Sad news

Don't know if anyones seen this, but I happened to be up early and
caught this on the BBC website - Christopher Reeves (superman, you may
prefer) has died aged 52

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/3732310.stm

Complete shock tbh, I was under the illusion he was in fairly good
health (despite his accident) - and he probably was. Sad news indeed,
let's hope something good comes from it and stem cell research takes a
new drive and acceleration

Yeah, and Rodney Dangerfield died last week. People seem to think these things happen in threes ...

never liked him as superman, was as poor a choice for the part as margot kidder was for lois lane, but... it sure sucked that he got hurt, especially the way he got hurt.

sad news indeed :sad:

I saw that this morning... a tad depressing, but they did have the people from little britain on after, and some hilarious comments from the news reader person...

It's a shame this has happened and come as quite a surprise as he always seemed fighting fit despite his condition :sad:

At least he'll be remembered for all the work he put into raising awareness of spinal injuries - for that he was a great ambassador.

And he'll remain in my memories from watching the Superman movies countless times as a kid :smile:

In Belgium, we have a man like Marc Herremans. He did triathlon until
he got hurt in a way Reeves got hurt too (paralised). He must feel bad.

I hope all those people suffering from that kind of injuries don't give up their hopes yet.

In Belgium, we have a man like Marc Herremans. He did triathlon until
he got hurt in a way Reeves got hurt too (paralised). He must feel bad.

I hope all those people suffering from that kind of injuries don't give up their hopes yet.

Yeah because they not only help themselves and people who become
paralysed, but they help the rest of the world with such fatal diseases
because they can volunteer for a "stem cell research" program,
like Reeves did believe.

Chrstopher Reeves was an asshole. There I said it.

..

Chrstopher Reeves was an asshole. There I said it.

Don't copy Maddox. Especially if the guy he was making fun of just died.

Gwil said:
..

ditto

Chrstopher Reeves was an asshole. There I said it.

Oh come on even if the guy was, look at the enjoyment he gave people
and the amount of research he has done for the disabled. The guy can
not be an asshole for that. So hush.

Well, there are people who argue he is because he didn't fund research for the disabled until he was disabled himself. Which isn't really that big of a deal, I mean, do any of you fund disabled research? Or anything as such? And I'm not talking about going to the store and donating a dollar to fund research for Breast Cancer or some other disease.

Well, there are people who argue he is because he didn't fund
research for the disabled until he was disabled himself. Which isn't
really that big of a deal, I mean, do any of you fund disabled
research? Or anything as such? And I'm not talking about going to the
store and donating a dollar to fund research for Breast Cancer or some
other disease.

He showed us how easily we change our views when something happens to
us. Okay, so I don't fund disabled research or anything. Although with
his condition he shouldn't have been in a healthy state to do any
research, so thats a bonus to the disable community.

the only complaint i have ever heard (and i don't usually take stock in rumors much) was that it takes dead babies to research his ailment.. for good or bad thats the only thing i have heard negative..

there is an old saying that seems to fit this view "walking a mile in his shoes" course reeves could no longer walk, it still a good quote :/

one thing i have to say.. don't bad mouth the dead, at least not till they have been dead a while :sad:

the only complaint i have ever heard (and i don't usually
take stock in rumors much) was that it takes dead babies to research
his ailment.. for good or bad thats the only thing i have heard
negative..

there is an old saying that seems to fit this view "walking a mile
in his shoes" course reeves could no longer walk, it still a good quote
:/

one thing i have to say.. don't bad mouth the dead, at least not till they have been dead a while :sad:

Embryo's aren't dead babies, nor are they alive. Technically (from the
limited amount of biology I know) embryo's are just all the chromosones
and crap ready to split and divide and rearrange in to what will be a
foetus. In my view technically a baby isn't a baby until it is born,
before hand its just a free spirit and soul. Although thats anti/pro
abortion rights and maybe spreading a bit too off topic.

Oh if only we had a discussion forum here like the NS forums do, I would be in there all night.

this is the forum for that, thursday :razz: we are too small a community to
warrant using different forums, but you can guarantee intellectual
debate at some point.

in the past we've covered politics, economics, social and moral issues,
science, history, art, technology, travel, culture.. feel free to start
such topics as you please :smile: more intellectual stimulus would be gladly
welcomed, it seems to have dropped off of late :smile:

there are few things that i am more anal about than cell phones, one is gays, the other is the point where you separate life from yet to be life..

they are... dead babies.

honestly though, i don't feel we have enough of a female representation present to have an intellectual conversation on such.. all we will end up doing is throwing around a bunch of male insights..

but, unless you have children, or have had dead ones.. you really don't have much opinion that can be taken serious enough.. sure you can voice your views, but most people will only glance at them and move on..

notices length of post

i have already said more than i have the right to.. my stance.. when sperm penetrates egg wall.. its a baby.

