I Can't Win.

As some of you know, Josh is allergic to peanuts (among other things). Very early on in my pregnancy, I started doing research- Should I eat peanuts? Some said No! It will sensitize this already-genetically-prone-to-allergies kid to the food, and cause harm. Others said, Go ahead! It will desensitize the kid or have no effect, since you're not allergic and reacting. Everyone also says, Eat lots of protein! and I'm not a big meat eater, so nuts are my preferred way to get it many days. I had a dilemma

Argh.

Based on my research, I settled on the fact that it was OK for me to eat peanuts- I'd not be doing any harm. My midwife thought it was more important that I was getting protein than the risk that eating peanuts was doing any harm- especially since allergies are about over-reaction of the immune system, and babies don't have a very developed immune system until 6 weeks- so it's fine while pregnant.

And then, TIME (which seems to come out with alarming pregnancy news weekly) today published an article, Can Pregnant Moms Give Their Babies a Peanut Allergy? Maybe..

Ugh. Because I don't already have enough to worry about.

According to the article, the American Academy of Pediatrics used to recommend avoiding allergens with a family history of food allergies (That'd be me, well, Josh's family) between 1998 and 2000, but then rescinded that recommendation in 2008 when British studies showed that the advice didn't seem to have an effect on allergy rates. So, I've been following the most recent recommendation. Yay!

This new study, however, shows higher reactions to peanuts in babies whose moms ate peanuts more than twice a week during pregnancy (That'd be me, too. By my calculations, I eat about 5 servings a week of nuts.) According to the researcher quoted in the article, these results aren't enough to change the current AAP recommendation- "I don't think we have enough evidence to tell families to do anything different than what they are already doing," he says, "but the study shows that maybe we should consider in utero exposure as a potential risk factor and study it more going forward." Is the door locked on eating peanuts? Not exactly, but this is making me more skeptical...

Try as I might to do my best research and make the most informed decisions possible, I can't win. Sigh. This making-the-best-choices-for-your-child thing is hard already, and he's not even on the outside yet.

Wildlife I've seen today

I've got lots of stories for you- and we're only halfway through our trip! I'm on McDonald's internet connection in New Hampshire right now, so I gotta be quick. Here's three wild animals I've seen today:


This squirrel's not so wild. In fact, it probably would have eaten out of our hands (or climbed into our car!) if we didn't keep trying to chase it off. I suppose I prefer the little squirrel to the fat raccoons we have at campsites in Indiana!


This little chipmunk wasn't quite as brave as the squirrel, but was still pretty fearless, and was obviously used to the campers.


The last wildlife was very unexpected- a black bear! Luckily, this guy wasn't anywhere near our campsite- he was strolling down the road as we drove up to Mount Washington, which was an adventure in itself! We had to drive right past the bear, and he didn't seemed fazed (thankfully!).

We haven't seen any moose yet, but lots of road signs warn of the possibility. Towns nearby are even full of moose safari signs! We're keeping our eyes out- I'll let you know.

OK, I've sat in the McD's parking lot long enough- hope everyone's enjoying their week! I'll check in again if I can!

Science lesson o' the day

On Sunday, while heading out to the car, something brightly colored on one of our bushes caught my eye. It was some sort of butterfly or moth, and it wasn't moving much, just clinging to a leaf. It was HUGE. I snapped some pictures of it with Josh's cell phone camera, and filed away the thought to look up what it was later. Of course, I forgot.

While checking out the progress of my strawberry patch this afternoon, I found the same moth, still huge, and just a couple feet from where I saw it before- this time clinging to a strawberry plant. I went and got my good camera, and tried my best to get some pictures without disturbing it.





Searching Google for something when all you know is what the thing looks like is not the easiest proposition. I finally figured out what this creature is- it's a cecropia moth, apparently one of the largest moths in North America! I'd believe it! Interestingly, once these caterpillars turn into moths, they have a natural fat burner: they have no mouths, and therefore don't eat. This lady out here probably only has a few days left to live, but the cooler temperatures we had and the fact this gal hasn't moved around much has made her life longer.

I love the orange and white stripes and black dots on her abdomen. If I were a bird, I'd steer clear of this bug! Also, if I ran into one of the caterpillars of this moth, I'd steer clear, too! What a colorful, cool insect!

