Supreme Court takes up contraception challenge to Obamacare

Story >

"This case presents, front and center for the justices to decide, a question that’s been open for a long time: Do companies, not just people and churches, have religious freedom?" said Tom Goldstein, a Supreme Court expert and publisher of the SCOTUSblog website.

[snip]

The challenge comes from Hobby Lobby Stores… "We believe wholeheartedly that it is by God’s grace and provision that Hobby Lobby has been successful. Therefore we seek to honor Him in all that we do," Green said.

[snip]

"This is a major religious liberties case," said Goldstein of SCOTUSblog. "... And the question of whether these companies can assert religious freedoms is one that will have importance for centuries."

 

The indignation from those who think corporations should fund all reproductive practices boggles the mind.

As much as I disagree with the religious stance that prohibits contraception, I firmly support a person's and organization’s right to hold that view and not be coerced into funding it.

National health care is crucial to our country and this is part of the growing pains of creating a system that protects health and religious liberty at the same time.

If corporations can be held accountable for protecting freedoms embraced by our national conscience, they shouldn’t be fined into bankruptcy by protecting their own.

[2013-11-26]

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Who do atheists give thanks to?

Who do atheists give thanks to? There’s certainly an enormous number of things to give thanks for, regardless of your religious convictions (or lack thereof).

I suppose you could thank another human being, but that’s something we do every day, when we get change at the register, or a waitress delivers our food, or someone holds the door for us.

Thanksgiving is a different sort of thing, and not just because Abraham Lincoln said so; it encourages an elevated gratefulness.

But perhaps there is someone right here on Earth that deserves our gratitude.

Yes, I think so.

Many of us wear glasses, are hard of hearing, on medication, use a walker, or have other conditions that would have cost us our lives in more ruthless times.

So we certainly should be thankful to those who are of sounder mind and body that have let those less fortunate live another year despite our infirmities, and to enjoy a turkey that alas, has not.

[2013-11-26]

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An update on Pecuniary Gluttony

An update on this post for perspective (“I'd be ashamed to spend this much observing a day that encourages thankfulness.” >): I spent $149 here >[1] on my Thanksgiving dinner to feed 6 adults, which included a 15lb turkey and new roasting pan, stuffing, squash, potatoes, cranberry sauce, rolls, green beans and casserole ingredients, two pies, and enough sausage and eggs and biscuits and bagels to get us through a couple breakfasts.

[2013-11-25]

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[1]

I am very proud to work for this company, but policy prohibits linking without VP approval. I figure my VPs have more important things to worry about 4 days before Black Friday. And as I add a final period to this sentence, I go to do the same.

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Ever wonder what goes into your favorite foods?

One of mine is summer sausage (around the holidays). I just learned why it's called “summer” sausage - because it needs no refrigeration; it also “uses leftover scrap meat and organ meat that would otherwise be wasted” (source >).

 

Sausage is sort of the circular file for hooved leftovers, but it sure tastes good.

 

Who has the best real sausage? Jet’s Pizza, no contest.

[2013-11-25]

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Clarence asks…

How much smaller can you make a piece of candy before the wrapper costs more than the contents?

Calling this Butterfinger nibblet a “bar” is a stretch of Willy Wonkian proportions.

 

(Does make a great summer sausage chaser.

 

     That's disgusting.

 

And tasty, too.)

[2013-11-25]

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God bless Ned Christopher

Sometimes those that seem the happiest are the saddest, that seem the most carefree have the most hang-ups, and that have it all together are falling to pieces.

Wealth and beauty don't protect people from personal pain, it just gives them ways to conceal it.

But there are also those those hold it together

I don’t follow popular media much anymore. I know the big train wrecks, but not the little derailments that cable news networks obsess over.

 

I remember instead famous people from my youth that had personal challenges they shared to raise awareness.

Child abuse came out of the closet when I was a boy (Mommie Dearest and a host of others, and that was a good thing). So did alcoholism and drug abuse. In those days, people went to the Betty Ford Clinic (whose namesake struggled with alcohol for years); those few that checked themselves in publically were considered tarnished heroes and applauded with “so sad” head shakes.

