Turning Up the Heat

You've likely heard that if you put a frog in hot water, it will struggle to escape, but if you put a frog in room temperature water and slowly turn up the heat, the frog won't notice and will be burned to death. The meaning of this is fairly simple - if someone directly attacks a fundamental right or liberty, we will notice it and see them for what they truly are. But, if they slowly chisel away at something... well, the heat is being turned up.

This is a very common tactic. It's been used for a very long time by the Brady Campaign, by MADD, and is now being used in a big and obvious way by the anti-birth control movement.

Let's start with MADD. While they started with admirable intentions and goals, they have more recently seemed to gravitate toward prohibition. After they accomplished their initial goals, they kept pushing further. They are pushing toward further lowering the legal BAC to the point where science gives no support to a claim of intoxication. They seem to want to punish people for drinking. Not for drunk driving, or even for being drunk. They haven't seemed to get much attention as of late, but I still notice that when a local politician is caught in a scandal, they start attacking the alcohol and tobacco people at various levels to distract. Perhaps there's some MADD influence there, perhaps not.

Next, let's look at the Brady Campaign. I will say right off that I am fond of guns, and am more than a little knowledgeable on them. The Brady Campaign's goals seem reasonable to those who aren't knowledgeable about guns, and those who don't understand the reasoning behind the Second Amendment - that is to say, it was the Founders' way of insuring that the government never became tyrannical. Also, they didn't really intend for a standing army. They liked the Swiss idea of every citizen being a soldier of sorts if the need arised. So technically, we should all have access to military grade weapons.

The Brady Campaign, bullshit aside, has the ultimate goal of banning guns as a whole. They start by asking for background checks, which does seem reasonable. Then they continue by having waiting periods. Then they want "assault weapons" banned. The Brady Campaign's definition of assault weapons is its own; to one who is knowledgeable on guns, said definition is "anything that looks too scary." They don't like flash suppressors (which don't actually hide the flash), they don't like silencers (which work nothing like they do in movies - guns are still loud enough to damage the hearing, just not as loud), they don't like barrel shrouds (keeps one from burning their hand when they hold the barrel for stability), they don't like pistol grips on rifles/shotguns (ergonomics, really), collapsing stocks (adjustable for shooter comfort), folding stocks (stock folds out of the way for different shooting style). They also don't like high capacity magazines, which may be more understandable for some, but I believe that they make little difference. Then they want to ban semi automatics as a whole. Then they want to ban handguns as a whole because of supposed ease of concealment. Then likely, they'll say they want to ban rifles as a whole, because of accuracy at long distance.

The issue that's been getting the most attention however is the abortion/birth control debate. First they wanted to ban late-term abortion. That's something I can actually get behind, unless said abortion is medically necessary. Then they want to ban abortions altogether. For some, it ends there... but not all. Because of a lack of unity in this movement, they are quite sloppy.

More recently, we've seen birth control pills (that neat little pill that prevents abortions from becoming necessary in the first place) come under attack... not just the Plan B pills, either. Some say that we shouldn't have to pay for women to be able to have sex... but I have yet to see Viagra come under similar scrutiny. Viagra is currently much more expensive than birth control, and having checked a Blue Cross/Blue Shield website, it comes up as a Tier 2 - preferred brand. To give an idea, a popular brand name tri-cyclic birth control pill, for a four week supply, costs about $80 without insurance. Viagra, for six pills, costs about $130. Do the math. Keep in mind, these are both name brand drugs... the birth control drug price I speak of is not for a generic.

So it's not the idea of paying for someone else to have sex that these people are objecting to. It is the idea specifically of a woman having sex. It's not a new double standard, though. When a woman has sex with a lot of people, she's a slut. When a man has sex with a lot of people, he's just lucky... or a stud... or something cool. But no negative label.

Get informed on the issues, and don't be afraid to call bullshit. Otherwise, you'll find yourself in the position of the frog being slowly boiled to death. The heat is being turned up.

