There’s just no shortage in our country of people who want to tell everyone else how to live their lives, is there?

So here’s the setup: one day, in Wilson County, Tennessee, the principal of Carroll-Oakland Elementary School brings all the students from the whole school into the gym, where she introduces representatives of the Gideons and explains why they are there, and then proceeds to tell the whole student body about the time she received her first Bible. The principal tells the students that taking a Bible is not mandatory, but then the students, row by row, are brought forward–graduation-style (or communion-style, if you prefer)–and each student is given a Bible.

I honestly just can’t fucking believe that there are still public school principals out there who don’t see the problem with this! No, the taking of a Bible was not technically mandatory, but then we all know how much elementary school children enjoy being ostracized in front of the entire student body by a group of Bible-thumping adults, don’t we? Fucking unbelievable.

I’d just love to see the outcry that would result from a local synagogue passing out copies of the Talmud, or a local mosque passing out copies of the Qur’an.

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates his duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
–Thomas Paine

These people first came to my attention following the Super Bowl XXXVII halftime show back in 2004. You remember: Nipplegate. I wrote a piece about that back at the time, on another blog that no longer exists; I may have to see if I have a copy anywhere. Regardless, my wife and kids watched that halftime show with me and I have to say that my kids (who were 6 and 7 at the time) weren’t damaged in any way by seeing the 9/16 of a second nipple shot of the beautiful Janet Jackson–we all got a HUGE laugh out of it. Personally, the only thing that struck me as possibly being at all offensive to the more delicate viewers during that particular halftime show was seeing Kid Rock wearing the US Flag in the style of a poncho. But, I digress…

Maybe it’s just me, but the PTC just strikes me as a bunch of uptight prudes who apparently are too fucking lazy to monitor what their kids are watching on TV!* Family Guy is rated TV-14. Now, to me, that says maybe I should be familiar with the show before I let an 8 year old watch it. And no, I’m not going to suggest that I don’t let my kids (now 12 years old) watch any TV-14 shows. Some TV-14 shows are fine by me and have been for years, and some are not, the bottom line is you have to watch what your kids watch until you’re comfortable that you know what the show is like.The TV ratings are, after all, guidelines.

Seems like common sense to me, but then we all know what they say about common sense…

Wah Cheong, a lifelong Republican and the soon-to-be divorced father of two teenage boys, sometimes surprises his co-workers and neighbors in a relatively conservative community outside San Francisco when he says he supports same-sex marriage.

“Here is my situation,” the 47-year-old chemical engineer tells them when the hot-button topic comes up. “If gays and lesbians were more accepted, I wouldn’t have married a closeted lesbian.”

Silence usually follows. Then, a spark of understanding.

HUNTINGTON BEACH – Colby Curtin, a 10-year-old with a rare form of cancer, was staying alive for one thing – a movie.

From the minute Colby saw the previews to the Disney-Pixar movie Up, she was desperate to see it. Colby had been diagnosed with vascular cancer about three years ago, said her mother, Lisa Curtin, and at the beginning of this month it became apparent that she would die soon and was too ill to be moved to a theater to see the film.

After a family friend made frantic calls to Pixar to help grant Colby her dying wish, Pixar came to the rescue.

The company flew an employee with a DVD of Up, which is only in theaters, to the Curtins’ Huntington Beach home on June 10 for a private viewing of the movie.

[...]

Colby died about seven hours after seeing the film.

Here in Tennessee, budget shortfalls have created an outright attack on education, most notably higher education.  Weekly there are news stories about universities having to consider the elimination of whole departments and the impact on students who face the prospect of their school no longer offering a degree in their chosen major. And currently there’s a storm brewing over the funding of pre-K programs in the state.  At this point, the brouhaha concerns only the method by which the program is funded, but when you have Republican lawmakers who publicly characterize the entire pre-K program as ‘glorified daycare’, it’s not hard to see that the very continued existence of what is generally regarded as a beneficial program is not on the most solid ground.

At least we have a governor who supports education, unlike some other states.  Check this out from the Louisiana Coalition for Science:

Gov. Jindal wants to cut $219 million from higher education, dealing a devastating blow to the state’s public universities just when they have been recovering in recent years from similar cuts made in the 1980s. Four of the state’s former governors actually met with Jindal in person to urge him to reconsider (such a meeting is highly unusual). The fact that Jindal is even contemplating such drastic cuts to higher education is indicative of the misplaced priorities in the Pelican State. His appointees enjoy very high salaries (which he made sure to give them last year), and legislators continue the time-honored Louisiana tradition of maintaining a slush fund, despite the fact that higher education and health care for the poor must go begging.

The problem is this: how do you change the pervasive perception that education perception that education is somehow dispensable?

The Tennessean:

The Tennessee legislature may have to pass more laws to protect bars, said Nashville attorney David Raybin. Until that happens, he says, he’d advise clients to post the sign and let someone else be a test case if a shooting were to happen.

