MAID Service

DON’T CUT ME OFF!

1Jaded1 recently asked about local views, and my opinion and views, on medically assisted suicide.  There’s very little mention, or pushback, here.  After all, we’re safe, sane Canada, not the Bible-thumping Southern Excited States.  Do whatever you please, just don’t scare the horses.

The issue does exist here.  Locally, it’s been given the cutesy acronym MAID – Medical Assistance In Dying.  I don’t know how far that label extends.  The very day she asked this question, an Op-Ed letter demanded that “death with dignity” access should be legally guaranteed, as a right.

I stand foursquare behind that.  I believe in the maximum of personal freedom.  I don’t feel that my bodily autonomy, or anyone else’s, should be violated by some do-gooder’s trumped-up morals.

HOWEVER!!!….

Be (VERY) careful what you wish for.  I can appreciate some people’s worry about the thin edge of the wedge, or the slippery slope.  Two days later, another Op-Ed letter arrived.  17 years ago, a man’s family and doctor fought him tooth and nail, to prevent him from accessing MAID.  With medication and psychotherapy, he is now a reasonably-functional citizen.  He was never promised that he would recover, but he now has hope.  He admits that he really didn’t want to die, he just didn’t want to live his nightmare any longer.

I am all for informed personal consent, but to ensure that cases like this do not occur, is going to require some administrative oversight. – a three-doctor panel?  This is where the bigots and the bureaucrats get their hooks in, and have a field day ruining running other people’s lives – as they see fit.

The same applies for gender-reassignment therapy.  INFORMED personal consent is paramount.  If little 8-year-old Billy wants to grow his hair down to his shoulders, and wear hair-bows, nylon panties and dresses, and call himherself Suzie – let IT!  Even non-bigot observers are rightly concerned when WOKE parents are authorizing treatments for pre-pubescent children.  You’re not even supposed to get a tattoo until you reach the age of majority – the age of informed personal consent!

Let Billy/Suzie live with the public fallout of the temporary decision for a while.  If he/she/it/they are still determined to go ahead, we can be reasonably assured that the choice is valid and duly considered.  Both these decisions have offices on a one-way street.  Once you start down it, there’s no turning back.  Considerable contemplation should be displayed, before a doctor is authorized to prescribe an overdose amount of Nembutal or Propofol, or before they lop Billy’s wiener off, and start pumping hormones in.

Pragmatically, especially on the suicide issue, I say go ahead – unless they’re directly related to me.  Earth’s population is now over 8 BILLION!  The overcrowded rats are beginning to nip at each other.  I can see you, Vladimir Putin.  I fear that a drastic reduction in population is going to occur anyway.  I can see you, COVID19, and all your mutant cousins.  A bunch of suicides might help reduce the social pressure by eliminating the emotionally inadaptable from the gene pool.

A lad from Montreal committed suicide on his 16^th birthday.  On the next anniversary, his distraught mother also committed suicide.  On the third anniversary, his bereaved father also committed suicide.  I don’t wish to appear hard or uncaring (Oh, go ahead) but, apart from cleaning up the mess, and the confusion and sadness of friends and relatives – perhaps we are all better off without their contagious weakness.

A representative of the Council of Canadian Academies wants all levels of government to do something about the profusion of scientific misinformation which has caused many preventable COVID deaths.  In addition to regulating social media platforms and private messaging apps, Ottawa needs to support the production and distribution of science-based, factual information.  Science communication is facing an uphill battle.

This is one of the things that most irks me most about some Christian Apologetics debaters.  They ask, “Even if Atheists could prove that there’s no God, (That’s not our job – or our aim!) what’s wrong with believing something that’s false?”  Because it can get you killed!!  Worse yet, you can take your family, your neighbors, your friends, and even ME along with you.  I see you, Jim Jones, and David Koresh.

That’s when and why I begin to care – deeply, strongly!  In the movie, Spy Game, Robert Redford played an old agent, training a new agent.  At one point he advises, “If it comes down to between you and him – Send flowers.”  I’m sorry that you are so dumb and gullible that you will believe internet/religious conspiracy theories.  Please accept this lovely bouquet of Chrysanthemums.  We’re all probably better off without you.”

