I have no idea how many families face this each year; tens, hundreds, thousands? But our Congress and President have chosen to bring it to the fore and now that it is on our collective horizon, we will not see it pass easily. I cannot comment on or judge what is in the hearts of the family members involved; that is something with which they must wrestle alone. In the realm of public discourse, however, we much sit and speak together of life and death.

As a society we face ever improving medical technology capable of maintaining a body indefinintely like Neo in the pod before he took the red pill. The question we don’t seem to be clearly addressing is this: what is it that makes us, us? Are we the sum of the chemical reactions and electrical signals flashing through our brains? And if these are something we can measure accurately, are we confident that we can measure some point, some chasm, between here and not-here? Can we come back once we’ve leapt the gap, or is it a one-way street?

If we are not-here, if it is the reptilian mind that abets the beating of a heart, the heaving of lungs, does it cease to be about us and turn, instead, to being about our others?

I am reminded of the ghoulishness of pet owners who have Fluffy freeze dried and stuffed so that she can curl naturally on her pillow for eternity-or at least until her owner also dies.

Letting go is perhaps the hardest thing we do. I once had a friend who believed fervently in those who pretend to speak with the dead. When I asked her why, she was quick with her honest answer: because she could not bear to live without those gone.

Are those who hold out for miracles any different? When does hope become irrational? Granted, our information is not complete. We do not yet know where the gap between here and not-here is. But we do know that it exists. And doctors can speak with authority about those who are not coming back.

The Expert Witness has clouded many issues in our society. When attorneys present expert witnesses to support their clients they create the illusion of authority. But in every instance that matters, opposing experts can not both be correct. One or the other must be wrong. In considering a debate we want to weigh both sides equally. But they do not always deserve such consideration.

We saw an example of this recently when C Span thought it should balance its coverage of a lecture by Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt by matching it with speech by Holocaust denier David Irving. The two are in no stretch of the imagination equal authorities, but in our quest for fair and balanced coverage, we incorrectly give credence to those who deserve none.

Such is the case in the Life and Death debate. While doctors are human and make mistakes, taken as a whole, they do understand the human body. They provide us with the best information as to when it is reasonable to expect recovery and when it is reasonable for those still living to accept loss.

Death used to be simple.

p.s. and yes, i have carefully not brought issues of soul into this discussion because, regardless of what we want to feel, there simply is no evidence for such a thing.

My Soundtrack: Horowitz In Moscow by Vladimir Horowitz.

In My Backpack… The End Of Faith: Religion, Terror And The Future Of Reason by Sam Harris; On My Nightstand… Autumn Bridge by Takashyi Matsuoka; On My Computer… The First Spring Dayby Christina Rossetti;
On My Screen… Statement (*) directed by Norman Jewison, written by Ronald Harwood and Brian Moore.

My Soundtrack… The Planets by Gustav Holst; Sir Andrew Davis conducting the Toronto Symphony.

The wonderful poet Sherry Chandler turned me on to Baghdad Burning. Today’s post-A Cruel Month-offers one citizen’s view of the protests commerating the second anniversary of our invasion of Iraq. Sometimes it is the banal that strikes me the strongest. I think that men look for the grand sweep, the massive event, the protest that will bring down the horrible despot.

But this Girl Blog From Iraq that purports to talk war, politics and occupation, in the end, speaks of an air that is:

clearer now but everything is looking a little bit diminished and dirty. It suits the mood.

And that is a fine thing.

My Soundtrack… Praire Home Companion with Garrison Keillor.

Courtesty of George Nemeth at Brewed Fresh Daily here’s an Internet diversion: Medevac 911. This appears to be the first game on what our Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital calls its Rainbow Virtual Playground. Under a coming soon heading are games promised for pre-schoolers, age 3-5 and school age,children, age 5-10.

I remember years ago readng about a video game for young cancer patients where the kids zapped cancer cells. I never read any definitive literature on the subject, but the anectdotal buzz was that the kids who played the game had a stronger attitude toward beatng their cancer and this attitude aided in a stronger recovery rate.

The hospital gives this synopsis of the game this way:

Hey! Ever want to fly a helicopter? Now”s your chance! You’re the pilot of the BK117 Helicopter used by University Hospitals MedEvac Emergency Flight Team.

This is your first flight training mission. Fly through downtown Cleveland, past the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Browns Stadium, all the way over to Tower City. Try to collect all ten Gold Rings under two minutes. Good Luck!

It’s a very simple game, but it would probably hold the interest of a five-year-old who was not hospitalized for repetitive motion syndrome from 10 hours a day on the Playstation 2.

My Soundtrack: These Dreams by Heart.

My Soundtrack… Swiss Movement by Les McCann & Eddie Harris.

