Economist – Doctors should be allowed to help the suffering and terminally ill to die when they choose
The argument is over the right to die with a doctor’s help at the time and in the manner of your own choosing. As yet only a handful of European countries, Colombia and five American states allow some form of doctor-assisted dying. But draft bills, ballot initiatives and court cases are progressing in 20 more states and several other countries (see article).
In Canada the Supreme Court recently struck down a ban on helping patients to die; its ruling will take effect next year. In the coming months bills will go before parliaments in Britain and Germany. …
The Koch brothers aren’t true evil, I was surprised to learn. But they’ve put together a coalition that intends to spend almost $1 billion in 2016.
I do believe that money is intended to buy election wins for Republican candidates who will be expected to support polices that benefit … the Koch brothers.
This is a business move. Though they lost perhaps half a billion trying to defeat Obama, they hope to get back more than 1.5 billion if the next President is a Republican.
Click PLAY or watch a protest song on YouTube.
If you don’t like billionaires buying elections, campaign against the politicians they support.
In the United States 98% of women have used birth control at some point in time and 62% of those of reproductive age are currently using birth control …
(I assume the other 2% practice abstinence.)
About a third of American women will have an abortion in their lifetime. It’s a difficult and traumatic decision for most. 😦
Anything we can do to reduce the rates of unwanted pregnancy and abortion should be considered.
old white men deciding what women can do with their bodies
If you restrict access to sex education and contraception, expect more abortions.
Roman Catholics and (many) evangelicals should expect more abortions because they limit access to contraceptives.
The Roman Catholic Church should council women not to have abortions. But then provide help for those additional children they want born. Many are born to young, poor and distressed mothers who don’t have access to abortion. Those children really need the help of the Church.
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… Around 44 million abortions occur each year in the world, with a little under half done unsafely.
Abortion rates have changed little between 2003 and 2008, before which they decreased for decades due to better education about family planning and birth control. …
Those who are against abortion largely claim that an embryo or fetus is a human with a right to life and may compare it to murder.
Supporters point to a woman’s right to decide over her own body and to human rights in general. …
The blue and green colours indicate those nations where abortion is mostly legal on request.
“Every Sperm is Sacred” is a Monty Python musical sketch satire of Catholic teachings on reproduction that forbid masturbation and contraception by artificial means.
Obviously 1 egg or 1 sperm is NOT life.
But there is a legitimate argument on when a human life actually begins. I don’t have a strong opinion on this.
A late-term abortion often refers to an induced abortion procedure that occurs after the 20th week of gestation. Those are – obviously – even worse than first trimester abortions.
Protesters calling for higher wages for fast-food workers stand outside a McDonald’s restaurant in Oakland, California December 5, 2013. The group, which numbered about 200, shut down the store for more than half an hour as part of a daylong nationwide strike demanding a $15 dollar minimum wage. REUTERS/Noah Berger
For 20 years The Economist has led calls for a rethink on drug prohibition. This film looks at new approaches to drugs policy, from Portugal to Colorado. “Drugs: War or Store?” kicks off our new “Global Compass” series, examining novel approaches to policy problems.
Fox News isn’t just bad for America, which is the usual liberal complaint. It’s also bad for the Republican Party, the still-conservative Bartlett holds, because it has stunted the GOP’s growth with a news agenda that ships “misinformation” to the party’s far-right base.
This is the so-called Fox “echo chamber” effect you’ve read so much about …
According to chamber theorists, Fox “breeds extremism” within the Republican Party by convincing viewers to reject other news feeds as biased and to partake only of Fox content and like-minded conservative radio fodder. The echo chamber, so the theory goes, has deluded the party into thinking that support for its radical-right views is greater than it really is. This, in turn, has convinced the party to run radical candidates who aren’t as electable as they seem to be. And all this extremism prevents the GOP’s presidential candidates from reaching centrist voters, who are essential for victory.
… the network is better at employing presidential candidates than electing them. …
… The median age of a Fox viewer is 68 … and its median age is rising. …
The Hyperloop is a conceptual high-speed transportation system put forward by entrepreneur Elon Musk incorporating reduced-pressure tubes in which pressurized capsules ride on an air cushion that is driven by a combination of linear induction motors and air compressors.
The conceptual route runs from the Los Angeles region to the San Francisco Bay Area, paralleling the Interstate 5 corridor for most of its length, with an expected journey time of 35 minutes, meaning that passengers would traverse the 354-mile (570 km) route at an average speed of around 598 mph (962 km/h), with a top speed of 760 mph (1,220 km/h). …
The first crowdsourced 7 km long track will be built in 2016 in Quay Valley (California), a town that calls itself the “100% solar powered, self-sustaining residential model town for the 21st century“. Around 200 people (from scientists to students) are working on this project right now in exchange for equity in the transportation company that will eventually emerge. …
New. Announced November 2014 for tourists wanting to travel to India.
e-Tourist Visa. Online. US$60. Good for 1 month. Single entry.
Here’s the application page (I hope). I’ll try it for a trip September 2015. Wish me luck.
Original post from 2014 ____
I’m in Nepal. Visa on arrival. No hassles. Nepal loves tourists.
India still requires a visa in advance for Canadians, a stupid and time consuming process from the days of the Raj.
Though open-for-businessModi promised Obama it was coming, it’s not yet here.
India is working on a proposal for visa on arrival (VoA) facility for US tourists, one of the big-ticket announcements expected to be made during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s high-profile visit to the US beginning September 26. …
Since 2010 visa on arrival was available for citizens of these nations: Finland, Japan, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Singapore, Cambodia, Vietnam, Philippines, Laos, Myanmar, Indonesia and South Korea.
Yet they cannot bloody add more nations to that list? 😦
UPDATE – The list has been expanded to 43 nationsincluding the USA. … But NOT Canada. NOT U.K.
1971 Richard Nixon fired the first shot in what became known as the “war on drugs” by declaring them “public enemy number one”.
In America and the other rich countries that fought by its side, the campaign meant strict laws and harsh sentences for small-time dealers and addicts. In the poor, chaotic countries that supplied their cocaine and heroin, it meant uprooting and spraying coca and poppy crops, and arming and training security forces.
Billions of wasted dollars and many destroyed lives later, illegal drugs are still available, and the anti-drug warriors are wearying. In America and western Europe addiction is increasingly seen as an illness. Marijuana has been legalised in a few places. Several countries may follow Portugal, which no longer treats drug use as a crime.
But even as one drug war begins to wind down, another is cranking up across Asia, Russia and the Middle East …
Rick McCharles 