Re: The Morality of Killing Babies
William T Goodall wrote: The atheists eat less babies than the theists though due to having a rationally designed, probably vegetarian, diet. There is nothing rational about a vegetarian diet. Vegetarianism is just a form of holier-than-thou for atheists. 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: The Morality of Killing Babies
Alberto Monteiro wrote: I think you should be careful to define _what_ are the goals, so that you can define what is "good" and what is "evil". If the goal is the long-range survival of intelligence and diversity, or even of diversity of intelligence, then killing weak babies is "evil". But it requires too much thinking to conclude that - and atheists are no smarter than fundamentalist theists, and will be satisfied with short-range egoistical goals. Short-term egoistical goals for theists mean "do good or God will punish you". Short-term egoistical goals for atheists lead to mass murder. In the absence of God or gods, why would one goal be preferable to any other? I might have one goal. You might have another. If they are contradictory, then the strongest man's goal is the right one. Or in other words, the concept of right and wrong in regards to goals become moot. 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: The Morality of Killing Babies
William T Goodall wrote: On 6 Sep 2006, at 4:13PM, Brother John wrote: Richard Baker wrote: If not, then I fail to see how the religious and atheist positions differ. Or: how does God Himself decide what is good and evil? Isn't He, at least, basically in the same position as us atheists? I guess so, unless he himself has a God as I believe. And does God's God have a God too? And if so does he have a God? And does God's God's God's God have a God? Absolutely, and it goes on forever. 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: unholy OS wars
Richard Baker wrote: JohnR said: Or you could buy a machine with lots of RAM, hard drive and a fast chip. Then install VMware and a half dozen operating systems and use all of them at the same time. I wonder if anyone finds doing that to be useful? I tried doing that at work but the video performance was annoyingly slow. We mostly use VMware for server applications. I guess we just need faster hardware. Maybe that will come. 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: unholy OS wars
Richard Baker wrote: JohnR said: What we really need is an OS with all of the advantages of XP and Ubuntu and none of the disadvantages of either. Then maybe we would have a decent operating system. That's called "OS X". Oh, except for the fact that OS X is much easier to use (and prettier!) than XP. And traditional Unix doesn't actually make a whole heap of sense. Why are there dozens of different configuration file formats? Why does no other Unix have things like launchd and lookupd but rather a rats nest of systems for starting processes and looking up directory data? Because they aren't slaves of Steve Jobs? 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: The Morality of Killing Babies
Richard Baker wrote: If not, then I fail to see how the religious and atheist positions differ. Or: how does God Himself decide what is good and evil? Isn't He, at least, basically in the same position as us atheists? I guess so, unless he himself has a God as I believe. 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: Once more into the 9-11 breach
Gibson Jonathan wrote:
Greetings compatriots,
I note the last few days have seen a small wave of 9-11
collusion/conspiracy events worth bringing up as they appear to shed
yet more light on this heated topic. I'm still digesting what we've
already been writing and following up on and I'd rather stew on it
further, but events appear to be accelerating. Although there are many
fine ideas expressed by our group around what mechanisms, natural -or-
otherwise, could have brought the buildings down what is notable is
the sheer number and severity of anomalies in timing and eye-witness
accounts of these events only makes me ever-more suspicious.
First things this morning my news aggregators popped up a Washington
Post story stating the 9-11 Commission debated hard over repeated lies
and falsehoods put forward by the Pentagon about what and why the
military was prevented from following regular procedures for
interception that day.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/01/AR2006080101300.html
It was argued hard that criminal proceedings should be brought, but
politics ruled the day and they deferred action to {executive branch}
departments to investigate - if they felt such a whimsy.
Last night C-SPAN carried a rare public discussion of the event by
some of the figures that members of this discussion group have been
quick to demean and they present themselves and {new} facts well.
Before you chomp hard on my very short notes please watch the whole
segment as there are certainly clues I did not pick up on that will
inform this debate. RealVideo = 1:45 minutes. C-SPAN has this in the
temp-bin which typically goes away in 60 days.
rtsp://video.c-span.org/60days/ap072906_theories.rm?mode=compact
Rough highlights:
Dr Jones: Where does the molten metal found under World Trade Center 7
come from if it wasn't hit by a plane - yet fell symmetrically with
all the signs of controlled demolition? Jones claims the substance he
found on metal samples from WTC1+2 demonstrate not that Thermite was
used, but the patented version known as Thermate - a super
demolition-specific version. Sulfer, Manganese, and other elements
confirm the yellow-red color of aluminum photographed is Thermate -vs-
Themite which runs silvery when it melts aluminum. I'm waiting for my
nay-sayer discussion-mates to chime in with another alternative
explanation, but I hope they watch the entire show as my notes are
cursory and not rigorous.
Lt. Col. Bowman: "The truth about 9-11 is we don't know the truth
about 9-11."
