So I was eating by myself at a restaurant the other day, and for some reason they were playing all these late ‘70s/early ‘80s songs, like “I Say A Little Prayer” by Dionne Warwick, and then “How Deep Is Your Love?” by the Bee Gees. The latter especially took me back to my early childhood. My dad used to own a blue AMC Concord and it had an 8-track tape player and I think he had tapes of Neil Sedaka, Kenny Rogers, and the Bee Gees.

This lead me to the notion of how impermanent magnetic tape is as a storage medium. All it would take to wipe it out is a moderate burst of electromagnetic activity, something that can be readily managed by solar flares, or an EMP weapon. And the more worrisome thing is that we still rely on electromagnetic storage—specifically, your hard drive.

Which led me to thinking about how I should backup my hard drive.

Which led me to thinking how quickly I might be able to get my Linux box with 8 hard drives up and running again.

Today, I had a discussion about how, in this country, we have allowed ourselves to be led by technology, and have failed to address the ethical quandries therein. I am referring specifically to medical technology. What were once thoroughly fatal diseases just one generation ago, are now survivable. It used to be that a heart attack was frequently an instant trip to the morgue, as was a stroke. All we could do was cross our fingers, give you a slug of morphine, and maybe an aspirin, and wish you luck. Now, people, for better or worse, are surviving seven, eight, nine heart attacks, are having multiple bypass grafts and stents, and still they don’t modify their diets or stop smoking, and, as the medical bills mount, with no relief in sight, sometimes with hospitals having to eat the cost, and as hospitals continue to go under, leaving the underserved with basically no health care, we have to ask ourselves, is it worth it to try to salvage those who are basically unsalvageable?

My thoughts then strayed to the NICU, the neonatal intensive care unit, where we manage to artificially sustain what used to be known as an aborted fetus. This is not without terrifying consequences. Many of these babies, weighing little more than a pound, suffer injury from oxygen-starvation, frequently ending up with severe brain injury, and sometimes intractable seizures, sometimes unable to eat without having a tube jammed into their bellies. And we can keep them alive for years, to the point where we transfer them from the pediatric service to the internal medicine service. There are children who continue to live by completely artificial means, where it is questionable whether they lead meaningful lives. And, seriously, I wonder if some of their lives are even as meaningful as my dog’s life, who at least can move around and exercise some volition. Do we really know how much these kids might be suffering?

And I stopped to think why the U.S. alone has failed to address the notion of rationing care and the concept of futility. Sure, there’s the old canard about how we’re a capitalistic society, and if you can pay, you should be able to get whatever you want, but clearly this is no longer the situation. It turns out that almost no one actually pays for their health care. How many of us could actually afford to pay what a CAT scan actually costs? Or even an ER visit? Hell, some of these miracle drugs we have are barely affordable (and many simply can’t.) Somehow we’ve found ourselves in this bizarre tangled weave, where the government has mandated that businesses provide health care insurance, when in fact it’s a misnomer to call it insurance. Getting ill is not a chance proposition, like your house catching fire or getting washed away in a flood. Getting ill is an inevitability and the only way you could possibly avoid it is if you died instantly instead.

And I stopped to think about the Puritanical origins of this country, that twisted form of so-called Christianity known as Calvinism. Hell, maybe it’s even a twisted form of Calvinism. There is this idea that your external appearances and circumstances are the end result of your virtuous or sinful acts. So if you were ugly or crippled, it must be because you deserved it. In this Puritanical world-view, nothing was left to chance, everything had a reason. (I suppose this presaged Deism.) And the reasons were reached by teleology.

So I kind of wonder if that’s not the real reason why the so-called religious are loathe to let people who cannot possibly lead any meaningful existence continue to exist. Because they have this kind of sick, self-righteousness where they imagine that you have to suffer and pay for your imagined sins. When clearly a one-pound baby couldn’t have possibly had any chance to commit a sin. When we know for a fact that many illnesses are caused by microscopic organisms and something that God has created as punishment.

Hell, this attitude of many Americans has been revealed by their reaction to AIDS, blaming it on homosexuality and sexual promiscuity, and by their reaction to other STDs, and their refusal to allow the use of protection for sexual intercourse.

Then, since it’s almost Christmas, I suppose it’s natural that my thoughts should stray to thinking about Jesus Christ. And for some reason, I started meditating on the commandments he was supposed to have given. Namely, (1) Love God (2) Love your neighbor. And I stopped to think about it. I think he actually left another one: Do not be afraid.

So I feel like the average American “Christian” is a big hypocrite, wishing ill-will on their fellow human beings, and mostly, by being afraid. The fact that they let terrorists affect them is a sign of their lack of faith in God. Didn’t he say “do not be afraid, I am with you”?