Amazing. And sad."Vegan parents guilty in infant murder 6-week-old died of starvation after being fed diet of soy milk, apple juice"
read more digg story
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I usually don't do this, but one issue I had with this story on Digg was the assinine comments made on it. Some of the real sore thumbs follow:
"Poor parents, they must be traumatized....I'm surprised they never mentioned the fact they were vegans to their doctor, a nutritionist could have easily helped them support their baby on a vegan diet." -dacrazydude
"'I know they're vegans, but was there something wrong with feeding the kid the milk from her breasts?'
That would be an animal product. " -chompy
"No offense to all the veggie eaters but I hate to break the news to you we are no herbivores, we're omnivores. Could they be any dumber really? Women don't have breast milk for no reason you know, proof right there we are to eat dairy and products of animals. " -richiestang78
"Proof positive that humans are not meant to be vegans. If you decide to be a vegan that's all well and good, but let your kids make decisions for themselves, and in the mean time feed them a healthy, normal diet that an omnivorous species like us is supposed to have." -dgh1973
And so on and so forth.
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The parents did not do this because they're vegan. They did this because they're extremely stupid and cruel. First off, she could have breastfed the baby or fed him a soy-based formula, both of which are vegan options that are perfectly healthy for a baby. Also, if she had fed the baby a large enough amount of the soy milk, he would have survived, he just wouldn't have been very healthy. So not only were they feeding the wrong food, they were feeding him a much smaller amount than any baby could have survived on.
That's not even the biggest mistake they made. I could understand not knowing any better and doing that for a couple of days, but when your baby is losing weight instead of gaining, there's a problem. When you have a six-week-old infant that weighs less than four pounds, there is no way in hell that you don't know that something's wrong. The reason they deserve every minute of their lives in prison is for ignoring their son's well-being and not even bothering to take him to a doctor until he was already dead. In my opinion, they used the vegan thing as a crutch, hoping it would get them off. I know many vegan mothers who have raised vegan children who are perfectly healthy. Hell, if you can't breastfeed, they sell vegan formula at Wal-Mart. Come on.
The thing that really gets me about the whole mess is that these people are going to reflect on the vegan community even though they're the exception, not the rule. There have already been cases where vegan children who are perfectly healthy have been taken by CPS because of their parents' dietary choices. (These children were all eventually returned to their parents.) Then you have people like the commenters above who get the completely wrong idea about things.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
The REAL Cost of the War
One of the greatest political issues of the day is the war in Iraq. There are many arguments surrounding the war, such as whether there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, whether Hussein had anything to do with the attacks on the World Trade Center, and various other issues that the Bush administration pulled out of their collective ass. Perhaps one issue we should be looking at more closely is the cost of this war. Many people dismiss these costs as something unimportant, but the fact remains that the cost of this war is a really big problem.
As of 11:57 AM on May 8, 2007, the cost of the war reached a staggering $423,929,450,000, according to costofwar.com. Estimates for the possible total cost of the war by its end range from a rather conservative $500 billion to well over two trillion dollars. many people dismiss the issue of money without giving it much thought, but what we need to do is ask ourselves, "What else could be be doing with this money?" Once you start throwing some numbers together, it becomes obvious that we could do much better things with 424 billion dollars than kill people.
We could provide government housing for 3,817,099 families, according to CostOfWar.com, or medically insure 253,850,000 children. While Bush has been pushing for increased funding for his war in Iraq, he has also been working to cut government-sponsored medical plans. Education is an area we all know is woefully underfunded. This amount of money could employ 7,346,799 teachers for one year or provide 20,551,257 students with a four-year-scholarship to a public university. How many starving children could we feed and clothe with this money? How many African AIDS victims could receive treatment? How many of our senior citizens could live comfortably?
The sad thing is that the tremendous amount of money that is spent on the war doesn't even begin to cover the real cost of the war in Iraq. What is the real cost? To date, 3,378 United States soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq, 80 of them women, according to Iraq Coalition Casualty Count. 24, 314 soldiers have been wounded, as well. That is a huge loss to our country. What about the cost of the war to the rest of the world? The war has claimed the lives of 148 soldiers from the United Kingdom, 33 Italians, 20 Poles, 18 soldiers from Ukraine, 13 Bulgarians, 11 Spaniards, as well as soldiers from Australia, Denmark, El Salvador, Estonia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Netherlands, Romania, Slovakia, and Thailand. A total of 223 soldiers from other countries have died in Iraq fighting Bush's war. Then we get to civilian deaths. Many jounalists and other workers who have gone to Iraq have died, and the number of Iraqi civilian deaths is perhaps one of the most sobering statistics of all. 38,198 Iraqis have died that we know of. This number includes men, women, and a startling number of children. Over 41,799 people have died as a result of this unnecessary, senseless war. The big question we have to ask ourselves is: Is it worth it? Is anything worth this?
As of 11:57 AM on May 8, 2007, the cost of the war reached a staggering $423,929,450,000, according to costofwar.com. Estimates for the possible total cost of the war by its end range from a rather conservative $500 billion to well over two trillion dollars. many people dismiss the issue of money without giving it much thought, but what we need to do is ask ourselves, "What else could be be doing with this money?" Once you start throwing some numbers together, it becomes obvious that we could do much better things with 424 billion dollars than kill people.
We could provide government housing for 3,817,099 families, according to CostOfWar.com, or medically insure 253,850,000 children. While Bush has been pushing for increased funding for his war in Iraq, he has also been working to cut government-sponsored medical plans. Education is an area we all know is woefully underfunded. This amount of money could employ 7,346,799 teachers for one year or provide 20,551,257 students with a four-year-scholarship to a public university. How many starving children could we feed and clothe with this money? How many African AIDS victims could receive treatment? How many of our senior citizens could live comfortably?
The sad thing is that the tremendous amount of money that is spent on the war doesn't even begin to cover the real cost of the war in Iraq. What is the real cost? To date, 3,378 United States soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq, 80 of them women, according to Iraq Coalition Casualty Count. 24, 314 soldiers have been wounded, as well. That is a huge loss to our country. What about the cost of the war to the rest of the world? The war has claimed the lives of 148 soldiers from the United Kingdom, 33 Italians, 20 Poles, 18 soldiers from Ukraine, 13 Bulgarians, 11 Spaniards, as well as soldiers from Australia, Denmark, El Salvador, Estonia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Netherlands, Romania, Slovakia, and Thailand. A total of 223 soldiers from other countries have died in Iraq fighting Bush's war. Then we get to civilian deaths. Many jounalists and other workers who have gone to Iraq have died, and the number of Iraqi civilian deaths is perhaps one of the most sobering statistics of all. 38,198 Iraqis have died that we know of. This number includes men, women, and a startling number of children. Over 41,799 people have died as a result of this unnecessary, senseless war. The big question we have to ask ourselves is: Is it worth it? Is anything worth this?
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
The Romeo and Juliet Effect: Why Christians Keep Having Sex Before Marriage
In William Shakespeare's play, "Romeo and Juliet," the titular star cross'd lovers fatefully decide to pursue their love, despite the chaos and war unfolding around them. Their decision ends up being a fatal one. I suppose the ironic question that some people might want to ask the protagonists is: Out of all the wo/men in the world...
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I don't see why people think that abstinence programs or religion do any good when it comes to keeping their kids from having sex. They're surprised that 88 percent of those kids break their vows of chastity? It's a red flag for them to sign the oath anyway. You know who you can always find to sell you drugs? Someone with a DARE sticker on the back of their car. "Dare to keep kids off drugs!" = dealer. In any case, the entire environment is just bad to begin with. First off, you keep telling kids sex is bad, sex is bad, sex is bad. That's all you tell them. You don't tell them how to use a condom. You don't tell them that they can get pills or shots to avoid pregnancy. You don't tell them about how to be safe or how often to be tested, because you're assuming that they'll listen to you and that they'll stay virgins forever anyway.
