What keeps my skin so young-looking?

Well, not mine, personally, since I keep mine looking wrinkle-free by filling it internally with another double-chocolate doughnut and a scoop of frozen custard... but, if this particular piece is true, then some folks are making their skins all pretty in a truly disturbing fashion:

Neocutis’ key ingredient known as “Processed Skin Proteins” was developed at the University of Luasanne from the skin tissue of a 14-week gestation electively-aborted male baby donated by the University Hospital in Switzerland. Subsequently, a working cell bank was established, containing several billion cultured skin cells to produce the human growth factor needed to restore aging skin. The list of products using the cell line include: Bio-Gel, Journee, Bio-Serum, Prevedem, Bio Restorative Skin Cream and Lumiere.

The very idea that somebody took fetal tissue to turn it into a cosmetic treatment is seriously abhorrent. I can hear the justifications, already, though: "The thing was already dead, so what's the big deal? It would have gone to waste, otherwise."

Well, the thing is, the thing was a human being. It did not die a natural death, but was taken untimely. And now it's being used not to save lives, but to make somebody feel pretty. It's not entirely unlike like putting grandma out of our misery because her medical care is inconvenient to us, and then saying, "As long as she's not using them, can I have her teeth for a necklace and matching earrings?"

Granted, the article says the tissue sample from the aborted fetus was (a) donated willingly and (b) very small, and granted, most of the stuff (the "human growth factor") used in the cosmetic product is grown in a laboratory from said small sample. And, I'm sure people have built great medicines from small samples of stuff I don't really want to know about. I acknowledge that wonders come from unlikely and unseemly sources. Bread mold, pond scum, bee stings, snake bites -- who knows what unsavory thing will help cure the next big disease? Still, it seems to me this is an ugly little foot in the door to much more sinister possibilities -- and no, I don't necessarily mean "Soylent Green." Once we have a marketable product to be made from something only grown from aborted babies, how do we restrict the trafficking of the unborn for such a business? How do we prevent poor young girls from virtually reducing themselves to slaves of a new, modern sex trade? What other "unwanted" lives do we throw away to satisfy the unending hungers of hedonists?

Where is the line drawn on the value of life? What dollar amount marks the end of humanity?

The toe-touch of death to the GOP?

Apparently the MSM are in full lather that events may have just conspired to kill the Republican party... or so the "experts" at Good Morning America are saying.

It starts with Gonzales resigning, following the high-profile resignations of Harriet Meiers, Karl "Dark Lord" Rove, and some nameless other guys who had better things to do than sit around the White House waiting to be sniped at by Congress (in their full partisan peacock regalia and an intellectual display which nearly equals that of said bird).


But now, we have another Republican whose cause has long been "family values", who had been caught touching toes with a stranger in an airport men's room, and had pleaded guilty to charges of disorderly conduct. Larry Craig has long battled sly hints that he might be gay. As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't really matter, does it? Either he is or he isn't. Is he a mastermind pedophile? Not so far as anybody says. All they say is that he behaved in a manner interpreted as propositioning a strange man -- who, unfortunately for him, turned out to be a cop. BFD.

What bothers me most about this is, they're dragging his name through the mud for something which, by all accounts, hurt nobody except, possibly, the senator.


Somebody very dear to me, some years back, remained in the closet for long years -- not because he was afraid of what it would do to his career, or to his reputation, or any other such selfish cause. He didn't want to cause his family undue concern for him -- and he was afraid the news would devastate his very traditional grandmother.

The funny thing is, last I'd heard from his grandmother before she passed away, she knew all about him, and simply worried that he might get hurt. His dad was the one who couldn't cope with the idea. And so, out of respect for that family, he remains as discreet as possible.

Is it remotely possible that somebody like Senator Craig may be closeted, and yet be doing his best to protect some of those he loves from pain and disappointment? And, must it be hypocritical to be gay and also support programs which promote traditional family structures? Is it so terribly unlikely that a man may have a set of feelings completely in contradiction to his moral underpinnings, and want to do as much as he can to protect his loved ones from feelings he views as destructive to them and to society?

