I’m about to head out on a 10-hour drive, and I’m wondering if anyone has any suggestions for an audiobook to keep me company. I was thinking I’d do Chris Mooney’s Republican War on Science, but it turns out, that’s not available on iTunes. Any other ideas?

Update: I decided on Jimmy Carter’s “Our Endangered Values.” I’ll post a review when I get back.

Alas, A Blog has posted a handy table showing how pro-life positions tend to correspond a different motivation than what they claim — that these positions aren’t consistent with a belief that abortion is murder, but are consistent with a belief that women should be punished for having sex. It’s quite compelling to see the argument laid out in this format.

Ampersand claims that he’s been reluctant to use the “pro-life movement is really anti-sex” argument in the past because he views it as an ad hominem attack. But, he says,

although I’ve met some rank-and-file “pro-lifers” whose policy preferences were consistent with a belief that a fetus is morally indistinguishable from a child, those folks usually have policy preferences which are totally out of step with the abortion criminalization movement as a whole.

In contrast, the leaders of the abortion criminalization movement have consistently put their political weight behind policies which make little or no sense if they genuinely think that abortion is identical to child murder. And they’ve done so with the apparent backing and blessing of the vast majority of the rank and file.

This is pretty much consistent with what I’ve seen in the comment wars here on Word Munger. I’ve had a commenter who defended the pro-life movement, but then said she’d be okay with abortions up to the fourth week of pregnancy. I’ve had a commenter who said it was ridiculous to say the pro-life movement was anti-sex, but when asked, pretty much matched up in attitudes to what is summarized in Ampersand’s chart, and I’ve seen no evidence that the pro-life leadership’s attitude is anything but anti-sex.

I’ve just finished working on a little book, called What every Student Should Know about Researching Online, which I co-authored with Shireen Campbell (which explains the light posting the last few days). It’s going to be roughly 128 pages, and it’s designed to supplement college textbooks in a variety of disciplines.

It’s based on our earlier book Researching Online, but the book had to be nearly completely rewritten from scratch, since the last time we touched that book was in 2002 — light years ago, in internet terms. There was no mention of blogs, MySpace and Facebook didn’t exist yet (we mention them now merely to suggest they aren’t very good research sources), and Google was still just a little search engine company.

Here’s the table of contents:

1. Creating an online persona
2. A field guide to participating in online discussion
3. Evaluating sources
4. Finding the right information
5. Managing the information you find
6. Giving credit to your sources: Copyright online
7. Giving credit to your sources: Documenting online sources
Appendix: How to make anything look good online

I’m pleased with the results, though I really wish we could have had a little more time to polish it. It will be a handy guide for students whose previous experience with the internet was IM and iTunes. You can look for it in your local college bookstore next fall.

The top three living humans listed in a Google search for Munger live in North Carolina. And two of us are writers. Who’d a thunk it? Number one, however, is a district of India.

The NCAA tournament begins in just three hours… if you still want to join the ScienceBlogs pool, you’ve got time — barely. If you’ve already joined but haven’t made your picks, then you’d better get going!

Update: I’m in last place — only picked 9 games right on the first day. Possibly my worst start in a pool, ever. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I’ve watched exactly one-half of a college basketball game this season.

Given the uproar earlier this week when Steve Waldman made a couple of guest posts on Political Animal, when he stated that liberals are “hostile” toward evangelicals (including sideline criticism from fellow ScienceBlogger P.Z. Myers), I thought I’d try to chime in with a somewhat more moderate perspective.

I’m a liberal atheist, but I’m married to a Christian who’s become gradually more liberal over the course of our marriage. Greta’s not an evangelical, though, and I don’t think she has much respect for evangelicals. She’ll say things like “if learning something new could destroy my faith, then what kind of faith do I have?” She’s a scientist, and she loves learning new things; she doesn’t see any conflict at all between her science and her faith. Her attitude about science is pretty much indistinguishable from mine; it’s the faith part that’s different.

