Cochainian Mindset

Ask Them What They Mean By Choice

2012-01-22T17:18:00.002-06:00

Today marks the anniversary of Roe v Wade, a time when 9 men fabricated a constitutional 'right' where none existed, and still doesn't through a straight forward reading of the Constitution, to kill another human being because of where he currently presided. This was not an issue that We The People had a say on, in fact there has never been a majority of Americans who agree with the unfettered abortion access that Roe v Wade and later v Dalton forced upon our society. Pro-abortionists know this. They know the majority of Americans don't like the idea of killing other human beings. So they have built their 'right' around an elaborately concocted game of creative symantics. They don't finish sentences; instead of pro-choice to kill your offspring they are just 'pro-choice'. You can be pro-choice about a lot of things. Pro-choice for school options, pro-choice for gun ownership, pro-choice for states to control welfare or not. But in other causes people aren't afraid to stand up and say what 'choice' they think should be availible. They reinvent words; in the 70's the term 'pregnancy' was redefined by the medical community to begin at implantation instead of conception so that products that cause early term abortions could be marketed as 'contraceptives'. They lie about the order of things, calling it a 'reproductive freedom' or a 'reproductive choice', when reproduction has already taken place and choice happens before action. But mostly they just do everything they can to avoid the clinical term 'abortion' much less what abortion really means.
I'm about 8 weeks pregnant. I have reproduced 3 times. I have 3 offsprings. All of my offspring are human, they have human DNA, they are members of the human species, and they are distinct and unique individuals who did not exist before their conceptions, currently exist, and will never exist again upon their deaths (in their full physical beings). As a placental mamal I have a biological duty to care for my offspring until they can be born, as a human being, made in the likeness of my Creator I have an ethical obligation to not kill another human being who is not offering me mortal harm. As a member of a civilized society I have a societal obligation to care for my children until they are of legal age, or until another can be found to care for them. And as a Christian I have the moral obligation to protect and raise my offspring in a proper manner. The only thing I don't have is the legal obligation to care for my youngest child. In fact that 'pro-choice' crowd thinks I should have the legal option to kill my youngest offspring because he is currently in my womb, exactly the place he is biologically supposed to be.
And not only that but they are advocating for my 'right' to kill very young offspring in the most horrific wa imaginable. We haven't agreed with drawing and quarting as a valid means of execution for even the worst criminals for hundreds of years, yet pro-legal-abortionists think I should be able to tear my baby limb from limb just because he is in my womb. We would be beyond horrified, riot in the street if the state executed a serial killer by immersion in a burning acid, yet pro-abortionists think I should have that right too. And if a murder was due to be executed by stabbing his head with scissors and sucking out his brain, or crushing his head between a jagged vise, everyone in the country would be clammoring for a stay of execution, yet the pro-abortionists think that's fine and dandy if the victim is an innocent child.
They are not 'pro-choice', they fight at every turn informed consent laws that wish to make sure women have real choice; they fight to close down pregnancy centers who offer support and help, because they lead women away from abortion. They are pro-abortion. They are pro-murder-your-unborn-child-in-as-henious-a-way-as-can-be-found-if-thats-what-you-want.
My 8 week old baby has human dna, a beating heat, human blood, human tissue, eyes, hands, fingers. It also, at 8 weeks, has just completed growing the only things needed to feel pain: nerve pathways, nerve endings, and a working hypothalamus. It has not yet higher order brain operations, neither did you at that age, but it does have everything it needs to feel pain. So when a pro-abortionists talks about how most abortions are early term, they are still refering to most abortions happening to innocent human beings who will feel excutiating pain, pain beyond their ability to understand, just pain, and then death.

You can't be 'pro-choice' without being 'pro-abortion'. That's like saying you could be pro-choice to rape and not be pro-rape. We aren't talking about ice cream flavors, sports teams, or even politicians. This isn't a debate any thinking human can be neutral in. You either think it's ok to kill innocent human beings, or you don't.

I don't. No human has the moral or ethical or biological right to kill an innocent member of the human race, much less a member of their own family. And I don't think they should have the legal right to do it either.
I am pro-choice for reproduction, no women should be forced to reproduce, nor should any man. Do whatever you wish to avoid reproduction and I'll be happy to fight for that right. I'm pro-choice for adoption, no parent should be forced to care for a child they can not, they should have a right to turn that child over to another who can care for it. But I'm not pro-choice for abandoning your child, no parent should have the right to simply abandon their unwanted or can't-be-cared-for child where someone else can't care for it, like in a dumpster. And I'm not pro-choice to kill your child. No parent should have that choice, no matter how old their child is. I can't kill my 3 year old kid, I can't kill my 21 month old toddler (and let me tell you, she's far more a 'drain' on my bodily autonomy than my 8 week old!) And I damn well shouldn't be able to kill my 8 week old fetus either.

If you think it should be legally acceptable to kill your own offspring, say that, at least then you're being honest. Because clinging to a 'pro-choice' or bogus 'reproductive freedom' lable just makes you for murder AND dishonest.

Disney Princesses

2011-11-15T09:24:00.002-06:00

(So I wrote this way back in Jan and forgot it was on my computer waiting to be uploaded to my blog. Enjoy.)

I’m getting caught up on some blog ideas I wanted to post during Christmas when I was just too busy to do so. Over the season I read three different blogs on how horrible Disney princesses were as role models for our daughters to watch/enjoy/look up to. (I’m guessing someone was getting too many princess gifts from relatives) First I want to note that I’m not a ‘pink’ girl. I don’t do princess. My mother used to complain that, even as a young child, I refused to let her dress me in “cute girl clothes”. I never had a roomful of Barbies, never dressed up like Cinderella, Belle, or Sleeping Beauty. And I preferred to watch National Geographic’s and the Discovery Channel to cartoons, Disney or otherwise, when I was a child. So this isn’t from someone who is just overlooking faults because I like them.
It’s no surprise feminists dislike Disney princesses, and their reasons seem fairly consistent: the females need a man to complete them, they fall in love too quickly, they are ‘loved’ for their looks, they are weak, submissive, painfully willing to overlook negatives in their men folk, etc. They all get it, Sleeping Beauty falls in love after a single short interlude and needs a man to kiss her to save her (Snow White ditto), Ariel gives up everything to chase a man she’s only seen before and he falls in love with her because she’s beautiful, Cinderella likewise falls in love in a few hours, needing a man to save her from her abusive situation, and Belle stays with a man despite the fact that he’s abusive….
Which is, I suppose, all well and good if your knowledge on human behavior doesn’t extend past the 1970’s.
But, no offense to both friends and family who share such views (okay, maybe some teasing, but no offense meant) I’d rather my children recognize social interactions didn’t spring into existence fully formed as they are in our current generation. I think it’s good and proper to teach children history, even in the passive sense of books and movies. I think all works need to be looked at in the sense of the time they are placed or written. I don’t think Huckleberry Finn should be edited to say ‘slave’ or ‘African American’ instead of the ‘N’ word for the modern audience, or that The Whipping Boy should be banned because it depicts child abuse. And I don’t think children are too stupid to understand complex concepts such as societal changes if they are explained to them. In fact I think they can and will find great enrichment in considering not only other cultures but other times.
Let’s take Beauty and the Beast, it seems to be the Disney heroine that gets picked on the most because the modern feminist sees Belle as staying with an abusive partner.
Given the guns and clothing Beauty and the Beast is probably set in the mid 1700’s in France. A time and place where peasants still had few legal rights, and even fewer consistently enforced, especially when they were up against a noble. There was no standardized legal system and nobles taxed their towns and farmers into poverty while they indulged in excess at Versailles. Women were under the lordship of their fathers or husbands, and arranged marriages were still common, although the lower classes did sometimes marry for love (considered trite by the upper class, which arranged marriages for money and social power). Books were becoming more popular but literacy among the lower class was still rare. War was common and the kings of France were generally considered to be more interested in their mistresses and parties than ruling.
So here we have Belle, daughter of a struggling inventor. They appear to own their own farm, but they are clearly peasants, not aristocrats. Belle is a wonderfully brave, progressive, and strong woman given this. She reads for one, a rarity for the time and place. She shuns the advances of the catch of the town, a brutish man who is only interested in her for her looks.
Meanwhile her father trespasses onto a royal’s property and gets tossed in his dungeon. Neither a harsh nor unexpected punishment, the Beast would have been within his rights to mount her father’s head on the spike of his gate. Then Belle, instead of staying home worrying while a group of the local men go looking for her father, goes out to seek for him herself. She then trespasses onto the property as well, finding her father in the dungeon.
Now at this point in time the Prince would be just as within his rights to toss her in there with her father. Instead he graciously, if somewhat moodily, allows her to take her father’s place. Allows her to serve her father’s sentence, also, not a horribly unusual concept for the time. Children could be sold to pay off debts, servants sent to prison in their master’s steed, peasants conscripted by their lords to fill their needs as servants or vassals. It’s an odd concept now, because our legal system is based on personal responsibility, the person who does the crime does the time, but even now the concept of a loved one confessing to try to save another isn’t unheard of.
So now, instead of making Belle stay in the dungeon the Beast gives to her a private chamber, says the servants will see to her, and tells her to come to dinner, in essence marking her more of a guest held in ransom than a jailed prisoner. A very noble and gentle gesture when, at the time, no one would have said boo if he’d taken her forcibly to his bed.
She then turns down his dinner invite and, instead of breaking down her door and having her beat for insubordination he asks, repeatedly, for her to reconsider. Later that same night he finds her trespassing in his private chambers and, again instead of striking her or having her beat for disobeying his one direct order to her, he shouts at her to get out.
Belle, “promise or no promise” then steals a horse (a death penalty offense at the time) and runs away. Legally it’s no different than a prisoner escaping jail or a legal indentured servant/slave running away. Yet, even after this grievous sin the Prince protects her from the wolves, not only putting his royal person in danger for her safety but actually acquiring injury. She get’s scolded, rightfully so, for his injury and her transgression and she bravely, if somewhat disrespectfully, sticks up for herself and calls him on his temper (something that historically would have gotten her in a lot of trouble, you didn’t speak to royalty like that!)
Just a few days later the Beast, after seeing that Belle’s father is sick and lost in the woods, releases her from her own bond and let’s her go, despite his growing attachment for her. Then we see the local stud trying to coheres her into marriage by threatening her father with commitment to a sanitarium, which, given his current sickly condition would certainly be a death sentence. She refuses again his marriage proposal, showing that while she may be willing to serve an indefinite jail term for her father, she’s distinctly not willing to enter into a likely abusive marriage even to save her father’s life (see that as good or ill it certainly counters feminist’s primary objection to Belle).
When the villagers attack his castle the Prince finds himself in a fight with Gaston, Belle’s would be suitor. Of course the Beast overpowers him easily, after being roused from his depression by Belle’s arrival, but, when the killing blow is ready to fall, the Prince hears Gaston’s cries for mercy and leaves him alive (until the craven gets unintentionally knocked off the tower after stabbing the Beast in the back). Put that largess against the rule of Louis XV, who rarely pardoned criminals destined to die, and whose courts put even petty criminals to death in gruesome, torturous, public means.
Finally we see the happy couple in a celebratory dance, with the understanding that they married (Belle is wearing a crown in the last picture). So let’s talk about that for a moment. We consider marriage to be the end, the culmination of a relationship. You met, get to know each other, flirt, fall in love, get married. But then marriage was very much the beginning of the relationship (with the exception of some lower class that did marry for love). We say ‘we’re just as in love as the day we wed’, but in a society that arranges marriages one may be meeting one’s spouse for the first time day of (or only know them a short time previously) the marriage. You are expected to fall into love after the marriage as you get to know each other. Belle and the Prince share an immediate ‘spark’, completely in line with the time the Prince likes the way Belle looks and acts on first blush, enough to build a lifelong marriage on. While we have this abysmal divorce rate, history and other cultures teach us that almost any two reasonable people can make a marriage work. Love is a choice and an action, we choose to love after we’ve seen abundant evidence that there is physical attraction, mutual interest, and common ground, which leads, unfortunately, to the notion that, if those prerequisites fade or change, then love (and therefore marriage which in this culture is the culmination of love) can be lost. But in most of history something else was considered a prerequisite for marriage, good breeding, a dowry, social standing, or just the relative ages of the two to be married, then the choice to love and its subsequent actions, were based on the prerequisite of marriage and the social requirement to remain in that marriage. People made it work.
So, let’s recap: Belle is hardly a simpering example of feminine weakness. Instead she displays courage and strength, intelligence beyond normal, deep respect and empathy for her father, she’s disrespectful of royalty, but then the peasants of France were, despite the consequences, prone to riot and disrespect. And finally she’s willing to happily base a marriage on more than most women of the time would have obtained, a previously known mutual attraction to a wealthy, kind, and merciful Prince.
So, let’s recap: the Beast/Prince is anything but abusive, showing remarkable restraint, grace, and mercy. For royalty he’s remarkable sympathetic and lacks the violent, self-indulgent, ego-centric character of most upper class at the time (characteristics, ironically, that the at-best-middle-class Gaston that Belle rejects portrays), and is prone to listening and taking the advice of his servants.
I don’t like Disney in general for several reasons, and strongly prefer their older work to most of their newer stuff, but (with the exception of Ariel who is a bad role model regardless of how you look at it, runs away from home, makes deals with evil sorcerers, seeks a romantic interest outside of her own species, etc) how is this a bad role model for young girls?
For goodness sakes people, ultimately it’s fantasy but they’re set in what? Snow White’s about the 1100’s, Sleeping Beauty is a bit later, maybe 12-1300’s given the armor of the knights we see, Cinderella is maybe 1500’s, Beauty and the Beast is in the 1700’s, Hercules (Meg counts as the ‘princess’ in that movie) is in maybe 800-500 B.C., Aladdin is probably set in the 1100-1300 era, Robin Hood is in the late 12th century, you get the point. Use it as a good teaching moment on history and multiculturalism and let the kids enjoy their princesses and princes, Disney or otherwise.
But then maybe I’m just old fashioned.

Sometimes, kids hurt themselves

2011-10-28T09:10:00.002-05:00

So it started over at Free Range Kids the other day with a dad frustrated that his kid's school had roped off a 3 foot dirt incline because someone had fallen, then it's over at The Stir, a mom with an accident prone 4 year old afraid of a DCFS visit over a black eye. And, I'll admit, I've been a little nervous that some moron would call DCFS upon seeing summer bruises on my son, because, as I'm sure we can all attest to, such moronic busy-bodies exist. How is it that we as a society have come so far from normal that bumps and bruises are 'troubling' and not a normal part of growing up? Bruises, scrapes, cuts, strawberries, splinters, knots, and the occassional black eye, broken bone, or stitches is just proof of a full and outgoing childhood. When I occassionally meet grown ups who have never had a broken bone or stitches I am baffled. How did they reach adulthood without passing through those necessities of play? My brother broke his arm in a pillow fight. I broke my wrist falling from a bike (as well as a toe playing a massive water fight at camp, a couple of fingers in random events, my nose during a baseball game, and my foot in track, I've had more than the average number of broken bones I admit, but still, not abnormally so). My brother got his first stitches after a bike crash when he was about 6. My first batch waited until a bad spill involving a barbed wire fence in 4th grade. But those are major injuries, that I hope my too little ones wait a few years for, but the standard 'ok who's bleeding on my floor' cuts from thorns or rocks and the standard bruises from running into stuff start about the same time they start walking. How could they not?
Kids are not china dolls, they aren't butterflies, and they have these wonderful things called bones that do an awesome job of protecting the delicate bits. Now I'm all for helmets on bikes, anything you can go faster than you can run on common sense should dictate some form of protection. But let's start remembering that those bruises, scrapes, and so forth are badges of growth and not to be ashamed of or hidden. Mentally tell those idiots who think kids should be raised in giant bubbles to go jump off a cliff in one, and stop worrying what might happen if one of them sees evidence of kids being kids.
Go collect some bruises with your kids, I bet you'll have fun doing it. :)

Intentionally Misunderstanding

2011-09-06T05:55:00.005-05:00

I was over at www.myobsaidwhat.com the other day, a place for women to submit some of the more 'winning' quotes from OBs, L&D nurses, nurses, midwives, and the occassional anestisiologist or pediatricians concerning infertility, pregnancy, miscarriage, birth, post-partum, breastfeeding, or early parenting. Despite what the occassional troll has to say MOBSW doesn't demonize the medical community, nor even OBs (who the majority of quotes come from), but it does allow a place for women to vent on those members of the profession(s) who *should* be demonized. But it's also a place to see one of, what I believe to be, the hallmarks of the politically correct era, intentional misunderstanding. Now I'm not talking about the submitters, it's a little hard to misconstrue an OB saying 'oh stop yelling, you obviously know how to open your legs' while he forces a woman's legs apart while she's yelling 'stop! That hurts, stop!' (Somehow it's not molestation/abuse if your attacker is in a white coat).
No, I'm refering to the occassional doctors, nurses, and laymen who intentionally misunderstand a comment made so they can be righteously offended by something a commenter has said. Usually it crops up on an especially horrific quote where the ob/rn/midwife/other is being even more inhuman than usual so there are lots of comments along the lines of 'what a complete &*!@! Doctors like this should lose their license and get tossed in a jailcell with a 400lb man named bubba!' (I'm not specifically quoting anyone here) And after a few dozen women have expressed their extreme displeasure at OBs LIKE THIS ONE, some OB (thankfully the sight almost never draws she-who-should-not-be-named...if you don't know who I'm talking about consider yourself lucky) comes on and chews us out because 'not all OBs are like this and I am always very respectful to my patients, they all love me, etc'.
We all know there are wonderful, respectful, and caring OBs/etc out there, that's why we said 'like this' rancid goat when we were commenting.
Now surely professionally aren't the only ones who do this. Sometimes it's a layman who has taken offense. These usually come in references to forced c-sections, inductions, or breastfeeding quotes. Some jerk OB is overheard saying 'there's nothing wrong with this baby, I just need to leave by 5 tonight.' As they are wheeling away mom for an 'emergency' c-section, usually after poor mom has been told she *must* have a c-section *now* or she's putting her baby's life in peril. So, of course, there are a bunch of comments along the line of 'this is why our c-section rate is so high, doctors should have to document a real, medical need for the c-section along with collaborative proof and insurance/people should refuse to pay for unneeded c-sections.' And then someone will come back with 'i'm so tired of everyone being so judgemental against women who have had c-sections! My c-section saved my son's life!'
the problem is hardly limited to such situations. Regardless of what you read, listen to, or who you converse with today it seems almost impossible to get through a full day without someon taking something out of context just so they can be offended. I know, I know, to the cuurent PC mentality nothing is more sacred than being victimized. Victimhood is to be claimed whenever and wherever possible, and if it isn't possible victims are free to re-interpret anything said to them to support their inherient victimhood status (unless you are a white married Christian male, then you can only be an offender, and anything said towards you that is offensive is either your fault for misinterpreting what your victim actually said, or you deserved because whoever said it was just defending themselves.). I get that, as much as I hate PC bs, I do understand the mindset (however insane, yes, go ahead and feel offended if you think PC-ism isn't insane) that mindset is.
What I don't understand is why the people who are misquoted/understood *on purpose* seem to fall all over themselves apologizing. Why do people bow down and take such nonsense? I mean, I assume most of the time people know what they said, and most people I've met (there are exceptions) rarely go around being offensive. So I've got to assume that 99% of the time they meant what they said and were only intending to offend...the specific group they described. So why in the world do they go tripping over their words to apologize to someone *not* within the specific group they were talking about.
If I say 'i think all people named Alyssa are jerks!' Then someone named Alyssa is free to feel offened, and if they could show to me they aren't a jerk I would be proven wrong and should (and would) stand up and apologize. But if someone named Alyma came back with 'well *my* name starts with an 'A' and I'm not a jerk, you are being a judgemental bigot by assuming all people with 'A' names are jerks'. They don't have any standing to object, I wasn't talking about them, in fact I especially excluded them by defining those named 'Alyssa'. Not only do I not feel obliged to apologize to Alyma, I'm far more likely to amend my original statement to include 'and apparently one person named 'Alyma' can't tell the difference between a 6 letter name and a 5 letter name.' And I'm not overly sarcastic or anything, but someone trying to make me into an offender just so they can be a victim isn't getting any sympathy from me. So why the heck are they getting it from so many others?

wow, it's september

2011-09-05T06:38:00.002-05:00

So I couldn't remember when I had posted last so I checked my blog and...oh, wow, april writer's challenge? Boy and it's already. Um...okay, sorry guys. Apparently I've been ignoring my blog a little more than I realized.
Mostly I've been busy crafting. Lots of sewing recently. But I'm starting to come back around to a writing mood, so I should find some time to post something soon. If nothing else maybe I can get my laptop to an internet hotspot and post one of the 3 posts that have been sitting in there for months (and months). That and I need to finish a guest post I've been asked to do. For now though, why don't you wander on over and surf some of my favorites? In no parituclar order: http://myobsaidwhat.com http://www.jillstanek.com http://freerangekids.wordpress.com http://www.evolutionaryparenting.com http://realchoice.blogspot.com http://firstthings.com/blogs/secondhandsmoke/ and http://www.crappypictures.typepad.com there you go, a random assortment of blogs I read on a semi-regular basis, have fun!

April Writer's Challenge- Dialog

2011-04-10T20:27:00.007-05:00

So I had a comment on my last piece, the writing challenge prologue for my friend Eric's blog, from another writer/blogger ( http://doingthewritething.wordpress.com/ ) I was surfing over at her blog and noticed she had an April writer's challenge to do a dialog piece. She had a very touching and image-provoking piece up as her entry, a list of email entries, and I immediately know exactly who/what to do for a dialog piece. The submission guidelines are simple, a dialog back and forth of any kind with JUST dialog, no tags, no asides, no descriptions. The goal is to create two or more distinct characters just through dialog. It's actually a goal I've played with for some time, and argued over with creative writing teachers as I tend to keep up with dialog better than they perceive the average reader does. Which is to say I rarely feel tag lines such as (s)he said, so-and-so replied etc are necessary. I tend to make the introduction at the beginning and assume my reader can keep up with the back and forth of conversation. I do, however, tend to like motion or action asides and tonal descriptions like 'he leaned against the wall' or 'she said with pity in her voice', so trying to find a scene where just the dialog would be sufficient to portray the depth of emotion of the scene was somewhat difficult. But a situation from book three of Tiger came to mind as uniquely appropriate. I'm resisting the urge to explain the situation as, well, that would kind of circumvent the point of the exercise, so, hopefully, the dialog is more or less up to the challenge ;) .... here you go!

"Tiger, you shouldn't be standing there. That window exposes you to a hundred rooftops."
"I've lost a husband and a child in the last week Richard, an assassin's arrow is not my primary concern."
"You don't have the luxury of being just a mother or wife, you know that. The nation lost it's Prince Consort and one of it's princes, it needs it's Empress. Come away."
"I can see the city square from here. It's where they hung him."
"He's not there. The servants have his body Tiger; they are readying him for burial."
"I know. I've already been to see him, and I saw the marks on his neck. He was still alive when they hung him this morning."
"I inspected the body. The noose broke his neck. It was a clean death."
"Clean death? Richard, he wasn't a man grown to care of such things, nor a warrior to expect such. He was a child of five, there is no such things as a 'clean death' for one so young."
"Come away from the window Tiger."
"Why? The Grey Wolf doesn't need an assassin's arrow; they've destroyed me. With one fell swoop they widowed me and placed me in an impossible position. They judge me as a mother for letting him die, or they judge me as a ruler for saving his life. 'One must never trade two lives for one'. I had no choice, but my people will fault me all the same, and who can blame them? What kind of mother won't move the world to save the life of her child?"
"They won't fault you. They too have lost children and loved ones to this fight. You share their pain, and so they will follow wherever you would lead."
"Tell that to my nobles, already they plot."
"They're nobles, that's what they do. You knew this war was unpopular when you started it. Too many have made their fortunes in the grey market to appreciate your attack against it."
"Thank you Richard, 'I told you so' was exactly what I needed to hear right now."
"That's not what I meant and you know it. I lost a son and a grandson as well."
"I know. I'm sorry. It's not your fault."
"Thank you, it's the first time you've said it."
"You were watching over Lily, and my husband should have been more than capable. It's too much Richard. The economy struggles, the nobles grumble, the people bleed, and that tiny body. I didn't need to see him hung to see it in my mind. I can see him swinging there, right there on the announcement post of the square."
"Another reason to come away from the window. He's gone Tiger. And you withdrawing your blockade would not have stopped it. It may have delayed it, but you know he was dead as soon as they took him, one way or another."
"No, I don't. I could have withdrawn. The Grey Wolf has returned prisoners of war in the past, has honored ransoms and seen captives home. All I had to do,"
"Was break one of the most sacred rules of your throne and throw away your honor as a ruler. Your people need you. They need their Empress, not a broken mother. There will be time to weep, Tiger; there will be time to grieve; you will have a chance to mourn, but right now you must put on your mantle as ruler and go to your people. Right now their grief will have to be enough for you."
"It's not as easy as you make it sound."
"Easy? I've lost a wife and a daughter in service to you, and now I've lost a son and a grandson as well. Life is never easy, but it's still your choice to follow through or to give up. And you've been through too much to give up on your obligations. Come, your people await your words. Stir them to righteous anger instead of depressed grief. Your family's blood has wet the ground, but you can still win this war."
"I have no righteous anger right now Richard."
"Find it. You have other children Tiger, would you forsake your duty and force the mantle of leadership upon Lily while she is yet so young? And in the midst of a war? Stop this maudlin and pull yourself together."
"Ever the poet,"
"Tiger,"
"No, you're right, I know that, brutal as always, but correct. Bring me my formal attire, I will need the trappings of my rank about me to manage. But I shall."
"Your servants await with it in the outer room, my Empress."
"I hate it when you do that Richard. Go, be with my children, give them what comfort you can. I shall have to be enough for my people this day."
"You will be Tiger."

March Writer's Challenge

2011-04-03T10:24:00.003-05:00

For those of you who normally read my blog this is an unusual entry, it's a prologue to a (hypothetical) second book in my Ten Nations world. It's an entry (short fiction) into my friends March Writer's Challenge that can be found here:ericswett.wordpress.com look at the March 1st entry. So, without further procrastination, here is the prologue to Balhook Chaos:

Prologue

“You bungling, maligned, interfering, drunken bastard of a mageling!” Shacree banged into the room already at full volume and flung the handbill at the table. “I thought we had an agreement about this!” The servants wisely scattered but Matthew, Head Mage of the Mage Council, narrowed his eyes and glared back at the furious intruder. His guest simply leaned back and smiled at her.
“Shacree, long time no see.” The elaborately dressed gentleman smirked at her. She stopped her advance on Matthew to turn a murderous glare at his guest.
“You, I told you I’d kill you if I saw you again.”
“Yes, but I assumed it was just one of those threats you’re so well known for.” He returned her glare with an unperturbed smirk. Shacree snarled and changed directions.
“Shacree, stop.” Matthew commanded. Per usual she ignored his command, but it did distract her attention and she once again turned her steps to Matthew.
“This?” She pulled out a second handbill and crumpled it before throwing it ineffectively at Matthew. “We agreed you would stop putting out wanted posters for me.” She growled.
“That was back when you were still being reasonable.” Matthew told her.
“You’ve made me unemployable.” The words came out between gritted teeth and the temperature in the room went up several degrees.
“I told you I needed you at the Palace.” Matthew picked up the second handbill from some eggs and dropped it onto the floor.
“About that.” She pointed one gloved finger at Matthew’s guest. “You force me back to the Mage Palace while Talgis Bloodeyes is here? I’m not your bloody assassin Matthew.”
“That was a long time ago Shacree, and you’ve yet to carry out your threat, besides a little bird told me you were showing more restraint these days.”
“More like a meddlesome winged man.” Despite the tone of the words Shacree’s temper seemed to go down a few notches at the reference to her old traveling companion. “Is he here?” Her voice softened marginally.
“No, I see him every few years, but mostly he’s busy. Af’Raiell comes by more often, but he left a few months back. Are you ready to talk now?” Matthew motioned to a seat. Shacree glared sullenly, took a few steps, and leaned against the wall.
“I’m not sitting at the same table as that.”
“I’m wounded.” Talgis murmured.
“Not nearly as much as you’re going to be if one of you doesn’t start explaining what was so bloody damn important it required setting every bounty hunter in the area on me.”
“Don’t be so dramatic.” Matthew rolled his eyes. “What bounty hunter is going to come after you?”
“What do you want Matthew?” Shacree’s voice dropped into the longsuffering tone Matthew knew meant she was ready to listen.
“Talgis came across something disturbing in his travels.”
“He’s a pirate Matthew, everything he comes across is disturbing, if not before than shortly thereafter.”
“Haven’t you heard? I’m retired now.” Talgis input with a smile.
“Then why are you still wearing that ridiculous hat?” Shacree glowered at him. Talgis swept the broad brimmed red hat with its gaudy plumage off his head in a mocking solute to the temperamental woman. Then, ignoring the usual proprieties of the breakfast table, he set it back on his head at a rakish angle. Shacree’s glower deepened.
“I’m Prince Bloodeyes now, with my own island and everything, and Admiral of a fine fleet. I leave the pirating to my captains. The hat is an affectation.”
“Good to see your manners haven’t improved.”
“Nor yours.”
“Matthew, if you have a point, make it.” Shacree resolutely turned her eyes from the aging pirate.
“The government of Balhook Island has radically changed in the last few years; they went from something of an awkward republic to a dictatorship.”
“Mageling, I am not an ambassador, I don’t care what one small island chain is doing with their government.” She said without much patience and as much scorn as she could muster. Matthew ignored the jibe.
“No, but you are a mercenary, and you have experience with chaotic magics. Talgis’s report makes me suspect there is something in your area of expertise manipulating things.” He told her. Shacree snarled and started pacing, fast, quick steps like a caged animal.
“I’ve had quite enough of that to last the rest of my life. We killed most of the Centiums along with their Master not ten years past, how much of a chaotic problem could you possibly be having?”
“You didn’t kill all of them, and the Mage Council has had nothing but trouble the last ten years. As much as we tried to keep it quiet what happened has become common knowledge to the Mage community. Not all of it.” He added quickly as Shacree’s eyes narrowed on him dangerously. “The knowledge that a living, if questionably successful, mix between a person and Centium was discovered had fueled a whole new round of chaotic mages with aspirations of greatness.”
“yes, I’m sure your battle mages are very busy; still lacking anything that had to do with me.” Shacree took a deep breath, stilled her anxious pacing, and leaned once more against the wall. “Matthew, none of this merited dragging me away from a successful job with wanted posters. Az’ might be right about my patience, but it’s still short, and being in the same room as him isn’t helping.”
“I’ve noticed it’s getting a bit warm in here.”
“Deal with it.” Shacree said shortly. In truth the temperature had risen to uncomfortable levels but Talgis made no move to doff his elaborately brocaded silk jacket, nor Matthew his mage robes. Talgis did dab at his brown with a handerchief, which he then tucked back into his sleeve.
“I need you to go with Talgis to Balhook and see what’s going on. You can take care of it if there is something untoward there.”
“Matthew, I’m not sticking my head back in a hornet’s nest. I have absolutely no reason to go gallivanting off to see if some dictator is employing chaos, chaotic beings, or mixes to oppress his citizens. I’m no more a philanthropist than I am an ambassador.”
“No, but again, mercenary.”
“I don’t work for mages.” Shacree growled out. “Get Bladesworn to do it, that sword of his gives him just as much ability as I do to find chaotic magics.”
“Hardly, it only detects chaotic creatures, and they have to be fairly close, which you know.”
“Regardless, his mission is to kill them, mine is to avoid them. Or get Az’Raiell, he can’t be so busy begetting that he wouldn’t welcome a good fight with chaos.”
“Crass Shacree. He’s only taken the one wife, despite attempts to persuade him otherwise, but he is too busy re-founding the government to be dragged away, as is his brother, and Wynter is helping them. And none of them owe any allegiance to me. Even Bladesworn is unlikely to go just because I tell him there might be chaos there.”
“How ironic, since I’m not going to go just because you tell me to either.” Shacree pushed herself off the wall with a thrust of her shoulders.
“But I’m not a mage.” Talgis rejoined the conversation. “I can hire you.”
“I don’t work for those I’m planning on killing either.”
“Stop with the posturing.” He smirked again. “You’re not going to kill me. I’m a pirate. I did what pirates do; you lost. You were young. I was young, and you’ve had well over three hundred years to track me down and kill me if you actually wanted to.”
“About that, you were saying you’re not a mage?”
“Okay, so I’m mageborn, but I’m not now nor have I ever been a practicing mage, not even a Hedge Mage. I’ve never apprenticed, and I’m not vested with the Council. I’m a magic user, but I’m no more Mage than you are.”
“Technicalities.”
“Important technicalities I think.” Matthew told her.
“Besides, how you would like to be able to enter a port again?” Talgis smiled and popped a bit of sausage into his mouth.
“Given that it’s your fault I’m blacklisted you mean?”
“I didn’t burn down that ship, you did that. But yes, I have a certain amount of persuasion in the area. I’ll let it be known that my ships will accept you. I think you’ll find the other captains will stop being so unreasonable shortly thereafter.”
“I don’t have much use for ships.”
“Everyone has use for ships on occasion, if not for themselves than for merchandise. Matthew tells me you still own that stud farm. There are places you could sell a good horse for ten times what you’ll get in the Ten Nations if you’ve got a ship to transport it.” He pointed out.
“Not mentioning anything I care about yet, at least, not more than I care about avoiding Centiums.”
“It’s unlikely there are actually Centiums on the island, unless they’ve been summoned there by a chaos mage. More likely it’s a chaos mage manipulating the local Night Faeries.”
“I. Don’t. Care.” Shacree stressed each word separately.
“I’ve got something you want.” Talgis stood and strapped on his buckler and sword with exaggerated care. “I’ll give you satisfaction, provided of course that Matthew has a healer standing by.”
“Talgis, she’ll kill you.” Matthew exclaimed.
“No, I don’t think she will.” The retired pirate gave Shacree a knowing look, watching her size him up.
“No, I suppose I won’t.” She breathed.
The temperature in the room suddenly dropped to near freezing, and Shacree’s flame red hair took on a corona of real fire. At the same moment as Matthew shouted ‘not here!’ Shacree swept out her hand and table, dishes, and most of the other furniture in the room exploded as she superheated then tore them apart with her fire.
Matthew warded himself against the flying debris and scrambled backwards to the far corner of the room. Talgis raised his arms across his chest and his natural magic flared in a flash, deflecting the debris as well as Matthew’s wards.
Talgis drew his wide cutlass to meet Shacree’s bastard sword. Her one handed swing drove him back several paces, but he held her sword with his. They clashed swords for a few quick blows. Tlagis was good, but he had no chance of beating Shacree, nor even standing against her for more than a few moments. He gave ground willingly, and she pursued him with a psychotic grin on her face.
The sharp ring of steel on steel faded as they fought, replaced by a blunted clang. Shacree’s blade radiated heat in waves and left tacky gouges in his blade. The heat coming off her made Talgis’s face hot and tight, an odd counterpoint to the still-freezing room.
She slipped around his guard to draw first blood; her burning sword searing the wound shut even as it cut a neat slice from inner elbow to outer shoulder. Talgis let out a startled shout, more in surprise at the burn than in pain.
The flinch was all the opening she needed. In three quick strikes she laid him open from left shoulder to the bottom of his right ribcage, across to his left hip, and then sliced deeply into his thigh almost to his knee. The room filled with the scent of burned flesh as he stumbled away with a cry and ended up on the floor as his leg gave out. None of the wounds were life threatening, especially given the lack of blood from the burns, but the spill was a deadly mistake. For a moment, with Shacree’s fire-filled eyes glaring down on him and her sword decending, Talgis was afraid he’d misjudged her and she was going to deliver the killing blow. Shacree’s face twisted as she felt the sudden rush of fear through him and the gibbering in her mind, more muted than it once was but forever there, leapt to the forefront.
Kill! Kill! Spill the blood; crack the marrow! Lap the blood; suck the marrow! Kill!
Shacree snarled and jerked her sword around before she killed him through unintentional rage. Instead she swung the sword in an ark and drove the point through his hand as he tried to scramble away. Talgis aborted a guttural scream and grabbed at his wrist above his skewered hand. He panted, nostrils flaring, and grimaced in pain as she put a booted foot to his chest and pushed him flat.
They stared there, for a long few seconds as they eyed each other. Shacree drug herself back into control, pushing the insanity to the back of her mind. She let a bit of it trickle through into a twisted upturning of her mouth that approached a smile only in the most technical of senses. The pirate paled at the grin and stilled, waiting for her next move.
Shacree winked at him, and his overly gaudy hat burst into brilliant flame. A startled, strangled cry slipped out as Talgis desperately batted the flaming hat off his head with his free hand. It landed in a pitiful pile of ashes nearby and he looked up at her in shock.
“My hat? You have me at your will and you burn my hat?” His voice sounded wounded.
“You have a mage healer waiting outside the door by now, or will in the next minute, in the long run the loss of that ridiculous hat will be more painful.”
“You’re psychotic, you know that, right?”
Shacree grinned again, jerking her sword out of his hand with enough twist to snap bones and aligned it with his neck.
“Tell me why. Why is this so important that you’ll risk life and limb to get me to go?” She said quietly. Talgis drew his hand to his chest and glared at her for a moment, before forcing out a deep breath.
“My son is my ambassador to the island nation; he negotiates trade arrangements for my ships. Eight months ago, after a very disturbing letter, I lost all contact with him. I want my son back.” He told her. Brief emotions flickered over her face, and then the temperature in the room rose as the heat waves from her sword faded. She sheathed it.
“Fine, but you’ll be paying me more than shipping rights.” Shacree stormed out of the room nearly as violently as she entered, nearly running into the healing mage Matthew had called to attend to Talgis. “Be ready in the morning!” She shouted over her shoulder, ignoring Matthew’s call to return.

