Society

•

immigration article foto

by Reid Fitzsimons

Note: the following article began as a brief e-mail to my brother (explaining some of the syntax), which somehow grew into 5 pages. Despite being too long and somewhat rambling, it makes points and arguments rarely, if ever, seen elsewhere.

I was going to add a few comments in regards to our discussion/argument about what you called immigration reform, though I think you were being a bit disingenuous and really meant support of an open border type policy (in theory Donald Trump rounding up anyone with a Hispanic sounding name and placing them in Mexico-bound boxcars could be deemed immigration reform). However this touches on a related topic of interest to me- the significant similarities between progressive liberals and Evangelical Christians, so I’m going to go ahead and write an excruciatingly long article for posting on an internet blog. I hope you are inclined to read what follows, which includes some outside the lines ideas in regards to immigration reform.

...continue reading →

•

state

by Barry King, November 28 2015

Thanks to Reid's son Forest for introducing me to this book. If you buy it, or buy anything else from amazon.com, please shop at smile.amazon.com instead of www.amazon.com, and select The Virunga Fund as your beneficiary. It won't increase your price, but amazon will make a donation to Virunga.

http://smile.amazon.com/Seeing-like-State-Certain-Condit…/…/

Book review: Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, by James C. Scott.

Prototypical scheme: A wild forest was designed by God, or by Darwinian evolution, to "succeed" as an ecosystem capable of sustaining a bio-diverse assortment of plant, animal, insect and bird species (and many other kinds). Modern "scientific" forestry, on the other hand, in its early stages, focused on maximizing board-feet of lumber produced, and chose mono-culture: a whole forest of trees of a single species, planted in rows. Many such projects worked for a few years, then failed as the whole forest ecosystem collapsed for unforeseen reasons involving complex interdependencies. The key insight is: these projects, and many others like them, were promoted as "modern", "scientific" and "rational", but were nevertheless unsustainable.

...continue reading →

•

dont

by Barry King, 28 November 2015

After the recent terror attacks in France, the instinctive response of people of faith all over the world was to pray for Paris, and to encourage others to do so. For others, who consider religious faith problematic, the response was different: “Don’t pray for Paris”. The subtext to those opinions was clearly: religion is part of the problem, so it can’t be part of the solution.

The first of those responses (prayer) has deep historical roots. Thoughtful people will wonder about the second: is it a new idea, or has it been tried before? If it has been tried before, what were the results of the earlier trials? Hearing news of the Paris attacks, many of us remembered John Lennon, who wrote 40 years ago: “Imagine…no hell below us, above us only sky.” John identified the objective of that dream as “..all the people living life in peace.” Clearly, if John were still among us, he would have been among those saying, “Don’t Pray for Paris”.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfbph4VCVtk

...continue reading →

•

white-house-forum-harvey-weinstein-whoopi-goldberg-blake-lively-naomie-harris-618x400

by Reid Fitzsimons

Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others- Winston Churchill

Clothes and courage have much to do with each other- Sara Jeannette Duncan

Up until today I could have searched the recesses of my cultural knowledge and concluded there is a person named Blake Lively and associated the word celebrity with the name. For some reason I happened to notice a trending now headline stating, “Blake Lively Shuts Down Preserve.” My initial assumption was that this Blake Lively person is one of those PETA-type celebrities who pose nude under the banner of “I’d rather go naked than wear fur,” and had been operating some kind of animal rescue organization. Being tangentially simpatico as a philosophical vegetarian for over nine years, my first thought was it is kind of a shame- so many celebrities offer grandiose statements or make ridiculous symbolic gestures pertaining to the progressive cause of the moment, but here was one that actually did something. Sadly, in the realm of “say it isn’t so,” I discovered Preserve is a largely commercial website featuring the “Stories and Creations of Artisans.”

...continue reading →

•

sen csey

by Reid Fitzsimons

Note: The following appeared as a Letter to the Editor in the Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania Times-Leader newspaper on Sep 17, 2015 with the title "Sen. Bob Casey Parrots Planned Parenthood's Dubious Statistics."  Below that (“Follow-up”) reflects a discussion subsequent to when the letter was written (early August 2015) with one of Sen. Casey’s policy staffers in his Washington office on Sept. 10, 2015.

A majority in the US Senate recently voted to terminate Federal funding of Planned Parenthood (PP), but a “supermajority” was not obtained, hence the motion failed. Among those voting in support of the half billion dollar plus subsidy of PP was Sen. Robert Casey, Jr. Those who follow such things know that Sen. Casey frequently declares himself to be “pro-life,” but of course he is not- his obsequiousness when it comes to the severe progressive liberalism of Barak Obama disallows whatever independent thought he might possess. Perhaps claiming to be “pro-life” buys him few votes or, less cynically, it helps assuage a sense of inadequacy in his inability to live up to his father’s moral standard.

...continue reading →

•

cc

by Barry King

For lovers of science and of nature, parasitism is a fascinating topic. An important detail is the complexity of the definition of "success" for the parasite, who prefers to rely on the productivity of others rather than on his own productivity (the cuckoo prefers not to be bothered by the hard work of building a nest, incubating eggs, and feeding chicks, so she just lays her eggs in someone else's nest.) The "success" of parasitism has an obvious strategic limitation in this consequence, that if the parasite is too "successful" the host is overwhelmed and goes extinct. Then the parasite goes extinct because it had become fatally dependent on a now-extinct host. Cuckoos can get away with it sustainably because they are parasitic only gently and on a wide variety of other species rather than on just one. A forest with cuckoos is more (bio)diverse than one without, but if the cuckoos collectively are not careful they will end up subtracting both their hosts and themselves from the biodiversity gene pool. That's why infectious organisms that cause 100% fatality in their hosts are extremely rare: their evolutionary tactic is strategically suicidal within just 1 or 2 generations. In human politics and economics, the analog to parasitism is misleadingly called "rent-seeking" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking) I guess it's a good thing that we humans are not aggressively parasitic organisms - or are we?

• 2 Comments

•

hillary_1

by Reid Fitzsimons

Back sometime in the late 1990s, beginning on a Monday at 8am and ending at 8am the following day, I was scheduled as the medical officer on-call at the NY State facility for mentally retarded/developmentally disabled people where I worked from 1986 to 2001. The on-call person is the primary medical contact for his or her own caseloads along with the patients of other providers who happen to be off the schedule at the time, and for everyone after normal working hours. Soon after my shift began I received a page from one of the outlying residences. The concern was an elderly lady who had been ill onset the previous Friday evening and continuing to the present. Her presentation included recurrent vomiting of blood, poor to no intake of fluids and in general looking very sick. I told the direct care staff to bring her to our clinic immediately and it was obvious she was in extremis, requiring an acute care hospital and operating room, well beyond our clinic capabilities. I made the arrangements for transfer to the hospital and got her on her way with haste, but sadly she died later that day.

My inclination was to always treat the lower paid direct care workers with respect, but in this case, knowing the agony this innocent person suffered over the preceding weekend, I very pointedly inquired as to why they let her deteriorate and failed to contact the weekend on-call person. To my surprise they said, with some frustration, they in fact had made the call. I asked what the on-call physician told them, and they replied, “He said give her Mylanta.” Though I don’t specifically recall the cause of death in this case, it was probably complications of hemorrhagic erosive esophagitis, the sometimes fatal end of the spectrum that begins with what is commonly called heartburn or reflux, and not uncommon in our patient population. At some point this patient was perhaps salvageable and, if seen and properly treated, her suffering certainly could have been diminished.

