How accurate is this email?

I guess it'd be "funny because it's true", if any of those things were true.Why is it that all the good comedians are liberals? That's what conservatives need to be asking themselves.

Well, compare how much pharmaceutical companies spend on research and development compared to how much they spend on advertising and marketing, and you'll begin to have your answer.There's a very good reason that something like less than 20% of the development of new treatments for illnesses occurs in private pharmaceutical laboratories, and the vast majority of it occurs in university-affiliated public labs that receive Federal funding. Your mistake is in thinking that pharmaceutical companies are in the business of developing cures.That's not what they do at all. Pharmaceutical companies develop chemical processes. They're chemical companies, basically. Figuring out which chemicals are therapeutic is largely done by public-sector university-affiliated research institutions.I'm not saying there's a big conspiracy, nor am I saying that the work the pharmaceutical companies isn't important. Chemical manufacturing is how a molecule discovered at Johns Hopkins becomes a pill in your medicine cabinet. But it's important to have a clear idea about exactly who's working to develop therapies, and who's working to develop manufacturing processes.

Those are sex roles, not gender roles. Gender roles are the socially-constructed stuff, like "men are doctors and women are nurses." Sex roles are the biological, nitty-gritty stuff like "men have penises and women have vaginas."

Another way to look at it is preserving the lives of sentient humans, and not allowing those lives to be irrevocably altered by that which has no sentience. That's consistent. Since condoms go on the penis, how is that not about physiology? Hey, great. If that was all that was on so-called "standardized" tests, they probably wouldn't be racist.But it's not. And so many of the supposedly-universal situations and examples are universal only to white people - which is what makes them racist.Did you know that, even in the 70's, IQ tests - supposedly designed to measure intelligence absent any culturally-confounding factors - used examples of bowling scoring to test intelligence? Absent any explanation of the rules of bowling, of course. Now, I'm a white guy from Minnesota, and even I don't know how to score bowling. Because I hate bowling. Can you imagine growing up in a community where nobody ever bowled, and then seeing that question on a test? How many points did you just lose from your putative "intelligence" because you weren't a white person from the suburbs? I think socialism works pretty well when all participants know each other pretty well. For instance, families are nearly universally socialist. Churches, too. Socialism is, in fact, one of the most common "emergent" economies at small scales. So to say it doesn't work is to ignore the myriad examples of socialism working just fine in a number of situations. You just don't think of them as "socialist", usually, but that's exactly what they are.

What the hell are you talking about? The only countries in the world that don't have public funding for the arts are the dysfunctional countries that don't even have public funding for things like sewers and roads.Public funding for the arts is a feature of every modern, functional government I'm aware of. What on Earth are you talking about?

Like you weren't being pedantic? Like you're still not? Please, HM. I've got no problem with a little pedanticism, but don't act like it's beneath you even as you're doing it, ok? (And at least when I'm being pedantic, HM, I'm also being factual. No such luck for you.) Sure. Males donate sperm. Women carry offspring to term. In humans, anyway. Of course, male and female roles differ by species. (Billions of years? I think you'll find that sexual reproduction is a pretty recent, and still rare, development in organisms.)What does that have to do with gender roles, which is what we were talking about? Gosh, you mean like the vast majority of living things on Earth, which have no sex? I mean what are bacteria (in your world where there's only homosexuality and heterosexuality) if not tiny, microscopic, bathhouse buggerers?I have to ask - do you think about the things you write before you hit post? Or are you so convinced that the drivel you generate from your colossal ignorance about the natural world is so insightful that it merits absolutely no review? Have you gotten the point yet that we don't, for the most part, consider you the vast, shining mind in science matters that you apparently style yourself to be?Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

Hey, no pedanticism, right, HM? We know how you hate to bite ankles, and all. Or something.

That's pretty gay, don't you think?

And, indeed, infanticide has been practiced as a form of birth control since time immemorial.I mean, you're acting like I'd have a problem with the fact that my viewpoint justifies infanticide. But if they're not sentient, what's the harm?

