Your fanaticism is in not being able to see that I'm not arguing against you, nor really against your true hurdles (the guy in the video above who will never see the merit in slugs or snails regardless of your evidence). I'm arguing against the need to see the other side as a combatant and instead as a group that has a different expertise and perspective. The 2nd voice in a complex evaluation at a national or global level.

Science minded people can easily project the benefits of research and have a lot of faith in science's ability to provide exponential benefits in the future. It's because this IS the case that this is even a debate. What WE seem incapable of doing is accepting that even exponential benefits and aggregate benefits can fall prey to scope and mass.

People on the other side don't see the long term or the exponential benefits however because theyre not science minded. Their focus has likely been somewhere else like business, healthcare, politics, social issues, etc. and so they will know more about THOSE lasting impacts than science minded people (including you and I). Unless youre suggesting science minded people are more experts on these topics as well?

So when using the explicit or implicit "greater good" as a measure it can be surprising how things unfold. I say "greater good" like that because the idea that the future benefit of current research is worth current spending over immediate problems implies "the greater good of society over time" and if you disagree with that then we can discuss that some other day.

Let me assist you quickly in countering my own comments so you can see why I feel we're not on the same page. The counter to the arguments i've expressed would be that "greater good" evaluation from moment to moment is NOT the correct way to fund research. Because the value that the general population will put on immediate issues (or support through public policy/voting/opinion) will always carry more weight than solving problems in the future (the immediacy bias of humans) it can not be used as a forward thinking way of funding research.

In other words, we don't need to convince people of greater good or of researches value over other uses of resources. The reason is that the only way to properly do science research is as a ongoing project on a mass scale with inter-dependencies that are too complex for anyone but the most informed to evaluate.

Arguing dollars and cents through cost benefit analysis or some other method would ultimately work against research funding, particularly when arguing with business and fiscal spending experts that can play on immediate human need/emotion.

As an aside, i enjoy this discussion but I truly think that there is a miscommunication about what topics you and I are concerned about and what our exact stances on them are. Perhaps this is my fault for not making my stance or opinion more clear because I was not trying to chime in on the debate at large, but chime in on the way people were undertaking the debate.

I believe research funding is even more important than immediate needs and that the justification for them does not have to meet any "greater good" measures because, having studied economics in college, I'm aware of how bad our evaluation of non-concrete goods/services are (ie the evaluation of human life or environmental impacts expressed in real world terms like money).

Because I believe this, I have to accept that it is an IMPORTANT balance to have people as biased in the opposite direction around to offset my opinion and I welcome open discussion (ie without assuming they don't know what theyre talking about from the beginning) with those people because it helps me to feel that our society IS actually meeting the needs of both types of people as best it can.

What I don't do is raise my nose at them as being uninformed and incapable of understanding the issues at large because I believe they do, but with a different process all together which still has value. I also don't assume that my fact and science based arguments will always win out over arguments with immediacy and immediate human benefit (which are very difficult to put a value on).

I apologize for harping on greater good, but it was being thrown around and wielded (even if implicitly) as though it was a single edged sword when it is in fact a double edged sword when the issue is viewed with the proper scope. I also didn't feel the need to be yet another voice clamoring for science funding when the opposite side had little to no presence. Group think is dangerous and without voices to temper the enthusiasm it's easy to forget that debates have 2 sides and both typically have merit even if the other side wouldn't care to admit it.

Maher is quickly falling into the trap of many 'New Atheists' and turning towards a strong denouncement of Islam (http://www.salon.com/2013/03/30/dawkins_harris_hitchens_new_atheists_flirt_with_islamophobia/).

The end of that article is particularly telling after having read the whole thread of comments here:

"Proving that a religion — any religion — is evil, though, is just as pointless and impossible an endeavor as trying to prove that God does or doesn’t exist. Neither has been accomplished yet. And neither will."

One thing that has been hinted at here but not overtly said is that there is a dominant, violent ideology which certainly rivals if not trumps the posited "evil" Islam in terms of casualties and suffering. Who builds the drones and the bombs and the fighter jets that rain fire from the skies? Who manufactures the small arms and ammunition that fuel countless civil wars across the globe? For me the answer is clear: oligarchical, capitalist states. Let's put them (and by them, I mean complicitly us) under the microscope for their acts instead of undertaking the Sisyphean task of proving that one religion is more evil than another.

Similar issue in Australia, only the single entity that owned every copper cable in the country (was post master general, then renamed to telecom, then sold off privately as Telstra), owns all of the major TV rights for cable shows (discovery, nat geo etc...), still owns all of the copper lines, and the telephone exchanges, and the pits/ducts....

They have a wholesale side of the company where they are forced by law to allow other service providers access to the infrastructure to sell services on via unbundled local loop (ULL) or line sharing services (LSS).

LSS services are basically telstra renting out everything to the service provider at cost, and a small premium. So they take all the profits, and make it neigh impossible for anyone else to compete with other providers.

ULL services are telstra giving access to just the copper pairs, service providers come in with their own equipment in the headend. The other providers still must pay rent, and line rental fees to telstra.

Imagine then, how these other companies can compete at a retail service level, against the company that owns all the lines?

They can set their prices as high as the competition regulator will allow them (which in a vast majority of the access undertaking costs, is FAR above what it actually costs telstra themselves), and then sell those same services to its retail arm for less than they charge their competition....they can price match and reap way more profits, or undercut them and drive the competition out of the market!!

Competition came in the 90's in the form of an HFC rollout by Optus, but every street Optus went down with HFC, Telstra followed them, the very next week, making their rollout far less lucrative (ie. not commercially viable).

The practice was ruled anti-competitve and telstra got fined heavily for it. Doesnt matter, it stopped anyone else from wanting to roll out an HFC network ever since.

Recently it has come to a head, Telstra have been forced to vertically seperate their wholesale and retail arms, the prices they set have been capped lower on the wholesale side, they cant over-quote competitors for access over what they provide their own retail arm....but thats not enough.

Noone can run out fibre, cause telstra own all the pits and pipes.

So...the government has stepped in, in the past 4 years or so, created a government owned company called NBNco (National Broadband Network Company), to buy up all the copper lines, rip them out, and roll out fibre to 93% of homes using GPON FTTH technology.

The opposition (who will likely win the coming election) wants to tear this apart. The very same people who set up the rules and regulations and sold off telstra into private hands, and made this mess in the first place, wants to go back on relying on private industry to upgrade this - a critical service infrastructure - which has already shown to be a COMPLETE failure in the past.

I hope that whoever wins, this NBN stays....wholesale competition has never ever worked for national infrastructure. Never, in any country.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/magazine/20pacemaker-t.html?pagewanted=all

One October afternoon three years ago while I was visiting my parents, my mother made a request I dreaded and longed to fulfill. She had just poured me a cup of Earl Grey from her Japanese iron teapot, shaped like a little pumpkin; outside, two cardinals splashed in the birdbath in the weak Connecticut sunlight. Her white hair was gathered at the nape of her neck, and her voice was low. “Please help me get Jeff’s pacemaker turned off,” she said, using my father’s first name. I nodded, and my heart knocked.
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Upstairs, my 85-year-old father, Jeffrey, a retired Wesleyan University professor who suffered from dementia, lay napping in what was once their shared bedroom. Sewn into a hump of skin and muscle below his right clavicle was the pacemaker that helped his heart outlive his brain. The size of a pocket watch, it had kept his heart beating rhythmically for nearly five years. Its battery was expected to last five more.

After tea, I knew, my mother would help him from his narrow bed with its mattress encased in waterproof plastic. She would take him to the toilet, change his diaper and lead him tottering to the couch, where he would sit mutely for hours, pretending to read Joyce Carol Oates, the book falling in his lap as he stared out the window.

I don’t like describing what dementia did to my father — and indirectly to my mother — without telling you first that my parents loved each other, and I loved them. That my mother, Valerie, could stain a deck and sew an evening dress from a photo in Vogue and thought of my father as her best friend. That my father had never given up easily on anything.

Born in South Africa, he lost his left arm in World War II, but built floor-to-ceiling bookcases for our living room; earned a Ph.D. from Oxford; coached rugby; and with my two brothers as crew, sailed his beloved Rhodes 19 on Long Island Sound. When I was a child, he woke me, chortling, with his gloss on a verse from “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam”: “Awake, my little one! Before life’s liquor in its cup be dry!” At bedtime he tucked me in, quoting “Hamlet” : “May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!”

