(in the context of a discussion of "silly surgeries")
>Alright, maybe I wouldn't make it [cosmetic surgery] ILLEGAL...how
about charging a sort
>of
>"sin tax" that would be directed toward research in the field
>(Mmmm...more
>money for the chemists! Yeah!).
There wouldn't be any more money for chemists. With the sin tax in
place, the bugeteers would use that in place the normal modes of funding.
From the chemists perspective, the research budget would remain the
same. The politicos would be the folks with more money to play with.
How much have teacher's saleries increased in your state as a result of
the state lottery which was supposed to pump much-needed money into your
public school system? School budgets haven't increased in direct
proportion to lottery revenues because as funding from the lotteries was
added to education budgets, state funding was redirected leaving funding
from the perspective of any given teacher or school administrator
unchanged.
I lifted the above argument from an NPR interview with author Mario Puzzo
(The Godfather).
On Sat, 14 Sep 1996 13:29:22 -0700 Lior Golgher
<efraim_g@netvision.net.il> writes:
>Branching off an idea recently discussed, Are there also memetic
>antibiotics? What are the memetic equivalents
>to:
>* Moulds producing anti-bacterial substances in order to survive.
>* People using those anti-bacterial substances in ever-growing doses.
>* Bacteria developing immunity\resistance to anti-memetic substances
>by
>natural selection.
>* "Carnivorous-bacteria", common species of bacteria which become
>lethal on
>certain circumstances. That
>Streptococus [sp?] scaring northern-Europe about a year ago for
>example.
>
>The stress is upon memetic antibiotics, not upon memetic
>immune-systems
>and\or memetic antibodies.
Wow! Those are some good questions. I sure can't supply any answers
right off the top of my head. You post is going into a folder, unlike
95% of the mail I receive. If I had a printer I'd print it and take a
look at the print out when I had a spare moment. I don't miss school,
but I miss the facilities.
Am I correct in assuming that you meant your third question to read as
follows?
What is the memetic equivalent of bacteria developing immunity\resistance
to anti-bacterial substances by natural selection?
I don't know much about moulds which produce anti-bacterial substances in
order to survive. Could you provide some pedogical service?
Good post, Lior.
On Fri, 13 Sep 1996 21:40:59 -0400 konsler@ascat.harvard.edu (Reed
Konsler) writes:
>Another book I'd look at if you are interested in medicine, aging, and
>health from a genetic perspective:
>
>"Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine" by Randolph
>M.
>Nesse and George C. Williams. Published by Vintage Books (Random
>House),
>New York, 1994.
I'll put it on my reading list, but it's a long list. Any excerpts or
synopses you would care to provide would be more than welcome. I'll do
the same for Dennett's "Kinds of Minds." Has anyone read "The Axe
Maker's Gift" by Burke and Ornstein? I've been meaning to do so for
months now. When I found my-self at Barnes and Noble, it wasn't there.
Was that fate intervening to save me from a bad book? Given the authors,
that's hard to beleive.
>
>One of it's sections deals specifically with senesence, aging, and the
>failure of modern medicine to significantly increase the maximum human
>lifespan. Advances have reduced your chance of death at birth (or by
>giving birth) and during childhood 10 fold in the last 60 years. You
>chance of death at 70 is still almost the same. As a result, average
>lifespan has increased (Figure 8-1, p 110 is a decent graph...although
>Tufte would kill whomever made the Y axis lograthmic with un-marked
>ticks)
Well, there's some coroboration for the claim that recent increases in
life expectancy are mathematical illusions fostered by a drastically
reduced infant mortality rate.
>
>
>>From the back cover: "By two copies and give one to your doctor."
> - Richard Dawkins
When I get a doctor, I'll buy two copies and give one to him.
Thanks, Reed.
I sent several posts on the science as dogma thread. When I get them
back I'll ask someone to forward them to the list for me, and then I'll
retreat into lurk mode until I've got more reliable e-mail. Take care,
all. -KMO
Take care. -KMO