Gotta love lawyers

This was interesting, and had me chuckling.

http://lawiscool.com/2008/03/29/lord-of-the-rings-as-property-law/

Copyright video—interesting and funny

I died laughing through most of this, and happen to agree with the sentiments as well. You can watch it on YouTube:



Or download it at the original site here: http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/documentary-film-program/film/a-fair-y-use-tale

Sad

Oh so sad, and oh so interesting at the same time:
http://www.sliceofscifi.com/2008/03/25/oh-yeah-they-know-were-here/

Another update - 3/24

MerryK continues to show weekly improvement in her physical therapy. She has been using only crutches all week and we returned the wheel chair to the rental company! What a relief to see that go!

MerryK conquered the stairs last week and now can come upstairs anytime she wants! This is a blessing to her since she can pick out her own snacks on her own schedule, which includes midnight.

The last few days she has been using only 1 crutch, which is amazing to see! Each week brings more progress and we are so thankful to God for her wonderful recovery.

MerryK signed up for classes at college this next term. Originally, we thought she would be taking online classes only but she felt ready to conquer the campus (which is on a steep hill) so she chose 2 classes close together.

It may be awhile before she can return to work, though, since her job requires her to carry heavy boxes of books back and forth from her desk. Please keep her your prayers!

Thought-provoking

“[Creationists] will only allow God the minuscule, infant universe described by the writers of Genesis (or Moses, if you prefer). They can't stand it that God has been working on this version of the universe for something like 14 billion years, and His workshop is so inconceivably huge that it seems silly to imagine the Earth and its dominant species to be the center of God's attention. They won't allow Him to work His miracles of life patiently, subtly, using the gradual, majestic power of evolution. My hypothesis is that creationists, having short attention spans themselves, just can't allow God three billion years of patience and attention to Earthly life. Instead, all they'll allow Him is one *POOF* magic, all-in-one creation, barely 6,000 years ago." —The Power and Majesty of God Almighty, Bob Riggins

Update on MerryK

We went to see the physical therapist on Monday and MerryK was allowed to stand up and take a few steps with a walker bearing most of her weight! It was scary and exciting all at the same time. She also tried using crutches and those felt better to her so we purchased a set for her later that day. She did get a bit light headed several times during therapy, since she hasn't stood up in over 6 weeks and her body wasn't very prepared. It will get better with practice, though. We are now focusing on strength building exercises and MerryK is practicing walking around in short sessions! She controls how much weight goes on her leg and if she uses too much her body reminds her with shooting pain. It should take a 3-4 weeks to get to full weight bearing. She is also trying to use her arm as much as possible for everyday movements.

She continues to have a great attitude and looks forward to getting upstairs so she can get her own food and snacks. ;) She is registered for classes at college for the spring quarter, although she may just take online classes. Her handwriting skills are improving and her arm doesn't tire as easily while typing, so we think she might be able to complete classes this spring. We will see how she is doing in April. She had to drop out of the last quarter since she was hit by the car on the first week of school.

Thanks for your prayers!

Merry had her appointment with the orthopedic doctors yesterday. They took x-rays of her arm and leg and reported that she is healing up nicely...just what we would expect at 6 weeks. Her bones still have a ways to go, (it actually takes a full year to complete healing) but she was given permission to start weight bearing exercises! That means she can work up during the next month to full walking! We are looking forward to our appointment with the physical therapist on Monday and starting phase 2 of her recovery.

Well, hopefully we will see Merry up and walking by April! She has a 4 day trip planned for the end of April and she really wants to be back to normal by then. Thanks for your prayers!

Update on Merry

Merry is healing up well and we are anxiously awaiting the trip to the doctor on Thursday for x-rays that will confirm this fact and allow her to start putting weight on her arm and leg. Her brain must know it is about time, since she started to stand up the other day, and then realized that was a no-no and quickly sat down!

She is quite adept at wheeling herself around the lower level of our house and out to the vehicles. She has been at church several times, and this last Sunday she even climbed up into our 15 passenger with the help of a step stool! (We were taking Clankeeper to the airport for a business trip and so we didn't all fit in the mini-van. We normally take 2 vehicles.)

Thanks to a wonderful physical therapist, (and Merry's hard work at home) Merry has wonderful range of motion in her shoulder and elbow, as well as her knee and ankle. Once she can bear weight, she will be able to complete the range of motion as well as build up strength. The PT says Merry can expect 99% of what she had before the accident!

Today we visited a dermatologist to discuss Merry's scars, and what we could do to minimize them. I needed to see the dermatologist for some suspicious bumps and it looks like I might have a couple small spots of skin cancer. Nothing dangerous, but they need to come off. They are in two areas that always got sunburned when I was a child. Clankeeper had a bigger cancer removed from the top of his ear years ago...another spot he always burned. So don't forget that sunscreen folks!

Clankeeper is away this week on business. This is the second trip this year (they have 9 scheduled so far in 2008). Once Merry heals up and the weather gets nicer we can make better use of the time he is gone for some history field trips around Washington State, or perahps some big household jobs that wreak havoc on our schedule and habits. Last December we refinished the dining room table while Clankeeper was gone. I sure miss him.

Thanks again for everyone's prayers. We will update again after the x-rays and doctor appointment Thursday!

Another update on MerryK

MerryK endured having all her stitches removed from her leg and arm on Thursday, as well as the staples in her head. It was much worse than we thought it would be since she healed so nicely that the stitches were stuck in there, but she was strong throughout.

They also removed the temporary plaster splint and gave her a removable boot that she has to use at night to keep her Achilles tendon stretched out. Facing the unknown that was under the cast was scary but it turned out to look a lot better than we all feared. The metal rods that they put down the center of the bones in her leg and arm will remain there permanently. The doctor assured us that they rarely set off metal detectors and if they do, we just have to show them the scars on her knee and shoulder.

We have 4 more weeks until they will take X-rays to see how she is healing. If all is well they will give her permission to put weight on the arm and leg at that point. The time frame given for walking was 3-6 months. The bones should be fully healed in 6-12 months. We are hoping that with lots of prayers, hard work, being young, and some great supplements, MerryK will be on the short track.

Her pain med use is going down and her spirits remain good, although she yearns for a good stretch. We will be visiting a Physical Therapist this week to learn some new exercises so we can stretch out those muscles and tendons and prepare them for walking someday. The doctor explained to us that it really isn't about the broken bones...those are easy to fix...but that she really has a severe soft tissue injury that just happens to have broken bones underneath it. It will take time to heal and longer to feel normal again.

Thank you all for your supports and prayers!

Update on MerryK

Sorry it has taken us so long to update the blog. Thank you all for your prayers! MerryK came home from the hospital last week!

After the last post, MerryK was improving slowly but surely. They were talking about letting her go home and then she passed out while sitting up and moving off the bed. She was white as a sheet with blue lips and scared us all! In 30 seconds they had 8 people in her room scurrying around, injecting her with anti-narcotic medicine and running various tests. They concluded she was low on red blood cells (hematocrit was 21) so she received two units of blood the next day. Because she only had one good arm (and it was a pin cushion by this point) the IV for the blood was quite painful and each unit took 3 hours to go in. She was a trooper about it, but Mom was having a hard time watching her suffer.

The next day she was much stronger and talk of letting her go home enlivened all of us! When they did let us go home, the car trip was excruciatingly painful for her as her leg took every bump and jolt. Her arm had a compression bandage on it, that had to be cut off when we got home because her arm had swollen up from all the movement and from not being elevated. But, once we were home, she could sleep without constant interruptions. You cannot imagine the difference just one good night of sleep made on her. She was like a different person. We still woke her up every 3 hours for pain meds, but she could sleep as much as she wanted in 3 hour increments, and she did a lot of sleeping at first!

