So we took the cats to the vet today. Yes, that’s right, three cats in the car, and we made it there and back again in one piece. Does that qualify us for some kind of medal or something?

Anyway, apparently Slate has hypothyroidism, and the doctor gave us three treatment otions: medication, surgery, or radiation.

But Slate is 18. Although the doctor seems to think that surgery is the best option, I am not sure that I want to put Slate through all that. Radiation, at $1400, is right out, but he said there may be side effects from the medication, and the medication would need to be given every day.

He seemed to be saying that she’ll decline, perhaps rapidly, if the condition goes untreated, but again, she’s 18. How much longer does she have?

I don’t know. We’ll talk to my parents, since she still is nominally their cat, and see what they have to say, but in the end I figure it will be up to us.

Why I don’t like Bush, Part IV, Environmental Policy (Part I, Part II, Part III)

As I mentioned before, being an “environmentalist” is how I was raised. It’s part of the respect that I was raised to have for others. But as I don’t see how someone can live on this planet and not be an environmentalist, I also don’t see how it is possible to be an environmentalist and support Bush.

Mountiantop Removal

This one is personal.

For several decades now, there has been in West Virginia a shift towards tourism, with West Virginia Tourism becoming a major source of income for the state. Which is a good thing, because it’s beautiful here. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem likely to remain beautiful here as the Bush administration is pushing to reduce restrictions on Mountaintop mining and watershed pollution. For an idea of what I mean, check out this site full of aerial photographs of mountaintop removal and coal slurry impoundment sites. We (as a state) are trying to bring people into the state, so I can not comprehend why knocking mountains tops off of into valleys should be considered a good idea.

It’s possible that the horrors of strip mining and clear cut logging and mountaintop removal are only clear when you actually see the sites for themselves. If you’ve seen a wooded mountain for years, only one day to come upon the entire area, completely devastated. You can trust me that it brings a sick feeling to the pit of your stomach.

Clean Air Act

The Clean Air Act was created in the 1970 to combat the health dangers of air pollution. The Bush administration has attempted to weaken the Clean Air act with its changes to the “routine maintenance” clause for older, higher polluting power plants that would allow such high pollution plants to avoid adding making costly upgrades to reduce pollution.

Why is this important? Air pollution isn’t just a matter of depleting the ozone and increased levels of greenhouse gasses (although these things are bad.) Because air pollutants have health effects and can cause problems such as: asthma, reduced lung function, chronic respiratory diseases, and they can exacerbate heart disease.

Appeals court blocks Bush clean air changes

Clean Water Act

The Clean Water Act was created in 1972 in response to public concerns over water pollution. Unlike the clean air act which focuses upon health problems caused by air pollution, the Clean Water Act deals with water quality that affects recreation and fishing. The Bush administration wants to stop applying Clean Water Act protections to most intrastate, nonnavigable wetlands and headwater streams despite an EPA report stating that doing so would have “profound and far reaching impacts”

Why is clean water important? Besides the pleasure of clean streams and rivers, dirty water can spread a variety of diseases, including cholera, giardiasis, amebic dysentery, hepatitis A, and cryptosporidium. Other problems stemming from polluted water are pfiesteria and dead zones.

Mercury

The Bush administration also wanted to relax regulations on mercury pollution, to roll back the deadlines for emissions reductions for industry, despite the dangers that mercury poses.

“(I)ndividuals whose diet included large amounts of fish had dangerously high levels of mercury in their blood. Fish accumulate methylmercury in their blood, and it cannot be cooked out. Even modestly excessive exposure to mercury has been shown to impair human immune, reproductive, and cardiovascular systems.”

CAFE Standards

The Bush administration, instead of increasing CAFE standards for SUVs, which would increase fuel efficency, and decrease gasoline consumption, proposes to make it easier for SUVs and other light trucks (which are used not as trucks but as passenger vehicles). Combined with the fact that contrary to common opinion, SUVs are not safer than cars, and in fact are no safer than compact and sub-compact cars. Combine that with the SUV tax credit that allows small businesses to take a tax write-off of up to $25,000 for a vehicle weighing more than 6,000 pounds, and you arrive where we are today, a country where light trucks outsell cars. Needless to say, legislation to improve the situation has gone nowhere.

“The difference between the fuel efficiency of new vehicles and that of the nation’s existing vehicle fleet continues to shrink and may even have disappeared.”
“In the United States, the transportation sector accounts for one-third of our total energy consumption and produces one-third of our CO2, the principal global warming gas. The US transportation sector is 97 percent dependent on petroleum. About half of the oil used by the U.S. is imported. In a “business-as-usual” scenario, the Energy Information Administration predicts transportation fuel use to grow by nearly 50 percent by 2020.”
“Jeffrey Runge … the US government’s road safety chief, and a former ER doctor, (is) calling on the automobile industry to make these beefed-up hybrids of cars and vans much safer. In testimony to Congress last week, he said that some types of SUV are so dangerous that he will not let members of his own family drive them.”
“(T)he U.S. government grants massive tax breaks to purchasers of SUVs. The original intent of the provision was to increase capital investments by farmers and other small business owners who rely on light-trucks or vans (ie. construction companies).”

Erin has an interesting and thoughtful post on violence, specifically rape, in fiction and comics.

It’s an interesting, although disturbing, concept to consider. I know that Marion Zimmer Bradley typically would not accept rape and revenge stories for Sword & Sorcoress (among other story types she avoided) which is something for which I was grateful. But it does beg the question, why is the subject so much more discomforting.

Go read.

I’ve been mucking about with Movable Type. It’s possible I broke something, in which case, please let me know.

From a response I made to Erin:

Bovine is Cow. Ovine is Sheep. Caprine is Goat.

ADDENDUM the First:
Gina doesn’t think the sheep I found are cute.

Humph.

Just got an e-mail from my dad’s cousin, Anthony Bogdan, that his geneaology pages are back up and have been updated.

He has a very nice file with the history written out, not just names and dates, but a little something about that part of the family if he knows it. The bits on my great-grandparents are around page 39 (Adobe numbering, 31 document numbering)

Here is a bit that Anthony had sent us a couple of years ago on The Lithuanians in Baltimore, written by one of my grandmother’s brothers.

Anthony mentions the 50th wedding anniversary of my great-grandparents that was written up in the Baltimore Sun. I have a copy of the actual article, as well as pictures that I’ve scanned by never taken the time to add to my site. (Which reminds me, my dad gave me a picture of my grandfather and his siblings, taken during WWII, that I am supposed to scan and give back, but have not yet done so. Slacker.)

Received this today via my work e-mail:

2) Bookstore manager seeks faculty recommendations for book titles
The WVU Bookstore is working to improve the title selection in the general book department, and seeks faculty input for a new section called “WVU Faculty Recommendations.” Send recommendations of titles that should be part of an academic college bookstore by Jan. 31 to General Book Buyer, Sandy Weston, at xxxxxx@mail.wvu.edu . The books will be displayed in their own section through the next 10 months as the sales performance of the new titles are evaluated. Successful sales will build sales records that will generate re-orders for these titles and new orders for similar titles, according to David Lang, general manager. “The goal is to create a more academic environment in our general book environment,” Lang added.

Because, of course, faculty are the only ones qualified to make book recommendations for books that should be a part of an “academic college bookstore”.

The rest of us are, of course, unqualified to recommend with authority any books that might be educational. After all, faculty members are so successful at choosing required books for classes that are engaging, interesting, and inexpensive, that we should look to them for the rest of our reading materials.

Ran across this as I was wandering around. This is the BBC ‘Top 200′ Books from their Big Read (books nominated as people’s favorites.)

The books I have read are in bold.

1. Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
(more…)

You must read this. Really, you must.

http://www.teemings.com/extras/truelife/scylla6.html

I’d quote some to draw you over to read it, but I can’t, really. You’ll just have to trust me.

Go there now.

(found because it was nominated for a Most Humorous Post award. The other posts nominated are nowhere near as funny as that one is, unfortunately.)

Must. Keep. Eyes. Open.

It’s painfully boring here. An entire day of sitting in the hall, except for the brief period of opening the lab up during lunch.

Mostly it’s because we got all excited about the weather, hoping that buckets of snow would fall and everything would close down and we’d get to stay home and sleep in.

No such luck. Instead, here I am at work, and then class this evening.

Not that I mean to complain, I do like my class, it’s just one of those days where, if you were a kid, you’d wander around going, “I’m BORED!” until your mom threw you out of the house.

I’m pretty sure that if I try that here, Gina will pummel me into insensibility.

Starting to sound tempting.

