That is, trying to get drugs banned that are extremely useful for some people, if taken appropriately, on the grounds that they are not absolutely safe. (Note: no drug is absolutely safe.)

See:

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/007140.html

Be sure to read the comments.

I really need an "I'm too lazy to bottle feed" shirt....

Donna -- Actually, in most countries that do international adoption, the wait to adopt a girl is LONGER than the wait if you want to adopt a boy or if you have no preference. This is because in most places the numbers of adoptable boys and girls are about equal, but more adoptive parents want to adopt girls. The major exceptions are China and India, where girls are abandoned in much greater numbers than boys -- but these are the exceptions.

Why all the hostility toward adoptive parents and potential adoptive parents? From some of the posts here, you'd think that adoptive parents are the most selfish, heartless people alive.

My guess is that none of the people here urging people to adopt from the US foster system have, themselves, adopted one of these children.

As for the whole "baby as accessory" idea, It has *never* been easy to adopt a child from China. First of all, at the US end you have to go through the whole homestudy process no matter how you adopt. This pretty much militates against anybody who would want to "pick up a baby as an accessory." If you adopt internationally, you have to deal with Homeland Security (the part that used to be the INS). You have to wait years. It's not something you do on a whim or out of boredom. Celebrities may be able to get around some of these boondoggles -- and that's a shameful thing -- but they are the exception.

See any of Doolittle's long speeches from "Pygmalion."

Why? Because we don't have any more to send. Honestly, I don't know why this isn't talked about more widely -- US armed forces are stretched as far as they can go. 25% of the troops in Iraq are on *at least* their third tour of duty, and only 25% are on their first tour of duty. Reservistsa and National Guard are being used as heavily as possible. Pretending that we can send more troops, or even maintain current levels, is just disingenuous. It's either pull out pretty soon, or institute a draft. I don't want to see a draft, but I wish the people who started this war would acknowledge that their policies have brought us to this point.

You mean, disingenuously claiming some sort of moral high ground because of an intention to commit suicide at some unspecified point in the future so that you never become a drain on society? As long as you're still here, you don't get credit for selflessly ridding the rest of us of your presence. And no, I'm not urging you to go out and off yourself: please don't. I'm just saying that talk is cheap.

Also: Hunter S. Thomson, not an exemplar of mental health or socially responsible behavior.

No, you do not tase someone for not showing I.D... but you DO tase someone for resisting arrest, repeatedly failing to obey orders by a police officer, screaming insults, and acting like a general jackass when it's a dangerous situation and the obvious course of action is to remain calm.

As many have pointed out here, tasing can be lethal. Let's see....

No, you do not kill someone for not showing I.D... but you DO kill someone for resisting arrest, repeatedly failing to obey orders by a police officer, screaming insults, and acting like a general jackass when it's a dangerous situation and the obvious course of action is to remain calm.

The argument according to which spending on wine is disputable because wine only stays in your mouth for a few seconds is moot.

This discussion is dead, but just for the record, my observation about wine only staying in the mouth for a few seconds was not an argument -- at least, not an argument about how anybody else should behave -- just an observation about how I view these things. The whole point of my post is that value is subjective, and that it depends not only on the desire for the object, but on the value of a given amount of money to a given person.

The sexual analogy is interesting, though. I would think that the amount of money spent would correlate to the quality of the experience even less than with wine. I'm married, so I don't even know how I would calculate how much sex costs me.