Would you like to be cloned? Make a compelling case.

Is suicide an act of philosophical introspection? A stretching of the boundaries of self-awareness perhaps? What do you think?*

*Please avoid cliches, there is so little time in life as it is, no need to waste it on stuff that everyone repeats.

I’ve been feeling awkwardly out of place lately in almost everything I do. Am I the only person out there with a defective compass? Your answers might provide a thread of guidance.

Maybe because this is a blogger, female, Arab, and young that I feel sorry that she has passed away. Maybe it’s because she represents parts of me that the news is so shocking even though I never read what she wrote before today. But all of this has brought this question to my mind: What do you think should happen to the blog when the blogger passes away? How will the readers know their daily thought supplier has died? Any ideas?

I don’t believe in violence as a solution to any problem. For the most part, I don’t believe much can be done to solve 99% of the problems I face. When I do think of a solution, it is often communication. This is why I am always surprised when I think of a solution to a problem along the lines of “I will send a group of guys to break this person’s face.”

What surprises me the most is that I think of myself as an intelligent person who does not adhere to the “tribal violence” mentality that I see prevalent in my society. If so, I ask myself, why do I even consider beating a person up as a means to teach them a lesson or perhaps get them off my case? For example, if my online stalker is put in the hospital after having his jaw broken at my command, would that really keep him from stalking me? I know it would make me feel better. Is that wrong?

I guess any such action would solve the problem to a degree, but not entirely. I have never resorted to violence to the extent I mentioned above, but I have considered it seriously as a solution to a number of problems. Does that make me a violent person or simply a person at loss for a solution?

What do you think?

I say good for Jordan. We can’t always boast about our medical expertise and about the quality of services we provide to Jordanians and Arabs alike, although most of this talk is valid only for private or military hospitals. We have to acknowledge our mistakes and when we do that, we will have credibility and we will be responsible for improving this important sector.

When my late aunt was rushed to a public hospital in Zarqa, she was still alive. Her good neighbor who was with her told me that she was still alive but the medics/nurses at the hospital were so slow in attending to her, and she eventually passed away. Thinking that she could have still been with us today had they reacted quicker is painful, to say the least.

An interesting bit in the article I linked to says that in Jordan we do NOT have a clear “medical responsibility” law, which means that the errors made since the dawn of medical practice in Jordan have gone mostly unaccounted for, the patients or their families have not been compensated, and no legal action was taken against the doctors or nurses.

وأوضح الحديدي أن قانون المسؤولية الطبية موجود على السطح ويحتاج للتوافق بين نقابة الأطباء ووزارة الصحة والمستشفيات الخاصة والجهات التي تمثل المريض ومنظمات المجتمع المدني لوضع قانون يضمن المساءلة الطبية للطبيب وضمان حقوق المريض بصورة عادلة وغير جائرة لأي طرف منهم.
وبين الحديدي أن غياب هذا القانون وعدم البت فيه منذ عام 2003 سيخلق فوضى في الاتجاهين أي اتجاه تزايد الأخطاء الطبية من جهة وتغول التعويضات في حال عدم إيجاد سقف وحد لها من جهة ثانيةن لتكون في حدود المنطق والمعقول وهذا سيحدث في حال غياب التشريع الواضح للأخطاء الطبية

Another interesting bit in the article is where it says that it is upon the patient to prove a medical error existed in their treatment. Very well, but in the case I cited above, it took the man NINE years to prove that a hernia surgery left his son basically incompetent. How is it possible that a case would take that long when the damage is so severe and so obvious? Also, there were many many cases where doctors left towels or scissors inside patients’ guts. How would the patient know unless they get sick and get opened up again?

Additionally, most patients who resort to public hospitals probably cannot afford to hire lawyers or to get legal assistance to prove that there have been medical complications beyond the scope of their treatment. I suppose that when they feel that they have been treated unjustly, some of them, or their families, resort to violence and beat up the doctors or nurses. Then we make a big fuss about it.

I ask because my information on the subject is minimal. Supposing two atheist people want to get married, how do they go about doing it in a country where your birth religion is inscribed in every document, identification material, and any other formal piece of paper you may acquire during your life?

Obviously, Jordanian law does not allow for the choice “Religion: none,” so if that is the case, does it stretch to allow for a form of legal binding between two people who have no religion?

LONDON (Reuters) – A British bus company has apologized to a girl who is led around on a leash by her boyfriend and describes herself as a human pet after one of its drivers threw her off a bus.

Tasha Maltby, 19, told British newspapers she was the “pet” of her 25-year-old fiance Dani Graves.

Pictures showed her dressed in black Gothic-style clothing with silver buckles on a silver chain — which the driver of a bus from the firm Arriva took exception to.

She told the Daily Mail newspaper Wednesday she was thrown off and told: “We don’t let freaks and dogs like you on.”

Now that in certain parts of the world there are laws protecting the rights of LGTB communities, and more are struggling to be added to the list (think zoophiles, perhaps even people who are into BDSM), where should the law draw the line?

Who gets to decide what is acceptable and what is not? Obviously, law-making has many variables; lobbying, sentiments of people at the time, etc. What was once taboo is now legal because of this, and viceversa. Perhaps by this logic we can say that right and wrong are also variables. They change.

So where do you think the law should draw the line? Should people on leashes be allowed on buses? Should people-animal lovers be allowed to dine in the same restaurants as the rest of the normal “us”? Gay people are already allowed most of the freedoms we enjoy, so why not these other communities?

What do you think?

On this subject, I was just reading an article detailing the side-effects for the increasing dependability on bottled water. These range from environmental hazards, to consumerism, to ethics. Here they are in a nutshell:

1- First, the manufacturing of plastic bottles, which are often made from nonrecycled virgin material, requires vast quantities of petroleum, and only 12 percent of this material is recovered for recycling.

2- Next, the distribution of bottled water, often by container ship from the other side of the planet (Fiji, Evian, San Pellegrino), is fuel intensive and results in greenhouse gas and sulfur dioxide emissions.

3- When you add the cost of packaging and marketing to transportation, not to mention the water makers’ huge profits, you are paying two to five times more for a bottle of water than you do for the equivalent amount of gasoline.

4- Americans collectively spend five times more on bottled water each year than it would cost to eradicate the 1.8 million deaths of children due to waterborne illness each year.

If you want to read thess reasons in detail, click here to go to Pablo Päster’s article in Salon about bottled water.

Now I want to know what you think about this. Do you think people should depend on tap water and abandon bottled water completely to save the environment and poor thirsty people in Africa? What say you?

I’ll share my mind but first, what do you think?