GeorgiaDon

It was Benjamin Franklin: “[W]hy should Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements and, by herding together, establish their Language and Manners, to the Exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them?” Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I haven't seen the actual test, I don't even know if it's available online (a google search brings up a million articles that refer to the test, but not the test itself as far as I have been able to find). Anyway I'm not a firefighter and couldn't judge that aspect of the test. So what follows is my speculation. One of the articles mentioned that the "written" portion of the test consisted of 100 multiple choice questions. My experience with such tests, both taking them and making them up for the classes I teach, is that some of the choices will be way out, but some will be very close to the one correct answer. Commonly at least some questions will be deliberately "tricky", so that distinguishing the right answer will depend on careful reading and parsing the specific meaning of the language of the possible answers. It's very easy to set a test where the score will depend as much on vocabulary and reading skills as it does on knowledge of the subject material. That's why I personally dislike multiple choice tests and much prefer a format where students have to write out an answer. Oral or written exams are harder to unintentionally bias, since the questions are usually more straightforward, and the examinee speaks or writes their response directly instead of having to choose from amongst several very similar, deliberately confusing answers. Another advantage of the oral exam is that there is opportunity for back-and-forth, so the examiner can always ask follow-up questions to make sure they can assess whether or not the examinee has the knowledge the question is directed towards. In the case in question, New Haven weighted the "written" (actually multiple choice) test most heavily, and nearly Bridgeport weights the oral exam more heavily, and Bridgeport seems not to have problems with "minority" candidates being unable to meet the criteria for promotion. Reading and writing skills are influenced by education, and school performance is influenced by factors like class size, teacher quality, and teaching materials, all of which are influenced by finances. Given that most school districts are funded mainly from the local property tax base, it's not unreasonable to suggest that, on average, people who graduate from schools in poor districts may have a harder time with tests that indirectly measure vocabulary skills, compared to people who go to better-off schools with smaller class sizes, more personal attention, and more up-to-date teaching methodologies and materials. Since average income and education in the USA still correlate with race (although the variances are huge), it's not impossible that, on average, people from some racial groups might have a harder time with certain test designs than people from other racial groups. Cultural practices such as speaking dialects like "ebonics", with non-standard word and grammar usage, might exacerbate the problem. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

So can I assume you provide your "internet security" services for free, and make your living charging people to watch, or maybe you sell them T-shirts? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Here you go: http://www.cms.hhs.gov/NationalHealthExpendData/02_NationalHealthAccountsHistorical.asp#TopOfPage Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Cute story about a gay (male) penguin couple taking on an egg/chick that had been rejected by its straight parents: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/06/05/gay-penguins-adopt005.html#socialcomments So, is there a special "lake of fire" (or iceberg of fire in this case) in Hell for gay penguins? Or does this story just demonstrate that homosexual behavior is a perfectly natural phenomenon in lots of species besides humans? If only humans have free will, and God created everything just the way it is (evolution being a liberal lie), doesn't this mean that God made these animals gay? And why doesn't the iceberg of fire just melt? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Perhaps in time Iran can get back to where it was in 1953, before a US-led coup (Operation Ajax) ousted the democratically elected government and installed the Shah of Iran, who then went on to lead decades of exceedingly harsh suppression of political freedom through his CIA-trained secret police (called "SAVAK"). Our track record of "nation building" in that part of the world has been anything but stellar. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

