The argument over Vaccines

Today I came across this image.

I've read some of the back and forth between vaxxers & anti-vaxxers, so I understand, to a degree, some of the arguments.  But this really made me pause.  I want to point ou that this isn't about people who Can't vaccinate their kids, but rather it is about the people who Won't.

The fact is, that for me, this is so completely not the issue.  I don't have a moment's pause for my vaccinated kids.  They can totally play with unvaccinated kids all day long an it doesn't bother me one iota, because I am so sure the vaccines work (within the bounds of effectiveness, of course).
One of the commenters on this image said something to the effect of "why should I care about your kids? It's my job to care about my own."  I feel this is a pretty valid argument, for some things.  However, we also live in a society and part of being in a society is caring for those around you.  More accurately, this is the job and responsibility of those living in a community.  I posit that almost none of us live in real communities anymore, which is why this attitude exists.  However, that is not the issue I wanted to address so we'll leave the community discussion for another day (if you want an interesting insight for it, read the 2nd to last chapter of "Dumbing Us Down" by Gato.  It's about the public school system, but I felt that chapter had a lot of Truth and Insight into what communities really are, and realized that for the most part, I've never lived in one outside of my extended family).

Lets talk about pregnancy, birth and babies for a minute.  I don't know about you, and what your experiences have been.  I only know mine, and a small portion of other people's.  For me though, pregnancies are hard.  My pregnancies aren't "Difficult Pregnancies," but they are hard.  The first couple weeks are fine, and because I chart I know I'm pregnant about a week after conception.  But then I start getting sick.  Not the lovely puke-once-and-be-chipper-the-rest-of-the-day sick.  I wake up nauseous, I dry heave for minutes on end because my stomach is empty, I can't eat much of anything without throwing it up and dry heaving more and throwing up/dry heaving is painful.  It's utter wringing of my stomach, twisted and stomped on, over and over and over.  And should I actually bring something up (usually I dry heave until whatever stomach acid is in my stomach comes up) it burns.  And I am nauseous All.  The.  Time.  Yes, I took medicine to help, but it was just a case of orders of magnitude.  I wasn't as nauseous, didn't dry heave as much, didn't wish myself into non-existence as much.   There was also much pondering on the wisdom of continuing on in such misery.  Plus very serious weight loss. And this for weeks.  9 weeks, actually.  That seems like a short time.  Just two months.  Just nine weeks.  Just 63 days.  Just 189 meals.  Just 1,512 hours.  Just 11,340 minutes.  Until it is constant, unrelenting and continuous.  Then it is an agonizing amount of time.
Moreover, it's an awful lot of effort.  On top of having to take care of the house, and the other kids, and the spouse, and the job, and the pets, and the cooking, and the shopping, and the everything else.  When it takes everything you've got to get up because life is so much worse when your vertical.
But, at least there is an end in view, with a bundle of happiness waiting, so you push through and eventually it's behind you.
Then things are hunky dory for a bit as you start to get larger and larger. And you have to pee all the time.  And you don't quite fit into anything anymore (doors, cars, chairs etc).  And you can't sleep comfortably, and then you can't sleep at all.
For 9 months you've been giving up yourself.  For 38 weeks you have been sacrificing your body.  For 266 days you have slowly been sacrificing your self, what you once were, heading imminently toward something new and utterly life altering.   For 6,384 hours you have worked.   And then Labor begins and you work some more.
Labor and Birth.  Compared to the time that pregnancy lasts, the time that life encompasses, it is a mere blip.  But what a blip.
Now, I am a big fan of epidurals.  Absolutely, every time for me (I'm also a big fan of every woman choosing the method that is right for her).  My first child was induced, so aside from some discomfort of very early labor before my epidural there wasn't much to that one as far as work went.  Easy peasy.  My second child began labor spontaneously. It took about a half hour from the time my water broke to get everything together and get to the hospital.  Now, I have very quick labors, so I was having contractions less than 5 minutes apart by the time we got into the car.  I thought those were pretty bad, but after several minutes of what I thought was horrible, horrible pain over and over, I finally got my epidural and everything was great.   ...except it wasn't.  My son was 3 days early and his lungs weren't developed quite enough and he was swiftly whisked off to the NICU.   And for the first time I felt real Fear.
