My ranking of the top 100 draft prospects for 2015 is now up for Insiders, and I held a Klawchat afterwards to answer questions about it. I’ll be at UConn’s game today (Saturday) against Cincinnati to see Ian Happ before I head home for Mother’s Day.
And now, the links…
- A grieving yet proud mother writes about losing her 29-year-old daughter to mental illness.
- The New Republic offers a hopeful piece on the imminent decline of pseudoscience.
- What’s the best way to fight science denial? This piece argues that it involves showing other pieces of science denial first.
- A thirty-year study by the Rodale Institute found that organic agriculture beat conventional methods for energy efficiency, water quality, soil health, and other important variables. Organic produce probably isn’t any more healthful than conventional, there’s limited evidence that it’s more nutritious (that seems to be a function of the soil itself), and there’s minimal risk from pesticides on conventional stuff. But organic ag is way better for the soil and the water, and it should use far less fossil fuels as well.
- From last week, a reader sent along this rejoinder to the pro-TPP link I included in that post.
- Kickstarter is behind lots of success stories, including many acclaimed boardgames, but what happens when a crowdfunded startup goes south?
- I haven’t followed football at all since the 1980s, but I couldn’t stop reading this New York Times “where are they now?” piece on the first-round picks from the NFL’s 1990 draft.
- Excellent piece from the Washington Post on one woman’s 400-mile drive to end a pregnancy. Women who seek abortions are not merely heartless babykillers, and reducing access to abortion services doesn’t do anything to reduce the demand, only to increase the hardships for women who need them.
- Scientists have found feathered fossils of birds from 130 million years ago, about 5 million years older than the previous hypothesized date for the first birds to appear on earth. Those scientists, man. They keep doing stuff.
- You probably caught this one going around, but a school in Texas that taught abstinence-only sex education had a chlamydia outbreak. I’m sympathetic to parents who believe the choice to teach kids about sexual morality should be theirs, not the school’s, but there’s a public health aspect to the question too, and, more importantly, a growing body of evidence that abstinence-only education doesn’t work.
- Turns out that getting vaccinated for the measles reduces your susceptibility to a bunch of other illnesses to which the measles would make you more vulnerable.
- They didn’t have this class when I was there: Harvard engineering students spent a semester building the ultimate brisket smoker.
- Speaking of barbecue, Aaron Franklin of Franklin BBQ in Austin (and of those AmEx commercials) became the first pitmaster to win a James Beard “best chef” award. If you’ve had his brisket, and I have, he deserves all the awards. Like, even the Nobel Prize for Economics, which is kind of a made-up thing anyway.
Perhaps relevant to your interests: Professor live tweet’s her son’s abstinence only sex-ed class
http://mashable.com/2015/04/16/alice-dreger-sex-education/
Thank you, Drew. I did see (and enjoy) that.
What abstinence-only advocates almost never bring up is that comprehensive sex ed programs teach the positives of being abstinent (such as not getting pregnant and not getting STD’s) and discuss with students ways to resist/ignore peer pressure or scrutiny. A-O advocates also think that humans (especially teenagers) are purely rational human beings who would never get embroiled with emotions, whether long-term or in the moment, where we know that’s obviously not the case (and thus teens should learn ways to keep themselves more healthy if having sex).
Keith–
My insider subscription is up this week. I pay for it largely to support your content, though the things I actually read (specifically the chats) aren’t actually insider (I’m not much of a “prospects” guy).
As a customer, I’m very frustrated that ESPN has buried the content I value (with the possible plan to kill it entirely, perhaps?). I am wondering if you can suggest the correct path for making my unhappiness known. Obviously, I could just stop my subscription, but I presume that (a) would not actually do anything to make my concerns known, and (b) would not be the approach you would advocate/prefer.
Thanks!
CB
CB: Yes, the new format doesn’t do well with the chats … but I don’t know exactly what to suggest to you. Let me look into it.
Cool, thanks!
Klaw: re this: Excellent piece from the Washington Post on one woman’s 400-mile drive to end a pregnancy. Women who seek abortions are not merely heartless babykillers, and reducing access to abortion services doesn’t do anything to reduce the demand, only to increase the hardships for women who need them.
True indeed. It is also true that many legislators and their constituents who support such restrictions sincerely believe that the aborted fetuses are human beings worthy of no less protection under the law than the rest of us, and if the hardships reduce the number of abortions, the legislation is justifiable. It’s best for the conversation to recognize that both are true, irrespective of which camp you find yourself in, or, like me, you’re not sure which camp is best.
Keep up the good work.
Well, Jeff, the problem with your statement is the flawed assumption that the “aborted fetuses are human beings,” because they’re not. Any such belief is fundamentally religious in nature, not scientifically supported, and laws made on that basis impose the religious beliefs of some people on all.
Keith, you have a daughter. At what stage in development did she become a human being? At birth? A few days before? Third trimester? 20 weeks? Second trimester? When her heart started beating? What intrinsically changed about her from the time her mother learned of the pregnancy until the time she was born? Your appeal to “science” as authority in this case is ridiculous.
I can’t even tell if you’re trolling – an appeal to “science” as authority?
To your question, at the four-week ultrasound my daughter was an agglomeration of cells, nothing recognizable as a human being. Had we decided, for whatever reason, to abort the pregnancy at that point, why should any law have stopped us?
So… when did the agglomeration of cells become a human being? (To recap, not a human being at four weeks, but a human being sometime after that). Please have Science tell me clearly.
Again, I’m not sure either way, but my inclinations toward the view that an unborn fetus is no less a human than a minutes-old baby has nothing to do with a religious belief. I don’t discount the possibility of a higher power, but I’m best categorized as agnostic. Those who argue pro-life positions on the basis of their religious convictions are not persuasive to me.
However, minutes, hours, days, and even months before my daughter was born, the only significant difference between her as an unborn fetus and her as born baby was a matter of her location. You may assert that an aborted fetus is not a human being, and I may assert otherwise. Neither is the result of a flawed assumption. Both are the result of different definitions. That simply illustrates that the debate, at least for many, turns on the definition of “human being.” It is an interesting debate, and I have sympathy for those who err on the side of a definition that includes babies before they are born.
Whether the basis of a law restricting abortion is influenced by religious belief or not is not relevant to the merits of the law. I don’t have the answer, but I’d prefer that folks on each side of the issue recognize that there are rational arguments on the other.
Please provide scientific proof that a human fetus isn’t a human being.
A fetus under 22 weeks isn’t viable. This is quite similar to the standard used by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade, by the way.
Requiring anything more than that invokes the burden of proof fallacy. The patient and her doctor do not need to show that this medical procedure is not criminal; the lawmakers seeking to criminalize such behavior need to show evidence that it is, and science does not support this.
It’s not a burden of proof fallacy, since there is no consensus definition of human being. In Roe, the Court adopted a definition to be used to determine when the fetuses rights exceeded those of the mother’s, but without an agreed-upon definition of human being, it isn’t a burden of proof fallacy. The burden of proof fallacy only exists when there is no dispute regarding the terms used by the person making the assertion of fact.
The dispute now and forever will turn on the definition of human. It may be irreconcilable. The Court’s definition is no more scientifically or logically valid than the definition that would say a being is human when, absent external intervention, it would become viable outside the womb. Science doesn’t answer this question.
The dispute will always turn on the definition of what it is to be a person, yes, but a person is a philosophical construct. Its not a real thing. The question, really, from a governance perspective, is whether society is better off having abortion be legal, or not. The only justification for abortion being illegal is that the fetus be considered a person, and the only harm to society for having abortion occur is the harm that persons are killed in the procedure. Since the only harm occuring hinges on accepting the definition, making abortion illegal requires that you accept the disputed definition in order to have an argument. Since there are all sorts of harms that occur in outlawing abortion, regardless of definition of person, the weight of the legality argument seems to me to be pretty firmly in the “keep it legal,” camp.
My wife’s recent pregnancy put me more firmly in the pro-choice camp than I’d ever been. THe only reason the physical and emotional changes, aches, and pains were bearable to my wife was because she WANTED the child. IF she didn’t, forcing her to carry it would have been nothing less than torture. Torturing someone because they have a different definition of person than you do? Not acceptable.
Very well said, Paul. That’s an excellent way to analyze the question of legality, yet the task of defining human being remains at the top of the list. And, fetal status as human being doesn’t necessarily require that abortion be illegal, as himicide is legal in a variety of contexts.