One significant implication of this is that certain types of cells with higher iron content - such as brain cells - may be more susceptible to damage from electromagnetic fields.
There are a lot more voting bible-belters than there are scientists.
True, but you are making the assumption that Bible-belters don't care about their childrens future. I think if you asked any 'Bible-belter' (how many do you actually know?), they would disagree with your assumption.
This administration has made it abundantly clear that they are only concerned with getting reelected. To hell with anything that stands in their way and alienates their voting base.
On the contrary, Bush seems to be doing things to try to please everyone, but it only pisses off everyone. For example, Medicare prescription coverage. Seniors want it, but at what cost? $450 billion at first passage, and now, it's looking more like $550 billion and rising. Who does that piss off? Every non-babyboomer with the who'll be paying for it for the rest of their lives. Of course, most aren't paying enough attention to care. Secondly, Bush's immigration plan. Who does that make happy? Businesses (small and large) who want cheap labor and (ironicly) liberals who want completely open borders and easy immigration for anyone. How about the National Endowment for the Arts? Bush has proposed increasing their funding by 10-15 million. That's the largest increase ever for the NEA. Art is waaaaaay too subjective and not something the government should be trying to support. Art should be self sufficient to truly be expressive anyway. What you consider art might be patently offensive to me - not an argument the government should be involved in.
The list goes on and on of items that are meant to appease everyone and no one at the same time. Sometimes I wonder what exactly the hell his plan is anyway.
The US Presidency, much like US Corporations, is afflicted with serious shortsightedness.
I agree that the presidential term cycle lends itself to short sightedness, but what does that have to do with Corporations, and especially US corporations? That's just a flame-bait comment.
I think a 10 year term is much better than a 4 year term because it would give the office holder at least 5 - 7 years before they would have to worry about reelection right after they enter office. And perhaps they'd think about doing things for the good of the nation rather than themselves.
NO, NO, NO! That would be horrible! 10 years and still give the chance for re-election?!?! I think a 6 year term with no re-election possibility seems like a better compromise.
I think that would help both sides of the presidential political issue: the president trying to get re-elected, and the candidate/parties trying to unseat him from power. They both generate a huge amount of FUD simply for their cause. Even though you would think scientist would be above this fray, they have their own agenda (just like you and I) as well. A good example is the mercury issue. Scientists/environmental groups want the mecury max-safe level lowered to almost immeasurable levels, but the only study that shows any illness or death from mecury is from post-WWII Japan in an area that was so contaminated it would have made these current scientists faint.
Take what the government gives you with a grain of salt, but take what *everyone* says with a grain of salt too, including the scientists.
Re:Jammers and Dampers (OT)
on
Cell-Phone Wars
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· Score: 2, Informative
which only makes the mobile and the base station turn up the power level, increasing the health hazard......
Slightly off topic, but...
Actually, studies are showing cell phones are not dangerous.
Was this guy hired by Micro$oft? Seriously. His arguments were so unconvincingly and universally applied to both open and closed source software that the whole article seemd like a joke.
I have yet to see even a *small* example of what he's talking about, but on the other had there's numerous examples of proprietary software having back-doors, exploits and vulnerablities that were not fixed for YEARS after the release of a product.
Examples: 1. Pix firewalls. These things have had numerous problems from day one and many were not fixed for many months.
2. I think it was 3com that had a default password on their switches/routers that anyone could use to access them. This was put in place by the company to allow technicians to service any unit.
3. The meta-data hidden in M$ Office documents. It has now even been documented by the government (and eventually Micro$oft) how to reduce the amount of meta-data in those documents. Hmm, I don't think this would have been an issue with open-source software.
There's many, many more examples, but these are they only ones I can think of off the top of my head.
He also said Linux was riddled with about the same amount of security problems as Windows. In what world? If you look at sheer numbers of vulnerabilities, yes a copy of Windows 2000 (56) has less than a copy of Red Hat Advanced Server 2.1 (109). But look at the actual exploits; most of the Windows problems will allow REMOTE administrative access or complete DOS. The Red Hat/Linux vulnerabilities are largely local application DOS issues and local privilege escalation in an application that usually isn't even running. Not to mention it may not even be installed (oh no! they've compromised mutt!). Conversely, how many Windows machines have been affected by worms compared to Linux machines?