/me done with this topic

you really don't have much opinion that can be taken serious enough.. sure you can voice your views

erk :/

i think it's best if you are quiet Orph, you get yourself into trouble far too easily :razz:

sure thing.. you know i meant every word of that post..

lemme see, maybe i can go find some doctor someplace, and tell him my opinion on his specialty.. knowing all along it will be baseless input.. BUT everyone knows what a doctor looks like, so i suppose we can just tell him anyways

sorry gwil, you deserved that :biggrin: the fact that i agree with your good intentions, not withstanding :razz:

[edit]

change of subject slightly.. at what point would you consider an opinion, more than just words? i mean seriously, how can someone have an opinion that we are supposed to take seriously, when one has no experience in the topic?

sure, i could go on and on about politics, but i rarely do, cause i have little working knowledge in it.. all i end up doing is basically repeating what others have told me. i could go on and on about nuclear engineering, just because i was a combat engineer in the military.. an engineer is an engineer after all.

bottom line, if you voice a viewpoint on a subject, your right to an opinion takes a back seat to real experience..

if, anyone took my word/post in any other way besides that.. tis your issue to deal with, cause my conscience is now clear with this edit :smile:

[/edit]

hum... :sad:

bah, useless rambling.

'tis a sad ending for Mr. Reeve. :sad:

Orpheus said:
there are few things that i am more anal about than cell phones, one is gays, the other is the point where you separate life from yet to be life..

they are... dead babies.

honestly though, i don't feel we have enough of a female representation present to have an intellectual conversation on such.. all we will end up doing is throwing around a bunch of male insights..

but, unless you have children, or have had dead ones.. you really don't have much opinion that can be taken serious enough.. sure you can voice your views, but most people will only glance at them and move on..

Are you saying that unless we have "dead babies" ourselves we are in no position to comment on embryo research? What if we have disabled friends or family, Orph? :rolleyes: Personally, I have no qualms using balls of ~32 unwanted human cells to help people lead better lives.

Leperous said:
Are you saying that unless we have "dead babies" ourselves we are in no position to comment on embryo research? What if we have disabled friends or family, Orph? :rolleyes: Personally, I have no qualms using balls of ~32 unwanted human cells to help people lead better lives.

look, i have no real issues either.. its one of those things thats really hard to put into words..

can you have an opinion without either having children, or killed some?? sure, i wouldn't care what you said.. i also wouldn't lend credence to it either.

but.. stem cell research can do so many wonderful things.. i am never going to say its ok to kill unwanted children, but i am forever a realist, if people are going to kill their children, why must it be in vain?? use the "cells" for some good.

as i said, its a very tough call, i am one of those people who are appalled by the rise in abortions, but until the laws change to where its a crime, its an evil we must deal with.. use the cells for something other than land fill waste.

i cannot really put that any better, or more humane, or even in such a way as to be inoffensive.. but there you go.

i mean seriously, how can someone have an opinion that we are supposed to take seriously, when one has no experience in the topic?

Therein consists philosophy. Or was it, "That way madness lies"? Something of the kind.

Anyway, regardless of his motives - and I think they are entirely respectable - Mr. Reeve has given some much-needed impetus to stem cell research. One day research of this kind may even help my mother to recover additional motor function.

my sympathies mike..

one begs to ask.. if no one as famous as reeves had sanctioned the concept, how long would it take to be important..??

sad, most times it takes important people to make bad things go away :sad:

I suspect stem cell research would have gone ahead without any celebrity backing, but it always helps controversial causes to have a popular spokesperson.

Of course I can have an opinion, just as you can, and the day that you stop letting me have one is the day you lose your freedom and whatnot... Validity of my opinion is another matter, though :razz:

By your reckoning, really, the only people who can have an opinion are actually the researchers themselves, as they are the ones who have to destroy these things at the end- saying that mothers who've lost their child, or people who have killed babies themselves, have just as valid an opinion (if not more valid) is wrong and unarguable; there is no emotional attachment, for a start, which seems to be the crux of what you're saying.

