Not quite. The parent is mostsly wrong about loss, but it is correct about higher fidelity coming about due to recording higher frequencies (which is what higher bitrates can translate to in a digital recording, assuming good input data), most definitely including frequencies you can't hear. This is why:
When two waveforms are combined, there are often four reasonably high amplitude results. The original two, the sum of the original two, and the difference between the original two.
Now for instance, let's stipulate that your hearing goes to 20 Khz (not likely, but let's go with it.) Let us also say that you have a recording, recorded with a brick wall filter that doesn't let anything past 20 KHz into the data stream. This is recording A. Recording B, however, let's say records up to, oh, 50 KHz.
Let us now suppose that as part of the performance, waveforms of, um, 35 KHz and 22 KHz are created. They're on recording B, but not on recording A.
Now comes time to play these back in your living room. Recording A produces everything up to 20 KHz, and you listen and you can hear all that. Nothing above comes out.
Recording B is played back now. 35 KHz and 22 KHz are faithfully radiated from your (very, very good) speakers. You can't hear these. But! They hit the walls and other hardish things in your listening room, and at that point, you get reflections at 22 KHz (can't hear it), 35 KHz (can't hear it) 57 KHz ((the sum) can't hear it) and at 13 KHz ((the difference) which you can hear!)
In this way, recording stuff above your listening range directly affects the playback qualities.
It goes further than that, too. Those fundamental, sum and difference frequencies bounce around your room, getting phase shifted, adding with other signals at other times (sound is slow; room size matters) and all of this not only contributes to exactly what you hear, but when. In other words, the room is an unavoidable part of the playback, and "stuff" on the recording that is (nominally) above your natural ability to hear will have a direct and potentially significant effect on what you hear.
So, the bottom line is, the broader the bandwidth of the recording, the more complex (and accurate) your listening experience is. Broader bandwidth literally does a better job of putting the performance into your performance space 9your listening area.)
So we're back to buying audio CDs? At least I get mine used, so take that RIAA.
You know, I really don't think we are. We can buy MP3s, we can encourage uncompressed and non-lossy recordings — disk space isn't really an issue any longer, and when there's no compression, there's less work for your CPU to do, so there's a good reason... and no compression inherently rules out lossy compression which audiophiles and anyone with a really good ear will appreciate. Plain encodings also mean that they are easy to process, easy to write loaders and savers for in terms of audio programs, and they're also easier to maintain error correction for (row/column error correction can fix single sample errors with almost trivial ease when the surrounding data doesn't have to be decoded.)
I'm really tired of being told what I can do with something I purchased. I don't steal or share audio or video I buy (I'm a musician, and I appreciate the idea of intellectual property and support it fully) but by Darwin, if I bought a recording, I think I should have ZERO flipping problem putting it in my PSP, my MP3 player, any computer I own, any editor I want, and so on. Compression mechanisms are, for the most part, patented and otherwise encumbered — and it seems to me that these days, they mostly serve to make things more difficult. So I say the hell with them. It's not like we're using 64k byte machines any more. Plopping a 30 megabyte tune into RAM is no problem for my machine; most current machines are 512 megs or more, so playing an uncompressed tune (typical) is about a 10% RAM load... who cares? Not most people, I suspect. Likewise, most portable players carry LOTS of memory and I bet hardly anyone is using all that space, or if they are, they're not listening to everything they've got stored... and memory continues to get less expensive and denser as time goes on, so what are we doing, really, by insisting on compression? Let's use our memory and encourage the memory manufacturers to give us more of that instead of the damned DRM trolls giving us more grief.
If no one bought Vista, Microsoft would have to consider a different strategy. Perhaps worse, if so few people bought it that (a) they lost money on development and (b) they had to keep losing money on support, that'd really send a message to them. Messages like: We don't like DRM. We don't like bloated code that takes gigs of RAM to run. We don't like code that was written so poorly, or in such retarded languages, that it takes a 2+ GHz PC to get those applications / OS's running in less than sixty seconds. We don't like little "thought bubbles" interrupting us every few minutes to tell us some irrelevant thing like an icon on the desktop is underused. We don't like products that are buggy and are never fixed, but instead we are expected to buy a new product which, perhaps, may fix that bug but has a new set of its own. Don't kid yourself. Microsoft, like everyone else, measures success using currency and nothing else. When you don't buy, you've cast a vote that counts.
Vista isn't pointless. That's just hyperbole. It is misguided, which is something else entirely.
So what do I do once popular applications require more RAM than my PC's motherboard can hold?
Buy a Mac. Run crossover or dual boot to (any version of) windows when you need to. You can use all the RAM you want. You'll be happier all around, I suspect. I know I am.
Vista's extreme support for DRM is my concern. I realize that XP also supports DRM in various ways, but Vista has quite a focus on it, and I'm not inclined to support that. That's what made XP my last Windows purchase. I bought an early Mac mini, and I've been nothing less than delighted with the thing. Feels like my linux machines, only prettier and a lot friendlier. Going to buy another Mac soon.
Apple's pushing DRM in a big way too; but Microsoft dominates the market and that's who I think the message needs to go to. In the meantime, buying MP3, staying away from iTunes AAC media, and supporting anyone who posts actual uncompressed, high-quality audio is the way to go. Vote with your wallet. That is the only thing these companies pay attention to. Every time you buy iTunes or any other proprietary DRM'd solution, you're screwing yourself and everyone else. And not in a fun way.
How about pedestrian-friendly urban planning? Eco-friendly transportation is a good step and all, but sensible urban planning is even better.
I have a very simple answer: $5000 isn't "pedestrian friendly."
Aside from that, urban areas in and of themselves aren't really the problem. Suburb to urban commuting, and back again, is the main one. I lived in NYC for years. I didn't own a car; the family didn't own a car. We didn't need one. We had subways and busses. We went everywhere, we saw everything. The beach, the museums, great eateries and fantastic pizza parlors a plenty, the zoo, the village... never needed a car. Mass transportation all the way. Subwau, elevated, busses, the ferries... rarely (like, maybe once year) we'd have a use for a taxi. Urban living doesn't typically require individual transport and hence isn't really the problem. Living in the suburbs and using individual transport is a much more significant problem and things like the Segway won't help even a bit with that. Better mass transport could, if safety, comfort, and capacity issues are addressed, at least, theoretically speaking. but Americans, at least, are in love with their cars, and I think that the bottom line is we had better give them cars that don't work quite as diligently at making a mess out of the atmosphere, and at consuming what appears to be a limited and geopolitically volatile resource (oil.) It's a smaller change for industry to make 9a lot) better cars than it is for Americans to make a social change that abandons the personal long and intermediate range transport. The Segway isn't even addressing the right problem to make a difference; it's a non-factor, on price, performance, and the sex appeal the American public demands.
...only if a canoe was priced 10x higher than any sensible person would consider paying.
Seriously. $5000 ??? $500, sure, $1000 maybe, $1500, probably not. You don't price a machine you want to "revolutionize" transportation at the same cost as a decent motorcycle (or more than a scooter) when you can't offer even a fraction of the benefits of the motorcycle or scooter. The Segway is ultra slow, totally thieve-worthy at five grand a pop, unable to deal with weather, too slow in traffic and not meant for it anyway, single-user, baggage crippled, short-range, annoying to pedestrians... frankly, aside from the gimmick (it balances... hoo hoo) I simply don't see the appeal.
What we *need* is an electric car that is affordable, quick, baggage-capable, carries passengers, has decent range (300...400 miles or so) and can recharge in a few minutes. Ultracapacitors are at about 1/10th the energy levels required for this right now, and my guess is that within ten years, they'll be right in the "zone." Barring something *actually* revolutionary (like antigravity!), pavement and car-class transportation isn't going anywhere.
Fact: Revolutions are made by people. Not by marketing declarations.
That's certainly an entertaining point of view, but I doubt it aligns very closely with the reality of our civilization.
The constitution, as a legal guideline for making and adjusting law by government entities human and agency, has been roundly ignored for some time. There has been no reaction from the populace. The constitution, as a legal binding for the average citizen, is a complete legal fiction -- no responsibility lies with the citizen to comply with even one line of the constitution until or unless they make a public oath or sign such an oath. Only politicians swear such an oath, and they, as we have seen, don't consider it to be binding. Compliance with the constitution is in the main ensured by pure coercion, though most citizens are unaware of this.
The system is therefore unlikely to come down from the top; and the citizens are, in the main, unaware there is even a problem. They're used to hearing people shouting from the rooftops. For instance, anti drug war people have been shouting 100% common sense and recommending constitutional compliance for 40 years now, and what is the result? More drug war, and cheering citizens. No, the problem with your view is that you can see problems, and they offend you. What you are missing is that the vast majority of the population cannot see the problems and won't lift a finger to help you, and in fact, were you to move to disturb their relative tranquility, they'd turn on you like wildcats in a heartbeat.
In American government, congress holds ultimate power. They can pass new law and invalidate old law. They can pass new law that clarifies conflicts. If the Supreme Court declares something unconstitutional, the Congress can amend the constitution.
Technically, this is correct. However, in the sense of what is reality, it is not.
(1) Congress -- both sides of the aisle -- are all for Megan's law and its sister laws in every state. As a hot button issue, it is incomparable. A politician simply has to pontificate about how they're hard on sex offenses and they've got a cheering crowd, completely distracted from all other issues, and from any side-effects brought by the ideas of the politician if they translate to law, as in many cases they do.
(2) Invalidating old law is, in fact, not what congress does. They very rarely even consider old law, being far too busy making new law. They could, yes, but they don't.
(3) Congress can amend the constitution with a highly unlikely majority (due to the 2-party system) and especially in the case where they might be seen as letting up any kind of pressure of sex offenders, there is absolutely no possibility of this happening, and that is to say nothing of the constitution convention issues.
(4) You have to understand what happened here. First the laws were made, with the grand compliance of the public. Someone convicted of a sex offense challenged the law, claiming that for him, who had already been through the system, sentenced, served said sentence, and all done, the late-coming requirement that he register as a sex offender without new offense, new trial and new conviction was, in fact, ex post facto punishment for the previous offense. This, of course, is obviously correct and is precisely aligned with what the founders meant when they wrote the ex post facto phrase. Further, previous law recognizing that posting one's face (shaming) was punishment was well established, and public web sites, for instance, meet this definition.
So the challenge made its way through the system of courts until it reached the USSC, where the law was declared valid because it didn't incur something the court saw as "punishment" (registration.) What we have here is a stack of compliant lawmakers, compliant citizens, and compliant judges, all topped off with the cherry that there is nowhere to go for these particular types of victims of ex post facto punishment who no one gives a damn about. The reasoning is sophist, even ridiculous, but regardless, it stands as the final word. You can't change this; your congresscritter won't change this, and neither will the courts.
The consequences for the current situation are as obvious as the nose on your face. Registration is not punishment, so sayeth the USSC; hence, the state (and of course, the feds) can register you for any reason, and on any list, that it or they choose to. No fly list? You're on. Sex offender? You're on. Generic enemy of the state? You're on. And no, you can't get off. They're not even required to tell you you're on. Look around you; you'll find more lists that incur secondary and tertiary consequences upon citizens. The FBI has them. Your local police force has them, as does the highway patrol and the sherriff. Credit card companies have them. Private companies of all kinds have them. Credit agencies have them. The precedent is massively ingrained into US society and there is no chance of eradicating either the behavior or the reasoning using the tools available within the system.
Understand now? To the entity maintaining the list, it is "just" a list. A list that says that you seem some degree of likely, to the list maintainers, to match the criteria the list collects. Secondary and tertiary consequences -- having your neigbors post your face all over the neighborhood on posters, suicide, failing to get a job, appearing on the town (or now, national) web site... that's all your problem,
I made this point above, but it bears repeating: It is NOT punishment, because the US supreme court has specifically said so. Registration is a state function; they have an "interest", and that's all it takes to make a registry legal.
This was established during a process where someone who was convicted of a sex offense prior to the enactment of the Megan's Law group of laws was registered *after the fact* and not by order of any court. The sex offender claimed (entirely correctly, in my view) that this was "ex post facto punishment", and the USSC in a leap of illogic incomprehensible to me, declared that registration could not be construed as punishment, hence it wasn't ex post facto punishment at all, and the guy was registered.
What was established by this is that (a) the state declares it has an interest in keeping you on a list of some kind, then it can, and (b), it can punish you in a myriad of interesting and creative ways if you don't comply. It was one of most ill-considered and least well reasoned USSC decisions in recent history, comparable to the ruling that pot grown in California, for sale and use in California, was "interstate commerce" because it "could" have been sold over state lines (no really, that's the ruling... it sounds like it was made up, it's so unbelievably stupid, but that's the situation.) In each case, a complete mockery was made of what the intent of the constitution was; in each case, the "reasoning" was strictly convenience of the moment.
The problem is that there is no recourse. Oncce the USSC decides something, you're done. Period. This Ohio law can survive no poblem, all it has to do is refer to the reasoning that underlies the (non) ex post facto status of the currently existing registries.
We are ruled by idiots. The population won't do anything about it. Mostly, they're idiots too. There's no help for it.
Democracy: Where any two idiots outvote a genius.
Democratic Republic: Where any two idiot representatives outvote a genius representative.
Oh, wait. There aren't any genius representatives.
Maybe someone in Ohio needs to challenge these laws to the supreme court
Won't work; it's too late. Poorly informed, hysterical and badly educated US citizens let the USSC declare that "registration" wasn't punishment (in order that sex offenders who had previously been convicted be forced to register without running afoul of the constitutionally declared right to be free of ex post facto punishment) and that opened the door (wide!) for the government to register you and yours for any reason it likes. It just has to declare it has "an interest" in you and that's it, buddy, you're on the list.
And as for revolution... don't count on it. The middle name of the America citizen is "gullible" and the surname should probably be "sheep." You'll do what you're told.
Suffering, in the context that I use it, is something I would characterize as a mental process involved from anticipation of pain, through experience of pain, through memory of pain. The more sophisticated animal life is, the more refined its ability to suffer is. I consider this an axiom -- completely obvious and true as a grounding principle.
Now, you (essentially) have stated that it is possible to kill a specific animal without it suffering. I agree. I will stipulate to humans as well, as they are, of course, simply animals. However, just as a for instance, when you kill the mother of a brood, even though you may have avoided suffering on her part, the brood itself is now suffering, most likely, and depending on the relationships, they may die or starve. Conversely, should you kill an infant, the mother may suffer. Should you kill a animal's animal companion, then the companion(s) of that animal may suffer. Should you kill a pet, the pet's human companions will suffer. Likewise, should you kill the pet's companion (the owner, in current social terms) the pet will often suffer, sometimes to the point of death.
