My friend David Hilfiker just let me know that he's publishing his writings on the web. He writes a lot of interesting, insightful material about the state of our country and our planet, and approaches his subjects of justice, religion, health, and poverty from a humble but perceptive place.

He's a Christian (which i am not), and one of a too-rare species of Christian who seems to take the best parts of those teachings and really dedicate himself to them in a way that tries to make the world better. One of the articles on his site is his Letter to Lefties, which addresses the relationship between the secular and religious sections of the progressive movement.

I've been following this story in New Orleans of a doctor and some nurses accussed of "murdering" patients in the chaos following Katrine.

It seems pretty clear to me, at least from the NYTimes article, that she was doing her best to act responsibly and as morally as possible under incredibly extreme circumstances. Yet the attorney general of Louisiana is bent on prosecuting her for murder. Nevermind that all of the patients would have died anyway, just more painfully and slowly, as the US government essentially left them there to die in a sweltering sesspool.

This is happening at the same time as Bush's veto of a bill to fund stem cell research (note: this in the first veto in Bush's entire career, the longest a president has gone without a veto since Thomas Jefferson in 1801). In a speech Bush gave yesterday, surrounded by dozens of white babies, Bush said that the bill, which would "kill" things that aren't actually alive, violates his "principles on the sanctity of human life". Meanwhile, we wage war in Iraq killing thousands of Iraq's, and fully support Isreal's slaughter of Lebanese.

"Culture of life" my ass.

ah! look how hated I am! everyone hates atheists!

"Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry." phew.

"seen as a threat to the American way of life by a large portion of the American
public"

this one kills me: "Many of the study's respondents associated atheism with an
array of moral indiscretions ranging from criminal behavior to rampant
materialism and cultural elitism."

fuck that. why don't we go down a list of the centuries most heinous criminals
and see whether or not they believe in god, or worse yet, committed their crimes
in the NAME of god. and rampant materialism? oh, yea, christians don't fall
for that. I'm sure everyone who bought a yacht in the last year swore off god
when they layed down that bucket of cash.

this makes me want to stand behind atheism even more. no more of that pansy
agnosticism! don't wimp out! civil rights for atheists!

A friend of mine wrote recently:

i'm finding it uncomfortable that most people i talk to at work are against the mta union. it's all about the high fares and the union being inconsiderate and unreasonable.

I find that pretty sad. i guess i'm lucky to work with folks who are predominantly pro-union, pro-worker types.

Seems to me, the simple question to ask is: if the transit workers' work is so critical to the city (and to your life, you pack of fucking whiners), why shouldn't they get commensurate compensation?

Due commemoration of Rosa Parks brought to mind a woman who exhibited similar courage and principle a century earlier, in New York. Elizabeth Jennings was a public school teacher and an organist at the First Colored American Congregational Church, and in the summer of 1854 she was violently ejected from a Third Avenue streetcar--not designated with the sign "Colored People Allowed in this Car"--when she refused to get off. She told the conductor, "I am a respectable person, born and raised in New-York... [you are] a good for nothing impudent fellow for insulting decent persons while on their way to church." She sued the Third Avenue Railway Company, and won (incidentally, her lawyer was future President Chester Arthur). Although the white jury awarded her less than half the $500 she had requested, the judge increased this sum, and paid her court costs. His ruling stated that streetcars were "common carriages, and as such bound to carry all respectable persons; that colored persons, if sober, well-behaved, and free from disease, had the same rights as others; and could neither be excluded by any rules of the Company, nor by force of violence."

i was reading the latest issue of Dollars & Sense (in paper!), and came across a version of this article about the interactions between the tourism industry, local communities, and the tsunami aftermath and the reconstruction efforts. It's a pretty sobering analysis.

Here's an example of a simple insight it provides that i'm embarrassed to say hadn't occurred to me before:

The ideological grammar embedded in an assessment methodology that places a hotel bed bringing in $200. a night as a greater loss than a fisherman bringing in $50 a month has far reaching consequences for the post-tsunami dispensation. With reconstruction measures predicated on this accounting of loss we are on a trajectory that exponentially empowers the tourism industry to be an even more powerful player than it was in the past, and, concomitantly, one that exponentially disempowers and further marginalizes the coastal poor.

a recent article in the BMJ talks about ethics of sterilization of young adults.

Of more generalized interest, the article talks about which wishes medical professionals (and presumably other people in a position of power or control) should be more willing to heed:

We might first distinguish between those wishes that are relatively autonomous and those that are less so. And we could plausibly suggest that wishes that are well informed and directed at the long term are more autonomous than those that are badly informed and subject to the seductions of the short term view.

So joelee, his mom, and i watched Sound and Fury, a really interesting documentary about the debate over cochlear implants. We've discussed this before, but seeing the documentary was really worth it. i recommend it.

There's more info about the film on-line here, and in particular, i recommend the deaf voices section. Very challenging, provoking stuff.

Discussion also turned to Laurent, South Dakota, which was featured in a recent NYT article (i think -- don't have the link handy): it's a town designed around ASL being the primary language.