Chaos the not so great

Well...the little man is still alive and kicking, but he's very weak. He did one short sprint up the hall and spent the rest of the time lying on the floor. The boy just has no stamina for anything except rolling around in his crinkly tube. I'm afraid that he probably won't be with us that much longer.

Naptime for the Chaos boy

I was lying on the couch, reading some articles that I need to summarize before tomorrow and Chaos decided that my foot would make a nice pillow.

He didn't seem to notice when I got up after I'd finished reading.

Loki loves his toy

So, I found this toy in the stuff that I got with Loki from his previous family. It had been in a box since January.

Well, let's just say that Loki loves this toy. I think that just about any definition of love might fit. Let's just say that he spent somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 hours of quality time with it this morning. That's the longest by far that I've seen him in any one location before, except for when he was asleep.

Loki's not feeling so hot

Loki: Dammit! *cough* Doesn't Mom realize that I'm not feeling well??? Why did she insist on taking me out of my cozy bed *cough* and taking me to that horrible place with all the barking dogs *cough* and whining cats, where they poke and prod? I hate that place! *cough* And then, when we get home, she pins me down and forces this cold banana flavored stuff into my mouth! *cough* It's so nasty! She's done it morning and night since then! *cough*

Walmart stops trying to get money from brain-damaged former employee

Remember Deborah Shank, the lady who worked for Wal-Mart, was in an accident and got brain damage - and then Wal-Mart wanted to get her settlement money from the trucking company, leaving her with no money for her continuing care? Well, Wal-Mart finally backed down.

Reposted from Wal-mart Watch:

WAL-MART DROPS SHANK FAMILY’S DEBT

Wal-Mart Drops Injured Worker Claim [Associated Press via CNN Money]

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is dropping a controversial effort to collect over $400,000 in health care reimbursement from a former employee who is confined to a southeast Missouri nursing home since she suffered brain damage in a traffic accident.

The world’s largest retailer said Tuesday in a letter to the family of Deborah Shank it will not seek to collect money the Shanks won in an injury lawsuit against a trucking company for the accident.

Wal-Mart’s top executive for human resources, Pat Curran, wrote that Shank’s extraordinary situation had made the company re-examine its stance.

Deborah’s husband Jim Shank welcomed the news. Family lawyer Maurice Graham of St. Louis said Wal-Mart deserves credit for doing the right thing.

“It’s a good day for the Shank family,” Jim Shank said in a statement.

Wal-Mart has been roundly criticized in newspaper editorials, on cable news shows and by its union foes for its claim to the funds, which it made in a lawsuit upheld by a federal appeals court.

Insurance experts say it is increasingly common for health plans to seek reimbursement for the medical expenses they paid for someone’s treatment if the person also collects damages in an injury suit.

The practice, called “subrogation,” has increased since a 2006 Supreme Court ruling that eased it.

Wal-Mart’s Curran said the retailer was required by the rules of its plan to seek reimbursement from the Shank’s settlement. But she said the case has made Wal-Mart revise those rules to allow for flexibility in individual cases.

“Occasionally others help us step back and look at a situation in a different way. This is one of those times,” Curran wrote in the letter.

Shank, 52, lost much of her memory and ability to communicate or walk in a crash between her minivan and a tractor trailer in May 2000. Her family sued the trucking company and won $700,000. Court records show that after attorney’s fees and costs, the remaining $417,477 from the settlement went into a trust to care for Shank.

The fund now has about $270,000, the family said.

Shanks’ health insurance was through Wal-Mart, where she worked nights stocking shelves. After the Shanks won their lawsuit, Wal-Mart sued the Shank family to recover medical costs totaling about $470,000.

Wal-Mart won its case and subsequent appeals by the Shanks that went as far as the Supreme Court, which closed legal avenues this month by declining to hear the case.

During the case, the Shanks also lost one of their three sons when Jeremy, 18, was killed in Iraq last year while serving in the Army.

The case put a spotlight on the growing use of reimbursement claims by health plans, experts say.

Roger Baron, professor of law at the University of South Dakota and a specialist in health-plan law, said health plans have become “very aggressive” about subrogation since the 2006 Supreme Court decision.

“It’s free money. They want the free money,” Baron said.

Lynn Dudley, vice president for policy at the American Benefits Council in Washington D.C., said the negative publicity around the case was beginning to draw the attention of lawmakers who might want legislation to stop or limit subrogation.

“Capitol Hill is paying attention,” Dudley said.

Baron said Wal-Mart’s size _ it is the nation’s largest nongovernment employer, with over 1.3 million workers _ means that its willingness to compromise in an individual case may have a wider impact on reimbursement practices by other health plans.

“I’m so pleased to see an element of reason because so much of this subrogation has been about just blindly going after the money,” Baron said.

Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Caught in the Act!

I took a break from grading papers to locate a ferret.

Ferrets are simply the easiest to photograph when they're napping.

Man has to learn about his partner's death from the news

This situation is not OK! This is a really short video about a man whose life partner of 6 years died in a plane crash, but they wouldn't tell him about it. He had to find out from the news.

Eric Breidenbaugh knew something was wrong.

His partner and his partner's parents were all missing – hours overdue from a family flight aboard a small private plane.

Eric called his local airport, near Pinellas Park, Florida, to see if they had any information. They did, but they wouldn't give it to him. They said he was "not an actual family member," so they couldn't tell him whether his partner was alive or dead.

He searched the TV news, where he soon saw footage of the plane he himself had ridden in many times. That was how he found out that his life partner of six years, Joseph Bellamy, had been killed with his parents in a plane crash. (HRC)

It doesn't really matter where you fall on the moral issues of the gay marriage debate. I think that if someone has demonstrated this kind of commitment, then they should be allowed access to each other's information. Each individual should have the right to grant access to his or her information to someone who they trust, regardless of sexual orientation!



If you are interested, the Human Rights Campaign is trying to raise money to help keep this type of thing from happening to others in the future.

Exhibit A in the case of the State vs. Loki Fuzzbutt

I give you Exhibit A in the case of the State vs. Loki Fuzzbutt.

The prosecution's star witness maintains that both the purple food dish and the red water dish were on the blue mat, with their contents inside, at the time that she got into the shower. Returning from the shower, she found the food dish upside-down and the water dish at a distance of approximately 4 feet from said blue mat.

Photographic evidence shows the aftermath of this heinous crime. The suspect is seen fleeing in the bottom left corner of the photo over the blue mat, upon which the dishes had previously been located.

Investigators suspect that Mr. Fuzzbutt nosed his way under the blue mat, pushed it up against the cupboard and spilled the contents of the food dish. He then moved the water dish to a different location in order to avoid suspicion.

Mr. Fuzzbutt could not be reached for comment.

He's eating! All by himself!!!!

I woke up from my nap to the sound of a ferret eating kibble. I assumed it was Loki. Imagine my surprise, when I walked into the kitchen and found Chaos crunching away! This is such a relief! Now I know that he'll eat without me having to be there to feed him wet food! I thought I saw him eating in the cage in the car on the way back from my folks' place yesterday, but the light was bad and I was cruising down the freeway, so I didn't get a good look.

I think it was good for Chaos to be away from Loki for the couple days while we were in ND for Tom's wedding. He seems to have come out of his funk. Hopefully, he'll continue to feed himself!

Loki - Interior Designer

Loki likes to rearrange the layout of the apartment. He often repositions litter-boxes between 2 inches and two yards away from their original locations. He also redistributes his toys. If this whole cute and fuzzy house pet thing doesn't work out for him, he just might have a future in interior design.

Note: Typing in fuzzbutt.com will take you to a porn site, and not a collection of ferret pictures. Loki assumes no liability for the actual contents of fuzzbutt.com

Loki the Lush

I think it's safe to say that Loki has adapted well to his new home state.

Do we need to do this whole abortion thing again???

So, in response to my post about a ferret bed, I was asked (by a fundie) to justify some of my stickers on the side of the blog. I've decided to delete that comment there, but repost that little comment here:

Duane & Patricia said...

Hey, yeah, I was wondering how you reconcile two of your stickers to the right--
"prochild-prochoice" and "when we kill the innocent, we become the enemy"? Isn't that a contradiction?

9:27 PM, March 01, 2008

So, here's a bit of a response:

Well, this has nothing to do with the ferret bed, but I'll entertain it anyway.

Life may begin at conception, but I would argue that the little individual sperm and egg are already alive even before conception. Of course, so is every other cell in the body.

I'm pro-child. Children are great (just don't ask me to babysit). I'm also pro-choice, however, I would not characterize myself as pro-abortion. In the same way that I wouldn't call myself pro-amputation, I wouldn't make it illegal for someone to choose to have an amputation rather than suffer from a painful gangrenous death. I think that such a person should have a choice! I would expect that most people would not choose to have an amputation unless absolutely necessary.

Basically, I believe that most women would not choose to have an abortion. However, if a woman feels that she is unable to carry a baby to term due to such issues as danger to her health, incest, or rape, then I think that she should be able to make that decision. Ideally, in my mind, every woman would carry a baby to term if she is able, and then give it up for adoption if she doesn't want it / can't take care of it. On the other hand, I knew a woman who had been adopted, and she said that she would rather abort a baby than subject it to adoption. Wherever you fall on that issue, I think it is incumbent on the woman to educate herself about the options / repercussions of an abortion before making that decision. It should be her decision. However, I also would personally choose to limit abortions to only happening early in the pregnancy, before there can be argument that the fetus has any cognition / feeling.

As far as killing the innocent, this refers to killing people for no justifiable reason. In addition to being a crime against humanity, it just builds hate in those who remain and is bad for everyone. I think that there is a quantifiable difference between people who have been born, begun experiencing life; and a bundle of cells not yet capable of cognition.