An old interceptor pilot who ran the initial Star Wars program asks,
"why were these planes not intercepted?" Bowman is more about heat
than light as he's runninng for Congress in Florida, so he's
less-filling on the facts side, but well-stocked on the moving forward
checklist, "It's time the oil mafia was removed from office and
indicted for treason"
Tarpley: "It took me 30 seconds to determine this was done as an
inside job due to the resources required and location limited just
which organizations could make such things happen... This was a coup
d'etat. ... Awareness now of these actions will immunize us from
future false-flag operations imminently due to push us into war with
Iran.
Dr Fetzer: Top-Ten reasons hijackers are fake:
10) names of hijackers NOT on airline manifests - not easy to do
9) no bodies available for autopsy
8) 5-7 of these people turning up alive in mid-east & UK
7) FBI suspect lists not modified by these people turning up
6) FBI knew immediately names of all hijackers by Atta's luggage with
lists and documents
5) These figures could not have flown the commercial jets.
4) Cell phones don't work at the altitude & speed flying.
3) Cockpit recorders don't record
2) 'Allah Akbar' are not the last words a devout muslim says when
confronting death: bad script writing is his suggestion.
1) Moussari confessed to a different crime than what the Government
finally convicted him on and FBI spies following him told their
superiors 70 times that this man was part of a deadly plot to crash a
plane into the White House. Conclusion: he was allowed to roam as a
patsy held in reserve. Compare and contrast how Nichols was given
decades of prison essentially for not telling anyone McViegh was about
to bomb Oklahoma City.
Alex Jones: Why did the head of the CIA-centric Defense Language
Institute {here in Monterey, California} immediately claim the
goivernment was behind this and that three of the hijackers had been
studying at his school?
I recently listened to WTC survivor and certified hero William
Rodriguez describe his actions and what he witnessed that day. It is
truly remarkable as a story of repeatedly rescuing people from inside
the buildings by someone who worked there for a decade. For years he
cleaned the stairwells starting from the top floors working down and
was intimately familiar with the structure and procedures which helpe
Re: Moving to Montana Soon?
Doug Pensinger wrote: Collapse by Jarred Diamond Part One: Modern Montana Chapter One: Under Montana's Big Sky [...] A similarity to my home town of Morgan Hill, Ca. to the Bitterroot Valley is the contrast in attitudes of the old timers; farmers and ranchers with sizeable land holdings and upper-middle class to upper class professionals with a fondness for the small town atmosphere in close proximity to a major metropolitan area. Morgan Hill has a slow-growth policy that allows a limited number of new housing units per year. This is frustrating to landowners because there is a huge demand for housing in the area. Have you ever driven through the Bitterroot Valley south of Missoula, Montana? I have done it only once, but I was deeply impressed with the beauty of it, and the size of the huge wood frame houses along the way. They were enormous, not particularly fancy but very large. I think that Missoula is one of most beautifully situated cities in the world, right along the spine of the continent. Of course, it isn't any prettier than Ketchikan, Alaska where I live. But then a perfect 10 is a perfect 10. John W. Redelfs [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Since we are all children of the same Heavenly Father, we really are all brothers and sisters." --Uncle Bob All my opinions are tentative pending further data. --JWR ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Prehistory
Charlie Bell wrote: On 01/08/2006, at 8:45 AM, Brother John wrote: As a child that raised white mice and rats as much as I did snakes, I can attest that white rats are much, much better pets than white mice. Mice bite and their urine stinks something awful. Neither is true of white rats. Rats actually make very nice pets, much better pets than hamsters of gerbils. Of course, that is just my person opinion. But it is based on personal experience. At last, some common ground. (Of course, you were probably raising rodents to feed to snakes, but I'll forgive you...). I never had white rats, I had a pair of dark chocolate brown rats with white bellies. The breed is "Black Berkshire", and they were _Rattus norvegicus_, or the Common Brown or Norway Rat (the most common pet rat, although a few people do breed Black Rats (_Rattus rattus_). Rats are *great* pets. Really social, and really smart. Yes, my brother and I were raising rats to feed to our snakes. But we really liked the rats. They didn't bite like the mice, hamsters and gerbils we owned. And they were much cleaner than the mice. Mice simply stink something awful. I think rats, if a person gets clean, healthy well bred rats, make excellent pets. Obviously disease ridden sewer rats aren't good to have around. But you could say the same thing about diseased, uncared for cats and dogs too. John W. Redelfs [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Since we are all children of the same Heavenly Father, we really are all brothers and sisters." --Uncle Bob All my opinions are tentative pending further data. --JWR ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Prehistory
Gibson Jonathan wrote: We have three cats who have made a serious dent in the gopher population in our neighborhood - without poisons. Playful ribbing aside, they have been much more patient and ardent hunters than the dogs around here. It's also quite a sight to see our smallish felines carry a struggling rat almost as large as themselves over for approval. I love cats and dogs, but for different reasons. Dogs are great chums and loyal "friends" beyond any reason. They appear to have been bred to fit human needs far more than cats, who obviously understand power politics better than canines. Where Douglas Adams' white mice come in I'm still puzzling out... As a child that raised white mice and rats as much as I did snakes, I can attest that white rats are much, much better pets than white mice. Mice bite and their urine stinks something awful. Neither is true of white rats. Rats actually make very nice pets, much better pets than hamsters of gerbils. Of course, that is just my person opinion. But it is based on personal experience. John W. Redelfs [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Since we are all children of the same Heavenly Father, we really are all brothers and sisters." --Uncle Bob All my opinions are tentative pending further data. --JWR ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Abortion