I felt the all-too-real Fear that my child, my little baby, would die.  I had only had him for minutes, for a couple hours, but I loved him so deeply.  I had sacrificed for him and was not yet done with my sacrifice to bring him into this world, to provide him with a body, to give him a chance at Life.  And I had Fear.
Fortunately, after a week in the NICU accompanied by a spinal headache and gallstones throughout, I was able to bring my precious child home.   But now I knew Fear, and Fear did not leave me for weeks.
My third birth was different.   The pregnancy was much the same, 2 months of abject misery followed by 7 months of increasing discomfort, change and sacrifice, etc.  But now I was acquainted with Fear, real Fear.  And Fear returned to me, bit by bit, as Birth approached.  Fear that we'd again be too early, that we'd again be in the NICU, that we would again be facing Death.  And Fear grew as I started having preterm contractions on and off.  The last week before we hit 'term' was agonizing, immobilizing with Fear.  But we made it.  Barely.  At 2AM of the first day of week 37, I went into real labor.
To this point I had been acquainted with Sacrifice, Fear, Work, and some degree of Pain for my babies.   But this one was different.  Because I birth quickly, I had only 1 hour left by the time we reached the hospital.  Because no one believed you're really in labor until they've done a million tests and they think that 'quick' means several hours, and because I manage pain relatively well, we waited for nearly an hour before being actually admitted as my labor pains became more and more intense.  I asked for an epidural several times, but due to unfortunate timing, the anesthesiologist had gone into a c-section about 10 minutes after I got there.  So I got the unique experience that I'd never hoped to have of giving a natural birth (after the nurse finally checked my dilation and realized I was about to pop and literally rushed me to a room yelling at anyone she saw to come assist her because there was no time).
I've read women's accounts before about how wonderful natural birth is.  They make it seem like it's all rainbows and unicorn farts.  They are lucky.  That is not how I experience birth.  Without going into excessive detail on the experience, I will say that I thought gallstones were the worst pain in my life worse than labor and on-par with a spinal headache.  Until I experienced true active labor.  Until then, I would have described labor pains as how I imaging someone sticking a knife into my guts and squiggling it all over would feel.  But now I don't think that does justice to how I experience real labor.  And that doesn't even touch the experience of actually giving birth.  My powers of description fail me when I try to quantify what that experience.  All I know is that now my 1-10 pain scale has been seriously skewed.
I have felt Pain now, and am in awe, deeply in awe, of the millenniums of women before us who experienced that for each and every person who ever lived on this earth, and countless more who never drew breath but came through the same amazing feat.  I was in labor for 2 hours, but am humbled to think that so many women throughout history, and probably many still today, who do that for hours on end, for days sometimes.  And I understand now how a woman could so easily die from it.  I am a fan of epidurals, but I don't think one can truly appreciate what it is to give birth until she has done it naturally.

And then, after all that, I now had a beautiful, precious daughter.  I Sacrificed my body for my babies, I became acquainted with Fear, saw Death fliting in the shadows, and experienced for the first time true Pain.  And all that, only to start the life of my babies.
Once they are here, then comes the long sleepless nights.  For the first 4 weeks or so I never get more than 90 minutes of sleep at at time.  There are studies on sleep deprivation and how it really screws you up.  New mothers get the joy of experiencing that.  The next 4 weeks saw that number rise to 2-2.5 hours of sleep at a time, at least once a day, but often only once a day.  But slowly, it increases.
And as you begin dealing with the mental changes that come with sleep deprivation you begin to loose yourself, your very identity begins to be subsumed by the child you now have, who is now the focus of everyone's attention, along with the endless diapers and feedings and spitting up and laundry and mindless baby games.  This is moderated to some degree by a good support system of course.  But you also have several weeks of painful recovery, and a lot of work if you ever wish to reclaim some semblance of the body you knew before.