Spilt Milk and Other Bumps

2011-03-17T08:18:00.000-05:00

We were at the Children's Museum today. It's midweek, nothing really going on, and it was later in the day so there were not many people there. But there were two things that really struck me today. My kids are 2 1/2 and 11 months respectively boy, girl. There was a smallish boy there, by his walk and vocabulary I'm guessing a small 2year old rather than a larger 18month old. Anyway he fell backwards, not hard, and on a cushioned floor. Bonked his head a bit but, realistically, it couldn't have been more than a brief 'ugh'. But he started crying like he'd been dropped on brick and his mother rushes over and scoops him up, holding him tight, rocking him, soothing him, and he kept right on with this pitiful cry until his mom actually left the play area to calm him down.
Contrast:
My daughter took a face first header on a slope a bit too steep for her to navigate without holding onto something (she let go of the side when an older kid approached), unfortunately she missed the softly padded floor and bonked her head into the unpadded wooden side wall. She picked her head up and started to whimper. I said 'oh! Big bonk!' In an uptoned voice. She thought about it for a moment but decided it really did hurt (big red mark with a little scrape) and started crying about the same time I swung her up. I gave her a kiss on her owie (a-boo in our toddler's lingo) while briefly snuggling her close then tossed her up saying 'bonk, bonk, bonk!' I jiggled her, held her up high, and bounced her while I grinned at her. Took about fifteen seconds then she was giggling and squirming. I gave her another kiss, told her she was okay, and set her back down to play.

Why, oh why do parents teach their kids that every little bump and bruise is a world-ending injury? I've been in the doctor's office and heard 5 year olds shrieking in agony after getting their shots for 10 minutes. My kids give a cry or two until I pick them up and give the nurse a 'why did you do THAT' look as they bury their head in my chest..then they sniff and usually reach out to be held by the nurse. Who always comments on how well my kids do.
It's likely kids are more sensitive to pain than the average adult, through lack of exposure if nothing else, but it's not like that poke, bump, or fall is ACTUALLY as painful as the bone-shattering screaming some kids carry on with. They carry on so because they have been taught by neurotic adults that it's worth that kind of attention.
"Ahh! My baby!" Cries the distraught mother as she rushes desperately towards the 3 year old who just tripped and bloodied a knee. Come on, we've all bloodied a knee! It's worth a grunt and a disgusted look, maybe a grimace or a wince with the next few steps. So why do so many parents think it's proper for their child to weep inconsolably for minutes at a time?
And don't tell me it's the kids! I had a nanny job once with a sweet little 2 year old. First day she fell, not even a mark, and she was wailing while her mother scooped her up and 'oh my poor baby'ed her for several long minutes. She tried the same thing with me later that day. I asked 'you okay?', dusted her off, said 'yep, it's okay' and kept walking. She looked at me like 'wow, really?' Stopped crying and caught back up. It took a couple of days, then she happened to fall again in front of her mother. Her mother started over, anguished look on her face. Her daughter bounced up, proclaimed 'it's okay' and was off, leaving the mom with a confused look on her face.
Children mimic, they are developing, not just physically but mentally, emotionally, and socially. They have no idea how they are supposed to act; they look to their caregivers and read the social cues we provide to determine what is the proper emotional response to something. Sure, as they develop mentally they may vary from your example because their fledgling personality is different than yours, but that's just a wonderful sign that they are on the proper road to independence, and as long as you both guide properly and foster their independence they rarely seem to go off the deep end. But you know what I see? Those same kids who learned 'oh the world is ending!' Anytime something minor happens almost never stray from that, they become 5 and 6 year olds, and even 8 and 9 year olds who still can't deal with the slightest thing that happens. I could still tell in high school which kids had parents who thought a skinned knee was a disaster verses the kids whose parents taught them to pick themselves up and dust themselves off. Because it's not just physical wounds they learn to apply that mentality, it's their ability to deal with the skins and scrapes of the emotions that really get hurt by the mentality.
So please people, next time you see your, or my, kids take a tumble, give em a grin and say 'big bonk! You're okay!' And then expect them to be. Because no one is doing the next generation any good by teaching them to cry over spilt milk.

Yes, Yes I am a Country Kid

2011-03-06T19:38:00.001-06:00

I was standing over the kitchen sink doing dishes (no, we don't have a dishwasher) trying to convince myself I wasn't being a bad mom for having Looney Tunes playing on the t.v. while I wasn't sitting out there watching it with him. And by him I mean our 2 1/2 year old. After all, it's the first he's watched today, he didn't watch much yesterday either (and none by himself), and I really needed to get some dishes done.
How I wish I had a decent house with a proper kitchen sink in front of the obligatory window overlooking a proper yard. But I don't; we live in a third story tiny appartment without so much as a patio. Between that and my physical difficulties my children currently spend way more time inside then I ever imagined would be the case. But then I never imagined moving back to the city. I hate the city. And that spawned a post idea; let's begin.
The average kid today spends most of their time indoors. No biggy right? I mean, there must have been lots of times throughout history that kids rarely saw the sun...wait, that would be during times of extreme cold like the Ice Age, or when hiding was necessary like during wars. Ok, bad example.
The average kids today eats whatever is available, regardless of nutritinal value like fast food, premade frozen foods, and anything else the parents can work into their busy lives. No biggy, they can take vitamins and there have been plenty of times in history where kids have had less than ideal...wait, that would have been during times of extreme famine, poverty, and war. Ok, bad example.
A large portion of kids today are missing one parent due to out of wedlock births and divorce. No biggy right? There have been plenty of times when a large portion of kids were missing parents...wait, that would have been during times of pestilance, war, and natural disasters. Ok, bad example.
A large portion of kids today are missing sibblings due to an abortion rate that has reached 60% in some demographics. No biggy, there have been plenty of demographics in the past (and currently) who have had a 1 in 5 or even 1 in 3 death rate among the under 5 group...wait, that was due to unhygenic conditions, war, famine, pestilance, disease, and natural disasters. Ok, bad example.
The average kid today spends a large portion of the day away from their mother/father and in the care of non-biologically connected caregivers in mass groups. Well that's no big deal, there have been plenty of kids who...wait, those were in foundling homes, orphanages, and in times when the working population of adults had been decimated by war, pestilance, or natural disaster. Ok...there has to be a good example around here somewhere...
Here's one: the average kid today has more toys and clothes than ever before. Yes, it's true. Adults and children, society as a whole, has managed to accumulate more possessions than all but the richest men throughout history. But you know what they say, "he who dies with the most toys, still dies".
THIS is the "good life"?
We've got the average family working two jobs, so busy that the family unit and especially the kids, are surviving in situations previously found only during calamity why? So we can all have 2 cars, a big screen HDTV with 500 channels, a wardrobe that needs its own room, a collection of toys that needs its own zipcode, a mother who doesn't feel dependant upon a/her husband, and a father who have a 'fulfilling' career? And this is supposed to be a GOOD thing?
All I'm left with is a rarely heard Bible verse: "Woe to those join house to house;
They add field to field,
Till there is no place
Where they may dwell alone in the midst of the land!" Isaiah 5:8

Anyone want to trade this 'good life' for a nice little ranch somewhere? Cuz frankly, I'd rather the farmhouse than the townhouse.

A Giant Step in the Wrong Direction

2011-03-04T09:11:00.000-06:00

This ladies is exactly why we have so much trouble getting people, especially medical people to treat pregnant/birthing/post-partum women like thinking adults: http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/mum-sues-after-newborn-smothered-20110215-1auwo.html. It's a news story out of The Land Down Under about a mom who tragically smothered her newborn. She laid down to nurse in a side-lay position and fell asleep. When she woke her babe was cold and blue, and had probably been dead for 20 minutes. Now, I'm unsure of the machanics of that, having nursed 2 babies in a side-lay I'm not sure HOW you could smother a baby at the breast from a proper side position. But, I'm a light sleeper. I wake up (even when excessively tired) when my child's breathing changes. My husband sleeps through smoke alarms, and I've seen him fall asleep standing up. Maybe this mom was more on my husband's side of the sleep scale than mine. However it happened, baby's dead. And as tragic as that is it's not the point. Mom chose to room-in, a right we in the US at least have had to fight for. She chose to LAY DOWN and get comfortable for sleep while she was in sole charge of the baby. So what does she do?

SHE SUES THE HOSPITAL FOR "LETTING" HER FALL ASLEEP!!!

EXCUSE ME?
Look people, if you want to be treated like an adult then you have to take responsiblity for your actions. If you want the right to informed consent/refusal, then you have to own the consequences of your choice. In no way, shape, or form is this the hospital's fault. And by trying to win a lawsuit this woman is also trying to set women's labor/delivery rights back whole decades, maybe even generations.
What? Should the hospital go back to forcibly removing all babies to the nursery whenever mom looks tired? Maybe moms should have to prove they have round the clock childcare help lined up for homecare before they are allowed to leave the hospital with their new bundle of joy? After all, don't you know, the baby belongs to the hospital until you can prove you are a fit parent.
I'm sorry for this woman's lost. I can't imagine how horrible it must be to think you caused your child's death, and maybe by blaming someone else she's just hoping to hold onto her sanity. But there are other people involved here too. Her husband, her lawyer, and certainly she's had at least some moments of clarity despite the guilt racked grief. What GOOD does she/they think is going to come of getting up in a sworn court of law and yelling "treat me like I'm an incompetent child because i'd just given birth!" I hope, if this woman chooses to get pregnant again, she agrees with absolutely everything the doctor, nurses, and staff want to do to her and her baby, because you can bet after this they aren't going to listen to her cries of 'i do not consent', and, frankly, can you blame them? Let's just hope the judge dismisses this monstrousity before it becomes how all hospitals view all laboring/post partum women. And let's hope some moron lawyer in the US doesn't read it!

For Teachers and Students, Against Greater Funding

2011-02-28T15:46:00.002-06:00

I haven't really been ignoring my blog, I wrote a long entry....on my laptop...that doesn't have an Internet connection....and my usb card is lost...and my husband's is broken. Yeah, that makes 3 blog posts that are going to be woefully outdated by the time I get them transferred and posted. Oh well.
In the meantime I wanted to do a short post on this: http://action.afa.net/m/rc/story.aspx?id=2147504012 it's a blog post about how teachers are getting their salaries and positions slashed all 'er the land. Which, ultimately is sad. Teachers, police, and military personnel are all abysmally underpaid. Yet Education, Law Enforcement, and Defense are all horrifically over funded. Why the paradox? One word: government. Now yes, the federal government is in fact supposed to be in the defense boat, and to a much lesser degree law enforcement (like Federal Marshalls), and the state government is supposed to be in the law enforcement business.
But neither one of them belong in our schools. It makes some sense for local government to be monitoring schools, and I suppose one could make a reasonable argument for some state monitoring (although I've never heard anything convincing in that matter), but, on the whole, education does not work when you make it a bureaucracy. Thus, public school teacher's salaries.
In the hugely bloated funding for education very little trickles down the the most important part of education...the actual teachers. Instead it gets eaten up by superintendents, principals, counselors, mandatory regulations, testing, sex education, pointless classes like 'dream interpretation', and the general bureaucratic nightmare that is public education. Our public school students sit in a classroom in 20 year old desks using 10 year old texts while they have a full contigency of physcological counseling availible, a sex ed program that will not only hand out free condoms and birth control but also arrange for clandestined (from the parents anway) trips to the local Planned Parenthood for abortions, a hundred thousand dollar projection/computer interface, a princi'pal' who earns 6 figures, and a teacher who only makes that if you count after the decimal point. To make matters worse they are bombarded by questionable and experimental teaching methods like 'whole language', 'new math', group learning, group therapy, and 'interpretive ethics'. The result? The last thing the students are doing is learning, at least not any of the '3 R's'. So the public school graduates a bunch of functional illiterates who have no knowledge of history, can't multiply without a calculator, but can darn well put a condom on a banana, and, as an added bonus knows condoms come in different flavors, textures, and glow-in-the-dark models!
The first 'public' school act in American history was the "Old Deluter Satan Act". But we would recognize it as a 'private' school today because the children's parents paid directly for the teacher and supplies. After all, you need very little to learn, a New England Primer, a math book, a decent history book, a desk, a notebook, a pencil or pen, (for those in algebra or higher a calculator), a room, and a teacher. It worked excellently for a couple hundred years. America was on the forfront of science and industry because our schools graduated students who ranked amongst the best educated in the world. Then the federal government got involved in the later half of the 20th century and we have seen a huge increase in the money we spend per student even while we have cascaded from top of the class to back of the pack in both math and language amongst 1st world nations.
Government would like us to think the way to make it better is more of what got us here to begin with. I have a radical alternate proposal: go back to what worked.
Kick the government out of the education system, and the Department of Education off the tax rolls and out of our pockets. Let parents pay directly to the schools that successfully teach what they want their kids to learn. Today both private and homeschool students outscore public school students on grade-level testing and college entrance exams, and have for years, every year. Yet private schools spend a fraction per student that public schools use, and homeschool spends a fraction of that! More money is NOT and has never been the answer.
I feel for teachers, many, although not all, try their best to teach their students despite the restrictions placed upon them by the government. While I was in school my teachers were really my only friends. I spent my spare time, before, during, and after the school day helping them grade papers, ready their lessons, and help tutor their high needs students. At the start or every school year from sophomore year (I was homeschooled freshman year and in a private school grades 6-8) I gave all my teachers gifts of school supplies, at Christmas it was more school supplies and a homemade card (candy for Valentine's Day), and a personal gift on the last day of school. Several of them told me the pens, pencils, etc I gave them kept them supplied with 'extras' for the students that had forgotten theirs so they didn't have to buy them out of pocket. I continued this tradition for many years past graduation until I moved. I scored in the 99th percentile in yearly exams, 'post high school' in placement exams starting in 4th grade (with reading) and in all subjects (please note, for those of you who don't know, yearly placement exams don't test all subjects you learn in school) starting in 5th grade. I graduated with honors, having earned all but 1 A since 2nd semester of 6th grade. I don't say this to brag, I say this so you may believe I am not anti-education nor anti-teacher. I've been in (multiple) public schools, a private school, and homeschooled (officially for one year but really more for two) I have personally experianced all the options, I have personally excelled in my education within (and sometimes despite) those options. I've had to get up in front of class and recite multiplication table, memorize classical poetry, finished a days classwork in a hospital while a parent was in surgery, graded my own tests (without cheating), confered with teachers on which books should be allowed in the class bookshelf, and which should be required verses optional reading in their classrooms (my fellow students were less than happy with that one as it added an additional book to their required reading list), and been the only one who worked on a 'group' project. I care about the education; I care about teachers and our students getting a full and rounded education. Which is why I strongly advise any parents reading this to NOT enroll a child in public education until the government gets its noses out of it.

in desperate need of some humor

2011-01-16T19:29:00.002-06:00

I'm in desperate need of some funny, and I'm betting you are too, so, here you go!
Food Groups:

Government: fruits/vegetables, 5 servings daily; grains, 3-5 servings daily; dairy, 3-5 servings daily; meat/protient, 2-3 servings daily; fats/sweets, use sparingly

Baby (over 6 months): boob juice, whenever I'm not too busy; stuff I can fit in my mouth, eat before mom takes it away; stuff mom gives me to put in my mouth, alternate randomly 3-24 servings daily with throwing it on the floor

Average Toddler: simple carbohydrates and other bland colored food, as much as possible; junk food, as much as I can beg, borrow, or steal; green stuff, as little as possible and less when I can hide it behind the couch.

Picky Toddler: mac & cheese, 3-5 servings a day; hot dogs, 3-5 servings a day; pizza, when I'm feeling adventurious and can pick off anything that looks questionable; banannas, only when bribed

Average Married Male: whatever the wife cooks, 2-3 times a day, store bought stuff, whenever she cooks crazy stuff like vegetables; meat, as much as possible, potatoes, see 'meat'; junk food, whenever the kids haven't eaten it all.

Mother (of young children): whatever I can cobble together from what's left from the last grocery run, mostly what's left over on the kid's plate; leftovers, whatever husband didn't eat; food I didn't cook, daily servings? more like monthly; chocolate, as needed.

Father/Mother=Father/Father?

2010-12-22T18:50:00.000-06:00

There is this very bizare article over at Slate (http://www.slate.com/id/2277787/) about the recent arrest of David Epstein for incest. I almost didn't link to it because I don't want to give such drivel more hits but...it's a lot easier to make my point if you've read the initial article. The author asks the question: if homosexuality is okay then why not incest?

So, first, I just have to say: TOLD YOU SO!

Ok, now that I have that out of my system, back on point.

Summerizing, in case you don't want to link jump, he states that incest is demonstratively wrong and should be illegal (although he also says he doesn't think Professor Epstein should be tried) because it causes a breakdown of the family unit. When Dad has sex with daughter or brother has sex with sister they are trampling what defines a family and therefore it is apropriate as a society to criminalize it/immoralize it. Then he makes the logic-wrenching statement that, since homosexual sex doesn't destroy the family unit it should be allowed and tolerated.
Wait...what?
Let's see, family unit as it has been defined in this country for over 200 years: father, mother, kids. How does father, father, kids or mother, mother, kids not change that? Is this person mentally deficient?
Not only that but that 'family unit' of father, father can not create 'kid' until and unless a 3rd party intervines. So, it's not only father, father, kid, it's actually father, father, mother, father, kid. (Because the adoptive kid still has a biological mother and father) (Or mother, mother, father, kid. ) Yes, adoption is a viable option for a traditional family as well but, in that case, you are adding onto the traditional father, mother pair the offspring of another father, mother pair. No matter how you look at it homosexual relations mess with the traditional family structure just as much as does incest, pedophilia, bigamy/polygamy, and any other deviant sexual behavior you can think of.
Unfortunately how they mess with the structure is fast becoming irrelavent to the liberal left. Especially for those who love the 'nanny state' mentality, the traditional family, with mom and dad raising, teaching, and equiping the children with the family morals and beliefs, is something they hate and are anxious to get rid of. So today it's 'accept homosexuality or you're a homophobic bigot' with people protesting their arrest/convictions of polygamy and incest (a polygamist recently used the same arguement as homosexuals to try to get him sentence over turned), and a ever more softening of liberal public sentiment towards them and other deviants. Tomorrow it's 'accept any sexual act or you're a sexually repressed bigot. (Or maybe they'll have to make up a new word along the same lines as 'homophobic' to be applied to people who hold to traditional morals.)
Guess what, I'm not 'phobic' of immoral behavior, regardless of flavor, I just recognize it is immoral, and will regardless of which flavor the liberals decide is 'in vogue' next. And regardless of what intelligence-insulting drivel they use to try to sooth their shriveled conscience.

The 'Ethics' of Food

2010-12-20T10:12:00.000-06:00

"And God said 'See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food.'" Genesis 1:29

"Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. I have given you all things, even as the green herbs. But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is , its blood." Genesis 9: 3-4

For a long time that was the only 'food ethics' I considered. If it moves or brings forth seed we are allowed to eat it. I grew up in the country, cattle country; there was a chicken farm right next to the local school, and I was in a state where almost everything is local to within a couple hundred miles, if not a couple dozen.
The horror stories of factory farms and mistreated animals were PETA propaganda that would be laughable if so many people didn't believe them. The meat of the animal is the muscel, and you don't get muscel if you raise the animal in standing room only. Unhealthy, uncared for animals will only get you unpalatable, unsellable product. No one is going to mistreat their meat animals, it's distroys one's livelihood. Besides, I'd personaly seen beef, pork, chicken, and even turkey ranches/farms. The animals were content and well cared for and slaughtered humanely.
Where I grew up the local store bought almost all the 4-H animals, and even labled which packages of meat came from the blue ribbon winners. And the farthest you could expect produce from was oranges from Florida when the local ones were out of season. (Well, I guess bananas were imported from wherever it is that they grow) There is almost nothing that isn't grown of raised in the Northwest, and that dwindles even further when you add in some citrus and tropical fruits from California.
I rolled my eyes at the 'animal rights' crowd and felt sorry for the people that actually believed that crap. And, having seen the difference between crops grown with and without insecticides, I washed my produce and ignored that overpriced 'organic' section. Only earth first freaks or those that were gulible enough to believe them bought a 97 cent apple for $3.
Then I moved.
I went to the local store and couldn't find the chicken. Oh, they have these little game hen things they insist on calling chickens, all 'plumped with up to 12%' who knows what. But there was no CHICKEN. And they wanted almost a $1 more a pound (on average) for these chicken-esque things than the normal ones back home. Ok...no chicken, where's the beef.
The 'fresh' beef had clearly been frozen. Isn't 'never been frozen' the definition of 'fresh'? How old was this stuff? And why was it so bloody expensive. And...what? 'Injected with up to 12%' what the *bleep*? I had known that some chicken, the really cheap stuff used by like questionable diners and roadside lunch trucks used chicken that had been 'plumped' but beef? I didn't even know you plumped beef! Ok...where's the pork?
The clearly 3rd rate pork they were passing off as 'fresh' was frozen too. And since when were pork chops that small? Ok...fish?
"Fresh trout: farmed in the UK, dyed to improve color" EXCUSE ME?
I broke down and bought some overpriced, injected, and frozen 'fresh' beef. And off to make dinner. Fast forward a few hours.
Wait, what happened to my meat? The 2 lb roast looks more like a 1 lb roast, that's not enough to feed us! And..oh bleck! That's not beef! What did they do to this?
Took me about 2 months of eating weird tasting beef for me to figure out what they had done to it... In Oregon people raise cattle on grass and hay (or alphalfa if it's really good beef) and fatten it on rolled oats and other grains. Over here they feed them corn. Corn! You don't feed a cow corn! They can't digest it properly, they get all bloated and don't develope the muscel and fat correctly. You feed cracked corn to chickens, not cows! No wonder this beef sucks.
The undersized chicken is tasteless and stringy. The pork IS 3rd rate, undersized, and tastes old to-boot. Never have gotten up enough courage to try the so called fish.
And then there is the produce. The apples are hit and miss at best. The rest is barely eatible at best. And it's all so old as to be almost pointless. Apples go bad in a week. Bananas are lucky to last 3 days, and that assumes you buy them green. Pears are worse then pointless, they're rock solid in the store and go directly from unripe to rotten, the pulms, nectorines, and peaches follow suit. The citrus might last a couple of weeks, but it's all tart and sour anyway so why bother? And the vegetables are rarely better.
Peppers start rotting almost immediately. Lettuce is limp from the store. My potatoes rotted under the cupboard in a week. ROTTED! Potatoes don't rot, they sprout! What in God's green earth do you have to do to a root vegetable to make it rot as opposed to sprout? What they do? Irradiate them then store them for 3 months before putting them out for sale?

2 years ago I would have flatly refuted the existance of wide-spread animal cruelty or poor living situations in the food market. Now I'm not so sure. I'm not sure there is another explaination for what passes as 'food' in the Midwest. I still think the organic section is just overpriced malarky, but when I'm staring at plums from Chile, pears from China, or Peruvian peaches, that overpriced, wormy produce is starting to look better and better, especially since it might taste like something other than gasoline and cardboard.
The dairy is right there too. Growing up the milk came from local, family owned farms and went from cow to shelf in 48 hours or less. It all says 'hormone free'. The first time I tasted milk over here I thought I'd got a gallon that had gone bad. More than a year later the milk still tastes funny (I'm going to guess they feed their milk cows corn too) and the cheese tastes more like colored plastic than cheese, that is, when it tastes like anything at all.
Oh, and they don't even sell 'grade AA' eggs. And everything in the stores is pasturized! Where's the raw apple cider? Even the farmer's market meat is frozen and liquid/cheese is pasturized. I actually had a meat seller at the farmer's market try to tell me there was no difference between fresh or frozen meat. (Even more unbelievable that meat defrosted in the microwave tasted no different than never frozen meat). THIS is what people who grew up here really think meat is supposed to taste like?
I still try to cook from scratch but I've got to wonder if, given what I have to work with if my home cooking is any better than store bought stuff?
And now I hear the FDA is holding hearings on the safety of food dyes (in pretty much any packaged food).
So what's my point? I'm not sure really, because I haven't made any decisions yet. But what I do know is that I've been confronted with a reality that is quite a bit different than what I thought was a universal (that and a strong urge to open a chicken farm to sell real chickens locally).
What's the food like where you live? Are you aware it's different elsewhere? What do you think about the ethics of food?

And a Partridge in a Pear Tree

2010-12-19T16:24:00.001-06:00

"One the 1st day of Christmas my true love gave to me; a partridge in a pear tree" wait, what? I like that song but, you know what, it makes about as much sense as "We Three Kings" wait, you don't get the comparison? Well here, let me help, here is my list of my 'favorite' Christmas gafts. (In no particular order)
1) Happy 'Birthday' Jesus? The Bible gives us enough information to determine when Jesus was born, and it wasn't in December. The timing of Christmas, Christ's Mass, was initially to celebrate his conception. The Light of the World was conceived on the Jewish Feast of Lights, which falls in November or December (due to the variation between the Jewish and Gregorian calendar). The specific date chosen by the paganized 'official' church was an attempt to line up with pagan festivals (much like trying to slip 'All Hallows Eve', a completely made up holy day, right next to Samhain. Christmas does have legitimate Christian roots just the specific date, Dec 25, was to help make the official church's celebrations more popular.) Of course there is nothing really wrong with celebrating your birthday on a day other than the actual anniversary of your birth. How many times do we schedule birthday parties around other things, like weekends or other birthdays, for convince? But that the average person, probably even the average Christian, doesn't know that we celebrate His birthday around the date of his conception is definitely annoying.
2) 3) 4) We Three Kings..at the birth. Here's a 3 for 1 sale on these guys. There is no real reason to think of them as kings, and plenty of reason not to. They were 'wise men' or 'magi'. Almost assuredly Persian in origin these figures were most likely learned men of the palace(s) astronomers, sages, advisors, and/or scholars of prophecy. Their number isn't mentioned in the Bible. The '3' is assumed because three types of gifts are mentioned. But the number of magi are not know. For all we know 20 magi decended upon the palace at Jerusalem looking for the newly born king, each with their gift of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Or maybe 5 wise men had pooled together resources to bring the three gifts worthy of a King-God. Think about your birthday parties, or any gift giving occassion, how many times does the number of gifts exactly match the people involved? (Especially when there are some rich people involved) and speaking of birthdays, they weren't there for the BIRTH! Nativity scenes annoy me more than most because they always show the wise men there the night of His birth. These men saw the star on the night of his birth. They quickly started their journery, traveling from Persia, probably from a palace, to Jerusalem, without the benefit of modern travel. They then spoke with King Harod. Then all the chiefs and scribes gathered together and and consulted their charts and held counsel together. (Tell you what, go ask Congress to answer an obscure procedural question and tell me how long it takes to get an answer) Finally they traveled to Bethlehem and "came into the house" and found "the young child" with Mary. (Note that the angels had used the term 'babe' when talking to the shepards night of) Given that Harod had all male children 2 and under slaughtered in an attempt to kill Jesus this whole process probably took....about 2 years. You'd think with all the nativities with their richly dressed magi and loaded camels that the average person must think the wise men from the east were capable of teleportation!
4) 5) Inn/stable: here come those darn nativity scenes again, the new family settled amongst the wooden stalls kneeling amidst straw with farm animals peeking over the wall. Rustic, cute, and extremely unlikely. There are a couple of possible (Biblical/historic) answers to this one and none of them are what a 21st century American is going to think about when hearing the words. 1st, and most likely, is Joseph and Mary were staying with extended family. But, do to the Feast of Tabernacles (Jesus's birthday, falling in Sept or Oct) and the Roman census there would have been a lot of extended family in the area. Homes at the time were usually built in 3 levels. There was the recessed lower level, the bedrooms on the 2nd floor, and then either an 'upper room' or a flat and habitable roof. The upper room or roof was the guest area, the 'inn' of the day. (True inns were fairly uncommon) If the upper guest room/roof was full when Mary and Joseph got there, then they would have been put up in the ground floor. This recessed ground floor would have likely contained the kitchen and things of the family livelihood too important to have outside, like a loom, potters wheel, carpenter work bench and tools etc. It was also where they brough their more delicate animals in to shelter for the night. A lamb, a calf, maybe a pregnant goat, or sick donkey, any animal that the household didn't want to spend the night outside. Thus the manger. You don't bring animals inside and not provide ready access to food, unless you don't mind them snacking on the decor. Another highly likely senario is like the first but, since it was the Feast of Tabernacle, the whole extended family may have been camping out in temporary dwellings (part of the feast) either on the roof or lower level, thus resulting in the crowding mentioned. (If you're 9 months pregnant and your choice is roof top or lower level how many pregnant women are going to choose the stairs?) So most likely Jesus was born into a warm circle of extended female relatives (who would have cared for Mary in her labor, birth being a woman's only task back then) in what we would today call a livingroom with a few curious animals looking on. There are 2 other less likely but possible senarios: there was a Roman inn in the town or their extended family's house was so full they were given the outdoor stables for privacy/space in birthing. In that area caves were used for stables/barns. It's possible if there was no room for the birth in the overcrowded house the animal cave was the next best offering, but see above for the gaggle of female relatives. Finally Roman inns were fairly predictable buildings. You had the inside space for a communal eating space and possibly higher priced rooms (those might be found in a 2nd story too) and then on the outside of the building you had straw filled stalls, used as both cheap lodging by the less wealthy travelers and to stable the horses or donkeys. While this is a historic possiblity in that such buildings existed, given the importance of family and guests in ancient Judea it is extremly unlikely Joseph would have been turned away from the household of his extended family, regardless of how crowded it was. As they say, there's always room for one more.
6) The happy couple's tailor. Why is Mary (and to a lesser degree Joseph) always shown in rich purples and blues? Lavishly swathed in the finest fabrics? These were things that only the rich could afford. Purple, blue, and to a lesser extent red dyes were expensive. No working class Jew could afford such things. Plus, she's just given birth, who wears their finest to a birth? Birth is messy, you've got every type of bodily fluid there is going all over the place. Even if by some stretch of imagination Mary had been gifted some regal fabrics the last place she's going to wear them is in labor! The second to last is traveling by foot or donkey on a dirt road. There is no reason to portray the young couple in anything other than sensible peasant browns.
7) Nativity scenes: see above. Also they have a tendency of showing everyone blond and blue eyed and/or the baby Jesus with arms outstretched basking very knowingly in all the adoration. Jesus came to earth 100% man (will still maintaining His godhood), so, like all men at the time of their birth He would have been tired, socially interested only in His mother, and likely unable to hold up His head, and, like Jewish babes were at the time, tightly swaddled with only His face showing.
8) Santa Claus is coming to town. Ok, I understand that not everyone who celebrates Christmas is a Christian and they need someone to focus attention on. I get that. I still don't get Santa. Mostly because it involves lying to your children and I definately don't get that (we always knew our presents came from our loving parents not some fat burgler who was only interested in you if you were 'good'). And I don't get why Christians 'do Santa'. There is nothing remotely Christian about him (he is not based on the Catholic saint Nicholas [which still wouldn't be a Christian connection], he's a mixture of Celtic and German mythology sprinkled after the fact with some Catholocism), and even if you just find him a 'fun' and 'harmless' figure, he still involves LYING to your children, which is against the Christian faith. So yeah, I hate Santa.
9) 'Happy Holidays': Yes, Christmas is a religious holiday, a Christian holiday with a fair portion of various favors of pagan thrown in (tree, yule log, Santa etc). It's a mutt holiday, that many people of many faiths celebrate...so why the huge push lately to not only remove any semblance of Christianity from Christmas but to refuse to acknowledge even the name? 'Winter trees' on sale in stores, 'holiday party' at work, 'winter break' for the kiddies, business telling employees they can't say 'merry Christmas', businesses and government removing nativity scenes (which you already know I don't like but are very much part of the tradition of Christmas), some of which have been fixtures for generations, cities putting up 'holiday' decorations instead of 'Christmas' decorations. It's sickening. Sit by your yule log fire reading 'twas the night before Christmas' to the kiddies by the glow of the lights from your Christmas tree while baby Jesus and the 3 wise men look on from the mantel, but it'll get you fired if you wear a button that says 'Jesus is the reason for the season'. Nevermind that it is, in fact, CHRISTmas that we, you, and the atheist next door are celebrating (I have met people who didn't make a big deal out of Christmas, I have met people that further mixed in pagan traditions with Christmas, or edited out parts they didn't like, but in 28 years I have known 1 person who actually didn't celebrate it) deplorable.
10).....so initially I was going to have 12 to go with the whole '12 days of Christmas', but it's taken sometime to write this and now I can't remember what my last two were supposed to be. So I'll leave you with a couple comments. I don't object to different people celebrating different days, different holidays, different ways. My 1 friend who doesn't celebrate Christmas celebrates Winter Solstice. I have given her Solstice gifts. What 'feast days' you celebrate, and how you celebrate them, are strictly between you and God. The Bible says celebrating certain days is a matter of conscience, not sin, so I've nothing morally against any feast day you may celebrate (I may have a moral objection to certain practices that in and of themselves are wrong such as lying to you kids or see my post on Halloween 'a different world'). I hope, whatever form or version of Christmas or other winter holiday you celebrate, you have a wonderful time with friends and family, and maybe my list of annoyances provided you with a few minutes of thoughtful humor.
Do you have a 'favorite' Christmastime annoyance?

