Jonathan's blog

According to a study reported in the medical journal The Lancet and summarized in an article on NewScientist.com, approximately 10 million female fetuses may have been selectively aborted following ultrasound results in India during the past twenty years:

Their study of 1.1 million households across India reveals that in 1997, far fewer girls were born to couples if their preceding child or children were also female. "There was about a 30% gap in second females following the birth of any earlier females," Jha told New Scientist. When the firstborn child was a daughter, the sex ratio for second children among the 134,000 births in 1997 was just 759 girls for every 1000 boys. For a third child, just 719 girls were born per 1000 boys, if both the older children were girls. However, if the eldest children were boys, the sex ratios for the second and third child were about 50-50. Based "on conservative assumptions" the gap in births equates to about 0.5 million missing female births a year, says the team. Assuming the practice has been common in the two decades since ultrasound became widely available, this adds up to 10 million missing girls... ...in India's patriarchal society, daughters are regarded as a "liability", as she will belong to the family of her future husband...A surprising finding was that the disparity was about twice as large in educated mothers, those with at least an Indian grade 10 education, than in illiterate women. "Most things in health are worse among the poor,"...the preference for boys is likely to have "profound long-term consequences". In China, the cultural preference for boys and restrictions on family size are already having effects. Some reports suggest there are 40 million bachelors unable to find brides.

From an article in The Detroit News: Detroit was America's fattest city in 2004 and third fattest in 2005, but now it's dropped all the way down to fifteenth. Chicago is now the fattest. Baltimore is the fittest.

Top 25 Fattest Cities
(2005 rankings are in parenthesis)
1. Chicago (5)
2. Las Vegas (9)
3. Los Angeles (21*)
4. Dallas (6)
5. Houston (1)
6. Memphis, Tenn. (4)
7. Long Beach, Calif. (20)
8. El Paso, Texas (11)
9. Kansas City, Mo. (18)
10. Mesa, Ariz. (15)
11. Indianapolis (13)
12. San Antonio (10)
13. Fort Worth, Texas (14)
14. Miami (19)
15. Detroit (3)
16. Columbus, Ohio (16)
17. Oklahoma City (21)
18. Cleveland (24*)
19. Wichita, Kan. (17)
20. Charlotte, N.C. (24)
21. San Diego (9*)
22. Fresno, Calif. (14*)
23. Philadelphia (2)
24. San Jose, Calif. (17*)
25. New York (8)

From an article titled "5 Reasons Torture is always Wrong" by David P. Gushee in Christianity Today:

1. Torture violates the dignity of the human being.
2. Torture mistreats the vulnerable and violates the demands of justice.
3. Authorizing torture trusts government too much.
4. Torture dehumanizes the torturer.
5. Torture erodes the character of the nation that tortures.

It is past time for evangelical Christians to remind our government and our society of perennial moral values, which also happen to be international and domestic laws. As Christians, we care about moral values, and we vote on the basis of such values. We care deeply about human-rights violations around the world. Now it is time to raise our voice and say an unequivocal no to torture, a practice that has no place in our society and violates our most cherished moral convictions.

A couple weeks back we watched a three-part documentary shown on Frontline on PBS. It was called "Country Boys." It's available to watch online here. We really enjoyed it. Filmed over three years (1999-2002), it follows the stories of Chris and Cody as they struggle to make it through the high school years in rural eastern Kentucky. From the PBS web site:

Cody Perkins is an orphan. His mother's postpartum suicide left the infant boy in the care of his father, who, 12 years later, killed his seventh wife before turning the gun on himself. Bounced around among relatives he barely knew, Cody eventually chose to live with his former step-grandmother, Liz McGuire, who took the troubled boy into her home. "My daughter married Cody's father. She was his fourth wife [and] I fell in love with Cody," Liz recalls. "When Cody's father passed away, he went to live with his aunt. They couldn't get along, and Cody said, 'I want to move in with Liz.' So he's been with me [ever since]." Offering unconditional love and strict maternal guidance, Liz helps transform Cody from an angry, depressed child into a compassionate young adult. Chris Johnson lives in a rundown trailer in a Kentucky "holler" with his mother, Sheila, a high school dropout who cleans hotel rooms for a living, and his father, Randall, an alcoholic with terminal cirrhosis of the liver. With his mother often absent and his father lost in an alcoholic haze, Chris finds himself thrust into the role of both mother and father -- cooking, cleaning, and taking care of his younger siblings. He also supports the family financially with the monthly Social Security disability check he receives for his learning disorders.

Check out the video of President Bush when he's asked if he's seen Brokeback Mountain. It's kinda funny.