What do you think of her actual record on the bench? Decisions like: “…it is not for the courts to make policy...if policy is to be changed, Congress or federal agencies must do it.” and: “…under our Constitution, even a white bigot has the right to speak his mind.” Do you find those statements offensive too? In over 100 cases involving some allegation of discrimination, she has found in favor of the party that alleges discrimination only 1/8 of the time. Hardly the record of an "activist judge". Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Here’s some info from Sotomayor’s judicial record that pertain to her alleged racism (and here’s the link to the source http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104941870): (I've underlined some especiaslly inflammatory passages for emphasis.) “In [a] case involving a black couple bumped from an American Airlines international flight, Sotomayor said their race discrimination claim was clearly trumped by an international treaty governing airline rules. It matters not, she said, that her ruling might mean airlines could discriminate on a wholesale basis and that there would be no legal recourse. The treaty's language is clear and it is not for the courts to make policy, she said, adding that if policy is to be changed, Congress or federal agencies must do it.” “Sotomayor … dissented when her colleagues allowed the New York City Police Department to fire one of its officers for sending hate mail on his own time. While the hate mail was patently offensive, hateful and insulting, Sotomayor wrote, it did not interfere with the operations of the police department, and, she observed, under our Constitution, even a white bigot has the right to speak his mind.” “As a judge, Sotomayor has ruled in 100 cases that involve questions of racial discrimination of one sort or another. Tom Goldstein, Supreme Court advocate and founder of the leading Supreme Court blog, has read all of those decisions. He says that Sotomayor does not seem to put her thumb on the scale and has in fact, most of the time, ruled against those charging discrimination. In only 1 of out 8 cases, he says, has she favored in some sense claims of discrimination. "The fact that she so rarely upholds discrimination claims I think answers the idea that she is always angling for minorities," he says.” “Sotomayor has not been reversed by the Supreme Court in any of her race cases, but that is likely to change in the next few weeks when the high court issues a decision in what is widely viewed as her most controversial ruling. It involves the city of New Haven, Conn.'s new promotion exam, which resulted in no African-Americans scoring high enough to be promoted. The city's lawyers warned that the test results were a red flag that made New Haven liable to losing a lawsuit from black firefighters. So the city discarded the exam and the results. Instead, the city was sued by a group of white firefighters who charged reverse racial discrimination. A federal district court judge held a fact-finding hearing and, in a 48-page opinion, said the city was discriminating against no one because all of the test results were discarded and nobody was promoted. Sotomayor was on a three-judge panel that reviewed that decision. In a six-sentence unsigned order, the panel said that because the test appeared to violate a provision of federal law that treats such racially disproportionate test results with grave suspicion, the city was within its rights to take the steps necessary to avoid liability. Wow! “…it is not for the courts to make policy...if policy is to be changed, Congress or federal agencies must do it.” “…under our Constitution, even a white bigot has the right to speak his mind.” Clearly the ranting of a racist lunatic! It’d be insane to let someone with those views on the Supreme Court! Think of the damage she’d do! [/sarcasm] Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

The story of the missing H-bomb is very well known, I've seen several articles in local papers or on the TV news since I moved to Georgia nearly 13 years ago. There is no big cover-up. The military apparently still looks for it fairly regularly. A couple of years ago a team of University of Georgia oceanographers tried to find it by sampling sediment from the sea floor and analyzing it for chemicals that would be released as the bomb rusted and exposed the detonation device. No such chemicals, and no radioactivity above background, were found. Also some private "treasure hunters" try regularly to locate it, so they can collect a reward from the military. How could the bomb just disappear? The exact location of the drop isn't known, so the search area is I recall over 100 square miles. Remember this was an emergency drop from a critically damaged aircraft where the pilots were busy just staying in the air, plus the technology of the day would have been a lot less precise about the exact position of the plane (which was moving at a significant speed). Also the bomb may have been carried with water currents for a distance after impacting he water (although probably not miles). Most significant, the sea floor in that area has large regions of very fine silt, and a heavy compact object like a bomb would penetrate several feet below the surface. It's likely that it would never have been findable by a visual search. In the time since, water currents could move silt around and bury it even more, or uncover it, there's no way to tell. The article you pasted is sensationalistic BS IMHO. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

The reporter isn't in the helicopter, he's getting feed from a camera mounted on the underside so he only has the image on the screen to go by. At one point he comments that he isn't getting any communication from the helicopter. No doubt the pilot has his/her hands full watching for other aircraft. The reporter comments about a police helicopter also following the car driver as he's running, and often there will be other news choppers around as well. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

When I lived in Holland (AKA the Netherlands) I was told that the penalties for DUI included confiscation of your vehicle. You'd get it back after a while, but in the meantime it had had a date with a press, so it generally resembled a 3' x 3' x 3' cube. The logic was supposedly that most people spend for a car in some proportion to their wealth, so someone of modest means might drive a Fiat (or worse a Citroen), and the wealthy a Porsch. Either way, the sting would be roughly the same. No slack would be cut if you were driving your parents car, or your friends. Imagine explaining to your parents that their car had been cubed because of your DUI. Just as bad, imagine if you're still making payments; now your car is gone, and you still have to pay back the loan. Since most people spend a bit more than they really need to on a car, you'd probably not be able to afford another until the loan was paid back, so you'd be looking at a few years of public transit. I don't know if things are still done that way, or if I got the story straight, but it does seem like an interesting approach to the problem. Maybe not for the first DUI, but certainly for a second (or third, and so on) conviction. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

