Follow-up: Schiavo

You probably already know, but just as a follow up, Terri Schiavo died today.

Don't think me insensitive for saying this, but thank God. I'm glad that poor woman was completely unable to know about all the recent strife. For the record, when I die, I don't want the government even remotely involved in my medical decisions. I don't want people preventing me from dying in peace. Political issue indeed. "Murder" indeed. For shame.

Rest in peace, Terri.

A Booming Business

(Heard this on NPR.) An issue that hits close to home...


It ain't Mr. Wizard

Amphetamine use is on the rise... and I'm not talking about Ritalin and Adderall, either. I'm talking about those wonderful homemade methamphetamines. Of course, with meth use on the rise, know what else is on the rise? Yep, meth lab explosions. Hooray!

Let me tell you what bugs me most about this disturbing trend. It's not the dumb things people do when they're hopped up on meth. It's not even about people coming in with meth-related health conditions. It's not even related to the fact that the chemicals used in making meth are killing the environment (ironic that Arkansas, the self-appointed "Natural State" has one of the highest rates of illegal meth production). It's the explosions.

Don't get me wrong. I love to see cool explosions as much as any red-blooded American male. The value of an action movie is directly related to the number of explosions featured in its sequences (okay, so not really). But let's talk about how infuriating a meth lab explosion is:

The most severe injuries sustained are burns, both the everyday thermal-type and the more devastating chemical-type. The meth-makers (and their unfortunate families) who are injured are brought in to their local ICU to receive life-support and treatment for their burns. This care will involve close monitoring to make sure they don't die, lots of blood tests and antibiotics to make sure they don't get infected and die, fancy ointments and regular dressing changes to make sure they don't die, and probably skin grafting... to make sure they don't die. This is not only highly time consuming for the ICU staff but is also quite expensive. Let's think about this--if you're a meth-making redneck from Nose Goblin, Arkansas, are you going to be fully insured and/or financially solvent enough to pay for your medical bill?

There's the rub. It's gross misallocation of medical treatment. Sure, we take in the winos off the street and put them through detox so they don't die from withdrawals, but that's relatively inexpensive. Burn center treatment runs up hospital bills of millions of dollars, which will never be reimbursed. Consequently, those of us who are responsible and pay for our healthcare have to pay more to make sure that the hospitals don't go out of business. Whoo! Thanks so much meth-head.

You should totally be ticked off about this. I certainly am.

Diversion of the Day: Sonic the Hedgehog Flash

I'm working on an article for publication.

Amuse yourselves for the time being. I'll give you a diversion: Sonic the Hedgehog Flash Game.

The Sonic series was a fine set of games. I played 1-3 on my GeneCyst emulator back in the day.

UK: "We're crazy about homeland security too!"

Kraboom!


"Noooo! My new scooter!"

I am totally late in reporting this to you (it seems to have occurred last Sunday), but in my defense it's from all the way across the pond. Just to show that we Americans are not alone in being sometimes overzealous in our efforts to preempt terrorist attacks, the British army attacked an unattended, unmarked scooter discovered outside of a government building. The funny thing is that...

Heidi Brown was told she could park her new scooter outside the vehicle registration office while she waited to get number plates.

Very interesting... but stupid. I'll have to take an armed guard to protect my car next time I take it to the DMV. Or would that look even more suspicious?

Dilbert-quoting (again)

Today, Dilbert had some words of wisdom. This is not to be confused with the last time I referenced Dilbert, when he had some words of silliness (those words being "fleem" and "spoo").

People are so conditioned to take sides that a balanced analysis looks to them like hatred.

Ah, Dilbert, you are so wise... and yet, so dang weird.

What the... Bust Up

In other news, I recently heard of this wacky product:

Bust Up Chewing Gum

It's a Japanese chewing gum that enhances your bust size...

No comment.

Divorced from reality

I came across this odd little story, and thought you might be interested:


Cheating wife gets millions in divorce

Brief synopsis: wife of a multimillionaire cheats on her husband not once, but twice... the second and more lengthy affair was with a married man... the sexual infidelity is cited by the judge as the cause of the end of the marriage... and she gets more than $40 million in the settlement... oh, and her lawyer apparently defended her as a "good mother." Meanwhile, back at the ranch the two halves of my brain fused. Yay!

