In My Memory

Dr Dalek, I call red herring. What wolves do is irrelevant and has nothing to do with our behavior. They arent inferior in the least. They are the mental and feeling equivalents to certain groups of humans and share many of the most important morally relevant characteristics with them, so they are out moral equals. BBC News - Animal Drug Testing: Several published studies assessing the prediction of drug side effects by animals have found them to be very poor predictors; correct only 5-25% of the time.[3] 92% of drugs fail in clinical trials, having successfully passed through animal studies.[4] Citations: [3] eg. Clin Pharmacol 1962;3:665-72 Zbinden, G (1991) Predictive value of animal studies in toxicology. Regul. Tox. Pharm. 14: 167-177 CMR Workshop – Animal Toxicity Studies: Their Relevance for Man Quay 1990 p 49-56 and p57-67 Spriet-Pourra, C and Auriche, M (Eds) 1994 SCRIP Reports PJB, New York Garratini, S (1985) Toxic effects of chemicals: difficulties in extrapolating data from animals to man. Annu. Rev. Toxicol. Pharmacol. 16: 1-29 Zbinden, G (1993) Regul. Toxicol. Pharmacol. 17: 85-94 Calabrese (1984) Suitability of animal models for predictive toxicology: Drug Metab Rev 15: 505-523 Oser, BL (1981) J. Toxicol. Environ. Health 8: 521-642 Calabrese, EJ (1987) Principles of Animal Extrapolation. Wiley, New York Olson, H., Betton, G., Stritar, J., and Robinson, D. (1998). The predictivity of the toxicity of pharmaceuticals in humans from animal data-An interim assessment. Toxicol. Lett. 102-103, 535-538 Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology 2000;32:56-67 Drug Metabolism and Drug Interactions 2000;16:143-155 Dr Ralph Heywood, former director of Huntingdon Research Centre, said, “… the best guess for the correlation of adverse reactions in man and animal toxicity data is somewhere between 5 and 25%.” [4] Lester Crawford, FDA Commissioner, in The Scientist 6.8.04 “More compounds failing Phase I” On the contrary, probably fewer drugs would be developed, or they would be more rigorously tested on human subjects. Well, it systematically undermines all of the common justifications for animal experimentation, such as: "if we didnt test on animals, we'd have to test on people" "animal testing is necessary to cure human diseases" "animal experimentation is save so many human lives" Those kinds of justications wouldnt have any meaning outside of an ethic that says "humans are the center of the universe", because they dont weight the benefit of humans against the harm caused to animals. On rejecting anthropocentricism, we're bound to consider the interests of animals and how we affect them just as seriously as we consider humans interests; and because many animals who are subjects of experimentation are the mental and feeling equivalent of human infants, and a beings morally relevant characteristics are intrinsically tied with its mental and feeling capacities, then animals and human infants are moral equals and entitled to the same consideration. If people object to using human infants as unwilling experimental participants to prolong animal lives, then the objections logically extend to animal experimentation so that animal vivisection is morally indistinguishable from human vivisection. We we reject anthropocentricism, yet still insist that human have basic rights to live and to be free from torture, then we can say animals have the same rights, and their rights would be based on nothing more than a logical extension of the humanistic principles that people already hold. So rejecting anthropocentric ethics leads very naturally and easily toward rejecting the permissibility of animal experimentation.

Dr Dalek,

Heres a thread to celebrate our stupidity, by telling our stories about the really dumb things we've done... I think I'm just a stupid prone person... I have so many stories to tell. Once, when I was a teenager, I ran out of razors, so I tried to shave my legs with a serated knife. Around that same time, before I came to my vegan sensibilities, I made a blow torch out of hairspray and a lighter and tried to set bugs on fire in my parents house, and I almost burned a couch down. Specifically, this thread was promted after something I did today: Today I got that idea that I should be more responsible with my money, instead of spending it all on cute skirts and high heels like I usually do, so I could be committed to other things like putting away money into a retirement account. So, I figured I could start spending less money by using less electricity, so I went and I bought some dry ice to put in my fridge and freezer to keep it cool. It worked really well, I turned down my fridge and freezer settings, and I start patting myself on the back for being thrifty and more environmentally sound. Fast forward to now, after about 6 hours have passed. I just looked in my fridge, and everything is frozen solid... all of my glass jars are broken, all of my juices have exploded all over everything, a bottle of oil has cracked and leaked over everything, and there are bits of shattered glass in all of my vegetables (somehow I didnt hear any of this). Also, I think I might have just broken my fridge for good, I think the plastic interior is cracked but I cant tell because the entire thing is covered in 1/2 inch of ice. On top of that, I havent eaten all day . So all of the money I would have saved on electricity is going to be spent today buyding new groceries and defrosting my fridge with a hair dryer. Stupid stupid stupid stupid. Share your stories