That seems very similar to the story of HeLa cells. They are a cell line developed from a cervical cancer tumor removed from a woman named Henrietta Lacks. It proved to be a very useful cell line for cancer research and is now grown in thousands of labs around the world. Ms Lacks died in 1951, but her cells (or a cell line derived from them, which is not exactly the same thing) are still going strong; in fact if you added them all up they would amount to several hundred times the number of cells in a single person, so in a sense she has been reproducing very efficiently. In another thread, some people are arguing that a fertilized egg should have all the rights of a person, because it contains a full complement of human DNA. I wonder if that reasoning would lead to the conclusion that Ms Lacks, or Mr Moore, never really died and their "soul" is now somehow inhabiting tissue culture flasks around the world. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I heard that story this morning, on Good Morning America, and was really surprised. I have a couple of patents on plant natural products, but my experience was that you can patent an application of a natural product but not the natural product itself (since it was "invented" by Nature). I recall that in the early days of the Human Genome project Craig Ventor's company (and maybe others) were patenting every bit of DNA sequence, but I thought the courts had thrown out those patents as nothing had actually been invented. It seems I was mistaken about that, as apparently about 20% of the genes in the human genome have been patented. The story today (http://www.genomeweb.com/dxpgx/aclu-files-suit-against-myriad-over-brca-patents) is about a lawsuit filed against Myriad Genetics, who hold the patent on two major genes (BRCA1 and BRCA2) involved in breast cancer. They market a test to determine if a patient has any of several known mutations that increase risk of breast (and also ovarian) cancer. The test is very expensive ($3,000); from a technical perspective I'm sure I could generate the same data for a lot less than that, but that wouldn't include research and development costs. The problem seems to be that Myriad is using the patent to prevent anyone else from developing a different, competing test. With only one test available there is no way to get a "second opinion" on your cancer risk. They are also allegedly stifling research on the two genes. As an example of the consequence of that, the existing data applies almost entirely to Caucasian women, so no-one knows how good the test results are for any other ethnic group. You could be "cleared" of risk by the test, but that result wouldn't mean much if the mutations that are common in, say, Asian women are different from the specific mutations covered in the test. I think it's outrageous that anyone could hold a patent on a gene. I have no problem with patenting a diagnostic test, or a treatment to fix a mutation that causes a defective protein, but gene itself and the basic information about the nucleotide sequence can't be invented and it shouldn't be the property of any individual or company. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

You seem to imply that US law should be dictated by what is acceptable to Catholic theology. Should the sale/use of condoms or other birth control devices also be illegal? Every other religion out there would also likely welcome the use of the legal system to force everybody to follow (if not actually believe in) their religious precepts. I don't think that's what America is about. Everyone is free to follow their own religious convictions, as long as they don't contradict secular law. Bill said the law of the land is that abortion is not murder. That is in fact correct. You said you answer to a higher power. That is your right. You certainly have every right to try to persuade others to also follow your "higher power". You don't have the right to impose your beliefs on anyone but yourself. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Although the ruling may be technically correct, I think the state legislature should pass a law to require a warrant for that kind of surveillance. Although it's true the police could follow you around, or even use a helicopter to follow your movements on private property, that would be hugely expensive and almost certainly wouldn't be done without a very good reason. On the other hand sticking a tracking device on a car is easy, so easy people will certainly be temped to abuse it. Suppose a police officer suspects their spouse is fooling around. Out comes the tracking device, then "what were you doing at the no-tell motel for 2 hours?". Judges almost never refuse warrants if there is probable cause; I think it's entirely reasonable that the police should have to show cause before subjecting anyone to that kind of surveillance, be it by tracking device or just following them around for extended periods. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Am I mistaken in believing that Christianity (as laid out in the New Testament) built upon, and developed from the monotheistic religion described in the Old Testament? Are you disputing that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam share the same root in the monotheistic religion of Abraham? As for the rest, I'd be interested in your opinion. I really can't see any credible argument that "made in God's image" has anything to do with physical bodies. No-one would argue that someone who had lost an arm or a leg was less human because they were missing a piece of their physical body, that would be absurd. Surely what makes us human is the mind, our consciousness and as a result our ability to think, feel emotion, wonder? Can a fertilized egg, or a blastocyst, or an embryo question the meaning of it's existence? Certainly an embryo is an incipient human, and so should be treated with respect. I just don't see how it deserves greater respect than the woman it happens to be in. Back to the original topic of this thread, I don't agree that it is an ethical decision to force a victim of rape or incest, against her will and at significant risk of long-term physical or psychological damage, to continue to carry and nurture a potential human against her will. All that being said, when my daughter got pregnant at 16, she decided to have the baby and my wife and I never once questioned her decision. As a result I have a granddaughter I adore. However that child was not the product of violence, and we were able and willing to provide a great deal of emotional and financial support, so my daughter finished high school, and has now graduated from university and is married to a fine fellow who has legally adopted my granddaughter. Not everyone who finds themselves unexpectedly pregnant has such a supportive situation. I don't think I have any right to tell them what they must do, or must not do. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

