The Octuplets Case Gets Creepier

The supporters of embryonic stem cell research are usually quick to point out that the embryos being destroyed are generally the “leftovers” from in vitro fertilization, in which multiple embryos are created in a dish but relatively few are used.  For those who believe that embryos are unique humans and deserve protection, this approach is monstrous.

At the other extreme, we have Nadya Suleman, recently famous for having octuplets, in addition to her six other children.  The eight embryos were apparently leftover from previous in vitro treatments.  Reluctant to have them destroyed, Ms. Suleman decided to have them implanted; she also refused medical advice to abort one or more.   The result:  Ms. Suleman, a single mother, has 14 children (the oldest is 7), and no visible means of support, except from her parents in whose house she lives.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28948599/

Further inspection suggests that this was not done out of a heartfelt conviction for the Right to Life, but rather a long-lived obsession with having kids.  Something is definitely wrong with this picture.  One is reminded of the well-meaning people who end up with houses full of cats which they have no possible means of taking care of properly.

There are thorny ethical issues aplenty here.  Why did the doctors involved allow her to be impregnated with these eight embryos?  But if she hadn’t had the babies, would it have been ethical to abort them or let the embryos be destroyed outside the womb?  Should the government step in to determine how many children people should have?  (In this case, it appears that some sort of government intervention is inevitable anyway–through financial assistance, if not state placement.)  And should the media have been glamorizing multiple births all this time?  (Sure, we’ve set records–but like the dog chasing the car, what do we do with it when we’ve got it?)

The key seems to be the in vitro fertilization.  First of all, without that the chance of even having octuplets would have been negligible.  There would have been no problem of what to do with the spare embryos, and there would not have been the question of whether to abort one or more of the babies.  There would not have been the question of whether doctors had broken the Hippocratic rule of “First, do no harm.”

This is not meant as a wholesale condemnation of in vitro fertilization as such.  It’s certainly not meant as an attack on the children produced by it–who, after all, had no say in the matter.  (As far as that goes, the embryos that routinely get destroyed don’t have much say in the matter either.)  However, this situation should act as a wake-up call that perhaps we need to come to terms with the implications of our technology and accept that there are limits on what we ought to be doing with it.  It is perhaps possible to reconcile in vitro fertilization with pro-life philosophy, if the fertilization is attempted with only one or two eggs at a time–in short, no more than what the lady involved would be willing to carry full term.  No leftover embryos, no abortions, no litters.

Yes, it’s more cumbersome that way; yes, it might be more expensive and less reliable.  But wouldn’t it be more responsible?  Yes, it might mean some parents don’t get children of their own–and I know this sounds cruel to would-be parents, but I can’t help that–but where is it written that we are guaranteed to get everything we want?  Where is the person who says we can have it all (who isn’t trying to sell you something)?  Isn’t that the philosophy that got us into this financial crisis, and produced the bizarre case of Nadya Suleman?

The epitaph of our era could yet turn out to be that line from Jurassic Park?  “Your scientists were so concerned with whether they could, they never stopped to think whether they should“… or something like that.

Caution: This evening’s sound and fury signifying nothing may have been prerecorded….

By now, most people have probably heard the news that the music provided by the famous quartet at the inauguration was in fact dubbed.  The pianist of the group, though, has stirred the controversy afresh by refusing to apologize for the event.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28878872/

The pianist, Gabriela Montero, cited technical difficulties with the piano due to the cold weather.   The solution, it seems, was to let the quartet play–but quietly, while the recording was played over the PA system.  The explanation was as follows:

We decided that it would have been a disaster if we went out there with that cold, with the wind, and played our instruments out of tune.  Can you imagine what kind of tone it would have set? … It would absolutely have been a pathetic way to lead a president into his oath and the moment that this country was waiting for so eagerly.

So…instead of owning up to the difficulty of the situation and asking the public’s patience and understanding (an easy thing to ask, as everyone was there for the inauguration, and not the quartet), the decision was made to pretend everything was normal, and let the public believe something that was not true.

What kind of tone does that set?

And do we need to issue an apology to the Chinese Olympic Committee?

Thoughts that Pass in the Night

According to CNN, during this year’s Superbowl GE will run ads embracing something called the Smart Grid, which supposedly “involves the digitizing of the nation’s power grid, for greater speed and efficiency.”  http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2009/news/0901/gallery.super_bowl/12.html  I find myself wondering what this means, exactly, especially coming at the climax of the country’s efforts to switch to digital television broadcasting.  Will the power at the socket start coming out in square waves instead of sine waves?  Will my lightbulbs need little adapters before they’ll work?  The computer, which is a digital system already, should work fine, right?

As part of an exercise in curiosity, I recently did a little bit of looking online at the price of real estate in London.  It was frankly astonishing that flats (never mind houses) could command six digits for the leasehold–i.e. just the right to live there, not outright ownership.  In discussing this with my parents, they reminded me of a news item from long ago wherein someone developed a walk-in closet as an apartment and sold it (leasehold, one presumes) for an outrageous rate.  No wonder the concept of the TARDIS has resonated so strongly there over the last 45 years.

Maybe he’s going for the insanity defense….

It seems that embattled and impeached Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has finally settled on a defense plan–throwing himself directly upon the court of public opinion.  A new report from the Associated Press (available at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090124/ap_on_re_us/illinois_governor, and perhaps elsewhere) says Blago is virtually ignoring the Senate trial altogether, instead concentrating on a media blitz portraying himself as a victim of a conspiracy among political insiders he’s annoyed along the way (umbrage he attributes to his refusal to raise taxes).

What exactly he hopes to gain by writing off his defense at the Senate trial and appealing to the public is hard to say–perhaps he hopes to be elected back into the office.  The aforementioned news article suggested he was hoping the public would pressure enough state senators into supporting him to block the impeachment.  Either explanation might be plausible–if his public approval rating were at more than 8%. 

Yes, that was 8%.  Not only does this indicate an abundance of courage (or gall), but it also suggests talent:  imagine that someone, in this day and age, can actually be less popular than the U.S. Congress (which was itself less popular than President Bush).

If Blago is intent on waging a media war, he really needs a song or jingle to stick in people’s minds and call attention to his plight.  There’s only one that comes to mind as suitable:

“They’re coming to take me away, ha-ha, 
They’re coming to take me away, ha-ha, ho-ho, he-he….”

Constitution?… Oh, THAT!

The inaugural flub shared by Chief Justice Roberts and President Obama during the administration of the oath of office was not nearly so interesting as the reaction to it.  The nature of the flub was that instead of vowing to “faithfully execute the office,” Obama vowed to “execute the office … faithfully.”

Most English students would agree that one can often move an adverb without any real change to the meaning of the sentence, and this looks to be one of those cases.  Yet because the oath is dictated in the Constitution as “faithfully execute…” the Roberts and Obama went back later and redid it just to make sure. 

Well…this does make a change from the typical Washington culture.  Imagine taking a literal reading of the Constitution, as the framers intended, instead of bending the verbiage to reflect what the framers should have intended (in the opinions of those doing the bending), or how we would like to have it read.

I wonder if it was Roberts’ idea.

Is it too much to hope that President Obama will nominate people to the Supreme Court who take a similarly literal approach to the Constitution?

On a slightly different note, one of my complaints about the proposed stimulus (now “recovery”) package and the National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank was how long it would likely take to get all the rules processes set up before anything could actually get done.  It seems the Congressional Budget Office agrees with me, estimating that less than half of the proposed spending could occur through the 2010 fiscal year.

http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2009/01/22/in-the-midst-of-celebration-darkening-clouds/

In Defense of Followers

Back when I was in college (the first time), I had an acquaintance who had the habit of classifying people as either Leaders or Followers.   Implicit in the categorization was the idea that leaders were the courageous makers of fashion, while the followers were sheeplike consumers without the will to make their own decisions.

In retrospect it sounds like the result of some well-meaning but half-baked piece of youth rally philosophy meant to encourage the kids not to follow the wrong crowd, but at the time it came to annoy me.  For starters, it left no room for those who didn’t follow blindly but at the same time didn’t exactly attract a following of their own.  The admission of a category for nonconformists would have been a worthwhile addition.

Also, it’s clearly a mistake to lionize “leaders” simply because they’re leaders or dismiss followers simply because they’re followers.  It is possible, after all, to lead downward as well as upward.  Besides, what would happen if everyone tried to be a leader?  I’m reminded of another experience from college (the second time).  This was one of those group problem solving exercises, the one where your plane has crash-landed in a Minnesota snowstorm, and your group has fifteen minutes to figure out what to do about it.  The results were about what one might expect from about a dozen ambitious MBA candidates, all keenly aware that their grade included a component for “classroom participation”:  fifteen minutes of vigorous debate (or I should say “debates,” since they tended to happen concurrently) concluded by about a dozen different answers.   It seems, then, by definition, not everyone can be a leader, since leadership implies a) movement, and b) someone following.

So…if you can’t be a leader without followers, it follows (so to speak) that “followers” are very important people, in that their choices determine who will be leaders.  “Followers” therefore have a responsibility to think about whom they’re following and why, and choose leaders who are worth following–and support them.   Of course there are lots of people who don’t seem to give it much thought (is there any other way to explain the multiple-piercings crowd?), but that doesn’t mean the responsibility doesn’t exist. 

And if all else fails, if there aren’t any of the right leaders around, it may become necessary for a follower to step up and learn to lead (or at least accept becoming a nonconformist), so there is someone going in the right direction–a terrifying prospect for the natural follower, but necessary, all the same.

So, maybe there is a place in the universe for followers–the thoughtful, conscientious sort–even if, judging by the state of the world, they’re in the vast minority.

On a final, and somewhat disjointed note, I would just like to add for the record that not all youth rally philosophy is half-baked–after all, it’s not easy holding a youth audience long enough to make a complicated point.  I need to work on appreciating those who try.

Well, that was quick….

It seems the Democrat-controlled Senate is now ready to seat Roland Burris, the nominee of embattled Governor and Wheeler-and-Dealer-in-Chief Rod Blagojevich. Oh, well–the Democrats’ brief experimentation with Principle must have lasted very nearly two months.

