More Abortions!: "This is great:

The U.S. Department of Justice has issued its first-ever medical guidelines for treating sexual-assault victims - without any mention of emergency contraception, the standard precaution against pregnancy after rape.

The omission of the so-called morning-after pill has frustrated and angered victims' advocates and medical professionals who have long worked to improve victims' care.

Gail Burns-Smith, one of several dozen experts who vetted the protocol during its three-year development by Justice's Office on Violence Against Women, said emergency contraception was included in an early draft, and she does not know of anyone who opposed it.

'But in the climate in which we are currently operating, politically it's a hot potato,' said Burns-Smith, retired director of Connecticut Sexual Assault Crisis Services.

The 'morning after' pill if taken soon enough will prevent conception from even occurring, or failing that it will prevent implantation. Whatever moral qualms one has about abortion generally, the morning after pill is far less 'icky' than IVF treatments frequently undergone by our happy natalists. The consequence of keeping raping victims from the pill will inevitably be more actual abortions.

But, they don't really care...
"

(Via Eschaton.)

If this were an issue created by a Democratic Administration, you can be sure that Karl Rove would have already be running ads talking about the Administration wanting you (the white ad target) being expected to carry Willie Horton's baby. But this response also indicates a level if disconnection from red america. Red Americans aren't concerned about reducing the abortions of rape victims. Red America overwhelmingly supports abortion for rape victims. Another wedge issue opportunity, being squandered.

Now to take this a step farther, why not use this as a wedge to push back by fighting for law mandating the notification of parents of raped minors of morning after pill and abortion options?

Now it becomes a victims' rights issue.

Would it be too hard to find somebody to testify who could say she was not told about her options?

There is an exceedingly obese woman across from me with a crying toddler on her knee and a child next to her who desperately wants to go to the Mcdonalds in the terminal.

If there is a god, it will ensure that these folks are on another flight.

Overheard on the intercom at Cincinnati just now:

"You will not see the flight on the screen, as we are having computer problems."

I called into Delta this morning to switch my flight from one leaving Lansing at 1:30pm and getting into JFK at 6 something to one leaving at 10:46am and getting in at 3:30pm. If you call 3 hours before a flight, the fee to switch is only $25.

The reservation agent (what is the preferred nomenclature these days? Schedule engineer?) told me that no seats were available.

I called back two minutes later, and got connected to a better reservation agent, who took care of getting me booked on the earlier flight.

Author Arthur C Clarke (who has lived in Sri Lanka for many years now) recommends giving to Sarvodaya if you are considering places to send donations.

The amount the US government has allocated for this event is equivalent to the amount spent in a morning in Iraq.

Time for another Pentagon Bake Sale.

Just saw Pather Panchali for the second time. Or is it the first time all over again when you only vaguely remember the first time?

Beautiful Beautiful Koyaanisqatsi moments. Emotion earned, unlike that trite Spielberg crap. (If you saw The Terminal, you know what I'm talking about.)

sigh

Julie dug up some interesting stuff for the Tolstoy discussion for tomorrow night.

Finally!

According to the news, Diaryland is about to get RSS feeds.

No more having to load http://members.diaryland.com/edit/buddies.phtml to see if somebody updated.

The Bro got me Garden State for Christmas. Rock.

The afternoon with Shana and Alexis and Valerie ( + boy ) and two dogs and cats and bunny and pistachios and the radiology of trauma victims and a beautiful redone bathroom.

Dinner with Brendan and Tim and Justin and Sara and Trudeau (+ girl) and Eric.

Pinball Pete's with Brendan and Tim and Justin and Sara and Suj and Dave.

Heidelburg with Brendan and Suj and Sara and Tim and Justin.

Slumber Party at Mich with Brendan and Sara.

Unforwarded mail found at Mich from a Blockbuster on Broadway, one in the Village.

I'm glad I stopped by.

There's word of apple releasing a $500 computer at MacWorld SF in a few weeks.

Does anybody else look at this and automatically think Set Top Box?

Quote of the day: My sweet little autistic nerd boy.

Bram Cohen, the guy who invented BitTorrent, the program that the MPAA hates, the one that is responsible for 30% of the traffic on the internet, apparently has Asperger's syndrome.


They are discussing Aspergers on Wired. Forget the rash of Autism stories on the NYT, just another one today. Autism is now not just cool, but hip.

Oy.

Jared Diamond has a new book.

And my Amazon Wishlist.

Forget Soup or Juice, tonight I had dinner at Saginaw's Super Buffet!

They had frog legs, crab legs, and bacon wrapped shrimp.

I am sad to report that all of the food tasted wholly mediocre.

The establishment had a sign up announcing that people who were members of a frequent dining club would get a free meal after dining for 14 paid meals.

The free meal can not be redeemed on Valentines day.

Ponder the person who takes their date to an all you can eat buffet for Valentines day, and then thinks they can get by with a free meal for said date.

TeeHee.

My fortune cookie taught me that in Chinese the word for sugar is "Tang."

The Hampton Inn in Straightlord has free Hilton WiFi.

Score.

"Science"

Tsunamis as large as Sunday's happen only a few times a century. A tsunami is a series of traveling ocean waves generated by geological disturbances near the ocean floor. With nothing to stop them, the waves can race across the ocean like the crack of a bullwhip, gaining momentum over thousands of miles.

Umm, no. The waves would lose momentum over thousands of miles. Otherwise we would have had serious problems on the US west coast.

The waves will spread out over the distance.

You only gain momentum if there is a force consistently applied, right?

2004 MN4 now has a 1/40 chance of hitting the earth.

Does this make Revelations Ironic?

My rowmate on the last plane in from Cincinnati came by to interview my for the local news about our flight experiences. It goes on tonight on WLNS CBS 6, during the 5pm show.

I did my midwestern best.

I've been playing with Horde 3.0 (the framework underlying IMP, the open source webmail program that so many organizations, popular universities included, use).

The PEAR problem I had with Horde 2.x has finally been dealt with on my webhost's site, though I'm still having problems with HTTP_Request, which when activated refuses to let the rest of the PHP work.

And I'm still looking for a gmail/imap interface.

That or a host that I can host a large quantity of mail on. I've been looking at Interland's virtual hosting, since I have some experience with it, but 1and1's hosting is about the same price as well, and I wouldn't mind having a debian system to use for my mail.

In other news, Delta called me today and told me that my bag was on its way this evening, scheduled to arrive at 2am.

Yawn. I don't think I'm going to be able to stay up.

I'm going skiing. I can't ski.

There's a new york times article today about http://anonymouslawyer.blogspot.com.

Fantastic stuff. Very American Psycho. The November archives are superb.