So you have all of this Price you have paid for this little baby, this little person, combined with the unquantifiable amount of Love you feel for her (when you're rested enough to be in your right mind).

I have all of this versus the anti-vaxxers claim that she doesn't give a damn about my child.  She may not, but I do.

So, what threat is her unvaccinated child to my precious little 2-month old who has just begun to smile?
Say they go on a trip in an airplane and unvaxxed child gets exposed because airplanes are great places to spread disease.  Or they visit a family member at a hospital.  Who know how the child gets exposed and subsequently infected.  The child is now unknowingly 1)infected and 2) contagious.
Shingles is contagous by contact with pus: shingles person touches rash then doorknob to the restroom.  Child touches doorknow and now has chikenpox
Chickenpox is most contagious the week before symptoms appear.
Chickenpox isn't too bad for newborns?
Lets talk measles.  Measles can live in the air for up to two hours.  Infected person sneezes, an hour later UV child walks by and now is infected.  Incubation period is about 10 days or so.  She begins to have a little sniffle, but no one realizes she"s sneezing out measles yet.  Oh, and according to the WHO measles  is one of the leading causes of death among young children.
Pertussis/whooping cough?  Oftem fatal for infants.  UV child contracts it from some other kid or person who doesn't realize they've got more than a simple cough.
Polio can be asymptomatic, it also doesn't start showing signs for a few weeks.  Say UV child has that and isn't so great at washing hands after using the toilet.  Or just decided to scratch his/her butt.   Polio can be life threatening, and assuming my infant survives, might leave her with paralysis and/or nerve damage.

Pneumococcal meningitis

Pneumococcal meningitis

Pneumococcal Meningitis?  Not contagious from UV kids, but still both deadly and preventable (one can say the same thing about car accidents and using the proper child safety equipment).

So, I have my beautiful smiling 2 month old who is still too young for most of these vaccines.  My older child has UV child over to play.  I don't know the child is unvaccinated, the child doesn't know s/he is infected and contagious.  The kids play merrily, at one point picking up a toy from baby's playmat, and then sneezing on it as they walk by, forgetting (as kids often do) to cover their nose.

I lay my beautiful, precious, perfect daughter on her playmat that she loves.  My daughter who I have Sacrificed for, Worked for, gone through Pain for and Feared for, and whom I love more than all of this.  And now, in this hypothetical but all too possible situation, my beautiful smiling daughter has become infected because anti-vaxxer parent only cares about her kids, not mine.
My precious daughter is screaming in unreleavable nerve pain and can't understand why Mommy can't make it better, because anti-vaxxer doesn't care about my child, its not her problem.
My child id dying because Anti-vaxxer doesn't care.
My beautiful infant is dead, and what else is there that matters?

.
....
.....
.......

Fortunately that has not yet happened, my daughter appears to be healthy, and smiling.  But I know Fear.  It is real, and it is valid.

No, your unvaccinated kids are not a threat to my vaccinated kids.  That is not the issue.

Pneumococcal meningitis

Pneumococcal meningitis

Rape Culture and Books

Rape culture.  Our society is run rampant with it. 
It infests nearly everything like the morning glory in my garden.  It's in every one of my flower beds, wrapping itself insidiously, tightly around every last flower with it's little innocent looking white flowers.  Nearly impossible to kill, it drops four fresh seeds from each blossom daily that can germinate up to 50 years later, it snakes its way underground.  Perhaps with daily application of serious poison I might be able to kill off the root system, but unless I use surgical precision my extensive and diverse flower gardens will be killed off right along with it.
What an apt metaphor for the rape and violence against women that runs through our culture.
Much has been said, and far more eloquently than I am capable of, by others about what rape culture is, why it's bad etc, so that is not where I'm going.  Let's talk books.

