It belongs to the county and you must pay a yearly rental fee to the county for the rest of your life or they will repossess it.
That's a fairly distorted view of property tax.
The county doesn't own a thing (if they did, they could kick you out of the house any time without any legal trouble). You also don't owe them any more than the property tax (in case of a mortgage, you owe the bank a frickin' large sum, and monthly payments on top of that).
Second a life isn't the same as alive. People, dogs, bacteria, tumors, and cell cultures are all alive, which ones contain a life?
That, at best, is a philosophical question.
Tell me in scientific terms how I would distinguish between uterine cancer and a fetus.
Cancer cells either retain some semblance to the tissue they originated from, or they completely lose their differentiation and show no tendency to differentiate again. So the cancer could either be identfied as "cancerous human uterine cells", or "undifferentiated cancerous human cells". Their DNA would also show defects (lost/altered tumor suppressor genes, for example).
The difference between healthy and cancerous tissue would even be visible under the microscope. Cancer cells look very different from regular tissue - irregular in shape, cells in various stages of division, and so on. That's standard textbook stuff.
The only thing I can think of that would distinguish them is that we know that the fetus should come to term,
The cells of the blastocyst start to differentiate within a few days after fertilization. If you're talking about a fetus (or even an embryo), you already have a wide range of well-differentiated cells.
(Please don't flame me for comparing fetuses to cancer - just making an illustration.)
No flame intended. The similarities between a blastocyst and cancer are extremely superficial (undifferentiated cells, ability to "metastasize", that's about it) and quickly disappear within a few days after fertilization. It's not possible to confuse the two.
If you are making an argument with regards to abortion the simple question is, is it a life?
My philosophical questions/analogies are:
Is someone who's in a coma now, but according to medical experience has an 85% chance of making a full recovery within 12 months, "a life" ? He certainly doesn't experience anything right now.
Would you have objected in a discussion about aborting you ? And if the answer is no, why do you chose to stay alive now ?
Find me a website for a new small car in the US that's being sold without standard power steering and available air conditioning, I dare you.
Well, the Audi A2 1.0 and the Lupo 3L were sold without those _because_ they would have made the car use more than 3l/100km.
If you load the car with "convenience" accessoires, it will consume more gasoline because the stuff adds extra weight and may need to be powered to. AC alone eats between 0.5l and 1l per 100 km and that's _quite_ a frickin' lot if your target is 2.4l/100km.
(if that's what you meant. Is there another mechanism you can "feel"?)
Somewhat. You will feel "out of breath" (which feels slightly different from "holding your breath for too long"), and the body will respond with an increased respiration rate. This mechanism works in a shorter term (hours to days) than the long term red blood cell count adjustment (which takes weeks).
Socialism has done a bang up job of fixing crime problems in Paris, hasn't it? All those rioting "Youths" must be skeery capitalists.
Well, I don't really want to mention the LA riots here.
How about this: Would you rather take a stroll through the not-so-touristy areas of Paris after dark, or through the not-so-touristy areas of a major American city ? I'd pick Paris. Even though my French is rather nonexistent.
Like previous posters have said, America is different.
Wanting to be different is not an argument for insisting on making poor choices in city planning.
Actually, the little helical molecules DO consider it a parasite,
... which is why they create a special, suitable attachment site that has no other purpose than allowing implantation. Any real parasite won't find itself welcomed so warmly.
and the baby considers itself a parasite too.
A parasite does not bring any benefit to the host. "Having offspring" is one of the biggest benefits you can have in the game called evolution.
There is a fun little hormonal war that goes on between mother and fetus, and sometimes it can get completely out of hand, resulting in the death of one or both.
Which is why the human race has long since died out. Wait, it hasn't ?
Other people do not require constant inputs of my own energy for their survival. They would not DIE if they stopped mooching off me. A fetus would.
So would a newborn. Which is even needier than a fetus. No need to clothe, diaper, rock to sleep, get up in the middle of the night to feed, or entertain the latter. Granted, you can pass the buck of being mooched off to someone else, but the newborn would still die if it wasn't able to mooch off someone.
Parent is also quite correct in saying science isn't well equipped to answer the question.