Butterflies

The Writers Almanac is a daily segment on NPR by Garrison Keillor where he highlights a poem and other interesting "on this date in history" facts, mostly birthdays of authors. Today there was another event featured besides a literary birthday:

It's an important anniversary for lepidopterists — people who study, collect, or observe butterflies and moths. On this day in 1975, an amateur naturalist, Kenneth Brugger, discovered where monarch butterflies from North America spend the winter. Scientists had been studying monarch migration for more than 30 years, and they had found out almost everything about the butterflies, except where they spent their winters.

Kenneth Brugger was an American textile engineer living in Mexico City. He remembered driving through a storm of monarchs once on a vacation, in the mountains west of Mexico City. He went back there, but he couldn't find anything, and the local farmers wouldn't give him any information. Then he brought his Mexican wife Catalina, and the locals warmed up. A farmer led them up the side of a remote mountain, up to 10,000 feet, and suddenly the fir trees were so thick with butterflies that they looked orange instead of green. Scientists estimated that there were 4 million butterflies per acre.

Brugger was elated, but he couldn't fully appreciate what he was seeing — he was colorblind.

Nine years to the day after that beautiful but underappreciated discovery, I entered the world.

Here's hoping I keep my eyes open for "butterflies", learn what God has for me to see, and fully appreciate it!

On a fun note, the "poem" for today in the Writer's Almanac is not exactly a poem, but definitely something I remember from childhood:

Denmark, Kangaroo, Orange
by Kevin Griffith
Pick a number from one to ten. Okay, now multiply that number by nine. You will have a two-digit number. Add those two digits. Now subtract five from that number. Take that number and find its corresponding letter in the alphabet (1=A, 2=B, etc.). Now think of a country that begins with that letter. Now name an animal that begins with the last letter of the country. Finally, name a fruit that begins with the last letter of that animal.

As a child, it was "magic"- now I see right through it, but it's still cute. Anyone else remember it?

Links for today

• A Super-Bowl-themed Carnival of Personal Finance is up, and paidtwice did an awesome, creative job putting it together
• Make It From Scratch is posted at Stephanie's place. As always, so many yummy and creative things to try!
• Wise Bread asks, Should you be ashamed to be on public assistance? I thought it was an interesting discussion and a good question to ask, since I know a few of my friends that have dealt with it.
• The history of the universe, in 200 words or less. Complete with Wiki links. Totally geeky, sorry.
• Will Samson brings up the idea of an energy fast for Lent. I like the idea, for sure. Perhaps I'll try it.
• In case you didn't hear, the Giants beat out the highly-favored Patriots for the Super Bowl title. To be honest, it was a pretty boring game until the fourth quarter, at which time it became awesome.
• Starting sometime soon: I picked up a oft-quoted book from the library, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger by Ron Sider. I'm going to be doing a chapter-a-week series on thoughts from the book. If anyone else wants to read along & join in, let me know. (Looking at the Amazon link, apparently it's been revised and updated. It was originally written in 1977, so I'd appreciate an updated version, but I'm reading the old one. Hmm.)
• It's Super Tuesday, are you voting? I'm not. Indiana is the fourth-to-last primary, on May 6th. If you want to make your voice heard, there's a friendly little poll on my sidebar where you can weigh in (RSS readers, that means, Visit My Site). Note: the poll was created before Edwards dropped out. It was also created before Giuliani dropped out, but I really didn't like him, and since he had fewer delegates than even Ron Paul, I opted not to include him in the list.

Science Stories o' the Morning

A couple geeky stories to throw your way, from my favorite source for occasional science news, Inkling Magazine:

The first, I read a few weeks ago, about miscarriage. Very informative, and full of stats that aren't talked about. And, as any good article does, the first sentence caught me: "After the fun part of baby making comes the hard part."

Yesterday's article was a mathematical description of the progression of Love in a relationship. I started to tell Josh about it, and he cut me off with "I never took Calculus." Good thing, I guess. He was the first one to say I Love You in our relationship. After reading this article, I thought about how I've continued to fall more and more in love with him, even when I thought it wasn't possible anymore. We're still silly and crazy about each other, sixteen months into marriage. I expect we'll be the same way in 16 years, and 60 years. And, although I did take calculus in high school & college, I'm not about to find the first and second derivative of the curve describing the relationship.

