For my regular visitors, if you find that this blog hasn't been updating much lately, chances are pretty good I've been spending my writing energy on my companion blog. Feel free to pop over to Home is Where the Central Cardio-pulmonary Organ Is, and see what else has been going on.
During 2000 to 2011, Danish male-female married couples were the healthiest and least likely to die at various ages compared with individuals who were unmarried, divorced or widowed. In contrast, same-sex married men in Denmark were no healthier than unmarried men. Same-sex married women had much higher mortality rates than other women, including the ones who were unmarried, divorced or widowed. There was no apparent marriage “benefit” in terms of better health or longer life for these same-sex married women.
I find it curious that, in so many studies, outcomes are so much worse for lesbian couples than any other group, except possibly single mothers.
It's always interesting to watch how, when a person is willing to be honest with themselves, logic and reason renders it impossible to deny the existence of God.
Challenging the cultural climate is a major component of the new apologetics, said Sean McDowell, head of Worldview Ministries. "The apologetics resurgence has been sparked ultimately by teens who are asking more questions about why people believe the things they do," he said. "Those who thought that kids in a postmodern world don't want an ideology were wrong."
I've have been seeing some interesting cultural shifts of late, including among our youth and young adults. It's something I've described seeing to people I've had debates with on various topics, but those I've mentioned it to do not see it. I'm not surprised by that. What they are seeing is what the mass media and certain alternative media that they follow want them to see. They are seeing the results of popular polls and superficial trends. In their eyes, religion is being destroyed by "science" and "rationality"; they see opinions towards SSM going in their direction, which they describe as "the right side of history" and other such meaningless catch phrases; they see the abortion issue as decided and beyond debate. Everything around them is telling them that "their side" has won.
I follow enough of popular media to know what they are seeing - and who is telling it to them. However, I follow both sides, and what I'm seeing is something very different. Even as the mainstream media claims that the abortion debate is no debate at all, painting pro-lifers in the worst possible light, I am reading the blogs and articles and watching the videos of those who were there. I am seeing the astonishing increase in people who are now openly and unwaveringly pro-life, even in the face of sometimes violent attacks from pro-abortion supporters. In popular and social media, I see the assumption that people of science are all atheists, and the claims that religion is anti-science and ignorant. The verbal attacks on those who hold religious views by those who claim to be "rational" and "scientists" are inevitably rude, crude, vile and completely unreasonable and unintellectual. Meanwhile, I am seeing people of faith make polite, rational and evidentiary defences in the face of these attacks. I read the papers, articles, books, blogs and reports written by men and women of both science and faith, and their careful claims blow away the irrationality of their attackers. I am also seeing, in complete contradiction of the claims made by those who support SSM, a rise in support of traditional marriage - a rise based on logical argumentation, rationals discussion and evidence based claims.
In all cases, this shift that I am seeing is very much a grassroots thing, and the demographics are completely at odds with how the opposition portrays anyone who disagrees with them. They are not the "old, rich white men of privilege" or "Christian bigots" and so on. No, I'm seeing this shift happening across the board. Men and women, rich and poor, of all colours, religions (or lack of them!), cultural backgrounds, even sexuality.
Most of all, however, I am seeing this shift increase among youth. For all the social experimentation of our public schools, some youth are still managing to be exposed to both sides of issues.
And when they are, they are seeing through the politically correct shadows and lies, recognising truth for what it is, and taking a stand.
It occured to me that I hardly ever post about anthropogenic global warming/climate change these days. To be honest, the AGW/ACC case has fallen apart so badly, I'm surprised when I find anyone who still supports it.
But I’ve grown old waiting for the promised global warming. I was 35 when predictions of a looming ice age were supplanted by warmmongering. Now I’m 68, and there’s still no sign of warmer weather. It’s enough to make one doubt the “settled science” of the government-funded doom-sayers.
The other modern substitute for the Bible is the heart. We live in the Age of Feelings, and an entire generation of Americans has been raised to consult their heart to determine right and wrong.
I've heard too many people justify their positions based on their feelings, to the point that they refuse to even consider logic, reason or evidence. The irony is that these same people are frequently also atheists, who hold themselves to be morally and ethically superior to people of faith because they claim they are the ones who are rational, logical and reach conclusions based on evidence.