It's a bit late for me to be composing a cohesive essay on the subject, but I'll attempt some half-formed musings:

I'm not a big fan of divorce. I'm terribly disheartened whenever I think of the latest divorce statistics -- 50% of all first marriages end in divorce. Also, in googling for that statistic, I was further disheartened to discover that there is such a thing as Divorce Magazine. I know good people who have gotten a divorce, and I don't think of them as being bad people for it. But there's something very wrong about all this.

A while back, my favorite target, George W. Bush, proposed a solution to the gay marriage dilemma: There ought to be different types of marriage as recognized by the government, with the most serious and binding of wedding vows possibly receiving more benefits from the government. That was a dang good idea, regardless of whether the American people would go for it. (Yep, I'm giving props to George W. and a relatively conservative idea. Told you I wasn't a staunch liberal.) I think the idea ultimately ended up falling short in my opinion because "obviously" man-woman marriages would be accorded more benefits than would gay marriage. I thought that if two people wanted to be that committed to each other, the government should reward that. (Yep, I'm no staunch conservative either.) You don't have to call it a marriage, per se, but I believe we should respect and reward that kind of devotion to a relationship, regardless of its form.

Back to divorce... on the one hand, people don't seem to be taking their marriages seriously enough... but at the same time, they're taking them too seriously, in that they want everything to be completely fairy-tale perfect without wanting the trials and compromise that makes for a real relationship. We spend too much time pointing fingers in our marriages. No one wants to stop and examine the finger they're pointing... You know, fourth digit, left hand.

Presidential Duties

What, exactly, is one supposed to do as President of the United States?


Bush discusses strategy with a chief advisor

So I've loosely been keeping tabs on George W. recently, and I've been wondering what exactly he'd been elected to do. I mean, he spent all of last year campaigning, and I was then concerned that the time spent on the campaign might be detracting from his ability to carry out his presidential duties. Prior to that, Voice of the Left Wing, Michael Moore, made it a cinematic point to ridicule Bush for taking so much vacation during his first term.

Recently, I've seen him party for 4 days to celebrate his electoral victory, then give a whole bunch of speeches, then go overseas to "mend fences" he had broken during his first term, then go on tour in America to give speeches and campaign for his increasingly unpopular social security plan, and now go back overseas to "underscore his support for democracy, historic reform and peaceful conflict resolution." Does a US President ever get to stop campaigning? I suppose he must, if he's going to have time to hand-pick a UN Ambassador who hates the UN.

But I stepped back from my Bush-bashing observations to realize that I didn't actually know what else I expect him to be doing right now. I suppose he's supposed to be fulfilling his role as laid out in the US Constitution. Looking over the job description in sections 2 and 3 of article II, it looks like these are his jobs:

• Be the boss of the military


• Ask his cabinet for status reports


• Pardon criminals


• Pick out ambassadors and supreme court judges


• Give the State of the Union address


• Convene congress

I guess it's your standard CEO type job, where your job is really to manage and delegate authority to people who further delegate authority all the way down to the low-level grunts who do what we citizens usually consider "work". I suppose that the campaigning and hand-shaking is really more of a publicity issue, rather than something necessary for the job. So it's more like an extracurricular activity to be the voice and face the world will associate with The United States of America.

You know, big companies (e.g. Nike) usually hire spokesmen (e.g. Michael Jordan) who will appeal to their target demographics, rather than letting their CEOs (like Phil Knight or William Perez) trip over their words. Sometimes the CEO tries to be the spokesman as well, and it doesn't usually turn out so well... like when Michael Eisner insisted on hosting The Wonderful World of Disney. Some CEOs can manage because they just happen to be charming people (like Walt Disney, when he hosted The Wonderful World of Disney), but this is the exception rather than the rule.

George W. Bush is no Bill Clinton. Say what you will about Bill's questionable morals, but he was a charming leader full of charisma and an eloquent spokesman at the least. Not in his aforementioned job description, you say? True, but, hey, that's what I'm saying. Sir, stop making all those speeches (because you're not so good at the talking thing) and just do your job.

What the... Mordor

This is totally random. What the...?


...so frickin' AWESOME!

Credits to the creator, one mexicotuts. I don't know who that is. Still, I am amused. Thanks.

Brought to my attention by Geppy.

Diversion of the Day: Church Sign Generator

Brought to my attention by Reve...