Gibson Jonathan wrote: Wow, you sound like a real bummed out grump on this. I grew up in white-bread Oregon and long held the view that place needed some salsa in the worst way. Our culture would be terminally bland and insular if we were only breeding as you seem to advocate. Our melting pot strengths easily out-shadow the congenital weakness an isolated culture fosters as it denies mutation and change. China did it for a long time, but it only made them a push-over for a dynamic British military empire. As I look for a silver lining in the Katrina disaster my fervent hope is that somehow the truly remarkable, rich, vibrant & amazingly creative society we call New Orleans can affect this nation positively - let a thousand Mardi Gras parades flow! --- You don't have to convince me about the advantages of a melting pot. As I have stated elsewhere, my wife and the mother of my three grown children is part of a large family of Hispanic immigrants who came here from El Salvador in the 1960s and 1970s. I am "white bread" from Omaha, Nebraska. But both my closest brother and I graduated from high school in El Paso, Texas which is more Hispanic than Anglo. And both of us married Hispanic, Spanish-speaking women who bore us many children. I love many things about my own culture, but I can clearly see some terrible flaws. And while there are also flaws in the Hispanic culture that is growing in our midst, it also has some marvelous strengths and admirable characteristics. One of them is how much they value their children, how central their extended families are to their lives, and how willing they are to work their butts off, not to satisfy ambition and desire for status in the community, but to provide good lives for their wives and children. My own parents had post-graduate degrees and lucrative professions. Yet of my father's 9 children by three different wives, only two ever finished college. My wife's parents never finished grade school, yet of their 8 children, all but two of them finished not only college but obtained post graduate degrees and have raised large families. This country really needs these immigrants. I believe that every last one of them should come here legally rather than illegally. But I believe they are a great blessing to this country. And they feel the same way about having children and share the same disdain and disgust for abortion that I do. Or course most of them are Catholic, but maybe that is why after the Protestants die out in North America, there will still be many Catholics. That is if they don't all become atheists and agnostics after a few years of worshiping our consumer goods the way most Americans do. -- John W. Redelfs [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Since we are all children of the same Heavenly Father, we really are all brothers and sisters." --Uncle Bob All my opinions are tentative pending further data. --JWR ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Abortion
Horn, John wrote: On Behalf Of Nick Arnett On 7/29/06, Brother John <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: We ourselves used to be an enormously fertile and prolific people. Our ascendancy over the Native Americans who were here before us is as much a factor of the difference in our relative birthrates as anything else. Cite, please. Seems to me that the death rate among the indigenous people had a whole lot more to do with it. Jared Diamond talks about this in _Guns, Germs and Steal_. A more agricultural society can sustain a higher birthrate than a nomadic one. Also, Western European crops had many more calories per pound than those the Native Americans gathered/cultivated. This is what I was trying to say in another post. We fed ourselves better, and reproduced more prolifically. So our culture replaced theirs. It will happen to us if we stop reproducing. We will breed ourselves right out of existence. Europe had been doing this far longer than we have. We have only really started since the end of the baby boom. John W. Redelfs [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Since we are all children of the same Heavenly Father, we really are all brothers and sisters." --Uncle Bob All my opinions are tentative pending further data. --JWR ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Abortion
Nick Arnett wrote: On 7/29/06, Brother John <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > We ourselves used to be an enormously fertile and prolific people. Our ascendancy over the Native Americans who were here before us is as much a factor of the difference in our relative birthrates as anything else. Cite, please. Seems to me that the death rate among the indigenous people had a whole lot more to do with it. While I have studied a lot of Native American history, I am unaware of any sociological studies to back up what I claim. I do know that the number of wagon trains passing through the lands that belonged to the Plains Indians on their way west caused them to despair because of the great numbers of them. Also, a few of them traveled east to where those wagon trains originated and came back and told their peoples that the Whiteman seeming outnumbered the stars of heaven. They were appalled by the sheer size of our population as it moved west. If they themselves were propagating in such numbers, something that could only occur if they were primarily a sedentary and agricultural people which they were not, our conquest of the New World would have been much more difficult. We overran the Indians primarily because we were an agricultural people and they were hunter-gatherers. As a result we could support a much larger population than they could because our ability to feed our families was so much better then theirs. Many of the native tribes practiced various forms of birth control, abortion and even infanticide which was common among some of the tribes when they could not feed themselves. Virtually all of the Native Americans in the New World who lived in large cities and had what we think of as "civilization" practiced human sacrifice as part of their religion. And in all of those native religions ritual cannibalism played a role. The Aztec didn't just kill thousands upon thousands of captives on top of those pyramids. After ripping out those still beating hearts, the priests ate them. Obviously their attitudes toward the sanctity of life was somewhat different from ours. Of course we "eat" and "drink" the body and blood of our God in our own Christian communion services. Is that not human sacrifice and cannibalism too, at least symbolically? Cultures that reproduce replace cultures that don't. Do I actually have to find scientific "evidence" to back that claim? I should think it would be rather obvious to anyone who knows anything about ecology or biology. John W. Redelfs [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Since we are all children of the same Heavenly Father, we really are all brothers and sisters." --Uncle Bob 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
Julia Thompson wrote: Brother John wrote: Julia Thompson wrote: 1) Not all people are suitable for parenthood. It's not easy. I have respect for people who decide that they're not going to be as good at parenting as their children would deserve. 2) If you decide you want a child, you'd better be prepared for the possibility of it having special needs, because a number of them do, and if you can't handle it, it's going to suck big-time for that child. If I were a child, I would rather have special needs that are not met than to be aborted. I suppose there are worse things than being aborted, but from the child's perspective I can't think of many. --JWR The real travesty is the parents who decide they can't cope with the child's special needs any longer, and attempt (sometimes successfully) to murder them. I can name 3 children offhand that were the victims of murder or attempted murder since May 1 of this year, where there was some attempt at justification given because of the child's special needs. That is incredibly WRONG. I agree completely. Unfortunately human beings are natural born killers as we have been demonstrating so well for many thousands of years. Other animals don't do this, not to the extent that we do. We not only kill others of our own kind in great numbers and have always done so since long before we obtained current technology, we even kill ourselves in great numbers. What other animal commits suicide to the extent that we do? And I'm talking about suicide in the narrow sense, not in the sense that some people commit suicide by indulging addictions such as alcohol and drugs. John W. Redelfs [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Since we are all children of the same Heavenly Father, we really are all brothers and sisters." --Uncle Bob All my opinions are tentative pending further data. --JWR ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Abortion
Ronn!Blankenship wrote: And FWIW :) the way I know that "Brother John" is not someone who has been here before and likes to yank chains is that I have known "Brother John" from elsewhere probably almost as long as I have been a member of this list . . . Yes, Ronn. If you have known the members of this list longer than you have known me, you have known them for a really long time speaking in Internet time. I think we have been hanging out together since the summer of 1992 or shortly thereafter. I was simply astounded to find you here when I stumbled onto this list cruising Mailman lists on Google. I assume that everyone here reads Brin's blog at http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/. Am I right? John W. Redelfs [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Since we are all children of the same Heavenly Father, we really are all brothers and sisters." --Uncle Bob All my opinions are tentative pending further data. --JWR ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Abortion
Julia Thompson wrote: Ronn!Blankenship wrote: At 07:53 PM Saturday 7/29/2006, William T Goodall wrote: 'Brother John' is a troll and probably someone who's been here before yanking some chains. No, he isn't. IAWTC. IAWTC? I'm not familiar with that acronym. --JWR ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Prehistory
Charlie Bell wrote: Your lack of imagination is unsurprising. Recently, a cat baiting exercise near my old house resulted in the poisoning of many pet and stray cats. Including all three of mine. This was done for "pest control" reasons by some locals. 3 months later, there is a serious rat and cockroach problem in the area. If rats and mice are your reason for having a pet, then keep a snake. They do a much better job than any cat. When I was a child, my brothers and I kept quite a few snakes. They even got written up in the Omaha newspaper when herpetologists from neighboring states visited us to see our snake collection. That's what my brother and I did with our paper route money. --JWR ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Wealthy couples travel to U.S. to choose baby's sex
Julia Thompson wrote: 1) Not all people are suitable for parenthood. It's not easy. I have respect for people who decide that they're not going to be as good at parenting as their children would deserve. 2) If you decide you want a child, you'd better be prepared for the possibility of it having special needs, because a number of them do, and if you can't handle it, it's going to suck big-time for that child. If I were a child, I would rather have special needs that are not met than to be aborted. I suppose there are worse things than being aborted, but from the child's perspective I can't think of many. --JWR ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Abortion
Doug Pensinger wrote: Well, if we don't reproduce, we will just be replaced. That is just a biological fact. We can agonize and discuss endlessly the moral and religious aspects, but simple biology dictates that there is a relationship between nativity and mortality. And that if a species or a subgroup of a species does not reproduce, it dies out. Or more likely, we intermarry and become one big happy family as has happened continually in the past. And even if the majority in this country does become Hispanic, so what. Are they lesser human beings? I hope not. My wife is an Hispanic immigrant from El Salvador, and our three grown children all look like Mexicans. Our grandchildren also would never be mistaken for Anglo-Americans. You seem to forget that we are a country of immigrants from all over the world. The immigrants from Mexico are filling a niche. If we really didn't want them or need them we would enforce strict laws against employing them and without jobs, they would go home. You don't have to convince me. But notice how willing they are to have children and then make great sacrifices to feed them. We used to be like that ourselves. It is a pity that we are not still. Today we would much rather abort them, something these Hispanic immigrants look down on to the max. While Anglo-Americans would much rather have condo, RVs and BMWs than children. Somewhere along the line we lost our proper sense of values and started to value our "stuff" more than we value our children. --JWR ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Prehistory
