greg1917

granted this isnt exactly current affairs but ive always been interested in it none the less. The Americans on the forum will probably view this differently but when the Soviet Union put missle bases on Communist Cuba, how was the American backlash justified considering they had Nuclear bases in Turkey on the Soviet border and always had nuke armed planes in the air over europe 24 hours a day for the best part of half a century. My dad remembers living near an air base in England and seeing two planes with big ass bombs strapped to their fuselages take off whenever another two landed, screaming down the runway. Im a bit of a socialist myself and I dont want to incur the wrath of the Western hemisphere but if America invades soveriegn Cuban airpsace they cant really complain if spy planes are shot down. Any thoughts? Russia had a right to protect itself from an American pre emptive nuclear strike as well as vice versa. I suppose the current war situation made me think about past conflicts and past solutions.

Well just how liberal do you want to be? I would say freedom is being alowed to do what you want to your body, drugs being an example. But here your not really putting it somewhere else, your creating a new life which has its own freedom to consider. And also no one ever replied to my question, or if you did i didnt notice, apologies. what ever happened to the cloning comapny? Clonaid or whatever it was called.

Firstly no offense taken, and secondly some of my early posts in this forum were either poorly articulated, porrly constructed or both so yes it did sound like i was quoting that book (what a load of pish that was). From what it sounds like Bush places too much emphasis on religion in his polcies but it should still be a factor in government policy due to its huge impact on society. More reasoned arguments are needed where the pros and cons of decions, and not just cloning, are decided in a more transparent manner. The public should be able to understand any governemnt decison and follow the argument (regardless of their particular orientation) clearly, otherwise yes it does become a decision for the minority which in this case it was.

Bush may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer but his administration will surely have consulted more than the Pope, who only stands for Catholocism not Christianity in General. I dont know much about US politics but Id certainly hope this is the case. If the public as a whole was better educated theyd be able to make their own decision instead of blindly following what their priest/minister said, and for that matter professor as well. Maybe of people spent less time watching transvestite nazis beat each other up on Jerry Springer they could make an informed decision. And i do agree the outright ban on cloning is over zealous as I said. I think he was right to consult the Pope, but it should have only been consultation, not a simple yes or no question. Religion is an easy political tool to use to scare people but it this problem should be addressed, not wiped out.

The government should make the decision, not anyone else. They have scientific advisers for a reason, and if for arguments sake cloning was as safe as currently used artificial reproduction techniques (which at this stage it most definitely is not) there are still the implications on cloning to society, the clone himself, the possibilities of where cloning could lead given inadequate monitoring and legislation and the long term effects of it on all these things. If these are taken into account then so must the advantages of course. If these are classed as ethics or morality then to me thats all it is; a classification. I still think they're valid arguments for or against cloning. If it actually were made as safe as currently used artificial reproduction Id reassess my opinion based on literature at the time and my own views. Im not blindly following an anti cloning theme as T_flex seems to think.

I have a perfectly reasonable objection to human cloning and you call me a bible thumping hater? So your completely oblivious to the perfectly valid ethical argument surrounding cloning? I dont support human reproductive cloning but I recognise that there are differences of opinion for understandable, valid reasons many of which have been mentioned in this thread. And anyway Ive been to church....... 3 times in my life? None of which were by choice. I may be a Rangers fan but i dont pretend to be a protestant, or even a Chrisitan. What is this almost purile hatred of religion anyway? Not all people who propose ethical questions have any religous tendencies, I certainly dont. Did I mention God in a single thread? No. You dont just need to open your eyes, learning to read seems like a plus. I happen to believe that the US governemnt is being too over zealous in an outright ban on cloning considering the medical implications it could lead to. My grandmother was one of the leading female psychiatrists in Scotland and for years lamented the unfair red tape and limitations of trying to carry out stem cell research so Im very aware of the advantages. I found some comfort in religion when she died in November but that didnt change my opinions, it just helped me through a difficult period in my life which science did sweet FA to address. So next time you lambast people for merely having religous views why dont you try looking at the situation rather than blindly following your own blinkered views, somewhat similar to the zealots who want an outright ban on cloning regardless of the research implications.

Alright maybe my geography is bad, sandwhiched between Yugoslavia and the Black sea.

