One of the subjects I've wanted to write about for some time is what Michael Garibaldi might call "my second favorite thing in the universe": science fiction.
Ever since I was a kid I was fascinated by the worlds created by H.G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, Ursula K. LeGuin, the late Andre Norton, Samuel R. Delany, Gene Wolfe, and so many others. You too, dear reader, will soon have the opportunity to share my excitement.
While I was away this week, the good folks at DHL dropped off my copy of Alastair Reynolds' brand-new novel, Century Rain, which I'd ordered from Amazon.co.uk. (It won't be released stateside for a couple more months, and I just couldn't wait.)
The Welsh-born Alastair Reynolds does space science for a day job - he works for the European Space Agency. He's also a damned fine writer. At just 39 years old, he's now giving us the fifth in a series of novels (plus a pair of novellas published as Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days) that began with Revelation Space. I'll be giving Reynolds a well-deserved post or two soon; I know I'll be busy this weekend reading Century Rain.
2005-04-01
Althouse on Transgender Discrimination
Ann Althouse has an excellent post on public restrooms and gender/transgender discrimination here. Analyzing a New York appellate court's ruling aginst a transgendered plaintiff (Hispanic Aids Forum v. Estate of Joseph Bruno), which upheld the landlord's position that "If you're biologically a man, if you're born a man, then you use the men's room," Althouse notes that "This is denying people the right to chose which sex to identify with when they choose whether to use the men's or the women's room." In an update, she also notes a later amendment to the City law (a similar law was rejected on the State level) defining gender to include "a person's gender identity, self-image, appearance, behavior or expression, whether or not that gender identity, self-image, appearance, behavior or expression is different from that traditionally associated with the legal sex assigned to that person at birth.”
Read the whole thing at the link.
Read the whole thing at the link.
Update
I'm back in Portland after a short visit to St. Louis, due to a relative's sudden illness. Will be resting up today, maybe posting a little. Expect to resume regular posting Sunday.
Back to serious mode ... I needed a break, and April Fools' day seemed as good an excuse as any. Now it's back to the issues of the day. My general policy is to cover anything I think is interesting or important, whether international or domestic. I will be watching the Mideast, and especially Iran, very closely in the coming weeks. Also expect more posts on Terri Schiavo and the implications of her death.
Arts and letters dept. As I've mentioned before, I also plan to spend more time writing about cultural stuff - arts, spirituality, and other things. After all, the fight for freedom is also the fight for the spirit.
Back to serious mode ... I needed a break, and April Fools' day seemed as good an excuse as any. Now it's back to the issues of the day. My general policy is to cover anything I think is interesting or important, whether international or domestic. I will be watching the Mideast, and especially Iran, very closely in the coming weeks. Also expect more posts on Terri Schiavo and the implications of her death.
Arts and letters dept. As I've mentioned before, I also plan to spend more time writing about cultural stuff - arts, spirituality, and other things. After all, the fight for freedom is also the fight for the spirit.
Morning Retort: April 1, 2005
Sharon pursues disengagement plan; Ozzy criticizes "withdrawal under fire". In a dramatic new development, the Osbornes were forced to retreat from their country mansion after a blaze broke out in the living room. Despite opposition from the hardline guitarist, Sharon is reported to have insisted on an early withdrawal strategy, saying, "We've got to get out of here. I don't need no bloody roadmap to tell me that." Ozzy declined to comment on the record, but was reported to have said, "****!"
Pregnancy reports "dead wrong", Britney says. In a news conference marking the release of long-awaited information regarding her rumored pregnancy, Britney Spears has characterized early reports as "dead wrong." Ms. Spears criticized the analysis of recent photographic intelligence, saying the information was "deliberately distorted" by certain parties within the celebrity tabloid community. "This deliberately false and misleading information has done immeasurable harm to the tabloids' credibility," she said, adding, "it's just totally, like, really bad."
Pregnancy reports "dead wrong", Britney says. In a news conference marking the release of long-awaited information regarding her rumored pregnancy, Britney Spears has characterized early reports as "dead wrong." Ms. Spears criticized the analysis of recent photographic intelligence, saying the information was "deliberately distorted" by certain parties within the celebrity tabloid community. "This deliberately false and misleading information has done immeasurable harm to the tabloids' credibility," she said, adding, "it's just totally, like, really bad."
2005-03-31
Nat Hentoff on Terri Schiavo, 2003
Nat Hentoff: Lying About Terri Schiavo
Read the whole thing at the link.
By Nat Hentoff
The Village Voice | November 10, 2003
I have covered highly visible, dramatic "right to die" cases—including those of Karen Ann Quinlan and Nancy Cruzan—for more than 25 years. Each time, most of the media, mirroring one another, have been shoddy and inaccurate.
The reporting on the fierce battle for the life of 39-year-old Terri Schiavo has been the worst case of this kind of journalistic malpractice I've seen.
On October 15, Terri's husband and legal guardian, Michael Schiavo, ordered the removal of her feeding tube. As she was dying, the Florida legislature and Governor Jeb Bush overruled her husband on October 21, and the gastric feeding tube has been reinserted pending further recourse to the court.
So intent is Michael Schiavo on having his wife die of starvation that one of his lawyers, after the governor's order to reconnect the feeding tube, faxed doctors in the county where the life-saving procedure was about to take place, threatening to sue any physician who reinserted a feeding tube. The husband had immediately gone to court to get a judge to revoke what the legislature and the governor had done.
The husband claims that he is honoring his marriage vows by carrying out the wishes of his wife that she not be kept alive by "artificial means." As I shall show, this hearsay "evidence" by the husband has been contradicted. The purportedly devoted husband, moreover, has been living with another woman since 1995. They have a child, with another on the way. Was that part of his marital vows?
For 13 years, Terri Schiavo has not been able to speak for herself. But she is not brain-dead, not in a comatose state, not terminal, and not connected to a respirator. If the feeding tube is removed, she will starve to death. Whatever she may or may not have said, did she consider food and water "artificial means?"
The media continually report that Terri is in a persistent vegetative state, and a number of neurologists and bioethicists have more than implied to the press that "persistent" is actually synonymous with "permanent." This is not true, as I shall factually demonstrate in upcoming columns. I will also provide statements from neurologists who say that if Terri were given the proper therapy—denied to her by her husband and guardian after he decided therapy was becoming too expensive despite $750,000 from a malpractice suit—she could learn to eat by herself and become more responsive. ...
Read the whole thing at the link.
2005-03-30
Terri Schiavo: Judicial Murder
The well-known right-wing Christian fundamentalist Nat Hentoff has this latest piece on Terri Schiavo:
RTWT.
For all the world to see, a 41-year-old woman, who has committed no crime, will die of dehydration and starvation in the longest public execution in American history.
She is not brain-dead or comatose, and breathes naturally on her own. Although brain-damaged, she is not in a persistent vegetative state, according to an increasing number of radiologists and neurologists.
Among many other violations of her due process rights, Terri Schiavo has never been allowed by the primary judge in her case—Florida Circuit Judge George Greer, whose conclusions have been robotically upheld by all the courts above him—to have her own lawyer represent her.
Greer has declared Terri Schiavo to be in a persistent vegetative state, but he has never gone to see her. His eyesight is very poor, but surely he could have visited her along with another member of his staff. Unlike people in a persistent vegetative state, Terri Schiavo is indeed responsive beyond mere reflexes.
While lawyers and judges have engaged in a minuet of death, the American Civil Liberties Union, which would be passionately criticizing state court decisions and demanding due process if Terri were a convict on death row, has shamefully served as co-counsel for her husband, Michael Schiavo, in his insistent desire to have her die. ...
RTWT.
Terri Schiavo
How much is a human life worth? That's the question posed by this article by a Harvard student with cerebral palsy:
Read the whole article at Discarded Lies.
Also read Victory Soap to find out what this is not about:
Read the whole thing at the link. Also please read this post which takes up Victory Soap's last point on "idle notions".
