anonemouse

Yes, I struggle with my beliefs and I am honest about that fact. The point I was trying to make is though I personally believe that smoking or drinking while pregnant is wrong, I would never try to pass a law to stop it. It is all about a woman's choice to control her body. But again, until that fetus is able to live outside a woman's body on its own, it is a part of the woman and she can do whatever she wants to her own body. Machine assistance is completely different from feeding or cleaning. The one month-old and the three month-old can breathe on their own and their hearts can beat without any extra support. They need feeding and cleaning to support their life, yes, but they are already living. They don't need a machine just to breathe or make their heart beat. I should probably refine my statement on my beliefs on abortion. I personally believe that abortion is allowable up until the fetus is viable. Beyond that point, like someone else said, I think that it should become an early delivery and the fetus put up for adoption. If the fetus is viable, then yes, aborting it would be murder in my opinion. Otherwise, though, IMO, it isn't.

I am going to be very blunt here about my beliefs, and I am just asking that I not be attacked for it. I want to state that the following is all my opinion and that I am not saying that anything is scientifically accurate. I struggle with my beliefs because I am anti-smoking and anti-drinking while pregnant. That said, I am 100% pro-choice. I believe that until a fetus (or baby, whatever you want to call it) can live outside a woman's body with no medical assistance (in the majority of cases), it is a part of that woman's body and is subject to her whim. I recognize that, in most cases, a fetus has the potential to become a person. But until that fetus can breathe on its own and support its own life (obviously, I am not talking about feeding itself), it simply isn't a person yet. To me, the rights of an adult will always trump those of a fetus. And to those of you talking about aborting Beethoven, remember this: A woman may well have aborted the next Beethoven or Einstein. But, on the other hand, she may have aborted the next Ted Bundy, Adolph Hitler, or Charles Manson.

When someone you haven't told asks you how you lost weight? I don't understand. I mean, so many of us complain about how people are always after us to "lose it on our own." Wouldn't letting people know that weight-loss surgery is a viable option that is more common than they think help get rid of the stigma?

The same kind of person who takes their young child off life support and then comforts them while they are dying. The women who are having abortions just because they don't want to be pregnant are not likely to use a so-called "comfort room." I would imagine that the people using it are the ones who had massively deformed, damaged, or already dead fetuses aborted. To me, that is no different than removing a loved one from life support. Would you deny a woman comfort who had just taken her 6 year-old off life support? Probably not. I see no difference in giving her comfort and giving comfort to the woman who had an abortion to remove a fetus that would have died anyway.

I just got through with all the appointments that were required before my info was sent to insurance. As soon as my surgeon does his dictation and his office gets the evaluations from the nutritionist, psychologist, and pulmonologist, they will be submitting everything to insurance. :clap2:

I wish I was going with you! I did an internship at Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge in Chatham in the summer of 2004, and I absolutely loved the area. I hope you have a great time!

What happens during the consultation with the surgeon you choose? I have mine scheduled for next week, and I would like to know what is going to happen beforehand.

I would report the woman he stays with to family services, if I were you. There is very little chance that she doesn't know what he is doing. She is putting her children at risk by letting him stay there. They will hopefully force her to stop seeing him.

No, she is the nutritionist.

Why are we suddenly getting all the XXX spam? It seems like we have gotten much more than usual, lately.

Actually, someone tried to make the airport put up a menorah, in addition to the trees. It wasn't a complaint about the trees themselves. Instead of simply putting up the menorah, the airport took down all the trees. Here is the article:

I do believe you. But just because you have experienced it doesn't mean that it is common. I know it exists, just like I know that violence against pro-choice people exists. Do I think either is as common as either the pro-choice or pro-life organizations say? No. I personally feel that both groups are out to paint as bad a picture of the opposition as they can.