Dire Possible Weather! Stay Home! Snow is Predicted!

Whatever.

We haven’t had any snow fall since yesterday morning.

Had a lovely time yesterday–went to Fairmont to have a New Year’s dinner with Kim and Mike. Nothing big, just take-out from the Great Wall, but it was very nice since we hadn’t seen Mike since before Christmas. Came home and Michael fell asleep on the sofa. Or, as he put it, “I’m not sleeping. I’m listening.”

Yes, dear.

Today was spent on laundry and studying. Finishing the last chapter for my health policy class was like pulling teeth–the previous chapters were interesting. This chapter I may read before bed every night. Should put me right out.

The circumvention of powerful self-interest groups through the use of market mechanisms is, as said previously, a concession to the limitations of political power and planning in the conduct of complex and controversial changes.

This reads like something my brother would have liked, back when he used to delight in cornering us somewhere, and then telling us all about the tax treaty that the United States has with Guam.

My brother has moved on to more subtle forms of torture and torment than those he used when we were younger.

Elsewhere, Slate today snagged a piece of tofu off my plate as we were getting ready to eat, but after several minutes of licking and chewing, decided that perhaps she didn’t care for crispy bean curd in brown sauce after all.

Cats are weird.

And that’s about it, other than this from today’s comics:

ADDENDUM the First:
It started snowing! We’ll see what happens…

Lots of SNOW!

It started last night right about when I left work, and it’s still snowing just bit now, but now enough to count.

Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy and Religion in The Matrix Glenn Yeffeth ed

We’re not going to discuss my somewhat obsessive interest in The Matrix. Let’s just say it’s one of those things and move along.

Obviously, this book is not of interest to you if you did not like The Matrix or are not interested in the ideas behind The Matrix.

But, if you are like me and fascinated with religion, philosophy and science, then this is a book you may want to read. Which is probably why The Matrix fascinates me so much, becuase it addresses subjects in which I am deeply interested.

But we said we weren’t going to talk about that.

Read More about Taking the Red Pill

As I mentioned earlier this month, I read quite a few books over the break. Here are a few:

The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass by Phillip Pullman

The initial book, ‘The Golden Compass’ is set it a world that is similar to, but yet unlike our own, where a person’s soul resides in their animal familiar–a dæmon.

Read More about The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass

Sabriel, Lirael, Abhorsen by Garth Nix

The stories are set in two connected worlds. There is the world that feels to me a bit like England before WWII, and the magical world, whose entrance is guarded by a military conversant in weaponry both modern and medieval.

Read more about Sabriel, Lirael, Abhorsen

Paper Mage by Leah R. Cutter

Xiao Yen, hero of Paper Mage is a dutiful daughter, dutiful niece, and practicing paper mage. The book is set in the Tang Dynasty of the Middle Kingdom (China about the time of the European Middle Ages), and the magic is quite unlike any I have previously read.

Read more about Paper Mage

The Onion Girl by Charles de Lint

Onion Girl is Jilly Coppercorn’s story, and delves into her past, and that is the reason that I hesitated for so long to read this book, for Jilly Coppercorn does not have a pleasant past, and so I knew that at least parts of this book were going to be hard to read, but probably no more so than some of his short stories. Regardless, sometimes you need to build yourself up to reading a book that you know is going to be painful in places.

Read More about The Onion Girl

Lord of Castle Black, Book Two of The Viscount of Adrilankha, by Steven Brust

I knew that it was going to be a good book when I was laughing out loud reading the first page of the introduction.

Read More about Lord of Castle Black

Spirits in the Wires by Charles de Lint

Spirits in the Wires is the story of the Wordwood, the literary internet site set up by Holly and others that has taken on a life of its own. Saskia Madding is an independent being, created by the Wordwood, and sent out into the World As We Know It, where she has fallen in love with Christy Riddle, and he with her. All of this is past history at the start of Spirits in the Wires.

Read More of Spirits in the Wires

This is not all of what I read over the holidays, so more to come later. Meanwhile, all these books are excellent, and come highly recommended.

Instead of firing bullets, the Taser gun shoots out two metal barbs tethered to long wires. As soon as the barbs find their target, the wires transmit a 50,000-volt shock - enough to floor the most aggressive of individuals. The victim recovers when the current is turned off.