“My prudent advice would be that, because you have the capacity to exclude people with firearms, if you don’t and someone is injured, you run the risk of a greater liability,” Raybin said. “Whether that will pan out as a court holding that way is another matter.”

[...]

All of the business owners Walt Baker has talked to have felt the same way. Baker, CEO of the Tennessee Hospitality Association, said not a single restaurant owner he’s spoken with has planned to go along with the new law.

As I’ve said before, I’m a huge supporter of the 2nd Amendment (indeed, the whole of the U.S. Constitution, for that matter), but at some point common sense has to prevail.  I mean, putting aside the well-reasoned arguments of law enforcement, that the provisions of the bill (requiring that a carry permit holder not be intoxicated while packing heat in a bar or restaurant) will be nearly impossible to enforce, it’s just a bad idea.

And why–WHY–would you go eat or drink–with or without your wife and kids–at a restaurant or bar where you truly believed you needed a gun to protect yourself? Let’s call that what it is: bad decision making.

State Representative Kent Williams (R-Elizabethton), Speaker of the House, in his efforts to cut off any debate as to the override, had this to say:

…to rehash the same arguments over and over and over, I think, are ridiculous.  I’ve heard it all for six months almost.

How eloquent! I always thought that the deliberate suppression of any free and open debate was the hallmark of communist and/or tyrannical regimes… (and the church). It certainly runs completely and utterly contrary to the principles upon which this great nation and this great state were founded. Bravo, Mr. Speaker!

Proponents of the bill point to Georgia, where they say “crime went down” after passing a similar law.  But they present no hard facts, and let’s not forget: correlation is not causation.

As State Representative Mike Turner (D-Old Hickory) aptly pointed out:

You know, even in old Dodge City, they checked the guns when they went into the city; they didn’t allow guns in saloons. So, I just think it’s a bad mix. I know, some people say it’s worked other places, but I think it’s potentially dangerous.

Opposing attorneys in the 2000 election fight for Florida – David Boies, who represented Al Gore, and Ted Olson, George Bush’s lawyer and later the U.S. Solicitor General – are teaming up to ask a federal court to throw out California’s ban on same-sex marriage.

The two filed a lawsuit Friday on behalf of two gay men and two gay women, arguing that the marriage ban violates the U.S. Constitution’s guarantees of equal protection and due process.

Olson said he hopes the case will wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

“This is a federal question,” he said. “This is about the rights of individuals to be treated equally and not be stigmatized.”

The bill proponents will tell you, Governor, that more guns make bars and restaurants safer, but they have no data to back up these claims.

The data is solid when it comes to police reports, which can tell you what happens when people enter drinking establishments with a gun.

Governor, Tennesseans are outraged that this bill is on the verge of becoming law. It is wrong, and should be fought at every turn.

Will you allow this? Or will you send the legislature and the gun lobby a message that Tennessee cares about the safety of its citizens?

Guns and booze? Hmmm. It doesn’t exactly take a rocket surgeon (or a psychic, for that matter) to see that this is a bad idea. And let’s not kid ourselves, not only is it pretty goddamned easy to get a carry permit, you don’t exactly have to be the sharpest tool in the shed to complete the mandatory, but shall we say, slightly less than “challenging”, course required of carry permit applicants either.

And I know. I’ve taken and passed the course, and I have a carry permit. And sometimes I carry. I just don’t feel the need to be packing every time I leave my house. Shit! If you are so scared to eat at a particular restaurant or grab a beer at a particular bar that you feel you need to be packing, why not just go somewhere that you’ll feel safe, and be done with it? And, if you don’t feel safe anywhere unless you are carrying a piece, well, that’s probably a psychological problem which should disqualify you from carrying in the first place.

You know folks, you have to be willing to accept that there is some amount of risk involved with anything. There is only one way to eliminate all risk–it’s called death, and I don’t know many people willing to undertake that one in the name of safety. Personally, when it comes to having dinner with my wife and kids at our local [restaurant that serves booze], I’m nearly always more concerned about driving there than I am about eating there.

Governor John Baldacci:

“In the past, I opposed gay marriage while supporting the idea of civil unions,” Baldacci said in a statement. “I have come to believe that this is a question of fairness and of equal protection under the law, and that a civil union is not equal to civil marriage.”

Indeed. It’s encouraging to see the dominos starting to fall so quickly.

The Tennessean:

HB 1508/SB 0074, sponsored by Rep. Les Winningham, D-Huntsville, and Sen. Jim Tracy, R-Shelbyville, goes before key committees this week.It would give the drug-testing authorization to local school districts and target students in grades 6-12.

Of course, cost should not be the chief consideration when children’s welfare is involved. But it must be noted that this bill is not only a bad idea because of the message that it sends to young people about acting in good faith; it also is a bad idea because random drug testing does not work.

