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#65 mustard:
“Are you the Boss of All of Us, and you get to decide after which point termination of pregnancy is wrong?”
Yes, I do.
You’ve decided that it’s *not* wrong, and you want to impose this standard on everyone. So how are you any different?
This is no different than any other moral quandary. Everyone thinks their right, and it’s possible that one position will come out as the winner. Then we’ll all believe it.
#66 – Berm
>>So silent all of the sudden… maybe because of this?
wtf, Berm? I posted a message just 3 minutes before yours, and another one 1/2 hour before that. You’re wearing me out, dude! How often do I have to post before you don’t accuse me of being “so silent”? Every 30 seconds?
And do you really imagine that I would go “so silent” because you quoted a few lines from a Wiki-whatever article. From which, btw, you slyly managed to leave out the REST of the nuanced points of view, namely that pregnancy begins on the day of last menstruation, ovulation, fertilization, implantation or chemical detection.
As you failed to point out, there’s quite a bit of uncertainty surrounding even when “pregnancy” beings. We’re not really talking about “pregnancy” here though, are we? We’re talking about THE BEGINNING OF LIFE. You know, the thing God doesn’t want us to snuff out? Sure, “pregnancy” may (“may” is the operative word here) at implantation, but what comfort is that to the opponents of stem cell research, who are willing to plant bombs and kill in the name of Life over frozen eggs in a test tube?
The bottom line here, Berm, is that you (and I, and anyone not directly involved) would be best advised to just butt the fuck out. There’s just waaaaaaaaay to much dispute and lack of concensus on the whole matter, and al fin y al cabo, it’s a matter to be dealt with by the woman involved, her family, and her doctor.
What you cavalierly dismiss as just another form of birth control, like the morning-after pill, other anti-choice advocates would liken to guards prodding tens or hundreds of thousands of Jews into the ovens at Auschwitz. Would you like to be tried in the International Court of Justice because you advised your wife or girlfriend to take the morning-after pill?
#69 – Berm
>>You’ve decided that it’s *not* wrong, and you
>>want to impose this standard on everyone. So
>>how are you any different?
Are you just jerking my chain, Berm, or do you really not see how saying “do what you feel is right” differs from saying “do what I tell you to do, whether you think it’s right or not”???
I really hope you’re just pulling my chain. Otherwise, I’ve seriously overestimated your intellectual capacity.
#68 – Berm
>>Implantation is a well-defined point in
>>pregnancy which kind of nullifies any
>>arguments that it’s arbitrary.
So is fertilization (i.e., conception; for many The Beginning of Life), so is birth. What’s your point? That because it’s “well-defined”, it’s the be-all and end-all in the abortion debate? And who says it’s “well-defined”, btw? It may be well defined to the endometrium and to the ovum, but how does the would-be birth-controller/ murderer know when it occurs? Does their partner get out the speculum and magnifying glass and look? What are the objective signs and symptoms of implantation, that will allow the concerned family planner to know if she is just practicing birth control, or committing murder?
>>Other people don’t share my beliefs about
>>slavery and murder.
Slavery and murder are easily identified. Hence the universal laws against them. As you yourself have made painfully clear (against your will), The Beginning of Life is NOT easily identified. What you think is simply harmless family planning, others feel is wanton genocide.
So. Who’s the murderer here, Berm?
#70 mustard:
I posted the article because I wanted to show that I didn’t make up the idea that pregnancy begins at implantation, and not conception. That’s all. I wasn’t posting it to try and convince anyone that the position is correct, just that it has some scientific credence.
“but what comfort is that to the opponents of stem cell research who are willing to plant bombs…”
I’m only talking about abortion. I think you’re trying to lump me in with these other people to discredit me.
“would be best advised to just butt the fuck out. There’s just waaaaaaaaay to much dispute and lack of concensus on the whole matter”
I’m trying to generate some consensus.
Just because there isn’t any yet doesn’t mean that I have to butt out. That’s a ridiculous position to take. It pretty much eliminates any need for bioethics to even exist as a field of study.
“What you cavalierly dismiss as just another form of birth control, like the morning-after pill, other anti-choice advocates”
I’m not ‘dismissing’ ECPs as another form of contraception, because they work EXACTLY like any other form of contraception! I’m sorry if other anti-abortionists don’t believe this – I do, and the science says I’m right and they’re wrong!
