Monday, May 26, 2008

Chinese family FYI

You will be allowed to replace your child.

Those families [with a child that was killed in the earthquakes] can obtain a certificate to have another child, the Chengdu Population and Family Planning Committee in the capital of hard-hit Sichuan province said.


How gracious, they're granting new certificates.

The announcement says that if a child born illegally was killed in the quake, the parents will no longer have to pay fines for that child — but the previously paid fines won't be refunded.

If the couple's legally born child is killed and the couple is left with an illegally born child under the age of 18, that child can be registered as the legal child — an important move that gives the child previously denied rights including free nine years of compulsory education.


What a turd bowl of a place to live.

Saturday, May 10, 2008

Surrounded by Crazy People and Terrified

I haven't blogged in a long time and read a few different posts from blogs I subscribe to that struck a chord with me, so I'm getting off the blogging schneid by making one of those posts that don't have a whole lot of substance themselves and only refer to someone else's blog.

VD had a post recently named 'Intellectual maturation' that I found quite enjoyable to read. Let me first make the disclaimer to my atheist friends that read this blog that I'm actually not trying to explicitly push your buttons and piss you off. The short of it is, I liked what Rachel had to say, and I liked what VD had to say about what Rachel had to say (ooph, that makes this post a very shameless and insipid 3rd generation of pointing out what someone else said). If anyone bothers to read VD's and Rachel's posts, it'll be obvious and unsurprising why a Christian would like it... we all like being identified as not stupid and having people agree with us don't we? By the way, the title of this post is what it is because of what Rachel's post has to say.

A snippet from Rachel...

The truth is that I am not exactly seeking salvation or God or anything like that, and frankly if I were, I would not talk about it with virtual strangers at this stage of the game. At this moment, my biggest aim is simply trying to relieve myself of the terrifying feeling I’ve had for years that I live in a society full of and run by people who believe a theology I don’t believe in, and that therefore I am surrounded by crazy people. It’s a bit of cognitive dissonance that I simply couldn’t take anymore.

Is my dad a crazy person? Are 90% of the people who read my blog crazy people? Are most of my friends crazy people? If I think Christianity is crazy, then the only answer to those questions is YES. But it just never added up.



Another post I read recently, 'Atheism and Child Murder' on Dinesh D'Souza's blog made me aware of a prominent atheist I didn't know much at all about, Peter Singer. I'm going to presume that D'Souza wasn't flat out lying or constructing inaccurate and shocking misconstructions and strawmen of some of Singer's arguments and thoughts. I thought I'd post a few of them (Singer's words) here. After getting past the initial shock of what he's saying and trying to ponder it sans the emotion, it falls into the same category as assertions like "The only truth is there are no truths." In other words, it's simply bizarre and annoying that such arguments even need to be addressed... and yet they do.

On how mothers should be permitted to kill their offspring until the age of 28 days:
"My colleague Helga Kuhse and I suggest that a period of twenty-eight days after birth might be allowed before an infant is accepted as having the same right to life as others."

On why abortion is less morally significant than killing a rat:
"Rats are indisputably more aware of their surroundings, and more able to respond in purposeful and complex ways to things they like or dislike, than a fetus at ten or even thirty-two weeks gestation."

On why pigs, chickens and fish have more rights to life than unborn humans:
"The calf, the pig, and the much-derided chicken come out well ahead of the fetus at any stage of pregnancy, while if we make the comparison with a fetus of less than three months, a fish would show more signs of consciousness."

On why infants aren't normal human beings with rights to life and liberty:
"Characteristics like rationality, autonomy and self-consciousness...make a difference. Infants lack these characteristics. Killing them, therefore, cannot be equated with killing normal human beings."