Spare parts

The future has arrived. Spare parts embryos?:

"Parents of sick children in Britain will be allowed to use IVF to create "spare-part babies" under controversial laws published yesterday.

The legislation will dramatically relax rules on IVF clinics creating "saviour siblings" who can help cure their older brothers and sisters of medical conditions such as leukemia."

At first blush the concept is a little creepy, but so was In Vitrio Fertilization at one time. In scientific terms, it makes total sense. If a live child can be cured of some kind of terrible disease by using cells from a sibling embryo grown for that purpose, why not? This could be a real gift for kids with leukemia and organ diseases.

The Usual Suspects at lifeshite etc are all up in arms about this, and why? Not because of the spare parts aspect of things, but because the extra embryos are being tossed. Here's an idea: let's use them for stem-cell research! Oh. Yeah.

I think it sounds like a fabb-o idea. I'm imagining how fast I could run a marathon if I had a new lung or two to replace the ones wrecked by all those years of smoking, a new ticker without all the drug damage... maybe a whole soft machine oil change of fresh new oxygen-rich blood. And that's just me -- don't get me started on a brain for Georgie!

Hope?

Something interesting has been happening here the last few days. No, not the SDA troll invasion, that was about as interesting as a case of diarrhea (and I can't say "case of diarrhea" without referencing that old joke -- Guy #1: "Come on over, we're partying!" Guy #2: "I can't, I've got a case of diarrhea." Guy #1: "Bring it, we'll drink anything!"). Anyway... whlle the swarm was happening, something else was going on.

I recently had a commenter, an American conservative -- a genuine Bush-voting Republican, no less -- who came here all full of piss and vinegar and looking for a fight. But somehow, with a little humour and careful treading around hot issues, we ended up having a pretty good dialogue. He stuck around for a week or so (I appointed him my TCC, "Token Conservative Commenter"), and although we disagreed on things, we found a surprising amount of common ground -- even though I'm not in any way shape or form a conservative. So it was the highest irony that this was the time rabid right-wing Canadians would choose to attack -- while they were attacking in one thread, on others I was having a courteous, rational dialogue with an American conservative, who as a Republican is likely someone these same people would respect. Funny thing -- I respected him too. In spite of our having completely different, even opposing, views on some issues.

I think my TCC has probably left this little swamp for more interesting ground; I doubt he was impressed by what passes for conservatism in Canada. (I had to laugh at his comment referring to one of the SDAers as a "pissant gulag-worthy POS" -- Ha! Now that's a conservative insult!) But for what it was worth, our scattered dialogue gave me hope that maybe, just maybe, it's still possible to heal the massive wounds we've been inflicting on each other for the last few years. If only so many people didn't have a vested personal (and financial) interest in keeping the volume turned up so loud that nobody can speak.

Canada's New Government™ no more

Don Newman noted this after the Throne Speech. Today, all refererences to "Canada's New Government™" disappeared from the government website. Canada's Government is "New™" no more:

Right or left brain?

Here's a quick visual test.

I'm mostly left, but if I view the test from an angle, I'm right. Ambi-braindrous!!!