Why is it that a man like New Jersey's Tim McGreevey can so completely flout simple rules of honor and decency and get away with crying "victim", but somebody who quite clearly had been struggling with his impulses gets run out of office? Hmmmm..... can it be that McGreevey is from a party of no values, no decency, no honor, and they revel in it?

It's obvious that Senator Craig has no self-control, since there have been reports of his similar questionable behavior in the bathrooms on Capitol Hill. I have some compassion for the man. It isn't easy to maintain a celibate life (or even a half-celibate one, surrendering that which might give one the greater pleasure), even when temptations don't pass you every day. But loss of restraint won't do, especially when one reaches higher offices via the right wing.

That, in a Republican, will always be a bad, bad thing. It bodes ill on such things as budget, pork, security, and so on. For the Republicans, Caesar's wife must always be above suspicion.

It would be nice if it were that way for all parties.

But I don't think ABC's "news" department will actually have the opportunity to crow over this for very long. After all, Incumbistan is a very nasty place, with lots of nasty little people with nasty little habits... and opportunities abound to develop them.

Is Paris Hilton an Illegal Immigrant?

By the amount of sympathy both are getting in the press, this year, for having broken the law, I'm beginning to think either Paris Hilton is an illegal or the illegals are all, somehow, blood relatives to her and the rest of America's so-called elite.

How is it that this country has gone so far away from its original principles of Thomas Paine, when he stated, "The true and only true basis of representative government is equality of rights"? In that same article, the Dissertation on the First Principles of Government, Paine continues:

When we speak of right we ought always to unite with it the idea of duties; rights become duties by reciprocity.

So far, it looks as though the only people who understand duty to law and reciprocity are the greater public (aka "middle America"), who are becoming increasingly angered over the Shamnesty bill and over the way Hollywood's elite cast aside public safety laws (such as those against drunk driving) as trivial things to be ignored.

This country was built upon laws. For the media to celebrate and members of Congress to encourage scofflaws indicates their serious disconnect from the true fundamentals of our society.

Building a new community

Bill Whittle at Eject! Eject! Eject! always has provocative essays posted. He takes his time and crafts beautiful works, presenting intriguing ideas and addressing half-hidden truths to ultimately leave them bare and lovely.

This particular piece (in two parts) is also quite timely. Whittle, like many of us, senses a certain desperation among many on the internet (it's in more places than just that, but we're dealing with this particular concrete set), that civilization seems to be falling apart, and there is no clear way to prevent that collapse.

Nevertheless, he sees that, throughout history there have been those who stood up for what is right and sane, for essential human virtue and decency and fairness and, well, you get the idea:

Today, when we think of virtues, we tend to think of things like prudence, chastity, modesty… pretty cold porridge. But to the Greek, the Virtues were dynamic and bold. More, Aristotle and others believed they were harmonized – that is related, interconnected, so that to not know one was to imperfectly know the rest. They were dionethic, he said, built by rationality – the virtues of understanding of substance, science, wisdom, the practical crafts and the practical mind.

And there were ethnic virtues, built by custom – courage and temperance; the property-based virtues of generosity and goodwill; honor-based virtues like pride, assertivity and control of anger; the social virtues of wittiness, honesty and friendliness; and the political virtue of justice.

These righteous individuals, who have been in ancient text called "Remnants," are what keep humanity from backsliding into oblivion. And the Remnants are always with us, secreted deep in every society, one way or another.

But look at the list of virtues in bold above, and ask yourself how you would feel about your child if they were fluent in all these? What if the political issues of the day were discussed not by how they would advance one party or the other, but rather as they held up against the list of virtues mentioned above?

What kind of society would a citizenry so educated and versed produce? I did a little beta-testing of this concept prior to posting this essay. I asked my regular readers two questions:

1. What are you good at?
2. Can you teach it?
   

With these questions, he's proposed the building of a new community, online, of and for people who believe in the classic virtues.

I have to admit, when I look at my own resumé, I see little to recommend me to this community. I am a Jill-of-all-trades and have mastered none. I can wield hammer, pliers, screwdriver, saw, drill (and they don't have to be power tools, but I can work those, too), shoot a bow and arrow with moderate accuracy, these days, and have myriad other basic skills, but no marketable area of excellence and expertise. I write moderately well, but know there are many others much better at it than I, and begrudge them not.

I have yet to seriously contribute to my own community. The stint I served as a substitute teacher was long ago, far away, and short-lived.

I'm good with furry and scaly animals, but will never be a veterinarian. I can make soap from ashes and animal fat. Not that I want to. I'm pretty adept at planning gardens, but, due to a long list of disabilities, I'm not so goodly a farmer and weed-puller.

I have a hellaciously large library of useless books -- who else needs Fran Striker's Tom Quest series in first edition, or a coverless, marked-up copy of volume I of The American Treasury of 1004 Folk Songs: a Musical History in Two Volumes, 1700-1899? anybody? anybody? Bueller? I lean toward the impractical.

My paintings and drawings have been good, but the effort to produce them leaves me an unpleasant person, dwelling too long within the darker parts of my mad self. I have had to surrender the habit until I can find a better way to live with myself. That is why I write.

Still, I'm told that, for a crazy woman, I've managed to keep remarkably balanced over the past couple of years -- without the help of chemicals. I'd say that means I have a superabundance of good luck. Or, maybe I've been suffering from undiagnosed old-lady-toxoplasmosis euphoria, today.

I'm also told that, when pressed for personal advice, I'm occasionally -- nay, often -- right. I also make good popcorn, and, according to both children and a handful of experienced adults, I give really great hugs.

I wonder if hugs are enough to make me a citizen in good standing in a community such as the proposed Ejectia!? If not, is it the sort of place I'd want to live?

By hooker by crook

The discussion has arisen on the net, lately (thanks to a member of the current administration resigning amid concerns over the release of phone records of a notorious D.C. madam) as to whether or not prostitution should be made legal.

I'm of two minds, on this.

Deep down inside, I resent most government intrusion into our personal and professional lives. I don't like it when the legislators try to tell me to stay away from smokers, I don't like it when they tell me I have to wear my seat belt (I do both anyway, because it's stupid to do otherwise) I don't like it when they take tax dollars to teach children to become morons. I think there's a trace of libertarian in me, here.

If they can pay Elisha Cuthbert a buncha bucks for what she did (or, rather, what she didn't do -- act) in "24", why punish somebody with greater talent, for a follow-through performance? It seems to me, Hollywood and Washington, D.C. have been getting big bucks for decades, now, for shtupping this nation. Maybe individual, non-union private citizens should have a piece of that action.

And, once made legal, it can be licensed, health- and quality-controlled, have proper training and safety protocols (including minimum age limits), and have the pimp-fat trimmed from the industry to the benefit of the labor pool. A pro who gets beaten up by a or a boss is not going to be afraid to press charges, because her career won't get her in jail -- she is an ordinary working citizen.

There are potential benefits to this legalization thing.

On the other hand, legalizing prostitution is one of those things where "slippery slope" actually comes immediately to mind. What is to stop us from winding up where Germany got to a couple of years ago? With unemployment and food assistance programs becoming more often tied to job search efforts, how will a non-disabled unemployed person be able to refuse a job as an "intimate masseuse and escort"? On moral grounds? How, then to make the exception just and fair? I discover a moral objection to working with a company which sells filthy, polluting automobiles, and, yet, for some freaky reason they are willing to hire me. If I refuse, will they make the same allowances for me with the car industry that they make for the poor soul accepted for work in the pleasure industry? What if I have a moral objection to serving non-halal food (true, I'm not Muslim, but I'm still heavily into dietary restrictions) and the job opening is at the McDonalds?