Not like today, where rehab is an obligatory right of passage for spiraling celebrities..

The one person I remember best from my youth who shared his private challenges was William Christopher (Fr Mulcahy on M*A*S*H). He had no bouts with the bottle or the paparazzi. He had an autistic child, Ned, whom he spoke publicly about to raise awareness.

He wrote a book on the subject with his wife, Barbara Christopher, called Mixed Blessings >

William Christopher Discusses Autism in 1985

 

[2013-01-17]

 

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We love speculating at the expense of others.

When I was single, I went home for lunch. I made a sandwich, checked email, caught up with CNN, used the bathroom, etc.

A neighbor told others I was going home to drink and she could smell it on me. She told my soon-to-be wife as a matter of fact. I did drink in those days, quite a bit, but never during the day, and never when driving.

We love speculating at the expense of others.

• If you sit in your car at lunch, as some do because they don’t have enough time to go out, you're anti-social.
• If you work through your lunch, you risk being thought an over-achiever, by even some very smart people like Jason Fried, the author of Rework and one of the brains behind Base Camp.
• If you’re nice to people who dislike you, you may be viewed as weak. But if you play by the same rules, you're petty.
• The more often you voice an unpopular opinion, the more likely you'll be branded counterproductive.
• If you're tempered around energetic people, you're humorless. If you’re energetic around humorless people, you’re undisciplined.
• If you're openly religious, you might be seen as hypocritical. If you keep your faith private, you might be seen as indifferent or ashamed.

There’s a presence we cultivate when we’re comfortable with our words and actions; there is also a certain awkwardness when we are constantly second-guessing ourselves.

I have trouble enough just being me let alone wondering what someone else thinks I should be, and I’ve had a lifetime to get it right.

[2013-03-16]

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A win-lose proposition for every Christian.

Among the most difficult things about being a conscientious Christian is that you experience the same level of frustration as everyone else, but you’re constrained in how you respond to it. You’re always under a microscope, always being evaluated, and since none of us are perfect, we're considered hypocritical when we fall short of our own expectations.

It’s a win-lose proposition and every Christian knows that going in.

I sometimes wish I could say my behavior is my business not yours and to hell with the world, but I can't.

I renew my agreement every day with God to make a difference. That doesn't mean I don't get angry and frustrated, it just means I try to respond differently, and hopefully differently enough and often enough that it becomes a habit, and others see a difference and respond likewise around me.

I can hear it now: “Poor Clarence, people are holding you to higher a standard, wah wah wah, sucks to be you.”

The whining is part of the the deal, too.

*shrug*

[2012-12-18]

 

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Parable of the Bee

A Bee, a Dog, and a Man were looking at a flower.

"Isn't that beautiful," said the Bee. It's such a pretty shade of violet.”

"That’s not violet," said the Man. “It’s yellow. Are you blind?"

"Is that yellow?” asked the Dog. “I’ve always called it ‘gray.’”

Bee: But it IS a flower, right?

  Man: Yep.

     Dog: Yep.

Bee: And I can still get pollen from it, right?

  Man: I guess so.

     Dog: I guess so.

Bee: So what does it matter what color it is?

  Man: Because you’re missing the full beauty it has to offer.

     Dog: What’s ‘violet’?

Bee: But I’m incapable of seeing it any other way.

  Man: So am I.

     Dog: So am I.

Bee: And I have to see it this way in order to find it and collect my pollen.

  Man: And I have to see it this way in order to coordinate it with my garden.

     Dog: I wish I could see it either way.

Then an Ant joined them and said, “What are you all talking about?”

“The nature of this flower,” said the Bee.

“Why, that’s not a flower,” said the Ant. “That’s a tree.”

[2013-11-19]

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What's the point in speeding to get only one car length ahead?

My dad frustrated easily behind the wheel. I do too, so I come by it naturally. Unlike me, he never swore, but like me, he grit his teeth.

One thing that bothered Dad on the road was folks that cut in front of him when there was plenty of open road behind him. The guy cutting in only got one car length closer to wherever he was going, which seemed pointless to Dad.

The angriest I ever saw my father was when he saw an old car he'd traded in being driven by the new owner. The new owner hadn't washed it and it looked a mess.

I understand now the attachment a driver develops with a car. Cars become little homes on wheels, mobile safe rooms.

I suspect that those folks cutting into traffic are the same folks fond of other stress inducers, like hunting down the fastest line at the grocery checkout.

In fact, Dad said once that he made a study of how grocery lines move, and on average, lanes of the same size will move about the same speed, and the few minutes you gain or lose on this or that visit is outweighed by the time you spend jumping around.

Dad worked in the grocery business and knew the hum and rhythm well. Someone once told him to shove a box of Fiddle Faddle up his posterior.

All in a day’s work.

[2013-11-19]

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The NRF says 33 million Americans will shop on Thanksgiving (and Clarence predicts…)

Click to enlarge: Black Friday crowd swarms outside Urban Outfitters in 2011. See the video here >

Despite the prediction that Thanksgiving weekend shopping will be flat:

"As many as 140 million Americans plan to shop in stores or online during Thanksgiving weekend, slightly less than the 147 million who planned to do so last year, according to a new NRF survey conducted by Prosper Insights & Analytics."
--National Retail Foundation, source >

Clarence predicts:
In the life time of my children or grandchildren, Christmas will suffer the same fate as Thanksgiving, meaning it will become a meaningless day off devoted primarily to shopping and retail statistics.

[2103-11-15]

Clarence predicts:
In the life time of my children or grandchildren, gay marriage will become formally and legally accepted and will assume a position alongside premarital sex and infidelity as an unacceptable but acknowledged state in which some Christians live. (Please don't confuse this with my moral stand on the issue; this is just a prediction.)

[2103-11-18]

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Bush not so close to Jesus as he is to the Romans who crucified him.

Andrew Brown: George W Bush's new 'crusade': converting Jews to Christianity >

"The Bushes feel that now as surely as the Balfours did a hundred years ago – and two thousand years ago the Caesars believed that gods were actually among their family members. None of them were good news for the inhabitants of Palestine, and I can't help feeling that Bush and his Texan Zionists are not so close to Jesus as they are to the Romans who crucified him."

This is probably one of the most insightful and well-crafted thoughts I’ve read from Andrew Brown.

He’s an interesting combination of thoughtful agnosticism and practical progressivism. I don’t always agree with him, but look forward to his perspective whatever it may be.

I think however he misses something important here:

As a former evangelical that grew up around sentiments like those expressed in Bush, I can tell you that there is an evangelical burden for all non-Christians, but that because Jesus was a Jew, many Western evangelicals have a special place in their hearts for Jews.

I fully understand the political hubris and religious chutzpah here; there’s no denying that it takes a lot of unexamined nerve to say “I’m right about ultimate reality and you’re wrong,” but that’s exactly what is happening.

More to the point, most evangelicals who feel burdened for Jews are acting out of an abundance of sincerity, of the sort normally found when someone wishes they could stop a car from hitting a dog, or intervene when a child is being abused by a parent in a grocery store.

I have no idea if Bush is sincere. I didn’t like him as a president, don’t think he’s especially bright, and he was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people who would have lived to work and play a little longer had he not pursued a war based on manufactured claims about weapons of mass destruction.

But what I think of him as a president and Christian is unrelated to his sincerity. That’s between him and his conscience.

And sincerity of course has no relationship to what’s ethical, practical, or expedient.

[2013-11-15]

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We forget sometimes how to find the wonder in small things.

Can you remember as a child discovering hours of enjoyment in something small? A game, a book, a cardboard box.

Yesterday my daughter Dee Dee got a gift from friends (thank you Rain and family :-) - a colorable backpack. I believe it’s called a “Color a Bag.”

She desperately wanted to get home after an evening out and immediately set to work coloring at the dining room table, not stopping until she was done. I think she did well for just turning 5 years old.

Dee Dee’s decorated backpack:

7am, Dee Dee still in her jammies and wearing her backpack (she kept it by her bed all night):

We forget sometimes how to find the wonder in small things. Some of us have lost the ability entirely.

[2013-11-18]

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China relaxes one-child policy.