“it’s a matter to be dealt with by the woman involved, her family, and her doctor.”
I’m sorry, but I don’t believe this. I realize that you do believe this. That’s why there is an ‘abortion debate,’ and it’s why we’re on different sides.
“Would you like to be tried in the International Court of Justice because you advised your wife or girlfriend to take the morning-after pill?”
No, I wouldn’t. But I can imagine a world where abortion is considered murder yet birth control is not. You can’t imagine this.
It had been suggested that Bush used George Orwell’s “1984” as a user’s manual.
Now Obama is using Franz Kafka’s “The Trial” for his guide.
It’s official Obama is now worse than Bush.
#72 mustard:
“What’s your point?”
My point is that there are many well-defined points during a pregnancy. Conception, implantation, birth – these things happen only once during a pregnancy, so unlike something like a trimester, you can look and say, ‘this is obviously post-implantation.’
You accused me of being arbitrary. Saying ‘abortions before the third trimester are OK’ is arbitrary, because that’s not well-defined.
You really probably meant that my picking implantation was arbitrary, but I don’t think it is – to explain it would take more space than this message board allows. All I can say is that I have scientifically motivated reasons for this belief. You can choose whether or not you want to believe that.
I used to be pro-choice, but when I thought about the pro-choice arguments, I felt they were arbitrary. I wasn’t comfortable with that, so I learned a little bit of the science, instead of regurgitating the ‘anti-choice’ rhetoric, and my position changed.
There’s nothing arbitrary about that.
“but how does the would-be birth-controller/ murderer know when it occurs? Does their partner get out the speculum and magnifying glass and look?”
I don’t have any answers for this. Yes, it’s a problem. But, it’s a separate issue. It’s independent of whether abortion is right or wrong.
There are a lot of parallels with the abortion *debate* and the slavery *debate*. (not the issues, so please don’t use this to attack me by saying I equate the two.)
Your logic is comparable to saying something like, ‘we can’t tell if they are using language, so how can we know if they really are people? best to assume they’re not.’
What I’m trying to say is that, just because it’s prohibitive to determine the stage of pregnancy doesn’t mean you can’t use a stage of pregnancy as the deciding factor as to whether the fetus is human or not.
“Slavery and murder are easily identified. Hence the universal laws against them. As you yourself have made painfully clear (against your will), The Beginning of Life is NOT easily identified.”
Again, there are so many similarities between the abortion debate and the slavery debate. Universal laws against slavery are very, very new. And we only got them after centuries of people trying to figure out if black people were really humans!
I’m not saying slavery and abortion are comparable, I’m just saying that the *logic* used in both debates is very similar.
#75 – Berm
>>I don’t have any answers for this. Yes, it’s
>>a problem. But, it’s a separate issue. It’s
>>independent of whether abortion is right or
>>wrong.
No, it’s the whole CRUX OF THE ISSUE. What’s right for you is up to decide. When you want to make it the law, and control how OTHER PEOPLE BEHAVE, you need to be able to operationalize your definitions. And if you pick a milestone in the gestational process that cannot be defined, that’s worse than useless.
Nobody cares why you want to have an abortion (if you could have an abortion in the first place, and had any business telling other people what to do). They just need to be able to obey the law. And if you want a law that involves detection of the currently undetectable, well, you don’t have have much of a law, do you?
Once you figure out a way to identify implantation (down to the minute, as people often make these decisions in a hurry once they realize that their “abstinence only” strategy didn’t work), THEN we can discuss whether implantation, conception, birth, or some trimester picked out of a hat is the appropriate starting point for defining murder.
#76 mustard:
“The latter to be punished, of course, by reciprocal murder.”
You’re really taking the most extreme anti-abortion position and applying it to everyone. I mean, that’s just a fallacy.
“Doesn’t your lawn need mowing or something? Do you really have THAT MUCH UNOCCUPIED TIME ON YOUR HANDS that you feel it necessary to meddle in how women deal with their own personal reproductive issues?”
Personally attacking me because I’m taking part in a debate? Excuse me, but this *is* my free time. I like to discuss and debate instead of watch a lot of TV. What’s wrong with that?