Obamacare

Like the Supreme Court justice, I won't pretend that I've read it - it's 2,700 pages long, and not exactly entertaining. Like most bills, it's probably unnecessarily lengthy, but contrary to how some are talking, it's again nothing new. Sometimes it's likely because a bill does cover a lot of subject matter, and every loophole needs to be closed, and sometimes it's for a more nefarious purpose - to discourage anyone (including congress) from reading much of anything beyond the title, as is my suspicion with the Patriot Act.

Of course, neither side is immune to using such tactics. At any rate, for those who have forgotten, Obamacare is not the bill's actual name - it's the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Here's a fourteen page summary. It's kinda surprising that Fox News' propaganda against it has gotten so popular as to make even supporters of the bill forget its actual name, although "Obamacare" really doesn't sound too terribly negative, despite attempts to make it into a dirty word.

The main thing that makes me wary is a mandate. Sometimes care simply isn't affordable, even if it's on a sliding scale. Yes, you can file for free care... but anyone who has ever filed for government benefits knows it takes a very long time... and in the meantime, you're still getting fined for not having said benefits.

Otherwise though, I like it. I like that it bans disqualification over "pre-existing conditions." Call me anti-capitalist for that if you like, but seriously - cancer won't go away just because you lost your job and the benefits that go with it. Should money, or blind luck in not being laid off from a job, be such a strong deciding factor in life-or-death decisions? I like that it makes healthcare available to all Americans.

I've noticed that those who protest it the most strongly are the same ones who, if asked why they dislike it, they'll provide answers such as "it's un-American," or "it's socialist." Good luck finding people that can actually point to specific parts and reasons for the dislike - they dislike it because Obama came up with it. They dislike it because someone with a loud voice who pretends to be more knowledgeable than most told them to dislike it.

War on Women

In general, I'm not fond of using such dramatic media/propaganda terms. However, a "War on Women" has seemed increasingly more real and less like propaganda.

It seemed to really start with the whole Rush Limbaugh/Sandra Fluke mess. Not over abortion, but over birth control. Many may dispute that birth control is a women's rights issue, but I am in agreement with those who say that it is. I think we've all heard the sarcastic joke about how a woman's place is to be barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen. Well, birth control does give women some say in the matter. It lets women choose when they are pregnant, lets them secure an education and career... and most importantly with that, independence. And it's working.

Many of the conservatives may say to this, "well then, women should just keep their legs closed!" Ahem... let us not forget where the sperm comes from that impregnates women. Should men keep having sex with women while women keep their legs closed, and it all continues to be blamed on women? Does anyone else see the problem here?

I firmly believe that women are entitled to, shall we say, "enjoy life" the same as men are, and without men making their life decisions for them. It's easy for a misogynist to make a decision about something that doesn't concern him.

If the "War on Women" ended there, I may still be likely to grit my teeth about it being called such, though. Sad to say however, it does not end there:

See, we have the old standby's of calling her a whore, calling her ugly... whatever, that's nothing new. We see this every time there is a fight for women's rights. Susan B. Anthony faced similar adversity. Misogynists were emboldened by Limbaugh's statements of her being a slut (for having sex). Why is it that women get called sluts for having sex, but men are just called "lucky?"

Again though, it goes well beyond this.

Wisconsin lawmaker says battered women should just remember what they love about their husbands.

TN law would require detailed info to be made public about women who have abortions (institutionalized blackmail).

AZ law would allow employers to question (and fire) women over the use of birth control pills. 

GA law to potentially punish women for miscarriages (as murder).

Dildos illegal in Texas.

Mandated pre-abortion trans-vaginal ultrasounds for women in VA, even in emergencies. 

1 in 5 pharmacies hinder access to "morning-after" pill. 

Then let's not forget that the objections to abortion or even the "morning-after" pill stay intact even in cases of rape.