Asac, If you're interested, here is a small collection of animal experiments I've put together: http://juliet.php0h.com/rubrique.php?id_rubrique=5 Animals are feeling beings who have an experiential welfare, and they have all of the same morally relevant characteristics as mentally similar humans, so they are entitled to the same moral consideration. If people believe its wrong to experiment on human infants, then the objection extends to mentally similar animals. However, people continue to experiment on animals because they breed quickly, theres no legal consequence, and the animals cant defend themselves. There isnt anything morally consistent about animal experimentation: - on the one hand, animals are so similar to humans that they can reveal medical insights useful to humans. But on the other hand, they are so dissimilar that killing them has no comparable moral consequence. - on the one hand, it is perfectly acceptable to kill millions and millions of animals to save a single human life. On the other hand, it would be murder if someone to kill other people to harvest their blood and organs for their own purposes. - on the one hand, its perfectly fine to breed animals with the intent to kill them. On the other hand, treating humans in a similar way would be the plot of a horror movie. - on the one hand, the US congress unanimously votes against a bill that would have allowed researchers to culture human blastocysts for use in stem cell research. On the other hand, Us congress votes to exempt researchers who breed mice, birds, and rabbits from animal cruelty regulations. - on the one hand, no medical journal on the plant will publish data collected from the the nazi holocaust experiments due to the unethical way the data was collected. On the other hand, almost all of tha nazi experiments have been reproduced using animal subjects (there are thousands of animal equivalents to the freezing experiments, turbuculosis vaccine experiments, decompression experiments), and the results of those experiments are readily accessible in almost any medical journal on the planet. - on the one hand, animals are pratically martyrs for being sacrificed so that other people can live. On the other hand, not a single researcher or beneficient on animal experimentation is willing to be sacrificed or sacrifice their children for the same ends. Animal experimentation is a product of the mindset that says "humans are the center of the universe", which is a superstitious and ignorant belief that should have died when geocentricism fell out of fashion. Animals are entitled to a right to life in exactly the same way as mentally similar humans for exactly the same reasons, and I defend animals rights not to be killed just like I'd defend humans if they were in the same position. If I had my way, I would categorically abolish animal experimentation altogether. We need to take all the money that goes into experimentation and fund cruelty-free alternatives.

Why censor the movie? Why not let the movie air as-is, then the old Clinton administration can sue for slander and willful misrepresentation? That would be more fun

My results: LIBERTARIAN Your PERSONAL issues Score is 90%. Your ECONOMIC issues Score is 60%. (According to my political compass, at -7.13 economic score and -5.90 social, I'm way out on the fringe of loonie environmentalism) I'm going to have to agree with Severian darling on most of the comments about Libertarianism however, because theres no rationale behind automatically linking "free trade / free market" with notions of good. One of the things that I never cared for were faux libertarians who call themselves libertarians without even being familiar with libertarian theorists like Nozick and Naverson, especially if they've never familiarized themselves with some of Nozicks criticisms of his own theory. Paranoia, Wait a minute? You're blaming 9/11 on the lack of a Libertarian government? I've seen some interesting discussions of libertarianism, but thats the most farfetched thing I've ever seen in my life next to "Republicans caused hurricane Katrina".