The uniqueness of the unborn child, for a long time (fertilized egg, blastocyst stage, embryo, arguably even the fetus) is derived almost entirely from the assortment of alleles received from the parents. Is this sufficient to make us "unique human beings"? Surely this collection of alleles only defines some boundaries on the possibilities of what that fertilized egg may eventually become, under the influence of environment. It's obvious (to me anyway) that much of the objection to abortion is religiously based, and is particularly associated with the religions that developed from the Old Testament (Judaism, Christianity, Islam). I suspect that at some fundamental level the issue is that "Man" was made in "God's image", so killing a human is on some level equivalent to killing "God". But is "God" just a random selection of alleles? That kind of thinking has, more in the past than now, been used to justify elevating some "human races" (especially European Caucasian) above others, deeming them "closer to God's image" based on the presence/absence of alleles with the phenotype of light vs dark skin pigmentation. Hopefully no-one here believes that any more. But if "God's image" can't be defined as a collection of alleles, what does it mean? Surely being "like God" means being self-aware, able to love (or hate), aware of our mortality, able to question our place in world, the meaning of our existence? These are the attributes that make us human, not the physical nature of our bodies. The things that make us human are properties that emerge over time, as we develop and grow. They are not properties of a blastocyst, or an embryo. If someone believes that just the potential to eventually become self-aware, to acquire all the other attributes that make us functional, are sufficient to define a fertilized egg as fully human, then surely that someone should also agree that they have a responsibility to ensure provision of all the things that potential human would need to develop all of their potential. That would include food, shelter, health care, and education at the minimum. Strangely, I've found that many people who ardently (almost violently) oppose abortion feel no obligation to provide anything for the child once it is born. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

If "conservative" means "government that interferes as little as possible in the activities of consenting adults", it makes perfect sense. If "conservative" means "I'm going to demand that everybody else follows my religious principles", I agree it is a confusing situation. Personally, I think it is a step in the right direction. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

The purpose of the experiment was to establish the technology to insert genes into the dog genome and actually have them be expressed. In the old days people would use a gene for an enzyme not present in dogs, for example a gene for a plant enzyme. Of course, to see if the gene is expressed as a functional enzyme, you'd have to extract the dog, which usually would be the end of the dog. These days you can use red (or green, or yellow) fluorescent protein; to see if the gene is inserted correctly and expresses a functional protein, you just shine a blacklight on the dog and see if it glows. No need for the messy dog-in-a-blender assay. Why is this possibly useful? For human medicine, dogs are in some ways more similar to humans than mice are, so they may be a better experimental system to test things out in. For example, dogs have a vomiting reflex and rodents don't. For the dogs, it could well be possible to use the technology (of inserting functional genes) to correct some well-known genetic defects in many breeds, for example hip displasia. You'd get a healthier dog and a cool party trick at the same time. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Busted! From the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8003799.stm): A court in Sweden has jailed four men behind The Pirate Bay (TPB), the world's most high-profile file-sharing website, in a landmark case. Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were found guilty of breaking copyright law and were sentenced to a year in jail. They were also ordered to pay $4.5m (£3m) in damages. _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

It's because, in some people's view, the proper posture is to lean slightly backward while pushing the hips slightly forward, so as to facilitate the rest of the world sucking our big bad American dicks. Kind of like the spectacularly successful foreign plicy of the previous administration. If you're going to show respect to foreign leaders, then how can you expect them to figure out their proper place in the world? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