Take Action

Today is Blog Action Day, and thousands of bloggers are talking about the environment on their blogs. Recent news includes Al Gore, the more famous environmentalist, winning a Nobel Peace Prize, and new hybrid cars being released by Chevy. But I digress.

Talking about the environment is nothing new around here. I've mentioned why I care and a couple practical things I do. Over the last year or so, I've learned a lot, and Creation Care has become more in the forefront of my mind and decision making. I look forward to moving into a house, where I may be driving more (because I will no longer live 1 mile from work), but I will be able to grow more of my own food, reduce my trash with a compost pile, and have a part of the environment to care for myself- actual dirt and plants that I'm responsible for. I'm looking forward to exploring Simplicity even more, and taking into account how my actions will impact not only the people, but the world around me.

For lots more, check out my Creation Care section and what others are saying about Blog Action Day.

KNITEST

I'm a massively huge dork. But you probably knew that. Scrabble is my favorite game ever. And I haven't played it in too long. This is an ad from my latest issue of Reader's Digest. I was pretty excited.

This is for Ashley as well, with all the cats. I thought she'd appreciate it. It's not often that cats show up on my blog.

Anyone else catch the National School Scrabble Championships on ESPN yesterday? Yeah, that's right, it's a sport. If ESPN airs it, it's a sport. If you did miss it, your last chance to see it is Friday, Sept. 28 at 2:00 PM on ESPN2. I know you'll be there.

Weird link o' the day

Bored with your current natural skin care products? Wanna get EVEN MORE NATURAL?

Try letting small animals eat away your flesh! No, really! mental_floss has a post about a Chinese spa that employs small fish that eat off dead skin cells, apparently with no more pain than a 'pleasant tingling'!

The Garra rufa, alternately known as the doctor fish, the kangal fish and the reddish log sucker, only dines on the dead areas of skin, leaving healthy cells to grow. Amazingly, the fish are used everywhere from Turkey, to England, to Japan, and are especially good for polishing your feet and helping to cure psoriasis.

Follow the link for photos. Really. You don't want to miss them.

And, I think I'll pass on the spa treatment.

The Fermi Paradox

Via Slashdot:

A blog called Sentient Developments has a post about the Fermi Paradox, a puzzle in science that basically states that, statistically, there should be life- and advanced life- on other planets, yet, we have not run into them yet. As our technology continues to advance, this fact becomes statistically more and more significant. Or, as Ellie Arroway in Contact said, "I'll tell you one thing about the universe, though. The universe is a pretty big place. It's bigger than anything anyone has ever dreamed of before. So if it's just us... seems like an awful waste of space."

As our sciences mature, and as the search for extraterrestrial intelligence continues to fail, the Great Silence becomes louder than ever. The seemingly empty cosmos is screaming out to us that something is askew.
...
The fact that our Galaxy appears unperturbed is hard to explain. We should be living in a Galaxy that is saturated with intelligence and highly organized. Thus, it may be assumed that intelligent life is rare, or, given our seemingly biophilic Universe, our assumptions about the general behaviour of intelligent civilizations are flawed.

A paradox is a paradox for a reason: it means there’s something wrong in our thinking.

Both CS Lewis & Ray Bradbury, in their science fiction writings, suggest that both God and life on other planets can exist, so I don't rule that out, but could the "something wrong with our thinking" be that the assumptions made exclude the possibility that this whole span of space was created by an extra-terrestrial, extra-temporal being- God- for a purpose, and we really are alone? At what point will the improbabilities get so big that scientists will be forced to consider the other alternatives to a completely natural (rather than super-natural) point of view? The blog author acknowledges one of these questions in a subsequent post.

Contact is a fascinating movie based on a book by Carl Sagan. It brings up good questions like this. I'm always interested in the way that science's study of the extremes- the extremely big cosmos and extremely small particles (atoms, string theory, etc) always point to bigger questions, with a discussion that ends up very philosophical and even theological in nature.

Morning Mind Twister

OK, so y'all know the gameshow Let's Make a Deal, where there are 3 doors, one of which has a prize, like a car or something, behind it, and the other two have non-prizes (let's call them 'goats')? The contestant chooses a door, and then one of the un-chosen doors is revealed, and there's a goat behind it. What's the probability of the un-chosen, un-opened door having a car behind it? (Is it advantageous to switch your selection to win a car?)

This problem has been quantified and studied, and has been dubbed the Monty Hall Problem. The Wikipedia article has a full answer to the above question- which is an interesting read, because it is very non-intuitive. I'd think that the un-chosen, un-opened door would have a 50% chance of having a car behind it- you've still got 2 doors, one car, & one goat, right? Alas, no. Read the above link to get the real answer.

From the mental_floss blog

Interesting note: I googled 'goat car' to get an image for this post, and most of the top results were discussing this puzzle. Who knew? But, then, who else discusses goats & cars in the same breath?

Fun Science

So, there's probably no one that remembers this show at all, but it was a childhood favorite of mine. Mr Wizard's World was a show that aired, as I remember it, at 6 or 6:30 am on Nickelodeon (Yes... I was an early riser even then...). Every day, Mr Wizard would show us new, cool science experiments that could be done with typical household items. He kept it simple. He explained the science behind the result. And made it look like so much fun! His interest in the subject made me interested, too, and kept me interested. I hadn't thought about it before, but Mr. Wizard was partly responsible for sparking my interest in science and planting a seed that grew into lifelong inquisitiveness and a love of learning. Or maybe I was just weird... what kid enthusiastically watches kitchen science experiments at 6am? Me.

Now, Mr Wizard was no Bill Nye. There was no flashiness, special effects, or extra characters. No fancy music or graphics or even a set, really. It was just a grandfatherly guy in his kitchen with another kid or two, exploring household objects and letting kids participate. There might've been an occasional "Let your mom or dad help you with this" but never a "Don't try this at home".

Mr Wizard passed away yesterday. He was 89.

Food in the news

I promised not to do this very often, but... there's some good articles I highlighted on my food blog, Sunflowers in my Kitchen. One is about the disappearance of the bees from hives around the country. Another is about the food bill up for renewal in Congress, and how it affects how we eat.

That's all for now.

Workin' hard

An article on Slate reports on an international study that says women and men work the same amount of time throughout the week when the hours counted include both "market work" and "home work". In developed countries, the disparity between how long men and women work is negligible. This contradicts some previous studies and widely-held perceptions that women work more.

I think my favorite quote from the article is the last paragraph:

Many women with demanding careers tell me that it is women working full-time in the market, not women overall, who work more than comparable men. This study cannot settle that question because it does not report work time separately for people with and without market jobs. But if women with careers work more than men, while women overall work the same amount as men, then women without market jobs must work less than men. Men can use that argument to hit the couch in the afternoon. Or to end up there at night.

CNN on religion

This week, a guy on CNN, Anderson Cooper, is doing feature stories on religion and specifically Christianity. CNN is probably my favorite news network, but even this is treading on dangerous ground, for them.

The first story I saw in the series, yesterday, I appreciated. Dr. Francis Collins, the leader of the Human Genome Project explains Why this scientist believes in God. Much of what he said brought him to belief in God is what solidified my belief, when I was researching apologetics like crazy. I discovered I could have a rational belief in God, just as this highly-respected scientist did, after reading the logical arguments of CS Lewis and seeing God's general revelation in teh complexities of science. It looks like I ought to add one more to my list of ways to worship- I love the last line of the essay: "By investigating God's majestic and awesome creation, science can actually be a means of worship."

The story I saw today that appears to be in the same series also focuses on science and religion. Apparently there's a new field called "neurotheology" trying to explain how our brain processes religious experiences like worship, prayer, and meditation. Some say that this field of study will 'explain away' God as just emotional response. I say, it is a good field of study, discovering more and more how God " has set eternity in the hearts of men" and given them a way to know him by wiring our brains as he has. I could go on about this for a while, but I'll stop here.

The latest story is the one that worries me most, probably because I think it will be a source of ridicule rather than objective reporting. Apparently, a $27 million dollar Creation Museum is opening up near Cincinnati (See the Answers In Genesis site). Christian tourist sites have failed miserably in the past, and I fear for this one's fate. I also hate that the park will present young-earth Creationism as the only view that is acceptable for Bible-believing Christians, while there are (Christian!) scholars and scientists who subscribe to other interpretations. Speaking of ridicule, it will be hard not to, with the museum's fundraiser called "Missing Links Golf Classic". That made me smile.

