The Global Gag Rule strikes again: we’re denying condoms to African aid agencies because we object to their abortion policies. Yeah, let’s punish Africans because of our own twisted morality.

Governor Palin appears to be living in an alternate universe.

Economists say: Vote Obama if you care about the American economy. (Via Obsidian Wings)

More to the “surge” than meets the eye.

McCain’s big plan for the rest of the election? Being negative. Let’s hope it doesn’t work.

An old cemetery in Santa Rosa just got refurbished. Very cool.

Curious about the ethical implications of using RFID in people? Have I got the essay for you.

Discussing patient errors is generally viewed as important, to avoid doing them in the future. So why don’t more doctors do it?

I’m a big fan of post-apocalyptic fiction, so when I noticed this recommended in the library catalog, I couldn’t resist. It’s a collection of apocalyptic stories written by a wide assortment of authors, several of whom are very well known. I ended up not reading three of the stories, one of them because it was by an author whom I despise ethically, so I refuse to give him the pleasure of wasting my time with his work, and two because they were just bad, and they didn’t grip me.

There were some awesome stories in here, and, as a whole, the book was quite varied. I especially loved “The People of Sand and Slag,” “Inertia,” “And the Deep Blue Sea,” and “The End of the World As We Know It,” all of which had very different takes on a potential apocalypse and how people would respond to it. (Although “World” got a little bit too meta at times for my taste.)

This was certainly a book well-worth recommending. If you enjoy post-apocalyptic fiction, I think you would probably like it. And, like all books of short stories, it has the advantage of allowing readers to skip things they don’t like, to focus on the stories which are enjoyable.

There’s something about apocalyptic fiction which is intriguing and compelling, and I think the introduction posited a very plausible reason for this. We like to read stories like these because we like to imagine ourselves in an apocalypse, confident that we would survive to be the heroes of our own narrative. I hadn’t really thought about it that way, but I think that’s actually right on. When you imagine the apocalypse, do you imagine yourself as one of the bloated corpses left behind by violent explosions, plague, tsunami, or what have you? No, you imagine yourself heroically striking out and coming up with enterprising solutions to uncommon problems. Becoming a leader who helps to rebuild a society.

Demographics:

Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse, edited by John Joseph Adams. Published 2008, 327 pages. Fiction.

So, those of you who listen to public radio are probably familiar with the pledge drive, in which the radio waves are taken over for a week by obnoxious appeals for money. I kind of accept the pledge drive, in that I just don’t listen to the radio during the week in which the pledge drive occurs. (And, yes, I do donate, I just can’t stand listening to it.)

But now, the station I listen to has started running ads about the pledge drive, even though the drive isn’t scheduled until the 21st. Discussing this with Tristan, we got into a brief argument, because apparently the Chicago station is running ads which say “the more money you give us, the sooner this thing ends,” and he couldn’t understand why I was annoyed, because he thought that my station was running those ads.

But no. My station is not running ads asking for advance pledges to end the pledge drive early. My station is running ads…to let us know that the pledge drive is coming. That is all. Oh, and won’t we have so much fun during the pledge drive? (Uhm…no. No, we won’t.)

Seriously, people. The pledge drive is bad enough as it is. I might forgive a station for running advance ads to shorten the pledge drive, but running ads about the pledge drive which serve no function? Please, stop.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, which means that the world is asea in pink, and people are being told that if they buy special branded crap, it will help people with breast cancer. Obviously, there are some serious problems with this, and it’s unfortunate that people don’t explore the issues a little more.

I’m not a fan of breast cancer, or cancer in general. I think that researching cancer is important, as is educating people about cancer so that they can detect early signs, and protect themselves from potential carcinogens. But the thought of dedicating a whole month to breast cancer awareness seems a bit disingenuous.

Breast cancer is a huge industry. And numerous organizations have started “pinkwashing” their products to take advantage of this industry, because they have learned that people will buy things as long as they are pink. Most of the products sold to promote breast cancer research? Only a small proportion of the funds gathered actually goes to breast cancer organizations, and, of that, only a tiny portion goes to actual research, prevention, and education.

Buying plastic crap is not the way to address the issue of cancer. Donating directly to reputable organizations is a good start. Being personally informed, and informing others, is also a good way to combat cancer. Women should be doing breast self exams, they should be getting routine mammograms when they reach an appropriate age, and they should be avoiding potential carcinogens. (Like, say, pink plastic crap.)

How did breast cancer get to be such a huge industry, when there are tons of other cancers and diseases out there that also urgently need research? I suspect it’s the symbolism. Breasts are a potent and visible emblem of femininity, and they make a great, easily-accessible symbol for cancer education and targeted campaigns.

