I found this woeful article from the Times of London via Hot Air. The author, a certain Minette Marrin, feels pressured and censored, but bravely decides that it she will bear the brunt of disapproval to state what many feel but won’t say:
This misleading news story [claiming that more Britons were refusing to abort Down’s-afflicted children] provoked an impassioned response. Several parents of babies and children with Down’s, and representatives of pressure groups, said publicly how much love and happiness such children bring, despite any “challengesâ€Â, and how they can, with support, live happy, independent lives.
More or less disguised was a strong tone of moral disapproval of anyone who feels that the birth of a Down’s baby is a misfortune, to be avoided if possible. Hardly anyone now dares to say so. The word “eugenics†is often used by Down’s lobbyists to make the nasty suggestion that people who think it is right to abort a foetus with a Down’s diagnosis are as bad as Nazis. This is argument by abuse.
I protest out of long personal experience.
Someone close to me in our family has a learning disability, which has been a handicap and a sorrow to her, and my lifelong experience of children and adults with learning disabilities, including many with Down’s, as they have grown older has given me a different perspective. I am convinced that it is a grave misfortune for babies to be born with Down’s or any comparably serious syndrome. It’s a misfortune for their parents and their siblings as well. Sad observations over decades have convinced me: a damaged baby is a damaged family, even now.
Oh, brave Minette. Someone close to her has a learning disability that “has been a handicap and a sorrow to her”? Surely, she wishes she had been thoughtfully aborted. How you must suffer for your views, so heroically, whereas the 10% or so who decide to give birth to Down’s children?
My second child, as many of you know, suffers from Childhood Onset Schizophrenia, and the one we raised to the age of nine is in many ways gone, and yet still here. And this one that we have, by the Grace of God and advances in psychotropic medicine, gives me as much joy as either of his healthy siblings. It is true that it has been an enormous inconvenience, but it’s also true that love does not see it that way. It is true that it has affected his brother and sister, the latter of which would be the youngest, if not for her brother’s illness, the former of which had his best friend taken away from him. I’d like to think that as is the case with many challenges met, it has made them better people than otherwise they might have been: kinder, more considerate, more understanding.
And I am no martyr. Neither am I a particularly good man. I am just a husband and a father doing the best that I can.
I resent the moral condescension of those who claim that people who think like me are not only wrong but hateful; there have been vicious attacks on me in the blogosphere by disability-lobby extremists. My point of view does not make me a heartless eugenicist.
It must be so painful to have people disagree with you on blogs, Minette. For what it’s worth, I don’t see you as a “heartless eugenicist”: I see you as a selfish twat.
For one thing I do not think that any woman should be pressed, for any reason, to have an abortion. To do so would be wrong. She must be free to choose and free to make a bad choice. What’s more, I firmly believe that people with disabilities should get all possible help and understanding to lead fulfilling lives, from society in general and from the taxpayer.
My belief that certain foetuses would be better not coming to term has nothing, logically, to do with my belief that everything possible should be done to help babies who do come to term and are born among us to share our imperfect world.
Well, bully for you, leaving choices to women and depriving them of the taxpayer, who apparently needs to be mau-maued into submission. And more better bully for recognizing that the world, though imperfect, ought to be shared with imperfect beings whose imperfections, presumably, exceed even one’s own.
There are some strange contradictions surrounding the question of abortion. People who reject abortion as always wrong are consistent and one cannot argue with them. But anyone who thinks abortion is acceptable under some circumstances, and who yet disapproves of what’s emotionally seen as “eugenic†abortion, is in an untenable position. After all, people accept abortion for certain “social reasonsâ€Â, and what more powerful “social reason†could there be for an abortion than the virtual certainty that the foetus would be condemned to a life of frustration, disappointment, dependence, serious illness and poverty, to the great sorrow and hardship of its family?
I listen with amazement and sadness to new parents of Down’s babies describing a rosy future of love, acceptance and independence (with “supportâ€Â, of course).
Those who reject abortion as always wrong often also respect people’s right to make bad choices, Minette. You are correct that it’s inconsistent to support abortion for social reasons, but all you cite is social reasons. As for believing that you have special access to the subjective interpretation of an afflicted person’s experience of his or her existence, you are full of crap. There is probably a majority population on this earth who experience frustration, hardship, disappointment, dependence, serious illness and poverty, who yet, strangely, believe in their misguided minds that their lives are worth living, and somehow manage to wring out of this vale of tears some fleeting joy and hope that tomorrow might be better, and do so without considering it the responsibility of government boffins to see that that’s the case. As for the families . . . there is love. And you listen with amazement and sadness because you are a selfish twat, and thus will never, ever understand, wounded as you are, perhaps, by comments of people on the freaking internet.
The truth is, though people are too compassionate to point it out, that support is in short supply and is expensive. With or without it, Down’s children face a future blighted by low or very low intelligence and by a high risk of heart defects (30%-50%), intestinal malformation, leukaemia, kidney and thyroid disease, poor hearing and vision and early-onset Alzheimer’s (25% as opposed to the normal 6%), as well as increased chances of diabetes and seizure disorders, including impaired executive function.
It’s amazing, isn’t it, what families will do to accommodate an afflicted member? And yet, there are people who will spend thousands of dollars to buy another six months for their seriously ill labrador retriever, and I personally have nothing to say about the wisdom of their choices, their choices being theirs alone.
In a hyper-sexualised culture that worships bodily perfection, beauty and sexual success, adult life is also bound to be painful for people with Down’s.
Oh, dear! Will they never find true love?
When they are babies and children, that may not be a problem. What happens, though, when the Down’s child becomes a teenager, interested in how he or she looks and keen to discover love and sex? It is all too predictable – a growing sense of sexual rejection. Any babies born will be taken away, probably rightly. It is heartrending.
In every other way the doors to adult life will seem all but closed, despite everyone’s best efforts to push them open. Without a great deal of help, a person with Down’s will find it hard to get and keep a job. At a time of recession, with social services understaffed and underfunded, there will be little money for social care. Even now there is nowhere near enough money to help everyone with learning disabilities lead a full and semi-independent life.
It is the parents’ job to advocate, advocate, advocate. For Christ’s sake, they give free heroin to Danish junkies, don’t they?
Then comes the hardest question of all – what happens when the parents die? The best of social services can do only so much, and it is never enough. Loving brothers and sisters may help, and help a lot; they may well have to, until they die, though they themselves did not choose to take on such a time-consuming, lifelong responsibility.
We all have hard choices thrust upon us, Minette. More’s the pity for those fools who put their faith in God rather than social services.
Most pregnant women instinctively understand all this. That’s why nearly all choose abortion. Those who choose differently should understand they are choosing hardship, perhaps great hardship, for their child and for their other children. This has nothing to do with eugenics and everything to do with the painful complexity of moral choices.
Exactly, Minette, you selfish twat. You’re in the majority, with those people who understand instinctively. I pity you, but not for the reasons you pity yourself.
Hmm… it occurs to me that most of Minette’s arguments could be applied to a gay child.
(and to forestall any hyperventilating, I AM NOT ADVOCATING THAT GAY FETUSES BE ABORTED).
Interesting spread of comments on the Times article, although largely disagreeing with poor Minette. Humanity still exists.
I AM NOT ADVOCATING THAT GAY FETUSES BE ABORTED
Yes, but would you support marriage rights for gay fetuses?
Magical thinking is simply going to be the doom of the GOP.
Real Life is not Forrest Gump, or in the case of Sarah Palin, Dave.
With her weird “sexual fulfillment” portion, the logical extension of that argument is that ugly children should be killed as well.
PSA: ignore the troll.
I have several comments in mind but already flipped out way back when nishi suggested that Trig would be a bad photo opportunity when he got older. I just saw my cousin Maggie this past Thanksgiving and, while she is more complex in her emotional reactions, she’s still the sweetest kid I know.
As with Kate, Minette can take her “I know what’s best” faux compassion for the good of mankind and go f*%k herself.
The banal bandwidth bandit is back!
Wow! I’m betting this person has never been a parent. (Or was, at the least, a very bad one.) I don’t doubt that these are difficult decisions. And I have no idea if I’d have the strength that you and others do Dan, to be upbeat when life can be so unfair. But with parenthood, you take it as it comes. I can’t imagine anything that could happen to my son that would make me love him less or stop trying to help him reach his full potential, whatever that may be. Yes, a new family member changes the family dynamics. Always. Perhaps self-centered little twits should be saved from the misfortune of having to go through life with siblings who want some of mom and dad’s attention too. (Even healthy siblings are pesky to have around after all.) Certainly we should also abort the less attractive among us, as they will clearly not be able to find love in the future.
is the very definition of “eugenics”. That she cannot bring herself to admit that’s her goal is sad.
C’mon, eugenicists! Take the word back!
Would my mom have chosen to have me if she knew I would suffer so from adult onset ennui? It’s hard to get too concerned about it to tell the truth.
Dan,
Saying you are not “a particularly good man” is bullshit. The simple fact that you are doing what you can proves that.
We live in a society that is increasingly becoming self-centered and at the same time morally individualistic. It doesn’t give a second thought to disposing of what is convenenient (or emabarrassing) to them.
Without going into any detail, my family went through somewhat similar circumstances as yours. My parents, who are very good people, dealt with it as best as they could. Sure, there were hard times…but those actually made the good times even sweeter.
My one sibling, who doctors, relatives, and some friends told my pareants to give up on is actually blossoming today.
It’s not martyrdom…it’s love, plain and simple.
Who for real is a disability-lobby extremist? The only ones I can think of that sort of fit are those people that are deaf what want to have deaf children. These people are mostly media story people not real people though.
Dan, you are wrong here. And too harsh.
You know what else is inconvenient? Children in general. They need to be fed, clothed, all kinds of things.
What a hassle.
What about the parents in “Little People, Big World”? I wonder how they would feel about this conversation. By the way the chick who wrote this needs to be punched in the fuckin face.
This is awful. I can’t believe what I’m reading.
How so, Sarah?
How much do you know about Trisomy 21?
I’m always reminded of Gorey’s The Beastly Baby whenever I read this kind of thing. Its like she’s saying: Why not just leave dangerous bric-a-brac around for the tot to off itself with? Why not leave it on the edges of cliffs whilst on picnic?
I lurvs to set arbitrary bars saying who gets to take a crack at The Game Of Lifeâ„¢ and who doesn’t. I wonder how many of us are in the 25,000,000 or so below Billy Ayers’ bar?
I can see the too harsh but still who cares what this woman thinks though really. This is her nutshell:
Which, that’s a fucked in the head attitude really. It’s one of those things what is profoundly unhelpful and tacky to say. And it’s loaded with eugenicky goodness.
Wow her parents really messed her up.
tony
south haven,mi
I don’t usually bring this sort of thing up, because its all in the past, but when I was born, I was diagnosed as blind and mentally handicapped. At 5 weeks, the doctors did a neural activity test on my optic/frontal centers and registered ZERO activity. However, on the 4th opinion visit, at age 5 months, did my parents get signs of hope, with a quasi-normal EEG reading. At age 9 months, I was fitted for my first pair of glasses.
Today, I drive, am happily married and hold two advanced degrees from Georgia Tech and MIT. I have already thanked my parents for having me.
Spell it out, Sarah. Don’t just “tisk-tisk” whilst shaking one’s head.
Channeling Leonidas: “Back in good ol’ Sparta we threw these babies off a cliff.”
Sarah, again, my cousin has Downs and she is now 11 years old. She was one of a set of twins (her sister is unimpaired.) Trisomy 21 is the extra chromosome that causes Downs. Most developmental problems are mild to moderate with only a small percentage being severe. Down’s syndrome kids, for the most part, respond well to vocational and specialized training which improves their prospects for being productive.
What is it about this post that has you so upset?
I knew a guy named Eugene.
He was born with an extremely large penis, and, the discomfort, embarrassment and pain it has caused has handicapped me in more ways than I can say.
I believe that, had Eugene been aborted, the world would be a better place, just for all the pain it would have prevented.
Now, I’m stuck with the effects of his handicap for the rest of my life with no rescue in sight. Which means, if we don’t get them while they’re corralled in the womb, we’re stuck with ’em running around free the whole of their lives.
So, see, there’s another reason to support unfettered abortion, huh?
Techie! That’s … ok that’s a little on the over-achievy side I think, but yay anyway.
Like it or not, much of the developed world is moving towards selective abortion as the preferred method for dealing with major genetic problems. This story about Downs Syndrome in Denmark.
Which, to be clear I should say I have no trouble with aborting kids what have DS at all just cause there are thems that can deal with that sort of thing and thems that can’t. When you’re one of thems that can or could it’s harder I think to see it from the perspective of people what shouldn’t even be having healthy children cause they are apt to fuck them up. I see these people at Target a lot.
No matter how “pure” the gene pool becomes, there will ALWAYS be people on the left tail of the bell curve. Heaven forfend anyone end up there in the brave new world of shiny happy people.
Sarah, she has the right to her opinion. I have the right to mine, and you to yours. But it’s not at all martyry of Minette to get cudgelled for expressing hers publicly, and the fundamental concern she shows in her article is for herself and her bloviating ego. Selfish twat. There. I said it again.
Well, I do believe in miracles, but I also think that I was a prime example of doctor’s fuxxoring up the tests.
“Selective Abortion” is such a squishy, nonthreatening way to describe a process of deciding who gets to live and who doesn’t. It’s not such a big leap to designer children where the ones without blond hair and blue eyes are “Selectively Aborted.”
I won’t begrudge a parent’s difficult decision to abort a Down’s fetus but Minette is arguing that it is the right and moral thing to do. Perhaps she can get herself elected as “Arbiter of Selective Abortion” so that she can spare other parents from making the morally offensive and socially inconvenient choice to actually, you know, have a Down’s child.
But my opinion may be skewed by spending last Thursday with Maggie on my lap waxing poetic about the Disney channel and giving me uncounted hugs. If so, mea culpa.
Yep, just as I predicted, I’m getting pissed off. Techie, that is a very inspirational story. Good on ya!
Nishi/Kate, for example. Waaayyyy out there on the left tail.
I thought Minette was annoying to the point where it obscured some of the sensible things she said. Cause she says wackadoodle things like…
That makes it very difficult to take a position contrary to one that holds that this Minette is definitely a varietal of insipid twat.
Just ban hyper-sexualised culture.
