Author Archives: hooglanda

Guns

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If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns. – Lost to history

A friend shared a video with me today called “Guns With History”. It disgusted me. This group of anti-gun activists set up a mock gun store with the intention of luring innocent, unsuspecting, first time gun buyers in only to share stories with them of every horrendous crime committed with a gun that they could think of. They had guns from the Sandy Hook school shooting and others where a child had accidently shot a sibling or parent.

The problem with this approach is you could do this with any common day object. “Want to try being a carpenter come on in! Hello. Do you like this hammer? Did you know that on average 584 people a year are killed in the USA by hammers!” “Oh I had no idea how dangerous hammers were, I’ll never use another hammer in my life” the clueless person on off the street might say.

What’s worse, did you know that 812 people in the US are killed in a year by hands, fists or feet! We should outlaw hands, fists and feet!

You can find the data I referenced for the 584 hammer deaths/year from the FBI here.

If you have understood by now I am trying to make a point that guns aren’t the problem. Yes, guns sure make it easier to kill someone and they also make it easier to conduct other crimes, but they also make it easier to stop someone who’s trying to perpetrate a crime with a gun. Read the tragic story of this girl. A “gun free zone” policy was in place on her campus. Therefore she, being a law abiding citizen chose to follow the law. She was assaulted and raped by a man who had a gun. Her comment about gun free zones follows “leaving them (law abiding citizens) defenseless against gun-wielding criminals who disregard the laws.” Did you read the last five words? Criminals don’t follow the law anyway. That’s why they are criminals.

Another important topic to discuss in the gun debate is the role antidepressants have played in gun violence in the past 20 years. The world can be a sad place, but the internet is a great place as far as sharing information. I will let you, the concerned reader, check out this article and this website documenting all the dangers of antidepressants and the role they have played in murders and suicides.

I leave you with these summarizing thoughts.

Outlaws don’t play by the rules. If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.

You can’t simply outlaw things because they are dangerous. Hands, knives and bats are all used to kill people everyday.

Antidepressants have played a role in most mass shootings and play a role in many other murders and suicides.

If you really want to help, focus on helping people and addressing what’s giving them the urge to shoot people, don’t try to simply stop them from shooting people, because if they can’t shoot someone, they will find another way to kill.

Challenge Your Norm

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“Somewhere else is just someone else’s back yard.” – Axel Hoogland

I have been actively looking for a job outside of Iowa for the last year. Specifically in Georgia or North Carolina to continue with my current company but I met no success.

My stated reason was to get out of the cold. I hate winter and want to drive my nice RWD cars year round, that was it. I wasn’t able to leave, despite an interview in North Carolina in August. After that I  decided to be content where I was. Eventually I started getting more ingrained in the community. I joined a dancing team at the University of Northern Iowa. We are learning to do the cha cha, rumba, triple time swing, waltz, foxtrot and tango. In December 2013 I couldn’t even have told you what those dances were. Now I can dance some of them with enough skill to trick people who don’t know much about dancing into thinking I actually know what I’m doing

Everyone who knew me before I was 24 is pretty surprised that I do so much dancing these days.

Everyone who knew me before I was 24 is pretty surprised that I do so much dancing these days.

I also got involved in mentoring kids. Specifically, via The Job Foundation. Going into it I wanted to help the kids learn. Little did I realize that I’d be learning just as much as they have, maybe more. Working with kids as an adult has exposed me to a whole new world. Well I guess it’s exposed me to the world of a child, again. I am able to take these kids to events that are old to me and they are fascinated by stuff that seems mundane to me. I took them to a shop recently. We played with an engine hoist for 45 minutes. They picked me up. They picked each other up. They picked up just about everything in the room. They were learning how a hydraulic jack works, without even knowing it. Sneaky me.  I can not remember in my memory having that much fun with an engine hoist. After that they spent 45 minutes taking a small wooden table apart with screw drivers. Again, they loved it. Another time I took them to the shop they played with a car jack for the same amount of time. It only picks you up 10”. They must have ridden up and down that thing 20 times. Kids don’t need much to be entertained. Just something new. And the same goes for adults!

“Iowa is so boring. The same old thing happens everyday. There’s nothing to do here.” This is what a lot of people complain day in and day out. And they have a valid point, in their own mind. For them, their days all seem to run together. They go to work, the store, maybe the gym. They see the same friends. Eat the same lunch etc. It’s mundane. Boring. Not thought provoking.

A cool dirt bike racing indoor event I went to, in my own town.

A cool dirt bike racing indoor event I went to, in my own town.

But it doesn’t have to be that way! Challenge your norm! You can seek out dissenting opinions in any city. Especially a city as big as the one I live in (100,000). Go to a new place to eat. Take a new route to work and look around. You might be surprised what you find. Change up where you go after work one day. Explore your city. Talk to new people. They probably do something different from you everyday and maybe it’s something you can find an interest in. If you don’t think you can, try acting interested in what they are telling you. Actions can drive changes in feelings. The point here is that a change can appear small at first but in the long run could provide some some life changing opportunity.

I gained access to this shop via a mutual friend. It's sure a great opportunity. I help out there sometimes. Sometimes I do my own projects. Everyone benefits. This all came about from one chance visit.

I gained access to this shop via a mutual friend. It’s sure a great opportunity. I help out there sometimes. Sometimes I do my own projects. Everyone benefits. This all came about from one chance visit.

Visited a Mormon Church. In town.

Visited a Mormon Church. In town.

Another thing I’ve been doing lately has been purposely exposing myself to people who I perceive to have different religious beliefs than I do. I am Catholic. With a small group from my church we have started visiting other denominations of Christianity as well as other religious centers. We visit 1 a month (2nd week/weekend of the month). Thus far we have visited with Lutherans, Mormons, Universal Unitarians and have in the works plans to visit a Methodist church and a Mosque. From the start I had to ask myself what my goals were with visiting these places. Did I want to come in telling these people how I disagreed with them and that they were going to hell? Honestly there was a small part of me that wanted to do that. But why? What good would that do anyone? I have worked very hard to only ask genuine questions to understand others beliefs without volunteering my own, unless I’m asked. This has proved to be a great way to meet people and build mutual respect. You find that often people are really more alike than different. Why do we put ourselves and others in boxes? I think it’s often because people are afraid of what they don’t know. If you are brave enough to just venture out a bit and challenge your norm, you’ll find where you are is a more  interesting place than it used to be.