Instead of buying pink stuff, maybe we should be talking about why  breast cancer is on the rise in industrialized nations. Why the culture of treatment expects women to be strong and perky, rather than sick and pissed off. Why it is that we have our heads in the sand about cancer while women and men die.

This is yet another case of me pulling a book off the shelf at the library and thinking it is a good idea. Honestly, I don’t know why I read this yuppie tripe, I should know better. The very quotes on the cover warn me that this will be a stupid book, and yet I read it anyway. Perhaps I just like to torture myself?

Anyway, what I learned in the process of reading this book is that I really prefer memoirs/biographies about people who actually, you know, did things. I don’t want to read a stupid self indulgent pile of crap about “oh, my terrible childhood, my mother was a bitch,” I want to read a book about walking on the moon, developing new surgical techniques, discovering a new color. I don’t want to read about a life that is ultimately average, dribbled out in bits and pieces like thin, watery vomit.

This was just vain, self indulgent, and ultimately pointless. And yet, this kind of crap gets turned out by the millions every year, and people eat it up. People love to read books about nothing, apparently. I find that both fascinating and horrifying. I don’t understand why this whole “tortured life memoir” genre is so very trendy. Is it that people with even more boring, average lives want to read books like this and secretly imagine themselves with a mysterious tortured past? Or do people want to be smug about their own boring, average childhoods? This also seems to be a style from a very specific generation; people born in the 1950s and 1960s seem to think that they are entitled to write stupid memoirs about their stupid lives, and that their stupid memoirs will sell.

The disgusting thing is that they do.

Demographics:

Her Last Death, by Susanna Sonnenberg. Published 2008, 273 pages. Memoir.

The peregrinations of Odd Thomas continue as he arrives in a sea-side town somewhere along the coast of Southern California, where he has been drawn to avert apocalypse. The plot was a bit far-fetched, but, then again, the character of Odd Thomas already stretches the bounds of believability, so I suppose it’s a bit silly to be questioning the plot of the novel.

I do like that we got introduced to a new enigmatic female character, whom I suspect will become recurring in the series, because she seems like that sort of woman. She can do a mysterious thing with a flower which we haven’t been allowed to see yet, and she has an eerie prescience which makes her seem like a good fit for Odd.

I do feel like Koontz is racking up the characters, and he needs to simmer down a little. I want to know some of the characters better, not get briefly introduced to interesting people, only to never see them again. Maybe if Odd goes back to Pico Mundo, we will get a chance to reconnect with some of the people in his life. I certainly hope so.

Also, I suspect that driving a tugboat is harder than Dean Koontz described.

Demographics:

Odd Hours, by Dean Koontz. Published 2008, 352 pages. Fiction.

That’s how many people tuned in for the Biden/Palin debate. Making it the most watched vice-presidential debate event since 1960, which is just mindblowing. And one of the most watched election debates, period. 34% more viewers tuned in for this than for the Obama/McCain debate, although that was a pretty darn historic event, if you think about it.

What’s amazing is the multiplicity of response. It seems like Biden “won” in the response polls, but Palin’s approval ratings also ticked up. People think she’s “more prepared” after the debate, for example. From that perspective, the debate could be considered a win for her, because she met admittedly very limited expectations. By not making a total fool of herself, she apparently impressed people.

I’m heard Republicans say that she was “great,” apparently willing to ignore the fact that she didn’t answer any of the questions. Democrats are deriding her performance for the most part, and praising Biden. Independents (like me, I’m registered non-partisan!) seem to be leaning in a Biden direction. Seems to me that if you had polled people ahead of time about the debate, the outcome would be pretty similar to the responses afterward: people make up their minds before they watch these things.

And, of course, there’s lots of dissection of every sentence in the debate, but what I find interesting is that this is probably Palin’s last public appearance. I suspect that the McCain campaign is going to whisk her away somewhere for the duration of the election cycle, because she’s too much of a liability for them. Unless, of course, they decide to use Bristol’s nuptials as an October Surprise.

Which, I mean, can I just pause for a moment and say how very tacky that would be. If I were Bristol Palin, I would not be allowing my mother to use my wedding as a political tactic. It would just be too slimy and weird and altogether unpleasant. She already looks painfully isolated at public events with her mother, relegated to the sidelines with the baby and an unhappy expression. I wonder how much of a say she got in the decision to join the McCain campaign?

They hid Cheney, who turned into one of the most dangerous veeps in history. And I’ll bet they’re hiding Palin, someone who could prove equally scary in that office, if she ever held it. So let’s make sure she doesn’t, ok?