BJTex
“Selective Abortion†is such a squishy, nonthreatening way to describe a process of deciding who gets to live and who doesn’t’
Actually I chose it because I thought it was particularly blunt. The article only spoke about “screening”.
Fred, thanks, but I don’t think it’s because I’m particularly good people. I think that I’ve been given a lot, from my parents, and that that has made it much easier for me to make the choices that I do. It’s exactly as you say, though: it’s all about love. Sometimes I feel hardship, worry and disappointment, but for the overwhelming part I don’t experience it that way. Neither do the parents of Down’s children that I know.
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
I wonder what she thinks about babies born with HIV.
Daniel: Yea I got that. Pardon my churlishness as this issue is a little personal for me and I tend to get snarly.
I see what you’re saying SarahW. These kinds of discussions can get quite heated. And I seem to recall that there have been folks on this site in the past who have disclosed they’ve had abortions (though I don’t recall who or why – I’m just aware that it’s a touchier subject for some folks than others, and those folks are very likely reading this). Still, it seems the thing that’s most distasteful about Minette’s article is how she “resent[s] the moral condescension” of folks who disagree with her, but spends a whole page telling those folks how wrong they are in quite the patronizing tone. I understand folks with Down’s children trying to educate women about how it’s not always what they think (though I don’t agree with anyone strong-arming someone). What I have difficulty understanding is the condescension toward folks (like Sarah Palin) who have chosen to keep their babies. Sure, if you’re close friends with the parents, be supportive and share both sides of the issue while (if) they’re struggling with the decision. But after the baby’s been born, it’s time to be quiet and lend support.
The other thing that is so odd about Minette’s article is that she seems to think she’s this lone voice in the wilderness. The propaganda and biased media attention given to this subject is so great that, on discovering I was pregnant with my first child I was so distraught that something would be “wrong” with him, that I was flabbergasted my doctor’s office suggested I shouldn’t come in until 3 months. “But what if something’s wrong?” The nurse assured me that nothing was, even though I’d had a glass of wine recently. After having a healthy pregnancy and birth, I would not be so panicky next time. But until then it hadn’t occurred to me how our society sets us up for “what if he’s not perfect” and “there’s always abortion.” Particularly disturbing is that I’m not a fan of abortion (even less so after giving birth but even then I wasn’t), but still the message instilled in me was “but it’s okay if the kid’s not perfect.” Like hf, I’m not suggesting that certain babies should or should not be aborted. That is clearly not my decision to make (thank heavens!) But I think maybe our society would be better off if the bias was a little less towards “get rid of unwanted nuisances” and a little more towards “look how miraculous every life is!”
Hey, if there’s a fatwa recommending aborting a DS baby, it’s gotta be right, right?
Panther Girl: Well said.
panther girl,
I’m not sure it’s just a question of unwanted nuisances. Where the conditions are heritable, there is the likelihood that eugenic policies like selective abortion will result in the permanent reduction in the incidence rate of “defective” births.
It’s arguably the most simple form of genetic engineering.
Would you support mandatory sterilization of anyone carrying a congenital disease, then, Daniel?
I’d comment but according to Minette I’m not allowed. I’m just one of those mouth breathing “all abortion is wrong” types. Apperently, there is just no arguing with me.
However, I will say Dan, the “For Christ’s sake, they give free heroin to Danish junkies, don’t they?” line was pure gold. Pure freakin gold.
You think you’re not one of those people until you are I think, lots of times anyway.
Word, ‘feets. I used to think folks who spent money on cats were silly.
Then I got one.
B Moe.
mandatory sterilization? No.
There are two reasons:
1. There is no need. Merely shifting the survival probabilities of the faulty genes is enough to guarantee their eventual elimination from the gene pool. You don’t need 100% efficiency to be successful, so voluntary compliance will be sufficient in most cases.
2. We are probably less than a century away from far more efficient genetic engineering technologies, so this kind of crude approach would only be justified for the most severe genetic conditions.
BJT, would you argue that all women who induce abortion of trisomy 21 babies are acting like “selfish twats”?
Or allow that often they are trying to do not only the best thing for themselves, but their families? There is truth in what Ms. Needs a Punching said. Unwelcome truth. But, it is true anyway.
This fury at expression of a truth that some think is better suppressed, reminds me of a prayer group I was in, and they were praying for my 13 yo kid. He had lost central vision in his left eye, overnight; his doctors did could not agree what had happened, and there was the possibility it was the result of a hereditary neuropathy that would leave him with central blindness in both eyes before the year was out.
In another part of that forum the Terri Schiavo case was being discussed, and in that forum I carefully explained why a bone scan did not mean what the excited poster thought it meant, or prove what she asserted/hoped it proved.
Her response to me getting in the way of something that could be played up and used to persuade, by asserting that if I would argue against that use of the bone scan, no matter what problems there were with the use, that I simply wanted Terri Schiavo dead. I should be willing to hide the truth and pull out all the stops.
And she was in that prayer group, and posted in the forum, and sent a mail around telling them that, and implying that my son was not deserving of any more prayers.
The truth is, deciding to end a pregnancy with a severe genetic error is not always a completely selfish act. It IS a complex moral choice. And the realities, potential or foreseeable or certain, of a trisomy 21 affected pregnancy or live-born child to raise, should not be glossed over.
A family who knows the worst, and actively chooses it, who not passively succumb to misguided hopes or fairytale images of a trisomy 21 child being some kind of sweet pet, is far more likely to make a good family for an affected child, and NOT to break apart under the strain.
Goes a long way towards explaining why the UK is aborting itself into oblivion.
Oh, and if this were submitted as a high school essay, I’d give it a D. On a cursory glance, she at least managed to spell everything correctly.
Ja, ja, ja! Zat is vhat I haff been saying all along! Society must purge the veak and the handicapped at conzeption! Only zen can the Fatherland be strong!
Wunderbar article, Frau Marrin!
A. Schicklegruber
Somewhere in Brazil
Minette you selfish twat! Sounds like Jane you ignorant cunt from SNL. Can’t help but smile.
What is truly sickening is that this woman thinks she is the compassionate one. To deprive these kids of life, in her world, is the more “compassionate” choice than burdening the living with their care.
If I was her parents I would quickly work to remove all Powers of Attorney she had cause’ I wouldn’t want her in charge of when my plug gets yanked.
I can agree with SarahW a lot and still think Minette is a ditz. That Schiavo thing was gay I thought. Mom and dad in way bad denial and Fox News serving it up morning noon and night. Crass as all get out. A lot of these things are a lot less controversial if you don’t have cable.
It’s unfortunate that the folks who tend to make their points in public are folks like Minette rather than folks like SarahW, who has some really reasonable points and expresses them quite well. It’s definitely a complex issue with many important and diverse viewpoints. It makes it harder to move beyond gut reactions though when the speaker is a “selfish twat.”
Sorry SarahW that you had that experience in your prayer group. It is mind-boggling how few people are truly reasonable beings (or at least how little of the time we each are).
Panther Girl – I think my own religious upbringing, or perhaps it goes back hundreds of years to my Scottish and Danish forebears on The “way out” and what it means to have one or to make one, and how moral it is to do so.
You make a really good point about how much easier it is to take a “way out” when one is legal, and sanctioned, and almost pushed upon one.
I think I wish people were more actively choosing their own path, if I had anything really to say about it. I think people should not resign themselves, but they need to discern the moral path and feel the burden of doing so.
Whoops, I cut so much out of the 10:51 post, the first sentence makes no sense anymore.
In hopes of making it readable: ” I think my own religious upbringing has a lot to do with my personal take on the the “way out” and what it menas to have or make one…”
The Schiavo’s way out was to make a spectacle of their daughter. That can’t be right.
I think I would make a spectacle too if my daughter was hooked up on life support while her husband, who had moved on with another woman, wanted to pull her plug and was doing everything he could to do it. I think I would make a huge spectacle that would include a beat down. Especially if all he could cite to “prove” that she would want her feeding tube to be yanked were conversations they had privately between themselves that he suddenly “remembered” years after she had been in a coma. IMHO
Reading these stories–not the opinions they elicit–but the stories themselves makes me realize I don’t really have any major concerns at all.
There but for the grace of God go I.
It’s harder to argue then that these sorts of decisions are private and wholly and essentially removed from the purview of the Minettes of the world I think.
Well it does seem she is not viewing this as a private decision but thru the “shame” she feels because deep down she knows she would take the easier but morally wrong action. So would most people, including myself, but I do not feel someone else having the child would be the problem in that instance. It would be my own inability to take the morally correct choice and instead choosing the easier path.
In other words I would compare this article between my opinion using this analogy.
Me on a Saturday at the mall seeing a parapelegic in a wheelchair and saying to my girlfriend “I rather die than live like that”
The writer of this article seeing the same man would go up to the parapalegic and ask “Why haven’t you killed yourself?”
Comment by Log Cabin on 12/2 @ 10:31 am #
Funny, man, funny.
Sarah: The answer to your first question is no, not at all, and I never stated anything of the sort.
Neither did Dan.
You and I both have, from different vantage points, a personal connection to the issues being raised by this post. We both should back away a little and look at it with fresh eyes. I’ll go first.
Dan called the writer a “selfish twat” for writing the following:
I agree with him. The choice is being defined as “moral” because of the “difficulties” and “most pregnant woman” understand what Minette categorizes as the “moral” choice, that being abortion. It’s a tap dance way of saying that one’s decision to have a genitally “defective” child is, in some way, immoral because of what constitutes potential problems for the family and the cost and inconvenience for society as a whole. Who died and made Minette queen of the moral choices or gave her the all seeing eye that allows her to pigeonhole the consequences of having a Down’s child as egregious?
I see a slippery slope in that personal landscape like Outer Limits at Killington. I don’t ever want decisions like this to become easy or convenient. These are and should be hard decisions because, if not, we end up down the road where progress in genetic engineering may provide us the opportunity to custom design our new bundles of joy. Who decides what about who lives and dies becomes muddy and, potentially, elitist and cold. Nishi would like to see it that way so that society can advance the 30% to the right of the bell curve. In the process, IMHO, life becomes diminished in that it is no more than a “convenience decision.” The risk that we could become something like that leads to all sorts of dark corridors filled with horrors already traveled by the likes of Mengele and Stalin and tribal leaders in Rwanda.
Minette simply throws aside any moral argument as to the decision matrix. She would like it to be easy and, in fact, correct. I would not. I don’t wish anguish on any family having to deal with a potentially genetically damaged child but the decision to end a life before it begins ought to count for something more than a vending machine choice.
It’s not the choice that’s being argued (although I might make that argument) it’s the cover fire being presented for making that choice easy and “mob moral.” In that context I am fully on board with Dan’s characterization of Minette and make no apologies for said support.
As an aside that woman in your prayer group who did that to you needed to spend some time praying to God for the wisdom to understand mercy as well as judgment, a fault all to common with Christians and others of faith.
I like that distinction. I dunno how to articulate it but it’s fairly new in human experience that we can even kick these thing around really like so much watercooler fodder. I think we mostly are graceless and sucky at doing it though. Too many Minettes, too few SarahWs.
oh. #69 was for Mr. Pink.
Fair point, Mr. Pink. When do we stop seeing a moral equivalence that suggests that those who smoke or are fat or have been paralyzed or suffer from diabetes are a drain on society and a burden to their families? If we can make a characterization that potential burdens and costs make the choice easy, why would it be so much more difficult to make the same choice about actual burdens and costs as related to common ailments? Will there be an age level after which your burdens are no longer “convenient?”
A bit extreme, I’d admit, but not fantastical by any measure of historical perspective, especially when remembering that “The Final Solution” was not just about Jews but also about priests, the mentally handicapped and the gypsy.
The difference between potential and actual burdens and costs with regards to decision making are directly related to one forcing us to look into the eyes of the of the burden as opposed to a sonogram.
#66
Bingo.
Also, I do see your point too, Sarah, FTR.
(sorry if the “fingerwagging” was a bit strong)
It’s good to have a keen sense of stuff what’s not any of your business, but it’s hard to honor that ethos and also argue that intrusive people are doing it wrong without being a big fat hypocrite. That’s so very zen I think.
The real villains are whoever paid her to write this and her editor.
Sarah, I hope you realize (that as BJTexas points out), I’m not calling those who make the decision to abort DS children selfish twats, though goodness knows some of them probably are. I’m calling Minette one, because she seems so appalled by self-righteousness in other people.
Who else is a self-righteous twat is that Ron Howard. What a dumbass, really. He seems like a very uneducated person who doesn’t realize that he’s just a big sillyhead.
In what way is the choice to kill someone because they’re disabled a “complex moral choice?” Yeah sure, quality of life, difficult for the family, etc. Uh huh. Which translates roughly to “It will be HARD.” Sorry, not sufficient justification for killing an innocent person. Any consideration of an unborn baby as a human being rather than a lump of tissue with potential renders this discussion void and utterly self-indulgent.
But it all depends on firstly, what is a human being, and second what rights and protections should be afforded to human beings? All else is emotional noise.
see now I have to bail cause now everything’s all rendered voidy and if I’m gonna be self-indulgent today it’ll involve chocolate I think
SBP, I’ve said for years that I hope they do discover a genetic basis for homosexuality.
Ten minutes later, there will be an in-home genetic test for it.
Ten minutes after the test hits the shelves, certain segments of both Left and Right are going to achieve Low Earth Orbit as they are forced to decide which matters more: their views on abortion or the existence of homosexuals.
Happy you want to really twist your head into a pretzel think about this: The author of this article probably does not support the death penalty and convicted murderers are a huge drain on society to the point they require armed guards and a cage for the rest of their life.
Plus being a convicted murderer is hard on your family and it makes them miserable. I’m seeing a Minority Report meets Planned Parenthood thinger.
That’s a good point too Mr. Pink. Except convicted murderers are a lot in the realm of things that are kinda sorta my business easy. It’s important to the social compact that there be a certain consensus with respect to criminal justice. I think I would argue that it’s important to the social compact that there also be a certain consensus with respect to a lot of other issues that it’s really none of our business.
Is this a woman without children, or with one designer child?
Someone put a teaspoon of crass in my coffee this morning. I’m feeling a little ashamed for mentioning Eugene’s member in a thread relating to eugenics and aborting trisomy-21 fetuses. Sorry…
This Eugenics stuff scares me a lot.
