and they call themselves anti-government encroachment when it comes to "personal" decisions. oh yeah? get out of my doctor's office.

i'd like to say it sounds absurd, but unfortunately, today's social and political climate seems to have desensitized me. if you'd told me a few years ago, for example, that some state's house of representatives — let's say south carolina's, for the sake of hypothetical comprehensiveness — has approved (after a second reading; it will have three) a bill that would require any woman who wishes to terminate a pregnancy to first sign a statement swearing that they had seen ultrasound images of their fetus, i might have quibbled.

however, i am saddened to admit that i'm not surprised. i wish it were different. and even more than wishing i didn't believe that a bill like that could get anywhere in any state's legislative process, i wish that i was bewildered to learn that the vote to approve it was 91 to 23. and even more than that, i wish i was just dumbstruck and speechless after learning that supporters of the bill also managed to get past two amendments that would have made an exception for rape and incest victims. (they also bypassed one that would have funded the ultrasounds for women who cannot afford them).

if a bill like this were actually to get through the senate, it would mean many things. it would mean that the government will demand patients to have what is an unnecessary medical procedure. it would mean that those women will have to pay for that unnecessary medical procedure. it would mean that a "state-wide" (religious fanatic) position on a social issue will have trumped the right to medical privacy. it would mean that the government will openly engage in truly twisted coercion in transparent hopes of manipulating the way patients think. it would mean that a fifteen year-old girl who was raped and impregnated by her stepfather will have to look at ultrasound photos and sign a statement that said she did before she can have an abortion.

i wish i were shocked. i wish i were riled. i wish i wanted to be shocked and riled about it with other people who wanted to be shocked and riled, too. but honestly, i have nothing to say.

the really, really not so friendly skies

i have been afraid to fly since twa flight 800 blew up not far from new york on its way to paris. i was fairly young at the time, and in boston visiting my sister. i had flown there by myself from dc, and was scheduled to go back either the next day or the day after. whichever day it was, i wanted no part of getting on that plane. i was convinced the plane i was on would meet with the same fate as the one that exploded the day or two before. needless to say it did not, but i was traumatized just the same. after years of anti-anxiety prescriptions, excessive sweating, moaning aloud in terror, bad airplane wine, inadvertently grabbing passengers next to me, surprisingly intense stomach flip-flops, white knuckles, and tension headaches, it seems i've finally gotten my anxiety at least mostly under control. i can fly without drugs. i am still nervous and very tense. i still, on occasion, wail in terror. i still really, really hate it when the plane is making a dramatic turn and i feel like there's just no way it's not going to catch the wind or something and nosedive like experts suspect jfk jr's plane did when he crashed it in martha's vineyard. i don't do well in those moments. so no, i'm not perfect. and i'm definitely still sweaty. but i'm better. and i'm better than my sister, who is still convinced that she mustn't move about the cabin during a flight (and she doesn't) for fear that she could "throw off the balance of the plane in the sky." and at least i can fly in the first place. there were a few years when i thought i might not want to anymore. fear of untimely death during horrific crash was my reason. and not that the following would keep me from air travel, but in terms of reasons not to fly, here are two more.

skywest airlines has just sent james whipple, who hails from a suburb of salt lake city, a letter of apology and a flight voucher after they prevented him from using the airplane's bathroom on a flight from boise to salt lake city. the bathroom was declared out of order for the flight because the light was broken and as the flight is a short one, the crew assumed the passengers could hold out. not so. mr. whipple, who had consumed what he called two "really big beers" at the airport before his flight, was forced to urinate in a motion sickness bag mid-flight. now this is very clearly not a matter of deliquence. no one wants to have to urinate in a motion sickness bag. said skywest spokeswoman sabrena suite-mangum, "for such a short flight, we really felt we were trying to inconvenience the least number of passengers possible by operating that flight." so the airline opted not to delay the flight for repairs to the bathroom light. fair enough, i suppose. but did they really not consider the fact that someone — perhaps a child — might just not be able to hold it? and should they have to? and perhaps most importantly in the grand scheme of things, was it actually necessary to have mr. whipple questioned by police upon arrival in salt lake city? that's right, though no passengers noticed the poor guy uriniating in his seat in a bag, but apparently a flight attendant asked him about it and then ratted him out to the captain who called airport police. for what? to investigate? he was "questioned" about the incident and then went home. i pity mr. whipple, i do. the man had a few beers and had to pee. and props to skywest for the apology and the voucher after the fact. admirable of them to realize the mistake. but, let us face facts, a nicely worded letter and a free flight will not undo the fact that his name has been plastered over all sort of press as "that guy who peed on plane."

though honestly, i think i'd have preferred james whipple's situation to paul trinder's. paul trinder, who'd been dozing happily in first class on a british airways flight from new delhi to london, was roused from his slumber to find a corpse being placed in the seat next to his. that's right, a dead person. it turns out that the elderly woman expired during the flight, and as the coach section of the plane was full, the flight's crew decided that they should give the "grieving family" some privacy. so they moved the family to first-class. the whole family. deceased included. the times (london) quotes trinder: "i didn't have a clue what was going on. the stewards just plonked the body down without saying a thing. i remember looking at this frail, sparrow-like woman and thinking she was very ill. when i asked what was going on, i was shocked to hear she was dead." right. board plane, perhaps eat plane food, read a bit, become drowsy, sleep, and something stirs you. of course it's the dead body that is probably touching you it's so close. and of course the crew isn't going to explain that you are, in fact, seatmates with a stiff (no disprespect to the deceased intended). i wonder if like james whipple, paul trinder needed to use the bathroom and nudged the woman to rouse her. that surely would have been awkward for everyone involved. in any case, according to british airways, about ten passengers die while flying every year and "while each situation is dealt with on an individual basis, safety is paramount." the airline's statement continued: "the deceased must not be placed in the galley or blocking aisles or exits, and there should be clear space around the deceased. the wishes of family or friends travelling with the deceased will always be considered, and account taken of the reactions of other passengers." at least we know they've got their policy down. no dead people blocking the aisle, got it. and the phrase "family or friend travelling with the deceased," doesn't it sounds just like "those travelling with children?" do those travelling with the deceased enjoy comparable pre-boarding privileges? oh, oh my.

as previously stated, i make no argument for abstaining from air travel. it's remarkably useful and exceedingly practical. it makes life much easier most of the time. but it has its downsides. for me, that has always meant everything i've discussed: the terror in the pit of my being, the sweating, all that. but for james whipple and paul trinder it clearly meant other things altogether. and to be honest, at the end of the day i really do prefer the ground. in cars and trains and bikes and such i often have at least an iota of control over the situation should something go wrong. that's not the case while a passenger in giant airborne machines flying thousands of miles over land and water; i really do think the flight attendants can stop it already with the "don't forget your seat cushion is also a floating device" thing. can we just admit that it's not going to help? and speaking of control, in cars and other modes of ground transportation, i find i often have nearly complete control of my bladder activity. and yes, i do live in new york, but i'd venture to say that 99.9% of the time — while on the ground — i also completely command over how many dead bodies people prop up next to me.

i suppose some people are just ground people.

how does it go? accept the things you cannot change, have courage to change the things you can, and have the wisdom to know the difference?

there's this interesting little study that was just published in the new england journal of medicine that is, besides interesting, also very disturbing, i think. and odd. i suppose it makes sense when you think about it, but then it quickly goes under the heading of "i don't really want to think about that sort of thing, and if i do it might throw off the delicate balance of things i just accept because i'm supposed to."

daylight savings is one of those things that one learns from a decently young age "just happens," and so we accept the fact that however many times a year there will be mornings when we wake up and it actually isn't the time that our clock says it is. never mind that we rely on that same clock every day of the year; on this particular day it's simply mistaken. i was recently discussing the daylight savings adjustment that occurred this year, which i first got wind of when i received an e-mail at work from the information & technology department regarding our outlook calendars and such. and when i actually thought about it, it seemd a bit absurd to get a work e-mail telling me that my entire sense of time-keeping was about to change. as in, how does this sort of thing just get mandated? isn't there some overarching sense of "rightness" and fact that should mean someone can't just decide that we're going to make a new time this spring? it seems bizarre when looked at in that light.

anyway, that's a long-winded way of saying that i think some things shouldn't be subject to change because they are dependant on other things. like time should just be time. similarly, if you have a heart attack on a tuesday, the chance you'll survive it should be the same as if you have one on saturday. well, apparently, that's not so.

according to this new study that was conducted by the robert wood johnson foundation, (and don't even ask me why they decided to launch a full study on this; if that doesn't make you wonder...) heart attack patients have a better chance of surviving if admitted to hospital for treatment on a weekday than if they are admitted on a weekend. and yes, researchers did look at other factors at the same time — demographic attributes, other medical conditions that might be ivolved, and "other variables between patients taken into hospital over the weekend as opposed to during the week" — but it turned out that the significant findings had nothing to do with those factors. it's as simple as this: more people die on the weekends of heart attacks than they do during the week. and that is because there are more specialists on staff during the week, more staff in general on staff, and patients receieve more invasive cardiac procedures that, evidently, are saving lives of heart attack patients. patients admitted during the weekend were less likely, for example, to receive angioplasty. time is also very clearly of the essence; succesful treatment is very heavily dependent on quick diagnosis and subsequent action, and it seems that this happens more during the week than on the weekend. that makes sense if we know that there are more hospital wokers on staff during the week.

though it sounds minute in percentage tems, from the very little understanding i have of anything medical, the discrepancy here is rather alarming. just for the sake of laying out the numbers, the difference was about 1 per cent more deaths within 30 days in the weekend admission. in layman's (read, my) terms, the researchers concluded that this 1 per cent increase in mortality "could account for several thousand deaths annually in the united states".

whoah, right?

this whole thing is pretty much a joke about waiting to have your heart attack during the week waiting to happen, but i'd actually like to try and avoid that route. it's pretty disturbing that an issue of staffing or which procedures happen when (most likely a result of the staffing issue) — in other words something people are deciding — is having this much of an effect on whether patients live or die. daylight savings is one thing; sure, let someone just decide that. it's not doing any harm, so that can be one of those things that — in my mind, anyway — shouldn't necessarily be subject to change due to someone's whim (or meticulous forethought, even), but if people in our hospitals are actually dying with more frequency as a direct result of the way higher-ups are choosing to do things, that's just problematic.

as i mentioned above, i have no idea why this study was conducted. but since it was indeed conducted, and the results are so overwhelmingly and plainly decipherable — even for someone like myself — there is no excuse for not making some attempts at correcting the problem. if hospital staff needs to be paid more to work on the weekends, then we need to find some money to pay them more. and more specifically, if more specialists need to be available on weekends, then we need to find a way to make sure that they are. it's simple. i'm not saying that the means by which we do this is simple, but the goal is. this is not an instance where we should take that information, digest it, and just accept it.

and if you happen to know anyone who is high-risk for a heart attack or who has already suffered one, encourage them to save extremely strenuous activities for the weekdays. i said i wasn't going to go there. too easy.

trivia on a thursday

is marine general peter pace...

a) chairman of the joint chiefs of staff?

b) this country's top military general?

c) utterer of the following? "i believe that homosexual acts between individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts. i do not believe the united states is well served by a policy that says it is ok to be immoral in any way. [...] saying that gays should serve openly in the military, to me, says that we, by policy, would be condoning what i believe is immoral activity."


yeses across the board. though i hope he's remembered — and i don't mean fondly — for c instead of a and b, or anything else he may have done or will do during his sad time on this planet that's not wholly repugnant.

come on.

"i do." "err, i mean i won't." "wait, what is it, daddy?"

the other night i turned on the news in time to catch a fascinating segment on what appears to be the hottest thing to hit the united states abstinence movement since the silver ring thing. during a "purity ball," girls are accompanied by their fathers to what seems quite the party, exceedingly wedding-esque: there are fancy dresses, white cakes, first dances, even vows. and what young girl doesn't like a wedding? especially where she gets to play bride! except at her purity ball, instead of vowing to spend her life with that one special person, she vows not to do a few specific things with any special people to another person altogether. oh, daddy.

that's right, if the event's somewhat presumptuous-and-mildly-insulting-in-my-opinion name didn't do it for you, at a purity ball, girls vow to their fathers to remain abstinent until they are married. in return, their noble, noble patriarchs swear to protect their daughter's chastity.

after all, said the father of a 12 year-old who pledged abstinence at a recent ball in south dakota, in "today's day and age, if the daughters are sexually active before they're married that ceremony really is meaningless because the father's not giving anyone away." and his (twelve year-old) daughter surely made him proud with her solemn declaration: "i'm going to stay pure until i'm married and I'm not going to date or kiss a boy."

her father continues, "i saw so many young girls get hurt by the whole dating process. people are just chasing after instinct, chasing after their pleasures and desires and that's going to sting in the end." indeed, many have been "stung" in the dating process. it's very risky business, that. not part of normal social development or anything, though.

in any case, apparently thousands of girls have taken purity vows at purity balls since 1998, when the first such event was held by "generations of light," a christian ministry in colorado springs.

one article i found about purity balls includes the following sentence: "the event's purpose is to celebrate father-daughter bonding, but the main focus of the evening is for the fathers and daughters to exchange pledges in an elaborate ceremony." the "event's purpose is to celebrate father-daughter bonding"? really? we can't do that over ice cream anymore? a baseball game? a tv show, even? does it have to be over the daughter's virginity?

though i think that sort of logic is unfortunately very much consistent with the pro-abstinence mindset. you know, "let's talk about it in terms of it being a bonding event for fathers and their daughters." yes, the "main focus" is ensuring some sort of archaic chastity [i'd hardly be surprised at this point if some new organization pops up to actually reinstate the chastity belt — i'm sure advances in the textile industry could make for some very comfortable products, indeed] situation, but there's also this fantastic bonding "purpose." it's about family. it's about values, morality. purity. very nice how they spin that.

it's almost reminiscent of how they spin the fact that there's even a remote possibility that abstinence-only education works. of course telling young people to just not have sex it the best way to go. silly, unnecessary information about condoms and other forms of birth control with which they can protect themselves should — deep breath — their pledge of chastity to their daddies go astray. no no, better just show them horrifying pictures of sexually transmitted infections. scare tactics and omission of real education in schools is definitely the way to go. oh, and did i mention that statistically, 88% of abstinence pledges do go astray? well, hey, at least the 12% who don't have sex until they're married are in excellent shape. as are, i'm sure, their fathers. just glowing with pride on their little angel's wedding day because he can say that he actually has something to give away at the ceremony. because a daughter who had sexual relations prior to her wedding night doesn't quite count, you know? there's just something missing. a history. a bond. i don't know, the strange pseudo-incestuous feeling i got from watching a father in a suit squeezing his twelve year-old daughter's hand and vowing to protect her chastity?

the bush administration, by the way, is now handing out approximately $200 million to abstinence programs. that's right, federal funding.

abstinence-only education doesn't work. these abstinence initiatives don't work. they are dangerous. it is a disservice to young people in this country if we delude ourselves even for a second into thinking that kids can take a virginity pledge and be done with it. even if they kept the pledges, which research proves they do not, don't they have a right to comprehensive education about their sexuality? shouldn't they be making informed decisions?

and leaving aside the numbers for a second, on a more purity ball-specific and personal note:

i bonded a lot with my father growing up. and i'd have to go ahead and say that none of those experiences included his taking me out for a night on the town (or at the holiday inn) so i could swear i wouldn't have sex until i got married. and i suppose i could be terribly mistaken, but i don't think i'm worse off for it. i don't even think that being properly educated about such things was my the beginning of my descent into immorality — even amorality — and disgrace. and i'll come right out and say it: i actually don't believe that should i decide to get married someday, i'm going to be worried about whether my father thinks he was wronged and left with nothing to "give away."


i mean, come on. he and i both know i'm a handful anyway.

coulterdendum

so it turns out three different newspapers have elected to drop ann coulter's syndicated column after the whole gay edwards slur incident.

says one editor: "we will not continue to publish the columns of someone who uses people as a punch line to get a cheap laugh and who so freely uses an offensive term to describe another human being."

according to the washington post coulter's publisher did not return a phone call seeking comment, the she-devil herself was unavailable for comment, and her web site was "down" for the majority of wednesday.


i don't suppose there's trouble in "the world according to ann coulter"?

more self-promotion

here's a work piece:

Where Are They Now?

everybody loves ann

the charming ann coulter is in the news after calling presidential candidate john edwards a "faggot."

coulter made the slur in washington on friday addressing the 34th annual meeting of the conservative political action conference, pontificating on the democratic presidential candidates.

to quote, "i was going to have a few comments on the other democratic presidential candidate, john edwards, but it turns out that you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot,' so I'm - so, kind of at an impasse, can't really talk about edwards, so i think i'll just conclude here and take your questions." this was met with applause.

though her representative has declined to comment, the new york times reported that she in an e-mail, coulter said, "c'mon, it was a joke. i would never insult gays by suggesting that they are like john edwards. that would be mean."

while kennedy and dean and hoards of gay rights groups have made eloquent statements about just how inappropriate this was, i'd prefer to point out just one. i think it gets at just how odious such a comment must be.

i mean, if mitt romney called it "offensive..."

uh, yeah.