Some years ago, when I was a lot into tabletop RPGs, I developed a strange habit of learning many different game rules and then trying to fill a character sheets for that game that was the most similar to the real me. Of course all those "me" characters sucked badly, but it was fun nevertheless.
Nowadays this isn't so easy. D20, for instance, removed the usefull descriptions earlier games had on what having a level "x" in this or that skill would meant in real life. The only thing you know is that, say, someone with Programming+67 is way better than someone with Programming+48, but what +67 and +48 actually are, that's not revealed.
GURPS, Storyteller or Call of Cthulhu still work nicely, though. Try it if you can.;)
Please note that when a republican (or anyone) says "free market!" but at the same time accepts legislation on the issue, he is lying about being pro-free market. Big companies never want a free market. Free market means competition, and competition means the risk of being driven out of the market by someone else. For big companies government legislation is always good, provided it works as a protection against competition.
A true free market solution for telecommunication would be comprised of the complete removal of all related legislation, coupled to the refusal to enact any legislation on the matter, thus rendering telco's lobbies ineffective and utterly useless. And by "related" I mean, among other things, no government regulation of either RF ranges and/or signal potency ("pirate" radios would be perfectly legit) as well as no copyright laws.
Anything else isn't free market, is regulated market. Republicans aren't agains regulated market, they embrace it. The difference between them and democrats isn't in the valuation or devaluation of regulation, but on the direction of this regulation.
I don't think ID is science either, but let's not incur in false statements. ID itself has nothing to do with 6000 year-old Earth. Taking the two things as being the same is kinda like saying that modern evolutionism is all about defending the Man of Piltdown: unfair at best.
PS.: I also don't take evolutionism is science. Both ID and evolutionism have huge logical inconsistencies, so I don't buy into either one. And no, I also don't have a 3rd alternative, so don't ask. What I do is simply to accept both the criticisms made by evolutionists to ID, and by IDers to evolutionism. Two-way skepticism at its best. Or worst, I dunno.;)
The problem with this explanation is that it is based on something that is itself hypothetic: the existence of a subconscious mind. The correct formulation is then: "if there is the subconscious, then it might provide a basis for explaining what's usually called ESP". To know for sure, we would need to first prove the existence of this subconscious thing, then discover exactly how it works, and then see if at some point the two things match, and if they do, whether they match entirety or only partially, and then seek the explanation for the aspects that do not match, if they exist.
AFAIK, no standard virtualization solution, be it VmWare or Virtual PC, has accelerated (if any at all) Direct3D or OpenGL support. So, Vista's Aero GUI won't be available inside them no matter what.
I don't know much about this kind of technology, but why is decent 3D support so difficult to implement in virtualization that no one seems to be even trying to do it?
Excalibur is sharper. At least in the Camelot 3000 comics.
SPOILER: King Arthur literally cuts an atom with it. You see the tip of the blade (solid as ever) entering the atom and KABOOM! Nothing better than a fission bomb to kill Morgana Le Fey in a very, very definitive way.
Oh, and BTW, the Excalibur itself survived the atomic explosion. And shining! It's not only a sharp sword, it's also a damn hard sword! I wonder how Lancelot managed to break it once...
In 1st world countries it can be due to lack of interest, but on 3rd world ones, such as mine (Brazil), most people who use Win98 do so because they simple cannot afford a computer able to run anything more recent. For these people there's no buying hardware, and much less buying software. It's Win98, and pirated Win98 at that. And in regards to support, if they screw up their installation they can always ask for a technician to reinstall Win98SE and install an (also pirated) MS Office 95 or 97, plus AVG Free and ZoneAlarm, for as low as $10.
But things are slowly changing. Low end computers are receiving some big tax exemptions and people are becoming able to afford something barely able to run WinXP. The end cost for such a computer is around $400, payable in 24 months (around $20/month). They usually come in two flavors: WinXP "Starter Edition" and Linux. So, the guy purchases either one, and then calls the technician to wipe the hard disk and install WinXP Pro, plus MS Office 2003 and Norton Internet Security 2006. Everything pirated, of course. For $15...
