No, choggie my love is correct.

As someone who hasn't lived in Texas since you were 13, you do not hold an insiders perspective and therefore should not speak as if you do.

This video exists because all of us "typical texas freedom hating right wingers" are SCREAMING by the thousands to stop these insane laws in their tracks. We're far from the only state with these types of laws on the books or attempting to weasel their way onto the books. And these laws are making it to the books not because people are so pro-life and against reproductive choice, it's because these laws are making someone with much more power a lot of MONEY.

The problem is not that your average poor stupid fuck red neck hill billy cousin fuckin po dunk texas trash is actually in favor of this shit, the problem is $$ in government. And thats a problem common to the entire GLOBE. No matter what superior state you're typing from your high horse in.

Interesting. I've got a semi-relevant story, but I get long winded so feel free to skip to the next comments if you like.

My wife (Thai) and I (American) had our first daughter this year. When she first got pregnant, one of the doc's first priorities was to get us both tested for "Thalassemia", which I had never heard of before. Apparently it is a blood disorder that affects hemoglobin production and therefore red blood cells -- if both parents carry the (rather rare) recessive gene, it can be a pretty bad deal.

It turned out that my wife is in the 1% or so of Thais that carry the gene (but she doesn't express / suffer from it, it is recessive and she has the dominant gene also). I had to get tested as well, but they said it would be incredibly unlikely that I'd be positive and I wasn't. So, our daughter has a 25% chance of being a carrier like my wife but zero chance of suffering from the effects of it.

Anyway, I was curious about the disease and asked the doc why it is a big deal here (every pregnant couple MUST get screened for it here when getting hospital/prenatal care) but I'd never even heard of it in the US. It turns out that the disease / genetic mutation arose only in places with high rates of malaria. As it happens, the genetic effect on your blood cells that the mutation has makes you more resistant to malaria -- full-on exhibitors of it (two recessive genes) are far less likely to die of malaria than people that don't have the gene. That is, assuming that you don't have the extreme variants of it that make it very unlikely to survive early childhood. Basically, if you have the disease and yet are healthy enough to survive to adulthood, you're close to malaria immune (that's overstating it, but ballpark). The malaria parasite can't survive and reproduce properly on your funky Thalassemia-affected red blood cells.

I thought that was a pretty interesting evolutionary response that must have arisen from some populations being pretty much decimated by malaria back in pre-recorded history. Current carriers like my wife are probably the descendants of lucky folks that survived a deadly outbreak in history by virtue of having a disease/mutation that is, under normal circumstances, slightly or even extremely bad in species survival / reproductive fitness terms. I thought that was kinda cool -- but I'm glad that neither my wife nor my daughter are/can be full-on expressors of the gene.

Do you mean the news where every day countries/states are legalising gay marriage? Or the (admittedly old) bit where the U.S. has a black president? Maybe it's where most civilised countries allow women the means to control their reproductive cycle?

Look, I get that there's some Bad Shit (tm) happening, and yes, you could argue that many of those 14 characteristics are being fulfilled.

But come on, you are literally invoking Godwin!

I'm not saying you shouldn't rail against the Bad Shit, but we're not fighting the Nazis. Things aren't that bad...

A child understanding how other humans are born seem like the most natural thing in the world. For the almost the entire time of the human race, except the last 100 years or so, it must've been a normal thing to understand reproduction and birth. Tragic that it has somehow become special for a kid to know it as something natural and seen by some as damaging.

It can't REALLY be eia if you're past reproductive age.. just sayin

@dirkdeagler7

You keep saying I'm being fanatic, or aggressive. Nothing in that quote could be construed as such. It was a direct response to the following quote from your previous post:

"Explain to someone who has no insurance or has a problem with medical bills or has no job or has family members fighting abroad or is getting foreclosed on....that we need to spend money to better understand hermaphroditic snails and the intricacies of their mating rituals in order to better understand evolution and reproduction to maybe one day apply that technology to genetic research or fertility programs."

Presumably you would also argue that they would not be convinced by the need to study the intricacies of sea-slug gill withdrawal reflexes. Your posts seem to suggest that someone other than scientists (some vaguely defined "greater good") should be dictating which specific research aims should be funded. You suggest we should be "asking" these people if that money should be spent.

My contention is that scientists have spent their (already meager) funds with remarkable efficiency. My example was meant to illustrate that asking lay people what science should be funded is likely to have prevented some of the most critical research of the last century from ever having taken place. They don't understand the broader impacts of the research, and thus lack the expertise necessary to evaluate its merit. Sure, someone in pain will probably balk at those sorts of studies. However, if you ask them "are you glad someone did the necessary research to develop ____insert_medical_procedure here____," then I think you'll find they're happy their forefathers spent a few pennies studying snails. The fact is the reverse argument does not hold up. We all, scientists not withstanding, are experts in basic human needs and suffering. For many, scientists that's what drove us to the work. You act as though we can not evaluate the merit of research with respect to the larger picture. I think you're wrong. We do it all the time.

