Re: Wealthy couples travel to U.S. to choose baby's sex
--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], Charlie Bell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Here's another, to illustrate the point - a fertility clinic is on fire. The fire service is 20 minutes away, and can't help. On one floor, there are 100 infants. On another, is the frozen embryo storage facility, with 100 liquid nitrogen storage containers, each containing 100 embryos. You can only keep the fire from getting to one of the floors long enough to clear it, the other will be lost. What do you do? I'd be willing to bet that nearly everyone would save the 100 infants over the 10,000 embryos. Because, no matter how much the right to life is espoused, no matter how much some people talk of embryos as children and claim they see them as equal, people do value babies more. And if you can understand why, then you can understand why abortions up to 1/3 to 1/2 of the way through pregnancy are not considered murder by a lot of people. This is, of course, an absurd hypothetical, sort of like the questions we used to ask as a kid - would you rather slide down a set of razors into a pool of rubbing alcohol or be burned alive? Anyhow, if one changes the example such that on the second floor are 150 Senior Citizens, I suspect that most people save the infants first. Of course, I doubt that you would then be reaching the conclusions that Senior Citizens don't have the right to live or that Senior Citizens aren't equal, and that killing a citizen isn't murder. QED. JDG ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: RFK Jr. interview
--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I give about 40 speeches a year, in red states to Republican audiences, and I get the same enthusiastic responses from those audiences as I get from Liberal college audiences. The only difference is, is that the Republicans often say to me, 'How come we've never heard this before?' ... The Democrats as a whole had a much more accurate view of those events. And then PIPA went back twice to these same people. Of course your found it intriguing. I am sure it is a very comforting bedtime story that Democrats are smart and Republicans stupid, and that if everyone had access to the truth, then we'd all be Democrats. Feh! JDG ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: RFK Jr. interview
On 7/22/06, jdiebremse [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Of course your found it intriguing. I am sure it is a very comforting bedtime story that Democrats are smart and Republicans stupid, and that if everyone had access to the truth, then we'd all be Democrats. Aside from the fact that it wasn't about smart and stupid or access to truth... You seem to be saying that I only found it intriguing because it fits my view of the world. So, you think it's bad to focus on sources of information that tell you what you want to hear? Which was the point, of course. Poll after poll shows that a lot of people in this country believe important things that are factually incorrect... things that the White House, Fox and others have said were true and/or refuse to disavow. That seems like a rather large problem for a democracy. Don't you think so? Or maybe that's just the way things have always been and democracy has survived it, so we shouldn't be particularly concerned? Nick -- Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] Messages: 408-904-7198 ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Wealthy couples travel to U.S. to choose baby's sex
Gary Denton wrote: Technically, 10,000 frozen embryos could be considered equal to 1,666 children considering the success rate of implantation. You could make a case to rescue those instead of a hundred infants but in nearly all foreseeable circumstance I wouldn't. I don't consider frozen dots human... These periods are the size of a frozen human embryos. There are 400,000 frozen embryos in the United States. Suppose I save Bush and the Snowflake clinic a lot of time and just run around and adopt them all. I'll store them in an ice cream container in my freezer. While trying to decide how to choose who I'll give them to my freezer gets too hot. It may be just the normal temperature I run it at could be too warm for long term embryo viability, but it looks like they spoil. I don't want spoiled stuff in my freezer. I have also been getting afraid anyway I might confuse it with ice cream in the dark and am worried what they would taste like. So I toss them into my garbage. One melting pail of 400,000 embryos, adios. Now, am I the individual biggest mass murderer in US history? Or am I someone who just took out the garbage? On 7/21/06, Charlie Bell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 20/07/2006, at 12:23 AM, Dan Minette wrote: So, I don't think it is helpful to make arguments based on one's own axiom set and then expect them to sound reasonable to someone who holds a different axiom set. What we can do is look at the consequences of various definitions. This is the point I was heading for. Now, I don't think it's wrong to say that human life starts at conception, but I just think it's meaningless, as a zygote isn't actually any more human than an ovum - it's still a single cell. Sure, it's been given the infusion of extra DNA and the biological kick that'll You can say it's not human if you like, but genetically you are just wrong. It is distinctly human and not of any other living species. Furthermore, it is alive. If it were not, there would be no need to kill it. --JWR ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: RFK Jr. interview