Now I would look at him and think of Anton Chekhov, who died of tuberculosis in 1904. “Whenever there is someone in a family who has long been ill, and hopelessly ill,” he wrote, “there come painful moments when all timidly, secretly, at the bottom of their hearts long for his death.” A century later, my mother and I had come to long for the machine in my father’s chest to fail.

Until 2001, my two brothers and I — all living in California — assumed that our parents would enjoy long, robust old ages capped by some brief, undefined final illness. Thanks to their own healthful habits and a panoply of medical advances — vaccines, antibiotics, airport defibrillators, 911 networks and the like — they weren’t likely to die prematurely of the pneumonias, influenzas and heart attacks that decimated previous generations. They walked every day. My mother practiced yoga. My father was writing a history of his birthplace, a small South African town.

In short, they were seemingly among the lucky ones for whom the American medical system, despite its fragmentation, inequity and waste, works quite well. Medicare and supplemental insurance paid for their specialists and their trusted Middletown internist, the lean, bespectacled Robert Fales, who, like them, was skeptical of medical overdoing. “I bonded with your parents, and you don’t bond with everybody,” he once told me. “It’s easier to understand someone if they just tell it like it is from their heart and their soul.”

They were also stoics and religious agnostics. They signed living wills and durable power-of-attorney documents for health care. My mother, who watched friends die slowly of cancer, had an underlined copy of the Hemlock Society’s “Final Exit” in her bookcase. Even so, I watched them lose control of their lives to a set of perverse financial incentives — for cardiologists, hospitals and especially the manufacturers of advanced medical devices — skewed to promote maximum treatment. At a point hard to precisely define, they stopped being beneficiaries of the war on sudden death and became its victims.

Things took their first unexpected turn on Nov. 13, 2001, when my father — then 79, pacemakerless and seemingly healthy — collapsed on my parents’ kitchen floor in Middletown, making burbling sounds. He had suffered a stroke.

He came home six weeks later permanently incapable of completing a sentence. But as I’ve said, he didn’t give up easily, and he doggedly learned again how to fasten his belt; to peck out sentences on his computer; to walk alone, one foot dragging, to the university pool for water aerobics. He never again put on a shirt without help or looked at the book he had been writing. One day he haltingly told my mother, “I don’t know who I am anymore.”

His stroke devastated two lives. The day before, my mother was an upper-middle-class housewife who practiced calligraphy in her spare time. Afterward, she was one of tens of millions of people in America, most of them women, who help care for an older family member.

Their numbers grow each day. Thanks to advanced medical technologies, elderly people now survive repeated health crises that once killed them, and so the “oldest old” have become the nation’s most rapidly growing age group. Nearly a third of Americans over 85 have dementia (a condition whose prevalence rises in direct relationship to longevity). Half need help with at least one practical, life-sustaining activity, like getting dressed or making breakfast. Even though a capable woman was hired to give my dad showers, my 77-year-old mother found herself on duty more than 80 hours a week. Her blood pressure rose and her weight fell. On a routine visit to Dr. Fales, she burst into tears. She was put on sleeping pills and antidepressants.

My father said he came to believe that she would have been better off if he had died. “She’d have weeped the weep of a widow,” he told me in his garbled, poststroke speech, on a walk we took together in the fall of 2002. “And then she would have been all right.” It was hard to tell which of them was suffering more.

As we shuffled through the fallen leaves that day, I thought of my father’s father, Ernest Butler. He was 79 when he died in 1965, before pacemakers, implanted cardiac defibrillators, stents and replacement heart valves routinely staved off death among the very old. After completing some long-unfinished chairs, he cleaned his woodshop, had a heart attack and died two days later in a plain hospital bed. As I held my dad’s soft, mottled hand, I vainly wished him a similar merciful death.

A few days before Christmas that year, after a vigorous session of water exercises, my father developed a painful inguinal (intestinal) hernia. My mother took him to Fales, who sent them to a local surgeon, who sent them to a cardiologist for a preoperative clearance. After an electrocardiogram recorded my father’s slow heartbeat — a longstanding and symptomless condition not uncommon in the very old — the cardiologist, John Rogan, refused to clear my dad for surgery unless he received a pacemaker.

Without the device, Dr. Rogan told me later, my father could have died from cardiac arrest during surgery or perhaps within a few months. It was the second time Rogan had seen my father. The first time, about a year before, he recommended the device for the same slow heartbeat. That time, my then-competent and prestroke father expressed extreme reluctance, on the advice of Fales, who considered it overtreatment.

My father’s medical conservatism, I have since learned, is not unusual. According to an analysis by the Dartmouth Atlas medical-research group, patients are far more likely than their doctors to reject aggressive treatments when fully informed of pros, cons and alternatives — information, one study suggests, that nearly half of patients say they don’t get. And although many doctors assume that people want to extend their lives, many do not. In a 1997 study in The Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 30 percent of seriously ill people surveyed in a hospital said they would “rather die” than live permanently in a nursing home. In a 2008 study in The Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 28 percent of patients with advanced heart failure said they would trade one day of excellent health for another two years in their current state.

When Rogan suggested the pacemaker for the second time, my father was too stroke-damaged to discuss, and perhaps even to weigh, his trade­offs. The decision fell to my mother — anxious to relieve my father’s pain, exhausted with caregiving, deferential to doctors and no expert on high-tech medicine. She said yes. One of the most important medical decisions of my father’s life was over in minutes. Dr. Fales was notified by fax.

Fales loved my parents, knew their suffering close at hand, continued to oppose a pacemaker and wasn’t alarmed by death. If he had had the chance to sit down with my parents, he could have explained that the pacemaker’s battery would last 10 years and asked whether my father wanted to live to be 89 in his nearly mute and dependent state. He could have discussed the option of using a temporary external pacemaker that, I later learned, could have seen my dad safely through surgery. But my mother never consulted Fales. And the system would have effectively penalized him if she had. Medicare would have paid him a standard office-visit rate of $54 for what would undoubtedly have been a long meeting — and nothing for phone calls to work out a plan with Rogan and the surgeon.

Medicare has made minor improvements since then, and in the House version of the health care reform bill debated last year, much better payments for such conversations were included. But after the provision was distorted as reimbursement for “death panels,” it was dropped. In my father’s case, there was only a brief informed-consent process, covering the boilerplate risks of minor surgery, handled by the general surgeon.

I believe that my father’s doctors did their best within a compartmentalized and time-pressured medical system. But in the absence of any other guiding hand, there is no doubt that economics helped shape the wider context in which doctors made decisions. Had we been at the Mayo Clinic — where doctors are salaried, medical records are electronically organized and care is coordinated by a single doctor — things might have turned out differently. But Middletown is part of the fee-for-service medical economy. Doctors peddle their wares on a piecework basis; communication among them is haphazard; thinking is often short term; nobody makes money when medical interventions are declined; and nobody is in charge except the marketplace.

And so on Jan. 2, 2003, at Middlesex Hospital, the surgeon implanted my father’s pacemaker using local anesthetic. Medicare paid him $461 and the hospital a flat fee of about $12,000, of which an estimated $7,500 went to St. Jude Medical, the maker of the device. The hernia was fixed a few days later.

It was a case study in what primary-care doctors have long bemoaned: that Medicare rewards doctors far better for doing procedures than for assessing whether they should be done at all. The incentives for overtreatment continue, said Dr. Ted Epperly, the board chairman of the American Academy of Family Physicians, because those who profit from them — specialists, hospitals, drug companies and the medical-device manufacturers — spend money lobbying Congress and the public to keep it that way.

Last year, doctors, hospitals, drug companies, medical-equipment manufacturers and other medical professionals spent $545 million on lobbying, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. This may help explain why researchers estimate that 20 to 30 percent of Medicare’s $510 billion budget goes for unnecessary tests and treatment. Why cost-containment received short shrift in health care reform. Why physicians like Fales net an average of $173,000 a year, while noninvasive cardiologists like Rogan net about $419,000.

The system rewarded nobody for saying “no” or even “wait” — not even my frugal, intelligent, Consumer-Reports-reading mother. Medicare and supplemental insurance covered almost every penny of my father’s pacemaker. My mother was given more government-mandated consumer information when she bought a new Camry a year later.

