Web Addiction Gets Conscripts Out of Army
HELSINKI (Reuters) – A number of Finnish conscripts have been excused their full term of military service because they are addicted to the Internet, the Finnish Defense Forces said Tuesday.
If there’s ever a draft, I’ll have to try this excuse. 😉
“Obesity is not a disease. All this does is open the door for the diet and bariatric surgery industries to make a potentially tremendous profit.” – Allen Steadham in “Fat activists start mass protest“
Riiiiight…and smoking isn’t bad for you either. The campaign against smoking is just a front for extortion by a hippocratic mafia. *rolls eyes*
While I agree that too much emphasis is placed on appearance, in particualr thinness, in our society, I don’t think that means all superfluous weight should be accepted. Some people have genetic predispositions to being overweight. They should seek help. Some people have emotional problems that lead to overeating. They, too, should seek help. Some people eat too many damn super-sized burger meals and unhealthy snacks and drink too much soda. They should quit stuffing their faces with fat , get off their lazy, gluttonous asses and get some friggin’ exercise! (Pardon my French)
P.S. I practice what I preach. I’ve been eating better and working out. I’ve lost about 25 pounds over the last year or so.
Friend and sometime co-blogger Jerry Nora was mentioned in the June/July issue of First Things. 🙂 (Thanks, Quenta Narwenion)
"It's been a while since I've had occasion to remark on Peter Singer of Princeton University, the ageing bad boy of moral philosophy. But now Gerald Nora, a second-year medical student, sends me the dust jacket of the 1996 edition of Singer's Rethinking Life and Death. Mr. Nora is right in suspecting that the blurbs 'praising' the book might have been chosen by Professor Singer's enemies. For instance, there is this from the Washington Post: 'Far from pointing a way out of today's moral dilemmas, Singer's book is a road map for driving down the darkest of moral blind alleys. . . . Read it to remind yourself of the enormities of which putatively civilized beings are capable.' Precisely. If you want a roadmap for driving down blind alleys, this is it. Then there is this from the publisher: 'A profound and provocative work in the tradition of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.' Precisely again. Even more precisely, it is in the tradition of thinking that Huxley so powerfully warned us against." – Richard John Neuhaus
At my 21-week prenatal appointment, my doctor asked if I had read the August edition
of Prevention magazine, and urged that I do so, as she is mentioned in one of the
articles, though not by name.
My gynecologist is the only one in the Allentown, PA area that is 100% pro-life
in support of NFP, and will not prescribe hormonal contraceptives (i.e. the pill).
She and other doctors like her, as well as pharmacists like myself who refuse to
dispense the pill and other contraceptives, are under major slanderous attack in
an article entitled “Access Denied.”
The article, which is quite long and involved, states that access to birth control
is a basic right in the world of women’s health and those of us who will not participate
in its distribution are denying women the proper standard of care. The quote that
burned me the most was from a woman who could not get her “last-minute”
pill prescription filled at a CVS – “I don’t think pharmacists should be in
a position to make that decision.” Yet any pharmacist who dispensed a teratogenic
(i.e. harmful, possibly fatal to an unborn child) medicine to an obviously pregnant
woman would face a lawsuit the size of Texas!!!
I’m obviously heated on this issue. In any case, what I’m asking of all of you is
first of all to pray! Pray for all those in health care under fire for this issue,
and for those beginning health care careers who will face tough decisions about
this matter. Secondly, for all those who like to be active and speak out, I’m asking
you to, if possible, pick up a copy of Prevention magazine for August 2004, read
the article, and flood the
editors with letters to the contrary! The good news is this article would
not have been written if those who support abortion and birth control were not scared.
Women reading an article like this are bound to be misinformed and/or uninformed
about the truths (and lies) concerning birth control. I’m going to do my best to
help them find out the facts and defend my profession.
I’d also urge people, particularly women, to write to Grassfire,
the SBA List, and Feminists
for Life.
It’s good to see that natural family planning has made the news. The Washington Post has published an article about CycleBeads, a reworked version of the old rhythm method. This article is mostly positive. However, there’s a definite bias against "complicated" methods that involve keeping track of anything beyond what day it is.
"These methods are just too complicated," said Victoria Jennings, director of the IRP. "It takes two weeks to train a provider on these methods at minimum, and eight sessions with a client to learn how to use these methods."
That’s absolute bull. My fiance and I taught ourselves about NFP in preparation for our wedding. She’s been collecting data for some time now so that we have a really good picture of her typical cycle. It DID NOT take "eight sessions" – however long those are supposed to be – to learn it. We both read Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler and bought Ovusoft, a program for keeping track of all the data that supposedly force "a woman to be a fastidious accountant", as the article says. The only thing that takes some learning is how to deal with the program when it predicts strange things. Though, usually it’s caused by forgetting to log body signs for a couple days.
The CycleBeads website asks, "Why choose CycleBeads?" My answer is, "People are too lazy to take a temperature or check cervical fluid".