There's a new enemy of Superman, an evil blonde kryptonian guy whose name I don't remember now, who in an official DC history wanna try sex with human women. Since he, being an extreme racist (or should we say "speciist"?), despises humans, he doesn't try to be nice to the girls, and the result is bloodly messy, to say the least. One can only conclude that in doing this with his wife Superman is extra careful.
I also remember that this "OMG!!! Would it be the case that I can't have sex?!?!?" dilemma was discussed in some Smallville episode, but I don't follow the series so I don't know how the issue was solved there.
The discussion in not on whether stem cells can be usefull. They can, no one disputes that. The issue is with the source of those cells. There are many sources available, and embrios are just one of those. I myself haven't seen yet a good argument for the use of embrionic stem cells, but I have seen a lot of good arguments on the use of the individual's own stem cells available on (IIRC) the spine, which can also be lab cultivated. For example, the individual own stem cells don't cause clinical rejection, while stem cells obtained from a 3rd party (embrios or other) do cause rejection.
So, AFAIK, the Bush administration just refused to subside studies on one possible source of stem cells, not studies on stem cells themselves.
But I, not being American nor living in USA, might be somewhat misinformed. If you have any usefull links I'd love to read them.
What about photos with nude native South American and native African children? I've seen tons of those on National Geographic alone. What if a pedophile scans those and put them online? Should scientific magazines start censoring the photos they include in their anthropology articles?
If none of the two gave donations to anything, their money would be in banks. So:
a) The banks loan the money they have stocked to companies and individuals that need them to increment their businesses.
b) These businesses being incremented create jobs both in the country where the money was borrowed, as well as overseas.
c) The profit the individuals and companies that borrowed money get with their businesses is in turn either:
c1) Stored in banks. Return to "a".
c2) Used by the individuals and businesses themselves. Return do "b".
d) The profit the banks get due to the interest they require in loans is split between the individual bank shareholders, which store it in their own bank accounts, and the bank stock itself. In both cases, return to "a".
Advantages of money being managed by banks: the global standard of living goes up as a whole.
Disadvantages of money being managed by banks: this "going up" is diffuse, so although it is noticeable when you compare the state of the world two generations appart, you cannot usually perceive it happening on a day-to-day basis.
Advantages of money being managed by charities: the standard of living of specific, targeted groups of people is extremely incremented in a very short time frame, being promptly perceived.
Disadvantages of money being managed by charities: the increase isn't shared among all individuals, only those targeted. So, if the whole of the economy was oriented toward charities, then global, diffuse improvement would decrease or stop.
Conclusion: both things are necessary, and one isn't intrinsically better than the other. They're simply different.
Also is it just me or the bigger a "capitalist" company becomes the more dictatorial/communist it ends up?
This is somewhat offtopic, but you're more right than you think. Browse the texts, links and visual maps at DiscoverTheNetworks and you'll notice that BIG corporations (and I mean BIG corporations, not mere "big" corporations) really are the main forces, both financially and ideologically, behind real world dictatorial and communist regimes.
This can seem unlikely, since we use to think about communism as being completely against capitalists, but the point is that such opposition happens only in theory. In practice three things happen: first, BIG capitalists really love monopolies, so they're ultimately against the free market; second, communists and other kinds of dictatorial establishments have realized over the last decades that some kind of profit-motivated expert management of the economic activity is needed, otherwise the economy colapses; third, making a guerrilla and sustaining a revolution requires tons of money.
So, BIG capitalists and dictators cut a deal: the capitalist fund the guerrilla while it's not in power, and, in exchange, once the guerrilla gets to power the dictatorial government grants these corporations exclusive privileges and monopolies, what also provides the country with the required expert economic management. It's a win-win situation, except for the people, of course.
The linked site provide tons of documented evidence.
I guess that with proper artwork some stores and services, such as Weapon Masters, e-Gold and Garb the World, plus flower delivery and some kinds of foods and restaurants (but nothing in the "fast-" category), could be adversised without much trouble inside medieval settings. But other than the above, I think it would be very difficult.
PS: I'm not affiliated with the above sites. I just happen to use them.:)
The ethical issue is precisely on how one defines "a person". You defined "a person" this way, others do so otherwise, others have a 3rd alternative, and so on. And since the definition itself is problematic, we must conclude that any practical decision regarding this issue, such as pursuing or not medical experiments with embryos, or allowing or not abortions, is always done without the proper ethical background being in place.
