My friend Jenny linked to this pic on Facebook this morning.
Why didn't we know about this approach?
Did 22 miles on the bike this morning, up to the top of Vistancia and back. My legs are feeling it tonight but I didn't have any problem doing the distance, the longest since late May and all the health issues that cropped up.
On rides that last more than an hour I take something to eat during the ride, usually half a PB&J or fig bars. I didn't plan ahead, so on the way out the door I stuffed three Oreos with mint filling into a baggie and put those in my jersey's pocket.
Note to self: those cookies are are a bad choice for mid-ride refueling. The little crumbs that explode into your mouth as soon as you bite down on the cookie go from there directly to your throat where they seriously interfere with the kind of open-mouth breathing done while riding a bike.
Bad Day:
A guy here was moving all his possession in a U-Haul truck when a BBQ and propane tank in the back shifted. The propane tank was punctured and an explosion resulted. That blew his tool box out through the back of the truck where it hit the front of his car being towed, breaking the windshield and trashing the hood.
But wait! There's more!
The explosion also blew a mattress out the back, which landed on top of the car. Alas, the mattress was on fire. He tried to get the mattress off the car but didn't get that done in time and his car was pretty much toast.
The back of the truck was blown apart and all his possessions destroyed.
Another car driving next to the truck also got a lot of damage along the passenger's side.
In light of last night's post on journalistic objectivity I found this article about just-released data from the Pew Center especially interesting. On Slate, of all places.
"Reproductive rights" is one of the catch phrases of this election season. That's code for abortion rights, coined because of the negative connotations associated with the word abortion. When framed as an issue of reproduction, or as about a woman's right to control over her own body, all those nasty mental images of ... well, you know... are left out of the discussion.
NBC News is reporting that a woman in Athens, GA is being charged with murder for stabbing her newborn son to death minutes, or at most hours, after his birth. In eight states a doctor could have done the same thing using medical instruments minutes before that birth without any legal consequences whatsoever.
That we find a late term abortion instinctively wrong, even repugnant, is clear from the fact that only one doctor at one clinic in the country will perform them, despite the eight states where it's legal.
The other 42 states identify a point, typically the end of the second trimester, beyond which an abortion cannot be performed except to save the life of the mother. That's a tacit acknowledgment that something is qualitatively different in that third trimester, that "tissue" has turned into "person," and warrants legal protection. But that begs the question. What happens at the 26th week to account for this difference? Why is an abortion legal one day and illegal the next? If we're going to draw a line like that shouldn't there be some specific empirical basis for doing so? We're talking about a tissue/human life line, a medical procedure/murder line. There's a mother in Georgia for whom that question is everything.
One reason for drawing the line at 26 weeks is viability. Babies born at 26 weeks currently have an excellent chance of survival. The problem: some survive when born as early as 22 weeks, and it's not unusual for a baby born at 24 weeks to survive. Furthermore, this promises to change as medical science continues to advance in the area of preemie care. A decade ago no one would have given a 24-week baby a chance. A decade from now??
As inconvenient as the question is, the crux of the matter is, when does human life begin? As the Athens, GA case illustrates, the law views any child outside the womb as a person deserving full protection. Forty two states and apparently everyone except one doctor in Colorado agree life begins somewhere at or very near the beginning of the third trimester, but without any objective basis for that determination.
In the absence of empirical evidence for a day/date line, and with the core issue as significant as they come - what is more valuable than human life? - it seems the only proper course is to err on the side of protection of the unborn. If we'll shut down whole industries to protect a fish the size of my pinky how can we do less when human life may be at stake?
I am convinced from biblical teaching that life begins at conception, though a case can be made that implantation on the uterine wall is a better marker. Either way, it's long before we can detect its presence. But for those who reject biblical teaching as a legitimate basis for a judgment on this matter the question remains: if the woman in Georgia is guilty of murder, and if passage through the birth canal is not the great divide, what is? Until that question can be answered with a clear, convincing, and empirical basis, and if we value human life without regard for level of function, abortion must be a most egregious evil.
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