 |
|
|
|
Disks in Rotation: Books Lying
Open What's For Lunch? Soul-Devouring
Worry When I Grow Up:
|
Sunday April 21, 2002 |
| Quote
of the Day Two other things that we know about scientists: the overwhelming majority of them do not believe in a personal God (about 60 percent of general scientists and a staggering 93 percent of top scientists), and the reason they become scientists is to pursue questions for which science is a particularly good tool. Most of these questions are rather more mundane than the existence of God. The result of this odd mix is that most prominent scientists do not believe in a personal God because of their understanding of science and of its implications, but come out in public with conciliatory statements to the effect that there is no possible contradiction between the two. -- From an article by Massimo Pigliucci |
|
Daily
Blog Actually it's half over. I'll have to try and get out into it at some point. Woke up Saturday morning (well, afternoon) with my left shoulder feeling like it had been hit with a hammer. No paricular reason, just it's up high by my collar bone, and if I lift the arm to shoulder height, there is a shooting pain. Slept on it wrong or something, I guess. Still hurts now, but hopefully I won't be held at gunpoint any time soon, or handcuffed to a skylight. Push ups are pretty well out of the question as well, not that I'm really dying to do any. But it would be nice to have the option... Various news items: • Stay out of prison. Really. Whatever you have to do, don't go. Things like this go on constantly. It's not like in the movies, you don't fight one guy and then get respect. You get jumped by 10 guys, and they break your fingers one by one, until you suck what they tell you to suck. And if you don't, they break them again, and knock your teeth out, and maybe kill you, when they get tired of just hurting you. • Okay, this is funny. Mandatory employee meetings for harassment topics. If you have anything approaching a job you know how horribly you'd dread having to waste a day on this sort of soul-draining bullshit. The only consolation in most jobs is getting to joke around with your co-workers, and perhaps flirt and talk about sex. Now even that's being taken away. At least there was some kiddy porn to cap off the presentation. If they offered that every session, they'd probably get higher attendance? • You've probably heard the controversy with Abercrombie and Fitch, and their t-shirt designs featuring caricatures of Asians. I suspect kids would have liked the shirts, but adults aren't real into the humor. Also if some Asian store sold them, they'd be okay, but not for a white-bread retailer like A&F. But I could be wrong. Rap songs by black guys can throw around "nigger" the way boy bands use "baby" (for everything, and to cover up their lyrical idea bankruptcy), but if the same words were in a Metallica song, it would be a big racist deal. I'm not saying that shouldn't be that way, I'm just saying that's how it is. It's sort of the fashion for conservative whites to complain every chance possible about how they are the butt of jokes, how they can't use the same terms for other ethnic groups that those ethnic groups use for themselves. As if the last few years of "political correctness" make up for the previous, oh, 350 years of American History. But that attempted whining about "reverse discrimination" annoys me, so I shan't bleat it myself. Anyway, all five t-shirt designs are pictured here. Click the arrows to scroll through them. #3 amuses me, but then I've always had a weakness for the "love you long time" line. • Layne Staley is dead. I loved Alice in Chains when they were in their prime, which unfortunately only lasted about two albums. I had a GF back in the early '90s who liked them a lot as well, and made sweet love with them as the soundtrack a time or three. They've done nothing worth listening to since about 1995 though, and likely that's due mostly to their various junkie issues. Heroin no doubt killed Layne. I saw the headline on Yahoo that he was dead, and instantly thought "drugs". It's true that junkies get what they deserve, and usually live to regret it. If they live that long. But it's still unfortunate that talented people get so involved with various chemicals that ruin their lives.
He was only 34, and had such a good voice, in theory he could have cleaned up and done great work yet. Or even done great vocals without kicking the junk, but it didn't seem to be happening for him. • So some companies take out life insurance policies on their low level workers, just in case they die? I'd never heard of that, but apparently it's a common practice. Walmart is caught doing it in this article. You can understand it on the CEO or other essential employees, who if they drop dead suddenly will really case a problem for the business. But no one in any Walmart is all that essential. Plus they have those ancient guys as greeters; they have to be like even money to drop dead. From shock of what "the kids these days" are wearing, if not being on their feet in a mercilessly boring job for eight hours a day. There are more gruesome implications:
Yeesh. And you wondered how that railing on the stairs to the employee break room kept coming loose. And why the rat poison was always right next to the non-dairy creamer. And this at last explains those "Free cigarette and red meat Fridays". On the bright side, if tech companies and the post office would get these for all of their workers, they could almost come out ahead next time someone snaps and comes to work with an AK-47. • Remember, there's nothing to worry about if you have "nothing to hide". Just don't happen to mention those office supplies you borrowed, or that extra little deduction you took on your taxes this year when speaking on your cell phone. Or home phone. Or office phone. Or email.