Despite those who see only in black and white, there is no perfect world, and there is no one-size-fits-all, perfect answer to either of these problems.  We’ll just have to live (or die) with imperfect humans – and keep your nose out of other people’s business, lest someone use it as an exclamation point.  😳

’21 A To Z Challenge – L

 

So, there I was, languidly lolling about.  I was afflicted with a bout of lethargic lassitude.  An A To Z Challenge post for the letter

was due, and I was lounging around, instead of writing.  I don’t want to say that my composition regimen was lax, but nothing was landing on the page.

The quick red fox jumped over the lazy brown dog.

I don’t give a shit!
Perhaps you should take a laxative.

I don’t want to have to admit that I am lazy.  (Among other reasons) That’s why I don’t have a web-cam on my monitor.  The French have a couple of softer, kinder phrases that I can use, and if it’s good enough for the French, I’m laissez-faire, and laissez-ća ā Georges enough to hide behind them.

Laissez-faire just means “let it happen,” a sort of Gallic shrug equivalent to Que sera, sera – yeah, whatever, man.  Laissez-ća ā Georges means, “Let George do it.”  That sounded like a likely solution to my lack of finished blog-post.  I gave George a call, but he was busy leading an LGBTQ+ parade in Luxemburg.

At long last I accepted responsibility for putting letters on the page.  It was the least I could do – and this I what you get when I give my least.  It was an L of a struggle.  Wednesday’s post will have a little more meat to it – curried beef, I believe – but there will also be some tofu dishes for my Vegan readers.  😉  😀

Book Review #25

The status quo is not working!
The Republic is disintegrating!

And all of this was foreseen as far back as the early 1960s.  It is a wonderful, empathetic, humanistic thing for the government to help those in need.  The author saw how socialistic support needed to be overseen and controlled – but wasn’t.

Pay a farmer not to raise a particular crop, to protect the income of other farmers who did.  Pay a single mother, so that she and her child could be assured food, clothing and housing.  Pay welfare to a man put out of work by social or technological changes.

Soon, the farmer neglects the maintenance of his equipment, and can’t go back to his trade, even when it is allowed.  The single mother has another child(ren), to increase her guaranteed monthly stipend.  She feels no urge to obtain a provider (A man, in the ‘60s), an education or training, or a job.  The guy on welfare deals drugs or robs corner stores on the side, because it’s easier than getting a real job.

Human nature being what it is, millions of people get lazy, and get used to the new status quo.  There is no impetus to do for themselves.  They become comfortable letting the government provide a reduced, but assured, standard of living.

The book: Space Viking
The book: The Cosmic Computer

The author: H. Beam Piper

The review:

Originally titled “Junkyard Planet”

Born in 1904, Piper was too young for World War I, and too old for World War II, but he must have observed the mountains of materiėl that was left when peace was finally, suddenly, achieved.  In 1963 and 1964, after the Korean War, he wrote these two cautionary, laissez-faire tales.

In each of these books, both initially set on the same planet, after an interstellar war, the people – the society – are poor.  Despite Billions of (dollars) credits worth of goods and equipment being left behind, aside from the occasional prospector/scavenger, no-one bothers to look for it.  They are so used to Big Government taking care of them, that they don’t rouse themselves to improve their own lot.

The two stories are essentially the same, only in one, Piper offers a social/financial solution, while in the other he shows a more political/military answer.  It’s the Stone Soup Theorem.  In each case, an exasperated, instigator protagonist starts a cycle of getting individuals and groups off their lethargic asses, by promising them something for nothing – if they’ll just put some work into his plan.

His credulous followers do not receive what he promises them – they get something much grander and better.  Companies are started, jobs are created, construction and trade is stimulated, unemployment almost disappears, wages go up, welfare goes down, taxes are paid, and infrastructure is rejuvenated.  The people are given back their pride, self-respect, and an incentive to continue to improve themselves and their society.

If only this would work in real life, but it won’t happen until we get a real leader – an honest visionary – who can convince a populace of passive takers, and a government of enabling vote-buyers, that more projects like the TVA – the Tennessee Valley Authority – and the Hoover Dam, will ultimately give back far more than they cost.

Phoning The Jokes In

I tried having my mother’s phone disconnected, but customer service told me that since the account was in my dad’s name, he’d have to be the one to put in the request. The fact that he’d been dead for 40 years didn’t sway the rep. Then a solution hit me: “If I stop paying the bill, you can turn off the service, right?”

“Well, yes,” she said reluctantly. “But that would ruin his credit.”

***

The village blacksmith finally found an apprentice willing to work hard for long hours. The blacksmith instructed the boy, “When I take the shoe out of the fire, I’ll lay it on the anvil; and when I nod my head, you hit it with this hammer.”