Also, I'm a bit insulted by your reference to people with medical bills, or family members fighting abroad as I fall into both categories. We all have our cross to bear. I don't think I'm alone in responding "I'll be fine, spend the money on the future."

I was attempting to say that people should not be fanatic on either side of this argument, as not all scientific research is the most efficient topic or use of resources and not all research deemed "insignificant" is actually insignificant.

The fact that people reacted so strongly to ANY criticism of current research or justifications for it shows just how fanatic some people are about the need to defend any and all research.

It's the nature of a scientist or science minded people to find value and merit in almost any scientific pursuit. But in a world of limited resources and with many other problems, we have to accept that there is an opportunity cost to any and all research, no matter how important.

For some the valuation of this opportunity cost will differ.

Explain to someone who has no insurance or has a problem with medical bills or has no job or has family members fighting abroad or is getting foreclosed on....that we need to spend money to better understand hermaphroditic snails and the intricacies of their mating rituals in order to better understand evolution and reproduction to maybe one day apply that technology to genetic research or fertility programs.

Then watch them give you the look of "thats great but why do I care about that now?" and understand that they are part of the greater good too.

I'm sorry, but there are lots of bogus points in here. First of all, no one is arguing that the scope or impact of funded science should be anything less than great. The question is who should decide it. It seems the republicans want to take the awarding of scientific grants out of the hands of peer review, preferring that politicians micromanage the appropriation of research grants. Personally, I think that will lead to an end of basic science. Politicians are bound by their sponsors whom for the most part have an interest in public funding of applied rather than basic research.

This particular research is not about ecology or the environment, or some squishy bleeding heart first world problem. It's about the relative value of sexual and asexual reproduction. This particular snail can reproduce in either fashion, and it raises fundamental questions about when and why sexual reproduction would be preferred. It will likely lead to a deeper understanding of the genetic mechanisms that underlie sexual recombination, and how they relate to the success of progeny. Sounds like it's got some scope to me. The competition for grants is so stiff within science today that it's highly improbable that narrow research aims will be awarded. The fundamental question you need to ask yourself is "should basic science be funded, or should the only funding available be for applied science." My answer is an emphatic yes to basic science. It has proven its value beyond all doubt. Further, I personally feel that the applied work should be forced into the private sector as anything with a 5 year pay off will be funded naturally by the market anyway.

You also sing the praises of defense funding. I agree, many great discoveries have been funded by, say, DARPA. However, break it down by dollar spent. Because the money isn't allocated by peer review, but rather the whims of some brass, I personally don't feel it is efficiently allocated. Our impression when dealing with ONR (for example) is that they had absolutely no clue what they were interested in as a research aim, and had no clue what we were actually doing. They just thought we had some cool "high tech looking" stuff. Further, we as researchers didn't really care about their misguided scientific goals. It was sort of an unspoken understanding that we were doing cool stuff, and they had money to burn or else they wouldn't be getting anymore. All the while, the NIH is strapped with many of their institutes floating below a 10% award rate. Most of the reviewers would like to fund, say, 30-40% of the projects. Imagine if a quarter of that defense money was allocated by experts how much more efficiently it would be spent.

A right wing think tank (funded by the Kochs, naturally) recently ranked the states in order of 'freedom' and North Dakota came out on top. Reproductive rights were not factored in, unsurprisingly. I get the feeling the main factor the Kochs use to determine which state is more free is the speed in which they will bend over for multi-national corporations.

We already give women (and men) control over their reproductive habits. It's pretty apparent that a large portion of these men and women don't deserve that control, since they reproduce without any thought or consideration to their impact on the rest of society. If everyone were mature and responsible, there would be no such thing as abusive or negligent parents. Parenthood should be a privilege, not a right. As an aside, in 2010 the divorce rate in the U.S. was over 50%. If 50% of married couples aren't even mature or responsible enough to sustain a marriage, how can these people be expected to raise mature and responsible children? Hell, how many of those couples had kids before they divorced? You ask me to have faith in people but the numbers really don't give me any reason to.