...continue reading →

• 2 Comments

•

bortion

by Reid Fitzsimons

Somewhere in the early 1980’ I switched from being pro-abortion to pro-life. I wasn’t any kind of firebrand pro-abortion activist, just one of the tens of millions of Americans who didn’t want to be troubled by thinking too hard. It took no great empathetic powers to comprehend an unexpected pregnancy can put a severe damper on life’s plans and, as Americans, we didn’t and don’t suffer interruptions to our ambitions or life-styles easily. Additionally, the feminists and social justice people of the early 80s, personified especially by Planned Parenthood, assured us we weren’t talking about ending a life but that abortion was more akin to picking boogers out of our noses. I recall three terms The Great Progressive Minds used when describing that troublesome entity residing in the uterus- a blob of tissue, a clump of cells, and, for the more intellectual among the mindless masses, the products of conception. What person in their right mind could possibly be opposed to sucking out a blob of tissue? It would be like being against hacking up a big loogie.

At this time I was a PA (Physician Assistant) student in Cleveland and I certainly possessed a cursory knowledge of embryology, so academically I knew the blob of tissue paradigm wasn’t entirely accurate, but everyone wants symbols and terminology to comport with their worldview; it allows us to not be troubled in our beliefs. During the clinical year I did a month-long inpatient gynecology rotation at hospital downtown, one that frequently did abortions. No problem for me, and I was perfectly fine with observing and assisting. Assuming most people can’t really envision the procedure, it is not one that requires high-level surgical skill. In other words, abortionists may be wealthy but are unlikely to be world-class physicians. Essentially a hollow plastic tube (curette) is passed through the cervix while attached to a suction machine and, with a little scraping and vacuuming of the uterus, viola’! problem solved. The thing is the suction tubing is transparent, and I happened to notice the promised blob being sucked into oblivion looked quite a bit like little arms and legs, with feet and fingers and things. Was it possible the progressives and good people at Planned Parenthood had engaged in a bit of deception?

...continue reading →

•

Revelers ride in a float during the gay pride parade in Salt Lake City, Utah, June 3, 2012. Over 300 active Mormons and more than 5,000 members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community with their supporters marched in the parade as part of the Utah Pride Festival. REUTERS/Jim Urquhart (UNITED STATES - Tags: SOCIETY) ORG XMIT: SLC07

 

by Reid Fitzsimons

Notwithstanding whatever newspaper it was that declared an end to commentary on homosexual marriage, the consequences of the recent Supreme Court paean to love will reverberate for years to come, and it won’t be limited to fabulous rainbow light shows at the White House and guys and girls gaily prancing about in leather thongs.

But before considering the consequences, I admit I’m a little confused about this Supreme Court decision. Homosexual marriage has essentially been legal for decades, and any residual barriers were correctly deconstructed in 2003 with the Lawrence versus Texas decision disallowing anti-sodomy laws. That is, of course, if marriage is defined as an association of people characterized by love (with an implication of the sexual kind as compared, for example, to the love of a good cigar, except in the case of Bill Clinton) and enduring commitment. Additionally nothing has prevented homosexuals from enjoying the more superficial ceremonial trappings, be it flowing wedding gowns or an expensive reception adorned with massive floral arrangements. Even securing an ordained but pretend Christian minister to bless the wedding has been no more difficult than catching Hillary Clinton in a lie. Really- does anyone actually know someone who cares how people associate themselves on a private and personal level? The concept of something being nobody else’s business is in many ways one of the underpinnings of freedom.

...continue reading →

•

coexist

by Reid Fitzsimons

Background:

Jarrod is in his early 30s and in a heteronormative marriage to Mindy, also in her early 30s. They are both products of middle-class suburbia and college-educated. Actually they met in college, where she studied art and computer technology and he eventually obtained a master’s in communications. Somewhat to his surprise, Jarrod transformed his college degree into a job with a tax-exempt group, eventually making a salary in the low-$100s with the title of Communications Director. The organization he works for has something to do with “advocacy” in a variety of areas including domestic violence, gender and race preferred small business opportunities, and community development. He discovered he has a knack for interacting with state and local politicians and has captured quite a bit of grant money for his organization. Part of him wonders why their offices are located in a nice high-rent area and the executive level salaries (including his) are not insubstantial, considering they are ostensibly advocating for the disenfranchised, but generally he convinces himself he is worth what he makes. ...continue reading →