On 2/13/15 5:31 PM, glen wrote:
just like others don't seem to smile (grimace maybe) when I suggest instead of
a knee replacement (you know who you are), they just have Flex-Foot Cheetah
prosthetics engineered in place of them.
I don't quite grok why people feel so negative about prosthetics. It doesn't
seem to be purely about their (lack of) functionality. I suppose this goes
back to the same topic most of the threads on this list (in which I
participate, anyway) deal with: the mind/body problem. Your foot, or hand, or
hair, is not just a body part... it's a part of one's self, one's identity. We
don't seem to feel this so much with things like aspirin or, say, what you ate
for lunch. But we feel it fairly strongly for things like SSRIs and other
psychotropics as well as eyeballs and the body parts closely correlated with
gender identity.
I "wore" a skin-tag on one eyelid for a decade before I *finally* tied a
bit of floss around it real tight and clipped it off with a pair of
toenail clippers (washed, dipped in alcohol which I then burned
off)... it was a trivial bit of skin but I was nearly as attached to
it as it was to me... it *was* part of me. I had a similar feeling
when I finally got tired of watching my hairline recede and cut off my
(very) long hair... it was part of *me*!
So I "get" the feeling and my challenge to our buddy about replacing his
legs below the thigh with prosthetics (particularly good for running,
but lousy for salsa dancing or bicycling, or playing hackey-sack) was
almost entirely specious.
I'd maintain, however, that having one of those 5-year hormone pumping implants
really is akin to having a metal knee ... or should be, anyway. It's not
_merely_ that how we feel is a function of what we are. It's full blown, how
we feel _is_ what we are ... and vice versa.
I know a fellow (also around 50) who has had MD since he was a teen and gets
around well enough on foot and even bicycle but cannot really recognize a
face... he has to stare off to one side to see your mouth moving and facial
features changing, but without foveal vision can't really do much more than
register that there are changes. I'm guessing this tech is just what he needs
to improve his quality of life.
Yep. If the article hadn't said "age related macular degeneration", I wouldn't
even have posted it ... there's no irony there.
I missed that part. I also had a friend (dead now) who kept driving
with advancing MD until he literally was staying on the roads by riding
the rumble-strips...
As for this becoming "the hazard we don't know", I believe it, but that is
always the case.
I _wish_ I could express this to the anti-GMO-labeling people. We (Oregon)
voted on a measure last november that would have required products made with GE
materials be labeled. Most of the people against the measure seemed to be flat
out pro-GMO. I'm pro-GMO to a large extent. But I was also for labeling it.
I think I'm in a small minority.
I definitely think it should be labeled and I'm not real happy about a
GMO crop of *anything* that I'm trying to grow coming into my
neighborhood within pollination distance.
There is an anecdote about the Peace Corps in a sub-Saharan African
country coming in and offering the people in a region low-sulfur sorghum
plants which made much more palatable molasses/sugar/etc... with higher
yeilds. Every one was happy for 5 or 10 years until a recurring cycle
of locust infestations came through and cleaned out their crops... the
high-sulfur variety were relatively robust to locusts, the "new and
improved" were not. I don't really trust engineering-thinking (GMO)
to replace evolution... humans and domesticated flora and fauna
"co-evolved"... just jumping in and replacing things with "new and
improved" isn't as simple/obvious as one might imagine, I contend.
"get off my lawn!" said the old curmudgeon...
The reason I'm both pro-GMO and pro-labeling is precisely because i believe in
tracking cause and effect, regardless of the wisdom underlying any intervention
decision. It's equally frustrating when, say, your program begins working for
no apparent reason, as it is when your program stops working for no apparent
reason. It's my ignorance that frustrates me, not the current state (working
or broken). I failed several attempts to explain this to the
pro-GMO-anti-labeling people I managed to argue with.
I think progress is inevitable/human, but just because you *can* drive
faster than your headlights can illuminate safely, doesn't mean you
should. I think GMO has some hidden/unintended risks that the pro-GMO
crowd isn't willing to look at and the anti-GMO crowd doesn't have the
ammunition to document.
Gun it! said the old curmudgeon...
- Steve
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