Arizona has passed a very controversial Immigration law. Trite as it may be, I do some sociological research by reading angry statements on Facebook. Its a bit more juvenile than talk radio, but unfortunately I also get to find out which of my 'friends' espouse said beliefs/mantras/bigotry.
My thoughts on this matter are mixed; If Arizona is doing this to force action by the federal government, it is a great move. The immigration system as in currently stands is broken. the tough at the border policy allows an underclass of illegal immigrants to live and work in our country, yet not live with the same rights and protections of citizens.
I think the anger directed at 'illegal immigrants' is misdirected. These are honest people who want to work and earn money. When I stand next to a citizen of Mexico, I can not see any difference, any real reason why I should earn $10/hr while my Mexican Neighbor earns $2/hr for the same work. Am I a better person, morally superior or of a better class to deserve such benefits as social security, good schools, and the government safety net if my earnings were to fail? On the contrary, I am a stay at home Mom, I don't even work. Lots of people work harder than me, are smarter, and better people.
Furthermore the Laws as they now stand are broken. In the early 1900's they were outright bigoted. They favored light skinned western European immigrants over the darker, poorer Eastern Europeans. I say that our laws today are inefficient and convoluted. Perhaps a historian of the future will look back and call them bigoted.
How will this situation look to historians of the future? We live in this rich country, yet we get incredibly angry when people come in and work, because we are afraid they might dilute our wealth, furthermore we punish them with deportation and anti-immigration militias but the business owners who profit from their work are not a part of the national outrage. The blame lies conveniently upon those least able to defend themselves.
A well-managed guest worker program is the best solution. As proposed by Lant Pritchett in
Let Their People Come, available in its entirety here;
http://www.cgdev.org/content/publications/detail/10174
Another question is this; The Western World is rich, the developing world is poor, as economies change, or as in the case of Iceland explode, is this divide sustainable? It is not fair for us to have such excess while so much if the world has so little. I know it is more complicated than just sending food and money, that economies and cultures have to develop. How can we justify 8 cars for every 10 people, while half the world lives on less than $2.50/day.
Is there an end to our greed? When we have 20% of the world's population with 75% of the money, That 20% is unlikely to share but rather will make up all sorts of reasons why sharing would actually be bad for the lower 80%. The most common lie is that the rich have some how earned their money through work and sacrifice and that the poor by default have not worked hard and do not deserve to have money. I have observed that this lie in various forms, grows stronger as the wealth increases.
I do not have a happy solution for this situation. I am frustrated and saddened by reports from Unicef like this;
According to UNICEF, 24,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.
I think that being aware of this problem and its possible causes is one of the steps towards formulating a solution.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Saturday, May 22, 2010
I need to run
Today I sacrificed my run so that my husband could pick up some stuff from the hardware store. He can not know the depth and breadth of such a sacrifice, and did not value the time as I did. He left later than he expected and returned without the stuff.
SO I gave up my morning run, and He did not get the stuff he wanted.
GRRRRR.
SO I gave up my morning run, and He did not get the stuff he wanted.
GRRRRR.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
placebo effect
I love to see stuff like this on the web
http://holfordwatch.info/
Holford watch.com is a site devoted to debunking A psuedo Scientist in the UK, a Man named Holford who claims to be a nutritionist. It looks like he promotes nutritional treatment of disease, but with little to no evidence to back up his methods.
There is legitimate nutritional medicine, legitimate nutritional supplements that can help a person. Fake science, psuedoscience hurts people by
1. Taking the money of people who are sick and often desperate for a cure.
2. Alternative medicine can replace legitimate medicine, interfering with a legitimate cure.
3. Alternative medicine by its very nature suggests that regular medicine is somehow not legitimate. It promotes other remedies and cures that can be potentially harmful, as they are unregulated and untested.
4. This culture is related to the anti-vaccination and anti-science movement, which are harmful to the public health at large.
5. Elements of the anti-science community reject the teaching of evolution and natural selection in public schools. This is one of the major reasons for the poor quality of science education in public schools.
OK, nothing new here. But some of this stuff 'works' and now we are to the placebo effect. It is powerful, it is real, and now perhaps to curtail some of this craziness we ought to have doctors prescribe sugar pills.
check out this article on the new role of placebo in medicine.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124367058
Perhaps the current role of non-legitimate alternative medicine is fulfilling the role of the placebo and the placebo needs to have a real place in modern medicine. Certainly a regular doctor prescribing fake medicine is better than a greedy quack. Of course there is a lot of placebo effect in regular medicine, and real medicine in legitimate alternative treatments, I just get excited about stuff that takes advantage of the sick and desperate, and costs a lot of money, especially stuff like chelation therapy which has been studied by the FDA and found to be ineffective.