Do we have a smiley for that? :eek: I just got this email from a student of mine: Followed up by yet another email. That makes 4 in 3 days. The second one had a time date of a minute after this one, so I think she tried to stop it from going out. I basically told her that her instructors happen to have lives, just like her. They have classes to take, papers to write, and finals to take. Not to mention lots and lots of freaking doctor's appointments. Nagging someone does not make them more likely to send a speedy response. If I was mean, I would have waited another day or two to send her her grade. Unfortunately, I went ahead and looked through the exams and gave it to her. I am going to be SO happy when this semester is over.:faint:

Calling someone rude, whether online or not, does not violate any code of conduct. Now, if I actually told you her name, which class she was in, and the university she is at so that you could all go and laugh at her, that would be different. That would be a violation, then. I'll post this again: Unless I actually assaulted her or started called her names, I would not get punished for anything that I stated here. Calling someone rude, even to their face, is not worthy of punishment. Hell, if she had sent me another couple of emails, I could have made a complaint against her. Being a teacher doesn't mean you have to sit down and take whatever your students want to give you. There is no ethical concern here. If it had been an email where she identified herself or wrote about her concerns for the class, then I wouldn't have posted it.

Don't get me wrong, I love what I am doing. But loving something doesn't mean that you don't get irritated or aggravated occasionally. To me, it is better vent those emotions instead of letting them sit and fester and grow.

Being sarcastic, of course. Part of my responsibilities as a grad student is to teach a couple of non-majors' biology labs per week. We gave final exams this week. My last lab was yesterday at 8 AM. I made a point of telling my students at the beginning of the semester that if they couldn't go to my lab for any reason, to go to one of the other 30 labs that are taught during the week. During exams, I shut the door so that we won't be disturbed. Apparently, one of my students showed up a little late yesterday and I had already shut the door and started the exam. Instead of knocking to see if I would let her in (she was only about 10 minutes late), she left. I got an email from her this afternoon saying that she wasn't able to go to any of the Friday labs. I basically told her that she would have to take a zero for the exam. I looked up her schedule, and there were a couple of labs she could have gone to yesterday if she had bothered to check. The moral of this story? Don't wait until the last day of the final exam week to see if there are any labs you can fit into your schedule. No matter what you may think, being late is not a valid excuse, especially for the first class of the day! I am not going to set up a special lab time for you to take the exam because you were too lazy to check and see if you could fit one of the other labs into your schedule until it was too late. Don't get me wrong, I have been late to classes of my own before. But it seems like common sense to me that if you miss the freaking final exam, to email the instuctor immediately and see if you can find another lab where you can take the test. You don't wait until the last day of the exam week to see if there are any labs you can go to. To me, if you are that lacking in common sense, you probably deserve to fail the freaking class.

Thank you. One of the professors has a sign on his door that I walk past every day, and I really want a copy of it. It says, "Lack of planning or laziness on your part does not equal an emergency on mine." I think a lot of the students don't realize that. They have been babied to the point where they think that everyone should be indulging them, giving them extra time on assignments, etc. It used to really piss me off in high school, because the teachers would go easy on the athletes on game days. Athletics is an extracurricular activity. School should be the first priority. If you can't put your schoolwork first, you shouldn't be playing. I also get really irritated at the people that cheat or whine about the class requirements. If they would simply put the same effort into their work as they put into cheating or whining, they would probably get an A.

A lot of scientific journal articles are difficult to find on the internet. If you had access to a research library, or some databases, there would probably be plenty.

