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I’m a geek for this kind of stuff. Simply amazing… not just the beauty, but the fact that we can even see this kind of picture.

Enjoy the miracle.

Credit Nasa.

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Pro-Choice!!!

I am across a very interesting article at The Weekly Standard on the new Swiss report titled, “The Dignity of Living Beings with Regard to Plants.”

An excerpt:

You just knew it was coming: At the request of the Swiss government, an ethics panel has weighed in on the “dignity” of plants and opined that the arbitrary killing of flora is morally wrong. This is no hoax. The concept of what could be called “plant rights” is being seriously debated.

A few years ago the Swiss added to their national constitution a provision requiring “account to be taken of the dignity of creation when handling animals, plants and other organisms.” No one knew exactly what it meant, so they asked the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology to figure it out. The resulting report, “The Dignity of Living Beings with Regard to Plants,” is enough to short circuit the brain.

A “clear majority” of the panel adopted what it called a “biocentric” moral view, meaning that “living organisms should be considered morally for their own sake because they are alive.” Thus, the panel determined that we cannot claim “absolute ownership” over plants and, moreover, that “individual plants have an inherent worth.” This means that “we may not use them just as we please, even if the plant community is not in danger, or if our actions do not endanger the species, or if we are not acting arbitrarily.”

The committee offered this illustration: A farmer mows his field (apparently an acceptable action, perhaps because the hay is intended to feed the farmer’s herd–the report doesn’t say). But then, while walking home, he casually “decapitates” some wildflowers with his scythe. The panel

decries this act as immoral, though its members can’t agree why. The report states, opaquely:

At this point it remains unclear whether this action is condemned because it expresses a particular moral stance of the farmer toward other organisms or because something bad is being done to the flowers themselves.

What is clear, however, is that Switzerland’s enshrining of “plant dignity” is a symptom of a cultural disease that has infected Western civilization, causing us to lose the ability to think critically and distinguish serious from frivolous ethical concerns. It also reflects the triumph of a radical anthropomorphism that views elements of the natural world as morally equivalent to people.

Why is this happening? Our accelerating rejection of the Judeo-Christian world view, which upholds the unique dignity and moral worth of human beings, is driving us crazy. Once we knocked our species off its pedestal, it was only logical that we would come to see fauna and flora as entitled to rights.

The intellectual elites were the first to accept the notion of “species-ism,” which condemns as invidious discrimination treating people differently from animals simply because they are human beings. Then ethical criteria were needed for assigning moral worth to individuals, be they human, animal, or now vegetable.

Rising to the task, leading bioethicists argue that for a human, value comes from possessing sufficient cognitive abilities to be deemed a “person.” This excludes the unborn, the newborn, and those with significant cognitive impairments, who, personhood theorists believe, do not possess the right to life or bodily integrity. This thinking has led to the advocacy in prestigious medical and bioethical journals of using profoundly brain impaired patients in medical experimentation or as sources of organs.

I never agreed with the animal rights movement’s “elevating the rights” of animals. I think, quite frankly, it lowers the value of human existence to that of an animal. Are we then going to lower the value of humans and animals to that of plants? How exactly will you prosecute an animal for ceasing the plants ability to reproduce when an animal decides to eat a plant? Will then humans and animals then be the “aids of the earth?”

AP Business writer Alex Vega penned a great story about how much fans of the band Radiohead are willing to pay for the rock bands latest release:

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Radiohead let its fans decide how much to pay for a digital copy of the band’s latest release, “In Rainbows,” and more than half of those who downloaded the album chose to pay nothing, according to a study by a consumer research firm.

Some 62 percent of the people who downloaded “In Rainbows” in a four- week period last month opted not to pay the British alt-rockers a cent. But the remaining 38 percent voluntarily paid an average of $6, according to the study by comScore Inc.
Radiohead broke with its past practice of releasing its music in CD format and through a major record label when it released its seventh studio album online itself. The biggest wrinkle was the band’s decision to let fans pay as much or as little as they wanted to download a copy.

The results of the study were drawn from data gathered from a few hundred people who are part of comScore’s database of 2 million computer users worldwide. The firm, which has permission to monitor the computer users’ online behavior, did not provide a margin of error for the study’s results.

Between Oct. 1 and Oct. 29, about 1.2 million people visited the Web site the band set up for fans to download the album, comScore said Monday. The research firm did not say how many people in its study actually bought the album.
Among U.S. residents, about 40 percent who downloaded the album paid to do so. Their average payment was $8.05, the firm said.

Some 36 percent of the fans outside the U.S. who downloaded the album opted to pay; on average, those fans paid $4.64, according to the study.

Radiohead’s U.S.-based publicist said Tuesday the band had no comment on the study.

The online release sent shock waves through the recording industry, with some hailing it as a shrewd move at a time of declining CD sales industry wide and others writing it off as a publicity stunt that amounted to the band giving away its music.
The band, which also offered fans the option of buying a lavish box set for about $82, plans to release the album in CD format some time next year.

I have been saying for some time that the record labels are in trouble. Big trouble. Huge trouble. Gargantuan trouble. Garth Brooks owns his entire catalog and has made and completed a deal with Wal-Mart. He now releases another greatest hits CD with a few new tracks on it and no label has a taste. Radiohead gave no label a taste. Soon artists are going to go direct to iTunes, Amazon, and the other online distributors. Some labels are trying to tap into the artists touring as another source of revenue. This is traditionally all the artists money, less production costs. Ticket prices for shows will start to come down too. Thanks to Garth. No ticket price for any of the Kansas City concerts was more than $32.50. Sure, some ticket brokers have gotten a hold of some and have made a commodity out of the tickets, but as a rule, the ticket prices were intentionally low. Just as the Eagles set the tone for high ticket prices on the Hell Freezes Over Tour, Garth will bring those ticket prices down.

Radiohead may be setting a new example: Pay what you want… we’ll make more.

This is going to be good to watch : )