The Ashes of the Phoenix

2010-12-13T17:50:00.005-06:00

While having an online back and forth over at www.moralscienceclub.com something occured to me. Something fundamental that I hadn't realized before and it inspired me.
We get and receive complements all the time in life, some sincere, many insincere. But can you think of the best complement you've ever been given? Out of everything from everybody does one stand out as 'the best'?
I can. While there are a handful of complements that I have been honored over the years to receive I think one bestowed upon me freshman year in college squeaks by as the best.
I was sitting in my buddy Adam's room in winter of freshman year (mine not his). It has been a rough month. I was dealing with a lot of personal stuff, very much depressed and struggling deeply with some relationships...but so were a lot of my friends and I was doing my best to comfort and help them, non-christians all, as they struggled with their own messes. I don't remember specifically what sparked the conversation that night but he looked at me and said: "I know your God exists because despite everything you still have such hope, and I know that comes from something greater". It goes right along with a handmade poster I had hanging in my locker in high school "It is fruitless for a mirror to have 'self esteem', 'self worth', or pride. Reflect the LORD!"
In what has certainly been one of my lowest points, personally, I succeeded in something that all Christians struggle with for their whole life (and certainly I still do). I reflected the hope of Christ and love of God so brightly my non-christian friend was able to see God through me. What Christian could possibly want for more? To die to ourselves so that Christ shines through? Almost 10 years later and I still can't come up with a better wish, a more perfect goal, a more noble hope.
I have long said that Christians and non-christians alike get depressed. The difference is Christians have HOPE. It means a lot, the difference between hope and hopeless, especially in the worst of situations.
So back to my revelation. I, and the blog author Jim, were in a back-and-forth discussion with a regular tagged 'girlevolving' about abortion. Specifically how abortion is not made morally right just because someone's situation is bad or because the babe will be poor, beset by hardships, or disabled. And something occured to me.
Christians look at any situation, regardless of how bad, and see the hope held therewithin. We know that every situation can be used for good, every heartache a path to joy, every empty wallet a start to a full heart. History teaches us the undeniable resilance of the human spirit. The greatest rise from the worst of situations, the strongest unfold from the weakest.
Non-christians look at a poor mother, an abuse victim, a woman struggling to make ends meet and can only see how hopeless it is. Why bring a child into that? Do not fault, they tell us, the murder of a babe in womb to save it from a lifetime of suffering; it's a kindness, a curtesy, a heartwrenching decision that the woman believes is 'best' for herself, her existing children or family, perhaps even the soon to be dead child itself. And we look at that and marvel at how they can view it that way, horrified at the wanton destruction of so much potential! A child could be exactly the thing that turns a delinquent teenager into a responsible adult, that convinces the abuser they are wrong, or finally gets the abused to leave. A baby could lead to a new friend, who leads to a job opening and financial security, or it could repair a fractured family as the mother is forced to accept help from relatives. That disabled babe might become a world class scholar, or painter, or simply find happiness and acceptance in a commited loved one. How can they not see that they are trying to 'fix' a temporary problem with a permanent and horrific 'solution'. Abortion not only doesn't address the problem, it takes away the solution that can be found in new life!
Somewhere along the way they forgot, or maybe they never knew, that humanity has survived every horror, every holocust, every depression, and has risen to greatness. Not by dying, but by living! Somehow they can't see that humanities ability to overcome and rise above puts the phoenix to shame! Like that mythical bird humans rise back up from the ashes of distruction, but it is not simply to our old selves we arise but to a greater self. From the desolation of despair do humans create the finest riches. It is the soul scarred by the worst that life has to offer that has the most capacity to empathize and help others, and the most capacity to revel in the simple most universal joys of life.
We see hope.
They see hopelessness.
Which is why, I realized suddenly, that all the biology, science, statistics, and facts so rarely make a difference. You can not make the hopeless understand hope, and you can not take hope away from those who have it.
But you can try to give it; it can not be forced, only offered, only accepted. And the best way to do that is to introduce them to the Author of hope. He can not be forced upon anyone either, but if they accept then hope springs eternal. Hope allows even the weakest, basest of humans in the worst situation to pick his head up and exclaim "it is well with my soul!"

Oh I Wish I had a Keyboard...hooked up to the internet that is

2010-12-07T12:59:00.003-06:00

I like to blog; I want to blog. And today is one of those days that thumb-pecking at this cell phone qwerty just won't cut it. I have so much I want to post right now. So, baring the sudden appearance of an internet connection to my laptop I'll just say this:
A blog I read over at www.mamaeve.com did a post on parenting today that made me want to write about the topic in more than quick responses, so, check her's out and think on it. http://www.mamaeve.com/index.php/effective-discipline/235-something-more-my-lessons-with-sibling-discipline
A friend posted on facebook about wanting the DREAM act to go through and that sparked a mini-debate on illegals on her board. I've written about illegal aliens before, but apparently never on my blog so, next time I get to a computer look for something on the topic to be forthcoming. In the meantime, if you are a facebook fan I expect you can find the discussion off my page, it's on Leslie's post.
And a brief post over at moralscienceclub.blogspot.com about how sexual 'rights' are trumping inalienable rights makes me want to write something on personal responsiblity. I suppose you could look back at my 'altered' post to get an idea of what I'm likely to say.
Anyway, I'll leave you with two points, you can ponder how they relate to the topics at hand. First, from wise old Mother Goose: there was an old woman who lived in a shoe, she had so many children she knew not what to do. So she fed them on broth without any bread, whipped them all soundly, and sent them to bed.
Then from old honorable Nathan Hale: "I regret I have but one life to give my country."

I'd say the victim was between 18 and 25 years of age.

2010-12-06T10:02:00.004-06:00

I like crime drama, Law and Order, SVU, CSI, NCIS, and Bones, even the 'oldies' like Murder She Wrote and odd ball ones like the Sentiel and Moonlight, but I find their means of aging bodies extremely annoying. Growth plates are bad enough. I had an xray in 5th grade and the only growth plates still open were on my sacrol crest. I stopped growing in 4th grade (that would be around 10) while my father grew two inches between 21 and 25. I was 5'6" and 130lbs in 4th grade, and 5th, 6th, 7th...you get the point. In fact I was still 5' 6" although I had dropped to 125lbs when I was married at 22. On the other hand my (female) cousin grew steadily until she reached her final height (about 5'8" but I may be off an inch or so) in late high school.
And then there are the teeth. According to crime shows everyone gets their wisdom teeth between 18 and 25, all four of them. Excuse me while I roll my eyes. Let's see:
Dad: 3 wisdom teeth removed in late 20's, never got the 4th
Mom: 2 wisdom teeth removed in late teens, never got the other 2.
Brother: 2 removed in early twenties (don't know if the others have/had come in)
Me: all 4 erupted and removed at 12. (Yes, really, I'm not kidding)
Husband: all 4 removed at 18 or 19.
Friend1: currently in her 40's, never got them
Friend2: 1 removed in late 30's...
Do I need to continue?
How do real life cops determine age of an unknown subject or victim? I have no idea, but I certainly hope they have something more reliable then those old television standbyes of growth plates and teeth! I realize it's television, but really, it's as ridiculous as using non-poisonous species of snakes, frogs, and spiders and having the scientist run away screaming. Really? Because a phd biology major doesn't know the difference between a Coral snake and a Milk snake, and, according to Hollywood niether do we. Which I find just insulting. I mean, come on, is it really that difficult to paint a snake? Or use one of the non-poisonous varieties that really do look like a poisonous one?
I like t.v. and movies, I do, but I shouldn't have to check my brain at the door to enjoy one.
What about you, what's your 'favorite' Hollywood annoyance? Or, when did you get your wisdom teeth in/stop growing?

Rational Questions About Vaccines

2010-11-22T14:37:00.008-06:00

I want to start by saying both my kids have received their age-appropriate vaccines (except for chicken pox), so far. My husband and myself both had all our childhood vaccines and my mother was a firm believer in the yearly flu vaccine so I got one every year too... and I still got the flu every year growing up. I also managed to get the mumps when I was 20. The mumps, seriously, who gets the mumps anymore? So I've always had a few questions about vaccines. Lately, I'm finding I have more.
At varrious health care facilities and public offices I see the flu vaccine touted as anywhere between 60% and 90% effective. But a meta analysis by the Crochane institute places it's effectiveness at just 1% for healthy adults, and warns that, since most of the studies were carried out by the vaccine's makers that 1% might be overstated. 1%, really? For a disease like small pox that, even among healthy individuals, has a 1 in 3 chance of death even a 1% effectiveness would certainly be worth it, but the flu? The point, realistically, seems to be little beyond a feel-good placebo effect. A placebo that does have known side effects.
And about that...I always throught double blind studies with vaccines (any drug really) vs placebo to test for side effects and efficency the placebo was supposed to be some sort of harmless 'sugar pill'. Yet now I'm reading that placebos, to maintain the 'blindness' of the study are things meant to mimic expected side effects. Yet then they epress the likeliness of side effects in compairison to the 'placebo' users in the drug trials. I honestly don't know if I believe it, but I've read it from more than one source and it is both despicable and sounds likely (realisticly how else WOULD you keep a study double blind if only one group was getting side effects?)
Another thing, the CDC says doctors woefully underreport minor side effects. Which makes sense. When I call the peds office to ask for proper dosing for weight because my infant/toddler has a minor but annoying fever after a vaccination I don't expect them to call and report that to the CDC. And what parent is going to call themselves and say their babe is cranky and feverish. We've already been told to expect that. The paperwork says minor fever/crankiness has a 1 in 3 chance of occuring after vaccinations but in 12 years of childcare I've NEVER met a kid that didn't have that reaction. It seems more likely that 1/3 of parents/doctors are apt to report.
So dragging myself towards my point...I have some questions that I feel are valid, reasonable, and logical questions about vaccines.
1) if vaccines are as effective as touted why do health officials say unvaccinated kids put 'others' (who are vacconated) at risk? I've heard/read it so many times it's apparently a mantra, unvaccinated kids in our schoools put all the students at risk. Only, wait, the kids are vaccinated they are supposed to be immune to the diseases they are vaccinated against, so how could being around kids who aren't vaccinated, and who could potentially have the sickness, possibly put them at risk??? I've had chickenpox, I'm immune so I have no fear of being around someone who has it. I've been vaccinated against measles as a child, and had my booster as a young teenager, can I, as an adult say the same? Could I even as a child? It doesn't make sense. So, are they lying when they say vaccines produce immunity to the diseases they vaccinate against? Or are they lying when they say unvaccinated children put vaccinated children at risk? Is there a third option?
2) If I catch a 'one time' sickness like chicken pox, mumps (seriously, MUMPS!) etc, I'm immune for life. I can, twenty years from now, take care of another with the disease without any risk of becoming sick (well, theoretically. I know a whole family, 4 kids, who ALL got chicken pox twice. Yes, it was 'really' chicken pox, confirmed by a doctor both times. On rare occassions you can get one time diseases a second time.) Yet the vaccines 'wear off'. Vaccines require multiple shots and even, years later, boosters. Why? If they actually produce immunity, why is it temporary? How can the (hypothetically) same antibodies produced by the vaccine not stick around when the antibodies from the disease sticks around? What's more, many of these sicknesses are known to be less severe when caught as children, so are we, as adults, all wandering around at risk for significantly worse cases of something if we happen to get exposed to it in our 30's, 40's, or, worse, 70's? Is this really worth it when the diseases as children are (usually) merely annoying? (The paperwork I received about the chicken pox vaccine when it was offered to my eldest child actually stated 'chicken pox is a painful childhood disease that can cause life long scars' really? States are making a vaccine that has only been around for a few years mandatory because they are afraid kids might get a scar?) Are required vaccines for our children putting us at risk as adults because they don't really produce immunity? Or are we being used as pin cusions for the money with unnecessary booster shoots?
3) What are the actual effectiveness vs side effects? I remember learning about Pastuer and his small pox vaccine. Long before 'double blind' trials he had real world proof his vaccine worked. Children receiving the vaccine were less likely to die from small pox. (did you catch that, it didn't provide immunity to small pox, it lessened it's severity) The trade off was they had a mild case of a different version of pox, which was non deadly. That makes sense. Deadly disease significantly less deadly for the price of a couple of sick days. But what about today's vaccines? What are their side effects? The real side effects, as in, take a 1000 kids, what side effects will they have, not what side effects are reported via doctors or what side effects are worse than those that had a 'placebo'. But what side effects do they actually have? And how effective is it? This relates back to a previous question. Can a vaccinated person really safely be around the disease without catching it? Does the vaccine just provide for a milder form of the disease? And I want to see the actual numbers. When the public health office says the flu vaccine is 70-80% effective to keep people from catching the flu, but the Cochrane institute says it's 1% effective, and that's questionable, it's clear us parents are not getting the correct/full information. When I looked at the papers on the Cochrane site I see lots of studies about different vaccines effectiveness in the elderly, or in children with specific health problems, but nothing (other than the one about the flu) about the effectiveness and side effects of the vaccines towards regular kids.
Alright, when I started this I know there was a fourth point, but I've been interupted in writing this so many times that now I can't remember it. So I suppose those three will work for now.
Do YOU have any questions about vaccines? Have you found any answers you would like to share?

Circumcision and Common Sense

2010-11-16T15:42:00.006-06:00

Recently I've been reading a lot about the who circumcision debate, words like 'intactivsm' and 'MGM' have been introduced into my vocabulary, and I've read both thoughtful and thoughtless comments from both sides of the aisle. To be up front I am against circumcision for my family. My son, and my husband, are both 'intact'. As I was a virgin when I married and not given to looking at nude males I've never seen a fully grown naked man other than my husband. So I don't know what a circumcised penis looks like on an adult. I have, however, seen it on children when I babysat as a teenager. I think it looks obscene. I think, by mimicking what an erect penis looks like, it sexualizies infants and children.
I'm a Biblical Christian, and Biblically speaking Christians are not supposed to get circumcised, so I'm always surprised when I hear a fellow Christian mention the procedure. It's my understanding, from a historic standpoint, that Jewish circumcision used to be a lot less 'extreme' than it, and secular US circumcision is today. I've never spoken to an Orthodox Jew about it though so I'm not sure on that point.
Recently my friend on Facebook brought up a proposed ban in San Francisco, CA on infant non-medically indicated male circumcision. Many repliers pointed out that female circumcision had been banned for years, why not male? Parental choice verses protection of children went back and forth, and in general most people had a thoughtful comment to leave.
Yet I think many people are looking at this with veiled eyes. On the one hand you have people saying things like, I want him to look like his father/older brother, it's cleaner, it looks nicer, or that's just what you do. On the other side you have people pointing out that you wouldn't amputate a kids leg if his father had only one, the varried and sometimes severe (including deah) side effects, it's no more difficult to care for than female genitals, it looks nicer, it's not the parent's body, and 'just because' isn't a valid reason to do a medical procedure. A few pointed out that we let parents pierce their infants ears so why deny them the option to circumcise?
Yes, society protects children from what society as a whole deems abusive, and that does change generation to generation. But just because it 'mutilates' the body doesn't automatically means it should be protected from. All societies throughout history have given parents/adults broad rights over a child's body in order to bring them into the society properly. Male or female circumcision, head shaping, foot binding, scarification, tattooing, neck/lip/ear/etc stretching, binding of the waist/ankles/wrists/etc have all, for one culture or another been seen as a normal and non-abusive act for a parent to inflict upon an infant/child. To call every child ever born into these societies (which includes out own during certain times) 'abused' stretches the word past any meaning and detracts from what it actually means. Saying that WE 'know' it's 'detrimental' means we get to tell others what is abuse and what isn't is the highest form of egocentric racism/culturalism. There are plenty of things 'we' (Americans) do to our children that would be considered abuse or neglect if viewed through the lens of another culture.
I would be willing to bet the vast amount of those calling out against circumcision because it's mutilization of a non-consenting body put shoes on their kids without mind or thought. Shoes premanently deform the feet, leading to many problems later in life not seen in societies that don't wear hard soled or structured shoes. So if their objection is really to deforming/mutilating the body why are they so cavaler about shoes?
The main difference is that America is a melting pot, and, increasingly so is the industrialized world. We want to embrace the cultures of the world while simultaneously preserving some sense of out own culture. So, as a culture we pick and choose what of other cultures we are willing to adopt and what we are willing to decry. Fortunately or unfortunately that is most likely to follow either the popluace majority or the money. Either way the industrial society has something that preindustrial society did not, a conflicting voice. In tribal cultures even extreme rituals of body modification is acceptable because everyone went/goes through it. It's not abuse, and people don't come out the other side as abuse victims. But in any society that which is unusual is, most often, going to be seen as destructive and unwanted.
The circumcision debate should not be 'to mutilate or not to mutilate' but rather have we, as a society come to a turning point where individual choice has made this particular modification rare enough for it to no longer be normal? I don't think so, in some places circumcision has dropped below 50% in the newborn generation, but not in all places, and even a 50/50 split is still well within the range of normal. It is time for those who don't like circumcision to talk to others and try to convince others, eventually the odds will swing (one way or the other) and perhaps male circumcision will, like the restrictive corset, become one of the 'horrors' of our cultural history. Or maybe it, like tattooing, will be regulated to an 'adults only' decision.

You Look Like Someone Stole Your Birthday

2010-11-12T07:06:00.005-06:00

I was reading an article about symantics and it was referencing the change in meaning of pregnancy and, specifically, 'conception'. Historically when pregnancy 'began' has varried some. Not every woman cycles every 28 days, and not every woman who misses the first expected day of her period is pregnant. The first successfuly abdominal surgery to remove a tumor in the U.S. (no, I don't remember the year) was proformed on a woman who sought medical help after a 13 month 'pregnancy'. I've seen the old drawing of this poor woman, looking very pregnant, being led astride a horse to the nearest doctor, many miles away. In some cultures if a pregnancy did not produce a birth (as in fetal demise that doesn't naturally expel the stillborn) the woman was still considered pregnant with a 'sleeping' baby, that might at some future date awake and be born. (Current medicine refers to these retained dead babies as 'stone babies' because they become calcified in the womb) Many cultures waited until the mother felt pregnant, or until 'quickening' (when the baby starts moving) to claim a pregnancy. Yet even in cultures that don't have calanders or counting the concept that pregnancies last about 10 moons (9 months give or take) is an accepted fact. I'm unaware of any culture through out history that didn't have a correct expectation of how long pregnancy usually lasts. Which, logically, means that pretty much every woman has understood that their pregnancy began before they knew they were pregnant.
With the advent of modern medicine we can tell if a woman is pregnant much earlier, and with more reliability than ever before. Most OTC pregnancy tests now work up to 5 days before a woman misses her period. But even now women understand thet they have to be pregnant BEFORE they can know about it. So where am I going with this rather long preamble? Conception.
Conception, the very moment a pregnancy starts. For generations the term conception was synonomous with fertilization, which is biologically sound. The moment sperm meets egg and fertilization occures biological life begins. The new human, medically termed a zygote, meets all the biological requirements of life and are a unique individual with a fully complete DNA that has never existed before nor will again (discounting asexual reproduction or cloning). As late as the 90's this was still the accepted medical description of conception, and therefore pregnancy (1995, 26th edition of Stedman's Medical Dictionary: "act of conceiving, or becoming pregnant; fertilization of the oocyte (ovum) by a spermatozoon to form a viable zygote"). But something happened. It started in the 60's actually when, following the lead of Planned Parenthood instead of biology, the ACOG redefined pregnancy to begin at implantation. This is primarily tied to the advent of hormonal contraception that can keep implantation from happening, thus terminating a pregnancy under the old definition. In the late 80's when the 'morning after' and 'chemical abortion' came onto the scene (the later wasn't legal in the US until 2000 but was medically known and availible elsewhere starting in the late 80's) the trend to redefine pregnancy as starting after implantation as opposed to fertilization gained more supporters. (The 27th edition of the above mentioned text, published in 2000, changed to read "act of conceiving; the implantation of the blastocyte in the endometrium).
I am reminded of 1752 when the official change over between the Julian calander and the Gergorian calander happened. To align the calander 11 days were deleted. People went to bed on September 2nd and woke up on September 14th. A bunch of people had their birthdays stolen that year. But in the last generation literally millions of people have had their birthdays stolen by medical personnel that assured a women that their birth control or morning after pill wouldn't abort a pregnancy. Yes, some mothers still would have chosen abortion for their newly made babes, but many would not have as well. And those mothers weren't given a 'choice'. 'The Pill' and the 'Morning After Pill' had far too much appeal to the abortion advocates to let a little thing like the dictionary to stand in their way. And, for whatever reason, the established medical community (especially pharmicutial companies anxious to get their pregnancy killing drugs to a wider clientel bas) has been following the abortion industry like good puppies since Planned Parenthood's early years. (I blame a mix of clever marketing and monetary gain)..
Language changes, and definitions change, it's true. But when the medical community redefines a medical term for a non medical reason I call BS. Nearly 50 years after the 1st redefining of pregnancy and still the average woman doesn't know the morning after pill "won't harm an established pregnancy" only because the company that created it put a * after pregnancy in their initial literature and gave the then unusual definition of 'an already implanted' baby. To the average mind conception still equals fertilization . Webster still defines conception as "the process of becoming pregnant involving fertilization or implantation or both". Yes, even Webster is starting to jump on the badnwagon, but it still shows the common English definition involves fertilization, the biological start of life, as the start of a pregnancy.
In the 1700's the establishment stole 11 days of birthday anniverseries, today we've stolen 50 years of actual birth-days from the most innocent and youngest of our societies, and most people don't even realize it.

Monsters in the Dark and What I Learned from Them

2010-11-10T12:18:00.005-06:00

So a couple of the blogs I commonly read are all doing parenting pieces, apparently there is a blog carnival going on. i dont know what that is but it seems to be something of a 'jump on the bandwagon' style thing, so I figured i'd toss in my 2 cents. Course, my '2 cents' would fill pages so...in an attempt to follow up on the 'will post via cell even if it's short' point' and because I'm feeling philisophical today, I'm going to touch on something my father told me once: "monsters are only scary because they don't have names. You'd be cranky if you didn't have a name too. So if you feel scared by the monsters in the dark just give them names and they won't be scary and will go away." My brother and I had, if I remember correctly, been complaining about having to go out to the wood pile in the dark, a scary thing for a young kid, when my father first dropped this jewel onto my little mind. It had the immediate effect of my brother and I shouting names into the dark while fetching wood. "George, Jill, Martha, Thomas, Amanda!" Any name that popped into our head. We gave those monsters names and by golly, they really did leave us alone. Even as a five year old it's hard to be scared of something you just bestowed the name "bob" upon.
But in the long run I look back at this nugget as one of the wisest and most insightful things ever said to me, by anyone. I have no idea if my Dad meant it as such, I don't know that my brother gleaned any deeper meaning from it. But I know it has followed me all these years. Let me break it down.
First, he acknowledged the monsters. Unlike so many adults my Dad didn't just say 'there is nothing to worry about; there's no such thing as monsters'. Because there are monsters. When you're a kid the monsters under your bed or hiding in moon-cast shadows ARE real. As real as the monsters we come to know as we get older. Because there are monsters. Murderers, rapists, child abusers, serial killers, and Hitlers exist and are just as scary, just as monstrous as the preverbial boogyman. What is more, even before my family came to the Lord, we acknowledged the spirit world and its evil (we just didn't explain it the same light). Demons exist, and I believe it's foolishness to dismiss our innate fear of 'monsters'. My Dad's acknowlegement of the monsters gave us the right and permission to be afraid, a key step to understanding fear is recognizing it's validity.
Second having given us the right to fear instead of mocking it by saying it shouldn't exist he gave us a way to combat it. In a very real way this relates to the old 'give a man a fish and he eats for the day, teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime' proverb. He gave us a way to combat fear, define it. Yes, shouting names into the darkness has a certain obsurdity to it, but the concept doesn't. It is the unknown that terrifies us, the 'nameless dread', the 'unseen terror', that chills our very spirit. The dark is scary precisely because we can't see what's out there. Telling us to name the monsters gave us a vital tool to deal with more than the dark. I knew from a very young age that, once I had defined and known a things nature I could then logically attribute to it only that fear which it deserved, which is usually far less than it would have been given otherwise.
Third, because of one and two, we were able to get over a fear of the dark (and the monsters of childhood) much earlier I think than the average. The dark might be scary for a five year old, but, as mentioned before, 'bob' is not, and, even to a seven year old the obsurdity of shouting names into the dark is nothing but laughable. It is extremely difficult to be afraid andtake seriously that which reduces you to gails of laughter. Yes, I remember occassionally needing to call out some names at 9 and 10, but for the most part by 8ish I had outgrown the child's boogyman. Because, ultimately, that which is capable of being dismissed merely by naming them are not worthy of fear.
Finally it is a lesson that is fully applicable to nearly all fears. When I was younger I had very little fear of the dark, I have very light sensitive eyes so the darkness was always somewhat of a relief, a respite. But I did have a very nearly overwhelming fear of walking towards the light with darkness at my back. Finding myself walking back towards the lit house in the dark would cause my pulse to jump, my breathing to quicken, and my whole body to quiver with the need to RUN! Of course running didn't really do any good, it just got me out of the situation marginally faster. So, annoyed with what I knew to be a pointless fear (if the dark didn't scare me all around why should it be scary just behind me?), I applied my Dad's lesson to it. I sought to understand it, to define it. It was based in a nightmare i'd had years earlier of running through the dark towards a point of light with some slathering monsters chasing me. Hardly unique I know. So I knew where the fear came from, I was afraid of the situation because it reminded me of a nightmare. Well that's hardly something to be afraid of, a remembered nightmare? Why should I be afraid of something just because it reminded me of a dream? Once I had named it I was able to asign the appropriate level of fear to it, namely, none. So I forced myself to walk slowly, breath normally, ignore the fear and demand my body catch up with my mind. It took conscious effort and time but my body did catch up with my mind.
I've had more than one person ask in an annoyed voice "don't you have any irrational fears?" To which, thanks to applying my Dad's advice I can reply: "no, that would be irrational." And why would a rational person put up with that? I have had irrational fears, and some took me years to fully dismiss from my physical body's automatic reaction, but I have never actively allowed an irrational phobia to linger. Nor have I ever allowed myself to panic over something I can't control.I seek to understand a fear or panic, do whatever is logically required or merited given that understanding, and then put it from my mind. All because my Dad thought to tell us to give those creepy darkness monsters names.
In conclusion I hope someday I get to tell my children to shout names at the darkness, and I hope they too take a valuable life lesson from naming the monster under the bed 'bob'. Because knowing that there is no reason for irrational fear or panic and that such can be overcome is definately a lesson I've used more than nearly any other through out my life. And in no doubt it will continue to need to be dusted off the shelve and used again and again as I age and deal with all those irrational parental fears that crop up as my kids age as well.
Love you Dad.

The first of many, hopefully

2010-11-04T14:03:00.002-05:00

My daughter (7 months) is sitting on the floor unrolling paper towels. But it's cute and I'll clean it up later.
I have been badly ignoring this blog for years, not from any real lack of intrest, but because it just always ends up being too far down on the list of things to be done to ever get done. I'm going to try to change that. Of course right now it really should be lower down the list, I have a Princapality Dragon Master to prepare for this week, but now is as good as ever.
Most of my posts have been long. I'm a writer, more to the point I'm a novelist. My high school creative writing teacher's stated goal was for me to turn in an assignment under 2 pages. She didn't get her wish. It's almost impossible for me to say anything of substance in less than 3 pages. In school I didn't ask how long the paper had to be I asked what the maximum length was, then I messed wih the margins to get another paragraph or two in.
That being said I don't actually have internet access right now, at least not in the normal sense. I have a internet capable cell with a qwerty keyboard aproximately 1in by 3 1/2 in total. So, while I can navigate, surf, read, even comment/reply, writing a standard 3-5 page discussion is a bit more than I want to commit to. What I will commit to is doing my best to post some short notes on topics that catch my interest.
Right now though, I need to work on a jewled belt that still needs a great deal of work. 'Til next time. Tz a maisve.

test post

2010-10-29T07:54:00.001-05:00

This is a test post from my cell, trying to determine if I can functionally post from my mobile device or not...