We have been home over a week now and we are pretty comfortable with our new routines. She still gets pain meds every 3 hours, but she is down to 1 each time instead of 3 and she isn't hallucinating anymore. She is able to move from the bed to the wheelchair very easily now. The most pain she has is from physical therapy, but she is showing improved range of motion nearly every day. She also gets an anti-coagulant shot twice a day and sometimes that is painful depending on where it goes in. She is uncomfortable in bed sometimes because her positions are limited, but she uses pillows to rearrange herself. During the day she sits on the recliner/sofa with her leg up and arm propped.

She can use her laptop (although typing is very difficult) and she watches a lot of old TV shows on DVD, like Stargate SG-1, MacGuiver and Battlestar Galactica, that she has gotten from the library. As a family we are watching Stargate Atlantis in the evening while we eat dinner downstairs with her.

We have an appointment next week to have her heavy splint on her leg removed and replaced with a removable one. We are all curious to see what it looks like under there. She cannot put weight on her arm or leg for another 3-5 weeks. When she was released from the hospital, she did not have a cast on her arm, just a cloth sling. Since there is a metal rod inside the bone (from shoulder to elbow), I assume they don't expect her to injure it in any way! There is also a metal rod in her leg bone from knee to ankle. It is remarkable how differently broken bones are handled nowadays. They had her moving the arm just 2 days after surgery!

Thank you all for your continued prayers for all those bone pieces to heal together properly. Everyone has been so kind to MerryK and she is quite overwhelmed with the attention.

Update on MerryK

MerryK is doing better this evening (Saturday). She is experiencing a little bit less pain and is less groggy. However, she does have a fever (~101 degrees) that is not responding as well to Tylenol as we would like. It may be nothing more than a normal post-operation fever, but it may be more than that. They took some of her blood to culture, so hopefully we'll know more tomorrow. She hasn't eaten much do to a depressed appetite, but hopefully that will change for the better as well.

Thank you so much for your prayers.

Prayer Request

Dear Friends,

In case you haven't already heard, our dear MerryK was hit by a car on Friday (1/11) while she was walking to catch a bus. Her right arm and left leg were badly broken, but thankfully she did not have any head or internal injuries, other than cuts and bruises.

On Friday afternoon, she went into surgery to repair the broken leg (estimated 3 hours). Since she was enduring the surgery well, they decided to repair the broken arm while she was out instead of having to have a separate surgery later. It ended up being ~8 hours, which was one of the longest 8 hours that I have spent waiting for news!

She came out of the surgery OK and is doing as well as can be expected (lots of pain). The doctor said that they put pins in both her arm and her leg and that she wouldn't be able to put any weight on either for about 6 weeks and that she wouldn't be very mobile during that time. Those of you who know MerryK know that being immobile for a day or two is hard, but six weeks?

Please continue pray for her so that she will endure the pain and the immobility with a good attitude. Pray for our family as well as this will be a major disruption for our family.

Thanks,
ClanKeeper & PurringPiggy

Realization

Winter quarter started for me yesterday, and I'm getting to know all my new teachers, classes, and fellow students. Something else happened, though, in my Introduction to Philosophy class. The teacher made a comment while talking about the Greeks that, we probably didn't know, but the movie "300" was based on fact, and I then realized that I was likely one of the few people in that classroom who had wanted to see "300" because it was based on fact.

The good and bad of Encore

We almost never play the game Encore (a game where teams battle over who can remember the most songs with a certain word or subject, and then sing at least six words of the songs) except on New Years Eve, and I always have the same two thoughts about it.

Good: Finally having a use for remembering many, many, too many, lyrics to songs.

Bad: The "Day After" syndrome. In other words, when you listen to recently purchased music and realize that you are an idiot for not remembering the song "Dream a Dream" when the word was "dream", the song "Name" when it was "name", and a very popular songs whose chorus has two of the four seasons you couldn't remember when the category was "Songs With the Four Seasons".