Other people than me have made much better arguments about this than I am going to take the time to do now.

ferrets doing ferret things

Here we have Chaos hanging out in a pant leg, and Loki washing his face.

For better or for worse, Ahmadinejad is right.

Here's a clip from a BBC article:

Iran defiant over sanction threat

Iran's leader has called the UN report an historic victory

Iran's leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says that no amount of UN sanctions will deter Tehran from its nuclear path.

"If they want to continue with that path of sanctions, we will not be harmed. They can issue resolutions for 100 years," he said in a TV interview.

His remarks came after a UN report said Iran was being more transparent - but had not given "credible assurances" that it was not building a bomb.

Tehran insists its programme is aimed purely at generating electricity.

He's right. UN resolutions don't really do anything.

Dinner in the comfort of your own crinkly-tube

James decided that rather than taking Chaos out of the tunnel to feed him, it would be easier to just transport the whole tunnel to the food dish.

An Epiphany

I just realized something! It's not that Chaos won't eat dry food. It's just that he won't eat the dry food that I'm offering him. He was more than willing to steal the dog's food, so that shows that "there's nothing wrong with the machine", to quote a previous veterinarian.

So, what I will do the next time that I get the chance, is to take Chaos to the pet store, where they have ferret food and kitten food in bulk bins and see if there are any that he'll eat.

All broadcast to be HDTV

So, the government has mandated that all TV broadcasts be in HDTV by February 17, 2009.

So, not knowing anything about these things, I can't help but wonder if it's easier to jam digital than analog. Anyone know?

Bush does something right and shows that he just might be human afterall

Apparently Bush put enough pressure on the Saudi king to get a rape victim pardoned.

(CBS/AP) A gang-rape victim who was sentenced to six months in prison and 200 lashes for being alone with a man not related to her was pardoned by the Saudi king after the case sparked rare criticism from the United States, the kingdom's top ally.
...
Earlier this month, Mr. Bush expressed his anger over the sentencing.

"My first thoughts were these," Mr. Bush said. "What happens if this happens to my daughter? How would I react? And I would have been - I'd of been very emotional, of course. I'd have been angry at those who committed the crime. And I'd be angry at a state that didn't support the victim."
...

So, maybe he could apply a bit more pressure to get his friends to treat women equally with men. *sighs*

On Obama per Shelby Steele

Here is an interesting take on Obama. You'll need to follow the link to hear what he has to say.

Word for Word from American Public Media
Race vs. presidential politics

February 1, 2008
Conservative intellectual, researcher and author Shelby Steele of Stanford University's Hoover Institution has written widely on race relations in American society. Now, Steele weighs in on presidential politics. In a Jan. 23 speech at the Commonwealth Club of California, Shelby Steele discussed his new book, "A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited about Obama and Why He Can't Win."

This is the book description posted at Amazon.com:

Book Description
In Shelby Steele's beautifully wrought and thoughtprovoking new book, A Bound Man, the award-winning and bestselling author of The Content of Our Character attests that Senator Barack Obama's groundbreaking quest for the highest office in the land is fast becoming a galvanizing occasion beyond mere presidential politics, one that is forcing a national dialogue on the current state of race relations in America. Says Steele, poverty and inequality usually are the focus of such dialogues, but Obama's bid for so high an office pushes the conversation to a more abstract level where race is a politics of guilt and innocence generated by our painful racial history -- a kind of morality play between (and within) the races in which innocence is power and guilt is impotence.

Steele writes of how Obama is caught between the two classic postures that blacks have always used to make their way in the white American mainstream: bargaining and challenging. Bargainers strike a "bargain" with white America in which they say, I will not rub America's ugly history of racism in your face if you will not hold my race against me. Challengers do the opposite of bargainers. They charge whites with inherent racism and then demand that they prove themselves innocent by supporting black-friendly policies like affirmative action and diversity.

Steele maintains that Senator Obama is too constrained by these elaborate politics to find his own true political voice. Obama has the temperament, intelligence, and background -- an interracial family, a sterling education -- to guide America beyond the exhausted racial politics that now prevail. And yet he is a Promethean figure, a bound man.

Says Steele, Americans are constrained by a racial correctness so totalitarian that we are afraid even to privately ask ourselves what we think about racial matters. Like Obama, most of us find it easier to program ourselves for correctness rather than risk knowing and expressing what we truly feel. Obama emerges as a kind of Everyman in whom we can see our own struggle to accept and honor what we honestly feel about race. In A Bound Man, Steele makes clear the precise constellation of forces that bind Senator Obama, and proposes a way for him to break these bonds and find his own voice.The courage to trust in one's own careful judgment is the new racial progress, the "way out" from the forces that now bind us all.

New "The Princess Bride" cover

So, I saw this new cover and thought that it was annoying that they'd changed the font.



And then I turned the case upside down - and it blew my mind for a few minutes anyway! ;) I was kinda annoyed that the "princess" face looks nothing like the face of the actress. Just thought I'd share. Now I should get back to something more serious.