Yeah, but it does happen all the time with bombs. Just because a non-zero (actually a pretty high) failure rate exists doesn’t necessarily make it “borderline”
The menstrual cycle. When it’s on, it’s busy turning itself off. When it’s off, it’s busy turning itself on.
Here’s an idea, what about that part of the WHO, World Health Organisation, dedicated to eliminating Polio?
Peter
The National Procrastinators Society.
The next meeting time is TBA.
But when it does only destroy itself, it’s a failure, not a fulfilment of purpose - therefore the purpose is not primarily to destroy itself. That’s the dividing line, to my mind.
I once took a course on procrastination.
I showed up for the first class and they flunked me.
(ba-da-Bomp-(tissssssss))
Not right away, I hope.
To be fair, the same could be said for dozens, if not hundreds or thousands, of other biological cycles.
Charlie Sheen?
Only if nobody is ever diagnosed with cancer again. Otherwise, even if many of the charity’s goals have been achieved, patients would still need different kinds of support after diagnosis.
The parts of a cell involving apoptosis.
How about the Voluntary Human Exinction Movement?
Motors Liquidation Company may be an example of what the OP is asking for.
How about movie models and props? Crews spend hundreds of hours constructing detailed scale models of planes, trains, & death stars fully cognizent of the fact that their efforts will wind up scattered across a warehouse floor somewhere.
Less so with improvements in CGI, but still.
The [del]first[/del], [del]only[/del], only democraticly elected Volkskammer of East Germany had a mandate focused entirely on dissolving the state getting it’s territory annexed to West Germany.
A lot of trusts are like this. People often think of trusts as either a 19th century form of corporate organization that lead to monopoly abuses or things rich people set up for their family. Both of those things are true but a trust is generically just a special type of legal relationship that can be put to many different uses.
One type of trust is a natural resource trust. The “Great Northern Iron Ore Trust” is essentially a legal vehicle which owns rights to collect fees or royalties on a large swathe of land in the Mesabi Iron Range in Minnesota. It was created in 1906 by the people who ran the Great Northern Railroad Company and is still in effect today, but it is basically hard coded to eventually die. In just a few years now 20 years will have passed since the death of the last person explicitly named in the original trust document, and at that point no new person can buy into the trust (right now you can buy into it on the open market.) After that it will continue to exist to distribute earnings and such but will slowly die down.
Some natural resource trusts are tied specifically to a certain supply of natural resources, and the ones tied to non-renewable resources are expected to dissolve at some point.
(These create interesting investment vehicles by the way, with extremely high dividend yields of 10% and sometimes higher, but the share price in these trusts is essentially guaranteed to decrease over time as the trust’s legal lifetime comes to an end.)
Excellent choice! They’ll never eliminate that. Even babies born 5 minutes early can keep them in the fundraising game.
There’s a similar entity for Chrysler’s unwanted assets. I think it’s called “Old Carco.”
I feel that, in this case, your cynicism isn’t warranted. They didn’t eliminate birth defects, either, or even SIDS. They raised a ton of awareness, brought the rates of their various goal ailments WAY down, and then looked at the new normal and said, “Yep, this is about as far as we can reasonably go with this one without throwing money down a hole; let’s find a new goal.” When they look at their graphs and see the numbers of preemies leveling off at a new, lower number, they’ll find something else to work on.
Seriously…there’s not another charitable organization I love more than The March of Dimes, and I’m usually a cynical bastard about nonprofits. They rock.
As WhyNot points out, not really. And I support MoD for the same reasons she does. They’re a good group that does good work. Their main mission is to make sure that babies are born healthy, and to support the families of children who aren’t. They do this by funding research and raising awareness of birth defects, premature birth, and just about anything that will ensure healthy babies. Hell, some of the research they did on Group B strep made sure that the sprog was born healthy and, more importantly, lived long enough to see his one-month birthday. I make sure I send them a few bucks every year to celebrate that.