And so my father’s electronically managed heart — now requiring frequent monitoring, paid by Medicare — became part of the $24 billion worldwide cardiac-device industry and an indirect subsidizer of the fiscal health of American hospitals. The profit margins that manufacturers earn on cardiac devices is close to 30 percent. Cardiac procedures and diagnostics generate about 20 percent of hospital revenues and 30 percent of profits.

Shortly after New Year’s 2003, my mother belatedly called and told me about the operations, which went off without a hitch. She didn’t call earlier, she said, because she didn’t want to worry me. My heart sank, but I said nothing. It is one thing to silently hope that your beloved father’s heart might fail. It is another to actively abet his death.

The pacemaker bought my parents two years of limbo, two of purgatory and two of hell. At first they soldiered on, with my father no better and no worse. My mother reread Jon Kabat-Zinn’s “Full Catastrophe Living,” bought a self-help book on patience and rose each morning to meditate.

In 2005, the age-related degeneration that had slowed my father’s heart attacked his eyes, lungs, bladder and bowels. Clots as narrow as a single human hair lodged in tiny blood vessels in his brain, killing clusters of neurons by depriving them of oxygen. Long partly deaf, he began losing his sight to wet macular degeneration, requiring ocular injections that cost nearly $2,000 each. A few months later, he forgot his way home from the university pool. He grew incontinent. He was collapsing physically, like an ancient, shored-up house.

In the summer of 2006, he fell in the driveway and suffered a brain hemorrhage. Not long afterward, he spent a full weekend compulsively brushing and rebrushing his teeth. “The Jeff I married . . . is no longer the same person,” my mother wrote in the journal a social worker had suggested she keep. “My life is in ruins. This is horrible, and I have lasted for five years.” His pacemaker kept on ticking.

When bioethicists debate life-extending technologies, the effects on people like my mother rarely enter the calculus. But a 2007 Ohio State University study of the DNA of family caregivers of people with Alzheimer’s disease showed that the ends of their chromosomes, called telomeres, had degraded enough to reflect a four-to-eight-year shortening of lifespan. By that reckoning, every year that the pacemaker gave my irreparably damaged father took from my then-vigorous mother an equal year.

When my mother was upset, she meditated or cleaned house. When I was upset, I Googled. In 2006, I discovered that pacemakers could be deactivated without surgery. Nurses, doctors and even device salesmen had done so, usually at deathbeds. A white ceramic device, like a TV remote and shaped like the wands that children use to blow bubbles, could be placed around the hump on my father’s chest. Press a few buttons and the electrical pulses that ran down the leads to his heart would slow until they were no longer effective. My father’s heart, I learned, would probably not stop. It would just return to its old, slow rhythm. If he was lucky, he might suffer cardiac arrest and die within weeks, perhaps in his sleep. If he was unlucky, he might linger painfully for months while his lagging heart failed to suffuse his vital organs with sufficient oxygenated blood.

If we did nothing, his pacemaker would not stop for years. Like the tireless charmed brooms in Disney’s “Fantasia,” it would prompt my father’s heart to beat after he became too demented to speak, sit up or eat. It would keep his heart pulsing after he drew his last breath. If he was buried, it would send signals to his dead heart in the coffin. If he was cremated, it would have to be cut from his chest first, to prevent it from exploding and damaging the walls or hurting an attendant.

On the Internet, I discovered that the pacemaker — somewhat like the ventilator, defibrillator and feeding tube — was first an exotic, stopgap device, used to carry a handful of patients through a brief medical crisis. Then it morphed into a battery-powered, implantable and routine treatment. When Medicare approved the pacemaker for reimbursement in 1966, the market exploded. Today pacemakers are implanted annually in more than 400,000 Americans, about 80 percent of whom are over 65. According to calculations by the Dartmouth Atlas research group using Medicare data, nearly a fifth of new recipients who receive pacemakers annually — 76,000 — are over 80. The typical patient with a cardiac device today is an elderly person suffering from at least one other severe chronic illness.

Over the years, as technology has improved, the battery life of these devices lengthened. The list of heart conditions for which they are recommended has grown. In 1984, the treatment guidelines from the American College of Cardiology declared that pacemakers were strongly recommended as “indicated” or mildly approved as “reasonable” for 56 heart conditions and “not indicated” for 31 more. By 2008, the list for which they were strongly or mildly recommended expanded to 88, with most of the increase in the lukewarm “reasonable” category.

The research backing the expansion of diagnoses was weak. Over all, only 5 percent of the positive recommendations were supported by research from multiple double-blind randomized studies, the gold standard of evidence-based medicine. And 58 percent were based on no studies at all, only a “consensus of expert opinion.” Of the 17 cardiologists who wrote the 2008 guidelines, 11 received financing from cardiac-device makers or worked at institutions receiving it. Seven, due to the extent of their financial connections, were recused from voting on the guidelines they helped write.

This pattern — a paucity of scientific support and a plethora of industry connections — holds across almost all cardiac treatments, according to the cardiologist Pierluigi Tricoci of Duke University’s Clinical Research Institute. Last year in The Journal of the American Medical Association, Tricoci and his co-authors wrote that only 11 percent of 2,700 widely used cardiac-treatment guidelines were based on that gold standard. Most were based only on expert opinion.

Experts are as vulnerable to conflicts of interest as researchers are, the authors warned, because “expert clinicians are also those who are likely to receive honoraria, speakers bureau [fees], consulting fees or research support from industry.” They called the current cardiac-research agenda “strongly influenced by industry’s natural desire to introduce new products.”

Perhaps it’s no surprise that I also discovered others puzzling over cardiologists who recommended pacemakers for relatives with advanced dementia. “78-year-old mother-in-law has dementia; severe short-term memory issues,” read an Internet post by “soninlaw” on Elderhope.com, a caregivers’ site, in 2007. “On a routine trip to her cardiologist, doctor decides she needs a pacemaker. . . . Anyone have a similar encounter?”

By the summer of 2007, my dad had forgotten the purpose of a dinner napkin and had to be coached to remove his slippers before he tried to put on his shoes. After a lifetime of promoting my father’s health, my mother reversed course. On a routine visit, she asked Rogan to deactivate the pacemaker. “It was hard,” she later told me. “I was doing for Jeff what I would have wanted Jeff to do for me.” Rogan soon made it clear he was morally opposed. “It would have been like putting a pillow over your father’s head,” he later told me.

Not long afterward, my mother declined additional medical tests and refused to put my father on a new anti-dementia drug and a blood thinner with troublesome side effects. “I take responsibility for whatever,” she wrote in her journal that summer. “Enough of all this overkill! It’s killing me! Talk about quality of life — what about mine?”

Then came the autumn day when she asked for my help, and I said yes. I told myself that we were simply trying to undo a terrible medical mistake. I reminded myself that my dad had rejected a pacemaker when his faculties were intact. I imagined, as a bioethicist had suggested, having a 15-minute conversation with my independent, predementia father in which I saw him shaking his head in horror over any further extension of what was not a “life,” but a prolonged and attenuated dying. None of it helped. I knew that once he died, I would dream of him and miss his mute, loving smiles. I wanted to melt into the arms of the father I once had and ask him to handle this. Instead, I felt as if I were signing on as his executioner and that I had no choice.

Over the next five months, my mother and I learned many things. We were told, by the Hemlock Society’s successor, Compassion and Choices, that as my father’s medical proxy, my mother had the legal right to ask for the withdrawal of any treatment and that the pacemaker was, in theory at least, a form of medical treatment. We learned that although my father’s living will requested no life support if he were comatose or dying, it said nothing about dementia and did not define a pacemaker as life support. We learned that if we called 911, emergency medical technicians would not honor my father’s do-not-resuscitate order unless he wore a state-issued orange hospital bracelet. We also learned that no cardiology association had given its members clear guidance on when, or whether, deactivating pacemakers was ethical.

(Last month that changed. The Heart Rhythm Society and the American Heart Association issued guidelines declaring that patients or their legal surrogates have the moral and legal right to request the withdrawal of any medical treatment, including an implanted cardiac device. It said that deactivating a pacemaker was neither euthanasia nor assisted suicide, and that a doctor could not be compelled to do so in violation of his moral values. In such cases, it continued, doctors “cannot abandon the patient but should involve a colleague who is willing to carry out the procedure.” This came, of course, too late for us.)