Slippery slopes and all aside, I think humans are wired to practice husbandry. We do it to plants, we do it to puppy dogs, we do it to specific “lines” of mice, and, history teaches that we’d like to get back to doing it to ourselves.
Maybe, what we call the “culture wars” in America can be boiled down to the ongoing campaign by Conservatives to check our species’ innate Eugenic-ism. Parental Consent laws and bans on Federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research are just two of the anti-Eugenicists’ sentries on the front-lines of their social barricades.
If they could iterate that to the electorate more clearly, alongside copious footage from Auschwitz, maybe the can reestablish the moral imperative to lead that they seem to lack right now.
(Maybe not, too.)
Very true happy, but I think it is safe to say that this woman does not see that distinction.
“Those who choose differently should understand they are choosing hardship, perhaps great hardship, for their child and for their other children. ”
Is this real, or is someone having a go? I can see this woman, wistfully typing at the computer, maybe even shaking her head as she writes. For some people, lady, what you see through your selfish-colored glasses as hardship; others see as a small price to pay to preserve the things that they see as the most important.
Here feets, some Daylight just for u an’ NG.
;)
In a hyper-sexualised culture that worships bodily perfection, beauty and sexual success,
…….so on my resume, should their be an orgasm section now?
Comment by happyfeet on 12/2 @ 11:54 am #
Do you have a valve you use to control that stream of consciousness or is it more of a “once it’s on it just goes” thing?
“Those who choose differently should understand they are choosing hardship, perhaps great hardship, for their child and for their other children. â€Â
Is this real, or is someone having a go?
Sounds to me like an X-box vs. Playstation commercial.
TheUnrepentantGeek can you explain your comment for those of us not fluent in geek?
Just joking at happyfeet. If that doesn’t work, try restarting your computer.
Folks like Minette and nishi are willing to argue for the extermination of inconvenient or disabled human beings. It’s sad and true and unfortunately not all that uncommon these days.
Look….abortion is a personal citizen choice and not your bizness, Dan.
What I said was that I didn’t see any reason for Palin to be celebrated for birthing a downs baby, or for making political capital out of it.
I’m sure other women made other agonizing decisions.
Like Minette says, it is a personal decision, and not one where religious views of “personhood” should be imposed on citizens desiring termination.
One of my riding buddies, a young mother has a six year downs little girl.
The little girl has had 3 heart surgeries, forced a family move to sea level for 2 years because of Denver’s mile high altitude, caused horrific financial hardship for her family including jobloss and forclosure of a home they couldn’t sell.
I’m saying, don’t judge.
It was Palin’s decision to bear a trisomy 21 child, and that was her right.
It is other women’s right not to do that.
And Dan, you have no right to judge.
I will whole heartedly argue for the extermination of people that commit murder or rape.
“And Dan, you have no right to judge.”
As far as I can tell we still live in a free society so people can “judge” whatever they want. If you want you can probably go back to some of your old comments and see how you “judged” Palin’s choices, even though those choices are according to you “private” and should not be judged.
PS. In short all you should take out of what I just typed is that I am calling you a hypocrite.
Nishi, did you bother to read at all what I wrote? Can you tell me whom I am criticizing?
One of my riding buddies
Riding what?
I’m saying, don’t judge.
There goes another irony meter.
oh. You’re right Mr. Geek. The stream of consciousness thing just goes like that I think cause of the momentum generated from the energy it takes for my thoughts to reach the escape velocity necessary to break from the orbit of my ennui. I’m almost certain that’s it.
Thanks, nishi … this part made my day…
That’s very empowering I think.
What I said was that I didn’t see any reason for Palin to be celebrated for birthing a downs baby, or for making political capital out of it.
I am pretty sure you said a lot more than that, nishfong. I would try to search it but God only knows what nom de tard you were using back then.
Kate weren’t you the one yelling “She is not of my tribe”?????
Seems like a huge amount of judgement to me, but hey it is your private decision to be a moron so I will not judge you. Oh wait yes I will. I will judge whatever the hell I want to. Here is some judgement for you, anyone that uses the phrase “riding buddies” and is not referring to motorcycles is a douchebag.
You are crittin’ Minette and by implication all strikewomen selfish twats that abort severe genetic anomalies.
COS is not detectable in utero, Dan, so you never faced that choice yourself.
So abortin’ trisomy 21 after amniocentisis is not your bidness.
COS is never goin’ to limit your childs options like downs.
COS are usually higher IQ than general population, not functional retardation like Minette discusses.
nishi’s tribe is the incipient early-onset community. Which, in a better world, would have been aborted to prevent all of the pain and suffering.
I don’t really think that, but nishi does.
You are crittin’ Minette and by implication all
womenselfish twats that abort severe genetic anomalies.lol
I didn’t know that. My ex-brother-in-law has schizophrenia, the more normal onset type though. I knew the guy since he was nine-years old and then at age 18 he started to develop schizophrenia, which is a common age, I learned, for that to occur. He shot himself in the head at age 19, but he lived. It’s a very strange disease. Also strange for those who remember the person before he/she develops the disease.
Mike is my ex-bil’s name. The docotrs keep him drugged up big time and he later developed obesity, but he has a girlfriend, yeah, met her at his group meetings. Yep, ex-in-laws are/were petrified of the prospect he’ll knock her up, she having schizophrenia as well. He does normal stuff, painted part of our house once, drove a car, drives himself to the hospital when he’s having problems, check’s himself in, tries not to chase people around with guns, which he did to his other sister once. Very strange disease, I think I said that. Mike’s not a bad guy at all, I always liked him.
Nishi you should be able to have as many abortions as you want to. Go ahead knock yourself out. You can schedule them every Friday and afterwards go out to TFI Friday’s for happy hour with some friends to celebrate. You can get the Three-For-All and a couple Red Headed Sluts to drink to let loose after your big day.
Me I also think Palin didn’t need to make special needs kids a centerpiece of her campaign. It felt cheesey to me juxtaposed with the threat of wholesale dirty socialist perversion of all that’s good in America.
Mr. Pink, i don’t get it.
Of course Palin is not in my tribe….that is a statement of fact, empirical data, not a judgement.
Look, I tole u guyz McCain would lose, I tole u Palin would split the GOP along the IQ faultline, I tole u Obama would be elected.
I demand props!
;)
Nishi, you are an misinterpretive masturbator, and an insufferable hypocrite, and a selfish twat.
I suppose that’s because life is so fucking hard for sensitive souls like you. Fuck off.
For me it’s a simple survival issue: How can we best guarantee the survival of our genes?
If by aborting a non-viable and not-yet consciously-aware child, we can try again and maybe create a viable child,
then it may be worth doing for the sake of the potentially immortal genes that would thereby survive.
In a sense, it’s just another way of trying to outsmart nature, which is constantly trying to kill us.
Biology being the eternal struggle of life against death.
if you prefer to call it “survival of the family” rather than “survival of the genes” that’s fine with me; it amounts to the same thing.
kk
I did not see anyone on here crying that McCain lost. Hell I thought he would lose too. Who cares and what this has to do with this discussion I have no clue.
Palin, according to you, is not of your “tribe” because she had a kid with Downs syndrome. That is a fact I agree with.
Really if you want to argue that a sitting Govenor is not of your “tribe”, not because she is religious or had a child with Downs syndrom, but because she is not as intelligent and successful as you please feel free to post your resume. I am sure it would make for a highly thrilling read.
You are crittin’ Minette and by implication all women selfish twats that abort severe genetic anomalies.
lol
How can anybody that illiterate be that arrogant?
I hear what you’re saying Daniel (#113) and I’m trying to get there. But I’m not a big fan of “evolutionary psychology.” And in the end it still feels a bit to me like putting a prettier (more scientific-sounding or biological-sounding, I guess) name on “hoping the next kid’s going to be more to our liking.”
And no offense at all toward you (seriously!) but I think Darwin and Cosmides & Toobes and then David Buss and a slew of others after that, got us all a bit too worked up about the “survival of our genes” thing. The whole point is supposed to be that it’s in our genetic code (part of our biology) – not that we use our powers of cognition to try to control these things. (Told you I don’t care at all for evolutionary psych.)
nishi’s resume:
bloggin
ridin
doin algorythms
secret stuff
griefin
Nishi is entitled to her opinions. I also know a chick whose daughter has Downs. Chick has 5 kids, the fourth has Downs, so obviously they didn’t think one Downs kid was a reason to stop having more. The chick’s hub is in the Air Force, always away fighting Bush’s wars. Her Downs kid will probably always wear a diaper. Her Downs kid minds well, good kid in general.
These things are personal. I think whether of not to have kids is a personal decision, just as is whether to have a Downs one or not. Kids aren’t for everyone.
For me it’s a simple survival issue: How can we best guarantee the survival of our genes?
Then you would just fuck as many women and create as many babies as possible. If you are really looking for simple survival, that is, I suspect you realize it is actually a little more complicated than that.
Nishi’s entitled to her opinions, thor, and I agree with her that the demands that having a COS kid places on me aren’t as great as the demands placed on a parent by a DS kid, but, as Jeff likes to point out, what she’s not entitled to is deliberate misprision of what I have written.
So, Daniel, where do you draw the line? Forced sterilization of genetically damaged adults? Why not do it in childhood? How’s that work out for the state of California way back when?
Even better let’s sterilize anyone who exhibits a genetically transferred disease. I have a buddy who was diagnosed with MS at age 29. He’s had two kids since then. Should he have been sterilized? How about a an over 70 rule that states if you have a short or long term terminal disease you should be euthanized to spare the family of your burden and the state of your cost.
Again, my problem isn’t with wrestling with the choices or forcing anyone to do anything. My problem is making it easy as pie to kill. Quite frankly that’s way more important to me than some pseudo-biological construct that thinks it has to clean the gene pool to “save humanity.” I hear enough of that grand world saving strategy from the Climate Change Gorons.
Nishi, I will keep posting this link until you stop lying about what you said about Trig. Photo opportunity indeed.
Stop lying about what you wrote, please.
I hear you panther girl. Darwinism is me. It is what I am.
It is my deepest core of self-understanding. I have no other.
Daniel, do you take this bipedal organism with flexible lenses appended to the front of her head in such a way as to provide for stereoscopic vision and an aperture below them through which she stuffs organic nutriment before masticating it to be your lawful wedded wife?
Death and mutation are core ingredients for Darwinism, Daniel. Evolution doesn’t work without them. The question is who decides what is viable, man or the environment?
B Moe “I suspect you realize it is actually a little more complicated than that.”
Yes, I do.
Dan #125: BWAA HAHA!
BJTexs
“So, Daniel, where do you draw the line? Forced sterilization of genetically damaged adults?”
I already answered that above:
Comment by Daniel Dare on 12/2 @ 10:23 am #
You do make a convincing argument there, Slart. Stop swaying me!
The question is who decides what is viable, man or the environment?
The environment decides, but we are part of the environment trying to outsmart the rest of it.
Seems to me these sorts of questions sure do make for some strange bedfellows. Steven J Gould and Richard Lewontin swinging away with every Marxist hammer they could muster against little old E.O Wilson and his fellow like minded thinkers in order to prevent the onslaught of Socio-biology and its follow-on cousin Evolutionary Psychology, ultimately joining hands with the Intelligent design crowd (though, I hasten to add that there’s no-one of that ilk posting here at PW) in classic enemy of my enemy style with no-one quite able to say where it all leads politically.
These intellectual reconciliations should be interesting to watch for the next fifty years or so.
I would not want to be a member of any tribe Kate is a member of. It would be much too unsettling.
Dan: Bravissimo, bravissimo. The author of that article is puddle-shallow and cannot see the value of hardship in one’s life. Furthermore, she does not recognize that it were better that we lived with “burdensome” people than evil ones.
Question for all: You are pregnant. You screen the child and discover that she is perfectly normal. You give birth. Three days later, the child suffers an aneurysm and the resulting brain damage leaves her in the same shape as a DS child.
What’s your decision now?
Scary as it is, dicentra, there are “ethicists” who believe there IS a choice to be made at that point.
…she does not recognize that it were better that we lived with “burdensome†people than evil ones.
dicentra wins the thread.
Two things occur.
First off, we have a beautiful illustration of leftoid “debate” technique: When caught in the wrong, wave frantically to change the subject; when caught in a lie, lie louder. Despite Kate and company, Dan’s essay specifically does not pronounce yea or nay on the subject of aborting infants, with or without Downs Syndrome. What he does do is (quite effectively) excoriate Minette for perching upon her presumed crag of omnipotence and declaring that the only morally and ethically correct choice is to abort, then surrounding her pronunciamento with pusillanimous pettifoggery designed to obscure the fact that she is imposing a moral decision, the very imposition of which cancels her right to make the decision for anyone other than herself.
Second, and perhaps more subtle — it could just be that we are seeing worked out, before our very eyes, the answer to a longstanding and perplexing conundrum. Sexual dimorphism in your hyumin been is not really all that great; there’s some, and it ought to be allowed for, but the amount of difference between male and female humans is not nearly enough to explain the fact that, over the sweep of history, societies permitting equal rights to women are nearly nonexistent and true matriarchies extremely thin upon the ground, whereas societies that treat women like (or worse than) domestic animals are very nearly the rule. Why is that? How is it that, over ten thousand years or more of inferrable or recorded history, ours is the first to think of and implement the emancipation of women?
It would appear, from the evidence before us, that the result of granting women control over their reproduction results in their refusing to have babies. If that is the case, the riddle is solved: the societies that stopped having babies vanished and do not appear in the historical record, while the ones that forced women to reproduce survived, their progeny both biological and sociological being the rule today. The implications are large, and not particularly favorable to any of us who would prefer to see that injustice was not routinely meted out.
Regards,
Ric
Person or pound of flesh? If the latter, why, and at what point does it become the former? Those are the critical questions.
PS. Palin splits the party along IQ lines? According to what, the “Agrees With Nishi Intelligence Quotient Measure?” It is to laugh. No props for you.
Nishi is babbling proof of the thesis that the most incompetent are most likely to rate themselves highly competent.
And if Palin does split the party along any line, it’s along an elitist/pseudo-intellectual fault line. Those most interested in the approval of people hostile to conservatism are the most likely to reject Palin, because if they don’t, the hostile parties will impugn their intelligence based entirely on the myth of Palin they’ve constructed. Those less interested in this approval will do the investigation necessary to see beyond the myth, and will not reject Palin.