Taser International’s government affairs spokesman, Steve Tuttle, claims the company has proved “beyond a shadow of a doubt” that the guns are safe to use on planes. Mobile phones may occasionally cause problems because of the frequency of their signals, but the Taser is more like a weak lightning bolt, which the avionics are designed to cope with.

“We have fired the Taser into every piece of equipment aboard every platform that United Airlines has, trying to damage it - without success,” says Tuttle. He also reports that they managed to land an Airbus on autopilot while repeatedly discharging a stun gun in the cockpit.

New Scientist 17 January 2004

Why I don’t like Bush, Part III (Part II, Part I)

The apropriate follow-up to my last post is of course religion. Get all those things you’re not supposed to discuss in public RIGHT out in the open.

First things first, although I currently am at loose ends theologically, I was raised Catholic. Being raised Catholic means, for me, possibly something quite different than it does for others, so let me explain further. I was raised to believe that it is my duty to care for others. That is, after all, what the bible says: “Do unto others as you would have done unto you.” When you lay out the details, it means caring for others and caring for the world that will be left for those who come after us. Pretty simple. It’s not about me, it’s about everyone else.

I, of course, fail miserably in my attempts to achieve this, but that doesn’t mean I don’t try. That’s part of the whole works over faith thing. You get points for trying, even if you don’t succeed. You just have to keep on trying, and perhaps one day you’ll succeed.

Thus, one of the things that enrages me most about Bush is the way that he is held up as a model Christian, but from where I’m standing, he’s gotten it completely wrong.

Yes, I know I’m missing the ‘Do not judge, and you will not be judged’ ideal here (I’m also doing a terrible job of “love your enemy”, but I am trying), but we are talking about politics, and about making choices. Let’s agree that I’m trying not to judge his soul, but his fitness for office, and leave it at that.

Poverty

There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land. Deuteronomy 15:11
Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed. Psalm 82:3
All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor. Galatians 2:10
Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Luke 12:33

Those statements, and others like them throughout both the New and Old Testaments are pretty unequivocal.

Care for the poor.

Not care for the rich and give corporate welfare. Not give tax cuts to the rich and hope that they use the money to buy more luxury items that will provide jobs with minimum wage pay and no benefits. But that is, unfortunately what Bush has done.

Bush’s tax cuts widen the gap between the rich and the poor.
Market wages do not meet these basic needs for low-income workers.
“[We] believe that poverty reduction, and not case load reduction, should be a principal goal of our national welfare policy. It is not enough to cite the decline in case loads - we must make sure that work pays and families do not remain below the poverty line.”

Health

When Jesus had called the Twelve together, he gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick. Luke 9:1-2

Universal health care has been widely opposed in the US, despite any success it has had in other developed countries. In the US health care is provided by employers, unfortunately, health care costs are rising, and those costs are either passed onto employees, or employers no longer provide health insurance. And there are many people who, despite working, have no access to health care, because their employer does not provide health insurance, and they can not afford health care on their own. These working poor slip through the cracks and their health suffers for it.

The share of the population without health insurance rose in 2002, the second consecutive annual increase. An estimated 15.2 percent of the population or 43.6 million people were without health insurance coverage during the entire year in 2002,up from 14.6 percent in 2001, an increase of 2.4 million people.

War

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. Matthew 5:9
But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness. James 3:17-18

As I said previously, the war in Iraq happened, there is nothing we can do to change that, but I am bothered by the way that our troops, past and present are being treated, but it is quite obvious that Bush has a militant stance. Whether such a stance draws us into further wars, it is hard to say, but I can only hope not.

The Outcast

When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and ’sinners’?”
On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Matthew 9:11-13

Jesus walked among the outcast of the time. The outcast today receive little or not support from the government, and in most cases are persecuted, just as they were two thousand years ago. Bush is doing nothing to change this, and everything to uphold the status quo.

It’s a walk the walk thing. You can call yourself whatever you want, but talking about religion is in no way the same as living a moral life, and following the directions set out in the Bible, or the Torah, or the Qu’ran. If you are going to claim to be a Christian, then you need to do far more than just talk the talk.

Check out my Morality! 68% liberal, 32% conservative

Happy Year of the Monkey!

Sent the e-mail cards out early, posted late. Go figure.

Why I don’t like Bush, Part II

This is going to be slightly more contentious than Part I (Politics of War), since the subject is a bit more volatile.