Additionally, there are many programs on Linux that have their vulnerabilities found and fixed because the source is freely available. How many holes still exist in Windows and are waiting to be discovered?
All of the real-world proof completely refutes all of his pretenses.
Inevitably a human will introduce microbes to the planet
Isn't that a bold assumption? They haven't even proven there's been any life on Mars. I think that's one of smaller problems for sending an earthling to Mars.
I mentioned it here
It's really old news. Come on guys...
Fast FBI response and humor in the worm
on
More MyDoom Gloom
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· Score: 0
I believe the FBI got involved so quickly because they have been working with CERT and the Dept. of Homeland Security. Here's from a recent notice from CERT:
As many of you are aware, a few months ago the CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC) announced a new partnership with the Department of Homeland Security's National Cyber Security Division (NCSD) to form a response system for our nation and the Internet infrastructure. While this new partnership, known as US-CERT, has been low key, we have been working aggressively to upgrade our capabilities.
In another notice from CERT, this string was extracted from MyDoom.B: "sync-1.01; andy; I'm just doing my job, nothing personal, sorry".
Considering that the origins point possibly to Russia, it would seem a hapless (but probably well compensated) hacker named Andy has been enlisted by organized crime.
Some sort of cluster file system is necessary for distibuted and fault tolerant applications but the commercial ones are expensive, and Oracle's free one is quite lame by any standards. Red Hat recently acquired Sistina Software (of Logical Volume Manager fame) which makes a commercial CFS. Red Hat has also been working closely w/Oracle to make sure RHEL is certified by the database vendor. Oracle clustering requires some sort of CFS. All of this leads me to believe that an excellent CFS will be in the next kernel sooner rather than later.
Any economist of any reputation will tell you that the promise of a tax cut in ten years time has negligible effect on the economy. Also a tax cut that benefits people with very high disposable income already has little effect since these people usually run out of things to buy long before they run out of money.
The richest 5% of wage earners paid 53.25% of the taxes in 2001, the top 10% paid 64.89% and the top 50% of wage earners paid 96.03%. And you people continually scream for more tax increases for the wealthy. They already pay the lions share of the taxes anyway. The Democrats keep harping on 'tax cuts for the rich' (which you have apparently bought into) so they can promulgate class warfare to try to get votes. If most people actually knew how much 'people with very high disposable income' paid in taxes, they wouldn't complain so much. And the recent tax cuts helped the middle/lower class more than ever with the increased child credit and reduced marriage penalty.
I don't think you will find many economists with credibility outside the far right who will claim that cutting inheritance tax stimulates the economy short term.
This is something that should have been done looooooong ago. It's only fair. Why tax something that has already been taxed? If your grandfater dies and leaves you his estate (which could easily be over 100,000 with a house, etc.) why should the government get 50% of that when your grandfather already paid taxes on every cent he earned during his lifetime. It's just greed by the congress and seneate.
The Bush tax cuts were justified by claims that the Clinton surplus would stretch out as far as the eye could see. You can hardly claim that they are crafted to bring about a recovery from recession unless you are willing to admit that Bush and the admin are total liars.
The initial cuts in early 2000 were based on that assumption somewhat, but then the dot-com bubble burst (a hollow boom during the Clinton admin), corporate scandal at WorldCom, etc., and Sept. 11 caused the recent downturn. The most recent and largest tax cuts were touted for exactly that reason: boost the economy. And in reality they have helped and the economy is starting to pick up at a rate not seen in almost 20 years.
Read about a project here [puremagic.com] to implement a grey list at the MTA level.
It basically involes inspecting the sending ip, sender envelope, and recipient envelope. If the receiving MTA has never seen this particular combination of the three before, it does not accept delivery of the mail piece with a temporary failure message. The vast majority of spam would then be ultimately rejected because it is often sent through open MXs and not a valid MTA with valid sender and recipient envelope information.
It is designed to be a compliment to other anti-spam measures without being as inflexible and cumbersome as black/white lists.
Along those same lines, you could also do a quick reverse check to verify reply-to addresses at the MTA level.
The battle against spam is not totally lost, and we shouldn't cut off our nose to spite our face the way blacklists do.
