(토요모임) 1/17 주제입니다.

[데니스]

안녕하세요. 데니스입니다.

이번 토요일 모임은 아래 두가지 주제로 table 별로 Discussion or Debaet로 진행됩니다.

(진행은 그날 분위기에 따라 ^^)

1 part : Surrogate mother

It may be an odd sign of the hard times: More women selling their eggs to couples desperate for children. Each donation can mean thousands of dollars and sticky issues of morals and emotions. The ads are everywhere, college newspaper and craigslist.

-I would love to give somebody a chance to have a child. I'm also looking to pay part of my way through school.

-Compensation for surrogacy would allow me to stay home full-time, which otherwise would not be an option.

-I am a medical student, musician and am quite athletic. I am charging a significant fee.

That is how thousands of women in today's tough economy earn extra cash- and lots of it. They're donating their eggs. It pays as much as $10,000. Women willing to carry a baby as a surrogate mom can rake in even more - 30 grand in some cases.

At 26, Courtney Smith has lots of bills to pay. She's a wine steward at a high-end Manhattan restaurant, but says the economy is hurting business, and cab rides. She'd get a second job, but she doesn't have the energy or the time. So she plans to donate her eggs. She first did it two years ago, when money was tight. She was paid $7,000.

Once matched, usually with a couple unable to have their own children, donors, like Courtney, take hormones for about two weeks to stimulate ovulation. A doctor then removes the eggs from the donor's ovaries. The recipient gets the eggs to fertilize them. The donor gets money.

Courtney says sharing her DNA doesn't bother her. She has no emotional connection to her egg, she says. And she doesn't think she'll have any regrets knowing a child that's a part of her, who she'll never meet is out there.

Courtney was recently anonymously matched with a recipient who will pay her $8,000. The maximum recommended by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine is $10,000, though some recipients place private ads like this one, offering much more.

The number of donor applicants at her agency has doubled in recent months.

When somebody gets picked, the most important thing is attractiveness. It's a beauty contest to a certain degree, but also education, high test scores, ability in music and sports and things like that.

Most women who donate their eggs say the money is secondary, that it's really about helping others. But Courtney says those women are kidding themselves. she would not donate her eggs, if she doesn't get paid.

Most women who donate are under 30, when their eggs are healthiest. They can donate every three months, but no more than six times altogether. Courtney will keep doing it as long as she needs the money. But she does plan to save some eggs to have her own child one day.

1.       Do you think she made the right decision?

2.       Do you think $ 30,000 is enough for a surrogate mother?

3.       Would you be willing to donate eggs for infertile couple?

4.       who do you think has more right to the baby if the surrogate doesn’t give up  the child, the surrogate mother or natural parents?

* 2PART : Minerva

 

Minerva of Peace

OK. It's damn funny, I gotto tell. The show is just too inevitably foreseeable. I wanted more than that. Something... suffocated. In this fiscal crisis, I really do think it has to be considered in a different way.

     Let.. me ask just two:

• what if Minerva is not the person who's been now under arrested?
  
• what if everything HE said would turn out to be all true? yet the truth must not be gone public? so to speak, the "uncomfortable truth"

No one knows the truth. Everyting said on the media is just assertion at most. That's the politics, at least in our country.

[관련 기사]

Internet financial pundit Minerva arrested

Home to one of the most connected countries in the world, Korea is witnessing the latest chapter in the debate over free speech and the Internet.

A Korean man was arrested late last week for spreading false information online after Korean prosecutors identified him as the anonymous writer "Minerva" who become popular among Korean people tracking his economic predictions.

Last December, The Economist profiled the emergence of Minerva as an “online Nostradamus” for the financial markets in Korea:

Minerva became an internet phenomenon, with 40m-odd hits to date. Web-users combed through previous posts, looking for prognostications, and clues about his identity. Sharp comments on the state of the Korean economy and government policy only increased his standing. The media now call him “the Internet Economic President”.

There are of course a lot of issues surrounding this story, but with the Internet being used to organize mass anti-government protests in the summer of 2008 it’s hardly surprising to see the government attach a stigma to anything to do with the Internet. The Financial Times gives one example from an adviser to the president:

The Korean government's panic over Minerva and other web-based rumour-mongers reflects a greater concern about the political role of the internet in South Korea, the country with the world's greatest per capita access to cyberspace.

An adviser to President Lee Myung-bak, a conservative former businessman, admitted to the Financial Times last month the government was trying to determine how to counter the influence of internet chat-rooms in Korean society, famed for its fiery temper.

One method chosen by the Korea Communications Commission regulatory body was to draft new rules in December for Korean portals:

Facing a tougher set of regulations that may endanger their business model based on unlimited freedom of expression‎, portals are introducing self-regulatory measures, albeit to little avail.

The Korea Communications Commission (KCC) has been looking to rewrite the country's media law and put major Internet sites under the same regulatory framework of news organizations, meaning more regulations and deeper scrutiny.

Another example that Chang of Web 2.0 Asia pointed out was legislation from a member of the ruling government party last July to create an “Internet Newspaper Law”:

All I can say is the politicians *so* don't get it - anywhere in the world, even in this cutting-edge Korean society. I certainly hope this laughable proposal won't pass.

The International Herald Times comes up with a good summary of the political back and forth over Minerva:

The government camp hopes that Park's case will lend weight to the Lee government's attempt to regulate the country's vigorous and unruly online communities. But the main opposition Democratic Party has accused the government of gagging the Internet, a popular venue for anti-government criticism. It has lined up high-profile lawyers to defend Park.

[Serena]

토요모임 참석하고 싶었는데 아쉽게도 이번주 역시 참여 못하게 됐네요~ 부디 좋은 시간들 보내시기를~ 데니스 오라버니, 매번 수고해주셔서 아주아주 감쏴~~^^

[김은휼]

회원가입하고 처음으로 모임에 참가해보려 합니다만.. 몇시에 어디로 가야하나요?

[Jenny]

충대정문에 카페 크레타 7시예요~~