I'm guessing he means (in his own special way), five instances of another red state posting its cultural beliefs for all to see.
No, that stopping a beating heart isn' t murder.
Off the top of my head:
1) Nonhuman - slaughtering a cow.
2) War.
3) Self-defence.
4) Suicide.
5) Ending lifesupport on a braindead (that is, significantly deader than Terri Schiavo) patient.
So is the parenthetical a concession that abortion ISN'T murder as long as a fetal heart hasn't developed?
Oh, maybe you're right.
But that's five. Woohoo! More titties!
Anyone ever drive through Missouri? There are a lot of anti-pornography billboards, often next to adult bookstores by the highway. ("Pornography destroys all people," they say [scroll down to "Pulaski"].)
Actually the uncached version of that site provides as many examples as you want.
When you get far west into the state you see billboards for the Precious Moments Chapel which is possibly the most offensive thing ever. It's Kawaii Jesus! (Am I using 'kawaii' right?)
Ok Labs, that's five counterexamples for both readings of your post.
Another, more red-state, counterexample would be:
6) Executing a convicted criminal.
(While the innocent can obviously be convicted of capital crimes, just as they can be killed in war, and both are heinous acts, neither are quite the same as murder.)
I knew I should have asked for more. Soon I'll post some pics of the room-service prostitution flyers I collected.
We'll figure that out after we've amassed sufficient quantities of it.
Priorities, ogged.
What about natural heart attacks? They stop beating hearts.
we've established that the Kansan poster is overinclusive -- there are many instances in wich stopping hearts from beating isn't murder -- but what about five instances in which it is underinclusive?
1) The practice known as "Balimal," in which one's heart is removed whilst still beating, and one is made to look upon it before being cast into the fiery pit. C.f. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
next?
This isn't my favorite bad anti-abortion argument. My favorite is: "I was adopted. If my mother had had an abortion, I wouldn't be alive right now."
Another counter-example:
Bypass surgery.
12: and where can I go to donate some to the hurricane relief efforts?
"Balimal" doesn't seem to actually stop the heart from beating, though. It's the victim getting dunken in lava that does that.
So I think Moharram is biblically okay on this one.
that is my point -- Balimal might properly be thought of as murder, but it does not stop a beating heart.
Ah, sorry. Sloppy reading on my part.
But I still disagree, dammit. It's the lava-immersion that's murder. Balimal may just be impolite.
Re: 17: since Balimal removes the heart, I find it difficult to see how Balimal couldn't be murder, as most people can't live without a heart for very long regardless of whether that heart remains beating. The dunk in lava isn't necessary for the kill; it's just a touch of panache.
"If an action stops a beating heart, then the action is murder" does not imply "If an action is murder, then the action stops a beating heart."
Hey, no takers on the Missouri-bashing? No one explains Kawaii to me? Do I have to proclaim the superiority of Pittsburgh barbecue to get a fight going here?
Of course, it's also not necessarily true that abortion stops a beating heart. Heartbeats begin at 9-10 weeks.
21: but that's a very strict sense. We can rephrase the second to "the heart function" instead of referring toa heart beating, and then it is true that if an action is murder, then it causes the heart function to cease.
24: I think the point is that if we take the argument to have a suppressed premise, it has to be "Anything that stops a beating heart is murder" rather than vice versa. So it's not germane to give examples of murders that don't stop beating hearts. But entertaining! (I had the word "enthymematic" in there, but dropped it.)
Note that Labs hasn't given us racier pictures from Vegas anyway. Strictly speaking, he didn't say he would.
21: very good, L. Perhaps one day you will take the LSAT. I was treating the sign as though it had created a category of all things that were murder: namely, things that stop a beating heart. We had already shown that the category was overinclusive: it included things that are not really murder. I wished to show that it was also underinclusive: it did not include things that were murder.
Mostly, I wanted to talk about Balimal.
In other words, the suppressed premise could easily be: "muder will be defined as all things that stop a beating heart."
After all, when defining what a crime is, it isn't usually enough to name one category of things that fit said crime. If our criminal code were similarly constituted, it would be even more difficult to apply. Instead, you must name the elements of that crime, which are both necessary and sufficient for conviction.
Isn't balimal awesome?
We are thankful indeed that you brought balimal up, but you can't seriously expect not to be nitpicked over it.
In as much as I announced what I was doing -- questioning whether categorizing murder as "stopping a beating heart" was underinclusive rather than overinclusive -- I could at least hope not to be nitpicked, even if, in this crowd, I couldn't expect it.
Hope, as they say, is not a plan.