[gallery] drawingarchitecture:
Michelangelo LaTona, A Monument in Two Dimensions, 2015, Graphite, Ink, Paper, Mylar, Collage, Spray Paint, 18"x12"
The law requires that patients be referred for psychological examination if the doctor suspects they have depression or mental illness. But some doctors see suicide as a solution to suffering and depression as rational given patients’ circumstances. Last year only three of the 105 patients who died under the law were referred for a psychological exam.
A 2008 study published in the British Medical Journal examined 58 Oregonians who sought information on assisted suicide. Of them, 26% met the criteria for depressive disorder, and 22% for anxiety disorder. Three of the depressed individuals received and ingested the lethal drugs, dying within two months of being interviewed. The study’s authors concluded that Oregon’s law “may not adequately protect all mentally ill patients.”
Also concerning are the regular notices I receive indicating that many important services and drugs for my patients—even some pain medications—will not be covered by the Oregon Health Plan, the state’s Medicaid program. Yet physician-assisted suicide is covered by the state and our collective tax dollars. Supporters claim physician-assisted suicide gives patients choice, but what sort of a choice is it when life is expensive but death is free?
[gallery] Abu-Bakarr Mansaray, A Nuclear Mosquito From Hell (2004)
In addition to measuring your ability to pay, as in the United States, the scores serve as a measure of political compliance. Among the things that will hurt a citizen’s score are posting political opinions without prior permission, or posting information that the regime does not like, such as about the Tienanmen Square massacre that the government carried out to hold on to power, or the Shanghai stock market collapse.
It will hurt your score not only if you do these things, but if any of your friends do them. Imagine the social pressure against disobedience or dissent that this will create.
Anybody can check anyone else’s score online. Among other things, this lets people find out which of their friends may be hurting their scores.
[gallery] This is worth buying if only for Garnette Cadogan’s moving, mournful, and yet hopeful essay on walking while black, especially in New York, “Black and Blue.” Full disclosure: I say this as a friend of Garnette’s who has moreover done some walking in New York with him. But trust me: that essay alone is worth the price of admission. And then as a bonus you get stories by David Mitchell, Alexander Hemon, Haruki Murakami — people like that.
Apparently, ISIS needs to do more than torture women and children and behead members of religious minorities in order to be considered newsworthy.
Blessed Are the Green of Heart
Blessed Are the Green of Heart
I don’t know that I’d read this since I published it, but now that I have read it, I think it holds up pretty well. Well enough to link to, anyway.
Walking is a way of connecting, of feeling our feet on the ground, a very ordinary and surprisingly spiritual thing. Author Kathleen Norris writes of its power in her small book The Quotidian Mysteries. Making the case that God is best known to us in simple, daily activities, she shares that walking is a kind of ‘poetic meter’ that 'originates in the bodily rhythm of arms and legs in motion’ and 'reflects the basic rhythms of creation.’ Another word for that rhythm, the rhythm of body, poetry, and creation, is prayer.
Ramsey’s solution? “Fellow Christians who are serious about their faith” should “think about getting a handgun permit.” He included a link to a state government Web site instructing residents on how they can acquire such a permit.“The recent spike in mass shootings across the nation is truly troubling,” wrote Ramsey, the speaker of the Tennessee Senate. “Whether the perpetrators are motivated by aggressive secularism, jihadist extremism or racial supremacy, their targets remain the same: Christians and defenders of the West.”
He continued: “While this is not the time for widespread panic, it is a time to prepare.” Then, he added: “Our enemies are armed. We must do likewise.”
Christians ‘serious about their faith’ should consider getting guns, Lt. Gov. says.
Then stepping forward they laid hands on Jesus and arrested him. And behold, one of those who accompanied Jesus put his hand to his sword, drew it, and struck the high priest’s servant, cutting off his ear. Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its sheath, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot call upon my Father and he will not provide me at this moment with more than twelve legions of angels? But then how would the scriptures be fulfilled which say that it must come to pass in this way?” At that hour Jesus said to the crowds, “Have you come out as against a robber, with swords and clubs to seize me? Day after day I sat teaching in the temple area, yet you did not arrest me. But all this has come to pass that the writings of the prophets may be fulfilled.” Then all the disciples left him and fled.
— Matthew 26:50-56
In this way, intolerance is not a static measure. If it were, we would still be measuring it based on freedom granted to communists, as Stouffer did in 1955. In fact, some studies in the 1970s did just that, declaring that Americans had become more tolerant as their hostility towards communists declined. But Sullivan, Piereson, and Marcus (1979) pointed out that these increases in tolerance were “illusory,” in that communists were simply no longer the most disliked group. Intolerance had shifted to other groups. The same is true today. While attitudes towards communists and homosexuals have changed over time, the majority of Americans still deny rights to their political enemies. According to the 2012 GSS, 77 percent of the population will deny rights to at least one of the groups mentioned, with Muslims being the most frequently oppressed group.