Supporters of random drug testing will point to studies that support their arguments, too. But they tend to be surveys such as one sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education during the Bush administration. That study compiled data not by interviewing students and analyzing findings, but by giving administrators a questionnaire asking how effective their drug-testing program is. Not the most reliable source for objective information.

The article cited addresses many important issues surrounding this proposed legislation.  One that it misses, however, is this: why is it that our children always seem to be guilty until proven innocent?  I mean, sixth graders aren’t generally, in the course of their school work or extracurricular school activities, tasked with responsibilities of public safety to near the same degree as, say, air traffic controllers, or railroad engineers–this I know, I have two of them.

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Two months after the local atheist organization here put up a billboard saying “Don’t Believe in God? You Are Not Alone,” the group’s 13 board members met in Laura and Alex Kasman’s living room to grapple with the fallout.

The problem was not that the group, the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry, had attracted an outpouring of hostility. It was the opposite. An overflow audience of more than 100 had showed up for their most recent public symposium, and the board members discussed whether it was time to find a larger place.

And now parents were coming out of the woodwork asking for family-oriented programs where they could meet like-minded nonbelievers.

Ten national organizations that variously identify themselves as atheists, humanists, freethinkers and others who go without God have recently united to form the Secular Coalition for America, of which Mr. Silverman is president. These groups, once rivals, are now pooling resources to lobby in Washington for separation of church and state.

They liken their strategy to that of the gay-rights movement, which lifted off when closeted members of a scorned minority decided to go public.

“It’s not about carrying banners or protesting,” said Herb Silverman, a math professor at the College of Charleston who founded the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry, which has about 150 members on the coast of the Carolinas. “The most important thing is coming out of the closet.”

[via Andrew Skegg on Twitter]

“You can’t resolve it with the distribution of condoms,” the pope told reporters aboard the Alitalia plane headed to Yaounde, Cameroon. “On the contrary, it increases the problem.”

Sweet evil Jesus! Just throw more gasoline on the fucking fire why don’t you? As Howard Cosell* once famously said, “If ignorance is bliss, you must be ecstatic.” Increases the problem? What problem are you talking about, your Popeness? AIDS, or unmarried sex?

You ever play the sports game where someone raises the question ‘if you could have any pitcher throughout history pitch one game and your life hung in the balance, who would you pick’? And, it’s not always baseball–I’ve heard the same question phrased in terms of quarterback, running back, power forward, etc. The point of the question is to spur discussion of the best pitchers, or whatever, of all time. You ever hear anyone say they’d pick the Pope to pitch that game? Didn’t think so. So why would anyone think the Pope has the answer in this particular life-or-death scenario? As numerous comedians like to point out, this is precisely why you shouldn’t get advice on sex from someone who’s never had sex. Yeah, it’s funny and all, but it’s also apt.

Benedict has never before spoken explicitly on condom use although he has stressed that the Roman Catholic Church is in the forefront of the battle against AIDS. The Vatican encourages sexual abstinence to fight the spread of the disease.

Ah yes, abstinence. Well, why not? It’s worked SO well thus far… The Pope is certainly sticking to what he does best: dogma. You know, as in the dogmatic adherence to failed policies even in the face of stunningly overwhelming evidence. Jesus! Abstinence doesn’t work. News flash: people are going to fuck. Now in all fairness, abstinence, in theory, could work, but it requires absolute perfection. Wanna fuck? Can’t fuck. Need to fuck? Can’t fuck. Gotta fucking fuck? Can’t fuck. Get it? Absolute perfection. And, doesn’t it seem a little, well, contradictory shall we say, to demand absolute perfection from the very people you hold to be anything but perfect?

Look, this really isn’t a complicated issue. If you want to control the spread of HIV/AIDS, why wouldn’t you utilize any methods that actually help? Condoms aren’t perfect–no one would argue that–but they are effective in stopping the spread of sexually transmitted disease, including HIV/AIDS. I just don’t think this “forefront of the battle against AIDS” thing is going to fly when you argue against the most effective means available…

Of course, if you’re only objective is to dogmatically prop up the failed policies and doctrines of the church of which you are the leader, even if it means completely ignoring the realities of life for those you claim to… (ding, ding, ding!  We have a winner!)

Oh, and by the way, Bob Gibson. No question.

By now, of course, you’re all aware of the 9-year-old in Brazil who, raped by her own stepfather and carrying twins, was granted permission by the courts to have an abortion, upon the recommendation of her doctors that the pregancy posed “serious risks” to her life (among which was the fact that she is so small, her uterus simply doesn’t have the ability to hold one, let alone two, fetuses).

Well, it comes as no surprise then, that the Catholic Church has excommunicated everyone involved–well, nearly everyone.  Nixed from “the show” were the child’s mother and her doctors.