The Wrestler

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“Once you’ve wrestled, everything else in life is easy.” – Dan Gable

Axel Hoogland, Donny Stork, Conference 2007

Axel Hoogland (Orange), Donny Stork, Conference 2007

I attended tiny feeder elementary and middle schools with one class per grade and between 8 and 20 kids per class. The only sport was basketball and I was a pretty aggressive basketball player. I fouled out of most of my games my 8th grade year and didn’t score many points. Once I got to high school I was basically funneled to the wrestling program by default, basically by small comments from my dad, uncles and wrestling coach. My father and uncles had been wrestlers. I don’t recall much push to be a wrestler growing up but I do remember attending one wrestling match that an older cousin was wrestling in.

I remember my freshman year of wrestling there were 7 or 8 freshmen on the team. Most of them had wrestled before and some of them were pretty good. They would wrestle and joke with the older kids. The older guys were Gods as far as I was concerned. Since I was new to the larger school I didn’t know many people, especially older kids.  I had never wrestled and I got my butt kicked, even by the worst guys. I was 125 lbs.

The day before the first wrestling match I had to ask the assistant coach a serious question.

“Am I supposed to wear a cup during the match?”

“No.” He laughed.

I don’t remember my first wrestling match, or my second, or third. From my freshman year I do remember wrestling at a Junior Varsity (JV) tournament. For wrestling, there are some JV only tournaments. I think there were 2 a year. The varsity guys didn’t go to those matches, they got the weekend off. I had to wrestle a girl at this particular tournament. I beat her. I was happy it was over quickly. Wrestling girls for a freshman guy in high school can be extremely awkward. You are around that point where maybe you’re sort of interested in girls. Likely your buddies made a few jokes that maybe they didn’t even know what they meant and the older guys had said some things about girls while in the locker room you didn’t understand yet. But you definitely don’t want to have to beat a girl up in front of a lot of people.

I beat 5 kids all by the same reach back head lock from the referee’s position. That’s just a garbage move that will get you pinned if you’re wrestling anyone good. Regardless I won the tournament. I was pretty ecstatic. I remember my dad saying that one guy had remarked “That kid is built like a brick shit house.” That sure made me feel good. Tough. Strong.

I wrestled my first varsity match. at a team tournament in Stratford, WI. I was a sophomore at 135 or 140 lbs. Our varsity guy was sick or gone. In a team tournament there are multiple full teams wrestling one team against another, as opposed to a bracket of individuals at the same weight wrestling each other. I got matched with up a guy who was also a JV guy being bumped to varsity. I beat him. It was a sweet victory. I ended my sophomore year on the JV team.

Living on a farm I was always working. We’d make hay, pick rocks from the field and work in the barn. Obviously stacking hay is a physical workout as is picking up rocks. One of the chores in the barn was mixing feed for the cows and feeding the calves. Both of these entailed carrying around 5 gallon buckets of feed. I’d take the time to walk slower and do curls with the buckets.

The summer after my sophomore year was the first summer I attended any type of wrestling camp outside of season. This is where good wrestlers are made. Everyone in the state puts in the 2 hours after school at wrestling practice. If you want to be better than everyone else you have to put in more time. This simple principle can be applied to all areas of life. My brother and I attended the Camp of Champs put on by John and Ben Peterson.

My junior year I finally started to get into the swing of things. Enough people had graduated and I finally had enough experience I had a starting spot on the varsity team, I was a team leader wrestling 152 lbs.

The Northern Badger tournament was the big tournament our team went to each year. It is a 2 day tournament so the goal is always to get to the 2nd day. It starts with a 32 man bracket and the 2nd day is wrestling to “place”. The top 12 people in each bracket wrestle the 2nd day. I ended up winning 2 matches and losing 2 matches which didn’t get me to the 2nd day. I was a bit upset. The last match I lost 12-16 to a sophomore, Larrieu, whose record was 6-3. He ended up 5th, which was pretty good for a sophomore at 152 lbs.

For the tournament our team hosted at our school, our 160 lb wrestler decided he wanted to drop to 152 lbs. He ended up beating me in a wrestle off before our home tournament so he wrestled at 152 and I wrestled at 160. It turned out to be a fortunate break for me because at 152 there was a junior, Lukasko, who was a state champion the previous year and had gotten 3rd his freshman year. I ended up winning at 160. That was my only home tournament win since the next year I wrestled Lukasko and lost.

My junior year I wrestled at conference for the first time as a varsity member.  I remember beating a guy, Stork, who was a senior, but the tournament was very oddly set up so I ended up wrestling him 2x and lost to him the 2nd time we wrestled. That was for 1st place, so I ended up getting 2nd that year in conference.

After conference is regionals, sectionals and state. All wrestlers should want to go to state. In division 3 in Wisconsin wrestling you have to get 1st or 2nd to get from regionals to sectionals, and then 1st,2nd or 3rd in sectionals to get to state. I ended up 1st in my regional of 3 people to go to sectionals. In sectionals I lost to Castorena in the first round and I was out. I was pretty crushed, and looking back there was no good reason I should have lost that match. I lost it 6-8 to a guy who basically had the same record as me. I ended my junior year with a record of 22 wins, 14 losses.

After my junior year I was pretty ready to be a great wrestler. My brother, myself and Casey Williams, another wrestler from our team, decided to go to a bunch of after season wrestling tournaments. Practice makes perfect as they say. The after season tournaments are where all the good wrestlers go to get better. We must have wrestled 30 matches between my junior and senior seasons. That’s nearly a full year’s worth of wrestling. Since I was getting beaten and wrestling a lot of very good competition my skills were progressing rapidly.

One of the matches was at the Badger State games against Larrieu, who I’d lost to at the Northern Badger the year before. I ended up pinning him in the first match. It was a free-style match, but still, to pin a guy who had beaten you previously was great. He was furious, as any good wrestler should be when he’s pinned.

That summer, 2006, I attended many wrestling camps. I went to wrestling practice in Park Falls, a neighboring town, with some of the better guys from that team and a mentor. He was a 30 something judo champion. Wrestling and judo are both contact sports so we did a sort of cross breed between the two. I remember one day I sat on the tractor all day raking hay. I lived on a farm. I took my shirt off because I thought it’d be cool to be more tan, I’m about the whitest guy ever. I ended up with the worst sunburn ever. That night at wrestling I was in tears from all the pain I was getting from the guys touching my back while we were grappling. I did eventually have to stop, the pain was too bad. I never took my shirt off on the tractor again.

My brother and I again attend the Camp of Champs again the summer of 2006 and later a camp at the UW-Oshkosh campus. My brother, Casey and I, 4 guys from Park Falls and 1 from Hurley (neighboring schools, went). Of the 8 of us 6 ended up going to state the next year. That was an intense camp.

Sometime in this summer of 2006 I had started doing a certain number of push-ups each morning. I was up to 50 once September came around and the start of the school year. Since I was on the cross country team in the fall I was already doing running practice so I didn’t really need to do extra, until wrestling season came around. By November, I was running a mile in the mornings, doing my pushups and climbing the 60’ silo on our farm. You hold pretty tight to those ladder rails when it’s icy outside. I don’t necessarily recommend this as a training method, but something similar could be good. After practice I’d spend time crawling up the stairs on my hands while someone wheelbarrowed my legs.

Coming into my senior year I was one of 3 guys who had started from when I was a freshman. The other guys had fallen off for various reasons. Some got tangled in drugs, some for bad grades or behavior, some just moved away. I had avoided all those traps. I had spent lots of time working hard to be a better wrestler. This was my year.

Onto the Northern Badger I came in with a 17-3 record. I got a bye the first round, won my 2nd match and ran into Larrieu again. This is a common occurrence in wrestling, seeing the same guys multiple times. This time I lost 10-8.  After that I lost a match 5-0 to Bonander but I was already in the 2nd day. I ended up winning 2 more matches and Castorena, from the year before, ended up 12th, although I didn’t realize that at the time.

On to my team’s hosted tournament, I ended up in the same bracket as Lukasko, the now 2x state champ. He was undefeated and I went in hard. I actually had him on his back, where most decent wrestlers will tell you they had a great wrestler at some point. I ended up getting pinned. The only time my senior year. I ended up 2nd. After the match I told Lukasko I’d see him at State. I’m sure he didn’t hear and wasn’t really that worried.

Fast forward to Conference. The year before I had got 2nd to Stork. This year his younger brother, Don Stork, was in my weight class. He was having a pretty good year wrestling and I was nervous to wrestle him.  It was a round robin 5 man tournament. There were 3 of us with good records and 2 guys who were just there. I ended up losing the first match to the other guy and then handily beat the next 2 guys. The final match was against Stork. He had beaten the guy who had beaten me first. If I beat Stork I won, if I lost I got 3rd. I ended up beating him. It was great. Finally conference champ.

Axel Hoogland (orange) Donny Stork, Conference 2007

Axel Hoogland (orange) Donny Stork, Conference 2007

Of course, conference didn’t mean much. I moved on to regional’s which I handily won. Moving onto sectionals there were 3 guys who should move on to state and I was one of them, Larrieu was another and there was a 3rd guy. Unfortunately I ended up on the opposite side of the bracket as Larrieu and on the same side as the other state bound guy. I ended up losing to him in 2 overtimes. It was the longest match I’d ever been a part of or seen. We weren’t even sure of the rules towards the end of the later overtime, neither were the coaches. Since I lost that one I had to wrestle back to 3rd to get to state. The first guy I pinned in a minute. The next guy, the guy I had to wrestle to go to state, was Castorena, from sectionals the year before, whom I had lost to. I didn’t remember much of him but I did remember he had beaten me the year before. I was out for vengeance. When he stepped on the mat he looked pretty muscular. I ended up pinning him right at the end of the first period. I was going to STATE!

There is a 12 man bracket for wrestling in state. There are 4 sectionals, 3 guys from each. The guy who gets first ends in the 1 man bracket. The guys who got 2nd and 3rd had to wrestle off each other for the 4 spots left. I ended up pinning the guy I had to wrestle. That was the first day. Later that night I was walking around, looking at the brackets and ran into Bonander, the guy who I had lost to at Northern Badger. He congratulated me on getting to state.

2007 wrestling bracket

The next day my first match in the 8 man bracket was Lukasko. I went in strong again but came up quite short. I ended up losing 2-11. He ended up winning state that year again, undefeated as he pinned his opponents in the semi finals and finals. At least I didn’t get pinned! I still had a chance to place, I didn’t. I ended up losing my next match in overtime 4-2. That was how I ended my high school wrestling career.

State Wrestling 2007

No where will you see as many seemingly tough high school guys crying as at state sport events. I’m not sure about other sports, but wrestling is quite personal. It’s you against the other guy and one of you has to lose. I definitely cried after the match while I was in the shower.

Lukasko went on to play college football at UW-Madison.

Larrieu ended up winning state the next year. Which gave me the chance to talk big the next year, saying I had pinned him, even if it was an out of season tournament, they all count, although admittedly the last match always counts more.

Donny Stork ended up dying in a car crash a few years later.

High School wrestling is definitely not the pinnacle of athletic performance. But it is at a certain point of your life. I put in as much time as I understood I could. You can always make time for important things. I could have put more time in. I could have pushed myself harder. Others could have pushed harder. I’m not sure how I would have responded. I try to remember my road through wrestling whenever I am faced with a new skill that seems difficult. After 2 years of being not very great, I started to develop slowly. Once I started to put in more time I started to succeed faster. There is no good reason I couldn’t have been better sooner, except I didn’t put in the time. If you take time to practice more than the other guy, you will surpass them in skill, knowledge, technique, strength etc. Whatever you do, do it well.

To Fight Or Not To Fight?

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“With great power comes great responsibility” – Uncle Ben (Spiderman)

Power is something I have been considering for a long time. What exactly is it? What are your obligations to use your power for, assuming you find yourself in possession of some power? How many types of power are there?

I want to tell a story from when I was in college to demonstrate a misuse of power in from my past and what I learned from that.

Let’s introduce the characters. Myself. John Bro and A.O.B. (Names have been changed to protect the guilty, or innocent as it might be, except for myself).

John Bro was a mutual friend of A.O.B. and myself. I didn’t care much for A.O.B. I considered myself pretty religious at the time (I had a lot to learn), but still, I was put off by much of  A.O.B’s general derogatory comments towards women. He was also much too obsessed with this appearance and tough guy demeanor. So  admittedly I wasn’t coming into this with a very good attitude, but I was overall cordial to A.O.B.

Now he was hanging around our house (John and I lived together) pretty regularly, which was fine. But what was not fine was that A.O.B. had decided that I was a good person to antagonize. Being generally averse to confrontation, I generally shook off his personal attacks. He would “talk smack” at me rather often. He’d also make these ridiculous jab motions towards me like he was going to punch me. You get pretty tired of flinching because you think you’re going to be punched relatively often.

Finally one night I had had it. After yet another fake punch and some more harsh than usual smack talk I decided to end it that night. I challenged A.O.B. to a fight. Now I was a pretty decent wrestler in high school and I’m also 6’1”and relatively muscular. A.O.B. was probably 5’8”, a little pudgy but was also on the college wrestling team (for a short time) and had been an (amateur) boxer. He had also grown up in a tough neighborhood, from what I understand, or at least that’s what he said.

The fight was quite uneventful except for my first (and last) attempt at some smack talk “Do what you do!” I shouted at him as we were scuffling. Not my most enlightened sentence, then again, I obviously wasn’t doing much clear thinking as I was in the middle of a fight that I had (more or less) initiated.

The fight was over rather quickly. As is oft to happen when a wrestler fights a boxer, we were on the ground in less than a minute, I had secured a rear-naked choke hold and he had tapped on my arm signaling he was giving up and I immediately set him go. I walked in the house smugly, sure I had seen the last of our problems.

Two seconds later I was made aware how wrong I was by a fist hitting me in the back of the head. Turns out people who walk around insulting others and generally being antagonistic are pretty poor losers. A.O.B. had punched me in the back of the head, after I had won! What the heck?!?!? At this point our mutual friend John Bro threw A.O.B. out of the house. He didn’t come back for a long time. Seems like overall that was a win for me right? Well that night I spent most of the night wondering what other retaliatory action A.O.B. would take against me. Would he destroy my car? I was (and am still) a pretty huge car guy. Would he get his gang members and come beat me up? He was allegedly in a gang. Luckily no more retaliatory actions were ever taken and I also never really had to see A.O.B. again.

So what were the outcomes of that fight? Well my main goal on not having A.O.B. around demeaning me verbally or making fake jabs at me was fulfilled. This is definitely not a guaranteed outcome in situations like this. It’s just as likely that he could have beat the hell out of me and as was shown by his post fight antics, he likely would not have stopped if he had gotten me in a compromising situation like I had him. I had put my personal safety in peril. That was dumb.So while the outcome was arguably good in this situation it could have turned bad.

One outcome was I was physically exhausted and had received a punch in the back of the head and a cut from the fight. Definitely not a preferred outcome.

Another outcome as I mentioned was that I was nervous for months that A.O.B. would be after me or my property. This was an unintended outcome and one I had not considered before the fight. Also a bad outcome.

It is a pretty safe bet that A.O.B. did not learn anything from that fight. I didn’t show him the quote that I shared at the beginning of this article, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Instead, I reinforced that the strong take and do what they want and the weak suffer. That was not that lesson that I meant to teach him. This was a third undesirable outcomes.

So for a total of 1 arguably good outcome (that could have ended a much different way) and 3 bad outcomes, lets consider other ways that I could have handled that situation.

One way would have been avoidance. I simply could have made myself scarce whenever A.O.B.  came around. This is generally a cowardly way to live and not necessarily a very reasonable one.

I could have approached A.O.B. myself with reason and conversation. I could have tried to share with him why I getting pretty fed up with his act. This would have saved me from being in a life threatening situation in the first place, a lot of paranoia afterwards, a punch to the head and it would have taught A.O.B.  that there are better ways to solve a problem than fighting. 4 for 4 good outcomes again.

The best way would have been to get John Bro, our mutual friend, as an ally on my side. I think I could have convinced him that via his mediation he could create a calm that would make the time we spent together more cohesive. Bringing a mediator in between 2 disagreeable parties, preferably a fair mediator trusted by both parties is always a great way to solve conflict. I could have shared the same things but with an ally that A.O.B. trusted instead of just by myself. There is power in numbers.

So now you know a story from my life. I was in a fight. I learned that there are better ways to solve problems than fighting. If that simple message could get out to the world at large, I think we’d be on a pretty good track.

Fat vs. Fat Wads Of Cash

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Entitlement and bad math skills.  These are two reasons people have so many problems these days. We feel entitled to have it our way (thanks to Burger King) and we expect it now. Also people are choosing to be awful at math, I guess I could blame this on the schools but I am more apt to blame it on bad parenting. It’s not hard to teach your kids math. 2+2=4 is pretty simple. Unfortunately you can’t pick your parents. I would also blame some of this on the government and their lack of keeping to a budget. What kind of example is that to the people? What should you expect the average person to maintain a budget surplus when you don’t yourself?

Let me start with a few simple equations relating to the title here.

Calories In < Calories Out = weight loss  – Preferred
Calories In > Calories Out = weight gain

For those of you whose parents haven’t taught them what < mean that means “less than”. You can remember that because < looks similar to a L. > means “greater than”.

The cool thing about equations is that you can affect different parts of them differently. For example you could reduce your calories in by eating less and thus make it less than calories out yielding weight loss. You can also increase calories out, for example by exercising, and thus make it more than calories in, leading to weight loss again. You have options.

The simple reason why diets don’t work is that people only affect one of those parts of the equation (calories out) and only for a short time. If you revert to the state that lead to the situation, by quitting your “diet” you should not be surprised at the weight gain.

As Einstein said (allegedly) – Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Onto the fat wads of cash equations.

Money In < Money Out = Debt
Money In > Money Out = Savings (Fat Wads Of Ca$h) – Preferred

By now you should understand the equations as they are the same equations. Notice that which on if the prefered equation is different though. You want excess in the money equations, you don’t want excess calories in in the weight equation.

Now onto the entitlement thought of the day. The problem with these 2 sets of equations is that you have to sacrifice things to come out on the preferred side. If you want to lose weight you will have to sacrifice some temporary comfort, either in the way of being a little hungry sometimes (not even starving, eat one less donut!) or less comfortable in the way of spending some time doing some physical activity. Gasp!

On the money side. You are required to make some sacrifices as well. Do you want to eat out every week for lunch that’ll be $50+. Do you want to make your own meals, probably will be $25 or < (that’s that less sign again). Do you want a new car and recurring payments for 72 months! Let me just tell you that no you don’t. You can probably continue driving your old car and banking that $500+ a month. Savings!