They are making the Hobbit! Finally!

New Line finally admitted it. Looks like Peter Jackson will be executive producer...no news on who will direct yet. I'm excited and worried. All the folks here will be thrilled, I'm sure. They have worked so hard for so long. Looks like they will make 2 movies, actually. Wonder where in the book they will make the break? Any guesses?

Rain, Rain and more Rain

Last week Washington State experienced an incredible amount of rainfall and subsequent flooding. Our neighborhood received 4 inches of rain in one day, but on the peninsula, they had 15 inches of rain and hurricane force winds! Plus there was 2 feet of snow melting in the mountains to add to the rivers.

Thankfully, we live in an area that doesn't flood, so our home was safe. For us the storm was full of fun as the children played in the pouring rain and we all loaded up and drove around splashing in puddles along the roads and in the parking lots of local warehouses. I've always had an affinity for puddle splashing, but this last week I experienced the biggest puddles of my life!

Since it was pouring rain on Monday, I drove Matt to work so he wouldn't have to get soaked before work. The warehouse parking lot already had at least 4 inches of water all the way across it, from warehouse to warehouse. On the way home, I was driving in the right lane of a major street (3 lanes in each direction) splashing in the occasional puddle along the edge. Well, suddenly I came up on a VERY deep puddle...it covered all three lanes of traffic on our side of the street! In the right lane it was probably 8-12 inches deep. I took my foot off the gas and slowed down to drove through, hoping I wouldn't stall the car. Suddenly, on my left, in the center lane, a huge truck came charging through the puddle and buried my car in water! I couldn't see for about 3 or 4 harrowing seconds! Whoa! Well, it was fun, though, and I took Matt through it later that day when he got off of work. The puddle was there the next day, too.

The flooding was incredible around here, and we live in the city. Parking lots filled as rivers of water flowed across roads and down embankments. We saw semi trucks and cars parked in 2-3 feet of water in several places. Just the water running down the road by our house carved paths over a foot deep in the dirt.

In other areas in Washington, rivers overflowed their banks and the interstate was covered in 10 feet of water! They closed I-5 for 3 days and the detour for trucks was 440 miles around! We saw pictures of a Walmart underwater and you could not see any windows or doors...just the top the building and the roof. It was devastating. The interstate was flooded in 1996, too, so the legislature passed a bill to pay for improvements so that wouldn't happen again. Sadly, the money was used for something else. How pathetic. And so they will ask for more money this year...what can you say to that?

The same problem happens with our schools and hospitals. They ask for money to make them earthquake safe, but the money ends up somewhere else, so a few years later they are asking for money again to make them earthquake safe. It's wrong.

The federal government will also give money to those who suffered in the flooding, as well. Some people will rebuild again in the flood plane, which I think is also wrong. If you want to live there, it should be at your own risk. If an area consistently floods (or experiences wildfires) folks should not be allowed to rebuild there and expect compensation when the damage occurs again. That is my 2 cents. Now I'm off to do laundry.

The Second Amendment Ratified

Another one of my papers for school...this one was for writing class, and the assignment was to develop and defend a thesis on gun control.

The Second Amendment Ratified

When you look at the world throughout history, there have been some problems that most people have acknowledged will never leave us. Perhaps an idealistic few have held on to their utopian dreams, but overall societies have observed rationally that human behavior has its flaws. That does not stop us from trying to manage these flaws, however, and in recent years talk has gone around about dealing with the amount of violence that takes place daily in the United States. Article after article, we hear of school shootings, robberies, armed assault, acts of terrorism, and even more seemingly random violent acts. As the most obvious connection between these acts, guns bear the weight of much of the criticism, and it’s not hard to see why. With the power and speed that these machines have, it can be a frightening thought to think of how many people do or can possess them.