I'm sure that doing a DNA test (very scientific) on the fetus would reveal two things:
1. Its DNA is 100% "homo sapiens", aka human.
2. Its DNA is different from the mother and the father. In fact, it is probably different from any of the other 6 billion human specimens on this planet, with only very slim chances of an exception (identical twins). It definitely isn't, and wasn't, part of another human that has just been discarded.
Simple biochemical analysis (also very scientific) would reveal that it has a functioning metabolism and is growing at an astounding rate, and is reacting to external stimuli to some degree (note that this means the cellular level). That means it is alive, by the commonly accepted definition. No jumping through hoops (as would be in the fringe cases of viruses) is required to come to this conclusion.
Common experience will tell that in less than nine months, it will be sufficiently developed to survive outside a womb.
There's very little philosophy about the above scientific facts.
A lighter vehicle will always loose to a larger vehicle.
Depends on your definition of "lose". If it's "which vehicle is more likely to drive away after the crash", then you're right. The more important thing is whose passengers can walk away after the crash. In this area, smaller cars can provide good protection. I don't expect to end up in accidents often enough that the convenience of being able to drive away from one is worth driving a big gas-guzzling chunk of metal.
No, I will not move to a crime ridden, over crowded, over priced and depressing city.
Then go ahead and fix your freakin' cities.
But, oh noes, making cities desirable places to live would require ghastly measures that would constitute socialism ! We cannot have anything like this ! Our cities must stay polluted cesspools of gangs, drugs, crime and violence !
Particulates in the emissions contribute far too much to smog and hurt air quality.
Wake up and smell the coffee - with particulate filters (that have been available for a couple of years now. And those dang French beat us Germans to them, too), particulate emissions drop below the threshold of detectability.
It would change habits a lot, but due to the associated world economic depression that would probably come along with oil prices high enough to make gasoline that expensive!
Oil can stay cheap. Just tax the living $417 out of gasoline, and use the revenue to fund more wars on terror to keep the oil price down.
"You agree with the war on terror, don't you, citizen? Fill up, pay up, shut up."
The simple fact is that the government fucking sucks at regulating the roads.
They also suck at keeping the roads in good condition.
They have not changed the speed limit in decades, yet cars today are significantly safer beasts then they were when the 65 MPH rule was put in place.
They roads have stayed in a crappy condition, though.
Federal government doesn't want to change the speed limits because they are incompetent.
They also don't want to build roads that deteriorate so fast because that costs money (since you need to put a larger layer of gravel under them). They also don't want to maintain the roads in good condition because, you guessed it, that also costs money.
The Smart is not especially light for a car of its size. Energy-intensive "light" materials (such as aluminium) were deliberately kept out of it during design. Its frame is made of plain old steel.
From reading the rules, the car has to be price competitive which rules out all the cars using expensive materials such as aluminum, carbon fiber, composite plastics and whatever else.
Well, I'm sure that rule isn't interpreted that strictly. It is probably intended to keep six-figure (or even "medium/high five figure") "small cars" out.
Sellable? Are you serious? This is essentially dividing the price of gas by five for many cars
Yeah, unfortunately he's serious. Most people don't want to spend $20k on a "small car" (that's also lacking such amenities as air conditioning and power steering), even if it gets 80 mpg.
The USA is one of the biggest potential markets for something like this, and has some pretty stringent street laws.
Yeah. Laws that keep 50+ mpg diesel cars off the roads (because they pollute too much per gallon of fuel burnt. WTH ?!), but still allow junkers that are mainly held together by rust and duct tape on the roads.
Those laws should be scheduled for reality and sanity checkups.
Well, you know wrong. In any real parasitic relationship, the host does not offer the parasite a specially prepared attachment site (which has no other purpose than letting the parasite attach).
The little helical molecules in the body know better than to consider this relationship parasitic.
which only exists due to the _voluntary_ actions and ongoing goodwill of the host.
Everyone exists only due to the "goodwill" of the other people. What's keeping you from shooting random strangers on the street because they're mooching off your oxygen in the air ? Answer: The fact that you're not a sociopathic nutcase (no, don't mention laws - they only stop you from doing it after you've done it at least once). If you lack that type of "goodwill", you're straying dangerously close to sociopathy.