It’s always amusing to watch the left launch into their “conservatives are demonizing their opponents” and “politics of personal destruction” rants. They’ve mastered both, and do it so reflexively and enduringly that they no longer even see it.
For some reason those women (particularly those elder who prey on youth) who suck out the womb remind me of those women (again, the elder who prey on youth) who cut off the clitoris; both embroiled in jealousy and vengence on the level of Medea’s barbarism.
Since the dawn of time why has my gender always been so raged over the loss of their youth?
Ric – Preserve the empire! Keep them barefoot and pregnant?
Not a pretty picture, is it?
But if, in five hundred or a thousand years, the kids learn in school “…oh, yes, Western civilization, it died off around the end of the twenty-first century” we won’t be much of a role model, will we? I seem to recall that the Carthaginians were somewhat pacifist.
Regards,
Ric
Great question dicentra. Would have been a good one to ask our next President during the debates.
I seem to recall that the Carthaginians were somewhat pacifist.
I don’t know about that, but they were known for burning their babies alive.
As for nishi’s “tribe”: people who don’t have a social conscience don’t have “tribes”.
He wouldn’t want to punish anyone with a baby panther girl.
the amount of difference between male and female humans is not nearly enough to explain the fact that, over the sweep of history, societies permitting equal rights to women are nearly nonexistent and true matriarchies extremely thin upon the ground, whereas societies that treat women like (or worse than) domestic animals are very nearly the rule. Why is that?
At least part of it is the fact that males are physically stronger than women. Women can get equality only in a society such as ours that provides avenues for women to survive without a breadwinner man in the house.
Although it is true that men have dominated throughout human history, I’d propose that it’s the lack of interdependence in our society that permits women to refuse childbearing (not to mention ready availability of contraception), and that yes, when prosperous women are given the choice to luxuriate in childlessness with no consequences of any sort, the result is demographic decline.
Don’t forget, though, the corollary to such a society: men who are also permitted to luxuriate in perpetual adolescence, and who also eschew reproduction in favor of “freedom.”
Well, when women (not all of them of course) start treating children as burdens as opposed to the amazing creatures that they are, society does seem to suffer for it.
Although I’ve never entirely seen the connection between matriarchies and pacifism. Many women seem to talk the pacifism talk, but not so much the walk. I wonder if women pacifists might go hand-in-hand with the child-rearing thing? Just a ponderment. Must go pick out a Christmas tree now.
One take on the eternal battle between patriarchy and matriarchy can be found here. It’s written from an LDS perspective by a scholar of ancient history and languages. Some of the theological points may seem strange to the non-LDS reader, but the basics are pretty universal.
From the linked thread:
Comment by Carin on 8/29 @ 9:07 am #
nishi, I’m gonna change my “shut up†to “fuck off.â€Â
You really are a horrible person.
Comment by quellcrist falconer on 8/29 @ 9:08 am #
pro-family, pro-life, young and cute……and anti-abortion
dur, a lot of wimmyns are gonna loathe her with fire of a thousand suns
Comment by quellcrist falconer on 8/29 @ 9:09 am #
yah, i am ;)
i glory in it
Kate is Evil.
Dorothy Sayers had Lord Peter Wimsey say something on this in ‘Gaudy Night’: ‘And they can write on the tombstone that God had no mercy for you, so man had none either.’
Mercy is weakness, so saith the Eugenist, the Totalitarian, and Kate.
Another take on human sexual reproduction from the female pov may be found in Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s “Mother Nature”. I’ve lent mine away or I’d find some quotes to post, but my memory of the book was that it was a damned fine take on the subject.
Dicentra,”You give birth. Three days later, the child suffers an aneurysm and the resulting brain damage leaves her in the same shape as a DS child. What’s your decision now?”
I would take my chances. Any child born today will have a reasonable chance of getting its brain repaired with stem-cell-based regenerative medicine in a couple of decades. Genetic damage will probably be harder to repair.
But check this. A treatment like this might one day, work prenatally.
#134 dicentra:
It is my little girl or my little boy. What else can I do but love and care for him or her? I am not a barbarian to spurn my own. My heart isn’t that hard.*
*I have a nephew with autism; I wouldn’t trade him for a jungle full of monkeys; or one Kate or thor.
The money quote from that very long essay mentioned in my #149 is as follows:
“Many women seem to talk the pacifism talk, but not so much the walk.”
panther girl – I’m not at all opposed to watching a good bitch fight if that’s what you mean. Guys’ll pay good money for that kind of shit. We’re idiots that way.
Daniel:
The possibility of repair is not part of the example that I provided. The question is whether a permanently disabled person  whether from conception or by accident  is worthy to live.
And let me reiterate that physical and developmental disabilities make for a great deal of inconvenience and even pain for their caretakers, but people who are morally disabled are the real threat to society.
But if we can’t even execute serial killers: why should we be able to execute the “unfit”?
Or rapists or pedophiles ….
“But if we can’t even execute serial killers: why should we be able to execute the “unfitâ€Â?”
dicentra – Because those serial killers produce wonderful childrens’ books once they are behind bars, silly.
Dicentra, though I only can claim to have skimmed Nibley’s article, I don’t think he examines even one “culture” (whatever that means) but only the fictional and mythological products of a few peoples in order to derive his matriarchy and patriarchy models. Or am I wrong? Does the invocation of “culture” mean solely the poetic or imaginary output of people? Seems odd to me on its face not to look closely at particular cities, tribes or political entities and their actual practices, rather than ramble on about Rapunzel or Penelope on the one hand and Odysseus or Nimrod on the other in order to say, oh, look, here are people and here is what they do, as opposed to, here is what they imagine or create.
dicentra, “The question is whether a permanently disabled person  whether from conception or by accident  is worthy to live.”
I would say, we find it very hard to kill anyone once they are born and have lived independently.
It has real force for us, this concept of “personhood”.
And it is so universal, it could well be a bias built-into our genes. Probably there’s a part of the brain that recognises “person”.
Daniel Dare: Merely shifting the survival probabilities of the faulty genes is enough to guarantee their eventual elimination from the gene pool.
Only by constant, ongoing management — spontaneous mutation will ensure they never really go away. There are always a portion of cases of heritable diseases that occur with no family history of the condition (roughly 1/3 of the cases of muscular dystrophy, for example). How otherwise would they get started in the first place?
Of course Varenius, I should have made that clear.
Spontaneous mutation will always cause a background incidence rate.
What I found most nauseating about the article was the cloak of martyrdom that Ms. Marrin put on.
That sanctimonious self-righteousness is enough to draw anyone’s scorn.
kk, try this on small government classic liberals.
If a woman does decide to bear a downs syndrome child, the cost to the rest of us citizen taxpayers averages $300,000 in social services and medicaid.
Is Palin paying all Trigs medical bills out of pocket?
Didn’t think so.
;)
It is hard for me to comprehend, but I believe nishi is getting denser.
Or try this…..
Hey Baby.
Guess what? You have trisomy 21, either as a result of inherited translocation, or as a point mutation.
Sorry, but you won’t ever have a normal life. You are probably going to have multiple physiological problems, and even infant surgeries.
You won’t ever be able to learn to read well, hold a good job, go to a real college, or get married, buy a house, and have babies of your own.
But, hey, I’m having you anyways, cuz I’m a wonderful person.
And I’ll prolly die before you and then you’ll be thrown on the mery of the state, social services an all that.
Sorry, but I need to do this so that I can feel good about myself.
Suxx to be u, Baby, but, hey, it’s what Jesus would have wanted me to do.
wow. If we offered them 150K to abort we’d still come out way ahead on the deal.
I just came to get my song really.
“I’m not at all opposed to watching a good bitch fight if that’s what you mean.”
daleyrocks – Have at it!
Over/under on when nishi takes a swan dive off the Chelsea? Think she will make it to 40?
“Genetic damage will probably be harder to repair.”
And harder still if we are being encouraged to abort these babies. If we’re putting money into educating women about the difficulties of having a DS child, that’s less money to be used for research into alleviating some of the issues associated with DS.
this is just one of those arguments I think
hey this is me on keyboard
Nor will you, freak.
Mikey is right about the sanctimonious self-righteousness. I don’t think this lady turned anybody around just cause she’s too transparently a lightweight bloated with self-regard. She needs to take a lesson from the Pegster how that’s done. I’ll help. Ok step one you have to start with a surfeit of credibility cause you’ll be copiously squandering it.
How about implanting a little jewel in our hands that will start to glow once our age reaches a point that our medical bills outweigh the amount of money we pay into the state? Wouldn’t that be even better Kate?
Pardon my fuckup but I forgot to add the part where once the jewel starts to glow you are taken away by the men in white coats and put to sleep.
Sweet peaceful sleep Mr. Pink?
I dunno, panther girl, short-term vs long-term.
Short term all we can offer is selective abortion for those who chose that they wish to avail themselves of that route.
Long term, science progresses on so many fronts. It is a global effort.
What the optimum strategy, that maximises utility and minimises total human suffering is, I don’t know.
Do you discount for opportunity costs of space research vs. medical?
Democracy decides. Or The Party.
Ohh, this leads to some delightful fantasy. Well, Mr. Rightwing, you think that national healthcare will cost too much, well, Poof! The cost of carrying to term and delivering a baby, in addition to the mother’s productivity loss, has now been decreased thricefold with our new testube, erhh,in vitro birthing facility. Any and all genes causing pathology have been eliminated. Yes, we know you gave us a sample of you and your partner’s DNA, don’t worry, all the important bits are left. You should really read our brochure written by that affable Huxley fellow.
Dash, I am a transhumanist. I believe one day we will outgrow even DNA. Our bodies will be rendered in nanotechnology. We will live eternally in space without even needing a spacesuit. Our nuclear-powered bodies will get a plutonium recharge once every century or so. I can fantasise with the best of them.
You got your pecker cut off?
Oh, I can’t wait to get my hippocampal implant and play 18 game hours of Fallout 9 in the span of 6-7 minutes of real world time whilst lounging on the sandy beaches on the 20-km diameter lunar south pacific island replica dome with it’s huge sharkless swimming pool sea. But the reproductive changes inherent in a lot of what this topic entails tend to preclude the necessary demographics in achieving a space faring society.
I’d trade you for a box of chicken turds. Chick shit can be used to fertilize.
But the reproductive changes inherent in a lot of what this topic entails tend to preclude the necessary demographics in achieving a space faring society.
It’s a valid point, but demographics depends on death rates as well as birth rates. They can both go down.
Dash, I am a transhumanist. I believe….
Well take a good hard look at nishi up there, she is what happens if you get too caught up in that particular religion.
You might also want to read up on the conservation of energy, what you are describing is going to require an assload of it, you know.
If we built solar collectors in near-solar orbit, we could harness a large part of the Sun’s energy output.
Fixed that for ya, chump.
“It’s a valid point, but demographics depends on death rates as well as birth rates. They can both go down.”
Yes, but the society as such will valur risk inversely to life span. Live longer, have less children, why run the risk of dying on the launch pad? Contemporary Europe is slowly drifting towards this model. Why fight for my existence and die young when I can live it up now, future generations be damned.
Just cause Jeff’s gone doesn’t mean you get to be all insulty, thor.
But we aren’t building them, and we have no plans to build them. Our entire space program, globally, is pure political theatre. We are fast approaching, if we haven’t already passed, the point of no return as far as squandering the capital and resources necessary for a serious space program. The decision has been made to spend the money locally, and unless some as now incredible dicoveries are made I don’t see it in the future. It apparently takes a much more ruthless and driven race than humans to progress far enough technically yet still make the necessary sacrifices to conquer space. I think we just need to enjoy ourselves until they get here.
dicentra is a transhumanist? Poor thor, probably didn’t even realize a word could have that many letters, did you?
Dash, perhaps death is not the worst thing that can happen to us. Boredom could be worse. Some will risk it some won’t. The future will be built by those who expand their horizons.
But we aren’t building them, and we have no plans to build them. Our entire space program, globally, is pure political theatre.
There will be a host of new industrial powers later this century. A couple of them several times larger than the USA. The game might hot up again then.
Well if we’re gonna talk about space might as well go all out. The notion of having insufficient energy at some point in the future strikes me as quite odd, whether it be the Luddite environmentalists and James Bond screenwriters who lament the looming ‘water-wars’ stemming from future shortages of aqua [desalination plants powered by multiple, parallel fission or fusion reactors – duh!] or some theoretical handicap in traversing the solar system. Likely some combination of fusion powered ion drives independent of anything so measely as a glorified solar panel, or in due time, anti-matter drives. Or might as well say eff it and just send human-consciousness linked robots to the nether regions of space with quantum ‘spooky entanglement action’ uplinks.
Thor, honey, forget it already.
You and I were never meant to be. You can stop dipping my pigtails in the inkpot.
“Our entire space program, globally, is pure political theatre. There will be a host of new industrial powers later this century. A couple of them several times larger than the USA. The game might hot up again then.”
There’s really nothing in this bloc of text which is agreeable. China, along with India, faces the looming problem of unsustainable demographics, i.e. millions more men then women, the crushing burden of >1.5 billion pensioners at some point in the future. An argument can be made that a society’s population must fit within a precise range wherein it doesn’t collapse in on, or over onto itself, similarly to the way the Earth fits in a nice niche where solar radiation is not to intense or sparse.
Political theater? More like inefficient bureaucracy. It still stands that NASA has plans to return to the moon by 2020, permanent lunar base, new generation of Ares rockets and such.
“A couple of them several times larger than the USA.†Don’t really think that’s possible for either China or India in the foreseeable future.
Or might as well say eff it and just send human-consciousness linked robots to the nether regions of space with quantum ‘spooky entanglement action’ uplinks.
Spooky entanglement doesn’t allow you to transmit information faster than light. It produces correlations that you can measure only after you exchange light signals. I believe in Einstein as well as Darwin. Speed of light will always limit the reaction time of virtual reality links.
Dash:
You’re positing a linear path of progress for humans from now on, wherein all future discoveries are built upon yesterday’s knowledge.
But history shows that technologically and intellectually advanced societies tend to decay and fall, and their knowledge is lost to future generations. Or do you know how the Inca hardened their copper tools?
