Friday I was working from home and didn’t have access to my accumulated links for a lunchtime post. So for today’s lunchtime post, I’d like to share some of the accumulation:
- Religion and Medicine. Independent of last week’s Planned Parenthood/Susan Koman issue, there’s been another interesting juxtaposition of religion and medicine. This one concerns the mandate of the new health care rules to cover contraception, and the fact that this creates conflicts for religious employers. The Obama administration has carved out exemptions for religious employers who primarily employ people of the same faith, but some feel those exemptions don’t go far enough. My thought: I always wonder about religions who don’t have faith that their adherents will follow their teachings, and want to enforce it in some way. If you are a Catholic employer, the mandate shouldn’t be a concern if you have indoctrinated your followers properly, for they won’t use it and you won’t be paying for it. If you are worried about your non-Catholic employee using it and your paying for it, (a) how would you know, and (b) why are you enforcing your religion on them. Then again, I do tend to be sensitive about religious groups trying to dictate their religions on me.
- Unintended Consequences. Speaking about consequences of government actions… the government recently required that airlines disclose all taxes and fees added to the price of a ticket so consumers could actually compare real prices. Spirit airlines doesn’t like that, and so they have added a $2 “unintended consequence” fee to the price of their tickets.
- The Economy is Improving, But Not for All. We’re starting to see signs that the economy is slowly recovering (oh, ye of little faith). But it’s not improving for all. In particular, law firms are still putting the squeeze on law associates.
- Little Annoyances. Cell phones. Can’t live with them, can’t shoot them. In our first two theatre outings of 2012, we had someone’s cell phone go off during the show. That didn’t happen yesterday, but a major plot aspect was one character whose cell phone kept ringing, and he kept answering it. Well, science has done their research and guess what: Cell phones aren’t dangerous… but they are annoying.
- Things You Need to Know: From Mental Floss: Six of the oldest trees in the world.
Music: The Innocent Age (Dan Fogelberg): Times Like These