I like to play Texas Hold'em with friends all the time, and for a while I played competitively on the TD Waterhouse poker league One of the things I recommend is getting aquainted with software that automatically calculates the exact odds of you winning a hand from pre-flop to the river (the 2 cards you're dealt in the beginning, to the last of 5 community cards laid on the table). I googled around for a bit and found this freeware that looks like it could be helpful. If you are playing for money and you're a beginner, my best advice is, be very passive or you'll lose all of your money very quickly. There are a few stategies that beginners like to use, but almost never work: - fold every hand until you get a good hand. Thats probably the safest way to go, but you just cant build up a chip count fast enough. Most people at the table have already figured out what you're doing when your hands look like "fold", "fold", "fold", "fold", "call", so they wont bother to see call you after the pre-flop or flop, so at best you only win the blinds and antes. - go all in on every hand. A lot of beginners have a habit of wanting to put all their money in the pot right off the bat to scare everyone else into folding (at best, the beginners wins the blinds and antes), but once everyone else at the table realizes whats going on, they're going to wait until they have a larger-than-average hand call the beginner's all-in, and then the beginner will lose the chip advantage that s/he's just spent the last 5 or 6 hands building up. Thats just a rule of thumb above from my own personal experience, however I think its worth nothing you you *might* gain a slight advantage over very skilled players by using the "all-in" strategry in no-limit poker. I've come some poker theorists like David Sklansky who say that a beginner player can outplay even world champions by using doing a simple computation based on the size of the blinds, antes, number of players, and strength of the hands, and either going all in or folding on with no other actions (most poker bots use that principle, and they can usually defeat amateur players, and rank in the top 10 out of 40 players in professional tournaments). - very predictable pattern of raising and better. Most beginners play their pre-flop hands like this: lousy cards (2 6 offsuit) - fold decent hand (10 J offsuit) - call strong hand (A A) - raise That makes sense intuitively, but making your play more agressive with the strength of your cards gives away what you're holding. A better preflop strategy looks like this: lousy cards - fold decent hand - raise strong hand - call Similarly, during post-flop play, beginners tend to do this: call when the turn doesnt help their hand call on the river when it doesnt help their hand ^^^^ thats very bad, because especially in games with small blinds, most people arent afraid to call all the way to river, so when you set your cards down to see who wins, everyone else on the table can see too, and that gives away your strategy. A better way to play is like this: with a decent hand raise on the preflop call on the flop raise on the turn call on the river ^^^ the advantage to raising on the turn makes the opponents think that you have a much stronger hand, but its also scary to see someone making such an agressive move when theres still one more card left to be dealt (which makes your hand seem even stronger). 4 out of 5 times, players will fold after you raise on the turn. However, when you call on the river, it confuses players into think you're trying to downplay your hand, and they may not be willing to risk. However, I've been stuck in a situation when I'm on the river and I call, but then my opponent raises (I usually take this to be an overly aggressive bluff, so to take the pot by force I might be willing to go all-in; it isnt strategically effective just to call the raise, and it is outright idiotic to re-raise because that gives the opponent and opportunity to go all-in and take the pot). with a strong hand call on the preflop raise on the flop call on the turn raise on the river ^^^ That works good for downplaying your strong hand, and usually on the flop your opponent is willing to call your raise if they've built up a modest hand. The technique above is a way of milking the maximum number of chips out of your opponents without scaring them off. - bluffing too much. A bluff is overrated and should be used sparingly, especially if you come across players like me whose gameplay is determined almost entirely by mathematics (I treat poker like the mathematical game that it is, and never expect to win on a longshot). In fact, what I see from a lot of beginners is that they want to bluff on really lousy hands because they want to force their opponents to fold before the river, but thats a good way to lose a lot of money. Poker is a 10% psychological game, and 90% mathematical, and the people who win world champion tournaments are ones who can determine precisely the strength of their hands and the relative strengths of everyone elses hand. - showing your hand after everyone has folded. <--- for that being nothing more but commonsense, you should see just how many novice players are too happy to show off their hand. Its not uncommon to hear "ha ha, I cant believe I just won with nothing", or "thats no fair, everyone folded out just when I was holding a pair of kings". No matter how strong the urge is to show off your hand, fight it like the devil, keep your cards to yourself. And if you have a dealer whose very rude and likes to flip over your cards for you, punch him in the nose. One of the things that helped me learn to play poker is to record your hands (most online programs will do that for you), then have a professional poker player analyze it line-by-line and tell you what you should or shouldnt have done, and also tell you how the odds of your hand winning are calculated. You can also try going to your library and picking up any of dozens of poker strategy books, I recommend Tournament Poker for Advanced Players by David Sklansky (ISBN 1-880685-28-0) and No Limit Hold 'em: Theory and Practice by David Sklansky and Ed Miller (ISBN 1-880685-37-X). Also, it helps to wear cute denim skirts. It doesnt make you a better poker player, but it does make you the most adorable player at the table, plus you get to gloat "na na na na, you lost all your money to a girl in a skirt".