While yes, there is a smaller, more quiet war on men... there is no denying that the war on women has been revived. The misogynists we had hoped were gone have been emboldened, and extremism is now being seen as admirable, if not heroic.

Outsmarting Nature?

In a word, nope.

Humanity has a mentality that nature is something to be outsmarted, overpowered, or is quaint and perhaps obsolete. Well, nature begs to differ. Big surprise.

No, I'm not going to be one of those gleeful, raving nutcases saying that we deserve it and that this is nature bitch-slapping us back into our place. But I am going to say that we have been more than a little arrogant, figuring that nature has several flaws, and forgetting the way we evolved into what we are now.

Some examples for you: circumcision, overuse of antibiotics, overuse of C-sections, many mothers' refusals to breast-feed. The list goes on.

Circumcision has its origins in religious dogma. Society more readily accepts it when done to boys, but not when it's done to girls. The reasoning is much the same, however - to reduce sexual pleasure. Some modern physicians also believe it's cleaner to do so. However, there can be a lot of unnecessary procedures that can make one "cleaner." Hey, armpits are smelly... if we remove the arms though, no worries, right? It comes down to a body part being removed unnecessarily.

C-sections... clinics and hospitals like them for the extra money. Some patients like them for the fact that they can have the baby on their schedule. One lesser known thing however is that in a natural birth, the mother's beneficial bacteria colonizes the child as they pass through. This can mean the difference between a sickly and robust adult. There are times when a C-section can be necessary, but they are being overused.

Breast feeding... the antibodies in "yummy mummy" (thank you, Dr. House) keep the baby relatively safe for at least the first six months... and evidence is pointing toward there also being more long-term benefits.

Now, on to the big one: overuse of antibiotics. A lot of patients are in the habit of going to the doctor every time they have the sniffles.  Because the patients see fit to pay the doctor, the doctor then writes a prescription. Maybe for a cough suppressant, but often antibiotics are involved - amoxicillin, azithromycin, etc. For decades, doctors have figured this was a fairly harmless way of getting a patient out of their office.

Then more recently, we started becoming familiar with bacteria that weren't behaving the way bacteria should when they get hit with a dose of antibiotics. Enter the superbugs.

Antibiotics are basically mild poisons. If you've ever had a roach problem, you probably know that later generations tend to not be as vulnerable to a poison as earlier generations were. This is because life adapts. Before humanity came along and erected huge cities, the pests we now contend with had natural predators. We drove out the predators, and the pest populations skyrocketed.

Much the same is true of many of our immune systems. In the years to come, the ones who are going to be best off are the ones who said "fuck it, I'm not going to the doctor," and sleep off their colds with Nyquil. The ones who were born more or less naturally and had the dirty hippie of a mother who breast-fed them. That's not to say that you shouldn't go to the doctor when it's serious - you sure the hell should. But don't overuse the doctor, don't overuse the antibiotics, don't overuse drugs in general. Usually, our bodies know what we need and either produces it or guides us to it. Of course, it could be your body continually guides you to the allergy medicine as does mine.

Unfortunately however, employers are also making that more difficult by insisting that we bring a doctor's note. But perhaps express some reluctance to take antibiotics and leave it to the doctor's judgement from there. They are produced because they are necessary. Just not to the point of it being a doctor's way to get you out of the office.

Hacks With Blogs

I just got done watching Contagion and loved it. I liked the realistic and human portrayal of everyone involved, from the governments, the WHO, the CDC, and the individual doctors and epidemiologists. Spoiler alert - if you haven't seen it yet, there may be a few spoilers in this post.

The other thing I found refreshing in it was that it just may be the only movie I've seen that involves a major (fictional) epidemic that wasn't the result of some vast government/shadow organization conspiracy. While yes, I love stories such as Outbreak, the Stand, and the Andromeda Strain, each one of them involves government conspiracy on some level. With this, it's easy to forget that most viruses and bacteria indeed have their origins in nature.

