Sayonara

Yes, that's all well and good when you are talking about copper, but if you consider other materials vital to complex technologies, such as platinum, iridium, osmium, and Greenockite, my point stands. I'm pretty sure I could go on with an extensive list of things we might like a great deal more of should we wish to expand beyond Earth. I notice you chose to talk about copper, which is commonly known to be abundant, but ignored lead. With the current rate of increase in utilisation, lead production (which includes mining and recycling) will become insufficient in about 40-45 years. But perhaps when we want to send all those ships to other stars we will be able to collect up all the bullets and melt them down for the cause.

Using a more efficient method of extraction doesn't change the total resource available. For example, we might find ways to cheaply refine copper from low quality ores, but there is still a finite number of copper atoms on the planet. I appreciate what you are saying about eking out resources, but we are discussing the long haul here and I don't understand why you would make the claim that 'very few vital resources are in any danger of running out' even though the thread is supposed to be looking at human affairs far into the future. Copper and lead are beginning to become problematic already yet demand is actually accelerating. It may be that you simply underestimate just how many elements and compounds are actually "vital" for maintaining our present civilisation, much less a more complex civ of the near future. Intra-specific competition brings its own selection pressures which - as long as we are picking our own reproductive mates - will never go away.

You are like... so corrupt.

Animal rights activists use the word vivisection and images of animals with bits missing and possibly metal parts added to galvanise hatred against anyone using animals in research. This is not a valid reason for changing the scope of the definition of "vivisection" to include anything we object to. What it is, is a dirty lie. Or propaganda if you wish to remain diplomatic. The fact is that using "vivisection" to refer to any animal experimentation is deliberately misleading, and factually incorrect. Let me give you an example of why your mutation of the definition of vivisection is bad: I am going to redefine "anal rape" in the same way that you redefined vivisection. Anal rape, in this experiment, is the "distressing insertion of any object into the anal passage". Doctors should be sent to prison for trying to diagnose potentially fatal conditions with rectal thermometers, because they are committing ANAL RAPE! Never mind the circumstances, just listen to how it sounds when I say it like this: ANAL RAPE!!!112 Do you see my point? You will need to provide substantially better evidence before anyone is convinced. Transplanting arguments between different but similar goals doesn't always work. If it did, it would sure have made this thread easier to read! I am relieved to hear it. There has been a great deal of rational discussion in this thread as to whether or not animal testing is "cruel". A sizeable part of the problem is that it is difficult to establish whether animals suffer in the same way we do (bearing in mind that suffering trauma and demonstrating a pain response are two different things). The second level discussion that follows on from that (irrespective of whether or not we decide that animals suffer in the same way as us) deals with the acceptability of such tests in a species context. Which is worse... testing on animals which might feel pain, or allowing millions of people to die from what are often medically trivial causes? Perhaps we are simply doomed to pick the lesser of two evils and live with it, and all the arguments are just pointless. I am not like an animal. I am orders more advanced, and so are you. I should not be tested upon because it would compromise or destroy faculties I have which animals simply do not share. Any attempt to protect animals from testing on the same basis needs to present evidence that they do in fact possess such faculties. "Black people could be kept as slaves" is a red herring. While true, it does not have any relevance to the argument other than to point out that sometimes society takes positions that people don't like very much. Laws are not just opinions (well, at least not in Western democracies). That is utterly incorrect. No. You missed the point entirely. References to constructive possession notwithstanding, the analogy between humans dominating the biosphere and you trying to take someone's house away is only superficially valid. It breaks down because the mechanisms and outcomes are entirely different. You have to remember that the tests performed in non-human stages are for toxicity as well as efficacy. If you find something puzzling, it's best to ask. Again, I don't wish to be rude, but if your aim is to educate you are not doing a very good job. You have introduced an entirely incorrect definition of "vivisection" which is well known as being a animal rights campaigners' device, demanded citations without offering any of your own, objected to thread management, argued by weak analogy, and claimed laws are opinion despite your entire view seemingly being no different. Neither anti- nor pro- is likely to be an objective source, to be honest. It is important to remember though that information is not correct because we are convinced or incorrect because we are incredulous. It is disingenuous to use the terms vivisection and animal experimentation interchangeably - please stop it. This thread has never been about vivisection, and if this carries on it is going to result in strawman warnings. I don't think that anyone is arguing that animal testing is "right". What most of the people who argue against the anti- position state is that animal testing is (a) a necessary evil, and (b) not anywhere as bad as campaigners make out. Look at the state of the arguments that most of the anti- posters have written in this thread. Mostly they come here from a google search, post an emotional and fact-free diatribe about how animal testing is awful and cruel and such, then vanish when they are told that actually, lab animals have quite a good life and that they would be doing more good campaigning against the cruel treatment of domestic pets. Do you think that this is likely, in any but freakishly rare cases? Yes, and as I said, if you read the thread you will see that we have extensively discussed the difference between an animal showing a pain response and an animal experiencing suffering in the same order as a human, and we have not yet seen any compelling evidence that the two things approach being the same state. By all means pitch some evidence in to that part of the discussion because all the other participants seem to have run dry, And yet they still allow animal testing. I wonder why that might be? What if that condition is limited to the confines of your mind? Although I am sure you have real conviction in your belief, it is possible that you are simply wrong about the way that animals work. Anthropomorphising hard-wired responses is a folly when you are trying to present a rational position. Yes, however this was due to the appalling conditions (of both transport and treatment after sale), and the use of sentient, self-aware, and self-determining beings as unpaid, "owned" labourers. The second objection is not applicable to animals. The first is not manifest in the vast majority of animal test organisations, due to the incredibly strict regulatory practices which have already been described at length in this thread. Your argument's reliance on the slave trade parallel is, in principle, no different to the fatal logical flaw that resulted in Godwin's Law. Yes, let's change another definition just enough to allow more evocative phrases at the cost of being accurate and intellectually honest. Cruelty is always deliberate and directed for its own sake. That is what the word means. Malice is therefore a pre-requisite. It is a common problem in threads like this for a poster to talk about a group within a group, unintentionally tarring them all with the same brush. I would take it as a given that iNow does not truly believe all animal rights campaigners are the same.

