Sussing out SIDS. Fact of life: parents worry about everything. Especially when you're a first-time mom, especially when you read What to Expect When You're Expecting, especially if you have any medical background. Or maybe just when you're neurotic, like me. Whatever your reason, I think every parent has experienced some anxiety over SIDS, and I know (I KNOW) you have all breathed a sigh of relief when your child passes those ages marking reduced likelihood of SIDS happening.
The problem - until now! See article! Yay! - is that SIDS is utterly mysterious. We know that putting babies to sleep on their backs has ostensibly yielded a lower incidence of SIDS. We also know that cooler temps and no loose bedding/stuffed animals are recommended.
Now there is science to help understand at least one of the mechanisms and/or hallmarks of SIDS. DO YOU REALIZE HOW HUUUUGE THIS IS?? We can quantifiably demonstrate a difference between babies who suffered from SIDS and those who didn't. What was once ambiguous and full of so much intangible ether has all of a sudden been transformed into concrete facts, a burgeoning understanding of something, ANYthing that goes wrong in SIDS.
In case you don't get my level of excitement over this from my writing, let me add: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I don't have personal experience with SIDS. I just am thrilled at the insights and power of modern science. I am hugely interested in how the body works - and how it doesn't work, as the case may be - and the fact that science is elucidating details about a previously mysterious, deadly disease is cause for celebration.
This gives me much hope.
Things I Hate in the News:
Or: Why I Am Never Living in France. Mainstream media articles re: this subject (shockingly few and far between) all seem to frame it in the context that France has; namely, that it is a regression of social mores and a throwback to uncivilized, barbaric times to have a society in which women choose to cover themselves. (Divulgence: That is my rather slanted summation.)
Excuse me. Let me try that again. France (and, yes, I am generalizing this to the whole country, since it is their parliament, their representative governing body, pushing forward on this) thinks that any sort of excessive covering of one's body - here, particularly, the face - MUST mean that a woman is being subjugated and made inferior, and THEY WILL NOT STAND FOR IT! (Heavy on the sardonicism there.)
Does anyone else not see the complete and total backwardness of that sentiment? While the law being contemplated alludes to "any veils that cover the face," it is widely understood - and supported by real-life experience, because what other population or ethnic/religious garb is there to which this ban applies - that this is a ban on the burqa/nikab. (Examples: here and here.)
Facts: While there may be a very small minority of women who wear a burqa/nikab because of their husband's wish (and why that shouldn't be a problem is a whole 'nother post), a HUGE majority of Muslim women take this step ON THEIR OWN. It seems France, however, refuses to consider that possibility, and, in so doing, they are contemplating DENYING women the right to choose to cover or not, to have a religious or personal identity, to exercise all it means to live in a "socially advanced, liberal" country - oh, wait, I'm sorry, I forgot we were talking about France here.
Sarkozy says it's an issue of women's freedom and dignity. If he had half a brain he would be able to see that, were that actually the case (as opposed to the religious persecution that seems more and more common in Europe against Muslims), a BAN would DENY women's FREEDOM to CHOOSE DIGNITY - because that is what covering represents to a Muslim woman.
GAH, I could go on. You get the idea. This = me = NOT HAPPY. I do NOT love this.
And because this needs MORE things in CAPITAL LETTERS FOR EMPHASIS: WELCOME TO THE DARK AGES. Sarkozy + French Parliament's Burqa Ban Commission = BIG FAT NEGATORY.
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