1. Because you consider embryos to be people, I should be bound by your beliefs? Does freedom of conscience extend only as far as the right to agree with you?
Ponder the consequences, starting with the tenets of some of the more radical animal-rights groups. If a large group of folks decided that cows and chickens were people, would you give up hamburgers and omelettes?
At what point do you consider a baby to be a person? After birth? What about premature babies? They are being born and surviving earilier and earlier. Once you have to determine when to label a fetus 'a person' the logic gets fuzzy. For the RTL crowd, and philosophically as well, a 'person' begins at conception. Before conception, there is no possibility for a human to form. If you argue that it is a 'person' only when it is able to survive outside the womb, you will be dis-proved by your own 'god' science that it is earlier and earlier. Just think about what it could be like in 100 years. Babies could be grown entirely outside of a woman. At what point is that baby 'a person'?
2. An infant cannot give consent to donate its organs any more than an embryo can. However, the parents of dying/dead infants often donate their organs to save other people's children. This is where babies with biliary atresia (a congenital malformation of the bile ducts which is uniformly fatal) get their donor livers and another chance at life.
Is that wrong, by your lights?
If not, what is your argument against the parents of frozen pre-embryos (16-cell clusters) donating those cells for use in stem-cell research or treatments, instead of just throwing them down the sewer if they aren't going to be used? Keep in mind that the pre-embryo is dead either way, and that throwing away the pre-embryos is not at all different from the normal implantation failures of the human reproductive scheme.
As for your first sentence, why would it be considered wrong? A brain-dead person can't consent either. Bad argument. As for the rest: If you have a problem with ESCR, you will have a problem with people throwing away their embryos. That is why IVF has some inherent problems from a basic RTL standpoint anyway. It is the same reason the aborted-baby-spare-body-parts industry is disgusting. Just because abortion is legal, doesn't mean its allowable to 'harvest' their little dissected bodies for profit and 'necessary research'.
Because biologically, that is how humans reproduce. If a woman is pregnant, there had to have been a certain sequence of events for her to concieve. This baby didn't just show up out of nowhere imposing its will on the mother. Unless she was raped, she did something to get pregnant. People forget the responsibility factors involved.
If I was put on your property by YOU, then I should have just as much right to 'pursue hapiness', as you put it, as you do. You can't put me on your property and then shoot me for trespassing. I was never trespassing, you put me there.
I disagree. Each time they break an atom down further, they get more and more smaller particles. Science will never 'know' everything. There will always be great unknowns. Even when space and time are 'broken', as you put it, the learning will be just beginning.
Actually, you exist because you can ask yourself the question "do I exist?" Remember the quote, "I think , therefore I am." (Kant, I believe) A quark doesn't question its existence.
Actually, the existence of matter is proof that there must have been some higher being outside of our dimension that wrought matter into existence. After that, it's a theological argument. Science cannot prove that God doesn't exist, and philosophy proves that some 'God' must exist.
Actually you shoot yourself in the foot with this statement: "The majority of the Slashdot community includes people who are able to think objectively and logically."
What? Where have you seen this? Slashdot arguements are often emotional, anecdotal diatribes rather than concise, accurate, balanced arguments.
Where is the good? Where is the evil? As Brin points out, the only indication which is which is the music. The Empire doesn't appear truly 'evil' in any of the films any more than the Rebels and Jedi appear truly 'good' Why should we root for the Rebels? Just because the Empire blew up a planet? What about the Death Star? There were probably more people on the Death Star than a sparsely populated planet.
>No, not at all. You see, the exception proves that rule is incorrect.:-) Use some logic, my friend.
Actually, no offense, but I think you missed the logic there. What I think he was saying is that people always try to use the 'rape, incest' exception and it is regardless actually because there are so many babies aborted everyday that are not a result of rape or incest. At least in the context of our current argument. For abortion to logically be wrong, all abortion must be wrong; even in cases of rape and incest.
>Good, then it should be acceptable to remove that baby from the woman's body if that's the woman's choice, and let the fetus get along on its own. Let's remove it in one piece, by inducing premature expulsion of the fetus, so that we can't be said to be directly killing that fetus. It'll die, of course, if it's expelled from the host body early enough--but we haven't killed it directly, it died of its own accord because it lacked self-sufficiency. Would that be acceptable tou you? No? Then you don't *really* believe that women should have control over their own bodies, you only like to say you do.