As for these young men, I'm guessing they had lousy parents who never taught them to respect other people or the law. That's probably why they raped a girl, peed on her unconscious body and took pictures of it all. If they hadn't been caught, do you really think they would have regretted their actions and turned themselves in? No, they would have just continued life as usual, grown up, had kids and raised them with the same twisted values. It's a vicious cycle that exists because we have no regulation over reproduction. Instead of wasting taxpayer money trying to rehabilitate them (and very likely fail; the vast majority of sexual predators can't break their habits), why not just end the cycle right then and there? Humanity is hardly on the verge on extinction, so getting rid of the trash and cleaning up the gene pool would only help make life better for future generations.

All that said, you're right that issues like poverty, lack of education, etc, are all relevant here. But would those still be issues if everyone were raised to be contributing members of society, as opposed to worthless parasites that exist solely for the sake of existing? There are a finite number of jobs and classrooms out there. There aren't enough to accommodate every living person. That's why we need population control. If you extend yourself beyond your own means by having kids you can't afford to feed or send to school, you're just making the problem worse.

The book is filled with statistics that support the position (often to the point of information overload).

And you're right that we need to address the root of the problem but you have the wrong root. Lousy upbringings can indeed lead to criminal behaviour, but what leads to lousy upbringings?

Lack of education, unemployment, perceived social inequality all factor into it. And yes, some people are just messed up and shouldn't have kids, but I'd say they are a minority.

So instead of your frankly insane, dystopian, eugenics-based future, we could instead look at ways to make everyone better off. First step, give women control over their reproductive cycle. This has been shown time and again to be one of the keys points in raising a societies economic and social values.

To get back to the original point here, how do these young men, (who had every advantage in life, compared to 90% of the world anyway) fit into your future?

When was torture last sanctioned by the state? The dark ages? Of course violent crime was higher in the dark ages. It was pretty difficult to enforce the law back then due to the lack of cars, satellites, computers, security cameras, guns, etc, not to mention that laws varied greatly depending on which part of the land you lived in and what lords you served under. Does Pinker's book have any contemporary examples that support your position?

In any case, regardless of whether you favor punishment or rehabilitation, the real solution is to address the root of the problem: lousy upbringings. Anyone can have children, no matter how qualified they are. They can have a criminal record, a history of mental illness and be unemploymed and still have as many kids as they want. It's ridiculous and the reason why so many children grow up to be criminals. We need to have strictly enforced regulation of reproduction. Parents should have to go through a thorough testing process and meet certain requirements (like having enough money to actually support a family) before being allowed to have kids. If a woman walks into a hospital with an unlicensed pregnancy, both she and the father should be arrested and executed without trial. Legal births would be recorded in an international database, which employers and government workers would reference during any hiring, licensing or authorization process. Essentially, illegal children would have no chance of ever becoming a part of regular society, forcing them to the outskirts and slums. This would make it easier to focus raids and clear out the most prominent concentrations of criminals.

This may sound dystopian but it's really the only way to fix the root of the problem. You will never be able to make people better if you let them be raised under lousy conditions. Morality is learned, not innate. If we want everyone to follow the same rules, they need to be taught to respect them. If the parents don't, why would the children?

In a comment, the uploader said:

See complementary videos on Marine food web and Reproduction in the Ocean
Fish story - The secret life of plankton: http://ted.com/talks/the_secret_life_of_plankton.html
and
Urchin odyssey: sex among plankton / How life begins in the deep ocean: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-life-begins-in-the-deep-ocean

When he says they have a right to a mother and a father what he really means is that they MUST have a mother and father. To have a right to something is to be able to claim something. A newborn child does not have the capacity to claim anything. At best Romney's argument supports having only the mother listed. However, advances in reproductive technology allow for an egg to be fertilised by non-sperm cells meaning that a child can legitimately have two mothers in every sense of the word. In fact, a woman can technically fertilise her own egg. Furthermore, it is technically possible for a man to do the same but with a donated egg. With this egg the DNA can be extracted and replaced meaning that the child, if born through a surrogate, can have two fathers and no DNA related mother. Further furthermore, it is theoritically possible for a man to be able to carry a child to term though it would require drastic intervention. The future debates in experimental reproductive ethics is whether humans can be born to surrogate non-humans such as pigs thereby eliminating the risks and potential burdens of gestation for the mother (or father-mother).

Romney, the times they are a changing.

>> ^bareboards2:

As if. Insurance rates for male drivers under age 25 dispute that notion.

Incorrect. While one may be able to argue that attention seeking behavior contributes to this phenomenon, it would be incorrect to state it is the cause. If you would like to state that it is the sole cause of increased insurance prices, you would be required to cite your data.

In reality, the need for increased aggressive and competitive tendencies in males, particularly in those in a prime stage chronologically, is a result of the need to assure that the most physically ideal male is granted reproductive precedence in a biological capacity. This is the primary reasoning behind said insurance rates.