Once you actually open your eyes to the relationships among animals, it becomes quite clear that there is no way to ensure that harmful actions can be made ethically cost-free through the presumption that suffering of the specific individual in question has been averted -- even if it is correct.
Do you take use appropriate drugs when you get sick or injured ? Does the suffering of the bacteria bother you?
Yes, I do take appropriate drugs in those cases. Suffering of bacteria is not a valid concept to me, because without a nervous system, just as with plants, there is no evidence whatsoever that those creatures can suffer. Even were it so, when any animal competes with me for a resource, including my body as raw materials -- you, a carnivore, an intestinial parasite, a mosquito, germs or viri -- at that time a line has been crossed. I consider agression towards me as unacceptable and I will act to stop it, presuming I can muster the resources required. Otherwise, the good that I may do in my life will have been terminated or restricted by an uncontrolled, uninvited outside force, and I view that as unacceptable for all the obvious reasons, and perhaps even one or two that might not be so obvious.:)
How do you create a market for a product, and make money of a product that has a huge initial creative investment, but then no manufacturing cost, and is in infinite supply?
For music, I''d suggest that performers lose the "videos", which are extremely effort-intensive, make recordings to distribute, and perform concerts for income.
For movies, I have no suggestions. They're expensive to make (and the better they are, the more they cost) and I see no potential for a split between live performance and recorded output.
In the end, it seems to me that copyright is a misguided concept, and ownership would be better. I realized this is a highly unpopular view, but it is what I think. Copyright simply does not work in the digital world; ownership gives both consumers and artists some teeth.
I think you'll find that for non-casual thinkers, the line wavers into being around the concepts of cognition and the cognitively derived capacity to suffer (and conversely, the capacity to enjoy living.) This is the line that puts plants on one side and animals with highly developed nervous systems on the other. If you want to criticize, that's the point at issue.
Quite Singerian, actually. (I assume you're familiar with his works.)
I wasn't; I am now, to some degree. Found some things (such as this) and read them. He's a lot more wordy than I am (which would be to the horror of many/. readers, I am certain, were there any left paying attention besides us two) but we seem to agree. Thanks for the pointer; it is quite refreshing to converse with an informed party. Since you are clearly familiar with him, I'll make some references to what I've read this evening in my reply.
However, there are three major principles that cast doubt on your reasoning.
The first is an economic principle of return on investment.
First of all, animals generally put a lot of effort into raising their own, so we aren't required to. In the cases where orphans are created or special care is required, yes, morally we are upstream if we help. But generally speaking it is not parenting I am advocating, it is simply the end to being an outright enemy. I do not argue that we should put equal effort into such support, simply that in many cases, putting some effort in will benefit all — such as designing roads where it is impossible to run into a deer or a porcupine, just for starters. The ROI of such efforts can be viewed as human-centric, while still providing significant improvements for the lot of non-humans.
The second principle arises from future potential.
I observe that in the US, which is a comparatively rich country with the demonstrated ability to not take the easiest path, babies with reduced resources are treated as equal in Singer's sense: "equality of consideration." I have already said that we are centuries from any such resolution, even with the idea in mind that some rich societies, like the USA, could afford to make large strides in this direction even now. It is not a matter of cost, at least here, as much it is a matter of that invisible, imaginary line drawn by what Singer (accurately, I think) terms "specisism."
In your second point, you seem to have taken an interesting (and highly unpopular, both philosophically and socially) view that retarded, terminal and not immediately useful infants are actually not entitled to equal consideration. I observe that this line is crossed when a country becomes richer; China has a most unequal distribution of wealth, and serves as an example of baby-worth being arbitrarily (I think) aligned with gross political goals, whereas the USA has a highher baseline and extremely widespread middle class, and here such an attitude is considered savage, or worse.
This dovetails nicely with my idea that time (which I presume correlates with wealth for any continuously existing society) will be required for equality of consideration to become the norm. This both gives society a chance to develop deeper resources, become more sophisticated as to what we actually are (animals), and to develop a deeper and more widespread understanding of where the various animals stand in terms of cognition, an area we are woefully short of detailed information in today.
Regarding your point in re continuation of (our) species, I would simply reply that as presumably high functioning individuals, we incur a responsibility to see to it that other species, through the individuals of those species, also have a reasonable chance to do the same. As with a family, the high functioning individual with the greatest wealth is most qualified to be the benevolent one who has the most effect on future potential. I simply choose to ignore the species line in that view.
The third principle is based on intrinsic aesthetics.
I simply don't accept this. My aesthetics are such that my compassion for a wounded animal reaches th
Should I have the opportunity, I will also support governmental research funding to assist this endeavor. I am unlikely to support new-harvest directly because I don't have the background--nor do they list the publication record--to evaluate the promise of and problems with their approaches.
They are one of many who are working on this. I listed them because I've been the whole route with them, gotten the proper tax records back from contributions, and I know what they're doing, having spent some time looking at them. But there are certainly many other potential vectors for supporting this type of research. We have, as was previously observed, evolved as omnivores and it is clear that some important parts of our nutrition are more easily obtained from animal tissues. This is the way to go, then, at least until the long job of actually understanding our physiologies is complete, or a lot nearer to complete.
but you neglected to explain why you think that animals and children have the same moral status. I'm curious about this, as most people seem to come to a different conclusion.
Animals have an intelligence that develops to a state very much comparable with that of babies and very young children, for the most part, though in some cases they do exceed the capacity of babies, certainly physically, but easy examples like dogs, cats and some seagoing mammals rescuing humans also come to mind. Pet owners have known this for centuries, though science is just beginning to come to the same conclusions.
Various non-human animals outperform us in base capabilities, often in spades, in areas for which they are specialized. Flight, running, climbing, vision, digging, smell, strength, flexibility and so forth. But cognitively speaking, they're very similar to babies in that they have very limited coping skills when situations are not familiar to them. Most animals are not immediately able to make the distinction, for instance, that a road is a hazard significantly more intense than a meadow or a plain, though they can slowly learn if they are lucky enough to have time to. They are, however, capable of the entire range of emotions we (babies and adults) experience -- love, rage, jealousy, etc. -- as well as being playful, creative, predatory and so forth. They communicate as well, and sometimes better, than babies do -- for instance, if my cats run out of food, believe me, they let me know it. They simply lack the immediate potential to become more than a baby, as it were. But then again, so does a baby that dies in a car accident or suffers from various diseases. If those non-developing babies are as of great a value during their lives to us as babies that do develop -- and by all indications, they are -- then I see absolutely no reason whatsoever for any valid rationalization that animals should not also be treated as of equal value. You'll note that when a baby is born with a terminal condition, we neither eat it, make belts and shoes out of it, test sunscreen or unapproved meds on it, or see if cosmetics will burn its eyes. If the baby has no chance to reach its potential, and cognitively speaking, never even gets to the level of an animal, then one might ask one's self why this is the case, if one finds that inflicting such things on other animals is "ok."
I do see that people don't want to be inconvenienced by the loss of animals as a foodstuff, as testbeds for products before people have to take risks, as entertainment for those who enjoy hunting and fishing and collecting dead heads and stuffed carcasses, and who do not want to deal with issues such as habatat reduction, ecological niche destruction, and even the loss of the occassional human being or family to the careless way in which roadways are built. People are not only lazy, they are cheap and they are perfectly well able to rationalize a perforated bucket into a luxurious swimming pool when they are so inclined -- the entire structure of g
If it had eyes or a mother, yes, I may well eat it. I'll try to avoid giving food animals a miserable existence, but until there's a suitable alternative (reasonably convenient, with no health/performance side effects), I'll be an omnivore.
If you're saying that there's a moral equivalence between abusing children and animal testing, then your answer is probably that all of these products are morally unacceptable until we find a different way to test them.
That is, in fact, very close to my answer. My answer is that further products are unacceptable; it would be absurd to waste the knowledge from the research that has already gone on. Absurd, and ethically bankrupt with respect to the lives taken and abused to get as far as we have today.
what about the moral culpability of people getting skin cancer when we could have prevented it, and how do you come to the conclusion that the two are equivalent?
I think if you want a product that does something for you and yours -- protecting you from skin cancer from the sun is a good example -- you have a moral obligation to test it on you and yours, not on the nearest helpless/defenseless creature/prisoner you can find. Can't find anyone who is willing to test your products? Maybe you should pay more. Eventually, someone will step up to the plate. Or if not, maybe what you're testing is so dangerous you shouldn't be screwing around with it. In any case, innocents shouldn't be a handy testbed. I'm sure you knew I was going to say that, too.
Should we, for example, charge people for vehicular avianslaughter if they hit a bird with their car unintentionally?
Highways and lesser roads are perfect examples of selfish and thoughtless design. It is a rare highway indeed that even has a wildlife underpass, much less proper (climbable, full coverage) fencing. We fully have the power to eliminate not only the deaths of the animals who are not prepared to deal with the rapid changes in environment that humans have made, but also the humans who die and are injured when (for instance) they hit a deer or lose control trying to avoid a beaver, rabbit, cougar, etc. The only thing stopping these problems from beginning to be solved, and saving many lives, is selfishness. There is no technological problem; and as for money, we're just now spending a few trillion on killing Iraqis, Afghanis, etc. Apparently, we can spend as much money and effort as we want, when we want to, on completely stupid pursuits. That we don't want to expend those resources for the benefit of animals and many humans is what incriminates us as unqualified to be stewards for the planet, as far as I'm concerned.
Should we have safety regulations for windows so that they look much more like solid objects so that birds won't fly into them and die, much like we have regulations for balcony railings so people don't fall off?
Yes, of course. To do less is to be less. All home windows I control are well-insulated and not particularly transparent in contiguous areas larger than a few inches. Both at my company and my home; at home I use stained glass (the modern equivalent, of course, not actual leaded glass.) At the company, I installed glass bricking. No dead or injured birds result. Also, less heat transfer, less fuel use for heating and cooling, better privacy. No down side at all, and I can still see out just fine at home, employees have lots of light, but few distractions. Win, win, win.
I think you will find that they (the extremists) feel that using the normal political channels will not save the animals that they know are being abused, as in, right now. As when a human child is kidnapped and abused, society pulls out all the stops. Guns are pulled. Roadblocks. People are inconvenienced. Rather than people lining up with signs and saying, "dear mr. abuser, please stop, signed, the community." To understand what is happening here, you have to look into your kitten's eyes and imagine some scientist (or busnessman) pouring some noxious substance into them, making a mark on a chart, then moving on to your daughter's kitten, pouring, next, ad infinitum. These extremists are able to generate empathy -- lots and lots of it -- for animals they've never met, at the same level you can for your kitten. Assuming you can do that, of course. Most people can. But most people are also able to forget about the abuses happening, especially when they're never called to task on them. Who speaks for the animals that are not pets? Very few. So what happens? We make shoes out of them, pour stuff in their eyes, eat them, etc. But when a person comes along who *cannot* escape the vision of the harm being done to them, I'm inclined to think they're a better person than those who make that escape.
Sure it'd be great if the protests were non-violent. But for that to happen, they'd have to work. There's a strong parallel with the terrorists in the middle east here. They feel they don't have any other options that will work, or so it appears to me. Looking at this event straight in the eye, the extremists won this round -- dr whoever has stopped. Hard to argue with that, especially if the argument for using animals as experimental victims is that "it gets results."
If you believe that we have a strong moral duty to protect animals and prevent their suffering, isn't your first priority to stop using animals for food?
Of course. If it had eyes or a mother, generally speaking, I won't eat it. Can you say the same?
So that leaves us with a question: why do groups like PETA and ALF focus their attention on research when they haven't got nearly enough manpower to make an impact on the worst abuses in the food industry, much less cover everything down to the relatively minor cases of animals used for vision research?
You left out a basic human issue: They're simply frustrated. They live in a world where hubris and cruelty are the order of the day. I don't think they're doing the best that could be done. But I think I understand what's driving them to the edge. It doesn't drive me to the edge; but it never escapes my attention, either.
Something else. The presumption that a group organized to get something done will do it in the most efficient or intelligent way is a false one right out of the gate. It is a very rare organization that works that way, no matter if they've got a powerfully correct moral basis, as here, or if they're working entirely without one, as is typical for the government. So your list of four ideas is pretty silly, when you get right down to it.
None of these hypotheses is particularly flattering, and most of them boil down to animal rights activists being ignorant, hypocritical, or both.
Your list simply boils down to your being presumptuous and full of yourself. It says nothing about why people want to protect animals; and it says nothing about their methods, either.
Suppose you're developing a new cosmetic product to be used on the face. Anything that people might put on their face could get in their eyes. What do you do?
I say, "This is a totally optional product, not worth anyone or anything suffering over, and I need to be doing something actually productive -- then I find something productive to do. Just as I would not take a job abusing children for the benefit of cosmetics for your face, or your girl's face, I would not take (or create) a job abusing other innocents for that type of thing. Is that so difficult to imagine for you?
(By extension: is the claim that all cosmetics are bad and shouldn't be used? That we should blind people in order to test cosmetics? Seriously--what is the proposal here?)
Animal testing is bad. Period. Because the vast majority of it is cruel. Another way needs to be found. Until then, cosmetics aren't on my list of humanity's "must haves", frankly.
With the war on terrorism...
Why can't get get rid of our home grown ones?
Yes indeed. I'm sure that's exactly what the animals are thinking when Herr Doktor Professor inserts his electrodes into their brains. I'm sure that's what animals are thinking when soap companies flush shampoo into their eyes. I'm sure that's what animals are thinking when they are overdosed with toxins to "see what will happen."
Animals are unable to protect themselves; that's why we are obliged to protect them from predatory behavior, just as we are low-functioning humans. This is a simple, obvious truth. Unless you buy the stupid religious argument that animals were created *for* us, which of course is superstitious nonsense on a par with santa claus and the tooth fairy.
You can bitch all you want about "animal rights terrorists", but the fact is, the "animals are ours to fuck with" clan has sponsored and directly caused more terror, pain, abuse and outright gross murder than the animal rights extremists will ever have time to catch up with.
When you're ready to put your innocent baby into drug testing or chemical sensitivty trials or have electrodes shoved into its head for "the betterment of the race", then I'll consider your argument for "terrorism." Until then, you're just another sick, murder-sponsoring fucktard.
Digital Vomit regurgitated this steaming instance of poorly-digested thought:
No, what should be drilled into people's heads is that science and religion are not mutually exclusive.
No, in fact they are mutually exclusive. What's not mutually exclusive are political correctness and religion. Political correctness being a disease of fools that has, sadly, replaced the use of manners in our current social structure.
Most people are just too cowardly or deluded to see, much less argue, the facts: Religion is an anti-rational mode of philosophical thought. Religion is uniformly harmful to rationality when implemented as a belief system, and it is 100% anti-science from the very first step, as science depends utterly on rationality in order to structure a useful, interdependent construct of justifiable confidence and *rational* ideas.
