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tsukikageSome Orneryboy comics:
You never listen to me! (warning: contains sexual content; not work safe)
Don't yell in front of the baby!
WoW can sometimes get in the way of... Things...
Ands some news articles:
A Muslim barbie: Fulla.
She's the must-have toy this festive season, flying off the shelves, but the season in question is January's Eid al-Adha, not Christmas, and Santa Claus means nothing to her.
Two years after she came on the market, Fulla the Muslim doll is now thought to be the best-selling girls' toy in the Arab world, displacing her Western rival, Barbie, in stores across her native Levant.
With thick black hair and large dark eyes, Fulla is the physical antithesis of Mattel's blonde-haired, empty-eyed icon of Western consumerism.
Compared with Barbie's pneumatic curves and lanky legs, Fulla's assets are modest and never officially on display. Although she is marketed with a Barbie-like range of funky clothes, furniture, jewellery and grooming equipment, to avoid offending Muslim modesty she has no range of swimwear.
And when she steps outdoors, she hides beneath a white hijab scarf and modest ankle-length coat, or an all-enveloping black abaya cloak.
Like the little girls who play with her, Fulla must learn to lead a double life.
The rise of Fulla — skilfully marketed by its Syrian creators, New Boy Toys — has aroused mixed feelings across the Middle East. With East-West relations the way they are, many Arab parents are happy to see a local girl take on and defeat the might of Western, corn-fed myth-making.
But some worry that the likes of Barbie — with her independent lifestyle and wide range of jobs — are giving way to a new role model who hides her hair and figure and who — judging from the slick ads on Arabic satellite TV — has little to do but shop, hang out with her friends Yasmeen (blonde, suspiciously) and Nadia (coppery red) or pray on her optional prayer mat.
As for romantic prospects, word is that Barbie may soon ditch her present toy boy, Australian surfie Blaine, and reunite with mega-bore Ken Carson, whom she notoriously split with 18 months ago after 40 commitment-less years.
Fulla, on the other hand, has no male friends, "though she might have angry brothers", as one joke has it.
Fulla's role in shaping expectations is undoubtedly a selling point for some conservative Muslim parents.
"Fulla is one of us but Barbie is still a stranger," says Mohammed al-Sabbagh, a manager at Space Toon, Damascus' leading toy store.
"Fulla is my sister, my wife, my mother. She comes from the same culture.
"Barbie has a boyfriend and a bikini and so on, which is not our style in the Middle East."
Which is not to say that Fulla is being imposed on little Arab girls solely by parental fiat. New Boy's Western-style aspirational TV advertising has created a profitable buzz among little girls across the region who — like their counterparts in the West — compete to see
who can be first in the playground with the latest spin-off product.
For the vast majority, questions of religion and modesty play no conscious role in their choice of toy. Yasmin Bakr, 7, who comes from a liberal, non-hijab-wearing family in the Palestinian town of Ramallah, has both Barbie and Fulla
dolls. But faced with a hypothetical tug-of-love, she would hold onto her Fulla "because she's nice. She looks nice, everything. I like her face so much."
The Space Toon store in Damascus, Fulla's home town, gives a whole section over to its local girl made good. The dolls are packaged either as Fulla "with her outdoor fashion" — hijab and coat combination, or full black chador — or as "indoor Fulla" in trendy and often tight-fitting clothes that Barbie might be happy to borrow. Both dolls are, in fact, of very similar size and construction, and some are even manufactured by the same sub-contractor in China.
Apart from the dolls and their clothes, furniture and accessories, you can also buy Fulla craft kits, girls' clothes, friendship bracelets, badminton and tennis rackets, skipping ropes, frisbees, hula hoops, prayer mats, bubblegum, scooters, flippers and snorkels.
So successful is the Fulla range, selling more than 1.3 million dolls at an average of about $A20 — a lot for a toy in this troubled region — that it has already spawned a Chinese knock-off, Fulah.
Ayman Barakat, manager of Toys For All in the East Jerusalem suburb of Beit Hanina, delves deep behind a display of cheaper knock-off Fulah dolls to produce a genuine "indoor Fulla" — price 100 shekels ($A29), compared with 69 shekels for a knock-off Fulah sold with home clothes, chador and a set of accessories.
Despite its higher price the original Fulla is still more popular, he says, but hard to keep in stock. Fulla's connection with Syria — still at war with Israel — prevents formal distribution in Israeli-controlled areas such as East Jerusalem.
"You place an order and it can take two months for them to come across from Jordan. In this place everything is politics," he says.
Across the city, the three toy stores in West Jerusalem's Malcha Mall do not sell Fulla dolls.
Another article on Fulla, and Islam-based commercialism in general.
Move over, Barbie
By Souheila Al-Jadda
This holiday season, as girls in the West find neatly wrapped Barbie dolls under their Christmas trees, Arab girls in the Middle East will be gifted Fulla dolls for the Islamic Eid al-Adha holiday in early January. Children are usually given new clothes, money and toys during this four-day celebration, which marks the end to the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.
Barbie's newest competition, Fulla, is named after a sweet smelling flower and is the hottest selling doll to hit the Mideast markets.
Fulla, with dark eyes and long brown hair, looks a lot like Barbie, but she is very different. For one thing, Fulla's breasts are modestly smaller. The major detail, though — she's Muslim, wearing the Islamic hijab,or head scarf, with a long flowing gown, or abaya. Fulla even comes with her own prayer rug.
In a world facing greater economic globalization, Fulla represents a growing trend toward the commercializing of Islam.
The creators of Fulla, NewBoy Design Studio in Damascus, Syria, say the doll represents Arab and Islamic values such as modesty, respect and piety.
Islamic symbol
Indeed, Fulla symbolizes the ideal Muslim woman in a conservative Middle East. Arab children are now choosing Fulla over Barbie. More than 1.3 million dolls, at $16 each, have been sold since the toy hit the shelves in November 2003.
With a global market of more than 1.25 billion Muslims, entrepreneurs and corporations, in the East and the West, have realized that huge financial gains can be made by selling Islamic values.
In France, a fast-food restaurant opened in Paris that serves only halal, or Islamically butchered meat. All its business practices conform to Islamic law. The workers at the restaurant are all Muslim, and female employees even wear the head scarves despite French laws that prevent women from wearing them in some public institutions.
The Muslim customers seem to like having their meals catered to their religious practices.
"Before opening this restaurant, we did not have much choice," one diner told Abu Dhabi TV. "We used to go to McDonald's and order only fish sandwiches. Thank God this restaurant is now open."
The Dutch brewing company Heineken has released a non-alcoholic malt drink, Fayrouz, which means turquoise. By coincidence, one of the most popular modern Lebanese singers in the Arab world is named Fayrouz.
The Korean telecommunications company LG Electronics sells cellphones that point the faithful toward Mecca, Islam's holiest site, for their five daily prayers.
Even in the USA, companies are beginning to target American Muslims, whose population is estimated to be 4.6 million. In 2003, the greeting card giant Hallmark added Islamic holiday cards to its list of products for the Ramadan and Eid holidays.
But how far is too far when it comes to selling religion cheap? Does all this commercial activity marketing Islamic products reduce the religion to mere profit margins? And what do Muslim scholars think about this phenomenon?
Free market
Suhaib William Webb, an American-Muslim convert, an imam and Islamic law student at Egypt's Al-Azhar University, says, "Our religion does not forbid us from engaging in a free market economy."
There is nothing wrong with marketing toward Muslims, Webb says, but companies should be making positive contributions to society. "If you're going to make money from us, at least put some profits back in the community," he says, "whether in Muslim or non-Muslim communities."
Islam calls for social responsibility, allowing the faithful to purchase anything from Islamic and non-Islamic sources, as long as companies and products do not harm people, for example, by producing items in sweat shops or by child laborers.