Is it fair to wonder who made what deal with whom to allow Burris in?

No warm fuzzies over CIA pick

You may number me among the people who are NOT impressed by either Obama’s choice for the next director of the CIA, or the reason behind the pick. Clinton leftover and former White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta was nominated after the other candidate withdrew due to “outrage” from some groups who claimed he had not gone far enough to condemn Bush’s policies.

Panetta is said to have no direct experience with the intelligence community (which seems like an invitation to make a snide remark about the Clinton White House, but I’m not really in the mood for a cheap gibe).

It makes me feel SO much safer to know that decisions in the intelligence community are being made on the basis of political correctness.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28510134/

NIRB: Full of sound and warm fuzzies, but signifying little

Those who were following news coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina will remember that one of the emergency programs the government hastily put into place at the time was a debit card to be used by evacuees to let them line up their own food and shelter.  In order to give the appearance that the government was doing something, financial controls on the cards were kept to a minimum.  Thus when word came that much of the free money was being used on a wild assortment of goods and services that had little to do with emergency shelter.

It is with some feeling of recurring history that I see the states, counties, and cities lining up at the trough, as it were, to collect “what’s coming to them” when President-Elect Obama launches his plan to spend our way out of this recession.  Certainly there are lots of projects that need funding–a symptom of long-term growing transportation demand and static-to-declining revenue streams.  Some projects are undoubtedly worthwhile; others are less persuasive.  The thing is, it’s always easy to spend money–especially somebody else’s–but it’s something else to make sure it gets to where it will do the most good.

In order to administer this national spending spree, Obama proposes setting up a new agency called the National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank.  If nothing else, this new agency can probably be relied upon to stimulate the economy of the DC area, with the staffing of a new bureaucracy, but we’ll ignore that for now.  The goal of the new agency is ostensibly a) to replace the Congressional earmarks with merit-based expenditures and b) to give the federal government the authority to issue capital improvement bonds.  These points deserve a little more consideration.

First, let’s consider the merit system.  Strangely enough, the Department of Transportation already has a process for allocating federal transportation funds among the states, as well as rules for determining what projects are allowed to receive federal funds.  It’s a long, cumbersome, and expensive process.  Of course, that’s part of why earmarks became so popular:  money could be allocated without going through all the regular channels. 

The point is, we’ve already got a bureaucracy or three working to prioritize transportation projects according to merit, and such work as it does routinely gets overridden by Congressional preferences.  If Obama wants his proposal to be taken seriously, he must explain what this new agency will do that the DOT doesn’t do already, and how he’s going to cure Congress of its addiction to earmarks–and how he’s going to guarantee that future Congresses won’t relapse.

Of course there’s more to infrastructure than transportation, but I would be greatly surprised if there weren’t similar structures in the other agencies that might deal with infrastructure (Department of Energy, for example).   Maybe the point of the NIRB is to prioritize among all infrastructure projects.  All the same, this is hardly a recipe for a speedy recovery.  It’ll take Congress forever to agree to a formula for prioritizing projects, and it’ll take the project sponsors forever to provide the documentation required for a meaningful appraisal.

On to the capital bonds thing.  We should probably offer a word or two of explanation here about what capital bonds are.  Capital bonds are bonds that are typically issued by cities to raise money for streets other local infrastructure projects, such as parks, sewer and water plants, and so forth.  The municipality borrows money against future tax revenues–frequently property taxes.   These stand in contrast to so-called revenue bonds, which are issued against income to be collected from the users of the facility to be built–for example, user fees on a new stadium.

So–what this capital bonds program amounts to is another way for the federal government to borrow money.  This raises an interesting question:  what income stream will be used to pay off these new bonds?  There isn’t a federal property tax (yet).  There isn’t a federal sales tax (yet).  Social security?  Already spent.  The Highway Trust Fund?  Broke and getting broker.  General revenue/income tax?  Ah–that’s a possibility.

But this sounds familiar…isn’t that essentially what a Treasury Bond is:  money borrowed that will be repaid using general tax revenue?  So why would it be meaningful to give the federal government the power to issue capital improvement bonds when it’s already got perhaps the most powerful bonding authority in the world?  Would the CI bonds be more or less likely than Treasury Bonds to get repaid?   Do we really want to hint that either of them wouldn’t get repaid?  Would CI bonds offer higher interest rates?  If so, do we really want to divert borrowing away from the general fund? 

A lot of people believe that the government has a duty to step up and increase its spending during economic downturns to offset the impacts from the private sector.  I assume that proponents of this school of thought believe that the money would not be spent on duplicated, wasted efforts–but perhaps not.   At any rate, after all these years of irresponsible financial choices in both the private and public sectors, why should we expect to see responsible choices now?

Spraining Ten in Southern California

If California–and especially Los Angeles–is so concerned about energy conservation and global warming and all that, why are they setting up outdoor ice skating rinks on the beach?

http://www.beachcalifornia.com/california/ice-skating-holiday-icerinks.html