If you ask Greta what she thinks of Christians who say things like “Dana Reeve deserved to die because she advocated stem cell research,” Greta would say “they aren’t real Christians.” I, on the other hand, would say they’re ignorant assholes. From a political perspective, Greta’s position would probably get a lot more political mileage than mine. But what would I think if liberal politicians started taking this tactic, essentially saying “my Christianity is better than yours”? I don’t think I’d be happy about it, but I’d probably accept it. It’d certainly be better than the tactic of the Democratic party in the middle of last century of embracing bigoted, racist “Southern Democrats” into their coalition.

Religion can be a powerful motivator, though, and I’ve seen it first-hand. At Greta’s church, hundreds of rich people get together every week and have a preacher tell them that the pursuit of wealth is bad, that they should be doing more to help others, that a life of service is better than a life of greed. These people come back week after week, in their Hummers, their Beamers, their Escalades. It sounds a little hypocritical, but it’s better than the alternative — that they never consider that their lifestyle might be wrong.

Maybe the key for me is that at Greta’s church, I never see anyone other than the preachers pointing the finger at someone else and telling them they’re wrong. And even the preacher is only pointing at the members of his or her own congregation, who come voluntarily every week to have the finger pointed at themselves.

The difference between religion and politics is that people aren’t free to choose their government the same way they pick a church. If a politician points the finger at us and tells us we’re doing the wrong thing, we can’t just stay home from America the way we might stay home from church one Sunday. Churches can get away with such in-your-face moralism precisely because we have freedom of religion.

So, the evangelicals cry, if liberals are so high-and-mighty about freedom of religion, why can’t we have prayer in schools? My liberal atheist reaction is this: “because I don’t want your bullshit crammed down my kids’ throats.” Greta’s response would be this: “because as a Presbyterian, I have a particular way I want my kids to pray, and I show them that at church. Freedom of religion is about me choosing where and when to pray, not someone else telling me to do it.” Again, Greta would probably win more votes.

So, are liberals “hostile” toward evangelicals? I think if George Bush was making the liberal case, he’d say “we’re not hostile, we’re liberators! We’re for freedom!” I think I’d phrase it a little more accurately. I’d say a liberal should be hostile toward anyone who’s opposed to freedom of religion, which includes a hell of a lot of evangelicals. If you want to impose your religion on America, then you’re unamerican. I’m not religious, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think religion has the potential to do some good, so I’m opposed to any government imposition or repression of religion. And if that means liberals don’t get elected this year, or next year, or next decade, so be it. That’s where liberals need to draw the line. Somehow I don’t think a lot of evangelicals will be crossing it.

I’ve been arguing for a while that Google is one of the good guys. It’s getting less and less easy to make that case. They’re supporting Chinese government censorship, they’re slurping up internet startups, and they’re acting more “microsofty” every day.

The most recent blow for corporate diversity is Google’s acquisition of Writely, an online word processor. Ben Vershbow comments on this at if:book:

In many cases, the networked book will live in an increasingly commercial context, tattooed and watermarked (like our clothing) with a dozen bubbly logos and scoured by a million mechanical eyes.

The mechanical eyes scouring the network have recently become an important concern to me. I was looking at the stats for Word Munger the other day and noticed that they really didn’t vary much from day to day. To see what was causing this, I switched to a stats package that compiles visits by bots separately, and found that nearly half my traffic consists of robots. Some of this, of course, is search engines, cataloging my work to make it easier for others to find, but increasingly, it’s spambots, looking for a weakness in my site to exploit. I may have to shut down the Moby Blook, incomplete as it is, because of spam.

Corporate solutions may be able to alleviate the problem: spam is a bigger problem for them than it is for us, so they can hire full-time programmers to defeat the spambots. But the temptation to allow some spambots in, for a fee, is great in such a scenario. Yahoo! and AOL have already succumbed to it. Can Google be far behind? Somehow it’s scarier to know that your work is being catalogued by a few select corporate allies, rather than any random Viagra salesman (and yet I almost edited “Viagra” out of that sentence, for fear of more spam).

I agree with Ben, I don’t really want my word processor encumbered by an array of context-sensitive ads. Although most of my writing is online, I do most of it using Wordpress or Movable Type; then if I need to compile it later I use good ol’ Microsoft Word (and Clippy has been permanently assigned to electronic oblivion).

