Al's Blog from the Bog

14 February 1938 – 14 October 2009

miscellaneous family, life, people

Jupiter and the Moon

For those who enjoy the study of celestial bodies it was quite a big night tonight. If the skies were clear above you, you would have been able to see a full moon and, just below and to the right, a very bright star. Except it wasn’t a star, it was Jupiter.

We’ve all been spoiled somewhat by the images sent back from various ’space probes’ over the years, and I guess we all have a pretty good idea what Jupiter looks like.

The bright dot in the sky tonight was, well, a bright dot in the sky (at least, that’s all I could see with the primitive technology available to me). So not very exciting really.

Except that I did find it just a little bit exciting. The thought that I was looking at something so massive, so important to our welfare, so far away and yet, relatively, so close. I’m not very romantic or prone to emotion, but for a fleeting moment the ‘joybringer’ did something for me.

miscellaneous astronomy, Jupiter, moon, night sky, planets, stars

I don’t claim to know very much about this and all my ‘knowledge’ has come from reading news stories and blogs, which of course may be biased or ’spun’, but I am slightly troubled. I am (politically) a liberal fence sitter, which obviously affects my perspective. There you are, I’ve declared my leanings.

As I understand it, President Obama wants to make it possible for everyone to receive medical care regardless of their means. A noble ideal, but someone still has to pay for it. In other words, taxes. This has caused a bit of a ruckus in the US, with the loud voices at either end of the political spectrum grabbing the headlines: down with taxes/don’t kill my baby; you know the sort of thing. Naturally there are also the (somewhat more subtle) corporates, lobbyists, pressure groups and so on, feeding money and (mis)information to those doing the shouting.

Daring Fireball has a couple of amusing (kind of) anecdotes:

From an Investor’s Business Daily editorial ¹ arguing against the current U.S. health care reform proposals:

“The U.K.’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) basically figures out who deserves treatment by using a cost-utility analysis based on the “quality adjusted life year.” One year in perfect health gets you one point. Deductions are taken for blindness, for being in a wheelchair and so on. The more points you have, the more your life is considered worth saving, and the likelier you are to get care.”

“People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.”

Stephen Hawking was born and has lived his entire life in the U.K.

and

Anti-health-care-reform activist, reportedly injured in a fight at a town hall meeting last week, is collecting donations to pay his medical bills because he was recently laid off and lost his health insurance. [more]

I read both of these with a sense of wonder and despair. The inaccuracy and hypocrisy shown is astonishing and made me wonder if many US citizens are taken in by this stuff. I suppose there must be quite a few, or it wouldn’t be worth publishing. And yes, I have seen Fox News.

Society, community, nation: surely these terms imply some kind of structure of care, of support for those who (hopefully temporarily) cannot support themselves? It would be easy to believe that those who have the resources are simply unwilling to share and that the flip side of ‘land of opportunity’ is ‘tough luck if you don’t succeed’. Systems such as those in Britain and Ireland may be far from perfect but they at least attempt to be humane.

I started to think about The American Ideal (or my understanding of it); how it has been corrupted and where, ultimately, it will take the USA. Immediately my mind conjured up images of anarchy; a sort of ‘Mad Max’ post-apocalyptic scenario where it’s every person for themselves and the only law comes from the barrel of a gun.

I can only hope I am very wrong, and as I said I am only seeing this through the eyes of the media.

1. since edited, removing refernces to Stephen Hawking ↑

miscellaneous, politics international, life, people, politics, USA

New display units make the bread look so yummy and touchable.

On recent visits to Tesco stores in Castlebar and Westport, we noticed these new display units for bread. Almost rustic, they do look good and the bread within looks really yummy.

Stand back and watch, however, and you’ll soon be put off. Most of the bread is not wrapped. Disposable gloves are provided so you can handle the bread – somehow you are drawn in and feel an almost primitive urge to touch and squeeze – but how many people will use them?

In less than five minutes, I watched four people approach, ignore the gloves, handle several loaves and walk away. One man lifted and squeezed just about every loaf on the display.

Oh, and the flies. Not quite a plague, but more than two or three were buzzing round, landing on loaf after loaf.

An attractive display then, great in theory but disgusting in practice. Shame.

miscellaneous

Many of you will have heard about the report, published a few days ago, into the abuse of children in Industrial Schools in Ireland during the 20th Century.

The report, a massive work that has taken nine years to compile, documents the enormous scale of the abuses – every type imaginable – inflicted on both boys and girls by the, supposedly Christian, people responsible for their education and welfare. It documents the awareness of the abuses, some might say collusion, of both the Irish State and the Catholic Church. What the report does not document, thanks to a High Court ruling in 2004, is the names of the guilty parties.

Much has been written and broadcast about the report, by people far more qualified to comment than I am. Indeed, the abuses are not really news. These appalling abuses have been widely recognised for some considerable time, but the report brings together many of the stories of the victims and highlights the scale of the tragedy. It is important for all of us to be aware of what happened, in the hope that a blind eye is never again turned towards such dreadful crimes.

Read more about the abuses committed by the Catholic Church in Ireland by clicking this link.

miscellaneous, national politics, politics Ireland, life, politics