Word: destroyer
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First, the Clinton Administration's rules that Bush has suspended while he searches for a compromise are themselves a compromise. They forbid federally funded researchers to destroy human embryos, but they allow the use of stem cells from embryos destroyed by others. What Bush wants is a compromise of a compromise...
...really going to start basing social policy on the assumption that a few embryonic cells equal a human being? If so, restricting research on discarded embryos is an odd place to start. Why not restrict fertility clinics, which routinely produce more embryos than they need and destroy the surplus? To pursue the gruesome Holocaust analogy, it's like outlawing the lampshades while ignoring the gas chambers. And yet President Bush is not searching for compromise on the issue of fertility clinics because there is no such issue. The Roman Catholic Church and others are publicly opposed to high-tech fertilization...
...Spielberg's hands, twists the notion of the Star Child: the nonhuman is more human, and in the sweetest way. All right, it's because man--playing God, playing tricks--programmed him to love, even as other film robots, like the Terminator, are designed to destroy. In the A.I. world, robots are made to give pleasure and, in David's case, offer joy. Gigolo Joe is a sex machine, David a love machine. The toy boy's sole purpose is to give and elicit affection. His obsession (in Kubrick's terms) or dream (in Spielberg's) requires...
...assume that humans--or some higher life-form--are still around to witness these cataclysms--an iffy supposition since we've been on Earth for only a fraction of the dinosaurs' time (2.5 million vs. 160 million years) yet already have the power to destroy ourselves. If we're still around, we will have to seek out homes on other planets orbiting other warming stars. That will take some giant leaps. Even the speediest galactic ark would have to travel hundreds of years, during which multiple generations would live and die on board, before reaching even a nearby star like...
...settlers demand that Sharon abandon the cease-fire and launch a military campaign to destroy the Palestinian Authority. On the Palestinian side, the Islamists and other militants are openly vowing to continue the fight. The original Oslo peace process factored in efforts by radicals on both sides to sabotage the process, leading to Rabin's formulation that "we will fight terrorism as if there is no peace, and pursue peace as if there is no terrorism." But there's no such separation of issues in Sharon's mind. The duration of the cease-fire may simply be measured...