Religion, in a word, is bunk. Any scientific truth that might be described in it is 100% coincidental. Any useful moral, ethical or procedural guides it provides are in no way uniquely confined to religion as to genesis or implementation.
Suggesting we tolerate the mental mush of religion is doing no one any favors in the long run. It just keeps you from having to be embroiled in controversy.
The odds are, science will destroy religion in the intelligent, non-neurotic segment of the population. This appears to me to be inevitable, because science continuously grows and provides results, while simultaneously shedding bright light upon the "mysteries" religion depends upon. Religion uses these mysteries to delude its followers. Science is in this way closing the door on religion's little monopoly of ignorance; and all the while, religion continues to fail to provide results. No angels, no 2nd (or 3rd, etc.) comings, no miraculous events, no answers to prayers, no workable predictions, no collections of virgins, no reincarnation, no planetary influences, no results in consequence of ouija boards, tarot, bone throwing, dancing, sacrifice, offerings, etc.
Science, on the other hand, works. Very, very well.
So, yes, religion is mutually exclusive with regard to science. All you need to do is grow some stones and admit it.
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Not quite. The parent is mostsly wrong about loss, but it is correct about higher fidelity coming about due to recording higher frequencies (which is what higher bitrates can translate to in a digital recording, assuming good input data), most definitely including frequencies you can't hear. This is why:
When two waveforms are combined, there are often four reasonably high amplitude results. The original two, the sum of the original two, and the difference between the original two.
Now for instance, let's stipulate that your hearing goes to 20 Khz (not likely, but let's go with it.) Let us also say that you have a recording, recorded with a brick wall filter that doesn't let anything past 20 KHz into the data stream. This is recording A. Recording B, however, let's say records up to, oh, 50 KHz.
Let us now suppose that as part of the performance, waveforms of, um, 35 KHz and 22 KHz are created. They're on recording B, but not on recording A.
Now comes time to play these back in your living room. Recording A produces everything up to 20 KHz, and you listen and you can hear all that. Nothing above comes out.
Recording B is played back now. 35 KHz and 22 KHz are faithfully radiated from your (very, very good) speakers. You can't hear these. But! They hit the walls and other hardish things in your listening room, and at that point, you get reflections at 22 KHz (can't hear it), 35 KHz (can't hear it) 57 KHz ((the sum) can't hear it) and at 13 KHz ((the difference) which you can hear!)
In this way, recording stuff above your listening range directly affects the playback qualities.
It goes further than that, too. Those fundamental, sum and difference frequencies bounce around your room, getting phase shifted, adding with other signals at other times (sound is slow; room size matters) and all of this not only contributes to exactly what you hear, but when. In other words, the room is an unavoidable part of the playback, and "stuff" on the recording that is (nominally) above your natural ability to hear will have a direct and potentially significant effect on what you hear.
So, the bottom line is, the broader the bandwidth of the recording, the more complex (and accurate) your listening experience is. Broader bandwidth literally does a better job of putting the performance into your performance space 9your listening area.)
Good point. Still, higher-bandwidth connections are spreading fast, too. :-)
You know, I really don't think we are. We can buy MP3s, we can encourage uncompressed and non-lossy recordings — disk space isn't really an issue any longer, and when there's no compression, there's less work for your CPU to do, so there's a good reason... and no compression inherently rules out lossy compression which audiophiles and anyone with a really good ear will appreciate. Plain encodings also mean that they are easy to process, easy to write loaders and savers for in terms of audio programs, and they're also easier to maintain error correction for (row/column error correction can fix single sample errors with almost trivial ease when the surrounding data doesn't have to be decoded.)
I'm really tired of being told what I can do with something I purchased. I don't steal or share audio or video I buy (I'm a musician, and I appreciate the idea of intellectual property and support it fully) but by Darwin, if I bought a recording, I think I should have ZERO flipping problem putting it in my PSP, my MP3 player, any computer I own, any editor I want, and so on. Compression mechanisms are, for the most part, patented and otherwise encumbered — and it seems to me that these days, they mostly serve to make things more difficult. So I say the hell with them. It's not like we're using 64k byte machines any more. Plopping a 30 megabyte tune into RAM is no problem for my machine; most current machines are 512 megs or more, so playing an uncompressed tune (typical) is about a 10% RAM load... who cares? Not most people, I suspect. Likewise, most portable players carry LOTS of memory and I bet hardly anyone is using all that space, or if they are, they're not listening to everything they've got stored... and memory continues to get less expensive and denser as time goes on, so what are we doing, really, by insisting on compression? Let's use our memory and encourage the memory manufacturers to give us more of that instead of the damned DRM trolls giving us more grief.
If no one bought Vista, Microsoft would have to consider a different strategy. Perhaps worse, if so few people bought it that (a) they lost money on development and (b) they had to keep losing money on support, that'd really send a message to them. Messages like: We don't like DRM. We don't like bloated code that takes gigs of RAM to run. We don't like code that was written so poorly, or in such retarded languages, that it takes a 2+ GHz PC to get those applications / OS's running in less than sixty seconds. We don't like little "thought bubbles" interrupting us every few minutes to tell us some irrelevant thing like an icon on the desktop is underused. We don't like products that are buggy and are never fixed, but instead we are expected to buy a new product which, perhaps, may fix that bug but has a new set of its own. Don't kid yourself. Microsoft, like everyone else, measures success using currency and nothing else. When you don't buy, you've cast a vote that counts.
Vista isn't pointless. That's just hyperbole. It is misguided, which is something else entirely.
Buy a Mac. Run crossover or dual boot to (any version of) windows when you need to. You can use all the RAM you want. You'll be happier all around, I suspect. I know I am.
Vista's extreme support for DRM is my concern. I realize that XP also supports DRM in various ways, but Vista has quite a focus on it, and I'm not inclined to support that. That's what made XP my last Windows purchase. I bought an early Mac mini, and I've been nothing less than delighted with the thing. Feels like my linux machines, only prettier and a lot friendlier. Going to buy another Mac soon.
Apple's pushing DRM in a big way too; but Microsoft dominates the market and that's who I think the message needs to go to. In the meantime, buying MP3, staying away from iTunes AAC media, and supporting anyone who posts actual uncompressed, high-quality audio is the way to go. Vote with your wallet. That is the only thing these companies pay attention to. Every time you buy iTunes or any other proprietary DRM'd solution, you're screwing yourself and everyone else. And not in a fun way.
I have a very simple answer: $5000 isn't "pedestrian friendly."
Aside from that, urban areas in and of themselves aren't really the problem. Suburb to urban commuting, and back again, is the main one. I lived in NYC for years. I didn't own a car; the family didn't own a car. We didn't need one. We had subways and busses. We went everywhere, we saw everything. The beach, the museums, great eateries and fantastic pizza parlors a plenty, the zoo, the village... never needed a car. Mass transportation all the way. Subwau, elevated, busses, the ferries... rarely (like, maybe once year) we'd have a use for a taxi. Urban living doesn't typically require individual transport and hence isn't really the problem. Living in the suburbs and using individual transport is a much more significant problem and things like the Segway won't help even a bit with that. Better mass transport could, if safety, comfort, and capacity issues are addressed, at least, theoretically speaking. but Americans, at least, are in love with their cars, and I think that the bottom line is we had better give them cars that don't work quite as diligently at making a mess out of the atmosphere, and at consuming what appears to be a limited and geopolitically volatile resource (oil.) It's a smaller change for industry to make 9a lot) better cars than it is for Americans to make a social change that abandons the personal long and intermediate range transport. The Segway isn't even addressing the right problem to make a difference; it's a non-factor, on price, performance, and the sex appeal the American public demands.