In the spring of 2008, things got even worse. My father took to roaring like a lion at his caregivers. At home in California, I searched the Internet for a sympathetic cardiologist and a caregiver to put my Dad to bed at night. My frayed mother began to shout at him, and their nighttime scenes were heartbreaking and frightening. An Alzheimer’s Association support-group leader suggested that my brothers and I fly out together and institutionalize my father. This leader did not know my mother’s formidable will and had never heard her speak about her wedding vows or her love.

Meanwhile my father drifted into what nurses call “the dwindles”: not sick enough to qualify for hospice care, but sick enough to never get better. He fell repeatedly at night and my mother could not pick him up. Finally, he was weak enough to qualify for palliative care, and a team of nurses and social workers visited the house. His chest grew wheezy. My mother did not request antibiotics. In mid-April 2008, he was taken by ambulance to Middlesex Hospital’s hospice wing, suffering from pneumonia.

Pneumonia was once called “the old man’s friend” for its promise of an easy death. That’s not what I saw when I flew in. On morphine, unreachable, his eyes shut, my beloved father was breathing as hard and regularly as a machine.

My mother sat holding his hand, weeping and begging for forgiveness for her impatience. She sat by him in agony. She beseeched his doctors and nurses to increase his morphine dose and to turn off the pacemaker. It was a weekend, and the doctor on call at Rogan’s cardiology practice refused authorization, saying that my father “might die immediately.” And so came five days of hard labor. My mother and I stayed by him in shifts, while his breathing became increasingly ragged and his feet slowly started to turn blue. I began drafting an appeal to the hospital ethics committee. My brothers flew in.

On a Tuesday afternoon, with my mother at his side, my father stopped breathing. A hospice nurse hung a blue light on the outside of his hospital door. Inside his chest, his pacemaker was still quietly pulsing.

After his memorial service in the Wesleyan University chapel, I carried a box from the crematory into the woods of an old convent where he and I often walked. It was late April, overcast and cold. By the side of a stream, I opened the box, scooped out a handful of ashes and threw them into the swirling water. There were some curious spiraled metal wires, perhaps the leads of his pacemaker, mixed with the white dust and pieces of bone.

A year later, I took my mother to meet a heart surgeon in a windowless treatment room at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. She was 84, with two leaking heart valves. Her cardiologist had recommended open-heart surgery, and I was hoping to find a less invasive approach. When the surgeon asked us why we were there, my mother said, “To ask questions.” She was no longer a trusting and deferential patient. Like me, she no longer saw doctors — perhaps with the exception of Fales — as healers or her fiduciaries. They were now skilled technicians with their own agendas. But I couldn’t help feeling that something precious — our old faith in a doctor’s calling, perhaps, or in a healing that is more than a financial transaction or a reflexive fixing of broken parts — had been lost.

The surgeon was forthright: without open-heart surgery, there was a 50-50 chance my mother would die within two years. If she survived the operation, she would probably live to be 90. And the risks? He shrugged. Months of recovery. A 5 percent chance of stroke. Some possibility, he acknowledged at my prompting, of postoperative cognitive decline. (More than half of heart-bypass patients suffer at least a 20 percent reduction in mental function.) My mother lifted her trouser leg to reveal an anklet of orange plastic: her do-not-resuscitate bracelet. The doctor recoiled. No, he would not operate with that bracelet in place. It would not be fair to his team. She would be revived if she collapsed. “If I have a stroke,” my mother said, nearly in tears, “I want you to let me go.” What about a minor stroke, he said — a little weakness on one side?

I kept my mouth shut. I was there to get her the information she needed and to support whatever decision she made. If she emerged from surgery intellectually damaged, I would bring her to a nursing home in California and try to care for her the way she had cared for my father at such cost to her own health. The thought terrified me.

The doctor sent her up a floor for an echocardiogram. A half-hour later, my mother came back to the waiting room and put on her black coat. “No,” she said brightly, with the clarity of purpose she had shown when she asked me to have the pacemaker deactivated. “I will not do it.”

She spent the spring and summer arranging house repairs, thinning out my father’s bookcases and throwing out the files he collected so lovingly for the book he never finished writing. She told someone that she didn’t want to leave a mess for her kids. Her chest pain worsened, and her breathlessness grew severe. “I’m aching to garden,” she wrote in her journal. “But so it goes. ACCEPT ACCEPT ACCEPT.”

Last August, she had a heart attack and returned home under hospice care. One evening a month later, another heart attack. One of my brothers followed her ambulance to the hospice wing where we had sat for days by my father’s bed. The next morning, she took off her silver earrings and told the nurses she wanted to stop eating and drinking, that she wanted to die and never go home. Death came to her an hour later, while my brother was on the phone to me in California — almost as mercifully as it had come to my paternal grandfather. She was continent and lucid to her end.

A week later, at the same crematory near Long Island Sound, my brothers and I watched through a plate-glass window as a cardboard box containing her body, dressed in a scarlet silk ao dai she had sewn herself, slid into the flames. The next day, the undertaker delivered a plastic box to the house where, for 45 of their 61 years together, my parents had loved and looked after each other, humanly and imperfectly. There were no bits of metal mixed with the fine white powder and the small pieces of her bones.

Katy Butler lives in Mill Valley, Calif., and teaches memoir writing at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur.

>> ^lurgee:

Adam was the first man, right? Eve was the first woman, correct? They had two kids, Cain, and the Undertaker...I mean Abel. The Bible says that Cain and Abel took wives. My Question: Where did these wives come from? Who were their parents?
In reply to this comment by shinyblurry:
>> ^lurgee:
Jesus believed the end of the world was coming in HIS lifetime (Mark 9.1). "The historical Jesus" is a Jesus who rests strictly on the evidence. The dominant view among scholars: Jesus was a Jewish Apocalypticist. The end was coming now! (Mark 14.62)

I have to say that I disagree with your exegesis. Firstly, Jesus didn't expect anything to be happening within His human lifetime:
Mark 8:31
And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again
As you can see, He had just said this in the previous chapter. Does it then seem logical to think that Jesus believed the Kingdom of God was coming in His lifetime? Clearly, He expected it to come at some point after His death.
Now, let's examine Mark 9:1
And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.
What is He saying here? That those standing directly in His presence would not die before the Kingdom of God came with power . Clearly, then, the Kingdom of God must come within the lifetime of those individuals, otherwise Jesus was wrong. So, how will we recognize when that happens? Let's ask Jesus:
Luke 17:20-21
And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:
Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.
Here Jesus makes a curious statement. He says that when the Kingdom of God comes, it will not be external to us, it will be internal. It will be within us. What could this possibly mean?
Let's see if scripture draws any parallels..
1 Corinthians 3:16
Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you?
We also see that God's Spirit lives within us. Is there any connection between the Holy Spirit and the Kingdom of God?
Matthew 12:28
But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you.
From this we can see that the indwelling and power of the Holy Spirit is directly associated with the coming of the Kingdom of God. Since the Holy Spirit lives within us, we know that when the Holy Spirit comes to dwell within us, with power (to cast out devils for instance), the Kingdom of God has come.
Therefore, when the Holy Spirit comes, the Kingdom of God is here. When did the Holy Spirit come? On Pentecost:
Acts 2:1-4
And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance
After Pentecost, the disciples were transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit from ignorant and fearful to learned and courageous. They preached the gospel boldly throughout the world whereas before, they had cowardly abandoned Christ during his final hours.
Pentecost meets all of the requirements of Mark 9:1, and when we interpret what the Kingdom of God actually is, we see it fits it perfectly.
In regards to Mark 14:62 and Luke 22:69, here is a more complete rendering:
Matthew 26:64
Jesus said to him, "You have said it yourself; nevertheless I tell you, hereafter you will see THE SON OF MAN SITTING AT THE RIGHT HAND OF POWER, and COMING ON THE CLOUDS OF HEAVEN."
The author of the video is of course utterly disingenuous for leaving out this verse and drawing a false dichotomy between Mark 14:62 and Luke 22:69. Clearly, Jesus had said both things in the same breath, but Mark and Luke each only recorded one half of it. Matthew records both halves, which, if you're paying attention, completely undermines his ridiculous assertion that Luke altered Marks text to compensate for a failed prophecy. What this verse shows is that Jesus was speaking of some point around His second coming. Everyone will see Him because everyone will be resurrected to stand before Him. He was not saying they would see Him during their lifetimes. If He was, He wouldn't have said this two chapters previous:
Matthew 24:36
But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only
He plainly said that He did not know when that day would come. Therefore, He could not definitively tell the jews they would see Him in His lifetime.
The problem with relying on atheists to interpret the bible is that A. they are only looking to discredit the bible and B. the bible is a spiritual book and can only be properly interpreted by someone who has the Holy Spirit. They can only give you a superficial exegesis that relies on appearances, and always ignores context. They are simply looking for "gotchya" verses with no awareness of the meaning of what they're talking about.



