Month: May 2005

Being Healthy

On Wednesday, I received an email from the Drexel MPH program. They had received my release form for their program to review the application I filled out for Drexel University Medical School. They asked so nicely for it too…Anyway, yesterday’s email told me that they needed a personal statement from me before the committee could review my completed application. Here was my prompt:

“This statement, which can be e-mailed to me, should describe what you perceive to be pressing public health issues, why a career in the field appeals to you, and how it will utilize your strengths and commitment. It should be approximately one page length.” Continue reading “Being Healthy”

Thoughts on Abortion

I don’t know why my mind is turning to this particularly, but since it is, I thought I’d post some thoughts:

The debate over abortion tends to revolve around the issue of when and if the preborn become separate alive individual humans. This seems obvious because the morality of killing something revolves around whether it’s human. If it ain’t human, it can’t be murder. However, the argument that a fetus isn’t really human is a rationalization, not a reason. If there were no other precursive reason for getting an abortion, the argument that the fetus was nothing more than a ball of cells (or whatever argument) would have no weight at all: Even a formless glob of cells that will, if left uninterrupted, turn into a fully formed human being is a pretty impressive thing. Humans are by and large pretty wonderful, and there’s no reason not to let that process continue. If I had a wart on my left elbow which, if left to itself, would grow into a fully developed human being, I would have every reason to let it continue. On the other hand, if the fact that a fetus wasn’t human were a *reason* for getting an abortion, then it would be a reason to abord **all** preborn children. So there must be some other motivation before an abortion can occur.

As far as I know there are three actual *reasons* for an abortion: Continue reading “Thoughts on Abortion”

I’m Daft at Medicine, or Why I Don’t Do Drugs.

Valerie has accused me, on occasion, of being against doctors. This is a grave and serious crime for someone who is marrying a person who wants to **be** a doctor. I have assured her that this is not the case. The problem is not that I don’t like doctors, it’s that I’m not very good at the physical realm. Give me metaphysics any day. I’m very inclined to be one of those Manichaen types who call the physical bad, the spiritual good, and have done with it. Alas that I am addicted to truth and know that it cannot be so. God created the physical realm, and called it good, and it has ever been so. Nevertheless, I’m not good *at* the physical realm.

I am, however, decent in economics, and I hate the insurance industry. By my keen understanding, it looks more like a cartel than an industry to me. Case in point: It’s my understanding that my place of work pays an average of about $15,000 per year per employee for medical benefits. What we have is supposed to be really good coverage. I couldn’t tell you the difference. But I can tell you that $15 K is 60% of my wages. I’m getting married in 2 months. I’d love to take a gamble have them give me half of that $15,000 and waive the insurance. I’m not at risk for cancer or heart disease. Seven thousand dollars would be a lot more useful to me than to visit a well-paid man in a white coat so he can tell me I’m not sick.

I did visit the nice man in the white coat, by the way Continue reading “I’m Daft at Medicine, or Why I Don’t Do Drugs.”

Education, Doctrine, Culture, and Apologetics

Pres. Bush delivered a [great commencement speech](http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/05/20050521-1.html) at Calvin College this weekend.

Two thoughts:

+ This is **exactly** what I’ve been trying to work toward.
+ Now how come we couldn’t get a guy like this to come speak at *my* commencement?

Actually, I know why. No community can extend itself very far beyond it’s own culture. Valerie’s commencement speaker was the president (or dean, I forget which) of the Charlotte branch of [Union Theological Seminary](http://www.union-psce.edu/), which is housed on the Campus of Queens University. UTS is a [PCUSA](http://www.pcusa.org/) Seminary, and I’m sure he gave a speech that was very moving to the modern liberal view, but it left something lacking for the evangelical Christian. On the other hand, Bush is evangelical, and it shows. He presents a worldview that allows for the individual, and calls for community which supports that which is right.

I think it was at my baccalaureate that it really clicked that I was probably in the wrong school, despite the wonderful wife I’ve acquired there. Continue reading “Education, Doctrine, Culture, and Apologetics”

RSS Reader

One of [WordPress’s](http://www.wordpress.org) coolest features is officially dead as far as I’m concerned. The [links-update](http://wordpress.org/support/topic/23457) feature is what used to control the order and formatting of the links in the sidebar on the right of this page. Links would be listed in the order of most recently updated, and links updated in the last 24 hours would be listed in bold. For over a month, according to wordpress, nobody has been updating anything. After the upgrade to WP 1.5 , it only kept track of maybe 4-5 sites. Now we’re down to none. And yesterday (finally) I gave up. They’re listed in simple alphabetic order now. So sad. Hopefully one day they’ll fix whatever kinks are up and I can reimplement this feature. It’s the first time WordPress has ever let me down.

Probably the saddest part is that, up till yesterday, I was still using my sidebar as a substitute for a genuine RSS reader. For a whole host of reasons, a nice neat list was really all I wanted. But since links-update has been broken, my nice neat list had me sporadically clicking every person on the list just to see if they had updated (I’m sure their hit counters were loving it).

Well, no more. I went a searching and found an online reader that seems to do pretty much everything I want (which is to say: nearly nothing). So I’m officially recommending [News Gator](http://www.newsgator.com/) as a good online RSS reader. The only disadvantage is that I now have to add things to my list of sites twice. Once there and once here. The good news is that now I’m reading up on all kinds of interesting things I had been missing out on.

For instance: Continue reading “RSS Reader”

Free Web Design

I’ve been doing some thinking recently, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I really enjoy web design. It’s become a mildly obsessive hobby of mine. Valerie says I’m actually pretty good at it (though she says my sense of what actually looks good could use some work). I think, for the most part, **this** site is as “designed” as it’s going to get for the time being, but the bug to tweak things is still on me. I’ve *heard* that you can actually make good money doing this, but I’m still amateurish at it.

So, in an effort to up my skills, I’m going to put an offer out there and see who bites: I will do your web site for free. Continue reading “Free Web Design”