Lens Envy Redux

I’ve really been having a blast with the new macro lens. I’ve been wandering around outside after work (because it’s been SO. NICE. OUT.) and taking pictures of whatever captures my eye. It’s amazing what you don’t see when you look at something every day. When it’s magnified and blown up and almost 4000 pixels wide suddenly you see things you’ve never noticed before. Like how alive grape vines can look. Like they aren’t really wondering around looking for things to grasp, they know what they are doing and it’s all part of some calculated plan. I’m on to you, grapevines. OH YEAH! You heard me!

I joined Reese’s photography project. Partly because, MORE PICTURE TAKING YAY! And partly because she’s been Explore’d FIVE TIMES and I’m hoping some of her brilliant capture skillz rub off on me. I might be a little jealous. Or a lot. But, whatever.

If you are a girl and a photographer, either the casual picture taker or somebody hoping to be something great someday, you should get on over there and check it out. It’s a great group of girls and a fun project at the same time.

My uterus, my right.

I really wasn’t going to go ‘there’. The abortion debate is everywhere and when reading blogs and message boards I’ve managed to stay out of it but GOOD LORD are people misinformed about this latest ruling by the Supreme Court regarding “Partial Birth” and “Late-Term Abortion”. It’s okay to HAVE an opinion. I have good friends that powerfully disagree with me on this topic but at least they KNOW and UNDERSTAND what they are talking about so I’m able to respect their opinions knowing they come from a full understanding of the facts.

So before I go further, I want to warn you that I’m going to explain different abortion techniques in detail below. I think that it’s important and you HAVE to understand the differences to understand the ruling that was made because the ruling was about abortion TYPE, not abortion in regards to DATE.

The form of abortion that was banned was Intact Dilation and Evacuation (or eXtraction so I’ll refer to as IDX from here) and accounts for .17% of abortions performed in the United States (source). In this procedure, the woman’s cervix is dilated and the fetus is extracted whole from the uterus. The fetus is pulled out feet first (breech position) up to the neck and there is a small incision made in the base of the skull and the brain matter is suctioned out of the head to make the head smaller and passage through the cervix easier.

This is a form of ‘Partial Birth Abortion’ which is defined by the federal government as any abortion in which the fetus is extracted “past the navel [of the fetus] . . . outside the body of the mother,” or “in the case of head-first presentation, the entire fetal head is outside the body of the mother,” before the fetus is terminated.

Late-term abortions (abortions at 21 weeks or later) account for 1.4% of all abortions in the USA. Of that 1.4% of late-term abortions IDX is used in 15%. So about 2,500 to 3000 of these abortions are performed annually by about 30 doctors… out of 1.3 MILLION abortions (according to the most recent Guttmacher Institute research) (source).

There are other forms of late-term abortion still legal. DE’s (Dilation and Evacuation) are one. The difference between IDX and DE is that in DE’s, the fetus is dismembered prior to being extracted a piece at a time rather than whole. This is more trying for the woman because 1) the cervix has to be farther expanded, and 2) It’s more time consuming. There are many doctors out there who say this is more dangerous especially in emergent situations, such as a woman suffering from an acute Placental Abruption where because IDX is faster it’s a better option if saving the woman’s life is the priority.

What the Supreme Court said in this decision is that there is NEVER a case when IDX is the beneficial procedure but after listening to many debates on the radio and doing QUITE a bit of reading, this is simply not true. A case in point would be Hydrocephalus, when the fetus has head growth to as much as over 200% the normal size. Now that IDX is illegal there are less options:

1) Deliver normally. Mother and fetus die.
2) DE. Fetus still dies.
3) C-Section with bigger than normal incision. Mother lives, baby dies shortly after childbirth.

A midwifery web site quotes Dr. William F. Harrison, a diplomate of the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology. He wrote that “approximately 1 in 2000 fetuses develop hydrocephalus while in the womb.” About 5000 fetuses develop hydrocephalus each year in the U.S. This is not usually discovered until late in the second trimester. Some cases are not severe. After birth, shunts can be installed to relieve the excess fluid on the newborn’s brain. A pre-natal method of removing the excess fluid is being experimentally evaluated. However, some cases are much more serious. “It is not unusual for the fetal head to be as large as 50 centimeters (nearly 20 inches) in diameter and may contain…close to two gallons of cerebrospinal fluid.” In comparison, the average adult skull is about 7 to 8 inches in diameter. A fetus with severe hydrocephalus is alive, but as a newborn cannot live for long; it cannot achieve consciousness. The physician may elect to perform a D&X by draining off the fluid from the brain area, collapsing the fetal skull and withdrawing the dead fetus. Or, he might elect to perform a type of caesarian section. The former kills a fetus before birth; the latter allows the newborn to die after birth, on its own. A caesarian section is a major operation. It does expose the woman to a greatly increased chance of infection. It “poses its own dangers to a woman and any future pregnancies.” Allowing a woman to continue in labor with a severely hydrocephalic fetus is not an option; an attempted vaginal delivery would kill her and the fetus. source)

So it wasn’t “late-term abortion” that was outlawed. It wasn’t “partial-birth abortion” that was outlawed. It was VERY SPECIFICALLY Intact Dilation and Evacuation regardless of the woman’s health that was outlawed. “Regardless of the woman’s health” is the most important wording because this form of abortion had ALREADY been outlawed, EXCEPT in the case where a doctor found it medically necessary. Now, the doctor doesn’t have the option of choosing IDX as an option at all.

Now, the million dollar question, What do I think? I think that the ACT of an abortion is disgusting. Even typing out the procedures above made me a little queezy. I myself, knowing what I know now (being a mommy) would probably not opt for one. I say probably because there ARE situations out there when I’d never rule it out: Rape, major risk of my own life, severe birth defects, etc.

However, I firmly believe that each woman should be allowed the freedom to make that decision for herself. I find it pretty insulting that five MEN on the Supreme Court don’t seem to think that I’m capable of making that decision myself without a counselor stepping in to describe to me in detail what will happen. I also find it troubling that the government has the power to decide what medical procedure is better for me, overruling what my doctor might think. They don’t have the best track record after all. It was just under two years ago that Senator Frist had to unstick his foot from his mouth after swearing on the floor of the Senate that Terri Schiavo was “not somebody in persistent vegetative state”.

Women who believe they they should be in control of their medical future should be scared. Doctors who believe they should be an important factor in the treatment of patient’s life threatening conditions should be scared. I am scared.

Remember Imus?

(EDIT – I wrote this yesterday, 04/17/07)

Go take a look at MSNBC and tell me what is missing… Go ahead. I’ll wait.

What happened yesterday was tragic. I sat at home and after work and quietly watched Cassidy do homework at the kitchen table and tried to imagine what parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, grandparents must be going through. Waiting by a phone for a call to come in. I just couldn’t. It made my throat close and my eyes well up.

I really don’t know what else to say about it. It’s just.. tragic. So until I have more, until we know more, I’ll get to my point.

So what’s missing on the front page of MSNBC? Anything at all about Imus. Well, there is ONE thing down at the very bottom of the page that is just a link to Dateline who’s doing a segment of a show on it**.

I had a pretty long post about the Imus situation. You just couldn’t seem to get away from it for a week there (until the media had something else to focus on) and like everybody else, I had an opinion. The main point of the post however, was how tired I am of people pointing fingers wildly in the face of racial drama.

I have to be perfectly honest though, I WAS one of those people. The first time I brought it up to Ben I fell into the trap. “Well, what Imus did was fucking stupid but SNOOP DOG! And Al Sharpton! And who else can I point my finger at?!?” And it wasn’t until I watched the webcast of Meet The Press on Monday that I had an epiphany. HOLY SHIT I’VE TURNED INTO A MEDIA FED DRONE!

It was a great segment and you can watch if you want. This exchange is the one that I think most stood out in the entire round table:

MR. ROBINSON: But back up, back up a step. I mean, we should have the discussion about, about rap music, about gangster rap and, and, and that language, and, and I—and that’s a discussion, for example, those are issues that Al Sharpton has raised, that Jesse Jackson has raised. And, and, by the way, I got a lot of mail on—when I wrote about the Imus situation as well, and, and one strain of it was, was, “Well, who appointed Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to, you know, to be spokespeople?” And my answer was this business did. You know, we’re, we’re the ones who call them up every time anything happens and kept going back and kept going back. And what does he think today and what does he think tomorrow? So…

MR. RUSSERT: And it was fair to ask Jackson about Hymietown, and it was fair to ask Sharpton about Tawana Brawley.

MR. ROBINSON: Of course, it—of course it’s fair, but, but the idea that, that, in this case, they were self-appointed is not really quite right because that was certainly abetted by, by a news media establishment that, that went to them, you know, 50 times a day.

And it’s TRUE! The media knew the best way to get the most play from the story was to make it as sensational as possible, so they went to the racial injustice ‘Go To Guy’. And it worked! Before we knew it, both sides of the story were wildly throwing around their index fingers going, “But, but, but HE does it!! And you don’t punish HIM!” It was basically a national version of a kindergarten playground. One idiot move does not cancel out the other and tryng to point out that another moron does the same thing only make you look like THAT MORON! You MORON!

The fact that Gangsta Rap is a deplorable display of racial slurs and sexist dribble IS a problem that should be discussed. But NOT as a way of trying to defend another instance of racial slurs and sexism. Or as a way to try and point fingers away from a mistake that should have been able to stand on it’s own for what it was.

MSNBC today displayed why doing this fails. Nobody cares about either issue now because another story came along. Now the media won’t focus on Spoop Dog OR Al Sharpton till another reporter want’s to sensationalize a story on racism.

The only reason Imus became such a big deal was the press made it one. The only reason that people like Rev Shaprton were involved is because the press asked him to voice his opinion. And we all bought it. Hook, line and sinker.

**Dateline canned the Imus show and covered the VT shooting instead.

Unable to Joostâ„¢.

So I got home and fell asleep. Only after Ben kicked me off the big couch so he could lay down. Totally over that though. Let it go when he bought me a steak dinner I’ve been craving since Saturday.

So when we got home from dinner I downloaded and installed Joost and BAM! I get an ‘Unable to connect error’. Quite a few people have suddenly started getting the same error today. They do mention on the Joost blog that they are expanding beta testing by “many thousands of viewers” and have been experiencing some back end server issues but after five pages of people reporting the same “Unable to connect error” there hasn’t been a single response by anybody at Joost. That is kind of disappointing. We all love that you are willing to open the beta up to new people, but in order to MAKE the beta work and for us to be encouraged and open to helping you better develop YOUR SOFTWARE, some kind of acknowledgement would be nice. Anything. A simple, “Sorry guys! We’re working on it!”

What I don’t want? Another rendition of the WordPress support forum. But I mean, I don’t want to go all Sam Fisher on anybody over at Joost yet so they haven’t reached that level of suckage, but still… Give us SOMETHING.

Anyway, I do have to give props to whoever created the error which popped up at exactly 800X600 resolution. Well played, Joost. Just when I’m starting to hate you up pops something like THAT to ruin my bad impression. From what I can tell so far, the actual interface and attention to detail and design has been fantastic. Very web2.0 and very eye candy. For now I’ll just have to sit and wait and look at more screen shots to see what I’m missing.

JOOST!

WEEEEEEEEE!!! I just FINALLY(!!) got a Joost invite and now I’m too excited to get any work done because I want to try it out. I will as soon as I get home and let you all know how much it rocks. Out of curisoty I checked the Joost Invite DIGG out to see how many people were still waiting for invites and now I feel really special. 3127 comments and counting… And to think I got mine from a flickerite.

Lesson: Seek alternatives to the mainstrean. And Flickr ROCKS!

This reminds me of an email we got at work yesterday. Very long and very wordy and as usual the most important point was wrapped up in once sentence somewhere in the middle:

Downloading your favorite song or new video file onto your Major Medical University workstation becomes a legal liability for the hospital.

I’m sure this email was sent out as a direct response to somebody doing something stupid. It’s also probably why the IT guys were here for an entire 48 hours trying to wipe out a worm that somebody let in about a week ago that stopped one of our most important systems from functioning.

I don’t understand why they don’t just walk around slapping The Stupid One’s with a large Trout. I’d think it would get the point across much more effectively.