So that was on the savings side. On the “Increase income” side you have plenty of options as well. Take a look at where you are now. What’s your income? Are you happy with that? Then disregard this completely. If you are unhappy then maybe take some time to research what jobs will pay you more. Then you can investigate what is required to take you from where you are to that job. Let me tell you, it’s not likely going to be a fast journey and that’s where the entitlement problem comes in. “I want it all and I want it NOW” as Queen says is the mentality we have these days.

That needs to change. Some people have very low self esteem or low motivation. I’m here to tell you that “You can do it!” Sometimes that’s all people need to hear is someone giving them positive reinforcement. Today is the best time to start. New year, new you right? The only thing is you need to maintain the new attitude or habit. Don’t give up 1 week later like most New Year’s resolutions.

You will notice that I mentioned creating good habits. That starts small and you will likely not see results immediately, but over time, much like compound interest, small changes add up. One pound lost a week over a year is 52 lbs! $10 saved a week (don’t drink 2 coffees a week?) is $520 a year! Small change over a long period time is the only sustainable way to do things.

I heard a story one time where a person said
“I want to run 3 times a week to lose weight.” – John
That person was asked “How’s that going?”. – Jen
“Not well, I don’t have time.” – John
“Well, why don’t you run one time a week?” -Jen

“What good will that do?” – John
You can recognize the  fatal flaw of entitlement. John expects himself to go from 0 to 3 times a week running with no effort. Remember when I said “You can DO it.” The key there is DO. Action often drives passion. If you can rouse yourself to go to the gym, or avoid buying a $5 coffee one time, you are more likely to do it the next time. Actions breeds passion.

My challenge to you is to choose one action in your life that you are not particularly happy with and change it this year. Start small. Set some actions that you can follow that will reinforce the new habit. Put a dollar in a jar each day if you want to save money. Do one push up before you get in the shower each day, or more if you can. Start small, but don’t forget to ramp it up as you progress. Have a happy and successful 2014!

Darin McClure – cover photo – Flickr Creative Commons

Trust. Government Regulation. Guns and Income Inequality (Oh And Of Course Smoking)

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I have been wanting to write about gun control and income inequality recently but as I’ve been researching and talking with people I have come across some interesting similarities between both topics that I feel the need to expound upon.

The basic idea shared by both these topics is how much government regulation should be exercised over each issue? I think it’s important to try to understand what is really being said, despite the words used. When a person says I want more government regulation, what they are really saying is “I trust the government to make better choices for my life than I can for myself.”

I am completely ok with that statement if some people want to make it. In fact, it’s probably quite accurate for the majority of people, not because the government is incredibly smart, but because people are often incredibly self centered and ignorant of how the world works. I would never make this statement myself. I am the architect of my own future.

For every regulation you think the government should make you should also be arguing for more taxes. OOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHH NNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOO. I’m not paying more taxes, you say. Ah. Herein lies the problem. People can’t see the world beyond the walls of their own home and they think that the government should take care of them, but they don’t want to pay for it. People expect someone else to pay for it and this is the problem with arbitrarily raising the minimum wage.

How do you conduct your shopping? If you are like most people out there you first ask “What is the cheapest way I can get this?” If that includes buying things from Walmart, which you are very vocal about not liking on Facebook, or buying a burger from a fast food joint because it’s fast, cheap and therefore convenient, you are part of the problem. If you wanted to do something active to make companies listen to you you need to start talking with your wallet. Read this article about Moo Cluck Moo. It is a semi-fast food joint in Michigan that pays its workers $15/hour. Here is the important part for you lazy people who won’t read it “In order to make this model work, customers have to pay a little more.” If you go to McDonalds because it’s faster or cheaper but then argue that McDonald’s should raise their minimum wage, you are part of the problem. That is called internet activism my friends and it’s as useless as a knife at a gun fight.

The same principle has been enacted in the argument for smoking. People are arguing that the government can remove someone’s free choice to smoke and your free choice to avoid establishments that endorse smoking because you think the government is smarter than you. If you are in the NRA you should also be trying to help smokers get back their choice to smoke in places that business owners think it is beneficial for their business (public places like gas stations and hospitals where it’s inherently dangerous excluded). Read my article on smoking if you want to understand that more. If however you are in the NRA but you think that it’s ok to deny restaurants the right to choose if they will have smoking or not, you are really saying that you DO trust the government to make good choices for you and all your arguments for no gun registration is as worthless as a gasoline engine on the moon. (For those of you who don’t understand this, an engine running on gasoline needs oxygen to run, of which there is none on the moon.)

So let’s recap. The question is how much do you trust your government? If you say, unequivocally but argue against higher taxes, you are a liar. If you say I don’t trust the government at all (NRA people and anti-gun registration folks) but argue for some regulation like seat belt laws and smoking laws I also call you a liar.

This is my challenge to you. Let’s start taking a little responsibility for ourselves. Do the right thing! If you think you can make good life choices for yourself lets see you do that. If you don’t think you are capable of making good life choices for yourself, please give your whole paycheck to the government and let them tell you exactly what you should be doing for a job, where you should live, what you should eat etc.

Mark Rain Flickr Creative Commons, cover photo

Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes – Movie Review

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I believe watching movies can help us reflect on current situations in our society. I recently watched the movie “Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes”.

The first thing I do when watching a movie is to identify the motivations of each character. It is also useful to identify what power each character or group has.

Malcolm is the main protagonist in the movie on the human side.His goal is to get the dam working again to provide power for the humans but also work with the apes for peace.

Dreyfus is the main antagonist on the side of the humans. He refuses to see the apes as intelligent or capable of reason. He is prejudiced against them as animals despite evidence showed to the contrary. His drive is to provide power to the city as they are running out of gasoline so their main goal is to restart the hydroelectric dam. He has power because he is ex-military and started the human city. He has provided protection for others so they trust him.

Caesar is the leader of the apes and the main protagonist of peace in the movie, even more so than Malcolm. He is constantly asked to trust the humans despite the continued disobedience of his conditions, by certain individuals, mainly Carver early in the movie.

Koba is the #2 ape, antagonist and main war monger. He refuses to listen to Cesar’s leadership and calls for peace. He is influenced by his past of being a lab animal and having humans do many painful experiments on him. His main flaw is looking at everything from a self-centered point of view and holding on to hatred from his past to a group of people (scientists) and applying that hate to the new group of people who had nothing to do with that. He eventually resorts to nefarious means to attain his agenda.

