Friday, December 17, 2004

News of the Day

Things you might have missed...

Parked in Desert, Waiting Out the Winter of Life

In a fascinating study, a NY Times reported explores the lifestyles of the senior citizens living in trailers and RVs in the California desert. Take the time to read it, and make sure you take good care of the elders in your family.

How Quickly They Change Their Minds
Anti-abortionists, that is, when it comes down to really affecting them. A controversial and poorly understood new treatment is being tested in China by a doctor who injects the cells of aborted foetuses into the nervous systems of paralyzed and diseased patients. Some people are agog at the use of foetal cells, but the results seem to verge on the miraculous, and that has lots of foreigners, including this guy, rushing to China...

Among them is Van Golden, a Christian, anti-abortion Texan who has sold his house so that he can travel to communist, atheist China and have Huang inject a million cells from the nasal area of a foetus into his spine. According to Golden's doctors, his spine was damaged beyond repair in a car crash last Christmas. The damage to his nervous system was so bad that he has been in a wheelchair and racked by spasms ever since. But Golden refused to give up, even if it meant having to compromise his values. "This is the only place that offered us any hope," he says. "Everyone else offered only to help make me sufficient in that chair. But the chair is not my destiny. It is not ordained."


Read more here.

Say It Ain't So

Bill Moyers is retiring from his show NOW on PBS as of tonight. Although there have been times I could not watch the show because it would leave me too depressed, it was still an excellent, thought-provoking lonely bastion of liberal thought in today's media. I hope Moyers will continue to speak out in different ways.

The Tables are Turned
The Social Security Administration has decided it will not recognize any marriage - straight or gay - performed in New Paltz, New York recently. This is due to the big to-do that happened last winter when the mayor began wedding gay folks (to one another, that is). It must be shocking for the straight couples who now find their marriages invalid. I wonder if they'll begin to understand what it's like to be in our shoes for a little while?

Everything's Turning
Including apartments. New Yorkers hungry fo rfloor space may be amazed by what you can get in Brazil for $300,000.

Nyah Nyah-Nyah Boo-Boo
Cheers for diplomacy at its finest! U.S. Diplomats in Cuba added an interesting sign to their Christmas decorations this year: a big "75" symbolizing 75 dissidents jailed in Cuba. The Cuban government's response? A huge sign facing the 75 sign showing the torture in Abu Ghraib.

Wildlife Education That Works
The excellent IFAW found unusual help in a religious leader who has his followers treating endangered sharks like family members.

Break Our Your Mukluks!
There's a cold wind on the rise...

But Don't Worry, The World Is Going To End Soon, Anyway
What, you haven't heard?

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