Israel

Check out this photo from Yahoo! News:

Abortion

As you either know, or have figured out by now, I'm a guy. As a guy, I understand that I have far less of a right to talk about "what a woman can/should do with her body" than a woman does. However, as a citizen, I have every right to discuss what our government does about abortion.

I would have to say that in today's lingo, I'm "pro-choice". This is not to say I think abortion is right or just or a good way to prevent unnecessary births. My personal opinions about Abortion are complicated, and as I have no personal experience with it, irrelevant (which does not mean that I wont talk about them here). I am "pro-choice" because I don't like the idea of President Bush becoming Dr. Bush, OB/GYN. There are a million different reasons why women get abortions. They range from horrible situations like incest and rape all the way to ending an accidental pregnancy. I'm sure woman have gotten abortions for reasons I could never fathom or understand. To think that our government should decide when it's right and wrong to get an abortion is crazy. I completely understand (although I don't agree with) the stance that an abortion is killing a living thing, and that if you believe that, you think most, if not all, abortions are wrong. This does not mean, though, that the government should stop people from making such a personal decision. These are personal decisions, and if you believe that it is wrong, you have made that decision for yourself -- you do not have the right to make such a personal decision for everyone else.

This is where the "pro-choice" movement screws up for itself. They focus on statements like "woman's right to choose", and "my body, my decision". These statements make people think (whether it be right or wrong to think so) that pro-choice = pro-abortion. A MUCH better stance for the pro-choice movement would be to say, "Abortion is a very serious, difficult topic. We think it should be a decision between a woman and her doctor after weighing all the issues." I know you can't put that on a billboard or scream it on the steps of the supreme court, but that's exactly the point. I understand people yelling and screaming about gun control (the topic of a later blog, I guarantee), because that is a much less personal issue. It's an issue of personal freedom and whatever. Abortion is a serious issue with serious repercussions for each individual involved. Those people on both sides who scream and rally are not treating this issue with the sensitivity it deserves. This behavior also leads to statements like "All abortion is wrong." Clearly there are cases of the health of the mother that could make an abortion a reasonable choice.

Partial Birth Abortion. Sounds quite horrible, huh? Sounds kinda like parents who wait until the last minute to make the decision if they want to keep the baby? That's what many people want you to think, but this is obviously not the case. Partial birth abortion is used mostly to save the life of the mother. The fact that this is now illegal is scary. There is a good article on this here.

Basically, we need to sit down, as a nation, and realize that being pro-choice does not mean that you support abortion, it means that you support the medical community and understand that a doctor who has been practicing medicine for 20 years knows more about health issues than all 535 congressmen (that's 100 senators and 435 representatives, for those of you confused) put together. We need to start realizing that life is complex. Things are not usually RIGHT and WRONG.

Olive Theory

I have a new theory. The theory is based on surveys of people I know. It is about as unscientific as a theory can be. So, on to the theory...

I believe that a person's opinion about olives can tell a lot about them. More specifically, two people should only date, get romantic, and get married if they have the same opinion on olives. Most people have extreme opinions about olives. People that do not like them (like me) REALLY don't like them and will never eat them. People like that should only be with other people who don't like olives. In fact, I think it should be a question asked on online dating services.

This post has been in what may be a series of not-as-serious posts on my blog. I'll try to post idiotic posts like this from time to time for levity.

AIDS and Poverty

We, as Americans, love thing simple... we also love when a single problem has a single solution. This is the case with both AIDS and poverty. It seems to me that most Americans think of these problems in America and world-wide as the same epidemics. Let me explain why they're not:

AIDS:
If you live in America, you know (or damn well should know) that using condoms helps reduce the spread of AIDS. If you don't know this, perhaps you might want to consider coming out from behind the rock you've been living under. Obviously condoms don't work 100% of the time, but they sure do work most of the time. Now, if you're living in America, and you want to be careful, you can go to your neighborhood CVS and buy a box of condoms and use them on your next "night out". In fact, it's even easier than that... if you can't afford to buy the condoms, there are places you can go to get them FOR FREE. Now, let's say you live in rural Swaziland, Africa. Unfortunately for you, CVS does not have an African Bush location, so you're kinda screwed there. Also, there's a good chance you don't have electricity, running water, an independant media, plumbing, etc. Your only contact with the outside world might just be the crazy guy from the Discovery Channel. There is probably no way that you know what a condom is, let alone that one might save your life. In fact, you might not know the nature or cause of what is killing you.

Poverty:
In America, we have things like Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, food stamps, homeless shelters, work assistance, etc. If you are poor in America, you have the resources to lift yourself up from you crummy situation and better youself. I'm not saying it's easy or that everyone can do it, but it is possible. There are jobs available, and there is assistance if you pursue it. Now, I'm not saying every homeless person will be a CEO some day, but I think most homeless people of reasonable mental ability (mentally disabled homelessness is a different problem) have the ability to improve their situation, either by themselves or with the help of charities and the government (for commentary on if the govnerment should be spending money on social welfare, see the approximately 1 billion blogs on the topic). I'm also not saying that this will be easy or that people who are homeless all somehow want to be, but there is hope and a good chance for these people to life a better life. Now, lets say you live in Darfur, Sudan. You have spent most of your life enduring a genocidal, civil war. You probably live in a refugee camp on the border between Sudan and Chad. Your life expentancy is quite low because there is a good chance you will die of malnutrition, starvation, disease, rape, murder, or a genocial mass killing. There is probably a 0% chance you will ever see a full plate of food, and you will surely never eat at anything as nice as a soup kitchen. You spend you entire life hoping that a helicopter gunship doesn't fly overhead and shoot you and your family down with a spray of machine gun fire. No matter how hard you work, you will never be able to better your situation. There is no transportation to get you out of the area, and even if there was, no one would take you in. You can't even try to walk away from the refugee camp, for fear of being killed and your wife and children raped. Your only hope is that the civil war ends or that African Aid workers come and that life may be better for your children.