The fact that the Chinese have access to our knowledge does not prevent it from being lost when THEY eventually fall apart.
“Don’t really think that’s possible for either China or India in the foreseeable future”.
Then we must agree to disagree.
There will be a host of new industrial powers later this century. A couple of them several times larger than the USA. The game might hot up again then.
But see, that is the thing, it is going to take a unified effort, a massive unified effort to truly explore space outside our little planet and moon. Interplanetary ships will need to be constructed in weightlessness, which means orbiting manufacturing facilities. Big ass ones. And a highly trained work force housed on it. And a very large fleet of shuttle craft running materials up there. Too much capital for any one faction in a competitive world economy to invest in such a long term project, it would be economic suicide, so it would have to be a cooperative effort among all industrialized nations. That don’t seem likely in our current progressively greener nannystate world.
Unless we discover a planet of single parent minority special needs children, then its on.
Dicentra, You’re right, I’m arguing a future in which our civilization will progress from where it is in a vacuum, democractic spending plans and the black hole of social security notwithstanding. That’s why we should build hella lot of library-pyramids.
Dare, I was under the impression that spooky entanglement is called just that because it is faster than light, in the sense that a spin-state changes instantaneously without photon transmission. If you can find a source to disabuse me of this, go for it.
Sdferr @ 159
I don’t think he examines even one “culture” (whatever that means) but only the fictional and mythological products of a few peoples in order to derive his matriarchy and patriarchy models. Or am I wrong?
Yes, Nibley is working with types and archetypes, using mythologies as his supporting materials. He is not making scientific claims.
The primary point of the lecture, which he delivered at a women’s conference, was to show that the problem with “matriarchy” and “patriarchy” is the suffix -archy, which means “rule by.”
And that rule by either men or women is imperfect in itself, whereas the godly paradigm has men and women as complementary equals.
The type of truth he is establishing is truth as the Hebrews would see it  correctly defining relationships between things  rather than truth as the Greeks would see it  observable facts and chains of cause and effect.
“Our entire space program, globally, is pure political theatre.”
DD – Zimbabwe is political theatre. Did you expect the U.S. to wait for the U.N. or some other as yet to be created supranational organization to conduct a space program? If not the U.S., then who?
The correlations seem to be “instantaneous”, if you assume a local realistic theory. But its like two random distributions. You don’t know which individual “bits” actually correlate until you compare them. To compare them you have to exchange light signals.
It’s a point that is always made in just about any source on Bell’s theorem. Relativity still holds for the exchange of usable information.
“Or try this…..
Hey Baby.
Guess what? You have trisomy 21, either as a result of inherited translocation, or as a point mutation.
Sorry, but you won’t ever have a normal life. You are probably going to have multiple physiological problems, and even infant surgeries.
You won’t ever be able to learn to read well, hold a good job, go to a real college, or get married, buy a house, and have babies of your own.
But, hey, I’m having you anyways, cuz I’m a wonderful person.
And I’ll prolly die before you and then you’ll be thrown on the mery of the state, social services an all that.
Sorry, but I need to do this so that I can feel good about myself.
Suxx to be u, Baby, but, hey, it’s what Jesus would have wanted me to do.”
Kate Mengele Kevorkian reappears.
It’s likely my failure Di but stuff like that just gets too goobledy-gooky for my taste, where it’s so easy just to make stuff up whether one may ever encounter it in the world or no. It can be pretty or beautiful or satisfying in many other ways (I think, for instance, Bach’s Matthew Passion) but as truth telling? I just can’t bring myself to trust it. Kinda like that Teilhard de Chardin guy and his (again, to my taste) hooey.
“To compare them you have to exchange light signals.”
Not if you’re if one of the parameters of the experiment is to measure the time at which the switch occured. Maybe i’ll look it up tommorow. Got work/class in the am. Later.
Sdferr: It makes more sense within the larger context of the LDS cosmos. Out of context, I imagine it’s gobbledy-gook at worst and Something Interesting at best.
I’m gonna go re-read Strauss’ Athens and Jerusalem and see if I can make anything out of that which can serve me as a tool to open the door to Nibley’s deal. And gobbledy is way better than goobledy, too, just so you know I know.
But back to the point of the post:
Sorry, but you won’t ever have a normal life. You are probably going to have multiple physiological problems, and even infant surgeries.
You won’t ever be able to learn to read well, hold a good job, go to a real college, or get married, buy a house, and have babies of your own.
Because life isn’t worth living if your life doesn’t fit the “normal” paradigm?
Because you can’t be happy unless you’re like everyone else?
Because having a hard life precludes having a good life?
As frustrating as it is to be handicapped, Minette is obviously projecting her own discomfort and calling it morality.
I mean, nobody says, “Hey, I think I’d like to be disabled from now on!” or “I hope my next kid has special needs!”
Nobody does. Because the default setting for human beings is to avoid problems and pain. Dur.
However, once you’re saddled with a particular problem, you learn to deal with it even though it totally sucks at first. And second. And third.
People whose lives are easy turn out to be the most boring people alive. It’s those who’ve had to deal with the really tough stuff that make the most valuable citizens.
Refiner’s fire, yo. We hate it worse than anything, but life’s difficulties can make us into pretty impressive people. It’s not easy, but it is worth it.
“Not if you’re if one of the parameters of the experiment is to measure the time at which the switch occured”
But how do you know the switch occured at that time at the distant detectors?
The information is encoded in the cross-correlation pattern.
The particles themselves can’t travel faster than light.
Until you compare the detector outputs and see the correlations, you don’t know the switch occured.
For this you need to exchange light-signals.
Dicentra,
Nibley(?)’s essay is at least somewhat interesting, even from outside the “LDS Cosmos”, but I think he needs to broaden his horizons a bit. The whole piece ultimately comes off as an attempt to re-invent Taoism using Western terms — to butcher three languages at once, “yangarchy” and “yinarchy” rather than “matriarchy” and “patriarchy”. Taoists even do it in fewer words :-)
Regards,
Ric
Ric:
I doubt he’s trying to go all Taoist, though he was undoubtedly familiar with Taoism. He was delivering a lecture at an LDS Women’s Conference, showing how the LDS mythology (plus other ancient myths) establishes the proper relationship between men and women, and how the Adversary is always trying to distort and/or destroy the godly paradigm.
From the perspective of moral instruction, it is exceptionally useful.
You’re an asshole. You’re entitled to be. I’m OK with that. I don’t give a fuck what religion you believe in and, as I so famously told you once before, your God can suck my dick.
You and your God-hysteria give me the creeps, just so we’re clear.
Oh, and as for your theory that no one who believes in God could possibly vote for Obama, how’d that work out for ya?
Props nishi.
Stay off the guy’s property. What’s so hard about that?
Famously told tales… gone poof.
I wouldn’t trade him for a jungle full of monkeys;
That’s Shakespeare, that is.
Moe.I think private companies are going to do what NASA is reluctant to do.
Whatever if people like Kate do not support the death penalty for murderers and rapists then that kinda shows they are not thinking rationally in my opinion. I mean how can you argue on one hand that it is perfectly legal (and moral or they will point their finger at you and yell DO NOT JUDGE) to abort a fetus/unbornbaby for whatever reason the mother and mother alone can dream up, but then the next day argue that someone who has taken the lives of others in cold blood deserves all our human compassion and should be incarcerated/rehabilitated but never put to death?
I think private companies are going to do what NASA is reluctant to do.
Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk,John Carmack, and Paul Allen have all taken steps in that direction.
Owning a spaceship is the latest status symbol, it seems. :-)
as I so famously told you once before
You really are a legend in your own mind, aren’t you boy?
A private company wouldn’t have the resources to do what I am talking about, and I frankly don’t have much confidence in the future of private companies.
“Owning a spaceship is the latest status symbol, it seems. :-)”
Yeah some boys grow up with really really small schlongs. They are the ones that have to compensate in extreme ways. Back in the day they would settle for pyramids or conquering half the world.
B Moe: things have a way of requiring fewer resources as time goes on. Back in the day, only major governments could fund expeditions to Antarctica. Now you can go there on vacation.
Mr. Pink: at least they’re doing something worthwhile with the money. :-)
I mean, nobody says, “Hey, I think I’d like to be disabled from now on!†or “I hope my next kid has special needs!â€Â
Nobody does.
Except, the deaf do.
Are these people arguing that it is morally correct to abort a baby you know will have a severe disease or that they should just be allowed to do it? I can’t tell anymore.
Mr. Pink, what is actually going on, down underneath, is that they regard a fetus as a parasitic excrescence which robs the female bearing it of the ability to shop comfortably. It therefore must go, immediately. To concoct a neologism directly from their own concept-set: they are fetophobes[1].
They are dimly aware that there are people who disapprove of simply immediately excising the parasitic growth, and are heaving mightily at the task of concocting excuses to justify it. Since (as is usual for leftoids) they have no slightest grasp of what the objectors are on about, and since the most vocal proponents of their position are also invariably the most bigoted and egotistical, they frequently end up being silly, evil, or both.
Regards,
Ric
[1]The British preserve the Latin vowel, and using it makes the word look more reasonable: foetophobic.
[…] by Mike @ 9:24 am Wednesday 3 December 2008 • Filed under: Flotsam and/or Jetsam Dan Collins explains what courage and love really mean, to a heartless eugenicist. Or, as he more aptly puts it, a […]
Mr. Pink, what is actually going on, down underneath, is that they regard a fetus as a parasitic excrescence which robs the female bearing it of the ability to shop comfortably.
But, but … they have those nifty parking spots for pregnant women now. They didn’t have those when I was pregnant and towing 4 kids ages 1, 3, 5 and 6 into the store.
Our first kid turned out to have cerebral palsy. We chose not to adopt a special needs child, the second time around. We nearly did anyway, though; we found this Korean girl that needed parents that also had CP, and we thought she’d be an ideal sister for our daughter. Another couple got her instead, though; a few years later, we adopted a healthy kid, by request.
Dunno what we’d have done if we’d gotten a Down’s child; that almost never happens, because the orphanages prescreen the kids. If by some miracle my wife had gotten pregnant and born a child with some genetic defect, we’d probably have just dealt with it.
And, really, that’s what I see being a true citizen is all about: deal with what life shells out to you, and do it without griping. Life is fucking hard, sometimes. People who expect life to be easy need to adjust their expectators, drastically, and the sooner they do that, the happier they’ll be. I was going to say that this is what being an American is all about, but there are, by demonstration, more than a few Americans that still persist in demanding that life be easy, and there are a whole lot of people in other places that stoically handle their lives without insisting that others take their burden from them. It’s not uniquely American, but it’s what Americans once were, and should (in my opinion) strive to be once more.
Don’t be a burden to those around you. Don’t bitch because your life is hard. Don’t insist that others adjust their moral values so that you can make your life easier. And don’t, above all, present some fucking cost/benefit analysis as a replacement for morality. It’s not fooling anyone. If you want to be morally bankrupt because it’s cheaper and easier for you to do so, knock yourself out. Don’t expect me to agree with you, though, and don’t expect me to help reinforce your self-deception.
Or when my mom was pregnant, towing kids ages 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, and 7 into the store.
We’ve got a disabled tag for my daughter, but we try not to use it because there are always people that have it worse than she does. It was needed and used much more when she was four and five years old, and still not good at walking, and my wife had back problems that kept her from being able to carry a kid.
Well if you view a baby as punishment or as an infection then you probably have some severe mental problems. Like the chick I knew as a freshman in college who at the age of 18 had already had 3 abortions. She was also a compulsive liar and would sleep with anyone who said hi to her.
I kinda find it hard to imagine anyone actually THINKING that it is a good moral choice, you know like telling the truth or helping an old lady with groceries as examples, to abort a baby. I have seen people argue it, but I really do not think anyone actually buys that. Everyone knows deep down the morally correct choice is to have the baby, IMHO. We have by circumstances the means to not have the baby, and the ability to determine with some degree of certainty if the baby will be deformed or a severe burden. Also women nowdays have the choice of whether or not to abort the baby. I can not imagine making that decision and can not say what I would have done in my teens or early 20’s if faced with it.
Life is mostly froth and bubble
two things stand like stone
kindness in anothers trouble
courage in your own.
What Minette and I are both saying is that is it not, your bizness, and not societies’ bizness, or the governments’ bizness if a pregnant citizen chooses to terminate a genetically damaged pregnancy. That there are a lot of reasons pertinant to the individual situation where a woman might chose to terminate.
For that Dan calls Minette a “selfish twat”.
How did I misconstrue that?
As for Dicentra’s point that agony refines us, well just break out that hair shirt and cat o’ nine-tails, or maybe deliberately cripple babies at birth, or sumpin like that.
Bulshytt, that.
How about, don’t try to impose your moral values on other citizens that don’t share your version..
We don’t fuckin’ care what you think of our “moral values”.
And you should just step on from criticizing ours.
See how that worked out for you in the last election?
It’s called law, nishi. Besides, you’re proposal is that we allow a mother to impose her morals, or lack thereof, on another party who hasn’t consented.
Which, you know, is ironic, given the scolding tone.
Your ability to completely miss the point of the post is transcendent. Read the last paragraph of what Minette wrote above and try to wrap your pea brain around the fact that it was Minette who wishes to impose her self styled morality on those with objections. By objectifying the objectors you give Minette full authority to proclaim a moral absolute. Who died and made either of you queen?
I realize that ranting against people who don’t kow-tow to your definition of Libertarianism is a favorite pastime but stop mischaracterizing what Dan wrote and, for once in your life, read for comprehension!
Ah: selection of morals via popular vote. Something tells me this isn’t going to end well.
People who reject abortion as always wrong are consistent and one cannot argue with them. But anyone who thinks abortion is acceptable under some circumstances, and who yet disapproves of what’s emotionally seen as “eugenic†abortion, is in an untenable position.
Who are “these” people? Who approve of abortion, yet reject it for babies who are going to be born with a disability? Are there any here? Could it be that this chick’s central argument is a big old strawman?
The size of Godzilla, Carin.
Not to anyone in particular, but I think had the economy been going great guns, McCain would have taken it. If we’d brought things to a finish more rapidly in Iraq, Obama wouldn’t even have been a factor.
I say that not as a fan of McCain, just noting that these things were much more on the minds of voters than the foisting-off of morality. Or you could just treat Prop 8 as an anomaly; no explanation, and no sense looking for one.