The danger in adopting Google for all your work: GMail for mail, Picasa for pictures, Blogger and Writely for writing, is that eventually Google can use their dominance in online productivity tools to force you to stay with them. If Writely documents aren’t compatible with the alternative, then you’re going to stay with Writely, even if Google’s ad regime becomes more oppressive. If Blogger doesn’t play well with other blogging systems, you’ll keep your blog there, even if Google forces you to accept comment spam “ads.” If Google makes these tools more interconnected (as they would be wise to do), the danger of Google’s market dominance becomes even greater.

The good news is, Google ain’t the only thing out there. Google may be the search engine king, but Myspace gets two and a half times more visitors each day. Not that Myspace is going to be anyone’s savior, but the web is a much more wide-open venue for competition than, say the desktop operating system. To me, a much more frightening concern is corporate control of the network itself. There are rumblings that the telephone and cable companies controlling the internet’s big pipes may soon start charging for bandwidth. If some high-bandwidth online resources are only available to those who pony up, then services like Google (and Myspace) may end up being the only ones able to afford to offer them. This combined cable/telephone/Google/Myspace monopoly really could destroy the free internet.

As we come to rely on the internet for more and more of day to day life, we may soon reach a point where figuring out how to replace it is more expensive than paying the monopolists whatever they ask. I don’t have a lot of answers on how to avoid this scenario. Maybe I should stick to writing about abortion.

I just realized that RSS subscribers to Word Munger were only getting brief snippets of each post. That’s no good at all! I’ve now updated the feed to include the full text of each and every Word Munger post, which is as it should have been all along (why didn’t you guys tell me?).

I’m not much of an RSS guy myself, but I know many of you are, so go crazy!

First, I just wanted to let readers know that the comments threads are still quite active in two of my posts on the pro-life movement (here and here — I really need to get a “recent comments” plugin set up on this site).

But I wanted to bring yet another of Deep Thought’s comments to the forefront, and since he doesn’t seem to mind the attention, I’ll address it right here. He says:

That is, in the end, the debate. The right of a woman to have an uninterrupted career, or to not be hassled while completing a graduate degree, or to not gain too much weight, or escape the economic burden of her own actions.

Women are selfish, he argues, for wanting these rights, and for sacrificing the life of another in order to get them. That’s the heart of his argument right there: that the rights of the embryo or fetus to live trump the right of its mother to have the life she wants. I don’t think he’d disagree with that.

But let’s be clear about some things: for Deep Thought, “her own actions” include using birth control which fails. I wouldn’t be surprised if Deep Thought included her being raped in “her own actions.” This is what Deep Thought is talking about. If you are raped, you must not only suffer that inhumanity, but if the rape happens to result in a fertilized egg, then part of your rape will continue for another nine months, because you will not only be forced to have intercourse, you’ll also be forced to bear and give birth to the child that results. Otherwise, you’re just being selfish.

For Deep Thought, emergency contraceptives for rape victims would be an unacceptable compromise, because Deep Thought believes, against all scientific evidence, that emergency contraceptives may prevent a fertilized egg from implanting.

Deep Thought claims that I haven’t talked to enough pro-lifers to really understand what they believe. Deep Thought believes that both abortion and contraception are wrong, but, he claims, for different reasons. It would be theoretically possible for someone to be pro-contraception, but also believe that life begins the instant the sperm reaches the egg, and so any device that prevents implantation or causes an abortion should be banned. I haven’t met anyone like that. I’d be interested to know if any group actually supports that agenda, because again, I haven’t seen one. Christina Page claims in How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America that no such group exists. Deep Thought, do you know of any?

Update: I’ve now added a recent comments list. I think it looks lousy, but it’s functional. Maybe one of these afternoons when I’ve got some time, I’ll spruce it up a bit.

I have an article up on seedmagazine.com about when scientists take their results directly to the mainstream press, without submitting them to peer review first. Here’s a snippet:

Given the recent hot news about fraudulent stem cell research in South Korea and cancer research in Norway, it appears that scientists are being pulled in two directions when deciding how to disseminate their results: On the one hand, they want to get the information out as quickly as possible, but on the other hand, they understand that other scientists need to verify that information to ensure the results are sound.

You Are Barney

You could have been an intellectual leader… Instead, your whole life is an homage to beer You will be remembered for: your beautiful singing voice and your burps Your life philosophy: “There’s nothing like beer to give you that inflated sense of self-esteem.”