This also means that every practical act taken, no matter if pro or against, is actually a "brute force" act, what implies another level of ethycal considerations, namely: is a forced practical solution to a philosophical dilemma ethically valid? How does one consistenly fundaments such an "ethichs of forced solution"? And so on, and so on.
From the comments I've read it seems everyone has a poor understanding of what a "soul" is.
The English word "soul" is synonym to the Latin word "anima", which in turn is the root of words like "animated", "reanimate" etc. Its meaning is thus very simple: soul is whatever that causes something to move by itself. So, "to have a soul" means simply "to be able to move by itself". That's all.
Now, the "whatever" part is important, because it does not imply that the soul needs to be some kind of "supernatural entity". A plain textbook explanation of the inner workings of a biological body fits the concept very well. As a result, anyone that says that a embryo "has no soul" is not only missing the point, but also showing he doesn't know the meaning of the words he uses. A human embryo has a soul as much as a cat, a cat embryo, a virus, a clone, a tree, a black hole, a volcano, the Sun, the Earth, individual cells, or, for that matter, anything else that makes, generates or maintains any movement by itself.
Removing the "has/hasn't a soul" issue from the discussion is a must for any meaningful treatment of the subject. For something to have a soul is not a big deal. There's nothing "special" in having a soul. Either things move (themselves and other things), or are moved by things that move, and that's all there is to it.
So, what is the issue, then? This is it: whether embryos are or aren't persons. If they are, then the full set of rights and obligations pertaining to persons also apply to them. If they aren't, then these rights and obligations don't apply.
The most ironic in this is that, back in the 19 century, for a married couple to be "conservative" meant to take their kids to watch first hand criminals being hanged. The reason? Because it was thought that the duty of parents was to teach their children what the world is, not what they wanted the world to be.
Don't take me wrong. I'm myself a very, very conservative guy. But I can't see this BS as a conservative ideal. Actual conservatives are for market solutions to market problems, nor big government intervention into private affairs. This is so damn true that actual conservatives are even for home-schooling, despising government schooling! How is it then that so many self-proclaimed "conservatives" come around wishing that government take into its hands their duties as parents? Nonsense? Non-sequitur? No such luck! These self-proclaimed "conservatives" are simply big government idolaters. In terms of methods, they work, act and think exactly as liberals. The only difference between both is that they have different ideas on what society "should be". To accept the world as it is? To not try changing it according to their own will? Ha! Never heard about that!
Wrong. There're universal moral values. The thing is, they're so damn obvious that people usually don't take notice these universal values exist, prefering to talk about the specific moral values that chance from place to place and from one person to another.
An example of an universal moral value: no society, ever, based itself on the unrestricted right of any person to assassinate any other persons. All of them have at least some rule on who can assassinate who and why. Even a psycho serial assassin guy with genocidal tendencies have a minimal set or rules, namely, that he has this right because he's he.
One big difference between modern (post XV century mostly) philosophers and the ones that came before is that the moderns had a big desire to explain everything about everything by themselves in what we nowadays call "systems". So one have the cartesian system (how Descartes explained everything), the humean system (idem), the hegelian system (idem), the kantian system (idem) and so on. No wonder then that these guys made BIG mistakes. If you don't worry with first getting the details right, how can your "big picture" be correct? If you just take that "marvelous insight" you had and try to explain everything based on it, what happens when someone else discovers a glitch in the insight itself?
In contrast, older philosophers, as well as a handful of XX century ones (very few, and most of them aren't studied in Academy), take the opposite approach. They investigate a small problem "a" until they reach a meaningful conclusion. Then they investigate a small problem "b". Then a small problem "c". And so on. Then, if they perceive that the different solutions they found for "a", "b", "c" etc. have similar characteristics, then they investigate this problem and, with luck, find a slightly more general solution that encompasses the previous, smaller ones.
If a CS course included courses on this second kind of philosophy, which we might call "scientific philosophy" (Aristotle, Plato, Aquinas, Leibniz, Husserl, Voegelin, Zubiri etc.), then it would be usefull, for it would tell you how to think in a very structured way while still fully imersed in the real world. Otherwise, if it included courses on "systematic philosophy" (Descartes, Hume, Spinosa, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Sartre etc.), or if they taught the scientific philosophers as if they also were systematic ones (a very common mistake which unfortunatelly happens all the time on the Philosophy college I'm taking), then it would be very useless, for instead of learning how to think about the world, you would just learn how to think about what this or that guy thought about the world, a completely different subject.
In the second paragraph I forgot to add this: "Only at the instant the show is beginning and the doors are closing the scalpers' prices drop to the middle point to fill the remaining few seats, provided not enough people seeked their tickets, something rare but that I've already seen happen."
Of coure, there're many, many cases in which even the scalpers' offers are below the demand, so prices keep going up and up until the doors close. Such lack of precision is due in great part for the lack of a standard way of doing the auction.
This is indeed excelent news! Fixed prices for shows have the same problems that fixed prices for everything else: either a) they're too much, so those people who can't afford the price simply don't go and you end up having empty seats, or b) they're too low, so more people than available seats are able to afford them and you end up having tons of people unable to attend the show.
Please note that the above is the case even when you include scalpers in the equation. Why? Because in that case you'll have "x" seats scalped, and "y" seats unscalped, so at the same time "a" and "b": "a" for the "x" seats and "b" for the "y" seats. Only at the instant the show is beginning and the doors are closing the scalpers' prices drop to the middle point to fill the remaining few seats.
So, by having the seats auctioneed way before the show, you solve almost all of the above problems, since the seat price will approach the best it can the ideal offer/demand equilibrium point. Of course this won't be always perfect, but even so, it will be better than what we have today.
Now, I only wish movie theatres start doing this too. If you wish to see the movie the day it's launched, it's just that you pay a premium, with the added bonus of no queues. And if you're price concious with a very limited budget, you can simply wait until the price to drop enough to reach your price point. And in all of this the theatre owners would guarantee many more full houses compared to what happens today, thus more profit, what would in time prompt more theatres to open, thus dropping the prices again. Everyone wins.
Many times (not always, of course) a free market approach is the way to go. This one is a clear example of such a case.
I haven't tried this tool, so I don't know how it behaves, but you can give it a try if you wish.:) If you do, please post a reply saying whether it works or not. Maybe I'll start using it too.
A Union is good for taking your money. Here in Brazil registered workers are obliged to join their professional unions.
Result #1: All the small unions do is to get from their "members" one pay day per year. This payment cannot be avoided. By law it's discounted from you paycheck by your employer. Needless to say, union owners do not have financial problems.
Result #2: All the big unions do is to grant to their members that they have a fair chance of losing their jobs, since companies burdened by crazy colective contracts are choosing to leave the country in search of less regulated places.
Result #3: Both big and small unions together managed to stablish this great concept, the "minimum wage". So, every one of the lowly skilled people whose services aren't worth this "minimum" are confortably unemployed, having to work under illegal terms to get any payment at all. And of course these illegal jobs pay these people far less than what they would get in case the magic "minimum wage" didn't exist.
Now, I won't say unions weren't usefull when they appeared in the XIX century. The point is: for most of the industrialized world their time has come and gone. Unions are an historical solution for an historical reality, namely, the sub-human work conditions under the pre-scientific management of pre-information age industrial plants. Those are extinct almost everywhere. And they are extict precisely because the unions accomplished the goals they were set to reach.
The globalized post-industrial, service-based, information age is a whole different beast. Trying to apply to it something that worked 150 years ago is nothing more than being a "conservative" in the depreciative meaning of the word, i.e., trying to "conserve" some old idea simply because it was good one day, not because it remains good today. Unions, as they now exist, are past, and must be left in the past. The modern world demands a modern solution, not a deficient model whose utility is long lost.
One series (actually, an umbrella of media products) which has everything connected and happening to the same characters is, IIRC, PoPoLoCrois.
You have some console RPGs (3 in sequece if I'm not mistaken), then a TV series that continues from where the last RPG left, then another RPG that continues from where the TV series left, and now a PSP game. But I'm not sure, it has been a while since I've seen the TV series and searched for info on it.
