Remember when Edwards said that, if Kerry was elected, people like George Reeves would get out of that chair and walk again? I’m betting that he’s cursing this woman now.

No! You can’t walk now! You have to wait until after Bush is gone!

It’s interesting that I’ve heard people condemning Bush over this (“See? She’s walking again! Bush wants to ban the research that did this!”) Unfortunately for those people, they’ve missed the distinction that Bush wants to avoid funding (not ban) the research using stem cells that are obtained by killing viable babies. This woman, on the other hand, was healed using umbilical stem cells.

So, we’ve had some success with adult stem cells, and now umbilical ones. We’ve had no success thus far, as I understand it, with embryonic stem cells. Since Bush doesn’t want to fund the one that’s failed so far, he’s evil… huh?

Via Instapundit:

Anti-Jewish yearbook prank another blot on posh school

Anti-Jewish Yearbook Prank is a “blot.” In response, the school’s headmaster contacted the students and their parents to express extreme displeasure.

Okay… Two sixteen year olds code (apparently without malice, though the ignorance and immaturity involved here is pretty amazing) anti-Jewish messages into their yearbook, and they get the same punishment that the UN deals to murdering tyrants.

Either the kids are getting a much too severe punishment, or the UN needs to seriously think about how to dissuade tyrants. Since I’m neither a child psychologist nor a diplomat, I’ll let you decide which one it is.

Like common sense, common courtesy is, I fear, going the way of the dodo. Little examples of rudeness are common. We live with them so often that we simply don’t even see them anymore. Jim Geraghty talks about the implications of the NBA fight at the Pistons-Pacers game. He seems to think that it’s the cost of the ticket that grants these fans their sense of entitlement, but that sense of entitlement is pervasive in American culture. It’s not just cup-chucking basketball “fans” who exhibit this kind of behavior.

Anyone who has spent any amount of time around me will know that I get irrationally angry about the way people seem to think that they have a right to stop their cars wherever they wish, just as long as they get just a few more seconds shaved off their walking time. One of my favorite examples of this was during a family dinner (Labor Day?) this year. Our house sits on a small county road next to a junkyard, and on weekends, it’s not uncommon to have the junkyard’s customers blocking our driveway (or the road leading to it — it’s a public road, but past our home, it’s virtually never used).

One of my young cousins was at this dinner (at my grandfather’s house), and when I went to get him a fishing pole from home, I found that the road was all-but blocked — by someone parked within inches of a sign pointing out an empty customer parking area. I managed to get through by driving through the ditch (both ways), and on the way out, I grumbled loudly about people who were apparently too stupid to read parking signs. A little while later, the driver stopped in front of my grandfather’s house to inform me that I was not to speak that way to his wife again, and that they had the right to park where they were. (Right to park… which amendment is that, again? It’s not the First; that’s the one that was protecting my right to grumble about stupid people.)

On Friday afternoons, it’s not at all uncommon to see traffic blocked by people sitting in front of the local movie theater while passengers hop out and run to and from the theater (apparently checking showtimes or something). The gas station where I fueled up this morning was the location of a minor traffic jam, thanks to a minivan that had parked in front of the doors and made it impossible to get around to any of the pumps on the other side.

How often do we see someone in a cash-only, 10-items-or-less express lane, pushing a full shopping card and holding a checkbook with which they intend to pay for their groceries? When traffic is backed up, how often do you see people move to the other lane, zipping forward only to foul traffic even worse when they try to forcibly merge back in to the first lane?

Our society celebrates selfishness and rudeness (see: most reality and/or talk shows), though whether that’s a result of the spread of common rudeness or an offshoot of it, I couldn’t say. No one cares to be held responsible for the consequences of their actions, but God help you if you somehow cause them to be delayed for fifteen seconds. As a society, we need to realize that an equal mixture of common sense and common courtesy would make this nation a much better place.

Either I’m reading too much fiction or I’m thinking too much about blogging (I write far more posts than are actually published here, as I write a few at work, save them to disks, and then forget them when I leave), because I spent most of the morning getting ready thinking that I needed to write about the horrible events of the Traders Council meeting last night.

I was on my way out the door when I remembered that the meeting in question was an event in Robin Hobb’s Mad Ship.

I’ve already discussed this a few other places. The latest of those mentions was a comment on this post at Dust In The Light.

Most opponents of homosexual marriage say that they want to protect the sanctity of marriage. While I understand their reasoning, I have to wonder what rock these people have been living under for the last decade or two (or more?).

Britney Spears’ marriage may have been the Shortest Celebrity Marriage, but many of the other celebrity marriages on that page seem to bely the “sanctity” of the institution. John Kerry attempted to have an 18-year marriage that resulted in two daughters annulled. Broadcaster Larry King has been married seven times (though, two of those were to the same woman).

My question to those homosexual couples who want to get married is this: Why do you even care? Our society is doing everything it can to make marriage a completely meaningless institution, less binding than a rental car reservation.

I want to define marriage as a binding lifetime union between a man and a woman. Homosexual marriage proponents want to scratch out the “a man and a woman” part and pencil in “a couple in love.” The actual definition in society today would more accurately be “a temporary, slightly binding pairing of a man and a woman which obtains them certain legal rights until they choose to dissolve the union.”

Here’s the deal: I’ll stand up in support of homosexual secular marriages (by which I mean you can’t force the church to recognize such unions, but the government treats them the same as a heterosexual marriage), but in exchange, liberals have to stand with me in seeking MUCH stronger divorce laws.

I want “’til death do us part” to mean “’til death do us part.” Maybe I’m deluding myself to believe that it ever really meant that, and maybe there’s no way we can make our society see marriage that way again. As long as the institution is something that people can enter into and retreat from without any real consequences whatsoever, it seems pointless to me to try to change the “legal” definition at all.

Here’s what I propose: Churches don’t have to recognize secular marriages. Whether a church recognizes a couple as married or not is up to the standards of that church’s religion, and the government stays out of the business of the church. This means that no priest/pastor/rabbi/whatever can be forced to marry a couple if his or her beliefs make him believe that the union is sinful. (I’m told this is actually the case now.)

Secular marriage is a lifetime union, a binding contract between two individuals and the state. I would want divorce laws to be exremely strong, enough so that divorces would (largely) be restricted to those cases where one spouse or the other is guilty of some major wrongdoing (adultery, domestic abuse, etc.). While no-fault divorces may still exist, they would have to come with some serious consequences.

This may very well mean that fewer people ever get married. We would probably want any marriage to be preceded by at least a couple of sessions with a marriage counselor who would try to get the couple to understand the true forever nature of a marriage.

A slightly “lesser” version of marriage would be the civil union, which would be available to couples of any gender combination when they felt that they weren’t up to the “lifetime” commitment just yet. The way it’s working in my mind, these would have all the legal advantages of a marriage, without the protection of not being forced to testify against your spouse or immigration benefits (in other words, no green card unless you’re married, and since it’s nigh-impossible to get a divorce, you get the protection against “cheating” the immigration system).

I think that a lot of very religious people are looking at this the wrong way. Our insistence that homosexual relationships are sinful and therefore homosexual marriage can’t be tolerated doesn’t protect marriage — marriage is already falling apart. It’s not convincing people not to be homosexual — they don’t really care that much what we say. There’s a very real opportunity here to gain some allies who obviously think marriage means something (most of the legal advantages can be obtained other ways, though it’s admittedly not as simple to get them by other means), and I think that we should reach out to them to try to shore up the institution of marriage before it completely falls apart around our ears.