Archives for August 2009

You know what we need? We need a group dedicated to reminding people that access to maternity services are incomplete and threatened. Hey, if it works for abortion…

Thousands of women are having to give birth outside maternity wards because of a lack of midwives and hospital beds.

The lives of mothers and babies are being put at risk as births in locations ranging from lifts to toilets – even a caravan – went up 15 per cent last year to almost 4,000.

Health chiefs admit a lack of maternity beds is partly to blame for the crisis, with hundreds of women in labour being turned away from hospitals because they are full.

There will always be “born-in-the-taxi-on-the-way-over” cases, because I’m told that sometimes babies make their appearance quite suddenly. But golly, 4,000 a year in Britain is A LOT.

Tory health spokesman Andrew Lansley, who obtained the figures, said Labour had cut maternity beds by 2,340, or 22 per cent, since 1997. At the same time birth rates have been rising sharply – up 20 per cent in some areas.

Mr Lansley said: ‘New mothers should not be being put through the trauma of having to give birth in such inappropriate places.

Indeed.

This item from yesterday’s National Post asks if bullied children should be able to fight back.

Thankfully, none of my children have ever been the victim of bullying. But from I can understand of it, it is (a) a learned behavior; and (b) a spectator sport. In these circumstances, I understand how difficult it can be for schools to eradicate bullying when the bully’s behavior is reinforced both at home and in the schoolyard by silent bystanders. But if a school is not solving the problem and providing a safe environment for all children, can it then blame parents for taking the matter into their own hands?

It’s funny though that when speaking about kickboxing and martial arts, the school boards association’s risk manager would say: “The kid is going into those courses for all the wrong reasons.” Isn’t learning to fight and defend yourself one of the basic reason to take martial arts, and improved self-esteem, physical fitness and coordination welcomed collateral effects? Has our society gone so mushy that learning to defend yourself is now a big no-no?

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Brigitte nods emphatically: Yes, and yes! Getting into martial arts so you can learn to beat people up is wrong. No, gratuitous violence is not good. But learning to defend yourself, and using those skills when forced to, even if it means kicking the snot out of a tenacious bully? You betcha.

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Andrea adds: I got into martial arts because I was scared of Brigitte.

I’m jealous…

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UMWhJsd0JE&feature=player_embedded]

[h/t]

Folks, I am cleaning my place with Edith Piaf on very loud repeat. Swiffering will never be the same. Certainly adds drama to mundane household tasks.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3Kvu6Kgp88]

I’m sorry. I don’t want to sound cruel (well, more than usual, I mean), or to diminish the suffering of those who have great difficulty conceiving children. But golly, articles like this one bug me big time. Children are persons, not things we choose to have rights over.

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Tanya’s got nothing but questions here: How can a government decide to cover abortions but not cover IVF? It’s contradictory in the most obvious sense of the word.  Is there reproductive choice, or isn’t there?

If a woman is infertile sometime between puberty and menopause, for whatever reason, she is suffering from an actual physical ailment. If a woman becomes pregnant through natural means, it’s an indication of her reproductive health. So, here in Canada, our health care system might treat the healthy one, but leave the unhealthy one to fend for herself? Really? Genius.

Admittedly, the Bill 34 kerfuffle in Quebec annoyed me. Et voila. The results of an annoyed Andrea and Rebecca, in today’s Post.

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Brigitte is laughing her his little head off: Check this out, from Paul Tuns’s excellent blog (I enjoy most everything except the baseball/football stuff, which I do not get at all):

I read the column this morning at home and when I was standing on the subway I noticed a woman sitting near me reading the Post who glanced toward that article, rolled her eyes and turned the page. I should have gone back to reading my magazine but I decided to open my mouth. I said to her that she when she got the chance she should read the “well-written and thought-provoking article on the ‘abortion distortion’,” to which she replied that “Andrea and Renita [sic] are funny names for men.” I corrected her, “Andrea Mrozek and Rebecca Walberg are co-founders of the ProWomanProLife blog.” The woman said they were a front for men or perhaps men using female pseudonyms. I said it was sexist to believe that political views are determined by biology and returned to my Economist. Further discussion would be fruitless.

I suppose now is as good a time to confess as any: I, too, am secretly a man. The name, the long hair, the reasonably feminine features, the inability to understand why adults should care about baseball? That’s just a front.

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Andrea/Andrew adds: Why should it matter? Gender is a mere construction anyway, a vestige of the patriarchy. Male/female: Cumbersome and unnecessary distinctions.

On a different note, it was bold of Paul Tuns to engage on the topic with her.

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Tanya balks: You’re all dudes? I feel so betrayed. All this time I perceived you both as enthralling, educated, articulate women with a solid foundation for your points of view. And all this time, you were just enthralling, educated, articulate men with a solid foundation for your points of view. I’m outta here!

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Rebecca says: Thank you to Paul for defending our honour. This sort of behaviour highlights one of the ugliest aspects of identity politics: reading out members of a group if they don’t toe the party orthodoxy. It’s not enough to dismiss us as mistaken or unconvincing; we are in fact not really women if we don’t support abortion at the drop of a hat.

In the US, where identity politics are even uglier, black conservatives are described as Oreos, black on the outside but white on the inside, and similar epithets exist for other groups, the intent of which is to put unpopular ideas beyond the pale, and thus avoid engaging them seriously.

Meanwhile, of course, the half-white Obama, who was raised by his white grandparents, is the hailed as the soul of African American authenticity …

One of my pleasures in life is going to Starbucks with Andrea. One secret I think I can share is that Andrea likes her Starbucks coffee super-duper hot. Like burning hot. So when I saw this story, I immediately thought of her. That’s how considerate and selfless I am.

The always informative Spiegelonline has a fascinating article about a pair of German scientists who have developed a coffee cup that keeps coffee at a temperature of 58 degrees Celsius (136.4 degrees Fahrenheit), which is apparently the ideal temperature for drinking hot beverages.

The two men, Klaus Sedlbauer and Herbert Sinnesbichler, got upset because their mulled wine was always either too hot or too cold. They figured there must be a way to retain the heat long enough to drain the mug, and found the solution in something called phase change material (PCM), “a wax-like substance” that absorbs warmth and is used in construction to retain daytime heat and reduce energy use.

Sedlbauer and Sinnesbichler constructed a coffee cup containing little pockets they could fill with a type of PCM that melts at exactly 58 degrees. Once liquidized, it absorbs the heat from the coffee, allowing it to cool to the perfect temperature, and then holds it there by slowly returning the stored heat to the coffee. Once the coffee is gone the material cools and returns to a solid state. (See a photo here).

Oh sure, it’s ugly as all get out. But who cares? If it really does keep the coffee warm…

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Andrea is laughing: Super-duper, extra, extra hot… I like to take the time to stress that with the barista. I like to give them ample opportunity to have me not return my coffee, which I had to do just yesterday. (Wish I could say I was joking…)