Slashdot Mirror
Some years ago, when I was a lot into tabletop RPGs, I developed a strange habit of learning many different game rules and then trying to fill a character sheets for that game that was the most similar to the real me. Of course all those "me" characters sucked badly, but it was fun nevertheless.
;)
Nowadays this isn't so easy. D20, for instance, removed the usefull descriptions earlier games had on what having a level "x" in this or that skill would meant in real life. The only thing you know is that, say, someone with Programming+67 is way better than someone with Programming+48, but what +67 and +48 actually are, that's not revealed.
GURPS, Storyteller or Call of Cthulhu still work nicely, though. Try it if you can.
Please note that when a republican (or anyone) says "free market!" but at the same time accepts legislation on the issue, he is lying about being pro-free market. Big companies never want a free market. Free market means competition, and competition means the risk of being driven out of the market by someone else. For big companies government legislation is always good, provided it works as a protection against competition.
A true free market solution for telecommunication would be comprised of the complete removal of all related legislation, coupled to the refusal to enact any legislation on the matter, thus rendering telco's lobbies ineffective and utterly useless. And by "related" I mean, among other things, no government regulation of either RF ranges and/or signal potency ("pirate" radios would be perfectly legit) as well as no copyright laws.
Anything else isn't free market, is regulated market. Republicans aren't agains regulated market, they embrace it. The difference between them and democrats isn't in the valuation or devaluation of regulation, but on the direction of this regulation.
I don't think ID is science either, but let's not incur in false statements. ID itself has nothing to do with 6000 year-old Earth. Taking the two things as being the same is kinda like saying that modern evolutionism is all about defending the Man of Piltdown: unfair at best.
;)
PS.: I also don't take evolutionism is science. Both ID and evolutionism have huge logical inconsistencies, so I don't buy into either one. And no, I also don't have a 3rd alternative, so don't ask. What I do is simply to accept both the criticisms made by evolutionists to ID, and by IDers to evolutionism. Two-way skepticism at its best. Or worst, I dunno.
The problem with this explanation is that it is based on something that is itself hypothetic: the existence of a subconscious mind. The correct formulation is then: "if there is the subconscious, then it might provide a basis for explaining what's usually called ESP". To know for sure, we would need to first prove the existence of this subconscious thing, then discover exactly how it works, and then see if at some point the two things match, and if they do, whether they match entirety or only partially, and then seek the explanation for the aspects that do not match, if they exist.
AFAIK, no standard virtualization solution, be it VmWare or Virtual PC, has accelerated (if any at all) Direct3D or OpenGL support. So, Vista's Aero GUI won't be available inside them no matter what.
I don't know much about this kind of technology, but why is decent 3D support so difficult to implement in virtualization that no one seems to be even trying to do it?
Excalibur is sharper. At least in the Camelot 3000 comics.
SPOILER: King Arthur literally cuts an atom with it. You see the tip of the blade (solid as ever) entering the atom and KABOOM! Nothing better than a fission bomb to kill Morgana Le Fey in a very, very definitive way.
Oh, and BTW, the Excalibur itself survived the atomic explosion. And shining! It's not only a sharp sword, it's also a damn hard sword! I wonder how Lancelot managed to break it once...
In 1st world countries it can be due to lack of interest, but on 3rd world ones, such as mine (Brazil), most people who use Win98 do so because they simple cannot afford a computer able to run anything more recent. For these people there's no buying hardware, and much less buying software. It's Win98, and pirated Win98 at that. And in regards to support, if they screw up their installation they can always ask for a technician to reinstall Win98SE and install an (also pirated) MS Office 95 or 97, plus AVG Free and ZoneAlarm, for as low as $10.
But things are slowly changing. Low end computers are receiving some big tax exemptions and people are becoming able to afford something barely able to run WinXP. The end cost for such a computer is around $400, payable in 24 months (around $20/month). They usually come in two flavors: WinXP "Starter Edition" and Linux. So, the guy purchases either one, and then calls the technician to wipe the hard disk and install WinXP Pro, plus MS Office 2003 and Norton Internet Security 2006. Everything pirated, of course. For $15...
