|
I am now back. My appointment, it turned out, was for 1500, not 1300. So, after cooling my heels for a couple of hours (no, not in the doctor's waiting room; if I'm going to be bored, I'll do it in comfort), I finally got to see him. His secretary also called the pharmacy to find out what happened to the prescription that he faxed in last November and that was never filled. Stripped of excess verbiage, the response was: "Yeah, we screwed up, and whilst we'd like to give you an excuse that you won't laugh at before we're done making it, getting you off the phone takes priority". So, the next time wagimoko goes down there, I think I'll go along and...lean on them a little. After catching my breath, I think Natalijagate is blowing up into a tempest in a blogspot. The discussion has ceased to be about the grievous crimes committed by both sides, to their infinite discredit, in the collapse of Yugoslavia, and has become about the personalities of the bloggers involved in fighting about instead. Therefore: Natalija -- Serbs are people, too -- some of them anyway (and some Croats aren't); Matthew -- you've made your point, now leave the poor girl alone; Perry -- grow up, you're just scared that Natalija is too upset to post anymore cheesecake photos of herself. Do not make me come over there. Turning to a more topical topic, Susanna Cornett of cut on the bias (to which I've linked -- ewww, I'm sounding like Jon Lovits) expresses her emotional distance and intellectual interest on the drinking age debate. Now, I won't dispute her on the quality of Libby Dole's evidence (although I can say, sight unseen, that it's overwhelmingly likely to be a load of dingo's kidneys), but I will when she writes: " Make it so an adult is an adult is an adult". Why should we suppose that one becomes mature enough to do everything all at once, like the dissolution of the Wonderful One-Hoss Shay? Granting that "legal x age" (where x can be nearly anything) is largely if not entirely arbitrary, why should there be a age of adulthood? Can we not suppose that a person is mature enough to drive at 16 and to vote at 18, but not enough to drink until 21? A "legal age" is (or should be) shorthand for "enough people are mature to do this at that age without destroying society in the process". We can't administer the Minnnesota Multiphasic Inventory to everyone who walks into a bar for a beer or a pack of smokes, nor even to everyone who walks into a government office for a driver's license, a marriage license, or to sign up with Marines, so we say, "Based on heuristics derived from five thousand years of history, he's old enough to do this" (actually, we say, "Yeah, give 'im a beer, and don't bother carding him", but that's another story). Since those heuristics have suggested that people don't spring into adulthood like Athena from the brow of Zeus, I think that we need a little evidence to the contrary to show that they do. Incidentally, I'm not impressed by the "if he's old enough to die for his country, he's old enough to drink" argument. Most eighteen-year-olds aren't old enough to die for their country, they're just old enough to whine that the "NO BLOOD FOR OIL" sign is too heavy, that they're getting splinters in their hands from holding it, and that they've been picketing all day -- a couple of hours, anyway -- and not one round-heeled hippie chick has offered to (unnecessarily) screw their brains out. A federal law that a military ID trumps all state and local laws restricting drinking, that I'll go for. But the typical frat boy should not only not be allowed to drink, he should be under armed guard at all times (I can seduce a woman, not just get her so drunk that she doesn't know what I'm doing). John "Akatsukami" Braue Monday, March 04, 2002 |
|