Collateral Damage

It's official: the American people elected a total asshat into the whitehouse in 2004.

Good ol' Dub-ya has, after six years of presidency, exercised his first-ever veto of a bill passed through congress.

And what, you may ask, was such a horrendous threat to the world that our illustrious president decided to block a bill that had already received congressional assent? What was so terrible that Dub-ya felt that for the first time in his entire presidency, he had to stop it from happening? What could possibly make Bush exercise the Presidential veto that the past three presidents never once used in their entire times in office?

Stem cell research.

Yes, our great and illustrious president decided that Stem Cell research was such a horrid threat that he'd veto a bill which would have allowed it.

Yep, Bush thinks that life is so sacred that he's blocking research performed on invisible clumps of cells; which he apparently thinks is the equivalent of walking up to someone and shooting them in the head.

'Course, when it's dropping bombs on Iraqi civilians, it's "collateral damage."

And, lest we forget, while Governor of Texas, Bush shattered all records across the country for most death row inmates executed while under his charge. But that's "justice."

As of this writing, there are approximately 400,000 embryos on ice in the United States of America. Until this bill was vetoed, those embryos could have been used to find cures for Parkinsons, Diabetes, paraplegia, MS, ALS, severe brain damage... Stem cells could mean an end to organ shortages. Now that this bill has been vetoed, those embryos can be either used for InVitro Fertilization, or destroyed. This bill would have allowed those slated for destruction to be used for research. Apparently, according to the Pro-Life brigade in the US, this would be the equivalent of mass murder.

Now, for some reason that is somewhat beyond my capacity to grasp, Bush decided to announce his vetoing of this bill while surrounded by "Snowflake Babies," their term, for the record, not mine. These babies were formed from embryos which were frozen; exactly the type of embryos that would have been used for this research. The irony is that none of these babies would exist if it weren't, literally, for decades worth of research performed on human embryonic cells; but Bush is going to studiously ignore that one, methinks.

Oh, and let's not forget, IVF requires implantation of several blastocysts in the hope that just one of them will grow into a full fledged human being.

All the others, I guess they're just "collateral damage."

Marshall McLuhan was wrong.

I should probably make clear at the outset that I'm against censorship of any kind.

I'm against censoring what we watch on TV, I'm against censoring the use of some specific words, I'm against censoring what is available to be viewed or heard.

I'm against censorship; especially in an era where if you don't like what you see or hear, you can change the channel or walk away.

But free expression means, practically by definition, sooner or later, someone is going to say something, or do something, or express themselves in some way that offends you. You can't have it both ways. You can either have free expression, or you can expect never to be offended. You cannot, in a free society, expect to have both. To do so is naive and, frankly, silly.

George Carlin did a famous comedy routine where he spoke about the seven words which were specifically prohibited on television. Seven, he said, out of approximately 400,000 words in the English language. "What a ratio that is," he said in his famous routine, "399,993 to seven. They must really be bad. They'd have to be outrageous to be separated from a group that large." He then went on to list the seven dirty words; shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits; on national television.

But seriously, what is it about some words, one specific sequence of sounds that we find so utterly offensive? "Truck" is an utterly inoffensive word, but somehow, when we replace the "TR" with "F," that word suddenly becomes vile?

And what makes a word offensive anyway? How do we decide that one specific sequence of sounds is horrendous and vile? What makes that switch turn on in our brains that says "oh, no, that's a bad word?" It would be trivial for me to offend you or spew the most vile of sentiments using the "cleanest" of words. Conversely, I could express the most gentle and noble of sentiments using the most vulgar profanity.

The point is that if you're not offended by the message I'm sending, it seems to me that it's ridiculous that you'd be offended by the words I use to send it. Kinda like recieving the present you always wanted for Christmas, then complaining about the gift-wrap. It's as if they don't care if you speak with hate, as long as you use appropriate wording to do so. As if the words you use are what make the discourse hateful or distasteful.

Marshall McLuhan was wrong. The message is the message.

Have Food Dehydrator, Will Travel

So I bought myself a food dehydrator, which, interestingly enough, costs less than half the cost of the food April and I bought for the West Coast trail.

Suffice it to say that I think April and I are both sick of our insta-meals in the backcountry, and would like to have something that is a wee bit more edible. So I bought a dehydrator so that we can make something a little more gourmet, that doesn't require us to carry a huge amount of stuff, or require a lot of preparation on the trail.

I'll let you know how that turns out.

Flag Desecration

So, my other country came within a hair's bredth of a constitutional ban of flag burning.

The last time this was brought up was in 2004. Also, incidentally, an election year.

Coincidence? Um, no.

But let's talk about this ban for a second. The United States of America wanted to ban the burning of the flag.

Here's the catch tho: the Flag Code of the United States of America specifically requires a flag to be ceremonially burned if it becomes soiled or damaged or has otherwise outlived its useful life.

Apparently, that kind of burning is okay, but burning it in protest is not.

In other words, the current administration is not trying to regulate the behaviour of burning the flag, so much as the sentiment voiced by said burning.

Seems to me that there was something in that whole constitution thing about some "free expression" somethingorother, wasn't there?

Now, I understand that some people are offended by the idea of flag burning. Freedom of speech, by definition, means that you're going to be offended. It means that you're going to hear things that you don't like, and don't want to hear. It means that a Neonazi can stand in the center of the village square proclaiming his hatred of all non-aryan races without fear of reprisal from the government. Freedom means acknowledging someone who stands at center stage proclaiming at the top of his lungs what you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours.

In short, the first amendment of the constitution is meant to protect all speech, not just the speech you agree with.