A Parent's Rights vs a Woman's Rights

2009-11-05T15:14:00.004-06:00

I was reading a great pregnancy resource book called 'Pushed' the other day and I just had to comment on something that was brought up in the book. The author (who has a website here: http://pushedbirth.com/ ) is clearly on the 'liberal' side of women's rights. Thankfully she didn't really go off on any long winded tangents during the book, but, multiple times, it was mentioned, sometimes naturally in passing sometimes somewhat forced into the conversation, that pro-lifers are hurting a woman's right to labor and deliver as they want since they are trying to give the baby individual rights. So the hospitals/doctors/states are using the baby having rights to force the woman to have c-sections, birth in hospitals, or otherwise be forced into unwanted intervention that the doctor thinks is 'better' for the baby. She references cases where court orders were obtained where the woman was forced to have a c-section against her will. One in particular stands out where the judge (while the woman was in late labor) told her 'the state has taken custody of your unborn child, and we are delivering the baby safely. You are having a c-section, now.' In that case the woman was attempting VBAC (vaginal birth after Cesarean) and, after having been told by doctors that her scar was 'sure to rupture' and refused the right to even try vaginal labor at the local hospital, had decided to try to have the baby at home.
Now, I will state on the outset that I am one of 'those' people who think the hospital is NOT the proper place for labor and delivery of a normal low risk pregnancy (which over 90% of pregnancies are). My reasons are varied but mostly come down to one point. Study after study since the 70s (and as recently as this year) show that home birth with a midwife is safer than hospital birth with a physician. The main reason is because physicians consider labor and delivery a medical problem that has to be fixed and midwives consider labor and delivery a normal course of life that should be allowed to take its natural course unless something goes wrong. For a physician in a hospital that 'something goes wrong' happens when the first contraction hits. Because of this the average c-section rate in America today is around 40%. Midwives have around a 4% c-section rate. A c-section is a major operation where is is 'expected' a woman will loose twice the blood as during a normal vaginal delivery, where the mother and baby will be separated for hours afterwards, and where a woman is 4 times as likely to die as during a vaginal delivery. It is also more dangerous for the baby. C-section babies are more likely to need help breathing, including tubing and resuscitation, more likely to have a low 1 and 5 minute apgar score, and more likely to require time in the NICU. Even assuming everything goes correctly, you still have a mother who has to take care of a newborn (not to mention any other children) healing from a serious abdominal surgery.
Now I could spend the next several pages going over research the has proved midwives/homebirth is safe, but the information is pretty easy to find, and that isn't want this blog is supposed to be about. I will offer two good books on the subject for anyone who is interested. The first was the one that was previously mentioned, "Pushed" by Jennifer Block and "The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth" by Henci Goer.
That being said I'm going to get back on point. I can understand that, from a pro-abortion standpoint, the issue of a woman's right to kill her baby in utero could seem similar to a woman's right to choose how to bring that baby into the world. But, as usual, they have missed the point entirely. Just like abortion isn't about a woman's right to privacy or authority over her own body, neither, in the most important aspects, is where/how to give birth.
As I've said previously choice always comes before action. A woman's right to choose to have a child happens BEFORE she has one, not after. The moment of conception is a moment of life. When two separate entities, nothing more than parts of individual people, join and create a new, distinct individual, with a new, unique, and separate DNA, the ability to grow, consume, respond, and produce (the four biological requirements for life). The woman is now a mother, the man is now a father. Their choice to enter into the mother/father relationship has already been made. Unfortunately the current law allows that mother/father to then choose to kill that baby. To become parents of a dead child, instead of a live child. Thankfully (for now) the law does not allow parents of older children to make that choice. Once a child can be easily seen by the society (the only real difference between a baby in the womb and a baby out of the womb) they are protected, by society, from extremely bad parenting choices. And I say 'extremely bad' because, under most situations, it takes more than a lapse in judgement or even what most people would consider bad parenting. As well it should. Parents should be free to raise their children as they wish, only expecting the society to step in and save the child if their actions pose a persistent and real danger to the child, like extreme or long standing abuse or neglect. This allows people who differ wildly in parenting styles to co-exist within a society.
I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone who takes the stance that to kill, maim, or starve their child is covered under their 'right to privacy' or their right to do as they wish with their own body. Its absurd. It is a parent's right, as the parent and guardian of an underage person, to use appropriate physical, social, or monetary punishment or reward. It is the parents choice where and how to educate, care for, dress, and monitor their children.
A woman's right to have a baby at home, in a birth center, in a hospital, to accept/refuse any/all intervention during the labor is not really a right to HER body, its her right, as a parent, to choose what is best for her child, taking into account, as parents do everyday, her own person as well. For instance, lets discuss VBAC for a moment. VBAC is 'vaginal birth after c-section', and many doctors refuse to even attempt them. Why? The stated medical reason is because there is a slightly higher risk for uterine rupture, which is dangerous to both mother and child. The real reason, however, is insurance. Insurance companies (remember all doctors are supposed to practice only with malpractice insurance) have declared an injury to baby after VBAC is 'indefensible'. So doctors who will perform VBAC will not be covered by their insurance carriers. The insurance company's position isn't due to any medical facts or even proven case law, instead it is their assumption that, since VBACs are rare, anyone who decides to sue for an injury during VBAC will be able to find a doctor to state it isn't 'standard medical practice' to perform one. "Standard medical practice" is the gold standard for medical malpractice suits. In order to conceivably win a medical malpractice suit the injured party must have been injured during a procedure or by an action that stands outside 'standard medical practice'. (this is meant to protect the doctor from frivolous lawsuits where the person was injured during the normal course of medical practice, there are side effects after all and no everyone who is injured during surgery is injured due to medical malpractice. In reality it just as often protects the doctor from legitimate lawsuits since not all medicine as it is commonly practiced is GOOD medicine. No where is this more evident than in the abortion industry. Since standards of practice are so low even woman who were injured or killed by what the average person would consider gross malpractice has no recourse in the courts since that 'gross malpractice' is actually common enough to be considered 'standard medical practice'. The case that jumps immediately to mind is the woman who suffered serious injury, including an emergency hysterectomy, because the doctor left fetal parts inside her and then refused to return her calls or reexamine her. Read the book 'Lime 5' for more specific examples of this) We've all heard of those absolutely ridiculous lawsuits, and, somewhere in there we can probably remember one of two against doctors. But, unfortunately, most of the time when someone brings a ridiculous lawsuit against a doctor we never hear about it, because the insurance companies just settle. Ultimately its usually cheaper to settle, even cases without any basis, than it is to go to trial. Since doctors must follow the mandates of these companies who are too removed from real life to understand that settling bad cases sets bad precedence, the doctor's patients end up suffering. Taking a step backwards lets look at the so called 'medical' reason for refusing VBAC. The standard statistic given is that 2% of VBAC births will end with a ruptured uterus. A ruptured uterus is deadly to the baby about 10% of the time. We are going to accept those statistics even though studies actually done on VBAC birth points to lower percentages. Now, a standard vaginal birth has around a 1% rupture rate. So, that means that a VBAC baby has approximately a .1% greater chance of death than does a standard vaginal birth baby. Now, I admit when we are talking life and death even .1% is something to be considered. But, since a baby is around twice as likely to die during a c-section delivery (its a little under 50%, numbers vary depending upon study and which pregnancies/births are counted and which are excluded) than a low risk vaginal birth, and the mother is 4 times are likely to die, how is that .1% somehow a reason to force a c-section? It isn't, at least not logically or medically. And certainly, given those odds for mother and baby both, it should be within a parents rights to choose which situation is better for their family. After all, you are 37 time more likely to die riding a motorcycle than you are while driving a car, but we allow parents to ride with their children as passengers in either a car or a motorcycle. It is, after all, the parents right, on behalf of the child, to make that choice and take those odds if they so choose. So go the so called 'medical' reasons for denying a woman the right to birth outside of a hospital, without intervention in a hospital, or any combination thereof. For instance it is a medically sound choice for a mother to refuse continuous electronic fetal monitoring (called EFM) because it has been shown in repeated studies to have no benefit over frequent manual monitoring with a Doppler or fetoscope. Hospitals, however, usually require this continuous EFM because 1) it frees up nurses, allowing a 2:1 or 3:1 patient:nurse ratio instead of the previous standard of 1:1 2) it is required by their insurance coverage as a 'paper trail' to be used in case of lawsuit and 3) its considered 'easier' than charting manual readings. EFM, however, isn't just not superior to manual monitoring, its actually worse for both mother and baby. If the baby or mother shifts the EFM can lose the heartbeat or signal a false decrease in heart tones for the infant, this can lead to intervention that is unnecessary and dangerous. EFM requires the mother to remain still and on her back, both of which are unnatural during labor and tend to slow or stall labor progress. The back lying position also can put stress on the baby. (all through pregnancy woman are told not to lay on their back as the weight of the baby can depress the blood flow thus potentially lowering the oxygen to the baby then, when we are trying to deliver, hospitals put us...on our backs)
So why can't a mother choose? Partially its because many doctors, in the role of making more money and running the hospital are more interested in seeing as many patients as possible than they are in giving quality care to the patients they see. It isn't hard to find a story of a momma overhearing the doctor who just coerced or scared her into a c-section to say something like 'great, I can make it home by dinner' or 'I'll be out of here in time for my tee time' (I'm NOT joking, I've read the quotes, they are NOT hard to find in you read pro-birth sites/books, but I will be happy to help you if you are curious and can't find them yourself). Partially its because doctors are legitimately afraid of lawsuits if something happens. But they are mostly to blame for this. They agree to settling ridiculous lawsuits when they happen at the advise and pressure of their insurance companies, and they set a women's expectation that since the birth is taking place in a hospital with the 'best medical' technology and access available, they can expect a perfect outcome. They don't want to admit they aren't perfect, that no one can guarantee a perfect baby, birth, or mother. Partially its the insurance companies fault, who are so out of touch with the real world that they pressure those doctors to 'admit' fault (even if only passively) by forcing them to agree to settlements when they are not at fault for an injury or death during a labor/delivery. Partially its the parent's fault, who don't do the research, put their complete trust in a broken system that treats a normal act of life as a medical emergency, and comply, even if its only under stress, to interventions they know they don't need, don't want, have already said no to, and know it is not evidence based medicine. I know its somewhat harsh to put any blame on the parents, they are made to have so little choice, frequently the nurses or doctors preform interventions against their will and/or without their knowledge. But every patient that puts up with it, who doesn't transfer care, birth elsewhere, complain to the medical authorities, or yes, even sue for non evidence based medicine regardless of if it is 'standard medical practice' (insurance companies get enough threats of legal action against a practice evidence proves is medically poor, they will start to treat them the same way they treat those 'frivolous' lawsuits now, and they might stop putting so much pressure on doctors to practice bad medicine.) who even goes so far as to contact the police for assault (regardless of if they listen or prosecute) when a doctor does something against their will or without their consent, only perpetuates the situation, only makes it seem like the behavior is agreeable and encourages it to continue. Men can even be more to blame for this than the women, after all, the father isn't in the middle of labor. He should be advocating for his wife/mother of his child. So should every other member of the birth team the mother chooses. So moms, if you are pregnant and considering birth in a hospital, first, consider again. Find the info, look into the facts, read the material, make an informed choice. And, if you still feel most comfortable in the hospital after you've been fully informed (which, certainly is both your choice and a valid choice for you to make as a parent), choose your birth party carefully, expect them to warn you if the nurse/doctor is about to do something you haven't consented with, expect them to advocate for you. Consider a doula, who is more familiar with the situation than you or your family may be. Mostly, be adamant, YOU are the parent, it is YOUR choice how your dependant child is treated, even in birth. Don't let yourself be bullied, coerced, or terrified into something you know is wrong. Write it down, try to stay calm, avoid even the little unnecessary intervention that will lead to larger ones which will be more difficult to decline. It will take time, doctors and nurses are accustomed to running roughshod over women in labor, they are accustomed to being god in the delivery rooms and doing whatever they want, bullying women 'arrogant' enough to disagree with them, frequently forcing them when it doesn't work. But every shift in policy needs its head runners. Every civil rights issue needs its forerunners, even its martyrs at times. Stand and be counted, not just so that you can have a better birth next time, but so that our daughters and granddaughters can as well.

Some good websites to check out for more info:
http://pushedbirth.com/
http://womantowomancbe.wordpress.com/
http://nursingbirth.wordpress.com/
http://rixarixa.blogspot.com/
http://www.theunnecesarean.com/
http://www.childbirthconnection.org/pdfs/evidence-based-maternity-care.pdf
http://myobsaidwhat.com/

A Different World

2009-10-22T16:18:00.000-05:00

I wanted to do this post last year, and the year before, but I have always been busy. This year I'm making time (even though I have other things I'm supposed to be writing about).
When I was younger October was one of my favorite months of the year. In early October all the trees are in their final, colorful hurrah, with golds, reds, and yellows adorning them in sprays of leaves about to fall, like shooting stars exploding from the trunks of trees, still a bit of green at the base turning to yellow, gold, and then flaming red as the leaves trailed away from the trunk. In the fields the harvest is heavily underway, mornings are cold, days are brisk, and the sunsets are beautiful as the occasional storm clouds gather and the sun sets them afire. The urge to ready for winter is overwhelming, and the animals everywhere, gathering, foraging, and generally not as shy as usual, distracted from their fear of humans by ripe grains, heavy laden grasses, bushes, and trees. People are infected as well, making sure hearth and home is ready for winter. Animals raised for August fairs have been sent to the butchers and home grown meat is done aging and the smell of it cooking brings children in from playing in the leaves. Hunting season is here and wild game is hanging in the yard, assuring food for the winter.
As the month progresses the leaves fall, gathering in piles to temping for any kid to pass up. The wood stove fills the air with the homey scent of woodsmoke, and warms the home through the frequently colder nights. In the stores piles of round pumpkins sit next to colorful apples, the last of the season and sweet from the cold. Multicolored Indian corn sits next to decorative and eatable gourds and squashes of all shapes, colors, textures, and sizes. At the end of the month there was the first snow fall, which, where I grew up, always came before the end of October. I'm sure it helps that its also my birth month (Oct 4Th) but to me October is hard to beat.
When I was young October meant other things as well. No one is born a Christian, they are reborn. While some people are born into Christian families, I was not. My mother came to the Lord when I was about 6, my father, brother, and I followed when I was 9. Before I was 9 the last week of October also meant costumes, candy, and trick-or-treating. Now you see Halloween decorations starting to go up in some stores in September, but then, it seemed at least, that Halloween really only popped up on people's radars about October 20Th. Even when we were little it wasn't that big of a deal, we weren't one of 'those' families that went Halloween crazy. We went dressed up for school with our classmates, went trick-or-treating, and ate enough candy to put a hummingbird into a diabetic coma.
For a few years after we became Christians we still 'dabbled' in it, dressing up for class and some years going to the school's Halloween carnival, which was more about trying to hit the principal in the face with a cream pie than it was about the small 'haunted' house set up in the corner. And there was never any big discussion about us not going trick-or-treating, once we were Christians, children or not, it was just apparent to us that Halloween was not your typical holiday. There was never a fight, my brother and I never felt pressured or commanded to not participate in those first few years, it just seemed natural. But I wouldn't say right then that we were really anti-Halloween, it just seemed somehow wrong for us to celebrate it, I don't know that any of us could have really explained it those first couple of years. Then something happened.
Our church had a Halloween meeting, it was mostly for grown-ups, but my parents never tried to 'hide' us from the world, so we all went. The main part of the night was taken up with a video from the "Occult Invasion" series about Halloween. (I can't remember if its called Occult Invasion: Halloween or Occult Invasion: Trick or Treat, I own it but its currently buried along with the rest of our stuff still packed from the move) It went over real life, first hand accounts of how Halloween isn't just some fun, frighteningly funny, family-friendly, good-time holiday. It spoke to current and ex wiccans, satanists, general occultists, druids, witches etc who talked about how, to them, Halloween was a high festival, a solemn part of their religion that included various practices. And that's all very interesting, but the part that has stuck with me all these years later, that hit us all that night, that made me find and purchase the video myself as an adult, was the segment on how serious crimes, many to children, are overlooked or not believed by authorities and the general public because the general public refuses to believe that such things happen. Halloween, after all, is about children dressing up in costumes, adults trying to scare themselves with ghoulish hunted houses, parties, and scary movies, and some 'harmless' adolescent pranks. Its about cartoonish witches on brooms, creepy ghouls, fake spiderwebs, and sheet-draped ghosts that go 'boo'! Things like ritual abuse, animal and human torture and sacrifice, murder, pagan orgies, and black magic are for horror movies and books, not real life. And if a bloody diaper turns up in the woods on Nov 1st its obviously some sick high-school prank, not proof that some group sacrificed a baby.
But in this video were testimonies from the people who had been intimately involved in such things. There were also handouts passed out that night with further statistics and testimonies. Three stories still stand out most vividly in my mind. A child (now an adult) in the UK who approached a police man in a public square and told him that she had been molested and raped by her family's coven (who called themselves 'witches' not 'wiccans') during their Halloween celebration as part of her introduction into their 'priesthood'. He didn't believe her and there was no follow up. A woman recounting how she ran from her satanic coven when they asked her to bear that years sacrificial baby. Apparently in that satanic group female members would conceive, carry, and bear a baby without seeing a doctor or official so that the baby would be born 'off the books' so to speak. That way, when they were sacrificed on Halloween, which they celebrated as 'Satan's birthday', no one would know the baby was missing, no one would expect a murder because no one expected a life. According to the information provided that night (and that I've seen many times since), the practice isn't uncommon. Finally, the one that made the most impact upon me, was the man, now a Christian, who recounted his ascension to the hereditary priesthood within the satanic occult group he had been born into. When he was a child, a few days before Halloween, he and a girl were taken to a van and kept there until Halloween, repeatedly sexually assaulted by their adult 'keeper' and made to have sex with each other as well. On Halloween night they were separated and when the soon-to-be boy priest was brought before the group, the girl was bound on the alter. The head priest slit her throat, and the boy was given some of her blood, collected in a ritual chalice, to drink.
The reason why this one stuck with me was not actually the extreme detail or graphic nature of it. I, even at the time, was familiar enough with what 'sacrifice' meant that I had a perfectly good understanding of what 'human sacrifice' may or may not include. The graphic detail of his recount hit me no harder, realistically, than did any other story of human torture and/or sacrifice. What struck me, and stays with me to this day, was what he said afterwards. He said that he feels betrayed by society, that every year at Halloween he feels victimized again, betrayed by a society that pretends Halloween is nothing but fun and games, that promotes it to children and uses the 'ghoulish' nature of it to sell costumes, candy, and trinkets. He feels that the real Halloween, a night of pain, death, and occult/pagan religious ceremonies, is being hidden from the world by the 'secular' acceptance of Halloween. He asked that we not participate, that we not help society and businesses to keep victims silent by covering up what Halloween really means to so many people.
There was no discussion that I remember, no long talk about what we should or should not do. We just knew that we had found why it felt wrong to celebrate Halloween, and we haven't participated in any part of it since. Its not just that man's story that troubles me every time I see a Halloween decoration, its not just that I know somewhere out there on Halloween night someone, probably many someones will die, be brutalized, or raped, and that the promoting of it as a 'family friendly' holiday will help to silence their voices, its also what that 'family friendly' holiday has become in the last few years.
When I was young I remember cartoonish witches, sheet draped ghosts, childish depictions of ghouls and goblins, bloodless mummies, fake cobwebs, and grinning pumpkins. Haunted houses or horror houses were places where adolescents shrieked in girly voices over brief frights and grown-ups giggled and teased each over startled jumps and couples found an excuse to cling to each other. Costume stores were filled with row upon row of cute kids costumes, smiling pumpkins, flamboyant pirates, cute puppies, princesses and princes, and cartoon characters. And, in general, stores started advertising and decorating for Halloween in mid October.
Now many stores start October 1st, some in late September. Costume stores are filled with row after row of costumes for adults, most sexually suggestive, some overtly or even pornographically sexual. Those that aren't are in a section so grotesquely violent or graphically gory that many stores post signs so that parents don't accidentally take their children in those areas. And those children's costumes? Regulated to a single wall usually, and no longer are the majority of them cute and harmless. Prostitutes, pimps, geisha, villains from t.v., movies, and cartoons, vampires, gory ghouls, demons, 'sexy' demons, and even Jack the Ripper for boys and Lizzie Borden for girls now fill the wall where ladybugs, princesses, Tom Sawyers, and He-Man costumes once stood. In the haunted houses, instead of Igor-like evil scientists with bowls of spaghetti intestines, there are movie-quality horrors. Upright pigs, splattered in dripping gore with mouths of sharpened tusks twisted in demonic glee, butcher human remains so real looking they could be mistaken for such in a photo. Horror movie quality corpses hang from spikes and chains, trashing even in death as they are electrocuted, or, even worse, scream with wide eyes and blood dripped wounds as they are torn slowly apart. Grotesque semblances of the human body are twisted, stabbed, and broken on torture devices that make the Inquisition look campy. Instead of a robed figure leaping out, hands dripping red jell-o, to raise a startle, a demonic witch flies down from the ceiling holding a gory knife, blood spilling from ragged teeth, mouth open in an insane scream, and her torso raggedly ending at the ribcage. White bones peak and purple-red ichor drips from tattered and molded clothing. Instead of people getting frights, leaving the haunted house laughing and giggling, haunted houses now have paramedics on sight, ambulances on call, to treat those who have panic attacks while inside, even heart attacks aren't unheard of in today's day and age.
The pretense of civility grows increasingly thin in regards to Halloween. The demonic is celebrated, the horrific laughed at, and the more realistically gory and grotesque something can be made the better people like it. It is more and more a holiday for adults. Children now trick-or-treat in daylight, their parents too afraid to let them out past dark for all the violent adolescent pranks now pulled, for fear they will see the adult crowd come out in all their terrifying 'glory' once dark descends. Other children, their parents oblivious, cry and hide their face at horrific store displays. Instead of campy 'Scooby Doo' Halloween specials t.v. stations run uncensored horror films, specials on medieval torture, or profile how Hollywood special effects are being used in this years 'all new' haunted house.
There is still no acknowledgement for the real dangers, the real people who are brutalized on Halloween night, but people now delight in the most graphic of brutalized 'entertainment'. Movies like Seven, Saw (in all its sequeled gory), and the Rob Zombie 'Halloween' reboot drench the watcher in the most horrific representation of the darkest parts of the human mind; all with sickeningly realistic visions of torture and torment that many theaters and movie rental stores make no attempt to actually restrict to the R audience (over 17). Children whose ages have not yet hit double digits are able to see these fantasies that could only come from the worst demonically-induced nightmares.
Now this is were we come to the title of the post 'a different world'. The average person looks at Halloween and sees make-believe. 'Demons' are borrowed from myths, 'witches' from historical misunderstandings, 'monsters' from nightmares, 'goblins' from medieval superstition, and those accounts of ritualized torture, abuse, rape, or sacrifice are just someones idea of sensationalism, false memories fueled by nightmares and rumors, or, at worst, singular occurrences carried out by people like the Dalmers, but probably nothing more than an urban legend, brushed off and given dark life on Halloween night.
I look and see real demons, spiritual powers capable of possession and destruction of those who call to them in ignorance or jest. I look and see real witches, who will be chanting to powers they don't understand, laying in orgies to build their strength, and sacrificing animals to work dark blood curses on those that have angered them in the past year. Where the world sees cute ghosts I see a very real spirit world full of demons who would love to appear as a dead loved one to lead people astray. Where the world sees superstition I see real reason to fear. I look and see candy covering blood, costumes covering wickedness, manufactured fright covering mortal fear. Halloween is not fun, its not family friendly, its not some party to play dress-up. Many people laugh, mock, scorn, but the world the Biblical Christian lives in is full of dangers, powers, and consequences that the secular world rarely, if ever, see, acknowledge, or believe. And those dangers, those powers, those consequences are real everyday, but on Halloween society itself, with all its mocking unbelief, gives these things so much more power, so many more opportunities on Halloween with their play acting and pretend to reach into their 'safe' little lives and destroy them. I can not look at a child dressed as a sorcerer out to trick-or-treat without wondering if that child will, in all innocence, call upon some power in play that will be more than happy to respond in real. I can't look at a teenager, dressed up like some gory corpse on their way to a graveyard to try to contact the spirits with a ouiji board without wondering what they will contact, wondering if they will be the same person tomorrow, or be indwelt by something they foolishly thought either didn't exist or they could control with a ring of salt and a white candle. I can't look at an adult, on their way to a party where they will get drunk and/or stoned likely while listening or watching something truly demonic or playing some Halloween 'party' game that 'pretends' to call upon the ghosts of past murderers or victims, without wondering if a demon will take the opportunity of a drugged out mind to make itself at home.
The world sees Halloween as a safe time to pretend, to revel in a darkness they won't admit even exists, to play at violence, depravity, and horror. I see Halloween as a terrifyingly dangerous time, when the minions of darkness revel in the minds of the unwitting, when the darkest elements of pagan and occult societies will actively invite real violence, depravity, and horror into their midst, when the only sane thing to do is hide from the storm, praying that all the non-Christians you know will still be in full control of their own minds come dawn, that all those children and babies about to be destroyed will leave their bodies to find themselves in God's presence, and all the adults whose lives will be taken repented in their last moments, that those whose lives will be ruined by horror and violence will eventually find healing, and those who ruin, will have their eyes opened so that they may find forgiveness and atonement.
For those of you reading from my world, can you, knowing what is true, truly feel comfortable participating at all in Halloween. For those of you from the other world, can you even imagine the difference? Can you look, this Halloween, from a different perspective and perhaps see the world of which I speak, can you allow God to open your eyes to the light, so that you can see the dark? Because the really scary part isn't that Christians see demons, see that people are generally bad (even if they might wish to do good), see this world of souls, possessions, spirits, and eternal consequences, its that the secular world, which has turned its back on the spiritual world and believe only in the material, who believe themselves safe in the physical world of flesh and blood, where people are generally good, who live in the 'here and now' where consequences rarely exists and, when they do, are fleeting at best, is the world of make believe. No more real, solid, or safe than the make believe worlds of children, oblivious to all the trials and dangers they will face as they grown to adulthood.

William Orion Part Two

2009-10-06T16:01:00.000-05:00

(This is the continuation to William Orion Part One found in the previous post. Some names have been changed. Some of the exact timing and order of events may be slightly off since my memory, like most peoples, divides 'days' by sleep cycles and I went somewhere between 5 and 7 days before I slept for more than 2 hours at a time. In general the order should be correct but the timing is likely suspect on several points. Part Three, which will conclude the story, should be along shortly. I had hoped to get it done in two but this is getting long, its late, and I came to a convenient stopping point, although I'm sure at least some of you will disagree with that last part.)

The first night we were hopeful, scared certainly, and disheartened, distressed, and pretty much every other negative you'd expect given the situation but also hopeful. After all, I had a cousin who had spent 10 days in the NICU after birth due to aspiration who came away untouched, and we were told that night about at least 3 others only one or two connections removed from us that were the same. So we were hopeful and prayerful that after the doctor's expected 10 days we'd be on our way home. But that night they weren't able to turn his oxygen down, in fact they kept having to bump it back up to keep his O2 sats from dropping too low.
By the time the next night rolled around he was the only baby in the NICU to have a personal nurse all night long. The sickest baby in the NICU. Then his lung collapsed.
They put in a chest tube but they still couldn't keep his oxygen saturation up. Less then 36 hours after admittance the doctor came to speak to me. My husband and his mother (who had flown in to be with us and the baby) were out of the hospital, getting food, clothes, and medication.
The doctor told me if he crashed again there was nothing they could do. He had to be transferred to Legacy Emanuel were they could put him on ECMO if he continued to decline.
ECMO
I was familiar with it, not from personal experiance but from study, and it terrified me. Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation is in effect a heart/lung bypass machine. It takes the blood from the body, runs it through a machine that oxygenates it, and then pumps it back into the body. The risks are many, the statistics aren't great, and, if you are in a position to need it, it means there isn't anything else they can really do but hope the body takes the rest to heal and get better. And our baby already had a hypoxic brain injury. That increased his risk for inter cranial bleeds from the ECMO treatment, which, due to the high amount of blood thinners required for it, would mean an almost immediate death.
He said that Orion was stable for now, and it would be much better to move him while he was stable then risk an emergency move while he was in the midst of a crash.
I was sitting on my hospital bed, still needing a wheelchair to move around, staring at a consent form to move my critically ill newborn across town to another hospital where he may or may not need a treatment that in and of itself was life threatening. The doctor said I had to make a decision now, the transfer process was lengthy and needed to be put in motion as soon as possible before Orion crashed again.
I told him I had to call my husband, had the doctor explain it to him over the phone, but I was the one who ultimately had to sign the form and get the process started.
Moving him was terrifying. Just getting him ready to be moved from one crib to the transport crib, with his cooling blanket, intubation tube, oxygen supply, chest tube, and various I.V.s took hours. They let us touch him right before they moved him. It was reassuring, the brief contact, but it also had that cold finality to it, knowing they were allowing it because, if something went wrong, it would be the last time we would touch him alive.
My husband had ridden with him in the ambulance from home to the hospital, so we decided I would ride with him from St. Vincents to Emanuel. He would follow with the rest of the family in the car.
It was hard to even breath during the ambulance ride, my eyes always glancing backward, turning around to try to see the transport team and my son every time someone shifted or a monitor changed pace. It wasn't a long ride, in good traffic the two hospitals are about 7-10 min apart and, even though we didn't go lights and sirens, most people give way when they see an ambulance trying to merge or change lanes.
When we got to the hospital though they parted him from me. They had to get him transferred to the new NICU, everything set back up, and let the staff reevaluate him. And they wanted to do all that before they spoke with us. So we waited.
I should make a note that I had been discharged at this time, realistically too early. I still couldn't make it around without a wheelchair, although I did my best with a walker for short distances if I had to, and, while I was in the hospital I was taking 15 mg of oxcycodone. When they discharged me they gave me a prescription for 10mg of oxcycodone and told me my insurance only covered me for 3 days of post-partum care (it didn't really matter that the 1st 'day' didn't start until around 11pm or that I had a medical condition that had made giving birth particularly stressful for my body and left me in a great deal of pain). The nurse at the new hospital kept telling me "we can get you transferred over if you like", "we can call your doctor to have you transferred" etc. When I told her I had been discharged she was surprised.
We also learned, while we waited, that, while St. Vincents let parents of NICU babies stay in open rooms, Emanuel had no such arrangement. Oh, they had a agreement with the local Ronald McDonald House to house parents, but only those from out of town; we lived too close to count. Besides, the McDonalds house was still out of the hospital. We had a baby who was very likely dying and, if he did go downhill, would do so very rapidly. Going home, or even to a hotel, was out of the question. But, while Emanuel had it in their 'patient's rights' that parents had the right to stay with their children (except for during shift change), the most they guaranteed were chairs next to his NICU crib. There were 3 overnight rooms, available on something of a weighted first come first serve basis, but not only would we have to sign up for those every night, we wouldn't know if we had them until 9pm and, at anytime during the night, if parents from out of town got transferred in, or if a baby became sicker than ours, we might get booted out.
Finally we got in to see our baby, talk to the doctor, meet the nurse, and, thankfully, get one of the rooms for the night. Orion had made the trip safely and was now in the hands of one of the leading children's hospitals in the US. (and one of the best in the world for ECMO)
At 3 am that morning, after an hour or so of sleep, I woke up to go back and check on him and nearly screamed when I tried to move. I made it to my wheelchair and spent several hours in the ER getting checked back into the hospital. They didn't know where to put me. My problem was pain, brought on by labor sure, but also due to a pre-existing condition and ultimately a bone/joint problem. Plus I had a baby in the NICU. I ended back up in the maternity ward but I wasn't actually a maternity patient, so I had confused doctors and nurses coming and going for the next two days.
Meanwhile, the next day, Orion's lung, despite the chest tube, again collapsed. At St. Vincents we were allowed to remain (obviously outside the 'clean' area set up for the surgery) close to him while they had inserted the first chest tube. But when the doctor showed up to place the second one she told us we would have to leave. She "didn't want to get nervous due to parents looking over my shoulder". I was furious, as much as someone as stressed out, zombied, distressed etc as I was could be (still hadn't slept for more than a few hours since the birth). Our baby was about to undergo a surgery, one that could potentially be fatal, given his current state, and one that I knew did not require our absence, and we were getting kicked out. But what could we do? Getting hysterical at the doctor would just prove her point, and it wasn't like there was anyone to appeal to, so we left.
It was shortly after the second chest tube that the doctors informed us that they could not keep his O2 sats up any longer. Another crash was imminent and yes, it might be 10 min or 2 hours away, but it would be better to get him onto the ECMO now than wait to try to proceed while he was in the middle of a crash.
My husband and I sat in chairs, side by side, watching them prep our son. He was just coming off the cooling protocol, in fact, they speeded it up some so that he would be at normal temperature for the ECMO surgery. Since the risks of ECMO went up if he was cooled. We still hadn't held him, and, with the ECMO, he would have to remain perfectly still so as not to jostle the blood flow, so touching him while he was on it would be at a minimum and must be done with exceptional care.
We sat there holding the paperwork, the consent form and the sheet on the risks of ECMO, and prayed that God take care of our baby. We were honest enough, with ourselves, each other, and with God, to realize he was dying. The odds weren't in his favor, and, while we prayed and we hoped God would allow his healing and let us raise our son, we also prayed for acceptance to God's will, that if this fallen world of sin and death took our son away from us that God would raise him for us, keep him safe until we could see him again. We sat holding hands, feeling we had done everything we could. It was in the hands of the doctors to do their best, and ultimately in God's hands if Orion would beat the odds, or if he would go to be with his heavenly Father before us. I will not say we were content, we were not, we were terrified, fearful, heartbroken, and depressed in spirit. But there was none of that hesitation or distance that you hear about in some couples, when the illness or death of a child drives them apart. We were together, holding hands in prayer and in supplication to God, calm that we had done everything we could as parents and it was time to wait, and see what God would bring. I know both of us in that moment were waiting for him to die, not ready for it, certainly not anticipating it, but acknowledging the very real possibility and secure that God would guide us though it if it came.
They all but shut down the whole NICU for the ECMO surgery, it, unlike the chest tube, was a full blown, sterile drape, medical personel only surgery. The doctors said his heart was strong, which was good, it would continue to provide most of the pumping during the ECMO treatment, so they only had to insert a cannula in his jugular (most times ECMO severs both the carotid and the jugular on one side of the next, Orion is only missing his jugular). Which was good, it cut down on some of the risks, both immediate and long term and made the initial surgery itself less risky.
The time came and we left the NICU, we were given a pager, in case something happened, and the nurses would let us know when it was over. Ben went to wait for the family to arrive (my family lived about 90 min away and was driving back in, after having left to care for their animals after he had been settled in the new hospital, to be there for the procedure) I went to find a room to pump in (I was pumping breastmilk so that, once Orion was off I.V. foods, he could be given colostrum and later breastmilk, and so that I could still breastfeed once we got to take him home)and hopefully to get some sleep. It may seem odd, from an outsider's perspective that I slept through most of the surgery, but we had said our prayers, made our peace as best we could, and were simply waiting. I was beginning to do something I had never done before in my life, fall asleep when I didn't mean to, so, at the advice of my doctors, I took the opportunity to try to get a few hours of sleep, instead of pacing in a wheelchair. The nurses knew where I was, and promised to wake me up if anything happened.
They didn't need to. I woke up just as the surgery, which went very well, was ending. I had time to go see the family, and then we were allowed to go see Orion.
It was scary, seeing him lying so still, with so many tubes and lines and I.V.s. There was his breathing tube of course, his two chest tubes, and the array of I.V.s, what was new were the two large tubes running from his neck to the ECMO machine, one the dark red of spent blood, one the bright red of oxygenated blood. So much blood, so much more than his body actually contained, yet one slip, one kink, one trip, and he would bleed out, not in minutes like from a severed artery, but in seconds.
They told us he could be on the ECMO for 7 days, after that, he had to come off, and he could not be put back on. We understood. He had 7 days to get better, or he would die. The average run on ECMO was 5 days. While he was on ECMO he would have twice daily brain scans, to check for swelling or potential bleeds (although we knew there would be little they could do if they found one) and twice daily x-rays, to check his lungs for healing.
And this is where the story takes a turn. Our little one, who had been the sickest baby in two NICUs, started improving rapidly. Every chest x-ray was noticeably better than the one 12 hours before, even to our untrained eye. The doctors and nurses were amazed at his progress. In less than 3 days they were talking about taking him off the ECMO.
It was stressful all over again. Once he was off, he couldn't go back on. But the longer he stayed on, the longer he played the odds on a complication. His lungs were healing well, but if he struggled when they took him off, we had just eliminated the only thing that was helping. But the doctors were all in agreement, his lungs had healed enough that the ECMO was more risk than it was worth.
Removing him was much simpler than putting him on, a gradual turning off the oxygen of the machine as they turned up his ventilator and then a quick removal of the cannula followed by a few minutes of pressure. It seemed odd, that something so dangerous, so life changing, could be over with so little fuss. And, within a few hours of the decision to take him off, the machine with its very own nurse to monitor it was gone, and it was just the ventilator sharing space with Orion's crib in his little spot in the NICU. He still had 2 official nurses (he'd had 3 while on ECMO since the machine itself had a full time nurse), a personal nurse and the nurse that was in charge of that row in the NICU. He was still, in some ways, the sickest baby there, but now it had changed. He wasn't getting worse, he was getting better. Not only that, but rapidly better. Instead of trying to ready ourselves for his death, we could again expect him to come home.
He was still on a ventilator, still had 2 chest tubes in, a PIC line, and a regular I.V. as well. But he was now awake enough that he could move his arms and legs, if sluggishly, and occasionally flicker open an eye (they were a blue so dark they were almost black).
It was nearly miraculous, he was recovering.

William Orion: Part One

2009-01-08T10:34:00.000-06:00

(Due to length and time constraints I am breaking up this story, this is the first part and goes only through the birth day, I will post the second part, which will cover his hospital stay (or that's the plan) as soon as I am able.) Name and birthdate have been changed for privacy.