It's often the same story - some deadly disease gets out. Turns out the disease has origins as a potential bio-weapon being studied by the government. Then some ambitious blogger investigative reporter exposes it all and saves the day. As for Andromeda Strain, it would be the more recent re-make of the movie that follows that unfortunate cliche, rather than the book I linked to above.

In Contagion though, it followed a more realistic pattern of events. The WHO, CDC, and others banded together to try and stop it. Of course, every such organization is made up of humans. Humans who have human fears and concerns... and families. Then of course there is the blogger who millions see as a hero.

For some reasons, a lot of people trust relatively anonymous (even if they use their real names) bloggers over actual politicians and reporters who have some accountability. Maybe it's because we're so used to depictions of masked heroes of the people. Surely, a blogger doesn't have any ulterior motives, right?

Well, my ulterior motive is a black Dodge Challenger, dammit! Of course, that doesn't mean that I'm getting one by blogging about anything and everything that comes to mind. Of course, I'm not actually expecting to get one from this, either. The point is that yes, even bloggers are human and have human motivations and the like. With that, we are held at near-zero accountability. Go ahead, set a blog up yourself. Anyone and everyone can. There's no real verification of one's identity who does set up a blog. You could say you're some Deep Throat type of government insider when the reality is that you're just making fries at some fast food joint while you live in your mom's basement. I could tell you that the sky is actually pink and purple plaid, but that there's a mind-control government conspiracy to make us think it's blue... and there would be no real repercussions on my end. The blogger in Contagion faked being sick to peddle a miracle cure the governments were supposedly withholding. The blogger got rich. People panicked. People got killed. But hey, he got rich because they trusted his talk of conspiracies.

Seeing this lack of accountability (and often truth) is a big part of why I started blogging. I rather hoped I could offer an alternative. As for me getting rich... not bloody likely. I'll keep shamelessly pandering to Dodge for a Challenger, mostly in jest, until I can afford one... but the only money I make on this blog is from those little ads on here. Not the links I post to Dodge or Amazon or where ever else, but just those Google ads.

So again, I try to post things that can be fact-checked, and I do try to keep honest. On the rare and unlikely occasion that I get access to an inside source (as I did in regards to Zombie Muhammad), I try to check on their reliability and see how the facts I'm provided fill in the gaps in what everyone else is told. In other words, I try to keep things honest. I have little, if any, reason to do otherwise.

Feminism

It's pretty easy to understand why feminism has been in the news a lot lately. There's the birth control debate (with Limbaugh throwing in his two cents, plus some), there's the abortion debate (though I can understand how some would not consider this one a feminist issue, despite my being largely pro-choice), then there's the rampant sexism, although more subtle than in years past. Things like women being allowed in the military, but having lower standards for them. To give an example, when I was in the Air Force, men were expected to run two miles in eighteen minutes or less... women had twenty-one minutes, I think. I also remember many women finding that patronizing and offensive. Those women realized that equality also meant equal standards and expectations.

Obviously, there are some things one sex can do that the other can't - men can't give birth, obviously. Men also tend to have an easier time building muscle. Women, I've heard, have a higher pain threshold (likely because they're the ones who give birth). But in the end, one sex cannot exist without the other. That's kind of the ultimate equality - it takes both to create life. Perhaps men were equipped with the extra muscle so protect and provide while the woman is slowed down from being pregnant. That's not to say that women should just be "barefoot and pregnant," but is instead a sign of equality through balance - one fills a role when the other cannot.

One of the big questions of today is what equality means. To some, it's pretty self-explanatory - equal standards, equal rights, not taking gender into consideration where it isn't relevant. However, today some men consider women's rights to be about standing up for the "little guy" in a manner of speaking. Sounds okay at first, but this is where that patronizing attitude comes in. Not to be insulting to disabled people, but this makes a lot of women feel like they're competing in the Special Olympics - they don't want to be a "special case."

