Thou Shalt Not Medicate

The Catholic Church has just knocked another gem outta the park. It seems people weren't going to confession enough (perhaps something to do with the old fashioned, and increasingly backward approach to a rapidly evolving world?). The solution: create some new sins to keep the sheep in line.

A Vatican official has listed drugs, pollution, genetic manipulation and social and economic injustices as new areas of sinful behavior. -AP

The new mortal sins were listed by Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti at the end of a week-long training seminar in Rome for priests, aimed at encouraging a revival of the practice of confession - or the Sacrament of Penance in Church jargon.

According to a survey carried out here 10 years ago by the Catholic University, 60% of Italians have stopped going to confession altogether. The situation has certainly not improved during the past decade. -BBC

Of course, any drug or gene therapy, or even genetic manipulation of lesser organisms that lets a believer live a little longer, or a little happier will still be alright; less need for miraculous intervention that way. And hey, they're still teaching abstinence and shunning condoms to control the spread of disease, so really we won't even need those treatments much longer.

Ultimately on the drug side of things, they're mostly referring to all those arbitrarily defined 'illicit' ones. But when you are based on the arbitrary, there's no problem with this kind of logic.

And then there will be all those forced into conflict by the declaration that the rich are sinners. Those that still believe God is speaking through George W. are going to need some extra medication to cope when they realize that as one of those rich people, he's one of the biggest sinners out there. But for no other reason. As an aside, I wonder what George himself confesses to sitting there in that vestibule.

I mean clearly the likes of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are sinners, what with all their millions of dollars donated to curing disease though alternative therapies. Double whammy on those two, definitely destined for some lower level of hell when they kick the bucket.

In the end it still comes down to people who need some defined set of rules because their own moral conscience simply doesn't exist without it. And when there are people out there who think like this,

so you think if no one believed in any religion there would be no wars or fighting? i think it would be worse. i know if i didn't fear god's judgement i would have killed many many times.

cajunXLVII - FSTDT.com

some kind of indoctrination is certainly better than the alternative. I have a feeling though that through history there have been far more that killed in the name of their god, than those that have decided not to kill in the name of their god. Clearly the nature of that argument makes it unprovable, such is the problem.

Place Boot Here

After being sick most of the week, Carolyn suggested she was well enough again to get together and watch the Oscars on Sunday night. We both figured that by that point, despite having lingering congestion, she probably wasn't contagious any more. So we got together and watched the awards. Of course, I had only seen the two mainstream, big budget movies up for awards in The Bourne Ultimatum and the latest Pirates of the Caribbean. Michael Clayton and No Country for Old Men have been on the agenda for a while, but being both to cheap to go to the movies, and more comfortable at home, I haven't had much of a window to see them yet.

And then 6:00am Monday came waking up like a wall had just hit me, and my nose dripping like a faucet. A few more hours of sleep seemed to clear things up, and for most of the day I felt just fine. But by the evening, my nose was running again at full drip, and my head in general begin to feel like a fish tank full of mucous. Three days, and plenty of OJ and Contac C later, the nose has dried up, and I'm just left feeling like I'm walking around under 20 feet of water. Just sitting up at the computer without feeling dizzy is a welcome accomplishment at this point.

Despite the sun getting higher and higher in the sky, its still something like -20 out today, so lazing around the house doesn't seem like the worst fate in the world for one more day.

The Economics of Disease

I came across this article on the CBC website this morning in which a study claims that healthy people are more of a financial burden than obese people or smokers.

The researchers found that from age 20 to 56, obese people racked up the most expensive health costs. But because both the smokers and the obese people died sooner than the healthy group, it cost less to treat them in the long run.

On average, healthy people lived 84 years. Smokers lived about 77 years, and obese people lived about 80 years. Smokers and obese people tended to have more heart disease than the healthy people.

Cancer incidence, except for lung cancer, was the same in all three groups. Obese people had the most diabetes, and healthy people had the most strokes. Ultimately, the thin and healthy group cost the most, about $417,000 US, from age 20 on.

The cost of care for obese people was $371,000 US, and for smokers, about $326,000 US.

Now, on beginning to read the article, I was willing to believe that because of the longer life expectancy of 'healthy' people, the cost incurred by them could be greater in the long run. However when I saw that the difference in the average life expectancy was only 7 years, and further saw a $50 000 difference in overall cost I became skeptical.

Since the study only covered costs from age 20 on, I subtracted that 20 from the average life expectancies, and divided the average cost of care for each group into those expectancies. This works out to a seemingly even more absurd result, that healthy people have a health care cost of $6520 per year for the years between 20 and death; an average higher than that for the obese and smokers at $6180 and $5720 respectively. I haven't gone and dug out the actual study itself, but something would seem to be amiss here. The only explanation I see is that healthy people in Holland are apparently a bunch of hypochondriacs. But clearly I am missing something...

Guitar Hero Killed the Radio Star

Video never did kill it, but guitar hero just might. Sure the game might teach people to respect some of the greatest guitar riffs of all time, but why not actually learn the instrument for real. It'll be far more entertaining in the long run and more enjoyable than hitting some buttons on a plastic mock guitar.

Its not even as challenging as getting people together to play a game of hockey or football or something, where playing a game as a substitute seems to fit. The next thing you know there will be an Eating Hero set of games.

Hey press these buttons to eat your twinkies and cheetos. Hit the secret bonus sequence for all you can eat ice-cream bar!!. Yea, they're not real, but you'll set one sexy high score.

On second thought, Eating Hero might not be the worst idea for some lazy ass kids out there. They'll be too busy game-eating to real-eat. I guess the qualification shouldn't be limited to kids either as there are some damned lazy people out there who aren't simply genetically predisposed to these kind of things. Nonetheless, we can all just blame it on the government and let them tax us more to deal with the problem.