(Preaching the Gospel of Fleem)

Church Sign Generator

Simple concept--put your custom message on a church sign. It's like photoshopping without all the work. Fantastic and fun. Here's another classic:



Enjoy.

A Right to Die?

Don't tell me you haven't been discussing this at some point over the past few days:


Terri Schiavo (I'm sorry, but why doesn't the AP have a better quality picture?)

To give an inadquate recap of events: Terry Schiavo is in a persistent vegetative state. Her husband, her legal guardian and surrogate medical decision maker has been trying to have her feeding tube removed since 1998. The tube was removed in 2001, but reinserted shortly thereafter while the appeals court considered the case. After 3/5 doctors testify before the court that Terri is in a persistent vegetative state, her feeding tube is again removed in 2003, but again shortly reinserted after Gov. Jeb Bush signs "Terri's Law" and issues a stay ordering the feeding tube be reinserted. The law is declared unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court. The feeding tube is removed for a third time on March 18 of this year, despite efforts by Congress to delay this while they hold a congressional hearing on the matter along with appeals for the US Supreme Court to intervene. In a special Sunday session, yesterday, the US Congress passes a new "Terri's Law," which President Bush signs, transferring jurisdiction of the case to a U.S. District Court for a federal judge to review. That's where we stand.

Before I take a stand on this, let me first point out some points of interest:

• Terri Schiavo had previously expressed a desire never to be kept alive by artificial means, presumably including a feeding tube. Her husband states that his decision on her behalf is what she would want.


• Irony (via NPR commentary): The effort to keep Terri alive is being spearheaded by Bush and conservatives in congress. Her medical care is being funded by (1) Medicaid -- for which Bush and conservatives in congress want to cut spending, and (2) a multi-million dollar malpractice suit -- the likes of which Bush and conservatives in congress want to cut back.


• Persistent vegetative state (PVS) is a heart-breakingly unclear state of being. It's not like a coma, when the person is unconscious and seems to be not-there at all. It's not like being alert and interactive, either. Rather, someone in PVS is unresponsive to stimuli, though they maintain a sleep-wake cycle and will do things like smile, grimace, and make noises, though again, not in response to anything in particular. The picture above is misleading in that it looks like Terri is smiling in response to her mother's kiss, which is probably not the case. Finally, PVS is a condition about which not much is known as to the neurologic and physiologic basis of the condition. That's why there was dissension among the ranks as to whether Terri will come out of this.


• Contrary to your gut reaction, "starving to death" is not terribly inhumane. In my experience and by what has been related to my by countless physicians involved in end-of-life care, you're hungry for about 2 days, and then you don't feel any pain whatsoever. Being resuscitated multiple times via electric shock and having people jumping on your chest? That's an inhumane way to die.


• Right to Life (of which I am a member) is a powerful social and political force in the world. Right to Die is not.


• People prefer to think of dying as heart-lung death rather than in terms of brain death. People prefer to think of personhood in terms of mental capacity rather than in terms of heart-lung capacity. As a result, those who are "brain dead" exist in a limbo when many would consider them still "alive," though many others might no longer believe that there is a "person" there. There are parallels at the other end, in the abortion debate.

The public perception of this whole issue is that the courts are giving Michael Schiavo the power to kill his wife, or, more strongly, that the courts are killing people as evidenced by protests such as these:


(protesters outside the federal court)

But the fine line that physicians and others involved in health care decisions walk is the difference between "killing" and "allowing to die." As medical technology allows us to sustain life (in a heart-lung sense), there has been a backlash in that many people don't want to "live" that way. So there are things like advance directives, which allow people to try to die a peaceful death.

If Terri Schiavo weren't in PVS, there would be little debate or uproar about the whole issue. Everyday, people across this nation elect not to be sustained by artificial means, including feeding tubes, and no one tries to write a law to prevent their will from being carried out. But the fact that there is disagreement between those who want to act in her best interests makes this now a subject of debate and division.

Back in the day, doctors made most of the medical decisions and the patient went along with it. The abiding concept in medicine at that time was paternalism, in which the doctor always decided what was best for patients. In those cases, he was usually right, given the patient's lack of expertise. However, some patients want a greater amount of control over their care. Currently, the physician-patient relationship is more of a partnership, with the doctor providing care in accordance with what the patient wants (within reason). I can argue that this has lead to other ethical issues, but that's another debate that I'll leave for later.