One of the advantages of the cyber move I made last month from Texas to New Jersey, is that Have Coffee Will Write now has an Really Simple Syndication feed. An RSS feed allows readers like George Nemeth at Brewed Fresh Daily to more easily keep track of dozens or even hundreds of blogs without having to click on each one to see if the blogger has posted anything new.

The way the system works is that a program called a Aggregator collects a digest of the first three lines or so of each new post on sites with RSS. Then using a reader such as RSSReader, it becomes possible to scan the headlines and ledes of stories. If you find something interesting, it’s only a click away.

To make my Have Coffee Will Write more reader and RSS friendly, I’m altering the format of my posts by removing the Headspace header that I’ve had since day one. I’ll still be posting the information, but since only the music changes within a 24-hour cycle, I’ll do so in a single post first thing each day.

For now I’ll keep the information the same as what I’ve been posting. If someone has any ideas for something else I should be putting on the list, just let me know.

The single exception will by my music. Since this changes with each post, there will now be a My Soundtrack… line at the bottom of each posting.

The first of the new Headspace postings appears below.

My Soundtrack… Water Music by George Frideric Handel, directed by Trevor Pinnock.

In My Backpack… The End Of Faith: Religion, Terror And The Future Of Reason by Sam Harris; On My Nightstand… Autumn Bridge by Takashyi Matsuoka; On My Computer… The First Green of Springby David Budbill;
On My Screen… Statement (*) directed by Norman Jewison, written by Ronald Harwood and Brian Moore.

My Soundtrack… From The Belly Of Abraham by Hasidic New Wave and Yakar Rhythms.

Headspace-On my stereo: MCMXC A.D. by Enigma; In my backpack: The End Of Faith: Religion, Terror And The Future Of Reason by Sam Harris; On my nightstand: Autumn Bridge by Takashyi Matsuoka; On my computer: I Will Make You Brooches by Robert Louis Stevenson; On my screen: Statement (*) directed by Norman Jewison, written by Ronald Harwood and Brian Moore.

I’ve been Nannied! One of the pieces-parts jobs I do is run the computer lab for a Jewish supplementary school. The administration has wisely, and appropriately, installed Cyber Patrol software to keep the kids (kindergarten through 8th grade) from inadvertently, or intentionqally, surfing over to websites we and their parents do not think would be appropriate.

Yesterday I got to the school early and had a few minutes to check Have Coffee Will Write. Instead of my blog, however, I got the orange Cyber Patrol warning screen and the message that the requested webpage was blocked for Hate Speech.

Hate Speech? I suppose I say some unkind things now and then, but I wouldn’t put any of it in the category of hate speech. Cyber Patrol considers a site to fit the hate speech criteria if it is found to be:

Advocating or inciting degradation or attack of specified populations or institutions based on associations such as religion, race, nationality, gender, age, disability, or sexual orientation.

**A cult is defined as: a group whose followers have been deceptively and manipulatively recruited and retained through undue influence such that followers’ personalities and behavior are altered. Leadership is all-powerful, ideology is totalistic, and the will of the individual is subordinate to the group. Sets itself outside of society.

Anybody out there care to comment on how Have Coffee Will Write meets any of those criteria?

I also Googled Cyber Patrol and found that others have serious questions about how the company selects websites to block. Now, I think, the company has an obligation to err on the side of caution since parents have a reasonable expectation that it is going to keep innappropriate material off their family’s computer screens. And, if a child needs access to a page that Cyber Patrol has blocked, it is an easy manner for a parent, once they’ve considered the child’s request, to unblock that particular page.

First I’m banned in M*y*a*n*m*a*r, now I’m nannied by Cyber Patrol. Dang, I never thought I’d be this famous.

Headspace-On my stereo: Fallen by Evanescence; In my backpack: The End Of Faith: Religion, Terror And The Future Of Reason by Sam Harris; On my nightstand: Autumn Bridge by Takashyi Matsuoka; On my computer: I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud by William Wordsworth; On my screen: Statement (*) directed by Norman Jewison, written by Ronald Harwood and Brian Moore.

Via my daily reading of Chris Muir’s Day By Day I discovered another conservative voice I’ve decided to add to my Top 10 Blog list. This one is written by nine women in Minnesota. Their blog is named M.A.W.B. Squad which stands for Minnesota Alliance of Women Bloggers. So meet: Sandy, Jo, Peg, Mama Ellen, Macaroni Penquin, Eloise, Margaret, St. Kate and Twice Blessed.

Taylor Eisenman interviewed Sandy at M.A.W.B. for a piece in the Minnesota Women’s Press on women bloggers.

Here’s what Eisenman had to say:

Minnesota Association [sic] of Women Bloggers (MAWB Squad) was started by two women last February because some members were having trouble keeping up with their daily blogs. “A lot of us are moms, and some of us work, and it is hard to keep your momentum and to get something up everyday if it is just you,” said Sandy, one of MAWB”s founders. “We just thought it was an opportunity to combine forces.”

The MAWB Squad plans on getting away for a weekend together in the near future. “With our busy lives we are not as able to hang out in the neighborhood as we used to and form communities. I really see it as another method to form communities and to have a voice,” Sandy said.

Sandy was gracious in her appraisal of the interview and article. Eloise had a blunter view:

…this article is utter horseshit. Sandy deserves far better. Gal bloggers deserve far better.

Ah, diversity. I’m enjoying reading M.A.W.B. Perhaps you will too.

Headspace-On my stereo: Classic Rock on Satellite Radio At Phoenix Coffee on Lee ; In my backpack: The End Of Faith: Religion, Terror And The Future Of Reason by Sam Harris; On my nightstand: Autumn Bridge by Takashyi Matsuoka; On my computer: I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud by William Wordsworth; On my screen: Statement (*) directed by Norman Jewison, written by Ronald Harwood and Brian Moore.

Turns out the Terri Schiavo Talking Points Memo (full text below) was real. Mike Allen of The Washington Post reports this morning in Counsel To GOP Senator Wrote Memo On Schiavo that Brian Darling, legal counsel to Senator Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) has owned up to authoring the memo. In a rare example of taking responsibility, Darling submitted his resignation to Sen. Martinez, who accepted it.

Hindrocket (why can’t these guys write under their real names?) over at Powerline is tap dancing as fast as he can this morning in Mystery Solved? to deflect attention away from Darling’s indiscretion. His principle points center around inconsistencies in an emerging story.

For example, he asks why news outlets:

took an anonymous memo by an unknown staffer, and misrepresented it as an official “GOP talking points memo” created by “Republican officials” or “party leaders” and distributed to “Republican senators.” This is only a slightly less egregious offense than if the memo had actually been written by the Democrats who fed it to the press and pounced on it for partisan advantage.

This is a perfect example of what really bugs me about the people on the wrong. Turn the story around, give authorship to an aide of say, Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), does anyone for a minute believe that full responsibility would be assigned to Sen. Kennedy? Of course not.

I dislike political shenanigans, regardless of the party responsible. I didn’t vote for President Bill Clinton in ’96 because I felt he’d failed to live up to his own campaign rhetoric. And more recently, I find the actions of Sandy Berger, Pres. Clinton’s National Security Adviser, reprehensible.

Harry Truman had it right, the buck does stop at the top. I served proudly for five years in our Navy. Naval captains are god on their ships. But with that extraordinary power comes extraordinary responsibility. When something bad happens, it is the captain who is ultimately responsible.

Hindrocket attempts to pass off Martinez’s (and other Republicans’) responsibilities by suggesting that the senator can hardly be referred to as a Republican official or Republican party leader since he has only served for three months. I think that is a little disingenuous. Before becoming the junior senator from Florida, Sen. Martinez was a member of President George W. Bush’s cabinet where he served for three years as the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. That, in my book, makes him a Republican leader.

Accepting Hindrocket’s position begs the question: Which was it? Was Sen. Martinez culpable, clueless or just out of the loop? None of these makes him look good. Can you say denyability?

Here is the full text of the Schiavo memo, compliments of ABC News:

S. 529, The Incapacitated Person’s Legal Protection Act

This legislation ensures that individuals like Terri Schiavo are guaranteed the same legal protections as convicted murderers like Ted Bundy.

[Update No. 1: Daily Kos has three follow-up pieces on the memo and Powerline’s reaction to it: Schiavo Memo II, Egg on his Face: Kurtz Burned by Powerline and Martinez’s office wrote Schiavo memo.]

[Update No. 2: Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings pounds a few more nails into Hindrocket at Powerline with I Guess Powerline Will Have To Find A New Scandal Now.

Headspace-On my stereo: The Best Of by Emerson, Lake & Palmer; In my backpack: The End Of Faith: Religion, Terror And The Future Of Reason by Sam Harris; On my nightstand: Autumn Bridge by Takashyi Matsuoka; On my computer: In the Hospital by George Garrett; On my screen: Statement (*) directed by Norman Jewison, written by Ronald Harwood and Brian Moore.

At the very first coffee house I visited on the Louisville: The Coffee House Tour last month, I encountered a bumper sticker on the back of the cash registers that read: Keep Louisville Weird. (See Gonzo Coffee…, 14 March.) I thought it was some counter culture coolness and vowed to get one for myself. I found out that the place to buy them was at EarX-tacy, a record shop on Bardstown Road. It wasn’t until I got home, however, that I learned the real meaning of the slogan.

Somebody with some brains in local development needs to email Leslie Stewart, project coordinator for Keep Louisville Weird, and pay close attention to what these folks are doing. Forget Big Boxes, think Big Connections.