’nuff said!

Though, really, the beer needs to be replaced with wine. Then there’s absolutely no doubt this is correct.

In North Carolina, children up to 8 years of age and weighing up 80 pounds are now required to be in car seats or booster seats.

For those of you without children who are wondering how big an 80-pound kid is, my 12-year-old daughter, a seventh grader who is a little short but not unusually thin for her age, weighs 81 pounds. This girl, almost ready to be thinking about boys and dating, is supposed to be just getting out of a booster seat?

Social implications aside, there must be some good science behind this law, right? Think again. I had read a while back (can’t remember where) that children are the least likely individuals to be injured or die in car crashes, by far. But maybe this is just because their mothers are more careful drivers. Maybe the car/booster seat offers the 78-pound 7-year-old extra protection for the few times mommy might end up crashing the minivan.

The Freakonomics gang has the evidence: not on your life. Kids in car crashes who had been restrained by seatbelts were no more likely to die than kids restrained by car seats. They took a step further and actually commissioned a test comparing car seats and seatbelts using crash-test-dummies. In their small sample, three and six-year-old dummies are equally likely to survive a 30-mile-per-hour crash in a car seat and in a seat belt.

Car seats are burdensome contraptions. They make carpooling more difficult, and they are a pain to install. Often, they’re not installed properly at all. They can cost hundreds of dollars. And, apparently, for children three years and above, they don’t work any better than seatbelts.

Legislatures love to pass these laws because it makes it look like they care about children. They should do kids a favor, save their parents a couple hundred bucks that could be going into the college fund, and abolish car seat laws from three years and up.

For those of you who, like me, are addicted to engaging in a useless bragging-rights competition in which pseudo-students compete for the right to be used as pawns in the corporate mega-marketing enterprise, you’ll be glad to know that it’s

NCAA HOOPS TIME!

That’s right, I’ve created an NCAA tournament pool group on yahoo.com. Originally the group was just for sciencebloggers, but since most of them couldn’t give a noodly appendage for college hoops, we’ve decided to broaden the pool.

Here’s the official instructions on how to join:

In order to join the group, just go to the game front page and click on the “Sign Up” button to create a team. After completing registration, or if you already have a team, click the “Create or Join Group” button and follow the path to join an existing private group. Then, when prompted, enter the following information…

Group ID#: 26228
Password: (email me for the password!)

Feel free to invite others. The prize for the winner is the right to mercilessly proclaim your superiority in a post on Word Munger!

Anne Fernald has a great post on the process of selecting essays for a college reader. It’s something I have a little experience with myself, but Anne writes brilliantly about the process.

I also recall another emotion in this process: terror — terror at picking something that wouldn’t really inspire freshmen, but instead annoy, or worse, bore them.

But I wanted to comment a bit more about Anne’s frustration in finding blog posts to recommend. I’d have to agree — it’s difficult to find a single blog post that stands on its own in a collection of unrelated essays. Come to think of it, it’s also difficult to find an essay that does that. We pick essays that respond to each other in some way. Because essayists don’t have the luxury of linking to the texts they’re responding to, they have to give us at least enough context to show us the connection they’re making. Most of the time, when an essay is truly out of its original context — in a magazine, or as a chapter in a book — the cues the essayist provides us aren’t enough. The anthologist fills that gap by placing related essays together in a chapter, or writing an introduction to give needed details.

Newspaper columns are probably the worst, often responding to a particular event that happened a day or two before. When the event is fresh, the column makes sense, but a year or two later, most columns fall flat.

To anthologize blog posts, since the links are where most of the action is, you’d have to actually show what the links are, either with footnotes or by including the linked items in the anthology as well. But even that isn’t as graceful as a sly link integrated directly into the text. Sometimes just hovering over the link is enough — you get the sense of where the link is going and can anticipate what it’s going to say. Sometimes you have to follow the link, read what it says, and then get back to the original.

So I think the only effective way to create an anthology of blog posts would be to do it online, so students can have the experience the way the bloggers intended. Yeah, someone really ought to do that. It still wouldn’t be perfect, because by next semester half the links would be dead, but it might be a start, a way of showing that blogs are literature, too.

Though we may disagree on free speech, Orac has been a great supporter of the Holocaust History Project. I would be remiss if I didn’t join others in condemning the attacks on the HHP’s headquarters, and encouraging still more people to spread the word about the good work the HHP does.

Got this from Bad Example.

1) Two favorite colors.
Green
Brick red
(but not together — too christmasy)

2) Two least favorite colors.
Pale blue
Pale pink
(especially on babies)

3) Favorite fast food restaurant.
Taco Time. I wish they had them in North Carolina

4) Favorite day of the week.
I actually really like Mondays. Get back to work day. (Amazing, someone who likes his job!)

5) Least favorite day of the week.
Tuesday. The day you realize work isn’t as fun as you thought.

6) Best thing about your significant other.
Her unflinching support for me.

7) Least favorite thing about your significant other.
Oh, c’mon! She reads this blog!

8) Your significant other’s favorite thing about you (without asking them).
I hope it’s my unflinching support for her.

9) Your significant other’s least favorite thing about you (again, without asking them).
The fact that I’m a sports fan.

10) Black or white?
Black

11) Red or blue?
Blue
What’s with all the colors in this meme?

12) Day or night?
Day. Night can be good, but I do most of my favorite things during the day.

13) Favorite part of your body.
My legs

14) Least favorite part about your body.
My gut

15) Do you like walking in the rain at times?
Yes, with a good umbrella. Not in a torrential downpour, but a nice steady rain can be good for a walk. What I really like is driving in the rain.

16) Do you have a tattoo?
No, and never had the least interest in getting one.

17) “Short and sweet” or “long and hard”.
Long and hard

18) Favorite kind of car.
A Toyota Prius that’s been hacked to run on electric only, coupled with a nice solar array.

19) Favorite kind of ice cream.
Jamoca almond fudge

20) Trix or Lucky Charms.
Lucky Charms. But Crunch Berries are even better.

I’ve found myself writing more and more about the issues of contraception and abortion, so I figured I may as well start a new category. I’ve even gone back and relabeled my old posts on the topic, so if you want a history of my thinking on the subject, you can click on the category above or in the sidebar. Yummy. You won’t be able to comment on the old posts, though, so if you want to make a comment on one of them, feel free to use this thread for that purpose.

Be forewarned: In the past when I’ve started a new category it’s tended to result in my either abandoning the topic or starting a new blog devoted entirely to it.

So Mollie Ziegler of the New York Sun has reviewed How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America, which I also reviewed last week. Let’s take it paragraph by paragraph:

NARAL Pro-Choice New York’s Cristina Page writes a book that fails to even attempt to live up to its title: “How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America” (Basic Books, 256 pages, $24). Instead, its bizarre thesis is that pro-life groups do not attempt to prevent abortion. Rather, “they are against sex, and the sex lives the vast majority of Americans enjoy.”

I’d agree that the book fails to live up to its title: I’d say it’s saved America up to now, but the future is in serious doubt. Now Ziegler claims Page has an alternate thesis, that pro-life groups are against sex. Let’s see if Ziegler shows Page doesn’t prove this thesis.

Her odd claim that pro-lifers oppose sex for pleasure would be laughable were it not espoused with vehemence. A book that critically responds to the political work of either side of the abortion debate would be welcome. Instead, she puts the worst possible construction on a few select positions, notably a view among some pro-life advocates that contraception is to be eschewed. She also conflates pro-life opposition to abortifacients with opposition to all contraception.

Note that Ziegler offers no response to Page’s claim that no pro-life organization supports contraception. If even one group did support contraception, this claim would be easy to disprove. Yet there is no response, only mockery at the very idea of the claim. Then there’s this nonsense about conflating abortifacients with “all contraception.” Page is very clear in the book about the difference between abortifacients and contraception. She points to the overwhelming scientific evidence that neither the birth control pill, nor the “day after pill” is an abortifacient, that they act by preventing ovulation and fertilization, not implantation. She makes a very clear distinction between these contraceptives and true abortifacients, such as the “abortion pill,” RU-486, already banned in the U.S. Note again that Ziegler makes no responses to Page’s argument, just misrepresents and dismisses it.

Physicians who refuse to prescribe morning-after pills are “kooky” and “outrageous.” Their “dubious religious notions” cause them to engage in “vigilante acts of obstruction-by-pharmacist.” Apparently she believes women should not be forced to have children they accidentally conceived, but pharmacists should be forced to act against their conscience.

Wait, I’m confused — is it the physicians, or the pharmacists who are obstructing here? How can physicians engage in “vigilante acts of obstruction-by-pharmacist”? Surely that’s a quote out of context if I’ve ever seen one. The next sentence rises to even higher levels negligence: Ziegler claims Page believes that women should not be “forced to have children.” Okay, so far, so good — I think — I hope that even Ziegler agrees with this part of the sentence. The next part is a huge problem: “they accidentally conceived.” Umm, no. Remember, the “day after pill” doesn’t have any effect on fertilized eggs: the way it works is to prevent ovulation, and possibly to prevent fertilization. The final part is the final straw, suggesting Page believes that “pharmacists should be forced to act against their conscience.” Page said no such thing. She said that patients should be able to go into pharmacies and get the drugs their doctors prescribed. Pharmacies should be obligated to provide staff that can fill the prescriptions prescribed by doctors. Now, if you’re thinking of getting into a career in pharmacy, your employer has every right to make sure you can do your job. But no one’s “forcing” you to work against your conscience. You can always find another job, just like someone uncomfortable with pornography probably shouldn’t be working for the cable company. No one’s forcing anyone to do anything. Except in South Dakota, where they’re forcing rape victims to carry their assailant’s progeny to full term.

Ms. Page is the Ann Coulter of the pro-choice movement. Not only are reports that abortion causes lingering psychological damage false, but girls who have abortions actually function better. Besides, everyone knows that postpartum depression is a more legitimate concern for women.

Uh-oh. I’m confused again. Is the Coulter thing supposed to be a compliment or a slam? Because coming from Ziegler, I’m really not sure. Next Ziegler restates Page’s argument, only sarcastic-like, because sarcasm is always an effective rebuttal for science.

After calling President Reagan a “fundamentalist” and making an obligatory comparison of pro-lifers and Iranian mullahs, Ms. Page writes that the pro-choice movement “has been the realistic movement. And if, as a result, it has given up the high ground of deeply felt, religious intoned ‘values,’ it has gained something else. It has science.”

Okay, let’s just say this quote is taken a wee bit out of context. The “values” Page is speaking about here are the pro-life movement’s repugnant work to dismantle UN efforts to help China end its oppressive “one child” program. I’d take “science” over those “values” any day.

Apart from Ms. Page’s mocking of religious views and contention that science is on her side, It seems that the pro-choice movement is the one in thrall to ideology. The pro-life movement’s tactics of fighting for incremental political gains in state legislatures and court appointments is much more pragmatic than the pro-choice movement’s rigid refusal to concede any ground against abortion on demand.

Let’s remember, Ziegler has done nothing to disabuse us of the notion that science is on Page’s side. I’ll concede Ziegler’s last point: lately the pro-life movement has been much more effective than the pro-choice movement in bringing its agenda forward. But whether Page’s book helps the pro-choice movement or not remains to be seen.

Oh, and one last thing. Did Ziegler ever show us that the pro-life movement isn’t against contraception, or that they’re in the least bit comfortable with recreational, non-procreative sex among even married couples? I’ve quoted her entire review, so I guess not. What she’s done instead is prove Page’s point, that the pro-life movement uses misleading innuendo and pseudoscience in the name of the “belief” that abortion is wrong. Ziegler doesn’t discuss contraception at all in the article (except to wrongly imply that emergency contraception is an abortifacient), when Page’s entire book is about the pro-life movement’s opposition to contraception.

And the pro-life movement laps this shit up. Just take a look at Dave Andrusko’s response to the review on the National Right to Life web site: it’s all about “ripping babies’ heads off” — when this is a book about contraception, not abortion. I guess it’s all right to lie and deceive, as long as you’ve got God on your side.