• Interesting article about a red heifer, and how it might bring about Armageddon. Not that I give any credence to the idea that it's some sort of biblical event or symbol, but since there are plenty of nuts who do, and are prepared to act on that belief. The last few paragraphs of the article cover that possibility, and are the most interesting portion of it. |
|
|
Since this story is in Canada, where they don't have the same constitutional protections of freedom as in the US, it's not entirely relevant, but bear with me. The article in question is here, and it's about a 16 y/o girl who is a Jehovah's Witness (no, not "Witless", though that's an appropriately dumb joke in this instance) and is refusing the blood transfusions she requires as part of her treatment for Leukemia. She's had intensive chemotherapy already, and the courts are forcing her to continue he treatment; they've had to strap her down to put the blood into her body. The article doesn't say if she'd have died or fallen into terribly ill health by now if they weren't doing it, but I doubt they're giving her dozens of large blood transfusions for fun Her religion says that the Bible prohibits any blood transfusions. Funny how it doesn't prohibit chemotherapy too. I wonder how many other Jehovah's Witnesses adhere strictly to this credo? I wouldn't think there would be too many old Witnesses, if they couldn't have any sort of surgery at all, died any time they had a bad car accident, slipped using a circular saw, etc. Anyway, I'm not talking about one particular religion/faith/cult here, I don't know what the Witnesses' actual beliefs are, if this girl is an exception or the rule, and I don't really care. The whole concept of refusing medical treatment for superstitious reasons is what I find interesting about it. I suppose that in theory it should be inspirational or ennobling that she's so devout she'll risk her life to follow her faith. Some people seem to support it when someone won't work on a Friday, or a Sunday, or insists on fasting for X number of days at some time of the year, etc. I don't see that illogical behavior is really a good thing, no matter how much someone supposedly thinks they *must* behave that way. Since in every case the vast majority of other people on earth think it's foolish, and has nothing to do with getting into Heaven (or whatever) or not, then one could correctly say that it's idiotic, at least going by majority vote. The girl's family is split on the issue. Her father is for the medical treatment, the mother and sisters are superstitious peasants who should be burned at the stake... I mean they support the girl's decision. It's hard to believe there are people in this modern age with this sort of Middle Ages view of things. I take it there aren't a lot of hemophiliac Jehovah's Witnesses? It's interesting that adults generally are given the right kill or cripple themselves for whatever idiotic reason, by refusing medical treatment because of their religion of choice, but minors are not. Yet outright suicide is illegal. So you can refuse to have a blood transfusion and die, but you can't shoot yourself? Where's the logic there? The other aspect of it I think should be addressed is financial. She's in Canada, so tax dollars are paying for her treatment. If she stopped getting the blood transfusions, and died because of it, after they'd spent a fortune on her chemotherapy, hospital stays, etc, and I were a Canadian tax payer, I'd be pretty damn pissed. What if you paid for someone to get a heart transplant and they went out and started smoking again and eating three pounds of steak a day? A perpetual tragedy is the huge shortage of donor organs in the US; thousands of people die every year waiting for a transplant kidney, liver, heart, etc to become available. Meanwhile lots of people die and don't allow organ donation for religious beliefs, or just through laziness. I'd like to see a national system where if you weren't on the list for donor, you could not receive one in donation. And you couldn't wait and change your status just when you got sick, you had to make the choice when you were of legal age to decide. That's when most idiots wreck their cars or motorcycles, and the younger body has a lot more useful parts than some 60 year old. I also wouldn't be opposed to organ donation being a pre-requisite to being treated (for anything) at any public hospital. Various religions could have their own private hospitals if they were so upset by modern medicine, but if someone is going to suck up tax dollars in their treatment, or even insurance dollars, they should, by god, be forced to share and share alike. People's religions are fine for how they want to be buried and if they are from some nutty cult that refuses whatever kind of medical care, but when their superstitions are causing other people to die, that's just not acceptable. It's idiotic to bury someone with valuable and life-saving organs in them, or burn them up, or throw them in a medical waste bucket during embalming. Hospitals should just take whatever they need, and tell the family whatever the family wants to hear. It's not like they'll ever know; granny isn't going to cut open little Johnny at the wake and count his kidneys. Of course I think any beliefs that prohibit that sort of thing are foolishness and shouldn't be humored for an instant. The people who have those beliefs think they are important, far more important than anything in life, since heaven and hell are forever. They're just wrong, that's all. |
|
|
<-- Previous -- Daily Main Page -- Next --> |
|
All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007. |
o
does "freedom of religion" = "freedom from medical
treatment"?