“What Minette and I are both saying is that is it not, your bizness, and not societies’ bizness, or the governments’ bizness if a pregnant citizen chooses to terminate a genetically damaged pregnancy.”
Well duh. This lady is writing an article though pointing her finger at parents who choose to have those babies and basically calling them stupid. Here is the money quote to prove it
“I am convinced that it is a grave misfortune for babies to be born with Down’s or any comparably serious syndrome. It’s a misfortune for their parents and their siblings as well. Sad observations over decades have convinced me: a damaged baby is a damaged family, even now.”
Kate shouldn’t you reserve some of your moral indignation for this b@tch then? Would you want someone calling your family damaged? This chick is basically preening about trying to act morally superior for advocating not having these kids.
To provide an analogy for what I think Dan’s problem with the writer of this article, (and my own problem with her) I take my dog to the vet and find out I need to pay 20000 dollars in medical bills in order for him to live with slight pain. Instead I think to myself “Well he is going to die anyway” and put him to sleep. After I put him to sleep I go around telling people that “it was for the best” and “he wouldn’t have wanted to live like that anyway”. Both of those would be complete bullshit. I would have put the dog to sleep because to me, it was just a dog and not worth 20000 dollars when I can buy a new one for 200. To this chick it is just an inviable tissue mass which causes “damage” to a family once “it” is born. She wants a pat on the back for her “moral” courage to say what she thinks is a tough truth but instead she comes across sounding like an ignorant, uncaring, bitch.
Minette: Merciless Twatwaffle Eugenicist
H. G. Wells, Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, Emile Zola, George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes, William Keith Kellogg, Margaret Sanger, Winston Churchill
List of famous people who supported Eugenics (Wikipedia) Just to counter the calumny that only nazis support eugenics.
Me? No. I think it is a blunt tool. But I understand those who chose this path as an individual choice. I would not make it official policy to encourage it.
As I said earlier, this is a huge, stinking pile of strawmen here.
It appears that people who decide to abort their baby want to be ensured a guilt-free life. I mean, it’s LEGAL, so we certainly aren’t debating whether it should be allowed. The last hurdle, it would seem, is to be free of any yucky feelings.
And, all those parents who knowingly bear defective children, and have the nerve to appear in public and proudly proclaim thus? Apparently they should just STFU.
Kate’s family is damaged. It gots Kate.
“It appears that people who decide to abort their baby want to be ensured a guilt-free life.”
Exactly.
lol, ‘zactly what i thought, feets.
;)
As a walking argument for fetal termination, nishi does have an argument from authority.
But it cancels itself out, because by her logic, she shouldn’t even exist.
Is Happy still in the throws of ennui? I could send a mix-tape or something …I promise no Nickelback.
Daniel:
If you had been following this you would know that we have gone over eugenics many times at this site. Planned Parenthood’s past with eugenics has been pointed out before, and I have made note of Justice Holmes’ opinion in Buck v. Bell. Eugenics was considered a liberal enlightened program, It was the Nazis who took it to the logical conclusion and in doing so nauseated societies.
Kate/nishi/matoko, our special needs commenter, has yet to answer any questions or do anything except extol her great brain. Come to think of it, that’s all our mental mayfly thor has done also. The questions need to be answered and they aren’t, so I’ll ask some of them again:
The argument has been made that the expense of a disabled child places a special burden on a family and a society, and that abortion should be considered.
Who or what agency/board determines what a burden is, or how much of a burden is tto much?
Who or what agency/board determines what genetic abnormalities are sufficient to counsel abortion?
Should sterilization be considered for people who are carriers of genetic abnormalities?
Who or what agency/board would make that decision based on what criteria?
Should elderly or terminally ill people be euthanized?
Who or what agency/board would make that decision based on what criteria?
These are just some of the questions and they are not idle ones – these things have happened in the past or are being promoted now. And if history is any indication, the criteria to determine what must be doen to whom, and the determination if it is going to be done to an individual, will involve less care and concern than we give to the chickens at an egg-ranch. Certainly well below what a convicted murderer gets.
So yes – most of us here are very reluctant to go along with Ms. Marrin (where did she get her martyr-cloak? It is just dramalicious!) or Kate when it comes to this subject. Too much evil has been done by self-professed progressive, good people on this very subject for much trust to be given. And given the way Kate/quellcrest has acted towards people (two-digits, cudlips, etc.) I think the lack of trust and the scorn applied are done with very good reason.
Oh, yeah, feets.
Here’s your daily. ;)
Rawr
This one is for NG.
If there is a happyfeets mixtape, i think i shud be the one makin it!
FANGS UP! COBRA STYYYYYYYYLE!
feets<— they say that kid hes got SOUL
It’s just that kind of jealousy, nishi, that makes women unlikable.
nishi – I’ve been listening to that song a bunch – they have a more bigger hit but I’m saving that for when I get tired of this one. It’s as good as my Len song really. oh. Carin – I’m gonna fix myself at the weekend.
Ok, I checked out those songs. I’m gonna need some Metallica to wash it all away.
Someone … make … pop … go away … I’ve got two of my kids weaned, so far, three more to go. Putting them in guitar lessons really helped. Once they figured those pop tunes simply didn’t have any interesting guitar in them… away it went.
Cyanide is making it all better … ahhhh
Happy, perhaps it’s this pop that’s causing the problem? A little head banging may help.
My b-day is tomorrow, and I’m gonna be forty-one. If I can be upbeat, so can you ;)
One can never have too much Cobra Starship +anime
Here’s some Stoner rock to wash away the Metro-pop crap.
Josh Homme. I’ll be in my bunk.
Anyone who watches more than 1 or 2 anime shows should get punched in the face by both their parents.
Aww Carin don’t be so antique.
J-pop absolutely rawks, right feets?
LM.C and genki rockets
Put on some Rancid or Pantera to wash off the gayness you just witnessed from your eyesockets.
And I’ll wash that old hippy stoner crap away with some Metro-station! ;)
Wish we were older
mebbe the we could relate to Carins music.
;)
This should be up your alley Kate
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=kkrHYHqChlI
boss person is being hovery so I will have to do music later. He seems kind of agitated really. Other Guy’s dad had a dream that boss person went away. How odd, but I can get on board with that dream.
And I’ll wash that old hippy stoner crap away with some Metro-station! ;)
“Hippy”, in no way, is a word that can be used in describing any music I listen to.
That music makes me want to cut myself.
I’m not all Tool, Metallica, QUTSA 24/ 7. I do like some young artists.
Bah. If you want pop, these are the kings. Not to be confused with The Kings.
Carin’s music I like to turn up (after putting in ear protection) and use to strip crusty old paint from furniture. It’s practically free, and relatively devoid of environmental side-effects.
Aside from the dead vermin I have to sweep up, after.
That’s the thing, Slart. I want my home to be a pop-free zone. You should see why my girls have done to my iPod.
Carin’s music I like to turn up (after putting in ear protection) and use to strip crusty old paint from furniture. It’s practically free, and relatively devoid of environmental side-effects.
Philstine.
ekshually i saw Interpol live 2 or 3 years ago when they were one of the NIN warmup bands at the Filmore.
Not bad, but the other warmup band (Muse) became supah-stars.
SuperMassive Black Hole
or, Philistine, if you’re picky about spelling. It’s hard to proof while listening to stoner rock. Seems antithetical or something.
Muse doesn’t have nearly the talent of Interpol. They’re not bad, it’s just there’s not a lot of “there” there. “Hysteria” is their only decent song.
Knights of cydonia makes me wanna cut myself. Obviously he has a man-crush on Freddie Mercury. NTTAWWT.
Before Muse, there was Throwing Muses. I loved them.
Carin: You need rock? Check out my future son-in-law’s band, just starting to get airplay in Philly.
RECENT HOURS
This was a pretty good tune. As for hippie stoners, kewl!
Minette remains a self absorbed twat, just in case anybody’s checking.
Here‘s my hippy music. I’m old; what can I say?
Here are two of the greatest guys to have ever laid hands on their respective instruments, playing live.
Oh, and three of these guys are in the top two or three musicians in the world, on their instruments.
Sorry, I’m a bit of an epicure, it seems, at least by comparison.
Not to be confused with Epicure.
Slart: I suspect that our IPods have a lot of similarities in musical content. I had never seen that Bela Fleck video. This guys are just sick.
BJ – with influences like:
311, Saosin, Circa Survive, Incubus, The deftones, tool, primus, Karnivool, Silverchair, Jimmie’s Chicken Shack, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, STP, Alice in Chains, Queens of the Stone Age, A Perfect Circle, Sevendust, Coheed and Cambria, RUSH, at the drive in, the mars volta, metallica, helmet, chevelle, 30 seconds to mars, 10 Years, Thrice, daft punk, kyuss, Filter, korn, foo fighters, nirvana, rage against the machine, nine inch nails, hendrix and the experience, deep purple, the chili peppers, skindred, The Who, YES, Live,
I’d say they are on the right track :) They’ve hit all my favorites in there.
Silverchair??????????? Sorry that is where I draw the line. Singing about how the water in your bathroom is very hard to drink is pretty freakin lame.
Mike just introduced me to mars volta. That is one creatively crazy assed band! Their drummer is superb!
No, it’s cool Slart. Different strokes for different folks. My thing is that I appreciate good musicality in ANY genre. I prefer heavier music, but my iPod is filled with other stuff. The only thing I can’t stand (two really) are rap and pop. Everything else I’m cool with. The similarity in my dislike of those two? That they are usually entirely driven by lyrics with little-to-no emphasis on anyone actually playing an actual instrument.
Rap is barely music. words to a beat. Illiterate words to a beat.
I agree with you on that Carin with one caveat. Rap music before 1995 was good, after that not so much. Put in some old Wutang once in a while.
I was just funnin’ ya, Carin. Our musical tastes have some points of intersection, or possibly whole open regions.
Cite? Hell, cite any rap music that’s worth my time.
See, I pretty much hate rap with a flaming passion, in general. It’s fine, a couple of lines inserted into a song for grins, but you can’t make whole albums out of the stuff, any more than you can make a decent suit of clothes out of a box of bracelets.
Doesn’t stop folks from trying, though.
I don’t care for rap either. Synth music set to profanity.
Rap and pop are directed at young audiences, mostly.
The roots of modern rap can be traced back to poets such as <A HREF=”site“>Linton “Kwesi” Johnson, who is far more literate than you’ll ever be.
One of my favorite LKJ poems.
thor’s literariness far outstrips his html skills
Oh stuff it thor.
Deconstruct this, bitch:
It was Friday night and I was feelin’ aight (Yep)
Downtown Atlanta, big city, bright lights,
Mixin’ Henney wit da Sprite while I’m drinkin’ and drivin’,
No police lights, no police sirens,
I’m headed to da club, lookin’ fo’ a freak,
To spread a lil’ love and spread a couple cheeks,
Pull up to da spot, 26’s like bam!
Eyes on me like “Bitch, do you see him?”
Stroll through the front door, headed to the VIP,
Bought a couple bottles and I took a couple sips,
Scopin’ out da room and what do I see?
A nice round butt and a pair of double D’s,
So I crept up like “Shawty, what’s happen’n?
You kilin’ dat dress and I love it wit’ a passion,”
Den she turned around and her face was aight,
She had a gap tooth and mean overbite,
But I was like hmm…
(T-Pain)
Chorus
If I take one more drink,
I’m gon’ end up f***in’ you,
Is that watchu wanna do, shawty?
If I take one more drink,
I’m gon’ end up f***in’ you,
You too.
Poet – Ludacris, who prolly couldn’t tell you who LKJ was.
Looking at the roots of modern rap music is like looking at the roots of the ringtone market. I’m not sure how this is helpful to know really. The important thing is people can make a buck off both still.
HA!
Honestly, there was a time when thors argument may have had some validity. But not with all the muthafucking rap songs out there now.
Regardless, wouldn’t it be a point to show how that “genre” of poetry has devolved into something profane and lacking any value?
Actually, the roots of the ringtone market is substantially more interesting. Guy named Thomas Dolby; you may have heard of him.
“I Scare Myself” <—- my favorite Dolby tune.
I hadn’t noticed that rap had devolved in any important way, Carin. Oh, sure: there’s more overt profanity than there was back in the 1980s, but that’s because the censors departed and were replaced by parental warning labels. Rap has been about pretty much all one kind of thing since the early 1980s: living the high life, getting the bitches, dissing the competition. It could be argued that the last two are really the same thing.
There are exceptions, of course. But we’re talking about the kind of rap that’s popular, not the cerebral kind.
I Scare Myself is also one of my favorites, Carin.
New generation rappers, both local Denver hiphop bands.
Hiphop is just rap with a dance bassline.
3OH!3
303 is the colorado area code.
Flobots
I’m actually in this music video……or at least my arms are.
;)
It was filmed one sunday morning last summer at the Filmore.
Quite a ways from Public Enemy and the Wu-Tang Clan.
The Flobots song, Rise, is going to be played at Obama’s inaugration.
Yes. Thomas Dolby. You know this isn’t helping the ennui none really. What else is psycho took a vow of silence. I just can’t see how that’s helpful. He should disavow his silence vow I think.
Carin, Ratatat warmed up for Daft Punk on their last tour.
I linked their tune Wildcat for feets.
Hiphop is just rap with a dance bassline.
3OH!3
303 is the colorado area code.
Flobots
I’m actu
Isn’t that a rip-off from the whole Eminem “313” thing, which is the area code for Detroit?
Funny, ’cause Em doesn’t live in teh 313. But I did for most of my life. Whateve.
Daft Punk is one of the bands from the list I don’t care for. See, I’m consistent.
And, Slart – I meant that rap was a form of devolved poetry. Not that it has devolved.
You know little about music or poetry, Carin.
Rap is as stupid as you want to make it. Rap is as cerebral as you want to make it. Duuuuh.
That M.I.A chick and Lily Allen are examples of young people who are quite impressive on many levels as pop artists. They’re not Herbie Hancock but they’re very impressive for the pop music scene.
Do you really think Metallica has much musicality? Yeaaah, I’m sure you do, it’s what you were told. Ppppp. Why don’t you go compare Tragically Hip and Metallica lyrics and report back to us, Carin, when you figure out your first clue of lyricism.
You might like this Slart it is kinda catchy.
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=Qapou-3-fM8
This too. Both from Tribe Called Quest.