Whats wrong with my geography? Bulgaria was one of the socialist republics that made up the USSR wasnt it? Its south of Romania, sandwhiched between Romania and Yugoslavia

Sorry my english was almost as bad as his there, i didnt read it over

Was there a point to that huge homophobic outburst? there was ahtread ages ago about whether or not there was a 'gay' gene i think but people seemd to come to come to the reasonable consensus there are genes which to an extent behaviour so it will have an impact as well as their life experiences. Sorry what? are you saying gay people are genetically damaged or are you seriosuly trying to suggest that concept of healing the sick is wrong? I presume your saying gays are a genetic mistake cos this merely shows intolerance, a reasonably high degree of stupidity and some right wing views. If you think medicine is wrong this shows that maybe the Chernobyl accident dumped a lot of radioactive material in your vodka supply. This wasnt really prompted by anything, you seemd to suddenly attack 'our stupid sense of humanity' with this outburst. By humanity do you mean freedom? I know the USSR wasnt a big one for personal freedom but you dont have to wind back the clock....

I thought zarkov was being sarcastic when he was proposing his zarkovian gravity theory but when i saw how big the thread was and how much hed developed his theory (although he never gave any of the amths to my knowledge) i began to realize that sarcasm was giving way to misguided over zealous self belief.

the same thing we do with normal deformed children, allow to live out their lives and giv them whatever treatment possible. Although if cloning was so unreliable that the risk was substantially higher than non assisted conception you have to question if its worth risking it by carrying out reproductive cloning in the first place with dangers like these.

Psychology must play a big part I suppose. Although a lot of it must be self appreciation - by attacking something as massive as the US government one makes oneself feel more important and it could be seen as an attempt to elevate yourself above people who dont subscribe to the theory, most conspiracy theorists seme to treat others who dont believe with contempt.

Being a chemist more than a physicist at this level I find it hard to follow some the points here but im aware phtons have no rest mass but due it having energy E it must have a relativistic mass given by m = (E^2)/c so really its a mass equivalence when travelling at speed c, giving it momentum p. or is that wrong?

Having joined this website recently, I looked over some old threads. the ones involving Adam and Zarkov were most amusing purely for their blind faith in their own theories, if you can call their inane ramblings theories. the thing i found most amusing was a general point about conspiracy theories. Adam thought that there was a planet with an elliptical orbit which caused earths magnetic poles to flip every 3600 years. he then said it was the US governments biggest secret and it was usually hushed up because we were told it was a supernova. Now for the sake of argument lets suppose he was right. The US government with its multi billion dollar security budget would probably do a half decent job about covering that up. The chances of somone like adam stumbling onto this are somewhat remote given the scale of the proposed conspiracy. aside from adam, how can people believe they uncover things like this? 'lies' of this magnitude wouldnt have cover up stories as flimsy as most conspiracy theories. I dont know about most people but i tend to be a believer of the simplicity theory, that is in most conundrums the first simple, logical explanation people think of is usually the right one. not the US government covering things up, or black helicopters following rednecks and doctoring their tax return forms or my favourite one, the Raelian philosophy. not really a conspiracy theory but laughable none the less.

In solutions which the solvent is water ppm = mg/L. heres the calculation anyway. 190 ppm chloride. that means in 1000000 gm of stuff, 190 gm will be chloride. ppm = (190 gm chloride) / (1000000 gm water and chloride) = (190 gm chloride ) / (999810 gm water and 190 gm chloride) we now know that we are dealing with 999810gm of water. since water has a density of 1kg/cubicmetre, that means we can use vol = mass/density (ive converted gm into kg here) = 999.810/ 1 =999.81 L water. if we have 190 gm chloride, thats 190000 mg . we can now do the basic calculation. Note that im ignoring the volume of the chloride but if you wanted to you could calculate it using the density of chloride. Below ive said volume of solution which should include volume of both water and chloride, but as i said ive only used water. Chloride will be miniscule anyway. mg/L = mass of chloride over volume of solution. = 190000/999.81 = 190 mg/L if you work this out youll notice you get 190.0361, if you included the volume of chloride youd get exactly 190 mg/L.

i eventually got all the answers i needed and also what happens when there are two chiral carbons in the one molecule. http://hexane.chem.uiuc.edu/cyberprof/public/chemistry/102x/Lecture/lect21c.html

True, a better example of photons behaving like particles would be the compton effect where photons appear to colide elastically with electrons where the momentum, p, = hf / c

Although the two interwind to an extent when u deal with wave particle duality where things display properties of both, like electrons have a measureable mass yet diffracting around atoms, or photons being affected by gravity yet having no measureable mass.

Yes, and also because of the life the clone would be born into. The reasons for this are partly the emotional stress on the clone, growing up knowing his/her 'parent' isnt that at all but his twin. His effective parents, those of the person who was cloned, may have already died which puts our clone in a strange place as he tries to find out his origins and identity. he can still grow up in a loving environment but in strange, odd circumstances. Also people trying to clone a dead child are putting their chld through a lot of emotional stress, the child will grow up and find out he was created as a replacement, and in any case you can never bring the dead back to life. I just dont agree with the thought of creating life and subjecting it to conditions like that. Twins occur in nature with no adverse effects, but an adult male/female being cloned obviously doesnt ever occur. I disagree with the concept of reproductive cloning not because it doesnt occur in nature, but because of the reasons outlined above. I wasnt very clear before. Incidentally has anything happened about that the clone that was supposedly created by the company in Canada? it hasnt been in the news much since all the initial media frenzy died down and I was wondering if there actually was a clone, or legal action was taken against the company.

Of course I can be against reproductive cloning and pro fertility treatment seeing as in vitro and human cloning are completely different. If someone is incapable of producing eggs then no I dont think they should be allowed to clone themselves to have a child, although they might live in a tragic situation that doesnt justify allowing human cloning to take place, the ends dont justify the means. Why should a parent like that be allowed to endanger a child's life who hasnt even been born yet by undergoing a dangerous and almost always unsuccessful process? Sometimes life deals you a crappy hand, that doesnt mean you can subject a child to the vast array of problems experienced by cloned animals, whether thats premature ageing or whatever. Obviously one has to be sympathetic to the infertile woman but a line has to be drawn somewhere. Hopefully cloning will be completely fazed out for stem cell research anyway, as adult stem cell research becomes more and more successful. Bone marrow stem cells from an adult male can form healthy brain tissue, so with any luck soon we can leave the ethically unsound process of creating hundreds of cloned embryos then throwing the vast majority away. It could take years and years before cloning humans could be deemed safe enough to be carried out for rerproduction and even if it eventually is there are still many many ethical objections to doing something like that.

You still simplify the matter by saying nature clones humans. Twins are only effective clones of each other and have two natural parents. Nature never creates a clone of someone asexually, I dont know why you insist on saying it does. If humans cloned themselves they'd be going out of their way to create someone with no parents, just a master copy. I think its perfectly reasonable to question why someone would want to carry out reproductive cloning. Humans dont asexually reproduce and you still havent given a reason why there should be human reproductive cloning. What does anyon have to gain from it?

I prefer inorganic chemsitry, although thats probably because i prefer to be able to work with numbers. Inorganic stuff doesnt have to be a memory exercise; when you use it every day and go farther with it it explains itself and becomes less a set of learning outcomes and more a set of concepts which interwind that you can deal with. in saying that, oragnics is fun. im sure everyones once had a bad day, whether it was cos they got out of bed too early or whatever, but anyway, as soon as those solvent bottles are opened (like ether) well, life isnt so bad after all. At least thats the feeling. Not that im condoning solvent inhallation, mind you ether is such lovely stuff...

Theraputic cloning I have no qualm with, but reproductive cloning is different in the sense your introducing a new type of person to society. I dont see why anyone would want to clone people for the sake of creating a clone - the dangers are too great and there doesnt seem to be any need in the first place. Theraputic cloning with a view to stem cell research is beneficial as is most medical research, here the ends justify the means in terms of embryos which never make it. its important to differentiate between these two things because I dont support reproductive cloning for the reason that its just not needed and is dangerous to both the clone and the impact it would have on society. poeple should have some respect for the life they bring into this world, cloning a dead relative wont bring that relative back because the clone will be a new person. All you'll have is someone with the same eye colour, characterisitcs etc. He wont be the same person the relative was because everyone is unique in the sense of what they experience.

Saying parents who adopt children are nazis is a simplification of the matter and has nothing to do with it. Choosing a childs specifications is different to giving an already living child a home, your effectively shaping the childs life before its had a chance to develop itself - ironing out natural diversity and creating a race of clones who are superhuman because they were all created with maximum specifications. Thats precisely what Hitlers aim was.