I decided to ask the question from the other angle: What would the population of the US be if the entire area were populated as densely as The Bronx, Manhattan, or Manila.

The area of the United States is 3,794,101 sq mi. At the density of The Bronx (33,000) the population of US would be 125 billion. The density of Manhattan is more than twice The Bronx, so at 71,000 the US population would go up to 270 billion. Manila is the the most densely populated city in the word. They pack 1,660,714 people into 14.88 sq mi at a density of 111,000. If the entire US were packed like that, the population would be 423 billion people. And if the entire planet were as dense as Manila? The land mass of Earth is 148,940,000 sq mi. That would be over 16 trillion people.

... if people see the government [providing health care] and they start thinking they can just stop reaching out to those in need, that's a mistaken perspective, and I think God will hold them accountable for leaving the loving to the government."

Just how much can the average person do, Christian or otherwise? Can they prescribe medications? Can they set a broken arm? Treat cancer? Perform surgery? Extensive education and training are required for people to provide this level of care. Even if all Christians were giving all they could, they could only provide a small fraction of the care required. Further, do Christians hold jealously to love? Must people suffer so that Christians can provide insufficient and untimely medical care? Holding your neighbor's hand while they die is an act of love, but how much greater is the love if you join together with all your other neighbors to pay a doctor to provide treatment.

We can view the sick receiving care paid by the government in several ways. We can view it through the eyes of a jealous love, wishing the government out of the way, the sick remaining sick, so that our help, however limited, is felt directly. We can view it through the eyes of someone disjoint from society, where the government is "them" and "they" take our money to provide care to people we don't know. We can view it through the eyes of someone engaged in society, where our tax dollars pay trained professionals providing the care a patient needs.

No doubt there are other ways to view government paid health care, but of these three, I choose the last. It is the one that provides the best care to the patient, and is thereby the one most expressive of genuine love. Here, love is not left to the government, but rather, government can be the means by which we, the people, love our neighbors.

"I was sick ... and you did not look after me." "Whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me." Matthew 25:31-46

Christians demonstrate how reticent they are to follow what their bible teaches when they so readily cast it aside. And they further demonstrate that they are, like so many religious people, projecting their own prejudices onto their sacred texts, imbuing their own fears and hatred with the authority of Divinity. While it is so very frustrating to see people debase Divinity, it is ever more saddening. (Why it saddens me is a very long tangent.)

I challenge Christians to demonstrate they aren't callously ignoring the inconvenient bulk of the bible by openly supporting public health care. Anything less and you prove your faith to be at best insincere, and at worst an outright lie. ]]> http://decasm.com/blog/nota/perl_boarding.html /nota Devon Smith 2008-08-05T18:47-05:00 http://decasm.com/blog/culture/hypocrisy_acres.html /culture Devon Smith 2008-04-11T02:59-05:00 Violent Acres' blog. It's well written, and funny, and until now, hasn't disappointed. I can't tell if she considers herself an exception from the "most athiests" group she derides in the post "Atheists are Snobs". I mean, from the context of that post it's clear she does, but the rest of her blog demonstrates that she's a snob.

"I, myself, have not been able to claim belief in a higher power for many, many years."

"[Athiests] come off sound[sic] like condescending pricks."

Go read the whole thing. A simple vocabulary shift and it's eerily appropriate in the current political climate.

I've never understood the presumption that any particular field of endeavor should have some sort of gender balance.

People - women and men - should be encouraged to pursue whatever career they want to pursue. It doesn't make sense to encourage women to pursue computing - no more sense than, say, detering men from pursuing it.

I take issue not with her analysis, but with the way she's framed the problem. Her frame seems to disregard the individual, sacrificing their interests to the alter of gender balance. I wonder if she assumes some moral, ethical, or other imperative for balance?

When people actually choose a career (most people just fall into a job they're reasonably good at), they'll use whatever discriminating factors are most important to them. Skill, pay, interest, risk - just to name a few. Without any evidence at hand, I'd guess that women and men tend to weight factors differently, which would lead to natural distribution differences.

Now, I should say that no one should be discouraged from pursuing a career because of what's between their legs. And wherever gender hostility exists, it should be eliminated - be it in an entire field, an office, or a single person. (Note: do not eliminate the person, just the hostility.)

The notion, however, that a field should somehow change itself to be more appealing to a particular gender is just bizarre.