Webb warns against buying into a system that violates the three main principles of Islamic law, which call for protecting life, honor and property. As he puts it, "We should always look at the free market system through an ethical lens."
When I was growing up in Ohio, I was a Barbie girl in a Barbie world, regardless of ethics. But today, as a grown woman who thinks about moral values juxtapositioned with economic globalization, I am comfortable knowing that should I have a daughter, she will have the choice to be a Fulla girl in a very different world.
COMMERCIAL APPEAL
Companies or products that market to Muslims:
Mecca-Cola: As an alternative to cola products, Mecca-Cola, based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, directs part of its profits to needy people. Mecca, Saudi Arabia, is the destination for Muslims' annual pilgrimage.
Ilkone i800 cell phone: Distributed by the Dubai-based Samcom, ilkone is Arabic for "universe." The phone provides the direction for prayer, the call to prayer, an Islamic calendar and the text of the Quran.
Hallmark: This company based in Kansas City, Mo., in 2003 introduced greeting cards for Ramadan and Eid holidays.
Lariba: A California finance house providing loans and banking and financial products conforming to Islamic law, which prohibits dealing in interest. Lariba also means "no interest" and is an acronym for "Los Angeles Reliable Investment Bankers Associates."
Al Safa Halal: A company based in Ontario, Canada, founded by an Orthodox Jew offers Muslims halal, or Islamically butchered meats, and food products that conform to Islamic dietary codes.
Dow Jones Islamic Fund (symbol: IMANX): A Chicago fund that caters to Muslim customers who want to have not only a financially rewarding investment but also one compatible with Islamic law. Since June 2000, the fund has invested only in companies compliant with shariah (which means Islamic law).
Souheila Al-Jadda is a journalist and associate producer of a Peabody award-winning program, Mosaic: World News from the Middle East, on Link TV. She also is a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.
Washington Woman Suffocates Under House Clutter
Wash. Woman Suffocates Under House Clutter
Police Chief: Clothes, Debris Piled 6 Feet High
UPDATED: 9:37 am PST January 9, 2006
SHELTON, Wash. -- A Washington state woman who was reported missing was later found dead suffocated under a pile of debris in her home, police said.
Officers found the body of Marie Rose, 62, buried under clothes Thursday, reported KIRO-TV in Seattle.
Her husband reported her missing after he couldn't find her early Thursday morning.
Officers found clothing, dishes and boxes crammed from floor to ceiling in every room of the couple's house.
"In some areas, clothes and debris were piled 6 feet high," said Police Chief Terry Davenport of the Shelton Police Department. "Officers were having to climb over the top on their hands and knees. In some areas, their heads were touching the ceiling while they were standing on top of piles of debris."
After 10 hours of searching, officers discovered the woman's body. Investigators Friday said she was smothered under the clutter.
The woman's husband told KIRO-TV that she had health problems and may have been looking for the phone when she died.
Fire and city code inspectors released the home back to the family after inspecting it.
Despite it's title, an article on where to focus the welfare money we have, particularly with respect to life support.
Do the Poor Deserve Life Support?
A woman who couldn't pay her bills is unplugged from her ventilator and dies. Is this wrong?
By Steven E. Landsburg
Posted Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2006, at 6:30 AM ET
Tirhas Habtegiris, a 27-year-old terminal cancer patient at Baylor Regional Medical Center in Plano, Texas, was removed from her ventilator last month because she couldn't pay her medical bills. The hospital gave Ms. Habtegiris' family 10 days' notice, and then, with the bills still unpaid, withdrew her life support on the 11th day. It took Ms. Habtegiris about 15 minutes to die.
Bloggers, most prominently "YucatanMan" at Daily Kos, are appalled because "economic considerations," as opposed to what the bloggers call "compassion," drove the decision to unplug Ms. Habtegiris. I conclude that YucatanMan either doesn't understand what an economic consideration is or doesn't understand what compassion is, because in fact the two are not in conflict.