I am a voracious reader, mostly of fiction.  My favorite genre is fantasy/sci-fi, and I'll talk about why in a sec.   I also enjoy a good mystery, love historical (and even only semi-historical) fiction, poetry and classics.  Recently I've discovered more and more books written in past centuries and, much to my surprise, they can be just as engaging if not more so than some modern fiction (Montezuma's Daughter - why has there never been a movie for this?!).   Can being the key word; I thought Wurthering Heights was possibly the most boring book in the world.   I love a good book.
What I've found I don't like, that I'm always disappointed by, is the genre of contemporary fiction.  Fiction that takes place in the here and now, in our real world.  They are, for me, almost without fail, utterly depressing.   Usually they're very tragic without any sort of positive balance to make the experience enjoyable.  Take My Sister's Keeper for example.  It's the story of a family pulled apart by the illness of one of the children and results in the death of one of the children.  It's terrible and tragic and we hear about that stuff in the news, we see it in our family or neighbors, we experience that awfulness of families being torn about by selfishness, disease, stress etc all the time in real life.  How is experiencing it more acutely in a book supposed to be something I will enjoy? 
Personally I read books to escape, and contemporary fiction on anchors me more firmly to this decrepit society, usually dragging me through the worst of it.  An experience I really don't enjoy.

But more than that, I prefer sci-fi/fantasy over contemporary fiction because for some reason it's the genre with the least amount of rape and general violence against women.  Why is it that modern fiction feels this desperate need to include a rape in every book?  Why is the fantasy genre the only one that understands that a book doesn't need to include a rape in it to be an engaging book full of meaning?  Have we really narrowed our perceptions so far that there's nothing more to our human experience than fighting the urge to have non-consentual sex/overcoming the trauma of said event?  We're talking about just books here, we're not even going to get in to TV, movies, videogames, etc.  Just books.   And I'll try to stay out of the murders our culture loves to portray in every media, though I think that is inextricably bound to the rape culture.
I read a book yesterday that was by a relatively new author (and thus wasn't very good, though it could have been given a few more rounds of editing and some better filling out of the characters) but it featured at least 2 women who'd been raped, one who during the climactic finale was nearly raped and 4 generations of violence against women.  In fact every last woman in this book (excepting a minor character who existed to tell a backstory and whose gender didn't matter) experienced violence against her at the hands of a male who should have protected her.  Now, you'd think given this description that this book might have been a commentary about rape culture and/or violence against women.
But it wasn't.
Nope, it was a story about the history of a (fictional) lighthouse and one guy's path to redemption (said male having never hurt a woman to begin with, he thought he'd killed his brother).  There was a minor, secondary line of story about a girl dealing with having been raped, but her resolution felt... unrealistic.  It was just a tool to make her antagonistic to the main character.   In this book rape and violence against women was just a backdrop casually used to tell a tale.
Which reminds me of another contemporary fiction I read.  In it the woman runs from a bad marriage with her child.  She goes on and on about how traumatized she is from her abusive husband.  Ok, no problem there so far, to the point where she shies away from the touch of an old male friend who's been in love with her since high school.  Ok, nice beginning.  But then, almost without noticing she throws herself at him.   Wait, what about all the issues you spent the first half of the book saying she had?  She just suddenly forgot about them?   No, in this case, again, the abusive backdrop was just a tool to keep her from falling in love with the right guy until x point in the story.  Then everything is suddenly ok.    Now, while I have been fortunate to not have ever been the victim of violence I know people who have.  Who've had bad marriages, bad experiences, traumatizing events.  For them, the effects linger.  For them healing takes time.  More than a day, a month.  More than the right moment in the tale.
These books... across all the genres, really, more and more are using rape as a plot device while ignoring the ramifications of such a very traumatic thing.  There are some who do manage to give these things the thought they should have - they tend to be the authors who make money because they're actually good at what they do.  But that's not the point.    We've fallen back on this as if it's an ok thing.   I want my character to be afraid of dark spaces.   What are the options? could have been mugged, attacked by a bear, seen a ghost, had a sibling who was attacked by a bear, watched a bear come out of nowhere while they were camping and she had gotten lost in the dark and seen it knock a head off a dear and suddenly felt her own frail mortality.  Sheesh!  the possibilities are endless, but what is most likely to be used? She was raped.  
I guess my problem is that we're allowing something that is truly a big deal, truly damaging, truly real to become a cliche.  Can't think of a reason to make two characters meet and fall in love? let's make both their dads have the exact same characteristics of yelling all the time, beating their moms and being general dicks.  Is it feasible in real life?  Absolutely.  But a good author isn't so lazy as to make both worthless men exactly the same, at least not without so dialogue between the offspring about it to explain to the reader why the author couldn't have made one angry about x and the other because of y.  Unless there was a good reason for them to react exactly the same for exactly the same reason.  Otherwise, once again, you're using a terrible thing as a cliche because an author can't think of something better.    Really, a good story can be told without using rape and violence against women as a crutch.  Use it for a subject, but not a stepping stone!
Rape culture and acceptance of violence against women perpetuate because we let it.  In this case because we willingly read books that use it as a cliched backdrop to tell a tale that could be told just as well, if not better, without it.  Books are just one corner of the beautiful flowerbed and we're letting this voracious, twisting, murderous weed twine ever tighter through them.
Let's stop supporting the spread of this weed before it is all that is left in what was once a verdant and diverse garden.