I also have concerns about this, because we have such a corrupt government in Illinois, already. I can imagine much worse horrors for the young and attractive as they come out from our public schools unprepared for actual work... they could end up as government interns and congressional pages!


It isn't such a stretch.

Personally, I don't see this as much of a threat to myself. I can amuse myself all the livelong day, but I'd probably fetch less than a nickle per day plying the horizontal trade. It's just not a career I think of as even remotely enjoyable, for myself, and, as such, I'd consistently fail to provide customer satisfaction. Not that I'm opposed to sex, but I've found I rather enjoy this celibacy thing I've been exploring lo, these past fifteen years. I always was a selfish person, physically (it's all about me!!!), and further, it's much easier to be content with myself if I don't hang my needs on somebody else's (or several somebodies') appendage(s). Therefore, no employment agent would think twice about giving me an exemption from such a job. After all, they do have to think about the future of the business to which they're referring this client.

EclectEcon: on academic freedom

John Palmer at EclectEcon has linked to a terrific article by Michael Yudkin, explaining why this recent trend in academia to call for boycotting Israel is a demonstration of willful ignorance (a common problem, but not exactly something one wants to see in college professors).

Since my earliest days, I've been a part of the collegiate world (first, as a child of a student, and then as the professor's daughter -- a "faculty brat"). In the intervening years, I've seen professors go from isolated, ivory tower, "there is no room for politics in the classroom or on campus" conservatives to ideologues selling every leftist fantasy, even in hard-science lectures. Both sides, in my view, have incredibly destructive powers as it comes to their own credibility with students and in town-and-gown relations.

I do worry about the value of an advanced education, in this day and age. At least when the old geezers tried to stay out of politics, the effect on the outside world was that the students came out of the school having been left to think for themselves in order to come to any political decision. The modern trend seems to be more dangerous, for the fact that its leftist sanctimony is an activist position, and brooks no argument. Their aim seems to be simple political indoctrination, and that is no education.

Worse, the direction this indoctrination takes is problematic. It can affect the lives of people outside the narrow confines of the campus, and affect them in ugly ways -- as the Yudkin article demonstrates. But Yudkin's conclusion, I think, says it very nicely:

It is a good deal easier to make grand gestures than to engage with the complexities of so intractable a problem as the conflict between Israel and her neighbours.

The university experience is supposed to prepare one for eschewing grand gestures, for learning how to face intractable problems. Too many of today's students are being cheated. Therefore, tomorrow's society is, as well.

There are no more journalistic ethics

At least, they haven't been taught to Gavin King, reporter for Aussie paper Cairns Post. This low-life-with-a-press-pass contacted blogger Sheik Yer'mami (who contributes heavily to the anti-jihad site Winds of Jihad) for comments on a proposal for building a local mosque, promising Sheik that his anonymity would not be broken. King subsequently not only published the actual name of the blogger, but his home address and telephone number, among other private data. From the letter (posted at Dhimmi Watch) Sheik sent to the Australian press council in complaint (with emphasis added by me):

Islamic terrorism is a scourge on humanity. Gavin King, the Cairns Post reporter who focused his article on me, ad hominem, my family, age, business, even listing my property holdings including where I live, is totally out of line. My identity was never a matter for the public record. Because of death-threats to anyone who opposes the spread of Islam I certainly see myself and anyone else in that regard entitled to anonymity. That should be common sense.

It would seem that common sense still isn't terribly common. At least among the news people.

(Full confession: I write a weekly column for a small-town paper. I even took a few courses in journalism in my feckless youth. But I do not want to be associated with those sorts of people who risk the lives of private individuals for their own agendas.)

King has not only endangered the blogsite by labeling it a "hate site" sight unseen, but he has endangered the lives of Sheik and his entire family, plus anybody else who is seen publicly as his friend and supporter.