Here, for the edification of bloggers everywhere, is an example of an economic consideration: If you ask people—and especially poor people—what their most dire needs are, you'll find that "guaranteed ventilator support" ranks pretty low on the list. OK, I haven't actually done a survey, but I'm going out on a limb here and predicting that something like, say, milk, is going to rank a lot higher up the priority list than ventilator insurance.
In fact, I'll go further. The back of my envelope says that a lifetime's worth of ventilator insurance costs somewhere around $75. I'm going to hazard a guess that if, on her 21st birthday, you'd asked Tirhas Habtegiris to select her own $75 present, she wouldn't have asked for ventilator insurance. She might have picked $75 worth of groceries; she might have picked a new pair of shoes; she might have picked a few CDs, but not ventilator insurance.
She might even have picked something health-care related—a thorough physical exam, or, if there were better markets for this sort of thing, $75 worth of health or disability insurance. I doubt very much, though, that with $75 to spend, she'd have chosen to insure against needing a ventilator as opposed to any of the other minor and major catastrophes to which we mortals are susceptible.
Now let me remind you what "compassion" means. According to Merriam-Webster Online (which, by virtue of being online, really ought to be easily accessible to bloggers), compassion is the "sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it." By that definition, there is nothing particularly compassionate about giving ventilator insurance to a person who really feels a more urgent need for milk or eggs. One might even say that choosing to ignore the major sources of others' distress is precisely the opposite of sympathetic consciousness.
There is room for a great deal of disagreement about how much assistance rich people should give to poor people, either voluntarily or through the tax system. But surely whatever we do spend should be spent in the ways that are most helpful.
Therefore there's no use arguing that the real tradeoff should not be ventilators versus milk but ventilators versus tax cuts, or ventilators versus foreign wars. It's one thing to say we should spend more to help the poor, but quite another to say that what we're currently spending should be spent ineffectively.
This is not to deny that the health-care system needs a massive overhaul; it does. But that's not the issue on the table here. The issue is: Given the current system, should or should not the federal government (or Baylor Medical Center, or somebody) effectively guarantee that nobody will ever die for lack of a ventilator? In other words, should poor people be given ventilator insurance?
The bloggers at Daily Kos say yes. But for the same cost, we could give each of those people a choice between ventilator insurance on the one hand or $75 cash on the other hand. If it turns out that I'm wrong and they all want the ventilator insurance, so be it. But why not at least ask them?
You can't do that with every government service. You can't offer people a choice between police protection and its cash value, because police patrols tend to protect entire neighborhoods at once, not just specific individuals. You might not want to offer people a choice between a flu vaccine and its cash value, because you'd really prefer to have vaccinated neighbors. But critical life support isn't like that; the benefits are targeted to specific individuals. There's no reason those individuals shouldn't be allowed to choose different benefits if they want them.
Tirhas Habtegris would probably have taken the cash. Then she'd have gotten sick and regretted her decision. And then we as a society would have been in exactly the same position we were in last week—deciding whether to foot the bill to keep Ms. Habtegris alive a little longer.
At that point, there's a powerful human instinct to come to the rescue. Well, more precisely, there's a powerful human instinct to demand that someone else come to the rescue. (I'm guessing that in the wake of the Habtegiris case, nobody at the Daily Kos has taken to funding ventilator insurance for the poor.) Be that as it may, choices have to be made. A policy of helping everyone who needs a ventilator is a policy of spending less to help the same class of people in other ways. Accounting for "economic considerations" means—by definition—trying to give people what they'll value the most. In other words, economic considerations are the basis of true compassion.
Again, my opinion on this topic to some extent comes down to this: we need a better welfare system. So many of my opinions come down to this, including my opinions on abortion, affirmative action, and oddly, welfare itself. But I'm starting to wonder more about where my beliefs lie until that (hopefully coming) day when we have a socialist economy. Or at least one that's more socialist than our present one.
Finally, pass the potato!
You never listen to me! (warning: contains sexual content; not work safe)
Don't yell in front of the baby!
WoW can sometimes get in the way of... Things...
Ands some news articles:
A Muslim barbie: Fulla.
She's the must-have toy this festive season, flying off the shelves, but the season in question is January's Eid al-Adha, not Christmas, and Santa Claus means nothing to her.
Two years after she came on the market, Fulla the Muslim doll is now thought to be the best-selling girls' toy in the Arab world, displacing her Western rival, Barbie, in stores across her native Levant.
With thick black hair and large dark eyes, Fulla is the physical antithesis of Mattel's blonde-haired, empty-eyed icon of Western consumerism.
Compared with Barbie's pneumatic curves and lanky legs, Fulla's assets are modest and never officially on display. Although she is marketed with a Barbie-like range of funky clothes, furniture, jewellery and grooming equipment, to avoid offending Muslim modesty she has no range of swimwear.
And when she steps outdoors, she hides beneath a white hijab scarf and modest ankle-length coat, or an all-enveloping black abaya cloak.
Like the little girls who play with her, Fulla must learn to lead a double life.
The rise of Fulla — skilfully marketed by its Syrian creators, New Boy Toys — has aroused mixed feelings across the Middle East. With East-West relations the way they are, many Arab parents are happy to see a local girl take on and defeat the might of Western, corn-fed myth-making.
But some worry that the likes of Barbie — with her independent lifestyle and wide range of jobs — are giving way to a new role model who hides her hair and figure and who — judging from the slick ads on Arabic satellite TV — has little to do but shop, hang out with her friends Yasmeen (blonde, suspiciously) and Nadia (coppery red) or pray on her optional prayer mat.
As for romantic prospects, word is that Barbie may soon ditch her present toy boy, Australian surfie Blaine, and reunite with mega-bore Ken Carson, whom she notoriously split with 18 months ago after 40 commitment-less years.
Fulla, on the other hand, has no male friends, "though she might have angry brothers", as one joke has it.
Fulla's role in shaping expectations is undoubtedly a selling point for some conservative Muslim parents.
"Fulla is one of us but Barbie is still a stranger," says Mohammed al-Sabbagh, a manager at Space Toon, Damascus' leading toy store.
"Fulla is my sister, my wife, my mother. She comes from the same culture.
"Barbie has a boyfriend and a bikini and so on, which is not our style in the Middle East."
Which is not to say that Fulla is being imposed on little Arab girls solely by parental fiat. New Boy's Western-style aspirational TV advertising has created a profitable buzz among little girls across the region who — like their counterparts in the West — compete to see
who can be first in the playground with the latest spin-off product.
For the vast majority, questions of religion and modesty play no conscious role in their choice of toy. Yasmin Bakr, 7, who comes from a liberal, non-hijab-wearing family in the Palestinian town of Ramallah, has both Barbie and Fulla
dolls. But faced with a hypothetical tug-of-love, she would hold onto her Fulla "because she's nice. She looks nice, everything. I like her face so much."
The Space Toon store in Damascus, Fulla's home town, gives a whole section over to its local girl made good. The dolls are packaged either as Fulla "with her outdoor fashion" — hijab and coat combination, or full black chador — or as "indoor Fulla" in trendy and often tight-fitting clothes that Barbie might be happy to borrow. Both dolls are, in fact, of very similar size and construction, and some are even manufactured by the same sub-contractor in China.
Apart from the dolls and their clothes, furniture and accessories, you can also buy Fulla craft kits, girls' clothes, friendship bracelets, badminton and tennis rackets, skipping ropes, frisbees, hula hoops, prayer mats, bubblegum, scooters, flippers and snorkels.
So successful is the Fulla range, selling more than 1.3 million dolls at an average of about $A20 — a lot for a toy in this troubled region — that it has already spawned a Chinese knock-off, Fulah.
Ayman Barakat, manager of Toys For All in the East Jerusalem suburb of Beit Hanina, delves deep behind a display of cheaper knock-off Fulah dolls to produce a genuine "indoor Fulla" — price 100 shekels ($A29), compared with 69 shekels for a knock-off Fulah sold with home clothes, chador and a set of accessories.
Despite its higher price the original Fulla is still more popular, he says, but hard to keep in stock. Fulla's connection with Syria — still at war with Israel — prevents formal distribution in Israeli-controlled areas such as East Jerusalem.
"You place an order and it can take two months for them to come across from Jordan. In this place everything is politics," he says.
Across the city, the three toy stores in West Jerusalem's Malcha Mall do not sell Fulla dolls.
Another article on Fulla, and Islam-based commercialism in general.
Move over, Barbie
By Souheila Al-Jadda
This holiday season, as girls in the West find neatly wrapped Barbie dolls under their Christmas trees, Arab girls in the Middle East will be gifted Fulla dolls for the Islamic Eid al-Adha holiday in early January. Children are usually given new clothes, money and toys during this four-day celebration, which marks the end to the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.
Barbie's newest competition, Fulla, is named after a sweet smelling flower and is the hottest selling doll to hit the Mideast markets.
Fulla, with dark eyes and long brown hair, looks a lot like Barbie, but she is very different. For one thing, Fulla's breasts are modestly smaller. The major detail, though — she's Muslim, wearing the Islamic hijab,or head scarf, with a long flowing gown, or abaya. Fulla even comes with her own prayer rug.
In a world facing greater economic globalization, Fulla represents a growing trend toward the commercializing of Islam.
The creators of Fulla, NewBoy Design Studio in Damascus, Syria, say the doll represents Arab and Islamic values such as modesty, respect and piety.
Islamic symbol
Indeed, Fulla symbolizes the ideal Muslim woman in a conservative Middle East. Arab children are now choosing Fulla over Barbie. More than 1.3 million dolls, at $16 each, have been sold since the toy hit the shelves in November 2003.
With a global market of more than 1.25 billion Muslims, entrepreneurs and corporations, in the East and the West, have realized that huge financial gains can be made by selling Islamic values.
In France, a fast-food restaurant opened in Paris that serves only halal, or Islamically butchered meat. All its business practices conform to Islamic law. The workers at the restaurant are all Muslim, and female employees even wear the head scarves despite French laws that prevent women from wearing them in some public institutions.
The Muslim customers seem to like having their meals catered to their religious practices.
"Before opening this restaurant, we did not have much choice," one diner told Abu Dhabi TV. "We used to go to McDonald's and order only fish sandwiches. Thank God this restaurant is now open."
The Dutch brewing company Heineken has released a non-alcoholic malt drink, Fayrouz, which means turquoise. By coincidence, one of the most popular modern Lebanese singers in the Arab world is named Fayrouz.
The Korean telecommunications company LG Electronics sells cellphones that point the faithful toward Mecca, Islam's holiest site, for their five daily prayers.
Even in the USA, companies are beginning to target American Muslims, whose population is estimated to be 4.6 million. In 2003, the greeting card giant Hallmark added Islamic holiday cards to its list of products for the Ramadan and Eid holidays.
But how far is too far when it comes to selling religion cheap? Does all this commercial activity marketing Islamic products reduce the religion to mere profit margins? And what do Muslim scholars think about this phenomenon?
Free market
Suhaib William Webb, an American-Muslim convert, an imam and Islamic law student at Egypt's Al-Azhar University, says, "Our religion does not forbid us from engaging in a free market economy."
There is nothing wrong with marketing toward Muslims, Webb says, but companies should be making positive contributions to society. "If you're going to make money from us, at least put some profits back in the community," he says, "whether in Muslim or non-Muslim communities."
Islam calls for social responsibility, allowing the faithful to purchase anything from Islamic and non-Islamic sources, as long as companies and products do not harm people, for example, by producing items in sweat shops or by child laborers.
Webb warns against buying into a system that violates the three main principles of Islamic law, which call for protecting life, honor and property. As he puts it, "We should always look at the free market system through an ethical lens."
When I was growing up in Ohio, I was a Barbie girl in a Barbie world, regardless of ethics. But today, as a grown woman who thinks about moral values juxtapositioned with economic globalization, I am comfortable knowing that should I have a daughter, she will have the choice to be a Fulla girl in a very different world.
COMMERCIAL APPEAL
Companies or products that market to Muslims:
Mecca-Cola: As an alternative to cola products, Mecca-Cola, based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, directs part of its profits to needy people. Mecca, Saudi Arabia, is the destination for Muslims' annual pilgrimage.
Ilkone i800 cell phone: Distributed by the Dubai-based Samcom, ilkone is Arabic for "universe." The phone provides the direction for prayer, the call to prayer, an Islamic calendar and the text of the Quran.
Hallmark: This company based in Kansas City, Mo., in 2003 introduced greeting cards for Ramadan and Eid holidays.
Lariba: A California finance house providing loans and banking and financial products conforming to Islamic law, which prohibits dealing in interest. Lariba also means "no interest" and is an acronym for "Los Angeles Reliable Investment Bankers Associates."
Al Safa Halal: A company based in Ontario, Canada, founded by an Orthodox Jew offers Muslims halal, or Islamically butchered meats, and food products that conform to Islamic dietary codes.
Dow Jones Islamic Fund (symbol: IMANX): A Chicago fund that caters to Muslim customers who want to have not only a financially rewarding investment but also one compatible with Islamic law. Since June 2000, the fund has invested only in companies compliant with shariah (which means Islamic law).
Souheila Al-Jadda is a journalist and associate producer of a Peabody award-winning program, Mosaic: World News from the Middle East, on Link TV. She also is a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.
Washington Woman Suffocates Under House Clutter
Wash. Woman Suffocates Under House Clutter
Police Chief: Clothes, Debris Piled 6 Feet High
UPDATED: 9:37 am PST January 9, 2006
SHELTON, Wash. -- A Washington state woman who was reported missing was later found dead suffocated under a pile of debris in her home, police said.
Officers found the body of Marie Rose, 62, buried under clothes Thursday, reported KIRO-TV in Seattle.
Her husband reported her missing after he couldn't find her early Thursday morning.
Officers found clothing, dishes and boxes crammed from floor to ceiling in every room of the couple's house.
"In some areas, clothes and debris were piled 6 feet high," said Police Chief Terry Davenport of the Shelton Police Department. "Officers were having to climb over the top on their hands and knees. In some areas, their heads were touching the ceiling while they were standing on top of piles of debris."
After 10 hours of searching, officers discovered the woman's body. Investigators Friday said she was smothered under the clutter.
The woman's husband told KIRO-TV that she had health problems and may have been looking for the phone when she died.
Fire and city code inspectors released the home back to the family after inspecting it.
Despite it's title, an article on where to focus the welfare money we have, particularly with respect to life support.
Do the Poor Deserve Life Support?
A woman who couldn't pay her bills is unplugged from her ventilator and dies. Is this wrong?
By Steven E. Landsburg
Posted Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2006, at 6:30 AM ET
Tirhas Habtegiris, a 27-year-old terminal cancer patient at Baylor Regional Medical Center in Plano, Texas, was removed from her ventilator last month because she couldn't pay her medical bills. The hospital gave Ms. Habtegiris' family 10 days' notice, and then, with the bills still unpaid, withdrew her life support on the 11th day. It took Ms. Habtegiris about 15 minutes to die.
Bloggers, most prominently "YucatanMan" at Daily Kos, are appalled because "economic considerations," as opposed to what the bloggers call "compassion," drove the decision to unplug Ms. Habtegiris. I conclude that YucatanMan either doesn't understand what an economic consideration is or doesn't understand what compassion is, because in fact the two are not in conflict.
