I wasn’t planning on writing any more on the Terri Schiavo case, but in chatting with Andi about it over dinner tonight I think I finally hit on what bothers me the most about this whole episode. It’s not her husband, or the video clip, or the Congress suddenly acutely aware of the ‘values vote’, or the fact that she’s being allowed to slowly starve, though these are all troubling to varying degrees and in various ways. No, what keeps gnawing at me is the very real tension that happens when ideology and real life collide in messy ways, and how people will stubbornly cling to either with no consideration of the other.
Many of us who identify in some way with the ‘Conservative Christian’ stereotype have become accustomed to questioning and even challenging the ‘scientific establishment’, if you will. Two particular issues that come to mind are evolution (about which the Washington Post printed a thoroughly useless opinion this past Sunday) and embryonic stem cell research. We know the positions we’re working from, and think we have a pretty good grasp of the other side’s positions, so when some opinion or statement or study or whatever comes out we’re halfway through the argument before we’ve even opened our mouths. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, either — slavery was abolished largely as a result of the tireless, vocal efforts of abolitionist Christians.
But the ideology obviously can’t say that all science is bad. When my daughter is sick, I take her to the doctor. A doctor who has studied the medical sciences extensively, and gained knowledge gathered from years and years of scientific research. He tells me what he thinks, and I listen to him because I trust him. If I didn’t, I’d find another doctor. The whole point of the relationship is that he has extensive knowledge that I will never have, and I simply need to trust him to care for my daughter to the best of his ability. We’re supposed to trust our doctors, and specialists, and surgeons. If we have a concern we can get a second opinion, but we can’t go through life second-guessing every medical professional we encounter. This stuff is science, but it’s real-life, everyday science.
So the ideology says that life is sacred, and so she must be allowed to live. But the real-life everyday doctors and specialists say that, regardless of what it looks like, there really isn’t any life there left to save. And as I have no reason to believe that that many doctors (and throw in a judge, too) are in some way enamored with killing off patients with otherwise hopeful prognoses, I have to trust that they know what they’re talking about. And yet, sometimes doctors are wrong. They are human, after all. Thus you have the tension between ideology and reality — a life should be saved, especially when it would be so easy to do, but is the life even really there? Are you trying to keep an old clunker running, or are you pumping gas in the tank to keep the wheels rolling while the car sits upside down in the bottom of a ravine?
And what bothers me the most is that some people on either side aren’t even wrestling with this. Either it’s that “you religious freaks need to just sit down and shut up because there’s obviously nothing they can do for her,” or it’s that “all those doctors are lying or stupid and her life should be saved for it’s own sake.” I don’t think either position is healthy or wise, and both could stand a good bit of humility and introspection.
This is not clear-cut, black and white. It’s messy, and we need to acknowledge that. Home videos notwithstanding.
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The judge says no tube, and the clock starts to tick. But the more I read up on the case (like you should have done before you opened your big mouth, bonehead) the more I realize that yes, indeed, she is in a “persistent vegitative state”, brief aged home video clips (and forwarded emails) notwithstanding, and has been for years. Which makes me pull back quite a bit from where I thought I stood and say…Wow. That’s a tough one. So there’s evidence and more than ample supposition that her husband’s a jerk, but that doesn’t change her state. And barring divine or appellate intervention, she’ll be gone, completely and undeniably, in a week or two. Should we mourn her passing? Or regard her as essentially already gone, and just grieve with her parents for the loss of their hope and focus? I don’t know.
Even so, I still think there should be a better way to resolve this that would allow her husband to get on with his life and allow her parents to pursue whatever therapy they deem worthwhile. I don’t know if there would be any hope were they given a wide open door. I don’t know if she’s still in there somewhere or not. And I don’t know whether or not she had indicated a desire to be “allowed to die” were she ever in such a state. But in this regard I do agree with Bush, that if there is any question, any uncertainty, it should be in our duty as human beings to err on the side of preserving life.
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So, the astute among you will notice that there used to be a post here that isn’t anymore. If you missed it, too bad. It was basically a criticism of a local real estate agent’s web page (and her apparent approach to the web in general), and I decided the spirit of it wasn’t the sort of thing I want this space to become. Yes, I’m all over the map, but I’d prefer the map to be predominantly positive/thoughtful/curiously random and not so much critical and snipish, particularly about such small things.
Now, if we’re talking politics or other big-picture issues, like whether or not to allow one person to decide when to end another person’s “artifical life support”, more commonly known as “food”, that’s another matter. Folks, we’re not talking about a vegetable here. We’re talking about a living, breathing human being who had a stroke. A woman whose husband is living with and has fathered children by another woman. A woman whose parents and siblings want to take care of her. Despite my opinion of it, I can understand from a human standpoint the husband’s desire to move on with his life. But doesn’t it seem strange for him to have to have her killed to do that? Let’s be clear about this point — she would be killed. She would not be “allowed to die a natural death” any more than you or I would if we were locked in a room and refused food and water. It’s starvation, plain and simple.
I don’t know. I’m never one to advocate divorce, and I understand that a “normal legal divorce” may not even be possible given her current state. But for heaven’s sake, wouldn’t it be better to make an exception or change the law or something, than to try to find a legal standing for killing the poor woman?!? It just seems like there should be some way to resolve this that doesn’t involve killing an inconveniently incapacitated person who, again, has people willing to care for her.
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Our oldest daughter is now about three and a half, and one of the things we’re trying to work on at this point is whining. She has a pretty strong dramatic streak, and tends to play up any injury, physical or emotional, real or imagined. She is, after all, 3. But we’re trying to teach her that there are better ways to react to circumstances.
One recurring type of situation involves her thinking we’re taking away something she thinks she needs. For example, every once in a while when we’re just sitting down to dinner, she’ll notice that there isn’t any food on her plate yet. “Hey!” she’ll say, and point this out. I know, I’ll reply. I just haven’t given you any yet. At this she’ll start up a good fuss and whine, “But I need food! I need some,” thinking, I suppose, that we intend to starve her or something.
So I’ve recently introduced a new response to these small eruptions:
Repeat after me, I’ll say, and that gets her attention.
Mommy and Daddy know what I need…
“Mommy and Daddy know what I need…”
and I don’t need to worry about it…
“and I don’t need to worry about it.”
She’s starting to get the hang of this by now, and she usually finishes up smiling. So far it seems to be a decent way to assure her that she is, in fact, cared for and being taken care of. And to get her to stop fussing. ๐
So yesterday morning I’m going through my quick morning devotional before work, and the verse for the day was Matthew 6:31-33:
Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (NRSV)
And once again God uses a picture from my own relationship with my kids to remind me, and teach me more deeply, something about my relationship with Him. How many times have I worried about how some situation in my life was going to work out? How often do I let fears of job security linger a little too long? How often do I fret over a perceived lack of direction?
Repeat after me, God says. But strive first for the kingdom of God…
Lord, remind me every day to put your priorities before my own, trusting that you already know what I need and that you’ve got it covered better than I ever could on my own.
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I promise this isn’t going to turn into a Grocery Blog, but Giant just ticked me off. And the more I think about it, the more I understand what they’re trying to do, and in a way it makes sense from their perspective. But that doesn’t mean I agree with it, much less like it, and the drive to Safeway is just as quick. Food Lion and Shoppers aren’t too much farther.
Let me explain. Two months ago Joel Spolsky, software engineer, author, and generally regarded Smart Guy, wrote a wonderfully informative and delightfully confusing post about product pricing that, among other things, finally explained to me why companies offer coupons and airlines charge wildly different prices for every person on the same flight. It’s an excellent article, and if you have even a passing curiousity about these things I highly recommend reading it. But to sum up, the basic idea is that you offer the same thing at different prices to (specific) different people so as to maximize your profit. Economists use terms like ‘Segmenting the Market’ and ‘Capturing the Consumer Surplus’. You do your market research and find out that most people will pay X for your widget, so that’s what you charge, but then you offer discounts to the sort of folks who wouldn’t pay X but were willing to pay X – 5 so as to at least get some profit from them, all while trying to hide from group X the fact that you’re giving someone else the same thing for less money. Because naturally, if you find out that your neighbor just bought the same widget from the same company you did and paid less for it, you’re going to feel ripped off.
Well, I feel ripped off.
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Noted the couple of ads showing the new Honda Ridgeline. Not quite as bold a move as I first thought, when I likened it to Nissan coming out with the fairly impressive Titan. In this case, while Honda is entering a new market it isn’t the full-size pickup market. On their own comparison page they’re putting it up against the smaller pickups, like the Toyota Tacoma and the Nissan Frontier, and perhaps most telling, Ford’s SUV/pickup collision…er, combination Explorer Sport Trac. And it’s not exactly a brand-new vehicle platform. Looking at the pictures on their site, I’m guessing they just built on the Pilot platform. Still, a significant expansion in Honda’s lineup.
Oh, and the game was pretty good, too.
Just Life Comments Off on So, Honda’s got a truck
We live maybe five or ten minutes from Giant, and pass it on our way to just about anywhere, so we often make quick stops on the way home for whatever we need at the moment. A jug of milk, a block of cheese, a case of Mountain Dew…you know, the essentials. This usually keeps us going for awhile, but every so often we need to do a full clip-the-coupons, make-the-list, pack-the-cart type trip. Life being what it is, occasionally this ends up meaning Andi clips the coupons and makes the list at night, and I head to the store after the girls are in bed. Every once in a while, for whatever reason, I don’t get out the door until 10 or 10:30, and Giant closes at 11:00. We know it’s pushing it, and that I’ll probably end up annoying some cashier or other for being kept late, but sometimes there’s just No Other Way To Do It.
Okay, so Safeway’s just as close in the other direction and they’re open an hour later, but I don’t know that store as well yet and it takes me two to three times as long to find things. I’ve got Giant down pretty well.
Anyway, two nights ago was one of those nights. We got the girls to bed, and Andi still had some work to do getting the list and coupons together, so I made a few phone calls I had to make. By the time we were both done, it was past 10:30. Ack! I grabbed my coat and all the shopping stuff, reminded Andi that my cell phone was charging so she wouldn’t be able to reach me, heard her say she was heading to bed anyway, and headed out the door in a mad rush.
As I’m driving down one of the main roads in our community, I suddenly see a small animal up ahead in my headlights. Large cat, small dog, raccoon? Hmm…it’s not running out of the way, it’s coming toward me…better slow down and pull over…it came over almost in front of my car…dumb dog. A beagle, to be exact — a young male beagle with no collar, running about at night in under-twenty-degree weather. Escaped, kicked out, stray? I had no idea, but at the rate he was going he’d be roadkill before long. What to do? Almost instinctively I reached for my pocket. D’oh! No cell phone. After glancing around and finding no handy way to tie him up while I figured out what to do, I let him jump into my car and took him home.
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Okay, so I’m still still here. Honest. Life’s just been a little crazy lately.
Back in November we started an office move at work, which involved moving out of the old office to make way for new tenants several weeks before the new space was ready. So for most of November and December I was either working from home on a dialup connection or taking advanatage of Panera’s free wifi connection. If you ever go there, you really must check out their Frontega Chicken Panini sandwich. No, I mean really. Wow. Thanks to Matt for that tip.
So anyway, then Andi went to Croatia between Christmas and New Year’s (about which she may post at some point) and came back with some bug or other, which she’s been fighting ever since. Main symptoms were extreme fatigue and occasional severe dizzyness, and all the doctors could narrow it down to was “probably a virus.” Not knocking them, mind you — they don’t really have much to go on. She seems to be on the mend now, thankfully, though she still doesn’t have quite the energy she used to. All in good time, I suppose.
In other news, our move to a new hosting outfit is complete, though for the time being we’re still on Moveable Type. I am, however, getting very tired of cleaning out comment spam every day. Google has a solution, but I haven’t yet figured out how to work it into MT’s code structure. We’ll see which I manage first — figuring that out, or just moving to WordPress where I can moderate comments anyway :P.
UPDATE: Not surprisingly, SixApart (the company that makes MoveableType) has a plugin for implementing Google’s solution. Surprisingly, it works for our version of MT. So we’ll see how that goes…
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Just Life Comments Off on Merry Christmas!
As a few of you may know, Andi’s going on a mission trip in a few weeks to Croatia. And as such endeavors usually require, a few weeks ago she sent out support letters to fifty or sixty friends and family, who have generously responded and completely covered her trip. Praise God! So the other day she sat down and wrote out various thank-you notes and such and put them in the mail, save one because we ran out of stamps. The next day I had a few other errands to run, so I offered to stop by the post office to pick up some stamps and mail the last thank-you card. No problem, right?
“May I help you, sir?”
“Yes, I’d like to mail this, and buy some stamps.”
“Okay, let’s see…” (places the card on her little measuring chart) “…that will be 49 cents.”
“!…I beg your pardon? Isn’t it just 37 cents for a regular, First Class letter?”
“No, sir. You see, it’s too small.”
I was dumbfounded. She showed me the chart, and seemed a little unsure as the top-right corner was outside the target grey area by only a millimeter or two. She asked her co-worker over to check, who agreed that it looked too small. The chart measures “machinable” envelope size, and apparently if it’s outside of that range there’s a 12 cent surcharge because someone actually has to process it BY HAND! The horror, I tell you. Mind you, this was a ‘normal’ thank-you card, the kind you can buy in packs of 20 or 30 at the grocery store. I mentioned that we had just dropped a bunch in the mail the day before, and was informed that while they may be fine (“because it is very close”), they may on the other hand either be delivered ‘postage due’ or returned to us.
Delivered postage due. That’s real nice. A thank-you note, thanking the recipient for their generosity, just might be delivered informing them they’ll need to pony up another twelve cents if they want to be thanked properly.
I’m baffled by the confluence of idiotic ideas going on here. First of all, they’re going to charge a full third MORE than the usual price to deliver an item that’s two millimeters SMALLER than ‘normal’, whatever that is. Then, upon discovering that the appropriate amount of postage isn’t already affixed to the envelope, instead of returning it to the sender to rectify the situation they’ll DELIVER IT ANYWAY, and CHARGE THE RECIPIENT!!!
I did find documentation regarding the first idiocy on their website, which, in describing items incurring the surcharge in question, includes this gem:
The length divided by height is less than 1.3 or more than 2.5 (length is the dimension parallel to the address).
Nice. Lemme dig out a ruler and calculator. ๐
Sheesh.
So anyway, I paid the 49 cents to mail the last one, though I confess I was tempted to ask if I could tape a piece of paper to the end instead to make it long enough. And when I left I was in one of those, “I’ll never use their services again!” type of moods. Rather unlikely, of course, and it didn’t last long anyway. But man, was I annoyed.
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