7 Quick Takes: The Left Behind Edition

 

Thanks to Jennifer Fulwiler, a fellow Texan, for hosting

7 Quick Takes Friday 

over at Conversion Diary.com

1 - Since I wasn't able to get to a computer nearly all day due to baking at my friend's house, I thought I'd be a smarty pants and write my first draft on a piece of paper. I even enlisted some feedback on the topics. Everything! I had a draft. I'd collaborated. It was going to be great. I managed to make it home without the list, but you'd probably guessed that already. I mean, you've read this blog before.

2 - Sometimes I forget that it isn't normal to have children with their parents during the day, so I took the brood of wee Martins shopping this morning. I got a lot of looks (no, they were perfectly fine until someone praised them--see #4) and one woman actually said, "Some of these children look like they belong in school." I blinked at her blankly for a moment and began lamely explaining myself when something enthusiastic took over. I gushed, "Oh, we're HOMEschoolers! We worked really hard to finish our work for the week yesterday so we could spend today baking!!!" I gestured dramatically to the cart full of butter-flavored lard, extracts, and food coloring. She looked perplexed, so I finished off with, "Isn't that the coolest thing you've ever heard of? We HOMEschool." Now, if only I could evangelize like that for NFP.

3 -  Okay, wait. Now I'm enjoying that NFP evangelization idea. Walking through the store with the Martin Five, and someone saying, "Are all those yours? Don't you know what causes that?" I could gush, "Oh we're CATHolic! We charted really hard to get them all spaced close together so we could spend our children's inheritance on disposable diapers and sippy cups!!!" When they look perplexed by my enthusiasm, I could add, "We LIKE children. We really LIKE them!" Then I might nod at them vigorously while contemplating how to work the words mucus and fecundity into the conversation.

Someone's in a fertile phase!

4 - Now that everyone has run screaming from their computers (I promise I won't say mucus again) it's probably a little late to make this plea, but here goes. Please don't ever tell me I have well behaved children. At least not while I'm with them and in public. I will start hyperventilating and breaking out into a sweat. You see, the words, "You have such sweet little children!" sets the timer ticking on the tantrum bomb. This nice-seeming little old man said that to us today and two of my children exploded moments later. It wasn't pretty. I'm working hard to forgive him. He meant no harm.

5 - Speaking of enthusiasm, while googling the picture above, I discovered to my horror that there are websites with titles such as "How-to-stay-enthusiastic-all-the-time!" Yes, the dashes seem to be part of the pleasure. Maybe it's to remind you that you must say it all in one breathy squeal.

6 - Mucus. Yes, I said it. I said it again.

7 - Is there anybody left reading this? Anyone? C'mon now, #7 is about chaaaarrrrtiiing!

A Fine Example of Oddball Thinking

I saw this headline from Yahoo "Birth control could help combat climate change." (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090918/ap_on_he_me/eu_med_condoms_climate_change)
The logic of the article was, basically, reduce the number of people in third world countries through the use of condoms and other devices and we could help save the world.

Let me just sit quietly with the idea of limiting the one resource the third world actually has--the available and as of yet untrained and untapped human resource. I could get lost daydreaming about investments in information technology and India-style customer service centers cropping up in places like Uganda and Belize, but no. This article would rather see less people instead of actually helping people.

Putting that idea aside and taking the article at face value, the logic behind it seems plausible until you factor in actual carbon usage. We in the "first world" are the main carbon emitters. Here's a beautiful example of our emissions by country. The US is looking chubby here.





In fact, when checking the accuracy of this map on Wikipedia, I found that the majority of nations considered to be third world were actually less than 1 percent of world carbon emissions per country. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions)

What is going on here? Could it be that the overall goal is to reduce the world population? Yeah, that's pretty much the gist here. But why start in the third world? If you buy into this theory, why not start in the US?

Is it because we here in the west would never stand for the idea of mandated reproduction laws? The third world has much less of a voice. We'll just trim them down to size first, work the kinks out of the system, and then try to push through the agenda here in the West--er, let me check that map again--the North.

But since I'm working on illogic, how illogical is it for environmentalists, of all people, to advocate that countries with limited GNPs should invest in artificial contraception that not only produces waste in the manufacturing process but also as a discarded product? Our waters are full of hormones excreted into the watershed by women on various forms of the pill (http://www.ncregister.com/site/article/3151 and http://www.nywea.org/clearwaters/08-3-fall/05-EstrogenInWastewater.pdf) Do we really need to add this environmental hazard to the already shaky infrastructure of third world countries? Discarded condoms and excreted hormones are contaminants that are unnecessary as there is a nonpolluting alternative in the form of Natural Family Planning (NFP).

NFP only takes training and a bit of discipline to use effectively. In a quick, simplistic summary, there is a monitoring and cross checking of female fertility signs and a monthly abstinence period of several days per month when those signs are present. Its effectiveness rate is right up there with the more pollution laden condoms and only slightly less effective than chemical alternatives, and it has the added benefit of being more cost effective to implement. (By cost effective, I mean it is free).

Here's a few links to back me up in case you are too lazy to Google:

http://www.ccli.org/nfp/basics/effectiveness-p01.php
and a cross check from a secular source
http://familydoctor.org/online/famdocen/home/women/contraceptive/126.html

The effective use of NFP both as a means to avoid pregnancy and to achieve pregnancy presupposes someone who is willing to be disciplined in checking and cross checking fertility signs and to engage in sexual activity during opportune times. In the West (and North), we have been trained to think that sex is an on-demand sport. The idea of actually waiting a few days seems foreign and a bit ridiculous to us.

But that is just another example of our oddball thinking.