Seriously. $5000 ??? $500, sure, $1000 maybe, $1500, probably not. You don't price a machine you want to "revolutionize" transportation at the same cost as a decent motorcycle (or more than a scooter) when you can't offer even a fraction of the benefits of the motorcycle or scooter. The Segway is ultra slow, totally thieve-worthy at five grand a pop, unable to deal with weather, too slow in traffic and not meant for it anyway, single-user, baggage crippled, short-range, annoying to pedestrians... frankly, aside from the gimmick (it balances... hoo hoo) I simply don't see the appeal.
What we *need* is an electric car that is affordable, quick, baggage-capable, carries passengers, has decent range (300...400 miles or so) and can recharge in a few minutes. Ultracapacitors are at about 1/10th the energy levels required for this right now, and my guess is that within ten years, they'll be right in the "zone." Barring something *actually* revolutionary (like antigravity!), pavement and car-class transportation isn't going anywhere.
Fact: Revolutions are made by people. Not by marketing declarations.
That's certainly an entertaining point of view, but I doubt it aligns very closely with the reality of our civilization.
The constitution, as a legal guideline for making and adjusting law by government entities human and agency, has been roundly ignored for some time. There has been no reaction from the populace. The constitution, as a legal binding for the average citizen, is a complete legal fiction -- no responsibility lies with the citizen to comply with even one line of the constitution until or unless they make a public oath or sign such an oath. Only politicians swear such an oath, and they, as we have seen, don't consider it to be binding. Compliance with the constitution is in the main ensured by pure coercion, though most citizens are unaware of this.
The system is therefore unlikely to come down from the top; and the citizens are, in the main, unaware there is even a problem. They're used to hearing people shouting from the rooftops. For instance, anti drug war people have been shouting 100% common sense and recommending constitutional compliance for 40 years now, and what is the result? More drug war, and cheering citizens. No, the problem with your view is that you can see problems, and they offend you. What you are missing is that the vast majority of the population cannot see the problems and won't lift a finger to help you, and in fact, were you to move to disturb their relative tranquility, they'd turn on you like wildcats in a heartbeat.
Technically, this is correct. However, in the sense of what is reality, it is not.
(1) Congress -- both sides of the aisle -- are all for Megan's law and its sister laws in every state. As a hot button issue, it is incomparable. A politician simply has to pontificate about how they're hard on sex offenses and they've got a cheering crowd, completely distracted from all other issues, and from any side-effects brought by the ideas of the politician if they translate to law, as in many cases they do.
(2) Invalidating old law is, in fact, not what congress does. They very rarely even consider old law, being far too busy making new law. They could, yes, but they don't.
(3) Congress can amend the constitution with a highly unlikely majority (due to the 2-party system) and especially in the case where they might be seen as letting up any kind of pressure of sex offenders, there is absolutely no possibility of this happening, and that is to say nothing of the constitution convention issues.
(4) You have to understand what happened here. First the laws were made, with the grand compliance of the public. Someone convicted of a sex offense challenged the law, claiming that for him, who had already been through the system, sentenced, served said sentence, and all done, the late-coming requirement that he register as a sex offender without new offense, new trial and new conviction was, in fact, ex post facto punishment for the previous offense. This, of course, is obviously correct and is precisely aligned with what the founders meant when they wrote the ex post facto phrase. Further, previous law recognizing that posting one's face (shaming) was punishment was well established, and public web sites, for instance, meet this definition.
So the challenge made its way through the system of courts until it reached the USSC, where the law was declared valid because it didn't incur something the court saw as "punishment" (registration.) What we have here is a stack of compliant lawmakers, compliant citizens, and compliant judges, all topped off with the cherry that there is nowhere to go for these particular types of victims of ex post facto punishment who no one gives a damn about. The reasoning is sophist, even ridiculous, but regardless, it stands as the final word. You can't change this; your congresscritter won't change this, and neither will the courts.
The consequences for the current situation are as obvious as the nose on your face. Registration is not punishment, so sayeth the USSC; hence, the state (and of course, the feds) can register you for any reason, and on any list, that it or they choose to. No fly list? You're on. Sex offender? You're on. Generic enemy of the state? You're on. And no, you can't get off. They're not even required to tell you you're on. Look around you; you'll find more lists that incur secondary and tertiary consequences upon citizens. The FBI has them. Your local police force has them, as does the highway patrol and the sherriff. Credit card companies have them. Private companies of all kinds have them. Credit agencies have them. The precedent is massively ingrained into US society and there is no chance of eradicating either the behavior or the reasoning using the tools available within the system.
Understand now? To the entity maintaining the list, it is "just" a list. A list that says that you seem some degree of likely, to the list maintainers, to match the criteria the list collects. Secondary and tertiary consequences -- having your neigbors post your face all over the neighborhood on posters, suicide, failing to get a job, appearing on the town (or now, national) web site... that's all your problem,
I made this point above, but it bears repeating: It is NOT punishment, because the US supreme court has specifically said so. Registration is a state function; they have an "interest", and that's all it takes to make a registry legal.
This was established during a process where someone who was convicted of a sex offense prior to the enactment of the Megan's Law group of laws was registered *after the fact* and not by order of any court. The sex offender claimed (entirely correctly, in my view) that this was "ex post facto punishment", and the USSC in a leap of illogic incomprehensible to me, declared that registration could not be construed as punishment, hence it wasn't ex post facto punishment at all, and the guy was registered.
What was established by this is that (a) the state declares it has an interest in keeping you on a list of some kind, then it can, and (b), it can punish you in a myriad of interesting and creative ways if you don't comply. It was one of most ill-considered and least well reasoned USSC decisions in recent history, comparable to the ruling that pot grown in California, for sale and use in California, was "interstate commerce" because it "could" have been sold over state lines (no really, that's the ruling... it sounds like it was made up, it's so unbelievably stupid, but that's the situation.) In each case, a complete mockery was made of what the intent of the constitution was; in each case, the "reasoning" was strictly convenience of the moment.
The problem is that there is no recourse. Oncce the USSC decides something, you're done. Period. This Ohio law can survive no poblem, all it has to do is refer to the reasoning that underlies the (non) ex post facto status of the currently existing registries.
We are ruled by idiots. The population won't do anything about it. Mostly, they're idiots too. There's no help for it.
Democracy: Where any two idiots outvote a genius.
Democratic Republic: Where any two idiot representatives outvote a genius representative.
Oh, wait. There aren't any genius representatives.
Won't work; it's too late. Poorly informed, hysterical and badly educated US citizens let the USSC declare that "registration" wasn't punishment (in order that sex offenders who had previously been convicted be forced to register without running afoul of the constitutionally declared right to be free of ex post facto punishment) and that opened the door (wide!) for the government to register you and yours for any reason it likes. It just has to declare it has "an interest" in you and that's it, buddy, you're on the list.
And as for revolution... don't count on it. The middle name of the America citizen is "gullible" and the surname should probably be "sheep." You'll do what you're told.
Suffering, in the context that I use it, is something I would characterize as a mental process involved from anticipation of pain, through experience of pain, through memory of pain. The more sophisticated animal life is, the more refined its ability to suffer is. I consider this an axiom -- completely obvious and true as a grounding principle.
