Archive for September, 2006

Abortion, Contraceptives and Poverty

Saturday, September 30th, 2006

How do you prevent abortions? You prevent pregnancies. And how do you prevent pregnancies? You teach comprehensive sex education to kids, and you make sure birth control is accessible. This seems rather self-evident, and it’s something those of us who’ve taught sex ed or otherwise been deeply involved in the sex education wars are well aware of. And now, Will Saletan over at Slate has written a cleverly titled piece, Where Rubber Meets Roe, about the pro-life brigade finally jumping aboard the bandwagon. While it’s interesting to see the logic of pro-life Democrat Tim Ryan, of Ohio, and how his bill ended up splitting into two over the debate over contraception, what’s really important about the article is the data that swayed Ryan.

Ryan’s bill is targeting families with incomes 200 percent below the poverty level, a number that is hard to wrap your mind around. (Consider that the poverty level for parents with two children under 18 is $19,000.) It looks like that in this group of women, access to contraception fell, and sexual activity also fell. But rates of unintended pregnancy increased; the fall in sexual activity did not match the fall in contraception use, so abortion rates increased. What the Saletan piece doesn’t mention, though, is the composition of the women in that 200 percent below poverty level group. We can infer, from the government census website, that the majority of the women in this group are going to be Hispanic or African American. Non-Hispanic white’s only make up 8.3% of the 37 million people in poverty in this country, a number that is slowly falling. Hispanic and African American’s make up 21.8 and 24.9%, respectively.

Access to abortion and contraception is an important women’s health issue that is intensified by class issues and money. And for better or worse, there is a racial disperity between the people fighting these legislative bills and the people who have to live in the reality of the changes the bills bring.

(And a hat tip to AJOB’s bioethics newsfeed, which put this article across my desk this morning.)

1
Posted in ...and everything else, Bioethics |

Bad Jokes

Saturday, September 30th, 2006

The worst philosophy joke, as told to me earlier this evening by Professor Jerry Levinson:

A young man is going out on his first date, and is very nervous. He asks his father what should he do, if conversation fails? The boy’s father tells him this is easy, just remember family, food and philosophy. “The three ‘fs’.”

So the young man and his date are driving back from the movies, and conversation has indeed failed. Desperate, he remembers his fathers advice and asks, “So, do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“I’m an only child.” She replies shortly.

“Oh.” He thinks, and remembers the next ‘f’ is food. “Uh, do you like broccoli?”

“No, I hate it.”

“Oh.” He thinks a little longer, remembers the third categorty, and asks, “So, if you had a brother, would he like broccoli?”

…yes, I laughed. Hard. We all did.

And then Pete followed it up with the worst utilitarian joke he’d ever heard, which I’m also going to force on your eyes:

A small bunch of utilitarians had a food group, where they would gather together and cook for one another, sharing food and wine, appreciating the good. At one meeting, one of the members told them, excitedly, that he had just heard of a recipe that made the most perfect, succulent pork ever! The problem was, you had to put the live pig in a metal box, then heat it slowly over a period of 24 hours. The pig would die after 12-13 hours of intense pain. But! It apparently made the best pork you would ever, ever taste! The group was eager to try this, but one member asked whether or not they could, in good conscience, do this – was the net gain of good enough to warrant the extreme suffering of the pig?

Everyone sighed and frowned and thought about it, agreeing that it was an awful lot of suffering to cause… then one member snapped his fingers and said “I have it!” Everyone looked eagerly to him for the solution: “All we have to do is get more members!”

…I’ll spare you the rest of the jokes that were flying around the table. I, however, had an awesome time: an interesting discussion on aesthetics and no one true beauty, lasting several hours, accompanied by dinner at a very nice French restaurant, followed by drinks and live music at a very funky jazz bar. (And how small is this town? Small enough that we ran into another grad student at that jazz bar, out on a date.) All in all, a lovely way to spend the day – laughter, geekiness, and intelligent discourse. For all my moments of homesickness lately, having the occasional day like this really nicely highlights why I am here.

0
Posted in ...and everything else, 2006 (NY), Academics, University at Albany |

Acting Metatron?

Friday, September 29th, 2006

I think I’m a writer and sort of a performer, and part of the deal is wanting to connect with an audience. Wanting to have your work read or enjoyed. And there is a real pleasure in knowing that you’ve made that connection with people and that they seem to like it.

I like that quote. It rings true for me, even if The Daily Show Resident Expert John Hodgman was talking about the role of fame, and what it brings – not something I have experience with. I do have experience with being a writer, and sort of a performer, and I think it’s something that’s come out most, these last few years, in front of the classroom. Put me in front of a group of people, give me a topic, and… I will make a willing fool of myself, in the name of entertaining education. Some of the things I’ve said and done in a classroom setting, I look in amazement on the memory, and often with embarassment. How in the world did I think saying/doing [fill in blank] was a good idea?

Example? How about the last class I TAed, where I decided to use the internet to my advantage and bring up MySpace while talking about communication, privacy and the internet? Completely forgetting, of course, that the MySpace picture I had up was in much more revealing clothing than I generally wore while teaching, taken at a night out at the clubs. And of course, the entire photo album was up and visible on the first page. Now, it’s not that I had a problem with my students seeing me in anything other than what passed for business clothing in Seattle; after all, many of them could see the MySpace information already. It was the surprise of forgetting there was a nearly half undressed me on awaiting us, the surprise of the class, and my general “oh, man, I’m never going to live that down…”

Of course (and thankfully), at the time, my instant response was “see! what a perfect example of what we’re talking about!”

I’m not even going to go into some of the stuff that happened when I was teaching sex ed,…

But, in a roundabout way, I come back to the initial quote, of writing and being a bit of a performer, and it’s an impulse I understand. Right now I miss the performance bit – I miss the teaching, but I also just miss stepping into the skin of the reactive performer, the person who just opened her mouth and let God speak through me.1

  1. Which, of course, is simply a reference to the approach some people have to improv. Frankly, I think good improv and teaching look remarkably similar… [↩]
0
Posted in ...and everything else, Academics |

Bones Wins

Wednesday, September 27th, 2006

I am rather known, among my friends, for having a strong stomach. Very few visuals get to me, let alone enough to make me think I’m about to lose it. I’m that irritating person who watches surgery while eating and chatting about what I’m watching.

This episode of Bones just won that particular battle with my stomach. That was quite literally one of the grossest things I’ve ever seen. And it’s still going strong… man. That’s nasty. (And yes, I have had several reactions to this, all of which boil down to “omg I have to see what it is that actually grosses you out!” Suckers.)

0
Posted in ...and everything else |

that got thru

Wednesday, September 27th, 2006

I am not the best with the people skills. Working on it, as best I can. But I can miss cues, and pull faux paus for it. This time, at least, the message got through loud and clear. Which is regrettable, but there it is.

Of course, Michael wants to play devil’s advocate and make me think about other options, which is fair – especially given the absolutely shitty few days I’ve had. And there are plenty of demony points to raise. But, it’s something I’ve been hesitent on for a bit now, just because the cues and signals have strongly shouted one thing, conflicting with what I’ve been told.

Oh, fuck it. I don’t know what to believe anymore. Maybe this was all just a horrible mistake.

1
Posted in ...and everything else, Academics |
« Older Entries