Category Maybe It’s Just Me, But…

General ramblings of an easily amused mind.

Love and Companionship–21st Century Style

Ed

Since I got into the reading mode this spring for my courses in bioethics, I thought I’d continue throughout the summer so I don’t lose the “edge.” One book recommended by my prof for the personhood course I took was Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other by Sherry Turkle, a licensed clinical psychologist. I’ve only gotten through the first hundred pages so far, but it’s already got me thinking.

Regarding current day robots (and possibly the future as robots get more and more sophisticated), Turkle wrote in the introduction (10):

A forty-four-year-old woman says, “After all, we never know how another person really feels. People put on a good face. Robots would be safer.” A thirty-year-old man remarks, “I’d rather talk to a robot. Friends can be exhausting. The robot will always be there for me. And whenever I’m done, I can walk away.”

I can relate to these two individuals because I’ve often felt (and thought) the same way. But what does that say about our society today when we view our friendships and relationships as an inconvenience? What will become of me if I should suffer a chronic disease or a debilitating disability? What will happen when I succumb to old age and my body fails me? Will I be abandoned because I’m too much of an inconvenience?

Turkle started her studies of how humans interact with computers and robots in the mid-1970s. At that time, there was a computer program called ELIZA at MIT that was the center of her studies. She noticed that although all the students knew that ELIZA was a limited response software, they kept asking questions and conversing with it as if it was a real person. She also noticed that the students would alter their questions so that ELIZA would be able to respond to them. In other words, they wanted to believe that ELIZA was real.

This trend continued in the 80s and 90s as Turkle observed children with Tamagotchis and Furbies. These little playthings became real to the children to the extent that some of them had difficulty returning the items when the study time (two weeks) was over. It’s not that the children didn’t want to let go of their favorite toys; instead, the children had grown attached to the toys as if they were real pets and they didn’t want to lose these “animals” that they’ve been nurturing and growing.

Many people have suggested using robots as childcare or eldercare proxies, but there are problems with this idea. I’ll write more on that next time. Click here to read the next post in this train of thought.

Medicine and Life

Ed

Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, just published a new book called Pro-life Reflections for Every Day.  The “minute meditation” for October 9 was based on a quote from Pope John Paul’s 1995 encyclical, The Gospel of Life. Here is the meditation from the book published by Catholic Book Publishing Corp. in New Jersey.

Physicians and health care workers are also responsible, when the skills they acquired to promote life are placed at the service of death. – The Gospel of Life, 59

Reflection. Pro-abortion politicians will often say to us, “Legislators should not be practicing medicine.” But we’re not asking them to practice medicine, but to prevent the abuse of medicine.

Medicine is for the purpose of preserving life; abortion takes life. There is no disease that abortion cures, and no proven medical benefit.

I thought the meditation was apropos since August 1, 2012 is the beginning of implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) the massive so-called “healthcare reform” that the Congress and President Obama passed in 2010. The first implementation is the requirement that all health plans pay for contraception and potentially abortion-causing drugs such as Plan B–a.k.a. the morning after pill or Ella–with a very narrow exception for religious organizations.

But of course, this is but the beginning of the rules that lead to death that the PPACA, for example, all health plans will be required to collect $1 per person per month to be applied to a special fund that will pay for abortions. By the way, the PPACA also states that the employee doesn’t need to be informed that their premiums will include this $1 per month charge nor will you have an opportunity to opt out of it.

Gendercide in America

Ed

I’ve written about gendercide in China over the years (read about The China Model and Forced Abortion in China), but did you know that Planned Parenthood will tell you how you can do the same here in the US? In fact, in Arizona–where it is illegal to get an abortion based on the gender of the baby–they tell you specifically NOT to tell the abortionist that this is why you want an abortion or else he won’t do it.

You can see the Live Action videos that expose this practice from Texas (Part 1), New York City (Part 2), Arizona (Part 3), Hawaii (Part 4), and North Carolina (Part 5).

Why is it important to know this is happening? Because some pro-aborts suggest that it’s okay to get an abortion for whatever reason you want, including the gender of the baby. From a recent blog on the website, Slate:

Let’s just remember that we are talking about fetuses. No matter how many ultrasound pics get posted to Facebook, these are fetuses with female genitals or male genitals—not little girls and little boys.

Beside the incorrect understanding of biology–if you have female genitals, then you’re a girl; and if you have male genitals, then you’re a boy–the author makes sense in the rest of the article. If pro-aborts hesitate to say that abortion is okay even if it’s based on the baby’s gender, then what other reasons can a pro-lifer offer where it doesn’t make sense that a woman should get an abortion?

For the pro-abort this is a slippery slope the other way, one that will lead to abolishing abortion-on-demand completely. They understand what’s really at stake, so no matter how immoral the reason for getting the abortion, or how sickened you might be to know that people want to kill their babies just because of the baby’s gender, the author of the blog on Slate say, “Gulp for a second if you must, then get over it [emphasis added].”

Testing Hootsuite connection to Speaking

Ed

Testing Hootsuite connection to Speaking 4 Life blog.

Beware the Wrath of Planned Parenthood and its Supporters

Ed

Op-ed pieces in some main stream media outlets are starting to realize that there was something overtly wrong with the response that Planned Parenthood and its supporters (media, individuals, companies, and politicians) had to the fact that Susan G. Komen for the Cure would no longer give grants in the future to Planned Parenthood. Make no mistake about it, the supporters of Planned Parenthood went into all-out attack mode when the announcement was made. What these supporters forgot was that Komen is an independent charitable organization that has every right to decide where their grant money goes.

The reaction of the Planned Parenthood supporters was also irrationally disproportionate to what Planned Parenthood would potentially lose. The amount of grant money that Planned Parenthood received from Komen in 2010 was about $600,000, merely 0.06 percent of Planned Parenthood’s FY2010 revenue figure of $1.05 billion. Yes, that BILLION with a “b.”

Here are some of the comments. From Kathleen Parker in the Washington Post:

Whatever one believes about the motivation behind its decision, the larger point is that Komen has no binding responsibility to allocate any part of its $93 million in grants to any organization. Komen is a nonprofit, free agent, and the good it has performed for millions of underserved women around the world is staggering.

Nevertheless, given the rabid response from abortion-rights supporters, you’d think that Brinker and her organization were running puppy mills for soup vendors. Even if their real reason for ending funding is because they no longer want to be associated with an organization as politically controversial as Planned Parenthood — or even if because some of their potential donors want the relationship severed — it is inarguably their right to change course.

Ross Douthat wrote in the New York Times regarding Komen’s decision to change it’s granting criteria and the charge that it was politically motivated: “…it’s no more “political” to disassociate oneself from the nation’s largest abortion provider than it is to associate with it in the first place.”

Regarding the media’s vicious attacks on Komen, Douthat wrote: “… journalists betray their calling when they simply ignore self-evident truths about a story” including this truth, “…for every American who greeted Komen’s shift with “anger and outrage” (as Andrea Mitchell put it), there was probably an American who was relieved and gratified.”

I would also include this truth to Douthat’s list that main stream media ignored: Planned Parenthood does not provide life-saving mammograms for anyone, let alone underserved women.

In the Wall Street Journal Review & Outlook column, they wrote:

Apart from the brutal lesson in the intolerance of abortion advocates, the larger principle at stake is the right of a charity to donate to whomever it likes, for whatever reason it likes. Mr. Bloomberg is free to do whatever he wants with his money. But it is to his great discredit that he would join a campaign to smear Komen for exercising exactly the same right.

Syndicated columnist Mark Steyn summed it up pretty nicely when he wrote about the severity of the attacks on Komen and the disproportionate response: “Komen could not be permitted to get away with disrespecting Big Abortion.”

I hope everyone is hearing the real message behind the Komen-Planned Parenthood fiasco: “Beware the Wrath of Planned Parenthood and its Supporters.”

Update: Shortly after, Komen decided to continue supporting Planned Parenthood due to the media blitz PP did on Komen.