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=ERQzl4xDpXk
Thor the difference is the singers and musicians of Metallica actually have to be able to play an instrument, even if they do not have talent they can do that. All good rappers need anymore is a good producer and they can harmonosize the hell outa their voices and make em sound like whatever they want. That and they put a good beat on there. Reference any song produced by Timberland or that features that idiot TI.
First off, Fuck you, Thor.
Second, both Tragically Hip and Metallica are teh Awesome. I’ve been a fan of the Hip since the mid 90’s, how about you? Gord is fucking performance artist GENIUS. His lyrics are poetry, and watching him perform live (in person) would be a transcending experience .
Metallica isn’t a lyrical band. It’s music driven. Shit,I feel like I’m talking to a CHILD. Their strength is in the MUSIC.
Rap – is neither musically or lyrical of any value. Rap as in the stuff that is sold and on the charts. Sure, I’m confident you could find someone out there performing something that might not be utter crap, but please, overwhelmingly the genre is driven my muthafuckers hoping to find a some bitch.
Yeaaah, I’m sure you do, it’s what you were told.
Honestly, you deserve another FOAD for that. Stand alone, if you will.
thor: Does your bile duct leak all of the time? Seems so…
Carin: Biggest influences for Recent Hours on that list: Deftones, incubus tool, primus, Hendrix, Zep, Zappa, Soundgarden, Rush, Karnivool.
Here’s a crappy video of the boys at Tom & Jerry’s in Philly.
No fan of rap am I but I recognize the talent that was Tupac.
Kirk Hammett is rated among the greatest guitar players eva. Rolling Stone has him at 11, and other lists rank him higher.
Give me one rap “artist” that is rated for any ability to play an instrument.
Sounds cool, BJ. I’ve got three of my kids taking lessons (two guitarists and a base player) and I’m gearing up to get my youngest started on the drums. My one son is pretty good already. Being home schooled, they have plenty of extra time to practice.
Mettalica is to rock what Ludacris is to rap.
First time I saw Gordie and the Hip was after their first album was released. They were touring in a American in a van. Yeah, after the show I decided he’s it, or he’s totally insane, whichever.
Kirk Hammett is an excellent guitarist but I must disagree with those tools at Rolling Stone. He doesn’t make my top 20 as there are others with more genius and technique. That having been said and despite the fact that their last few albums have been underwhelming, Metalica has reached iconic status in rock music. They’ve broken lots of new ground and have had the courage, unlike virtually all other heavy metal bands, to potentially piss off their fan base by moving in new directions. (A great example of that is Van Halen, who never really moved passed the designation as “swesomest bar band evah!)
Real musicality is an almost lost art in modern pop and rock. In fact, there are time I hear more good and interesting playing in R & B than I do in rock. My major concern is that Rock is dying amongst young people as they drift in ever increasing numbers to rap and hip hop.
Oh and Tragically Hip is a great band.
Oh, he’s it.
You gotta check out that link, BJ. Tragically Hip’s live performance make their studio stuff pale in comparison.
Regarding Metallica – their new album is really good. REally.
Kirl Hammett barely knows how to play guitar. Slarti knows who can play guitar.
This guy taught a lot of Kirk Hammett’s how to play guitar, of course Hammett never really figured it out.
Kirk Hammett barely knows how to play guitar. Slarti knows who can play guitar.
Yea, ok. Whatever.
Carin: Yes it it, much better than “St. Anger.” They fired their producer for this one and it shows… and, uh, sounds.
Ha ha! Is it just me or does Gord see things on the stage that are hidden from the rest of us? He is a trip … or on a trip, I’m not sure which!
thor, you are just being a willful jerk. Hammett learned most of his stuff from Joe Satriani, who would be in my top 20. Step up, thor. give us your top twenty rock guitarists of all time.
Tommy Bolen, excellent guitarist, doesn’t make my top twenty.
First of all, at least post a decent live clip of Gord.
Secondly, while Hammett and Satriani were both trying to look like Tommy Bolin and asking their guitar teachers how to play Teaser, it’s Bolin’s work on Billy Cobham’s Spectrum that sort’a puts him toward the top, and well above dumb three-chord major scale redundant thrashers.
Time and place. When Cobham took Mahavishnu Orchestra’s jazz/rock fusion to the next level with Spectrum, every long hair with a guitar listened to it and said that’s it, that’s how you play triplets into the minor and jazz scales. He was just a kid from Iowa, even when he died, just a kid. But that little fucker was way beyond what others, everyone really, was mimicking a the time, which was Hendrix. He, Cobham and Hammer actually had talent. Ironic they recorded that at Ladyland.
Really, I don’t like to get into the ranking thing, particularly as concerns guitar. There are so many good guitarists out there that I don’t even think I even know everyone in any reasonable top 20 list. I’ve heard guys who I don’t even think of as outstanding guitar players do some quite interesting and admirable things. Todd Rundgren has surprised me on guitar. Most of what I really like, technically, is acoustic, because it turns out that distorted electric guitar makes the technique a lot harder to pick out. Surprise, surprise.
Bassists, there’s really not much of a list. There’s Victor Wooten up on top, with a smattering of guys like Stanley Clarke and the late Jaco Pastorius in the second rank, and then you have a long list of really decent bassists including Sting. I might put Geddy Lee near the top of the third rank players; he can’t lay a finger on Victor. But then, no one can.
Drummers, well, it’s another huge pile, with me putting my faves on top. I think Steve Gadd is one of the best nifty drummers of all time, Lenny White one of the best power drummers, and there are just a slew of physically talented guys, that I’m loathe to rank, skill-wise. I’m inclined to put Futureman near the top of the heap, just because of what he can do when he’s just drumming negligently, and of course Neal Peart belongs way up there, because he’s taken nearly godlike talent and continued to improve it as he’s aged.
And that’s all I have to say about that.
And, speaking of Mahavishnu Orchestra, here‘s a bit of that classical goodstuff I alluded to. The guy in the middle chair you might recognize from some of those Return to Forever tunes I linked to.
You right that you really can’t rank guitar players, ranking being nothing but a gimmick that mags like Rolling Stone use to sell copy.
How does one rank Al Di Meola? Even Carlos Santana, he’s brilliant in his unique way, but nothing as close to the proficiency on acoustic as a Di Meola. There’s no markers to gauge except skill or impact, I suppose. We have flamenco guitarists who play on the street in Miami who’d make a Hammett-type wet his pants.
Paco de Lucia is sitting on the left in the vide I just linked to. Outfuckingstanding flamenco guitarists.
He makes Di Meola and McLaughlin look sick, in terms of speed.
thor – True Story: A bunch of friends and I drove up to Bennington College in Vermont for an all day Jazz and Folk symposium and concert.The lure was a 90 minute show featuring Billy Cobham. When we arrives at the gate to buy our admission (I think it was, like, $2.50 per head for the entire day in 1976) they informed us that Cobham had suffered an injury and would not be playing.
Damn!
About mid morning we were walking across the campus when a large. black man on crutches hobbled in our direction. Yep, it was Billy himself. We stopped and chatted, asking him just what the hell happened. It turned out that he was jogging earlier in the morning in the town of Bennington and was set upon by a pack of dogs. As he sprinted away his foot found a pothole and he turned his ankle, tearing ligaments. The moral of the story is that large, black men shouldn’t be jogging alone in Bennington in 1976. Very personable guy, talked with us for about 15 minutes before we went on our way.
Made the trip worthwhile.
I guess Jimmy Page ought to score high on any list of all-time greats, just because the guy could play better kited up on heroin than most anyone else can, completely straight.
Dunno what happened to the dude. I saw some of his recent stuff and he’s…well, he seems to have completely lost it.
I remember when I first listened to the that Sundance album. I was constantly wondering who was who on the lead. The critics hated the album, which says something about critics. Three dudes who can play, fer sure. I’m enjoying it, thx.
Thanks for the Tragically Hip stuff, thor and Carin. I’m chagrined that I’ve never given them a listen.
Yep, Page is/was always a decent player, compared to his rock counterparts he was amongst the best, even if you’ve tired of him as much as I have, he layed down solid tracks while others were posing, bonus points for that.
Nice story BJ. It’s sad that talent alone doesn’t sell albums. I never saw Cobham live, I bet he pounded the shit of the skins back in the day though.
Even when I first heard VanHalen’s first I recognized that that was a very cool sound, props for all that, but it’s always the jazz guys that I wished I could play like.
Herbie Hancock, my American Idol. And no, I don’t play anything but basic piano, I play guitar, but Herbie has such good taste. We should really have statues in public squares of that guy.
Slart, with Gordo of the Hip it’s his body of work that stuns the mind. He’s out there without much competition. For a rock/pop guy, wow.
Slart: I’m assuming that you have “Friday Night in San Francisco.” I assume that you’ve heard John and Al do “Tales of the Black Forest.” I assume that your head, like mine, exploded the first time you heard it. Have I assumed too much?
I also had the good fortune to see Mclaughlin live with Shakti, his Indian music project. It made my head hurt to watch those guys scream through Raga music in 12/11 or whatever goofy time signature. Pretty dang amazing.
thor: I got to see Cobham play with the Orchestra in 1976, I believe. It was a twin bill with, of all people, Jeff Beck, touring to promote his Freeway Jam album. Phenomenal show and yes, Cobham really, really, REALLY could smash those skins. Might be, purely, the fastest drummer I’ve ever seen.
I have a ton of respect and admiration for Beck as a musician because his style is unique to him and depends more on phrasing than on spectacular technique (which he has when he needs it, even today.) It’s the same reason I love Davis Gilmour of Pink Floyd. More with less.
Without question the Jazz guys tend to really fan my flames, all the way back to Wes montgomery.
No, not too much. I got that album for Christmas back in 1982, and I immediately loved it. I still have it on vinyl. Amazing piece of work. My college girlfriend’s brother gave it to me; I was spending Christmas with them because my parents broke up. I think that’s one of the better gifts of music I’ve ever gotten, if not the best, period.
Thanks again, Steve, wherever you are!
Son of a bitch. You’re…me?
I always thought Gilmour did loads more with sheer timing and phrasing than most other guys accomplished with raw speed and technique.
Agreed, BJ, unique phrasing always catches the ear. You caught some classic shit there.
As much as I think Beck ripped off Bolin’s jazz/rock style and made a career out of it, I like Jeff Beck, hell, I like Beck.
I took my strat and tele to Univ. of North Texas’s jazz school for one year. I, uhh, didn’t have a clue you had to be that fuckin’ good to be to get into jazz school. That I could play every lead off Aerosmith’s Toys in the Attic album impressed no one, not even me after I saw what those pimply faced jazz nerds could play. I quickly transferred to A&M, in shame.
…not to belabor it, but I thought his guitar work on Animals, on Dogs in particular, was just gorgeous.
I think of Gilmour as an emotional guitarist. His playing oozes emotion, if that makes any sense.
Interestingly, Clapton does a pretty fair impression of Gilmour on Pros and Cons, but doesn’t quite nail it. Has more of a staccato sort of feel to the attempt, whereas Gilmour tends to draw out the notes as if he’s playing out line in some sort of musical fishing game.
Speaking of Beck, did either of you two catch him at Clapton’s “Crossroads” concert in Chicago? You would have seen his cute, tiny little girl bass player who just about gave me a heart attack.
Tal Wilkenfeld. Check it out!
thor: I would never, on my best guitar playing days, have considered attending a jazz class in college for guitarists. I was not worthy and I knew it! That’s why I became a whiny folk singer.
@247. Comment by Mikey NTH on 12/3 @ 10:00 am
“Eugenics was considered a liberal enlightened program, It was the Nazis who took it to the logical conclusion and in doing so nauseated societies.”
Sorry it took so long to reply – Timezone thingy – As in other-side-of-the-world.
I am not sure that I’d characterize traditional, early 20th century Eugenics, as a “liberal program”. It was an extremely radical program that was willing to countenance extremely-illiberal practices, like forced-sterilization and licences to breed.
This was because in the early 20th century, before the discovery of the genetic role and structure of DNA by Watson/Crick in 1953, the only way that people could imagine to modifying genes (a “function without a structure”) was selective breeding.
What’s different about modern “eugenics” is that first:
Only self-chosen selective-abortion is being applied at the moment. Or selection of embryos after in-vitro fertilization, which amounts to the same thing. It could be argued that these are extensions of the kind of selection that nature does anyway, and in any case, most secular people don’t consider the early-stage embryo to be a “person” yet.
I agree that this is a difference without any real scientific foundation. I would argue, that it may have some foundation in the way the brain is structured to identify “person” as opposed to “thing”. We may be cognitatively pre-disposed to see only independently-acting humanlike organisms as “persons”. For many secular people, embryo’s don’t qualify – yet. They are only “potential people”. As long as you only abort embryos/fetuses it’s not “murder”. It may not be logical, biologically, but it could be the way our minds/brains are built.
Secondly: The DNA thing. It opens up the potential of radical genetic engineering in all sorts of ways – By means other than illiberal practices like sanctioned selective breeding/abortion. It doesn’t have to be so illiberal, it could be left to individuals, “the free market”, to decide.
Thirdly: I challenge that the Nazis are the “logical conclusion” of eugenics. I would argue that the Nazis are the pathological disfunctional form. All technologies can be misused. Airplanes can deliver bombs or evacuate injured children from danger. If there is any “logical conclusion” to eugenics it is transhumanism – The improvement of the natural human design to minimise human suffering, and maximise human potential.
I would argue: Transhumanism may be essential, if we are ever to “conquer space” or “colonize space” in anything other than the most trivial ways, given how deeply-adapted we are to life on this planet.
Transhumanism may also be essential to keep us one step ahead of our rapidly-evolving robots. Without TH our machines are getting smarter, we are not.
I caught this guy live and I caught myself wondering if he might be better than Lars, Mettalica’s drummer.
#336 Daniel: Eugenics was actively promoted by people who would have declared themselves liberal. Yes, even Churchill had liberal impulses, ‘It cannot be a bad thing to put milk into babies’. It is part of a generous impulse, to spare people and societies. The problems happen when people decide to take an idea like Eugenics and then place the power of the state behind it. My example that I used in previous threads on this topic was Justice Oliver W. Holmes, Jr. He was a liberal, and a titan of the Supreme Court. Yet, Buck v. Bell, and his decision there, was against the liberalism of increasing individual liberty and for the liberalism of using the power of the state to force sterilization on those the state declared mentally unfit, to enforce a ‘big idea’ that ‘science’ had declared was necessary. Necessary to strengthen the race and curb the prolific impulses of ‘lesser races’.
