The opinionated fool declareth:

Too bad you can't read anything on Andrea Clark on the major news outlets, print, internet or television broadcast. That's right. Deciding to kill someone for monetary considerations isn't big news. But checking CNN.com, you can read about dolphins drowning on a coast of Africa, a Daytime Emmy awards party, or a story about a former gold medalist being arrested.

And I want to say, that this matter on Andrea Clark makes me so mad, so indignant, that I feel like bringing my fist down into my hand - how can something so wrong be so quietly abdicated by an ethics committee meeting without legal representation from the family? Can you feel the forces of the strong being brought against the forces of the weaker? A woman lies face up, breathing via respirator, struggling in and out of consciousness, being told when she comes about only that she has a matter of days before her care is summarily ended, and she is made to be no more on earth and this means... no more than thousands of dollars to St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital! This woman, who said she wanted a hamburger the last time she was awake, who turned to crying and hysteria after being told that the insurance company and hospital had determined to pull her life support the following week. Can you imagine?!?! This is wrong. So wrong. It cries to Heaven for vengeance, and how will tha...

By the way, should you wish to email the hospital, do so here: generalinformation@sleh.com More information: We've just received breaking news from a representative of the family of Andrea Clark about incredible and reprehensible actions underway by St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital in Houston, Texas. The family learned of a facility in Illinois that is willing to accept Andrea and offer her the opportunity to live, an expensive move that would require Andrea to be far removed from her family. However, placing corporate greed ahead of all patient interests and the interests and wishes of the family, St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital has just notified the family that they are willing to pay the almost $17,000 to move Andrea to Illinois if they will immediately - that's TODAY, move Andrea out of St. Lukes to the Illinois facility. If the family waits until tomorow to decide, St. Lukes will only pay half. And if the family can't make a decision by tomorow, the hospital may con...

Another email I just sent: To whom it may concern: I find it dispicable that St. Luke's Hospital would use a law that exists in Texas to euthanize a patient who, very recently, vehemently expressed a strong desire to continue living. People go to hospitals for health care, not physicians who decide it's cheaper to let the patient die! As a Houston resident, be assured that I and my family will stridently refuse to EVER go to your hospital should you lapse in your mission to protect and serve the healthcare needs of your patients in such a tragic and appaling manner. Believe me, I am very outspoken and involved in student life at Rice University. I can see to it that public opinion in my social circle of your facilities are rightly brought low if you should choose to abuse the trust that patients explicitly put in your hospital. I'm not sure what is more horrifying, the fact that your hospital would rather kill her because her life costs money, or the fact that this is ha...

Connect the dots.

I've had visitors from North America, South America, Africa, Europe and Asia. :) Missing Antarctica, I suppose.

Mark Shea, a Catholic apologist has a pretty cool blog entry today on the virginity of Mary, among other things: The average modern reader of Matthew assumes Joseph disbelieved Mary and wanted to divorce her as an adulteress. Pictures come to the mind very easily of a Mary "pregnant out to there" and fumbling to explain to a skeptical Joseph that, well, it's not the way it looks and there was this angel, you see... But surprisingly, there's another view of Joseph, one which Scripture supports better than the "Suspicious Joseph" portrait commonly accepted by modernity. In fact, it's a way of viewing Joseph's actions that was shared by such Church Fathers as Jerome, the greatest biblical scholar of antiquity. Put yourself in Joseph' s shoes. You are a first century Jew, not a 21st-century materialist. Not just God, but angels, the afterlife, miracles, visions, and the whole supernatural world is, for you, as normal and real as daylight and sun on t...

I just emailed the following to my boss: Subject: I respectfully ask for a moment of your time, sir. Message: The right good and honorable Big Chris, with all due respectfullness and becoming that suits the graduate student addressing his right honorable advisor, Danio Wagner, respectfully wishes to point out that temperature in "his" half of the laboratory fluctuates between 25.4 C and 26.1 C (77.7 to 79 degrees Fahrenheit) depending on the time of afternoon of data collection. Whereas common laboratory protocol, as is rightful and befitting for this laboratory to follow, commonly hold the term "room temperature" to be between 21 and 23 C, And whereas numerous people make bothersome comments about the room "being fucking hot," And whereas Christopher might sometimes agree with said colloquial references and classification of the situation, if not the profane and disrespectful manner of such vocalization, And whereas the right honorable Big Chris wishes fo...

"PS #2: There have been conflicting reports about whether Andrea can actually speak. Melanie said that she's had a trach and because of that, she has to mouth her words. So, she can clearly make her wishes known, but she can't actually speak out loud." From here . How could you kill a woman who is sentient... and wants a burger? My God this is horrible...

Terri Schiavo's brother speaks out: “It is fascinating to see the ways [the media] can report a story to over-simplify it. The media misreported and didn’t report an enormous amount of facts in the case.” He stated it was rarely reported, for example, that there were 25 national disability groups standing with the Schiavo family trying to stop the killing of Terri, for the media did not want to recognize her as a disabled person. Instead, he said, they consistently applied the label of Persistent Vegetative State to her condition which he considers absolutely false. “We never for a moment believed that Terri was in a PVS condition.” “PVS is something that needs to be abolished… It is a completely subjective diagnosis, based entirely upon the interpretation of the doctor.” To drive this point home, Schindler referred to a recent British study which concluded that PVS is misdiagnosed 43 % of the time. The media also repeatedly referred to Terri as being on artificial life support. “T...

I can't believe what's going on here. From another blog: "the hospital ethics committee met the day before yesterday and concluded that Andrea's treatment (respirator and dialysis) should be discontinued. We have ten days to move her from that hospital or they will 'pull the plug' and let Andrea die." Obviously this is a pretty involved story so you will have to read the whole post. I can't pretend to know all sides of this. John called the sister, Melanie, and was told: "her sister [Andrea] recently had surgery for a heart condition. After surgery, she developed an infection and that's why she's so weak and needs a respirator to breathe. Again, her sister is not brain damaged, she can speak, and she does not want the hospital to let her die." "If what Melanie Childers has told me is correct," writes John, "we've got a situation where a hospital that claims to provide 'ethical, compassionate and quality care...

Working now?

So many good points in this opinion piece. Steyn is still the man. Linkzorz!

It's kind of surreal (at the very least, it makes me uncomfortable) to see this kind of thing receive a voice of advocacy on an international source of news and opinion like Forbes. It's been said before by people a lot smarter than me that the USA is closely mirroring the Roman and Greek (and many other) empries in its development, adolesence and perhaps decrepecy and death. In some ways this is more apparent than others. For example, in both ancient Rome and Greek cultures, the struggle between moralist pagan cults and cults centered specifically around decadence and self-glorification, homosexuality and general immorality were in constant political contention. Particularly in Rome, the weakness and inability and unwillingness of Rome to stand up to her enemies can be directly compared to the heights to which her culture's decadence climbed and depths to which her morality fell. Ultimately this fragility lead to Rome being sacked by a bunch of wussy Germans. I believ...

This is just really interesting. I've said it before and I'll say it again - if I had more guts I probably would have liked to become a theoretical physicist. It borders on philosophy. So interesting. How do we work, afterall? What keeps the sub-sub-atomic energies together, progessing through space-time? What determines physical constants in our reality, and how were they established, how are they changing? Et cetera... *Note - NewScientist has been pretty biased and wrong on several things that I've read them talk about where I knew a lot about the subject matter. I know almost nothing about physics, so I guess take what they're saying with a grain of salt. Incredibly intereseting regardless.

"Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them." -Paul, writing to the Ephesians (5:11) Evil flourishes when it is hidden; injustice festers when the victim is unseen. Sam Heller (interesting name), lawyer for the Center for Reproductive Rights eagerly says that: "It is the first ruling recognizing the United States Constitution gives protection -- constitutional protection -- to the informational privacy rights of young people in health care," Heller said. Sure. And it helps 13 year old kiddies abort their children. It's not about privacy, it's about abortion, and it effects only abortion. Should a 13 year old be the manager of their health history? Do they have their own health insurance? Do they get to call the shots with the doctor on what surgery is best for their condition? I'm sorry, I think their parents are better suited at protecting and ensuring that their long-term interests are protected - not a Planne...

Well, I haven't been posting much lately. Guess I'm busy with things right now.

Last night, South Park tried to show an image of Mohammed and it was censored by Comedy Central .

This one is great . What the hell are they thinking? Argh!

At some point a critical mass is reached, and the vacuous espousement of abortion "rights" is revealed to be cosmically and egregious contrary to any kind of conceivable natural order where human life in any form has any meaning. The link, talks about: Research to be presented at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health's annual conference later this month shows babies born at 25 weeks or under cost almost three times as much to educate by the time they turn six as those born at full term. In its response to an in-depth inquiry into premature babies by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, the RCOG writes: "Some weight should be given to the economic considerations (of neonatal intensive care) as there is a real issue in neonatal units of 'bed blocking', whereby women have to be transferred in labour to other units, compromising both their and their babies' care. One of the problems of the 'success' of neonatal intensive care is that ...

"If the U.N. found it, it must be pretty damned obvious." Link. United Nations officials investigating Iran's nuclear programme say they have found convincing evidence that the Iranians are working on a secret uranium enrichment project that has not been officially declared. How convincing? How convincing does it have to be ? How convincing does it have to be to warrent... action...?

Put a new song up there to the right. A click on the song name should let you download the .mp3 file to listen to. Cuban music for the win!

From Wesley Smith, this morning I'm reading a story about - get this! - a scientist at UT Arlington who gave a "Doomsday Talk" at the 2006 Texas Academy of Science (I've volunteered for this organization previously, back when I was an undergrad in San Antonio) conference. What's so big about this? Well, to start with, he dismissed the idea of anthropocentrism, the idea that man has a special quality or place in the world. Okay, no biggie. A good three-quarters of my professors probably feel the same way, or think they do. But... he espoused the idea that man is very bad for the environment and for Earth, that ~90% of the population should be disposed of, hopefully by an airborn Ebola-variant in order to bring us into check. Still saying "so what?" Yeah, there may be a few utterly evil individuals out there that would be excited by the prospect of 5 billion people dying a most agonizing death of Ebola infection. (You know, where blood oozes from a...

From Wesly Smith, this morning I'm reading a story about - get this! - a scientist at UT Arlington who gave a "Doomsday Talk" at the 2006 Texas Academy of Science (I've volunteered for this organization when I was in school in San Antonio) conference. What was so big about this talk? Well... He espoused the idea that mankind is currently bad for the environment, and that ~90% of the population should be disposed of, hopefully by an airborn Ebola-variant. So what? Yeah, there are a few nutjobs that would be excited by the prospect of 5 billion people dying a most agonizing death. I guess the kicker is that this scientist received a standing ovation after his talk, and then five hours later received the 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist award from the Academy. If you're worried about fundamentalist takeovers and the like, the real danger is in fundamentalist positivists/naturalists (of which a lot of academic scientists are). They're the fuckers that think...

I'm still waiting for a visitor from Africa or South America. C'mon already! hahaha I finally got a visitor from Australia ! In other news, our latest grant resubmission went out this last weekend. We could really use the lab. It'd make Dan so happy - and me as well, indirectly.