Since when does 'control over their bodies' mean killing a human? The problem is what you two are arguing: the definition of a human. When is it a human? From what I gather of your posts, a human is only human and valuable (i.e. it should be allowed to exist) after it comes out. How does that follow logically? What about premature babies?
Personal autonomy (control over your own body) is only extended until it affects another person. There is not 100% free speech (there can't be in civilized society), and there is not 100% control over your own body.
>A statistically significant percentage of rapists are never found and convicted.
Actually it's believed that only like 20-30% of rapes and sexual assaults are reported, let alone found and convicted.
>What then? Then is it acceptable to remove the fetus? And what if he is found--who's going to have to be burdened with the care of the child for the next 18 years, him? No? The woman, of course. Even if she gives it up for adoption, she will have been forced to endure the humiliation and pain of carrying a rapists unwanted child for nine months of her life, definitely interrupting it and her future, possibly destroying her chances for college or career advancement, and making her subject to health problems and permanent body changes.
Nine months? Looking at it objectively, it is only a small fraction of your time on this earth. I understand your compassion for the woman (I've known someone who was sexually assaulted), but how is taking a human life justified because of the shame and disruption a rape induced pregnancy gives a woman? Why not kill the rapist if he can be found. Rape is henious enough without death as well. BTW, have you ever wondered what the women actually thought? The UN tried to bring abortion gear to Kosovo for the refugee women that had been brutalized and to ease the pressure on the refugee camps. They were soundly rejected by the women because even though they had been raped and were pregnant with a rapist's baby (who would have been racist as well), they knew the baby was still a part of them, still a life that deserved to live.
Considering those womens situations (hmm, war refugee, raped, pregnant with rapists baby) saying a baby should be killed because it disrupts your career advancement is pretty dehumanizing and elitist.
>That is unacceptable and inhuman, and you clearly lack in compassion and understanding if you would force a woman to endure that. Even worse, what if this woman is a high-school girl whose youth will be taken away because you're forcing her to bear a rapist's baby?
I would have to say that killing a baby simply because it is disrupting and inconvienient is 'unacceptable and inhuman'. Her youth taken away? What about a life? With your plan, two lives are destroyed.
>Yes, children have become pregnant from rape before.
A 'child' is pregnant by rape reinforces your conclusions? This person is in more need of an abortion because she is young when she is raped? Abortion affects the woman very negatively and it would affect a child even more.
> Your arguments are blunt and ill-conceived. Worse, you're a very bad person for wanting to push your own religiously-based notions on others, even when they would cause those people pain and degradation.
You can take religion out of this argument and still reach the same conclusions. People like to pull the 'but you're just trying to push your religion on me' for any view point that they disagree with that might align with traditional religious views.
>You are just a very selfish moralist, pushing his own religious agenda on the rest of the world no matter who is harmed. At least my opinion gives rights to people who are clearly and provably human beings. Yours takes those rights away from people who are clearly and provably human beings, in order to give them to unborn fetuses which are only debatably human beings, and not provably so. My stance is, therefore, clearly the logical one.
I'm sorry to disrespect, but I fail to see how your stance is clearly the logical one. What is a provable human being? Are you? If not, I can kill you at will because you are not 'provably human'. At what point is a fetus a human being? Who decides? I'm sorry, but with your last paragraph your whole 'logical stance' completely shatters. I have decided that your invalid grandmother is no longer a human being (she cannot feed herself, go to the bathroom by herself, etc.) and taking up space and energy that can be used for other, more important, humans. How is she provably human, according to your proof methods?
Slashdot Mirror
to your mind than Professor X:
;)
One significant implication of this is that certain types of cells with higher iron content - such as brain cells - may be more susceptible to damage from electromagnetic fields.
There are a lot more voting bible-belters than there are scientists.
True, but you are making the assumption that Bible-belters don't care about their childrens future. I think if you asked any 'Bible-belter' (how many do you actually know?), they would disagree with your assumption.