As one commenter pointed out, this isn't the first time a journalist has endangered the life/lives of private citizens for no good reason. Earlier this month, a Virginia newspaper published the names and addresses of all its local citizens who had concealed carry gun permits -- without regard for the possibility that some of those people were (a) hiding from violent exes or (b) not actually carrying guns, only carrying permits, and (c) perfectly within their legal rights to own and carry guns for their own protection. The paper essentially printed a shopping plan for gun thieves.

And another case is cited of a paper which published the address of a battered women's shelter. Nice.

I hope Sheik and his family can find some satisfaction from the Cairns Post. I hope King gets his hindquarters tossed to the wolves in much the same way he has tried to do to Sheik. Not that I think anybody but the jihadis are likely to do anybody any physical harm. It's just that, when violence arises (and it will. There is jihad in this world, and people are really dying because they choose to think and live freely) I'd just like to see it come to the right people: the ones who would call it down innocents.

The Scooter Libby verdict

(Via Hugh Hewitt) Gabriel Schoenfeld has some cogent thoughts on special prosecutors and their results.

Most damning:

We obviously cannot know whether the feckless Clinton would have acted more vigorously abroad had he not gone to sleep every night that year thinking about how to escape from the legal consequences of his own tawdry conduct and lies, and been thinking instead about how to protect the country from its enemies. But all of us have paid a price for having a President distracted from his duties by an unbounded investigation of his private life in a year that his Secretary of State came to call “all Monica, all the time,” but should have been all counterterrorism, all the time. The bill for Clinton’s fun and frolic, and for our own, was only to come due on September 11, 2001.

Now, unlike in the 1990’s, we are at war. We do not yet know what the price tag will be for the Libby distraction, just as we do not know if his conviction will be tossed out on appeal or result in a presidential pardon. But in its broadest ramifications, the case, which arose out of an internecine dispute about the quality of foreign intelligence, augurs ill for any President’s ability to gather and evaluate the intelligence provided by subordinate agencies like the CIA, to formulate foreign policy, to defend what it has formulated from bureaucratic warfare waged by such subordinate agencies, and to keep our country secure.

So the results could very well be long-reaching outside the legal circles, if, indeed, this undermines the intelligence capabilities of the WH.

It still bothers me, too, that we have had a non-Constitutional witch-hunt going on during two consecutive president's stays in office, neither of which hunt did any genuine good for the nation or for the truth.

Libby lied. So did Clinton. So, it seems, did Patrick Fitzgerald -- who is not, so far, being prosecuted for obstruction of justice, for his part in concealing the truth that Armitage was the leak, and for concealing that he knew this long before he first questioned Libby.

I hope to all that is Holy and Constitutional that we will never see another special prosecutor again.

Trust the MSM? I don't think so!

Let's start with the reports from Police Capt. Jamil Hussein (and related issues), in Baghdad. The A(wT)P says he's their main source for lots and lots and lots of Iraqi news over the past few years. The bloggers questioned his ubiquity and his veracity, and Eason Jordan, hoping to improve his 'net cred, challenged two of the more vocal of those bloggers to accompany him to Iraq to see if they could find Capt. Hussein to ask him a few personal questions (like, "Where are you from, and how come you get reports from nearly every district of Baghdad, even though nobody in the US military or the Iraqi Ministry of Interior has heard of you?" "How come you say six mosques and several men were set afire, and nobody anywhere else in the city offers even the remotest confirmation?" etc.).

Here's what Mr. Jordan has to say now(HT:lgf):

If an Iraqi police captain by the name of Jamil Hussein exists, there is no convincing evidence of it - and that means the Associated Press has a journalistic scandal on its hands that will fester until the AP deals with it properly.

This controversy and the AP’s handling of it call into question the credibility, integrity, and smarts of one of the world’s biggest, most influential, most respected news organizations, the New York-based Associated Press.

