I do not now and will never make excuses for the Bush & Obama administrations' conduct in this matter. However, I think the British government ought to have told the State Department to shove their threats and released the information anyway.

By not doing so, they're aiding and abetting. I grant you, it's a tough choice. But so is prosecuting our last President. I don't *like* the idea of having to put our highest officials on trial. I just don't see a better alternative.

In the case of the UK, "saving lives" by sacrificing their principles was not the better alternative.

along with many others as a "population control freak". Thank you for writing an article ridiculing a position I and many other intelligent people consider common sense. It's much better to just charge off the cliff with all the other lemmings.

Keep it up!

Handing out money to buy bread and attend the circus raises consumption of bread and attendance for circuses exactly as long as the money gets handed out. No more money, no more bread and circuses.

We ought to focus on building infrastructure with public dollars: you pay people to work, yes, but afterward you have something real that people can use. Like working bridges, roads, electrical grids, renewable power sources, sewage systems, and on and on.

But instead let's just give people money to go buy new cars.

anyway.

which you do not cite, some number of people who took pain drugs lived a trivial amount of time longer than some other number of people who got care. Big whoop.

As for "accepting mortality", I invite you to go first. I am going kicking and screaming, and hoping there comes some way to hack our bodies back into health. After all, aging appears to be nothing more than preprogrammed obsolescence plus inevitable breakage. Rage against the dying of the light.

In addition to the many posts by people who stood up to say they will not accept society-mandated limits on their right to fight for their own lives (though you may not like it, that's at least one third of this country's Founders' intentions), I'd like to say:

Population control (and frankly reduction) is an idea that's rarely talked about and almost universally rejected. This is short-sighted.. I'd much rather: a world with few children, raised carefully, born largely to replace people lost to accident and incurable disease, than one where we all frantically race to procreate as much as possible before our own demise. We'll ultimately end up in such a world, as we become more and more skilled at defeating aging. The growing pains may be unfun.

For those of you that don't want to live a long time.. don't. No one will make you. And your very absence will ultimately bias the debate against you. People who do want to live will pile up, and eventually tip the scales. And then perhaps we'll have a sensible system of population control. Or maybe the elites will end up controlling who breeds and who doesn't. I don't know. I'd be happy to have a few hundred years to sit around arguing about it, though.

Is he in trouble for covering up torture, or because he didn't cover it up well enough?

Pff. Too Short.

< screed >

To say that the choice is between fearing death and accepting it is a false dichotomy. I'm not afraid of nothingness. There's nothing to be afraid of. Poof, gone.

Another way is to accept death's likelihood, as I do, and to be implacably determined to do what I can about avoiding it.

Also, the simplistic picture of long life inevitably leading to a world in stasis, where children cannot rise, and where the population grows endlessly, is popular but unlikely.

First, as people get older, they slow down some. They're simply not as smart as younger people. There will be, for a long time after life extension becomes practical, ways for the young and hungry to quickly make a mark.

The young and dumb are not going much of anyplace in the here and now, so there's no need to consider how they won't be going places in the there and then.

It's probable that in time neuroscience will be able to even smarten us back up. At that point, yes, experience will count for a lot. But if you have ages to live, you have time to wait. The cream will always rise, given time, if for no other reason than that the bosses like having people around who can do things, and because accidents happen. I for one am not here to become the richest man on earth. I'm here to have fun. For as long as I possibly can.

I foresee a world in which people do different things over time, since doing the same job for a hundred years would bore most of us. That will inevitably allow people to rise and fall as their skill, drive and luck allows. That's the real likelihood. But by all means, continue with the strawmen if that helps prop up your argument from tradition.

Finally, it's well known that people who constantly deal with emotional trauma (or just death, as in slaughterhouses) become desensitized to it. That does not necessarily imply wisdom. They're welcome to choose for themselves, but not for me.

FWIW I don't advocate endless use of public resources on end of life care. I do say that we had better make damn sure supplemental insurance is not interfered with by public options, and that choosing supplemental insurance does not disqualify a person from whatever they'd get without it.

< /screed >

We expect superhuman behavior from our leaders.. kinda sad. Let it rip Timmy!

You missed a priceless opportunity for comedy gold. If only you'd put your hands just on your thighs like the Dear Leader, and frowned just a little bit more.