In this current climate of "doing what the patient would want," it's interesting that so many still have the impulse to do what they think is in her best interest. Her parents and those in government who have sought to give her parents the ability to keep her "alive," claim to know what is best for Terri. Her husband claims to know what she wants. It's good to have the problem be that everyone wants to act in her best interests, but, at the same time, it's frustrating that the dissent should be so polarizing.

I suppose I fall on the "right to die" side of this divide, though I hate to turn my back on the right to life. Really, I don't think it has to be an all-or-nothing matter, though I think that some of my colleagues in the right to life ranks might disagree. But my take on this issue is that Terri isn't living. She's dying (and wants to die), and we're keeping her alive with our fancy medical treatment.

I'm no neurologist, and I can't tell you if the 2/5 doctors who testified were right in believing that she can get better with therapy, as her parents claim. But it shouldn't matter. We can keep people alive by all sorts of extraordinary (and sometimes ordinary) means. But we've lost sight of the fact that dying is just as natural as living. We strive to ensure that people can live as they wish (within limits), but we are reluctant to ensure that people can die as they wish (within limits).

Turtle Power

And I thought Ninja Turtles were cool...


Satan's image on turtle shell

An Indiana pet store owner says he sees the image of Satan on the shell of a turtle that was the only survivor of a store fire in October.

The palm-sized red-eared slider turtle, named Lucky, was the only animal to survive the fire at Dora's A-Dora-ble Pet Shop in nearby Frankfort, about 40 miles northwest of Indianapolis.

Owner Bryan Dora now says he sees Satan's face on the critter's shell. He can spot lips, eyes, a goatee, shoulders and a pair of pointy horns on Lucky's back.

That's all. No clever commentary. Just a random bit of news.

Personal Fowl: Extreme Sports Puns

It's been a busy week here at my end. I've no time to learn new sports... like this guy:

One day, a man decided to learn some new sports. He spent some time finding out what was available for him, but after a few months, he called some of his friends out to watch him trying out some of his ideas. They all followed him up to the top of a local cliff. Not a big cliff, but still they were puzzled about why he had taken them there.

"Let me show you," he said, and produced from a cage a small yellow bird. He held the bird by the feet, and proceeded to jump off the cliff. His friends were obviously worried, but he was fine, albeit slightly bruised, and returned to the top of the cliff.

"Well, " he said, after a pause, "I don't think much of this budgie-jumping."

So, then he revealed that he had also brought a chicken with him. His friends were forced to watch an almost identical sequence of events all over again. Once again, he hit the sand at the bottom of the cliff, trudged back to the top, and said to his by now growing audience:

"Hen-gliding doesn't seem to work for me either."

Finally, he tried once more. This time, it was a parrot. Again, he leapt off the cliff holding the unfortunate bird by the feet. This time though, as he jumped, he pulled out a hand gun, and shot the bird as he fell. The end results were pretty much the same, though, and he arrived at the top of the cliff with yet more bruises. The crowd waited to hear what he would say this time.... He paused, scratched his head, and opened his mouth. The crowd hushed....

Finally, he said: "And that's the last time I try parrot-shooting too."

Don't you feel honored? That's, like, 3 bad pun dances for the price of one. Goodnight.

ANWR 'n' War

Someone needs to warn the ANWR that "W" ran and won...

Okay, now that we've established that the A, N, W, and R keys on my keyboard are functional (and that I'm fond of anagrams), a pictoral questipn:

What could be more picturesque than this?

The Arctic National Wildlife Reserve... now

Well, 51% of our Senate thinks that this is.

The Arctic National Wildlife Reserve... in about 10 or so years

So... hooray for progress, yeah? Another clear cut mandate from the people for the Bush Administration. Once again, I find myself on the wrong side of a 49-51 split. Yes, it's a matter of taste, perhaps, but I much prefer the first landscape over the second.

I don't like partisan politics. I understand that in the past, opponents of ANWR drilling have killed similar measures through the fine art of filibuster. Apparently, in order to declare a debate officially over, you needed 60%. You can't filibuster on the national budget, so this measure snuck through as a provision on next year's budget. Ohhhhhhh. (devilish laugh)

It would seem that this measure passed on the strength of concerns about rising gas prices and our continued reliance on the Middle East to power our street racers. Makes sense that our lawmakers want to do something about it, or at least give their constituents the impression that they're doing something about it. The facts, as I understand them, as given to me by "The Democrats" and the "liberal media":

• Despite rising gas prices over the past four years, American gas consumption hasn't waned. It's increased.


