News From the Home Front

I feel good.

No, I mean I feel damn good compared to how I feel on most Sundays and it's because I'm taking fewer medications now. Last week I had my regular three month appointment for the MS study I'm in. I told them I wanted to withdraw from the study mostly due to being tired of how the weekly Avonex I take makes me feel. Ever since I enrolled in the study back in December of 2006, my Sundays have been mostly ruined. The drug makes me very tired, gives me body aches from head to toe, and just generally makes me feel like garbage.

That's a lot of time spent feeling that way for anyone; but when you also are a single dad, work full-time, manage another disease, and are trying to finish school, it can be overwhelming. So, I finally decided I was through with it. I'm not sure what's next in managing my MS. I have to schedule an appointment with my regular neurology provider to explore my options. Cost will be the biggest hurdle. Check out this chart of MS drugs and how much each costs.



Now, I have good insurance, but the last time I looked it was only covering approximately half of the two drugs I checked on. There's no way I can cover the remainder. That means I might not be taking anything for awhile. On one hand that's rather scary. On the other, my thinking is "come what may." Even with medication there is no guarantee of what will happen with the disease in the future. None of these drugs are cures; they only work to slow progression of the disease. None offers a promise or any sort of guarantee of an MS-free future. They only offer hope of prolonging it. And, you know what? I don't need drugs for that. If I can find some sort of cost-effective solution now or sometime down the road, I'm sure I'll start taking something again but until then I'm not going to fret it.

In other news, I'll be starting school again tomorrow. It's long overdue. I only need 30 more credits to finally get my degree and I intend to do it by the end of the year. That's a lot of work for anyone let alone someone with all of the responsibilities I juggle, but somehow I'll make it happen. The next chapter of my life is past due and it's time I moved on. This will, of course, keep me quite busy. I'm not sure how often I'll be posting around here. I'll try to pop off something from time to time, but no promises. You can still catch my snark on Twitter or Facebook if you know me there. Live long and prosper.

Conservatives Only Pay Lip Service to Small Government

An Alaskan conservative wants to prosecute people for having sex out of wedlock.

One blog post on the Eagle Forum Alaska site praised efforts at criminalizing adultery in Michigan, and Paskvan asked Haase if he thought it should be a felony in Alaska.

"I don't see that that would rise to the level of a felony," Haase said.

Paskvan: "Do you believe it should be a crime?"

Haase: "Yeah, I think it's very harmful to have extramarital affairs. It's harmful to children, it's harmful to the spouse who entered a legally binding agreement to marry the person that's cheating on them."

Paskvan: "What about premarital affairs -- should that be a crime?"

Haase: "I think that would be up to the voters certainly. If it came before (the state) as a vote, I probably would vote for it ... I can see where it would be a matter for the state to be involved with because of the spread of disease and the likelihood that it would cause violence. I can see legitimate reasons to push that as a crime."

I understand not thinking that sex outside of marriage is acceptable. It's perfectly fine to feel that way, but how is it in any way feasible or desirable to attempt to outlaw it and prosecute people for it? Not to mention, aren't conservatives the ones always squawking about smaller, less intrusive government? How does this square with that? Healthcare reform and the individual mandate are a "threat to liberty", but trying to outlaw who people have sex with isn't?

This is why I have a hard time taking most conservatives at their word when they scream for less government. What most of them mean is, "I don't like Democratic policies (because they aren't on my team) and I don't like helping the poor."

A Fickle Newt

Newt Gingrich does a complete 180 on Libya in a matter of weeks. This led to one of my favorite Tweets of all time, of all time!

Newt Gingrich changes positions on Libya as often as he changes wives.

So wrong, but oh, so funny.

UPDATE: Sadly, but unsurprisingly, he's not the only Republican in the "Whatever Obama is For, I'm Against Even If I Was For It Yesterday" camp.

Did God Have a Wife: An Exercise in Bad Journalism

In my previous post I highlighted an excellent example of long-form journalism and mused that more of that was needed. Well, here's an example of a brief article that does virtually nothing to educate the reader on the topic presented.

It's ostensibly about early versions of the Bible and how a researcher believes that they told stories of Asherah, God's wife. For those who haven't studied religion or the ancient Middle East, Asherah was a fertility goddess and mother figure. Stories of her and similar goddesses abound in the region from those times. It is quite possible that she was in early versions of the stories that now make up the Torah/Bible.

But other than the fact that this researcher believes Asherah was redacted from the Bible and a very quick primer on who Asherah is, what does this article tell you? It doesn't give any examples of passages from the Torah that the researcher believes point to Asherah's removal. It doesn't give any concrete examples of the "Hebrew inscriptions" that supposedly evince his hypothesis. It gives no historical background for the writing of the Bible other than a brief aside about "heavy-handed male editors" and one sentence about the pivotal destruction of the first Jewish temple in 587/6 BCE. All of this information would have given this article some weight, some merit. As it is, I find it worthless other than giving me the name of this researcher (Francesca Stavrakopoulou) so that I can dig around for some more helpful material on his research.

Religion is hard to write about. I get that. It rarely has a clear narrative. Many adherents and their beliefs are opaque and confusing. But it seems that effort is rarely made to clearly elucidate the subject. Articles like this (and their headlines) seem made to generate controversy and traffic instead of relying on an excellent writing to bring in readers.

The image is a statue of Asherah (from the Wikipedia article). Isn't it great looking? I'd put that on my mantle.

Pot Heads Dealing Arms Internationally

I really enjoy long-form journalism. It's like a story instead of just some bland recitals of he said/she said. We could use more long-form articles because many stories are too complex and nuanced for three paragraphs complete with misleading headline. I know that goes against the grain of our instant gratification, Twitterific culture, but, you know. Anyway...

I recently came across this story about a couple of 20-something pot heads who became wealthy international arms dealers.

His business plan was simple but brilliant. Most companies grow by attracting more customers. Diveroli realized he could succeed by selling to one customer: the U.S. military. No government agency buys and sells more stuff than the Defense Department — everything from F-16s to paper clips and front-end loaders. By law, every Pentagon purchase order is required to be open to public bidding. And under the Bush administration, small businesses like AEY were guaranteed a share of the arms deals. Diveroli didn't have to actually make any of the products to bid on the contracts. He could just broker the deals, finding the cheapest prices and underbidding the competition. All he had to do was win even a minuscule fraction of the billions the Pentagon spends on arms every year and he would be a millionaire. But Diveroli wanted more than that: His ambition was to be the biggest arms dealer in the world — a young Adnan Khashoggi, a teenage Victor Bout.

To get into the game, Diveroli knew he would have to deal with some of the world's shadiest operators — the war criminals, soldiers of fortune, crooked diplomats and small-time thugs who keep militaries and mercenaries loaded with arms. The vast aftermarket in arms had grown exponentially after the end of the Cold War. For decades, weapons had been stockpiled in warehouses throughout the Balkans and Eastern Europe for the threat of war against the West, but now arms dealers were selling them off to the highest bidder. The Pentagon needed access to this new aftermarket to arm the militias it was creating in Iraq and Afghanistan. The trouble was, it couldn't go into such a murky underworld on its own. It needed proxies to do its dirty work — companies like AEY. The result was a new era of lawlessness. According to a report by Amnesty International, "Tens of millions of rounds of ammunition from the Balkans were reportedly shipped — clandestinely and without public oversight — to Iraq by a chain of private brokers and transport contractors under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Defense."

This was the "gray market" that Diveroli wanted to penetrate. Still a teenager, he rented a room in a house owned by a Hispanic family in Miami and went to work on his laptop. The government website where contracts are posted is fbo.gov, known as "FedBizOpps." Diveroli soon became adept at the arcane lingo of federal contracts. His competition was mostly big corporations like Northrop Grumman, Lockheed and BAE Systems. Those companies had entire departments dedicated to selling to the Pentagon. But Diveroli had his own advantages: low overhead, an appetite for risk and all-devouring ambition.

Read the whole thing. It's worth it.

Headline of the Day

"U.S. Launches $157 Million Worth of Democracy at Libya"