Tyler's Turn Blog

I remember when I was first coming out, going to Christian college, and I would see someone I knew in a gay bar. Many of them would blush and try to pretend like they hadn't seen me, or mumble something about how they were only there with a gay friend. I always thought that was silly. Why be embarrassed? After all, they'd seen me there too.

Well the new blush-and-hide meeting place is Wal-Mart. It never fails, when I'm in Wal-Mart I'll see someone I know and they quickly say, "I don't usually shop here, I just came in because . . ."

Reminds me of a joke: What's the difference between a Methodist and a Baptist? The Methodist will say Hi when he runs into you at the liquor store.

If you see me at a gay bar or at Wal-Mart, feel free to say Hi. And, don't worry, I'll keep your dirty little secret.

I remember visiting South Africa in the 1970s and being sickened by the terrible injustices caused by hate and prejudice. At that time, the government of South Africa was fighting hard to hold on to the immoral prejudices of a bygone era, and was rightly seen as a blot on the face of humanity. If you had told me then that South Africa's government would one day be more enlightened than the United States, I would have said you were crazy. But here it is 2005, and it looks like South Africa will have equal marriage rights for all long before the United States does.

Incidentally, South Africa is the country where Gandhi performed his first act of civil disobedience. He lead an uprising of East Indian South Africans whose marriages had been invalidated by the state, because they weren't Christian.

While debunking the hype around the bird flu threat, the Weekly Standard article I mentioned in the last post also discusses a preventative measure that would actually save live in the event of a pandemic:

Among the few successful medicines doctors used during the Spanish flu were privately made vaccines for bacterial pneumonia. Today we have something called the pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine. One injection protects against 23 types of pneumococcal bacteria for a lifetime, so you don't have to wait until you're ill or even until there's a pandemic to be inoculated.

Michael Fumento believes this vaccine could be more helpful in the event of a pandemic than any stockpile of flu vaccine, and probably even more helpful than antiviral drugs, because most people who die from the flu actually die from a secondary infection of pneumonia. But, again, common pneumonia (which, according to the WHO, kills more children every year than any other infectious disease) isn't nearly as sexy as an exotic strain of bird flu.

I'll bet my doctor's gonna be surprised when I call up to ask about the pneumonia vaccination, instead of the scary disease du jour that everyone else is calling about.

I've been trying to stay away from political topics, but I have to say it, because so few people are: The Bird Flu is no more an imminent threat than Saddam's WMD were. And declaring war on the bird flu will not make us safer, only poorer.

There was a great Weekly Standard article a couple weeks ago, which took a reasoned look at the possibility the avian bird flu H5N1 might cause a pandemic killing millions. It's a very long article, but the bottom line is H5N1 doesn't have what it takes to cause widespread death and destruction. If it did, it would have done so long ago. The last paragraph states:

"Bottom line? We are all going to die. But from various causes. There probably will be another pandemic, but nobody knows when or what its origin will be.

We humans are really good at getting all riled up about things we have no control over. And, more often than not, the real threats arrive like hijacked planes out of a clear September sky, or a heart attack while we're watching television.

So, knowing life is short and death is unpredictable, lets stop fighting stupid unending wars against made-up threats and start making a real difference in the lives of the people around us. I know the honest work of government, like fully funding law enforcement, ensuring liberty, and passing a workable budget, isn't as sexy as waging wars against poverty, drugs, terrorism, or the Threat du Jour, but it's a lot better use of our government's time and money -- not to mention the lives of its citizens.

Hat tip to The Volokh Conspiracy for the link.

I know Toyland is a happy holiday song that's supposed to bring fuzzy feelings to the whole family, but it's always scared the bejeepers out of me.

Childhood toyland
mystical merry toyland
once you pass it's borders
you can never return again.

As a kid I didn't know what Perry Como was singing about, but I knew for certain I didn't want to go to Toyland. You can never return again? Yikes! Sounds too much like the witch's ginger bread house to me -- lure the kids with toys and then lock them in a cage. No thanks!