There's a new enemy of Superman, an evil blonde kryptonian guy whose name I don't remember now, who in an official DC history wanna try sex with human women. Since he, being an extreme racist (or should we say "speciist"?), despises humans, he doesn't try to be nice to the girls, and the result is bloodly messy, to say the least. One can only conclude that in doing this with his wife Superman is extra careful.
I also remember that this "OMG!!! Would it be the case that I can't have sex?!?!?" dilemma was discussed in some Smallville episode, but I don't follow the series so I don't know how the issue was solved there.
The discussion in not on whether stem cells can be usefull. They can, no one disputes that. The issue is with the source of those cells. There are many sources available, and embrios are just one of those. I myself haven't seen yet a good argument for the use of embrionic stem cells, but I have seen a lot of good arguments on the use of the individual's own stem cells available on (IIRC) the spine, which can also be lab cultivated. For example, the individual own stem cells don't cause clinical rejection, while stem cells obtained from a 3rd party (embrios or other) do cause rejection.
So, AFAIK, the Bush administration just refused to subside studies on one possible source of stem cells, not studies on stem cells themselves.
But I, not being American nor living in USA, might be somewhat misinformed. If you have any usefull links I'd love to read them.
What about photos with nude native South American and native African children? I've seen tons of those on National Geographic alone. What if a pedophile scans those and put them online? Should scientific magazines start censoring the photos they include in their anthropology articles?
If none of the two gave donations to anything, their money would be in banks. So:
a) The banks loan the money they have stocked to companies and individuals that need them to increment their businesses.
b) These businesses being incremented create jobs both in the country where the money was borrowed, as well as overseas.
c) The profit the individuals and companies that borrowed money get with their businesses is in turn either:
c1) Stored in banks. Return to "a".
c2) Used by the individuals and businesses themselves. Return do "b".
d) The profit the banks get due to the interest they require in loans is split between the individual bank shareholders, which store it in their own bank accounts, and the bank stock itself. In both cases, return to "a".
Advantages of money being managed by banks: the global standard of living goes up as a whole.
Disadvantages of money being managed by banks: this "going up" is diffuse, so although it is noticeable when you compare the state of the world two generations appart, you cannot usually perceive it happening on a day-to-day basis.
Advantages of money being managed by charities: the standard of living of specific, targeted groups of people is extremely incremented in a very short time frame, being promptly perceived.
Disadvantages of money being managed by charities: the increase isn't shared among all individuals, only those targeted. So, if the whole of the economy was oriented toward charities, then global, diffuse improvement would decrease or stop.
Conclusion: both things are necessary, and one isn't intrinsically better than the other. They're simply different.
Just out of curiosity: what's the hard drive encryption solution your company adopted?
This can seem unlikely, since we use to think about communism as being completely against capitalists, but the point is that such opposition happens only in theory. In practice three things happen: first, BIG capitalists really love monopolies, so they're ultimately against the free market; second, communists and other kinds of dictatorial establishments have realized over the last decades that some kind of profit-motivated expert management of the economic activity is needed, otherwise the economy colapses; third, making a guerrilla and sustaining a revolution requires tons of money.
So, BIG capitalists and dictators cut a deal: the capitalist fund the guerrilla while it's not in power, and, in exchange, once the guerrilla gets to power the dictatorial government grants these corporations exclusive privileges and monopolies, what also provides the country with the required expert economic management. It's a win-win situation, except for the people, of course.
The linked site provide tons of documented evidence.
I guess that with proper artwork some stores and services, such as Weapon Masters, e-Gold and Garb the World, plus flower delivery and some kinds of foods and restaurants (but nothing in the "fast-" category), could be adversised without much trouble inside medieval settings. But other than the above, I think it would be very difficult.
:)
PS: I'm not affiliated with the above sites. I just happen to use them.
The ethical issue is precisely on how one defines "a person". You defined "a person" this way, others do so otherwise, others have a 3rd alternative, and so on. And since the definition itself is problematic, we must conclude that any practical decision regarding this issue, such as pursuing or not medical experiments with embryos, or allowing or not abortions, is always done without the proper ethical background being in place.