I guess I’m just some sort of looser because I post things on the internet – which kind of sounds *exactly* like you.
“your relentless drive to interfere in other people’s personal business, and to meddle where you have no right to meddle.”
I believe that I have the right to ‘meddle’ wherever I think murder is being committed. You don’t think abortion is murder. Fine, I understand that.
But until you can convince me that an implanted fetus isn’t human life, I’m going to meddle. I used to think it wasn’t human life, so there is the possibility that a really good argument might sway me. It’s beyond the scope of this forum, though.
I’m not taking a political position on abortion. I’m more than willing to have a debate as to when life begins, but people like you just want me to ‘butt out’ because you’ve apparently got a 50/50 issue all figured out.
As much as you’d like to believe it, the abortion debate is far from being over.
#77 mustard:
You don’t even know what my position is on how the abortion laws should be written! You just make assumptions because you lump me in with the religious right.
“When you want to make it the law, and control how OTHER PEOPLE BEHAVE, you need to be able to operationalize your definitions.”
I would like to see a law that makes it illegal for doctors to preform abortions. I fully understand that it’s probably impossible to do anything more than that.
I think a pregnant woman who intentionally starves herself to force a miscarriage is committing a morally wrong act, but I don’t want to see a law making that illegal – we would have to give up too much liberty for it to be enforceable.
You’re just as bad as the pro-life extreme. You can see no legal middle ground, so you parade out the most ridiculous laws the religious right would like to see enforced, and because I’m anti-abortion, you attribute them to me as well. It makes it easier to attack me, I know.
“if you could have an abortion in the first place, and had any business telling other people what to do”
So I need to be a parent to spot child abuse? Just because I can’t do something, doesn’t mean that I can’t morally judge it.
“And if you want a law that involves detection of the currently undetectable”
Like I said, you have no idea what my position is on the laws. You’re confusing all these separate issues and lumping them together in one easily-attackable regurgitated political position.
I don’t necessarily think the law should be a perfect reflection of my own (or even society’s) morality. That’s unworkable. You can’t attack my position based on what you think I want the laws to be. Sorry.
# 12 Patrick
Yes I know it was a throw-away statement I made and I also know about the site, but really looking at that list you can’t really say he’s done anything.
# 11 bobbo
Moving a prison and decimating the constitution does not equate to closing down anything, as for the rest of your blather since I don’t are what you think that’s good for me.
Is she lesbian?
#85 Yes but much, much hotter than Olberman…not that there’s anything wrong with that. 🙂
Rachel gave a well reasoned analysis of Obama’s speech.
What Obama is doing in his speach, is creating a rhetorical fog of words to mask his adhoc legal process he is proposing.
This shows Obama’s for what he really is. Since he is not an ideologue like Bush, he dosn’t have the historical framework or perspective (basically the balls) to go against the CIA/NSA/FBI/DoD … ideologues who advise him.
He is nothing more then a coward who can’t even defend the constitution. Constitutional law professor my ass.
He is the same why with his heath care plans.
Their appears to be no hope left of following the constitution. It has been manipulated since 1913 and their is no looking back… It seems Obama is being bombarded with and brainwashed daily by the generals and security adviisers that got it all wrong in the first place…
Pray for our country…but theirs not much left for the America (AmeriKa) I grew up in…
#90 – Warden
Oh, I have listened to Rush, Wardie, and I know people who listen to him on a regular basis.
Sure, the hatemongers were angry that he spent money, but they just lovedmost of what he spent it on (e.g., $700,000,000,000 on the Iraq war [more than the Vietnam War cost]).
For the life of me, I can’t understand why people listen to that guy (more than once). He’s ignorant, spiteful, bigoted, everything-phobic, and the few cutesy phrases he comes up with, like “drive-by media” get old after the 2nd or 3rd repetition, and by the 20938409859th repetition, you’d think any decent person would be ready to puke.
I knew that guy was an unsalvageable assmuch when his “put all the drug users in jail/ oops, I’m addicted to OxyContin” quandry hit the air waves. Good thing his listeners’ median IQ is about 6, none of them noticed his hypocrisy.
As to Obama being Bush on Steroids…HAW! HAW HAW! HAW HAW HAW!! Obama is Bush with a brain transplant, an education, a makeover, and some common sense.
Sure, he’s got to spend some money to fix what Bush broke, but whaddayagonnado? You have hurricanes and floods, you have to spend money to clean up the damage. You have a crack cocaine epidemic, you have to spend money to clean up the damage. You have an AIDS pandemic, you have to spend money to clean up the damage.
Same thing goes for Dumbya. He made a big mess, and now it’s going to cost money to clean up the damage.
#91 – Fredo
>>I’m encouraged…I thought Obama could do
>>nothing MSNBC would object to.
That’s because you’re a big dummy, Fredo.
You have a complete lack of understanding of the progressive/ liberal mindset. Unlike the neocons, liberals do not follow, lemming-like, anyone who says he’s a liberal or progressive. In cases like this one, we will take Obie to task every bit as vigorously as we would Bush, or McBush, or even Joe the “Plumber”. Talking the talk isn’t good enough. You’ve got to walk the walk as well.
I realize this kind of “freethinking” is heresy among the neocons, so I don’t expect you to understand it. But maybe you can drag yourself out of the neoconservative slime pit and become enlightened.
You may say I’m a dreamer. But I’m not the only one . I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one.
#59, brm,
Probably the country whose extermination, every few days, is called for by Iran’s leader.
Could you cite where Iran’s leader actually called for Israel’s extermination?
#95 – Fissile One
>>Could you cite where Iran’s leader actually
>>called for Israel’s extermination?
People like Berm seldom cite original sources. They rely heavily on the “XXX for Dummies” series for their understanding of most things, like “Well, Rush said he said it, so he musta said it”.
#80, trashh,
You’ve proven my point life begins at conception. As you’ve said it’s too complicated to decide when it begins otherwise.
Are you trying to justify not treating cancer?
#98 – Fredo
Christ, boy. You’re relying waaaay too much on the Rush spindoctor machine for your interpretation of events.
The video that “the LA Times suppressed” was not “suppressed”, and whatever was done was not done by the LA Times. It was reporter Peter Wallsten who declined to release the video, because it was given to him by a confidential source who only provided it on the condition that it not be released.
See how much clearer everything is when you skip the Rush/ World Net Daily/ Jewish World Review spin?
And you may remember Peter Wallsten (the “suppressor”); he was the report who was taken to task by Dumbya for wearing sunglasses indoors. Turned out he’s partially blind due to macular degengeration, and he HAS TO wear them. Woopsie.
#93 – Fredo
>>I like [Rush]… his insights are often genius.
That says it all, Fredo. That say everything that needs to be said about your judgment.
Obama better get that tea party together for the remaining Axis of evil guys.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8066861.stm
#93, Ayatollah1,
He’s a man of FREEDOM…a patriot…no doubt being watched by Homeland Security…no doubt one of the men Obama would like to detain, prolong(ly).
Boss Limpdick is a fucking card carrying NAZI. People like him should be watched.
#99 Mister Mustard
>>Peter Wallsten who declined to release the video, because it was given to him by a confidential source who only provided it on the condition that it not be released.
How does that scenario make sense in anyone’s world? Give a reporter news with a condition not to use it? Inquiring minds would like to know why you are even defending this suppression?
Oh, and welcome back.
#103 – ‘temptie
Thanks! Glad to be back, while I have the time to do so.
As to “giving a reporter news with a condition not to use it”, pshaw! Even you must realize that wasn’t the condition; if it were, no one would ever have heard of situation. The condition was not TO RELEASE THE VIDEO PUBLICLY. Obviously, the news itself was not under embargo, everybody knows about it.
And if “The LA Times” (or Wallsten, or anybody) was trying to do Obie some kind of “favor” by not releasing it, that sure backfired. It gave McBush cannonball after cannonball as fodder for his attacks on Obie’s imaginary “censorship”.
Traaxx,
You’re a f’ing retard. The world would be a better place if you were gone.
….whatever
#105 Mister Mustard
Now that the dust has cleared and Obama is president for life, we discover a lot of material was suppressed by many news organizations. A government run propaganda machine could have done as much.
Just an observation, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference if it backfired or not. The desired result was achieved.
#85,86 – Actually I think Maddow is American. So is Olbermann, but I don’t think he’s a lesbian.