An Act of God

Secular interests like insurance companies and the religious will tell you, Hurricane Katrina was officially an "Act of God".

If you believe in an almighty creator, you have to acknowledge that he's a two-faced bastard; he is an almighty destroyer, a taker of life, a purveyor of tragedy, a being that could act and does nothing. If you believe that there's an invisible man that is pulling the strings behind the scenes, he's generating deadly storms too. If you think he makes a baby or a flower, you have to believe that he makes hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanoes, and tsunamis.

Every time you thank your god for something good, you must also hold him accountable when he fails to act. President Bush even prayed for no loss of life before a Sunday press conference. God answered his prayers... answered with a stern, "NO!".

I watched God do nothing when 3000 people in a burning tower prayed in desperation. All he did was not stop another plane from breeching that second building. I've watched him do nothing as EVERY DAY more babies die in Africa from preventable starvation and disease than can be amassed from all the trash cans in abortion history. God has the worst customer service record. When people need him, he ain't there. When tragedy looms he's nowhere to be found. But people insist on worshipping this baby killer?

Can some of you religious experts explain to me why your god does nothing, except of course, make the storm in the first place?

Could it be that weather is a consequence of physical phenomena met while living on the Earth and that there is no invisible bearded man driving it? Could it be? Science is crap, right? You know better, it has to be God, the Creator... right?

You Creationists are also Destructionists, right? After all, he is the almighty. Do you endorse your god's decision to kill all of those innocent people? Do you endorse how all of the prayers went unanswered? Do you feel that he has taken all of the material possessions from a million uninsured people in the poorest part of our country? You must!

Don't just tell me that "it's a mystery and we'll all find the answer someday". Bullshit. You seem to have an answer for everything else, even hard scientific facts like earth being round, not in the center of the universe and filled with life forms generated by evolution. Here the objective truth is crystal clear and you fail to acknowledge it, yet you can't tell me why your god has a bug up his ass to kill. I want an answer NOW.

C'mon geniuses and know it all's... tell me why your creator is a destroyer. Tell me why he makes people suffer. You have all the answers, let's hear them.

Weather Channel = DEATH

How does it convince a loser in New Orleans that the storm is dangerous and that evacuation is important, when the warnings are delivered from a guy in a windbreaker standing in the middle of it?

I'm watching a historic hurricane make landfall and everyone has been told to evacuate. However, there still are news people there, standing out in the storm, giving a report.

If you want to show how dangerous it is have Jim Cantorre and Stephanie Abrhams give their report from the comfort of a Denver hotel. They can talk about how bad the weather is and how there's no way they'll be anywhere close to it.

Time to Hunker

I don't know if "hunker" is a word, but a lot of toothless, slurring cajun goons are doing it today. Since I have moved to the South I have been introduced to a freaky phenomenon. When faced with a disaster that can be averted by leaving the area, many here seek refuge in the home, oftentimes a trailer or other marginal structure. The government sets up shelters, they tell you to leave days ahead of time. What leads some pseudo-macho brainstem to gather up the childrens and get to WalMart for a case of Bud and a few Moon Pies to "ride 'er out" defies explanation.

Last year in Florida people were told to get the hell out of the path. Many stayed, many died or were injured. But what really makes my ass chew gum is when people defy orders, get into a pickle, and then expect cops, firemen, army dudes to bail their asses out. Last year a family called into a local radio show in a panic. They "rode 'er out" and one of the elderly people sharing the trailer needed medicine and the dirt tracks to the county highway were blocked. They needed help. The sheriff's office had to take manpower off the street and send it to help these idiots that defied orders.

Last week some dickhead family decided to go out boating in hurricane Katrina. Smooth. Instead of making them a genetic dead end, the taxpayer had to pay for the Coast Guard to yank their stoopid asses out of the ocean, risking the lives of a helicopter pilot and others.

In the shadow of category 5 Katrina television interviews reveal a large number of New Orleansians that plan to hunker. They say it "won't be too bad". One after another says, "we're going to ride 'er out". Good luck, asshole. The city is 20 feet below sea level and waves that are 30 feet above sea level are coming. that puts your stupid ass under 50 feet of water. Math is not a strong suit of the red states.

It's also time to teach these assholes a little bit about evolution, another reality not taught in much of the South. If you decide to hunker down, go out boating, or refuse assistance when it is easily gathered, then TOUGH SHIT. Your defective germ line ends with YOU. There will be no future hunkerers, no other idiots. Most of all, there will be no brave public servants risking their lives to save your sorry ass.

You may even see red states take on a magenta hue.

Sham Shampoo, Sham Conditioner

It is important to read the labels of products that you use on your person. Work duties brought me to spew my science rantings in Columbia, MO. While staying at a bed and breakfast, I showered as per norm and used the supplied shampoo. I then did the thing that I never do and used the supplied conditioner. A quick towel drying and then out the door…

At one point I walked past a mirror and thought that I saw Bowser from Sha Na Na. Some greaser was in my usual reflection, some prick gooed up with Brillcreme. Time would reveal that it was me, and that my hair was greasy, wet and slimy. It looked like it hadn’t been washed in decades and it attracted airborne dust, spores and crud. During an entire day of scientific discourse I sported a helmet of filth.

Later I returned to the B&B only to find that the conditioner was actually “high-moisture hand lotion”. Everything was now crystal clear and it took the rest of the shampoo to restore cleanliness to my follicles.

World Wide Web

Say what you want about North-Central Florida. Its not all boiled P-Nuts, W-Stickers and rigged voting machines; it also is all about cool spiders.

Spiders are kick ass in that they are either completely retarded or supremely ambitious. My gut suggests the latter. The textbook will tell you that insects have 6 legs and spiders have 8, but close inspection reveals that the two extra "legs" are just massive spider scholngs that define the unbridled ambition and fervor of the biological class.

Tonight I walked outside into my yard only to feel resistance on my forehead, like I walked into the flat part of a trampoline. I turned on the light to observe that I had ventured into the web of a juvenile banana spider, a young arachnid, yet with the tools of a skilled webmaster. All of the senior spiders had claimed all of the primo small web hunting spots in my yard and this critter took it upon itself to ambitiously span a healthy chunk of real estate in search of airborne prey.

I admired his effort. Here was a web 12 feet wide, 4 meters high with a giant spider in the middle. I stood in awe of the creation; until the 750ml of Jim Beam decided to submit its two cents.

I reached down into my lungs and coughed up the hairriest evil hocker my alveoli could muster. I parsed my lips and dispatched a hunk of tar sucked off the business end of a Camel unfiltered cigarette in 1982. That goowad danced through the air and firmly met the web site with a gentle bob.

The spider wasted no time. Within seconds my tarry snot hocker was wrestled to dead and entombed in filamentous coccoon of spider zook. It hung like trophy, better than a moth or a junebug, it was a liquid residue of a mammal, a gelatinous offering chock full of protein and testosterone. Then the ambitious arachnid sunk its manibles deep into the gooey prey and extracted nirvana- cells, phlegm, sputum, burrito and booze. Its compound eyes rolled back on their ocelluses. Ahhhhhh.

Chances are the ambitious arachnid will pack up and go before morning, but if its there it will be big, really big, deriving nutrients from that mummified hocker- a goob so big it made the web sag. It is good that I can give a little bit back to nature, even if it is a tiny hunk of a drunken lung cookie.

A Dick's Member

When I lived in Southern Wisconsin we had the local independent grocery chain called "Dick's". Like the rest of the grocery industry Dick's decided that they wanted their patrons to contribute to marketing surveys involuntarily by offering them special deals if they presented their Dick's preferred customer card. They named it to give it a sense of exculsivity, something every customer would be pleased to brandish.

Only the plan backfired, as they referred to this program as the "Dick's Insider Club".

Say that ten times fast and see if you think someone in marketing might have been fired.

Emergency Room Bill

Last week I went to the emergency room because of double vision and atypical problems. A few hours, an IV, never seeing a doctor and a CAT scan left me in reasonable shape upon leaving. Today the bill arrived... Over $5000.

I have bitchin' insurance that I and my work pay over $600 a month for, but I still have a 20% co-pay. So it will cost me $1000 for the few hours of hospital time. Yes, that sucks and I will not go next time unless I am oozing blood from at least two orifices.

While there, I gazed at the broken chunk of humanity that lined the walls of the waiting room. I can say with general certainty that I was the only person in the waiting room that could possibly muster $1000, or had to fear damage to his credit rating for lack of payment. There were weirdos, nere'-do-wells, cretins, scumfucks, churchburners, mulletheads, goofballs, twits, ninnys, and goons. One woman emerged from a TV room with her kids. She was 24 or so and they followed her out like a mother duck... 1,2,3,4,5,6,7! Seven kids, all in age from 2 to 12. They were all admitted and spent the entire time screaming about shots and treatments. I know, I had to listen to it.

Let's see, I was there for the routine and mundane and it cost $5K. Treatment of the seven kids had to cost at least as much as my care, so that was a $35,000 night for that young mom. My guess is that she ain't going to pay for a whole lot of it. Still, her kids had Nike everything, except for that which was FUBU. Whatever that means.

Meanwhile I'm sitting there in a "where's the beef" t-shirt and some sweatpants my mom threw out when I was in high school in 1982... And I have to shell out a kilobuck? I chose not to put out free ween to all the babes when I was 12, I kept it in my pants and/or covered in latex. I did the right thing. Why do I get stuck with the bill but Ms. Vagina-A-Plenty does not?

I feel like an old crotch. It is good that we live in a time and place where a bastard family can have access to top-notch health care. However, something is severely wrong when I am there for three hours and it costs $5000, I have to pay high monthly premiums and still have to produce a co-pay, and they get it for free because she doesn't want to work and just wants to screw together a new tricycle motor every 10 months! I contribute. I get a fuckload of tax taken out monthly and I pay for insurance. I'm playing by the rules. Why do I get screwed?

I think this is how people turn into republicans.

Sick of High Gas Prices?

If you'd like to get REALLY depressed read the not-so-fine print on the "Energy Bill" (Senator John McCain called it "No Lobbist Left Behind"), where over 3 billion dollars in subsidies and additional tax breaks have now been granted to oil companies.

Are we mad yet?

I Shit You Negative (revisited)

I originally posted this in January, but it is so sweet, I had to show it again. This is a mobile billboard in front of a church in Melrose, Florida.

I would offer a comment, but it speaks for itself.

Evolution and Creationism, End of Discussion.

Last night it occurred to me how to frame the Evolution vs. Creationism issue in a short simple phrase that nobody can argue with:

Evolution seeks answers to the question;
creationism seeks questions for the answer.

Game over. Creationism is "anti-science" and should not even be considered as any part of a scientific curriculum.

Mr. Turtle Pool Terror

I walked out of K-Mart on a hot summer day, thinking about how good it would feel to submerge my sweaty self in some cool water. Apparently the family that walked out behind me had the same idea, and not a minute too soon, as a funny smell of fermented fish boulion emanatted from their sooty pores. There stood the stinky family, dad in his sleeveless t-shirt that said, "Drop the Chalupa", a witty Taco Bell catch phrase from the 1990's. Mom had on short pants that were too thin for her legs making each look like a sausage that had been liberated from its casing.

The kids were cute, a boy and girl, brother and sister, one day to be husband and wife. They scampered around in a circle, swollen in anticipation. Soon the red-vested clerk appeared in the doorway with the new plastic pool, one of those that is shaped like a turtle, only with a concave shell area.

The kids were estatic, this was clearly a big deal, and it was cool to see that they were so crazy excited about the big bowl. The family progressed across the parking lot to a blue 1968 Chevy Chevelle Malibu Classic SR (the one with the V8 350 with pocket ported torqer heads, the comp 280 cam, edelbrock performer intake, and holly 600) that had "antique" plates, yet it was completely covered in grey bondo patches. A bitchin' ride. The children piled into the back seat where they were likely conceived, and dad set the new pool onto the roof. Mom slithered into the car, dad climbed into the car, and no tether was produced to retain the pool.

Instead, the car backed out of the parking space, and the windows descendend into the doors. Next a little tatooed stick arm emerged from each side of the car to grasp on to the pool. Dad burned a little rubber and headed toward the open road. I was overcome with a very clear picture of what the future would hold... And I had to witness it first hand.

I ran to my car and caught up to the family at a stoplight, the fragrant family's exhaust mixing with that of their car. When the light turned green they jerked to a start, merged onto the highway and quickly accelerated.

10... 20........ 30.......... 40................ 50......................

The large plastic dome shook on its base, the little grimy hands fighting Bernoulli's famous principle with all the strength their track-marked arms could muster. Instead of pulling over, dad pushed it a little faster, probably thinking "If we can only get to 70 it'll glue down".

A sudden snap of wind broke the disc free from the hands that held it, lifting it gently into the fracas of swirling highway wind currents. Two little faces popped up in the rear window, eyes open and mouths agape as the new turtle pool danced on the wind currents for a few seconds before it chanced to crash to earth direcly in the path of a speeding semi. It was crushed to a plastic pancake in an interval faster than mom through the door at a WalMart early bird sale.

Above the brake lights I saw the two little faces screaming in absolute horror. Mom started hitting dad with the other tatooed arm and dad pulled over. I kept driving because I didn't want to watch him frogger across I-75 to fetch a fragmented kiddie pool, but it probably would have made a good blog for another day in and of itself.

The moral of the story might be to use rope to tie stuff down to your car, but I think the greater lesson is to be sensitive to when something funny might unfold before you, then do what you can to witness it when it happens. The image of those screaming kids, faces glued to the rear window is so burned in my memory that I laugh whenever I think about it. In the future I'm going to buy a digital camera so I can capture these images to share here, as they can be priceless.

A Good Day for Science

I have the pleasure of being a scientist. I run a first-rate research program, supervising 9 excellent scientists, ranging in skills from gifted undergraduate researchers to advanced Ph.D. level scientists. I am grateful that I get to redefine the very edge of understanding everyday. It is a career I highly endorse, and I feel that training scientists will be critical to this nation's survival. I explain--

Seconds ago the space shuttle landed and I got choked up. I get misty often with science, perhaps too emotional. For instance, I had to pull over when I heard that the Ivory Billed Woodpecker was not actulally extinct.

On the same day that science and engineering has again conquered mankind's quest into space, I had to endure further discussion on bringing Intelligent Design (aka Creationism) into our classrooms. They want to teach belief, not fact, not testable science. This undermines the very base of the sacred scientific method-- develop a hypothesis, test it, re-test it, and interpret the results. At that point one may determine the validity of the hypothesis by whether the data support or do not support its contentions. That is how science works. Every day I get to generate evidence that informs our hypotheses, whether it supports our best guesses or not. Sometimes, we are wrong, and that's good because the exceptions are invariably much more interesting than the rules.

Creationism is predicated on a rule, a single mundane rule that God did it all. They expect science to capitulate, that whatever the hypothesis is, no matter what the data are, no matter how sensitive the tests are, it is all WRONG unless it ends with the earth being 6000 years old and made by God. Period. There is no testing, no hypothesis, just a conclusion that then can be used to pick and choose supporting evidence. How unscientific can you get? THIS is terrorism, paralyzing our children with myth and belief ahead of science. While children in the rest of the world are learning science, our children will be instructed on how to subvert the scientific method and use faith, belief and conjecture to solve important questions. We'll build that generation that knows there are weapons of mass destruction and can kill thousands based on a belief over scientific evidence and fact.

As a scientist my mind is open. If Creationists could provide me with evidence that the earth is only 6000 years old and that some god put everything here, I'll look at it. If it passes objective scientific scrutiny then I'm all for it. That is my rule. Evidence shapes outcomes.

The Creationist mind is closed. The only data that count are those that support their conclusions. All the rest are lies and distortions. The earth if flat again.

I maintain that it is a good day for science. The success of scientific endeavors, as well as the further erosion of our country's scientific base continue to drive my energy and ethusiasm for discovery. It is hard not to be productive in a well-equipped, superbly staffed, scientific theatre on a beautiful morning where science has prevailed, yet scientific ignorance is poised to destroy.

Terrible Ted is Truly Terrible.

When I was 13, back in 1980, I cranked my clock radio every time "Wango Tango" was broadcast over the airwaves. This risque, double-entendre-soaked tribute to scrumping was my favorite song, belted from the pipes of Thaddeus "Ted" Nugent. Back then The Nuge' would turn his Birdland to 11 and play an infectious homage to sex, drugs and rock and roll while swinging from a vine in a loincloth. So stimied was the pubescent Schmootzie that he became an ardent fan of Terrible Ted.

While the rest of my cohort was still learning the YMCA dance and trying to reconcile the Death of DiscoTM I took to the antics of Ted and aspired to learn his craft. I sat for hours on my bed, literally playing Stranglehold until my fingers bled. I could pick out little bits of the 13 minute guitar solos and practiced with mighty diligence. I would mow the grass in a loincloth and my dad hit me in the head for once for thanking "all the Nashville Pussy" and for yelling, "San Antonio, suck my bone-io".

I appreciated even the crappiest of Ted's later stuff and even went to see him play live a few times. He is an excellent showman and can make your ears bleed even with a skeleton 3-piece band. That, is rock and roll.

*****

Then I made the mistake of not listening to his music and listened to his scary rhetoric instead. His misaligned, jaded perceptions were so off base that I could not believe that it was the same guy that was telling me as a teen to "pretend my face was a Maserati". I could not believe what I was hearing, I was so disappointed. It was like coming home from college to find my brother blowing my dad.

Shattered were the images of the wildman, the unbridled gifted guitarist. Instead he was just another dupe, another rich dick that knew what was best for everyone else. He's another patriot championing the virtues of the "land of the free" while simultaneously endorsing an agenda that limits access and freedom. It's easy to make the rules and direct everyone's rights and responsibilities when you're extremely wealthy.

Now I listen to "stranglehold" and try to remember Terrible Ted when he was the good kind of terrible, not just another dupe in a zebra-striped sleeveless t-shirt.

The Really Bad Thing

A long time ago, in my very first blog post I referred to the RBT, or Really Bad Thing and have not spoken about it since. See, I don't like to think about the RBT because it makes me sad. It is not a question of if the RBT will happen, it is a question of when. The persistent bombings in England are a reminder of how a small group of militant religious kooks can change lives forever with a few pounds of fertilizer. Our nation, a large group of militant religious kooks, enjoys good ol' Christian revenge. Our unChristlike lust to get even has brought us to a dangerous precipice. The world hates us, we're stupid, and we have leadership that insists only on fueling acts of violence.

When a couple of extremists can do the damage they did with the ease they did it, one can only guess at the magnitude of the attack that is coming, the RBT. As a nation we fucked up. After 9-11 the world stood with us. Our leaders made up stories of evil weapons to justify the invasion of a sovereign nation that had little, if anything, to do with the attacks. Then we told the rest of the world to fuck off when they suggested we use restraint. WWJD? Rather than using our wealth and power to aid, feed, and educate, we chose to further agitate a global climate of hate. Essentially it boils down to our Savior on a Stick is cooler than their Five Pillars of Ritualistic Ignorance. The fact that life as we know it will end over ideology, we'll sterilize a planet based on a battle of who's creator is better. It is nothing more than insanity that a battle over a creator will cause our destruction.

The next big attack will not be an army on our shores. They are already here. It will not be a suicide bomber on a train, it will not be a stick of dynamite in a Starbucks. The RBT will be a coordinated, paralyzing attack on metropolitan areas that will kill people, destroy infrastructure and disable a limping economy.

In a world with missing nukes, in a country with porous borders, with leadership that believes in solving problems with killing, it is the only way it can end. A Really Bad Thing. Madness begets madness and hate escalates until one stubborn bully decides that the effort is not worth the cost in lives. Here we have a stubborn religious jihad against the west pitted against a retarded cowboy xenophobic nation that feels a happy duty to cleanse the planet for Jesus.

Hence the road to disaster. The most enlightened decisions on life, liberty, freedom and the importance of human life will come from the rubble. We won't worry about embryos and fetuses, we won't worry about gods and borders. Possibly it will be bad enough that the survivors will all stand united as humans. Perhaps they'll stand together and pledge to put care and love above politics, put education and technology above allegiance to an invisible man in the clouds.

It is a shame that I'm counting on catastrophe to bring us a clue.

Schmootzie KO'd

I write today from the Schmootzie Recombinant DNA Laboratory, since I was assigned to strict bed rest by an emergency room doctor. What do they know? About 12 hours ago I was taking in a dose of misinformation from the liberal media (CNN) when I could no longer resolve the television images. A quick look at a digital clock revealed insane double vision.

X24's dad just told me about detached retinas and I thought I must be a victim, only it was in both eyes. What are the odds? All was a bit blurry and weird. I felt fine but had weird speech problems; slurring and the inability to find the next word. No, I was not drunk (for a change).

Mrs. Schmootzie was concerned. While I was mixing a cocktail to solve the problem (I thought that maybe I could cancel out the double vision by making it double in the other direction), her great wisdom landed me in the emergency room at a local hospital.

They gave me all the tests and I'm in excellent health except for the freaked-out vision. I was excited about the "digital exam". It sounded so high-tech, but KY and a rubber glove is about as low tech as you can get.

A CT scan found nothing. No major problem like a stroke anyway. I have some kind of cyst, an intracranial pusbag or something that might be the problem, but they don't think so and I'm following up with my normal physician today.

I was fairly dehydrated and they IV'd in a liter of the most expensive gatorade I'll ever consume. The nurse kept shooting big (I mean like several inches in the tube) air bubbles into my arm and that didn't sit well with me. My internal plumbing may be oxygen rich but it is bubble free. All those old Sea Hunt episodes taught me bubbles + bloodstream = bad.

At this point they are chalking up the whole episode to dehydration, but I still feel shitty and weird. For certain, it is all in my head at this point.

I'm going to follow doctor's orders and go back to the big top soon. My little coconut needs to be protected as my brain is my number #1 money maker. I don't want to use my #2 money maker because I don't have the energy to work in porn again.

Thanks for the good stuff on evolution vs. idiocy.

Creation vs. Evolution, the Final Chapter

Let's put this discussion to bed. Let's face it, people that believe in an omnipotent invisible man in the clouds are going to have no problem believing that humans were placed on the planet 3500 years ago, a couple of days after it was created. Those among us that are science educators or make decisions based on evidence obtained from hypothesis-driven inquiry passionately want to teach people facts, downplaying beliefs.

It does not work. The brainwashed masses don't care about facts, they don't care about evidence. The Bible trumps them all. You cannot debate with these people. They swear that they know the truth; that dinosaurs walked with people and were wiped off the planet by Noah's flood, that the Earth is only a third older than the dead guy on a stick.

One cannot question this logically, because it comes from a place of no logic.

The solution to the "debate" is to let them have their way. Allow prayer in schools, but only during discussion of evolution. Let the students that don't want to consider empirical evidence go into another room and think about baby Jesus.

Why? Because we can further separate two distinct social classes in this country, those that have a clue and those that do not. Facts always win, those that subscribe to evidence and reality will always earn more, live more happily and find greater life satisfaction than those that live in constant fear, guilt and ignorance.

Plus, why should I spend my time as a science educator forcing people to believe facts? If they don't want them, they don't have to have them. I don't need the competition in the future.

To me, the best investment in Homeland Security is an educated populace. However, only the country in last place among developed nations would elect George W. Bush as a leader. He wants to teach fables in classrooms to keep out children dumb and submissive so they'll grow up to be good little religious limbaugh zombies and vote for leaders that can manipulate them with fear of god.

Let's close the book on this debate, for there is no debate. They are completely wrong and you'll never change their minds.

The Loving Act of Abortion

Everyone is familiar with the pro-life and pro-choice stances on a woman's right to make decisions regarding termination of pregnancy. I'd like to add a third leg to that stool-- my stance is 100% Pro-Abortion. See, I have removed a woman's right to choose in the other direction. On Planet Schmootzie you don't get to reproduce and pass on your potentially defective genetics until you prove that you can be a decent parent and cover the needs of the child. On the outside this looks like an draconian practice, yet with close analysis it is clearly the only way to end a spate of world problems and stave off new ones.

The goal is to stop the suffering and this lies in the woman's ability to regulate reproduction. You can sterilize 99% of guys but that 1% can still generate a few unwanted acts of conception a day. The woman holds the womb, and the woman is the center of the way in which the wanton production of children needs to be controlled. The uterus holds the power, and the future of the human race if it is used wisely.

It is all about where you want the suffering to occur. In Niger thousands die every day from preventable illness and starvation. Christian missionaries deliver aid, but remind the people not to use birth control. With dead crops and little commerce there's lots of time for scrumping. This tied to the fact that most children die makes parents desire bigger families to starve. Here the suffering is confined to innocent children that rot to death, malnourished and covered in flies. There is not enough food to go around, leading the entire set to die more slowly. Parents have to watch their children get weaker and weaker, to deteriorate until they close their eyes for the last time. Children suffer, parents suffer, communities and nations suffer. Wouldn't it be easier to just RU486 the fertilized ball of cells? It wouldn't know what hit it! A glob of cells doesn't suffer, and if it does then I don't have to hear it scream or see it die on the news.

In America the only part of the population pyramid that is growing rapidly is that associated with poverty. The affluent and middle class are having fewer children while the poorest of the poor are trying to raise large families with no resources. The number of children growing up in poverty rises, while schools and infrastructure deteriorate around them. Despite the parents' best intentions they don't have the resources to raise a family of 14. Shouldn't we protect their best interests by regulating how they reproduce and tax the system?

Shit, we make people buy a license to drive a car, own exotic pets, own a gun; but we let anyone that wants to screw and generate offspring do it freely. If you want to volunteer and adopt someone else's problem you have to fork out $30K and be approved to do it! This bothers me because I made the choice NOT to reproduce simply because I knew I could not afford it (with time or money).

I want the government to cover three other costs before any foreign country gets any other aid; I want abortion on demand, reversible sterilization until competent to raise children and free implantable, long-term contraception for all. On the homefront I would like to see reversible sterilization or complete use of Norplant or similar contraceptive until a couple could demonstrate financial and emotional competence to embark on parenthood.

Yes, there will be many lost unfairly. I would have never been born, as my folks' didn't have a dime and ended up with my stupid face to feed. Oh well. Sometimes you have to take radical action to save the whole.

Religious types will call this plan insane, as they want more poor people to fuck like bunnies and fill God's planet with His love. Get it through your thick skull, God too practices abortion, he just waits for the kid to be born and THEN makes them suffer miserable existences, forcing them to hurt along with their families. Until your lazy-ass God starts watering deserts and raining food and money for all, we better get moving on a more efficient plan.

Magnetic Ribbons #3

Magnetic Ribbons #2