Cains wife was most likely a sister, niece or grandniece. Scripture doesn't say how old Cain was when he killed Abel. Considering their long lifetimes, he might have been hundreds of years old, which meant there were already quite a few people on Earth at that time.

Adam was the first man, right? Eve was the first woman, correct? They had two kids, Cain, and the Undertaker...I mean Abel. The Bible says that Cain and Abel took wives. My Question: Where did these wives come from? Who were their parents?
In reply to this comment by shinyblurry:
>> ^lurgee:

Jesus believed the end of the world was coming in HIS lifetime (Mark 9.1). "The historical Jesus" is a Jesus who rests strictly on the evidence. The dominant view among scholars: Jesus was a Jewish Apocalypticist. The end was coming now! (Mark 14.62)


I have to say that I disagree with your exegesis. Firstly, Jesus didn't expect anything to be happening within His human lifetime:

Mark 8:31

And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again

As you can see, He had just said this in the previous chapter. Does it then seem logical to think that Jesus believed the Kingdom of God was coming in His lifetime? Clearly, He expected it to come at some point after His death.

Now, let's examine Mark 9:1

And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.

What is He saying here? That those standing directly in His presence would not die before the Kingdom of God came with *power*. Clearly, then, the Kingdom of God must come within the lifetime of those individuals, otherwise Jesus was wrong. So, how will we recognize when that happens? Let's ask Jesus:

Luke 17:20-21

And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:

Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

Here Jesus makes a curious statement. He says that when the Kingdom of God comes, it will not be external to us, it will be internal. It will be within us. What could this possibly mean?

Let's see if scripture draws any parallels..

1 Corinthians 3:16

Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you?

We also see that God's Spirit lives within us. Is there any connection between the Holy Spirit and the Kingdom of God?

Matthew 12:28

But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you.

From this we can see that the indwelling and power of the Holy Spirit is directly associated with the coming of the Kingdom of God. Since the Holy Spirit lives within us, we know that when the Holy Spirit comes to dwell within us, with power (to cast out devils for instance), the Kingdom of God has come.

Therefore, when the Holy Spirit comes, the Kingdom of God is here. When did the Holy Spirit come? On Pentecost:

Acts 2:1-4

And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance

After Pentecost, the disciples were transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit from ignorant and fearful to learned and courageous. They preached the gospel boldly throughout the world whereas before, they had cowardly abandoned Christ during his final hours.

Pentecost meets all of the requirements of Mark 9:1, and when we interpret what the Kingdom of God actually is, we see it fits it perfectly.

In regards to Mark 14:62 and Luke 22:69, here is a more complete rendering:

Matthew 26:64

Jesus said to him, "You have said it yourself; nevertheless I tell you, hereafter you will see THE SON OF MAN SITTING AT THE RIGHT HAND OF POWER, and COMING ON THE CLOUDS OF HEAVEN."

The author of the video is of course utterly disingenuous for leaving out this verse and drawing a false dichotomy between Mark 14:62 and Luke 22:69. Clearly, Jesus had said both things in the same breath, but Mark and Luke each only recorded one half of it. Matthew records both halves, which, if you're paying attention, completely undermines his ridiculous assertion that Luke altered Marks text to compensate for a failed prophecy. What this verse shows is that Jesus was speaking of some point around His second coming. Everyone will see Him because everyone will be resurrected to stand before Him. He was not saying they would see Him during their lifetimes. If He was, He wouldn't have said this two chapters previous:

Matthew 24:36

But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only

He plainly said that He did not know when that day would come. Therefore, He could not definitively tell the jews they would see Him in His lifetime.

The problem with relying on atheists to interpret the bible is that A. they are only looking to discredit the bible and B. the bible is a spiritual book and can only be properly interpreted by someone who has the Holy Spirit. They can only give you a superficial exegesis that relies on appearances, and always ignores context. They are simply looking for "gotchya" verses with no awareness of the meaning of what they're talking about.

>> ^kceaton1:

Neil is asserting the old question of whether something of sufficient intelligence beyond ours; and not just intelligence it will also cover anything that intelligence has manifested for us: languages (although as others have pointed out languages are special and in fact may be a foundational aspect of intelligence; then we create other forms of language over the instinctive setup, like math, or coding), culture, politics, civilization, and I believe those basically cover almost everything really as anything will be a group, sub-group, or "ultra"-sub-group of one of these parent categories.
The 1% that he spoke of was of course the exact genes and DNA that allow humans to complete all of their FULL "sentience". That was the key thing. We ALREADY know of animals in the past that most likely had baseline IQs of 150 or so; I'm not kidding (they were called the Boskops and unfortunately they went extinct; they lived in 'Southern' Africa, I know it was Africa just not sure it was the southern end). They most likely did not have one thing we have, making their extremely high intelligence very limited in its usefulness: they were missing LANGUAGE. Language IS --THE-- foundational stone for civilization, increasing potential, building, constructing, or making anything on the LARGE scale--for all of these you need cooperation and for that you need understanding and for THAT you need language. Language is so simple, but it is letting me right now explain to you some very straight forward ideas and a few abstract ones and it's the ability that our language and intelligence can convey these abstract notions to one and another that makes our brains SO stupendous!
Unfortunately for the Boskops they came into being at a very bad time in history. They had VERY low numbers when whatever nearly wiped out the human species hit the planet also hit them, but it decimated them into extinction. Too bad as they would have been our closest kin to having another "kind" to talk with, if we could find a way to communicate past the barrier that we surpass so easily with language and then as we get older we use different advanced forms of "language" to explain abstract things: art, math, music, etc... I think the 1% in intelligence and the barrier we may come across with other alien species is much like this scenario here. It's nice and hopeful to have faith that we WILL persevere and always be able to understand and to be needed (not to be the ants on the sidewalk...). BUT, if their biological and perhaps technological changes make us so inferior that only their babies seem to get along with us, we may have a problem. We can hope due to their intellect that they will realize that they may be able to "raise us" to their level, as we may be able to do as well--which I will say below in the next paragraph. But, we will never know until we start meeting these alien races. It is also VITAL to remember that these races will be ALIEN in EVERY sense of that word. Their genetics, their physiology, how they reproduce, not to mention their culture and language... When we meet an alien race it will be an undertaking for BOTH of our sides; not to mention the how our biosphere and their related (assuming we meet them with their spacesuits, we will most likely be the lucky ones; unless they have technology to deal with every conceivable threat--then we are the ones in trouble, unless they thought of that too) "brought-along" biosphere will interact with each other and what will happen. It'll be DAMNED interesting whether we meet in peace, trivial lifeforms with a chance of "breakthrough", and of course the resource/planet-builders or "war".
(BTW, there are some extremely good documentaries about alien biology; problems we'd have with their biology coming in contact with us (and us with them), technology differences, etc... I'll post it in this thread if I can find it and the name (hopefully I 'll be able to see if it's available for viewing pleasure somewhere or atleast Netflix if you've got it.)
1% is a bit of a cop-out... As the situation is a bit more complicated than that; especially nowadays. Soon we will begin to have the option to enhance ourselves via bio-genetics and also through technology--later through nano-technology (that is were the real fun happens; well atleast a good portion of it). To be honest we could quite literally in the far-off future take the 1% of the genetic structure that makes the aliens "super-smart" and then replicate that part directly into ourselves. We can also add computers to our brain and change our biology to do an endless amount of things--things that would sound like you just wrote a new Sci-Fi novel, but you didn't. You could also later install an sentient A.I.: merge with it, with you in control--these A.I. units would be made to have all sorts of personalities and perhaps traits, like being good at math, art, and likes to write poetry. It could have a pre-stored vault of knowledge allowing you to gain a HUGE mass of information quickly. Then you have its sentient core that is fabricated to get along with your psychology--they could be designed to feel a sense of extreme euphoria to join with and allow someone to merge with them so that there isn't any real chance of problems, because you've designed them to WANT this more than anything in THEIR lives--it would be a win-win. Suddenly you would be able to multi-task think in two frames (maybe more if you have "cloned computer cores of your A.I.") of mind with almost all of humanity's knowledge base at your fingertips and if that nanotechnology surgery went through then you had ALL of your neurons and structures rebuilt and replaced with whatever is the fastest (probably either photon or quantum based). Then, now, you are thinking almost as fast as the speed of light, we'll go conservative at 80%.
So now this once human that has been highly modified most likely from birth, perhaps even before that... We have something that the aliens might greet and realize that this object is very much ON their level--easily. Even if you are not, that can be modified and if our science is good enough and future is bright enough--THERE IS NO LIMIT. That is the other part that Neil needs to mention.
Once you are able to get so far in the intelligence game you have a CHANCE to play big and win it all. Atleast that is how I can easily see things happening. I don't think we are EVER limited, not anymore. What DOES limit human beings is our corruption, our literal moral and social decay. It is PARAMOUNT that we watch out for this! OR, we will not see these "bright" futures.