Got this from Doug Hoffman

9 lasts:
last cigarette: With my stepsister, in the second grade. Took one puff, my one and only, ever.
last beverage: I’m alternating right now between water and half-caf Last alcoholic beverage: Yellowtail Shiraz
last kiss: I kissed my daughter Nora good night last night.
last movie seen: I hate to admit it, but it was The Dukes of Hazzard. Great car chases, lousy movie.
last phone call: God, I don’t know. Probably something kid/summer camp related.
last cd played: CD? It’s been a long, long time. I honestly can’t say. The last song I played was a Beethoven violin trio, via iTunes.
last bubble bath: Don’t remember.
last time you cried: Didn’t exactly cry, but I teared up this morning when I heard about Kirby Puckett’s death.

8 have you evers:
have you ever dated one of your best friends: Yep. And married her, too.
have you ever skinny dipped: No.
have you ever kissed somebody and regretted it: I don’t think so.
have you ever fallen in love: See three lines up.
have you ever lost someone you loved: You mean like a lover? I don’t think so. But aunts, uncles, grandparents, my stepsister, absolutely.
have you ever been depressed: Sure.
have you ever been drunk and thrown up: Oh, yeah. Can you say “Southern Comfort”?

7 states you’ve been to:
1. California
2. New York
3. Nevada
4. Utah
5. Arizona
6. Washington
7. Louisiana

(Same as Doug’s list, too lazy to come up with others)

6 things you’ve done today:
1. Went for a run.
2. Argued with a pro-lifer.
3. Finished writing a book chapter.
4. Tried (and failed — so far) to import old posts into the new CogDaily
5. The dishes.
6. Folded laundry.

5 favorite things in no order:
1. Skiing
2. Hiking
3. Writing
4. Cooking
5. Greta

4 people you can tell [almost] anything to:
1. Greta
2. …
3. …
4. …

I’m like Doug here. There’s really no one else

3 wishes:
1. Becoming a famous writer, making lots of money, yadda yadda
2. World peace, end to global warming, yadda yadda
3. Health and happiness for friends and family, yadda yadda

2 things you want to do before you die:
1. Spend a year in a foreign country
2. See my happy, grown-up kids raise my grandkids

1 thing you regret:
1. I think I wish I gave law school a chance. But only if I could be retired from law by now and doing exactly what I’m doing this moment.

I’m having quite a debate with “Deep Thought” in the comments about some of the finer points of abortion. I don’t want to pick on Deep Thought in particular, but I have noticed a few things. Pro-lifers like to think in analogies: Abortion is like pushing someone off a roof when they’re hanging on with one hand. Just letting them fall may be negligent, but it’s not like abortion.

Frankly, I’m having a hard time figuring out what either of these analogies has to do with abortion. The only way it works for me is if you start with the idea that abortion is murder. Then, yes, a different type of murder is also like abortion. But if you actually consider what an abortion is, then the analogy falls completely apart. Is the woman the roof? Or is she the one hanging from the cliff? Or is she the pusher? Maybe the father is the roof. I guess the fetus must be the guy hanging from the roof, since it’s the thing that “dies.” But what if you don’t believe the fetus is alive? The analogy is of no use in determining whether abortion is actually murder.

Second, pro-lifers don’t like statistics. You can tell them that there’s a one in a million chance that someone on the Pill will somehow produce an egg that gets fertilized but doesn’t implant (actually the chance is probably lower — there’s no evidence the Pill, even the “day after pill,” prevents implantation), and they’ll go on a crusade from here to Kathmandu to protect that one “potential life,” no matter how many other lives they ruin in the process. That one in a million fertilized egg is worth more to them than the millions of women who die in childbirth around the world.

Third, they will deny until hell freezes over that their opposition to sex education has anything to do with their opposition to abortion. They’re two completely separate issues that almost all pro-lifers happen to be in agreement on. It’s just a complete coincidence that people who don’t like abortion also don’t like sex. Education. I mean it’s a coincidence they don’t like sex education.

Fourth, it’s all a slippery slope to them. Except when it’s not. For example, if you’re willing to abort a four-week fetus, you might be willing to murder a toddler with autism. Yessir, a slippery slope. But it’s invalid to suggest that since many pro-lifers and all pro-life organizations are either opposed to contraception or unwilling to support contraception, that the ultimate goal of the pro-life movement is to ban not only abortion, but also contraception. Nosirree, no slippery slope there.