The real problem for subminis in the U.S. is interstate/highway driving: there's a much more limited market for vehicles that can't do high-speed interstate driving in the U.S. than in Europe,
The Smart ForTwo goes 120 km/h (~75-80 mph), and that's only because it's speed is limited by a governor. You can get it without one, and slightly tuned, then it'll go 100 mph.
Interestingly enough, humans don't have any way to sense the oxygen concentration in air.
They do, actually. However, the mechanism that regulates blood oxygen saturation works much, much slower (hours to days) than the one that reacts to excess blood CO2 concentrations.
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That's a fairly distorted view of property tax.
The county doesn't own a thing (if they did, they could kick you out of the house any time without any legal trouble). You also don't owe them any more than the property tax (in case of a mortgage, you owe the bank a frickin' large sum, and monthly payments on top of that).
That, at best, is a philosophical question.
Tell me in scientific terms how I would distinguish between uterine cancer and a fetus.
Cancer cells either retain some semblance to the tissue they originated from, or they completely lose their differentiation and show no tendency to differentiate again. So the cancer could either be identfied as "cancerous human uterine cells", or "undifferentiated cancerous human cells". Their DNA would also show defects (lost/altered tumor suppressor genes, for example). The difference between healthy and cancerous tissue would even be visible under the microscope. Cancer cells look very different from regular tissue - irregular in shape, cells in various stages of division, and so on. That's standard textbook stuff.
The only thing I can think of that would distinguish them is that we know that the fetus should come to term,
The cells of the blastocyst start to differentiate within a few days after fertilization. If you're talking about a fetus (or even an embryo), you already have a wide range of well-differentiated cells.
(Please don't flame me for comparing fetuses to cancer - just making an illustration.)
No flame intended. The similarities between a blastocyst and cancer are extremely superficial (undifferentiated cells, ability to "metastasize", that's about it) and quickly disappear within a few days after fertilization. It's not possible to confuse the two.
If you are making an argument with regards to abortion the simple question is, is it a life?
My philosophical questions/analogies are:
Is someone who's in a coma now, but according to medical experience has an 85% chance of making a full recovery within 12 months, "a life" ? He certainly doesn't experience anything right now.
Would you have objected in a discussion about aborting you ? And if the answer is no, why do you chose to stay alive now ?
Well, the Audi A2 1.0 and the Lupo 3L were sold without those _because_ they would have made the car use more than 3l/100km.
If you load the car with "convenience" accessoires, it will consume more gasoline because the stuff adds extra weight and may need to be powered to. AC alone eats between 0.5l and 1l per 100 km and that's _quite_ a frickin' lot if your target is 2.4l/100km.
Somewhat. You will feel "out of breath" (which feels slightly different from "holding your breath for too long"), and the body will respond with an increased respiration rate. This mechanism works in a shorter term (hours to days) than the long term red blood cell count adjustment (which takes weeks).
Well, I don't really want to mention the LA riots here.
How about this: Would you rather take a stroll through the not-so-touristy areas of Paris after dark, or through the not-so-touristy areas of a major American city ? I'd pick Paris. Even though my French is rather nonexistent.
Like previous posters have said, America is different.
Wanting to be different is not an argument for insisting on making poor choices in city planning.
and the baby considers itself a parasite too.
A parasite does not bring any benefit to the host. "Having offspring" is one of the biggest benefits you can have in the game called evolution.
There is a fun little hormonal war that goes on between mother and fetus, and sometimes it can get completely out of hand, resulting in the death of one or both.
Which is why the human race has long since died out. Wait, it hasn't ?
Other people do not require constant inputs of my own energy for their survival. They would not DIE if they stopped mooching off me. A fetus would.
So would a newborn. Which is even needier than a fetus. No need to clothe, diaper, rock to sleep, get up in the middle of the night to feed, or entertain the latter. Granted, you can pass the buck of being mooched off to someone else, but the newborn would still die if it wasn't able to mooch off someone.
Ask that question again after you've been anaesthesized and killed.
I'm sure that doing a DNA test (very scientific) on the fetus would reveal two things:
1. Its DNA is 100% "homo sapiens", aka human.
2. Its DNA is different from the mother and the father. In fact, it is probably different from any of the other 6 billion human specimens on this planet, with only very slim chances of an exception (identical twins). It definitely isn't, and wasn't, part of another human that has just been discarded.