Doug Pensinger wrote: Brother John wrote: Consider the marvelous book by Jared Diamond called /Guns, Germs and Steel. /It is almost all conjecture. It is very good conjecture perhaps, but conjecture nevertheless. Have you read it? Yes, I read it. And I really enjoyed the first half. Then I got bored with the constant statement of conjectures as fact. Consider the very important paleoanthropological find in the Columbia River Valley called the Kenniwick Man. We know from a study of his skull and other bones that he was not racially related to the Native Americans that now occupy that part of the world. He seems to have been of European ancestry or at least his bones are more European-like than any of the Native Americans today. I thought that they've concluded that he was probably an ancestor of the Jomon, who also were the ancestors of the Ainu people of Japan. Who are "they?" The last I read "they" were of a multitude of opinions with little if anything upon which to base their opinion. But what chance is there that we will ever be able to figure out where he came from, or what happened to his descendants if he had any? There is no way to answer such questions scientifically. We do know that he had a stone projectile point embedded in his pelvis. Yes, but we do not know how he died, or how he came to be where he was. The stone point was obviously not what killed him because it was an old injury when he died. --JWR ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: (no subject)
Doug Pensinger wrote: Are you a fundy? Do you believe that the earth and heavens were created in six days approximately 6000 years ago? No, I think that the "six days" mentioned in the Bible are more properly thought of as six creative periods each of which is of indeterminate length. Each of those "days" could easily have been tens of millions or hundreds of millions of years long or even longer. But if I do not know exactly how long the earth was forming before mankind came on the scene, I highly suspect that the scientific community doesn't either. Just during my own lifetime they have repeatedly changed their estimates almost always claiming that the earth is much older than the last time they pretended to know. They obviously haven't got a clue. --JWR ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Prehistory
The Fool wrote: From: Charlie Bell On 30/07/2006, at 1:03 PM, The Fool wrote: Well if you mean writing. The sphynx is estimated as being 8000+ years ago. About 1-2000 years after the domestication of the cat. "Domestication"? ;) Parasitication? The only good use I've ever been able to imagine for a cat is to grind it up for dog food. Why spay them when they can serve such a useful purpose? --JWR ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Abortion
William T Goodall wrote: On 30 Jul 2006, at 1:31AM, Charlie Bell wrote: On 30/07/2006, at 9:38 AM, jdiebremse wrote: Of course, I don't think that Brother John does anyone any favors when he equates ova and sperm with zygotes and unborn children. No, he equated sperm and zygotes with "babies". Babies are infants in the minds of most people. Not unborn children. He may have meant it, but it's not what he said. It's that sort of rhetoric that makes it impossible to have a debate with so many. Talking about babies and children (rather than specifying unborn children or foetuses) puts anyone on the other side in exactly the same position that asking them "When did you stop beating your wife?" does - there is no response that doesn't make them look defensive or bad. A little historical comparison of child mortality and birth complication death rates of mothers in the past with now in developed and other countries would be interesting. But then, I see that "Brother John" is happily trolling in a couple of subthreads now... 'Brother John' is a troll and probably someone who's been here before yanking some chains. I am not a troll, and I have never been here before. I discovered this list while doing Google searches to find Mailman lists. Since I really like the SF of Gregory Benford and David Brin, I thought there might be some interesting people here. So far, I have not been disappointed. If I seem to be trolling, it is only because I have highly unusual opinions about many things. All my life I have been trying to figure out what the "truth" is by being the contrarian. I reason that if the "truth" exists, it must be very different from what most people think it is. If most people knew the "truth," whatever that is, the world wouldn't be a messed up as it is. While I cannot think of any better way for men to govern themselves than by the principle of majority rule, I have often pondered on how outrageously wrong the majority have often been in the past. Therefore, long ago I concluded that whatever the truth is, it must be a rare and precious commodity known to only a few people. And while I do not claim to know very much about truth, I have very little confidence in the knowledge of anyone else. They are as likely to be ignorant as I am, and in a few cases even more likely. My Uncle Bob used to say that "It isn't what you don't know that kills you, but what you know that's not so." I have often thought that must be true. A person who thinks he knows the truth when he actually doesn't is not very likely to figure out what it is. --JWR ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: (no subject)
Charlie Bell wrote: Where do you think our primitive cultures came from? They are all descended from higher cultures, descended from the drop outs and "hippies" of prior civilizations. Do you suppose that the Maya are the only illiterate natives descended from high culture? If we had the written history to prove it, which we don't, we would find that virtually all primitive cultures are like the Maya in that respect, fallen from a higher culture. I'm beginning to think you're pulling my leg, rather than engaging in a real discussion. Which is fine, but a smiley would be nice. I am not pulling your leg. I don't have the same reverence for currently fashionable scientific thought that many have in our culture. I have an abiding confidence in all human ignorance, especially my own. --JWR ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Abortion