This also means that every practical act taken, no matter if pro or against, is actually a "brute force" act, what implies another level of ethycal considerations, namely: is a forced practical solution to a philosophical dilemma ethically valid? How does one consistenly fundaments such an "ethichs of forced solution"? And so on, and so on.
From the comments I've read it seems everyone has a poor understanding of what a "soul" is.
The English word "soul" is synonym to the Latin word "anima", which in turn is the root of words like "animated", "reanimate" etc. Its meaning is thus very simple: soul is whatever that causes something to move by itself. So, "to have a soul" means simply "to be able to move by itself". That's all.
Now, the "whatever" part is important, because it does not imply that the soul needs to be some kind of "supernatural entity". A plain textbook explanation of the inner workings of a biological body fits the concept very well. As a result, anyone that says that a embryo "has no soul" is not only missing the point, but also showing he doesn't know the meaning of the words he uses. A human embryo has a soul as much as a cat, a cat embryo, a virus, a clone, a tree, a black hole, a volcano, the Sun, the Earth, individual cells, or, for that matter, anything else that makes, generates or maintains any movement by itself.
Removing the "has/hasn't a soul" issue from the discussion is a must for any meaningful treatment of the subject. For something to have a soul is not a big deal. There's nothing "special" in having a soul. Either things move (themselves and other things), or are moved by things that move, and that's all there is to it.
So, what is the issue, then? This is it: whether embryos are or aren't persons. If they are, then the full set of rights and obligations pertaining to persons also apply to them. If they aren't, then these rights and obligations don't apply.
The most ironic in this is that, back in the 19 century, for a married couple to be "conservative" meant to take their kids to watch first hand criminals being hanged. The reason? Because it was thought that the duty of parents was to teach their children what the world is, not what they wanted the world to be.
Don't take me wrong. I'm myself a very, very conservative guy. But I can't see this BS as a conservative ideal. Actual conservatives are for market solutions to market problems, nor big government intervention into private affairs. This is so damn true that actual conservatives are even for home-schooling, despising government schooling! How is it then that so many self-proclaimed "conservatives" come around wishing that government take into its hands their duties as parents? Nonsense? Non-sequitur? No such luck! These self-proclaimed "conservatives" are simply big government idolaters. In terms of methods, they work, act and think exactly as liberals. The only difference between both is that they have different ideas on what society "should be". To accept the world as it is? To not try changing it according to their own will? Ha! Never heard about that!
Disgusting.
Wrong. There're universal moral values. The thing is, they're so damn obvious that people usually don't take notice these universal values exist, prefering to talk about the specific moral values that chance from place to place and from one person to another.
An example of an universal moral value: no society, ever, based itself on the unrestricted right of any person to assassinate any other persons. All of them have at least some rule on who can assassinate who and why. Even a psycho serial assassin guy with genocidal tendencies have a minimal set or rules, namely, that he has this right because he's he.
One big difference between modern (post XV century mostly) philosophers and the ones that came before is that the moderns had a big desire to explain everything about everything by themselves in what we nowadays call "systems". So one have the cartesian system (how Descartes explained everything), the humean system (idem), the hegelian system (idem), the kantian system (idem) and so on. No wonder then that these guys made BIG mistakes. If you don't worry with first getting the details right, how can your "big picture" be correct? If you just take that "marvelous insight" you had and try to explain everything based on it, what happens when someone else discovers a glitch in the insight itself?
In contrast, older philosophers, as well as a handful of XX century ones (very few, and most of them aren't studied in Academy), take the opposite approach. They investigate a small problem "a" until they reach a meaningful conclusion. Then they investigate a small problem "b". Then a small problem "c". And so on. Then, if they perceive that the different solutions they found for "a", "b", "c" etc. have similar characteristics, then they investigate this problem and, with luck, find a slightly more general solution that encompasses the previous, smaller ones.
If a CS course included courses on this second kind of philosophy, which we might call "scientific philosophy" (Aristotle, Plato, Aquinas, Leibniz, Husserl, Voegelin, Zubiri etc.), then it would be usefull, for it would tell you how to think in a very structured way while still fully imersed in the real world. Otherwise, if it included courses on "systematic philosophy" (Descartes, Hume, Spinosa, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Sartre etc.), or if they taught the scientific philosophers as if they also were systematic ones (a very common mistake which unfortunatelly happens all the time on the Philosophy college I'm taking), then it would be very useless, for instead of learning how to think about the world, you would just learn how to think about what this or that guy thought about the world, a completely different subject.