The humans main power comes from technology and knowledge.

The apes main power comes from being physically stronger than the humans. One of the characters also mentions that the apes are stronger because they “Don’t need electricity.” They are more resilient to nature.

The movie starts with a brief review of the history of how the humans were negatively affected by the testing that had been completed on the apes. Then it moves to the community in the woods that the apes have established. Caesar and Maurice (an orangutan and close friend of Caesar’s) are discussing the humans and how they have not seen or heard of them in 2 years.

Of course, the next thing that happens a few apes wandering around the woods stumble upon Carver, who’s with a party of humans looking to restart the hydroelectric dam to supply power to the city. Carver immediately feels threatened, because he is afraid of the apes and lacks knowledge about them. He ends up shooting Ash, one of the apes. The rest of the apes descended on Carver and the rest of the humans, Malcolm being part of that group. Caesar uses his wisdom to allow the humans to leave peacefully despite Koba’s insistence of punishing the humans. The apes retrieve Malcolm’s notebook and bookbag at the site of the attack.

Pondering what to do next the apes decide a show of force is necessary. They march down to the human’s city in a show of force. They return the bookbag to Malcolm and issue a warning for the humans not to return to the forest.

What follows from here is some trust building and breaking among the humans and apes as a small contingent, including Malcolm, return to the apes to ask them to be allowed to work on the dam. Cesar again complies in believing that working together is the only way to help both species.

It is around this point it becomes obvious that most of the characters on each side are quite trusting of the other side and willing to work together. It is also obvious that there are some characters on each side who are irrationally afraid of the other side. Carver being the human and Koba being the ape who are most guilty. This is an important point that should be considered and applied to the world at large. Most people are good decent people, but there are just a few violent or ignorant people who choose to make the world a bad place.

Koba eventually steals a gun and shoots Caesar. He makes it look like a human killed Caesar. With no investigation he works the apes up into a frenzy and they attack the city. This is another very important turning point of the story. There is absolutely no investigation by the apes to see if it was indeed a human who killed Caesar. They take Koba’s word because he was the 2nd in command, but he is a twisted individual and has chosen to use his power for evil. Can you think of any situations in the modern world where people jump to conclusions way before any evidence has been shown? Have you ever done this yourself?

Meanwhile, Malcolm has found Caesar and learned that Koba was the real killer. He starts nursing Caesar back to and brings him back to the city.

During his attack on the city Koba shows signs of a dictatorship. He imprisons any apes that are still loyal to Caesar and his ideals of peace. At one point during the attack one ape refuses to kill a human, saying that’s not what Caesar would have wanted. Koba responds by killing that ape.

Malcolm finds Caesar’s son, Blue Eyes, and brings him to see his father. Blue Eyes shares the information that “Fear makes the other apes follow Caesar”. Does Koba’s reign of terror remind you of any point in history? How about any current regimes? Nazis? North Korea? U.S.S.R?

The end of the movie includes the triumphant return of Caesar to power and his ousting of the evil that is Koba.

Overall I thought this was a great movie when thinking of how it applies to current situations such as when groups of people react irrationally and with a lack of information.

It also shows how a few bad people can really affect humanity negatively by using misinformation and hate to lead good people to do evil.

I encourage you to start thinking in these types of terms both when you are watching movies and in your own life. What power do you wield? How do you use it to affect those around you? When you learn of a situation, do you jump to conclusions quickly or do you take time to think through rationally and understand what is really happening?

Ross Elliott – cover photo, Flickr Creative Commons

Smoking. Why It Should Be Legal.

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I am not a smoker, but I think it should be legal in certain places. Many people I have talked to have been more than happy that smoking has been outlawed in public places, at least in the midwest for around a decade now. I am going to tell you why that’s not a good reaction.

Lets start by saying this is not an article promoting smoking. I understand that scientifically there is a lot of evidence that says smoking is unhealthy for the smoker. There is also evidence that says that smoking is unhealthy for those who regularly breathe 2nd hand smoke. For that reason I do not advocate that anyone should smoke in their home if they have any non-smokers in the house, this meaning anyone with kids. There is not evidence, that I know of, that says that someone who walks within 20 feet of a smoker once a month will develop significant lung problems. I personally have asthma so I think I qualify in the group that is hard of breathing.

Why do people smoke in the first place? Usually it’s started as a way to be “cool”. The older kids smoke. Your parents don’t want you to smoke. Naturally the thing to do is smoke. Later people can become addicted to the nicotine. At this point it gives them a relaxing feeling to smoke, as they are getting their “fix”.

How to stop cigarette smoking? Like most things, I think the most effective way to stop smoking is through education. If you show kids pictures of smokers lungs they are pretty unlikely to start smoking. Have you seen the scary  anti smoking commercials? Effective. It’s probably not common knowledge that most smokers actually want to quit. But it’s a difficult road to break any addiction.

So now that I’ve thoroughly painted the picture that I am not advocating smoking, let me tell you why I’m also not trying to outlaw it. Smoking was outlawed because it was unpopular. Not because it was unhealthy, but because it was unpopular. This is a bad precedent to set. People wanted to go to a bar, restaurant or bowling alley and breathe clean fresh air. While that is fine and dandy, I have yet to read in the Constitution where you have the right to go to a privately owned restaurant. The people who want to go to those places have a choice. They can go to those privately owned places or not. They are not entitled to it. The key here is privately owned establishments. Don’t write me telling me how it should be illegal to smoke in a hospital, I agree, because there is a captive audience there who can’t choose to leave and medical equipment that shouldn’t be smoked around.

People have more power than they recognize. While they have demonstrated that they have the power to band together to ban things they don’t like, perhaps we should step back and think if this is a good road to go down. Think of things you like. Alcohol? Soft drinks? Burgers? Riding a bicycle without a helmet. Driving a motorcycle without a helmet. Driving a car without a seat belt? All of these things can be dangerous and I’m sure you can tell me why I shouldn’t do any of them, but I am here to tell you that me wanting to do any of these things doesn’t inhibit your ability to choose to not do them. Some of these things have been made illegal and come back from it. Prohibition. Some are currently illegal in certain places, riding a motorcycle without a helmet. Some are not yet illegal but certain people are trying to make them illegal, drinking more than a certain volume of soft drink. Thanks Michael Bloomberg. Basically by outlawing things you are running to the teacher and telling on someone. That’s childish.

