Saturday, February 07, 2004

Well, the latest patient to suffer from craniopagus parasiticus has died. No not by natural causes, but because of the perpetuation of modern medicine's insistence on attempting to thwart Darwinian rules. Charles Darwin gave a name to what everybody kinda knew already, namely that it is the fittest who survive. After all, who wants the genes of the weakest being passed down to future generations?
But modern medicine does not want to acknowledge this basic precept, instead spending billions of dollars and man-hours striving for survival of the weakest. It is hopeless cases like these that medicine spends the most time and effort on; this girl's parents couldn't afford the $100,000 surgery, so who do you think is paying for it? The article doesn't say anything about that. I guarantee you that it is you and I who are being overbilled on our insurance premiums to pay for this little doomed experiment.
Otherwise, just look at the countless dollars being spent on keeping vegetables alive, housing and "treating" the insane, and the work to keep alive people with hopeless conditions from cerebral palsy to renal failure. While these incurables get big wads of cash flung at them for "research" and "treatment" (yeah, right), reasonably healthy people like me have to go without regular checkups because I can't afford the co-pay on my insurance plan!
The newest craze: survival of the weakest. Darwin is spinning in his grave.

Friday, February 06, 2004

Now we hear that Yahoo! is planning on selling music. I guess that projects like this and iTunes and the new and "improved" Napster are an OK compromise in the RIAA's ongoing megalomaniacal aspirations to make money from every note that the human ear can hear (any ear, everywhere). My reason for supporting the peer-to-peer networks on which one can download all those illegal files for free is basically - you get what you pay for. If the RIAA would find and promote some artists that might be worth listening to, people would be more inclined to pay for their music. Instead we have music from overhyped, undertalented "artists" like the lip-syncing queen Britney Spears and couldn't-be-a-bad-boy-if-he killed-someone Justin Timberlake as well as Ja-Rule, C-Murder and other alphabetically enhanced idiots.
While these artists continue to be paid incomes greater than the national budget of some nations, (by the way, where does that money come from?) the undiscovered independent artists who actually create quality music from scratch, no less, languish in the backwater venues and have to work odd jobs to make ends meet. What is ironic is that these quality artists are the ones who often don't mind having their work downloaded for free in the interests of simply promoting themselves and getting it "out there."
99 cents a download for the latest from Jessica Simpson? Fine, I guess. I just hope you get your change. otherwise, go to http://www.iuma.com/