Severian, For starters, he kidnapped, tortured, and killed 12 million people. The gods I worship look down on that kind of thing.

Granted. I wish I was 10 years younger.

Severian, Please dont take this the wrong way, but are you saying that Hitler may have gone to Heaven, and the 12 million victims of the Holocaust are in Hell? Do you think, somewhere in the back of Hitlers mind, he believed God was very pleased with his Final Solution?

Severian, So you're saying he's not your idea of a True Christian, fine by me. ^^^ refer to Mokeles post above. schpaw Aardvark, Quite sure. Hitler and the Nazis repeatedly explained and justified their actions by reference to spurious perversions of Darwinism. They rewrote biology textbooks and set up biological research units working on the basis of those beliefs. Are you sure about that? Because I have excerpts from a couple of Hitler's rewritten textbooks right here: A biology textbook The only spurious reference to Darwinism I can see are some uses of the word "survival"' date=' but theres a lot more political content than anything: And to my knowledge, those research units were seeking for the ultimate Aryan form and breeding with them. To my knowledge, I dont think Hitler really knew much about Darwinism than the basics of heritability and selective breeding, but to say that he tried to justify his actions by Darwinism is a stretch, and I think he justifications were just an intense hatred of Jews rationalized by his religious convictions (i.e. "I hate the Jews and God agrees with me").

Sisyphus, Granted. You are Batman, an anthromorphic ashwood bat with the power to crack baseballs dramatically into stadium lights just before your team wins, unfortunately you cant enjoy the after-game party due to concussion. Phi for All, Granted. You materialize in Mexico, where all the 0's on a peso note mean practically nothing, so you know with perfect cetainty which purchases are worthless because all of them are. I wish I had someone beautiful to kiss right now.

If I remember correctly, all of Hitler's anti-Christian quotes originate from a 1953 publication called Hitler's Table Talk, which is a collection of informal, off-the-record quotes and comments compiled by one of Hitler's secretaries. And all of Hitler's Christian quotes are excerpted from hist books and speeches. I'm inclined to take the second-hand quotations from Table Talk with a grain of salt. I think its very likely that Hitler was religious, and the god he worshipped just happened to hate all the same people he hated. If Hitler hated Christianity, then he hated it in the same sense that some Christians today despise Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses as not being True Christians. There are still Christian anti-semites today, you can see them at ChristianParty.net (<--- warning, NSWF), and they believe Jesus was an anti-semite and that we should finish what Hilter started. Aardvark, Are you sure about that? It isnt even clear to me that Hitler actually had any exposure to Darwinism at all. I dont think so. Its wrong to say Martin Luther founded Nazism, but he was fanatically anti-semitic and his writings have been of interests to white supremacists for decades. And in fact, the influence of Martin Luther on Hitler is held by the majority of academics. Theres a nice post by Gary Hurd on the Pandas Thumb on the topic: Here we have Hitler, in his argument to Hungary’s Admiral Horthy, invoking not an übermench racist position, but an anti-Bolshevik, and nationalist one. If Hitler tried to draw rhetorical support from _Social_ Darwinism_ arguing in Mein Kampf, it is not evident from the text, and in any event was at most merely a twig on the trunk of his anti-Semitism. His opposition is to what he considered a Marxist threat, not drawn from Darwin, which was more a rationalization of his hatred than its origin. Further, the theoretical models Hitler drew from was not evolution in any event, but the Germ Theory of Disease, and Christianity.

Granted. The rotation of the earth drops dramatically by almost 200 mph, sending everything tumbling ferociously to the ground, so you can spend those 4 extra hours piecing together the crumbling debris that you used to call civilization. I wish George Bush will be remembered by historians as the worst president we've ever had.

Phi Darling, Speaking of vegan bands, theres one I heard called Velvet Acid Christ (<---- brilliant name for a rock group), they play really intense vegan trance / acid. The first 3 songs from "Between The Eyes: Vol 3" are the best if anyone likes the trance / acid genre

A superorganism to be precise. Just like the way all individual ants working as a single unit can be described as superorganism, the earth is too Lets call this organism Gaia, just for the fun of it. Think about it, the earth is self-regulating in a homeostatic feedback loop (<-- I can just see bascule getting all hot and bothered right now ), and even with some degree of will and complex intelligence. For instance: The mean temperature of the earth, even before people had the capacity to affect the climate, has been relatively constant, when it should be unintelligently drifting between extremes of hot and cold every year. Theres no real necessary reason why the earth should "prefer" one temperature to others, unless its learned to regulate itself. However, since the influence of people is raising the temperature of the earth artificially, beyond the acceptable limits of Gaia's homoestasis. Obviously, Gaia would know that it can maintain its homeostasis by eliminating some people, so maybe extreme whether conditions are Gaia's way of defending herself. And if you've ever seen where humans have interfered substantially, and stripped forests out of the ground, or if you've seen how everything is charred after a major fire, it certainly looks like Gaia is in pain. Fortunately, Gaia detects the damage and repairs it over time, which is unmistakably a sign of intent and will... and if we arent willing to grant that much to Gaia, then hopefully its a little easier to accept that the surface of the earth behaves as if its a physiological system. Ponder that in your pipe and smoke it

Dak,

Was it love at first sight? Serendipity? Your high school sweetheart? Or some really smooth one-liners? I thought this would be a fun thread because almost everyone has an interesting story of how they met their husband or wife, for instance I work with a guy who met his wife on an H P Lovecraft messageboard, and I know another couple who met because the woman (a cop) had pulled over her soon-to-be husband for speeding I was never really "officially" married, so much as perpetually engaged for so long that we bought a house together and people thought we were married, so I think my story still counts ... ... the setting is a time long long ago, in a galaxy far far away (the galaxy of Toronto, Canada), I met my "husband" completely by accident, he was a bank teller and cashed my paychecks every two weeks. After a few months we got to know each other on a first name basis and started to become really friendly. One day I pulled up to the bank to desposit a check, and I saw him chatting with people on the side of the bank, and I noticed I could hear almost everything perfectly well... so I decided to be a very bad girl and listen to the conversation without his knowledge, and he just said all the right things without even knowing it: So I caught up with him after his shift and decided to go on a date, which turned into 3 more dates, and then 5 more, and then forevermore... until we decided to "divorce" peacefully last year So thats my story, share yours and if your story isnt beautiful, embellish something to make it beautiful

itchyworm, Its cultural for the most part, because most people really dont know anything about morality, they dont know what makes life valuable at all. Believe me, the people who object to abortion are just are morally naive as those who dont care at all, neither group has even the remotest handle of moral principles. But at least I consider myself a moral-minded person with a good handle on moral principles, and I have objections to baby-murder that arent applicable to abortion. Babies are feeling beings with an experiential welfare, and they valuable enough to protect for just that much; but unborn fetuses dont have those characteristics (at least not before 24 weeks, when 99% of abortions occur). In fact, I dont think a 9-week-old fetus has any morally relevant characteristics in common with a 9-day-old infant, so I dont see the two are even remotely comparable.

Bascule, He's a lot more attractive than most 60-year-old men I've seen

Jesus on a Stick Mittens for Kittens Cyclone Poo Cyborg Hippo Reacharound Boys (the new Backstreet Boys) Turkeypox

Severian, He's a darling and a perfect gentlemen, and sends me many pictures of himself without a shirt on mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm [/derail]

YT, Next time in Colorado, I'm getting bascule a sex change and we'll get gay-married and have children. mwahahahaha

I got ENTJ (extroverted, intuitional, thinking, judging), which probably explains why I'm so great

Bettina, I'm not at all willing to dismiss his comments as drunken rambling. Mel Gibsons father' date=' Hutton Gibson, is a viciously anti-semitic and a Holocaust denier, see wikipedia: I dont think Mel Gibson would have regretted his comments at all if he wasnt so publically embarrassed.