Friday, November 10, 2006

That eerie silence with a few chirping crickets...

...is the sound of me not saying anything about the 34:32 vote in favour of therapeutic cloning in the Senate, nor the mid-term elections in the United States. Nor- you may have noticed- about NaNoWriMo.

15 comments:

Jenny said...

anyone would think you were writing a thesis and had no time for any non-thesis ideas...

wow, that was a long, hard to write word verification

Anonymous said...

You are in a state of shock, devoid of ideas of where to go next. However, you must clone yourself a million times such that your fight can live on.

Nato said...

therapuetic cloning passing Senate = sad/bad;
US mid-term election result = good;
NanoWriMo = insomnia
(Had no idea what this meant until I googled - ah, search wins again!)

Dr Clam said...

Que?

Let me map your conclusions on to the dairy industry, Nato:

cheese (in Australia) = sad/bad
adding rennet to milk (in United States) = good

Dr Clam said...

I seek not to clone my genetic inheritance, Anonymous, but my memetic one! The only problem with reproductive cloning is that we do not know how to do it yet. Should experimentation on chimpanzees advance to a stage where we can produce ape clones with levels of embryo wastage and birth defects as low as those in natural reproduction, then we should proceed to clone humans. This will, among other things, remove any coherent theological objection to gay marriage.

Nato said...

Now that I know what Rennet is (ah Wikipedia!) I'm not sure I agree with your conclusion mapping to the dairy industry.
And I can't tell whether your agreement with cloning was highly sophisticated sarcasm.
My points were that:

1. Therapeutic cloning for stem cell research is not only wrong (due to the deliberate destruction of a living human being) but completely unnecessary for its stated purpose, due to the advance in other areas of stem cell research.

2. The Democrat win will restore some much needed balance to an out of control Administration (thank goodness Rumsfeld fell on his sword!)

3. NanoWriMo will cause sleep deprivation :-).

Dave said...

I'll stay out of the therapeutic cloning debate. I can't pretend to understand the science, so there's not much point my speculating on the ethics.

I will just disagree with Nato that Rumsfeld fell on his sword. It seems to me that his days were numbered because there was no possible spin that could make the current situation in Iraq palatable to American public. He was just kept on life support until the election result so that Bush would have a sacrificial goat to throw to the Democrats.

NaNoWriMo causes all manner of stresses, but I found that occasional bouts of insomnia are actually kind of handy.

Dr Clam said...

I agree more than completely with point 1, Nato! You might want to have a look at my therapeutic cloning post from early in the year. But my reproductive cloning argument is also completely sincere.
With point 2, I am unrepentantly neoconservative in most of my moods, and consider that the U.S, administration has been too restrained and wussy. I agree with Dave that Rumsfeld has been tossed aside like a used tissue as a sop to the Democrats by an administration rapidly returning to 'business as usual' and the James Baker '**** you, Jack, I'm alright' school of foreign policy.

Dave said...

Heh. If I may spray a wild salvo over the barricades, it disappoints me no end that Rumsfeld has been ditched because he is no longer politically sound and not, you know, because he was demonstrably incompetent at the one part of his job that really mattered - planning.

Furthermore, his persistant failure to acknowledge his responsibility for the multitude of things that have gone wrong on his watch precisely corresponds to the log in the neoconservative eye.

(Excluding Clam, of course, who is capable of introspection and humility and therefore sets himself apart from the luminaries of the neocon movement).

Dave said...

And yeah, I don't particularly rejoice in the potential return of an insular US foreign policy. Diplomacy, on the other hand, might well be worth a bit of a shot.

Jenny said...

While I hesitate to start yet another discussion; Why will reproductive cloning "among other things, remove any coherent theological objection to gay marriage"? Have I missed a blog where the whole theological objection has been winnowed down to the lack of reproduction?

Lots of V's in that word verification

Dr Clam said...

Consider it a challenge, Jenny! :)
"Given the technological advances postulated, put forward a coherent theological argument against gay marriage." (9 marks)

(Don't worry, you haven't missed a discussion- I think my only post tangentially related to this was quite some time ago.)

Nato said...

Thanks for raising the other question I had, Jenny :-)

neocon or no, Rumsfeld's incompetence (dating back to before George Bush Snr's time at the helm, when he actively funded and championed Hussein) is one of the "known knowns" of the whole Iraq debacle.

My only hope is that he's not just a sop, but the first domino of many...I shudder to think of Jeb Bush continuing the Presidential dynasty of incompetence.

Marco Parigi said...

Diplomacy is made more powerful if "military action" is seen to be a credible fallback enforcement tool (Discuss).

France: Stop breaking your treaties/promises or we will take (military) action.

Iran: Yeah right :)

France: OK. Stop breaking your treaties/promises or we will encourage the US to take military action :)

Iran: Well theres no need to get violent. Fine. We will definitely say that we will keep these promises.

France: You do know that the US will know whether you do or not?

Iran: Where? What can they see?

Dr Clam said...

Dave has reminded me that I ought to be more cheerful at the ejection of Rumsfeld than I am. Unfortunately, the valid and necessary argument over ‘means’ took place mostly behind closed doors, and was overshadowed in the media by the interminable re-arguing of the once equally valid and necessary but by then mostly irrelevant argument over ‘ends’. Thus I have tended not to dwell on Rumsfeld’s leading role in bollixing up the whole democratisation-of-the-Middle-East proeject.