Scott Chisholm Lamont, RN.

The purpose of this blog is to post interesting, day to day tidbits that touch upon at least one of the eclectic topics of my pages, ranging from nursing to politics. I will try to avoid those traps of the blogosphere, where this becomes either part of an echo chamber or the posts are so self-involved that they aren't worth your time to read. Mainly, I am hoping to get people to think a little, maybe challenge some assumptions. I will also try to watch my spelling while I'm at it.

Comments? Thoughts? Rants about my rants? You can use the convenient comment tabs found at the top of each item, and I promise to read them and to leave them up for others to read (within reason, of course - plain old flames are boring, and I'm not going to waste server space on them). If you just want to say something to me, you can e-mail me.

April has rolled around, and I cannot believe that I'm as busy as I have been. Living the bachelor life again was supposed to free up more time for my school work, and although it seems to have done so, I sure can't tell the effects based on how much I'm getting caught up.

Posted Thursday, April 28, 2005 @ 0707 PDT
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Please, PLEASE, tell me this isn't going to happen.

I awoke to this headline:

Airlines could allow chatter - FCC reconsidering ban on in-flight calls, starting to ask travelers what they think.

What a terrible idea. Having been trapped on many airplanes under trying circumstances, I cringe at the thought of adding a batch of people yammering away on their cell phones to the mix.

My favourite quote from the article:

Charles Fleischer of Corte Madera was also leery of allowing cell phones at 37,000 feet.

''I do not believe that there is any requirement for passengers to use cell phones on airlines unless there is an emergency like 9/11,'' he observed.

"I can see having high-speed Internet connections, so passengers can continue to work through e-mail. This would not require voice traffic. There is enough noise on planes now. Cell phones on planes would make me strive harder not to fly.''

Like, the voice of reason! What are the chances it will be heard by the powers that be? No, don't e-mail me an answer to that, I am trying to avoid depression these days.

This is not to say that I haven't used my cell phone while flying (true confession here, FCC drones, come spank me if you feel so inclined) - but it was in an air ambulance, where I was attending a patient, and we had lost radio contact with the hospital and needed an alternate means of communication right then. Also, we've always flown with our text pagers on, without evidence of interference with the avionics. But that's totally subjective, not to mention anecdotal.

Now, on a completely different topic, I haven't had time to post about an email I got regarding the heinous Texas law that just passed their House, but let me start off with saying that it involves a clip in which Jon Stewart absolutely decimates CNN (again) for their shoddy coverage. I'm away at the SWEFA Beltaine celebration in NM this w/e, so I will try to post about it on Sunday when I get back.

Posted Thursday, April 20, 2005 @ 2017 PDT
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Just fucking evil.

Like I needed another reason to avoid Texas for the rest of my natural life. I lived in Texas for almost a year when I first came to the US, and I was unimpressed, to say the least. Now comes this headline:

Texas Says Gays Can't Be Foster Parents

Texas could become the only state to bar gays from becoming foster parents under legislation passed Wednesday by the House. The ban is part of a bill to revamp the state's Child Protective Services agency. It passed 135-6 with two abstentions and now heads to the Senate. The foster parent amendment is not included in the Senate version of the legislation, but that body could accept the House bill.

"It is our responsibility to make sure that we protect our most vulnerable children, and I don't think we are doing that if we allow a foster parent that is homosexual or bisexual," said Republican Rep. Robert Talton, who introduced the amendment.

Protect them from WHAT, exactly? Personally, I would like to see them protected from ignorant, homophobic attitudes like the ones so prominently on display in the Texas House. I would like to see them protected from the type of evil that Talton seems so intent on spreading.

What do I mean by evil? I define it as a profound lack of Love. Not love in the romantic sense of the word, but Love in the spiritual sense - that basic recognition of and connection with the fundamental value and worth inherent in another being. Talton and his ilk claim concern for "the children", yet it seems obvious to me that the real motivating factor for their actions is a deep hatred for queer folk, which leads them to try to exclude queers from public life and meaningful social contribution in every conceivable way. Of course, they have to hide their efforts behind a facade of protecting innocents, or defending traditional values, or some other relatively unassailable effort. If they came right out and said: "Deny queers opportunity, deny queers legal protection, deny queers the right to have sexual relations or form adult relationships", the lack of Love.....in other words, evil.....would be obvious, and the majority of people would recoil from it. So, the actions they propose are not only evil, they are disingenuous.

The kids in the foster system of any state need shelter, security, consistency, guidance, and connection with genuinely concerned adults. They need people who act out of Love. Considering the difficulty of the work and the shortage of homes that will take in foster children, legislators should be shouting praises for foster parents of any creed or persuasion, not to mention passing budgets that improve support for foster families and the agencies that supervise them. However, it seems that sort of true concern for the welfare of the "most vulnerable children" is unlikely to make an appearance in Texas any time soon.

Posted Tuesday, April 12, 2005 @ 2122 PDT
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Gay marriage results in many contortions.