The CBC is reporting that the Afghan government has passed a law that enforces Taliban-favored restrictions on women: "The new Afghan family law would reportedly make it illegal for women to refuse their husbands sex, leave the house without their permission or have custody of children." http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/04/01/harper-interview.html I haven't seen this reported in the American press yet, although I haven't looked extensively. However a quick Google search revealed pages of Canadian and European news sources and various blogs covering it, but nothing in the US news outlets. I wonder why? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

This I agree with. However, even if the defense budget were scaled back to be in line with what Canada or European countries that don't engage in such adventurism spend per capita, the cost would not be trivial. How would that fee be any different from a "tax", except that you would have to pay your lifetime tax all in one shot. Since no-one except children of the very wealthy would be likely to $50,000 plus (admittedly a WAG, but not an improbable figure) on hand the day they turn 18, wouldn't that amount to involuntary conscription of everyone except a few who had the good luck to be born into wealthy families? How is forced servitude, with the only alternative leaving the "protected area" (the entire US, so effectively being stripped of your citizenship) not a much worse intrusion on your freedom than paying your "fee" off a bit each year (i.e. an annual tax)? Similarly, it seems unworkable to me to have the judicial system only be available to those individuals who choose to pay a user fee. So if a crime is committed against you, the police will not investigate, and prosecutors will not prosecute the offender, unless you paid up in advance? Or if you "opt out" of the system, would that entitle you to act as judge, jury, and executioner yourself if you believe you have been wronged? If someone decides not to pay a user fee for access to the sewer system/treatment plant, would the city pour cement down their toilets to block access? If then that person decides that instead they'll just use the river as a latrine, doesn't that put everyone else who uses that water at greatly increased risk of disease? I get the argument about toll roads, although having to stop every couple of miles to pay a toll seems hugely inefficient to me compared to paying that toll when I buy gas, through gas taxes. The cost could well be about the same, without the need to stop and wait through a line of gas-wasting idling cars at a toll booth every 5 minutes (as I experienced not long ago trying to take the loop around Houston). I do get the principle of freedom to choose you are advocating, and I can imagine some circumstances where that could work, but I guess I also lack the imagination to see how it could possibly work in the real world in many other cases. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Out of curiosity, how do you suggest dealing with a situation where people may not want something, or wish to pay for something, but they still derive a benefit from it. A person may not wish to pay for the military, but situations can readily be imagined where the military is needed to protect the country/society that person lives in. Imagine what would follow if the US military were to be completely disbanded, for example; how long would it take before some other country decided to help themselves to our resources and assets? On the other hand, if financial support for the military were to be completely voluntary, how would it be possible to protect only those people/institutions who had previously contributed to the existence of the military? What possible process would allow some people to be protected, and others left to their own devices to defend themselves against an invading army? Also how would you thereafter deny the non-supporters access to all the aspects of US society that had to be defended, and that they refused to support defending? If you couldn't separate supporters from non-supporters in this manner, if non-supporters would benefit from the military as much as supporters, what possible incentive would anybody have to pay taxes to support the military (or anything else)? How would your system work? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

OK, so you're talking about an abstract principle. I can see where you're coming from, although I'm not in complete agreement. However, lets imagine a real world scenario. That poor adult skydiver with the fractured femur and pelvis and subdural hematoma has been life-flighted, unconcious, into your trauma center. He is actually insured up the wazoo, as he is a responsible adult and pays a HEFTY amount in insurance every month. However you have no way of knowing that, as his wallet is in his gear bag back at the DZ. You have, in fact, no knowledge about his financial health, but you do know that if you don't begin treatment immediately he will die or suffer irreversible brain damage from the hemotoma. Do you really think he should be allowed to die, because his insurance status is unknown when he arrives at the hospital? How long will you leave him on the table while you try to track down his insurance or bank account balance? Or will you treat him, save his life, and sort the insurance/payment out later? We'll put aside for the moment the possibility that, if you don't treat him and he dies/is disabled as a result, and it turns out he was in fact insured, you'll be hearing from some lawyers pretty soon. It's my understanding that when a patient's life is in danger, EMS personnel will stabilize and transport as quickly as possible, which means they often do not spend time to track down wallets/purses/gear bags, and so critically injured patients often arrive at the hospital without ID. If I'm wrong I'm sure someone will correct me, but I believe the scenario I described is very plausable. Abstract principle meets real world, and the clock is ticking. What will you do? Oh, and thanks for the discussion and making your perspective clear. I may not agree, but I do like hearing other points of view. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)