The Remarkable Sally Ride

I'm not a big one for memorial blogs. Great people die every day, often unnoticed by everyone who wasn't close to them. Famous people do, too.

Everyone once in a while, someone dies who is both great and famous. Sally Ride was famous to many people because she was the first woman the US sent into space (not the first woman in space - Russia had us beat by a couple of decades), the youngest to go into space and, for those who care about such things, the first lesbian in space (someone's sexual orientation, to me, is not important, but I can understand her being an inspiration to many for that reason).

For me, those are trivia question answers, not why someone is "great". She was a good and dedicated scientist, an accomplished astronaut who went on to teach and make a difference in the world of science and space long after she stopped being an astronaut. And that's good.

But, to me, she was great because of how she cared about space and science, how she dedicated so much of her life to sharing that love with children. To me, she was great because she understood what was really important and stood up for those who were worried about safety when everyone else was on gung-ho fast forward. She brought that sense of practicality and understanding of priorities to everything she did, which was why she was so popular on studies and reviews in her lifetime.

To me, she wasn't great because she was an astronaut. She was an astronaut because she was great. She spent all her life trying to make the world better than it was when she came in, mostly in a quiet but profound way.

She will be missed.

Read more...

Sad Tidings

I'm not at my best today. Not only is it the anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing, which always makes me sad (particularly the images of the broken children brought from the rubble), but there was a tragedy in the extended family the end of last weekend. One of the hardest things I can imagine for any family - a cousin died out of the blue from an aneurysm. He was just ten years old.

I didn't know the parents or the child, actually, but I still grieve. It's the kind of experience I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. I know it's sad when anyone dies, but there's something particularly poignant about the death of a child that really gets to me.

I'm grateful to live when I do now instead of fifty, a hundred years ago, when parents could expect to lose a child, if not more than one. I am, but it still makes me sad that some don't make it, that children still die for whatever reason.

Unfortunately, that makes me poor company.

Hopefully, tomorrow, I'll do better.

Read more...

So, Where's the Line?

Yesterday, I asked why suicide was considered a crime (or taboo for Relax Max who doesn't think it's illegal). I got a number of interesting viewpoints and comments, including Relax Max arguing that only attempted suicide is a crime but not suicide itself (since there's not we can do to punish a successful suicider), Soubriquet's excellent examples of socially acceptable suicide (we call it bravery) and mrsbitch's making a comparison between murder and suicide.

What I'd like to do is expand on mrsbitch's comments. She noted that murder was illegal and, as suicide was effectively self-murder, the same rules applied. Well, although I noted that, in my opinion, the problem with murder is that you're making life/death decisions for someone else without their input - which isn't the problem with suicide.

But, let's for argument sake, say that there is an inherent sanctity of life that no one has the right to snuff out, not even for oneself. So, if human life is absolutely sacrosanct, anything one does to shorten or endanger one's own life would also be criminal. To some extent we do this now by making narcotics and other serious and addictive drugs illegal. But, where do you draw the line? If we couldn't put our lives at risk, smoking should be absolutely forbidden, and extreme sports made illegal. Obesity would be a crime. One could not refuse treatment for oneself. Salt would be seriously curtailed.

And he's a kicker. What if you're pregnant and the pregnancy puts your life at risk? You'd no longer have a choice to try to carry the baby. Of course, that's a whole other post.

Read more...

Someone Explain This To Me

Why does the death of a celebrity electrify the media?

Someone asked me this on Ask Me Anything.

You know, I have no idea. Deaths can be tragedies, but they don't have to be, but of all the factors that make me think a death is tragic, fame is just not one of them.

Death can be tragic if it's preventable - a child trapped in a trunk or falling unnoticed into a pool, someone killed by a drunk driver.

Death can be tragic when it strikes someone healthy or someone who might have had a full and happy life before them if not for the condition that killed them - people struck down in their prime with cancer or children dying of meningitis.

Death can be tragic when it's senseless - people killed in a drive by shooting or teenagers killing themselves.

Death can be tragic when someone innocent is killed via deliberate violence - serial or spree murder victims, victims of child abuse, someone shot protesting an unjust regime.

Causes of death that are painful, that rob the victim of dignity or memory or other key characteristics can be tragic, though, after the causes ravage a loved one, you can also feel relief that the victim is no longer suffering.

People touch lives, add magic or pain, and it shouldn't matter if it's a thousand lives one touches or just one. The life is precious.

Just my opinion. Oh, and that picture up there, Earnest Louis Sulak died a week ago at home, leaving many people who loved him.

Read more...