Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Life Ethics: the seat of consciousness

Research on severely brain damaged Patient R suggests the brain more than likely doesn't have a single region that is devoted to self awareness, but rather, the complex phenomenon likely emerges from much more distributed interactions between multiple brain regions -

Live Science: "Brain Damaged 'Patient R' Challenges Theories of Self Awareness"

Aug. 29, 2012
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Human Rights corruption taking humanity to the dogs -

Here's a perfect example of what's wrong with the postmodern concept of Human Rights. Just about every premise and tenet is corrupt in this BBC piece. Is it any wonder we're going to the dogs with so much ignorance? -

BBC: "A Point of View: Do human rights really exist?"

Apr 30, 2012
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Are all cosmologists out of this world? -

In the article entitled "Has Physics Made Philosophy and Religion Obsolete?" Ross Andersen talks to Lawrence Krauss, a theoretical physicist and Director of the Origins Institute at Arizona State University, who published a tome, "A Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing", a book that, as its title suggests purports to explain how something---and not just any something, but the entire universe---could have emerged from nothing, the kind of nothing implicated by quantum field theory. Richard Dawkins wrote the afterword for the book. He compares it to Darwin's "The Origin of Species". Kraus: "And of course as a scientific work it doesn't some close to "The Origin of Species", which is one of the greatest scientific works ever produced. And I say that as a physicist; I've often argued that Darwin was a greater scientist than Einstein." Which is rather peculiar for a scientist who has claimed to have written the book on the scientific explanation of our beginnings, making wild claims about the obsoleteness of religion and philosophy. Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection has never been proved. Nor was there ever any missing link found. Is it a wonder one mistrusts any claim made by cosmologists? Anyway, also this light in the darkness fails to explain creation ex nihilo...

The Atlantic: "Has Physics Made Philosophy and Religion Obsolete?"

Apr 25, 2012
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A monster virus -

Mail Online: "'Anthrax isn't scary at all compared to this': Man-made flu virus with potential to wipe out many millions if it ever escaped is created in research lab"

A group of scientists is pushing to publish research about how they created a man-made flu virus that could potentially wipe out civilisation. The deadly virus is a genetically tweaked version of the H5N1 bird flu strain, but is far more infectious and could pass easily between millions of people at a time. The research has caused a storm of controversy and divided scientists, with some saying it should never have been carried out. The current strain of H5N1 has only killed 500 people and is not contagious enough to cause a global pandemic. But their are fears the modified virus is so dangerous it could be used for bio-warfare, if it falls into the wrong hands. (...) >>>

Dec. 4, 2011
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God or goo -

Human Events: "Liberals' View of Darwin Unable to Evolve", by Ann Coulter

(...) There's a reason the Darwin cult prefers catcalls to argument, even with a 9-year-old at the helm of their debate team. Darwin's theory was that a process of random mutation, sex and death, allowing the "fittest" to survive and reproduce, and the less fit to die without reproducing, would, over the course of billions of years, produce millions of species out of inert, primordial goo.

The vast majority of mutations are deleterious to the organism, so if the mutations were really random, then for every mutation that was desirable, there ought to be a staggering number that are undesirable. Otherwise, the mutations aren't random, they are deliberate -- and then you get into all the hocus-pocus about "intelligent design" and will probably start speaking in tongues and going to NASCAR races. (...) >>>

Sept. 1, 2011
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Are alpha males sperming the world? -

A number of cultural slash pseudo scientific articles pushed into the cultural memesphere that are supposed to white-wash the behavior of serial rapist and IMF head socialist honcho, Dominique Strauss-Khan. Ann Coulter has why liberal men have been mistreating women for over 200 years. It's a matter of preference: do you prefer amoral liberals, to immoral conservatives? -

Time Magazine: "The Caligula Effect: Why Powerful Men Compulsively Cheat"

Human males have never been thought of as models of sexual restraint — and with good reason. From the moment the adolescent libido begins to boot up, boys seem to enter an ongoing state of emotional — if not literal — priapism, from which they never fully emerge.