Cheap fake medicine is fine.
http://holfordwatch.info/
Holford watch.com is a site devoted to debunking A psuedo Scientist in the UK, a Man named Holford who claims to be a nutritionist. It looks like he promotes nutritional treatment of disease, but with little to no evidence to back up his methods.
There is legitimate nutritional medicine, legitimate nutritional supplements that can help a person. Fake science, psuedoscience hurts people by
1. Taking the money of people who are sick and often desperate for a cure.
2. Alternative medicine can replace legitimate medicine, interfering with a legitimate cure.
3. Alternative medicine by its very nature suggests that regular medicine is somehow not legitimate. It promotes other remedies and cures that can be potentially harmful, as they are unregulated and untested.
4. This culture is related to the anti-vaccination and anti-science movement, which are harmful to the public health at large.
5. Elements of the anti-science community reject the teaching of evolution and natural selection in public schools. This is one of the major reasons for the poor quality of science education in public schools.
OK, nothing new here. But some of this stuff 'works' and now we are to the placebo effect. It is powerful, it is real, and now perhaps to curtail some of this craziness we ought to have doctors prescribe sugar pills.
check out this article on the new role of placebo in medicine.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124367058
Perhaps the current role of non-legitimate alternative medicine is fulfilling the role of the placebo and the placebo needs to have a real place in modern medicine. Certainly a regular doctor prescribing fake medicine is better than a greedy quack. Of course there is a lot of placebo effect in regular medicine, and real medicine in legitimate alternative treatments, I just get excited about stuff that takes advantage of the sick and desperate, and costs a lot of money, especially stuff like chelation therapy which has been studied by the FDA and found to be ineffective.
Cheap fake medicine is fine.
Monday, May 10, 2010
facebook, I hope, is not a reflection of america
Facebook has made me lose faith in my country.
I have used it to reconnect with some old freinds, including my old room mate Melissa, who is as awesome and smart and funny as I remember. I am glad that I have some contact with her again. Unfortunately I have also seen many other friends, and I have seen some ugly ugly opinions and ideas.
1. 'Death prayer for the President' This horrendous group on face book advocates praying for the president's death in a funny witty way. Obama is a scapegoat in so many ways, He is facing one of the most difficult presidencies in recent history and has performed, so far in an exemplary way. He is not making everyone happy, but that is not his job. No one really wanted to be president this term, The republicans chose McCain, who was as much a democrat as they could get, and the Democrats narrowed it down to Clinton (who was unelectable due to her husband) and Obama. There really wasn't a choice. He was put in this crazy situation and now he is doing the best job that anyone else so situated could do. I HATE how health care is pinned on the president (though I am glad that it passed) when every detail of the plan is a compromise between the white house and the senate.
2. 'Drug test everyone on welfare!' and other such ill-formed political minded groups.
Rife with misspellings, these groups are full of lots of resentment and hate, but are not directed in a rational direction. There are no welfare recipients who sit home and do nothing all day long. There is a welfare to work program. I am afraid that the old system that attracts so much ire and hate may have actually been better. A full-time mom taking money from the government to support herself and watch her kids is at least able to raise her own children in a decent secure way. When government subsidized childcare, and insists the moms work to 'earn' their living, the children are shuffled off to substandard care.
I am not saying that every mom is better than every babysitter (I do not want to get into the mom wars) but rather that the average low income Mom loves her children and takes better care of them than the average low-income childcare center.
I saddened to think that people I know may actually subscribe to such false ideas and racist, classist ideology.
3. "Vaccinations/Hospital birth/Modern science is very possibly a government conspiracy"
ACK! I have had to block some friends because they kept posting stuff like this and then other people would agree with them. I know that there are crazy people out there with bad ideas, but now because of facebook I know who they are. I have lost so much respect for so many people because they are just so incredibly stupid. There are real problems in our country right now, actual gaps in the education system, environmental challenges, and sociological issues that need attention and public understanding. Wasting our time on fake problems (which conveniently can be solved by products sold by these same friends' multilevel marketing businesses) wastes our collective time and mental energy.
4. wanton idolatry
bedazzled, farmville, kidnapped game, foodfight
they are all silly time wasters, and now I know who wastes their time. so sad.
