I’ve read quite a bit about starting a business in the past three years, and I feel I know what I need to know. This couldn’t have happened sooner.

Here’s the first lecture:

• Eating fatty food appears to take an almost immediate toll on both short-term memory and exercise performance, according to new research on rats and people. (New York Times)

• Canadian Privacy Commissioner: Facebook has until Monday to find a way to fix its ’serious privacy gaps.’ These include the retaining of personal information after an account has been deactivated, and the sending of personal information (other than contact info) to third parties. (www.canada.com)

• Gene therapy improves vision for the blind, by creating a new fovea, the part of the retina that is most densely populated with photoreceptors. (www.technologyreview.com)

• The temperature of the sun’s outer atmosphere soars to several million degrees Kelvin (K); which is much hotter than at the sun’s surface. Scientists have been baffled by this until now. (www.spacefellowship.com)

• Seth Godin has written another unreal post, this time about the future of education. (www.sethgodin.typepad.com)

Light is both energy and mass at the same time. Light can fall; that’s why black holes are named that way—surrounding light gets sucked inside.

In 2005 it was predicted that there was an attractive and repulsive force component to light. They have since discovered the attractive force, but have only now discovered the repulsive force.

I say all this, hoping I still have your attention. If I do, you may be interested in the other discovery I made today.

In the 1960’s, a young man by the name of Bill Gates stumbled on those same lectures and loved them as much as I. Since then, he has purchased the rights to the video of his lectures and has posted them online for free, in what is called Project Tuva. The catch is that you have to download the video player required to see all that is to be seen on the website of Microsoft Research, Silverlight. It is hardly an inconvenience, as it is a 10 second download, and a quicker install, and very much worth your time, if you are interested.

Now you may watch the lectures, in excellent quality, with great extras that are still unobtrusive. I’m not in marketing, but if there was any trick I knew to get people to at least watch the first of the lectures, then I would do it.

If I got a single person to watch even a single lecture by having posted this, it would be worth far more than my time and effort. It just may lead to someone starting think about light a little bit more.

My opinion on the debate is a complicated one, that has changed with time. In the past, I have been a staunch supporter of pro-choice. Since then I have given way, albeit not completely, to the pro-life aspect of the debate.

Where The Debate Gets Muddled

There are two key points that make this debate a controversial one: Deciding when life begins, and secondly, putting value to human life.

First, I will address the topic of the value of life. Some people agree with forcing a pregnant woman to bring a child to the world, even if it is to a broken home—while supporting the death penalty, which I feel shows a certain degree of hypocrisy. Some would say a Canadian of any age is “worth more” than a Nicraguan farmer. Throw in age, cultural, income, educational and health differences and you’ll have such a huge pool of varying opinions on the value of life that I could list on for a very long time. I think there are some people who would trade the lives of a dying Somalian they’ve never met to extend the life of their dog—and I can understand, no matter my opinion.

I speak as a secular humanist, therefore my argument hardly stems from a belief in any particular deity, nor from a book written by people who lived in a world without telephones or Google. At the base, my opinion is based on a respect for life. What many may not understand is that this is the same respect I share for any other animal or creature. It is difficult indeed to explain why I think a baby is worth as much as maggot larvae (again, is it not a devaluation of human life, it is rather an appreciation for all life).

Second, the debate also revolves around when life truly begins. Between masturbation and birth, where does one attribute life? Why may one be okay with killing those who hold an extreme opposite opinion, but do not to abort an egg that was fertilized a week prior? Again, you can tie in the appraisal of the value of life.

An Inconvenient Child

A 17-year old high school girl gets pregnant with her first sexual partner, only a month after they met. With my poorly-thought out valuing of human life, I’d say that unless it was very early in the pregnancy, or that the mother’s life was in danger, she should have the child. This is coming, however, from someone who has not lived through an unwanted pregnancy. I therefore consider my opinion to be a weak one.

It is startling to see how completely fired up people can get on either side of the debate once this hypothetical is brought up. It engulfs the debate entirely and leaves out discussions of the prevention of this situation.

Common Ground

I believe there are more important points to be debated, as I believe there is much more common ground between both sides of the argument than meets the eye. Without question, I believe that an abortion should be carried out if there is any danger to the life of the mother to proceed with the birth of the child. It is in my opinion, however, that only fraction of abortions are undertaken for this purpose. This is unfortunate, and I want it to change.

I also believe is that both pro-lifers and pro-choice supporters wish to decrease the number of unwanted pregnancies. It seems as though much of the focus is on the unwinnable philosophical and ethical grounds, as opposed to discussing actual solutions to the problem. I feel the debates should rather revolve around effective sexual education. It is in the opinion of American Psychological Association,the American Medical Association, the National Association of School Psychologists, the Society for Adolescent Medicine (endorsed by the American College Health Association), the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Public Health Association, that abstinence-only education does not work, and I would dare think it even makes matters worse. I’ve once read in a conservative blog that research has proven otherwise, according to The Heritage Foundation. Unfortunately, the latter does not cite any of its references, and I openly question the foundation’s agenda, considering the use of terms such as “out-of-wedlock childbearing”.

Positive Change

In other words, let’s cut the bullshit and teach people about the consequences of sex, how to protect oneself during sex and what it means to have a child. The day we set aside out ideological differences is the day we’ll see more positive change.

Time to get your learn on: