It’s been yet another week and I’m again behind on my posting. I’ve decided to try something new this week, I’m offering a ‘news roundup’ of things I found interesting, important, and insightful. They are presented in no particular order.
Wisconsin Police Chief Writes Himself a Ticket
KEWASKUM, Wis. - Police Chief Richard Knoebel says he wasn’t about to take the easy way out when he accidentally drove past a stopped school bus with its emergency lights flashing.
For violating traffic laws, Knoebel wrote himself a ticket for $235, docked himself four points on his driving record and paid the fine the next day.
I applaud Mr. Knoebel and his actions. I’m sure that police are more honest and trustworthy than the general American population (not everyone, though, I’m making generalizations), but it’s still amazingly reassuring to see that he had the honesty and integrity to do what was right. I’m sure that he could just as easily have ignored his violation and gone on without a second thought. I wish I could say that this is indicative of a new moral and social direction in America, but I’m afraid it remains an outlier in the continuous decay that surrounds us.
Switzerland May Allow Assisted Suicide for the Mentally Ill
LAUSANNE, Switzerland: A ruling by Switzerland’s highest court has opened the possibility that people with serious mental illnesses could be helped by doctors to take their own lives.
Switzerland already allows physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients under certain circumstances but the Federal Tribunal’s decision, which was released on Friday, puts mental illnesses on the same level as physical ones.
I see real problems with this on two fronts, one being the continuing decay of the importance and sanctity of human life, and the other being the fact that mentally ill patients are being allowed to make such decisions. If many mentally ill patients cannot even make decisions about their treatments, what position are they in to decide to end their lives?
Frankly, I just don’t get the idea of assisted suicide laws in the first place, and I find physician assisted suicide especially troubling - it is the role of doctors to work to protect and save their patients, not end their lives. I don’t really care if people decide that there lives are so terrible that they need to commit suicide, but at the point that there are laws that allow doctors to ‘help’ is just insane. And what is there to stop the slippery slip from assisted suicide (which is apparently now expanding) to mandatory euthanasia for seriously ill or elderly patients. I don’t like it one bit.
China to Censor Year of the Pig Commercials
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Chinese state television will censor advertisements featuring pigs in order not to offend Muslims in the Year of the Pig, a media company said on Friday.
“Originally they didn’t want pig images in ads on TV, because they worry about conflicting issues with Muslims in China,” said Lisa Wei, managing director of media investment firm GroupM China Trading.
Personally, I find this terribly surprising and a sad reflection of the world we live in. While I can’t say that I care for the Chinese government or their rampant censorship policies, this just seems to be going off the deep end. I’m not even going to pretend to be an expert on China, but I’ve always had the impression that they at least ignore religion and often seem to actively suppress it - it seems very strange to me that they would thus censor for such a purpose. The other aspect that gets to me is the fact that the Chinese have a rich culture dating back 1000s of years. For a great many of these years, the zodiac system and lunar calendar have been essential - that they are censoring their own traditions to pacify Muslims is silly at best and cultural suicide at worst.
More than 120 People Killed in Baghdad
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A suicide bomber driving a truck loaded with a ton of explosives hidden beneath cooking oil, canned food and bags of flour obliterated a Baghdad food market on Saturday, killing at least 121 people in one of the most fearsome attacks in the capital since the U.S. invasion in 2003.
It was the fifth major bombing in less than a month targeting predominantly Shiite districts in Baghdad and one provincial city to the south. This one leveled about 30 shops and 40 houses, witnesses said.
What is it with these terrorists?! When are they going to learn that killing innocent civilians (and your own people at that) is no way to get the support you need to make real change. I’m going to refrain from offering many comments on this, mainly because I just can’t understand why the terrorists perform such heinous acts and I have no ‘advice’ to offer. I just know that there is someone out there who can stop this, some way that it can be done, I’m just not sure who or how.
Teacher Fired over Suicide Bomber Comment
Andrew McLuskey was sacked from Bayliss Court Secondary School in Slough after a Religious Education lesson discussing the pros and cons of religion.
Pupils at the predominantly Muslim school claimed Mr McLuskey said most suicide bombers were Muslim.
I’m not going to bother finding statistics for this one, but I’m confident enough to say that his comments were 100% accurate (that most suicide bombers are Muslim). I understand that the fact he teaches ar a mainly Muslim school (talk about the Islamification of Europe), but if the facts do support the statement, I see no justifiable grounds for letting the teacher go. I understand that the school likely wanted to create a ’safe’ environment free of ‘prejudice,’ but to fire a teacher over (seemingly) factual comments is insane and incomprehensible in my mind.
Again on a bit of a tangent, this situation highlights an interesting difference between British and American schools. In the United States even teachers of accused terrible crimes will almost always be put on ‘administrative leave’ for weeks or months before the school can even consider firing said teacher. In England, it seems, a few complaints about a teacher’s comments (even if they are seemingly truthful) and the teacher’s out the door faster than you can ask, ‘huh?’
German Preteen Gets Sex Change
A 12-year-old German boy who insisted he was a girl trapped in a boy’s body convinced his parents that something had to be done, so they agreed to allow him to receive a series of hormone injections, making him the youngest sex-change patient in the world, according to published reports Monday.
[…] Her treatment, which has cost more than $40,000, is being funded by German taxpayers.
This story comes straight from the ‘what in the world were they thinking’ department on multiple levels. I’m really not even sure where to begin, so I’ll go ahead with the most obvious to me.
What in the heck were they thinking. There is no way in the world that a twelve year old has the maturity, intelligence, and common sense to make such a life-altering decision. The very idea that this was ever allowed even makes me a bit nauseous. People are born with a specific gender for a reason, and to do something so disgusting and self-mutilating as ‘gender reassignment’ is a complete travesty to the moral and ethical values that lie at the basis of our society and culture. I am also appalled at the doctors for taking any part in such a disgusting act.
I realize that much of the scientific literature does not support my following contention, but I still firmly believe that virtually all of the diseases that deal with gender identity and sexuality are entirely psychological in nature and can be treated with the right combination of therepy and neurological medications. Until I see solid and repeated scientific evidence, I also refuse to believe that any of it is genetic.
In the whole scheme of things, some random Tim becoming Kim is not going to have any impact on me at all (beyond, perhaps, spawning a rant like this). But this is different, and if I was German, I’d be fuming mad and protesting the government right about now. Why? The $40,000 cost of Tim’s mutilation is being paid for by the German people, through their national health plan, and ultimately through their taxes. I’ve always thought that socialized medicine is nonsense, but this takes it to a new low. In some countries (Canada comes to mind), people have to wait days, weeks, or months for the medical care they need (perhaps to save their lives). Yet, at the same time, government funded health care is permanently disfiguring a young boy in Germany. Does anyone care to explain why this is a good thing? I guess that’s one more reason to avoid the Democrats in 2008.
Boston Bomb Scare
BOSTON — The CEO of a New York City-based marketing firm apologized for a publicity stunt that caused a bomb scare, saying the firm had acted quickly to try to resolve the problem.
[…] More than three dozen of the devices were installed around Boston weeks before authorities responded Wednesday. Authorities shut down highways, bridges and river traffic as bomb squads checked out the devices. There was barely a stir in nine other cities across the country where similar devices were placed.
I fully understand that authorities across the United States (and the entire world) have been very uptight and perhaps a bit jittery in recent years, but I just don’t see how LED signs can be confused for bombs. I understand that some of the locations they were placed could be considered targets for terrorist attacks, to nearly shut down the city over it was certainly an overreaction.
When it comes to punishment, I’m really not sure what should be done. Yes, the men placed very odd, clearly either littering or vandalizing signs around the city, but I believe them in that they had no criminal intentions and certainly did not intend to create a bomb scare. At the same time, I think that they (or the advertising agency) should be held somehow responsible for their actions, most likely in a financial manner (reimburse the police and other public safety costs) or perhaps community service, but not through prison time - we have bigger things to worry about. I also hope that this incident sends a message for any person or company considering an unusual or ‘creative’ marketing campaign, please try to avoid possible bomb scares.