The embryos themselves aren't taken directly out of people- they're usually cloned from IVF embryos (i.e. were created 'manually' in a lab using an egg and sperm), so no-one has "lost" anything either or gone through any trauma in their inception. They're not much different from having a "normal" stem cell that you've taken from under someone's fingernail or bone marrow, except they have the potential to become a human being, given the right circumstances. Of course, in a few years I'm sure that we'll have the technological know-how to give ordinary stem cells the potential to grow into full human beings too- does that make them human beings?!

Anyway, end of science lesson :smile: It's a shame he died, but I'm sure thanks to his efforts thousands of lives have been saved or bettered, and to ask what he did for charity before his accident is moot.

i'll be damned, i didn't think i'd live to see a disagreement end cordially.. we still disagree, but this time.. it seems we were permitted to..

yeah, sad he died.

? posted by Leperous - "does that make them human beings?!"

funny, i have listened to you for a long time now, and that sentence just doesn't sound like you.. why would they not be human?

there are few things that i am more anal about than cell phones, one is gays

So, is it safe to say, you're strictly anal for gays?

Sorry, I had to do it.

He just said he's not strictly anal for gays, he's also anal for cell phones... whatever that means... I don't think I want to know. :razz:

It was a joke, Hugh. You know? "haha" joking:

Joke (joe-ck) n. :
1. Something said or done to evoke laughter or amusement, especially an amusing story with a punch line.
2. A mischievous trick; a prank.
3. An amusing or ludicrous incident or situation.
4. Informal.
a. Something not to be taken seriously; a triviality: The accident was no joke.
b. An object of amusement or laughter; a laughingstock: His loud tie was the joke of the office.

Also see crack a joke; dirty joke; no joke; sick joke; standing joke; take a joke.

It was a joke at the expense of my long-lost father and founded in, erm, not... reading his quotes properly... not that you cared but still.

le drama

Why doesn't it sound like me? My views on this sort of thing is usually that it is ok, and imho it's only through bad sci-fi or seriously flawed arguments (read: misinterpreted religious ones) that people are against it :smile: Anyway, if you want to class your piece of human skin as a human being, then you need to remember what the Monty Python boys sang ("Every sperm is sacred")

i had a very well thought out reply, but alas it was lost :sad:

suffice it to say, that i misread your post, it sounded like you were against the concept of clone=human. which is not like you, or the words you typed in the past.

my bad.

One of the biggest problems with the stem cell research issue is that it invites a moral stance, but most of those involved in directing moral stances on it really have no idea what's going on. I spent four years at college studying biochemistry, and I still wouldn't trust what I have to say as anything more than slightly informed. I will give a few tidbits that I know:

• A stem cell is ANY immature cell that can become one of a variety of cell types. I had a professor who was involved in bone stem cell research, but those stem cells could only become one of three types of bone cells (don't ask me to name specifically). I believe the fact that he already had the stock tissue culture and the particular properties of the stem cells allowed him to mess with it in a US lab.

• Embryonic stem cells are the current contentious subject, and work on these is currently banned in the US.

• Scientists probably won't give you a good answer for when life begins. They'll say something like "We're still trying to figure that out" or perhaps describe the stages at which you can find neural activity in a fetus. Most religious authorities will say life begins at conception. Current US law defines the beginning of human life at birth. News reporters have no clue what they're talking about and are liable to say anything, especially the ones on TV. These groups are not going to agree for a long, long time, so don't expect to get an answer for when life begins any time soon.

• In the past, aborted fetuses have been sold to scientists for creation of tissue cultures. I am uncertain if this practice still occurs - this doesn't seem like a Bush kind of thing. Note the word 'sold.' Someone's making money, and it's not the nominal parents.

• We clone human DNA all the time, especially in the forensics department where a technique called Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) is used to created a mass quantity of identical DNA from just a few strands.

• We have not cloned a full human. The degree of difference between cloning DNA and cloning a human is like inventing the wheel and inventing the space shuttle.

And the big one:

• No one has yet determined what chemical signals are required to make a stem cell become a certain type of cell. Understanding of this is integral to ANY application of stem cells in medicine. The professor I mentioned above was deeply involved in a specific range of research on this topic.

IMO "Life" is a religious concept. There really is no way to decide where the line is. Birth is just as arbitrary a demarcation point as any other.

To add a bit to CCS's list:

• Embryonic stem cells are special because they can become any cell in the body.

• Embryonic stem cell research is not banned in the US, but the creation of new cell lines is. Or at least no federal funding is available for it.

• Chris Reeves had nothing to do with the importance of stem-cell research. He may have popularized the subject and maybe gotten more money into the field, but make no mistake; this research would have, and will move forward regardless of any outside influence. The promise is just too great. if the practice is outlawed scientists interested in the work will simply move overseas, and the United States will be left behind in the biggest technological revolution since the invention of microprocessors, or combustion engines.

Crono said:

Chrstopher Reeves was an asshole. There I said it.

Don't copy Maddox. Especially if the guy he was making fun of just died.

Actually I knew someone would bring that up. I do go to his site but I have my own reasons for disliking Reeves. I have seen people who struggled through life and finally did something great and helped many people. I'll use an example. There is an actual woman that has adopted 12 kids with many different disabilities. Everything from mentally handicap, a boy with cistic phibrosis, kids with no limbs, etc. She has constantly struggled through life and is not married but she is doing so much for these kids. And then there is Reeves. He never gave any donations before to any handicap kids but as soon as he got into the position he was he instantly made himself look like a saint. It pissed me off because he got so much credit for the push for stem cell research but there were many other people that did just as much but were never recognized. I do feel for him for losing all abiltiy to move but I hated him for making himself look like he was the sole person responsible for stem cell research.

cystic fibrosis* and you can't really say they did as much, because even if they did support research, they didn't have wads of cash to dedicate to it.

Hugh said:
cystic fibrosis* and you can't really say they did as much, because even if they did support research, they didn't have wads of cash to dedicate to it.

That is exactly what I mean. All he gave was money. Which is great but any rich person can give money and look like a great person. That is why I brought up the story about the woman. She isn't rich at all but look at how much good she has done.

She has done good, but a big heart doesn't cure things.

ive always found this to be somewhat spooky, and even more so now.....same name nearly, and a very untimely death for both......coincedence?

http://www.who2.com/georgereeves.html

and yes, its sad news....

Doc B......

Tom and Clark were standing on the roof of their building drinking a few beers on their break and Clark said, "Hey Tom, did you know that if you jump off this building, after you get down so far, a draft will pull you back inside the building on the third floor?"
"Get outta here," said Tom.
"No I'm serious, watch me."

Clark hopped off the building and sure enough, he was taken in by the draft at the third floor window. He took the elevator back to the top and Tom and a security guard that arrived were standing there, Tom in awe.

"I can't believe it." Said Tom.
"I know you should try it Tom."
So Tom hopped off and plunged into the ground.
"Superman you're an asshole when you're drunk." said the security guard.

...

I really don't care about Christopher Reeve the person, but I do love the Superman films....and superman jokes.

Hugh said:
She has done good, but a big heart doesn't cure things.

That's one of the wrong things in the world now. Money has overcome everything else, dignity, heart, responsibility, etc.

You mean you love the first two Super-Man films. If you're talking about three and four ... I'm afraid I'll have to break your legs as a down-payment on your bad-opinion payments.

Crono said:
You mean you love the first two Super-Man films. If you're talking about three and four ... I'm afraid I'll have to break your legs as a down-payment on your bad-opinion payments.

i didn't like any of the superman movies, but crono, your views on movies are not exactly what i would call "world shattering" either.. you make some good points sometimes, but your "good vs. bad" films are a bit one sided.. in other words, not many would share your views. course, theres absolutely nothing wrong with that, damned few share my views on most any topic you'd care to name either :heee:

if i were seeking out a movie to my tastes i would most likely be scanning your "BAD" movie list :biggrin:

Orph, see my reply here: http://www.snarkpit.com/forums.php?forum=1&topic=1373&start=780

Figured I'd let Reeves' thread stay clean ... er.

Crono said:
Figured I'd let Reeves' thread stay clean ... er.

why? few others have, but hey.. thats ok :smile:

don't get me wrong crono, you are entitled to your views, i often seek them out.. but our (yours and mine) movie tastes are not completely compatible :smile:

as i said, all the superman movies, sucked.. it wasn't any of the actors, it was the portrayal. gorge reeves version, as poor as it was, by far blew the movies away :/

sadly, i remember when the gorge reeves version wasn't as old :biggrin: