anonemouse

Yep, that would be you. To me, an unreasonable person is one who, when confronted with truth and facts, continues to deny something. It's like the people who continue to protest that there are WMDs in Iraq, when we know (even the President knows and has said this) that there are none there. Your circumstances do not determine whether our economy is good or bad or whether or not GWB has done a worthy job. You have to look at the overall picture. And the overall picture is that we are and have been screwed royally.

Yeah, I kind of get a kick out of people telling me that I am going to hell for being an atheist, since I consider doing that to be against the Christian ideal of "love thy neighbor." I think to myself, "If there is a hell, I'll meet you there." I am an atheist, but I think that if I was completely wrong and there is a God, he would be compassionate instead of hard and grudge-bearing. I think that he would see into the hearts of people and judge them based on the type of person they currently are and the type of person they have been in the past. If that's the case, there are a lot of so-called Christians that wouldn't be going through the Pearly Gates. If you are a good person, you are good whether or not you believe in a higher power. I personally believe that child molesters, rapists, and murderers can't be reformed. If God is the sort of power that would allow them to reside in the same place as good, moral people, then I don't want to be in his heaven. Even if those rapists, murderers, and child molesters "repent" and believe in God, that doesn't change the fact that they are rapists, murderers, and child molesters.

...if this is the right thing to do. I know it is, but it is just starting to seem real to me, since my surgeon is ready to send everything to insurance. Before, it was basically just an idea, something that would be great if it happened but just didn't seem real. Now it's real, alright. I am starting to think, "Holy cow, what am I getting myself into?" I know this is the right thing for me, but convincing everyone else is starting to take its toll.

A few of you have said that there are either no exceptions when it comes to abortion or that it should only be allowed in cases of rape and incest. To the folks who say that it should be allowed only in rape and incest cases: Who decides what is rape or what is incest? Are all types of rape covered, or is it just in cases where there was a conviction? Should the women who claim they were raped have the same access to an abortion as the women who were raped and the rapist is in prison? Not all rapes are reported. What happens if a woman who didn't report her rape got pregnant and wanted an abortion. How would you validify her claim? What about the women who agreed to have sex and then said no, or the women who were unable to say no because they were too drunk? The same holds for incest cases. Do you allow abortions only when incest has been proven or also when it is claimed? You see, allowing only some exceptions can become a slippery slope. You wind up either forcing some rape victims to bear their rapists' children or aborting the children of women who say they were raped or victims of incest just to get access to an abortion. A law that does this would never hold up in court, because it forces an undue hardship on the victim to prove that they were raped or a victim of incest. To those of you who say there should be no exceptions at all: You become a rapist yourself. I would imagine that if you asked a woman that was brutally raped how she would feel if she had to bear her rapist's child and feel it moving inside her, she would probably say that she would feel like she was being raped all over again. I know I would. You would turn women into nothing more than brood mares. If a husband wanted children but his wife didn't, all he would have to do is rape her or sabotage their birth control. She would have no other option than to have his child. Saying, "Well, she should have been sterilized if she didn't want children," doesn't cut it. There are very few reputable doctors out there that willingly sterilize a young woman who has never had children. Taking this stance makes you complicit in rape and incest, IMO. Whether or not you believe you are preventing murder, you would be forcing a woman to bear a child, literally transforming her into a brood mare. Do you really think Christ would approve?

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.

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 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!

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.