The child, of course, was not excommunicated.  Not because damn near every civilization ever know to humanity has recognized the right to defend one’s own fucking life, no, because she’s too young to be held accountable under church law, and that’s actually pretty reasonable.

But, also not excommunicated is the 51 year old stepfather, who’s been doinking his own fucking stepdaughter for three fucking years, since the girl was 6 years old.  Six!  And why does the stepfather get a pass from the church? Well, according to Archbishop Don Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, “A graver act than (rape) is abortion, to eliminate an innocent life.”  What?  Abortion is worse than rape, so the habitually incestuous pedophiliac gets a free ride.  Good call, Archbishop doucebag, and extra points for defending your appalling and outrageous position by invoking god.

Brazilian Minister of Health Jose Gomes Temporao sees the whole issue a bit differently, however: “It is legitimate for the church to have its dogmas, but these dogmas must not be imposed on society as a whole.” Maybe it’s just me, but that sounds vaguely familiar, yes I’m sure I must have read it somewhere…

RIO DE JANEIRO — A 9-year-old girl who was carrying twins, allegedly after being raped by her stepfather, underwent an abortion Wednesday despite complaints from Brazil’s Roman Catholic church.

Police said the stepfather has been jailed since last week.

Abortion is illegal in Brazil, but judges can make exceptions if the mother’s life is in danger or the fetus has no chance of survival.

Call me crazy, but how anyone can tell a 9 year old rape and incest victim, whose preganacy puts her very life at “serious risk” according to doctors, that she cannot even make the choice to defend her own life, is way the fuck beyond me.  And while this particular 9 year old girl lives is Brasil, let’s not forget that this is precisely what countless American fundagelicals would like to make the law of our land.

[via Internet Infidels News Wire]

How could any parent not feel at least a little tugging on the “heartstrings” at this? I love it. Join me: “Awwwww”!

I’m sure there are plenty of “political commentators” who will crack jokes and/or try to make hay out of this, and that’s fine–it’ll just show them to be the partisan, pompous dickheads that they truly are.

Nothing in this Constitution secures or protects a right to a vasectomy. The people retain the right through their elected state representatives and state senators to enact, amend, or repeal statutes regarding how and when a vasectomy may be obtained, especially related to situations involving the knowledge and consent of a spouse when the person requesting the vasectomy is married.

This bill is said to be a response to the efforts of the pro-life* camp, whose lemmings have introduced two bills, HJR61 and HJR66, both of which are aimed at severely limiting access to abortion in the state.

Kind of drives home this issue, doesn’t it? I mean, I’ve never considered having a vasectomy, and can’t imagine that I would, but…

nkb

* When did “pro-life” become synonymous with “anti-freedom”?

What is wrong with these fucking legislators? The Tennessean newspaper reports that the State of Tennessee, as of the end of January 2009, has 7,184 children in some type of state care or supervision.  So, what’s the solution? Arbitrarily reduce the pool from which adoptive parents can be drawn.

Of course, this bill has nothing to do with children or adoption; it is simply yet another in a long line of legislative attempts to punish gays and lesbians for daring to be in any way different. The hate-mongers are getting better at subterfuge, however, for this bill, unlike previous failed attempts, doesn’t mention the real target (gays and lesbians) but rather speaks in terms of “unwed couples”. “See? It’s not gays and lesbians we have a problem with, it’s anyone who isn’t exactly like us ‘normal’ folk.” Fucking people! Do they really think we’re that stupid?

I’ll keep this one short and only make the following remark (though I could go on for days about this).  The thing that far too many people don’t understand is that there’s no such thing as a “normal” family–there’s only family, and there’s no such thing as a “normal” life–there’s only life. Not everyone is going to live their lives the way you choose to live yours. So get the fuck over it.

In the months since my first post about how my children won’t “friend” me, I’ve come to see that today’s parents see Facebook the way earlier generations of parents probably saw the Beatles — as a threat to the known universe that could actually be fun once you stop panicking and really listen.

Good advice.

Folks. Please. Vaccinate your children. The science is in, the tests have been done, the results are solid: vaccinations do not cause autism. What vaccines do is save the lives of thousands of children who would otherwise be suffering the effects of preventable diseases… and one of these effects can be death.

Save your kids’ lives. Take them to a doctor and get his or her advice on this. And if they recommend vaccinations, then do it.

[via Bad Astronomy Blog]

Does your child like dinosaurs? Fine. Dinosaurs it’ll have to be. Learn some of those fuckers’ names. Quick tip from me to you: Most of them end in “saurus,” so you can fake your way along pretty good by just adding that to the end of a word you already know.