Here, for the edification of bloggers everywhere, is an example of an economic consideration: If you ask people—and especially poor people—what their most dire needs are, you'll find that "guaranteed ventilator support" ranks pretty low on the list. OK, I haven't actually done a survey, but I'm going out on a limb here and predicting that something like, say, milk, is going to rank a lot higher up the priority list than ventilator insurance.
In fact, I'll go further. The back of my envelope says that a lifetime's worth of ventilator insurance costs somewhere around $75. I'm going to hazard a guess that if, on her 21st birthday, you'd asked Tirhas Habtegiris to select her own $75 present, she wouldn't have asked for ventilator insurance. She might have picked $75 worth of groceries; she might have picked a new pair of shoes; she might have picked a few CDs, but not ventilator insurance.
She might even have picked something health-care related—a thorough physical exam, or, if there were better markets for this sort of thing, $75 worth of health or disability insurance. I doubt very much, though, that with $75 to spend, she'd have chosen to insure against needing a ventilator as opposed to any of the other minor and major catastrophes to which we mortals are susceptible.
Now let me remind you what "compassion" means. According to Merriam-Webster Online (which, by virtue of being online, really ought to be easily accessible to bloggers), compassion is the "sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it." By that definition, there is nothing particularly compassionate about giving ventilator insurance to a person who really feels a more urgent need for milk or eggs. One might even say that choosing to ignore the major sources of others' distress is precisely the opposite of sympathetic consciousness.
There is room for a great deal of disagreement about how much assistance rich people should give to poor people, either voluntarily or through the tax system. But surely whatever we do spend should be spent in the ways that are most helpful.
Therefore there's no use arguing that the real tradeoff should not be ventilators versus milk but ventilators versus tax cuts, or ventilators versus foreign wars. It's one thing to say we should spend more to help the poor, but quite another to say that what we're currently spending should be spent ineffectively.
This is not to deny that the health-care system needs a massive overhaul; it does. But that's not the issue on the table here. The issue is: Given the current system, should or should not the federal government (or Baylor Medical Center, or somebody) effectively guarantee that nobody will ever die for lack of a ventilator? In other words, should poor people be given ventilator insurance?
The bloggers at Daily Kos say yes. But for the same cost, we could give each of those people a choice between ventilator insurance on the one hand or $75 cash on the other hand. If it turns out that I'm wrong and they all want the ventilator insurance, so be it. But why not at least ask them?
You can't do that with every government service. You can't offer people a choice between police protection and its cash value, because police patrols tend to protect entire neighborhoods at once, not just specific individuals. You might not want to offer people a choice between a flu vaccine and its cash value, because you'd really prefer to have vaccinated neighbors. But critical life support isn't like that; the benefits are targeted to specific individuals. There's no reason those individuals shouldn't be allowed to choose different benefits if they want them.
Tirhas Habtegris would probably have taken the cash. Then she'd have gotten sick and regretted her decision. And then we as a society would have been in exactly the same position we were in last week—deciding whether to foot the bill to keep Ms. Habtegris alive a little longer.
At that point, there's a powerful human instinct to come to the rescue. Well, more precisely, there's a powerful human instinct to demand that someone else come to the rescue. (I'm guessing that in the wake of the Habtegiris case, nobody at the Daily Kos has taken to funding ventilator insurance for the poor.) Be that as it may, choices have to be made. A policy of helping everyone who needs a ventilator is a policy of spending less to help the same class of people in other ways. Accounting for "economic considerations" means—by definition—trying to give people what they'll value the most. In other words, economic considerations are the basis of true compassion.
Again, my opinion on this topic to some extent comes down to this: we need a better welfare system. So many of my opinions come down to this, including my opinions on abortion, affirmative action, and oddly, welfare itself. But I'm starting to wonder more about where my beliefs lie until that (hopefully coming) day when we have a socialist economy. Or at least one that's more socialist than our present one.
Finally, pass the potato!
