Terri Schiavo: Saving a life?
I'm not enthusiastic about this cause. If the issues were as clear as some of the conservative talkers indicate, there would be no controversy.

It reminds me of past campaigns to raise pennies for school children, or feed starving orphans in Somalia, or something equally heart-rending but just as likely to be deeply burdened with layers of useless bureacratic "overhead".

I cannot learn the facts of the matter by scanning the news stories or listening to Rush. The news is just packed with rumors and innuendo -- there's no way to tell what if any is true.

I believe that under the current laws, the spouse of an incapacitated marriage partner holds the responsibility of legal guardianship. This woman's parents don't like that arrangement, because they want to keep maintaining the women in case she might recover from her decade-long coma, and the husband wants to withhold medical intervention to let her die. Thus the parents want to challenge the legality of the husband's custodial authority. This argument is the essence of the matter, and as far as I can tell, summarizes the only clearly delineated facts. Almost everything else in the news appears to consist of one-sided stories that rather remarkably represent one of the parties as a saint and the other as an evil tyrant -- this assignment of heroism or depravity depending on which of the two family groups you choose to side with.

This argument should have been settled between the families. How unfortunate that the jurists who heard the original lawsuits did not so judge.

Tommorow is the end of the world
Somebody else is worried that the world might end tommorow...
FLDS doomsday
Least of my worries, I'm thinking. Not sure I would even notice. :-(

Nuclear Iran
I'm indulging in some sloppy brainstorming here, honest reactions welcomed...

Nuclear Iran

While things in Iraq seem to be working themselves out, now I think its time to set off a little bomb in the Iranian nuclear project, before some of the Iranian radicals start thinking they're free to cook up nukes to use on us. There's no reason to work so hard against terrorist capability in other places while neglecting such a threat.

Here's hoping the Israelis will take charge and catch the heat. I would volunteer for an Israeli-sponsored international strike force to blow away the Iranian nuclear complex. There's no reason for terrorism to be such a one-way function.

These people developing their nuclear program have it far too easy, leveraged by borrowing existing technology from others who already bore all the risks and paid the real costs. It wouldn't take much to discourage this kind of enterprise. Rupture a few containment vessels and the site will glow in the dark for 5000 years. And billions in infrastructure investment will be untouchable.

Then let the Iranians raise a hue and cry about nuclear poisoning in their own backyard.

Interpreting AIDS/HIV statistics
In the course of discussion someone told me that my assertions were simply wrong.

Yah, I always am, just as a matter of policy. I find that it saves a lot of time just to start out simply wrong, instead of fumbling around with complicated complex wrongs.

As far as sparring with the numbers, I suppose you serve your own interests there. The numbers I see tell a different tale.

I was looking at Avert.org, and found data and reporting that seems to support the same kind of inconsistency I see in your views.

With regard to AIDS/HIV epidemiology -- statistics indicate that it is manifestly a disease that far disproportionaly affects blacks and homosexuals. Without those particular groups to communicate HIV, the "epidemic" does not exist. This is what the numbers show.

The numbers from Africa are staggering. 7% of the total population is infected. Two-thirds of worldwide AIDS/HIV incidence is in Africa. Some individual African countries approach 40%. Truly, this is not an epidemic, it is a decimating plague. (BTW, this also tends to skew the "worldwide" figures.) AIDS/HIV incidence in North America is reportedly 0.6%.

I found it ironic to read in the Avert reports the concern that in the US, blacks account for so much of the current incidence (12% of population, 49% of cases), but nothing to note a similar disparity for homosexuals. Rather, there was sort of a congratulatory note because a third of the currently infected are reportedly heterosexual -- a sort of inference that homosexuals don't have any more to worry about. Perhaps this is what you were trying to explain as well. But by my ballpark guestimation,the current numbers indicate that homosexuals run five to ten times higher infection risk in proportion to the rest of the population.

To me, that sounds like a disease that definitely prefers homosexual victims.

I'm not passing moral judgements about AID/HIV. But if it matters, we should at least charcterize the problem accurately.

Proof

In the priesthood meeting discussion regarding the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, the subject of the witnesses was brought up. Someone asserted that it would be impossible for that many people to all experience exactly the same fantasy at the same time, with no prearragment or collaboration, and corroborate on all details.

I wondered to myself how many people would be watching the same television program that night.

What constitutes proof in one context does not necessarily suffice in another.

Arguing with God
I've had my own arguments with the Almighty about the way things are being mis-managed. It seems that my personal plans for happiness and success don't always fit in with the eternal scheme of things. Too bad, I really did intend to share the wealth. And as far as I can see, nobody seems to be very receptive to the idea of sharing poverty.

Safe assumptions
In the last few years it has been made painfully obvious to me that my personal predisposition and inclination are based on many rather arbitrary
assumptions. I cannot function effectively without taking a whole lot of things for granted. But because of some of the things I accepted without question, I have on occasion run face-first smack into a lot of brick walls that I assumed were doorways.

One of the areas of concern that I take for granted is that I am safe from massive secret conspiracies. The possible food conspiracy that was hinted at doesn't seem real to me, so I assume that it doesn't exist.

I have come to know, however, that my assmptions don't necessarily obtain, in all cases. Perhaps there really is a food conspiracy -- Phillip Morris and Pepsi and Coca-cola are really trying to poison me. From a pragmatists point of view, what can I do about it? Not much, I figure. So it seems a safe assumption to pretend that no such conspiracy could exist. In fact, I know that a major conspiracy has existed for decades in the formuation of addictive substances in cigarettes and cola drinks. But it is more convenient for me to ignore this evidence in the interest of a comfortable life.

What other "safe assumptions" do we make that really are not at all "safe"? We depend on countless elements to sustain our very lives. And we have no
rational reason for believing that they are dependable, other than that they have been up to now. And a track record is no assurance that we are not nearing the end of the rope.

What can we depend on, then? Virtually nothing, it seems.

Isn't that why we have faith, the evidence of things hoped for, the assurance of things not seen?

So soon forgotten?

Bored and sick today, I started making a survey of attitudes reflected in news and blogs. How remarkable it is to me that we so soon forget. I suppose human memory is merciful in this regard. Otherwise the pain from hurtful memories should be constant and unremitting.

I looked at photos of people falling from the burning WTC buildings, and was reminded of my feelings on the day of that horrifying event. I renew my assertion that we cannot afford to live in the same world with people who can contemplate such acts, who have the will and the resources to commit such atrocities.

I believe progress has been made in correcting that problem. While the means we have used to forward that undertaking are as distressing as the problem they intend to correct, I believe the motivation which moves us makes all the difference.

When bombs and bullets are being flung about, it is difficult to identify the higher moral and ethical considerations that prompted us to escalate this conflict. Yet our purposes remain the same, as do those of our antagonists. To me it is only a small sample of the continuing battle between good and evil.

Mission of secular community education
Liberal college administrators justify their own misrepresentation of community interests--
UVSC Editorial
The author acknowledges that UVSC is growing because more students cannot get accepted at BYU. In the same breath he denies that UVSC fills the gap.

Border patrol vigilantes
Want to join a vigilante gang on the Arizona border, help clean up the west for our wives and daughters? Check out the Minuteman Project, "http://minutemanproject.com".

The organizer says it will only cost one or two thousand dollars for you to go camp out on the border for a month. You can assist the US Border Patrol in apprehending illegal aliens trying to cross the desert into Arizona.

It might be fun to join the mob. I'd like to pass out Gatorade.