So what do I think would have been a more effective way to get people to stop smoking in a place you wanted to be? Perhaps talk to the owner of the establishment. Tell him directly that if he doesn’t choose for his place of business to have it smoke free, you won’t give him your money. Money talks. Now this being the owners place, he could comply, if he thinks he’d get more business that way, or if he thinks he’d get more business by allowing patrons to continue to smoke that’s completely fine by me also and it should be ok with you also.

So what do you think? Will you continue to make criminals of people who aren’t doing anything wrong? Or will you continue to advocate to outlaw things as long as you disagree with them?

Let me expose you to a speech by Martin Niemöller.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Now let me interpret that for you by substituting things you might care about.

First they came for the smokers, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a smoker.

Then they came for the soda drinkers and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a soda drinkers.

Then they came for the coffee drinkers, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a coffee drinkers.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

And finally a thought by David Allen Green.
So my challenge to you is to think bigger. Don’t think “How will X impact me?” But think “How will X impact the world?”

Credit Francisco Karm for cover photo. Flickr Creative Commons.

Understanding. Can We Have A Reasonable Discussion?

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Understand – Verb
perceive the intended meaning of (words, a language, or speaker)

Perceive – verb
interpret or look on (someone or something) in a particular way; regard as

interpret – verb
explain the meaning of (information, words, or actions).

If you take the time to type each of those definitions into Google, you will find that usually one of the definitions (there are usually 2) references one of the other words, which is very unhelpful.

As you drill down though, you see that understanding is an action that requires effort on your behalf that is supposed to help you know why something happens, how it happens or in the case of ideas, what someone is trying to explain to you.

Understanding is something that takes time. It is a process and is very difficult in today’s instant gratification society. We don’t take the time to explain things that we believe to others and we take even less time understanding what other people are trying to explain to us. One reason could be that we don’t actually have very well developed beliefs ourselves. Try a small thought experiment for me. Try to answer this question “My beliefs on homosexuality are….” Try to think beyond the “It’s wrong.” or “I agree with it.” Why do you think those things?” What other questions can you ask yourself about it? Do you support homosexual couples passing on their inheritance to each other after they die? Do you support homosexual couples being able to adopt children? Do you support homosexual couples having the right to having messy divorces when they decide it won’t work, much like many heterosexual couples these days? What is your definition of a marriage? Is it a spiritual bond? Is it a legal entity?

I’ll continue this thought later in the article.

In order for me (or anyone else) to determine if I am actually for or against your viewpoints, on anything, I need to understand your beliefs. I need to understand what drives you. This can only happen with discussion and usually pointed, deliberate, tough conversation. It is not always fun and often it gets cut short when people find a point they disagree on, or think they disagree on.

The problem is we each perceive the intended meaning of many things when we hear a word. I will explain my perceptions or what I think other’s erroneous perceptions are of 3 topics below.

Feminism

When I hear the word feminism I automatically think of my own definition of radical feminism, which is hard to define and that cop out on my behalf is definitely not progressing understanding.  I will point to this video, that seems to try to shock people into thinking that if we teach young girls to swear and act in ways that wouldn’t be acceptable in a school setting or at home we are somehow empowering them. That seems radical enough to me.

Now I think you can agree that many people will be turned off by this vulgar display which from now on could be the idea that I would when I think “feminism”. Trying to work past my biases, and looking up the definition of feminism “the advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men.” I think we get a much different message and we can ask ourselves some questions.

Do I support women being paid equally, assuming they are equally qualified to perform any task. Of course.
Do I support women being giving the same backing on political issues and same doors to be a candidate if they so choose. Of course.

Do I support teaching kids it’s ok to say bad words to sell T-shirts. No.

So if you ask me if I’m a feminist, I’d argue, yes. If you ask me if the FCKH8 people are feminists, I’d argue no, because they are alienating their cause to the public. They are being bad stewards of feminism.

Another topic that is rampant with misunderstanding.

Gay Rights. Homosexual Agenda. Gay Marriage.

Whatever other terms you want to describe this.

This is a topic that has much of the world split into about 100 different factions, as evidenced by my not knowing what to call it even without being unbiased. There are those who are promoting gay marriage as the exact same as heterosexual marriage. You have those who insist that gay unions will ruin heterosexual marriage. You have those that just oppose it because they feel it’s wrong. (This one I have no argument for, it’s completely illogical, at least provide some argument!) You have those that oppose gay marriage on the basis of religion.

There is so much misunderstanding in this debate it’s not even fun to laugh at.

Speaking to several homosexual people and to several who are opposed to gay unions I see they are working on such different premises it’s no surprise that there is so much debate on this topic.

Let me present the arguments as I think each side wants to see them.

Homosexuals –  We want validation that our unions are legally binding. This is the most simple explanation. Here is a question from this article.

“Why do we need governments and courts to involve themselves in creating rules and tax codes for some provisional alliance between two (or three or 57) adults who merely wish to live together (or apart, or whatever they want) and ‘love each other?”

This gets to the root issue many people have with gay marriage. They want a definition of what is and isn’t included in the marriage. But what comes with legally binding? Do they get tax breaks or tax increases, as some married couples get? Do they want to right to adopt kids? Do they want hospital visitation and and the right to pass on belongings to spouses after they have passed.

Heterosexuals – Many I have talked to simply disagree with gay marriage because it’s not something they are familiar with. I think that’s a cop-out, a bad argument, etc. But that’s why we need to foster discussion.

Marriage as it happens in many churches is both a religious and legal contract. Many feel that if they legally validate gay unions and call it a marriage, it somehow degraded the sanctity of their religious marriage.

I find it a bit humorous that as many heterosexual couples choose to not get legally married that many homosexuals are looking for a legal marriage. Why don’t homosexuals choose to live together and not get married, much like many heterosexual couples. Then when they break up it’s not as big a deal. No lawyer, etc. Many who argue against homosexual marriage argue on the basis of religion. They don’t want their church to have to perform homosexual marriages in their churches. You might think, “that sounds silly, the state can’t force the church to do something.” Yet. Is my reply. Read about this happening elsewhere in the world. Good work Denmark.

Getting to a completely different topic which is being used to demonstrate the the importance of understanding.