I did respond to her email within 24 hours of reading her first email. I had 3 others by that time. Like MarySue33 said, having 24 hour access to email doesn't mean I check it 24 hours a day. I responded as soon as I could. No, I don't have an out-of-office automatic reply set up, because I had never needed it before. I simply did not have time to send her an email earlier than I did. I had classes of my own, a super-long paper to write, and other finals to give (for the people that waited until a week after the final to inform me that they had missed it). Also like MarySue33, I am a student. I am getting a Master's degree in Biology. I understand that the undergrad was stressed. That doesn't excuse rude behavior, especially when your instructor is doing something that they aren't required to do. You see, technically, I am not supposed to even discuss grades through email. Unless they come to me in my office, they shouldn't even be finding out what they made in lab until their biology grade is posted on the internet. Heck, I can't even discuss their grades with their parents unless the student signs a waiver. And I would tell her to feel free to do so, since I am not doing anything wrong. I did not identify the student, the class, or the university, so I didn't violate her privacy. I wouldn't even get a lecture from my supervisor. And it is better than doing it to her face. Even that wouldn't get me any punishment, though, as long as I didn't assault her. You see, my supervisor knows me. He knows that, as a rule, I am very nice to people. He would wonder how I got to the point of insulting people to their faces. And I think if he knew the student was basically harassing me through email, he would understand. And that is what is happening, if you send 4 emails to someone in less than 3 days. Heck, it was actually less than two days, since she sent the first on late Monday and the last around noon on Wednesday. She should know it by now. I would think it is obvious that knowing what your grade is won't change the actual grade. If she made an F, she will still have made an F whether or not she actually knows she did. And the final was important. It was worth 25% of their lab grade, which in turn was worth 1/3 of their entire lecture grade. Maybe I am just more well adjusted than a lot students. I don't know. But I still think that people should have learned that nagging doesn't get you far by the age of 10. They should definitely know it by the time they get into college.

One thing I learned in my Scientific Literature and Writing class is that lots of documentation doesn't automatically equal quality. The problem with doing research is weighing the pros of using a paper as a source and the cons of it. Yes, this paper probably does have some good sources. But is seems just as likely, judging from the language in the paper, that the information in the sources was twisted or that the information it the sources was biased in the first place. Good scientific research papers don't use inflammatory language like this one does. To be honest, as a scientist, it makes me wonder about the quality of the paper itself. This paper was clearly worded to appeal to a reader's emotions, not to their intelligence. Like I said before, quantity of sources does not equal quality. This paper repeatedly cites sources that are seriously questionable, when it does cite sources for its statements. For example, it states: The papers source for these statistics were these: First, both organizations are extremely pro-life. Second, they don't say where they got the third citation. Third, how did they do their analysis? Did they only talk to certain women? Clinics can't give up their patient lists. Did they only talk to women who came to them? So don't look to organizations. You're right, they are biased. You can probably find many scientific research papers out there that deal with these statistics. Those are peer-reviewed, to weed out "bad statistics."

I am not a caregiver, but I would not be surprised at all if it is interfering with weight loss. I think any stress can.

Not from Memphis, but my brother and his girlfriend live there. His girlfriend actually works for Dr. Madan.

As a biologist that frequently does research, the first things I look at when I find an article are the author, the organization the author is associated with, and what the article was published in. To put it bluntly, if I tried to cite an article from "Birds of Death" as one of the major sources for my breakthrough statistics on birds pecking people to death, my article would be torn apart and would never be published in a reputable, peer-reviewed journal, simply because my sources were not good. To put it even more bluntly, all sources are not created equal and something being published does not mean it isn't biased or that it is even correct. There is no way that you can deny that is an incredibly biased report. Still, I am not going to come right out and say that it is wrong or that it is misstating the facts, but the fact is that they (or anyone writing a report like this) wrote that report for a reason and that reason was to spread their point of view. Can you find something from a source that is neither a pro-life or pro-choice organization that supports your opinion? Otherwise, I am going to take the report from the "Life Research Institute" that states on the first page, "This report was delivered to each member of Congress and to Attorney General Janet Reno during her failed inquisition against pro-lifers for their alleged violence," and "abortion is the deliberate, painful, brutal murder of innocent, defenseless human life," with a grain of salt as to the accuracy of their statistics.

Tell them this if they deny coverage: Technically, your surgery isn't going to be resulting in weightloss. It isn't like you are having the entire band replaced. You are simply having the port moved so that it doesn't wear through the spot it is currently in and cause more problems.

It is getting better, though. I live and go to school in Kentucky. Several counties have gone non-smoking. My county isn't, other than the university, but I am hoping it won't be long before it is.