It's So Personal, Ctd
Sunday, June 14, 2009
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We were told that the ultrasound suggested strongly that our second child would be born, if she made it that far, with a Trisomy 18 birth defect. There were cysts on her fetal brain that were indicative. Her death before birth or just after was highly likely. If she survived against the odds, it was almost certain that she would suffer from severe birth defects and profound developmental delays. Her short life would be taken up with corrective surgery and pain, none of which she would be able to understand but which she would suffer. The amniocentesis would let us know for sure.
There was that time while we waited when we had to decide what we would do if the news was bad. While my wife and I believe in a right to choose, we strongly feel that life is always the first choice if possible. Even so, we could not allow our daughter to undergo this. We would terminate our pregnancy and spare her. The news came back good and Meg is 16, wonderful and on her way to a career as an artist. It's not the decision that matters; it's why it's made. It's parents stuggling through terrible choices. And their only hope and help is with the doctors. We are all struggling badly to find our way. Perhaps this is the fairest way to understand Dr. Tiller.
An earlier reader testimonial here. Illustration: Leonardo da Vinci.
It's So Personal, Ctd
[Source: Good Times Society - by The American Illuminati]
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posted by tgazw @ 6:27 PM,
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Last Week's 5 Greatest Hits at Reason.com
PrintEmailPDF Here are the top five most popular articles that ran at Reason.com from May 24-31. Read 'em once again or for the first time.
Sonia Sotomayor on Gun Rights and Racial Preferences: Why libertarians-and everyone who believes in limited government-should worry about Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee Damon W. Root (5/26)
California's Silent Big Spenders: Political class refuses to explain why the state requires hysterical spending growth Matt Welch (5/28)
Is the Abortion Debate Changing?: Understanding the latest opinion poll results David Harsanyi (5/27)
Nostalgianomics: Liberal economists pine for days no liberal should want to revisit. Brink Lindsey (5/26)
What Norm Coleman & Al Franken Have Taught America: The Senate is carrying more dead weight than an Uruguayan rugby team Nick Gillespie (5/29)
Last Week's 5 Greatest Hits at Reason.com
[Source: Good Times Society - by The American Illuminati]
Last Week's 5 Greatest Hits at Reason.com
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Last Week's 5 Greatest Hits at Reason.com
[Source: Boston News]
Last Week's 5 Greatest Hits at Reason.com
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posted by tgazw @ 6:09 PM,
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The other Susan Boyle
PrintEmailPDF The global success of the Britain's Got Talent star has had an unlikely impact on one unassuming Texas artist. Stuart Jeffries hears how
There is, you might think, room in the world for only one Susan Boyle. But you would be wrong. The American artist, Susan K Boyle, was living her quiet, unassuming life in the pretty hill country of Kerrville, Texas, when a friend sent her an email.
"It was a link to Susan Boyle's YouTube performance a few days after her audition," recalls Susan K. "I thought she was wonderful - what a beautiful voice and what a compelling story. But I thought it was just an interesting coincidence, nothing more."
Except that back in 2002, Susan K Boyle had set up a website, susanboyle.com, to display her artworks. That site had been rusting in cyberspace for a couple of years - until the Britain's Got Talent finalist sudenly came to the global consciousness last month, and something rather strange happened. "A journalist called me and said, 'Do you know your site is getting 1,800 hits per hour?' I had no idea - I hadn't upgraded the site for a couple of years." Yesterday, she calculated the cumulative total of hits to be more than 172,000.
Susan K's website shows her figurative line drawings and head studies in oil. Like her namesake, she has got talent, though not the sort to irrigate Simon Cowell or Amanda Holden's tear ducts.
And then the madness, as it does in such cases, began in earnest. "A couple of Susan Boyle fans emailed me to say they thought I sang beautifully. Another thought I sang beautifully and liked my artwork! Among the emails were inquiries for price quotes on a couple of my art pieces. However, I have had no sales as a result of this. Yet."
So is Susan K expecting a surge of sales as a result of the sudden celebrity of an unglamorous though sweet-voiced woman who lives on the other side of the Atlantic? "That would be too weird, wouldn't it?"
Next, she started getting calls and emails from people wanting to buy her website's domain name. "One guy, within a minute, had increased his offer from $100 to $500,000. I'm not sure how serious he was, but that sort of thing is very strange to happen to someone like me." She consulted a company called Sedo that sells domain names and, following their advice, has now put her web address up for sale for a cool $25,000. She hasn't sold it. Yet. (She has moved her artwork display, though, to sboyleart.com).
Surely she'll be rooting for her namesake to win tomorrow night's final? "I haven't heard the other finalists, so I can't say." Admirably diplomatic - but Susan K now has a pecuniary interest in the other Susan's success. According to Sedo's director of business development, Nora Nanayakkara: "The value of the domain name really depends on the sustainability of Susan Boyle's popularity."