JDG wrote: Of course your found it intriguing. I am sure it is a very comforting bedtime story that Democrats are smart and Republicans stupid, and that if everyone had access to the truth, then we'd all be Democrats. I don't think its a matter of smart or stupid as much as a tendency to filter information such that it supports an established POV. Do you have a critique of the poll [http://astro.berkeley.edu/~aleroy/Report10_21_04.pdf] that establishes that its results are biased or wrong? The above post implies that it is complete fiction. From tha analysis of the poll: Another possible explanation is that Bush supporters cling to these beliefs because they are necessary for their support for the decision to go to war with Iraq. Asked whether the US should have gone to war with Iraq if US intelligence had concluded that Iraq was not making WMD or providing support to al Qaeda, 58% of Bush supporters said the US should not have, and 61% assume that in this case the president would not have. To support the president and to accept that he took the US to war based on mistaken assumptions is difficult to bear, especially in light of the continuing costs in terms of lives and money. Apparently, to avoid this cognitive dissonance, Bush supporters suppress awareness of unsettling information. -- Doug ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: RFK Jr. interview
Dan wrote: ionary.. RFK Jr's statement didn't adress this at all. I'd argue that both Democrats and Republicans give half truths that favor their position. It's not that RFK Jr. is a champion of truth against those lying Republicans. Have you looked at the poll RFK refered to? [http://astro.berkeley.edu/~aleroy/Report10_21_04.pdf] -- Doug ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: RFK Jr. interview
Have you looked at the poll RFK refered to? [http://astro.berkeley.edu/~aleroy/Report10_21_04.pdf] That link is broken, but I've seen polls that indicate that sort of denial of facts by Republicans. I also have seen it by Democrats. All it indicates to me is that it is not unusual for folks to be in a state of denial. Dan M. mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Wealthy couples travel to U.S. to choose baby's sex
On 7/22/06, Brother John [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Gary Denton wrote: Technically, 10,000 frozen embryos could be considered equal to 1,666 children considering the success rate of implantation. You could make a case to rescue those instead of a hundred infants but in nearly all foreseeable circumstance I wouldn't. I don't consider frozen dots human... These periods are the size of a frozen human embryos. There are 400,000 frozen embryos in the United States. Suppose I save Bush and the Snowflake clinic a lot of time and just run around and adopt them all. I'll store them in an ice cream container in my freezer. While trying to decide how to choose who I'll give them to my freezer gets too hot. It may be just the normal temperature I run it at could be too warm for long term embryo viability, but it looks like they spoil. I don't want spoiled stuff in my freezer. I have also been getting afraid anyway I might confuse it with ice cream in the dark and am worried what they would taste like. So I toss them into my garbage. One melting pail of 400,000 embryos, adios. Now, am I the individual biggest mass murderer in US history? Or am I someone who just took out the garbage? On 7/21/06, Charlie Bell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 20/07/2006, at 12:23 AM, Dan Minette wrote: So, I don't think it is helpful to make arguments based on one's own axiom set and then expect them to sound reasonable to someone who holds a different axiom set. What we can do is look at the consequences of various definitions. This is the point I was heading for. Now, I don't think it's wrong to say that human life starts at conception, but I just think it's meaningless, as a zygote isn't actually any more human than an ovum - it's still a single cell. Sure, it's been given the infusion of extra DNA and the biological kick that'll You can say it's not human if you like, but genetically you are just wrong. It is distinctly human and not of any other living species. Furthermore, it is alive. If it were not, there would be no need to kill it. --JWR It is not a free-standing individual but is at the stage of a symbiotic parasite. My definition of live human begins at a later stage. -isn't this picture of frozen embryos cute. -- Gary Denton OddsEnds - http://elemming.blogspot.com Easter Lemming Liberal News -http://elemming2.blogspot.com http://www.apollocon.org June 22-24, 2007 ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: RFK Jr. interview
On 22 Jul 2006, at 7:27PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Have you looked at the poll RFK refered to? [http://astro.berkeley.edu/~aleroy/Report10_21_04.pdf] That link is broken, but I've seen polls that indicate that sort of denial of facts by Republicans. I also have seen it by Democrats. All it indicates to me is that it is not unusual for folks to be in a state of denial. ROTFL Try this one http://astro.berkeley.edu/~aleroy/Report10_21_04.pdf -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ It was the pseudo-religious transfiguration of politics that largely ensured [Hitler's] success, notably in Protestant areas. - Fritz Stern, professor emeritus of history at Columbia ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: RFK Jr. interview