Yeah, I know this The Onion and it’s funny and all, but that bit about the dinosaur names really works… I mean, from what I’m told…

Science Magazine, Louisiana Creates: New Pro-Intelligent Design Rules for Teachers:

Last year, Louisiana passed the Louisiana Science Education Act, a law that many scientists and educators said was a thinly veiled attempt to allow creationism and its variants into the science classroom. On Tuesday, the state’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education adopted a policy that sharpens those fears, giving teachers license to use materials outside of the regular curriculum to teach “controversial” scientific theories including evolution, origins of life, and global warming. Backers of the law, including the Louisiana Family Forum, say it is intended to foster critical thinking in students. Opponents insist its only purpose is to provide a loophole for creationists to attack the teaching of evolution.

“We fully expect to see the Discovery Institute’s book, Explore Evolution, popping up in school districts across the state*,” says Barbara Forrest, a philosopher at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond. The Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank, is a proponent of Intelligent Design. In a statement on the institute’s Web site, its education analyst Casey Luskin hailed the new policy as a “victory for Louisiana students and teachers.” The policy will now be printed in the Louisiana Handbook for School Administrators, which public school officials use as a guide.

Phil Plait, the renowned skeptic, author and astronomer behind the Bad Astronomy Blog, and President of the James Randi Educational Foundation, has a take on this that is dead-on:

So they changed tactics again, now claiming that teachers need “academic freedom” to discuss controversial theories. The thing is, evolution isn’t controversial. Not among real scientists, that is. It’s a manufactured controversy, with reality on one side, and antiscience creationists making stuff up on the other.

The ultimate irony of all this is that the last thing the creationists want is academic freedom. What they really want is for children to learn only their errant beliefs, and get no real science education.

Precisely. This isn’t about freedom, academic or otherwise, but is simply about telling other people how they must live their lives and how they must raise their children, and that is anything but freedom. “Ultimate irony”, however, is quite an understatement. As I’ve said before, when discussing the Creationists’ recent claims that reading the Bible (in public schools, of course) promotes critical thinking:

The bottom line is that nothing, absolutely nothing, is too patently false, too intentionally misleading, too unnecessarily obfuscating of the real issues, or even too hypocritical for these people [to use as a justification].

[via Bad Astronomy Blog]

Associated Press, Future of abstinence-only funding is in limbo:

With the exit of the Bush administration, critics of abstinence-only sex education will be making an aggressive push to cut off federal funding for what they consider an ineffective, sometimes harmful program.

[...]

Obama is considered an advocate of comprehensive sex education, which – unlike abstinence-only curriculum – includes advice to young people about using contraceptives if they do engage in sexual activity.

Halle-fucking-lujah!

You know, it’s really sad that so many fundamentalist Christians act towards their own children just as despicably as their “god” supposedly acts toward them. Study after study finds that abstinence-only education results in kids who are no less likely to have sex before marriage (or whatever criteria you choose: before a certain age, before college, or before dinner…) but are far less likely to use any form of protection against either pregnancy or the spread of disease when they do have sex. And who wants that?

“Don’t have sex before marriage Suzy, but if you do, I hope you either get pregnant or contract an incurable STD, because I love you so much.”

MSNBC:

In an unusual legal case arising from the increasingly popular practice known as “sexting,” six Pennsylvania high school students are facing child pornography charges after three teenage girls allegedly took nude or semi-nude photos of themselves and shared them with male classmates via their cell phones.

The female students at Greensburg Salem High School in Greensburg, Pa., all 14- or 15-years-old, face charges of manufacturing, disseminating or possessing child pornography while the boys, who are 16 and 17, face charges of possession, according to WPXI-TV in Pittsburgh, which published the story on its Web site on Tuesday.

Teen abstinence programs don’t work.

When it comes to pledges of abstinence “no pledge” is every bit as effective as “any pledge” or even a hundred of them.

These programs and pledges do accomplish two things, however, one of which is meaningless and one of which is terribly dangerous: (1) they make nervous parents “feel” better, and (2) the kids who make these kinds of pledges are far less likely to use any form of protection against either pregnancy or the spread of disease when they do have sex. Good job.

Premarital Abstinence Pledges Ineffective, Study Finds:

Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do, according to a study released today.

The new analysis of data from a large federal survey found that more than half of youths became sexually active before marriage regardless of whether they had taken a “virginity pledge,” but that the percentage who took precautions against pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases was 10 points lower for pledgers than for non-pledgers.

“Taking a pledge doesn’t seem to make any difference at all in any sexual behavior,” said Janet E. Rosenbaum of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, whose report appears in the January issue of the journal Pediatrics. “But it does seem to make a difference in condom use and other forms of birth control that is quite striking.”

Associated Press, Tennessee: Divorced mother appeals night ban on partner:

ACLU spokesman Paul Cates said the clause primarily affects lesbians and gays with children because same-sex civil unions are not recognized in Tennessee. Heterosexual couples can circumvent the paramour clause by getting married, Cates said.
[emphasis added]

America can do better than this folks.

