A woman in Riverrim's knitting club just lost her son to the War on Terror. This woman was making an afghan for her son, one square for every month he was away, and now the afghan will join him in his coffin. This story rips my heart out and the knitter inside me is weeping.

Posted by: Sarah at 02:50 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 57 words, total size 1 kb.

I really like these new AFN commercials where a talking computer compares military benefits to the civilian world. I've seen ones about pay raises, vacation days, and medical care. I think it's important for soldiers to know how their benefits compare to the outside world because it's easy to gripe about the Army, but another job might not be any better.

But what I don't like on TV is being lectured to, especially by an ex-stripper. My husband and I watched the "Secrets and Flies" episode of CSI last night. The story revolved around an organization that finds mothers for abandoned embryos. The woman who was killed was a single Christian mother who adopted a leftover fertilized egg from a fertility clinic because she believed that every embryo is a baby from the minute it's fertilized in a laboratory dish. And the CSI cast openly rolled their eyes and scoffed at this organization. Catherine, the ex-stripper, pulled out all these quotes about papal precedent to argue with the head of this organization. The beat-us-over-the-head Message on the show was that pro-lifers are complete nutjobs, and all the CSI characters agreed. There was no inter-office discussion of the matter; it was just settled and blatantly woven into the script that this was insane.

Cop dramas have been doing this for a while. I wrote a while back about similar propaganda in Law & Order. I'm tired of shows painting right-wing ideas as looney. I honestly don't think this "embryo adoption" thing is that weird. If a couple is willing to give away their extra embryos and someone is willing to take them, then everybody's happy. But you should've seen these CSIs' faces: they were completely disgusted by the whole thing. I don't understand why.

I'm not 100% sure what my view is on abortion. I struggle with one fundamental paradox: If an unwed teen gets pregnant, then we start talking about "at what day is it actually a baby", but if a happily married couple gets pregnant, it's obviously a baby from day one. I know when I get pregnant that it will be a baby from the beginning, and I don't care what day the heart starts beating or the blood starts circulating. So if it's a baby for me, I should see it as a baby for everyone. But I still can't say that abortion is absolutely murder. My thoughts on the topic are kind of messy, and thank goodness I've never had to really work through them.

That said, I respect people who do think that it's murder, and I admire someone who might consider adopting an embryo to give every baby a chance. I certainly would never roll my eyes at her or argue with her about what the pope said in the 16th century (which is what the CSI did). All other things being equal, I respect the right-wing position on abortion more than I do the left-wing position, even though I fall somewhere in between. So why is it obvious that the message on TV is that the right-wingers are nuts?

Posted by: Sarah at 02:09 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 524 words, total size 3 kb.

1 Sarah, I actually kind of disagree with you on this one (even though I'll save most of my comments for a real conversation with you). I think in comparison to adopting a live baby (one that has already been created, born, and neglected), adopting embryos is a little nutty. I'm not quite sure how I feel about abortion either...and yes, if and when I get pregnant, the embryo inside of me will always be referred to as "the baby." Having said that, I think scientifically, I can understand why the characters of CSI scoffed at adopting embryos. If we imagine that these characters are real people, then we can understand that they are around DNA, micro-organisms, and all kinds of teeny-tiny blobs of goop all the time. They are probably more capable of lumping embryos into the "teeny-tiny blobs of goop" category than you and I are. But...I do agree with you that more and more, tv shows are making fun of righties...sometimes justifiably (there are a lot of righty crazies out there), but a lot of times it's just over the top.

Posted by: Erin at April 11, 2006 05:17 AM (7oVGv)

2 Hey, if Erin disagreed, do I have to agree now? I don't really watch this new spate of cop shows, but from what I've seen I actually find them kind of right wing, in a different respect. The prime suspects are always really guilty; the cops and DAs never go after the wrong people. That hardly sends a message about the importance of civil rights. If the shows were liberal agitprop, half of the cops would belong to the KKK, and the DAs would sit around laughing about how they were sending innocent people to prison. In fact, it seems like his character is constantly lecturing the audience, from the little bits of the show I've seen. (And his co-star Angie Harmon spoke at the 2004 Republican National Convention.)

Posted by: Pericles at April 11, 2006 06:34 AM (eKf5G)

3 Oh, I forgot to say... I don't think that it is quite true to say that couples thnk of embryos just like they do babies. I've had family members suffer miscarriages, and while this was upsetting and sad, it was still nothing like the loss of a baby would have been. They may have called it "the baby," but the attachment wasn't that strong yet. In fact, a pretty high percentage of pregnancies end in very early spontaneous miscarriages, for no apparent reason. I never hear about anyone regarding this as any kind of tragedy, or even like a public health problem comparable to SIDS.

Posted by: Pericles at April 11, 2006 06:40 AM (eKf5G)

4 Erin -- OK, maybe the idea of adopting embryos is not mainstream, but I don't think it's nearly as weird as some of the other right-wing stuff on these shows: they often feature fanatic pro-lifers who kill abortion doctors or extreme religions where the dads impregnate teenage daughters and stuff. I think this one isn't quite so "out there", but the CSIs acted like they were in the same camp with cult types. I think there's at least room for discussion about adopting embryos, which is in a completely different realm than killing Planned Parenthood workers. But CSI seemed to treat them like they're the same. Catherine was overly pissed off at the woman, barking about stem cell research and pro-choice stuff. I just thought it was too much. Pericles -- Hmm, never thought about that. They do always solve the crime and rarely does some "innocent black man go to jail for a crime a rich white kid committed", or some other "liberal" idea like that.

Posted by: Sarah at April 11, 2006 06:49 AM (uJOsU)

5 I quit watching CSI a while ago - too gruesome and tawdry. I loved them for the science and whodunnit aspect problem solving stuff. But the gratuitous flesh and sex-oriented stuff was just too much. How did the treatment of the organization compare to say, the furries - where people dressed up as animals and had orgies? They were pretty much, well, weird to me, but ok. Certainly didn't call them stupid or debate the leader.

Posted by: PhilS at April 11, 2006 02:00 PM (aeR5+)

6 PhilS -- Good call, I forgot about that one. With all the sex stuff on that show, no one ever moralizes. Remember the dominatrix one, where Grissom talks to the "madam" like they're both scientists? I just think it's a double standard.

Posted by: Sarah at April 11, 2006 03:11 PM (uJOsU)

7 Part of becoming a human being is growing and evolving in your mother's womb, so I don't think an embryo in a petri dish can be called a baby. Adopting an embryo is about the same as adopting the stain on Lewinsky's dress.

Posted by: Will at April 11, 2006 07:14 PM (eIQfa)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

Found this on a knit blog and immediately wanted to do it.

Name 5 of your favorite books:
Alas Babylon
The Cornish Trilogy
Lolita
The Power of One
Contact

What was the last book you bought?:
The First Three Minutes

What were the last 3 books you read?:
War of the Worlds
Just a Couple of Days
Gates of Fire

List 5 books that have been particularly meaningful to you:
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Atlas Shrugged
To Kill a Mockingbird
Stranger in a Strange Land
Skinny Legs and All

Name 3 books you've been dying to read but just haven't gotten around to:
Taking Science to the Moon
Up From Slavery
The Soul of Battle

My husband and I did some final unpacking from Iraq last weekend. His tattered, dirty, torn copy of Atlas Shrugged fell out. I had promised it to Erin since Amritas gifted me a nice new copy, but when I saw it and thought of how it had kept my husband company for so many hours out at that stupid bridge over the Tigris, well, I just couldn't part with it. I'm buying Erin her own copy.

Posted by: Sarah at 10:45 AM | Comments (14) | Add Comment
Post contains 196 words, total size 1 kb.

1 I tried to get my girlfriend to read Atlas Shrugged a few days ago. I, too, have a worn, tattered copy. She read the first few pages and decided that the writing was "boring," which I can admit that it is. But I do love that book. Even though the characters never change or have varying emotions, and even though the whole book is just one long essay. I like the message. To me, it's not right or left - not in today's world where everyone seems to care more about power than success.

Posted by: Will at April 06, 2006 02:40 PM (eIQfa)

2 Sarah, I can't wait to read Atlas Shrugged. But don't buy me a copy, silly! I know how to work amazon.com just as well as you do!

Posted by: Erin at April 07, 2006 12:58 AM (wNSIT)

3 Sarah, I'm sort of pleased to see that "Alas Babylon" is one of your favorite books, but I want to make sure it is the same one I know. The main character is a reserve military type who organizes security during a nuclear war in the Orlando FL area? Maybe, maybe not. But it was a great story anyway. I liked the book. Subsunk

Posted by: Subsunk at April 08, 2006 07:39 AM (dMUm8)

4 "Even though the characters never change" Atlas Shrugged is in part about the awakening of Hank Rearden and Dagny Taggart. They change, though John Galt does not.

Posted by: Amritas at April 08, 2006 12:01 PM (WnSrS)

5 Subsunk -- Yep, same book. Man, what a page turner.

Posted by: Sarah at April 08, 2006 01:42 PM (imqSY)

6 IMHO, Dagny and Hank don't really change - they just hold out longer than anyone else. But their characters remain the same. It's not a bad thing, it's just not the most interesting thing to read. Especially after page 1000, when we've seen every version of the argument that Hank, his wife, Dagny, her brother, etc, etc, can have.

Posted by: Will at April 08, 2006 03:35 PM (eIQfa)

7 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? *Gags*

Posted by: Pericles at April 08, 2006 08:20 PM (eKf5G)

8 The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called 'yourself.' Ahwww....

Posted by: Will at April 08, 2006 08:57 PM (eIQfa)

9 On what basis exactly are you two making fun of Zen and the Art? I'd like to understand.

Posted by: Sarah at April 09, 2006 03:58 AM (3qZs7)

10 I was just teasing. I haven't read it in a long time. I really didn't care for it when I read it, but some of my reasons may have been very personal rather than anything to do with the "Quality" of the book itself. I've mentioned on here before that I studied philosophy, and I wasn't thrilled with the way that the book reinforced the notion that philosophers tend toward mental illness... It may just be snobbery on my part, really. It is a hard thing to write books that get philosophical ideas across to a mainstream audience. It is no surprise that people who have read more of the classics will find popular books a little thin. On a different subject, I'm curious why Atlas Shrugged gets so much more attention than The Fountainhead. I've always thought that the latter was the superior book. In some sense they're the same book, really, but not only is The Fountainhead a little shorter, the characters seem slightly more human. Although I never understood why Rand can never get a hero and heroine in bed together without its bordering on rape.

Posted by: Pericles at April 09, 2006 09:23 AM (eKf5G)

11 OK, thanks for clearing it up. I was trying to guess why you might gag at the book. That reason makes sense to me now. Yeah, Ayn Rand's sex stuff weirds me out too. But beyond that, I like the books. And I liked The Fountainhead best for a long time because of Roark, but after reading Atlas Shrugged again recently, I appreciate Galt's Gulch so much more now than I did when I was in high school. Back then I just didn't really care about railroads...

Posted by: Sarah at April 09, 2006 10:26 AM (3qZs7)

12 It is a good question, by the way, about what books have been personally meaningful. Putting together a top 5 would be hard for me, without a lot of thought. Stranger in a Strange Land might be on my list, too. A lot of Heinlein is horrible, but that is pretty good. Maybe The Fountainhead could make my list. I'd have to include Crime and Punishment, and maybe The Brothers Karamazov, too. Perhaps Great Expectations, although maybe not. Dickens is probably my favorite author, on the whole, but are his stories really deep enough to be among the five most meaningful? To Kill a Mockingbird could make my list, even though I haven't read it since high school. Also maybe The Catcher in the Rye and Huck Finn.

Posted by: Pericles at April 09, 2006 05:10 PM (eKf5G)

13 You should give To Kill a Mockingbird another read. I think it's phenomenal; in fact, if we have a son, his middle name will be Atticus. I personally thought Catcher in the Rye was overrated, but I think I was expecting too much because of its banned status. Maybe if I read it again without all the hype, it might seem better. I thought Crime and Punishment was a very good book too.

Posted by: Sarah at April 10, 2006 01:41 AM (81mkK)

14 A couple of books that caught my attention: Alas Babylon. Great! For awhile in high school I could not turn down a book about the apocolyptic-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it. This is one of the books that was read several times in that period and a few times since. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I read this book when I was down with the flu in Dombas, Norway. It was a training trip, mostly skiing and I go the flu real bad. Left alone in the barracks to recover, this is the only book I could find in my teammates gear. Actually, it belonged to my team leader, a captain that was a little off center but a good guy. I struggled through the book, partly because of my illness, partly because of the psychological nature of the book. I've not seen nor heard of it until your list. Atlas Shrugged. [rolling eyes] Great story. Too drawn out. The part that really killed me was Galt's (I think it was him) speech on the radio that lasted something like 65 pages. Guy, if you can't get your point across quicker than that... Anyway, I enjoyed the story, the moral, if you will, but it is a dull read. I'm already thinking about which book I'll bring home tattered and care-worn. Any ideas?

Posted by: JACK ARMY at April 17, 2006 04:21 PM (6AoYx)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

When my husband left for Iraq, I started a patchwork quilt. That was two years ago. Sewing it all together was fun and easy, but as soon as it came time to actually quilt it, I thought it was too hard. The quilt sat on a shelf for over a year, but I knew I had to finish it before we moved. I finally finished this week; it really wasn't as hard as I thought, though of course there are all sorts of mistakes that I just whatevered and kept going. I tried to take a photo of the finished product today. Naturally, everything in this house belongs to Charlie, so he grabbed it and ran down the hall with it.

Charlie has chewed on some valuable stuff in his lifetime, but this might take the cake. Unless you count the envelope of $300 I wrestled away from him on Monday.

Posted by: Sarah at 03:19 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 153 words, total size 1 kb.

Yesterday I actually sat and watched an entire hour of Al Franken. It wasn't as torturous as I thought it would be. I thought Tim Russert did a great job of keeping Franken honest, and I would love to see Russert interview someone like Ann Coulter the same way.

At one point, Al Franken said that what he'd really like to see is for Bush and Cheney to come clean with the world. He said they should give a "six hour long speech" (wow) in which they delineate everything they did wrong in Iraq. He wants their mea culpa to include everything from inaccurate pre-war intelligence to not stopping the looters after the fall of Baghdad. Franken said that after Bush and Cheney admitted they had been wrong about everything under the sun, then the international community could forgive them and the Democrats would gladly sit down and draft a bipartisan plan for Iraq.

I started thinking about transparency in government. The husband and I have been watching 24 recently. "President David Palmer" is probably close to everyone's ideal president. He went straight to the media when he learned his son might've killed someone. He ratted out his campaign contributors when he figured out they were dirty. And he divorced his wife during the primaries because she became too power hungry. In watching 24, you can't help but think that if all politicians had half of Palmer's integrity, the world would be a better place.

But if everyone wants Mr. Smith to go to Washington, why does it never happen in real life?

There are things that Bush and Cheney could've done differently with Iraq. I'm sure they know this. But I honestly don't think that it's appropriate for anyone to give a six hour apology while the war is still going on. And I honestly believe someone would still find something that Bush left out of his six hour speech to complain about. Lord knows there are times when I wish for more honesty in Washington (Would someone please step to the plate and call Cynthia McKinney a race-baiting bitch?) but I don't expect it to ever happen. Politics is a tricky game, and any one thing you say can haunt you for life (see "Read my lips", "I did not have sex with that woman", and "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.") No matter what Al Franken says, I don't think a big apology would make any of his opponents respect President Bush more, and I guarantee something from his apology speech would become a soundbite in the next election.

I often think I'm too thin-skinned to blog, so I know for sure that thin-skinned people certainly can't get into politics. I lie in bed worrying about how President Bush sleeps at night knowing his face is superimposed over a swastika; I'm sure he must be the type of man who waves it off and keeps going. We need our politicians to be thick-skinned, aggressive, and tough. We need them to play the game at the level that everyone else does, like it or not. Mr. Smith really wouldn't last long.

We may think we want Bobby running Ewing Oil, but in a world of dirty dealers, JR's the man for the job. Sad as that may be.

Posted by: Sarah at 02:29 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
Post contains 561 words, total size 3 kb.

Pericles pointed out an article to Erin that's worth repeating here:
Don't Politicize Our Soldiers

Also, a hearty HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Tim! We miss you!

Posted by: Sarah at 04:44 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 27 words, total size 1 kb.

1 Hey! You beat me to it... But yeah, it's a thought-provoking article. I'm still letting it marinate in my mind before I publicize my opinion about it.

Posted by: Erin at April 02, 2006 11:53 AM (2q7O3)

2 Neocons created the divisions in America by orchestrating the Iraq War? Say what? Did I read that on tryingtogrok?

Posted by: Will at April 02, 2006 04:46 PM (eIQfa)

3 Will -- As hard as it may be for you to believe, I read stuff, and sometimes point to, articles I don't 100% agree with. I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment of that article.

Posted by: Sarah at April 03, 2006 01:49 AM (czIYR)

4 Cool. All right. You have my respect.

Posted by: Will at April 04, 2006 01:17 AM (eIQfa)

5 I'm paying for Internet access in London, so that is all I have time to say. Except that I wopuld never have posted here, or on Erin's blog, if I thought the two of you were so wedded to a party line that you'd never consider a contrary idea. It is nice to see that we can find some common ground, sometimes.

Posted by: Pericles at April 04, 2006 04:51 AM (GVzN8)

6 Yay. We're all getting along.

Posted by: Erin at April 05, 2006 03:53 PM (GyYB2)

7 I'm all warm and fuzzy inside.

Posted by: Will at April 06, 2006 12:38 AM (eIQfa)

Hide Comments | Add Comment