Now, you (essentially) have stated that it is possible to kill a specific animal without it suffering. I agree. I will stipulate to humans as well, as they are, of course, simply animals. However, just as a for instance, when you kill the mother of a brood, even though you may have avoided suffering on her part, the brood itself is now suffering, most likely, and depending on the relationships, they may die or starve. Conversely, should you kill an infant, the mother may suffer. Should you kill a animal's animal companion, then the companion(s) of that animal may suffer. Should you kill a pet, the pet's human companions will suffer. Likewise, should you kill the pet's companion (the owner, in current social terms) the pet will often suffer, sometimes to the point of death.
Once you actually open your eyes to the relationships among animals, it becomes quite clear that there is no way to ensure that harmful actions can be made ethically cost-free through the presumption that suffering of the specific individual in question has been averted -- even if it is correct.
Yes, I do take appropriate drugs in those cases. Suffering of bacteria is not a valid concept to me, because without a nervous system, just as with plants, there is no evidence whatsoever that those creatures can suffer. Even were it so, when any animal competes with me for a resource, including my body as raw materials -- you, a carnivore, an intestinial parasite, a mosquito, germs or viri -- at that time a line has been crossed. I consider agression towards me as unacceptable and I will act to stop it, presuming I can muster the resources required. Otherwise, the good that I may do in my life will have been terminated or restricted by an uncontrolled, uninvited outside force, and I view that as unacceptable for all the obvious reasons, and perhaps even one or two that might not be so obvious. :)
For music, I''d suggest that performers lose the "videos", which are extremely effort-intensive, make recordings to distribute, and perform concerts for income.
For movies, I have no suggestions. They're expensive to make (and the better they are, the more they cost) and I see no potential for a split between live performance and recorded output.
In the end, it seems to me that copyright is a misguided concept, and ownership would be better. I realized this is a highly unpopular view, but it is what I think. Copyright simply does not work in the digital world; ownership gives both consumers and artists some teeth.
I think you'll find that for non-casual thinkers, the line wavers into being around the concepts of cognition and the cognitively derived capacity to suffer (and conversely, the capacity to enjoy living.) This is the line that puts plants on one side and animals with highly developed nervous systems on the other. If you want to criticize, that's the point at issue.
Exceptions are eggs, which have a mother. The exception exists because eggs have no capacity to suffer, to the best of my knowledge.
Because again, plants have no capacity to suffer, to the best of my knowledge.
What is false to you may not be false to someone else. I'll leave it to you to work out why.
I wasn't; I am now, to some degree. Found some things (such as this) and read them. He's a lot more wordy than I am (which would be to the horror of many /. readers, I am certain, were there any left paying attention besides us two) but we seem to agree. Thanks for the pointer; it is quite refreshing to converse with an informed party. Since you are clearly familiar with him, I'll make some references to what I've read this evening in my reply.
First of all, animals generally put a lot of effort into raising their own, so we aren't required to. In the cases where orphans are created or special care is required, yes, morally we are upstream if we help. But generally speaking it is not parenting I am advocating, it is simply the end to being an outright enemy. I do not argue that we should put equal effort into such support, simply that in many cases, putting some effort in will benefit all — such as designing roads where it is impossible to run into a deer or a porcupine, just for starters. The ROI of such efforts can be viewed as human-centric, while still providing significant improvements for the lot of non-humans.
I observe that in the US, which is a comparatively rich country with the demonstrated ability to not take the easiest path, babies with reduced resources are treated as equal in Singer's sense: "equality of consideration." I have already said that we are centuries from any such resolution, even with the idea in mind that some rich societies, like the USA, could afford to make large strides in this direction even now. It is not a matter of cost, at least here, as much it is a matter of that invisible, imaginary line drawn by what Singer (accurately, I think) terms "specisism."
In your second point, you seem to have taken an interesting (and highly unpopular, both philosophically and socially) view that retarded, terminal and not immediately useful infants are actually not entitled to equal consideration. I observe that this line is crossed when a country becomes richer; China has a most unequal distribution of wealth, and serves as an example of baby-worth being arbitrarily (I think) aligned with gross political goals, whereas the USA has a highher baseline and extremely widespread middle class, and here such an attitude is considered savage, or worse.
This dovetails nicely with my idea that time (which I presume correlates with wealth for any continuously existing society) will be required for equality of consideration to become the norm. This both gives society a chance to develop deeper resources, become more sophisticated as to what we actually are (animals), and to develop a deeper and more widespread understanding of where the various animals stand in terms of cognition, an area we are woefully short of detailed information in today.
Regarding your point in re continuation of (our) species, I would simply reply that as presumably high functioning individuals, we incur a responsibility to see to it that other species, through the individuals of those species, also have a reasonable chance to do the same. As with a family, the high functioning individual with the greatest wealth is most qualified to be the benevolent one who has the most effect on future potential. I simply choose to ignore the species line in that view.
I simply don't accept this. My aesthetics are such that my compassion for a wounded animal reaches th
They are one of many who are working on this. I listed them because I've been the whole route with them, gotten the proper tax records back from contributions, and I know what they're doing, having spent some time looking at them. But there are certainly many other potential vectors for supporting this type of research. We have, as was previously observed, evolved as omnivores and it is clear that some important parts of our nutrition are more easily obtained from animal tissues. This is the way to go, then, at least until the long job of actually understanding our physiologies is complete, or a lot nearer to complete.
Animals have an intelligence that develops to a state very much comparable with that of babies and very young children, for the most part, though in some cases they do exceed the capacity of babies, certainly physically, but easy examples like dogs, cats and some seagoing mammals rescuing humans also come to mind. Pet owners have known this for centuries, though science is just beginning to come to the same conclusions.
Various non-human animals outperform us in base capabilities, often in spades, in areas for which they are specialized. Flight, running, climbing, vision, digging, smell, strength, flexibility and so forth. But cognitively speaking, they're very similar to babies in that they have very limited coping skills when situations are not familiar to them. Most animals are not immediately able to make the distinction, for instance, that a road is a hazard significantly more intense than a meadow or a plain, though they can slowly learn if they are lucky enough to have time to. They are, however, capable of the entire range of emotions we (babies and adults) experience -- love, rage, jealousy, etc. -- as well as being playful, creative, predatory and so forth. They communicate as well, and sometimes better, than babies do -- for instance, if my cats run out of food, believe me, they let me know it. They simply lack the immediate potential to become more than a baby, as it were. But then again, so does a baby that dies in a car accident or suffers from various diseases. If those non-developing babies are as of great a value during their lives to us as babies that do develop -- and by all indications, they are -- then I see absolutely no reason whatsoever for any valid rationalization that animals should not also be treated as of equal value. You'll note that when a baby is born with a terminal condition, we neither eat it, make belts and shoes out of it, test sunscreen or unapproved meds on it, or see if cosmetics will burn its eyes. If the baby has no chance to reach its potential, and cognitively speaking, never even gets to the level of an animal, then one might ask one's self why this is the case, if one finds that inflicting such things on other animals is "ok."
I do see that people don't want to be inconvenienced by the loss of animals as a foodstuff, as testbeds for products before people have to take risks, as entertainment for those who enjoy hunting and fishing and collecting dead heads and stuffed carcasses, and who do not want to deal with issues such as habatat reduction, ecological niche destruction, and even the loss of the occassional human being or family to the careless way in which roadways are built. People are not only lazy, they are cheap and they are perfectly well able to rationalize a perforated bucket into a luxurious swimming pool when they are so inclined -- the entire structure of g
A proper fence would stop birds, it's simply a function of mesh density -- so WTH are you talking about?