• Drilling wouldn't take place for another 10 years


• There's only enough oil in the ANWR to sate our gas bellies for 4 months.

Granted, these "facts" may be no more than speculation, but so is the assumption that prostituting our national parks will help us win the "war on terror."

I hope someone finds a way of killing this thing before it takes root. Seriously, did you know this was going to happen. I heard something about it earlier this week, but it wasn't exactly publicized. I'd like to think that most Americans would oppose this if they knew about it, but there's a 49% chance I'm wrong.

What's really ridiculous about this is that it's become such a partisan "us" versus "them" issue. Being in Little Rock, I was blessed to hear some commentary on a local talk show last week, blaming "the liberals" for not letting "us" tap into "the richest oil field" ever to be found on American soil, up there in the Alaskan wilderness beneath "some frozen tundra." Those danged liberals are ruining everything.

But drilling in the ANWR is something that is opposed even by moderate Republicans, as I understand it. That prompts me to ask (some might say it "begs the question"... I wouldn't): Is our government now 51% conservative Republican and 49% everyone else? I don't believe that.

I suppose that's the idea behind playing partisan games. "If'n you ain't with us, yer agin' us." I think a lot of senators voted for this measure because "the liberals" oppose it, rather than because they really think it will make a difference in the War on Terror or our day-to-day tank-filing. I think our system is broken if proving "them" wrong means more than doing what is right (and, yes, the door swings both ways). Either that, or I'm much more of a naive liberal commie pinko hippie than I thought.

On Blogging

Today, in response to Jiggity John's piggity post from thiggity Thursday, I blog:



Walt Whitman once wrote in his "Song of Myself":

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric YAWP over the roofs of the world.

I recall first being made aware of this when watching Dead Poets Society, in which Professor John Keating (Robin Williams) tries to get his students to step out of their shells of convention and make themselves known to the world. I recall one of the boys sounding his YAWP after successfully asking a girl on a date. To me, the yawp was a primeval call of "I am alive!"

This blog is my yawp. This is where I sound my presence to the world. I have been told that the blog has become the voice of the people, a new weapon in the "political word war." Strange that most Americans are unfamiliar with blogging, yet we bloggers are considered representatives of society. As I commented to John, we truly represent but a fraction of America.

Still, my presence here is known. There are at least half a dozen people who are now aware of what I think and many others who know where one faceless barbarian stands on the issues, though they know not whence this yawp came. At the very least, through blogging, I'm still a statistic, but a more accurate one.

I do not claim to represent the blogging nation, though a Google search for barbaric yawp will net you more than a few links to blogs. However, I claim to represent no one other than myself. This is no manifesto. It is but a response, dear reader. You ask what a blog is for? To blog is to yawp, so that the world will know you were here.

I sound my barbaric BLOG over the roofs of the world.

Radios and Theology

So you might be able to tell that I've been listening to mostly NPR as of late. However, I've also been listening to a fair amount of Contemporary Christian radio as of late, mostly due to the influence of my dear wife.

The Christian radio stations also give occasional news updates, which tend to have a focus on Christian issues. For example, today I heard that a full 38% of teenagers don't believe in evolution, believing, rather, that God created man less than 10,000 years ago. Being a firm believer that I'm closely related to chimpanzees, I was surprised that the number is still so high. I always thought that stuff like the Scopes monkey trial was stuff from the past... and that everyone obviously accepted the theory of evolution these days. But I guess it depends on what you like to read. There are some who might say I should have spent more time reading another book.

But that's not what I wanted to talk about in this post. Rather than the news on Christian radio, I was thinking today about the music on Christian radio. There is really quite a plethora of religious issues I could bring up... and I may at a later time. For now, let me focus on this:

I've heard songs such as this one that make mention of a central Christian tenet, based on Jesus' own words in the Gospel of Matthew:

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.

--Matthew 6:19-20

I was reflecting on this, and it suddenly struck me as odd that we should be good on Earth in order to earn a reward in heaven. It's like a little child being told that if he cleans his room, he'll get an ice cream cone. His desire to clean the room isn't based on an innate desire to do his chores or be a "good boy," but because he wants the reward. It seems to me odd that the goodness we all strive for in our lives is something so similarly motivated. We are being good so that we can get good stuff later on. It seems--I don't know--selfish somehow.

