Month: March 2005

Yeah, I know what I said, but I couldn’t ignore this.

Danger – outrageous analogy ahead.

Terri’s Ordeal Compared to Christ’s Crucifixion

CNSNews.com – Terri Schiavo’s mother Mary Schindler is like another Mary — forced to watch her child die, a spiritual adviser to the Schindler family said on Tuesday.

Brother Paul O’Donnell spoke on Tuesday after a federal judge refused an emergency request to reinsert Terri’s feeding and hydration tube.

“During this week, as we look to Good Friday, all Mary the mother of Christ could do was stand at her child’s side. He was condemned by unjust courts, the same way Terri Schaivo is being condemned to die by court order.

“We pray that this modern-day crucifixion will not happen and we have faith that Terri will be liberated, and we are not giving up hope,” O’Donnell added.

The characters in this play are no longer normal people. Now, they’re divine.

Puhleeze.

Here’s the only opinion I’ve seen to date that makes perfect sense to me.

More political correctness gone berserk.

‘Easter’ Bunny Gives Way To ‘Spring’ Bunny – Some Local Malls Go P.C. For Religious Holiday

Customers at local area malls are being taken by surprised to find that the Easter Bunny they’ve come to know and love now has a new name. In fact, some local malls now refer to the Easter icon as the “Spring Bunny.” However, some customers don’t like the new trend.

“It makes me sad, because I think Easter is really important. The message is important,” Plano mother Deidra Klemm said. “And I think it’s wrong to call him the Spring Bunny. Let’s just say what he really is.”

Klemm is not alone. Another unidentified mother said, “The Easter Bunny is the Easter Bunny. There’s no getting around it.”

Some popular malls that have adopted the new trend include The Shops at Willow Bend in Plano and the Stonebriar Centre in Frisco.

First of all, let’s get one thing straight. The Easter message is not about a bunny and his alleged ability to hide eggs and leave a basket of candy. The Easter message is about the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Renaming holidays is not a new thing. Halloween has become “Harvest Celebration”, and Christmas has become “The Holidays”. Easter (at least for now) has remained Easter, even if the majority of people don’t know what the holiday is about.

But, we’re not talking about the meaning of Easter, we’re talking about the name of a character. Just who is offended by the Easter Bunny? What’s the threat? Will less people come to the mall and shop because a guy dressed in a rabbit outfit is standing there posing for pictures with kids? Of course not.

This is yet another example of fear. Some are paralyzed by the thought that they might offend someone by practicing a tradition, or by having a little fun with the kids at the mall.

When will it stop? How will it stop?

Via SF Chronicle: School to vote on renaming Jefferson Elementary due to the fact that the founding father owned slaves.

Parents, students and teachers at Berkeley’s Thomas Jefferson Elementary School will soon vote on whether to rename their school because the nation’s third president was a slave owner.

The question of whether to rename the school has been debated for more than two years — since several teachers, including an African American mother of three former Jefferson students, said Jefferson’s moniker offended them and suggested a name change.

This is Berkeley, so I’m not surprised.

Yes, Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. He was as much a product of those times as he was the instrument that changed the worse aspects of those times. I find it hard to believe that merely changing the name of the school will solve the problems of those who are offended by being associated with one of our founding fathers.

You’d think they would have more important issues to tackle.

Do the same “offended” individuals refuse to carry a $2 dollar bill in their wallet? Would they purposefully drive a longer route if their trip pointed them toward Jefferson County, Missouri? Have they stopped watching reruns of “The Jefferson’s” on television?

The answer of course, is No.

Too many people are offended by too many things in this country. Too many dollars are spent and too much time and energy is wasted. Someone has to stop the spin we’re in.

If you’re expecting a baby and you want to capture the labor and delivery forever on video, you can forget about it in Washington State. What used to be common place in many hospitals in the Pacific Northwest has now become a no no. Fearing lawsuits, doctors are hesitant to allow Dad to frame Mom as she’s huffin and puffin and yellin and screaming.

John C. Nelson admits that he gets a little teary-eyed every time he sees the videotape of a close friend’s child being born by Caesarean section.

But don’t expect Nelson – an obstetrician and president of the American Medical Association – to allow any of his patients to capture all the same heartfelt and life-changing moments on videotape. Like other doctors around the country, Nelson said increasing fears that those family videotapes could one day be used in a lawsuit led him to start asking parents to limit camera use during some of their infant’s first moments.

“What once used to be really fun and warm and cozy and so forth is now a potential nail in the coffin from a liability perspective,” said Nelson, who practices in Salt Lake City and delivered babies until 2003.

The medical association doesn’t offer specific guidelines on personal videotaping of deliveries, but Nelson said ongoing concerns about medical liability has many doctors and hospitals at least cutting back on what they will allow. He said he began restricting mom and dad’s videotaping after the medical center he practiced in, LDS Hospital, started urging limitations.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends that its members discuss what limitations there may be on filming the birth during a patient’s prenatal visits, so there are no surprises in the delivery room, said Larry Veltman, chair of the committee on professional liability. While doctors’ preferences still vary, he said, “Certainly the tendency is to move toward less and less ability to videotape.”

Personally, I never really “connected” with couples who wanted to videotape the birth of their children. Heck, I’ve known some to actually have the child at home, in the living room, with the ENTIRE family sitting there taking in the event. I don’t know…just something creepy about it.

But, I digress.

This issue is really larger than families missing out on 45 minutes of guttural moaning, sweating, and cursing with angle shots of 3 or 4 different bodily fluids. This is about the fear doctors have about the job they do. This is about a doctor having second thoughts about everything he does, in the clinic, over the telephone, in the operating room, or on an airplane when an emergency occurs and the flight attendant asks if a doctor is on board. The threat of litigation is very real, and it can destroy a practice.

“The doctor wants to be concerned about the clinical issue in front of him, and not have to worry about how it’s going to play on TV,” Nelson said.

Others argue, however, that that is exactly how doctors should be thinking when they deliver a baby or perform another medical procedure.

“If doctors were concerned about liability and frivolous lawsuits, they should welcome videotapes,” said David Beninger, a lawyer with Seattle-based Luvera Law Firm. “A videotape proves what happens and when it happens. There’s no more reliance on faded memories.”

Beninger said he thinks most people want to record a child’s birth for the memories, not the evidence – but argues those tapes can also come in handy if there is a dispute.

He and his client, Dylan Malone, relied on a personal videotape in a case involving Malone’s son, Ian, who was born in 1999 and died last May of pneumonia, a result of complications related to his birth.

The family eventually reached a $2 million settlement with Cascade Midwives and Birth Center in Everett. Malone said that was largely because medical records inaccurately portrayed Ian as healthy throughout the birth while the videotape showed dire complications. The medical center declined to comment.

Nope, I’m not going to get in that fight. You know, the argument about Midwives and “Birthing Centers” as opposed to the good ‘ol traditional sterile hospital where I was born. I have to wonder though. Has anyone done a study to measure the risks of having babies in odd places? Yes, yes, yes, I know…my grandparents were probably born in the family barn or in a basement or some place that was dirtier than, well, you get my drift. It didn’t hurt them right? I wonder. It does seem like there were lots of complications back then, and lots of stillborn children.

But I digress.

Although videotaping cutbacks stem from lawsuit concerns, Veltman said he hasn’t heard of insurance companies pushing doctors to stop videotaping. Gary Morse, general counsel with Seattle-based Physicians Insurance a Mutual Company, said the issue was discussed somewhat by insurers in the 1980s, when home video cameras began appearing, but his company hasn’t dealt with it since.

After his son’s birth, Malone became a staunch proponent of allowing videotapes in delivery rooms. But when his own second child, Molly, was born in a different hospital, the Malones tried to create an experience exactly opposite of their son’s birth – and that included ditching the video camera.

“I didn’t even ask about their policies,” Malone said. “I wanted a very different birth.”

The bottom line is this – frivolous lawsuits are a plague on our society, and something must be done before we get to a point where doctors won’t even touch patience anymore. They’ll simply program a computer who will do all the probing, poking and prodding.

But hey, if your doctor does end up being a computer, you’ll probably be able to give birth and live blog the contractions at the same time.

Cool.

There will be no more news or comment from me regarding Terri Schiavo. The blogosphere is saturated with the issue and anything I add from here on out will simply be a repeat of something someone else is saying.

I’m done.

USAToday examines the TV exposure CNN is giving to Blogs, Bloggers, and the news they make.

Mainstream media continue to be wary of Internet bloggers because the reporting and opinions on their websites are often not subject to journalistic checks and balances, such as editing and rules on sourcing.

But Jon Klein, a former CBS News producer who jumped to an Internet venture before being tapped to run CNN a few months ago, says that there’s no sense in ignoring the “blogosphere,” which is why he has created a daily, four-minute segment on Inside Politics.

“Inside the Blog,” which kicked off Feb. 14, is the first daily segment on cable or network TV dedicated to people whose reporting and opinions appear on the Web.

“We want to demystify blogging,” Klein says. “We want to peel back all those layers and also do a reading of the blogs that our audience doesn’t have the time to do.”

This is a good move for CNN, but don’t think for a moment that the news network is giving equal billing to the blogosphere. Read between these lines…

Inside Politics host Judy Woodruff says that “not being a child of the Internet, I confess I was skeptical when Jon first suggested the segment. I viewed the blogs as pure opinion, no reporting. But I’ve come to see the segment as a tool for getting at a new, unpredictable and increasingly influential place on the political landscape.”

But, she says, “the one thing I’d like to see us do more of is explain who the bloggers are. We could tell more about who they are and where they get their information. The only thing stopping us from doing that now is time.”

So, Judy wants to “understand” bloggers and find out where they get their information? Perhaps she’s still skeptical? At this point she can’t help but draw a solid line of distinction between bloggers and news reporters. Fine. Problem is, she’s already identified herself as someone foreign to the blogosphere, so she’ll need to take a lot of time and do much research before she draws that line fairly. If she wants to do her research in between commercial breaks or 2 minutes before the segment, I’m afraid her focus will continue to be on how bloggers are amateurs (less credible) and “real” reporters are professionals (more credible).

Jeffrey Cole, who runs the Digital Center at the University of Southern California, calls CNN’s new segment “an interesting idea.”

“Occasionally the blogs are the extra eyes and ears that can be on to something,” he says, and “summarizing what the blogs are buzzing about provides good insight into current interests and developments.”

But, Cole says, the Internet also has its share of oddballs. Though they can be entertaining, “the key is that CNN not promote them to greater significance than their ideas deserve.”

Yes, there are oddballs, and some of them get on the air and make fools of themselves. As Jeff Jarvis said, there are risks that come with the MSM’s sudden excitement and acceptance of bloggers. Once in awhile, you’ll put the nut-job on the air. Hopefully, it won’t happen a lot, but regardless of the frequency, it shouldn’t serve as an excuse to broad brush the blogosphere as the home for wackos.

CNN Executive Jon Klein sums up with this…

“Don’t treat bloggers as some kind of freak show at all. They take them very seriously,” Klein says. “Bloggers are as multi-layered as any other source of debate or dialogue, and it’s a mistake to write them off as one thing or another.

“They are fertile ground for doing what good journalists do: find out who they are and what they are saying, and how accurate are the things that they’re saying and how useful are the things that they provide.”

Indeed. If CNN sticks to this edict, the reputation and credibility of the blogosphere will increase in stature.

But will it last?

If a little healthy competition develops between CNN and Bloggers, I predict a quick end to their daily television segment on blogs. Just as you don’t hear any mention of ABC, NBC, CBS or FOX from the lips of Judy Woodruff, you won’t hear the word “blogosphere” from any TV network news division when citizen journalism stands on equal ground.

RIP John DeLorean.

From none other than Chrenkoff.

According to academics attending the Compassion in World Farming Trust conference this past week, farm animals have feelings which should be respected and catered for. They believe animals should not be dismissed as simple automatons – cows take pleasure in solving problems and sheep can form deep friendships.

Professor Marc Bekoff, of the University of Colorado states,

“And what animals feel matters very much as they try to negotiate their lives in a human-dominated and often abusive world, in which they are mere pawns in our incessant and obsessive attempts to control their lives for our and not their benefit.”

HELLOOOO? I don’t want to be nice to my beef. I want to eat my beef. When it’s put on a plate in front of me, and it’s hot and juicy with a marble of fat running through it, I don’t care a wit for what it thinks of me. I couldn’t give a rip if it was nicely talked to nor do I shed a tear at the thought that it might have been whapped up side the head with a two-by-four.

In fact, right about now I’m ready to sink my teeth into one of these:

 

After reading about this, I immediately envisioned myself doing this.

Like a watermarked bill, a tattoo on the skin, a branding on a cow, red wine spilled on a wool fiber carpet, and a splotch of black permanent ink from a Sharpie on an $90 white shirt…

…this product is forever etched in my mind.

            The Popeil Pocket Fisherman

It’s number 92 on a list of the Top 100 Gadgets of All Time.

I don’t know what I liked better, the product or the infomercial selling the product. The Ronco commercials are classic, but this one was the greatest.