Peterkin

Yes, and now you have clarified it. You believe that medical decisions should be made, not by medically trained persons on scientific grounds, nor by the patient whose life and health is at stake, but by unqualified legislators, according to their own value system. Only without the 1. implicit threat or 2. taking away a right those affected already have. That means a return to the middle ages, when the decision-makes were prelates, the threat was explicit and the plague took out a third of Europe's population, while the Inquisition burned midwives. In the following statement, you also seem to take it for granted that voters are able to 'find' and elect what you consider reasonable legislators. That, too has happened, and was the standard for a few good years, while reasonable legislators enacted laws in accord with their constituents' will, and left medical decisions to medical personnel and their patients. That is the very state of affairs which has been reversed, one reasonable law at a time, one civil right at a time, one legal protection after another, in America's processional toward the medieval status quo. Once the democratic process has been corrupted and debased, voters no longer have the power to reform it - which was the very purpose of the corruption. The only way for a populace robbed of its political power to regain it is through revolution.

To right-wing lawmakers, who lives and who dies is not the issue - it's not even a consideration. If no abortion - or other procedure to stop bleeding or remove necrotic tissue - is performed, both mother and foetus may very well die. Or the mother may bring a pregnancy to term, deliver a defective baby, which dies a few hours or days or horrible months later, and the mother may also die of sepsis or hemorrhage. The legislators and jurists are not interested in medical problems. The only issue is who decides.

Reasoning is what every entity with a brain does to solve problems and make decision. If the entity is sane and viable, the vast majority of its reasoning is rational and logical. The soundness of its conclusions depend on the quantity and quality of information with which it was supplied at the beginning a reasoning process. As thinking entities gain complexity, they develop more facets to their mental capability: instinct, emotion, memory, pattern-recognition, empathy, anticipation, abstraction, generalization, imagination, intuition, projection. These aspects of thought can be life enhancing and prompt decisions that have positive outcomes for the individual, or its progeny or its species, but are not necessarily rational or logical. They can also lead the thinking entity into reasoning on false premises, or according to irrational rules. The individual is not necessarily insane or non-viable when this happens (though it often is the case) but they are no longer logical. Logic is strictly constrained by its own rules, while reasoning may range widely and make use of other faculties. Logic is a mental tool that can be applied to a given subject or problem or discipline or situation. One can ask: Does the imaginary world of Harry Potter have a prevailing internal logic? Yes - all stories, dreams, religions, fantasies, national constitutions, games, sports, clubs, businesses, relationships and even jokes do. Then, if one asked of a specific act or event in a Harry Potter story : Is that logical? it would be in the context of the rules of that world, rather than outward reality. Likewise, when characters in a story reason, the factors they consider are those that prevail in their world, not ours; their decisions are rational or irrational by the internal standards of the story-world. And when people in our world reason, we don't always know whether they're applying logic, or to what degree, what other faculties they're using, and in what system of rules they operate.

That was half a sentence with no meaning without the other half" The creation of an implicit threat seems to be very much by design and aims to take out medical decisions away from physicians into a So what you are approving is a system of intimidation where physicians are forced to make medical decisions according to the moral code of people who have no medical knowledge but know - or think they know - what some Hebrew prophets wrote 28+ centuries ago. to "find some reasonable law makers" Yah. Good idea... a little short on implementation. Only one side has presented it this way in legal or legislative argument. Only one side has put the extreme position in action and enshrined it in law. These opposites are in no way equal or comparable, and have never been the only choices available to patients, doctors, jurists or legislators.

Which should be? - The creation of an implicit threat - taking medical decisions away from physicians - a morality-based judgement system controlled by law-makers - all three? Should be that way for everyone in all cases? If the lawmakers are predominantly of one faith, or share a prejudice, then all life, death, treatment and prevention should be designed on their belief, rather on the scientifically determined best outcome for the patient? When did this become CharonY's job description? They very well might be so, but 2. is not, and has never been the actual pro-choice position - despite many, many attempts to present it this way.

And after all these testimonies, and all the footage we witnessed live, and again in reruns, and all the tweets and speeches that have been recorded for all to see, the pro/con split is astonishing https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2022/06/23/jan-6-poll-trump-insurrection-capitol Only 64%! That tells us more about the conservative propaganda machine and wilful unreason than anybody should be forced to know about their fellow 'intelligent' life-forms.

Time is a fluid. The reason you can't travel in it is that the past has frozen solid, impenetrable; the future is random vapour; no footing or traction: only the present is liquid enough to move around in in.

No, I wouldn't. But you have, to your own satisfaction, and that seems to be all you're interested in. I wish you well.

No, thank you.

No, questions about the unnatural motion of snails as compared to the natural motion of rivers and clouds are not evidence for the absurd claim: If this were so, intelligence would have had to precede existence, and your 'lower' life forms would not be there for the 'higher' life-forms to consume, nor would the lowest life form have anything non-living to consume, and the ancestors you worship wouldn't have had any ancestors of their own. So you'd have to come back to some kind of smart, immaterial creator, which would be silly. (IMO) Sure. And You have quite eloquently failed to convince me that you have any idea what those grandiosely capitalized words mean, let alone what life means.

To presume neither but work from observable phenomena is reason. To hold an unfounded belief is faith. You're entitled to your method, as I am to mine. The difference between life and non-life is metabolism, not opinion. To you. But the next reasonable question might be: "How does life, or even Life, sustain itself? Would it continue to exist in the absence of material things? Evidence? What are they? I didn't set out any "term of reality"; I questioned you approach to the subject and mentioned others that might be taken. If you begin and conclude with your personal belief, why bother talking about philosophy? (I'll give you one subjective opinion: Capitalizing common Nouns and insignificant Verbs in order to Imbue the things they signify with some special importance, as if they were indisputable sacred Concepts is not merely ineffective and annoying, it is a Futile Attempt to assume Authority the writer does not,in Fact, have. )

You NEED a Newfoundland PUPPY!!! Will keep devil cat busy with Someone NEW to bully, without serious damage to Dog or Furniture. (Might need bigger house...)

They have reason to be cocky. **Since Nixon and Billy Graham, their political influence has been courted by candidates, and their power has grown along with the white supremacist faction's, as the Republican Party, at the federal level, and even more obviously in the state governments, have catered to their demands in preference to the general population's interests. That holy war is simply one flank of an all-fronts attack. Once they've broken the United States and its accustomed form of government, they'll turn on one another. Very cold comfort! Afterthought. It's a bit more complicated, and harks back to another cozy bedfellow of the political right. https://history.princeton.edu/about/publications/one-nation-under-god-how-corporate-america-invented-christian-america And now, of course the death industry supports God and Jesus has learned to love guns. https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/In-god-and-guns-they-trust/article14005414.ece

I quite like this comparison. Until the Democrats are tough enough to be willing to do how Republicans do, they're just as bad as the Republicans. Keratosis and melanoma are both skin blemishes. Why quibble over which one you have on your face? That's fine as long as you're alone. A subjective sample of 1, however, doesn't give you the statistically significant comparison. Try riding a crowded downtown bus late on Friday night.

You might not get many takers with that approach.

Our ability or inability to influence events is irrelevant to the question. "Is it then already part of the future based on the near impossibility of any other incident preventing it happening." No, it is a projection based on calculations of what is known. There may be unknown factors already at work, and unknown factors yet to take effect that will change the event and invalidate the prediction. Venus could be knocked out of its orbit by a meteor collision, or explode from within, or be stolen by Davros. The key word there is highlighted. No. It can be considered highly probable. All of our decisions in life are based on degree of probability of the outcome of the confluence of current evens and our own actions. Sometimes we're underinformed, sometimes misinformed; sometimes we miscalculate, sometimes we miunderunderestimate the unknown unknowns, sometimes we just close our eyes and jump, trusting to luck or a deity to make it all right in the end. The reason you can't kill your grandfather before your father was born is that your father was born. The good news is, he can't recsind your own or your father's birth, either.

We should probably determine whether the objection to the petition was valid. It appears to have been, so, but not sufficient to throw out the whole list. The party line voting is pretty much a given in US politics (other countries, too!) but the motivation is not entirely clear. Closing ranks behind one member who did something underhanded, but in their own eyes forgivable, for a small advantage? Automatically voting for anything that might dilute the other party's base, regardless of its validity? Both are common reactions. Strategic voting is not entirely unknown to Canada, either - to the detriment of the Green Party in particular. I guess they know the drill by now: their best option is to support a party than can win and persuade it to adopt their platform, or join a party that can win and advocate for their platform -- which is routinely done. While the situation doesn't come to near the scope or effectiveness of gerrymandering and voter suppression (i.e. not quite the equivalent of what I've been 'constantly complaining' about), wrong is still wrong, and ought to be righted. From the most egregious to the most trivial, there are so many flaws inherent in the present electoral system and so many accumulated abuses and corruptions over time, by whichever party had the opportunity at one time or another, that it has become barely reflective of the will of the people: only marginally and sporadically democratic. The two-party system is an unlikely stage on which it can be righted. The electoral college is an unlikely tool for righting it. And the current Supreme Court is not the champion to accomplish it.

It will get ugly at on the highways and harbours, too, when vigilantes intercept women trying to get out of their clutches, and anyone who tries to help women do that. They will be making 'citizen's arrests', beating men and groping and humiliating women in the cause of ... the usual: supremacy. https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/is-it-legal-to-travel-for-abortion-after-dobbs

The fact that you asked

We don't rely so much priests in Canada. They kinda lost their halos with the whole Residential School business. The abortion issue was entirely between the doctors and the lawyers. The legislators fussed and fumed and fought among themselves but every decade, one strong Liberal government comes in and does what the voters mostly want.

Why assume state laws are reasonable?

Here we go again! In the late 1960's, the same law was used to obtain abortions in cases where the woman's life was seriously threatened by the pregnancy. Some, then many physicians chose to interpret that loosely as if the woman's life is at risk. Then they included emotional risk, such as possible suicide. If you wanted an abortion, you had to apply to go before a committee or two physicians and a psychiatrist. The committee system did not function well: the wait for a hearing would often put the termination beyond the 12-week gestation legally allowed, (In those days, you didn't get a positive result until 4-6 weeks into a pregnancy) plus it tied up valuable doctor-time, so it became a rubber-stamp process. (You don't have to come in and do the histrionics, just say you 'll kill yourself if you're forced to have this baby, and we'll approve the application.) In 1969-72, our inner city hospital was doing about 20 suctions and maybe 10 D&C's every Wednesday afternoon. Very, very few later than 16 weeks, and those would be severely defective foetuses.

How many of the things you use every day do you know who made them? They don't have to hide; they just have to blend into the background that doesn't interest you - like all the people who resurface your roads, unload the containers of retail goods, stock the shelves, swab the hospital floors. Have you ever even tried to read the name of the quality inspector who signed off on your box of teabags? That's because it's not 'made' at all. It happened, as a result a whole lot of previous events, with no intelligence behind them - just mindless, intractable, inescapable physics.

I'd be really interested to see it in use. (I do a lot of chopping and my boards look like battle-scarred veterans of a turf war.) Can we have updates from time to time?

That's way too beautiful to mess up with cutting. Very fine work!