But then again, what else could I possibly expect out of morality? Should people be good for the sake of being good? What sense is there in that? That point of view really just leads to an arbitrary set of rules, with no reason why something should be morally good or bad.

I can see now that my ponderings have stumbled back into a philosophical issue of ethics and philosophy of religion... namely, "can there be goodness without a benevolent diving being?" I haven't the energy nor the time to write a philosophy paper tonight, so I'll leave this as a "just a thought" post for now. As always, loyal readers, your comments and thoughts are most welcome.

Litigators Gone Wild!

A boy named "sue"...


Teenager sues over homework

<rant style="crotchety old man">
Kids these days... always bellyaching. Back in my day, we were assigned homework everyday, even on Christmas. And we liked it! We didn't complain about having to do three math problems, just because we wanted to go to camp! We went to boot camp over the summer, and we liked it! We loved it!
</rant>

But seriously, it's a very bad sign when it's easier for someone to file a lawsuit than to do pre-calculus homework. I mean, pre-calculus is no walk in the park (there), but what ever happened to "sucking it up" or "dealing with it" or "doing work"? I'm even further bothered that it's Honors pre-cal. That means that this kiddo is a gunner, but one who doesn't want to do the work.

Is it time to cull the herd? Well, don't base your answer on just one stupid lawsuit. Base it on a whole mess of stupid lawsuits.

Overwatering the Roses

For today's post, you get a special bonus: semi-obscure cultural reference, editorial photoillustration, and half-baked news commentary all in one. Behold:


Bush of Roses
George Bush as Christian Slater
Mary Stuart Masterson as Middle East Democracies

Part I: Semi-Obscure Cultural Reference
For those of you who don't remember this movie (by many accounts, it was rather forgettable), Bed of Roses was a 1996 movie starring Christian Slater as an introverted, yet romantic florist. It was the quintessential 90s chick-flick, full of quotes brimming with smug sarcasm. It also had a super-mushy love story. I had the great fortune of watching this movie while I was a freshman at Notre Dame... with a bunch of girls from the neighboring dorm--I was doing my best to develop my "feminine side." But all in all, it wasn't a life-changing experience.

My most salient memory of watching this movie was one of the girls I was watching the movie with breaking down into tears while admonishing the main character, "Oh Lewis, you're overwatering the roses." Okay, so you have to know something about the movie to know what the heck that is all about... so here you go:

Lewis (Slater) has this habit of wanting things to be absolutely perfect. So much so that he sometimes overdoes things. When he was young, I think he was put in charge of a rose garden, and did such a good job watering the flowers for a week that the roses were just beautiful. Wanting to do even better, he watered them even more until he had overwatered the roses and they all died. (I didn't know you could do that.) Anyway, so he falls in love with this girl and goes all out... so all out that he nearly scares her off, thus prompting my colleague's emotional outburst.

Ugh... anyway... for the sake of keeping track of where I'm going with all this, remember the "overwatering the roses" bit. Everything else is fluff.

Part II: Editorial Photoillustration
So there's apparently much ado being made about this recent issue of Newsweek, in which they use a photoillustration of Martha Stewart to make their point about their cover story. I don't see the problem with it. I guess that sometimes art is too convincing and that too many people thought it was an actual picture of Martha Stewart in prison with gold curtains and pink sweaters. I guess some folks can't distinguish reality from fiction and they felt tricked by it. I think it's ridiculous. Obviously, the curtains in Martha's prison would be a shade of celadon.

Anyway, just so you know, I'm not trying to slander George W. Bush by making it look like he's making out with a tattooed Mary Stuart Masterson. It's called "photoshopping." I guess no one will really care, because I'm not technically media. Or am I?

Part III: Half-Baked News Commentary
Okay, so here's the upshot of all this rambling:


© Copyright 2005 Daryl Cagle All rights reserved
Bush pushes for democracy in Lebanon
(and in other parts of the Middle East)

I am not alone in wondering if all of Bush's trumpeting his success in spreading democracy is warranted. I think that there are definitely things which have come to pass only because of our recent pushing and confrontational cowboy approach to governments we oppose. But there's only so much that you can gain by giving US backing to protesters in Lebanon.