As far as nature is concerned, this is just fine. The goal of any organism, after all, is to ensure the survival and propagation of its genes, and males — far more so than females — are eminently equipped to do that. (...) In some cases, though, the stability never happens; in some cases, unlimited opportunity simply leads to unlimited appetites. Emperors and despots may be best known for this kind of behavior. The 18th-century Moroccan ruler Moulay Ismail is said to have fathered 888 children with his 500 concubines. Genghis Khan makes Ismail look practically barren. (...) >>>

May 19, 2011
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Abortion radicals - There is a branch of the pro abortion lobby that sees in every attempt to regulate it a danger to abortion 'rights'. Obama is one of them. This is why they want uninhibited terminations, even very, very late term. No cell clusters here! Read the horror story of partial birth abortion -

PJM: "‘Climate of Hate’ Obsessives Ignore Culture of Death - Think Jared Loughner was evil? Meet Kermit Gosnell", by Bob Owens

Two weeks ago, a deranged young man slaughtered six innocent people and wounded 14 more. Before the rivulets of blood dried, demagogues at the New York Times and Newsweek, along with a bevy of snarling cable news pundits and guileless politicians, pounced on “the right” for creating a “climate of hate.” They rushed to judgment — and were exposed as charlatans and fools when the truth came out. Jared Loughner is a young man with what appears to be severe mental illness, one who likely has never heard of the conservative politicians, commentators, or personalities the left rushed to libel.

What precious few scraps of information did come out about Loughner’s meager frame of political reference sent the media running from the whole question of his ideology. (A high school friend called him “very liberal.” He became infuriated at the mention of George W. Bush. He fixated on a bizarre film promoting decidedly non-Tea Party ideas.) Loughner had served his purpose as the catalyst for a smear campaign. When the narrative of “right -wing violence” ceased to be even remotely plausible, the media dropped their focus on the story.

A week later, we were treated to the sight of the same pundits and politicians scurrying away from an even more gruesome, loathsome crime — this time with hundreds of victims and clear-cut political implications. Why? The reasons are blindingly obvious. The perpetrator was Dr. Kermit Gosnell, an apparent serial killer of hundreds of newborn babies — a man who collected the severed body parts of his victims in jars as macabre trophies of his butchery.

Despite the fact that warnings of his crimes were repeatedly reported to the authorities — by victims and his own employees — he was ignored for years by the authorities. Why? Because Gosnell was an abortionist, protected by pro-choice politicians who would rather his murder spree continue than its exposure threaten the practice of abortion itself. He was finally undone, not because of his decades of killing, but because he also profited from dealing prescription drugs. (...) >>>

Jan. 26, 2011
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Making sure the outcome fits the ideology -

NYT: "Weighing Medical Costs of End-of-Life Care"

The Ronald Reagan U.C.L.A. Medical Center, one of the nation’s most highly regarded academic hospitals, has earned a reputation as a place where doctors will go to virtually any length and expense to try to save a patient’s life. (...) Yet that ethos has made the medical center a prime target for critics in the Obama administration and elsewhere who talk about how much money the nation wastes on needless tests and futile procedures. (...) Listening to the critics, Dr. J. Thomas Rosenthal, the chief medical officer of the U.C.L.A. Health System, says his hospital has started re-examining its high-intensity approach to medicine. But the more U.C.L.A.’s doctors study the issue, the more they recognize a difficult truth: It can be hard, sometimes impossible, to know which critically ill patients will benefit and which will not. That distinction tends to get lost in the Dartmouth end-of-life analysis, which considers only the costs of treating patients who have died. Remarkably, it pays no attention to the ones who survive. (...) >>>

Dec. 23, 2009
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A familiar subject from the early years of our quest. It's still a fascinating subject:

The Church Report: "Darwinists, Moral Relativism, and Hitler", By Richard Weikart

The Darwin celebrations this year have reinforced my concern that Darwinism is not merely a scientific theory. For many Darwinists, it is much more than that. For some it is the basis for a secular worldview that not only rejects theism, but also promotes moral relativism. (...) >>>

Dec. 22, 2009
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Remember this for future reference: the subjective price of life, or the Quality Adjusted Life Year (QALY), or the Complete Life System by Dr Ezekiel Emanuel - this is 1938:

PJM: "Health Care vs. the Value of Human Life", by Sarah Durand

Don't believe the left would cut medical costs by rationing care? Check out their formulas to calculate your life's value. (...) >>>
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So what precisely constitutes a human? Well, not newly borns and certainly not fetuses, which are cell clusters. In some circles "socialization" and nourishment are the constituting criteria.

CNSNews: "Inhofe: Some Senators Share Holdren’s View That Born Babies Are Not ‘Human Beings’

Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, says he believes some of his Senate colleagues share the view expressed by White House science adviser John P. Holdren in a 1973 book that human fetuses do not become “human beings” until sometime after they are born. (...)

“The fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly before birth, and given the essential early socializing experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being. Where any of these essential elements is lacking, the resultant individual will be deficient in some respect.” (...) >>>

Dec. 11, 2009
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Two articles looking at euthanasia from a different perspective:
It used to be that the doctor ruled over the death bed; now he has to take the patient's wishes into account. Anthropologist and lawyer Anne-Marie The about the Dutch euthanasia law in practice. (...) >>>
An engineering student thought to be in a coma for 23 years was actually conscious the whole time, it has emerged. Rom Houben was misdiagnosed as being in a vegetative state after a car crash left him totally paralyzed. But, in actuality, he was trapped in his own body the whole time with no way of letting friends and family know he could hear every word they were saying. (...)

"About 20,000 are followed by a coma of three weeks or longer. Some of them die, others regain health," he continued. But an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 people a year, remain trapped in an intermediate stage: they go on living without ever come back again." (...) >>>

Nov. 30, 2009
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When amorality starts asking questions ...

Newsweek: "The Case for Killing Granny" - Rethinking end-of-life care", by Evan Thomas

(...) The idea that we might ration health care to seniors (or anyone else) is political anathema. Politicians do not dare breathe the R word, lest they be accused—however wrongly—of trying to pull the plug on Grandma. But the need to spend less money on the elderly at the end of life is the elephant in the room in the health-reform debate. Everyone sees it but no one wants to talk about it. At a more basic level, Americans are afraid not just of dying, but of talking and thinking about death. Until Americans learn to contemplate death as more than a scientific challenge to be overcome, our health-care system will remain unfixable. (...) >>>

Sept. 21, 2009
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Stark raving mad and yet a Czar ...

Popmodal: "Ann Coulter on Hannity "Obama's speech to Congress should be paid for by DNC"" (the first part is about the anti humanism of postmodern ethics)



Sept. 14, 2009
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The essence of Fascism isn't jackboots, swastikas and flags. It's making everything - from individual to corporation - subservient to the whole. With that in mind, is this still Fascism with a ;)? Here's more on Dr Ezekiel Emanuel:

NY Post: "DEADLY DOCTORS"

(...) Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. He has already been appointed to two key positions: health-policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research. Emanuel bluntly admits that the cuts will not be pain-free. (...) Savings, he writes, will require changing how doctors think about their patients: Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, "as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others" (Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008).

Yes, that's what patients want their doctors to do. But Emanuel wants doctors to look beyond the needs of their patients and consider social justice, such as whether the money could be better spent on somebody else. (...) "Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination; every person lives through different life stages rather than being a single age. Even if 25-year-olds receive priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years" (Lancet, Jan. 31). (...) >>>

Aug. 17, 2009
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The war on natural procreation:

The Washington Examiner: "Obama's Science Czar: Traditional family is obsolete, punish large families", by David Freddoso

President Obama's Science Czar, John Holdren, took a controversial and amoral approach to the science of population by recommending mass compulsory sterilization and even forced abortion (and/or forced marriages) under certain circumstances. His 1977 tome, Ecoscience, which he co-authored with Paul and Anne Ehrlich, also displays a revealing disregard for the institution of the traditional human family. (...) >>>

July 19, 2009
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A "Progressivist's" slip of the tongue! Watch Glenn Beck on the "subject of eugenics and population control.

WND: "Ginsburg: I thought Roe was to rid undesirables - Justice discusses 'growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of'"

In an astonishing admission, BoldU.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says she was under the impression that legalizing abortion with the 1973 Roe. v. Wade case would eliminate undesirable members of the populace, or as she put it "populations that we don't want to have too many of." Her remarks, set to be published in the New York Times Magazine this Sunday but viewable online now, came in an in-depth interview with Emily Bazelon titled, "The Place of Women on the Court." (...) >>>

July 12, 2009
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Related:

- "Science as a Narrative" (dossier)

To archive >>>

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