“Misery can only be removed from the world by painless extermination of the miserable.”
—a Nazi writer quoted by Robert J. Lifton in The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide
The case of Terri Schiavo has been framed by the media as the battle between the “right to die” and pro-life groups, with the latter often referred to as “right-wing Christians.” Little attention has been paid to the more than twenty major disability rights organizations firmly supporting Schiavo’s right to nutrition and hydration. Terri Schindler-Schiavo, a severely disabled woman, is being starved and dehydrated to death in the name of supposed “dignity.” Polls show that most Americans believe that her death is a private matter and that her removal from a feeding tube—a low-tech, simple and inexpensive device used to feed many sick and disabled people—is a reasonable solution to the conflict between her husband and her parents over her right to life.
The reason for this public support of removal from ordinary sustenance, I believe, is not that most people understand or care about Terri Schiavo. Like many others with disabilities, I believe that the American public, to one degree or another, holds that disabled people are better off dead. To put it in a simpler way, many Americans are bigots. A close examination of the facts of the Schiavo case reveals not a case of difficult decisions but a basic test of this country’s decency. ...
Read the whole article at Discarded Lies.
Also read Victory Soap to find out what this is not about:
Here is a review, in case people need a refresher, of the many side issues that have nothing to do with Terri Schiavo's case:
Your aged and terminally ill relative who voluntarily refused food and nutrition and so died "peacefully" a couple of days later has nothing to do with the Schaivo situation. People dying of terminal diseases reach a point where they can no longer take in nutrition; in fact, it becomes a torment to them. Terri Schiavo was not dying from a terminal disease.
Your dying relative/friend/patient who was hooked up to a heart/lung machine but who showed no signs of brain activity after extensive tests, and who therefore had their "plug pulled" because they were not going to recover, have nothing to do with the Terri Schiavo case. Terri Schiavo's heart and lungs worked just fine.
The many people talking about how awful it would be to live "like that." Since none of these people really have any way of knowing exactly how awful life without much of a brain would be, this sort of speculation comes down on the side of "idle notions" and we should not be basing life and death actions on such twaddle. ...
Read the whole thing at the link. Also please read this post which takes up Victory Soap's last point on "idle notions".
The Peace Movement
"So beautiful, so at peace." American Digest comments on the creepy "she's going to be at peace" meme.
American Digest has this:
(And if you are wondering how the patient, forbidden all food and drink, was able to ingest the morphine, read the post at the link.)
AD responds to the killing of Terri Schiavo with a very simple question - and a simple and inescapable answer. Myself, I am wondering: what, exactly, is this "peace" that reporters seem so eager for? It is the peace of death, clearly more desirable than life.
American Digest has this:
Once it became clear that there would be no reprieve for this woman, but that the sentence of death-by-starvation-for-her-own good was set in stone, the entire country was condemned to be tainted by the unfolding spectacle.
If I had any doubts about this, they were swept away yesterday when watching one of the "reporters" on the scene tell us yet again that Michael Schiavo's attorney, George Felos -- the now superstar of Right-to-Die lawyers -- said, yet again, that he'd "never seen Terri look so beautiful, so at peace." Within a few minutes, the same or another reporter (it really doesn't matter, does it?) felt compelled, utterly compelled, to tell us that Mrs. Schiavo was receiving morphine, a substance well known for putting the recipient 'at peace.'
(And if you are wondering how the patient, forbidden all food and drink, was able to ingest the morphine, read the post at the link.)
AD responds to the killing of Terri Schiavo with a very simple question - and a simple and inescapable answer. Myself, I am wondering: what, exactly, is this "peace" that reporters seem so eager for? It is the peace of death, clearly more desirable than life.
Terri Schiavo
What are radiologists saying about Terri's brain scans? Not neurologists, but radiologists - the people who look at brain scans for a living. To find out, take a look at Code Blue Blog.