News flash: people don't care if you tell them sex is bad. They don't care if you tell them it's immoral, it's a sin, it's dangerous, whatever. They're going to do it. We're programmed to do it. You telling a person not to have sex isn't going to make them decide to be chaste. However, if you tell them the dangers of unprotected sex and then teach them how to protect themselves, they may listen to you.
The other problem with a lot of parents who go this route is that then you have kids who are so afraid that you'll be angry that they're not willing to talk to you about it when they DO start having sex. They're afraid to ask about buying condoms. They're afraid to ask to be put on birth control. And so then you end up with high schoolers catching STDs or getting pregnant, where, if they were able to have a healthy discussion about sex with their parents who cared more about their child's safety than about their chastity, they might not catch these diseases or become pregnant. The entire idea of putting so much pressure on kids not to have sex just hurts us in the long run. You have people who aren't informed and who are afraid to talk to their families about getting medical care but who are still doing to do whatever they're going to do.
Why do people have such a problem with sex in the first place, anyway? I mean, it's perfectly natural, it's necessary for the survival of the species, and we're programmed to do it. The things about women that men find attractive? Large breasts, hourglass figure? Those women are more fertile, which is why men are programmed to find them more attractive. Women find big, strong men to be more attractive most of the time. Why? Natural selection of a sort. The ones with the best genes are the ones who procreate. All of this is programmed in our brains to begin with. Why go and fight it? It doesn't make any sense. And since when is feeling good sinful? Who are you hurting by having sex with your boyfriend or girlfriend? What's more, a lot fewer people would get hurt through sex if we were intelligent about it and informed, but we still have people pushing abstinence-only education in schools, doing the exact opposite.
read more digg story
*************************************************
I don't see why people think that abstinence programs or religion do any good when it comes to keeping their kids from having sex. They're surprised that 88 percent of those kids break their vows of chastity? It's a red flag for them to sign the oath anyway. You know who you can always find to sell you drugs? Someone with a DARE sticker on the back of their car. "Dare to keep kids off drugs!" = dealer. In any case, the entire environment is just bad to begin with. First off, you keep telling kids sex is bad, sex is bad, sex is bad. That's all you tell them. You don't tell them how to use a condom. You don't tell them that they can get pills or shots to avoid pregnancy. You don't tell them about how to be safe or how often to be tested, because you're assuming that they'll listen to you and that they'll stay virgins forever anyway.
News flash: people don't care if you tell them sex is bad. They don't care if you tell them it's immoral, it's a sin, it's dangerous, whatever. They're going to do it. We're programmed to do it. You telling a person not to have sex isn't going to make them decide to be chaste. However, if you tell them the dangers of unprotected sex and then teach them how to protect themselves, they may listen to you.
The other problem with a lot of parents who go this route is that then you have kids who are so afraid that you'll be angry that they're not willing to talk to you about it when they DO start having sex. They're afraid to ask about buying condoms. They're afraid to ask to be put on birth control. And so then you end up with high schoolers catching STDs or getting pregnant, where, if they were able to have a healthy discussion about sex with their parents who cared more about their child's safety than about their chastity, they might not catch these diseases or become pregnant. The entire idea of putting so much pressure on kids not to have sex just hurts us in the long run. You have people who aren't informed and who are afraid to talk to their families about getting medical care but who are still doing to do whatever they're going to do.
Why do people have such a problem with sex in the first place, anyway? I mean, it's perfectly natural, it's necessary for the survival of the species, and we're programmed to do it. The things about women that men find attractive? Large breasts, hourglass figure? Those women are more fertile, which is why men are programmed to find them more attractive. Women find big, strong men to be more attractive most of the time. Why? Natural selection of a sort. The ones with the best genes are the ones who procreate. All of this is programmed in our brains to begin with. Why go and fight it? It doesn't make any sense. And since when is feeling good sinful? Who are you hurting by having sex with your boyfriend or girlfriend? What's more, a lot fewer people would get hurt through sex if we were intelligent about it and informed, but we still have people pushing abstinence-only education in schools, doing the exact opposite.
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