jdiebremse wrote: Harder than the decision to carry the child to birth? Harder than the decision to give up the child for adoption? Harder than the decision to raise the child? I don't like the way "Brother John" attempts to villify those who choose abortion. I think those that choose abortion are far, far, far more often victims than villains. At the same time, however, I am not comfortable with the characterization of choosing to have an abortion as being "the hardest decision." The other possible decisions are almost certainly equally hard, if not harder. I'm sorry I come across as "vilifying" those who choose abortion. I would much rather come across as someone who finds it lamentable that so many pregnancies are unwanted. We move heaven and earth to preserve and protect endangered species. Look how highly we value such great art works as the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper, and the treasure in the Louvre and other museums around the world. Would all these abortions take place if we valued children as highly? I don't think so, and that says something about us as a people. Why do we value children so little? There was a time, earlier in our history as a nation, when a pregnancy was a cause for great rejoicing, not only for the mother and father-to-be, but for all of the neighbors, and for the community. There was a great stigma to having children out of wedlock, and married women who were unable to conceive and have children were objects of pity. Children were considered great treasures. Women died in childbirth, and families had many children because there was no assurance that more than half of them would live to adulthood. Today we treat pregnancies as a great inconvenience in many cases, and an utter disaster in others. Of all the children that are actually born, how many are thought of as the great treasures that they are? I don't mean to vilify those who get abortions. I feel sorry for them because they didn't want the child. I don't think that "murder" is taking place, but I consider it one of life's greatest tragedies that so many children are unwanted even to the point of putting an end to the pregnancies that do occur. A pregnancy should almost always be a cause for great rejoicing by the mother, the father, the grandparents, and the whole community. And it is a fact that there are many women who are emotionally unable to abort their children. The maternal love they feel for the unborn child is so great that they simply cannot do it. It is too bad that all women are not like that. If they were, there would not be nearly as many women who value their "right to choose" above the life of an unborn child in any stage of its development. Even if abortion is not murder, and I do not think it is, it is a terrible comment on the kind of people we are and the kind of nation we have become. Finally, the enormous problem of illegal immigration that we are having here in the USA is caused in part by the huge birthrate among the Hispanic people who live in Mexico and other nations of Latin America. We aren't having children, and they are. Even here in the USA the birthrate among the Hispanic people is much higher than among the Anglo-Americans who have been here much longer. We ourselves used to be an enormously fertile and prolific people. Our ascendancy over the Native Americans who were here before us is as much a factor of the difference in our relative birthrates as anything else. We were growing like crazy. We had huge families and we did a good job of taking care of them in comparison with the Native Americans of the same period. We literally populated a whole continent from "sea to shining sea." Today we are just barely replacing ourselves and in some places there would be no grown in our population whatever if it were not for Hispanic immigrants and the large families they have before and after coming here. Well, if we don't reproduce, we will just be replaced. That is just a biological fact. We can agonize and discuss endlessly the moral and religious aspects, but simple biology dictates that there is a relationship between nativity and mortality. And that if a species or a subgroup of a species does not reproduce, it dies out. Biologically the definition of a healthy and vigorous population is tied to the food supply and the effect that has on reproduction. Populations grow or they die out. If our culture has become as sterile and barren as it seems to have, then the future is not good for us regardless of the minor nits we like to endless discuss when the topic of abortion comes up. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Prehistory
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Totally meaningless comment: In a message dated 7/29/2006 3:26:09 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: We know from a study of his skull and other bones . Bottom line. I don't know. But I don't think anyone else does either. I would rather trace my ancestry from a line of skulls than from a bottom line. I would rather humbly admit my ignorance and not trace my ancestry than to make something up without sufficient evidence. Others, I'm sure, would rather make something up. --JWR ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: (no subject)
Richard Baker wrote: Brother John said: Where do you think our primitive cultures came from? They are all descended from higher cultures, descended from the drop outs and "hippies" of prior civilizations. Where did those higher cultures come from in the first place if not from earlier primitive cultures? Douglas Adams gives an explanation that is as likely as any other. In the /Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe /or one of its sequels he told the story of a colonization ship piloted by a complete insane captain who was taking a bath on the bridge in an antique bathtub. It turns out the the thousands of colonists in his hold, deep in hibernation, were all of the lawyers, insurance salesmen, account executives, and other assorted paper shufflers and pencil pushers from a civilization that had expelled them by perpetrating a scientific hoax that their sun was going nova. The pencil pushers were in the first of two ship seeking another world, or so they thought, and after it had taken off and traveled far into interstellar space, it crash landed on Earth. And mankind is made up entirely of the survivors of that crash. We are descended from lawyers, and petty bureaucrats. The reason the story is so funny is because it could be true as far as we know. We have absolutely no way of telling how we got here excepts bits and pieces of bone, pottery, and stone tools which we can only guess the meaning of. Rich GCU Troll ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Prehistory