I found the answer to that.

We don't know how well you turned out, do we? And even if we did, it would be anecdotal evidence. Holding yourself up as an example doesn't really help anyone. Have you ever wondered what contributes to the behaviour whereby one labels people as "lefties" to make it easier to dismiss what they thank?

But the point is that whether or not the dogs had diabetes is a non-issue. The effects of insulin on their blood chemistry can be monitored regardless, and since we know the mechanisms of diabetes the data is entirely as useful. I have to say I share your bewilderment over chemotherapy. Considering how advanced much of our medical technology has become, it seems almost a barbaric assault.

I think Season 1 was only continuous because it was a half season anyway, so it ended before the split would have happened. Don't know what the deal was with season 3. Anyway, before we know it we'll have seen the finale and all have the Blu Ray uber box set on pre-order

McCain's looks like the approach of a simpleton who has never played with an economy before. Surely his people must be more savvy than that? I don't think cutting tax for everyone is going to fool a lot of people when you have the working man getting a 0.2% cut and the rich minority getting more than 20 times that off their tax bill.

Because there is a difference between an act being unfortunately unpleasant, and cruel. Cruelty is an act of deliberate malice.

To be honest ParanoiA, I am worn out too (although it has more to do with just getting in from work than the thread). Your latest post though has left me somewhat confused as to whether you are opposed to the idea of society rejecting discrimination per se, or the idea that this rejection be mediated by government

