Monday Post

Shark Week: Great for self-esteem

Quickly now ...


Charlie Gard's parents have withdrawn their plea to send him to the US for treatment after a British court held him hostage (oh, yes, it did - what else would one call being confined to one place without permission to leave?) and waited until nothing medically could be done for him:

The parents of Charlie Gard, whose battle to get their critically ill baby experimental treatment stirred international sympathy and controversy, dropped their legal effort Monday, saying tearfully that it was time to let their son die.

At an emotional court hearing, a lawyer for the baby's parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, said the couple was withdrawing a bid to have Charlie sent to the United States, where a doctor had offered to try to treat his rare genetic condition. The decision came after new medical tests showed the 11-month-old, who has brain damage and cannot breathe unaided, had irreversible muscular damage.

Both parents wept in the packed courtroom at the High Court in London as lawyer Grant Armstrong made the announcement, his voice breaking.

"This case is now about time," Armstrong said. "Sadly, time has run out."

 
Now that a precedent has been set, this will occur again and again.

Right now, Sarah Palin is feeling a twinge of bittersweet vindication.




A newborn is dead after his mother was brutally stabbed:

A newborn who was delivered by emergency C-section after its mother was stabbed multiple times died in hospital Monday, police said.

A 37-year-old man who is the woman’s partner was taken into custody several hours later, said spokesman Jean-Pierre Brabant.

Police were called to a home in the city’s Montreal North borough around 2:30 a.m. and found the woman, 33, stabbed multiple times in the upper and lower body.

The suspect was not at home when police arrived and the victim, who was eight months pregnant, was transported to hospital.

“The woman is in stable condition,” Brabant said. “Unfortunately the baby did not survive its wounds and was pronounced dead in hospital.”

Hours after the attack, around noon on Monday, the suspect reappeared and approached a police vehicle not far from the scene of the crime.

“After a brief discussion, he was arrested,” Brabant said.

It was not the police force’s first visit to the home.

God, people are stupid:

While common sense probably could have saved any disappointment — along with pre-show interviews where Phelps assured everyone that he wouldn’t really race next to a shark in open water — many viewers were not pleased.

Throughout the episode, viewers watched as Gutteridge and the team collected data about the swim speed of sharks, which is apparently very hard to do, because sharks don’t typically swim in a straight line.

What really rubbed salt in the wound? Phelps lost.

Thank you!

We don’t sufficiently appreciate the unintended effects of novels and stories. Most of us read fiction for pleasure, not education, but the best stories have a way of instructing. They leave behind perceptions that enrich us....

A sensitive author sometimes shows us the inner lives of people who radically differ from us. If we are young, writers expose to us the thoughts of the old. If we are old, they do the opposite. They tell men something about women and women something about men. ...

People regard knowledge as some vague thing spoken about hypothetically, not something that ongoing, organic or found in rich sources.

That is why people are stunned that an Olympic swimmer didn't actually race a shark, or make so many grammatical errors in their native language that it is embarrassing to read what they've texted.

What happened to the book that expanded one's mind as well as entertained it?