The apprentice did just as he was told. Now he’s the village blacksmith.

***

There once were twin boys, age six, who had developed extreme personalities. One was a pessimist and the other a total optimist. Concerned, their parents took them to a psychiatrist.

First, the psychiatrist treated the pessimist. Trying to brighten his outlook, the psychiatrist took him to a room filled with toys. But instead of yelping with delight, the little boy burst into tears. “What’s the matter?” the psychiatrist asked. “Don’t you want to play with any of the toys?”

“Yes,” the little boy bawled, “but if I did I’d only break them.”

Next, the psychiatrist treated the optimist. Trying to dampen his outlook, the psychiatrist took him to a room piled to the ceiling with horse manure. But instead of wrinkling his nose in disgust, the optimist climbed to the top of the pile, and began gleefully digging out scoop after scoop with his bare hands.

“What are you doing?” the baffled psychiatrist asked.

The little boy replied, “With all this manure, there must be a pony in here somewhere!”

***

In surgery for a heart attack, a middle-aged woman has a vision of God by her bedside. “Will I die?” she asks.

God says, “No. You have 30 more years to live.”

With 30 years to look forward to, she decides to make the best of it. Since she’s in the hospital, she gets breast implants, liposuction, a tummy tuck, hair transplants, and collagen injections in her lips. She looks great! The day she’s discharged, she exits the hospital with a swagger, crosses the street, and is immediately hit by an ambulance and killed. Up in heaven, she sees God. “You said I had 30 more years to live,” she complains.

“That’s true,” says God.

“So what happened?” she asks.

God shrugs. “I didn’t recognize you.”

***

Two salespeople approached the wife in a furniture store.  She followed the one who called her ‘Miss.’ The ‘Hello Ma’am’ one should take notice.

’19 A To Z Challenge – Kludge

Three Laws Of Practical Engineering
Force to fit
File to hide
Paint to cover

At the steel fabricating plant where I once worked, the difference between a welder, and a welder/fitter, was a ten-pound sledgehammer. Those storage tanks always fit.

Kludge

Noun – a software or hardware configuration that, while inelegant, inefficient, clumsy, or patched together, succeeds in solving a specific problem or performing a particular task.

Verb – the atypical act or action of achieving such a goal

Coined 1960/65 by American author Jackson W. Granholm.

Too often, ivory-tower engineers design things for the perfect, optimum conditions, and ignore reality. If you design something to be foolproof, someone will design a bigger fool. As James Bond said to Q, in one of the movies, “There’s a lot of wear and tear goes on out in the field.”

The concept of ‘Kludge’ indicates an open and adaptive mind, instead of one bounded by unchanging rules and regulations. Larry the Cable Guy may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but you have to admire his Git ’er done philosophy.

I got this challenge done, and I’ve got a couple more, ready to post soon. Y’all come back now, y’hear?

The Same Sad Story

The recent scandal of the Catholic hierarchy covering up sexual allegations against priests, and moving them from post to post, only shows that the problem is neither new, nor restricted to the Catholic Church.

The first time I heard about a serial child molester was about 1960.  The United Church of Canada had defrocked a minister named Russell D. Horsburg, after he had been convicted in Windsor, Ontario.  He was an equal opportunity pedo, willing to debauch both boys and girls.

One of the wife’s older sisters had left the Catholic Church, to wed a New Order Mennonite boy.  As a compromise, they attended and were married in a local United Church.  Always paranoid and defensive about leaving the Catholic Church, and anxious to justify her actions, she is the only person I personally know, who put her marriage certificate in a silver frame, and hung it on her living room wall for all to see.

After we got married in 1967, and had a child, we sometimes visited.  One evening, after a washroom trip, I stopped to examine the certificate.  Sure enough, it was signed by Reverend Russell D. Horsburg.  Hmmm, so he practiced his craft here, before the United Church slyly shipped him 300 miles down the highway, to an unsuspecting parish.

She suspiciously wanted to know what I was looking at.  I told her that her officiating minister was later jailed for pedophilia.

WELL, THAT DOESN’T MEAN THAT WE’RE NOT REALLY MARRIED!

No, but you’re probably lucky that he wasn’t still here in Kitchener, as your kids grew up.