I was on my hands and knees on the living room floor, which had not been the plan. The nice, warm birth tub sat within touching distance, but plans for a water birth were out the window. The head wasn't advancing as well as the midwives wanted so they had moved me in an attempt to open up my pelvis. I have bad hips, pretty much anyone who knows me knows that since my day's activities have been planned around my limited mobility for the last several years. My pelvic girdle is tipped, rotated a bit down and in. I'd talked to multiple doctors, OBGYNs, and midwives before going through with a home birth. They all assured me I had a low risk pregnancy and should have more than enough room for baby to be born, and, even if it was a bit tight, my joints were so loose that the rigors of labor would just move everything out of the way. The dangers, they all agreed, were towards me. We went into the labor with every expectation that I may dislocate a hip or separate my pelvis. It didn't concern me that much, after all, I dislocate things all the time and, while rotating something out of place the first time hurts like you'd expect, a non emergent trip to the ER to wrench something back into place (or maybe just with a chiropractor) seemed a lot nicer than arguing with doctors about a c-section whilst I was in labor.
I have Elhers-Danlos Hypermobility syndrome, a genetic, connective tissue disorder that causes, as suggested by the name, extreme mobility in my joints due to laxity in connective tissue (tendons, ligaments, and, to a lesser degree, skin and cartilage). It also causes other problems, wounds heal very slowly, scars are wide, fragile, thin, like rice paper, I don't respond to pain medications properly, and damage done to tendons, ligaments, muscles etc, never really fully heal. (I re injured the same muscle four years in a row in track and, even 12 years after the initial injury, still feel the strain on the muscle some days. The rib I put out of place about 16 years ago still rotates out of place almost weekly) So, while I realize there is a 3% chance that a c-section will be medically required, I did not want to put all the muscles in my abdomen, not to mention my womb itself, in the hands of doctors with a nearly 40% c-section rate (not to mention that there was a fairly high likelihood that an epidural would work poorly or not at all on me). Add to that the normal complications inherent in a hospital delivery (mortality/morbidity rates for hospital births for mother or child for a low risk pregnancy hover around .02%, for a low risk home birth, .01%. The risk for serious complications is also statistically higher for hospital birth than home birth) and the last thing I wanted was to be in a hospital. While the logical statistics is what ruled my decision I will admit that, if the statistics had been equal between them, I still would have chosen a home birth as the thought of being 'delivered' by a doctor is repugnant to me. Labor is not something either mother or baby need be delivered from. I wanted to birth my son and deliver him to the arms of his father, not have some doctor pull the proverbial rabbit from the hat in delivering the baby from me.
So we were at home, with myself and my husband, a birth tub, 1 nurse midwife, 2 direct entry midwives, 1 apprentice, my two parents, his mother on speaker phone, 1 cat who had judiciously hidden herself hours ago, and a partridge in a pear tree. Orion had been monitored the whole time by Doppler and, right up until the time they moved me from the birth tub, his heart beat had been steady and sure. But now something was wrong.
They had told me once the head was birthed we'd be able to pause, to have a bit of a breather, but the head was out and everyone was still calling for me to push. Someone called for oxygen, and I thought it was for me. When he was born, only 3 or 4 minutes after me being moved, they didn't hand him directly to me. I still didn't really realize anything was wrong. I knew enough about labor and delivery to know sometimes you have to bulb out babies, give them a bit of oxygen and stimulation to get them to start breathing. It's not a big deal and is relatively common. We'd been ready for something to happen to me, baby had been given a complete screening, genetic tests, diagnostic ultrasound, and the odds something would go wrong was so remote, the odds something would go wrong with me so much more likely, that none of us were really ready for the possibility. Then I heard something I'll remember for the rest of my life: "One, two, three" pause "one, two, three" pause. That measured beat that anyone who has ever taken a first aid course would immediately recognize.
William Orion was born at 6:45 pm on August 8th, 2008 without breath or pulse.
The midwives had an oxygen mask on him immediately and a heartbeat back within about 30 seconds. My husband was calling 911; he couldn't talk, and one of the midwives took the phone from him. For a moment I could see my baby, a bit of face and chest, and managed to reach back and stroke his cheek once. Then he was gone behind a wall of midwives working to keep his heart beating and trying to get him breathing.
We heard sirens literally seconds after we had called 911, and the paramedics were there within minutes. They didn't have a backboard for an infant, and Orion was carried out on a cookie sheet by the midwife. Benjamin and my father went with the midwife in the ambulance. My mother and I, along with the rest of the birth team, would follow as soon as we were able. It took a bit more than a half hour to get me out the door, and it took two people to get me down the stairs.
At the hospital we learned what was wrong. Orion had a hypoxic brain injury and a severe meconium aspiration. The doctor said on the scale of brain injuries he was a 'moderate' case. It was, as he said, worse than 'moderate' made it sound, but a lot better than it could be. He explained that they had very good outcomes with cooling to reduce brain injury by keeping swelling down. As far as his lungs were concerned he was on a respirator and oxygen. They were having difficulty keeping his oxygen saturation up but, for now, it was within reasonable ranges. The doctor was hesitantly optimistic but advised us he would be in the NICU for at least 10 days.
He was also a complete jerk, rude to both our midwife and my husband and myself, clearly looking down on us for having a home birth, and wanted to run urine tests on Orion because I was "a chronic narcotics user" (I was on prescription pain medication, under supervision of 3 doctors, while pregnant, but had been off them completely for the last full month of pregnancy so that Orion would be born without any chances for side effects of medication withdraw. My pain management doctor had told me I could safely stay on them throughout the pregnancy but that the baby would have to be checked into the hospital for a safe detox if I was still on the drugs when he was born. I didn't want that, so I was off all pain meds a full 4 weeks before his birth, just in case he came early).
When I went into the NICU Orion was shaking uncontrollably. I was in a wheel chair, unable to stand, so I couldn't really see him, just a bit of his side really. But I could reach up and touch him. He was so cold. 91 degrees sounds warm, but, in reference to normal body temperature, its very cold. My son was born, but there was no warm embrace, no soft lit room filled with loving family, no first suckle. Instead he was cold, shaking, hooked up to tubes and I.V.s out of my reach, out of my arms, the loving family was restricted to two at a time by his bedside in the NICU, and he was getting his nutrients from an I.V. while I was trying to use a breast pump. My husband and I sat there, 10 days, at least 10 days before we could have our baby back, but we were optimistic. We knew, either first or second hand, of many babies who had spent a few days in the NICU after birth, 2 for exactly the same problem, who had come home safe and sound after a few days of oxygen and care. We learn new things about those we love in times of stress. I responded to the overwhelming emotional stress in my customary way, by affecting a clinical detachment that allowed me to remain functional. Despite nearly 24 hours of labor I was awake and wheeled into the NICU several times that night to speak with the nurses and watch my newborn son tremble in his crib. Ben? He responded by a nearly coma-like sleep, trusting me to wake him if something happened. And thus ended the first day of our son's life.

My Unpopular Hypothesis

2008-06-15T15:58:00.000-05:00

Another one so soon?? Yes indeed! I choose to post this even though every time I mention this to other people I usually get weird looks, even though it is not one of my usual highly contested political/religious 'hot button' issues, but hey, maybe somewhere out there is someone who agrees with me on this one. (If this is the first time you've checked my blog for a while because you know me and know i don't post regularly, make sure not to miss my last post, which is only a few days old)

Do you remember when you were in science class as a student and you had to come up with a hypothesis to test? You remember, the Scientific Method? Observe, Hypothesize, Test, Repeat. Well I’ve observed something that is commonly pushed upon the public as a ‘fact’ that I do not believe actually stands up to the Scientific Method. (And for once I’m not talking about evolution.) Now I will never have a chance (or at least it is extremely unlikely that I will have the chance) to test my hypothesis, but I can at least take the opportunity to share my observations and hypothesis with others.
Now its common knowledge that in the last generation skin cancer occurrences have greatly increased, we’ve all been told since we were children to slather on the sunscreen, stay out of the sun, wear hats and long sleeves, and in every way to minimize our sun exposure. Why? ‘Common knowledge’ will tell you it’s because sun exposure increases and/or causes skin cancer. Now certainly there is a proven link between SUN BURNS and an increased risk of skin cancer, but does sun exposure itself equal skin cancer? (For the purposes of this debate ‘sun burn’ means a painful reddening of the skin that emits heat and is sensitive to heat/cold/and touch. It may or may not include blisters or peeling.)
Like all problems and questions I always suggest approaching it from a logical basis, so let’s look at what we know.
1) Overall exposure to the sun has decreased greatly since our grandparent’s time.
2) Overall use of sunscreen has greatly increased since our grandparent’s time.
3) Occurrences of skin cancer have greatly increased since our grandparent’s time.
4) Racially (and historically) speaking the closer the race is to the equator, the lower its overall occurrence of skin cancer.
5) Sun exposure is greater the closer one gets to the equator.
6) Our bodies need the sun to produce vitamin D, a necessity.
7) Our bodies have a built-in filter that builds over time in response to sun exposure.
8) The race with the lowest occurrence of skin cancer world wide lives very close to the equator, at very high elevations, and participate in a daily sunning activity that exposes a large portion of their skin to the sun during ‘peak’ sun hours.

Given these 8 points one can immediately rule out general unprotected sun exposure as a causality of skin cancer. Logically life-long sun exposure should actually reduce ones likelihood of skin cancer. But we know that sun burns do greatly increase an individual’s likelihood of skin cancer, and we know the UV rays of the sun are (usually) responsible for skin cancer so, where’s the catch? Where does a healthy, beneficial, and necessary thing (sun exposure) suddenly turn into a (potentially) deadly disease?
My hypothesis is that skin cancer is on the rise because we intentionally remove our body’s defensive filters. When a babe is born he has smooth, soft, and pale skin (even darker races are paler as children than as adults). When he is exposed to the world around him, wind, texture, and sun, his skin automatically matures to help protect him from the world. (Remember two things, 1) we are in a fallen world and the fallen world is innately dangerous and 2) the purpose of the skin, the largest organ in the human body, is to protect.) It does this by becoming rough where it was once smooth, first calluses on the knees from crawling, then on the hands and feet from walking and working; firmer where it was once soft, like the general hardening of the hands or soles of the feet and the overall texture difference; and darker where it once was pale, producing more melanin in response to the sun, in other words, tanning.
All of these things are the body’s natural way to protect us from the world and what do we do? Intentionally use products to remove our body’s protection. Let us look at this from a slightly different angle for a moment to help put it into perspective. Remember a time where you had to do physical labor you were unaccustomed to for a time, let us use digging as an example. The first day, probably within the first hour for truly ‘new activities, you get blisters from the shovel. Your hands are unaccustomed to the texture and friction that goes along with both your grip on the shovel and the pressure caused by digging. Everyone knows blisters don’t last forever though, they’ll grow, painfully, eventually burst (if the activity is not discontinued), and the skin that grows back in afterwards is thicker, harder, better able to stand up to the texture, friction, and pressure of this now understood activity. If the activity continues, calluses will form over those initial pressure sores to further protect the delicate nerves, blood vessels, and musculature. What was once extremely painful is now painless due to our body’s natural protection. That’s how it’s supposed to work.
Now, image for a moment that every time that tougher skin started to grow you took a piece of pumice to it and ground it off until the skin was as smooth and soft as it had been before. Guess what’s going to happen the next day? Yep, that’s right, another painful blister because you just removed your skin’s protection. And guess what, if you continue to remove the stronger skin every time it tries to grow in, not only will you be in constant pain from blisters, but the repeat damage to the nerves and lower levels of the skin may cause permanent damage.
So let’s apply this logically to our skin cancer hypothesis. If the body naturally grows darker, firmer, and stronger skin in response to the sun and we continue to remove that protection what is likely to happen? Not only will you get more sun burns, but, as we see in today’s society, more occurrences of skin cancer. Makes sense right? So why would anyone in their right mind get rid of their bodies protections? For vanity.
We as a culture have a very aristocratic view on beauty, which means we find traits that portray a certain social standing, weather actual or perceived, to be more desirable as a cultural than reproductive beauty. Let me explain, because this is important and very few people really think about ‘beauty’ or what that means.
There are two distinct types of ‘beauty’ that the human mind registers, there is sexual, or reproductive, beauty, and then there is cultural, or social, beauty. Reproductive beauty is a trait that varies very little between different races, cultures, ages, or classes. Social beauty, however, varies greatly between races, cultures, ages, or (to a lesser degree) classes.
There have been many studies on what humans find sexually beautiful, and no ones really surprised by the results since its what nearly everyone will automatically recognize as a ‘good mate’. Men prefer symmetrical, mid-toned (tanned) young women with large breasts, wide hips, straight teeth, oval faces, mid range body fat (about 25%), and as close to ‘perfect’ proportions as possible. (for those of you who aren’t artists and don’t have the standard human proportions memorized the basic measurements *there are a great deal of more precise ones but this gives you an idea* for the human form are about 7 heads tall, females have a shoulder width of about 2-2 ½ heads, males about 3, the torso is 2 heads tall, thighs 2 heads, lower legs 2 heads, elbows to the inner curve of the waist, which is where the ribcage ends, feet length equal to lower arm length, hands the same length as chin to hairline and outstretched fingers the same chin to hairline measurement.) Females prefer symmetrical, mid-toned (tanned) mature men with facial hair, wide shoulders, square-jawed faces, straight teeth, mild body-fat (lower than for females, about 18-20%), visibly developed musculature, and as close to ‘perfect’ proportions as possible.
We intrinsically know these characteristics will make a good mother/father and caregiver/protector, and even at only a few months old babies will already choose people/pictures that portray these characteristics.
Reproductive beauty doesn’t care if you have crow’s feet, weather-chapped or ‘leathery’ skin, or calluses. Social beauty, however, looks at an entirely different set of markers.
Social beauty is defined by class markers specific to each society that indicates social standing and class ranking. It is learned, not automatic, and is more important in cultures that have advanced to a point where social standing has more to do with putting food on the table than physical ability. In our European based society social beauty is still largely based on the aristocratic markers common to the upper classes during the pre-industrial revolution era.
For instance pale skin is considered socially beautiful because it harkens back to the day when only the rich were able to afford the leisurely life that kept them out of the sun year round. In fact the term ‘blue blooded’ which we still use to refer to old-money, powerful people/families was a term for the aristocrats of Europe because their skin, unlike that of the working class, was pale enough for blue veins to be visible. Smooth skin is admirable for the same reason. Woman so thin the are nearly pre-pubescent in their forms touch on a few different aristocratic concepts but the most important ones are 1) the woman clearly were wealthy enough to avoid any labor, and 2) were wealthy enough to afford wet-nurses and nursemaids to rear their children so they could retain their ‘young’ appearance. I could continue, but you get the point.
We as a culture have been trained since early childhood that these social indicators, such as fair, fine, unmarked skin, are more important than natural beauty. From a very early age children are taught by the culture, heavily influenced by the media and grown-up interactions, that these social indicators make people more desirable as friends, peers, and even future mates. Peer-pressure to conform to these social indicators is tremendous and is further fueled by the rampant advertising campaigns of beauty product manufactures. The simple fact that it is much easier to change ones social beauty than ones reproductive beauty (moisturizers vs surgery for instance) and that changing ones social beauty can help them change social standing (or at least other people perception of their social standing) makes it seem almost illogical to resist this peer-pressure.
Which is why, I believe, no one in the general scientific community will ever question the actual benefits of such ‘beauty’ products as moisturizers and general ‘skin care products’. And, even though we are now seeing an increased number of American’s suffering from a lack of vitamin D or even vitamin D deficiency (especially among children and the upper classes), I highly doubt anyone is going to advise people to do the logical thing and go sit in the sun for a while because, as long as we as a society are obsessed with keeping adult skin in its immature ‘baby fine’ condition, we will continue to see nothing but an increase in skin cancer.
Of course, take it or leave it, it’s only a hypothesis after all, one I have no way of formally testing. If I could I’d ask a few thousand skin cancer suffers how frequently they used moisturizers or anti-aging/rejuvenating products and compare their answers with an equal amount of people (of the same age/race/latitude) that have never had skin cancer. Follow that up with a 10 year study of people who did everything they could to avoid the sun and keep their skin ‘young’ in comparison to people who spent time every day sunning themselves and avoided all such skin care products, and I think we’d have an answer to my hypothesis (and, I think, a new way of looking at cancer prevention and skin care). Unfortunately, such statistical gathering of raw data is far beyond my ability as a private citizen, and given the huge monies involved in skin care products, I doubt we’ll ever read such a study.
For me, logic rules and the choice is easy, with or without any further statistical data. The previously made 8 points is enough to convince me. So I get as much sun as I can, make sure I don’t burn, and avoid all moisturizers, any product that is supposed to ‘repair’ or ‘rejuvenate’ skin to a ‘healthy youthfulness’, and all anti-aging products. I also make the mental choice to ignore social beauty and look upon people with weather-worn tanned skin, callused hands, and healthy fat deposits with all the admiration that they, in their natural, healthy beauty deserve, looking forward to seeing the warm, natural beauty of my own features as I age, crows feet and all, perfectly happy to ‘look my age’. And I’m willing to bet that I’m far less likely to develop skin cancer than the 40 year old women who are slathering on anti-aging creams and sunscreens with equal abandon in hopes of looking 20.

Cultural Suicide

2008-06-07T18:39:00.000-05:00

So I’ve been putting off an entry because every time I started writing, the topic just felt off. Something finally clicked, however, and this is probably my most politically incorrect and charged post yet. Most of my topics are definitely politically incorrect, but they usually only anger one side of the political spectrum. This one, however, is likely to tick off people from both sides.
This post is about IVF (in vitro fertilization), fertility drugs, and population. First off, I know this is a long post, in fact 7 pages typed out, but it easily could have been twice that long. So please bear with me for the duration. And I may expound upon related issues (genetic testing, embryonic stem cells, and further abortion/population control) at a later date. That being said I want to start by stating a few fundamental points that I want everyone to keep in mind during the duration of this post.
1) The only population problem we are having is a lack of population. Over population is the last problem the earth is having. All the people on the planet could comfortably fit in standard apartment style family housing in the U.K. That’s right, those couple of small islands off the west coast of Europe could contain all of human population. Of course, the U.K. isn’t the nicest of places, climate wise, how about fitting the entire world’s population on the big isle of Hawaii? We’d fit. And that would leave the rest of the world for food production, animal husbandry, manufacturing plants, undeveloped natural habitat, and even future growth. Why is this important? Well apart from being a very interesting mathematical fact, it makes the point that all those ‘population control’ arguments are nothing but an attempt to blackmail the ‘breeding’ members of society to commit cultural suicide.
2) Since all qualifications for biological life are met the moment sperm and egg unite, since life is either classified as human or non-human (its biologically impossible to be ‘potentially’ human or ‘potentially’ canine for instance), and since murder is defined as ending human life without the justification of law or self-defense, therefore all destruction of human life in the pre-birth age group, unless for the express purpose of self-defense, is murder.
3) Every species that drops below replacement level in reproduction, without specific intelligent intervention, has suffered extinction.
4) Replacement reproduction is 2.7 children per woman. All the economic power countries in the world are below replacement level for their native women, and most are below replacement level even including immigrant women. Most third world countries are close to or below replacement levels as well.
5) The most common natural spacing of children for a healthy woman is 18 to 30 months (depending upon natural fertility and breast feeding), and human women most commonly reach sexual maturity between 13 and 16. They loose the ability to naturally reproduce between 40 and 45 years of age. That leaves about 25-30 years of reproductive ability, or, let us assume 36 months between children to be generous, between 8 and 10 children given normal human fertility. (No I’m not necessarily advocating women start having children as soon as they are capable, but historically, morally, and biologically speaking there aren’t any actual reasons against it as long as that women is in a faithful, lifelong marriage partnership, these are simply statistics.)
In this day and age, especially in first world countries such as America, we are being told some very contradictory things. First off, it’s the ‘right’ of every pregnant woman to murder her baby and become not-pregnant. At the same time we are being told every non-pregnant woman should have the right to use unnatural intervention to become pregnant. (Since both abortion and IVF/fertility treatments are usually covered by either insurance or governmental welfare programs, taxpayers are being forced to pay for these ‘rights’.) Then we are being told that it is the right of the woman (and possibly her spouse) to use those unnatural interventions to determine what kind of child they will or will not have, again having the right to destroy the child if it is not to their liking. While all this is going on hundreds of thousands of children are abandoned, neglected, raised on the streets, in ill-conceived orphanages, or under-supervised foster homes.
While the government makes it easier for people to destroy viable children, and unnaturally create children, on taxpayer’s money, while making it progressively harder to place children in permanent, loving, and safe homes.
In the interest of disclosure I will advise my readers that I am currently pregnant, and while it took longer than expected for me to get pregnant, I have never had to deal with infertility. (I do have some physical difficulties that have always made pregnancy a question, and may make future pregnancies more difficult or even ill-advised) Now I fully believe in every couples right to have as many children as they wish, even believe in the duty of couples to raise children. I know a couple must feel immense shame, heartache, and even failure at the inability to conceive. I know this because, throughout history and in every culture, being barren has been the great social stigma. Being ‘civilized’ as we are in our post modern industrialized age can not change such a deeply ingrained biological necessity or our response to it. Of course infertile couples should always be given societies help and encouragement to adopt or otherwise rear/help rear non-biological children.
Over all, however, the percentage of the population that is infertile is minimal, and has never been enough to hinder the survival of the species. Now, however, our infertility rate is climbing quickly.
This climbing infertility rate is directly linked to two things. The first is the rising use of IVF and fertility drugs. Before IVF and fertility drugs women, or men, who were infertile could not pass on their genes to future generations. Now these women, through artificial and unnatural means, are not only passing on their genes but, since they are more likely to have multiple births (or donate unused embryos to other women) they are now more likely to leave a greater genetic footprint than a healthy woman.
Since fertility and infertility are strongly (although clearly not fully) genetic, the more babies born to mothers through fertility treatments or IVF, the more future mothers will have to rely upon them. And, only a single generation past the introduction of these unnatural means, the need for them, our percentage of infertile women, has already noticeably risen. Are we as a society prepared to breed ourselves to the point where we can only conceive and carry through artificial means? Are we willing to so condemn future generations just to assert the so called ‘rights’ of the infertile minority? How can it be anyone’s right to deny nature?
We live in a fallen world, where sin has corrupted the natural order. We know it is unnatural for women to not get pregnant, only the sin cursed world we live in makes possible such a painful disruption of the natural order. Given that we do live in this world, however, where death and disease corrupts and genetic defects wreck havoc, just because we can change something, can do something, doesn’t mean that such a thing is a responsible thing to do.
The joy of birth for a previously barren woman must be weighed against the long term consequences of such an act. Not only are ‘fertility’ births more likely to be multiple births which pass on detrimental genes, the act of IVF has been shown to increase the likelihood of birth defects, premature birth, c-sections (which increases the risk of death and serious injury to both mother and child) and life-long brain, neurological, and physical impairments.
Further more nearly all IVF treatments destroy embryos, both those deemed ‘unhealthy’ and under most circumstances those deemed ‘healthy’ as well. Therefore even if all other IVF issues were ignored, it should be despised and rejected as another form of wholesale slaughter of the unborn. Given the number of humans destroyed to produce one successful IVF baby, it would be appropriate for an IVF baby to be considered to have survived IVF, or born in spite of IVF, as opposed to having been born because of it.
For those who aren’t genetically infertile, IVF and fertility drugs can be used by woman who are close to or have passed the natural age of conception. Assuming that these women are not naturally infertile (which may or may not be true given the situation of each woman) IVF and fertility drugs still pose a detrimental effect upon both the woman, and upon society. Fertility drugs have a long list of devastating side effects for the woman, not to mention the general emotional strain upon such women when they don’t succeed, are extremely expensive, usually footed by insurance companies which means every insurer pays for it through rising health care costs, and are more likely to cause multiple births (which are frequently ‘selectively’ terminated by doctors and/or mothers who don’t want more than one or two live children), and have been shown to increase the risk of pregnancy, including premature birth (although what percentage of those increased risks can be directly related to the drugs and what percentage related to the woman needing those drugs to get pregnant to being with is impossible to accurately determine). As far as the societal damage such drugs and IVF treatments pose there is a reason woman are only fertile for so long. Humans are not physically mature (depending upon your definitions of physical maturity) until around 16 for women and 20 for men; they reach cultural maturity (depending upon the culture) between sexual maturity, perhaps as young as 12 for some females, to upwards of the early 20’s. So, depending upon culture, children will be dependant upon their parents, especially their mothers, for an average of 15 to 20 years. In America parents are responsible for 18 years.
A woman during her natural reproductive years should be capable of physically, economically, and mentally caring for her children until they are adults. A 40 to 45 year old women who conceives via IVF or fertility drugs will be (in America) 58 to 63 years old before her maternal obligations are fulfilled, and that assumes that they do not help their children through the college years or early adult years. If they help until 22 (4 years of college after high school) they will be 62 to 67 years old.
By the time the mother has given birth, she has already significantly declined from her physical prime in which she is meant to be responsible for an active, growing child. By the time that child has come of age the women will be nearing retirement age, the age of a grandmother, and, under many circumstances, incapable of responding to the physical, emotional, or monetary needs of a teenager or new adult. And, somewhat more important societally speaking, a child new to adulthood is not capable of taking care of an aging parent.
Historically and naturally speaking children should be taking care of their parents once their parents can no longer work. Our current rejection of the historical and natural order of things has led to our dependency on completely inappropriate and inadequate governmental programs such as social security and medicare/medicade. Having children unnaturally late, or having a reduced number of children than biologically natural, while does on occasion happen naturally, is a perfect set up for an economic collapse, which is exactly what has happening in most first world cultures. Which leads into my next point.
Many completely fertile women have been convinced to delay marriage and/or birth and to intentionally limit the number of their children. Not only is this based upon faulty information- the over population myth- but its detrimental to society.
The US Census expects that there will be only 2 workers for every retiree within less than 20 years. Not only that but advances in medicine is extending life, usually at quite the premium, so the balance between working years to retired years is becoming more unbalanced and the retired years are becoming more expensive.
It is economically impossible for the government to support such an unbalanced populace, and with so few children born so late few retirees have family to fall back upon. Governmental debt is the least of the problems associated with an aging and unbalanced population. The lack of workers is far more dangerous and the slow decline of the middle class into poverty is equally as bad.
As the percentage of workers slowly decreases and the population ages fewer people are available to work an increasing amount of jobs. Thus our workforce is becoming reliant upon illegal aliens and the outsourcing of jobs, making an increase in overall jobs actually correlate to a rise in unemployment, which we are already seeing the beginnings of today. Illegal aliens are cheaper labor than legal citizens, which drives the wages down, making it all the more difficult for legal citizens, who bear the burden of taxes and social welfare programs in addition to familial necessities, to find and hold ‘living wage’ jobs. Which, in and of itself, is a downward spiral, more unemployment and below living wage jobs equal (in our socialist tinged society) more welfare programs which must be funded by a higher tax burden to the working class, which in turn means the ‘living wage’ must go up to compensate, etc, etc, etc. But that downward spiral is for another post, back to topic…
Outsourcing jobs, however, has nearly the same outcome as illegal aliens. As companies find cheaper labor elsewhere they will move more and more jobs elsewhere, and/or lower the wages on domestic jobs to try to keep up with companies who do outsource. Both leave a native working population, which remember must be making more per person (adjusting for inflation) than previous generations to fund the care of the aging retirees, with less jobs available for lower wages.
This is not theoretical, already, as the early baby-boomers are aging past working age, a 2 income household is not only the norm (at around 70% of households with two working parents), but nearly a necessity. Right now, with most families barely maintaining a living wage income on 2 incomes, the working class is supporting a parent generation which averaged just over 2.5 children and a grandparent generation which averaged over 3 children per woman. But the current working class has fallen to between 1.9 (for native American citizens) and 2.3 (including first generation immigrants) children. Welfare programs are bankrupt with a working class of 2.5 reproductive rate caring for its elderly. Exactly what will happen when the working class of 1.9 reproductive rate is forced to care for an elderly population that will contain not only parents, but grandparents, and, for the first time, a significant amount of ‘great-grandparent’ aged people (over 80)?
Add to the economic strain of caring for an aged population to the increased economic strain of children without parental financial support for higher education, (right now most outsourced jobs are entry level but as fewer parents can afford to help their children through college more high-end jobs will be outsourced due to lack of education, and the government funding of college-level education has already become economically unfeasible and governmental grants are dwindling each year) plus the strain of IVF, fertility drugs, (which is usually covered by insurance and as previously stated, will only become more and more necessary with increased use) and expensive medical life-prolonging advances and we are looking at a true economic collapse. And I’m not referring to one of those ‘nice’ depressions like the Great Depression or the collapse felt in the Soviet Union after WWII; I’m referring to the total collapse of an economic system as in the downfall of the Roman Empire which plunged the then ‘known world’ into the Dark Ages. Add to the complete economic failure a cultural collapse, since, as a culture, we are well below replacement levels, and American civilization will be as much a part of history as the Roman civilization.
To further compound the issue this is not just an American problem, in fact we are 10-15 years behind most 1st world countries/cultures. Japan, England, China, France, Canada, Russia, in fact nearly every European and Eastern European (former Soviet Union) nation are all below replacement levels in reproduction and faced with not only a rapidly aging population but an even worse lack of workers than we are dealing with currently. Japan is estimated to be ‘missing’ over 1 million workers from its currently maturing population.
Any logical person with access to only a few basic statistics (for instance birth rate, aging rate, replacement level etc) can arrive at the same basic conclusion, that the vast majority of ‘power cultures’ and first world nations are committing cultural and economic suicide. Some people would find this to be very appealing (from Muslim nations- one of the only populations still noticeably above replacement levels for the record- to human hating ‘green’ activists), some have buried their heads in the sands, too terrified of what it means to acknowledge it, but most people have simply been overcome intellectually, brainwashed by the over-population myth pushers and the ‘well-meaning’ human rights activists who push for the infertile minority’s ‘right’ to have a biological child.
But for those who look logically at the issue, who recognize biological, cultural, and historical trends, what can be done? Unfortunately given both the massive scale of the problem and the massive brainwashing campaign of the other side I will admit, very little on a large scale. But something can be done on a small scale; do not be a replacement couple. Do not feed the problem by avoiding children, and, if you have difficulty conceiving, give a loving home to as many adopted children as possible. Do not depend upon the welfare system for your retirement plans, and certainly don’t leave your parents to it. A true fix would require a significant mind change in the majority of the population, not something likely to happen in time. But those who are still of childbearing age have the choice to at least attempt to secure our bloodlines, and future security, (and I do not use bloodlines as a racial or racist concept, purely as a term for blood relatives) because even in the face of a cultural and economic collapse some people will make it safely to the other side. Those won’t be the rich, whose money will be useless once overwhelming inflation kicks in, it will be those with the familial structure capable of supporting them.
Switching from a purely statistical/logical stance and getting into more personal concepts, for those who haven’t figured it out yet, I’m a Bible believing Christian. In End-Time prophecy the world powers are listed, and America is not among them. Those who believe the Bible know America will suffer a collapse of sufficient magnitude to drop us as a super-power with world-wide influence. Due to various conditions in other areas of the world, mostly to military might or political make up, some countries have a chance to realistically pull something out of their own socio-economic collapse (for instance the European Union becoming a true government, an empire of sorts, when the individual countries begin to collapse as the increased combined population and cultural structure would be able to forestall, if probably not avoid, a continent wide collapse for at least a few generations, or the ‘million man’ army of Chinese bachelors, since China’s population problems are combined with its significant lack of females, able to sweep the smaller and crumbling societies of Asia and/or Eastern Europe to forestall their own collapse.) America has no such net. Joining or annexing our neighbors (as other countries may be able to do) would only hasten our demise as Canada is further along the economic decline than us due to greater welfare social services and Mexico (which is also below replacement levels in most of its population) is far worse off economically than we are.
While there are certainly other scenarios brewing that could also explain the eventual collapse of America as a super-power, this is clearly a facet that can not be ignored. As a Christian I have no expectation that we will, as a nation, recovering from a below replacement level reproductive rate. Nor even, realistically, a wish for such a thing as the removal of the U.S. from among the super-powers would only be further evidence of the immediate nature of the End-Times.
I do, however, wish for those with their eyes open to survive in a firm, Biblical family unit until the Rapture, which, given a Biblical timeline will most likely be after said U.S. collapse. It is my wish to have as many children as the Lord gives to my husband and me, and to further fulfill my duty as a Christian parent by adopting more children to help balance out what is, biologically, a late start (I’m 25 and have been reproductively mature now for 10 years). I urge others to do the same. God gave us a command, in fact the very first command ‘fill the earth’. Given that all the people in the world could fit in Hawaii, any attempt to halt our population at this time would be in direct contradiction to His command to us. Now I’m not against birth control in general, a newly married couple may fell like God would have them wait for a time, or physical and/or medical reasons may make bearing biological children dangerous to either child or mother. (For instance I know one dedicated Christian couple who can not have biological children due to the risk of extreme birth defects because of medication she took when young) There are legitimate reasons for birth control (as long as we are actually talking about methods that PREVENT pregnancy and not just terminate early term pregnancy), but I believe many Christians are either ignoring God’s prodding to begin reproduction, or have placed mankind’s fallible ideas about over-population, financial security, and human ‘rights’ ahead of ‘be fruitful and multiply’. And for those who can not themselves, for whatever reason, have biological children they should strive for a large, stable family unit of adopted children. (Adoption is perfectly Biblical; in fact we are God’s adopted children)
We must balance our pity and sympathy for those who are barren with our duty to be fruitful, and we must accept God’s Will and Word to fill the earth over man’s attempts to destroy the human population.

And now for something completely different

2007-04-21T18:35:00.000-05:00

I think between my post, my husbands post (if you read one you probably read the other but here is his link if you don't http://smokefilledmirror.blogspot.com/ ) and the news in general we have had enough depressing and frustrating rants in the last week. I sat down to write another post about the homosexual agenda, (more debate and less rant) but I’m not going to. Instead, I’m going to take a tip from Monty Python… And now for something completely different!
Here is a poem for your reflection, it’s meant to be serious and thought provoking, but since it’s also a Cochainian political commentary poem it won’t necessarily make full sense to most of my readers. But, I think the general gist of it transcends cultural boundaries.