This administration has made it abundantly clear that they are only concerned with getting reelected. To hell with anything that stands in their way and alienates their voting base.
On the contrary, Bush seems to be doing things to try to please everyone, but it only pisses off everyone. For example, Medicare prescription coverage. Seniors want it, but at what cost? $450 billion at first passage, and now, it's looking more like $550 billion and rising. Who does that piss off? Every non-babyboomer with the who'll be paying for it for the rest of their lives. Of course, most aren't paying enough attention to care. Secondly, Bush's immigration plan. Who does that make happy? Businesses (small and large) who want cheap labor and (ironicly) liberals who want completely open borders and easy immigration for anyone. How about the National Endowment for the Arts? Bush has proposed increasing their funding by 10-15 million. That's the largest increase ever for the NEA. Art is waaaaaay too subjective and not something the government should be trying to support. Art should be self sufficient to truly be expressive anyway. What you consider art might be patently offensive to me - not an argument the government should be involved in.
The list goes on and on of items that are meant to appease everyone and no one at the same time. Sometimes I wonder what exactly the hell his plan is anyway.
The US Presidency, much like US Corporations, is afflicted with serious shortsightedness.
I agree that the presidential term cycle lends itself to short sightedness, but what does that have to do with Corporations, and especially US corporations? That's just a flame-bait comment.
I think a 10 year term is much better than a 4 year term because it would give the office holder at least 5 - 7 years before they would have to worry about reelection right after they enter office. And perhaps they'd think about doing things for the good of the nation rather than themselves.
NO, NO, NO! That would be horrible! 10 years and still give the chance for re-election?!?!
I think a 6 year term with no re-election possibility seems like a better compromise.
I think that would help both sides of the presidential political issue: the president trying to get re-elected, and the candidate/parties trying to unseat him from power. They both generate a huge amount of FUD simply for their cause.
Even though you would think scientist would be above this fray, they have their own agenda (just like you and I) as well. A good example is the mercury issue. Scientists/environmental groups want the mecury max-safe level lowered to almost immeasurable levels, but the only study that shows any illness or death from mecury is from post-WWII Japan in an area that was so contaminated it would have made these current scientists faint.
Take what the government gives you with a grain of salt, but take what *everyone* says with a grain of salt too, including the scientists.
which only makes the mobile and the base station turn up the power level, increasing the health hazard......
Slightly off topic, but...
Actually, studies are showing cell phones are not dangerous.
Good call! I wish I could fit the whole quote in my sig. Maybe I'll just have to copy an paste it every time I post. lol
Right on.
Was this guy hired by Micro$oft? Seriously.
His arguments were so unconvincingly and universally applied to both open and closed source software that the whole article seemd like a joke.
I have yet to see even a *small* example of what he's talking about, but on the other had there's numerous examples of proprietary software having back-doors, exploits and vulnerablities that were not fixed for YEARS after the release of a product.
Examples:
1. Pix firewalls. These things have had numerous problems from day one and many were not fixed for many months.
2. I think it was 3com that had a default password on their switches/routers that anyone could use to access them. This was put in place by the company to allow technicians to service any unit.
3. The meta-data hidden in M$ Office documents. It has now even been documented by the government (and eventually Micro$oft) how to reduce the amount of meta-data in those documents. Hmm, I don't think this would have been an issue with open-source software.
There's many, many more examples, but these are they only ones I can think of off the top of my head.
He also said Linux was riddled with about the same amount of security problems as Windows. In what world? If you look at sheer numbers of vulnerabilities, yes a copy of Windows 2000 (56) has less than a copy of Red Hat Advanced Server 2.1 (109). But look at the actual exploits; most of the Windows problems will allow REMOTE administrative access or complete DOS. The Red Hat/Linux vulnerabilities are largely local application DOS issues and local privilege escalation in an application that usually isn't even running. Not to mention it may not even be installed (oh no! they've compromised mutt!). Conversely, how many Windows machines have been affected by worms compared to Linux machines?
Additionally, there are many programs on Linux that have their vulnerabilities found and fixed because the source is freely available. How many holes still exist in Windows and are waiting to be discovered?
All of the real-world proof completely refutes all of his pretenses.
Bah.
What are your working conditions like? -- The food in the cafeteria is better here than what I had when I was in U.S :-)
Well duh! I prefer Indian food to cafeteria food any day!
And 6'5" men who drive Minis are the epitome of safe, courteous drivers? Bad drivers are bad drivers and they come in all sizes, sexes, and vehicles.
Not sure how your comment was insightful. More like 'inciteful'.
Inevitably a human will introduce microbes to the planet
Isn't that a bold assumption? They haven't even proven there's been any life on Mars. I think that's one of smaller problems for sending an earthling to Mars.
I mentioned it here
It's really old news. Come on guys...
I believe the FBI got involved so quickly because they have been working with CERT and the Dept. of Homeland Security. Here's from a recent notice from CERT:
As many of you are aware, a few months ago the CERT Coordination Center
(CERT/CC) announced a new partnership with the Department of Homeland
Security's National Cyber Security Division (NCSD) to form a response
system for our nation and the Internet infrastructure. While this new
partnership, known as US-CERT, has been low key, we have been working
aggressively to upgrade our capabilities.
In another notice from CERT, this string was extracted from MyDoom.B:
"sync-1.01; andy; I'm just doing my job, nothing personal, sorry".
Considering that the origins point possibly to Russia, it would seem a hapless (but probably well compensated) hacker named Andy has been enlisted by organized crime.
lol
speling and grammer.
yes, what is the problem?
This was the syntax of the day. Read The Canterbury Tales or Beowulf. It was a language closer to Latin than ours is now.
Some sort of cluster file system is necessary for distibuted and fault tolerant applications but the commercial ones are expensive, and Oracle's free one is quite lame by any standards. Red Hat recently acquired Sistina Software (of Logical Volume Manager fame) which makes a commercial CFS. Red Hat has also been working closely w/Oracle to make sure RHEL is certified by the database vendor. Oracle clustering requires some sort of CFS. All of this leads me to believe that an excellent CFS will be in the next kernel sooner rather than later.
Any economist of any reputation will tell you that the promise of a tax cut in ten years time has negligible effect on the economy. Also a tax cut that benefits people with very high disposable income already has little effect since these people usually run out of things to buy long before they run out of money.
The richest 5% of wage earners paid 53.25% of the taxes in 2001, the top 10% paid 64.89% and the top 50% of wage earners paid 96.03%. And you people continually scream for more tax increases for the wealthy. They already pay the lions share of the taxes anyway. The Democrats keep harping on 'tax cuts for the rich' (which you have apparently bought into) so they can promulgate class warfare to try to get votes. If most people actually knew how much 'people with very high disposable income' paid in taxes, they wouldn't complain so much. And the recent tax cuts helped the middle/lower class more than ever with the increased child credit and reduced marriage penalty.
I don't think you will find many economists with credibility outside the far right who will claim that cutting inheritance tax stimulates the economy short term.
This is something that should have been done looooooong ago. It's only fair. Why tax something that has already been taxed? If your grandfater dies and leaves you his estate (which could easily be over 100,000 with a house, etc.) why should the government get 50% of that when your grandfather already paid taxes on every cent he earned during his lifetime. It's just greed by the congress and seneate.
The Bush tax cuts were justified by claims that the Clinton surplus would stretch out as far as the eye could see. You can hardly claim that they are crafted to bring about a recovery from recession unless you are willing to admit that Bush and the admin are total liars.
The initial cuts in early 2000 were based on that assumption somewhat, but then the dot-com bubble burst (a hollow boom during the Clinton admin), corporate scandal at WorldCom, etc., and Sept. 11 caused the recent downturn. The most recent and largest tax cuts were touted for exactly that reason: boost the economy. And in reality they have helped and the economy is starting to pick up at a rate not seen in almost 20 years.
Read about a project here [puremagic.com] to implement a grey list at the MTA level.
It basically involes inspecting the sending ip, sender envelope, and recipient envelope. If the receiving MTA has never seen this particular combination of the three before, it does not accept delivery of the mail piece with a temporary failure message. The vast majority of spam would then be ultimately rejected because it is often sent through open MXs and not a valid MTA with valid sender and recipient envelope information.
It is designed to be a compliment to other anti-spam measures without being as inflexible and cumbersome as black/white lists.
Along those same lines, you could also do a quick reverse check to verify reply-to addresses at the MTA level.
The battle against spam is not totally lost, and we shouldn't cut off our nose to spite our face the way blacklists do.
1. Because you consider embryos to be people, I should be bound by your beliefs? Does freedom of conscience extend only as far as the right to agree with you?
Ponder the consequences, starting with the tenets of some of the more radical animal-rights groups. If a large group of folks decided that cows and chickens were people, would you give up hamburgers and omelettes?
At what point do you consider a baby to be a person? After birth? What about premature babies? They are being born and surviving earilier and earlier. Once you have to determine when to label a fetus 'a person' the logic gets fuzzy. For the RTL crowd, and philosophically as well, a 'person' begins at conception. Before conception, there is no possibility for a human to form. If you argue that it is a 'person' only when it is able to survive outside the womb, you will be dis-proved by your own 'god' science that it is earlier and earlier. Just think about what it could be like in 100 years. Babies could be grown entirely outside of a woman. At what point is that baby 'a person'?
2. An infant cannot give consent to donate its organs any more than an embryo can. However, the parents of dying/dead infants often donate their organs to save other people's children. This is where babies with biliary atresia (a congenital malformation of the bile ducts which is uniformly fatal) get their donor livers and another chance at life.
Is that wrong, by your lights?
If not, what is your argument against the parents of frozen pre-embryos (16-cell clusters) donating those cells for use in stem-cell research or treatments, instead of just throwing them down the sewer if they aren't going to be used? Keep in mind that the pre-embryo is dead either way, and that throwing away the pre-embryos is not at all different from the normal implantation failures of the human reproductive scheme.
As for your first sentence, why would it be considered wrong? A brain-dead person can't consent either. Bad argument. As for the rest: If you have a problem with ESCR, you will have a problem with people throwing away their embryos. That is why IVF has some inherent problems from a basic RTL standpoint anyway. It is the same reason the aborted-baby-spare-body-parts industry is disgusting. Just because abortion is legal, doesn't mean its allowable to 'harvest' their little dissected bodies for profit and 'necessary research'.
Because biologically, that is how humans reproduce. If a woman is pregnant, there had to have been a certain sequence of events for her to concieve. This baby didn't just show up out of nowhere imposing its will on the mother. Unless she was raped, she did something to get pregnant. People forget the responsibility factors involved.
If I was put on your property by YOU, then I should have just as much right to 'pursue hapiness', as you put it, as you do. You can't put me on your property and then shoot me for trespassing. I was never trespassing, you put me there.
I disagree. Each time they break an atom down further, they get more and more smaller particles. Science will never 'know' everything. There will always be great unknowns. Even when space and time are 'broken', as you put it, the learning will be just beginning.
Actually, you exist because you can ask yourself the question "do I exist?" Remember the quote, "I think , therefore I am." (Kant, I believe) A quark doesn't question its existence.
How do you know that? You don't exactly sound like a church-goer anyway...
Actually, the existence of matter is proof that there must have been some higher being outside of our dimension that wrought matter into existence. After that, it's a theological argument. Science cannot prove that God doesn't exist, and philosophy proves that some 'God' must exist.
Actually you shoot yourself in the foot with this statement: "The majority of the Slashdot community includes people who are able to think objectively and logically."
What? Where have you seen this? Slashdot arguements are often emotional, anecdotal diatribes rather than concise, accurate, balanced arguments.
It doesn't seem to matter the subject either...
So, are _you_ a cancer? Can I douse you with chemotherapy and radiation? Just asking...
Where is the good? Where is the evil? As Brin points out, the only indication which is which is the music. The Empire doesn't appear truly 'evil' in any of the films any more than the Rebels and Jedi appear truly 'good' Why should we root for the Rebels? Just because the Empire blew up a planet? What about the Death Star? There were probably more people on the Death Star than a sparsely populated planet.
Actually, I believe it's the opposite. Read this recent slashdot posting: here.
>No, not at all. You see, the exception proves that rule is incorrect. :-) Use some logic, my friend.