Back in Canada, Harper and the Tories are busy trying to kill the gay marriage bill, and claiming they don't need to invoke the notwithstanding clause of the constitution to do so. So what if more than a hundred constitutional lawyers have told them they are wrong. What could legal experts possibly know that the Loyal Opposition doesn't? Perhaps shit from Shinola.

Meanwhile, Libertarian Jennifer Roback Morse has published this intellectually convoluted opinion on why the freedom of same-sex couples to marry will result in the individual person being left alone and "naked" to face the evil and overwhelming power of the state - as in all of us individual people. If nothing else, this is a perfect example of how Libertarianism is not about individual freedom against the tyranny of the state, but rather the illusion of freedom within the shackles of conservative social conformity. A choice quote:

It is simply not possible to have a minimum government in a society with no social or legal norms about family structure, sexual behavior, and childrearing. The state will have to provide support for people with loose or nonexistent ties to their families. The state will have to sanction truly destructive behavior, as always. But destructive behavior will be more common because the culture of impartiality destroys the informal system of enforcing social norms.

Like the informal system of burning fags at the stake and stoning adulterers? Or perhaps the great informal normative system in some Muslim countries of casting the victims of rape out of their homes and families as "unclean"? Wonderful respite from the tyranny of the state that protects individual rights through its smothering rule of law.

My take on her opinion? She justifies her preconceived notions of what a family ought to be in the language of freedom, but freedom is not the foundation of her argument - prejudice is. There is nothing in her argument that acknowledges that as a society we can choose to change our norms, and thus still have norms, just not the ones that failed to recognize the diversity of human relationships.

US Health Care is the real looming crisis.

Krugman has got it right. If the health care issue does not get fixed soon, bad things (not the least of which are economic) will follow. You should see my wife's health care deductions in New Mexico! One month is more than twice what I was paying for health care (including medication coverage) for a quarter (ie: 3 months) in Alberta, where the government charges a provincial health care insurance premium (granted, a few years ago, but still, inflation isn't THAT bad in either country). I'll find out what it currently costs in Alberta and post it here. The bottom line: the US has the highest cost for the poorest outcomes of any industrialized nation on the face of the Earth - something many have pointed out, but many more are unwilling to hear (or believe).

The Right's "Culture of Death".

Bless Frank Rich at the NY Times for nailing it on the head. Discussing the recent media hyped spectacles of ghoulishness, he points out that the right wing is not interested in life or making life better for those of us already here. Here is an excerpt:

What's disturbing about this spectacle is not so much its tastelessness; America will always have a fatal attraction to sideshows. What's unsettling is the nastier agenda that lies far less than six feet under the surface. Once the culture of death at its most virulent intersects with politicians in power, it starts to inflict damage on the living.

When those leaders, led by the Bush brothers, wallow in this culture, they do a bait-and-switch and claim to be upholding John Paul's vision of a "culture of life." This has to be one of the biggest shams of all time. Yes, these politicians oppose abortion, but the number of abortions has in fact been going down steadily in America under both Republican and Democratic presidents since 1990 - some 40 percent in all. The same cannot be said of American infant fatalities, AIDS cases and war casualties - all up in the George W. Bush years. Meanwhile, potentially lifesaving phenomena like condom-conscious sex education and federally run stem-cell research are in shackles.

This agenda is synergistic with the entertainment culture of Mr. Bush's base: No one does the culture of death with more of a vengeance - literally so - than the doomsday right. The "Left Behind" novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins all but pant for the bloody demise of nonbelievers at Armageddon. And now, as Eric J. Greenberg has reported in The Forward, there's even a children's auxiliary: a 40-title series, "Left Behind: The Kids," that warns Jewish children of the hell that awaits them if they don't convert before it's too late. Eleven million copies have been sold on top of the original series' 60 million.

The "Left Behind" kids series really makes my skin crawl. But there are hopeful signs that these wingnuts are not going to be able to dictate terms of life and death for the rest of us. It seems that people in the US are beginning to wonder about the influence of the religious right.

Progressive Vulcans.

Alternative power - it's only logical. And in Alberta, no less.

Peterson Engineering of Calgary wants to convert the town of Vulcan into a model of renewable energy.

The firm has developed a proposal that would use solar panels over an area the size of a football field to heat homes and water.

The $20-million plan also includes some biomass energy and burning products such as straw and wood waste. The energy would be delivered to homes through underground pipes.

Engineer Jim O'Keefe says the town of about 1,800 would get between 40 per cent and 60 per cent of its energy from renewable sources.

Mayor Dave Mitchell says he has yet to hear any negative comments about the idea.

More on Peak Oil from AlterNet.

For those of you with your head in the sand, we are not going to run out of oil soon, we are just going to run out of the capacity to produce enough to meet demand soon (like, maybe this year). This is a great little piece with lots of comments. Bottom line: we need to become a frugal society, and show the rest of the world how to do so. If everyone tries to imitate Western consumption, we're doomed. End of story .