World Youth Day had some effect

This is a nicely done essay prompted by the papal poltroonery that has been going on in Sydney recently. Here are a few bits:

I don’t give a stuff what people believe in, but it won’t stop me poking at it or prodding it. Why should religion be any exemption? Telling me I’m going to hell won’t bother me because I have the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the Invisible Pink Unicorn and Bertrand Russell’s Teapot in my heart. Google them if you are in the market for some red hot enlightenment.

And this is really true — throwing off the foolishness is liberating.

It’s been a revelation to me a year since my “epiphany”. I feel as if I’m walking through life with the blinkers off. Suddenly all the religious mumbo-jumbo jumps out as so bonkers. Wearing certain things, eating certain things, mumbling certain things at certain times so some imaginary friend will let you into a club in the sky when you die. I want to do my living now, thanks. I’m not afraid of dying. I’m afraid of never having lived.

I don’t care what people believe in, but I do care that religion impacts on political discourse, public policy and that it stunts the ability of people to think for themselves and question. And that it kills people and causes suffering. But most of all I care that the invisible electric fences that are wired in the minds of children brainwashed by religion are difficult to remove. And impossible if you don’t even know they’re there.

Looking for a journalist willing to do a story

One of our regular commenters here, BrokenSoldier, has a story to tell — an all-too-common tale of our government’s neglect of the men and women sent out to fight, and returning damaged to a bureaucracy that isn’t willing to do the right thing and support them. If anyone out there is willing to help get this story out, here’s an opportunity — it’s practically written out for you. This is a broken soldier’s story:

This is a request for help. Disabled veterans are being treated as if they are a burden on the government’s checkbook, and the government is getting away with it, mainly because the situation is so far out of the public’s collective eye that the military can quite effectively sweep it under the rug. Politicians are using our sacrifices as political capital in front of the nation, while the Army medical system turns around to our face and disdainfully treats us as if we are asking for something we do not deserve. All we want is the care we were promised, and all we are getting is organized resistance from the military medical bureaucracy. In some cases, this resistance amounts to the pure manipulation – and even alteration – of the medical regulations, for the sole purpose of reducing the amount of money the Army has to pay disabled vets upon their separation. I have turned to this kind of appeal, frankly, because I am out of options. I believe that
the only thing that can even begin to fix a problem such as this one is true exposure to the bright lights of public scrutiny.

When wounded soldiers comes home, they have to go through an evaluation process in which a panel of Army doctors determines what their final disability rating will be. If they decide that the soldier rates less than 30%, then they can separate that soldier with merely a severance check, and never dole out another dollar to him or her again. Should the rating be above 30%, the Army is required to medically retire that soldier, and send him or her a monthly check after they leave the service. In principle, this makes sense. But this is being abused by those doctors, in that they are intentionally low-balling wounded vets in order to get them under the 30% ceiling and get them out, for obvious reasons of saving money. Just in my case alone, I have seen doctors lie on official reports about what I told them, make childishly snide comments about the appeals that I have written to the Physician Evaluation Board (PEB), and one doctor even suggested that a
previous diagnosis was invalid simply because I was “fine” on the day he saw me. (And I have proof – to include hard copies of documents showing the offenses.) This does not stop with the low-level doctors, by any means. The Army PEBs operate on instructions given to them by their command, and one in particular is very telling. Since soldiers began coming home with serious concussion injuries, the Army medical community has seen fit to publish instructions to its PEBs concerning certain ratings and how they are to be ‘interpreted’ pertaining to veterans’ disability claims. One of them that I ran directly into deals with the occurrence of migraine headaches, which many veterans with concussion injuries suffer from, and how they are to be viewed. The schedule that lists ratings that are to be applied states that for a 50% rating, migraines must meet the frequency requirement of at least two pper month, and the severity must be prostrating. After
veterans began receiving this rating for their complications from IED-induced concussions, an instruction to physicians was published informing them that from then on, the word ‘prostrating’ was not to be interpreted as it is defined, but rather for migraines to be considered prostrating for rating purposes, the soldier must have stopped and sought immediate, emergency medical attention. Due to the fact that it is very difficult for someone laying prostrate from a migraine to get up and make it to the ER, you can imagine how well this worked in reducing the number of veterans that received disability ratings for their migraines.