Dan wrote: Have you looked at the poll RFK refered to? [http://astro.berkeley.edu/~aleroy/Report10_21_04.pdf] That link is broken, Try this. http://zzpat.tripod.com/cvb/pipa.html but I've seen polls that indicate that sort of denial of facts by Republicans. I also have seen it by Democrats. Can you show me one. I haven't seen anything like this poll. -- Doug ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: RFK Jr. interview
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] difficult for non-citizens to vote. One example that I just read was the opposition to a picture ID voting card, which requires proof of citizenship to vote. Requiring citizens to get an ID card from one single statewide office that is never open, to be able to vote is the essence of jim crow. Which is why that law has bee struct down, in both state and federal court. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Wealthy couples travel to U.S. to choose baby's sex
On 7/22/06, Gary Denton [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You can say it's not human if you like, but genetically you are just wrong. It is distinctly human and not of any other living species. Furthermore, it is alive. If it were not, there would be no need to kill it. --JWR It is not a free-standing individual but is at the stage of a symbiotic parasite. My definition of live human begins at a later stage. If there is a God, I wonder where his definition of a live human being begins, and does he feel it is morally OK for each of us to have our own personal definition that is different from his? Is there any way to find out without merely guessing or theorizing? If we place the point at which the organism is viable, and can survive outside the womb without a mother's love and care, then we deny the label human to many children and even some adults. Perhaps we should just kill every human organism that is helpless and cannot sustain itself. It would certainly solve a lot of the problems with the elderly, the homeless, the handicapped, and the starving poor of Africa and North Korea. I'm not sure that even atheists and agnostics would find that morally acceptable, although I cannot imagine why not. From my perspective, God is the source of all moral law. And if there is no God, or if his will is unknowable, then all things are equally moral. And to be more precise, the concept of morality ceases to exist. Of course, that is just from my perspective. People think and believe in a marvelous variety of ways. It seems to be as much a unique quality for each individual as his face or his fingerprints. We love to think that our attitudes are all the result of reason, logic and carefully though out positions. But my observation over 61 years indicates to me that people don't even know why they feel and believe as they do. It is all determined by mental processes that take place far deeper than that part of the mind which we are aware of or have conscious control of. And happiness for each individual depends on how well we are able to live according to what we really believe on this deeper, involuntary level. People who outrage their inner most convictions, the ones we are not even aware of on a conscious level, can never be happy and often end up either suicidal or self-destructive or both. Just to be on the safe side, I personally opt for preserving all human life from a zygote to a completely senile person well over a hundred years of age. Why kill them? They are going to die anyway. Every living thing does. All we have to do is be more patient. That some are unwilling to wait for natural death seems morally risky to me. Some women who abort their children never recover emotionally but spend the rest of their lives agonizing over the choice they made. And this is undoubtedly true regardless of what stage of development the unborn child was. Not being a woman who has ever aborted an unborn child, I cannot speak from experience. But I imagine that for some women recovering from a youthful and foolish decision to get an abortion is like trying to recover from sexual child molestation. There is a sense in which all of us are children and always will be. John W. Redelfs [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** Do you play World of Warcraft? Let me know. Maybe we can play together. *** All my opinions are tentative pending further data. --JWR ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: RFK Jr. interview
On 7/22/06, The Fool [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] difficult for non-citizens to vote. One example that I just read was the opposition to a picture ID voting card, which requires proof of citizenship to vote. Requiring citizens to get an ID card from one single statewide office that is never open, to be able to vote is the essence of jim crow. Which is why that law has bee struct down, in both state and federal court. Maybe it would make more sense to shoot down the laws that permit a state government to keep difficult office hours. Why don't the people in this country stop kidding themselves about states rights and just admit that the various states are administrative units of the federal government? The Tenth Amendment is obviously repealed without due process simply by ignoring it. John W. Redelfs [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** Do you play World of Warcraft? Let me know. Maybe we can play together. *** All my opinions are tentative pending further data. --JWR ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Wealthy couples travel to U.S. to choose baby's sex