With this being so, anyone speaking up in favor of some sort of gun control—whether just more restrictive gun licensing, the illegality of certain types of weapons, or no gun access at all—will automatically have the gut reaction of everyone on their side who has seen how guns can kill hundreds in seconds. As everyone knows, though, gut reactions are notoriously subjective, and I’m not sure it’s wise to trust them in this case.

But then, there are admirable reasons for gun control. Such powerful weapons should not be easily available, common sense says. Even if most are purchased by responsible people, merely their presence could prove a danger to those who have a mind to take them and use them for less responsible means. And there is an ease in how they can be used—it is much more tempting than other weapons. Highly restrict them, or ban them altogether, and you should eliminate much of the threat of violent crime. However, this is only a pretty ideology by itself. Though in the mind it may seem solid, even a more thorough theory shows that gun control does not reach its goals.

When trying to effect social change, it is wise to look to social psychology, the area of science that examines how we think and behave as a society. We don’t have to dig deeply here to find the first problem with the idea of gun control, that pesky idea that can be expressed by the proverb “when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns”. It’s common sense that those who would break the law that says that it is illegal to kill would not find any number of lesser laws, such as those that banned guns, a deterrent. Simply making something illegal does not eliminate it, as everyone knows from the easy supply of illegal drugs currently available. As long as someone wants it, they will be able to get it; laws don’t get in the way all that much. So, rationally speaking, the only effect of gun control laws would be that law-abiding people would give up their guns. We aren’t really worried about them, are we?

Even without that common sense, however, there are deeper psychological truths about the effects of laws and punishments. When it comes to stopping behavior, psychologists have learned that you can’t simply put an end to one behavior without doing one of two things: replacing the original behavior with a more approved one, or making the punishment too severe to be contemplated. Because, as should make sense from experience, punishments are most likely to make people more adept at avoiding punishment. Except those non-dangerous law-abiding people, of course. When faced with an inconvenient law, such as speed limits, most people are willing to break them. Even if there are fines, they must be enforced, and even if police vehicles are stationed every so often, they can’t be stationed everywhere. Instead of stopping our speeding, we just learn to speed when police vehicles are not around. Why should we think that gun control laws would have more success? Criminals would be most likely to find better ways of hiding that they possessed a gun.

All of this is a theoretical discussion of gun control, however. As it’s not a brand new concept, why don’t we address the varied levels of gun control around the world? After all, surely the evidence here proves a point in one direction or another.

Unfortunately, it’s not quite so clear-cut. Correlations could be made between violent deaths and gun control laws, but that would not prove causation. It would prove even less if the correlations were different in each case, as they indeed seem to be. Switzerland requires all males to keep a service weapon and ammunition in their homes at all times, and has very low crime rates compared to America. Israel has very high standards for who can purchase and own a weapon, but they encourage everyone to own a gun, and have the lowest rate of violent deaths involving guns. Britain, it is true, has higher gun control laws and a lower crime rate than the US, but they had that before adopting those laws, and that accounts for more than just crimes involving guns. As Don B. Kates said, paraphrasing British analysts, “First, how do those who blame ‘lax American gun laws’ for the far higher U.S. rate of gun crime explain the country's also having far more knife crimes? Do they think that Englishmen must get a permit to own a butcher knife? Second, how do those who attribute U.S. gun murders to greater gun availability explain the far higher U.S. rate of stranglings and of victims being kicked to death? Do they think that Americans ‘have more hands and feet than’ Britons?” (Guns, Murders and the Constitution). As he concludes, societal differences make it next to impossible to make comparisons between countries over what laws they have.

And why would people want to carry guns in the first place? The answer, of course, is self-defense. The original intent behind the Second Amendment right to bear arms was so that Americans would always be able to rise up against their government if it proved oppressive. As long as they always had a way to fight back, Americans could feel safe under their government. And they weren’t just paranoid; Hitler convinced the Germans to give up their rights to weapons, and then had no resistance to fear when he took over the country with his armed soldiers.