A few weeks ago at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, I shared with the nation some of the many reasons why I believed my husband would be an extraordinary president. It was the biggest speech I’d ever given. When I was finished, I headed backstage with my daughters. They turned to me, breathless with excitement.

“Mom,” Malia, our ten-year-old, said. “We have something important to tell you. We need to have a sleepover!”

That snapped me out of speech mode, with the bright lights and applause, and back into the role I love: Mom. The next night, 15 giggling girls – my daughters, the Biden granddaughters, and friends – took over our hotel room.

Now that Barack has been elected president, it will be an honour to be First Lady. I will work daily on the issues closest to my heart: helping working women and families, particularly military families. But, as my girls reminded me in Denver, even as First Lady, my No 1 job is still to be Mom. At 7 and 10, our daughters are young. My first priority will be to ensure they stay grounded and healthy, with normal childhoods – including homework, chores, dance, and soccer.

Michelle Obama sounds pretty damned “grounded”, “healthy” and “normal” herself. I think her kids will be fine, even growing up in the White House.

They also have a proper site for the movie now UP : The Official Website. This site is, at this point, little more than a teaser for the movie, but stay tuned…

My mother was admitted to the neurological intensive care unit, where she remained in a coma for eight days. Test upon test was run: stroke, meningitis, even West-Nile virus.  The results were all negative, save for a urinary tract infection, which in the elderly–especially those with reduced kidney function–can have rather severe effects. As the infection was treated with antibiotics and the week passed, there was really very few signs of improvement.  The doctors (and she had several: a neurologist, nephrologist, infectious disease, internal medicine, and her primary care physician) were simply unable to explain why she was not ‘waking up’ from the coma.  On the eighth day of her coma, she was moved out of the NICU to a regular hospital room, with the intention of beginning ‘hospice care’, which–at least in my mother’s case–is patient-friendly doctor speak meaning “we’ll keep her comfortable while we wait for her to die.”  That’s tough to hear, for anyone.

My brother and I had, that week, discussed at some length with each other and with her doctors the fact that my mother, has a living will and DNR order.  We explained that our mother, a retired Registered Nurse, had long-held beliefs about being kept alive artificially, but that she had no religious or philosophical objections to medical treatment–her position is one that I personally share, essentially that anything goes so long as she is being diagnosed or treated, but that she doesn’t want to be “maintained” on any kind of life support, including respiration, nutrition, dialysis, etc.

My brother and I also had cause to discuss mother’s “last wishes” (funeral vs. cremation, memorial service, etc.), which she has made well known to us over the years.  Not only were we being told by the doctors that she most likely had very little time remaining, but I had a more personal fear.  I confided in my brother that I was personally afraid that our mother would die the following day: my birthday.  It is not uncommon for elderly people to die on dates that hold some significance for them, and there is a history in our family of parents dying on children’s birthdays. So I was somewhat dreading that next day.

The following morning, while I was expecting the worst, our mother ‘woke up’ and began speaking intelligently (meaning her mental state appeared sound), though not at all intelligibly (that would come after the first couple days).  It would be an understatement to say that this took us by surprise.  And, I would be less than completely honest if I didn’t admit that I thought for a brief moment about hitting my knees and thanking god–you know, just in case (“God, if you do exist, I want to thank you…”, etc.).  But I didn’t.  A part of me wanted to, but I just couldn’t.

I often try to explain to my Christian and otherwise religious friends that “nobody wants there to be a god more than me.”  And no, this is not exactly mainstream conversation in atheist circles.  But, what I try to explain is that I’d give almost anything to have even one more day with my deceased father and would give damn near anything for one more day with my deceased daughter.  I think that’s probably one of the most basic and fundamental human emotions or desires.  But, that doesn’t mean that I can make the leap from “wanting” it to be so, to “believing”–much less “knowing”–that it is so.

As easy–and let’s be frank here, comforting–as it may have been to hit my knees and thank a benevolent and merciful god for the incredible gift of hearing my mother strain to wish me a happy birthday after spending a week in a coma, I kept coming back to the idea that if there’s a god who is to be thanked for making my mom better, then isn’t this the same god that let her get so sick in the first place?

This conundrum puts me in mind of the following quote by Epicurus^*:

Is god willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him god?

Of course, some will say that there’s good that came out of my mother being so sick.  Well, I spent the better part of two weeks smoking like a chimney, eating everything in sight, sick–literally–with worry and stress, missing work, and worst of all, away from my wife and children.  I could go on and on, but really, where’s the good?  Well, some say that we’re not meant or even able to understand, but how does that help?

The true believer will believe in the face of anything.  As has been pointed out before, the true believer needs to believe, and so can’t be inconvenienced by something as meaningless as a lack of evidence or even clear evidence to the contrary.  I understand this–I really do, but that doesn’t mean that I’m able to check my reason or common-sense at the door.