Simple biochemical analysis (also very scientific) would reveal that it has a functioning metabolism and is growing at an astounding rate, and is reacting to external stimuli to some degree (note that this means the cellular level). That means it is alive, by the commonly accepted definition. No jumping through hoops (as would be in the fringe cases of viruses) is required to come to this conclusion.
Common experience will tell that in less than nine months, it will be sufficiently developed to survive outside a womb.
There's very little philosophy about the above scientific facts.
Depends on your definition of "lose". If it's "which vehicle is more likely to drive away after the crash", then you're right. The more important thing is whose passengers can walk away after the crash. In this area, smaller cars can provide good protection. I don't expect to end up in accidents often enough that the convenience of being able to drive away from one is worth driving a big gas-guzzling chunk of metal.
Fits perfectly, doesn't it ?
Then go ahead and fix your freakin' cities.
But, oh noes, making cities desirable places to live would require ghastly measures that would constitute socialism ! We cannot have anything like this ! Our cities must stay polluted cesspools of gangs, drugs, crime and violence !
Wake up and smell the coffee - with particulate filters (that have been available for a couple of years now. And those dang French beat us Germans to them, too), particulate emissions drop below the threshold of detectability.
Oil can stay cheap. Just tax the living $417 out of gasoline, and use the revenue to fund more wars on terror to keep the oil price down.
"You agree with the war on terror, don't you, citizen? Fill up, pay up, shut up."
They also suck at keeping the roads in good condition.
They have not changed the speed limit in decades, yet cars today are significantly safer beasts then they were when the 65 MPH rule was put in place.
They roads have stayed in a crappy condition, though.
Federal government doesn't want to change the speed limits because they are incompetent.
They also don't want to build roads that deteriorate so fast because that costs money (since you need to put a larger layer of gravel under them). They also don't want to maintain the roads in good condition because, you guessed it, that also costs money.
I'd like the right to kill anyone and anything that causes me pain and discomfort or poses health risks.
Either you believe the host should have control over her body or you do not.
Does the right to "control over my body" include flexing my finger when I point a gun at someone ?
The Smart is not especially light for a car of its size. Energy-intensive "light" materials (such as aluminium) were deliberately kept out of it during design. Its frame is made of plain old steel.
Well, I'm sure that rule isn't interpreted that strictly. It is probably intended to keep six-figure (or even "medium/high five figure") "small cars" out.
Yeah, unfortunately he's serious. Most people don't want to spend $20k on a "small car" (that's also lacking such amenities as air conditioning and power steering), even if it gets 80 mpg.
Yeah. Laws that keep 50+ mpg diesel cars off the roads (because they pollute too much per gallon of fuel burnt. WTH ?!), but still allow junkers that are mainly held together by rust and duct tape on the roads.
Those laws should be scheduled for reality and sanity checkups.
Well, you know wrong. In any real parasitic relationship, the host does not offer the parasite a specially prepared attachment site (which has no other purpose than letting the parasite attach).
The little helical molecules in the body know better than to consider this relationship parasitic.
which only exists due to the _voluntary_ actions and ongoing goodwill of the host.
Everyone exists only due to the "goodwill" of the other people. What's keeping you from shooting random strangers on the street because they're mooching off your oxygen in the air ? Answer: The fact that you're not a sociopathic nutcase (no, don't mention laws - they only stop you from doing it after you've done it at least once). If you lack that type of "goodwill", you're straying dangerously close to sociopathy.
The Smart ForTwo goes 120 km/h (~75-80 mph), and that's only because it's speed is limited by a governor. You can get it without one, and slightly tuned, then it'll go 100 mph.
Make it 10%, just to get the point across. The other 90% may be chosen arbitrarily, even if they're all oxygen it won't matter.
That's "power per unit of mass", which doesn't make sense. What's the "energy per unit of mass" of these things ? Is it 1750 Wh/kg or 1750 Ws/kg ?
It's not mandates that make fuel efficiency a big selling point, it's the taxation of gasoline.
And once the US government figures out that taxing gasoline would be a great way to pay for the war on terror
They do, actually. However, the mechanism that regulates blood oxygen saturation works much, much slower (hours to days) than the one that reacts to excess blood CO2 concentrations.