An interesting take on the debate

I'm reading former President Jimmy Carter's book entitled Our Endangered Values. In one particularly interesting passage, he links the abortion debate, contraception, and social services. Carter is personally against abortion due to his religious beliefs, but he also does not think his religious beliefs should be the law of the land.

He points out that the most common factor among those who get abortions is poverty. In the United States, six out of ten women who get an abortion have an income below $28,000 for a family of three. With good social services and the economic prosperity of the '90s, American abortion rates actually dropped to a twenty-four year low of sixteen per thousand women of childbearing age. The data shows that in nations where women "have access to contraceptives, the assurance that they and their babies will have good health care, and at least enough income to meet their basic needs", abortion rates are low. In Belgium and the Netherlands, the rate is approximately seven per thousand women of childbearing age.

Yet many conservatives think the Netherlands is a filthy liberal Gomorrah? hah.

Meanwhile Carter cites several countries where abortion is illegal and social services are very inadequate such as Peru, Brazil, Chile, and Colombia. The abortion rates are about fifty per thousand.

Yet many of the same people here in the United States who are adamant pro-lifers are at the same time against ready access to contraceptives and the very social programs for those in poverty that help convince women to keep their babies.

Conclusion? If your goal is to minimize the number of abortions, stop yelling at pro-choice people and start advocating the social programs that give expectant mothers hope that they can care for a baby if they bring it into the world. Guess what? Most of the pro-choice people will be all for those programs. Work together. Also, knock it off with the abstinence-only programs. The data is clear. They don't work! Moreover, by supporting ready access to contraception, we will reduce the abortion rate even further.

These are goals people on both sides of the abortion debate should be able to support.

Berlin

First things first. In Berlin I saw the worst use of neon lights ever. Here it is:


This sign says "All art has been contemporary". Of course that's hard to read because they inexplicably put the sign behind the pillars. Nevermind the fact that on this old building fronted by a row of pillars, I can't think of anything that would go worse with it than freaking NEON! Who's idiotic idea was this one? And why didn't they just go ahead and add a neon cowboy on the roof while they were at it? Way to ruin the front of one of Germany's best known museums, morons. For the record there was a very nice Egyptian exhibit inside.

But let's rewind a day. The coach arrive in Berlin in the evening and our hotel was on the outskirts of town. Our tour manager told us how to get downtown if we wanted to go that night, but said he'd just be hitting the bar in the Generator hostel next door to the hotel. Most of us thought that sounded like a good plan, so we joined him. It was Halloween night.

The Generator in Berlin is an enormous hostel. The drinking age in Berlin for beer and wine is fourteen years old. Hostels, with their cheap, low grade accomodations, attract mostly young people. Ergo, the hostel bar was full of drunken teenagers. That was kind of different to see in a bar, especially for an American like myself who's used to a legal drinking age of 21. I didn't think much of it at first, but when a guy who looked to be about fifteen stood on a chair and started stripping, it was just wrong.

The drinks were cheap (for Europe) and plentiful, so before long our entire group was feeling pretty good. Not much longer after that, many of us were feeling much more than that, but it quickly became obvious that the most blitzed people in our group that night would be... our tour manager and our driver. After a couple hours, our manager crumpled to the floor. A couple of us picked him up, and a little while later he crumpled to the floor again. Repeat. I learned that Berlin isn't really concerned about serving drunk people at the bar. He'd stagger back up to the bar and they'd sell him another drink.

Meanwhile our driver was smashed out of his gourd too. The following is second hand from the only other American on our tour, a Georgian named Bo who hung out with our driver a lot that night: Our drunken driver, after hitting on a girl that Bo warned him was too young and proclaiming that if you go two of the girls that made 28 (years old), insisted that he was staying in the hostel that night. They were skeptical, but Bo and another guy helped him up to the third floor of the hostel, where he proceeded to try to open one of the doors with what turned out to be his hotel key card. Yeah... it didn't work. They tried to explain to him that he was staying next door at the hotel, not here. He didn't get it. He collapsed on the floor in the hallway and started yelling incoherently. It was about 3am. They convinced a couple kids staying there not to call the front desk, and then they tried to get him to get up and leave with them. He told them to fuck off. They left him on the third floor of the hostel and went back to the hotel to get some sleep. He seemed alright in the morning. Somehow.

So anyway, I did my touring of Berlin the next day. The Third Reich walking tour was interesting. The aforementioned museum was kind of cool. It had a bunch of obese looking statues in front of it. No, really. There was a fat cat, a fat horse, a fat woman or two, and other fatties. Blame Botero. It's what he does. Quite frankly though, I thought Berlin was a depressing city. It looks like it still hasn't fully recovered from the wars. Germany has made a bad habit of starting and losing wars, and Berlin took much of the resulting damages. I'm sure the overcast skies didn't help.

The second night in Berlin we did a fairly forgettable pub tour. Then it was on to Prague!

How fast do you type?

97 words

First try. 1 error. Boo yah!

I noticed two things about that little test. Having to pause every couple lines while the next set of words came up slowed me down. However, the fact that it was all common words made it much faster for me. Typing code and technical speak is obviously much slower.

Tried again the next day on my home computer (1 error again):
103 words