Disabled Queers In Action (DQIA) released the following statement:
Read the whole thing at the link. Hat tip: Straight Up With Sherri
Judith has excellent coverage at Kesher Talk. Via Judith, Wittingshire quotes John West on the tendency to presume in favor of PVS diagnoses.
Disabled Queers In Action (DQIA) released the following statement:
In a 2-1 decision, the court ruled early this morning that Terri has no right to eat, thus no right to live. Although our justice system presumes innocence until proven guilty, Terri has been tried and convicted without any charges against her -- for the capital offense of being disabled. Society and the courts have deemed her "better off dead than disabled". America was built upon presumed checks and balances, yet for people with disabilities like Terri, those balances failed again and again.
Today is one of the darkest hours in disability history for three reasons: ...
Read the whole thing at the link. Hat tip: Straight Up With Sherri
Judith has excellent coverage at Kesher Talk. Via Judith, Wittingshire quotes John West on the tendency to presume in favor of PVS diagnoses.
The Changer and the Changed
"Political change is different. I think it tends to happen against one's will, often very much against one's will." This important observation sets the tone for a very enlightening series at Neo-Neocon.
Agents of change. "Therapists are change-agents by definition, and it helps if a therapist actually believes that people can change. But every therapist knows a bitter truth, and that is that true and fundamental change is both difficult and rare, and that it is often exceedingly painful for the person who changes, and for everyone around him/her."
- Part 1
Mechanisms of change. "Different schools of therapy approach clients through different parts of this troika of cognition, feeling, and behavior. For example, (surprise, surprise!) cognitive therapists work on changing thought patterns, many psychotherapists work on feelings, and behavioral therapists work on--well, behavior. But a therapist can also work eclectically and choose to approach on any of these dimensions, and that's the method that made most sense to me, choosing the point of intervention based on the particular presenting problem. Intervening to change one dimension could end up changing another, and ultimately changing them all. The idea was that lasting change could start anywhere, but would then (at least, ideally) cause a ripple effect ... "
- Part 2
Roots of identity. "So, what did I learn in my childhood about politics? I learned to affiliate with my family's beliefs on an emotional level, but I learned very little except generalities about the reasoning and factual basis behind those positions. I learned that politics could be a very contentious subject, but that people still liked to discuss it. I learned that some people were fanatics and didn't listen to reason or argument, and I knew I never wanted to be like them. And I knew the world was a dangerous place, and that (at least in my mind) there was an excellent chance I wouldn't live to grow up, because a nuclear conflagration would stop me. There was fear involved in politics, but it seemed important--perhaps a matter of life or death."
- Part 3
Go check it out.
Agents of change. "Therapists are change-agents by definition, and it helps if a therapist actually believes that people can change. But every therapist knows a bitter truth, and that is that true and fundamental change is both difficult and rare, and that it is often exceedingly painful for the person who changes, and for everyone around him/her."
- Part 1
Mechanisms of change. "Different schools of therapy approach clients through different parts of this troika of cognition, feeling, and behavior. For example, (surprise, surprise!) cognitive therapists work on changing thought patterns, many psychotherapists work on feelings, and behavioral therapists work on--well, behavior. But a therapist can also work eclectically and choose to approach on any of these dimensions, and that's the method that made most sense to me, choosing the point of intervention based on the particular presenting problem. Intervening to change one dimension could end up changing another, and ultimately changing them all. The idea was that lasting change could start anywhere, but would then (at least, ideally) cause a ripple effect ... "
- Part 2
Roots of identity. "So, what did I learn in my childhood about politics? I learned to affiliate with my family's beliefs on an emotional level, but I learned very little except generalities about the reasoning and factual basis behind those positions. I learned that politics could be a very contentious subject, but that people still liked to discuss it. I learned that some people were fanatics and didn't listen to reason or argument, and I knew I never wanted to be like them. And I knew the world was a dangerous place, and that (at least in my mind) there was an excellent chance I wouldn't live to grow up, because a nuclear conflagration would stop me. There was fear involved in politics, but it seemed important--perhaps a matter of life or death."
- Part 3
Go check it out.
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