I ask if Susan K's life story is as heart-rending as her namesake's. "I don't know much about her biography," she replies. I'm thinking of the fact that the 46-year-old singer from West Lothian claimed - apparently as a joke - never to have been kissed, at least until Piers Morgan made her life story even more harrowing by kissing her backstage last week. "Oh, I've been kissed," Susan K replies finally.
The 64-year-old from Kerrville is an art major who has drawn and painted throughout her life, while working mostly in the airline industry. "I was a stewardess, as they were called in the 60s, for PanAm. I left just before Lockerbie [the PanAm crash in 1988]."
In addition to Susan K's new website, her work can be seen in a show called Turning Point at the Hill Country Arts Foundation in Ingram, Texas, from 6 June. She is understandably eager for the media circus (ie me calling her at the prearranged time of 7.30am from London) to move on, so she can walk her "lovely old dog" and then get back to her art.
After the interview, she sends me a disarming email: "Please be kind to me in your article. Another outfit in the UK wrote about me yesterday and made me sound stupid AND greedy - and they hadn't even spoken with me!! Egads!"
For the record, Susan K Boyle is neither of those things (and I'm always a sucker for a woman who exclaims "egads"). She is, like her namesake, a breath of fresh air. The last thing the "other" Susan Boyle says sounds sweet coming down the line to this celeb-crazy nation. "I am an artist and am happiest in my studio working on my art. I don't deserve, or want, fame".
guardian.co.uk ? Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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[Source: Good Times Society - by The American Illuminati]
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posted by tgazw @ 5:48 PM,
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Quote For The Day
PrintEmailPDF "If anyone has an urge to kill someone at an abortion clinic, they should shoot me. ... It's madness. It discredits the right-to-life movement. Murder is murder. It's madness. You cannot prevent killing by killing." - John Cardinal O'Connor.
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[Source: Good Times Society - by The American Illuminati]
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posted by tgazw @ 3:46 PM,
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Inviting The Brotherhood, Ctd
PrintEmailPDF Crowley talks to a member of the group:
[Mohamed Habib, deputy chairman of the Brotherhood in Egypt] explained his skepticism about Obama's speech here on Thursday. "If there is no radical change in American policies, I don't think it matters what he says," Habib told me through a translator. "I pity Obama because I know he is not on his own. He is surrounded by different forces--business congolmerates and the Zionist lobby." Nor did Habib care much for the prevailing debate in the US about how much emphasis to place on democracy promotion. "Understand that democracy in the Bush administration was not a goal itself but a curtain to hide the atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan." When it comes to Egypt's internal affairs, all the Muslim Brothers ask, Habib said, was that the US end its support for Hosni Mubarak's regime. "We don't want anything from the U.S. but to back off from supporting existing dictatorships. That's it," he said.Inviting The Brotherhood, Ctd
[Source: Good Times Society - by The American Illuminati]
Inviting The Brotherhood, Ctd
[Source: October News]
posted by tgazw @ 2:51 PM,
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WHY ARE WE BAILING OUT GENERAL MOTORS?
PrintEmailPDF As president of General Motors when Eisenhower tapped him to become Secretary of Defense in 1953, ?SEngine Charlie? Wilson voiced at his Senate confirmation hearing what was then the conventional view. When asked whether he could make a decision in the interest of the U.S. that was adverse to the interest of GM, he said he could.
Then he reassured them that such a conflict would never arise. ?SI cannot conceive of one because for years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa. Our company is too big. It goes with the welfare of the country.?
Wilson was only slightly exaggerating. At the time, the fate of GM was inextricably linked to that of the nation. In 1953, GM was the world?"s biggest manufacturer, the symbol of U.S. economic might. It generated 3 percent of U.S. gross national product. GM?"s expansion in the 1950s was credited with stalling a business slump. It was also America?"s largest employer, with over 460,000 employees. Its blue-collar workers received (in today's dollars) $60 an hour that year in wages and benefits.
Today, Wal-Mart is America?"s largest employer, the majority of whose employees receive just over $10 an hour. And General Motors is filing for bankruptcy. Wilson?"s reassuring words in 1953 now have an ironic twist. There will be little difference between what is good for America and for GM because it is soon to be owned by U.S. taxpayers who have forked out more than $60 billion to buy it.
But why would U.S. taxpayers want to own today?"s GM?
The answer, after the jump.
--Robert Reich
WHY ARE WE BAILING OUT GENERAL MOTORS?
[Source: Good Times Society - by The American Illuminati]
WHY ARE WE BAILING OUT GENERAL MOTORS?
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posted by tgazw @ 2:32 PM,
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