No, I prefer to accept the truth.  Medical science is not perfect and there’s still an awful lot that we don’t understand about the brain.  Unsurprisingly, the organs of the human body are highly inter-related and dependent upon each other.  And, the elderly, difficult as it is for those of us who love them, get sick and sometimes die.  That’s life.  We, as a species, have evolved an amazing ability for self-healing, but this too is not perfect.  

There’s nothing ‘miraculous’ here, but it would be very easy to see it in those terms. When my mother ‘woke’ from her coma, I experienced a surge of emotion that was simply overwhelming. Coupled with the immediate release of stress and tension and worry it was, I dare say, nearly euphoric. But it seems to me that this is exactly the time to take deep breath and not “let your emotions run away with you”, as we’ve all been told by our parents since we were kids. In the end, amazing as it was that my mother ‘woke’ from her coma, she’s still in a very critical and precarious condition. She’s not ‘out of the woods’ by any measure.

I know I’m sort of rambling here–maybe I’m not yet exactly clear on what it is that I’m trying to say, or maybe it’s just really late.  The past two weeks have been a very emotional time for me.  Maybe what I’m trying to say is that while I understand the desire for there to be a loving ‘greater power” watching over us, perhaps anecdotal personal experience isn’t the best thing upon which to base such a belief.  Maybe I’m trying to say that life is goddamned hard sometimes, and maybe it’s ok to get through it any way you can.  Or, maybe I’m just trying to say that I truly love my mother and wish like hell that she didn’t have to be sick.

In the end, what I think I’m trying to say is that we, as a species, have a need to understand things. When we don’t understand something, it’s easy (and often comforting) to attribute this ignorance to god(s)–our species has been doing just that for thousands of years. But ultimately, that approach brings us no closer to the truth or to a real understanding. I prefer to accept reality. And, of course, what we refer to as reality is merely ‘mankind’s collective best understanding of reality’, which ultimately means that sometimes we just don’t know the ‘how’ or ‘why’. Which brings me back to where I started. Fuck, it is late…

I love you Ma.

­

^* Epicurus was a Greek Philosopher (gee, who wasn’t a philosopher in ancient Greece?), who lived from 341-270 B.C.E. He was one of the primary figures in the development of science and the scientific method, and insisted that nothing should be believed if it had not been tested through direct observation and logical deduction.

Democtatic Presidential Nominee Barack Obama had this to say:

I’ve heard some of the news on this, and so let me be as clear as possible. I have said before and I will repeat again: I think people’s families are off limits. And people’s children are especially off limits. This shouldn’t be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Governor Palin’s performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president. And so I would strongly urge people to back off of these kinds of stories.

You know, my mother had me when she was 18. And so how family deals with issues and, you know, teenage children, that shouldn’t be the topic of our politics. And I hope that anybody who’s supporting me understands that’s off limits.

I can’t find a quote from presumptive Republican Presidential nominee John McCain, but both the Palins:

We’re proud of Bristol’s decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents.

and McCain campaign aides:

Bristol Palin made the decision on her own to keep the baby, McCain aides said.

have both emphasized that Bristol Palin made her own free choice and is not being pressured into anything, because of her mother’s involvement in the Presidential Race.

Interesting, no? I mean, Sarah Palin and John McCain both want to eliminate this “decision”–not only for their own daughters, but for every pregnant woman in the country.  They both want there to be no decision, so why play up the whole ’she made her own decision’ angle? Weird.

I wrote about this nearly two years ago, on my old blog, wherein I concluded:

My personal credo has always been “to each his own, just leave me alone.” But you know, leaving me alone also means letting me decide for myself what is or isn’t indecent and what is or isn’t appropriate for my kids (see “lowest common denominator principle” above). I guess I just get a little “pissed off” (not profane according to the FCC when “used as part of a slang expression that means ‘angry’”) when anyone else tries to impose their standards on me. Of course, in the best traditions of America, that should probably piss us all off.

Well, todays’ appeals court decision hopefully will mark the start of the much needed pendulum swing back in the direction of rational common sense.

For what it’s worth, the court found that the FCC violated its own well-established and long-standing practice of fining indecent broadcast programming only when it was so “pervasive as to amount to ’shock treatment’ for the audience.”

The Commission’s determination that CBS’s broadcast of a nine-sixteenths of one second glimpse of a bare female breast was actionably indecent evidenced the agency’s departure from its prior policy

[emphasis added]

Personally, I don’t know what’s more American than bare female breasts. Just what the hell do you think our fighting men in Iraq and Afghanistan are fighting for? [cue: national anthem]

On a Monday morning last month, highway patrol officers visited 20 classrooms at El Camino High School to announce some horrible news: Several students had been killed in car wrecks over the weekend.

Classmates wept. Some became hysterical.