When you quote, it does actually give a little arrow icon in the quote which links you to the relevant post if you click on it. There is also a multiquote system, which means you can go through the thread clicking the " icon on all the posts you want to reply to, then hit the quote button when you are ready to start replying. It is quite a time saver. I am not going to spend much time replying to your post for the simple reason that you are decrying vivisection, which is not the topic of this thread. You are confusing vivisection and animal testing. This is not surprising, due to the efforts of people who are strongly opposed to all forms of animal experimentation. They paint all such efforts as the devilish and avoidable mutilation of fluffy animals, despite the fact that this is rarely representative in the slightest of the efforts they are attacking. Vivisection is defined as, and only as, surgery conducted on a living animal. That could be anything from replacing a monkey brain with sawdust to repairing ligaments in your pet dog's leg. Are you against pet dogs receiving such treatment? Probably not, I should think. The lesson to learn here is not to muddy the waters by using terms inappropriately. No problem with lengthy posts on this site... just keep in mind that "I can't let that go" is an emotive response, which is not often going to engender refutations of the highest quality. As I said, vivisection is surgery on animals. So it cannot all be labelled as "cruel", because you need more specific information about the vivisection you are discussing. It's also not the same thing as animal testing, so you are wasting your own time. On this site, you shouldn't make such a claim without credible supporting evidence. Not true. If we assume that a dog which raises its eyebrow is experiencing curiosity, we are anthropomorphising, which is a subjective assessment. The biochemical responses of cellular material to the action of a drug under test conditions are hardly subjective assessments. I didn't remember this and had to go back and look. I think I meant to say that they were enantiomers, which are explained here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enantiomer The basic thrust was that they might not even be assimilated by the human body. Fine with me. But without reasoning which precedes the conclusions, nobody is going to take any notice. I could sit here typing "ANIMAL TESTING IS MAN'S GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT!!!!!!1112" over and over, but you are not going to subscribe to that notion without some pretty compelling arguments, are you? Your misunderstandig of the term 'vivisection' aside, this simply demonstrates that you lack any sense of perspective on the issue. Please don't presume to lecture the administrators on what people are "allowed" to say, when there is not even any censorship in effect. As before, Bosun can voice all the opinions he wants, but without any substance to demonstrate why people should take that opinion on board, nobody will. Without any substance to demonstrate why that opinion is significant, nobody cares. Do you really consider this to be a rational approach? Before you answer, think carefully how your response might affect the way that your arguments are received afterwards. Holding that belief has a name: it is called being a sociopath. Animals do not have rights, save those which are designated by law. Laws are made and changed based on the strength of arguments and the balance of cost versus benefit to society. On what basis would you presume to argue that animals have the right to not be tested upon? Notice here that I say "on what basis". I am, in other words, not asking you to simply repeat the flat and unevidenced statement that they have that right. You should not join a discussion unless you are aware of what has been said already. It makes you look ignorant, foolish, and arrogant when you simply parrot what has already been voiced and demolished beforehand. It also tires out the people who are deigning to write rational and comprehensive answers, putting them to conduct undue volumes of work. Bosun's laziness is not worth that, no matter how intuitive you might find it to complain. Please stay focused on the issues, and not childlike objections to completely reasonable efforts to manage the thread. Briefly, yes. However since that bad analogy is not a shift in the weighting of an ecosystem I don't see how it is relevant. Let's ignore the vivisection bit, because we have already gone over the idea that you might just be spuriously injecting the wrong word into your argument. We know that animal testing works because like all trials which follow the scientific method, they are repeatedly observable. Also they produce results, which kinda helps. Yes, a question which has been repeated ad infinitum throughout the discussion, and dealt with numerous times. Hence he or she was just wasting keystrokes by repeating it yet again. I don't mean to be rude, but your critical reasoning is not the best and you are evidently not well versed in forum etiquette. I would therefore ask you to stop trying to police my posts, as I strongly suspect that I am much older than yourself and have a great deal more academic and life experience. Look, you have clearly come to this site with an agenda and from the first lines of your post it was clear that you don't have a clue what you are talking about. There is more to objective discussion than picking a side and arguing with whatever the people you agree with have told you. Research the issues in depth from non-biased sources, and come to your own conclusions. I appreciate that there is a steep learning curve involved in finding out how to argue effectively using good, properly referenced information, but I can assure you that some of our best long-term members have been people who came here with much crazier views than yours. An objective rationality won't come to you overnight, but it will be worth the effort. However, in order to answer your question (), I suggest you READ THE THREAD. The data and arguments have been presented. You "and others" disagreeing does not mean that you have changed reality to match your claims. Because they can tell us.

