A fundamental belief of the pro-life position is that life begins at conception. This means that at the moment of conception an individual rights-bearing entity comes into existence.
The confusion here: twins. If the conceived embryo is a rights-bearing entity, then it is an individual entity. How can twins fit into the picture? It must be that twins are each half of that original rights-bearing entity. Hence, twins must have half of the rights of a full individual. Practical upshot: we have a way of lowering the world population by changing our definition of what a person is. Downside: ethical nightmare.
Now, an easy pro-life rebuttal would be that the formation of two embryos from the initial one then makes two rights-bearing entities, but then that brings a lot of ambiguity to the value of conception.
We went Geohashing yesterday. What is Geohashing? Look here
This hash is located East of I35 near Valley View, TX. GPS: (33.501784N, 97.114371W)
The Meetup
Only my fiance, her dog Penny, and I showed up, and there’s good reason why. We arrived about 20 minutes before 4:00, travel time was only about 20+ minutes from Denton. It looked like it was on some ranch or area that was not currently in use, though had buildings(barns?) on the far side of the very large property. We had to climb through very thick woods and brush before getting to the location, which resulted in many insect bites and some small wounds, not to mention wading through muddy water and climbing under a barbed-wire fence. We arrived at the spot a couple minutes after 4PM and had picnic on an old dirt road; the sun was beating down and it was incredibly hot. I suggested going back to the car a different way, which ended up with us getting lost in the woods in a lot of thick brush and getting ourselves covered with dirt, leaves, spiders, and mosquito bites.
- Looking (roughly) West from the location.
- Looking (roughly) South from the location.
- Our feet (notice that my toe is bleeding).
- Looking (roughly) East from the location.
- My fiancée, Brandi, and her Yorkie, Penny Lane.
The posting on the Geohashing/xkcd wiki.
I just finished reading my first graphic novel today: Blankets by Craig Thompson. My first impression of the book just after I closed it was that it was mediocre. However, I did enjoy the graphic format of the novel. The drawings were well done, and they helped add a depth to the novel that might not have gotten through to the reader otherwise. The graphic novel certainly allowed the writer to experiment with form and tell the story in a completely different way. Frames that featured nothing but snow and trees, or contained nothing at all, captured the lonely feeing of adolescence perfectly. But, no matter how skillfully the artwork was done, it couldn’t make up for the poor dialog and weak plot. Without the drawings, the novel would have never made it through publication.
This leaves me not knowing what to think about the rapidly growing genre of the graphic novel. Part of me feels that instead of using words to paint a picture in the reader’s imagination, these writers are simply drawing comic strips along with their story to make up for the weak writing. On the other hand, if I look at these books from a more artistic perspective, I look at the juxtaposition of the pictures and frames and admire the effect they create for the reader. In the end, I think that a good graphic novel should have it all: an excellent plot, effective dialog, and great artwork. Because the graphic novel is a hybrid, their authors have to impress both art and literary critics. This may leave them at a disadvantage, but as the genre develops and matures, I think it could make for some very interesting works.
Creative Labs has decided to threaten a community modder because he was making Creative Labs drivers that actually supported Windows Vista with all of the features advertised for the product. Vista has been out for well over a year, and I have used it now for less than a year, and during this time Creative has entirely failed to provide a driver solution that gives all of the features advertised for the product. Hell, they can’t even make a driver that’s stable on the operating system. I have contacted Creative Labs support on a couple occasions about this, posted on the forum, etc. but in the end anytime I try to have sound outputting during high CPU usage I am nervous about my computer locking up.
I have complained about this product in the past, how Creative won’t just release specs so people can make Linux drivers, but I make this my vow: I will not buy another Creative product, period. I also will go on every single review website, forum, etc. and give people the raw facts about Creative Labs: they are incompetent and worthless(with of course, all the details of their failings).
For more on this topic, see the digg article.
UPDATE: For those looking to download the Creative Audigy drivers written by Daniel_K, they can be found here http://digiex.net/drivers/164-creative-audigy-series-vista-32bit-x86-vista-64bit-x64-drivers-daniel_k.html
Erik gave me an account on his blog, so I thought I’d make my first post about something outside his usual scope - art.
Today at work I came across a new magazine shipment and flipped through the pages of an issue of Art Lies. A piece by an artist called Andrea Zuill caught my eye, so I checked out her site. Her pieces are surreal and darkly humorous; here are a few good ones:
“Scout”
“Fairy”
“Monster”
“Elephant Dancing”
“My Time as a Bear”
And here is a sculpture called “Grunt with Bow”
I enjoyed her work. Her site is www.andreazuill.com.
Yesterday I received an envelope from the Office of the Attorney General of Florida. The Financial Investigator there has asked me for evidence of my problems with TigerDirect, specifically about how they never follow through processing rebates with their “partner”/co-owned site OnRebate.com
This will hopefully be a turning point for consumers who have been abused by all of these rebate offers that turn out to be scams.
Now, if only I can find all of those old rebate copies and order printouts…
(click for larger image)
You are supposed to put stuff in the template boxes, not leave them with the instructions.
The abortion debate is one that is extremely heated and has no resolution in sight. It has become an us/them conflict with very little discussion occurring. The primary reason for this is because both sides see each other as having incompatible values; one side sees a need to protect life, the other sees the need to allow choice. Both of these positions frame the debate in a manner to their political advantage, and this interferes with the dispute having any chance of resolution.
The Pro-Choice community assumes within its ideology that a fetus is not a human life, and hence life rights do not apply. For political posturing, though, they choose to frame the issue as about choice instead of the moral status of the fetus. I find this framing distasteful and manipulative. The assumption of personality liberty is a part of the Pro-Life position, with the universally understood exception of when that liberty harms the life of another. The key to making the debate more honest is for the Pro-Choice camp to promote and center its argument on why a fetus is not a human life, and thereby deserves no moral consideration.
This is where I hinge my argument.
Here is a diagram of the issue and where the two viewpoints, in their basic form, diverge:
(click above for a larger image)