-----EDIT-----
OK, couldn't resist. Another story came across the wire and I had to add it to the post. This one is a ministry I've heard about before, called XXXChurch.com. The group is edgy, to put it lightly. They minister to and educate men about how pornography negatively affects their lives, including relationships with their families and with God. It's something that needs to be said, especially with so much smut at any internet users' fingertips, but the issue is seriously uncomfortable to talk about. XXXChurch lays it all out on the table, unafraid to bring up hard questions. They're also not afraid to reach out to those producing the pornography, offering bibles and love to those who are in the midst of the industry. This, like the last story, could also be ridiculed by the world as an overreaction, or criticized by other Christians as inappropriate, but I see it as necessary and right-on, even if it is uncomfortable. Sometimes Uncomfortable is OK. Sometimes we need Uncomfortable to shake us from our Comfortable, wrong-living.

Happy Pi Day!

There. I said it. Now I'm a huge nerd.


Celebrate with the world.
A million digits of pi, for your perusal:


And, to top it all off, I set the blog post time to 3/14 1:59 because I'm that big of a dork. (To think, in just 8 years, we'll be able to celebrate on 3/14/15 9:26! Even more digits of accuracy!)

Sigh. I don't know why anyone puts up with me.

Treading Earth Softly

Christianity Today reports that prominent Religious Right leaders are calling for the resignation of the vice-president of the National Association of Evangelicals. Why might this be? Has he committed some deception or sin like former NAE president Ted Haggard? Has he fallen away from the faith? Has he made some prejudicial remark to offend? No, none of thee things. This group of leaders believes that vice president Richard Cizik cares too much about the environment and global warming. (Jim Wallis at the God's Politics blog has thoughts on the matter)

The evidence is in, Al Gore made a movie, and it is completely widely accepted that global warming is happening, and it's the fault, at least mostly, of humans. I'm not going to cite source after source, because the sources are not hard to find. So why is this a spiritual issue? We know God cares for the world, every sparrow, all the animals listed in Job that he watches over... but it is our job?

"The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it." (Genesis 2:15)

"You must keep my decrees and my laws.... And if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you." (Leviticus 18:26, 28)

"The land itself must observe a sabbath to the Lord. For six years sow your fields, and for six years prune your vineyards and garner their crops. But in the seventh year the land is to have a sabbath of rest, a sabbath to the Lord.... The land is to have a year of rest." (Leviticus 25:2-5; cf. Exodus 23:10-11)

"The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants. Throughout the land that you hold, you shall provide for the redemption of the land." (Leviticus 25:23-24)

"You shall not pollute the land in which you live.... You shall not defile the land in which you live, in which I also dwell; for I the LORD dwell among the Israelites." (Numbers 35:33-34)

"If you besiege a town for a long time, making war against it in order to take it, you must not destroy its trees by wielding an ax against them. Although you may take food from them, you must not cut them down. Are trees in the field human beings that they should come under siege from you?" (Deuteronomy 20:19)

"We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time." (Romans 8:22)

"Woe to you who add house to house and join field to field till no space is left and you live alone in the land. The LORD almighty has declared in my hearing: 'Surely the great houses will become desolate, the fine mansions left without occupants. A ten-acre vineyard will produce only a bath of wine, a homer of seed only an ephah of grain.'" (Isaiah 5:8-10) - I had never seen this verse before, but I guess God foreknew that the suburbs would someday be built...

Verses taken from EarthCare

Some Christians believe Jesus is coming back very soon, so the earth is ours to 'use up', and there is no imperative to take care of it, because it will 'pass away' very soon. The prevailing view among evangelicals, however, is fueled by these verses. We must be good stewards of what God gives us, be it spiritual gifts, material possessions, money, family members, or the earth and its resources.

So what does our household do, given this spiritual imperative? What are practical first steps to shrink our carbon footprint and tread more softly on this earth? (Incidentally, many of these aren't only good environmental practices, they're frugal, too!)

What we do now:

• Transportation - This is the easiest for us. We chose to live very close to where I work, and not far from where Josh works. I drive just a mile to work and, when it gets warmer, I hope to walk or ride my bike when the weather's good. We both drive cars that get an average of 30 mpg.


• Electricity - We do the obvious. We turn out lights when not home or not using them. We turn off the computer when not in use, for the most part.