If there's one thing Mr. Jordan is sensitive about, it's media credibility. Gateway Pundit has much more.



And then there's the NYT. Yesterday, it stated, among other things, that the cellphone Saddam snuff film was posted in its entirety on, among other sites, littlegreenfootballs.com. Not quite. And, when asked for a correction to be made, did they do it? Not quite.

Two of the largest, most powerful news sources in the world have serious problems getting their facts straight, and can't admit they even have a problem.

Bloggers like Charles Johnson are working up an intervention, but I wonder if the disease has gone too far to save the NYT and A(wT)P?

Gratuitous postcard: Rinty watches tragic scene

I'm not sure who is the corpse, but

Postcard: Fort Apache - movie set of Rin-Tin-Tin, 1969

he probably feels better than anybody who read Kofi Annan's farewell column in all seriousness, today. The man not only left the truth in his dust, but was -- due to his leadership of that most corrupt of agencies -- largely responsible for millions of real (not Hollywood) dead bodies lying on and beneath this earth. And, yet, he waggles his finger at the White House and speaks of government accountability, as though his own office had nothing for which to answer!

Captain Ed just about said it all (please, read his whole post):

Accountability. Annan. Not exactly two terms one would tie together in UN history. This laughable attempt by Annan to do so will not succeed in anything except providing a much-needed laugh to Post readers.

Buh-Bye, Mister Secretary. I hope the good dog bites you on the ass on your way out.

Carter caught at plagiarism

Another big WOW!

Jimmy's latest book is more than a nasty, bigoted piece of anti-Semitic crap -- it's also the product of theft! Jim Hoft, at Gateway Pundit, provides this nice quote from Fox News:

Ambassador Dennis Ross, a former Mideast envoy and FOX News foreign affairs analyst, claims maps commissioned and published by him were improperly republished in Carter's book.

"I think there should be a correction and an attribution," Ross said. "These were maps that never existed, I created them."

After Ross saw the maps in Carter's book, he told his publisher he wanted a correction.

When asked if the former president ripped him off, Ross replied: "it sure looks that way."

It also looks as if Jimmy should have stuck with building houses after he left the Oval Office. Of course, if he did that the way he seems to have done everything else, maybe they ought to check on those homes, to see if they're still standing.

Upon whose holy book does one swear?

Dennis Prager's raised hackles regarding the swearing-in of Muslim congressman-to-be Keith Ellison is, in my view, misplaced. He seems to think that everybody who is sworn into office or under oath must use the Bible:

Insofar as a member of Congress taking an oath to serve America and uphold its values is concerned, America is interested in only one book, the Bible.

Which version, Mr. Prager? RSV? NRSV? Oxford Annotated? New American Standard? KJV? Living Bible?

Prager defends his view, saying,

Of course, Ellison's defenders argue that Ellison is merely being honest; since he believes in the Koran and not in the Bible, he should be allowed, even encouraged, to put his hand on the book he believes in. But for all of American history, Jews elected to public office have taken their oath on the Bible, even though they do not believe in the New Testament, and the many secular elected officials have not believed in the Old Testament either. Yet those secular officials did not demand to take their oaths of office on, say, the collected works of Voltaire or on a volume of New York Times editorials, writings far more significant to some liberal members of Congress than the Bible. Nor has one Mormon official demanded to put his hand on the Book of Mormon.

The question which begs asking is, how many of these others have asked for alternatives in the first place? As a point of fact (which Mom points out just now), during America's Colonial period and the first years of the Federal period, Quakers taking office didn't swear upon any book -- they chose to aver affirm, and it was accepted. There is precedent for not doing what "every other American" does.

The point behind taking an oath on a holy book is that one is promising, "as the god I worship shall be my witness," the oath-taker will follow the words in the oath with honor. In other words, he's calling upon his deity to watch him, and to punish him if he does wrong by his promise.