On 22/07/2006, at 8:14 PM, Brother John wrote: Now, I don't think it's wrong to say that human life starts at conception, but I just think it's meaningless, as a zygote isn't actually any more human than an ovum - it's still a single cell. Sure, it's been given the infusion of extra DNA and the biological kick that'll You can say it's not human if you like, but genetically you are just wrong. It is distinctly human and not of any other living species. Furthermore, it is alive. If it were not, there would be no need to kill it. --JWR Again I refer to HeLa cells. I haven't had a chance yet to respond to JDG's point, so I will here, because it's an important issue - being a human cell and being a human being are not the same thing. A reminder, I referred to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa to show a case of free-living human cells. JDG replied thus, a valid objection: It would seem to me that cancer cells likely fail at least one of the two tests, or both. For one, many cancer cells do not seem to be individuals, any more than a free-floating blood cell is an individual. True, many cancer cells do not. But some cancer cells are very close to amoebae in structure and behaviour, and multiply by binary fission. Is that not individualism? His second objection was not valid. For two, the wikipedia entry you posted says that these cells in this case are not human, but are instead of another genera. This using of what things are called to define what they are is a classic trick, but it's also a serious error. The map is not the territory. The same trick is used by creationists arguing against human evolution. As hominid fossils are divided by the genus _Homo_ and others such as _Australopithecus_, and newly discovered fossils in the hominid family are placed in one of these groups, it's used as an argument that there are no transistional fossils between ape and human. If it's in _Homo_, it's human, if it's not, it's not. Even a cursory look at the fossils shows you the stupidity of this line of reasoning, just as a walk across the border between two countries shows the arbitrariness of human national borders - there's rarely a geological or topological boundary, unless it's a coastline or a river, and even then it's still arbitrary. HeLa cells have human DNA. They're tumour cells from a human cervical cancer patient. It has been proposed that as these cells are free- living that they could constitute an incidence of speciation, and a new name has been suggested (but is not universally accepted). But the point remains. These are free living human cells, with a full complement of human DNA. That someone has suggested they're a new species is beside the point - these are free-living human cells... so why aren't they human beings with the same rights as the rest of us? So, back to the start... Genetically, you are just wrong. I'm not saying it's not a human cell. I'm not saying it's not human. I'm saying it's not the same as a human being, just as an egg isn't a chicken, and an acorn isn't an oak tree, and just as a HeLa cell isn't a human, even though it is genetically human and not of any other living species. Killing a cell and killing a person aren't the same thing either. Just to make it clear, this is what we're talking about having full human rights: http://www.advancedfertility.com/pics/8cellicsi.jpg That's it. That's what these frozen embryos are. Charlie. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Wealthy couples travel to U.S. to choose baby's sex
On 23/07/2006, at 12:07 AM, jdiebremse wrote: This is, of course, an absurd hypothetical, sort of like the questions we used to ask as a kid - would you rather slide down a set of razors into a pool of rubbing alcohol or be burned alive? Maybe so. Anyhow, if one changes the example such that on the second floor are 150 Senior Citizens, I suspect that most people save the infants first. Of course, I doubt that you would then be reaching the conclusions that Senior Citizens don't have the right to live or that Senior Citizens aren't equal, and that killing a citizen isn't murder. Nice sidestep, and nice way to avoid the answer. And this: http://www.advancedfertility.com/pics/8cellicsi.jpg is not a citizen. Charlie ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: RFK Jr. interview
On 23/07/2006, at 2:50 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: RFK Jr's statement didn't adress this at all. I'd argue that both Democrats and Republicans give half truths that favor their position. It's not that RFK Jr. is a champion of truth against those lying Republicans. He certainly isn't. His recent pieces on Thisemero/autisml and on Bush stealing the election both contained so many factual and analytical errors that I have to doubt a lot of what he says. Stay off my side, in other words. Charlie ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