Continuing on this line of thought, there are the women who don't want to be equal, but to be superior. They want to punish men. And some men are inclined toward this line of thought, also. This is where we start seeing biased legal rulings (ie, divorce, child custody, domestic abuse, etc), less than fair public opinion in disputes between men and women, and the open acceptance of misandristic (man-hating) speech while treating misogynistic speech as a taboo equal to or worse than racism.

One thing I find kind of darkly amusing however is how much some of the more radical feminists have in common with their male-chauvinist rivals - they both want to dictate what a woman can or cannot do with her body. Consider their objections to things like porn or the Hooters restaurants. The women who work at these places, or choose to model nude, or choose to be in porn... well, it's their choice. Same as men who choose to do similar. Some enjoy it. And it is their body to do with as they please, in my opinion. If they want to show it off, it's their choice to do so.

Which brings us to this:

Exiled Iranian women pose nude.

Well, I'd say they are certainly in a position to appreciate feminism in its truest sense. In Iran, they may well be risking their lives in doing this. But, I have to admit that I did see some irony in the fact that the photos are still censored here. They may not be arrested for posing nude for photographs in the west, but they still aren't afforded the same rights as men, either - they would be arrested for being topless in public, but men are not. Do people see women's breasts as being objects of sexuality? Yes... as a guy, I will readily admit to being turned on by the beauty of a topless woman. However, women also get turned on by attractive shirtless men, don't they? Don't bother lying about it, I see it regularly. Just that it's more common, so it's not as big of a deal. Why shouldn't this be true for women also?

Going back now to the subject of birth control, it seems that some in power are catching onto my question of why we're making such a big deal of birth control, and its coverage on insurance, but not erectile dysfunction drugs: Ohio lawmaker wants men to get a second opinion from a psychological professional before getting ED drugs.

The bill is rhetorical, certainly. But the point of course is valid. Why should women have to go through that, and the coverage of birth control pills be questioned when that of ED drugs is not? This debate has brought out the knuckle-dragging mentality a lot of people still have.

Derogatory Words

This may seem a strange thing to do a post on, but it's seeming to become more relevant. We've all probably heard the term "politically correct," and probably don't think very highly of things that fall under that label.

There are times when political correctness does become ridiculous. I've heard of cases where hate groups instead become labeled as "unhappy groups" in the guise of political correctness.

On the other hand, there are words that really are best to be treated as curse words. To name a few examples (only as examples of such words, don't take offense) - niggers, kikes, chinks, crackers, wetbacks, and several others. Those were terms that were made up exclusively as insults with no technical relevance or benevolent intention. So those I am all for treating as swear words, and in general discourage the use of, except in proper context in theater and writing (keep history in mind - I don't support the N-word having been edited out of Mark Twain's work) and of course in giving examples (lest I make myself a hypocrite).

But, we have another category here - what about technical words that have become insults?

Campaign to treat "retarded" as a swear word.

Unofficially, said word has been treated as a swear word or insult for decades now. But there was a time that it was the proper technical word for a condition. The dictionary definitions can be found here. Basically, it means "delayed" or "slowed down." Now government documents use such terms as intellectually disabled, other organizations take it a step further and say "differently-abled." I'm not against terminology changing, although I think "differently-abled" is a bit... hmm... flowery? I'm all for treating people with disabilities with dignity and respect, but there are of course those who take offense at it being labeled as a disability. It does affect the quality of one's life and inhibits independence, so by definition, it is a disability.

I don't know... I'm of two minds on this. On the one hand, the more sentimental part of me supports this effort. I can understand how it may make people feel for a descriptive term of themselves to be used as an insult. On the other hand, the more technical part of my mind says that this word shouldn't fall into the ranks of the racial slurs and insults, even if it unofficially has. Let it be one of those things where the more intelligent/enlightened ones keep the true meaning of the word in mind. Keep in mind that there have been similar efforts on this same issue. Remember how "special" became such a loaded word?

Thoughts, anyone?

This is a graphic from an old MAD magazine in regards to prejudice and inequality: