You know there are many reasons I don’t do debates. The biggest one so far is that every time, the nobodies challenging me are complete idiots. It happened again today, on twitter.
Out of the blue, some guy I never heard of announces that his pal can crush me in a debate. Eh, I think, another clown.
My travel plans are slowing down a bit, fortunately: Skepticon this week, then a break, and then I’ll be speaking right here in central Minnesota at St Cloud State University on 19 November…where, by the way, my oldest son attended college, so I have connections. So come on out to lovely St Cloud two weeks from today!
Oh, and to cap off the semester, it’s Eschaton 2012 in Ottawa. Then the world ends and we all get a nice rest.
Wow. I had no idea that some Catholics would go so far as to prevent simple procedures to remove ectopic pregnancies. These are conditions in which the zygote implants in the wrong place — the fallopian tube, rather than the uterus. The embryo can grow for a while, but not long, before it reaches a size that ruptures the fallopian tube and causes the mother to bleed to death. The solution is easy: either surgically remove the doomed embryo before it can become deadly, or use a drug, methotrexate, that kills dividing cells to destroy it.
But no, that’s an abortion and some Catholic hospitals prohibit even procedures that would end an utterly futile pregnancy.
Yes, some Catholic ethicists argue that the catholic “Directives” preclude physicians at Catholic hospitals from managing ectopic pregnancies in a way that involves direct action on the embryo. So a woman can have her whole tube removed (an unnecessary procedure that could reduce her future fertility), but she can not have the pregnancy plucked out (as is done with the standard therapy, a salpingostomy, where a small incision is made in the tube and the pregnancy removed) and she most certainly could not have the methotrexate.
How common is this practice? Well, it is pretty sad that someone had to study it. According to a study from 2011 by Foster e. al., (Womens Health Issues, 2011) some Catholic hospitals refuse to offer methotrexate (three in this study of 16 hospitals). The lack of methotrexate resulted in changes in therapy, transferring patients to other facilities, and even administering it surreptitiously. All of these expose women to unnecessary risks, expense and are, quite frankly, wrong.
These patients who are turned away go, we hope, to less ideologically abusive hospitals, where they get treated. Imagine a country with nothing but Catholic hospitals, though: they’d be sending these women away to die.
I have no understanding at all of the logic that justifies a Catholic hospital refusing to remove a deadly embryo, but does allow them to chop out the whole organ bearing the deadly embryo, at a cost of reduced fertility. It seems somehow un-Catholic…but on the other hand, the fact that it requires twisted theological logic that ignores basic human needs makes it profoundly Catholic.
So I checked the lead political story on CNN:
CNN poll: It’s a dead heat
Then I checked the lead political story on MSNBC:
NBC/WSJ poll: Very close race with one day to go
Feeling desperate, I even checked Fox News:
CLOSING TIME: In Final Hours, Are
There Still Undecideds Left to Swing?
Do you sense a theme? It’s one that we’ve suffered with for the entire election season: news media that are obsessed with the horse race rather than the issues.
Fuck the media. Only xkcd sees the truth.
And tomorrow is the race itself, with non-stop coverage of exit polls, with maps showing trends, and predictions, and declaring that one state has gone to one candidate or the other — it’s all our media live for, I think, is the ultimate orgasm of who wins, rather than the substance of the consequences of electing either of these people.
I hate them. I hate them all. I will not be watching any of those channels, I will not be visiting their websites at all tomorrow: I am going to vote and then I am going to shut out the yammering ninnies for the whole day, and I will check my newspaper for who the winner was on Wednesday. I might be nice and create an election day thread for you all here, but I will not be reading it myself.
The real election campaign is long over. We were supposed to have news that clearly discussed the differences and similarities between the two. We didn’t get that, so now we get numbers filtered out of noise.
Also, Salon’s top two articles on tomorrow’s election are all about the polls…but they also have an article by Robert Reich on Romney’s destructive policies. More of that, please. I don’t give a damn about the polls — the only one that counts is the election itself.
Tomorrow, one long national nightmare, the election season, ends…and possibly another one begins. Not that I would want to influence your vote or anything*, but here’s an unrehearsed, unstaged moment from Mitt Romney.
How anyone can sit there in all seriousness and babble about prophecies of Jesus’ return and be taken seriously as a candidate is a mystery. No, Jesus is not going to reappear, split the Mount of Olives as a super-duper magic trick, and then rule the planet from Jerusalem and Missouri.
And then he declares that he is more conservative and authoritarian than the Mormon church requires, as a point of pride. It’s not enough for him to be bugfuck nuts, he’s got to proudly gloat that he buggers worms.
Please don’t elect this guy. Elect the other militaristic evangelical Christian who’s a little less demented.
*Heh. Right. Be assured, if you’re voting for anyone with Republican or Libertarian affiliations, you have my withering contempt. Which will dissuade you, right?
Sometimes I despair. I know I can’t win; the ailurophiles have taken over the internet. And sometimes I just want to give up.
But I won’t. The battle must go on! And sometimes, I will fight back with a frenzy. Take this, cats: four creatures that are niftier than you! Hy-yaaaaah!
BABY RED PANDAS!
SEA OTTERS!
FERRETS!
BABY SCORPION!
I push back the feline horde just a little bit today. Today is a good day, except for the head-full-of-snot thing.
I woke up this morning with an awful, miserable head cold: there is a great wobbling blob of snot atop my shoulders today, and there are grisly, bubbly, phlegmy noises coming out of my mouth. It is not good. It is kind of gross.
So I would like you all to pray for me.
Oh, wait, no! That never works! Don’t do that. Instead, there’s only one thing that might give me some psychic assistance: money. Yes, a small pile of money would really help right now.
Only not for me. Send it to Skepticon. Would you believe they got a rude surprise this week? The venue is demanding an unexpected and rather excessive sum of money right away, or they’re going to cancel the whole event. It’s like learning that someone plans to steal Christmas, on top of having a brain that has turned into a flocculent, foamy fluid today.
Skepticon is in urgent need of donations, fast. Those crazy kids…it was suggested that maybe if they charged a nominal admission fee, like $5, that would be enough to cover the shortfall, but noooo…they’re sticking by their principles and insisting that this conference will always be free of charge.
So make a cranky old sludge-brained man mildly less dismal by throwing a few dollars at some idealistic young’uns, OK?
This is the lounge. You can discuss anything you want, but you will do it kindly. You cannot resist the power of baby dolphin.
Status: Heavily Moderated; Previous thread
It’s a weird, interesting, frustrating Survey on the Good and Meaningful Life. There were bits that made me think, and lots of bits where I thought, “my answer isn’t one of these multiple choice options!”
Go get provoked by it anyway. Now I just hope there is a follow up where Jean Kazez answers the question, “What was the meaning of that survey?”