I had forgotten how much I hate these sorts of books when I picked this up at the library. You know, the woman in the midlife crisis who is brought up short by the realities of the world sort of books. Oh, woe is me. That sort of thing.

This book was even worse than the usual offerings in this ilk, because it meandered so much and the language was so choppy that it was difficult to follow the story, or the characters, or, honestly, to feel much interest in what was going on. Someone on the front cover calls her language “oddly brittle, spiky,” but I would just call it poorly composed and wandering, personally. Trying to read this book was like trying to decipher street signs without glasses. I could get a vague idea of the shape of things, but I didn’t really know what anything meant.

Oh well, I guess you can’t love everything you read, even highly-recommended contemporary Irish fiction.

Demographics:

The Gathering, by Anne Enright. Published 2007, 261 pages. Fiction.

For someone who doesn’t want kids, I certainly have an abiding interest in pregnancy and childbirth. This book was mentioned in Misconceptions, and it sounded interesting, so I decided to check it out. When picking it up at the library, I felt obligated to tell the librarian “it’s not what you think” when she glanced curiously at my stomach.

Anyway, I thought that this book was really interesting. As I told my friend Sarah, not having had/planning to have children, I don’t feel qualified to speak on the topic, and I certainly wouldn’t tell another woman how to have her baby, but I would definitely recommend this book. There was a lot of really intriguing information, including some things that I assume would be helpful for expecting mothers to know, if you can get over the kind of wooshy, touchy-feely parts.

One thing about the book that was really neat was the survey of the history of childbirth, and the rise of the use of medical intervention. Why are laboring women encouraged to lie on their backs, when this position is pretty much awful for labor/delivery? Because that’s how the medical establishment decided it needed to be in the 1800s. Why are women forced to adhere to a labor and delivery schedule? So that OBs can go home at five. Why are women given pain management drugs, even if they interfere with labor and delivery? Because pain is “abormal” and “bad.”

I’ve always thought that childbirth is a pretty natural process, and that while there certainly may be cases in which medical intervention is critically needed, for the most part, women can probably handle it with the support of friends and a qualified midwife (like they do in the rest of the world). Only in the United States do we have this birth-industrial complex which dictates every aspect of labor and delivery with the expectation that the process can be fitted to a plan, even though every woman’s body is totally different.

We also live in a country where physicians are terrified of making mistakes, and I think that probably feeds into the whole thing. It’s hard to have a natural childbirth if you work with a doctor who is afraid of being sued, and hard to dictate the terms of a birth plan which meets your needs in a facility with specific rules about how birth is handled.

I also really loved the photographs in this book, documenting a wide variety of labor and delivery practices. One of the saddest images was from the 1970s: a young black woman, alone, trapped in a hospital bed flat on her back. Apparently it was (and still is, in some places) standard practice to basically chain women down and leave them alone while they were in labor. How horrifying.

Demographics:

Immaculate Deception II, by Suzanne Arms. Published 1996, 290 pages. Health.

This comprehensive survey of the early years of the AIDS epidemic came out at a time when I think people still thought that AIDS would be cured/vaccinable within a few years, and that attitude definitely colors the final chapters of the book, which just makes it more depressing. The whole book is about the failures in the early years of the AIDS crisis: the failure to identify what was going on, the failure to act, the failure to set politics aside.

It’s a well-researched and well-composed piece that blends personal stories of AIDS victims with a narrative of what happened from 1980-1987. The emphasis on San Francisco is heavy, because that’s where Shiltz was living and working, but I don’t really think that detracts from the book or the story, which is incredibly depressing and sobering.

And the Band Played On is a great handbook for what not to do in an epidemic. It’s about fear and misinformation, denial and confusion. Shilts did a great job of profiling the people involved, and of capturing the battles which raged between government agencies, groups within the gay community, researchers, and activists. I think that Shilts also really humanized the faces of AIDS in this book; no wonder it was such a huge deal when it came out.

I get the sense that people are forgetting about AIDS these days, treating it as a treatable nuisance and nothing more. The fact is that AIDS is a global killer; only residents of the First World can afford the incredibly costly and often painful treatments. And rates of new AIDS infections are on the rise, as are rates of other STIs, which suggests that people are not taking the risk seriously anymore. At the same time, we’re ignoring other quietly growing pandemics, like the rise of multi-drug resistant syphilis, gonorrhea, and other STIs which were, for a time, pretty easy to treat.

This book is about the end of an age of sexual innocence, and it’s a bit eerie to think that some people seem to be returning to that age, blissfully unaware that there are snakes in the garden now.

Demographics:

And the Band Played On, by Randy Shilts. Published 1987, 630 pages. Health/history/sociology.