h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

doctors have a good chance of curing most cancers if they detect them early .

Cheers Apple. I only mentioned it 'cos Scotty suggested that cancer is incurable. I also like to reassure other readers who might be newly diagnosed. Of course, 10 years on, their outlook is even better now than mine was back then.

The treatment is usually unpleasant, and cancer is really about 200 different diseases. Some grow slowly, some fast; there's no substitute for having all the checks you can - and not smoking! I still have to have an annual test in case mine returns.

Here's good health to all our readers.

toxx

I remember hearing once that 'everyone knows someone with cancer', but at the time I didn't - then my friend Ellen's brother died of lung cancer at 27, although he had *never* been exposed to cigarette smoke! (JW family). Ellen was having the year from hell, 6 months later she popped an aneurysm, but that's by the by.

I hope your check-ups continue to have a good result, toxxin, and I wish the same for all cancer sufferers here...

Glad to hear you beat the bug Toxx! Let's hope it stays gone, this would be a less interesting place without you.

My mother taught grade school here for many years, mostly 4th where the kids are about 9 or 10 years old. One boy in her class one year showed remarkable talent with numbers, but not with other subjects. While teaching long multiplication at the start of the school year she chose an example of two four-digit numbers and wrote the equation on the board. Intantly this kid had his hand up, but she chose another student to aproach the board and work it out the hard way. Another equation, another hand, another student was picked. The third time she called on this kid and he simply rattled off a list of numbers, so she wrote these to the side of the equation and asked him how he came up with that-he had no idea-but his answer was right. It was also right the next ten times. I don't recall if he was as good at other math like division, and though Mom was way ahead of most other 4th grade teachers the algebra she inflicted on her kids was simple. She also made them do term papers. REAL term papers of 10-20 pages that I helped grade, year after year after year.

Whoops not quite done yet!

Good examples Math, I'd agree that the more recent wars had little if anything to do with religion. Perhaps 'man' just likes war or became used to the idea.

I had enough difficulty with Spanish and Hebrew so I won't even attempt Welsh

I think humans have everything to do with the current state of affairs, be they pleasant or not; that list or something like it is what I put in front of people who are trying to convince me that their God exists and He's so kind and wonderful and forgiving.

There! Now I'm done, except for some and a . Mmmm.

A while back someone of a religious bent pointed out to me that animals do not have souls and were merely placed on the Earth by God for our use. If that were the case why do dogs dream?

Most religions were/are an easy way of keeping the population under control without a large police force, unfortunately they have also been the cause of a war or two.....

I pray most Friday nights in a temple called the pub (mostly I pray that I've got enough cash to buy another pint or the cute blonde I've just spotted is single...)

I suspect that the minimum requirement for dreaming is to have a mind (some will say 'brain'). Do you assume that the 'soul' is the same thing? Anyway, you can't possibly prove that dogs dream.

Cute blondes are *never* single!

toxx

So you've never seen a dog asleep, twitching and barking quietly?
My arguement is that if they are here purely for our use then why should they have thoughts and feelings of their own, unless you wish to say they don't they merely appear to have them?
Aren't thoughts and emotions an indicator of a so called "soul" and if not what would you say is?

"Cute blondes are *never* single!"
Nor are cute brunettes or redheads. I'm doomed I tell you.

OK, I know what you mean about dogs dreaming. We can never *really* know it, but it certainly appears that way.

Thoughts and emotion, desires too, are indicators of a mind. In psychology, we call them: cognition, affect and conation. Some will argue that there's no separate thing called 'soul'. Others say it is the spiritual aspect of a person. I don't quite understand this either.

I certainly don't agree that animals are purely for our use, although this seems to be suggested in the OT. There are laws in the west about inflicting needless pain on animals. Nevertheless, we are natural omnivores, so most of us accept meat as part of our diet. Ideally, it should be produced with the least possible suffering. I also accept that we sometimes have to use animals in research. This includes veterinary research that will help other animals as well as ourselves.

toxx

Ash, where did you get the idea 'that if they are here purely for our use then why should they have thoughts and feelings of their own,'?
Why should 'thoughts and feelings' have anything to do with having a soul?
Why doesn't having have two vees?

alji

The Christian writer George McDonald certainly was of the opinion that animals have souls... he wrote a very strongly worded essay about it, which I have in a book of his (when I recall the name of the book, I'll cite it here.)

My father, (from the UK) didn't eat a lot of meat, but my mother (NZer) did, and once in a while they clashed about it. That being said, it was just a matter of preference. He used to go hunting, but killed *only* what he intended to eat - and eat it we did.

My mother had cats, and you can see a cat sleeping, and occasionally looking as if it is dreaming - but I don't know what implications might follow from that. BTW, I do believe humans have souls. (To answer an oft-asked question, I believe the soul communicates with the mind, which communicates with the body.)

I don't eat meat but I have no problems with animals being used for research so long as it is properly regulated
in fact if a lot of the more dubious factory farming practices were stopped I expect I could bring myself to eat meat, although I suspect it would be too expensive to have often
I don't believe animals have souls, but then I don't believe we do either

I don't eat much meat, but it's only because my family's on this insanely healthy diet at present - I do eat it when we go out, and I've got no problem doing medical tests on animals as long as they're properly regulated and administered. If we complain about doing them on animals what are we going to do them on next - potatoes?

We eat meat, but not a lot of it... Jim hates the very idea of steak or similar...

Some of the 'Animal Rights' lot would prefer us to do them on convicts! More reasonably, they argue that human cell cultures can be used - which ensure that the findings relate to the relevant species.

Computer simulations have been suggested. This seems rather fanciful at present, although I think that work on the chemical expression of genes might get us towards that point for some purposes.

toxx

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yes i agree ,but convicts have rights too its sad to say .

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science would love to prove everything ,but it just show's that some thing's in life can't be proved ,

depends if the blonde is cute on the inside as well as the out , there are plenty of good looking people on the outside but evil inside and the other way round ,the movie shallow hal,now if everyone was to see the world like that , seeing people how they are on the inside now that would be very interesting .so not all blondes etc are cute as you may think .

I've seen animal rights pamphlets in which they say that results from animals can't be generalised to people... but I think that's probably too sweeping a statement. Some studies will *have* to be performed on animals.

I have always been puzzled by the animal rights activists who would rather see experiments carried out on people. They appear to like other species better than their own, which is rather confusing. I'm happy if human subjects are used, as long as they're willing. If there's risk of death and stuff like that... well, may as well use an animal that can't realise it's sacrificing its life for science.

Exactly! And surely it's better to sacrifice ones life for science than for McDonald's.