First things first, I despise the Bush administration’s agenda pushing abstinence as the only sex education that should be taught in schools. Apparently these people were either never teenagers, or have no memory of being teenagers. Yes, abstinence is important and should be emphasized in sex education BUT let’s not pretend that it works 100% of the time, because doing so essentially damns those teens for whom abstinence education doesn’t work. What I find most frustrating about abstinence education is that it is actually contrary to the goal of reducing rates of abortion, which should be everyone’s primary goal. Get rid of unwanted pregnancies, you have removed the need for abortion. But those goals seem to be contrary to the idea of abstinence education, which doesn’t leave room for telling teens that if they don’t wait, it is imperative that they use contraception.

Abstinence education doesn’t give teens who are already having sex access to contraception, and that lack is what can lead to unwanted pregnancy, and that unwanted pregnancy can lead to abortion. It’s as if the right has forgotten their goal of stopping abortion in their quest for universal conservative ‘Christian’ morality with no sex before marriage. We should have the goal of a culture without abortion, but it will be far more effective to achieve this goal through the stopping unwanted pregnancies rather than requiring women who do not want to have a child, to carry that child to term.

Then there is the administration’s treatment of gays and lesbians. I cannot understand how a society that spilled gallons of ink on the 55 hour marriage of Britney Spears can say that the a gay or lesbian couple vowing a life time of commitment is degrading to sanctity of marriage. We are far more degraded by drive-through elvis chapels and quick divorces than we are by two people of the same gender swearing eternal devotion to one another. And that doesn’t begin to touch the conservative delusion that homosexuality is a choice. To paraphrase my friend Hammer, yeah, people become homosexual because they figure they can’t make enough people hate them through force of personality alone.

As far as I am concerned, asking someone why they chose to be gay is akin to asking them why they chose to be left-handed. I’m sure that you could use the modern equivalent of smacking the child with a ruler when they use their left hand, but that doesn’t mean the trait is not an inherent and natural trait–or that smacking them with a ruler is a good idea.

We also have the subject of Planned Parenthood and US support overseas. We won’t give ANY support to Planned Parenthood or other similar organizations, in the work they do overseas, even if that work would reduce unwanted pregnancies, reduce incidence of STD transmission, reduce transmission of AIDS, and ultimately reduce abortion rates. I believe this is a serious case of biting off our nose to spite our face. What we need to export to these countries is education and tolerance, not excuses.

Again, these are not necessarily arguments to persuade someone to my way of thinking–there are far better arguments out there, this is simply my detailing of the reasons I do not like President Bush, and why I fear his reelection.

Here are some links to peruse at your leisure. None of the fit particularly well into the essay, so I’m providing further information here.

AIDS rates are increasing in the US after a decade of decline
AIDS rates are increasing internationally
Rates of teenage pregnancy in the US are higher than other industrialized nations
A BBC Health feature on genetics
Copy of a NY Times article on the genetics of homosexuality

I just like saying that.

“I am children.”

Children: You are still a child at heart,
and the world is still a fantastic place
when you are allowed to see it as such.
Either you are still young or else you have
the blood of fae running through you,
for you are not as banal as a normal human.
You have low/3-5 banality.
How Banal Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

I’ve finally gotten started on my studying. Read two of the four chapters for my health policy class, and have been going over the first chapter for my editing class.

Regarding the health policy class, the readings were not nearly as boring as I feared they might be. Chapter two was almost interesting.

Regarding the editing class, “What do you MEAN I have to learn the names of all the parts of a sentence again?!”

Unusual comments heard frequently at my house:

“You! Get out of the dishwasher!”

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.
– Martin Luther King Jr.

The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and, therefore, brothers.
– Martin Luther King Jr., ‘Strength to Love,’ 1963

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
– Martin Luther King, Jr.

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.
– Martin Luther King Jr.,
1964 Nobel Peace Prize

“I believe that what self-centered men have torn down, men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed and non- violent redemptive goodwill proclaimed the rule of the land. And the Lion and the Lamb shall lie down together, and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid. I believe that we shall overcome.”
- Martin Luther King
1964 Nobel Peace Prize

You can also find text and audio to Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

The King Center
DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., MEMORIAL FOUNDATION

I just put an apple pie in the oven.

Plus I made biscotti this afternoon.

And deviled chicken soup.

Someone better come help us eat all this food.