Okay, I’ve described the problem.  Now it’s up to somebody (or somebodies) else to come up with a solution to it.  😳

’18 A To Z Challenge – G

 

For the letter G, I want to take you from Sheep to Socks, through

GADGETS

In my Rapunzel post, I told of my daughter, who is a spinster – literally a woman who spins yarns.  While she also does it with cotton, bamboo, milkweed silk, dog fur, angora, llama and other, more exotic fibers, she most often spins wool.  There’s a lot more to it than just spinning, so I thought I’d show you some of the gadgets necessary to get from a naked ewe, to a well-clad me.

Most sheared fleece the daughter obtains, has already been washed.  If not, she has to soak it clean to remove dust, dirt, and the natural lanolin.  The above picture is of two hand carders.  Like giant, curved brushes, handfuls of the raw wool are placed on one of them, and then ‘combed,’ to align all the fibers.  Hand-carding is a long, tedious operation.  She also has a hand-cranked drum-carder, but needs the moved-away grandson, to run it.  Usually she just purchases ‘roving,’ which is a commercially produced, loose, fluffy rope of fiber, already for spinning.

This is a drop-spindle.  Hung vertically, and brushed against the leg to rotate it, the yarn grows ‘up’ until it’s wound onto the spindle to hold it, and the process is repeated.  This one is fairly small, for producing delicate yarns.  Depending on the size, these can produce anything from the finest yarn, up to ships’ ropes.

These are slightly larger drop-spindles for heavier yarns, one wound with thread the daughter has already produced.  These are all commercially made, but the daughter has several that she built herself from readily available household items.

This is the smaller one of the daughter’s spinning wheels.  Her larger, better one has two foot treadles, to prevent a sore, tired leg from pumping with just one foot.  Through gear-ratio, the large wheel rotates the small spindle quite quickly, and the thread/yarn flows off as fast as the spinner can keep up.

This little storage bobbin hangs off the side of the spinning wheel.  As the loose yarn accumulates, it can be temporarily wound on here, until the batch is finished.

This is called a Knitty-Knotty.  The finished yarn is wound on from the bobbin, up-down, back and forth, then slipped off as a skein.  A loose skein of yarn is not handy to knit from.  The yarn can tangle, or it can fall to the floor.

This gadget is known as a swift.  A skein can be held in the Vee of the center.  The shaft slides up and down to change its spread, and match the circumference of any skein.  You may notice that all these gadgets are made of wood.  Spinners and craftsmen developed and built their ancestors from wood, long before metal crafting became cheap and commonly possible, so there has been little reason to change what works in wood, into metal.  Steel/aluminum swifts are available, but they are not as inexpensive, tend to jam or tear yarn, and fall apart sooner.

At this point, the daughter’s yarn reels off the wife’s swift, and goes onto her winder, to produce a small, firm, easy to find and control ball, that will sit on her lap, or drop into a knitting bag.  This is about the only gadget which has successfully been fabricated from plastic and metal.  Like a little sewing machine, the wire arm shuttles back and forth, to produce that round, even ball.

The daughter knits a variety of things.  Her hand-spun yarns and knitted items can be viewed online at http://www.facebook.com/frogpondcollective .  In the past, the wife has also knitted a wide range of clothing items, but now concentrates on custom-fitted socks.  Non-elastic socks don’t ‘fit all.’  She makes them for the daughter, our son, the grandson and now his fiancée.  The above pair were lovingly crafted for me, when it became apparent that my aging body couldn’t pump enough blood to my feet at night to keep them warm enough so that I could sleep.

***

In last year’s A To Z Challenge – K I included information about Herbert, Lord Kitchener, for whom this city is now named.  While not a very nice man, he did accomplish one nice thing.  Hand-knit socks, the only kind available back then, were basically tubes.  The toes were sewn closed, leaving a protruding, rough ridge on the inside.

Kitchener found that, after marching his men for hundreds of miles, their toes were raw and bloody, and the men would refuse to march further, or be unable to manoeuvre when needed.  He went to some women who knitted socks, explained the problem, and asked if there was a solution.  At least one of them said that there was, and explained it to him (or his aide.)

Without being able to knit a stitch himself, he is given credit for “The Kitchener Stitch,” which is not really a stitch, but rather, a type of grafting, or weaving, which closes the ends of socks smoothly.  Of course, the wife knows all about it, and uses it on every pair she knits.

Th-th-that’s all folks – for this time.  I hope to see your electronic footprints back here soon.  They could even be in a special pair of socks if you play your cards right.  😀