Interesting - opposing the end of suffering in terminal cases is a severe lack of compassion in my opnion. Hearing a religious leader take a philosophical stance on this is cool. But, as always, how the issue is viewed will depend on the worldview of the individual and which developmental moral stage dominates their perspective.

Summary

All the major religions are opposed to euthanasia (in their official statements at least), but why is this?

The most basic religious attitude is one that seeks to preserve the affirmation of life, and it is very fearful of anything which might undermine that. But against this is the seeming negation of the religious and moral decree of compassion and care, by increasing the amount pain and suffering a terminally ill person will have to undergo in a sustained or extended life.

How do the major religions stand on these issues and what help can it offer us in contemplating this political hot potato?

BIO

On May 22, 1968, police moved in to break up a student-led occupation of Hamilton Hall, at Columbia. As a final bit of revenge against a history professor who had failed to fully support their cause, one student proposed burning the man's papers and notes.

The fire cost the professor, Orest A. Ranum, a book he was working on.

Conformity is such a strong influence in society that it's impossible to understand human behaviour without it. Psychological experiments show that people will deny the evidence of their own eyes in order to conform with other people.

But as Professor John C. Turner says conformity is not always the norm:

"Anyone who looks outside the window at daily events around the globe will find that [...] resistance, conflict and change are as normal as the sun rising." (Turner, 2006; p.42)

Understanding when we conform has all kinds of practical real-world benefits, depending on your aims: it can help you understand your own behaviour as well as understand how others will behave under a variety of different situational pressures. Everyone should be aware of these factors and how they affect the most important areas of their social life.

submitted by yul_brynner [link] [comment]

Republicans including Sarah Palin have taken to attacking Barack Obama as a "professor." This line of attack taps into a long history of anti-intellectualism, stereotypes about higher-education, and possibly racism in American politics....

That’s the opinion of Michael Mautner, Research Professor of Chemistry at Virginia Commonwealth University:

As members of this planet’s menagerie, and a consequence of nearly 4 billion years of evolution, humans have a purpose to propagate life. After all, whatever else life is, it necessarily possesses an incessant drive for self-perpetuation. And the idea isn’t just fantasy: Mautner says that “directed panspermia” missions can be accomplished with present technology.

“We have a moral obligation to plan for the propagation of life, and even the transfer of human life to other solar systems which can be transformed via microbial activity, thereby preparing these worlds to develop and sustain complex life,” Mautner explained to PhysOrg.com. “Securing that future for life can give our human existence a cosmic purpose.”

Submitted By Frank Ruscica

The Jobs Plan We'd Get If Relevant Innovation Scholars And Growth Economists Weren't Being Volckerized (i.e., Ignored As Volcker Was Until Recently) -- Part 1

The Jobs Plan we'd get would leverage America's advantages to make America the Silicon Valley of the global market for customized education (CE).

Understanding why we'd get this plan starts with knowing that popular online markets for CE can be expected to catalyze the creation of many jobs.

From a November 6, 2009 article in the Wall Street Journal:

"According to the Census Bureau, nearly all net job creation in the U.S. since 1980 occurred in firms less than five years old. A Kauffman Foundation report released yesterday shows that as recently as 2007, two-thirds of the jobs created were in such firms. Put more starkly, without new businesses, job creation in the American economy would have been negative for many years."

As secretary to the university’s department of philsophy it fell to me to make a record of the discussion at the most recent academic committee meeting. And what a meeting it was! The main item for discussion that day was “the matter at hand”. And this is how the meeting unfolded…

Professor Moore: “I now think it is time to turn to the matter at hand.”

An uncontroversial beginning one might have thought, but rarely are things so simple at a gathering of the philosophical “great and good”:

“I object to that!”  offered Professor Bradley, more sharply than was normal on these occasions, “there is no ‘matter’  to be ‘at hand’ if by that you intend to refer to some underlying substrate in which ‘matter’ might inhere. I might give you a ‘hand’ but there will be no accompanying ‘matter’ to place next to it. Or underneath it. Or anywhere else for that….And any ‘hand’ whose existence I am prepared to assent to would not be individuated separately but would be part of an inclusive Whole.”

My colleagues appeared restless at this. For Professor Bradley had a point: if we could not agree on the existence of matter then  it followed a fortiori  that there could be no matter at hand and that further discussion was therefore pointless. Luckily Professor Ayer, his mind no doubt on a later assignation, was keen to move things along…

"Heavy multitaskers are often extremely confident in their abilities," says Clifford I. Nass, a professor of psychology at Stanford University.