PS- A little more on my A.I. and merging possibilities. You'll have to zoom-in or copy/paste it as it's a little to long as it's too much off topic.
I really do think that is the way to go with A.I. that is sentient; make sure you do two things: one, make sure that they have an intelligence with knowledge that allows them to easily see that civilization or cooperation is KEY to us living as a species (THE SENTIENTS should be included in their programming as being different, but I would think a "speciation" should be understood. The key goal is to merge as this would give them FULL feelings and emotion while giving the human control as well, fundamentally this would be a "transcendental" process for them as they are becoming the NEXT specie in the speciation process "a new human-A.I." merged species. This would of course merely be a choice for people to make in their lives not one they HAVE TO (but that will be a subject for when something like this would ever happen). When lifespans enter the hundreds even perhaps thousands of years with little to no chance of EVER dying due to all the enhancements they may have, merging may ultimately seem like a qualitative "next step" in life, much like marriage is to many nowadays. Second, as I said above I think since WE are the designers of a new species we are ALSO INCREDIBLY responsible for their well-being, behavior, choices, and EVERYTHING that goes along with this. When we create their psychology I would purposely cause increased euphoria during MANY events in their lifetimes and basically no pain except to warn--but ONLY to the most minimal of degrees. When they interact with humans in a cooperative fashion in which the human agrees and likes euphoria can be introduced. More so for A.I.s that are going to be merged this euphoria is enhanced A LOT to better allow them to serve their counterpart so that in the merger--it is very important--that no conflict of personality would arise as it might destroy the entire "structuring" event--I'm assuming a merger may take awhile, perhaps a few days. The euphoria is a safeguard. Although I would use it many other aspects along with other beneficial things we've found the problem is are we going to just end up creating an A.I. that is essentially a drug addict. I don't know whether it's best to go backwards or forwards on that issue, as it would be nice to never have depression (if you have the chance for it). If we create robots who are sentient (because they have to be to do the job safe), but their job is to empty trash all day long; what if we co-design them to make sure they LOVE to do the job that they are doing. They also get euphoria from performing well. When they get rest they can do what they want, but perhaps since they are doing such menial and hard-work so that we don't waste our lives doing it--maybe they can have access to euphoric dream states, so when they wake THEY ARE HAPPY! Perhaps even give them a secondary core were they are enabled with their co-workers, who in these cores have very strong and different personalities, here. It could be a place like WoW meets Skyrim and while they work, loving what they do, they also lead a second life with their secondary core that gives them a true A.I. personality--with their normal euphorias and pains. But, they know it's a game and they never tire of it--it's the best ever made or that will ever be made. Such is the same for all the menial labor bots who perhaps have a little chat forum that's active for a few hours every night where everyone talks about their characters and the game--think of it like our prime-time T.V. schedule. Anyway, there are a few fun A.I. ideas...
A little long and off-topic so I'll make it SMALL!
/LONG (so if you quote me, kill my text, please, or smallify it...)

I forgot what I was going to say.

(And you can quote me on that.)

Neil is asserting the old question of whether something of sufficient intelligence beyond ours; and not just intelligence it will also cover anything that intelligence has manifested for us: languages (although as others have pointed out languages are special and in fact may be a foundational aspect of intelligence; then we create other forms of language over the instinctive setup, like math, or coding), culture, politics, civilization, and I believe those basically cover almost everything really as anything will be a group, sub-group, or "ultra"-sub-group of one of these parent categories.

The 1% that he spoke of was of course the exact genes and DNA that allow humans to complete all of their FULL "sentience". That was the key thing. We ALREADY know of animals in the past that most likely had baseline IQs of 150 or so; I'm not kidding (they were called the Boskops and unfortunately they went extinct; they lived in 'Southern' Africa, I know it was Africa just not sure it was the southern end). They most likely did not have one thing we have, making their extremely high intelligence very limited in its usefulness: they were missing LANGUAGE. Language IS --THE-- foundational stone for civilization, increasing potential, building, constructing, or making anything on the LARGE scale--for all of these you need cooperation and for that you need understanding and for THAT you need language. Language is so simple, but it is letting me right now explain to you some very straight forward ideas and a few abstract ones and it's the ability that our language and intelligence can convey these abstract notions to one and another that makes our brains SO stupendous!

Unfortunately for the Boskops they came into being at a very bad time in history. They had VERY low numbers when whatever nearly wiped out the human species hit the planet also hit them, but it decimated them into extinction. Too bad as they would have been our closest kin to having another "kind" to talk with, if we could find a way to communicate past the barrier that we surpass so easily with language and then as we get older we use different advanced forms of "language" to explain abstract things: art, math, music, etc... I think the 1% in intelligence and the barrier we may come across with other alien species is much like this scenario here. It's nice and hopeful to have faith that we WILL persevere and always be able to understand and to be needed (not to be the ants on the sidewalk...). BUT, if their biological and perhaps technological changes make us so inferior that only their babies seem to get along with us, we may have a problem. We can hope due to their intellect that they will realize that they may be able to "raise us" to their level, as we may be able to do as well--which I will say below in the next paragraph. But, we will never know until we start meeting these alien races. It is also VITAL to remember that these races will be ALIEN in EVERY sense of that word. Their genetics, their physiology, how they reproduce, not to mention their culture and language... When we meet an alien race it will be an undertaking for BOTH of our sides; not to mention the how our biosphere and their related (assuming we meet them with their spacesuits, we will most likely be the lucky ones; unless they have technology to deal with every conceivable threat--then we are the ones in trouble, unless they thought of that too) "brought-along" biosphere will interact with each other and what will happen. It'll be DAMNED interesting whether we meet in peace, trivial lifeforms with a chance of "breakthrough", and of course the resource/planet-builders or "war".
(BTW, there are some extremely good documentaries about alien biology; problems we'd have with their biology coming in contact with us (and us with them), technology differences, etc... I'll post it in this thread if I can find it and the name (hopefully I 'll be able to see if it's available for viewing pleasure somewhere or atleast Netflix if you've got it.)

1% is a bit of a cop-out... As the situation is a bit more complicated than that; especially nowadays. Soon we will begin to have the option to enhance ourselves via bio-genetics and also through technology--later through nano-technology (that is were the real fun happens; well atleast a good portion of it). To be honest we could quite literally in the far-off future take the 1% of the genetic structure that makes the aliens "super-smart" and then replicate that part directly into ourselves. We can also add computers to our brain and change our biology to do an endless amount of things--things that would sound like you just wrote a new Sci-Fi novel, but you didn't. You could also later install an sentient A.I.: merge with it, with you in control--these A.I. units would be made to have all sorts of personalities and perhaps traits, like being good at math, art, and likes to write poetry. It could have a pre-stored vault of knowledge allowing you to gain a HUGE mass of information quickly. Then you have its sentient core that is fabricated to get along with your psychology--they could be designed to feel a sense of extreme euphoria to join with and allow someone to merge with them so that there isn't any real chance of problems, because you've designed them to WANT this more than anything in THEIR lives--it would be a win-win. Suddenly you would be able to multi-task think in two frames (maybe more if you have "cloned computer cores of your A.I.") of mind with almost all of humanity's knowledge base at your fingertips and if that nanotechnology surgery went through then you had ALL of your neurons and structures rebuilt and replaced with whatever is the fastest (probably either photon or quantum based). Then, now, you are thinking almost as fast as the speed of light, we'll go conservative at 80%.