Quite frankly, It'd be silly to have me swear on a bible, most days. I could easily raise my hand and say, "Upon all that I hold sacred and dear, I promise...", but a book of inspiring poetry doesn't put the fear of getting caught in bad behavior in any more menacing a light, to me. On the other hand, if I stood in front of my dad and said, "To you, Pop, I promise..." you can be assured my hindquarters would stay exactly in line.

It all depends upon where your priorities lie.

More importantly, both Prager and Ellison have problems. Prager is trying to impose a religious test upon the office. "Swear by our book or don't serve" is as bad as "leave your church or have no say in your own governance." Ellison, on the other hand, is tied to some rather dangerous radical, anti-American groups, such as CAIR, Nation of Islam, and the Democratic Party Leadership.

Two wrongs don't make anything except a Congressional precedent.


Update: Dammit, I should have known Eugene Volokh would be saying this better than I.

Think Tank sells itself as "How to Think". False advertising.

Via Robin Burk at Winds of Change, I see that there is a think tank whose design is to oppose religion as antithetical to scientific inquiry. I have to admit, I think they're right about that. Religion is, by its very nature, based on faith. Scientific inquiry is supposed to take nothing on faith.

Sadly, when an organization starts out with statements like

"We cannot hope to convince those in other countries of the dangers of religious fundamentalism when religious fundamentalists influence our policies at home"

they're showing themselves to be fundamentalists, as well, of another religion -- that being what we around here like to call scientism. Theirs is the only path to truth and enlightenment, theirs is the only wisdom, theirs is the only and the all. Its priests dress in lab coats and wear safety goggles, operate waldoes, and can calculate π to the nth place past the decimal. But they show no more understanding of the human condition than did the Inquisitors.

"This disdain for science is aggravated by the excessive influence of religious doctrine on our public policies,"

The group targets religion as though it were the fundamental flaw in our social/political structure.

And, yet, the influence of religious doctrine is what initially drove the drafters of the Constitution of the United States to sign the Bill of Rights. The influence of religious doctrine is what drove the Emancipation movement and freed the slaves in America, and still works toward that goal in the rest of the world. The influence of religious doctrine -- like it or not -- is what involved us in the European theater in WWI and WWII. And there were those, in every case, who argued that both the influence and the actions were excessive.

They need to take into account the religious fanaticism within their own ranks, and how that damages the credibility of the rest of the world's scientists and sciences in general. When a mob in white lab coats calls "heresy!" if a handful of scientists say they have evidence running counter to popular scientific consensus (global warming, e.g.), theirs is a religion. When some members suggest prosecution for those who speak against the consensus, theirs is an intolerant, fundamentalist religion.

Scientism also lacks a root in something absolutely crucial to human survival, as well: it lacks morality. Or, if you will, it needs a more clearly delineated set of ethics. When scientific inquiry has been used as an excuse in modern history for torture and wholesale murder, they cannot claim to hold any such moral high ground over other religions. When a lack of scientific evidence is cited as an evidence of legal right, instead of asking, "What's the harm in waiting a little more?", that religion has no future, and would deny it to others, as well.

John Stuart Mill suggested questioning the orthodoxy, questioning what your leaders teach you, questioning your own beliefs, and finding your own path to enlightenment, as it were. Are those who join the Center for Inquiry Transnational willing to question their own views concerning others' faith and the right to apply it in making law? Physician, heal thyself!


As I've said before, ethics and morals are not based on logic. They're based on emotion, on the animal need for justice, fairness, kindness, compassion, and a multitude of other senses not entirely rational but certainly within reason in a healthy society. If we were a purely scientific, rational species, we would likely never have flinched at the films from Auschwitz, we'd have felt nothing over the killing fields in Cambodia, we'd have no qualms with Stalin's purges. One death or a billion, makes no difference to those who have no emotional attachment to life. Heck, it means more for the rest of us, doesn't it?

But then, if we were purely scientific animals, we'd never have had Mozart's Requiem or Michelangelo's Pietà.