They're working on vat-grown tissues. These people are one good example. They take contributions.
That is, in fact, very close to my answer. My answer is that further products are unacceptable; it would be absurd to waste the knowledge from the research that has already gone on. Absurd, and ethically bankrupt with respect to the lives taken and abused to get as far as we have today.
I think if you want a product that does something for you and yours -- protecting you from skin cancer from the sun is a good example -- you have a moral obligation to test it on you and yours, not on the nearest helpless/defenseless creature/prisoner you can find. Can't find anyone who is willing to test your products? Maybe you should pay more. Eventually, someone will step up to the plate. Or if not, maybe what you're testing is so dangerous you shouldn't be screwing around with it. In any case, innocents shouldn't be a handy testbed. I'm sure you knew I was going to say that, too.
Highways and lesser roads are perfect examples of selfish and thoughtless design. It is a rare highway indeed that even has a wildlife underpass, much less proper (climbable, full coverage) fencing. We fully have the power to eliminate not only the deaths of the animals who are not prepared to deal with the rapid changes in environment that humans have made, but also the humans who die and are injured when (for instance) they hit a deer or lose control trying to avoid a beaver, rabbit, cougar, etc. The only thing stopping these problems from beginning to be solved, and saving many lives, is selfishness. There is no technological problem; and as for money, we're just now spending a few trillion on killing Iraqis, Afghanis, etc. Apparently, we can spend as much money and effort as we want, when we want to, on completely stupid pursuits. That we don't want to expend those resources for the benefit of animals and many humans is what incriminates us as unqualified to be stewards for the planet, as far as I'm concerned.
Yes, of course. To do less is to be less. All home windows I control are well-insulated and not particularly transparent in contiguous areas larger than a few inches. Both at my company and my home; at home I use stained glass (the modern equivalent, of course, not actual leaded glass.) At the company, I installed glass bricking. No dead or injured birds result. Also, less heat transfer, less fuel use for heating and cooling, better privacy. No down side at all, and I can still see out just fine at home, employees have lots of light, but few distractions. Win, win, win.
I have no problem with you James, evolution is killing your bloodline off for me. :)
I think you will find that they (the extremists) feel that using the normal political channels will not save the animals that they know are being abused, as in, right now. As when a human child is kidnapped and abused, society pulls out all the stops. Guns are pulled. Roadblocks. People are inconvenienced. Rather than people lining up with signs and saying, "dear mr. abuser, please stop, signed, the community." To understand what is happening here, you have to look into your kitten's eyes and imagine some scientist (or busnessman) pouring some noxious substance into them, making a mark on a chart, then moving on to your daughter's kitten, pouring, next, ad infinitum. These extremists are able to generate empathy -- lots and lots of it -- for animals they've never met, at the same level you can for your kitten. Assuming you can do that, of course. Most people can. But most people are also able to forget about the abuses happening, especially when they're never called to task on them. Who speaks for the animals that are not pets? Very few. So what happens? We make shoes out of them, pour stuff in their eyes, eat them, etc. But when a person comes along who *cannot* escape the vision of the harm being done to them, I'm inclined to think they're a better person than those who make that escape.
Sure it'd be great if the protests were non-violent. But for that to happen, they'd have to work. There's a strong parallel with the terrorists in the middle east here. They feel they don't have any other options that will work, or so it appears to me. Looking at this event straight in the eye, the extremists won this round -- dr whoever has stopped. Hard to argue with that, especially if the argument for using animals as experimental victims is that "it gets results."
Of course. If it had eyes or a mother, generally speaking, I won't eat it. Can you say the same?
You left out a basic human issue: They're simply frustrated. They live in a world where hubris and cruelty are the order of the day. I don't think they're doing the best that could be done. But I think I understand what's driving them to the edge. It doesn't drive me to the edge; but it never escapes my attention, either.
Something else. The presumption that a group organized to get something done will do it in the most efficient or intelligent way is a false one right out of the gate. It is a very rare organization that works that way, no matter if they've got a powerfully correct moral basis, as here, or if they're working entirely without one, as is typical for the government. So your list of four ideas is pretty silly, when you get right down to it.
Your list simply boils down to your being presumptuous and full of yourself. It says nothing about why people want to protect animals; and it says nothing about their methods, either.
I say, "This is a totally optional product, not worth anyone or anything suffering over, and I need to be doing something actually productive -- then I find something productive to do. Just as I would not take a job abusing children for the benefit of cosmetics for your face, or your girl's face, I would not take (or create) a job abusing other innocents for that type of thing. Is that so difficult to imagine for you?
Animal testing is bad. Period. Because the vast majority of it is cruel. Another way needs to be found. Until then, cosmetics aren't on my list of humanity's "must haves", frankly.
Yes indeed. I'm sure that's exactly what the animals are thinking when Herr Doktor Professor inserts his electrodes into their brains. I'm sure that's what animals are thinking when soap companies flush shampoo into their eyes. I'm sure that's what animals are thinking when they are overdosed with toxins to "see what will happen."
Animals are unable to protect themselves; that's why we are obliged to protect them from predatory behavior, just as we are low-functioning humans. This is a simple, obvious truth. Unless you buy the stupid religious argument that animals were created *for* us, which of course is superstitious nonsense on a par with santa claus and the tooth fairy.
You can bitch all you want about "animal rights terrorists", but the fact is, the "animals are ours to fuck with" clan has sponsored and directly caused more terror, pain, abuse and outright gross murder than the animal rights extremists will ever have time to catch up with.
When you're ready to put your innocent baby into drug testing or chemical sensitivty trials or have electrodes shoved into its head for "the betterment of the race", then I'll consider your argument for "terrorism." Until then, you're just another sick, murder-sponsoring fucktard.
Digital Vomit regurgitated this steaming instance of poorly-digested thought:
No, in fact they are mutually exclusive. What's not mutually exclusive are political correctness and religion. Political correctness being a disease of fools that has, sadly, replaced the use of manners in our current social structure.
Most people are just too cowardly or deluded to see, much less argue, the facts: Religion is an anti-rational mode of philosophical thought. Religion is uniformly harmful to rationality when implemented as a belief system, and it is 100% anti-science from the very first step, as science depends utterly on rationality in order to structure a useful, interdependent construct of justifiable confidence and *rational* ideas.
Religion, in a word, is bunk. Any scientific truth that might be described in it is 100% coincidental. Any useful moral, ethical or procedural guides it provides are in no way uniquely confined to religion as to genesis or implementation.
Suggesting we tolerate the mental mush of religion is doing no one any favors in the long run. It just keeps you from having to be embroiled in controversy.
The odds are, science will destroy religion in the intelligent, non-neurotic segment of the population. This appears to me to be inevitable, because science continuously grows and provides results, while simultaneously shedding bright light upon the "mysteries" religion depends upon. Religion uses these mysteries to delude its followers. Science is in this way closing the door on religion's little monopoly of ignorance; and all the while, religion continues to fail to provide results. No angels, no 2nd (or 3rd, etc.) comings, no miraculous events, no answers to prayers, no workable predictions, no collections of virgins, no reincarnation, no planetary influences, no results in consequence of ouija boards, tarot, bone throwing, dancing, sacrifice, offerings, etc.
Science, on the other hand, works. Very, very well.
So, yes, religion is mutually exclusive with regard to science. All you need to do is grow some stones and admit it.