Actually, no offense, but I think you missed the logic there. What I think he was saying is that people always try to use the 'rape, incest' exception and it is regardless actually because there are so many babies aborted everyday that are not a result of rape or incest. At least in the context of our current argument. For abortion to logically be wrong, all abortion must be wrong; even in cases of rape and incest.
>Good, then it should be acceptable to remove that baby from the woman's body if that's the woman's choice, and let the fetus get along on its own. Let's remove it in one piece, by inducing premature expulsion of the fetus, so that we can't be said to be directly killing that fetus. It'll die, of course, if it's expelled from the host body early enough--but we haven't killed it directly, it died of its own accord because it lacked self-sufficiency. Would that be acceptable tou you? No? Then you don't *really* believe that women should have control over their own bodies, you only like to say you do.
Since when does 'control over their bodies' mean killing a human? The problem is what you two are arguing: the definition of a human. When is it a human? From what I gather of your posts, a human is only human and valuable (i.e. it should be allowed to exist) after it comes out. How does that follow logically? What about premature babies?
Personal autonomy (control over your own body) is only extended until it affects another person. There is not 100% free speech (there can't be in civilized society), and there is not 100% control over your own body.
>A statistically significant percentage of rapists are never found and convicted.
Actually it's believed that only like 20-30% of rapes and sexual assaults are reported, let alone found and convicted.
>What then? Then is it acceptable to remove the fetus? And what if he is found--who's going to have to be burdened with the care of the child for the next 18 years, him? No? The woman, of course. Even if she gives it up for adoption, she will have been forced to endure the humiliation and pain of carrying a rapists unwanted child for nine months of her life, definitely interrupting it and her future, possibly destroying her chances for college or career advancement, and making her subject to health problems and permanent body changes.
Nine months? Looking at it objectively, it is only a small fraction of your time on this earth. I understand your compassion for the woman (I've known someone who was sexually assaulted), but how is taking a human life justified because of the shame and disruption a rape induced pregnancy gives a woman? Why not kill the rapist if he can be found. Rape is henious enough without death as well. BTW, have you ever wondered what the women actually thought? The UN tried to bring abortion gear to Kosovo for the refugee women that had been brutalized and to ease the pressure on the refugee camps. They were soundly rejected by the women because even though they had been raped and were pregnant with a rapist's baby (who would have been racist as well), they knew the baby was still a part of them, still a life that deserved to live.
Considering those womens situations (hmm, war refugee, raped, pregnant with rapists baby) saying a baby should be killed because it disrupts your career advancement is pretty dehumanizing and elitist.
>That is unacceptable and inhuman, and you clearly lack in compassion and understanding if you would force a woman to endure that. Even worse, what if this woman is a high-school girl whose youth will be taken away because you're forcing her to bear a rapist's baby?
I would have to say that killing a baby simply because it is disrupting and inconvienient is 'unacceptable and inhuman'. Her youth taken away? What about a life? With your plan, two lives are destroyed.
>Yes, children have become pregnant from rape before.
A 'child' is pregnant by rape reinforces your conclusions? This person is in more need of an abortion because she is young when she is raped? Abortion affects the woman very negatively and it would affect a child even more.
> Your arguments are blunt and ill-conceived. Worse, you're a very bad person for wanting to push your own religiously-based notions on others, even when they would cause those people pain and degradation.
You can take religion out of this argument and still reach the same conclusions. People like to pull the 'but you're just trying to push your religion on me' for any view point that they disagree with that might align with traditional religious views.
>You are just a very selfish moralist, pushing his own religious agenda on the rest of the world no matter who is harmed. At least my opinion gives rights to people who are clearly and provably human beings. Yours takes those rights away from people who are clearly and provably human beings, in order to give them to unborn fetuses which are only debatably human beings, and not provably so. My stance is, therefore, clearly the logical one.
I'm sorry to disrespect, but I fail to see how your stance is clearly the logical one. What is a provable human being? Are you? If not, I can kill you at will because you are not 'provably human'. At what point is a fetus a human being? Who decides? I'm sorry, but with your last paragraph your whole 'logical stance' completely shatters. I have decided that your invalid grandmother is no longer a human being (she cannot feed herself, go to the bathroom by herself, etc.) and taking up space and energy that can be used for other, more important, humans. How is she provably human, according to your proof methods?