And aside from the failings of the rating process, once the soldier is done with that, then there is the incompetent bureaucracy within the ranks of those handling retired service members to deal with. I was retired in January, but did not see a single cent of my retirement money until June. And when it did begin, taxes were being deducted – which shouldn’t happen, because combat wounded vets get tax exemption from their disability checks. After getting that fixed, I recently discovered that I have absolutely no medical coverage whatsoever – which I found out while trying to get my prescriptions filled – because my retirement documents never got to the agency responsible for administering my care as a medical retiree. The incompetence of those that handled my retirement file ensured that the necessary paperwork failed to reach almost all of the necessary agencies. And I am by no means the only one this type of injustice is happening to, but instead
it is a widespread occurrence. The reason for this is that once the soldier leaves the service and begins the fight for his or her benefits, it is simply that soldier against the entire framework of the Army bureaucracy, and that is far from a fair fight. (They do allow you a liaison in order to to help you navigate the system, but if mine was any indication, this is more of a burden than a help – in asking her to participate in a conference call to discuss why I disagreed with my initial rating of 10%, she resisted and actually said to me, “I’m not here to hold your hand through this.”) So I have ended up in a position quite familiar to veterans – broke, living with my parents, in debt up to my ears from the months without income, and having no consistent medical coverage.

So, if you read through this and it seems wrong to you, especially if it makes you a bit angry, then I’m asking for your help. The only thing that will fix this problem is to shine a spotlight on what is happening, because once that happens, the freedom of action that the Army medical community has enjoyed in bullying the wounded soldiers applying for disability will be gone. Once the public is cognizant of exactly what has been done to the veterans the government so profusely praises for their sacrifice, their hypocrisy will be laid bare. If you know anyone – journalist or not – that will take this story and tell it to the public, please let me know. The above injustices are only the tip of the iceberg, even in my case, and I have documentation of many more transgressions.

A disabled vet has fought far too much already to have to continue to fight with their own government like this when they get home. In this case, it is the soldier who is looking to citizen for help with this fight.

If you’re willing to help get the word out, contact Gary E. Ford.

Who the heck is Greg Moore and why does he keep threatening me?

Here’s another one for the files. This guy has sent me several menacing messages — nothing new there — but now he has announced that he’s coming to visit me. I’ve put the header for one of Mr Moore’s creepy threats below the fold, for the record. His specific email address is not included, so we don’t have a repeat of the last episode.

Nice people, these Catholics. If Mr Moore shows up at my door, the only people who will be meeting him are the local police.

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Epigenetics

Blogging on Peer-Reviewed Research

Epigenetics is the study of heritable traits that are not dependent on the primary sequence of DNA. That’s a short, simple definition, and it’s also largely unsatisfactory. For one, the inclusion of the word “heritable” excludes some significant players — the differentiation of neurons requires major epigenetic shaping, but these cells have undergone a terminal division and will never divide again — but at the same time, the heritability of traits that aren’t defined by the primary sequence is probably the first thing that comes to mind in any discussion of epigenetics. Another problem is the vague, open-endedness of the definition: it basically includes everything. Gene regulation, physiological adaptation, disease responses…they all fall into the catch-all of epigenetics.

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Not again…

Bill Donohue has once again issued a press release, urging all of his followers to harass my in-box. Once again, my email is rendered useless by a flood of idiots sending me bizarre tirades and links to Catholic fables and threats. There is a new change in tone: now lots of them are gloating that they’ve written to CAIR, and the Muslims are now going to come and blow up my house, ha ha! Thanks, Donohue, for reinforcing prejudice about Muslims.

I may have to simply dump all email sent to my more public addresses and create new accounts that I’ll only make known to a sensible few. It’s that bad.

Time for a brief break

It’s been a high-stress week — not because of anything on the blog, I assure you, since that’s all been chaos over trivialities — but because all my recent travel has put me far behind on a lot of work, with missed deadlines and heaps of writing that had to be done right now. A significant chunk of all that has been polished off now, so I get to relax for a little bit. Now I just have to figure out how — I think I’ve forgotten.

I may blow up a few things in Warcraft, or I may go hide away and read a book. Movies are out — all that’s playing in Morris right now is Wall-E. At any rate, I think I’ll drop offline for a few hours and do something that doesn’t involve deep thought and tapping away at a keyboard (unless, of course, my editor demands fast rewrites, which could happen). I’ll be leaving you all to your own wiles for a wee bit — consider this thread an open invitation to talk about your pleasant pastimes that do not involve SIWOTI syndrome.

It’s got almost everything!

How about a little extreme right wing paranoia to start your morning?

Global warming is the perfect excuse to do what the Left always wanted to do – to destroy faith (Christianity), the family and freedom. There is no area of our lives that will not be invaded through taxation, control, regulation or obliteration to save the earth.

Read the whole thing — global warming is the conspiracy that ties together abortion, taxes, communism, and our hatred of little children. If only it had mentioned evolution, it would have been perfect.

Also, it’s from a Canadian. It’s reassuring to see that the US doesn’t have a monopoly on loons. To be fair, though, the replies from other Canadians are scathing.