Complaining vs Not

Today, I am confused.

Lately I've been in some degree of pain.  Let's focus on the physical for a moment, though I think this discussion spans the gamut (physical, emotional, mental, etc) of pain.  Last weekend I got sunburned.  It's certainly not the worst sunburn I've ever had, or that ever has been, but it still hurt pretty bad.  It still does, in fact.
Now, I'm a fairly friendly and even-tempered person once you get past my introvert nature, but the last few days I've been increasingly surly, whining to myself about all the ways it hurts.  Not being the type to impinge on other people, I keep it to myself.  But finally I just couldn't stand it any more, so I wrote about it on a private forum.   On the one hand, it was a relief to finally get it out there but on the other I was overshadowed by the feeling of 'what if someone I know reads it and it hurts them?'  Worse, in the end, it just made me more surly and irritable.  Spreading and nurturing negativity does that, even if it's just within yourself.
In my grouchiness this morning, some bright chipper sunspot posted on facebook something challenging the hapless passerby-er to "go 24 hours without complaining and see how your life starts to change!"   I growled at it and scrolled past, especially since that is my usual modus-operandi which I was currently and deliberately eschewing.  
But darn my brain!  It won't let it go.
So now I'm stuck trying to figure this out.  Sure, let's go 24 hours without complaining, I like to be happy.  But I don't like ignoring the pain.  That never turns out well and tends to make an injury heal slower, incorrectly or not at all, tearing the wound open further.
So where is the difference?  At what point does my expression of the pain to someone who might help become a complaint?  Can I be positive while still being honest?  No, I can't say 'it doesn't hurt, don't worry about it' - that is a lie.   How can I make you see the depth and serious nature of the injury, that though it appears superficial to you it's real and painful and valid to me?  How does one do this without crossing the line of being a whinny complaining (insert appropriate noun of your choice)?
The problem with complaining is it breeds negativity and ill feeling.  How often, perhaps, do Drs go in to see their patient and ask "How are you doing" and the patient replies "I'm doing well!" when they're obviously not.  I wonder how often the Dr thinks "If you're so great why are you here?"  We're so obsessed with not letting people see our pain, we can't complain!  But this just leads to holding it in and the injury festers. 
But constant complaining isn't any better.  No one wants to be around a pessimist, the ones who are always bringing you down, who can never say a positive thing.  The ones who are made of complaints.  They exude as much negativity and bad feeling as holding in your pain.

So, again, the question how can you tell someone it hurts and it's a problem (and have them really understand) and yet still not complain?  There must be a balance somewhere, but where? and how?

Yeah, but...