Even if you say that the time for men to be part of militias and ready to fight against an oppressive government is passed, that is not the most likely reason for a modern person to own a gun. Besides hunting and target practice, people are most likely to own a gun for personal self-defense purposes. Though it may seem that using a gun in self-defense would escalate the situation unnecessarily, John R. Lott showed that, 98% of the time, just pulling out a gun is enough to prevent a crime from taking place. He also pointed out surveys that showed that guns are five times more likely to be used in defense than in crime.

So yes, in a perfect society we would not need such things as guns. In a perfect society laws would be obeyed, and no one would need to fear at all. But in an imperfect world, where criminals break laws left and right, passing stricter ones on the ownership of guns to prevent violence is not a bad thought, but one that is sadly lacking the support of logic and common sense. As long as there are criminals, there will be a need for law-abiding citizens to have a means to protect themselves. The Founding Fathers were firm when they guaranteed the right to own firearms to all American citizens, and even 200 years later there is no evidence to suggest that they made a mistake.

Reflection

It’s the end of the year. Christmas music is already assaulting my ears (I love it, but not the day after Thanksgiving), and there are only two days left in my college classes. When I look back, I see that I’m a different person than I was three months ago.

I used to be a stay-at-home person, someone who read 3 or 4 books a week, someone who gardened and made her own herbal shampoo, someone who cooked and loved baking bread, someone who drank tea and discussed Anthony Trollope and Georgette Heyer, someone who kept most of her interactions with people to the internet and who had too many blogs and forums to count. That person’s favorite subject was English Lit, with a close second place tie between Language and History. That person collected quotes and had a secret geeky passion for the 1800s, especially British Navy tales, with a side love of fantasy and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Within three short months, that person ran away and left me in her place.

The first half of my waking day is spent at school. I take the bus every morning with my huge backpack, study, go to an education class to talk about teaching and politics, and then pop over to a psychology class to discuss—well, everything. I then hop on another bus to go work for a few hours at a book warehouse, where my job is simply to process books by entering ISBNs and conditions into a computer program and then shelve them in the warehouse. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I go back to school after this for a writing class of reading essays and discussing them, and on Friday I volunteer at an elementary school where I correct papers and tutor kids. I eventually come home every night for a bit of catching up on a couple blogs and forums, maybe a little fun thing like watching an old episode of Stargate or writing some more of my story, and then more studying before bed.

I’m not the same person anymore. I am a person who discusses politics and science instead of books and language, a person who talks to strangers on the bus and has many new friends at school, a person who gets a regular paycheck and who has to manage this and a schedule very carefully, a person whose only experience with books on a weekly basis is putting them on shelves and reading from textbooks. I’m more likely to talk about Wernicke’s area than the genitive case, to say hi to someone as I walk by than be engrossed in a book, to catch a bite to eat on the run than spend the day baking challah. Worst of all, I’ve joined the ranks of science fiction geeks.

And yet, which I’ve yet to understand, I’m just as happy. Sure, sometimes I miss books and cooking, but even more often are times when I wish I could stay at school forever. I hate that classes are ending and I’ll have to have new teachers and classmates next quarter. I have a hard time filling my weekends with anything but studying, and look forward to working full time over winter break. I get more exercise, less sleep, more social interaction, less free time, more writing, less reading—and my happiness level has not changed. Yes, I know that we’re supposed to be joyful always, but I didn’t expect it to be so easy.

I don’t know if the old me is gone forever or not. I would like to have a visit from her, maybe in the summer, or maybe just a virtual visit through doing some of those things I used to love. But if my life continues in the vein that it’s in right now, I wouldn’t mind either. It’s a little frightening to see what happened in three months, but after all, I’ll probably be able to find a psychological reason for it. Now would that be cognitive dissonance or adapting schemas I wonder...