The Catholic Church. I can’t imagine there is anything that has been so misunderstood in history as the Catholic Church. I recently read a book, Muscle and a Shovel, which I wouldn’t recommend. Based on it having completely incorrect information. Multiple times in the book it uses an argument that “The Pope is seen as God by the Catholic Church so it can’t be the church of Jesus.” To put it bluntly, this is completely and utterly false. I read this book because a good friend recommended it to me. After I reached that point, about ⅓ of the way into the book, I was tempted to put it down, but in the interest of understanding where he got these thoughts, I pushed through, and was exposed to the same thought at least 2 more times. Each time I thought, this is completely illogical, why is this book able to be sold at all?

The point being, obviously the author of that book (and anyone who reads and agrees) took a total of no time to understand the Catholic Church. He had an opinion, he wrote it down, sans thinking or understanding. If you have an opinion about something, take the time to discuss with people who hold views opposed to yours. You might find that you don’t actually understand the circumstances or that you actually even have the same views, just you didn’t take the time to understand it.

In all these situations, and many others around the world, there is rampant misunderstanding that I think with a little conversation and effort by both sides, could be cleared up. One thing we need to be aware of is that disagreement is not equal to hatred. I am allowed to think you are doing something wrong without hating you as a person. I think that that is something that has been lost in the world. If you aren’t for us you’re against us, seems to be the rally cry,and that just isn’t the case. I hope anyone reading my articles can engage in understanding and not just argument.

credit Nick Webb, cover photo

“Love, No Matter What” – A Rebuttal of Andrew Solomon’s TED talk

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In this post I’d like to discuss the TED talk given by Andrew Solomon called Love, No Matter What. (See the link for the YouTube video). I enjoy TED talks very much because they offer a perspective on topics that you often haven’t thought about or if it is a topic you think about it could offer a different perspective. This talk titled “Love, No Matter What” seemed to have potential. I was hoping he’d talk about the good that can come from love. What I found was not exactly that. There were some good points, which I will let you listen to the talk to find, but one small point near the middle (11:56 minutes in the transcript) which caused me to seek the transcript, listen multiple times and finally rebuke Andrew’s comments with this post.

Here’s the YouTube description of the talk.

“What is it like to raise a child who’s different from you in some fundamental way (like a prodigy, or a differently abled kid, or a criminal)? In this quietly moving talk, writer Andrew Solomon shares what he learned from talking to dozens of parents — asking them: What’s the line between unconditional love and unconditional acceptance?” – Youtube description TED talk “Love, No Matter What”

This talk was good in that it talks about how it can be hard for a parent to understand a child who is different from the parent. The examples Andrew uses are a child who is deaf, has dwarfism, is gay or has Down Syndrome. This group presents an interesting, and seemingly completely arbitrary smattering of different things that people can be identified as, which brings up an interesting thought on identity, that I have made a note to think of at a later date. But I digress,

Here is the point that confused me at starting at 11:56.

“We live at a point when social acceptance for these and many other conditions is on the up and up. And yet we also live at the moment when our ability to eliminate those conditions has reached a height we never imagined before. Most deaf infants born in the United States now will receive Cochlear implants, which are put into the brain and connected to a receiver, and which allow them to acquire a facsimile of hearing and to use oral speech. A compound that has been tested in mice, BMN-111, is useful in preventing the action of the achondroplasia gene. Achondroplasia is the most common form of dwarfism, and mice who have been given that substance and who have the achondroplasia gene, grow to full size. Testing in humans is around the corner. There are blood tests which are making progress that would pick up Down syndrome more clearly and earlier in pregnancies than ever before, making it easier and easier for people to eliminate those pregnancies, or to terminate them.” – Transcript.

Read the last line again or better yet watch the video.

“There are blood tests which are making progress that would pick up downs syndrome more clearly and earlier in pregnancies than ever before making it easier and easier for people to eliminate those pregnancies or to terminate them. So we have both social progress and medical progress.” – Andrew Solomon

This prompted my thought to change the title of the talk to “Love Your Child No Matter What, (Unless They Have Down Syndrome, Or Any Other Disease Or Deformity That I think Can’t Be Cured At This Time)”

Here are my thoughts and questions on this.

Later in the talk Andrew says

13:35 – “We have to think about how we feel about cures altogether. And a lot of the time the question of parenthood is, what do we validate in our children, and what do we cure in them?” – Andrew Solomon

Why is the only thing he mentioned that he’d validate in your child was homosexuality, although he didn’t actually say that, it was more implied. In fact, he didn’t mention homosexuality at all in the talk (at 11:56) about how he’d “fix” the issues that could be detected in a child.

He mentions BMN-111 treat dwarfs to make them “normal”.

He mentions hearing implants for deaf children to make the child “normal”.
And then his solution is to murder (abortion) a child who MAY have down syndrome. We can share numerous stories of people who were supposed to have been aborted, Tim Tebow for one, whose parents were brave enough to tell the doctor’s “Abortion is not an option.”

Andrew mentions a total of 0 “cures” for homosexuality. I’m not promoting that he should be or shouldn’t be promoting a “cure” for it, but when he goes through all the other situations he presented but doesn’t mention homosexuality that’s raises questions in my head of what his motives are for the talk. It seems his thoughts are 2 fold.

  1. Normalize homosexuality. I really think this is the underlying point of the whole talk, and if Andrew wanted to disagree with me on that point that’s ok.  (I am not trying to be biased for or against that, I have complex views on homosexuality and haven’t researched enough to form a complete arguing opinion. Look for future articles. This in not what I want to address in this post.)
  2. Promote abortion of children who could have developmental disorders. I honestly think this was not high in his mind at all while writing this talk. I think Andrew could have left this point out completely and he would have been just as happy. I think that he so nonchalantly mentions it, and then that people applaud him, show the state our society is in. I have researched a great deal on abortion and I am adamantly against abortion.

It seems Andrew is biased. I wonder what the Robart’s (the people he interviewed for his book who’s son has Down Syndrome) thought about that statement. Here’s what Tom Robart had to say.

“I think if we lost everyone with downs syndrome it would be a catastrophic loss.” – Tom Robart

So why then, is Andrew’s solution for children (who are people definitely by the time the fertilized egg has implanted in the uterus wall, and really in my mind likely at conception, but I’ll save that for a future post after more research), to abort them at the chance of an issue, when even the father of one of those children said that it would be a “catastrophic loss”? I have enjoyed many TED talks, but this one has caused concern for me. If you want more thoughts on abortion, please read and share my post related to the subject.

Thank you to Amy Entwistle at Flickr Creative Commons for the cover photo.