Busy rushing always going
So many things, so many cares
What life is this of rush and haste?

Are we warriors that lives hang on our actions?
Or rulers that support nations?
Does not the ale spill if the server is rushed?
Are not the stitches loose if the seamstress hurries?

Shall man require his convenience over another life?
Let it not be!
Even the slave is given the festivals.

Do not follow the senseless sun
Which rushes forever through its daily race.
It accomplishes nothing in its haste
And needs arise anew every day
To chase its path through the sky.

Rather observe the stately march of the stars,
Whose quiet pace is a help to all who seek it.

And now for something completely different!
Did you know that according to the US Department of Agriculture fruity cocktails are good for your health? You see, apparently the ethanol (alcohol in rum, tequila, and other hard spirits) boost the antioxidant nutrients in colorful fruits such as strawberries or blackberries. To quote “Any colored fruit might be made even more healthful with the addition of a splash of alcohol”. Lets see, I guess that lets hard alcohols, provided you drink them with fruit, join the group of ‘health foods’ right along side red wines. I guess it just goes to show, ‘everything in moderation’. Which really should be ‘most things in moderation’, because there are some things that should be done to excess. ;) Here’s the link to the news article if you’re interested: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/nutrition_cocktails_odd_dc

And now for something completely different!
Here are some well known scientists from the past that were creationists (for a much more complete list look at
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/bios/default.asp : Frances Bacon, Galileo Galilei, Johann Kepler, Blaise Pascal, Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, Johathan Edwards, Carolus Linneaus, Samuel F.B. Morse, Gregor Mendel, Louis Pasteur, William Thompson (Lord Kelvin), Joseph Lister, James Clerk Maxwell, Alexander MacAlister, and George Washington Carver. So just remember, if you believe in the Bible you are not only in good standing religiously but also intellectually and scientifically!

And now for something completely different!
Nope, never mind, I think I’ll take my own advise, this is one joke that should be used in moderation.

"Equal Protection"

2007-04-19T21:30:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I've written about this before, but its come up again and I think its time to revisit the subject.
I found out something horrible today. The Oregon legislature passed a bill to allow domestic partnerships and to grant protected minority status to homosexuals, transvestites, bisexuals, ET all. I just had a rather expected online argument with one of my chat buddies, which ended when he simply left (which is rather typical for liberals, they rarely want to go through any form of logical debate they just want to spout rhetoric and then get ticked off when you dare question it) about my dismay over the new 'laws'. You know, I wish I owned a business, because right now, I would be very proud to get arrested for refusing to hire the right 'quota' of homosexuals, or get sued for having, instead of a sensitivity lecture, a required attendance lecture on the dangers of homosexuality.
Man, I even hate the word. "Homosexual", biologically speaking, means a creature that reproduces asexually, within the 'same sex'. Strictly speaking its impossible for a human to be homosexual. A better term would be homophiliac, lover of the same. Not that 'love' is a good term to use for that particular practice. How about 'homofornicator'? Yeah, I like that, its a great description. Of course, I always preferred sodomite or queer. Sodomite technically doesn't describe females that have sex with other females, but queer works for both.
Okay, back to the point, they have always had equal protection. There is no reason for 'special protection'. People claim that they don't have equal protection because they can't 'marry' whoever they want, and they might be discriminated against. News flash, I can't marry whoever I want either. I can only marry (or could marry since I'm already married) a living member of sufficient age of the same species that is not a close relative, who is not currently married to another, and who is of the opposite sex. The average person can't get married to whomever they please, why should queers have special rights? What about all those necrophiliacs? How about those pedophiles? How about all those lonely polygamists? They can't marry whomever they wish, why should queers be able to? Of course, what most people who are so quick to defend the queer don't realise is that making 'marriage' between two people, regardless of sex, is just the first step. Next is to allow marriage between multiple partners (its already begun, a polygamist recently sued, thankfully he lost but its only a matter of time, to set aside his conviction for marrying 3 women using the same argument that struck down the sodomy laws in Texas which sparked all this 'marriage' talk), then the next step is to remove age restrictions. Don't believe me? Look overseas. The country that has always preceded us in queer rights, The Netherlands, has not only domestic partnerships for multiple partners but a POLITICAL PARTY based around pedophilia.
As far as discrimination in employment we discriminate against convicted rapists all the time, and well, they will be happy to tell you they are 'born that way' and that rape is the only way they can enjoy sex. Don't know about you but my employment contract includes a morality clause that says I can be fired for making the company look bad or producing bad PR. Like if a CEO has a messy affair they can be fired because its bad PR. Well, if a company has a good moral compass it will make them look bad to employ a practicing queer. If a queer wants a job maybe they should keep their perversion in the proverbial 'closet'. Lets be clear about something here. I'm not homophobic, such a stupid term, no more than I am adulterer-phobic or pedophilia-phobic. I work with at least 3 queers, and converse politely with them as coworkers. And there used to be another there. She was very outspoken, and blurted out, very loudly, about her sexual experiences with her partner during a company dinner. Nothing happened to her. I would say if a normal couple said something that lewd, that loudly, during a company function I would expect the bosses to get their tail feathers ruffled. But since she was queer if they had done something they could have gotten in trouble for discrimination. I am not, in anyway, suggesting that rules apply differently to queers than they do to people of more moral bedroom practices. The exact opposite, I demand they be treated the same! Why is it okay to tell someone you disagree with adultery, but if you say you are against sodomy you are bigoted and 'homophobic' and (as proven by numerous stories from around the country) can be fired for simply voicing your point of view, a point of view that has ruled every society from time memorial. (Even in the Greco-Roman culture homosexuality was still considered by the majority of the populace to be wrong, it was just tolerated among the upper classes)
So then people say, well since we have separation of church and state its not right to criminalize sin, or to let people's religious convictions dictate other people's 'rights' to do as they please. Really? What are laws? They are state sponsored criminalization of sin. Murder? Against the law. Rape? Against the law. Pedophilia? Against the law. Why do we have the right to say these things are wrong but the 'right' to say so stops at homosexuality? There is no logical reason, there is no scientific reason, there is no biological reason. In fact the only possible reason to not include an act that is against reason, is against science, is against biology, in the list of sins we already criminalize is the wanton and willful inclusion of sin purely because its sin. The queers have been shouting for so long, demanding that they be allowed not only to sin, not only to rub our faces in it, but for the right not to call is sin, and not to allow us to call it sin, that the public finally was intimidated. Like some 5 year old who's afraid of being yelled at our elected officials, as well as a fair amount of the populace has folded and fearfully begun to bow and scrape to the alter of political correctness. The fact that every state that has brought a defense of marriage amendment to the ballots has passed it shows that the majority of the populace aren't scared by yelling, but that lawmakers in those very states repeatedly ignore the general populace proves that apparently being elected to office requires the removal of all courage and conviction. For some reason the majority of people who vote for marriage protection laws then turn around and vote into office people without enough spine to stand up to the temper tantrum of the approximately 1% of the population that is queer. That's what I will never understand. Why people don't vote on their convictions. They vote on political issues, who promises tax relief, better schools, or better roads, all the while ignoring the actual important issues of weather a politician is for baby-murder (abortion), forced feeding children sin (homosexual programs in school), homofornication, ET all. Don't get me wrong, I wish we had better public schools, but if the choice is between bringing the public schools up to snuff or stopping babies from being slaughtered, guess which one I choose? So why in the bleepedy bleep does anyone think that its 'okay' to vote on purely political issues instead of moral ones? I've heard confessing Christians (I say confessing because I find it difficult for any real born-again Christian to think this way) say that they don't think its their job to vote for 'forcing beliefs on others' IE criminalizing abortion or homosexuality. Well who else is going to do it? The non-Christian who finds being yelled at horrific?
Okay, so this ended up on a different tangent than it started, but its all connected, its all one big attempt to brainwash and keep life and truth from reaching the populace. An attempt to silence the truth, the Truth, from being preached because its not politically correct, because it might offend, because it might call someone a sinner.
If you are reading this and are a Christian, even if you aren't a Christian but you defend the Jedo-Christian belief system this country was founded on, I urge you to vote not for politics, which are fleeting and ultimately pointless, but to vote for morality, which might just help save one life, one babe, one child, one impressionable teenager from death, death by suction, death by abuse and molestation, death from AIDS and STDs, and from the ultimate death of never being told the truth.
With prayer,
Jez

Altered

2007-02-02T17:49:00.000-06:00

"While based in part on a fictious event this blog is the response to actual events and does depict actual persons and events. Any resembled to real people, places, or events, known, read about, or heard third hand from your niece's friend, is entirely intentional."
Okay, so I haven't been on in a while, and I know I touched on this point in one of my previous blogs, but I just had to restate. I was watching Law & Order today and they were prosecuting a fellow for murder one because he killed 3 people while driving. Now some of you may recognize this episode just by that and know where I'm heading, for the rest of you, some plot points. The man was actually drunk while he was driving, and he probably didn't hit the people 'on purpose' but they can't really 'prove' he was drunk. There is a witness that collaborates his story about how much he had to drink (about 15 of those little airline bottles of Scotch) but McCoy is more or less hiding her from the defense because the most the guy can get for 'vehicular manslaughter' is 5-15 and they can get him for life for 'murder one'. Since there are witnesses that say the man intentionally sped up to hit the first pedestrian he killed, McCoy isn't happy with vehicular manslaughter. At the end McCoy 'does the right thing' and hands over the witness statement that states he was actually drunk and therefore 'not responsible' for murder and gets the man for vehicular manslaughter. The whole point is since he was drunk he couldn't form 'intent' to kill. One more thing: he did this before, sending a woman into a coma, and was driving without a license at the time of the 3 deaths because the last judge took his license away.
Can someone please tell me what part of this wasn't intentional???? Not only did the man have a known track record of being belligerent and irrational (above the norm) when he was drunk he also knew he had driven and hurt someone before. Yet, knowing this, knowing what might come from drinking, HE STILL CHOSE TO GET DRUNK. The key word there is CHOSE. He knew full well that getting drunk may result in another injury or death because he knew himself and his history. He even admitted that he was prone to blackout periods. Most people, if they accidentally put someone into a coma by their hand, would go to any lengths to avoid such a thing happening again. Yet he went out of his way to recreate the same situation, choosing to get drunk when he had no definate plan to get home safely. There is nothing sacred about getting drunk, or high, or any other form of 'altered', no inaliable 'right' or 'reason' to do so. (please note I am not saying that getting drunk should be illegal, just that any one individual doesn't have any specific 'right' to get drunk where, when, and however he wishes and that restrictions can/are/should be put into place to protect societ as a whole, such as no driving under the influence.) Unless someone forcefully injects you, or spikes your drink without you realizing, then you darn well are responsible for ANYTHING that happens while you are drunk. Its the same thing as if you plan a robbery and someone gets killed. Even through you didn't 'intend' to murder since a murder is a foreseeable outcome from a robbery you are guilty of murder. Since an accident is a foreseeable outcome of driving drunk and driving drunk is a foreseeable outcome of getting drunk in an area that you do not have a specific plan to to get drunk and get home safe that someone is drunk shouldn't be any more of an excuse for murder than robbery is. I can not understand why murdering someone while breaking a law should give you a way to beat said murder rap! And the same should be said for any form of intentionally altered state, pot, heroine, prescription drug abuse, gypsum, etc. Now since I've never been drunk some people might say I don't know what I'm talking about. I don't understand how you don't intend to get drunk, how you don't realize you're drunk, how you can't be expected to stick to a plan when you are drunk etc etc etc. Okay, I've never been drunk. I have, however, been sober. And I've been a designated driver. And I've had enough to drink that I knew it was beginning to affect me. I know its perfectly reasonable to a) realize you are beginning to feel the effects of alcohol b) to realize you probably shouldn't drink anymore c) to plan ahead and have a reliable designated driver, and d) to not have keys on you when you start the evening. If someone wants to get drunk, and while I don't quite understand it and feel sorry for people who feel getting drunk is necessary to 'have a good time', its perfectly reasonable to expect a SOBER person to plan ahead to know a) where they are going to get drunk b) where they will stay the night or alternately c) how they will get home. As well as d) not to leave the house with any means of driving e) but with enough money to call a cab if they happen to get stuck. Well then, you say, what about people who take the keys to a car after they are already drunk and change the plan by getting behind the wheel of a car? Any designated driver worth the trust of being a designated driver, as well as any friend worth his salt, would immediately call the cops on anyone who did such a thing so the cops could deal safely with the situation. Yes, if we were at a friend's house drinking and my husband (I am usually the designated driver), for whatever reason, grabbed the keys and headed off in the car you better believe I would call the cops right away. I would much rather have my husband arrested for a DUI than have him in an accident where he killed someone. Its too much of a risk. And for those who would said 'well it just happened', that they didn't plan on getting drunk so they couldn't reasonably be expected to have a plan... then don't bloody get drunk! There is no reason why you suddenly HAVE to drink because you suddenly and unexpectly have the ability to take a drink! If you want to change your plan to include drinking you have the time you are sober before you take your first drink to be a responsible adult and MAKE a plan BEFORE you take that first 'unexpected' drink. The only drink that can reasonably be called 'unexpected' is the one you didn't know you took, i.e. someone spiked your 7up. Even that's not a horribly good excuse because by the time someone has reached drinking age they've been told repeatedly that while at a part they should never take a drink from everyone, always get your own and if the drinks are in a community area make sure its sealed. Yes, it possible for someone to spike the drink of even the most careful of people, but its not very likely. The bottom line is this: not holding people responsible for what they CHOOSE to do is only another way of giving them permission to do it. People drink and drive, people smoke dope, shoot heroine, cook meth, and otherwise give themselves over to alternate states of consciousness because they know perfectly well the justice system is like a free ride for them. All they have to say is 'diminished capacity' and they'll be out in time to hit the next happy hour.

Video game logic

2006-09-10T00:58:00.000-05:00

I have a fairly unique perspective on video games. Specifically I'm horrible at playing them but very good at helping others play them. My hand eye coordination works great on direct interaction things such as general artistic endeavors, weaponry and such activities where you use something as an extension of yourself. It sucks on distance related things such as throwing, catching, and, most notably, video games. Remembering that I have to hit the little X button to make my character kick, or even figuring out how much left I have to push the arrow to make my character move across the screen just doesn't click. My brother, however, is and always have been fantastic at video games. He was also very persuasive and could usually talk me into not only helping him buy or beg for a system or game but also sit and watch him play. It was my job to read the manuals, watch the game, and figure out the 'tough' spots. My husband is very much the same and I have easily slipped into the same position of helper to his slightly more complicated games. I have spent literally hundreds upon hundreds of hours watching and advising on video games of all types from basic fighting games such as Soul Blade to very complex games such as Prince of Persia. They're the ones beating the games before their friends, setting scores in arcades, and killing the big bad; I'm the one answering the question "okay where do I go now?", "how do I get over there?", or "why can't I find the stupid thing!" Perhaps its because I'm not actually stressed out dealing with the bad guys but the answer is usually fairly apparent after a careful survey of the surroundings. I have found that while video game players today are quite obsessed with 'walkthroughs' no one seems to be paying much attention to the general rules of video games. My husband and I got through all of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time without a walkthrough. (When he went through Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within he purchased a walkthrough but he fell back on me when the walk through didn't give enough information.) Realizing there are general rules to video games can be far more helpful, not to mention a lot cheaper than buying all those game specific helps. So, without further adieu I present to you my top ten video game rules to remember.

Basic guide to video games

Rule 1) Follow the enemies.
Since the basic premise of nearly all video games is to beat the enemy the easiest way to find your way through a level is to follow the enemies. If confronted with multiple paths always chose the one with visible enemies, or, baring that, the one where you run into enemies the quickest. In general if you go more than one full screen, or more than a minute, without running into a trap or enemy you are going the wrong way! Turn around and go back.

Rule 2) Kill all enemies.
Enemies are in your way for a reason. In any game where fallen enemies give loot, treasure, or items make sure you kill all enemies before proceeding to the next screen. The one enemy you rush past might carry the key you need to unlock the door in the next level, or the item that will make or break your next boss fight. If you are revisiting areas simply to level up this rule is not as important the second time around.

Rule 3) Collect all items.
This goes with rule number 2. Chests, crates, boxes, etc are placed about for a reason. If you can't open it now, remember it and come back, you will need it eventually. Even if it's just monetary in nature take the time to smash and grab. Otherwise you might find that key item at the next shop is just out of your price range.

Rule 4) Items are there for a reason.
If you are fighting the big bad of the level and every time you turn around you keep picking up knives, use the knives! If you keep finding a plethora of fire based items than fire based items are likely the most effective against the present enemies. Ultimately games are made to be beaten and the material you will need are usually provided in a very timely manner.

Rule 5) Use items wisely.
This works with the same principle as rule number 3 and 4, if you're given it or able to collect it you're going to need it. Don't waste items unnecessarily. If one bomb will work don't use three just because you like the explosion. If two doors lead to the exact same place don't use two keys when just one will work. If the potion heals three hearts and you're only missing one, wait. If you don't you are likely to find that you are short something you'll need later. If you end a level with left over items likelihood is you'll need them in the next level.

Rule 6) Pay attention to your surroundings.
Everything is there for a reason. Visual clues are provided to lead you, usually to somewhere you definitely want to be. Changes in the look of stone walls, rock faces, even curtains or pictures should never been ignored. It takes work for the designers to change things and they aren't going to do it without a reason. Look for these minor changes in your surroundings for vital hints to solve puzzles, open new areas, and find hidden items. When in doubt take the time to give that discolored ice a few swings or try to climb up that suddenly ivy covered wall.

Rule 7) Save often.
Even the most experienced player can do something stupid. Even if you are going through a level you know you can beat if you come across a save spot and you've made any discernable progress since the last one, take a moment to use it. No one wants to lose an hour of game play because the controller came unplugged.

Rule 8) Try it again.
There's a spot, at least one, in every game when every other possible angle of entry or exit has been exploited and the only way to proceed is through that impossible jump, some ridiculous acrobatics, or some other such nonsense. You probably won't make it the first time. The difference between grabbing the ledge and making the jump or falling to your death could be a matter of your jumping off point being an inch to the left as opposed to the right. If you've been following rule 7 trying to three or four times shouldn't be a problem. On the other hand sometimes that impossible jump really is impossible and there is another way. If you've tried something four or five times and still can't make it go back and pay closer attention to rule number 1 and 6, the really easy exit is probably hidden behind the strangely colored brick.

Rule 9) Upgrades
If you are playing a game that allows for upgrades make every attempt to procure them as soon as possible. If you wait too long game play will get increasingly more difficult, which will make picking up the experience or items needed for said upgrade all the more difficult to obtain. Most games that require upgrades also allow for backtracking. If you find yourself in battles were every little bad guys seems destined to kill you, head back a few levels and spend some time leveling up before you try to proceed, but don't forget rule number 7 or your tireless hours of killing level one meanies might be wiped out due to a momentary distraction.

Rule 10) Try everything.
You can in fact get to the room, defeat the bad guy, gather that last crystal, etc, etc, etc. Games are not made with level that you can't pass, rooms you can't enter/exit, or bad guys that can't be beat. If you think you find yourself in such a situation it's either because you have ignored one of the previous rules or you are unlucky enough to have fallen into a glitch in the game. Glitches are rare, but certainly not unheard of. If you find yourself stuck in a glitch, reset the game to your last save spot. Most glitches can be avoided once you've found them.

Random Responses 2 of 2

2006-06-05T00:19:00.000-05:00

Due to length I broke this up into two pieces, look back one to find the beginning and explanation. (question for first response in italicts) *Author's note* I just realized that when I published this is put two of my posts of my 'previous' list and into the archives. So if this is a new blog for any one reading this you can now find "wrongful...life?", my first post, in the archives list. My popular 'sick days' is found there as well. :)

C) Every day, I find a news story about someone in an education or government position, who is being arrested for child related sex crimes. I've talked to Louise about this, and you know, even though for the most part I consider myself liberal, I'm starting to think that the problem is with the media, television and movies that seem to be 'glamorizing' the sexuality of the very young. And parents seem to be losing their compass on what is 'acceptable' behavior by their children.. allowing them to wear clothing that is extremely revealing or just plain sexual (thongs for 8 yr old girls!). I have theorized that this may be a 'fallback' to how we viewed sexuality/eligibility for marriage when most of society was agricultural .. when at 14 you were as educated as you needed and started looking for a good partnership..I know a few hundred years isn't enough time to 'evolve' that type of thinking out of our culture, but I don't understand why it seems to only be a problem for such a small segment of our society..
Traditionally, in nearly all societies, women are considered adult and marriageable material when they reach sexual maturity, in other words when the period kicks in between 12-17. In nearly all society men have not been considered adult until quite a bit later, 20-30. Its perfectly natural for an older man to find a pubescent woman attractive or a possible wife. In nearly any society, however, prepubescent have always been off limits (the Asian, both Chinese and Japanese have always had a cultural thing for prepubescent girls). It is not normal, healthy, or moral to find prepubescent or younger girls or boys sexual. While the media helps sexual these children, and certainly parents are largely to blame for allowing it as well, it is quite a bit more than that. The media is just a reflection of the cutting edge wants of the people. And when I say cutting edge i mean the most vulgar, liberal (no offense meant), amoral and even anti-moral, outspoken parts of the society. For the last 2 generations or so there has been a constant push to distance sex from the concept of marriage, procreation, and love. its been drilled into our minds from every conceivable secular angle that sex is nothing more than pleasure. The point of sex is to bind two people into one flesh, when you take that away and make it only about sexual gratification you lose the moral footing to say certain forms of sexual gratification are wrong. Social conscious looses its compass and it's distilled down to 'what you want'. While it is possible to hold personal 'preference morals' without a base there is no way to restrain society when you degrade right and wrong to personal preference. While it can take only moments for personal right and wrong preferences to change it takes longer for society as a whole to do so, and it's very gradual. At one point in time fornication was scandalous, totally disgraceful, but when enough people started practicing it, and more importantly, when enough people started fully believing that sex was just about pleasure it became less important, nearly acceptable, eventually it became expected. The liberal edge of society helped push the envelope by inundating the youth with the message that it was normal and okay and by telling the adults there was no way to prevent people, regardless of age, from doing it so we might as well get used to it. They made people believe that it would be better to accept it because then they'd have a chance to make it safer, if they refused it as 'wrong' all they would do is damn those who were going to do it anyway to have no help with the consequences, no where to turn if they got in trouble. The more you accept a thing, however, the more it happens, it's a perfect plan. If you convince one group its okay, the other group that its going to happen anyway you effectively neuter any resistance and make it socially acceptable. Adultery followed closely on the heels of fornication, since everyone was doing 'it' and people might grow out of gratification with one person and want to seek it elsewhere why should people be condemned to a lifetime with only one choice? No fault divorce allowed people to make and break connections so adultery became fornication and marriage just because a good idea as far as taxes go. Next comes a feminist rush, now I'm not talking about the women that fought to get a vote and equal treatment under the law in the 20s and 30s I'm talking about today's breed that splits into two main groups, those that say women is so far superior to man that all we need men for is procreation, and those that believe that there is no difference between the sexes, that male and female are as immaterial to the person as hair color. They both help push society away from marriage but more importantly they both help usher in the next main step in the 'sexual revolution' that degrades sex to just amoral pleasure. Since sex has been distanced from procreation the first group has no reason to keep men in their lives to fulfill their pleasure since sexual gratification doesn't have anything to do with the need to procreate. The second group doesn't see any difference between the sexes, coupled with the distances of procreation from sex, so it doesn't matter to them where you get the pleasure. The male backlash from the first agreed that females were so incredibly different than man that it was pointless to try to force the issue, although obviously disagreeing with the female superiority thing. The second side is as appealing to men as to women. Taken together it is a huge social push towards accepting homosexuality. The same thing happened, the revolution leaders convinced one group that it was okay and convinced the other group that it was inevitable. They downgraded same sex attraction from a deviant predilection to a completely normal preference, threw in a few false statistics and hinted that it might not even be their choice and then shouted for all they were worth. It took about the same amount of time to make homosexuality 'okay' and acceptable as it took to make fornication and adultery. The next planned push it to make bisexuality and polygamy legal in the same push, since they overlap for legal reasons. Since we've bought the first two bluffs, and now believe that sex is nothing more than a pleasurable encounter there is no socially acceptable reason to continue to 'withhold' the 'right' to a person's preferred form of pleasure. While you didn't want to believe me the other day when I said eventually pedophilia will be legalized what you see if the start of that movement, waiting in the wings until its time for its showing. Already it's started to creep forward, just like other areas of the 'sexual revolution' crept forward long before they started shouting for attention. The bisexual legal groups have agreed to wait until the homosexual legal issues have been resolved so as not to push too much on the public at once. These are written agreements between large groups, not just supposition, understand that this is a worldwide push not just in the US so you have to look outside of the US to see the whole picture. Meanwhile, the legal ramifications for pedophilia are being chipped away at, mostly in CA within the US but in Canada, Europe, and Asia as well. Laws requiring doctors to report underage sex and molestation are being revoked, instead of getting years for child molestation or child rape people get a few months, or even less sometimes. The legal and medical societies push to get it defined as an 'illness' or an 'inborn preference' the same steps it took towards homosexuality and bisexuality and 'polysexuality' before classifying it as a 'alternate lifestyle'. Children are sexualized in the media and literature and adult/child relationships are featured in a good light in literature and 'successful' adult/child relationships are celebrated, they get movie and book deals and are flaunted by the media. Exactly the same steps taken for making deviant behavior acceptable that has been used before. If you tell people that sex is just pleasure enough times they'll eventually believe it. Once they do they have no reason to deny that to a 'certain minority' of the population. You might not believe me but history backs me up. The Greco-Roman empire did the exact same things, in more or less the exact same way, and with the same results. The UNICEF, one of the foremost 'child rights' advocates in the world is dedicated to 'the reproductive and sexual rights of all children' and include in their list of rights the right 'to abortion and the choice of their sexual partners' in other words the 'leading' world wide child advocates approves of childhood sex. Meanwhile children who would otherwise have nothing to do with sexuality are being pushed into it by the media telling them that everyone's doing it, its okay and normal, and giving them positive examples of it. Children as young as kindergarten have been caught mimicking sex and its now considered a status symbol to a lot of middle schooler and even elementary kids to have 'made it' with a high schooler. In most places proms, which used to be upper classmen only, are now open not only to 'lower classmen' but also to dates from the local middle school. Elementary schools are staring to have dances. Probably within your lifetime, and likely within mine, it will become 'biased' to say that pedophilia is wrong. And already its considered old fashioned to prosecute for statutory rape and even grade schoolers can be given birth control and condoms without their parents knowledge or permission. Once a society starts down the proverbial 'slippery slope' it will keep going all the way to the bottom. Eventually all conceivable forms of 'sex' will be legally allowable and a 'protected right'. You note that its "such a small segment of our society" but there is about the same percent of acknowleged pedophiles that there are homosexuals, not only that but its an extremely overlapping group. the vocal minority is perfectly capable of changing the silent majorities mind, or failing that, overriding them.

D) In the beginning was God. He created everything in 6 real days and then rested on the 7th, setting up the 7 day week we still hold to today. He put the moon and stars in place to mark the seasons and the sun to mark the day. He created the physical universe with life on Earth. He created a host of heavenly beings, Angels. Adam was created perfect without sin and in a perfect relationship with God. He, and all humans after him, were created for the specific purpose to have a love relationship with God, a meaningful, willing relation of praise and love and companionship. Adam turned from God and fell into sin staining every human to come from him with both the knowlegde of good and evil and a sin nature. Because God is perfect, which means just, His law had to be fulfilled. Man is incapable of fullfilling it because we all fall short of the mark of perfection. The very word 'sin' is an archery term meaning to not hit the bullseye. "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." Because of this we are eternally separated from God and spiritually dead in our sin nature. Meanwhile, sometime before Adam turned from God, Lucifer, one of God's highest angels, rebelled from God, saying that he 'would be like the Most High'. 1/3 of the angels followed him in his rebellion and God cast them down from heaven and from His grace. We call them demons or fallen angels. Because Adam, who had dominion over the physical creation and creatures there of, fell and entered into a sin nature the whole creation was affected and death, decay, pain, and a general winding down entered into the universe at that time as well. Death is not natural. The reason our very being cries out against it is because it is the enemy, we were not created to die and our hearts of heart cries out against the intrustion upon life, mourns for the lost it knows is unnatural. But God is as merciful as He is just. He wishes that no one die. Hell was made for the angels that rebelled against Him, it was not meant for man. So God created a way for the payment for our sin to be paid by another, by Him as Jesus. While US justice system does not allow for another to take the punishment in lue of the offender most systems do. God redeems us by paying the price, the punishment, for our sin for us. He came to earth, lived with temptation but never sinned, and yet died, sacrifying Himself in our place. All we need do is accept His sacrifice. If we refuse God will not force Himself upon us while we are on Earth and we will remain in a damned state and we will have to pay for our own sins with both a physical death and eternal spiritual death, separation from God. If we accept His sacrifice in our place we are redeemed, which means a debt to be paid in full, and enter freely into His presence for eternity and have a relationship with Him while still on Earth. While the eternity waiting for those redeemed, or Christ-followers or Christians, is far better than this current life we are called to live for Christ to represent His light to a fallen world, to follow the Great Commission 'go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit'. Ultimately there is nothing better on this Earth than to see another come to Christ. It says the Angels in heaven rejoice for those that are saved, that they marvel at the Redemption, and the newly alive Christian certianly does. As one of my favorite songs says 'for His favorite song of all, is the song of the redeemed, when lost sinners now made clean, lift their voices loud in song. When those purchased by His blood, lift to Him a song of love..'. Meanwhile to really state fully answers to our mini-debate:God is perfect, that means perfectly good, just, righteous. And His law is perfect. Anything outside His law is not-good, bad, evil. Humans are intrisically evil because we brake God's law. There is ultimate right and wrong because there is an ultimate Law Giver. And He has carefully explained His law to us both in nature, for nature not only screams a creator but the Creator, and in His Word, a love letter and warning letter to all humanity in which the fullness of the Godhead is explained as well as is possible before Heaven 'for now I see in a mirror dimly, but then, face to face'. The Bible is simple, God's law is fair, simple, and easy to understand, and written in the hearts of ALL men so that no one is without blame. Absolutes exist. Demons are evil because they broke/brake God's law. Angels, both fallen and not, can manifest physically and effect the physical. Since angels are only used for very precise purposes, and never contracdict God anything not human which makes an apparence for other than those purposes or contradicts God is a demon. Whether it takes the form of a faerie, an alien, a ghost, or just a dark presence it just demons mascerading as something more believable to the person its appearing to. Demons aren't afraid to lie after all.'ghosts' as we think of them, as in departed spirits of the dead who come back to converse with the living, do not exist. Necomancy, or any attempt to contact the dead, is stictly forbidden by the Bible. In one instance God allowed contact with a deceased only for the purpose of rebuking the person who was trying to contact him. (I think its in II Kings) 'it is given once for a man to live and after that the judgement' spirits of the dead are not able to wander about. They are either in Heaven or in sheol (which is also hell just not the ultimate hell that will last forever after Lucifer has been judged) waiting for hell. Any aparition of a 'ghost' is nothing more than a demon who is pretending to be the dead for purposes of lying to the living. I am unafraid of anything you may call a ghost for 'greater is He who is in me than he who is in the world' demons can not touch a Christian and must flee before the name of Jesus.Ultimately 'every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord' But meeting God wrapped in His grace and His righteousness is far better than meeting Him in only your own sin.I 'believe' in the Christian God because it has been proven to me irrevocable and unequivically spiritually, emotionally, intellectually, and physically. I first believed out of a leap of faith that it was simply what I had to do given the knowledge of my own sin nature. When you are confronted by your own sin and by the absolute righteousness of God you either abase yourself and accept His Lordship or you turn forever away from Him. But since no one can ever know when that choice has been truly made (its called blasphem against the Spirit and is the 'unforgivable sin' because it is the complete and willing rejection of salvation) there is always an overwhelming push, a drive, to try to introduce all those you love to the Creator of the universe as a personal Savior

E)(Forgive some anthropomorphizing) A potter makes a beautiful clay box, the pride of his collection. He made it for a very specific purpose, to hold his most valuable possession. He loves this beautiful box so much he makes a special place just so it can live safely and in comfort for all its days. But once he has placed it in its place and laid his prized possession inside of it, the box rebels and refuses to hold the possession. Repeatedly the box refuses to hold the possession.“I have created you solely for this purpose,” Says the potter. “Since you have refused your purpose I could destroy you. But I love you, you are my most beautiful creation, the pride of my collection. I will keep you, and give you an opportunity to accept your purpose until you are destroyed naturally. But you may no longer inhabit this perfect place I made for you.” And the potter took the box down and put it on a shelf, and used it to hold whatever may need a place. Every day the potter would attempt to place his most prized possession back into the box, admonishing it that if it would but accept it then it could return to its honored place. But the box continued to refuse. Eventually the box crumbled from old age, not only could it not fulfill its created purpose it was no longer able even to hold the simplest of things. The potter was very heartbroken that his favorite piece had been destroyed without returning to its place of honor, but there was nothing more he could do. The potter swept up the broken pieces sadly and placed it in the rubbish heap with the rest of the broken pottery.God is the potter, and we are the pot. It is not that you, or anyone, lives a life without purpose, it is that you live a life without the purpose you were created for. God created humanity, you, me, everyone, to be a receptacle of His love. We were meant to live in a close, personal relationship with Him, both treasured and treasuring. We were meant to walk with God in perfection, to talk with Him, to learn and converse with Him without pain, without death, without evil. He created us with the knowledge required to choose to love and accept Him, for if we did not have a choice it would not be love. The angels worship Him, but only humanity was created with the unique ability to have a loving relationship with Him. Such a thing cannot be forced, it must be accepted. Like the box in the parable we have rejected the purpose we were created for. We have turned away from our creator and followed after our own hearts “There are none righteous, no, not one; There is none who understands; there is none who seek God. They have all turned aside; they have together become unprofitable, there is none who does good, no, not one.” In this fallen state it is impossible to live the life our Creator intended for us. But God loves us, He loves His creation and contends for our love “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.” But His law has been broken, and to appease His perfect justice God created a way for us. “Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous.” And “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” If we but accept His free gift to settle His justice our sin is wiped out, not just forgiven, but forgotten. God says He puts our sins away from us ‘as far as the east is from the west’. We are washed utterly clean and allowed to reenter the life our Creator made us for, the sweet purpose better than anything else we could possibly want for ourselves. God does not ask us to do something we cannot; we do have to be perfect, nor even good to accept His gift. “But God demonstrates His own love towards us, in that while we were still sinner, Christ, died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.” In response to this wonderful gift we are called to His service, knowing full well that He knows us better and has a better plan for our life than we could ever do ourselves. For “O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thought afar off. You comprehend my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word on my tongue, but behold, O Lord, You know it altogether… For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well… Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them.” You do not give up your free will when you give yourself to God, instead you understand that His will is far superior to your own and it would be foolishness to reject it. You still have every choice to turn and follow their own path but, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.” Reasonable service, its nothing above and beyond what He has right and reason to ask us. He seeks only in love to draw us away from the fallen and return us to grace. “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”It is utterly good to submit your will to God. It will not obliterate your free will, but rather release all the goodness that God wills for you. “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy ad where thieves break in and steal; But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.” And “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” Only He can truly fulfill us, for only He created us. “But those who wait for God will renew their strength. They will mount up with wings like eagles. They will run and not be weary. They will walk and not faint.” There is nothing worthwhile outside of God’s will in comparison to what is within God’s will! He will give you His Spirit, which will guide us through this life. Instead of: “the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissention, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like:” we are given: “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” What a far greater way to live!

Random Responses 1 of 2

2006-06-04T23:59:00.000-05:00

So I haven't had any time recently to make a post, nor any one thing that has stuck out and demanded my attention to be written about. Most of this is my fault, I've been glued to my story and have a backlog of new articles from the last month or three sitting in my email box. But that doesn't mean I've been silent either. Here are a few random answers to questions or mini-debates that I have had recently. When appropriated the questions have been left before my answer in italitcs. But not all.
A) Amount of animals: First off, and I mean this as politely as i can :) millions of animals is a knee-jerk reaction to the millions of individual animals we have today. The Bible talks about 'kinds' which is kind of like a species but not fully. A kind is anything that can interbreed. Anything below that is variation within a kind that has happened since then. For instance all the species of wolves, cyotes, wild dogs, domesticated dogs, and possibly even foxes *people i've read go back and forth on the foxes one* are all from a single created kind, and probably represented by a single breeding pair. For the feline groups there were probably two created kinds, one for the small wild/domesticated cats and one great cat, within those groups everything can interbreed. Horses/donkeys/zebras/burrows/ponies were likely one created kind. Ect for other grouping of animals. Including extinct animals kinds there are only about 8000 different kinds of animals, making just over 1600 individual animals, clean kinds of animals, of which there are only a few, had seven pairs. The average size of an animal is about the size of a rat *the average size of the dinasours is only the size of a chicken* with about 11% of the animals over the size of a sheep. For those animal kinds, like the really big dinasaurs or even cattle there is nothing saying the animals had to be adults, probably adolecents were used, even the largest dinasaur starts out small.> So, the ark only has to hold about 1600 *btw the above quoted figures are all on the libral side on purpose*. > Space: The arks dementions were 300X50X30 cubits, or 459X75X44 feet, with gives a volume of 1.5 million cubic feet. This is the equivalent of 522 railroad box cars. You can fit 240 sheep *this is a shipping standard thing* into a box car. So if we amuse the animals were kept in close quarters like sheep in a box car they would take up less than 7 box cars out of 522! If you assume they were in cages/stables of an average size of 20X20X12 or about 3 square feet would be plenty for the average size of a rat, they would take up only 42,000 cubic feet or 14.4 stock cars. This would leave the rest of the room for food, range room for walking, and for Noah's family. This is assuming the cages were not stacked. If some of the cages were stacked, leaving room for people to walk between them for care, it frees up even more space. Food was likely dried and concentrated, like packed alphafa, grains, and dried fruits. Common calculations for total food requirements for the animals and humans use up about 15% of the total space, or 225, 000 cubic feet of space. Water would take up an additional 9.5% or so, or 142,500 cubic feet of space. Water requirment could be much less if Noah started the trip with little water and piped in rainwater as needed or to fill up space left open by food consuption. All of that could be stacked to keep as much floor space as possible open. So, if eveything is taken together, 42,000+225,000+142,500=209,500 leaving 1,290,500 cubic feet as free space that could be living quarters for Noah and his family and exercise areas for the animals, or growing space for some of the larger animals. The Arc had three floors, One floor could have been used completely for all the animals, food, and water leaving two full floors for everything else. > Upkeep:> All those cages and all those animals produced waste, but that is not a large problem. Deep bedding of sawdust, woodshavings *both of which Noah would have had in abundance* or peat moss can last a full year without being changed. Any waste that needed to be disposed of> could have been composted, which would have provided worms as a food source as an added bonus plus a great amount of heat to help keep the arc, which was probably mostly below water, warm, or could be flushed overboad by use of slanted floors and water, which could have been draw and did not need to be carried with them. Also, many animals might have been in a state of hibernation. warm close quarters with minimal day light, rich food on demand, and no need for hunting/foraging/traveling would put many animals into a lathargic or even hibernative mode. Also, its possible that God put them in a hibernation but since that's not specifically mentioned no explaination should hang on that.> Bringing the animals together: First off, nearly all of the animals that we consider indemic are only indemic NOW. Things like kangaroos were once found in many parts of the world, including the middle east. There are very few creatures who are not found in the fossil record spread all over. Specifially nearly all animals kinds are represented in the fossil records or historic records around the cresent valley, which is where Noah landed and disembarked. Since a represenative from ALL animal kinds was initially created in the garden and then spread out *God populated the whole earth but everything was created in the garden as well so it would make sense that the area surounding that would still hold a higher degree of variation that a far flung area.* Noah did not gather the animals, God did, the animals arrived at the arc without Noah or his family gathering them up. Certainly God is able to tell them where to go. As far as traveling over water or to remote areas the Bible tells us that both the waters and the dry land were gathered together. There was likely only a single continent so no need to make a long water journey to collect species indemic to a specific island, because there were no indemic species and no islands. Even if one does assume that some kinds had traveled so far out of the area as to not be readily availible to Noah's location, which is fair given 8000 different kinds. Noah had instructions to build the arc about 70 years before the animals arrived. Given that, God also had 70 years to have animals from far flung areas, if needed, to start their migration towards the arc to arrive in time to be loaded up. Once the animals were all there it only would have taken about 5 hours for them to board the arc. The same applies to food sources. If specific food items were needed then they would have been in the local area for Noah and his family to gather during their 70 years of making the arc. More to the point, however, is there was likely no need. Creatures like the koala, which only eat a single item, were almost certianly not created that way but rather lost the ability to eat other things over the years. For instance the panda is a member of the bear kind yet it eats b> amboo, which other bears would find quite unapatising. The orginal bear creature would have had the required stomach to eat the bamboo but as they gene pool thinned out from interbreeding among populations that were distanced from each other things were lost from some groups and became more frequent in others. Lets note that this is variation within a kind and only using the existing genetic material. For instance, boxers, my favorite dog breed, can't burp, they throw up instead. They lost the genetic material necessary for their bodies to do that. All bears but the Panda have lost the genetic matieral necessary to digest bamboo, on the other hand the panda has lost a huge amount of genetic material due to inbreeding amoung a fairly small group in addition to an environment that was only interested in a single trait. The likelihood that Noah would have had to pander to any dietary restriction on the arc are very low but even if he did need to, it would have been easy for him to gather and store those items needed. For the record, pretty much anything we consider carnivorous or omnivourious can actually subsist healthily on a v> egatarian diet. Given that many plants did not survive the flood probably some plants that didn't make it would have provided the nutrients now only found in meat, otherwise there really won't have been any reason for God to give permission for people to eat meat, something necessary for a fully vegatarian diet was lost which would have kept those few animals that can't currently subsist on a vegatarian diet healthy. Btw, I am unaware of any carnivor that has no documented occurances of subsiting only on a vegatarian diet.> Where did the water come from?: Where did all the water come from to cover the whole earth? First off, nearly all the mountains seen today can be traced to the flood or early post flood period. before the flood the land was much flater. If the earth was flatted out, that is the ocean beds raised and the mountains lowered till the earth was smooth we'd be coved with 1.7 miles of water. There is more than enough water on the earth to cover us during a flood. So why did it flood then but not before or after? There are a couple of theories but the key is the term 'the great deeps'. we hear a lot about plate techtonics, some of it probably, most of it unproven, and some of it clearly ridiculious, but one thing is obvious from both the mountains and current natural phenominons. The dry land of the pre-flood earth likely floated on a cushion of water. When God ripped open the fountains of the great deep water, pushed on by the weight of the dry land, rushed out and far into the atmosphere, most of it would have fallen as a torential rain, blanketing the earth very quickly, but while the waters rushed out from the rupture the earth retreated from it, caving in where the water rushed out and crashing into itself, causing some areas to lift quickly, delaying their flooding for a short period of time. As pressure releaved itself the rupture would stop driving water into the upper atmosphere and start gushing out like an undersea vent, which it would have been by that time. meanwhile the nealy ripped plate of dry land continued to buckle, shift, and run into itself, slowly causing land masses to rise and oceans to sink. Part of this buckling and shifting would have captured pockets of the water still under the earth, causing the phenomenoms we see today, such as the fact that 70% of what comes out of a valcano is actually water! and huge underground hotsprings that are still under pressure, undersea vents venting hot mineral water, and giant salt caverns underground from pockets that have dried out. I have a really good book that goes into this indepth if you want.> Where did the water go?: First off, coodos to you for thinking of this. Where did the water come from is, truthfully, not overly important as we have enough water visible on the planet to flood it. The real question is why are we still not flooded. Building on my last point, as the water retreated from underground the earth crumpled and folded, as liquid earth moved about by the flood water parts were pushed up and parts were pushed down. for every down the water ran down, for every up the waters receded futher from that point. We know that even the highest mountains were once under water because we've found marine fossils on pretty much all of them *including everest*. Eventually the waters receded enough for the arc to rest upon one and after a while longer the earth had enough valleys and mountains for there to be enough dry land for plants and trees to start their growth and the animals were let out of the arc. In actuality only the realtive tops of mountains stick up out of the water as 70% of the earths surface is covered in water.> Dispersal:> After the flood the animals were told to dispers. Since I have little time left today i'll answer this a bit abruptly. A disperal from the cresent valley to all ends of the earth has the same problems as an evolutionary desperal to all ends of the earth. Since nearly all the different kinds of animals are represented in either fossil or history around the cresent valle> y, which is considered the 'cradle of civilization' even from a secular perpective, it makes perfectly logical sense that it started from there and moved out, it also agrees with both the fossil record and the cultural history of the people groups. if you want i can expound upon this point more tomorrow/or monday, or answer any questions you have.

B) *continuation of above.*Since I haven't written my debate on time yet the majority of your objections are fairly reasonable, and I will do my best to answer them fully, as they are answerable. Since i've got to change computers at 9 I am just sending the first part of this. I will answer each question, or objection. but since that will take time I'll sent them in sections. But first, back to the arc...Wood: First off, while 20th century ships *1900s*, which were/are much smaller *althought larger do exist*, had metal framewook 19th century ships, 1800s, were made entirely out of wood. there is a famous poem 'clipperships and captains' that contain one of my favorite lines in a poem, "when the ships were wooden ships, but the men were iron men" Its mostly bemoaning the shift from wooden ships to iron ships. More to the point, the Romans and Greeks made huge vessels, capable of holding hundreds of men intirely out of wood. Pliny, an ancient historian, acounts of ships with up to 40 tiers of oars! In Ussher's account of the Aegean Sea battle in 280 b.c. he has this to say about the larger ships used in that battle "In his navy, ships were sent from Heraclea in Pontus, some of six, some of five tiers of oars. These kinds of ships were called 'Aphracta'. The largest ship of all had eight tiers of oars and was called the Leontifera. She was admired by all for her large size and exquisite construction. In her were a hundred oars per tier, so that on each side there were eight hundred rowers which made 1600 in all. On the upper deck or hatches there were 1200 fighting men who were under two special commanders. When the battle began, Ceraunus won and Antigonus was forced to flee with all his navy. In this fight, the ships from Heraclea performed the best and among them the Leontifera did the best of all" Given what we know about smaller galleys a ship to hold that many would have been 400-500 feet long and capable of carrying not only its 3000 men but supplies for several days at sea! Plutarch discribes a fleet build about 294 b.c. that each had 15 or 16 tiers of rowers! But, the largest we have a decent discription of is from Athenaeus built by Ptolemy Philopater * 244-205 b.c* it was 420 feet long, 57 feet wide, and 72 feet high to the top of her gunwale. From the top of its sternpost to the water line was 79.5 feet. It had four steering oars 45 feet long. It had 40 tiers of oars. The oars on the uppermost tier were 57 feet long. The oars were counter-balanced with lead to make them easier to handle. It had a double bow and a double stern and carried seven rams, of which one was the leader and the others were of gradually reducing size. It had 12 under-girders 900 feet long. The ship was manned by 400 sailors to handle the rigging and the sails, 4,000 rowers and 2,850 men in arms for a total of 7,250 men. (it should be noted at this is thought to be an ordament for his fleet and too big to be of much help in a fight) Think of how huge that was! And all made out of wood.That being said, yes, a standard ship of that size holding that kind of cargo on those seas, certainly VERY choppy, would probably capsize if not break up. But the arc wasn't a sailing ship. It never had to be launched, or dry docked, or worry about navigating up channels, or even being loaded or unloaded while afloat. Check out this http://www.answersingenesis.com/creation/v21/i1/ark.asp picture about a paragraph down for a very likely model of the arc and http://www.answersingenesis.com/tj/v8/i1/noah.asp if you want a semi-technical expose on how it would have worked just fine in the flood waters. Since it never had to be dry docked or launched the arc would need no keel, but could have been build flat and simply floated as the flood waters rose. What we call the first submarines were similar. In the civil war iron submarines were made with flat bottoms and just their tops, with the cannon ports, floated above the water, the arc would have worked likewise. The arc, in all its box-like glory would have faired quite well and was quiet within the size paramaters, if at the large end, of historically undisputed ships. Evidence: Of course a global flood would leave huge evidence! And we have it in abundance. Secular science CAN NOT acknowledge it because
evolution and an old earth CAN NOT accept a worldwide flood. Many things that evolutionists either can't explain or explain extremely poorly are beautiful evidence of a worldwide flood, and many scientists and geologists do see exactly that. Other than natural structures such as canyons *think Grand Canyon*, mountains *I'll talk about them later*, huge reservoirs, and tectonics, the strongest evidence for a global flood is the fossil record. Fossils, almost by definition, require very fast burial. While whole books have been written about the fossil evidence for the flood I'll list some of my favorites.
1) Jellyfish: These soft-bodied animals with no bones do not fossilize even in 'normal' fast burial situations. Yet in a Wisconsin sandstone quarry we find hundreds of perfectly fossilized jellyfish incased in about 12 feet (vertical) of rock! These jellyfish were quickly buried in multiple layers and sealed in sand, which normally is not a good agent for fossilization due to how porous it is. While I have the article at home with very nice pictures I'll try to give you the highlights here.
The jellyfish were not beached but underwater when this happened. Ripples from the sand they were buried in are preserved by what covered them, which wouldn't happen in a normal storm or in just random sea swells. This is because they have to be covered by a completely different
substance, in this case by finer sand mixed with red oxidized mud. There are about 7 layers of jellyfish, each with distinctive ripples where they were covered by different sediment. Reasonably the only thing that could cause that would be a huge flood that was carrying sediment from elsewhere, and not just a normal local flood or the sediments would have quickly dispersed when the floodwaters hit the ocean waters. No this must have been a cataclysmic flood with enough force to make literal rivers of mud and silt that were born through waters, and swirled and tossed to and fro repeatedly. The jellyfish were not beached by a high
tide and then covered, say by river sediment, as jellyfish inflate their bells when they are beached and these fossils do not have that trait. There were no scavenger marks on the jellyfish, so they could not have lay exposed after being washed up already dead and wait for a local,
'normal' flood to cover them in sediment. There is no evidence of burrowing, such as earthworms in the sediment, either between the 7 layers of jellyfish or in the whole block of sediment, so the entire thing must not only have been laid down A) while under conditions to keep worms away, such as underwater B) all at one time or regardless of where it was
burrowing would have been evidenced and C) the whole thing buried by even further sediment to seal out air to form the fossils and to keep it trapped from burrowing after it all solidified. It is hard to imagine a localized event with the ability to sustain enough flood sediment to
bury and preserve this bed of fossils, in fact, the best answer evolutionists give is several huge tropical storms that buried each of the seven layers over a span of about 1 million years, but they can not account for how the ripples were preserved, why the bell wasn't expanded, and
the lack of burrowing evidence. In addition to all of this evolutions date the lowest of these fossils at the Lower Cambrian, supposedly 510 million years old. Yet these are the largest jellyfish fossils every found, starkly contrasting evolutionists 'little to big' hypothesis, as the huge jellyfish would have to have formed before the smaller, read less complex to an evolutionists, did. In conclusion, I've got a great article on this that I'd be happy to bring in if you want more or this
one. By the way, this is not the only such deposit of jellyfish, but simply the most remarkable.
2)Birth Fossils: While evolutionists are slowly admitting that fossils not only take a short time to form but must be buried either at death or very shortly thereafter to create a fossil any fossil evidence of living animals captured in time like a photograph prove cataclysmic burial
with no time for scavengers, rot, or further disruption. While single fossils could be part of a local deviating event they also fit, even better, with a single worldwide event. My favorite fossils are those that catch animals in the process of birth. I have seen several, perhaps the most vivid of which is of an ichthyosaur giving birth. The infant is part in and part out of the mother! Nearly the entirety of the baby has emerged, with only its beak and part of its head still in the birth
canal. This is a live birth, and if the mother had simply died giving birth the infant wouldn't have had difficulty pulling itself free from the mother and escaping. Only an extremely rapid, heavy burial would not only kill both but also keep them preserved without the baby falling
out as it settled. There is another one, same species, which show the mother with several babies still in her womb and one infant already fully birthed just outside the body. Unfortunately I could find no pictures easily accessibly, but could probably dig some up if you are
interested. 3) Fighting fossils: My second favorite class of fossils are those where predator/prey have been caught in the middle of battle. There is a fish fossil I've seen (pictures of not the actual fossil) from the Green River Formation from Wyoming where the fish is in the middle of eating another, as in one fish is half way out/ half way in the other fishes mouth! There is a dinosaur fossil, I'm afraid I don't remember the particulars, of a predator, raptor of some sort, on the back of its prey biting its neck. 4) Fossil Graveyards: While rapid fossilization is proof of at least local cataclysmic events huge fossil graveyards are proof of a more than local, but rather a near global or global event. These are found both as vegetation, for instance the huge permafrost peat bogs in Russia that contain all kinds of different woods and vegetation preserved from a massive flood by the cold, and as animal fossils, for instance the mass
burial of both whales and land animals in Africa. Here are some specific ones: In the Vyatka River valley near Kotelnich Russia a herd of 300 tetrapods were buried and fossilized while standing with their heads erect! Not only that but the herd was buried while standing on a steep
hill, so any attempt to explain it away due to the animals getting stuck in a swamp, the usual explanation when standing fossils are found, is completely invalid. There are two well-known mass fossil graveyards in the US, one found in Utah, The Dinosaur National Monument, and a less well-known one, (its newer) in Como Bluff Wyoming. There is a huge fossil graveyard in South Africa called the Karroo Formation. There is a whale fossil graveyard in what is now the desert of Peru. A whole herd of mammoths have been found frozen in place while crossing a river! (While not a fossil quickly frozen animals, particularly in such a circumstance, also cannot be explained away by a slow and gradual process. Even an ice age under evolutionary standards could not accomplish this, only the super cooled air, water, and sediment that would result from
the beginnings of a sudden worldwide flood) In Russia fossil graveyards that include tropical, subtropical, temperate, and tundra creatures have been found, my favorite list includes foxes, oxen, mammoths, rabbits, and tigers! Huge mats of vegetable matter, which include tropical
trees, deciduous trees, and even fruit trees with the fruit still on them, have been found in the Artic. In fact, coal veins are nothing more than huge mats of vegetation that was quickly buried and placed under pressure and heat. There is a petrified forest where a whole forest of trees
have been uprooted and fossilized in place, cutting through many different layers of rock. Obviously all those layers of rock were mud at the same time as the trees were uprooted and stuck in them, then they hardened together in place. Fossil conclusion: This could continue for pages and pages. The real question is, since a rapid burial followed by an equally rapid sealing
of the surrounding ground is required for any fossil, where is the fossil evidence for all this slow and gradual that is required for long ages. Realize that either nearly every fossil in existence would be created either directly by a global flood or right after it by the upheaval
caused by it, OR they were nearly all created slowly over millions of years. Both can't be true, there aren't enough fossils for both a global flood, or even multiple near global floods, and long ages. Next
up... Mountains! *the debate ended at this time*

Cochainian Reflections

2006-03-16T08:55:00.000-06:00

For those of you who haven't read the most recent blog (With the purity of an ant colony and the beauty of a flawless pearl) on wabam.blogspot.com you should. Provided, of course you are either 1) conservative or 2) have a good sense of humor. Anyway he inspired me to write my own. Warning, likely to offend anyone left of far right. So here you go, earth based reflections of the Cochainian mindset:

Legal System:
First off I'd trim the police department of all unnecessary personnel namely parole officers and psychologists (please note this does not include profilers), then I'd put anyone under 5'6" on permanent desk duty. I don't have anything against short people, I'm short, but if they can't hold their own against the average fully grown man they don't belong at the business end of policing. They can do behind the scenes work if they still want to be in the law enforcing business. Then I'd change the pay system. All law enforcement would be provided with a housing budget equal to 1.5 the mean of the city they live in. So if a two bedroom apartment (in a large city) or house (in a smaller town) is an average of $600 a month for rent then they would get $900 a month for use towards rent or mortgage. They would be provided with a car fitting their and/or their family's needs and a credit card for gas. Insurance, provided they remain fault accident free off the job, would be provided by the city as well. In addition they would be paid a monthly salary of $4,000 tax free with a .5% increase for every hour of overtime worked during the month. I would also make slots open for policeman who wished to work 4 ten-hour days and have 3 off instead of 5 eight-hour days with 2 off. State police would be treated the same as local. Federal police, FBI, would have an additional 5% increase for each day they are away from their home base. There would be no more squabbling over jurisdiction. If the chase, or crime, crossed over the city lines it is a state police matter. If the chase or crime crosses state borders it is a FBI matter. All information on ALL crimes will be stored in a computer system freely accessible to all law enforcement agencies, so there will be no squabbling over leads or holding back information with jurisdiction changes. And so proper searches for previous crimes can be accomplished. Furthermore DNA and fingerprints of anyone convicted of any crime will be entered into a national database for comparison.
Next is the judiciary system. First off, lawyers. If a lawyer is aware that his client has actually committed the crime they will be required to report it. Arguing in a court that a client they know committed the crime is innocent of the crime (they could still argue diminished capacity, exigent circumstances, self-defense etc) would be considered perjury and punishable as such. Lawyers would not be able to reject jurors for any and all or even no reason but only if the juror had a strong preconceived opinion to the guilt or innocence of the accused or if they had a personal prejudice against or for the accused. As far as sentencing goes the phrase 'cruel and unusual' would revert back to its intended form. We know what its was intended to protect against and what it would allow by looking at what was illegal and what was legal at the time the people who wrote and signed it lived. Physical punishment would most definitely take its appropriate place back in the justice system. Furthermore sentencing would be focused on making criminals pay their debt to society and to their victims as well as making sure they do not re-offend. For crimes against property, such as burglary, car jacking, graffiti, destruction of private or public property etc, the criminal would be sentenced to jail until they have paid restitution to their victims. By restitution I mean full repair or repurchase price for the item/property damaged/destroyed. For non-lethal violent crimes, such as assault, the criminal would be sentenced to physical punishment in addition to jail time until restitution can be made, and by restitution I mean not only paying any and all medical bills but also any lost wages and 'pain and suffering' punitive damages to be awarded by the jury. Someone convicted of sustained abuse, such as wife beating or child abuse, if convicted a second time, would be ejected from the country after serving their time for restitution. They would be allowed time in jail to find somewhere else to live and 1 month after their release, if found in the country afterwards they will be jailed by the INS as an illegal alien. Someone convicted of molestation would be physically castrated and serve a jail sentence until their victim turns 18, with all money made past restitution put towards a nationwide college scholarship for victims of abuse, molestation, and rape. If their victim is over 18 they would serve no less than a 5 year term. A repeat conviction would result in ejection from the country after their mandatory time of restitution. Convicted rapists will have any and all property forfeit towards restitution of the victim, if further restitution is required for medical bills rapists will be jailed until such a time as they have repaid restitution, then they will be executed unless granted leniency in writing by their victim. If leniency is given the jail term shall be no less the 10 years. If the assault resulted in pregnancy and leniency is granted they will be required to provide child support, parental rights, however, are at the mother's graces. Repeat offenders are not eligible for leniency. Murderers (manslaughter and degrees of murder will no longer be valid. If you kill, its either murder or self defense.) will have all property forfeit and will serve time until restitution has been made towards any medical and funeral costs, then they will be executed unless granted leniency in writing by their victims closest surviving family member (spouse then mother then father than older siblings than younger siblings...) Multiple counts or repeat convictions are not eligible for leniency. If leniency is granted the jail term shall be no less than 10 years.
Prisons would be completely redesigned. Cells will contain a bed, a sink, a toilet, and a desk. Inmates will be allowed paper and pen to write and if they obey all rules will have library access although magazines will be restricted to technical, scientific, medical, or otherwise specific magazines, general magazines, such as "People" or "Time" and pornographic magazines will be banned. While in jail inmates will spend their days at base manual labor such as clean up, road work, tree planting, or harvesting under the eye of armed guards. They will be paid $5 an hour minus taxes. For those not scheduled for execution 5% of their earning, unless otherwise noted, will be put into a savings account so they do not leave the prison destitute, the rest will go towards restitution. Inmates will spend 1 day a week in class learning a basic manual trade of their choice such as constructions, plumbing, mechanics, roofing, tree trimming, etc. Inmates who act out or break rules will be subject to corporal punishment, library privileges revoked, and be unable to receive outside mail, care packages, or visitors. Inmates attempting to escape will be shot. Lethal measures will be avoided but legal for fleeing inmates. If they survive the attempt any medical costs will be added to the restitution they must pay. Juvenile offenders will spend an equal amount of time in age appropriate labor and schooling. A juvenile's legal guardian may pay up to 50% of a juvenile's restitution as well as be allowed to add to the saving account for the benefit of the juvenile up to any amount. A juvenile's voucher money (explained later) will be forfeit to the state during the time of incarceration.
Along the lines of the justice system illegal immigration will go back to being illegal. Any illegal aliens found in the country will be expelled, if their home country does not take refugees they will be held by INS until they can either legally apply and obtain citizenship or until they find somewhere that will take them. Any employer found to be hiring an illegal alien will be prosecuted for stealing from the state and fined the fair wage price for the entire time the alien worked for them. For instance if an illegal alien had worked for 8 months for an average of 50 hours a week and the fair wage for his job was $8 an hour the employer would owe $12800 in restitution. If he employed 10 aliens for the same time period the restitution would be $128000. Up to 50% of the restitution can be paid by the employer from existing moneies, the other 50% must be paid through jail time. The money will be paid to a local area charity supporting the poor. Legal immigration, however, will follow simple rules. If the person has no criminal background (criminal background will be defined as a conviction for a crime that is also illegal in the US), no tie to known terrorist or crime syndicates they will be allowed in on a 2 year visa. Before the year is up they must take a written and oral English examination, be able to read aloud the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and pass a true/false test on the legalities of randomly chosen actions. A possible questions might be "It is legal to protest against the government" or "It is legal to refuse to pull over when a police car flashes its lights behind you" or "It is legal for your employer to fire you for your religion". They must also swear loyalty to the US and take the Pledge of Allegiance in public. All testing will be in English. If their visa expires before they have completed the required exams they will be expelled from the country.
Public schools will be run by private institutes and will not be subsidized by federal, state, or local governments. Parents will get $2000 a month per child to spend on any school of their choice, or to use towards home schooling. Schooling will not be required but all students, and all home school students whose parents are drawing the voucher, will submit to yearly academic testing. The full results will be published by school and if any home school student falls more than one grade average behind the average local public school student they will have 6 months to make up the difference or they will be required to attend a public school of the parent’s choice or loose the voucher. Colleges will not be directly subsidized by federal, state, or local governments. Full scholarships for those that test within the top 10% of the nation will be provided by the federal government for any school of the student’s choice provided they fail no class. Full scholarships for those that test within the top 10% of each state will be provided by each state for any school of the student’s choice provided they fail no class. Past that scholarships and tuitions will be left to the colleges.
Adultery will be illegal and any married party who is convicted will be subject to 1 year in jail with wages being paid to their spouse. Prostitution will be illegal and any person convicted of soliciting a prostitute will be subject to 1 year in jail with wages being paid to a local charity. People arrested for prostitution will have their names, DNA, and fingerprints loaded into a system, their third such arrest will result in a 1 year jail sentence with 50% of their wages going to local charities and the other 50% placed in a savings account for their use when they are released. For either solicitation or prostitution a third offense resulting in jail time the sentence will be 5 years. Marriage will be held sacrosanct and divorce legal only upon a spouse's explusion from the country or upon a spouse's adultery conviction. Legal separation, however, will be allowed but parties will still be considered legally married and may not remary and any sexual promiscuity will be considered adultery. Engaging in any form of sexual intercourse with a person not yet of sexual maturity will be strictly illegal and will be considered rape and charged as such. Homosexual intercourse of any kind will be strictly illegal. Upon conviction perpetrators will be given a choice between 1 year in jail with their wages paid to a charity or medical group or accept expulsion from the country. A third conviction will increase the jail time to 5 years. Abortion will be illegal in all cases. Medical procedures to save the life of the mother that may inadvertently, unintentionally, or inescapably harm or kill the baby will be legal. The performer of an abortion will be charged with murder. Anyone exchanging any services, monetary or otherwise, to pay the abortionist will also be charged with murder. Euthanasia will be illegal and anyone performing it will be charged with murder. Anyone exchanging services, monetary or other, to pay for the euthanasia will also be charged with murder.
Finally the federal government will get out of people’s lives and get back to doing their job. They will protect this country from all enemies, foreign and domestic, make sure the states uphold the Constitution as it applies to state governments, and COIN money. That’s right, coin money. As put forth by the founding fathers to keep inflation from getting out of hand all money will be in the form of coins made from metal, gold, silver, copper etc, loans, credit cards, bank notes will all have to be directly backed by their face value in hard currency. The federal government will be allowed to tax the states for military and required bureaucratic funding. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, and the Ten Commandments will be visibly posted in every federal building. The states will rule the people as intending and the federal government will keep the states as a cohesive unit and protect citizen’s right to move from state to state freely. Each state may tax its citizens as it sees fit, as may each town. Drugs, public morality, religion, tolerance policies, and election policies etc will be strictly under each states specific rule and will in no way be limited with in any state by the federal government. Congress may pass laws concerning interactions, transactions, morality, and in general any activity that fall under federal jurisdiction only. That is, a federal law can only be broken when state lines are crossed. For instance if marijuana is legal in California but illegally federally a Californian would be safe from federal arrest as long as he did not cross state lines in possession of marijuana.

There, that is, more or less, as close as you can get to my perfect government in earth terms. Of course, my truly perfect government is much simpler to define: A direct Theocracy under Almighty God with Jesus ruling from the New Jerusalem. And while I might hypothesize about the best human government it is nothing more than an amusing discussion topic, for a perfect government will never be founded by men. But, someday, I hope to see you all in the only perfect government, that wonderful, everlasting Theocracy called Heaven!

As a former infant I oppose infantacide

2006-03-14T11:36:00.000-06:00

I've been distracted, I freely admit that. I'm supposed to be writting a post on time, evolution, and creation. I'm also in the middle of a stalled response about the flood to a friend *but i loaned him books so I probably can put that off a bit* Anyway, I've just been distracted on other projects. I'm not abandoning my debates, but every time I want to right on this blog I feel like I shouldn't until I get the debate done. So I'm just going to ignore it for now and come back to it when the urge hits. Right now I'm very busy with a new creative project, other worlds and all, and will be writing on that soon. Right now I just have a quick post about the situation in SD. Its shorter and a bit chopier than my normal work because I had submitted it to the Oregonian after their article on the new law. As expected they didn't print it. Since the Oregonian (also known as the Horrorgonian, Whoreagonian, or just the Liespaper by various members of my family) leans so far to the left as to make Gore, Kerry, and the Clintons seem midline I hardly expected them to, I'm pretty sure its against their bylaws to print a conservative letter that is backed by more than the writers emotions. Pointing out evidence, science, history, ect that suports a 'conservative' viewpoint is a sure way of making sure they never print it. Still, one has to try. This is hardly my first attempt at getting them to print something. Anyway, I saved it, so, here it is. My response to all the bad publicity against South Dakota.

Calling abortion a 'reproductive right' is incorrect. The choice to reproduce, like all choices, happens before not after. At conception reproduction has already happened. A person can choose when, where, with whom, protection, and version of sex they have. Once sex has happened the legitimate choices have been made. One reason rape and incest are heinous are they takes away that choice. Our justice system shouldn’t punish innocent bystanders for the crime of another. The mother of a child by rape or incest still has a choice, keeping or adopting. She has no more right to kill the child than the police do to charge it as an accomplice. Biologically and scientifically speaking life begins at conception. A woman is then pregnant and a mother; abortion only makes her the mother of a dead child. Killing a person is illegal except in self-defense. Unless the pregnancy endangers the life of the mother, like ectopic pregnancies, there should be no legal reason to kill a human because of where it resides. Abortion isn’t a privacy right, it’s infanticide. If the pro-abortionists wants to push for legalized infanticide instead of hiding behind the lie of ‘reproductive rights’ then let them. Then they’ll at least have honesty to stand on. Roe v Wade was passed given insufficient scientific evidence and rhetoric that has been disproven. Our legal system should follow what is scientifically true: life starts at conception.