5. breast cancer/heart disease/skin cancer/infertility awareness
clicking on a button may make you think that you are supporting the said cause, but in reality it just makes you feel good. If you really want to help, donate money or go to the website and explore ways to volunteer. Joining a facebook group may be counter productive in that it may fulfill your need to do real good thus preventing some real action.
Most of these 'causes' are fairly benign. Cancer is bad, but also highly cureable. It also tends to strike randomly, thus eliminating any guilt or blame for any action or inaction. There are far fewer groups devoted to potentially controversial disease such as diabetes, lung cancer, type2 diabetes, or obesity. These afflictions are preventable and to care about them presupposes action and activism. But actually doing something is not a part of the facebook culture. People sitting at home trolling their friends statuses are not, in their hearts, wishing to be people of great action. So these more active causes are less popular.
I have used it to reconnect with some old freinds, including my old room mate Melissa, who is as awesome and smart and funny as I remember. I am glad that I have some contact with her again. Unfortunately I have also seen many other friends, and I have seen some ugly ugly opinions and ideas.
1. 'Death prayer for the President' This horrendous group on face book advocates praying for the president's death in a funny witty way. Obama is a scapegoat in so many ways, He is facing one of the most difficult presidencies in recent history and has performed, so far in an exemplary way. He is not making everyone happy, but that is not his job. No one really wanted to be president this term, The republicans chose McCain, who was as much a democrat as they could get, and the Democrats narrowed it down to Clinton (who was unelectable due to her husband) and Obama. There really wasn't a choice. He was put in this crazy situation and now he is doing the best job that anyone else so situated could do. I HATE how health care is pinned on the president (though I am glad that it passed) when every detail of the plan is a compromise between the white house and the senate.
2. 'Drug test everyone on welfare!' and other such ill-formed political minded groups.
Rife with misspellings, these groups are full of lots of resentment and hate, but are not directed in a rational direction. There are no welfare recipients who sit home and do nothing all day long. There is a welfare to work program. I am afraid that the old system that attracts so much ire and hate may have actually been better. A full-time mom taking money from the government to support herself and watch her kids is at least able to raise her own children in a decent secure way. When government subsidized childcare, and insists the moms work to 'earn' their living, the children are shuffled off to substandard care.
I am not saying that every mom is better than every babysitter (I do not want to get into the mom wars) but rather that the average low income Mom loves her children and takes better care of them than the average low-income childcare center.
I saddened to think that people I know may actually subscribe to such false ideas and racist, classist ideology.
3. "Vaccinations/Hospital birth/Modern science is very possibly a government conspiracy"
ACK! I have had to block some friends because they kept posting stuff like this and then other people would agree with them. I know that there are crazy people out there with bad ideas, but now because of facebook I know who they are. I have lost so much respect for so many people because they are just so incredibly stupid. There are real problems in our country right now, actual gaps in the education system, environmental challenges, and sociological issues that need attention and public understanding. Wasting our time on fake problems (which conveniently can be solved by products sold by these same friends' multilevel marketing businesses) wastes our collective time and mental energy.
4. wanton idolatry
bedazzled, farmville, kidnapped game, foodfight
they are all silly time wasters, and now I know who wastes their time. so sad.
5. breast cancer/heart disease/skin cancer/infertility awareness
clicking on a button may make you think that you are supporting the said cause, but in reality it just makes you feel good. If you really want to help, donate money or go to the website and explore ways to volunteer. Joining a facebook group may be counter productive in that it may fulfill your need to do real good thus preventing some real action.
Most of these 'causes' are fairly benign. Cancer is bad, but also highly cureable. It also tends to strike randomly, thus eliminating any guilt or blame for any action or inaction. There are far fewer groups devoted to potentially controversial disease such as diabetes, lung cancer, type2 diabetes, or obesity. These afflictions are preventable and to care about them presupposes action and activism. But actually doing something is not a part of the facebook culture. People sitting at home trolling their friends statuses are not, in their hearts, wishing to be people of great action. So these more active causes are less popular.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
how to behave in church
Last week, a silly converstaion in a church class left me sad, discouraged, and feeling like m ytime was being wasted. I left the room when my kid started ating up, and jsut didn't try that hard to go back inside.
What I shoud have done; r5ised, my hand, and voiced my problem. I am sure I was not the only person annoyed with the message of the conversation,s and perhaps a more helpful lesson could have ensued.
When I don't agree with stuff st church, my job is to contribute to the action, steer it in the right direction. I am a part of this church, it means that I need to contribute and I will. This is the proper way to conduct my life.
This could lead to some interesting conversation, we will see.
What I shoud have done; r5ised, my hand, and voiced my problem. I am sure I was not the only person annoyed with the message of the conversation,s and perhaps a more helpful lesson could have ensued.
When I don't agree with stuff st church, my job is to contribute to the action, steer it in the right direction. I am a part of this church, it means that I need to contribute and I will. This is the proper way to conduct my life.
This could lead to some interesting conversation, we will see.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
The great debate
THis week in sunday school , we discussed leviticus 23, teh story of Balaam and the talking Ass. This Balaam was a non-0Israelite prophet, and probably was not such a bad guy. The fact that he couldn't wee the angel that his Ass saw, was probably due to the Lord removing his prophetic sight from him, that he was only able to communicate with god intermittently. I feel that I am only able to communicate intermittently, but this is not due to God removing the means of our communication but rather my own intermittent worthiness. That being said, Balak, who is tryign to get Balaam to curse Israel thinks of God as soemone who can be bought or manipulated into doing the will of man. Balak may not be such an awful person in general, be just has a very wrong idea of how God works.
ANyhow, Balak builds 7 altars, sacrifices a bunch of animals, the Balaam goes to curse Israel, then ofcourse God tells him to Bless Israel, and he does that instead. Then Balak, not being one to give up, builds 7 more altars, and offers up a bunch more animals. Balaam is again constrained to bless Israel.
The big question that our wonderful teacher brought up at the end of this lesson is this;
How much of our church service is done like Balak, building 7 altars and offering animals so that God will do our will?
This brought up some introspection. What exactly is God's will concerning my life? I want my life's master plan to include a 3:30 marathon, possibly a few 100milers and being a seminary teacher. I also want to serve my fellow man by teaching high school math, after raising my 4 wonderful children. I also want to spend every saturday evening watching Dr. Who with my Husband who will continue being my faithful spouse well into eternity. I want to be a democrat who works towards real change in this country's foreign policy.
I am afraid that my life might contain some difficulties. If my marriage were to prove undesirable, I would be uncomfortable. Perhaps my political ideas will develop into something more than heartfelt wishes and half formed ideas and I will actually have to take drastic action to live a life in accordance with what I believe to be right. Financial devastation could occur in the form of job loss, or a family member could die, or I might have to talk to my parents about serious matters and watch them face their own craziness.
I wish they would separate. Marriage is not about being chained to the albatross forever. This is the bad side of temple marriage. When there is abuse -especially emotional, which is harder to see and often perpetrated by the woman- the abused spouse feels extra obligation to stay in the bad relationship and the abuser can use that to guilt them into staying.
So far my strategy has been to ignore their craziness and move far away. I also have a lot of kids, so if they are on the phone I can just pretend that someone needs me and hang up. This will not work when they kids are older, but because my Mom is so self destructive she will probably be dead by then.
I am so not visiting them this summer.
ANyhow, Balak builds 7 altars, sacrifices a bunch of animals, the Balaam goes to curse Israel, then ofcourse God tells him to Bless Israel, and he does that instead. Then Balak, not being one to give up, builds 7 more altars, and offers up a bunch more animals. Balaam is again constrained to bless Israel.
The big question that our wonderful teacher brought up at the end of this lesson is this;
How much of our church service is done like Balak, building 7 altars and offering animals so that God will do our will?
This brought up some introspection. What exactly is God's will concerning my life? I want my life's master plan to include a 3:30 marathon, possibly a few 100milers and being a seminary teacher. I also want to serve my fellow man by teaching high school math, after raising my 4 wonderful children. I also want to spend every saturday evening watching Dr. Who with my Husband who will continue being my faithful spouse well into eternity. I want to be a democrat who works towards real change in this country's foreign policy.
I am afraid that my life might contain some difficulties. If my marriage were to prove undesirable, I would be uncomfortable. Perhaps my political ideas will develop into something more than heartfelt wishes and half formed ideas and I will actually have to take drastic action to live a life in accordance with what I believe to be right. Financial devastation could occur in the form of job loss, or a family member could die, or I might have to talk to my parents about serious matters and watch them face their own craziness.
I wish they would separate. Marriage is not about being chained to the albatross forever. This is the bad side of temple marriage. When there is abuse -especially emotional, which is harder to see and often perpetrated by the woman- the abused spouse feels extra obligation to stay in the bad relationship and the abuser can use that to guilt them into staying.
So far my strategy has been to ignore their craziness and move far away. I also have a lot of kids, so if they are on the phone I can just pretend that someone needs me and hang up. This will not work when they kids are older, but because my Mom is so self destructive she will probably be dead by then.
I am so not visiting them this summer.
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