There are plenty of people over there who are very much against our involvement (which they term "interference"). It's not that they don't want freedom. And I think that there are definitely a lot of people in Lebanon who want Syria out. But a lot of those people want to be given credit for winning their own liberty. Not everyone wants us to save them... or even help them out by issuing orders to those they oppose. If you were a protester in Lebanon, maybe you want to see that change comes about because your people wanted it, not because George W. Bush said so.

Meanwhile, W is also making it more difficult for those protesters to gain support among their own people because of the idea that "if George W and the United States want it, it's obviously evil." People will fight the change just because it's backed by the US. True democracy is not forced on people. The change comes about from within, and there's no other way it can work. So if Lebanon wins its freedom (it's been democratic for quite some time, by the way), it accomplishes nothing for Bush to chalk that up to the success of his Bush doctrine.

I think he is definitely due some credit for helping some democratic change bloom. He outright planted some in Iraq. But what he's doing now is overwatering the roses.

Bad Rabbit Jokes

As a corollary to today's fatherly post on the Gabi Blog, (and as the customary change of pace after yesterday's "serious" post) some bad jokes which are also rabbit themed:

How do you catch a rabbit?
Hide in a meadow and make carrot noises.

How do you catch a unique rabbit?
Unique up on him.

How do you catch a tame rabbit?
The tame way -- unique up on him.

If you have a line of 100 rabbits in a row and 99 of them take 1 step backwards, what do you have?

A receding hare line!

In the depths of the countryside there lived a farmer who took care of baby animals.

The farm was very peaceful until one day the farmer's wallet disappeared. Now the farmer took the incident very seriously, so he started an investigation.

Unfortunately, the only witness the farmer had to this theft was his pet bunny rabbit.

Since the rabbit was unable to speak and tell him who stole the farmer's wallet, the farmer lined up his four prime suspects, a cow, a horse, a goat, and a duck, and told the rabbit to pick out who had committed the crime.

The rabbit hopped up and down the line, checking each animal, and then finally hopped forward three feet, and stopped in front of the goat.

"It wasn't me! It was't me!" yelled the goat.

The farmer shook his head and said, "Hare's looking at you, kid."

End transmission.

Im Westen Nichts Neues

How difficult would it be to be an American soldier in Iraq? The world sees this:


Freed Italian journalist shot by American troops

And you're seen as either the bad guy or just incompetent. Your superiors try to defend your actions, but, really, it only makes you look more guilty... and now someone's trying to cover up what you did....

If you read much Fleem Reactor, you know I'm no fan of the war in Iraq. I've been against our storming in there since we went back in. (Incidentally, I was all for the first war, but I was in junior high then, and we got out of there after we had apparently won.) Despite my anti-war stance, I do sympathize with the soldier's plight. A little more than a year from being hailed as person of the year, people are sick of your being there. People in Iraq don't like your presence there because it's humiliating to be part of an occupation. You don't have time to get to know them, because you're worried about getting blown up if you let the wrong person too close. And because of your well-founded paranoia, you've shed innocent blood. I suppose that's part of the psychology of terrorism... if you weren't seen as the bad guy before... you are now. And while they don't like your being there, it's clear to everyone that you have to stay, else risk further destabilizing the situation.

Sometimes maybe you wish folks would order you to pull out. If you were in the Syrian army, you'd have all sorts of people telling you to get out. But there's a difference, really... they were invited in to help keep the peace in a time of political upheaval, which is now long since past... you're there on a mission of freedom and democracy, and your work is really far from over.

And meanwhile, folks back at home, for whom you entered the service to begin with, are getting tired of your being in Iraq. Your families and communities miss you. But people are concerned about having to foot the bill for rebuilding Iraq, though they also recognize that you need funding to protect yourself properly. Really, everyone wishes it were all over. Maybe people were happy we were able to finally bring down Saddam Hussein, but now what? Isn't it over yet? We've had the climax of the story, and we won, right? Where the denouement?

I'm too young to have been part of Vietnam, but from my limited perspective, this seems to be dangerously close to the catch-22 faced then. Try to be too trusting and avoid shooting innocents, and you'll be the victim of suicide bombing. But shed innocent blood, and you become a monster. If I were to look closely enough, I might discover that the same holds for every war in history, but the difference since Vietnam is that we civilians were suddenly all too aware of what's going on. World War II stories are usually heroic. Vietnam stories seldom are. And for the moment, I think I've heard more bad than good come out of our involvement in Iraq (perhaps that's because I don't watch enough Fox News).