The problem always comes down to that – those with the big ideas need to have power to get them enacted, and the power of the state is always attractive. And for the past 150 years those who have self-described as liberals or progressives have had the market cornered on big ideas to change society for the better. And those big ideas have usually come down to restricting individual liberty, and not just for an emergency, or to permit liberty for others, but to enact the big idea.
When it comes down to the life of a person the big idea rarely stays at leaving it up to individual choice, it always seems to come down to encouraging, and then forcing, certain choices. Instead of ‘The Society for the Propagation of the Fit’ encouraging certain people to have children and others not to, it turns into eliminating the unfit. It is much easier forcing than persuading, the state can do it, and the ends turn out to be the same, so why not just change the means? Before WWII this nation had laws for the sterilization of the unfit. That is eugenics being enacted by a democracy, and using the power of the state to make it so. And without benefit of a public trial, and appeal, and multiple layers of review. A convicted murderer facing the death penalty gets more protection – had more protection then – than one of those ‘unfit’ sterilized in the early twentieth century. The Nazis merely applied the power of the state to remove any ‘racial’ threat to the Aryan people; the Soviet Union had its own ‘New Soviet Man’ program. We clawed our way back up that slope just recently, and I have no desire to see us go back down it.
If you do go through the months of threads here dealing with eugenics, you will find that Kate/nishi/q.f./etc. is in the eliminationist camp. And is a very cocksure, self-righteous person. Be careful with that one.
Agree with you guys on Gilmour and Beck, love the hell out of both of them. Eddie Hazel never gets enough props in my book, Maggot Brain should be in the top five rock guitar solos of all time and the dude hardly ever gets mentioned.
During the rap/hip hop discussion it occured to me that rap ain’t nothing but a trick on wiggers. Don’t know why I never thought of that before.
If there is any “logical conclusion†to eugenics it is transhumanism – The improvement of the natural human design to minimise human suffering, and maximise human potential.
And who gets to decide what or who needs to eliminated? Who gets to decide what is an improvement?
That is where it gets very scary. What are the priorities of that person or agency or corporation? Are they beneficient or selfish? Utopia is nowhere, and distopia is possible, in fact tyranny is more likely than anything.
And what about the engineered person? They did not make their life, they had no free will in that. It was decided by a board, or even just a requisition form. Such a life. “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time… like tears in rain… Time to die.”
Tyrell: “More human than human” is our motto.
Sounds pretty f’ing inhuman – diabolic – to me.
And on a lighter note:
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/disney_lab_unveils_its_latest
Thanks for the Tragically Hip stuff, thor and Carin. I’m chagrined that I’ve never given them a listen.
You are welcome. They’re pretty big in Detroit because we share a radio market with Windsor. They play in the city all the time, and the first time I ever heard them they did a free concert, and simulcasted it over the radio. I was preggo with my first (14 yrs ago) and fell in love with them at that moment.
Yes, Gord’s behavior on stage is … unusual. But he is wonderful and has an amazing sense of timing. I like that bit (100th Meridian) I linked becuase I get a kick out of the double-time he does for that one verse.
Hmm, thor acting like a normal person and normal commenters not attempting to murder him.
Music does indeed soothe the savage breast!
♥
(I have no real comment on the OP. luls.)
#342 Carin:
Heh. Here’s how antique I am. One of my high scholl teachers was Russ Gibb. When I was substitute teaching he used to request me because I understood his students. Yes – I was a Gibblet – (minor league). My little bro, who worked on Back Porch Video, still keeps in contact with him from time to time through his blog.
http://www.russgibbatrandom.com/
As to the engineered person and who gets to choose, if this worries you then the best way to prevent it is to ban germ-line modification. People can modify themselves but they can’t pass it on to their children.
Personally I am willing to accept the judgement of parents & doctors in relation to questions like seriously low-IQ, and obvious difficulties like: If you are going to die at 10yo then it is OK to modify your genes while you are still a minor. If your lungs don’t work, or if you are allergic to common substances and you could die, etc. Medical opinion would sway me.
Otherwise I would prefer to severely restrict germline modification.
Actually it’s because of the difficulties of later-life genetic modifications, that I might really see more potential in nanotechnology and cybertechnology than in genetics, when it comes to transhumanism.
People get so uptight about genetics, but in a way it is the least radical of the technological possibilities facing us.
Doctors and Professionals? Who chooses which doctors and professionals will make these decisions? Based on what criteria, professional ability or professional ability and supporting the latest politically acceptable idea?
This is power over humans at its most basic – and if you don’t get that power draws bastards like ants are drawn to sugar (Thanks Ric!) then you don’t get who is going to determine what is going to be eliminated and what is going to be emphasized. Based on the cold record of history you will get a fictional Dr. Tyrell or you will get a very real Dr. Mengele.
Genetically modifying wheat is one thing, modifying humans is something else. And if you don’t quite get that very deep chasm you want us to leap over, Daniel, then I hope there are some blade runners out there.
Even if they are also replicants.*
*Sci-Fi isn’t a dry-run of the future, but like any good fiction it may hold up a mirror to our human nature and show us something we did not want to see, or something that we ought to see.
I don’t expect the USA to be the leader in this kind of thing.
The conservatism of US society in this area is very obvious to outsiders like me.
If I had to bet which culture would embrace transhumanism the quickest, it would be this one.
O god, he’s still on transhumanism.
Well it’s more on-topic than the music discussions.
But for real Dare, transhumanism is likey beyond the scope of our lifetimes. Maybe if some dashing young biochemist cracks the epigenome we could get a handle on the aging thing but genetics is still really an incipient science, despite the tomes of primary literature one might find on linkage disequilibrium and such. And the whole arguing one culture betters fits transhumanism than another is also mucho bizzaro in a lot of ways. We must close the hippocampal implant gap with the Chinese!
– transhumanism is likey beyond the scope of our lifetimes
That I agree. It is a dream for the ages.
transhumanism is a lot a frame of mind more than any specific reality I think… isn’t that the point really? Maybe I’m missing something.
it just seems to me that people with the transhumanist enthusiasm wants them some technology to validate their worldview, and aren’t really about saying that technology is a remarkable catalyst for human development per se, but that it’s a remarkable catalyst for human development just so… and that’s probably another one of those dealios what mostly makes sense in my head but that’s what I think anyway.
Sure, I amenable to that pov, but there’s a good deal of hard science and reasonable theory behind it. It’s more likely to come as a function of necessity than cultural inclination, which is to say that at some point biological evolution and Lamarckian technological innovation will fuse into something resembling, for example, a prosthetic genome that circumvents the messy business of regulating gene expression in favor of artificially synthesizing, say, myostatin in vivo to maintain muscle density whilst traveling about the solar system, rather than because of some amorphous desire for greater awareness or a higher plane of being or some such.
oh sure – that’s where transhumanism comes from – you guys know better than me so I defer – I just mean specifically the enthusiasm has different roots I think. I think it’s a perfectly nifty enthusiasm by the way but it is what it is.
Yea I was more responding to Dare guy up there but I think you’re on to something hf. It’s a lot like how leftism sees human nature in a vacuum and think it’s perfectible. That sort of transhumanist vision sees some sort of egalitarian, zen society in the deep future where our bodies, minds and civilizations are all perfect and in a state of equilibrium. Or something. Perfectly innocuous for the moment and novel too, but lacks that bit of transhumanism which still has human in it.
We need super-long lives to reach the Stars happy.
I don’t believe faster-than-light.
I only believe faster than death.
In a fusion rocket at 5% speed of light you get to several stars in a century or two.
If you live a thousand years, the trip is worthwhile.
gtg. l8r. as nishi says.
If you live a thousand years, the trip is worthwhile.
There’d better be some kick-ass inflight entertainment, is all I’m saying.
The basic problem I have with transhumanism is the product isn’t human anymore, it is to be a superior product that would be directly in competition with humans, so what you have is a species trying to create it’s own extinction. Something just doesn’t seem right about that to me.
SBP, “kick-ass inflight entertainment”
well you will have virtual reality with computers that are probably way smarter than us, by then.
World of Warcraft version 5,000, lol.
Or maybe like The Matrix, but you can be Keanu.
B Moe “the product isn’t human anymore”
Species are not permanent. Sooner or later our descendents will evolve into something else anyway.
In fact consider the following scenario:
Assume humanity spreads out through the Galaxy.
Assume there are no other intelligent species.
Assume they go forth and multiply and fill billions of star systems.
Well, the time it takes for a gene to diffuse from one end of the galaxy to the other, assuming near neighbour mating, is millions of years. In that time its original version will have changed. Their genetic codes will have diverged.
Conclusion: It is inevitable that the human species will eventually fracture into multiple species.
Actually Man is not a species. It is a new phylum that just happens to have only one species in it at the moment.
One day there will be millions of different kinds of humans, just like there are multiple varieties of insects or multiple varieties of vertebrates. They all once evolved from a single common ancestor.
Our transhumanist friends are all likely to die of something utterly typical in an ordinary course of time. Me, I’m dreaming of something reasonable. Like Rosie.
Species are not permanent. Sooner or later our descendents will evolve into something else anyway.
True, but I know of no other instance where a specie was actively complicite in its own demise.
It is inevitable that the human species will eventually fracture into multiple species.
I do not agree.
Actually Man is not a species. It is a new phylum that just happens to have only one species in it at the moment.
I do not believe this is coincidental. The natural state of things is to eliminate competition, not aid and abet it.
Dare, you are spending too much time with the ‘slines.
You will wind up with them eating your liver.
Here is all you extramuros have to know about transhumanism.
Transhumanism is the attempt to give all homosapiens sapiens the chance of true equality.
Intraspecies genetic equality.
Currently, all men can be equal under the law, but no men are equal under the genes.
Like the Killahs say, Are We Human?
Better visuals on this one
Fuck off, nishi. You don’t have either the chops or the smarts.
Hey! I know…you can get your own blog. I hear they’re free, and you can talk about whatever the fuck you want to. We may even drop by to make fun of you.
Well…you see Slart…I did have my own blog.
But I had to shut it down after I contracted Ardolino disease.
That is also why I have to keep changing nics.
;)
So i can’t be googled, lol.
Anyways, that is a beautiful Killahs song.
You should have a lissen.
I think we are denser.
Denser than what?
Denser than what?
Nishi?
Way past osmium and headed toward neutronium, I’d say.
I think we are denser.
You’re our density, it seems.
I’m denser, I think. Ever since I started doing P90-X. Shouldn’t that be a good thing? The only downside to being more dense is the non-floating on water dealo.
Haps – the transhumanists want super powers, and this is their way of getting them.
The ones that will actually end up running these sorts of programs, well we’ve already seen their ilk.
BMoe #339: Holy crap! I just listened to that Hazel solo for the first time in my life! I’m not sure I’ve ever heard so much raw emotion infused in guitar licks! He was only 20 years old and hooked on heroin when he recorded that track. It actually raised a lump in my throat to hear it. Spectacular!
Audio here.
And I’m pretty bored with the whole transhumanist discussion so I’ll gracefully exit and stop the thread jack.
Oh – I’m with you BJ. But, the music stuff was fun.
B Mo,
I do not agree.
OK Fine.
Nishi, wtf is Ardolino Disease?
Google has never heard of it.
Neither have the science search engines.
This is a much more incendiary version of the same tune, BJ. Audio, live performance.
I’m only guessing, Daniel, that she’s referring to blogger Bill -who-doesn’t-want-his-last-name published. You see what a nice person Nishi is by PUBLISHING it after just about everyone knows he doesn’t want it out there, and she is using it as an example (I don’t know the particulars of Bill’s experience) of why she keeps her identity secret.
But, really, Nishi, it’s what we’d expect from you.
Carin,
Oh. I thought she might be addicted to Ardolino’s pizzas in Pittsburgh
Free plug for Ardolino’s world-famous pizzas.
Thanks to Google and the intertubes.
Nishi,
“Dare, you are spending too much time with the ’slines.
You will wind up with them eating your liver.”
Anathem right?
BTW I just bought Wheeldon’s Firefly and Ridley Scott’s BladeRunner in bluray
Aw, crap that was Michael Hampton on guitar.
Who is no slouch, but not Eddie Hazel.
I kind of liked Anathem, but I couldn’t possibly like it enough to pick up its vernacular and use it as if it’s current.
We leave that kind of thing to nishi. It doesn’t make her make a lot less sense, so no big deal.
Slart,
I’m not really a fan of Stephenson. He is not my kind of writer.
Stephenson used to be less of a freaking chore. You invest a lot and then he ends with some artsy flourish and you’re like oh thanks for that there … you had no idea how to end this did you just admit it.
Yea I slogged through Cryptonomicon and was glad it was over, now I have Quicksilver on my desk and don’t really want to start it.
Carin, Bill has been an Iraq field correspondent for the past 2 years.
Under his real name.
You are a foo’.
Dan? (fuck off Kate) I came very late into this, but in my unique perspective as a life skills coordinator (3 yrs,78-81) for older Downs children and an English and History teacher to developmentally disabled adults? I’ve found the following;
The parents are PROUD of their children.Each step, or misstep, is a foundation to a learning experience to the child AND the parent…Not that I need to tell you that, but…I’ve also taught elementary school grades 1-3, and the parents there have never come close to my “other” kids parents in the matter of their childrens education.
Love?…Fucking LOVE!!?? (channeling Jim Mora here)…There is more love in a Downs syndrome child OR adult than in any 30 of us “norms”…GOOD GOD MINETTE!!! Buy a fucking clue. I lived with them daily for years, and until ’04? was still in touch with “Lucy”…a beautiful girl who lived an amazing life…She married “Alan” (a developmentally disabled child in the class). “Alan” died in 2001, But “Lucy” lived until 04, when her diabetes just got the best of her….She was 40 years old, and I still talk to her parents. YES MINETTE…….PARENTS
Sorry folks, got out of sync there, This kind of thing pisses me off more than Thors’ pederasty. Suffice it to say that even though I left the business for monetary reasons? I still connect. BTW? LUCY and ALAN aren’t their real names, but you got that already I bet…