{"id":5425,"date":"2012-02-06T11:38:54","date_gmt":"2012-02-06T19:38:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=5425"},"modified":"2012-02-06T11:38:54","modified_gmt":"2012-02-06T19:38:54","slug":"friday-on-monday-religion-and-medicine-unintended-consequences-law-associates-cell-phones-and-trees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=5425","title":{"rendered":"Friday on Monday: Religion and Medicine, Unintended Consequences, Law Associates, Cell Phones, and Trees"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-4976\" title=\"userpic=freberg\" src=\"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/userpicfreberg.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"95\" height=\"95\" align=\"right\" hspace=\"10\" vspace=\"10\" \/>Friday I was working from home and didn&#8217;t have access to my accumulated links for a lunchtime post. So for today&#8217;s lunchtime post, I&#8217;d like to share some of the accumulation:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Religion and Medicine<\/strong>. Independent of last week&#8217;s Planned Parenthood\/Susan Koman issue, there&#8217;s been another interesting juxtaposition of religion and medicine. This one concerns the mandate of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/nationworld\/nation\/la-na-court-contraception-20120131,0,5324593.story\" target=\"_blank\">the new health care rules to cover contraception, and the fact that this creates conflicts for religious employers<\/a>. The Obama administration has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/news\/opinion\/editorials\/story\/2012-02-05\/Kathleen-Sebelius-contraception-exemption\/52975092\/1\" target=\"_blank\">carved out exemptions for religious employers who primarily employ people of the same faith<\/a>, but some feel <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/news\/opinion\/editorials\/story\/2012-02-05\/contraception-mandate-religious-freedom\/52975796\/1\" target=\"_blank\">those exemptions don&#8217;t go far enough<\/a>. My thought: I always wonder about religions who don&#8217;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&#8217;t be a concern if you have indoctrinated your followers properly, for they won&#8217;t use it and you won&#8217;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.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Unintended Consequences<\/strong>. Speaking about consequences of government actions&#8230; 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&#8217;t like that, and so <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2012\/02\/01\/travel\/spirit-fee\/index.html?hpt=hp_bn7\" target=\"_blank\">they have added a $2 &#8220;unintended consequence&#8221; fee to the price of their tickets<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>The Economy is Improving, But Not for All<\/strong>. We&#8217;re starting to see signs that the economy is slowly recovering (oh, ye of little faith). But it&#8217;s not improving for all. In particular, <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424052970203363504577186913589594038.html?google_editors_picks=true\" target=\"_blank\">law firms are still putting the squeeze on law associates<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Little Annoyances<\/strong>. Cell phones. Can&#8217;t live with them, can&#8217;t shoot them. In our first two theatre outings of 2012, we had someone&#8217;s cell phone go off during the show. That didn&#8217;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: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/health\/archive\/2012\/01\/cell-phones-are-more-annoying-than-they-are-dangerous\/252165\/?google_editors_picks=true\" target=\"_blank\">Cell phones aren&#8217;t dangerous&#8230; but they are annoying<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Things You Need to Know:<\/strong> From Mental Floss: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mentalfloss.com\/blogs\/archives\/115470\" target=\"_blank\">Six of the oldest trees in the world<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Music: <\/strong><em>The Innocent Age<\/em> (Dan Fogelberg): Times Like These<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Friday I was working from home and didn&#8217;t have access to my accumulated links for a lunchtime post. So for today&#8217;s lunchtime post, I&#8217;d like to share some of the accumulation: Religion and Medicine. Independent of last week&#8217;s Planned Parenthood\/Susan Koman issue, there&#8217;s been another interesting juxtaposition of religion and medicine. This one concerns the <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=5425\">Read More &#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-chum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5425"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5426,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5425\/revisions\/5426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}