 

China says it will relax one-child policy as part of new reforms >

Other changes include labor camp reforms and an improved relationship with the United States.

It’s impossible to comment on this without descending into gross understatement.

I'll do it anyway.

Good for them.

 

[2013-11-15]

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Haven't heard about it? Might be partly because abortion has become regarded as a right along the lines of gun ownership, not a civil right similar to equal treatment under the law or homosexual union. In other words, the "having an abortion" part is so strongly defended, alternatives or reversals like this are immediately viewed suspiciously. The right will view it as China's attempt to boost population growth rate while the West's is in decline, and the left will view it as disregard for a growing indentured Chinese class manufacturing goods to meet the West's material excess.

Perhaps we can instead celebrate the millions of lives that will be spared.

[2013-11-17]

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Why do we insist on the impractical? (my trouser taxonomy)

Why do we insist on the impractical? Especially when it comes to dress.

For nearly an entire month leading up to the holidays [last year], my VP was very generous and permitted jeans at the office so long as we weren't meeting with outside business partners.

Then my wife had a baby, and I spent two weeks at home wearing jeans every day.

Now, my favorite jeans are what you call "carpenter jeans." I don't use the loop, but I use every pouch and pocket, and I became accustomed to using them every day for six weeks.

Now it's back to slacks, and I have four places to keep things:

1. My left front pocket (phone)

2. My right front pocket (keys and change)

3. A watch pocket sewn inside my right front pocket (USB drive)

4. And my right rear pocket (wallet)

(I keep my left rear pocket empty to stay on good terms with my sacroiliac, which likes to complain sometimes.)

If I have to carry anything else, It messes up my trouser taxonomy.

Other impractical things I'd deep-six if it were up to me: neckties, collar stays, laces, or anything else that takes more than 2 seconds to fasten or unfasten.

 

[2013-01-15]

 

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Does the word “trousers” date me? That’s what my Grandpa Cairns called “pants.” I thought it was old-fashioned then, but realized only now that I was using it without even thinking about it, I suppose because of the alliteration with “taxonomy.”

[2013-11-14]

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Another reason why abortion is legal.

The privileged class knows most of the babies being aborted are from underprivileged classes; the privileged will likely not ever meaningfully interact with them; so long as they reproduce in sufficient numbers to keep stores, factories, and armies full, that is enough. The rest can be discarded before they become a charge to society.

This may be subconscious for most, and probably very conscious for some.

This is not entirely my own idea (if any idea can be one’s own), and not an entire explanation for abortion rate differences among classes[1]. I read something similar in National Review many years ago. I stopped reading it when William F Buckley left as Editor-in-Chief. Not because it went downhill, but because it wasn’t the same without him. But I’m still fond of the enlightened conservatism it featured.

[2012-11-01]

 

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[1]

See the infographics from January 8, 2013 at the Guttmacher Institute, “Roe at 40: New Infographics Illustrate Key Facts About Abortion in the United States”  here >

Guttmacher is a pro-choice organization.

[2013-11-12]

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A Dawkins metaphor is helpful but flawed.

On Thursday, December 27, 2012, I wrote this, intending to post it then:

In a metaphor in The Ancestor's Tale, Richard Dawkins compares the human genome to a dictionary of words with instructions; eg, that the lists of words in David Copperfield and The Catcher in the Rye are essentially the same, but what is different is the order in which the words are strung together.

The metaphor is helpful but flawed. I’m not a fan of Intelligent Design, so my objection doesn't arise from that, but if the only difference between these books were the word order, the metaphor would be equally valid for any two sufficiently large corpora of texts intended for the same reader.

What makes any book interesting is not merely the presence of words; any computer can generate a list of words. It's that the words create completely different experiences in the hands of different writers. It isn't the list, after all, and not only how the words are "strung together," but their meter, context, balance, etc.

[2012-12-27]

Compare the sound of a novice and a professional playing the same piece of music. The novice may get every note right, and the timing may be perfect, but it’s not the same music. A real relationship with a medium comes only with time and an abiding affection.

Not everyone can hear it. Or read it. Or see it. Or feel it. But it’s there nonetheless.

[2013-11-13]

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