Luckily, this is just about the worst thing that can happen to a person, so if they survive this they'll be prepared for anything!

>> ^imstellar28:

you're just a statistic waiting to happen. when you have a gun to your head while someone is raping your wife, i hope you are comforted that "only 1 in 1,000 experience violent crime".


Well that won't be comforting, but knowing that we won't suffer eternally in hell for aborting the fruit of this unholy union is really gonna make us feel better, if we survive. Excuse me while I go into the kitchen for another glass of kool aid.....

the tuxedo part of the plan may have been a way of pleading insanity IF they survived.

Scary stuff, in fact *fear. Not snuff if they survived.

hear that? if you survive the big one, and all is a desolate wasteland, head north.

Colonize, probably not. I'd bet we could get there and back though. Problem is it would cost incredible amounts and scientifically we are getting a lot more from robotic missions right now. It just doesn't make any sense to even if we can since the return would be little more than being able to say we'd done it, we'd spend enough on that one mission to finance dozens of robotic ones.

If we survive long enough to eventually colonize anything I'd think having the groundwork laid with robotics before the first human ever sets foot on the place is most likely, moon excepted since we've already stepped there.

OMFG, if it survives, this is TOP 15 FREAKIN' GOLD!!!

No, on birth control I know that's not your position - I was commenting on society in general, not on anything you said.

Your points do make sense; I just hit and run there as I didn't feel like wading into the details b/c it's not especially productive when people get too emotional (c.f. alt.abortion), so I just chucked my 2 cents in and wandered off.

I totally understand the horror of stillborns, though. The idea I imagine Lurch would've been getting at, though, is that if the baby is still in the womb, it'll move past that stage. If it's out early, well, medical disasters happen to people at all stages in life, and if you're out of the womb prematurely, you're dead. Of course, though you're not fully formed and independent, assuming no interference or medical problems you're on track to be have a full life with a few weeks/months time.

Aside from the tragedy of miscarriages, which is often unavoidable, I was just lamenting the avoidable tragedy of 'unnecessary' abortions.

It's an unfortunate shame the issue gets clouded with super-charged ultra-emotional arguments (Don't take away my choice! Don't kill babies!) rather than what's best for women, kids, families and society in general. <sigh>

In reply to this comment by Kreegath:
I never said that abortion is justified as a form of birth control (like how it's done in China) though, did I? I'm saying that there are cases when it is justified, and that while it's very very easy to take the position Lurch takes, it's also very very irresponsible and shortsighted in that he simply ignores the problem that arises from someone that is for any reason or another unable to raise a child, in an environment unfit to raise it in.
Also, I did take offense when Lurch blurted his "I can't agree that a critical part of being a parent is to kill your child", an extremely ofending remark in anyone's ear which I'm sure he was completely aware of when writing it. That's clearly not what's been written in opposition to his own (in my opinion) immature views, and I was tempted to reply to his flame bait that he must be a sadist that hates children because of his contempted views on sentencing unwanted fetuses to a lifetime of torture.
In closing, Lurch's blatant ignoring of the fact that regardless if there's a law against abortion, women will (as they've done for thousands of years) try and preform the abortion on their own.

To build on what I wrote earlier about my brother's work as a nurse, they're actually not allowed to try and save fetuses born earlier than the 23rd week of pregnancy. They've got no working organs, no immune system and no awareness. So even if the survival rate were 1%, both the life quality and quantity of that fetus would be so immensly reduced by the early birth, the terrible prize the other 99% would pay in deaths by infections (they have no immune system, meaning any bacteria will ravage them horribly), not to mention the surviving fetus would life a very short life in great suffering. However, according to Lurch that's irrelevant and they're all child killers.

In reply to this comment by Krupo:
Kreegath, leaving all the extreme scenarios out of the picture, I think we can all agree that something abortion should not be used for is birth control for "inconvient" pregnancies. One would hope people could just wait a little longer and share the life with a childless couple in an endless adoption queue...