If I'm ever in the same state Terri Schaivo was? Please do. I've made such wishes known to my wife and family. (I hope you've made your wishes known, too. It's irresponsible not to.) Fallacy of the looming caveat, if you'll pardon the expression. That's like saying "I don't have any debts, except my car payments, my mortgage, three credit cards, and I'm into Vinnie the Shark to the tune of 50 grand. Other than that, though, I'm living debt-free!"It's the lack of intellectual capacity that renders them non-sentient. I mean, at some states of development we're talking about an organism that has no brain. No, not magically at birth. It's a slow process that's commensurate with the absorption of language (which is, in my opinion, why children raised without language never develop above animal-like behavior.)But I'd say birth is a good legal dividing line. It's unambiguous and universal. Um... ok? Can I assume from this remark that your next objection will be to the idea of schools teaching children how to tie their shoes?What's next with you, NJ? You think teaching children their colors and shapes violates the First Amendment? It's always a pleasure to see what outlandish, idiosyncratic legal theory you'll gift us with, next. I did explain. What are you still confused about? Let's say that they did explain the system, and then asked you to score a picture of some pins.Since bowling is a sport more likely to have been played by whites than by other ethnicities, isn't that question still biased in favor of whites? The reason I never bowl is because I don't know how to score it. Even with the instructions written right out there, it doesn't make any sense to me.Do you remember when we talked about privilege? And one of those privileges was the privilege of having your culture considered "normal"? Like there's black culture, and asian culture, and then... where's white culture? It's all those things that don't seem like they're part of a culture to you - because you're a white person in white culture.At the risk of being redundant, bowling is a part of that. It seems like "just a sport" to you, but to another race, it's a "white people's sport." And they'd be as unfamiliar with the rules of bowling as you would be with the rules of Muay Thai kickboxing. That's fair enough. For my own part I don't think it works in a system so large that any two people are strangers to each other.Love should be socialist. I like the way you put that.

Honestly? I think we're already at the natural level of people killing other people's infants. I don't think we'd see a sudden rash of it.But, honestly, I find birth to be a convenient and obvious demarcation for the beginning of independent, protected human life. And I've heard no reasonable argument for why we should move it back, or what we would gain from doing so. And nobody seems interested in moving it forward. And I don't think it helps our position to compromise with the position that will brook no compromise. Fetuses don't have a soul, and abortion doesn't destroy a mind. Forced birth, however, very well could. So the moral calculus is very simple for me.Let's here the counterargument, I guess. But trying to argue our side from a position where we'll give the other side the benefit of every doubt doesn't seem like a good idea. I don't see how abortion is supportable from the position that a fetus does have a soul, or some such.

It's not. I'm sorry, wasn't I clear about that?I don't think birth represents a change in "mindyness". (Mindfulness? Mindishness? Mindocity?) That's not why I think birth should remain our metric for the beginning of life, like it's always been. Um, is it? I'd say the question of whether or not we're required to help someone when we're in the position to do so is very much up in the air, and there's a vast weight of arguments on both sides. One view is that someone else's emergency doesn't constitute an obligation on my part. Another view is that not providing aid when in the position to do so is an immoral act. (That's certainly how I was raised.)I'm glad it makes sense to you, but as a strategy for changing minds, pinning the abortion debate to one of the great moral issues doesn't look like a winner to me. The issue is a lot simpler than that. And this is supposed to be an argument that rallies people against forced birth? "Vote pro-choice; you've got the right to be selfish!" This is what I was talking about before - you've implicitly given up almost all the ground to abortion foes. You've implicitly accepted the construction that women who seek abortion are acting selfishly with no regard to the human life within them, and you've tried to pin the argument to thinner-than-a-hair distinctions between direct and indirect actions.All because you don't want to come to a conclusion about who is a person, with a life to lose, and who isn't? I don't find your argument compelling - and I'm on your side! I'm glad it works for you but it's not an argument I would ever expect to change somebody's mind.

That's good advice. I'm not overlooking it. In fact I've stated that. I don't understand why you think that constitutes a rebuttal to my argument. Indeed, birth doesn't cause a significant change to "mindfulness" (if you will.) But there are other reasons to consider birth the beginning of the person; for instance, tradition.I'm waiting to hear arguments about why we should move that beginning back nine months, and what we would gain from doing so. None have been presented (and they wouldn't be on-topic in this thread, as broad as it is.) So can a potted fern. Next objection. Right - therefore, not sentient.If you don't have the capacity to understand and forsee death, nor the ability to remember life, then death is meaningless to you - just as it was meaningless to the 1.5 million other sperm that didn't fertilize an egg when you were conceived. Just like it was for your countless brothers and sisters who fertilized but passed right out of your mother's body without implanting.The destruction of those cells had no meaning. They were no more significant than the thousands of cells that died within my body, just today. Every one of them was capable of reacting to its environment, detecting damage (feeling pain), responding to incursions (defense mechanisms), all of it. Not one of them was possessed of the least bit of mind. I don't know when I'd draw the sentience line, but sure, I include infants. Toddlers, I don't know about. I don't think it takes very much exposure to language before a "theory of self" begins to develop.Like I've said infanticide has been a feature of every civilization in history. It shouldn't surprise you that I don't consider them sentient - many cultures don't. In many cultures you didn't even receive a name until your first birthday, because there was a greater than even chance you wouldn't survive that long. And what would be the point of naming you? It wasn't like you were going to get a grave at that age. You've never heard of ASL? What on Earth would make you think that the deaf can't learn a language? Even Helen Keller learned to speak. Yet, oddly enough, we mark our age as people from the time, roughly nine months later, when we emerge as infants.Why do you suppose that is, NJ? Why do you suppose it is that no culture on Earth has ever reckoned conception to be the true beginning of the person?You're asking me to overturn many thousands of years of universal human tradition. Why? What is to be gained? I still don't understand why it wouldn't be, or why you think condom use isn't an appropriate part of a sexual education class. Did your dad ever show you how to use a condom? Mine sure didn't, and I think I would have died from embarrassment if he had. (For that matter, I didn't even learn to do it in school. The first girl I used one with had to show me.) Why have schools, then, if parents teach children all that they need to know?Because parents don't do that. That's what schools are for - teaching children. Less pregnant than they were under your system, my friend. Or didn't you know that? Are you just not reading, or what? Yes, white people are more predisposed to bowl than asians, for instance. What, you've never watched bowling on TV? How many Chinese guys do you usually see in pro-level bowling? If the test was held as universal and race-neutral, and I lost points because of my racial/cultural unfamiliarity with the game? Yeah, that would be racist.How wouldn't it be? Cultures associated with race. In the context of the question there's no difference. An African-American and an African are not of the same race, except in the loosest, morphological sense.But race is a lot more than your skin color - and, simultaneously, a lot less. Race is a socially-constructed concept that folds in physical features as well as culture.Man, I had no idea that this disagreement boiled down to the fact that you didn't even know what race was. We could have settled this weeks ago!Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

Of course it's up in the air. We're disagreeing about it right now! People have always disagreed about it. Because lifeguards have that responsibility, I understand.Is it possible to be saddled with responsibilities that you didn't voluntarily, specifically choose to take on? I think that circumstance can occasionally do that to us. You're not the only person that came around from being an abortion foe. When I thought about what it would be like to subject someone I loved to the experience of forced birth, the issue became very simple for me. If you're going to be for it, be for it. I think that probably goes too far, sure; but there's plenty of similar laws, where not acting to stop or report a crime makes you an accomplice after the fact. As it is said, "all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." If evil then triumphs, what culpability do those who did nothing possess? Quite a bit, it seems to me.Maybe it's too complex a question for the law, but that gets back to my point - the issue of "sin by inaction" isn't nearly as simple as you make it out to be, and it's much too complex to successfully "pin" the abortion debate to. Telling ourselves how right we are isn't something I'm interested in doing, and it doesn't further the cause. I'm interested in what arguments convince people.

I can't type. I run about 30-40 wpm with the two-finger peck method. Hasn't this been tried in various countries? Didn't Australia make it a misdemeanor or something not to vote on Election day? I'd settle for convincing him that pregnant women are people; people who don't deserve to undergo forced pregnancy. I know. I think most of those presuppositions are indefensible.