The way I see it is that other people reading this thread might have similar concerns, so it's relevant Go to the privacy settings tab and ramp everything up so that people can only see your profile if you are friends. Turn off "public search listing" under the Privacy->Search tab. If you want to be uber-secure, also make sure that non-friends cannot view your friends list (this is a double-edged sword if people you know are trying to find you, because a good way to see if "John Smith" is the one you know is to look at his friends). Go to the Privacy->News Feed tab and scale back what gets publicised when you perform actions on the site. Under Privacy->Applications->Other Applications, there is an area called "What Other Users Can See via the Facebook Platform". Deselect everything other than profile picture and online presence. In your photo album options, set all albums to "friends only" as a minimum. You can take this further by limiting access to individuals you specifically chose. Only install applications you cannot live without. When you do install an application, uncheck the "allow this app to send me emails" box. This prevents savvy app authors from collecting your email address if your mailserver bounces any notices back to them via the Facebook app platform. I routinely block applications which people invite me to, but which I do not wish to install. I suggest doing this because blocking prevents that app from accessing your details. It also means you do not have to reject invites to the same application over and over and over... If you remove a tag from a photo etc, it cannot be replaced even by the person who uploaded the photo. Only you. It is a bit annoying that you have to veto tags rather than agreeing to them before they "go live", but it's better than having no control. For things like "how I know this person", you do have to agree to the details which the other person supplies. if you edit them, the other person then has to agree that it is true. I would make the argument that being on Facebook, aware of the way it works, and having some control over what published material is tied to you is leagues better than not being there or having that control. There are limited opportunities for Facebook to gather this info. Quick solution: don't plug your credit card details in, and don't install unnecessary applications. For 3rd party sites which use image beacons on Facebook, I don't see how this is really a problem. They gain nothing by monitoring your facebook activity, and if they monitor your activity OFF facebook then that is not due to the way facebook works. There are various ways of denying image beacons which you will be able to google. Also, a simple and effective measure for crippling unsolicited snooping is by setting your browser to reject 3rd party cookies. To prevent Facebook from tracking your off-site activity, simply ramp up your browser's cookie privacy settings to an appropriately high level.

Urrrggg... we have been around this so many times in this thread. You can't just unilaterally label all testing as "cruel", if in reality it is not. Deliberate torture of animals is cruel, but this is not necessarily the same thing as animal testing. You need to have a comprehensive understanding of animal testing before coming to any conclusions, and the retina-burning images most people see (dogs with wires protruding from an exposed skull, etc) are not in the least bit representative of how lab animals are treated.

When you are classifying abuse, I would have thought that the intention is more pertinent than the mechanism. For example, a slap to correct behaviour is not going to be considered "abuse" by anyone but the most shrill bleeding heart. However if the slapping is systematic and regular, and serves no purpose other than to cause physical suffering and the associated trauma, then it's clearly a different matter.

I knew YOU would get it; I just wanted it in black and white (or black and blue I guess) for those who don't, so they can't run with the flawed "useless trial" reasoning.

And that's exactly what they are doing. No matter how many times you call this subjective law-making, the fact remains that prejudice and discrimination cause objectively verifiable and clinically predictable harm to individuals, groups, and communities. The only reason you can make this statement and have it be commensurate with the views you state that you hold is because you have a ridiculously narrow idea of what "damage" means. FYI, it is by definition not possible to discriminate against everyone. It's not the "lack of selling food" that is the damage. It's the subjective denial of access to the service which causes the damage, yes, but the damage itself cannot be unilaterally quantified because it will differ depending on the circumstances. You are trying to make a round peg fit in a square hole here. Clearly Fred is not free to roam about the countryside hunting for pasta bows, teabags, vacuum cleaner filters, a better cellular deal, life insurance, or orthodontic treatment. The fact of the matter is that we do now live in a civilisation which centres around a service economy, and it is not right to exclude some people from accessing it because someone doesn't like them very much. Nor is it right to come up with ludicrously tortured reasoning to try and justify it. No, it is legislated against because some people - despite the best efforts of the rest of us - just don't get why it is the wrong thing to do. In the case of the legislation we are discussing in this thread, it might just as well apply to whites as to blacks (as some previous posts have discussed). I would hardly call that "assimilating the minority". To accept your proposal one also has to disregard age and gender discrimination, although I can see how you personally would forget about those seeing as your posts have so far pretty much been a monument to your own worldview. I don't think this is always the case, but I don't really see how it changes matters for either of us. I think you need to qualify "subjectively determine" there. Laws are not passed by some system of lucky dip. So what? The systems may be vaguely comparable, but they are not the same. Even if they were, that does not make the system "bad" per se, it simply means it can be used to ends which we may find either beneficial or unconscionable. Blatant strawman. Kudos on not getting Godwin's Law invoked though. The lesson that most people learnt from slavery was that all people, including their individual aspirations and dreams, are of equal value and worth. Which seems to be somewhat at odds with your demands to have the right to discriminate. As someone pointed out, you cannot just "sell bread". Businesses are subjected to rules which are themselves subject to change. Anyone starting up a business should know this, and if they do not then they cannot blame society for their lack of preparation. When you start up a business you are effectively buying into society's service provision. You are no longer acting as an individual as such. Whether you are a family butcher or the president of a credit company, you are still acting as an interface between the customer and the service. You simply have no right to interfere with their access to the service because of your own personal problems. Because that is either a stupid comparison or an intellectually dishonest strawman, without any rational basis. That's why. Let's make this perfectly clear: the vast majority of laws relating to businesses exist to ensure that service providers deliver what they promise at a fair price, in transactions which threaten neither the economy nor the the customer. One's home is not generally set up as a profit-driven public service, so the simple act of "living in a house" does not attract such stern supervision. Give up the rubbish comparison, please, before my eyes start to bleed again. I have a problem with people being racist anywhere, in point of fact. But we are not discussing laws against people barring group x from their houses. Although incidentally you might be interested to know that in the UK, you can conceivably commit a racially aggravated public order offence while being in your own house, which would be recorded and investigated as a hate crime. I am pretty sure there will be similar legal circumstances in the US. FFS, it's not a lack of imagination. It's a cost-benefit result which comes from the hopelessly one-sided choice which society has constructed for us over many centuries. If you genuinely think that it is right to protect your own interests (and not even good interests, but very petty ones) no matter the cost to others, then I genuinely feel sorry for you. Human civilisation would seem to be marching forward faster than you can keep up. Your repeated allusions to people with a better sense of fair play than yourself being like "slave owners" are laughable, but also tiresome. They are also likely to offend people. Kindly give it up. Rubbish. One of the fundamental purposes of a government is to maintain public order, so that individuals are capable of pursuing happiness. If they are allowing discrimination to go unchecked then they are failing their citizens on at least one front.

The dogs don't need to have diabetes for changes in insulin levels to affect their blood sugar levels, so TheAM was creating a false requirement anyway.

Yup, that's the idea.

True, but making that the basis of preferential treatment ignores the importance of the "optional medical service" to the customer. Why should one group of people be assured that their feelings and desires will be accommodated, while another group has to go without?

TheAM makes his assertions about the reliability of animal testing despite the vast libraries of evidence, which are added to every single day, demonstrating clearly that it DOES work. I wouldn't bother arguing with that kind of position tbh. You won't get through.

I can hardly believe this thread got so much attention in the past few hours. Booker, there is a very apt saying: put up or shut up. http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/lolcat-funny-picture-moderator1.jpg

It might be different for the UK and Canada. Dunno!

I seriously doubt that would be able to account for the missing mass, even if such structures were commonplace.

While the phrase "there isn't a biological distinction for 'race'" often gets bandied about, there are obviously going to be genetic differences between different populations. There is an overview of skin colour genetics on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_color#Genetics_of_Skin_Color_Variation "Mixed race" is not a useful term, since in human populations 'race' usually involves cultural elements as well as biological ones.