Richard Baker wrote: Brother John said: Where do you think our primitive cultures came from? They are all descended from higher cultures, descended from the drop outs and "hippies" of prior civilizations. Where did those higher cultures come from in the first place if not from earlier primitive cultures? From earlier higher cultures? I don't know. Written human history only goes back about 6,000 years. And the earliest records of literate societies having a written history show those societies to be very sophisticated with mathematics, literature, laws, a knowledge of astronomy, etc. We can go back even further than that if we accept the "evidence" of old campfires, stone spear points, bit of bone, etc. But there is no way whatever to know who those people were, where they came from, or what happened to them. As a result, it is impossible to know whether or not they were the people who "evolved" into the ancient literate cultures of Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus River Valley, and similar cultures in the Western Hemisphere. There is just so much that we do not know and can never know because the evidence is simply not there. Consider the marvelous book by Jared Diamond called /Guns, Germs and Steel. /It is almost all conjecture. It is very good conjecture perhaps, but conjecture nevertheless. Consider the very important paleoanthropological find in the Columbia River Valley called the Kenniwick Man. We know from a study of his skull and other bones that he was not racially related to the Native Americans that now occupy that part of the world. He seems to have been of European ancestry or at least his bones are more European-like than any of the Native Americans today. But what chance is there that we will ever be able to figure out where he came from, or what happened to his descendants if he had any? There is no way to answer such questions scientifically. We don't even know if Neanderthal was driven to extinction by modern man or was intermarried with modern man to the point of extinction. Bottom line. I don't know. But I don't think anyone else does either. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Wealthy couples travel to U.S. to choose baby's sex
Richard Baker wrote: Brother John said: Why would any adult not want to have children? Are they not a source of almost infinite joy in the lives of those who have them? Are they not great treasures? To pass up a chance for a child is like walking by a 100 dollar bill on the sidewalk and not leaning down to pick it up. Only the barren and lonely do not have children. It is a sad situation for any person to be in. Well, it's just possible, I guess, that some of us don't think that children are a lifestyle accessory designed purely to make us happy. It seems to me that having children is a very serious investment of time and money and that I shouldn't have them until I have a fairly good probability of being able to give them a better life than I've had. It also seems to me that the opportunity cost of having children is not being able to invest that time and money in other projects that will make the future a better place not just for as yet unconceived children but for everybody. And when I do have children, it will be with the confidence that I can provide them with an excellent start in life rather than merely, y'know, because I kinda felt like it. If I never feel that I can be an adequate parent, then I simply won't have children at all. I must say it stuns and amazes and disappoints me that anyone could think otherwise. Your attitude towards children seem very pessimistic to me and seems to imply that you are lacking in self-confidence. Those who have children while realizing what a "very serious investment of time and money" they are, do so with supreme confidence that they will not only be able to provide them with better opportunities than they have had, but that their children can be reared to be a great blessing to the world who will make it a much better place for everybody. And while I admire your resolve not to have any children at all unless you feel that you can be an adequate parent who can do far more than provide them with an excellent start in life, if you had more confidence in yourself, you would simply resolve to be such a parent and then carry out your resolve. Our culture is full of people who have lost faith in their ability to make a good home for children. How very sad. My wife and I raised three children to adulthood, and we did a much better job than our parents did. In my case, a much, much better job. And so now, in our sixties, we are wrapped in the love of wonderful children, and our lives are filled with happy and healthy grandchildren. A cultural pessimism about rearing children, does not bode well for the future of that culture. I must admit, however, that there are a lot of factors in our cultural environment that make it very difficult to raise children well. I consider it a miracle that I turned out as well as I did myself, and some would suggest that isn't saying much. Still, I feel bad for those who have so little confidence in themselves or the future that they choose not to have children or to even attempt to rear a family. Children are the greatest joy a person can have, and if they are reared well, that joy lasts at least until the end of life. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: (no subject)
Richard Baker wrote: Charlie said: It seems to me that most of the atheists I know are just as ethical as anyone else, and spend a lot of time thinking about social responsibility and equality issues. We have to spend a lot of time thinking about ethics because we're unlucky enough not to know with absolute certainty from God Himself that eating shellfish is an abomination(*) or that it's okay to keep slaves as long as they're from other tribes or... Atheists are ethical because they were raised in a religious culture and have adopted the values of that culture while rejecting the religions that were the source of those values. Put them in a nation or community of other atheists where they can rear their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and so forth with atheist values, and in not too many generations they will all have painted faces, grass skirts, stone tipped spears and be jumping around fires in the jungle after a meal of human flesh. Where do you think our primitive cultures came from? They are all descended from higher cultures, descended from the drop outs and "hippies" of prior civilizations. Do you suppose that the Maya are the only illiterate natives descended from high culture? If we had the written history to prove it, which we don't, we would find that virtually all primitive cultures are like the Maya in that respect, fallen from a higher culture. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Wealthy couples travel to U.S. to choose baby's sex
