Sometimes I think I can see specific insights Carl has, as directly stemming from his recreational enjoyment of marijuana smoking. I'm not disparaging these insights, they are virtually all logically sound and rationally defensible. Its just that they are non-obvious, highly unconventional ways of viewing phenomena and humanity that we either typically take for granted or are oblivious to altogether. I think the most striking example of this is when he states that "We are (ie. human consciousness) the universe experiencing itself" in Cosmos. It seems like new agey piffle at first glance, but if you know a little about physics; the big bang, stellar nucleosynthesis, formation of planets, etc. chemistry and biology; evolution, hypothetical origins of life, brain complexity and neurology; then the statement takes on a whole new reality. We are the product of a mechanistic material universe and so we actually seem to be at least one of the ways that the universe 'knows itself'. These sorts of insights, while they could have been made in a completely sober state, bear the earmarks of cannabis influenced rumination. But whatever the method he arrived at these deep truths about nature, we should be eternally grateful. Some of us miss you so much Carl.

In giving this some more thought...
on how the videos in these hypothetical affiliate sifts (hey, I like that, affiliate sift)... anyway... so, the owner, or affiliate sifter could post videos to the site that would post concurrently on both the sift and his blog, also, he could snag vids posted by regular members to the sift and earmark them for display on his blog/affiliate sift as well, kind of like playlisting them. This would give them room to expand their content because they probably wouldn't have members as they would in collectives.

Well... that's the start of an idea anyway... anyone like to pick up off that?

Well said, peretz.

I may have raised the abortion angle in post #62 or #65, but the artificial insemination angle of posts 72-77 was just too juicy to pass up, so I dropped it.

DavidM

I would point you to
http://stemcells.nih.gov/ for information that is more critical and thorough. Christian bioethics advocacy groups have their pluses and are easier to Google, but the stemcellresearch.org site is a bit undernourished on critical analysis.

Has your tax money been earmarked for the drug companies? I am pretty bitter that my taxes have gone to pay for (now unused) barbed wire fences in Sadr City, Iraq and single-source contracting with Halliburton. But such is a big Fed. It is the fairly minimal individual cost of being a citizen of a great (new AP ranking #7) and affluent nation.

I do hate the libertarian or NIMBY argument that you advance against government sponsored scientific research. To wholly privatize something like stem cell research, you would invite two substantial problems into the field:

1) Intellectual property issues - A lawyer's feast for bottomfeeders like me to be sure, but these issues won't help patients.

2) Profit - Research would be driven by profit alone which would cut off many avenues and possibly limit the pool of persons who ultimately benefit.

Public-Private competition (as was found with the human genome project) is probably the most beneficial state of affairs.

This is the type of aid the western world should be providing Africa, not just debt write offs and bundles of cash loans with strings attached. I worked with NGOs, with EWB specifically and witnessed their effect in Central Africa. While many mean well, their intrusion into the environment, short term provision of aid which dissipates once the mission leaves is only creating a beggar mentality in the African people.

An example is the provision of agricultural service to the populace, if there is a famine, the western world floods the nation with surplus food aid, this of course cures the immediate problem but destroys the local agricultural market, which means the nation becomes dependent on aid until the market recovers from an influx of goods (which is free don't forget). The western world never tries to actually work on the trade relations between nations which could easily support any famine relief themselves and in effect create a network of agricultural markets that could sustain and prevent further disasters. But borders are closed because of minor disputes between African leaders, the west could easily force borders open via negotiations, especially since WTO and IMF aid package negotiations allow this to happen to equip the economy for capitalization and recovery.

Further more, money donations such as the outburst of contributions seen last year with Live 8 Aid and Make Poverty History campaign, are USELESS. We never hear of the results these aid packages provide, there is no reportage or follow up, because most of the money is earmarked by the organization for self growth! How else do you think Make Povery History, AIDS and other campaigns get all those celebrity endorsements? Or the large office blocks these organizations possess? It's sick. This type of money aid has also been around for 40 years, combined totally over a trillion dollars worth of aid has been given to Africa since the 70s, clearly this doesn't work, actual GDP has fallen in most nations. Mostly because these aid packages go to naive inexperienced corrupt governments, that produce a large public sector snuffing private development, resulting in mismanaged economies. Most of these aid donations can be reflected in the shiny fleets of government Mercedez cars.

Time and time again it has been shown that provision of educational services, and on site training with available resources creates entrepreneurship and development, Engineers Without Borders works in such a way, providing engineering solutions to problems faced there everyday. These solutions are always built via locally available resources, training of the population ensures that the knowledge will be retained, and the systems could be rebuilt if broken, without NGO presence.

Once these aims are achieved actual economic growth can have a chance to take place. However the West has to finally come to a decision to whether it will continue undertaking economic policies that are determental to third world development. Currently both the US and EU maintain high tariffs and quotas on agricultural products coming from the third world, and subsidize their agricultural producers. Meanwhile 70% of Africa's economy is agriculturally based while in the US and EU this is only a small percentage, due to the subsidization, the agricultural industry in the west has ballooned to large inefficient size, government subsidizes created artificial demand and both have been producing surpluses, so much so that the EU pays farmers not to use a percentage of their land now! The government actually buys the surplus (to artificially raise the price), and then dumps the surplus into the world market which hurts the African producers even more.

There are layers and layers to this issue that I won't even dwell into, but the basic fact is that the west keeps it's markets closed to the third world which stumps growth of their economies. And this has to change, but the problem lingers as WTO after WTO meeting ends in deadlock over this pivotal issue.