In the second paragraph I forgot to add this: "Only at the instant the show is beginning and the doors are closing the scalpers' prices drop to the middle point to fill the remaining few seats, provided not enough people seeked their tickets, something rare but that I've already seen happen."
Of coure, there're many, many cases in which even the scalpers' offers are below the demand, so prices keep going up and up until the doors close. Such lack of precision is due in great part for the lack of a standard way of doing the auction.
This is indeed excelent news! Fixed prices for shows have the same problems that fixed prices for everything else: either a) they're too much, so those people who can't afford the price simply don't go and you end up having empty seats, or b) they're too low, so more people than available seats are able to afford them and you end up having tons of people unable to attend the show.
Please note that the above is the case even when you include scalpers in the equation. Why? Because in that case you'll have "x" seats scalped, and "y" seats unscalped, so at the same time "a" and "b": "a" for the "x" seats and "b" for the "y" seats. Only at the instant the show is beginning and the doors are closing the scalpers' prices drop to the middle point to fill the remaining few seats.
So, by having the seats auctioneed way before the show, you solve almost all of the above problems, since the seat price will approach the best it can the ideal offer/demand equilibrium point. Of course this won't be always perfect, but even so, it will be better than what we have today.
Now, I only wish movie theatres start doing this too. If you wish to see the movie the day it's launched, it's just that you pay a premium, with the added bonus of no queues. And if you're price concious with a very limited budget, you can simply wait until the price to drop enough to reach your price point. And in all of this the theatre owners would guarantee many more full houses compared to what happens today, thus more profit, what would in time prompt more theatres to open, thus dropping the prices again. Everyone wins.
Many times (not always, of course) a free market approach is the way to go. This one is a clear example of such a case.
Some days ago I was reading the replies to a Slashdot article (I don't remember which one) and one poster had this link as his signature:
:) If you do, please post a reply saying whether it works or not. Maybe I'll start using it too.
http://winsudo.toadlife.net/
I haven't tried this tool, so I don't know how it behaves, but you can give it a try if you wish.
A Union is good for taking your money. Here in Brazil registered workers are obliged to join their professional unions.
Result #1: All the small unions do is to get from their "members" one pay day per year. This payment cannot be avoided. By law it's discounted from you paycheck by your employer. Needless to say, union owners do not have financial problems.
Result #2: All the big unions do is to grant to their members that they have a fair chance of losing their jobs, since companies burdened by crazy colective contracts are choosing to leave the country in search of less regulated places.
Result #3: Both big and small unions together managed to stablish this great concept, the "minimum wage". So, every one of the lowly skilled people whose services aren't worth this "minimum" are confortably unemployed, having to work under illegal terms to get any payment at all. And of course these illegal jobs pay these people far less than what they would get in case the magic "minimum wage" didn't exist.
Now, I won't say unions weren't usefull when they appeared in the XIX century. The point is: for most of the industrialized world their time has come and gone. Unions are an historical solution for an historical reality, namely, the sub-human work conditions under the pre-scientific management of pre-information age industrial plants. Those are extinct almost everywhere. And they are extict precisely because the unions accomplished the goals they were set to reach.
The globalized post-industrial, service-based, information age is a whole different beast. Trying to apply to it something that worked 150 years ago is nothing more than being a "conservative" in the depreciative meaning of the word, i.e., trying to "conserve" some old idea simply because it was good one day, not because it remains good today. Unions, as they now exist, are past, and must be left in the past. The modern world demands a modern solution, not a deficient model whose utility is long lost.
One series (actually, an umbrella of media products) which has everything connected and happening to the same characters is, IIRC, PoPoLoCrois.
You have some console RPGs (3 in sequece if I'm not mistaken), then a TV series that continues from where the last RPG left, then another RPG that continues from where the TV series left, and now a PSP game. But I'm not sure, it has been a while since I've seen the TV series and searched for info on it.