Procrastination, kind of

2006-01-16T11:49:00.000-06:00

Okay, so, for those of you waiting, I'm officially delaying my next planned blogpost, "The Broken Clock" which was to deal with time. This has not been canceled, but it has been delayed. There are a couple of reasons for that, foremost being I got a book on very recent science developements in this area and want to finish the book. Also, since this post will deal with several different dating methods and concepts I'm still trying to decide how exactly I will lay it out best. Thanks for your patience. If anyone has specific dating methods, time concepts, or some such dealing with time please feel free to leave a note on this post and I will do my best to include it in my eventual post.
Thanks

lookbackwards

2006-01-07T10:36:00.000-06:00

So I finally published my first in my evolution series, only to have it publish BEFORE my last post, not after. So, if you are interested in it, look before "Random" to find my newest blog. How much sense does that make?

Random

2005-12-29T10:37:00.000-06:00

Okay, so I'm too sick *big surprise* to want to sit down and formulate my thoughts enough to continue on my intended debates promised in my last post. I will get back to them *I have the first one half written* just not right now. Meantime, I wanted just to babble for a while.
Christmas has come and gone, with many very nice gifts. And some not so nice ones. Our family got the flu for Christmas and my husband had a death in the extended family. Still, despite those blemishes, we had a wonderful Christmas service, a good dinner with the family, and the presents are still piled in the livingroom.
A lot has happened recently, and most of it has been pushed to the back of our minds due to Christmas. So here are just a few conservative news points as a general update.
Iraq: while the liberal media continues to slam this as a lost cause and inflame the public against our current leader one of the largest jokes in America, the WWE Raw, went and entertained the troops and said all the things the media SHOULD be saying. I watched part of it with my husband, under protest to begin with, then with shock, awe, and a touched heart as these show-boating wrestlers really portrayed an attitude that America as a whole has been lacking since WWII. In other news, while Americans, fueled by the liberals, are increasingly pessimistic about Iraq, Iraq is not. In recent polls 2/3rds of Iraqi citizens say they are better off than they were under Saddam and 82% say their lives will be better a year from now. The recent election was attended by 70% of Iraqi citizens and no major violent incidences were reported *that I have found* By the way these are not 'cooked' number by some ultra pro-war conservative office or anything. The first two statistics come from Joseph Lieberman who is, *gasp* a DEMOCRACT senator from Connecticut. The second comes from the Oregonian which leans so far to the left it would make Clinton blush. Lieberman says that the Iraq war is a war for 27 million Iraqi citizens against 10,000 terrorists. And yet the media says we're losing??? To keep things in perspective, it is a war: US Casualties of war *from greatest to least*:
Civil War: 618,222
World War II: 405,399
World War I: 116,516
Vietnam War: 58,209
Korean War: 54,246
Iraq *most recent I could find*: 2,127
Boy, kind of makes Iraq seem like a resounding success doesn't it?

Church/State: While most of our attention was turned to either blasting Christ out of Christmas or keeping Him in a very telling news bit passed under the radar. In California's Byron Union School District 12 year old students now have a 3 week course in "becoming Muslims". During this time the class is divided into Islamic city groups, take Islamic names and wear name tags with their new names on them. So far so good, we did the same thing in fifth grade for the Revolutionary war period and the Civil war period. But it doesn't end there. Their name tags have the Muslim star and crescent moon symbols, which are religious symbols. They receive materials instructing them to, and I quote, "remember Allah always". They complete the five pillars of Islamic faith, and memorized and recited the basmala, a quote from the Koran, which they also wrote and hung about the classroom. In addition they were given extra credit for fasting from something they liked during Ramadan *sp?*. One article also reported that they memorized and later recited in front of the class various prayers, although this aspect was not reported in the other sources I found. Sounds like religious indoctrination doesn't it? Several parents sued the school district objecting to their children being proselytized so obviously. And here's the real catch the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the same court that ruled to take the words "under God" out of the pledge because it was a violation of church and state, is currently hearing this case because the first court ruled IT WASN'T A VIOLATION OF THE CONSTITUTION! Watch, I bet that ultra-liberal court will rule likewise. Talk about a double standard! Could you imagine the uprising that would happen if a public school made kids do the same towards Christianity? They'd arrest the teacher!

Marriage: One of the reasons conservatives have been protesting against so called 'gay marriage' and sometimes even against 'civil unions' is due to the slippery slope argument. Once you redefine marriage, and check any dictionary or historical source it is most definitely a redefinition not an 'expansion' or an 'inclusion', where do you stop? If two men can be married why can't you call three men, one man and two women, or three chimps and a teenager, a marriage? Most of the pro-gay marriage supporters worldwide have denied this, but bisexuals and polyamory *or polysexual, apparently an attempt to make multiple sexual partners at the same time a born trait of some people instead of an preference. Hey, if you can be 'born gay' or 'born transgendered' why not born polyamory?* are closely watching the gay movement for pointers for their fight. In places where the gay fight has been settled, they are starting their war. Now, we're not hearing anything much about it over here, because if the liberal media reported on it it would completely contradict all their talk about how allowing homosexuals to 'marry' won't lead down the slippery slope for marriage to mean anything and everything anyone might want it to mean. But it is happening. A few months ago, its just now being reported on, a Dutch married couple entered into a "samenlevingscontract" with a third partner, another female. The Dutch have more than one marriage arrangement, kind of a three step tango between legally and officially cohabitation as a couple, civil unions, and redefined marriage. Given this "samenlevingscontract" is the lowest step in this marriage higherachy, but the couple is legally recognized as a bound three-some. But technically 'married' or not the same type of showboating by gays in the 1980's in the Netherlands led to civil unions and then to full fledged marriage in the 1990's and beyond. In fact, according to one source "After all, Dutch same-sex marriage advocates still celebrate the foundational role of symbolic gay marriage registries in the early 1990s. Although these had absolutely no legal status, the publicity and sympathy they generated are now widely recognized as keys to the success of the Dutch campaign for legal same-sex unions and ultimately marriage. How odd, then, that American gay-marriage advocates should respond to the triple Dutch wedding with hair-splitting legal discourses, while ignoring the Dutch media frenzy and subsequent signs of cultural acceptance--for a union with far more legal substance than Holland's first symbolic gay marriages. Despite the denials of gay-marriage advocates, in both legal and cultural terms, Victor, Bianca, and Mirjam's triple union is a serious move toward legalized group marriage in the Netherlands." And its not just in la-la land across the ocean. Lawyers at top school such as Yale are already formulating how a legal argument for polygamy can make it through the courts using the homosexual precedent to push bisexuality and polyamory 'rights' to marry. Open the Pandora's box, slide down that slipery slope, and take a left turn at reason and sensibility and you will find a world where everyone's sexual wants are turned into needs, everything is allowed, and 'marriage' has as much meaning as a one-night-stand.

Ethics: Stem cells are being hailed as life savers, the virtual cure all of ails. At least the embryonic version of stem cells. In real life nearly all stem cell successful are ADULT stem cells and using EMBRYONIC stem cells have been a disaster. The problem is the embryonic stem cells belong to someone else, even if its a very small someone else who is now dead because of the 'harvesting' of said stem cells. People's immune system reject them. Sometimes drugs can be used to suppress the rejection reaction but problems still persists. The main one being that, without the normal input of the developing baby the stem cells, while they can be manipulated into nearly any type of cell, can't be turned off. The cells create horrible tumors that can't be controlled. Regardless of these set backs scientists are obsessed with this concept, probably because it gives the pro-abortion group a salve for their failing position that the embryo isn't human. If embryonic stem cells can save lives then the abortion industry had another reason to devalue the lives of the very young to nothing more than a collection of possible parts. This obsession presses them towards some way to use embryonic stem cells despite the risks. One way that they are attempting this is to clone an embryonic cell from the adult who needs treatment. While technically outlawed in the US many scientists worldwide are not only very interested by also actively attempting it. So far the only one to have well-known success is Woo Suk Hawng, a Korean scientist. He had been claiming to have 11 different stem cell lines cloned from an adult patient using donated eggs. It was hailed as the holy grail of stem cell research up till now and Woo Suk Hawng's name has been widely published. The big surprise? ALL 11 LINES WERE FAKED. None of them were genetic matches to his patients and it turns out he even lied about where he got the eggs, some were harvested from his own assistants and some were bought, which is illegal even in Korea. The holy grail has been ripped away. I wish this meant that the scientists are going to give up this horrid 'medical' tangent and focus on safe, proven adult stem cell research but, unfortunately I expect this will simply make other scientists more anxious to be the first person to first clone and then kill a human only to use the parts to harm another human, all in the name of medicine.

Well, there you go, just some random points that have caught my divided attention this holiday that I thought to share. Lets hope that this can be a happy New Year after all the things that have happened in it.

Part 1: In the Beginning

2005-12-15T14:22:00.000-06:00

To start with I'd like to refer all first time readers to the post titled "the search for... Oh whatever" for the purpose of this post.

In the beginning, something happened. In the hypothesis of macro-evolution that something was *most commonly* the Big Bang. Somewhere just short of 15 billion years ago by this hypothesis matter erupted from nothing and exploded outwards into the nothingness of space and populated the know universe with stars, galaxies, planets, and assorted debris. Somewhere around 4.6 billion years ago earth solidified in more or less its current orbit. Somewhere around 3 billion years ago life emerged.
For people, both lay and scientists, there are two commonly held beliefs on what was before the Big Bang. The first is that this is a cyclical process that has always happened and will always happen. The second is that nothing existed before that moment and some 'unknown agent' acted upon nothingness to cause the Big Bang. Since the second allows for some 'unknown agent' it is generally rejected by the naturalistic evolutionist crowd as it requires a force outside of nature. I will be dealing with the first and likely the most popular belief.
First off, it fails logically. Specifically it uses the false logic of ad infinitum to place the answer further away from the question without actually answering the question. For those that say the universe has always existed, shall always exist, and the Big Bang we know of is simply the latest Big Bang in a string of Big Bangs that has happened into infinity still does not answer the fundamental question of "where did the matter come from?" And the question must be answered. According to the Law of Conservation of Matter matter can neither be created nor destroyed. *E=MCsquared is the exception but that only allows for the destruction of matter for the creation of energy* The First Law of Thermodynamics says that energy cannot be destroyed and the second law states that the total balance of enthropy in any closed system increases until all usable energy has been used. These three laws taken together are a devastating blow to an eternal natural universe. Energy can not be destroyed, nor can it be 'wound back up' that is, made to be usable after it has already been depleted. The universe is headed towards what is called heat death. Eventually, although it is a very long eventually, all usable energy in the universe will have been used and everything will reach 0 Kelvin and even on the subatomic level movement will cease. Even if all matter in the universe is destroyed to convert it to energy heat death will eventually happen as the total balance between matter and energy remains balanced. This is called the Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy. Logically not only does the universe have an end it also had a beginning. Even if everything in the universe is 'wound up' there will still be a point in time that one can not go backwards into, that time itself came into being along with all of the possible matter and energy contained within the universe. There is no naturalistic explanation for this first moment when everything came into being as it requires, scientifically, some cause OUTSIDE of the system to have created it. Newtons Third Law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Logically the reverse is true, for every reaction there is an equal and opposite action. This is called Initial Cause and was best and really first described by Leonard Susskind. Newton's law works both ways and you can no more violate it backwards as forwards. Which leads logically and scientifically to some sort of outside force that first acted upon the universe to cause it to come into being. This is usually called the "Cosmic Genome" but in actuality a force outside of the universe *this plane of existence* that has the power to create is, in essence, a deity.
I will skip the birth of the earth since evolutionists themselves can not agree on when or how that happened. Most sources will admit that the creation of the solar system and notably the earth through naturalistic means is not yet explained. Instead I will move forward to the supposed appearing of life about 3 billion years ago by leading evolutionary standards.
According to main stream evolutionists the first self-reproducing cell arrived by chance from dead matter. The first and most obvious problem with this is called the Law of Biogenesis. Louis Pasteur is most commonly seen as the father of this law although several scientists of his day contributed to it. It is his quote that echoed still in the halls of the scholars "Omne vivum e vivo" or, for you who didn't waste college credits on dead languages, "every living thing arises from a preexisting living thing." Since this flatly contradicts an evolutionary, naturalistic origin of life recently scientists have tried to say that this law only applies after life is already in existence, and wouldn't be valid for an initial lifeless earth. There is no logical reason for this objection and such an exception has never been proven or even successfully hypothesized. Its called abiogenesis and it is the belief that under the right circumstances life can spontaneously arise. No life has ever been seen to arise from non-living matter, despite very detailed attempts to produce such a process in the laboratory. Of those that tried Stanley Miller in 1953 probably came closest and certainly is the most well known. Hailed as a breakthrough it was actually a very carefully controlled failure. In life amino acids are either left or right handed and life only uses the left handed amino acids to build enzymes, the right handed ones being deadly to life. It takes about 400 amino acids to build an enzyme and the simplest free living cell has about 482 genes to code for those enzymes. In Miller's, and other's experiments, both left and right hand amino acids were combined and those that did bind together bound in dipeptides *pairs* with a few binding in tripeptides *threes*. The experiments only created some of the amino acids needed for life and no enzymes were formed. Also they were not self regulating, breaking down almost as soon as they were formed, some within seconds when exposed to high heat. And, finally, the experiment had to be terminated as the build up of useless right handed amino acids and gases deadly to the amino acids had blocked the further production of even those tiny dipeptides. Neither life nor anything like it was created. Not only that but a carefully controlled experiment, even if eventually successful, would only prove that intelligence can create life. In the face of their failure to figure out or reproduce how life could spontaneously generate from non-life evolutionists usually resort to time and chance. Saying that if enough time is given non-living matter will eventually come together in the correct order to produce self replicating life. And here they run into another problem. Even if one assumes that the possibility for life has existed since the 'big bang' in every moment in every place in the universe the often quoted figure, from famous mathematician Frederick Hoyle, for the probability of a single cell arriving by chance is 10 to the power of 57800. To put that into perspective there are only 10 to the power of 80 electrons in the whole universe. Mathematically and statistically speaking that means it CAN NOT HAPPEN. Evolutionists come back with the thought that theoretically a cell does not have to form, just some sort of self replicating organism that can change into a cell. They usually talk in terms of bacteria or viri. While this is impossible anyway since both bacteria and viri need living cells as hosts to survive it is the most common solution presented. According to Harold J Morowitz, Professor of Biophysics at Yale University, one of the smallest bacterium, a form of E Coli, has 3-4 million base pairs giving it a mathematical likelihood of arising by chance of 10 to the -100,000,000,000. Again, statistically and mathematically speaking this is impossible. Given this evolutionists hypothesize that the first bacteria or cell would be of a far more simplistic sense than those we see today. This runs straight into two hurdles, the first being fossils. While they have plenty of fossils of cells and mircoorganisms none have ever been found that are fundamentally different or more simplistic than we have today. On the contrary, fossilized cells and mircoorganims are the same as those found today, with very little change. The second wall is called Irreducible Complexity and was best described, in my opinion, by Michael Behe in his book Darwin's Black Box. Although an evolutionist and atheist himself Behe points out several cellular and microscopic systems that are irreducibly complex, meaning they can not function without all steps already in place. There are things in nature, from the microscopic to the massive, which by no means could have evolved since any possible step between the initial hypothetical protosystem and the current system would have been non functioning and ultimately deadly. Michael Behe deals with irreducibly complex systems in the 'simplest' of organisms. Please note, Behe himself is an evolutionists and does believe in molecule to man evolution, he simply does not believe in goo to molecule evolution, acknowledging that those first steps must have been created. Unfortunately having done a very good job at disproving the first step in evolution Behe goes on to suggest panspermia, that is that life was seeding to earth by some alien lifeform. He acknowledges that this does not answer the ultimate question of a beginning to the cycle but says he is unwilling to entertain the notion of special creation so panspermia is the only option left to him.
Unfortunately much of the evolutionist community is like that. Having stared in the face of the impossible and having rejected the supernatural as unthinkable evolutionists must put more and more faith in their belief and shout louder and louder to drown out reason. This is not my opinion, but their's, and to show that I end this segment with a few choice quotes from evolutionists. Please note these are not some backwards scientists, but professors and even noble prize winners.
"There are only two possibilities as to how life arose; one is
spontaneous generation arising to evolution, the other is a supernatural
creative act of God, there is no third possibility. Spontaneous generation
that life arose from non-living matter was scientifically disproved 120
years ago by Louis Pasteur and others. That leaves us with only one
possible conclusion, that life arose as a creative act of God. I will
not accept that philosophically because I do not want to believe in God,
therefore I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically
impossible, spontaneous generation arising to evolution."
(Dr. George Wald, evolutionist, Professor Emeritus of Biology at the
University at Harvard, Nobel Prize winner in Biology.)
"My attempts to demonstrate evolution by an experiment carried on for
more than 40 years have completely failed.....It is not even possible
to make a caricature of an evolution out of paleobiological facts...The
idea of an evolution rests on pure belief."
(Dr. Nils Heribert-Nilsson, noted Swedish botanist and geneticist, of
Lund University)
"The pathetic thing about it is that many scientists are trying to
prove the doctrine of evolution, which no science can do."
(Dr. Robert A. Milikan, physicist and Nobel Prize winner, speech
before the American Chemical Society.)
"All of us who study the origin of life find that the more we look
into it, the more we feel it is too complex to have evolved anywhere. We
all believe as an article of faith that life evolved from dead matter
on this planet. It is just that life's complexity is so great, it is
hard for us to imagine that it did."
(Dr. Harold Urey, Nobel Prize winner)
"I suppose the reason we leaped at the origin of species was because
the idea of God interfered with our sexual mores."
(Sir Julian Huxley, President of the United Nation's Educational,
Scientific, Cultural Organization (UNESCO).)
"If I knew of any Evolutionary transitional's, fossil or living, I
would certainly have included them in my book, 'Evolution' "
(Dr. Colin Patterson, evolutionist and senior Paleontologist at the
British Museum of Natural History, which houses 60 million fossils)
"For over 20 years I thought I was working on evolution....But there
was not one thing I knew about it... So for the last few weeks I've
tried putting a simple question to various people, the question is, "Can
you tell me any one thing that is true?" I tried that question on the
Geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History and the only
answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary
Morphology Seminar in the University of Chicago, A very prestigious body
of Evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time and
eventually one person said, "Yes, I do know one thing, it ought not to
be taught in High School"....over the past few years....you have
experienced a shift from Evolution as knowledge to evolution as
faith...Evolution not only conveys no knowledge, but seems somehow to convey
anti-knowledge."
(Dr. Collin Patterson evolutionist, address at the American Museum of
Natural History, New York City, Nov. 1981)
"I can envision observations and experiments that would disprove any
evolutionary theory I know."
(Dr. Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution as Fact and Theory," Discover
2(5):34-37 (1981)
"Evolution is a fairy tale for adults."
(Dr. Paul LeMoine, one of the most prestigious scientists in the
world)

The search for... Oh whatever

2005-12-15T08:41:00.000-06:00

Truth, its a fundamental necessity in life, without knowledge of basic day to day truths our lives would be, well, they'd be likely over. We learn them as we grow, fire is hot, water is wet, usually followed closely by we can't breath water, gravity exists, food is necessary, and mother's don't like it when you bring snakes into the house. Then we go to school and learn more truths: 2+2=4, Asquared+Bsquared=Csquared, biology means 'the study of life', and cafeteria food isn't generally eatable. Somewhere along the lines, hopefully, we learn more basic, meaningful truths of life like love, respect, obedience, and loyalty. The point is, truth is to be sought, not sought because it gives us something to do but because it exists and without it we are meaningless, pointless, and well, wrong.
The search for truth drug western civilization out of the mess of the middle ages and into the Era of Enlightenment, pushed us into the Scientific Era, carried us breathlessly into the Industrial Revolution, and finally settled us into this modern era of convinces and general good living. Most people have jobs, most people can afford food, electricity, education, and medicine, and even the lowest of modern society live better than most of the population did in the middle ages.
Note I used the terms 'western civilization' and 'modern society' this is not a global concept, just like search for objective truth is not a global concept. It takes a very precise footing for science, which is in its best and purest form the search for objective truth, to spring to life and flourish. It takes a belief in the existence of objective truth. Science didn't bloom in the great Oriental regions because as a civilization China, Japan, Korea, et all do not believe objective truth can be achieved. *I am speaking historically here* It didn't flourish in India as that subcontinent does not traditionally believe that objective truth exists. Most of Africa believed in the whims of their gods, not a stable operating force, the same for the ancient Greeks and Romans, who came so very close but were ultimately defeated.
Only in the great halls of Europe and later America did the Scientific Method find a foothold. The Scientific Method was discovered by Sir Francis Bacon, an Englishman, and its states simply that one must Observe some segment of the universe, create a Hypothesis, create a Test that is capable of Proving or Disproving your hypothesis, Test the hypothesis and Update the hypothesis as needed by the outcome of the test. Its simple, clear cut, and always produces results. It also tells us something about objective truth, its testable. Its provable. Its able to be known. This is upheld by the Second Law of Logic, called the Law of non-contradiction, which states "something can not be both A and non-A at the same time and in the same respect." In laymen terms it means two opposites cannot both be right. Its a fundamental law.
So why are people abandoning true science and objective truth like its going out of style? Why do people insist on saying 'we can agree to disagree', 'we're both right', or 'there is no right or wrong'? These philosophies come from lands that rejected science. Many of these lands still, in this modern era, struggle to pull themselves up out of a third world condition simply because they still hold the basic belief that truth can not be known or does not exist. Why do we have what seems like a whole generation of people that suddenly don't care to learn the truth and even go so far as to refuse its existence? How could any logical, intelligent person tell another when faced with an opposing side 'I don't want to hear your proof', 'I don't care', 'just because you're right doesn't mean I'm not right too', or 'you have your beliefs, I have mine'. Beliefs? Who said anything about what you believe?? I believe black shouldn't be a mourning color, that's a belief. I'd be more than happy to debate with you, see your side, and even agree to disagree about that belief. In opposition, that an in-utero baby is a living human being, is tested, proven, and objective fact. Now, if you want to believe that fact doesn't have any barring on whether or not that baby human should have the right to life that is your right and an opinion, and its a debatable point that two people can have different opinions, depending upon their underlying beliefs. It does absolutely no good to say 'that's just your belief' when a FACT is presented. Not only does it make you sound like an idiot it makes any further discussion ABOUT ANYTHING utterly pointless as you've proven you care not for logic, fact, or even simple common sense. If you refuse to 'believe' one fact you've laid the foundation to ignore any you wish to. Now, that doesn't make any logical sense, jumping off an overpass is going to result in a splat regardless of your 'belief' in gravity, and it makes no sense as a personal belief, for any belief system that contradicts truth if flawed and cannot be true itself. So, why the obsession?
The obsession with making truth into belief and making all beliefs 'valid' regardless of their nature, contradictions, or flaws is directly linked to mainline science ignoring objective truth and following beliefs. Foul you cry? Not at all, just because something calls itself 'science' doesn't mean it is. Words have definitions for a reason, and when something not A is called A people get confused. Science was founded on the fact that the observable world can be known and and understood by the process put forth in the Scientific Method. Mainstream Science today, at least the part that gets the most attention, does not follow the Scientific Method and instead tries to force discoveries into a pre-existing belief. If they cannot manipulate the discoveries the discoveries, which are physical fact, are dismissed instead of dismissing the 'theory' that has been disproved. This obvious belief espoused as objective truth has degraded the very definition of truth till it has become the sad cousin of opinion.
This false science that has torn down real science and the real search for truth is, of course, the Theory of Evolution. It has paired with the religions of Naturalism and Humanism and has toppled that perfect search for truth that brought us the Law of Biogenesis, the Theory of Gravity, the Theory of Relativity, and the Law of Genetics. In fact, even labeling it the "Theory of Evolution" is a misnomer as, according to the Scientific Method it is at best a hypothesis. The problem is not that such a hypothesis exists, but that is has not only failed numerous tests but also that it has someone managed to attain the coveted standing of Scientific Theory despite its faults.
Its not complex, its not difficult, its easy. Logic always is. If A and non-A can not both be true at the same time in the same sense then evolution can not both be false and true. So, a simple question then, what could prove evolution false? First, lets define the term evolution. Evolution can mean many things, its most basic meaning is 'change over time' that form of evolution is proven fact, things DO change over time. Few argue that. What the Hypothesis of Evolution is referring to, and I am objecting to on the basis of objective fact, is what is called 'molecule to man' evolution or 'upwards evolution'. This is the belief that change over time moves in an upward directions producing increasingly complex structures, organisms, and systems. Its called a lot of names but the closest to a Scientific name it seems to have is Macro-Evolution and it is this that we will be dealing with.
Its also pretty easy to disprove. To make the best use of space I will be writing a number of posts over the next while dealing point by point with various requirements of the Macro-Evolution hypothesis and tests that can be used, or truths already known, to falsify each requirement. I will deal with no beliefs, only facts. It is this 'theory' that has led Western man down the path of 'all paths' instead of seeking to better ourselves in the search for true knowledge. If this shining box of belief is toppled off the pillar of truth we can perhaps go back to a mindset where people sit down and debate until one or the other has been convinced of the truth, where people seek true because they know it can be known and it MUST be known. For that reason showing evolution for exactly what it is, and is not, is ever so important. I do not undertake this in jest, but with all seriousness of faith in the truth and in the necessity of knowing truth.

Monsters

2005-12-14T13:10:00.000-06:00

So this is a cry out to whoever might read this, all of the two people who are likely to. Hey, maybe I'll get lucky and someone will do a search for 'monsters' and find it. Anyway, this is one of those random jaunts into alternate realities. I go in search of....
MONSTERS
okay, so I can come up with languages, cultures, maps, races, species, etc at the drop of a hat, but I'm completely stuck on these monsters. Usually because I don't find much use for them in my stories/worlds. But I'm in the middle of creating this world for a homespun RPG and find I need more monsters than I have in my collection of past works. Don't ask me why rpgs need such a preponderance of monsters but they sure seem to. I've flipped through Monster Manuals before, on rare occassions, but I don't want to pledgerize directly or anything. It is possible this might be published some day after all. So, what is your favorite monster? Favorite monster characteristic or concept? Anway, leave a comment if you have one and ask someone else and leave their comment, if you're feeling generous. If you're someone I know *hi Ben, hi lynn* I'll even let you know what monster I come up with via your comments!
Thanks.

Sick days

2005-12-13T14:23:00.000-06:00

Okay, so I'm rewriting this because this stupid computer just ate my work, but that's another rant.

So I'm home sick, again. What it is about our culture ignoring the fact that people get sick? All thought history some people have been 'sickly'. In this day and age there is no such thing as sickly. All you need is more vitamins, better meals, more sanitary environments, ect. Unless you have a major problem along the lines of cancer, heart disease, or AIDs, being sick a lot is at best wimpy and at worse hypercondria. I'm sickly. I'm not a wimp, most of my sicknesses include high fevers. I'm not a hypochondriac, most of my sicknesses have included doctors, prescriptions, and obvious physical symptoms. Until I was about 15 I had 3-4 cases of strep throat a winter, 4-5 cases of the stomach flu, at least 1 case of the flu, usually 2 cases of a fever virus, and a general cold from early September to late March, sometimes April. After 15ish I stopped getting strep, finally, and my cases of the stomach flu went down. I haven't had a fever virus *just a high fever with no other symptoms for those of you who are healthier* since I was 16. But I still am plagued by colds, flues, sinus infections, random sicknesses, and the occasion stomach virus. For most of my 23 years I have had a flu shot, I always get the flu anyway. The past few years I haven't bothered to get one, why waste a flu shot on someone who is going to get the flu regardless when it could go to someone it might actually help? Heck, I even got the mumps. People don't get the mumps anymore, we had to get the encyclopedia out! I'm just sickly, and finally my doctor just admitted it saying that 'regardless of what we do some people just have poor immune systems.' Finally, some honesty. My parents still won't believe it, my mother just says 'you've got to get over being so sick' like she wasn't there when I was growing up being constantly sick regardless of what she did. I've taken vitamins, I've eaten well, I've washed my hands, my blankets, my pillowcase, I've downed handfulls of vitaims with a glass of orange juice, sucked on zinc tablets, and taken iron pills prescribed by a doctor to try to lessen my monthly bout with anemia *didn't work*. Nothing works. My point is why does this society ignore the fact that people get sick and in fact encourage the spread of illness. All through elementary and grade school I got sick because normally healthy kids would drag themselves to school on the one day they were really sick so they could get their attendance awards. They could have stayed home for one day and I wouldn't have been sick for two weeks. But the schools reward perfect attendance, regardless of weather or not the students are sick. In high school, even though they didn't give attendance awards anymore, students came to school obviously sick, and even ignored teacher's requests to go home, because they didn't want their parents to keep them from hanging out with their friends after school. Heaven forbid they miss whatever popular kids did after school for one day to get some sleep at home instead of spewing their germs all over school for kids like me to catch! Now I'm at work, and people show up sick because they either need the attendance bonus they receive for perfect attendance, or they don't have enough sick/vacation time to pay for a day off. During November I was very ill, which resulted in several days off from work, some of which were unpaid. And despite a verbal agreement with management I was given a written warning, withheld my bonus for the month *which I hit despite being out so much* and placed on probation. Thankfully this time I not only was sent home by management, apparently throwing up at work is sufficient to be sent home, but was also given a promise by upper management *technically he is the vice-president but its a fairly small company* that I would not be fired. Yippy for me. Until next time. While I don't know where I got this current sickness from, the sickness I had during November was caught from a coworker who was sick for a total of 3 days. I was sick for nearly a month with a cold/sinus infection/cough/situational asthma mess, well, actually I still have the cold so it has now been over a month. All likely to have been avoided if the sick employee had stayed home for a day or two. There was also another person in the office that caught it at the same time, she also ended up with a sinus infections. Thankfully for her she avoided the perpetual cough that kept me home from work, she also had a more normal run for the sickness, a total of 2 weeks before she was fully better. And for coming to work sick and causing several other employees to be sick *at least two others caught the cold but, like her, were minorly sick for only a few days* resulting in at least 5 sick days between myself and the other worker, this woman will be rewarded by the company with an attendance bonus.
This world is so insane, they reward behavior that causes sickness and then punishes those that dare to be sick! I plan on being a stay at home mom, a housewife. And its a good thing, because to last through the winter with a company take a lot of understanding. I'm constantly stressed that the next coworker who comes to work sick, or the store clerk who won't go home will be the one who knocks me off my feet for the next two weeks. I can't expect even the most considerate workplace to not fire me if I call in with a 102 temp and vomiting or extreme cough for two weeks, not how their handbooks are currently written. If I ever own a business my employee manual for sick leave will read as follows: employees who come to work visibly, audibly, or otherwise discernibly sick will be asked to leave the office until well. Sick pay will be provided. Any employee who calls in sick will be required to submit a doctor's note to be excused from work. Any copayment or expense derived from the required doctor's visit will be reimbursed by the company upon receipt of the doctor's note. Sick pay will be provided assuming a doctor's note stating the illness is remitted. Three unauthorized sick days will result in disciplinary action.
I am willing to bet that my employees would be happier, healthier, and less stressed. I also bet I'd pay out for less sick days than the average employer. And such a policy would allow for those of us that are 'sickly' to be more productive members of society. Can you imagine how much better life would be, and how much healthier we'd all be from kindergarten up if people just stayed home in bed when they were sick instead of spreading it? In this civilized world we come into contact with more people on a day to day basis that most people a hundred years ago would come into contact with in a month. Traditional knowledge said people got in bed and had chicken soup when they were sick, sometimes shops closed for a couple of days. Sometimes people had to wait an extra day to get a package or had to help a neighbor with chores. Life somehow continued at this slower pace. Life would be better if we all remembered we're humans, not perpetual motion machines, and that life doesn't need to run at Mach 5 all the time.

wrongful....life?

2005-12-10T11:22:00.000-06:00

So yesterday I set up this blog, but didn't write anything as I was waiting for something particularly abhorant to hit me. It did, this morning as I was reading my emails I came across something that truly proves just how horrendous this world is. WARNING RANT AHEAD: In many places women can now sue for 'wrongful life' or 'wrongful birth'. You heard right "WRONGFUL LIFE"! The article that first keyed me into this practice involved a woman in Scotland that is suing her hospital for failing to abort one of her twin daughters. The child is now four years old and the woman is suing for the 'financial burden' of her unwanted child. In the abortion industry a live birth is called "the dreaded complication". Not injuring the mother, not tearing a living being apart piece by piece, not even killing the mother gets this distinction, no, only a live birth falls under this moniker. Despite what anyone could think of abortion, and don't misunderstand that comment I am fully against it, how could anyone even consider suing for wrongful birth? Anyone ever heard of adoption? Look, lady, if you don't want the kid, there are plenty of people who do. If for no other reason this is why abortion is so horrible. There are so many people who wish for a child, who would be more than happy to take this woman's unwanted get. Everytime someone has an abortion, and certianly everytime someone does something as brainless as sue for a live birth they tell everyone who has been adopted that they are better off dead. After all, isn't that what this boils down to? Instead of giving up a child for adoption as people had done for ages, people would rather kill the child. God forbid they fail in their attempted murder of their own offspring people now have the ability to sue for support and damages. This woman's kid of four years old! If she doesn't want her why didn't she give her daughter up for adoption? Can you imagine being that poor little girl? The mother currently has said she has no idea what she will tell her daughter but "maybe when she is nine or ten I will sit her down and explain it to her." What horror to imagine that conversation. Instead of letting an adoptive mother explain to a ten year old 'you grew in mom's heart not her stomach and you are our true and loved daughter' that woman would rather sit down and tell her daughter that 'I killed your twin sister and tried to kill you but the doctor messed up and that's why mommy gets a check every month to help raise you because its really their fault and responsibility that you are alive.' And people wonder why suicide is happening at younger and younger ages! My husband and I both work and raising a child right now would be difficult, but with all my heart I would welcome and love this child and any other who's biological parents have decided that death is preferable to life. This precious child is four years old and her mother STILL wants her dead, makes it clear how close we are to infantacide doesn't it? And do not mistake this for some insanity across the sea, these cases have happened in Canada and even here in the US! In the words of a California pro-abortion speaker unwanted pregnacies are, after all "a disease, the recommended treatment for which is abortion." So sure, why not sue your doctor for failing to 'cure' you, for allowing this 'disease' to run its course and produce a babe in arms?