Light and Darkness

Does Possession Validate Ownership?

National Geographic online has a video series regarding artifact ownership. It broaches the subject of who becomes the owners of objects taken as the spoils of war, archaeological digs, and thievery. What do you think? Hitler's practice of claiming artwork for himself robbed Jewish families of their prized possessions. Decades after the war, pilfered pieces hang in museums or private collections and descendants of the victimized families cry in outrage. Who owns it?

Euthanasia

The first time I ever heard that word was in my high school biology class. I couldn't understand why my teacher suggested Youth in Asia as a topic for a research paper in a science class. Yeah, I know. Moronic. I think I actually picked that topic for Mrs. Allen's class and discovered an amazing amount of information. If it wasn't my topic, then I sure as hell did read a lot on the pros and cons of euthansia for pleasure. Twisted.

Anyways...where do you stand? Are you for or against? Circumstances that you would allow it to occur? Absolute nos? Who should control the approval for such a final act? Should it be the government who allows it for population control and the survival of the human species? A Soylent Green show of altruism? Should private citizens take it into their own hands? But would that lead way to exorbitant numbers of suicides, especially those attempts acted upon during times of strife? Do we kill off the mentally ill or the physically challenged? Do different races, sexual orientations, religious subscriptions become deviant behaviors and do the practitioners of said afflictions become the poster children for euthanasia? Horribly, a dystopian view of the world.

It popped into my head whilst walking my dog, Jolie. I'm down. Miserably low because of the events in my life. The plaguing thoughts of suicide popped into my head. How could my death be a gift instead of my selfish act of not trying anymore? There is no proper way to answer that. But it did lead me to think about my life in twenty years. Could I survive being me for another fifty or so years? Or does the sweet silence of death appear reasonable when I'm sixty-five?

Is your concept of fat misguided?

Often we find out that our ideals are truely out of sync. Influences of others that generally take what we consider healthy, and then twist and distort them into some carnival mirror image. And over time, those once pure ideals become so much more contrived and compromised.

Fat people. Western societies have a general dislike for anyone who doesn't fit in the category of weight healthy or "normal." According to nutrionists and the medical field, normal is a marginally slim section of the spectrum. However, have you ever been introduced to an Asian's perspective? Or a third-world people's ideal? Some consider the belly paunch an indication that you are wealthy. You always eat well. You are beautiful.

Kate Harding has a series of photos up that questions your idea of fat. View it two ways. Play the slideshow without info. Guess who's normal. Then play it with info. Or just play it with the info. If you roll your mouse over the picture as it begins, you'll see the "i" to click for captions.

Thanks to and I wasted all that birth control for the direct and to Kate Harding for the beautiful illustration of why our self images tend to be false.

Interracial Adoptions

Should people adopt children not of their own race?

With the seemingly scary world of private adoptions here in the States, many couples and individuals are turning to foreign lands and their overburdened orphanages. The paperwork, counselling, money, background checks, and time weed out potential baddies from the parenting pool as well as cement adoptions.

But what about those children here in our group homes and orphanages? Many children outside the infant the years wait impatiently for people to bring them into their homes and give them last names that stand for love and committment and security. And, sadly, many of these children are African-American boys.

In any case, whether it be an infant, Asian girl from China or an African American, male toddler from Tennessee....should a parent outside the child's race adopt him/her? Would a white mother be able to provide the cultural history for that child? Will the child lose part of his/her identity being immersed in a culture and surrounded by a race not of his/her own? Or are there too many children out there that have been abandoned and discarded, waiting for homes and love that color and culture do not matter?

I want to know your thoughts. I'm not swaying you with my opinions....yet.   

I Have Questions...You Have Answers

New category. Very simple. I pose a question and I hope you answer. Let's christen this bitch, shall we?!

I'm infatuated with the show Taboo on National Geographic. Tonight it was all about old practices in medicine, which are really frowned upon. Not new to me but very interesting and very squeamish (I'll save you the torture and not post pictures)....please don't hesitate to include any other new medical practices you've happened upon....faced with a non-healing wound, would you allow your physicians to treat it by alternative means including the application of maggots?