Dr. Richard Stith examines the faulty logic that flows from Row v. Wade‘s determination that a person is only entitled to legal protection after birth.^[1] How can it be that a child feels more or less pain, or is more or less human, depending on his or her placement, in our out of the birth canal, in or out of the womb?

1. Dr. Richard Stith. “Roe vs. Reason” Arlington Catholic Herald 2005-10-20. http://www.catholicherald.com/articles/05articles/stith.htm

What do you want to bet that there will be no mention in the mainstream press of a black college professor who would like to see all white people killed?^[1][2][3] Surely they will be quick to denouce such blatent racism and hatred … or not. No, in the eyes of too many, racism is a crime that black people cannot commit.

1. Mr. Jon Sanders. “*Former* NC State visiting prof Kamau Kambon DID call for the extermination of white people” The Locker Room 2005-10-20. http://www.johnlocke.org/lockerroom/lockerroom.html?id=5853
2. Dr. Mike Adams. “Exterminating Whitey” Townhall.com 2005-10-21. http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/mikeadams/2005/10/21/172189.html
3. Mrs. Michelle Malkin. “‘WE HAVE TO EXTERMINATE WHITE PEOPLE’” MichelleMalkin.com 2005-10-21. http://michellemalkin.com/archives/003754.htm

The Catholic News Agency (CNA) looks at the tendency to abort children with Down Syndrome as a reflection of the societal view, echoed rather more strongly in many parts of the biology community, that these lives are not worth living.^[1] These children may not be able to achieve so much in today’s technology and science driven world, but they are still able to love and laugh, hurt, mourn, and cry. They are still human and deserving of better than to be brutally killed in the earliest and most defenseless months of their lives.

1. Catholic News Agency. “Pre-natal testing: weeding out society’s undesirables?” www.catholicnewsagency.com 2005-10-20. http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=5203

Compare the argument against boxing as presented in a BBC report of a Catholic journal’s article^[1] to a rebuttal posted on some boxing website.^[2] I hesitate to call it a “rebuttal,” because it is rather pathetic. The presented argument basically boils down to “Yes, people die, yes everything you said about it is true, but unlike the gladiators, they choose it, so its okay.” As if every gladiator was 100 percent forced to become one, as if none of them came to enjoy the gruesome “sport” they “played.” As if no boxer has ever felt pressured to accept a match, to enter the ring.

But the choice really is nearly a side point here. For what sort of “sport” is it when at best one side takes what is likely permanent injury? Reading this drove home with me the differences between boxing and wrestling. It is not that I did not know the differences before, but it confirmed my thoughts. For in both you strive to physically dominate, physically beat, and, to differing extents, to hurt the other to make him submit. The difference is entirely in that “to differing extents.” For in wrestling, the permanent injury is guarded against, usually comes as an error on the part of the opponent, and often even then only if accompanied by an error on the part of the referee. Boxers and boxing on the other hand are known for the brain damage the sustain, the phenomena of being “Punch Drunk.” Of being like Rocky, so damaged even in victory as to become effectively retarded.

While less true here, this is especially true in the Asian matches, which have fewer restrictions and greater lethality than the American version, so much so that it qualifies with the martial arts. The point of boxing is to damage the opponent, whereas the point of wresting is to bring him to submission, by pain if your skill and strength is insufficient, but without damaging him.

1. BBC News. “Catholic journal condemns boxing” BBC News World Edition 2005-10-14. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4340514.stm
2. Mr. Aaron King. “Boxing Gets a Shot on the Jaw” East Side Boxing 2005-10-18. http://www.eastsideboxing.com/news.php?p=4958&more=1

It has apparently been some time^[1] since I last wrote about stem cells. It is not that they have not been in the news, but that I do not feel that there has been anything significant added to the debate. An article yesterday in in Slate changes that.^[2] It takes a serious look at the ways in which recent developments will potentially split those who are against embryonic stem cell research into differing (I will not say “opposing” here, I think that is too strong a word) camps. It also reveals rather more of the details, of the potentials both implicit and explicit, of the new proposals than I have previously read or heard. The potential for one of the cells take to develop into a fully formed, fully alive and unquestionably human child in its own right for example.

It looks hard at the ways in which this will potentially blur the lines of what is human and what is not, where one starts to be a life with a right to live, versus a mass of cells. And in doing so, it, almost certainly accidentally, exposes the importance of the Church’s stance against artificial method of creating life. For all of them lead, necessarily, to this, and to this blurring that we now face.

1. Mr. Luke Schierer. “Stem cells cost lives” Random Unfinished Thoughts 2005-08-22. https://www.schierer.org/~luke/log/index.php?s=stem+cells
2. Mr. William Saletan. “Stem-Cell Shakeup” Slate 2005-10-19. http://slate.msn.com/id/2128306/

Mr. Brian O’Dwyer has noticed something that I missed.^[1] Chief Justice Roberts had to defend his Catholicism, but being an evangelical protestant is justification for President Bush’s pick of Ms. Miers.

1. Mr. Brian O’Dwyer. “A return to anti-Catholic bias of JFK era” New York Daily 2005-10-17. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ideas_opinions/story/356311p-303714c.html

I totally forgot when I wrote my mom’s poem viewer that the php “include” command would include remote files. Someone from Argentina took advantage of this fact to hack my server yesterday night, a fact I learned yesterday morning.

Unfortunately my work backing up the data I wanted to preserve was far from complete. Most notably, I lost my cron jobs, my iptables script, and all but the photos from my gallery2 install, as the mysql dump alone appears to be next to useless.

Further, in bringing the mail server back up, I neglected to ensure my .qmail files were in place before starting the mail server, so I’m pretty sure I lost mail. Lovely.

Interoperability between MSN and Y!M will no doubt make life interesting. Quoth Tim: “i wonder how they’ll namespace the screennames.” Ars Technica has a writeup^[1] with what little is known.

1. Mr. Ken “Caesar” Fisher. “Microsoft and Yahoo shake hands on IM” Ars Technica 2005-10-11. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051011-5419.html

Several things worth noting in Mr. Pat Buchanan’s recent column.^[1] First: one in three abortions today, or at least according to his 2002 statistic, are performed on black women; second: 44 percent of state and federal prison inmates are black, and 35 percent white. It follows from this that violent crime is either seven times greater in the black community, or seven times more successfully prosecuted. The two are not, on the surface, related, nor does Mr. Buchanan attempt to relate them.

I think they are, in fact, related however. Both I suspect stem from the breakdown in the family. Taking either side of the disjoint in the latter, with the family broken by chronic dependency, chronic absentee fathers, and multiple marriages, children have little chance of breaking out of poverty(and thus pay for legal assistance). Alternately, the lack of positive male influence, coupled with the presence of negative male influence, would clearly (except to a radical feminist) leave a vacuum in the child’s life, making him or her a more vulnerable target for temptation to crime. Taking the former proposition, the same breakdown of the family would create greater pressures on the mother that could lead her to feel there is no option except abortion.

The family is the building block of society. As it is attacked, as it breaks down, our society crumbles with it. These are just some of the results.

1. Mr. Pat Buchanan. “The lynching of Bill Bennett” World Net Daily 2005-10-12. http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46778

The National Catholic Register is running an editorial talking about the sex abuse crisis facing the Church, and the upcoming (current?) look at the seminaries.^[1] It talks about the misrepresentation of the crisis in the media, showing that the majority (it cites 81%) of the abuse was of teen-aged boys, not children at all. Naturally even 1% of the abuse being child abuse is unacceptably high, much less 19%. I sincerely hope that as they address the (also unacceptable) majority of the abuse, by focusing on homosexuality in the priesthood, they do not neglect the rest. But I cannot fault them for looking to a solution at the root of 81% of the abuse.

Admittedly, I have not paid much attention to the song “YMCA,” but I have not noted the homosexuality in it. Perhaps it is there, and I have simply missed it. Mom has surely missed significantly more in a song with a good beat. I am sure, though, that for every study and statistic that the Register could have cited in support of its position, that the liberals could raise some other study. Evaluating which is more accurate is not something I am going to spend time doing. For myself, suffice it to say that I tend to trust the Register enough to go with its statistics and studies.

Taking it as a given then that the Register’s two statistics are correct, that 81% of the abuse was homosexual in nature and not pedophilia, and that 73% of homosexuals will abuse teens, the focus on homosexuality in the priesthood makes sense. Mom worries that a number of good men will be excluded. William has been given justifications along the lines of “Part of being a priest is embracing celibacy for the sake of their ministry, while a homosexual is called to give it period.” This creates a difference, is it sufficient? Such a call is beyond me. Yet we do see that a non-trivial number of priests have and perhaps still do tell their parishioners things that are not in accord with Catholic Doctrine. That they do not believe in the Real Presence, they do not condemn birth control, and other issues. Perhaps such a drastic step as this is necessary to handle both the crisis of abuse, and the problems of a clergy that does not teach as they should. I do not know.

1. National Catholic Register. “Seminaries and Scandals” National Catholic Register (online) 2005-10-09. http://www.ncregister.com/articulo2.php?artkod=OTI=