I never said that abortion is justified as a form of birth control (like how it's done in China) though, did I? I'm saying that there are cases when it is justified, and that while it's very very easy to take the position Lurch takes, it's also very very irresponsible and shortsighted in that he simply ignores the problem that arises from someone that is for any reason or another unable to raise a child, in an environment unfit to raise it in.
Also, I did take offense when Lurch blurted his "I can't agree that a critical part of being a parent is to kill your child", an extremely ofending remark in anyone's ear which I'm sure he was completely aware of when writing it. That's clearly not what's been written in opposition to his own (in my opinion) immature views, and I was tempted to reply to his flame bait that he must be a sadist that hates children because of his contempted views on sentencing unwanted fetuses to a lifetime of torture.
In closing, Lurch's blatant ignoring of the fact that regardless if there's a law against abortion, women will (as they've done for thousands of years) try and preform the abortion on their own.

To build on what I wrote earlier about my brother's work as a nurse, they're actually not allowed to try and save fetuses born earlier than the 23rd week of pregnancy. They've got no working organs, no immune system and no awareness. So even if the survival rate were 1%, both the life quality and quantity of that fetus would be so immensly reduced by the early birth, the terrible prize the other 99% would pay in deaths by infections (they have no immune system, meaning any bacteria will ravage them horribly), not to mention the surviving fetus would life a very short life in great suffering. However, according to Lurch that's irrelevant and they're all child killers.

In reply to this comment by Krupo:
Kreegath, leaving all the extreme scenarios out of the picture, I think we can all agree that something abortion should not be used for is birth control for "inconvient" pregnancies. One would hope people could just wait a little longer and share the life with a childless couple in an endless adoption queue...

You might be right on the linux support, but then again DRM is in trouble now in spite of seeming to be the trend of the future just a couple or few years ago. If it survives it'll be a less intrusive form than they wanted and all it took to force the change was consumers saying no. I'm happy enough to do that. Lots of things have changed over time which seemed wishful thinking at some point.

If you're a gamer or need it for work you might be better off to stay with Windows but for me there was no reason not to make the move. Only thing that isn't 100% is flash, the rest of what I use daily I see no problems in. Some aspects are actually better, mplayer for example runs fullscreen quicktime instead of in that little box we're stuck with on Windows. Computer is a bit faster and I went from a real "I'm needing an upgrade soon" frame of mind to being able to wait a bit longer. When I do buy I'm planning to be as open source compliant as possible, no nvidia or other proprietary stuff to deal with. Intel cards and others work just fine, if the ones that insist on proprietary lose business they'll get the idea same as they did with DRM.

Even if he survived this time, the career of branchcliffjumpers tends to be a short one.

We've had this vid up before; wonder if it survived the Youtube purge?

"As of now there is NO EVIDENCE that embryonic stem cells even hold promise, while other approaches, such as adult stem cells, already have yielded results."

What about all of this research done with mice and mice ESC which has shown to regenerate a mouse's damaged spinal cord. Where are these results that adult stem cells have shown, I have not seen them.

"I'll come right out and say I'm against embryonic stell cell research because I believe that life does begin at conception and thus ebryonic research destroys life. That is my belief."

If you believed that the earth was flat, does that mean the earth is flat?

If you're against ESC research because you believe life begins at conception, then do you believe that conception can occur in a test tube? I believe conception occurs in the womb, not a test tube.

Are you against IVF? The process of IVF destroys hundreds of thousands of embryos each year. I'm not talking about just the left overs that are thrown away. Several are destroyed in the process just to have a successful pregnancy.

There are other ways to get embryonic stem cells than just using left over IVF embryos. Are you against Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer to create ESCs? SCNT uses an unfertilized egg and a DNA sample (usually a skin cell) to create an ESC line matching the patients DNA. This process shows the most promise in ESC research becase the stem cells have no chance of being rejected by the patient.

People oppose SCNT because the same process can be used for human cloning, but only if the cells are implanted in a woman. This has been unproven though, and most scientist believe that the "embryo" would not develop normally even if it survives. They use the argument that the research can be abused, so we should ban it all together.

I am for researching both adult and embryonic stem cells. I've read articles from scientist that say ESC research is needed to fully understand the potential of adult stem cells.

You would only need to precept things at this speed if your survival in an environment required this, things like flies see stuff pretty much at this speed, movies to them would just be a sideshow, because predators in it's environment require faster reflexes and preceptive sight.