A few hours and many tears later, though, the pain turned to fury when the teenagers learned that it was all a hoax — a scared-straight exercise designed by school officials to dramatize the consequences of drinking and driving.

Way to go. I’m sure these teenagers were easily able to shake off the feelings of betrayal and focus on the content of your message. What a lame, stupid move. And what was the schools motive? To “traumatize” the kids!

Officials at the 3,100-student school officials defended the program.

“They were traumatized, but we wanted them to be traumatized,” said guidance counselor Lori Tauber, who helped organize the shocking exercise and got dozens of students to participate. “That’s how they get the message.”

Encarta: traumatize
1. cause somebody emotional shock: to cause somebody to experience severe emotional shock or distress, often resulting in long-lasting psychological damage
2. injure somebody or something: to cause physical injury to somebody or something

Well, looks like they got what they wanted–a school full of traumatized kids:

As seniors prepare for graduation parties Friday, school officials in the largely prosperous San Diego suburb are defending themselves against allegations they went too far.

At school assemblies, some students held up posters that read: “Death is real. Don’t play with our emotions.”

And nobody ever grabs a beer when they’ve been dealt a severe emotional shock, right? Right, only when they learn that the severe emotional shock was intentionally inflicted–and needlessly at that!

Now don’t get me wrong, nobody wants teenagers drinking and driving and nobody wants to see them die needlessly in horrific car wrecks. I have two kids of my own and quite obviously I don’t want that for either of them (I also don’t want this for either of them). But you know what I do? I talk to my kids–ABOUT EVERYTHING–nothing, and I mean nothing is “off limits” or “taboo”. Knowledge is the greatest weapon with which you can arm your kids. (Well, unless you want them to believe that the universe is 6000 years old and that human beings used to have to run away from dinosaurs…but that’s a topic for another day.)

You want your kids to make good decisions? Then you had better teach them how to make good decisions, and it starts with teaching them how to think and not merely focusing on what to think.

Opponents of teaching evolution, in a natural selection of sorts, have gradually shed those strategies that have not survived the courts. Over the last decade, creationism has given rise to “creation science,” which became “intelligent design,” which in 2005 was banned from the public school curriculum in Pennsylvania by a federal judge.

Now a battle looms in Texas over science textbooks that teach evolution, and the wrestle for control seizes on three words. None of them are “creationism” or “intelligent design” or even “creator.”

The words are “strengths and weaknesses.”

Starting this summer, the state education board will determine the curriculum for the next decade and decide whether the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution should be taught. The benign-sounding phrase, some argue, is a reasonable effort at balance. But critics say it is a new strategy taking shape across the nation to undermine the teaching of evolution, a way for students to hear religious objections under the heading of scientific discourse.

The critics are right.  This is just the latest attempt by the Creationists to stuff a wolf into sheep’s clothing.  It’s nothing new–as Intelligent Design was nothing new–they’ve just changed the name again.  Creation Science begat Intelligent Design which now begets “strengths and weaknesses”.  Same old shit, different day.

[via Evolving in Kansas]

FWIW, my family and I spent 5 days in the mountains on a very well-deserved mini-vacation.  Nothing like unplugging for a few days to recharge your batteries.  No internet, hell I even had to step outside the cabin to get one bar–one single puny bar–on my iPhone.  Just enough signal to check my home security cameras and logs via email…

Well, back to the grind…  here goes nothing.

The transcript, the authenticity of which is almost universally doubted, is believed to be part of a movie script former Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade was working on before his death.

Yeah, I’m off for the rest of the week and I’ll be spending time with my loving family, which is to say I’ll be tolerating my family and trying to do as much “me” stuff, as I can get away with, ok?

Have a great holiday, and remember what Mr. Show taught us: Life is Precious and God and the Bible.

Instead, I’ll just say that the sunsets must be beautiful these days… (you know, all that smoke in the atmosphere must be generating colorful sunrises and sunsets). Hey, you gotta focus on the ’silver lining’…

Ok, this is serious. 300,000+ people ordered to evacuate (you think the media will call them “refugees”, you know, like they called the Katrina evacuees? ok, ok, I digress). 1200+ homes and businesses burned. 335,000+ acres (more than 400 square miles) burned and/or burning.

The arrest followed several weeks of Internet chats between Atchison and a detective posing as the mother of a five-year-old daughter. Let me say that again: a FIVE-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER.

Oh by the way, Atchison, in addition to being an assistant U.S. Attorney, was: father of three grown children; married, his wife a high school science teacher; a coach of youth soccer, baseball, and other sports; and president of a community sports organization, the Gulf Breeze Sports Association, where girls as young as 4 can participate in the soccer program. I haven’t seen any indication one way or the other, but I’ll just bet this guy is, if not a deacon or some sort of “elder” of his church, certainly a fixture at Sunday morning services.

Criminy! I’ll never trust my kids to anyone who seems too “normal” (or too “religious” for that matter).