Here’s a bit of what Ms. Stewart has to say:

Keep Louisville Weird is a grassroots public awareness campaign, recently and quietly begun by a small but growing coalition of independent Louisville business owners who are concerned with the spreading homogenization of our hometown.

We”re concerned that the proliferation of chain stores and restaurants in Louisville is not only driving the independent business owner out of business, but is also robbing the city of much of its unique charm.

And, of course, she keeps a blog: every day i write the book. Here’s a taste from this week:

Eighty seven local entrepreneurs turned out for the first ever gathering of the participating Keep Louisville Weird businesses this week, packing the upper level of the Bristol Bar & Grille in the Highlands. It was great to meet everyone, and to feel the energy and the sense of forward motion as we overwhelmingly decided to proceed with the formation of an independent business alliance. We also had some great ideas for the upcoming “Independents Week” promotion in July. Lots of work to do between now and then!

When was the last time Cleveland got 87 local entrepreneurs together in one room to preserve and grow what makes us weird?

Headspace-On my stereo: Unplugged by Bob Dylan; In my backpack: The End Of Faith: Religion, Terror And The Future Of Reason by Sam Harris; On my nightstand: Autumn Bridge by Takashyi Matsuoka; On my computer: In the Hospital by George Garrett; On my screen: Statement (*) directed by Norman Jewison, written by Ronald Harwood and Brian Moore.

For your consideration, two completely different videos: The Linda Show and Coming Out-Youth In Iran (click on Second Place). The first video is compliments of John Pike at Pike Speak; the second comes from Jeff Jarvis at Buzz Machine. I like the juxtaposition of these videos because they represent the wrong and the right way to powerfully use Internet video.

I find the first video offensive. Not for its caricatures, but because it distracts us from more important things. There is plenty of idiocy on both sides of most National questions, but labeling your opposition in that way removes any possibility of a solution. And, much more importantly, it isn’t the few idiots driving these issues; it is the people behind the curtains. If you want change, you have to keep your eye on the ball.

And Change is what the second video is all about. Using a simple documentary style, this video gives us the view we rarely get on broadcast or cable television. The Military-Industrial Complex would like us to think that Communism in the Soviet Union was brought to its knees by Peacemaker missiles and B-1 bombers. The truth is that it was Big Macs and Levi jeans. And the same thing is happening in the Middle East as this video indicates.

The Internet is flooded with video; and not all of it is pornography. Newspapers and magazines began their slow death spiral with the advent of television. How long will it be before the Internet does the same things to television?

Headspace-On my stereo: The English Patient (soundtrack) composed by Gabriel Yared and performed by Academy Of St. Martin In The Field; In my backpack: The End Of Faith: Religion, Terror And The Future Of Reason by Sam Harris; On my nightstand: Autumn Bridge by Takashyi Matsuoka; On my computer: In Second Grade Miss Lee I Promised Never To Forget You And I Never Did by Linda Pastan; On my screen: Statement (*) directed by Norman Jewison, written by Ronald Harwood and Brian Moore.

Well, I’ve sorted through George Nemeth’s NEO Blog list and pulled out all the female bloggers I could find. There were a few on the list that I haven’t included because their blog had gone dormant, been removed or outright abandoned. In assembling the list I discovered that I actually had seven, not six, women bloggers on my NEO Blogroll. The 7th is Adele Dimarco Kious who writes Sicilian Soul Food. My apologies to Adele for not noting her presence on my blogroll earlier.

Today I also found another female voice that I think is interesting: Tish at Love And Hope And Sex And Dreams. I particularly liked her post from 2 April on workers in the sex industry.

Please take a look at the list and tell me who you really like. If I’ve been a dolt and missed someone, let me know that as well and I’ll add her to the list. My goal is to find the 10 female NEO bloggers who make me want to read what they have to say every day.

[Update No. 1: Really Bad Cleveland Accent]
[Update No. 2: ART_GiRL]
[Update No. 3: Nightcrawler]

The Remedy
Sonadide
Erie Effusion
Auto Muse
Your Daily Art
Live In The Delirious Cool
Belle The Cat
Tina, Talking
Bittergirl
Bitter-Girl
Management Professor Notes
Foodgoat
Soup Fork
Angels And Frogs
Marguerite’s Blog
Technology In Teacher
Exmachina
Six-Layer Kate
Nova Mim
Mommies At Law
Star Loft
Beer And Clothing In Lakewood
Postscript
Miss Underpants’ Land O’ Crazy
Naked Treble
A Lover’s Quarrel With The World
Help Wanted: Inquire Within
Awareness 101
Somebody Pinch Me
Clevel-Land-It
Piquant
Survival Dance
Mozamblog
Super Barista
The Life Cycle Of A Fruit Fly