Progress on the March (continued) -- A summer camp for computer addicts

Sorry to have been away from the weblog for a while. I've been vacationing
in coastal Maine. Upon my return I ran across this story about a holiday
retreat of a different sort.

There are, of course, a great many things people grow pathologically
attached to in our addictive, consumer society. But reports of kids
getting hooked on computers are of special note because the
machines are still widely touted as being (in and of themselves) of tremedous
educational value. We still have not begun to weigh adequately the balance
of social cost and benefit in the heralded computer revolution.

Computer cure at camp for children
Ben Aris in Berlin
Wednesday August 6, 2003
The Guardian

Given half a chance Daniel, who is 13, will spend up to 12 hours a day staring
at a computer screen. He weighs 110kg (17st), has no friends at school, and
has been in constant trouble with his teachers. The problem faced by Daniel
(not his real name) is all too familiar in Germany, where a growing number of
children are addicted to playing computer games or surfing the internet.

In a desperate effort to reconnect him with real life his parents booked him into
the Boltenhagen summer camp, Europe's first school for teenage computer addicts,
where children are taught how to make friends, exercise and play games.
The camp, on the Baltic coast, is run by an evangelical charity, but the course is
funded by the German social security services and the children are from all denominations.

Ute Garnew, the camp director, said the demand for the 60 places had been so high
since it opened in February that parents, "really have to fight to get a place".

There is only one computer on the site and the children are allowed to use it for only
half an hour a day, and are not allowed to play games or surf the net.

So this is progress: human hybrids in the lab

As reported in the Washington Post, scientists have recently
produced an ethically dubious work of art. What would these
creatures have been if allowed to come to term?

Scientists Produce Human Embryos of Mixed Gender

By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 3, 2003; Page A10

Scientists in Chicago have for the first time made human embryos
that are part male and part female, raising ethics questions and
prompting calls for more oversight of the rapidly evolving field of
human embryo manipulation.

The experiments, described at a meeting of the European Society
of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Madrid, proposed to
answer basic questions about human embryo development and
to foster therapies for congenital diseases.

The hybrid embryos were destroyed after six days, when they
had grown to a few hundred cells organized into a microscopic,
mixed-gender ball, according to a written synopsis of the work
submitted by the research leader, Norbert Gleicher of the Center
for Human Reproduction.

Such work is legal in the United States if federal funds are not
used and if the male and female embryos that Gleicher merged
were freely donated for research, as Gleicher reported they were.
Nonetheless, his presentation yesterday drew criticism from some
fellow scientists at the meeting, according to a report from Madrid.
Reuters news service quoted one official of the society as saying,
"There are very good reasons why this type of research is generally
rejected by the international research community."

The experiments also angered U.S. opponents of human embryo
research and prompted some ethicists to refresh their long-standing
call for a national debate about the pros and cons of human embryo
studies -- and perhaps creation of a national ethics board to review
proposed experiments.

"I don't know if this work is 'right' or 'wrong,' but it should be reviewed
and discussed long and hard before it's done," said George Annas, a
professor of health law and bioethics at Boston University. "It's one
thing if the right-to-life community has problems with your work. But
if scientists hear you talk about your work for the first time and say
it's outrageous, that says something."

****

New logic for Bush leaguers

As quoted in the Boston Globe, Ari Fleischer recently issued the following
challenge on the missing weapons of mass destruction:

Fleischer said that not only would the United States find chemical and
biological weapons in Iraq, but that ''I think the burden is on those
people who think he [Saddam Hussein] didn't have weapons of mass destruction to tell
the world where they are.''

By the same token, try out the logic of the following proposition:

"I think the burden is on those people who think gnomes and fairies do not exist
to tell the world where they are.”

One can hear Limbaugh and O’Reilly yelling: “Yeah, come on, you liberal pinkos,
show us where they’ve gone or shut up!”