Today I came across a page entitled "15 Things You Don't Owe Anyone At All (Though You Think You Do)."    Overall, I felt that it was pretty accurate, except that the way it was phrased, if everyone took it right at face value, would make us a society of jerks.  Most of these my exception is that explanations are owed to the people who are closely and negatively affected by our choices.   And I have to wonder if stuff like this is part of what is making us all so... anti-social.  That and sit-coms where people are rude and sometimes downright cruel to the people closest to them, whom they should be treating with the utmost care and respect, and then we're told to laugh at it.  And then we wonder why our own relationships don't ever work out...   But that's a different topic.

Here's my "yeah, but" list for that article.

1. You don’t owe anyone an explanation for your living situation.

Absolutely.   From the article "If you are fully aware of your living situation, then it means you have your own reasons for being in that situation that are nobody else’s business."  Yeah...except when your living situation directly and negatively impacts someone else, like your children or your spouse.  If my husband suddenly decided to up and move us to a different place you bet your buttons he'd owe me an explanation.  I think children are owed (eventually) an explanation for the circumstances for which they lived, be they good or bad.  Perhaps it's not a sit-down-and-talk-it-over, but they deserve to understand, to some extent, the reasons life was as it was, even if it was good.   Also, I think it's not a bad idea to sit down and have an honest chat with yourself explaining your living situation, and what you might do to change or improve it should you feel that it needs such things.

2. You don’t owe anyone an explanation for your life priorities.

A agree pretty much with this one as well (ok, I agree with all of them).  Go ahead and stick to your chosen priorities, but be honest with yourself about what they are.  In fact, I'd go so far as to say that you might owe yourself and explanation of your life priorities, and if you like what they are then go after them.   But remember that other people might not like or agree with your priorities, and that's not your problem.  Though it might affect your relationship with them... but I think the best thing you can do is remain true to yourself.  If you change your priorities, do it because you feel it needs to be done, not because someone else is pressuring you to it.  Anyhow, moving on...

3. You don’t owe anyone an apology if you are not sorry.

I agree with this one, too.  An apology when you're not sorry is a lie.  I did read an interesting bit of advice recently that I thought wise.  The suggestion was that instead of apologizing, offer gratitude.  Rather than "I'm sorry I was a jerk" (if you don't feel like you were a jerk) try saying "Thank you for being patient with me today, I've had a really difficult day."  This keep name-calling out of the equation (see, nobody got labeled a jerk here).  But remember, the goal here is honesty, both with yourself and the other person.   And do apologize if you are sorry.  It's amazing how much an honest and heartfelt apology (especially if you add "Will you forgive me?" at the end) will go toward starting to mend the hurt in a relationship. 

4. You don’t owe anyone an explanation for requiring alone time.
And I agree with this one, too.  Alone time is very important.  However, I think it's prudent to explain to the people closest to you why you need it from time to time.  Imagine if your spouse just randomly shut themselves up in a room, or left on a hike or whatever, without telling you why they just wanted to be away from you.  You'd wonder about the health of your relationship.  And seriously, how hard is it to say "I love you, I just need some time to myself for a bit." ?    And especially with young kids.  For an introvert such as myself, having small children, while wonderful on so many levels, is mentally and emotionally exhausting.  I rarely get time without them running in to me to talk or get help, or feed them or break up a fight or get a toy, etc.  It's even worse when I just want to talk to my husband after a long day about anything at all from the grown up world.  I don't get to have a conversation with him that isn't interrupted literally every two or three sentences with their need for attention.  Wearying.   But, they need me, they rely on me and they love me.  They DO deserve an explanation when I need my alone time, else they think they're being shunned, that I don't love them.  It breaks their hearts when I snarl at them to leave me alone for 5 freakin' minutes.  However, I've learned that if I explain to them that I need some alone time (usually I have to put it in terms they understand - I'm grounding myself from them until I feel less grouchy) then they're not hurt.   So I'd seriously say that you owe an explanation for needing alone time to the people who you seriously hurt by not showing up (that is, your spouse and kids).  Social engagements, no, no explanation required.  But the people closest to you?  You do if you actually care about them more than yourself.  (You owe them an explanation, but you don't necessarily owe them the forfeiture of said alone time)

5. You don’t owe anyone your agreement on their personal beliefs.
Yup.  But that doesn't give you the right to be a jerk about it.  And remember that they don't need to agree with you, either.