So now this once human that has been highly modified most likely from birth, perhaps even before that... We have something that the aliens might greet and realize that this object is very much ON their level--easily. Even if you are not, that can be modified and if our science is good enough and future is bright enough--THERE IS NO LIMIT. That is the other part that Neil needs to mention.

Once you are able to get so far in the intelligence game you have a CHANCE to play big and win it all. Atleast that is how I can easily see things happening. I don't think we are EVER limited, not anymore. What DOES limit human beings is our corruption, our literal moral and social decay. It is PARAMOUNT that we watch out for this! OR, we will not see these "bright" futures.



PS- A little more on my A.I. and merging possibilities. You'll have to zoom-in or copy/paste it as it's a little to long as it's too much off topic.

I really do think that is the way to go with A.I. that is sentient; make sure you do two things: one, make sure that they have an intelligence with knowledge that allows them to easily see that civilization or cooperation is KEY to us living as a species (THE SENTIENTS should be included in their programming as being different, but I would think a "speciation" should be understood. The key goal is to merge as this would give them FULL feelings and emotion while giving the human control as well, fundamentally this would be a "transcendental" process for them as they are becoming the NEXT specie in the speciation process "a new human-A.I." merged species. This would of course merely be a choice for people to make in their lives not one they HAVE TO (but that will be a subject for when something like this would ever happen). When lifespans enter the hundreds even perhaps thousands of years with little to no chance of EVER dying due to all the enhancements they may have, merging may ultimately seem like a qualitative "next step" in life, much like marriage is to many nowadays. Second, as I said above I think since WE are the designers of a new species we are ALSO INCREDIBLY responsible for their well-being, behavior, choices, and EVERYTHING that goes along with this. When we create their psychology I would purposely cause increased euphoria during MANY events in their lifetimes and basically no pain except to warn--but ONLY to the most minimal of degrees. When they interact with humans in a cooperative fashion in which the human agrees and likes euphoria can be introduced. More so for A.I.s that are going to be merged this euphoria is enhanced A LOT to better allow them to serve their counterpart so that in the merger--it is very important--that no conflict of personality would arise as it might destroy the entire "structuring" event--I'm assuming a merger may take awhile, perhaps a few days. The euphoria is a safeguard. Although I would use it many other aspects along with other beneficial things we've found the problem is are we going to just end up creating an A.I. that is essentially a drug addict. I don't know whether it's best to go backwards or forwards on that issue, as it would be nice to never have depression (if you have the chance for it). If we create robots who are sentient (because they have to be to do the job safe), but their job is to empty trash all day long; what if we co-design them to make sure they LOVE to do the job that they are doing. They also get euphoria from performing well. When they get rest they can do what they want, but perhaps since they are doing such menial and hard-work so that we don't waste our lives doing it--maybe they can have access to euphoric dream states, so when they wake THEY ARE HAPPY! Perhaps even give them a secondary core were they are enabled with their co-workers, who in these cores have very strong and different personalities, here. It could be a place like WoW meets Skyrim and while they work, loving what they do, they also lead a second life with their secondary core that gives them a true A.I. personality--with their normal euphorias and pains. But, they know it's a game and they never tire of it--it's the best ever made or that will ever be made. Such is the same for all the menial labor bots who perhaps have a little chat forum that's active for a few hours every night where everyone talks about their characters and the game--think of it like our prime-time T.V. schedule. Anyway, there are a few fun A.I. ideas...

A little long and off-topic so I'll make it SMALL!

/LONG (so if you quote me, kill my text, please, or smallify it...)

>> ^lsue:

Well I have to say that I disagree with you regarding your stance on late term abortions. I don't believe it should be criminal (for either doctor or patient) to undertake a medical procedure which concerns your own health and well-being. The point of the removal of laws against abortion is to decriminalize, not to encourage late term abortions or make them commonplace. What good would criminalization do?
But regardless of this disagreement, I felt that your first comment describing Canada's lack of abortion legislation "right up until the last second before birth" largely simplifies a complex issue and undermines the regulations which exist to get women the proper care when they need it (early in their pregnancy). This is why I replied.. I didn't mean to provoke an argument.
>> ^bcglorf:
>> Criminal laws on/against abortion are a federal matter though. And Canada has for some time now very clearly established that there is NO LAW against abortions. Current Canadian federal law in ALL provinces and territories makes all abortion, even up to 9 months, perfectly and completely legal.



But criminal law is an enormous part of the entire debate. Currently in Canada, it is perfectly and 100% legal to kill a fetus 1 hour before going in for a c-section. It is equally and completely 100% illegal, and considered one of the highest crimes in the nation to kill that exact same baby 2 hours later once the c-section has been completed. I say that's madness and more than just a little bit troubling.

I think you are far to quick to dismiss that situation as irrelevant or unimportant.

Well I have to say that I disagree with you regarding your stance on late term abortions. I don't believe it should be criminal (for either doctor or patient) to undertake a medical procedure which concerns your own health and well-being. The point of the removal of laws against abortion is to decriminalize, not to encourage late term abortions or make them commonplace. What good would criminalization do?

But regardless of this disagreement, I felt that your first comment describing Canada's lack of abortion legislation "right up until the last second before birth" largely simplifies a complex issue and undermines the regulations which exist to get women the proper care when they need it (early in their pregnancy). This is why I replied.. I didn't mean to provoke an argument.

>> ^bcglorf:

>> Criminal laws on/against abortion are a federal matter though. And Canada has for some time now very clearly established that there is NO LAW against abortions. Current Canadian federal law in ALL provinces and territories makes all abortion, even up to 9 months, perfectly and completely legal.

>> ^Tman:
I'm not sure I follow deGrasse Tyson's logic. So we need to build a moon base to spark interest in science and engineering because we are falling behind the rest of the world in these areas. What is sparking interest in science and engineering in the rest of the world? Are they all planning on building a moon base?
No, they aren't. I think we are falling behind for other reasons (e.g., a broken education system) and incurring massive debt for grandiose manned space exploration projects will not help the issue.
I love the idea of space exploration, but it is something a rich government should undertake. Our's is broke.

He did say "for me...", although I would disagree that it's a primary reason for doing so instead of just a really positive side-effect. Personally, I think the reasons for returning to the moon and beyond are greater than most of us can assimilate given the immensity of world problems nowadays. But, there will always be world problems. Why wait?

I read somewhere that we could have financed two (or more) manned missions to Mars with the money we spent in Iraq. In the long-term future of humans (assuming we survive long enough to become truly space-faring), which do you think would have greater benefitted our species? Which will history regard as an important stepping stone in human advancement/evolution? Getting Saddam and destroying the infrastructure of an entire country, not to mention the tens of thousands of lives lost, or, the cooperation of nations in getting to Mars.

Space exploration doesn't have to be just an idea, and it shouldn't be.

I'm not sure I follow deGrasse Tyson's logic. So we need to build a moon base to spark interest in science and engineering because we are falling behind the rest of the world in these areas. What is sparking interest in science and engineering in the rest of the world? Are they all planning on building a moon base?

No, they aren't. I think we are falling behind for other reasons (e.g., a broken education system) and incurring massive debt for grandiose manned space exploration projects will not help the issue.

I love the idea of space exploration, but it is something a rich government should undertake. Our's is broke.

Bachelor film project 2011 from The Animation Workshop.

As long as anyone can remember, the coming of The Undertaker has meant the coming of death. Until one day the grim promise fails and tension builds as the God fearing townsfolk of Backwater wait for someone to die

By: Bo Mathorne, Tue T. Sørensen, Arthur Gil Larsen, Rie C. Nymand, Mads Simonsen, Thomas H. Grønlund, Esben Jacob Sloth, Martin Holm-Grevy

Bo Mathorne - Director
Arthur Gil Larsen - Animation Lead
Mads Simonsen - Technical director
Thomas Grønlund - Animator
Rie Nymand - Animator
Esben Sloth - Art Director
Martin Holm-Grevy - Environment lead
Tue Toft Sørensen - Animator

Music composed and performed by:
Sons of Perdition

Voice actors:
The Tramp: Zebulon Whatley
The Minister: Lucien Dodge
Bubba: Phillip Sacramento
Towns people: Laura Post

Supervisors:
Michelle Nardone - Production supervisor
Katrine Talks - Production supervisor
Jessie Roland - Animation supervisor
Christian Kuntz - Animatic supervisor
Patrick Voetberg - Editing supervisor
Sunit Parekh-Gaihede - CG supervisor
Jared Embley - Rigging supervisor
Thomas Christensen - Sound supervisor
Svend Nordby - Technical supervisor

Consultants:
Peter Albrechtsen - Sound design consultant
Michael Valeur - Story consultant
Andrew Harris - CG Consultant
Mads Juul - Animatic consultant
Saschka Unseld - 3D animatic consultant
Anna Kubik - 3D animatic consultant
Jericca Cleland - Story consultant
Marec Fritzinger - Design consultant
Tomm Moore - Design consultant
Lawrence Marvit - Design consultant
Niels Bach - Background consultant

Thanks to:
Lasse Niragira Rasmussen - Additional animation
Jeppe Bro Døcker - Additional animation
Morten Thorning - Moral guidance
Oliver Kirchhoff - Scripting
Those Poor Bastards - Inspiration
Robert Bennett - Voice work
Lostandtaken.com - Textures
Friends and family

I'm glad you reference your video, which is a perfect example of trying to make illogical moral exceptions for your deity. You accuse my comment of being but "a weak appeal to emotions", but it is actually a succinct argument refuting the video's thesis. But since you clearly cannot understand anything with a hint of subtlety, I will spell it out for you:

The video argues that evil must exist in order for there to be freedom of the will. Fine enough, but that only accounts for the kinds of evils done by humans. The things my comment link to are all examples of evils that are not caused by human actions, but by nature (i.e. "acts of God"), and affect perfectly innocent beings. A child who is born with a genetic disorder that will cause it (and it's parents) to suffer for it's whole life is not a matter of "freedom of the will". Answer me this, with a simple "yes/no" answer please: did the 13-day old baby killed by the family dog deserve it?

I know what you'll say: all of humankind, nay, of creation, is tainted because of "original sin". Remember how we've already discussed this ad nauseum? The concept of original sin relies on the story of Creation and the Fall. I know you literally believe that all of humankind is the offspring of an incestuous clusterfuck that started with Adam and Eve, and was renewed when God killed everyone except one family (incest ftw eh?). Let's put aside how utterly disgusting and impossible that is, and concentrate on how it is also a totally immoral belief. You are saying that God, omni-potent/benevolent, lets every single being be "tainted" with "sin" no matter how they live, and thus deserve anything nature's twisted ways will throw at them? All because ONE person did not blindly follow his orders (although without knowing it was wrong to do so)? Do you even realise what a sick, twisted tyrant of a deity you are defending?

It's clear you didn't understand the argument the video was making, or even your own argument:

The video is outlining Plantigas free will defense which states:

God's creation of persons with morally significant free will is something of tremendous value. God could not eliminate evil and suffering without thereby eliminating the greater good of having created persons with free will who can make moral choices. Freedom (and, often it is said, the loving relationships which would not be possible without freedom) here is intended to provide a morally sufficient reason for God's allowing evil

The FWD neatly solves the logical problem of evil. Now, you make a point from natural evil, but this also addressed by the FWD. The corruption that came into the world was from originl sin. You say it isn't fair that other people have to suffer for the choices of the prior generation, ignoring that every child is impacted by the choices of their parents, and every other generation before them. God would either have had to start over or prevent all evil, and either choice would eliminate free will. What you miss is that people still have the same opportunities to accept or reject Gods offer of salvation, regardless of original sin. Children who have no capacity to make that choice do receive salvation.

What you're really referring to is the Evidential problem of evil which goes like this:

A) It is improbable that an omnipotent, omniscient and omni-benevolent God, would allow gratuitous suffering.
B) Gratuitous suffering does exist.
C) Therefore it is improbable that an omnipotent, omniscient and omni-benevolent exists.

There are a few ways to address this argument. In chaos theory, something small and insignificant, like the flapping of a butterlfys wings, can lead to something large and powerful, like the creation of a hurricane. Likewise, the actions we undertake have a ripple effect that go beyond our finite understandings. In the movie sliding doors, there are two timelines to the story, where the heroine is trying to get on a subway, and either makes it at the last minute, or gets there a few seconds late and misses it. In the timeline where she makes it, she goes on to have a happy and successful life, but is suddenly killed in a car accident. In the other, she endures a lot of suffering but ends up living to a ripe old age.

Only an omniscient God could see how all of this is going to play out. Just because something may seem pointless to us at the time doesn't mean it couldn't turn out to be beneficial later. If God is working towards a greater good, suffering may be part of how that ultimate good is achieved. It's easy to think of examples. Let's say you were going to take a trip to Tibet to climb Mt Everest, but you ended up breaking your leg and cancelling the trip. Later you find out that the plane you were going to take crashed into the ocean. What seemed pointless at the time actually saved your life.

The invasion of Normandy resulted in untold casualities, but served the greater good of serving to end the war. So, it isn't something we can really quantify, whether some suffering is pointless or not. It is also an incomplete sample. You can say yes, when you only consider the suffering in the world, God doesn't seem as likely, but that is part of the picture. When you consider all of the good things, the probability starts to balance out.

1There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil.(Job 1:1) The very first verse says Job was perfect. "But that's the narrator speaking!" you might interject. Fine:

And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? (Job 2:3) This is God speaking, and he follows by saying that "[Satan] movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause", i.e. "Satan made me do it". It is not Dan who is twisting the story, but you. Unless, of course, the Bible is not inerrant, but there's no way you'll accept that, now is there.

I've already addressed all of this. Although some translations render the word as "perfect", it is referring to an outstanding moral character and piety towards God, not sinlessness. This is proven by Jobs own words:

Job 9:20 If I justify myself, mine own mouth shall condemn me: if I say, I am perfect, it shall also prove me perverse.

Job 13:26 For thou writest bitter things against me, and makest me to possess the iniquities of my youth.

As far as "the devil made me do it", you fail to understand what is going on. Satan is like a prosecuting attorney in Gods courtroom.

Revelation 12:10

And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.

Satan laid a false accusation against Job, brought him to trial, and Job was tried and tested and found innocent.

Thankfully for you (and everyone else) he is but a figment of your imagination.

You protest too much, hpqp. Your fervent denial shows you have more than a clue. You accuse me of delusion but you're the one fooling yourself.

>> ^hpqp

Considering what is in demand changes every year, and it takes 2-4+ years to get a degree or 1-2 years to get licensing/training required....in which you have to pay for those via loans. While it's "possible" to predict what might be in demand when you get out of your training/schooling, it's not a sure thing. So to expect people working who want a pay boost/advancement to go into a different "in demand" career field that may or may not be in demand when they finish is an idea that's good for a laugh. Especially when it's so ungodly expensive to go for any degree in the first place. God forbid you pick an in demand one, that everyone else picked because hey.....it's in demand, and still can't get a job.

The burden is put entirely on the individual to research job demand (which is based on data businesses give), figure out how to get the training they need to be the best qualified for said job, take loans or pay out of pocket for said training, and when they get done investing years and have a good chunk of debt and a piece of paper to show for it... the economy drops out/businesses down-size/the data was wrong/economists were wrong/etc. And now you should have gotten a degree in XYZ and known that those reports we put out 4 years ago were complete bullshit. Oh and you bought a house because all the financial indicators 6-7 years ago said things were super awesome? Had a few kids because now you had the house to settle down in and begin a family? Didn't you know that all those professionals and politicians managing the reports and oversight were gaming the system to inflate the numbers? You didn't? Well I guess we get to blame you again, because hey you should have known better...everyone else pretends they did.

BTW jobs as undertakers should always be in demand, yet you're going to have a hard time finding positions for a thousand of them being trained year after year. Oh, and just two years ago everyone was saying "Go into healthcare! We need more nurses, etc!", and now looking at the job listings it's maybe an eighth of what they used to list just a year ago. So I can only imagine how many people are now physician's assistants and what not who can't find a job because even the doctor's offices are laying people off and downsizing.