Julia Thompson wrote: Gary Denton wrote: He reasoned that the Supreme Court could not make it fertilization as that would make most Americans guilty of murder as birth control pills work by preventing fertilized eggs from attaching to the uterine wall. It would not be the attachment to the uterine wall as that would leave the status of humans born from artificial wombs in doubt, although that technology was not yet perfected. Um, birth control pills are designed to prevent ovulation, not prevent implantation. IUDs are designed to prevent implantation. Some people BELIEVE birth control pills prevent implantation and are hence abortifacients. At a significantly higher dose than normal, that can be the case, but they are designed to prevent ovulation so the whole implantation thing never comes up in the first place. Why would any adult not want to have children? Are they not a source of almost infinite joy in the lives of those who have them? Are they not great treasures? To pass up a chance for a child is like walking by a 100 dollar bill on the sidewalk and not leaning down to pick it up. Only the barren and lonely do not have children. It is a sad situation for any person to be in. Of course this is just my personal feeling, but there was a time when it was shared by a great many others in our nation. That was back when we were reproducing rapidly enough to BE the illegal alien problem instead of HAVING an illegal alien problem. --JWR ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Good Lord, it's hot
Ronn!Blankenship wrote: At 09:53 PM Sunday 7/23/2006, Nick Arnett wrote: On 7/23/06, Ronn!Blankenship <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: At 08:33 PM Sunday 7/23/2006, Nick Arnett wrote: >The last two days, my little indoor/outdoor thermometer has recorded a high >temp of 117 degrees. I suppose I should clarify that that was the maximum recorded outsidetemperature. The maximum inside temp was ... good heavens, 97 degrees. In my office! But I think it has mostly been 77-82 in here, with A/C and ceiling fans working all too hard. Now I'm wondering when it hit 97... I suspect it was while the thermometer was on top of my display, which, despite being a flat panel, puts out some heat. Allow me to clarify also: I was talking about glancing at the thermometer part of the clock display that is about a foot or two from my head when I am lying down on numerous occasions during the past couple of weeks or so and noticing it read "94.5°F" it's down to 95 now, at 8 pm... .and we still don't care to walk the dog. Nor does the dog seem especially inclined to keep moving much. During the day the cat is similarly disinclined to move much. He has taken to lying on top of things with all four legs, his tail, and most of his head hanging over the edge putting them more in line with the output of the fan. On occasion he shifts position a bit and finds that in the new position enough of his mass is hanging over the edge to make him unstable, so "Clunk!" he goes to the floor and then jumps back up to try to get into the artificial breeze again. It was nicer today. It rained pretty hard for awhile about lunchtime, although according to the news that plus the 2.5" we got over the weekend (according to my rain gauge) is not enough to get the water use restrictions lifted . . . It is nice and cool here in southeast Alaska. Enjoy your sun bathing. --JWR ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: FEMA disaster for free speech
Nick Arnett wrote: I've read about this before, but it still just astonishes me that Katrina survivors have lost civil rights as a result. They end up living in a community where they are not free to talk to the press unless there is a FEMA representative present. They can't have a landline telephone or cable television. No decorations outside. Our government has done better and can do better, much better. What's really awful about this, to me, is that it works against accountability. Intimidate the people and the media so that the story isn't told. It's not going to work in the long run, but in the short run it is a disaster on top of a disaster. http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2924 When we consistently vote for a police state in this country, why should we be surprised when one rises up in our midst? --JWR ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Wealthy couples travel to U.S. to choose baby's sex
David Hobby wrote: Welcome back. I think you're missing Charlie's point. To me, his argument is that it is VERY hard to draw a clear line between things that can turn into adult humans and things that can't. I advise conceding the point, unless you just like to argue for the fun of it. : ) May I propose that you reply: "Anything produced by combining a human egg and sperm certainly counts as HUMAN. Other things might also; we'll decide about clones later." ---David (Must--not--argue--with--John... No, it's no use, I can't help but gang up on you: Personally, I think you ARE a long ways down a slippery slope to "every sperm is sacred". Sorry.) Perhaps it is an overstatement to say that every sperm is sacred, but human life most definitely is. And if our popular culture no longer values the sacred, or even understands the meaning of the term "sacred," we have lost a big part of what makes our own lives valuable. I mean, we think nothing of stepping on ants. But if human life has no especial meaning, why should it be any greater wrong to step on humans in the same fashion? Are not ants just as "alive" as we are? But if there is some special value to a human life, why draw a line anywhere and say it is unimportant and without value? Certainly there have been men and tyrants throughout human history that would as soon kill as preserve human life. With them killing men was no more than stepping on ants. Maybe they have the right attitude, do you think? If not, maybe we should treasure every human life at every stage of development. And if some sperm, ova and zygotes get the ax, then let it be for some very important reason, not just as a convenience or because we think no more of it than of sterilizing a bacteria colony or, squashing bugs under our feet. We don't need to think of a sperm or zygote as "sacred." But we should consider what we do when we cultivate a sentiment among us that babies don't matter and are no more worthy to live than germs, and less worthy to live convicted murderers. Abortion may not be murder, but it is certainly a form of child abuse, a rather terminal one. I'd be willing to bet anything that the hard-hearted men and women who abort unborn children don't love those that are born very much either. ___ 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: Wealthy couples travel to U.S. to choose baby's sex
At 11:48 AM 7/19/2006, Alberto Monteiro enlightened us with: Maybe this is a Good Thing(tm), as it will improve the human race with lots of Darwin-awards, culling motherlovelessness from the human gene pool! This has always been my feeling, but this is the first time I've admitted it to anyone. I'm far too politically correct. John W. Redelfs[EMAIL PROTECTED] === Is World of Warcraft the new golf? The mainstream media is starting to say so. Let me know if you play. Maybe we can get together. === All my opinions are tentative pending further data. --JWR ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