6. You don’t owe anyone a yes to everything they say.
Yup.  The article says "You have a right to say no whenever there is no compelling reason to say yes. In fact, the most successful people in the world are those who have mastered the art of saying no to everything that is not a priority. Acknowledge other people’s kindness and be grateful for it, but don’t be afraid to politely decline anything that takes your focus away from your core goals and priorities. That’s how to get ahead."   No additions from this quarter.

 

7. You don’t owe anyone an explanation for your physical appearance.
"You might be slender, plump, tall, short, pretty, plain or whatever, but you don’t have to explain yourself to anyone for why you look how you do. Your physical appearance is your own business and you are obligated only to yourself. Physical appearance shouldn’t determine your self-worth."  Damn straight.  I'd also expand this to include bucking 'beauty' norms.  If you want to wear make-up or not, if you spend an hour on your personal grooming every day or 15 minutes, if you wash your hair with the fanciest products or have gone simple with baking soda and vinegar, if you wax all your hair or never shave, or anything in between, you don't owe anyone an explanation.  Ok, except maybe yourself.  As long as you're honest with yourself about why you do what you do with your appearance, no one else's opinion on the topic really matters.  

8. You don’t owe anyone an explanation for your food preferences.
Yup.  Unless your food preferences are destroying your kids' health.  Then maybe you owe them an explanation and apology (unless you're not sorry... in which case maybe you'd better not be in charge of your kids' food).

9. You don’t owe anyone an explanation for your sex life.
Except maybe your partner.

10. You don’t owe anyone an explanation for your career or personal life choices.
The article's comments on this change the header a bit - they mean an explanation of how you choose between career and personal life.  With that slant, I agree.

11. You don’t owe anyone an explanation for your religious or political views.
This should have been partnered with #5 I think. I agree that you don't have to explain yourself, but it doesn't give you the right to be a jerk about it.  And remember that they don't need to agree with you, either.

 

12. You don’t owe anyone an explanation for being single.
Yup

13. You don’t owe anyone a date just because they asked.
Yup.  "Someone might be nice, good looking and you may even be a little interested, but you don’t owe them a date just because they ask. If you feel deep down you don’t want to go on that date, then don’t. You may offer a reason for declining, but keep it brief and stick to your decision."  Or sex because they bought you dinner, or anything else along those lines.

14. You don’t owe anyone an explanation for your decision about marriage.
Except maybe the other person involved, your spouse or spouse-hopeful.  And it's always good to be able to explain it to yourself.

15. You don’t owe anyone an explanation for your relationship choices.

 I think this is a similar thing to #14.   But I'd probably add that the exception to my exception is if there is abuse involved.  If there is abuse coming from another party of the relationship, no explanation is needed for termination the relationship.

Pattern Recognition

Pattern recognition.  I'm pretty sure everyone knows what it is, and I'm certain everyone does it.  It's one of those marvels of the human mind, our tendency to search out and recognize patterns.  So much so, in fact, that occasionally we see patterns that aren't there.  But perhaps that's our trust in our ability to see patterns combined with our sense of superiority...  And, on the other hand, it seems there are those out there who exclaim, whenever they hear something they don't like "Oh, you're just seeing patterns where there aren't any!"