And that would be a pity.

Cumulative effects

This week has been a little on the challenging side, emotionally, for me -- and quite unexpectedly so. I'd like to be able to say that it's "just hormones", or some equally dismissive response to it all, but, somehow, it comes down to snowballs.

Somebody pushed one down a snow-covered hill.

It started with my seester, last week, suggesting that next time she and her husband head out to Vegas (which they do annually for a specific trade show), I might join them, and use the trip to meet my daughter, whom I had surrendered to adoption a generation ago. Financially, I can't afford to travel, which is why I hadn't yet been out to meet her after contact was first made, more than two years back. Her father had met her last summer for the first time since her infancy, but I just couldn't swing it, no matter how desperately I had wanted to.

But my seester offered to pay much of my way, if needed, so the seed of thought that this may be possible for me is now planted.

And then, somebody asked me, over the weekend, about my last -- and highly treasured -- betrothed. He is a very special man, and we have always shared a great deal of love and respect. The only reason we could not marry was, I guess we could say, geography. He was from Southeast Asia and a patriot, and I am a very American woman. I could not have been happy away from my home, and he was not happy away from his.

While we were together, though, we started a pregnancy. I had been using multiple methods of prevention, and the combination counteracted each other, with the back-up plan failing completely. We had not expected a child. We had not been prepared to have one so soon. But we would have given everything, anything, to bring that life kicking and screaming into this world. It was accidental, unintended. It was also ectopic due to the old-fashioned IUD I had used, unrecognized as such until I had hemorrhaged and collapsed, and it was, therefore, dangerous.

I nearly died.

We lost our son -- the only son either of us could have had, it seems.

Love does not conquer all.

I had forgotten, for all these years, how very much my beloved Ratfink and I had wanted to have that son -- he had wanted a large family. I had forgotten how desperately I had wished I could have raised my daughter, as well. I had stepped aside from my losses and thought I had moved on.

So. Here am I. I have lived more than twenty years with this, and it seems to have sat in waiting for something to remind me that it was there, this lost, frozen parcel.

Grief is a strange creature. If you allow it to, it will lurk in odd caves of the mind, often too patiently, making itself look like just another snow shadow to ignore, until its time comes. And as it waits, it gains strength with each snowfall. It eats, it feasts on other storms of the spirit. For some, the beast comes out in a rush, an avalanche of pain. For me, it rolled out slowly, bouncing around at the edge of reason before it gathered and let loose its full force.

The catalysts came in rapid succession:

• John Palmer posted an article on the ethics of infanticide.

• The news was released that fetal stem cells may be the best/only real treatment for some forms of blindness.

• And then came the coup de grace: of all things, a nighttime soap opera, a television drama I accidentally surfed into. In Grey's Anatomy, the OB/Gyn who has been caring for a supremely happy couple had to break the news to them that the child they had been awaiting is dead. She cried. She let them know. They all cried. I cried.

I couldn't stop crying. Two hours later, I was still crying.

And, once I stopped crying, I realized, in what I had been writing about fetal stem cell research, about euthanasia, and so on, that our ethics are not at all tied to reason, not tied to rational thought. They are about visceral responses, about recognizing moral boundaries based upon simple, fundamental, gut reaction to right and wrong. When we talk of medical ethics, we are really discussing the impact upon more than a single person, a single patient. We are discussing the emotional, psychological, and spiritual impact upon the entire society.

We, as a free society, are a brotherhood.*

What you do to my brother, you do to me.

Because I understand, because I have experience at living, the pain of another's loss is my pain. This is as it should be, or else we become soulless beasts of nothing more than selfish appetites.

It's not exactly the most rational selling point, but there it is. That's where morals, ethics rest: they define the precipice between the snowball and the ever-expanding roll toward humanity's destruction.



*please, let's not go into sexism in language, here, okay? The French used to have it right -- if in words only.