Now, I'm sure our government recognizes the distinction here, but I don't believe most Americans do. It's time that we recognize that there is a monumental difference between the problems here and in African, and the solutions are quite different as well. In fact, it is almost incorrect to call these the same epidemics. In America, the AIDS rate is 0.6%. In Swaziland, the rate is 38.8%. That's 65 TIMES greater! In America, the unemployment rate is about 5.5%, in Zimbabwe it's 70%. With an unemployment rate that high, how could you ever find a job?! We need to understand how different problems are around the world and start forcing our government to help these people in resonsible, ethical ways.

Wasting Water

Can someone please explain something to me? Why do people always tell you not to waste water? When you pour water down the sink, it goes through the sewage system, gets filtered a little bit, and then either sucked back into the water system or dumped into a lake or stream. That water can then be filtered and used as potable water, or it will evaporate and become rain. Either way, the water does not escape the system. The water is not destroyed so that we need to find new sources of fresh water. Am I missing something? It seems we're wasting the electricity of the processing plant, not the water itself.

Also, potable is a stupid word. It just means drinkable. Why don't people just say drinkable! (I see the irony in using potable above and then bitching about it here. I was using it above to prove this point!)

Gas Prices

I drive a Toyota Prius. I am not a hippie, though. I care about the environment, but not to any extreme. My purpose for having a Prius is not to save money, either. Even at current high gas prices, it would take me years before I made up the additional price for the hybrid system on gas savings. Perhaps I will delve into my reasons for purchasing my Prius in a later post. For now, I'd like to discuss gas prices.

Paying for gas sucks. There no way around that. And paying more for gas sucks more. We do, however, need to spend some time looking at how much other Western countries are paying for gas and why. In Europe, the average cost per gallon of gas is more than double what we pay here. Why is that, you might ask? A lot has to do with taxes. In Europe, the cost of gas is made up of as much as 60% - 75% taxes. For this 60%+ tax, the Europeans enjoy one of the best transportations systems in the world. Good quality road, trains, busses, trolleys, funiculars, etc.

Now, why should we, as Americans, pay more for gas? The answer to this has two important components:

1) Using too much gas is wasteful. No matter what some people may say, we have a limited supply of oil. How much is that? No one really knows. We live in a society that requires the use of gas. I'm not saying that everyone should drive a hybrid, or everyone should walk to work (I surely don't), but I'm saying that people should start to make an effort. If you are a single, twenty-something business-person, you DO NOT need a Hummer or Denali or Escalade. That's just BEING WASTEFUL. I know you think it makes you look cool, but would you throw all your garbage out the window and shit in the street if that was cool? If everyone made the slightest effort, we could significantly reduce our dependence on oil (be it either foreign or domestic). Money is a huge motivator of people and if gas prices increase, hopefully the waste associated with the use of these vehicles will decrease. In Europe, with their $7+/gallon price, people walk more, use more public transportation, and drive smaller cars.

2) Taxes. Most state, including my home State of Texas, charge tax on gas on a cents per gallon basis. This could very well be the worst idea. Allow me to explain. By setting a price per gallon, instead of a percentage of gas price, we are reducing the value of the tax that is collected every year. Because of the system in place now, congress would have to pass a tax increase every year to keep up with inflation. That is clearly not going to happen. The effect of this system is to cause the government to use other taxes (sales/property/income/etc) to subsidies what gas tax should be paying for (road improvements, road construction, public transportation). So, in effect, to get the same bang for each tax buck, the government is needing to either raise taxes in another area or raise the national debt.
For more information on gas taxes per state, check THIS out.

Human Weakness

I've been reading a little bit lately on studies that have been done to show how weak we all are as humans. It's something I've been interested in since I went on the March of the Living in 1998. Over the last few days, I've stumbled upon some websites which have made me revisit this belief. First, some background....

Anyone who has ever studied about Nazi Germany inevitably comes to the question: "How could so many people let something like the Holocaust happen?" It is a very interesting and powerful question. Millions of people lived in Germany during and before the war. It is impossible to believe that regular people did not know what was going on in the camps. It has been reported that the smell coming from the camps could be detected for miles. So, assuming that people knew (because they must have), why did so many people go along with Hitler? There are definitely cases of Germans helping Jews escape or hide from the Nazis (Schindler's List, Anne Frank, etc.), but most of the German population went along or allowed these acts to occur. There are also acts that are less horrific but also very disturbing, like book burning, which the Nazi got people to do.

This brings me to two articles that I've recently read. One concerns a high school teacher who was asked the very question I posed above. To answer the question, he started an experiment with the class to demonstrate how easy is can be to become brainwashed. The experiment was called the Third Wave. The other article is about the Stanford Prison Project. This was an experiment in the 1970's to understand the dynamics of prisoners and guards. The website also tries to explain the correlation between those experiments and the Iraqi prison abuse scandal.

These two studies illustrate a very strong and scary point about the human mind. Most people... Almost all people... Would say that they would never go along with a group or be led like that, but it's easy to see from history how easily a person can be swayed. It is probably too harsh to say that people are inherently evil, but it does seem that we are all weaker than we think we are.

I'll probably add to this point later, but this is a good start...