Peggy Ornstein is a blogger and author of Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture. She wrote a piece for the New York Times Opinion Page titled Should the World of Toys Be Gender-Free? that I’ve been mulling over recently. In the piece she addresses the new girl-focused Lego sets that come with blocks in pastel hues and svelte looking characters to replace the classic blocky figurine. Lego advises they’ve done their anthropological research and it shows that boys and girls play differently, they’re only trying to be fair to girls by offering them more “girly” sets. Ornstein points out that preschoolers are at a very impressionable age and it’s at this time they assimilate things like gender roles. She asserts that by buying these gender specific toys there may be a “negative long-term impact on kids’ potential”.

Ramblings

I’m a sucker for sick kids, it just seems so unfair that a child should have to suffer through something that I know would crush me if I had to go through it. At the beginning of last year I came across Courtney Roth’s blog, EBing A Mommy, about her son Tripp’s battle with junctional Epidermolysis bullosa. Epidermolysis bullosa is a devastating skin disease that causes the skin to blister – inside and out – at the slightest touch or friction, and junctional EB is the worst of its kind. Tripp had just turned two when I started reading, an amazing feat as doctors didn’t suspect he’d make it past the age of 1. Courtney and Tripp’s story was heart wrenching and uplifting, they were amazing and strong in the face of the greatest adversity.

Tripp passed away on Saturday, January 14^th. I bawled when reading Courtney’s blog entry. This little boy I had never met had a special place in my heart, in thousands of hearts, he was just an amazing little guy.

S. 606/HR 3059, the Creating Hope Act, is set to help children with rare diseases. Here is the official summary:

9/23/2011–Introduced.Creating Hope Act of 2011 – Amends the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to
revise the priority review voucher program for tropical diseases to:

1. include rare pediatric diseases;
2. allow unlimited transfers of vouchers under the program;
3. require a sponsor intending to use a voucher to notify the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) at least 90 days (currently, 365 days) before submission of the application.

Revises provisions regarding the priority review user fee, including to make it payable upon notification of the Secretary of intent to use the voucher. Authorizes the Secretary, upon request of the manufacturer or sponsor of a new drug, to designate that a new drug is:

1. for a rare pediatric disease;
2. an eligible treatment.

Requires the Secretary to deem a rare pediatric disease product application to be incomplete if it does not contain a description of the sponsor’s plan to market the product in the United States. Authorizes the Secretary to refuse to issue a priority review voucher upon the approval of a rare pediatric disease application if the Secretary finds that the sponsor lacks a good faith intention to market the product in the United States. Directs the Secretary to issue a guidance document setting forth the evidentiary support necessary to demonstrate such a good faith intention. Requires sponsors of applications under the priority review voucher program to report to the Secretary within five years after the approval of the application on the demand and distribution of the product within the United States.

Simply put, this bill will help to encourage companies to put time and money into researching rare diseases that normally don’t receive such care. It’s a pretty big deal for kids like Tripp who suffer from diseases that most of us know nothing about¹.

You can follow this link and put in your contact information to automatically look up your local representatives and send them an email asking them to support the Creating Hope Act. I was able to quickly and easily send a message to Senator Jim Webb (D-VA), Senator Mike Warner (D-VA), and Representative Morgan Griffith (R-VA-09). I’m asking everyone I know to do the same. Speak out for those who can’t.

1. I had never even heard of EB before stumbling onto Courtney’s blog. [↩]

Ramblings

So I’m sort of, kind of doing National Blog Posting Month. I haven’t made a big deal about it, such as announcing it on 11/1 or putting any badges on my site. Mostly because I totally suck at sticking to things like this. I made it 11 days into Project 365 this year. In my defense, I was stupid, ridiculously pregnant. Logan was born on the 16th and then readmitted to the hospital on the 23rd, where he stayed for 3 weeks. I mean kind of busy there. But last year for NaBloPoMo I made it two days. And it’s not like I just missed the 3rd. I missed the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th. Way to bomb hard.

This year I have more hope, though. Number one reason being I bought Andrew a PS3. We don’t really use consoles in this house, we’re PC gamers. I’m not really a fan boy when it comes to PC vs. console gaming, but the simple fact of the matter is that most console games and the people who play them suck and I hate them. Okay, so a little rage there. Most of it stems from Dragon Age 2. In the past most game developers design a PC game for the PC, then dumb down the interface and controls and port it to consoles. The trend recently has been to save time and money by designing the game once, for a console, and simply releasing that across all platforms. That would be fine, except for the simple matter that PC can handle so much more than consoles, so games designed for consoles are limited, simplistic and frustrating when played on the PC. Dragon Age 2 is a perfect example of this. Dragon Age is a PC game, the franchise was built on a fan base of PC gamers. In Dragon Age: Origins there were a few things you could tell were developed with a console in mind (such as only being able to quick travel, no wide open world there), but it was still an amazing game. Dragon Age 2 was not. Sure, it had pretty graphics, but that’s to be expected of a game in this day and age. Let’s take a look at the DA:O and the DA2 menus so you can see what I’m talking about.

Dragon Age: Origins interface, pretty to look at but still easy to navigate.

Dragon Age 2 interface. What in the fucking fuck?

Ramblings

Facebook’s new Timeline thing is AHH-MAZING! Apparently I joined Facebook back in 2006, senior year. All of these pictures from way back when are just blowing my mind. I miss these people, these places, these times! Warning, this is going to be ridiculously long.

Ramblings

With the tenth anniversary of 9/11 coming on Sunday it’s no surprise people’s minds are on terrorism, Muslims and New York. I was recently conversing with a friend when our conversation turned to the “mosque near Ground Zero” debate. As I listened to this person I have known for years and care deeply about spew nonsense about Muslims building mosques on conquered lands and how Muslims are savage terrorists I wanted nothing more than to put my fist in her face.

How does this happen? How do we as people allow ourselves to become so clearly and shamelessly bigoted? 9/11 was a horrifying experience, I remember sitting with my classmates and crying as we watched the horror unfold on live television. Something I will never forget are the images of people jumping or falling from the towers as they burned and crumbled. I still feel for the people who lost their lives, their loved ones, their sense of safety in their own neighborhood, but hatred and vitriol will not right those wrongs. Blaming an entire religion for the acts of a few is not acceptable.

When you think of Christians do you think of radical, white-supremacists who advocate for the violent overthrow of our government?

Eric Robert Rudolph, the Olympic Park Bomber worked on behalf of the Army of God. He killed two people an injured 150 in a series of bombings targeting abortion clinics, gay and lesbian nightclubs and the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord; The Order; The Mountain Church; even the Klu Klux Klan has Christian notions and has been supported by the formerly listed organizations. These are Christians who have taken the words of Christ and twisted them into something hateful that I’m sure would be utterly unrecognizable to Christ himself. We all know this, we know not all Christians hate gays and condemn you for getting an abortion and want to kill and maim and terrorize. It’s a select few, radicalists who don’t know the truth of the words they say support their ridiculous intentions.

Why can’t we see that truth about Muslim terrorists?

I’m very openminded and I don’t feel it’s my place to tell people what they feel or think is wrong, but when it comes to such blatant discrimination I just have to say shut up. Shut up and stop regurgitating everything you’ve seen on TV and start thinking for yourself.

Muslims do not build mosques at the site of victories. They have built mosques in lands they’ve moved into, and even repurposed churches as mosques, but nearly all army forces have brought their religions with them. One of the most common arguments I have heard for this is that the Muslims tore down the Temple Mount after the conquering of Jerusalem to build a mosque. Though a mosque was built on the site, to commemorate where Muslims believe Mohammad ascended to heaven, Persians had occupied Jerusalem almost right after the Muslims and it’s unable to determine who actually destroyed the original temple.

The “mosque” is not even really a mosque, it’s a community center that has a place to worship. It is also going to have a basketball court, 500-seat auditorium and pool and it’s open to all. It’s aim is to provide a community space for everyone, much like the YMCA and the Manhattan Jewish Community Center. Those aren’t called a church or a synagogue.

When the Pentagon – another target during 9/11 – rebuilt, they opened a nondenominational chapel that offers weekly prayer services for Muslims.

There are already mosques near the Ground Zero site. And it’s not a damn mosque!

As the tenth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, all I ask is that everyone stop wasting time and energy and breath on hatred and condemnation, and remember that 2,977 people from 115 different countries were lost that day. It was a grievous wound to all people who love freedom and peace and the perpetrators do not represent the mindset of the second-largest religion in the world.

Ramblings