There are two things about the Todd Akin controversy that amazes me. 1) that it happened at all (especially considering the complete lack of controversy over Biden's recent bout of foot-in-mouth-disease) and 2) that it's still going on.
When I first saw the headlines after Akin's interview, I could see right away that there was a case of how not to report the news going on again. The headlines made it obvious. Virtually every headline had the words "legitimate rape" in it, in quotes, followed by claims that Akin said women who've been rapes "don't", "won't" or "can't" get pregnant. A few had some variant of how women can somehow "shut down" their bodies if they're raped to prevent pregnancy.
Of course, with headlines like that, people were in full freakout mode. I expected that from the political left, of course. They'll freak out over the most minor of gaffes by those on the political right, while pretending the most heinous comments from their own side never happened, or simply brush them off as irrelevant. What amazed me is the vicious attacks from those on the political right. From what I've seen (and I admit, I've missed a lot of it) the attacks on Akin from his fellow conservatives has far exceeded the attacks from his liberal opponents.
The problem is, everyone seems to be freaking out over what they think he said, or some projection of what he apparently meant when he said it.
What was it that he actually said? Well, see for yourself.
Here's the transcript of his actual words.
Well, you know, people always want to try and make that as one of those
things... "Well, how do you slice this particularly tough sort of
ethical question?" It seems to me, first of all, from what I
understand from doctors that's really rare. If it's a legitimate rape
the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. Let's
assume that maybe that didn't work or something. You know, I think there
should be some punishment. But the punishment ought to be on the rapist
and not attacking the child.
And then all hell broke loose. But why? What did he say that was really so wrong or terrible? Let's look at the key phrases everyone is blowing a gasket over one part at a time.
"...from what I
understand from doctors that's really rare."
Okay. So what's controversial about that? Pregnancy from rape is rare. He's not saying it doesn't happen, as so many headlines and commentators have claimed. He just said that doctors have told him it's rare. How rare? Well, that's difficult to say, since rape statistics are understandably questionable in the first place (more on that below). What percentage of rapes result in pregnancy? There have been many claims that the pregnancy rate in rape cases is the same as for consensual sex, but I'm not seeing any legitimate data to back those claims up. Then there's this example.
Pregnancy is rare after a single act of forcible rape. In a prospective
study of 4000 rapes in Minnesota, there were no pregnancies. In a
retrospective study covering nine years in Chicago, there were no
pregnancies. In a prospective study of 117 rapes there were no
pregnancies among either the 17 victims who received DES or the 100 who
did not.
Eugene F. Diamond, MD
Professor of Pediatrics and Past Chairman of the
Department of Pediatrics at Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine
April 11, 1985 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine
Now, that's old data in just one area, but I don't know that women in Minnesota are any more or less fertile then women in other parts of the US, and while the number of reported rapes may have changed, I have not seen anything to suggest the percentage of pregnancies as a result of rape has increased since then.
So basically, then, his first statement - that pregnancy due to rape is rare - is true. He didn't say it doesn't happen, or that he doesn't believe raped women get pregnant. Obviously, he knows it happens, and that is reflected in the interview. Yet if you read only the headlines, you'd think he said that rape due to pregnancy doesn't happen, which is clearly false.
What's the next part? Ah, yes. This one.
"If it's a legitimate rape..."
People are just losing their heads over the use of the word "legitimate." There are all sorts of accusations that he was somehow implying that there's rape, and then there's rape-rape. Kinda like Whoopi Goldberg.
Now if only people had flipped out over Whoopi's comments the way they are now over Akin's comments, because hers were far more condescending and insulting to rape victims!
What confuses me is how anyone could have any confusion about the use of the word "legitimate." To be honest, I think Akin's detractors know full well what he was talking about, but it's far more satisfying to get all offended and pretend he was saying something else. It fits into the "Republican War on Women" narrative so much better.
For those who still refuse to see the obvious, he's talking about ... well, legitimate cases of rape vs things like false accusations or false claims of rape.
Here is where things get muddy. Rape statistics are unclear at the best of times. Part of the problem is that there is an unknown number of women who never report their rapes, or report them years after the event. It's said that 1 in 4 women will be sexually assaulted (all types of sexual assault, not only rape) in their life time, which is meaningless, since it's a prediction. Then there's the problem of false rape reports. Again, it's hard to know how many false rape claims there are. On one end of the spectrum, it's claimed that only 2 percent of reported rapes are false (which is higher then the percentage of abortions due to rape). Yet a US Dept of Justice report from 1996 found that about 25-26% of rape cases were proven to be false!
So here we have a problem of there being an unknown number of unreported rape cases, coupled with what may be as much as 25% of reported rapes being proven false (some have claimed that number is actually as high as 51%, but I don't find it reliable). It's entirely possible the unreported vs false accusations cancel each other out, but there's no way to know.
To further mess up the numbers, there's also statutory rape, which can include consensual sex as well as forcible or coercive rape.
In other words, when it comes to rape statistics, we really do need to know what is, or isn't, "legitimate" rape!
In context of the interview, this sort of thing was obviously what he was referring to. The headlines would have us believe he was somehow claiming that rape victims weren't really raped, or somehow making light of the seriousness of the crime committed against rape victims. Personally, I think that's a stretch. It does make me wonder, though. Just how could he have been more clear? Some have suggested that he should have just said "rape" without any qualifiers, but in context of the interview, that would have actually made his statement worse. So what would be a more appropriate word to us? Real? Authentic? True? Actual? I can think of a lot of potential adjectives, but they all end up making his statement sound worse, too.
Which leaves us back with the word "legitimate." Personally, I can't think of a better, less offensive, way to differentiate between actual rape events and false claims.
Which leads us now to the next part that has people's heads spinning.
"...
the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."
Wow, have the responses been over the top to this part! Akin is accused of all sorts of things, from being stupid, unscientific, and crazy, to associating him with Nazi experiments and linking him to some bizarre claim from the past that "spastic tubes" somehow prevent pregnancy.
First, let's make it very clear what he ISN'T saying. He is NOT saying women who have been raped do not, cannot or will not get pregnant. That's what's in the headlines and in the interpretations. That's not what he said. He is also not suggesting that women have some magical ability to voluntarily make their bodies prevent pregnancy during rape. Again, that is something others are claiming is meant, but it's not what he actually said.
Is there any truth to the statement?
Actually, yes, and it's been known for ages. Long before we knew about the chemicals our bodies produce, and the roles hormones play in reproduction in particular, it was known that trauma and high levels of stress can affect a woman's ability to conceive and/or prevent miscarriage. Such things affect male fertility, too, but when it comes to women, our bodies actually do have ways to prevent pregnancy when conditions are not optimal for conception.
The female body is, from a purely biological point of view, a baby making machine. We are awash with chemicals and hormones that are there to ensure optimal fertility. That may not be true as individuals but, as a general statement for healthy women, that's how our bodies work. Aside from stress, a number of things can trigger our bodies into becoming hostile to conception. Nutritional deprivation is one such example. When we're starving, women are less likely to conceive, and if we do conceive, we're more likely to miscarry. Likewise, if we have too much or too little of specific nutrients, it can prevent pregnancy. I remember seeing an interview, several decades ago, with a doctor from a Toronto fertility clinic. He talked about how most of his patients didn't need extreme interventions such as IVF; most needed to only make minor lifestyle changes. He described two cases to illustrate. One couple he treated lived an extremely "healthy" lifestyle. They were both marathon runners, and were in peak physical condition, yet they could not conceive. In the end, it turned out the wife did not have enough body fat. They relaxed their marathon training regimen, gained some body fat, and promptly got pregnant. Another woman he described was also a "healthy" eater. He talked about how one of the first things he did was look at the palms. When he saw this woman's palms, he noted a distinct orange cast to them. As he talked to her, he learned that she had read a lot about antioxidants and had been supplementing with beta carotene. For some reason, she was taking very high amounts of it, which is why her palms started to turn orange. She stopped taking the excessive supplements and was soon pregnant.
Calorie restriction can also affect fertility. Our bodies can't tell the difference between starvation due to famine or starvation due to dieting. It can tell when we are not getting enough nutrition to support a pregnancy, causing changes in our chemical balance that make it more difficult to conceive.
These are just a few examples of ways our bodies create conditions to prevent pregnancy by shutting down our reproductive system. In the context of Akin's interview, it is the stress related responses of our bodies that kick in, creating conditions hostile to conception. Such conditions also cause miscarriages and prevent lactation. This is old news.
Do women still get pregnant, even in non-optimal conditions? Obviously we do, and he never claimed we didn't. He just said that our bodies "try to shut that whole thing down." Which is accurate. Sometimes, it fails. The idea that he was suggesting women can somehow control whether or not they can become pregnant is ludicrous, but that doesn't stop people from making that assumption.
Now, I have no idea who Akin is and, frankly, I don't care all that much. What I do care about is accuracy and truthfulness. I've seen his interview and compared it to the many headlines and column inches dedicated to tearing him apart, and it bothers the heck out of me. The attacks against him are inaccurate, in that they claim he said things he didn't, and dishonest in how they extrapolate meanings to what he said that are, at best, pure conjecture or, at worst, deliberate misrepresentation for the purpose of destroying him both personally and politically.
Was what he said clumsy, "misspoken" and or insensitive? Perhaps, perhaps not. I think the "shut things down" part of what he said was clumsy and unclear, but only to those who don't know anything about the effects of stress on the reproductive system.
Was what he said false? No. Though he was repeating what he says he was told by doctors, and he was in no position to expand on the claims during the interview, his actual statements were correct.
Of course, you won't know that by the headlines.
With all the focus on one sentence of what he said, people are completely forgetting about the closing sentence.
You know, I think there
should be some punishment. But the punishment ought to be on the rapist
and not attacking the child.
People are completely ignoring what he's pointing out here, which is that it is the rapist that did something wrong and should be punished for it. This brings up the obvious question for pro-abortionists using the rape and incest argument: Why should any child conceived in rape be killed because of what the father did?
Headline aside, it's not actually about wolves being poisoned because of the "tar" sands. Aside from the usual anti-oilsands rhetoric, what the post is actually saying is that wolves are going to be culled because caribou numbers are decreasing, and it claims caribou numbers are decreasing because of oilsands activities. Since wolves kill and eat caribou, the Canadian government is going to kill wolves to protect caribou.
Uh huh.
So I decided to do a bit of research. First, I looked up caribou ranges. The species of caribou in question is the woodland (Boreal) caribou.
As you can see, there's very little contact between the oil sands surface mineable and currently disturbed areas, and the range of woodland caribou. For more detailed maps of the areas involved, visit here (pdf) and here.
For more information about the wolves and their affects on ungulate populations, visit here (pdf).
I highly recommend spending some time going through all the links. Until then, this is a brief overview.
The woodland caribou is a species that lives in small populations with a low birthrate and with a habitat preference for older forests. This makes them susceptible to a number of things that can affect their population. Timber extraction results in younger forests that are preferred by other ungulates, like moose and elk, which displace the woodland caribou. The increase in population in these other ungulate species leads to an increase in wolf populations. Wolves replace themselves quickly, are highly adaptable, and very efficient. More wolves means more loss of woodland caribou to predation, which can devastate a species that is so slow to replace itself.
So what does this have to do with the oilsands?
Not much, it turns out. Although human industrial activity does disturb and fracture their habitats, they have been at risk since before the oilsands grew to the point they are now (which still has little overlap with local woodland caribou populations), and some of the populations in Alberta that are declining aren't anywhere near the oilsands, but are in Banff and Jasper parks. Throughout Alberta, there are little pockets of caribou that are increasing, decreasing and are stable, with still others listed as "unknown," and considering the geographical spread of these populations, no connections to the oilsands can be made, other than the usual ways all other human activities affect them.
Are the wolves being poisoned because of the "tar" sands?
Nope. They are going to be poisoned in a culling process that will span years because of overpopulation, and that overpopulation is putting the woodland caribou at increased risk due to predation.
Now, one can argue over whether or not humans should be culling wolves at all. One can argue about the use of poison for culling (shooting them from helicopters has been done in the past, which lead to a huge uproar from the general public). That's not what the blog post is saying. The writer there is blaming the cull and the decline in (some) woodland caribou on the oilsands. However, it turns out that the association between the culling of wolves, the population of woodland caribou and oilsands activities is spurious at best.
