Dog Crap

I just spent a solid half hour picking up poop. Let me tell you, two dogs equals a lot more crap. When I finished scouring the yard with a garden trowel I had a bag weighing at least half Speak’s body weight. That’s a lot of poop.

The whole venture made me think that somewhere somehow there had to be an economic use for all that poop. Someone should pay for dog poop by the pound. It’d be like the refund on pop cans and kids could collect poop from the neighborhood and cash in.

Maybe it’d be some sort of fertilizer manufacturer who would want it, but we could find a better use than tossing it in the trash. Sometimes Mazie short circuits that path and just does her business in the garden. Sometimes it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie, so to speak.

Update: Apparently I’m not the only one dreaming of a crap-powered world.

Pharmacists Refuse to Give Contraceptives

I don’t usually write about politics and for good reason. But this just floored me. Apparently some pharmacists are refusing to fulfill perscriptions for contraceptives on moral grounds. It seems some of the contraceptives being refused are morning-after pills, similar to the abortion pill, RU-486, though most morning-after pills can’t terminate a pregnancy. It seems it all comes down to your definition of pregnancy. The article doesn’t make it clear if standard birth control perscriptions are being refused or if it’s only controversial “emergency contraceptives.”

I guess I’m just surprised this is a political issue. I would think the drug stores wouldn’t allow their pharmacists to do that. It seems like a business issue. If a waitress refused to serve somebody for moral reasons, they’ be fired. It’s not as simple as that, but that’s the first thought that comes to my mind.

More than anything I’m surprised at the ways the pro-life cause is often acted out. It seems we often want to deal with everything when it’s too late. Denying birth control seems like a silly thing to be up in arms about, and hardly an effective way to get your message across. It just seems like a good way to piss people off.

Reconnecting Thanks to Blogs

Blogging like this is such an odd thing sometimes. Rarely do I realize how many people are reading along. When I look at the numbers it seems like a lot, though I wonder if they’re actually reading every day and just sitting quietly in the shadows, or if it’s a lot of search engine traffic reading something I wrote months or years ago and never coming back. It’s a strange medium.

What’s especially fun is when people tell me they’ve been reading. It’s an odd ego boost, but also exciting. My first thought is wow, they actually read what I have to say. My second thought is oh no, they actually read what I have to say. And later, after my pride has gone up and down, I start to think about the potential. And that’s what I like.

A week or so ago an old high school friend tracked my blog down and posted a comment from Afghanistan. That’s amazing. Reconnecting like that, even if it is the loose connection of e-mail, never would have happened otherwise. It’s a minor and obvious example, but the ability of the net to capitalize on real life relationships is so cool. It makes dreams reality, not in an overnight, sensational way like we expected during the dot com years, but in the slow and steady, surprising way that networks pay off.

Does Terrorism Trump Genocide in Sudan?

The LA Times covers the Bush administration’s dealings with Sudan, which seem to imply that in exchange for cooperation fighting terrorism, the Bush administration has taken a softer stance on genocide in Darfur. That’s a harsh claim to make, and I’m not sure I’m ready to buy it, but it does express a brutal reality. To what length do we go to get intelligence on terrorists? Does terrorism trump genocide?

Bleh. I realize it’s not an easy choice, but it certainly is ugly. Weighing lives is always a lose-lose game.

And have I mentioned how you can take action on Darfur? It’s as simple as sending an e-mail to your representatives.