• Heat - This winter, rather than relying on the furnace to heat our apartment, we purchased an oil-filled heater, which seems much more efficient than the furnace (based on our electric bill, anyway.) I did my research to find the safest option out there, and this was it. We're big fans.


• Shopping - We try to do as much grocery shopping as possible at ALDI, an international grocery store chain with 3 locations relatively nearby. ALDI doesn't provide shopping bags free, so we make a point to re-use grocery bags, reducing waste.


• Food - Making things from scratch reduces packaging waste, processing, and transportation related to pre-packaged convenience foods. Beyond canned goods and the occasional frozen pizza, I've gotten pretty good about cooking. Lunches are another issue- we both pack our lunches to take to work, and in re-useable containers as often as practical. This reduces the packaging waste from the alternative- a fast-food lunch.

What we'd LIKE to do:

• Transportation - I'd LOVE a Prius, but that's just be dreaming :) I'd like to walk/ride my bike as transportation more often, as I said earlier.


• Electricity - There's more we could do. The newest rage are those energy-saving compact florescent light bulbs, which we'll talk about moving to, when the need comes up. When looking for a house, we'll take into account energy consumption needs, as well as location (to avoid driving an excessive amount to work every day.)


• Recycling - This is the obvious one that is conspicuously missing from the above list. Our apartment complex doesn't offer it, which is a huge bummer. Hopefully wherever we live next will. At work, it is expected that you recycle your cans, and I do, which makes me feel really funny about throwing them away at home.


• Food - We cold be more conscious about shopping. I've been reading a lot about eating locally and eating in-season to cut down on the energy costs that go into producing, transporting, and preserving the food we buy. Currently, we don't take these things into consideration. In the long run, when we get a house, we've talked very seriously about having a big garden of things we like to eat, to eat REALLY locally- from our backyard.

I'm sure there's WAY more we could do. I feel like these are little ways we're fulfilling the stewardship requirement God puts on us. What do you think of "creation care"? What do you do to be a good steward?

Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day

Today is Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day! And, appropriately, today it was announced that Frances E. Allen has become the first woman ever has won the Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery.

Unfortunately, I don't have any girls handy to do introduce to my profession of "systems engineer". Anyone have one I can borrow? I'd love to, really. I love encouraging girls in science and technology, mostly to not make them afraid of it. If they can get over the fear of it, whether they're passionate about it or not is a personality and interests thing. I really believe that societal and peer pressures as well as they way they're taught grow girls into thinking that they can't do science, technology, math, etc. Normally unspoken attitudes like the one expressed by the former president of Harvard are prevalent, and they make me mad. Girls and women CAN "do computers" or science or math. If the topics are explained in such a way that the subjects are both understandable AND relevant to girls, absent of underlying assumptions and prejudices, they really enjoy the subject. I could go on a long time about the way computer science & other science & math is taught, childhood 'roles' that discourage girls, and other things, but I'll stop. For now. (Earlier, I discussed how I was first exposed to programming)

One of the best events I've been to that touches on this subject was last year's Indiana Women in Computing conference. We were able to do everything from seeing research other female college students (mostly grad students) were doing in a variety of areas to making jewelry, all with other geeky girls like myself. It was awesome.

At the conference, I learned that IU has an excellent outreach program locally. Google is encouraging girls in engineering today. I LOVE the Girl Scouts ad campaign, which I've seen on billboards & in malls. Gender-neutral campaigns include DiscoverEngineering.org and TryScience.org

That said, I think it's really important to NOT be on the computer all the time. I discussed this before. Even Bill Gates says his kids have limits on their computer time. I think that's very healthy- for kids and adults. Getting out and doing REAL things, AWAY from a screen, with your hands, or with people, or with nature, is more valuable.

The Tiniest of All

Or, When It Might Be OK to Lie

The news outlets are abuzz about the report that the most premature baby ever is about to go home from the hospital. The report is interesting to me because of all the new babies born around me in the last few months, and the couple expected soon. This Guardian article is the most interesting, in my opinion. The little girl's mother was pregnant for just 5 months before having an emergency c-section- not even into her 3rd trimester. When the doctors asked how far along she was, she exaggerated by over a week, because hospital policy dictated not to resuscitate babies born before 23 weeks. Little Amillia was resuscitated, and has fought to survive until now, with a very bright prognosis for her future.

As the Guardian article points out, this brings up very serious questions regarding policies of when a baby is a baby- when does our current technology allow the new life to be kept alive? And for how long is a fetus "disposable"? Is there a line between "disposable" and "viable"? From the Guardian article (a British publication):

According to the American Association of Pediatrics, babies born at less than 23 weeks are not considered "viable". According to a landmark report published by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics late last year, which provides guidelines that all British neonatologists and paediatricians are asked to consider, babies born before 22 weeks and six days gestation should not generally be resuscitated. Below 22 weeks, no baby should be resuscitated.
...
Meanwhile, although it doesn't often happen, the Abortion Act allows terminations to be carried out until 24 weeks in Britain; any time after that there must be incontrovertible medical evidence that it would be dangerous to continue. The law in the US is predictably fraught and unclear, and in any case varies from state to state. Roe v Wade bans it after the foetus is viable, which, as Amillia has shown, is something of a contestable point.

Contestable point, indeed.

One opinion from the article:

"Should one really be trying at all to keep that baby alive?" asks Professor Richard Nicholson, editor of the Bulletin of Medical Ethics. "Chances are it will require an enormous amount to be spent on it for the rest of its life. We have much less experience of death, so we have become much less willing to accept it. In countries where infant mortality is higher it would be seen as absurd. We live in a society where we have become addicted to physical existence. It's totally unsustainable. Our attempts at the moment to keep every human physically alive as long as possible will make it less likely that the human race will survive climate change."

"Is choosing whether a baby lives or dies an economic or evolutionary one, like this professor suggests? That thought bothers me. Another expert quoted in the article, John Wyatt, a professor of neonatal paediatrics at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, has a more compassionate view:

Most parents, when given the facts, would accept that the best thing for a baby born below 23 weeks is to allow nature to take its course, and most neonatalogists would agree that they shouldn't be resuscitated. And yet ... we need to decide what is best for each individual baby. A premature baby is as much a member of the human community as anybody else, and deserves the best care that's available. By and large this care has been extremely successful. There are thousands going into adulthood who previously wouldn't have done so."

The article appropriately ends with an essay by a mother of a premature baby.

You worry about their future, of course, and Amillia's mother will be worrying right now. You scan the pictures in the special-care baby unit of children whose lives started here, and you find yourself thinking: are they normal? Will my child be normal? But even though some of the children in the pictures don't look "normal" - they're too thin, they've got a squint, they're in a wheelchair - you don't ultimately care whether that is what is going to happen to your baby. You hope everything will turn out fine, of course you do: but you already know you love this baby anyway, and you know that nothing is going to change that. Not a doctor's grim predictions today; not a teacher's pessimistic evaluation tomorrow; not the fact that your friends' babies can do more, and earlier. You have that one, precious person - I have my Rosie, Sonja Taylor has her Amillia - and the world will be brighter and better because of it.

That's the point, isn't it? That a new precious person is in the world?

To add, another angle on the abortion discussion: the TIME story on the grassroots abortion war: crisis pregnancy centers and their strategy on winning the abortion debate one woman at a time. (I came very close to blogging about this by itself about a week ago, but didn't. Seriously, read it.)

Household Tip O' the Day

From LiveScience:

Sponges and kitchen scrub brushes can be loaded with disease-causing viruses and bacteria.

So microwave them, scientists say.

Researchers soaked sponges and scrubbers in a disgusting brew of raw wastewater containing fecal bacteria, viruses, protozoan parasites and bacterial spores, including Bacillus cereus spores—known for being very hard to kill with heat, chemicals and even radiation.

Zapping at full power for two minutes killed or inactivated 99 percent of living pathogens. It took 4 minutes to destroy the B. cereus spores.

“People often put their sponges and scrubbers in the dishwasher, but if they really want to decontaminate them and not just clean them, they should use the microwave," said Gabriel Bitton, a professor of environmental engineering at the University of Florida.

The study was announced today and was detailed in the December issue of the Journal of Environmental Health.

Other studies have shown that sponges and dishcloths are common carriers of pathogens from uncooked eggs, meat and other food. Damp objects help them thrive.

The researchers suggest wetting the objects—water being heated by the microwave seems to play a role in the sterilization—before zapping them every other day or so.

Guess what I'm going to do when I get home? I wonder if this goes for cutting boards and dishtowels as well? I'm certainly going to try it!