At any rate, I was watching Cosmos with my boys tonight.  We watched the episode about lead poisoning, which was very interesting.  There's a lot that could be said as commentary about that episode; things about the politics of money, scientists besmirching the name of science for money, doing excessively dangerous things for the sake of ease and money (wait, was there any of that that wasn't about money?).   There's also lots of cool science and a bit of history.  Mass spectrometers are awesome.
The part that got me thinking this time, though, was about the radioactive half-life of uranium.  This combined with our dependance of carbon dating to assess the age of some object.  Now, this technology and this science is really, really cool.  I love science, I really do.  It is half of all Truth (the definition of truth per my definition of it, especially in regards to science and religion is meaty enough for a different post) is found in science and the observable world.   But the fact is that radioactive decay/half life has always seemed somewhat flawed to me.  Maybe I just don't understand the concept well enough, maybe it's something in the math or the logic that I'm just not quite getting, but deep down, I've always felt it is flawed.
This episode of Cosmos reminded me of this deep seated feeling.   Our Narrator-of-Awesomeness (because I don't remember his name, though I should, and because I don't feel like looking it up) mentioned that the testing and tracking of the decay of Uranium was tested over decades.  Now, that's a pretty formidable set of data, hard to argue with.  Except, I have to wonder...
The Laws of Physics and of Nature aren't quite as concrete as we'd like to believe.  The universe, on a grand scale, doesn't always follow the law that govern our everyday lives.  Physicists were amazed to discover that on a small scale, many of the Laws of Physics no longer even applied (hello, Quantum Mechanics)!    This leaves me to wonder.   According to the testing that was done on a meteorite shard that hit the Earth found it's Uranium to be nearly 5 Billion years old.  Ok, cool, fair enough.  But... has the test been repeated on other meteorites? On rocks brought back from the moon?  Surely?  I wonder what those results say.  And more, wouldn't that number be more the age of the solar system, perhaps, than the earth?  Maybe, maybe not (that is where a larger sample size might come in handy).
But more, I wonder, we tested Uranium decay over a couple decades.  What's a couple decades to 5 billion years?  Not even a flash in the pan.   Are we doing Quantum Physics sized test lengths on an subject of Macro proportions?  What if the rules are different for larger swaths of time?
Go to a grocery store and people watch.  At first thought you might shrug them off as all random and see no pattern, beyond their humanity.  But pull back, perhaps many of them are wearing coats.  What does it mean?  Maybe they all like coats, maybe it's cold out, maybe it's rainy, maybe they all carry shotguns.  Expand your time and you may find that more people come a certain time of day than others.  Expand and you'll see a new pattern where some days are busier than others.  Expand again and you'll see a change of clothes over the seasons of the year.  Expand again and you'll see patterns of fashion.  All where once you saw only random people...
Patterns are everywhere and in everything, but sometimes you just don't see them because you're too close, your sample size isn't large enough or perhaps you just don't know what to look for.  Where one person might see a pile of rocks, another may see where they come from, what has happened to them, if they belong together, etc.  Where one person sees raindrops falling in random places, another might see the undulating pattern of the wind in those drops.  Pattern recognition is what gives us science, gives us society, gives us life as we know it.
True, not all patterns should be maintained. True, not all perceived patterns are accurate.   True, not all patterns lead to something greater, some patterns hold us, individually and as a people, back from becoming all the great things that we could be.  But, one way or the other, it seems to me that the worst thing you could do would be to ignore the very existence of these patterns.
They are here, and they come, and come again.  But, you cannot truly take control of them, to break them, or use them or bend them to your will, until you understand them.  And for that, you must first find a way to see them.

Anyhow, that's enough rambling on that subject for now.  :)

First Up

Howdy!

So that you know, this isn't going to be about horses.  Most of the time.  Really, it'll just be me, thinking out loud.  Or something.

I like to believe that I think about things.  I consider my thoughts fairly enlightened.  However I try not to confuse 'enlightened' with 'trendy' (which can cover the same ground at times and sometimes not).  Also, I'm willing to look at things from opposing views and sometimes I might revise my stance and sometimes I might not.  Differing opinions need not always have a right and a wrong side.

Also, these posts will probably just ramble.  No well thought out and polished statements like those 'professional' bloggers for me (and they are impressive writers). Just me and my thoughts.  And your thoughts, if you choose to comment.

Anyhow...

Enjoy!