So I think it's important to be sympathetic to our troops, even as I say things like "War equals bad." They sacrifice far too much to be placed in this no-win situation. You become a soldier because you want to be a hero, not a villain. God bless our troops.

Word of the Day: Avuncular

Lissa brought this word to my attention:

avuncular

Etymology: Latin avunculus -- maternal uncle
1 : of or relating to an uncle
2 : suggestive of an uncle especially in kindliness or geniality

You know, I think I've heard this word before, but I just figured it meant something more sophisticated than "uncle-like." Who knew?

The Riot Act

Over-reading a conversation today (I'm declaring that a new languagism for the internet-age), I came across the term "read (insert name) the riot act." As with many oddities of the English language, this prompted me to determine the origins of this phrase.

The first information I came across in my brief investigation were websites for this 2002 Pearl Jam album and this Atlanta-based punk band. Yeah... not what I was looking for. I don't think that "reading (insert name) the riot act" has to do with Pearl Jam lyrics or Georgian punk-rock.

After several grueling seconds of google search, I came across useful information here. Unfortunately, this site seems to take its copyrighted narrative very seriously, so I won't quote them here. Paraphrasing, the Riot Act was a piece of British legislation which was passed in 1715. It was intended to make it a crime for members of a mob to fail to disperse after being ordered to do so by the magistrate. Interestingly, it didn't work very well. I mean, if you're part of an angry mob, are you really going to quiet down to listen to some official make any sort of proclamation?

Further googling found this site, which added that this act was passed around the time of the Catholic Jacobite riots, in which Northumbrians supporting the Scottish Stuart line of kings, expressed their opposition to the new Hannoverian king, George I. While that bit of information probably requires some interest in British history, I did find the text of the section of the Riot Act which was to be read:

Our Sovereign Lord the King chargeth and commandeth all persons being assembled immediately to disperse themselves, and peaceably to depart to their habitations or to their lawful business, upon the pains contained in the act made in the first year of King George for preventing tumultuous and riotous assemblies. God save the King.

These days, folks use the term to describe any sort of scolding. I find it interesting that the history of the Riot Act shows it to have been grossly inept at accomplishing its end.

Anyway, I just thought it would be good to know why it is we say what we do. I don't think enough people care about it... they just say stuff for effect. For example, "I could care less..." is often used to say "I don't care...". But anyone with a 4th grade understanding of mathematical word problems should be able to see that if you could care less, then you obviously care somewhat. What people mean to say is "I couldn't care less..." but I think that must have too many syllables. The English language is in a sad state of decline, and this guy isn't helping:

In 1994, there were 67 schools in Texas that were rated "exemplorary" according to our own tests.

--The Best of DubyaSpeak

Yo lineman's so fat...

...he eats "Wheat Thicks"


Study: NFL players so obese that when they back up, they beep.
NFL: Study so dumb it reckoned a quarterback was a refund.

It's no secret that size matters in the National Football League, but a new study suggests that a whopping 56 percent of NFL players would be considered obese by some medical standards.

The NFL called the study bogus for using players' body-mass index, a height-to-weight ratio that doesn't consider body muscle versus fat. The players union said that despite the familiar sight of bulging football jerseys, there's no proof that obesity is rampant in the league.

The most amusing part of this story is that the NFL is actually refuting the study's claims, based on a technicality. The NFL points out a well-known flaw in the use of Body Mass Index (BMI) in determining whether or not a person is obese. That is to say, muscle weighs more than fat. A very muscular person will have a higher BMI than a fat person of the same height. BMI scores have strict cut-offs for what is "overweight," "obese," and "morbidly obese." But any self-respecting doctor knows that muscular atheletes deserve special consideration. (Sidebar: What's your BMI?)

Certainly, this is an age of instant replay and coach's challenge, but really... Do you watch the games? When your average lineman is about 300+ pounds, you aren't going to get a team full of Arnold Schwarzeneggers to make "muscle mass" a significant factor to outweigh (pun intended) "fat mass."

Not much else to say here, really. Just one of those news stories that makes you point and laugh derisively... like this: