Despite what every female I know seems to believe, there is no absolute scale of female beauty, at least not to my mind. (Also, despite what every female I seem to know believes, they are in fact attractive. I cannot think of anyone I'm reasonably well-acquainted with who I and several others do not hold that viewpoint about. There are few things mroe frustrating and futile than trying to convince a perfectly attractive girl that she IS just that.)

There are very few absolute statements I am able to make about female beauty. In fact, I can make exactly two, which I will do so now to get them out of the way:

tigerphoenix is the most adorably, wonderfully expressive girl I have ever met.
cyfis has the loveliest, most incredible hair I have ever seen in my entire life.

All right? Now the rest of this wanders into less quantifiable terms.

I'm speaking solely for myself here, of course. It's possible ad really quite likely that other guys have specific traits or characteristics they look for, and rate them on a scale, resulting in a given girl being more or less attractive to them in absoltue terms.

My perceptions don't work that way.

First of all, I believe personality is inherently imprinted on beauty. So much of how a person looks depends on what that person is like. A girl can have every single classic measure of beauty in spades and beyond, but if they don't have intelligence and a personality of SOME sort, then they're no more attractive than a slack-jawed cow.

This makes it difficult for me to judge attractiveness solely by image. To really know how a person appeals to me, I need to see them move, hear them talk, get a feel for what sort of person they are. People insist this is a cop-out to get me to avoid making a determination, but this is what I absolutely believe.

A body is just a lump of flesh. How you move it, the animation you give to it, means a very great deal.

That being said, I make no secret that I am a leg man. This is not, actually, to say that rationally or intellectualy I consider the female leg to be the finest feature, though they do have many merits. Rather, the attraction is more magnetically primal. A nice set of bare legs draws my eye magnetically (best when actually done with a miniskirt or cutoff shorts; having the actual hip area concealed heightens the allure).

Nevertheless, in legs and in all other features, there is no overriding set of characteristics that can be termed supremely dominant in terms of attractiveness. I have found short, slender girls attractive, and tall, voluptuous ones. But how does one compare the two? Their features are so different that it's impossible to. Can one therefore be said to be more attractive than the other?

Absolutely not. Call that statement a cop-out if you want; I prefer to think of it as being fair, and honest. In all sincerity, I cannot label one as superior, because they both have merits in entirely different ways.

I like to think I have a reasonably enlightened outlook on appearence. So therefore: If I tell you you're attractive, I'M TELLING THE TRUTH!

I am a gamer. I make no secret of this fact; I flaunt it, in fact. I consider it a point of pride. But what, precisely, is a gamer? Certainly I'm not a hardcore Penny Arcade-style player of video games, possessed by all systems and fundamentally aware of the flaws and merits of each individual game, big-named or esoteric and strange. Nor am I a rampant roleplayer, though I might wish to be. I cannot remember the last time I took up the nobles arms of a roleplayer -- sword and shield, or in other words, d20 and rulebook. I have never painted miniatures. I have never played Halo 2, or Doom, or Tomb Raider. Why do I call myself a gamer? Why do I cling to the trappings of arcane, arbitrary rules and enforced interactivity?

When I was young still -- though I beg of those older than I not to lambast my statement, for the truth is that I am still younger than many of those older than I, though in fairness I am also older than many of those whose birthdate follows my own. I make use of the term "young" to characterize a dramatic gap between my current existence and circumstances, and those of the past. To wit, I am at this time an adult in my mid-20s -- a statement which is shocking to write -- living on my own, whereas in the mythical youth I speak of I was but a child whose age could be counted on one's fingers, still in primary education and blessed with a complete family.

Get to the point, the reader says, and cease dithering and digression! Poo on you, I must therefore rejoin, poo and double poo! But there is a point to my recitation, and that is simply this: My bed time was, in these nether depths of time, 8:00 PM. The sole exception to this rule, granted with parental wisdom, was the glorious night of Saturday. Unwearied by the burdens of school, yet lacking need to arise at an hour considered unnatural by the youthful body, I remained awake and alert an entire additional hour! Now, certainly this figure is laughable to we of greater age and less innocent mind, but an hour is far less of our lives than it was to the me that once existed. But musings on the nature of time are far less relevant, if perhaps far more entertaining, to the searching of my gaming soul, than the means by which I spent the extra time alloted to me. I'm certain you've long since figured it out, and indeed wandered off to watch the badgers animation some time ago. But for the sake of completing this, ironicallyt, foresaken essay, I'll spell it out clearly: the Saturdays of my youth were game nights.

And what games we played! My parents and I ventured across many broad spectrums of board- and card-based entertainment. A cabinet full of Milton Bradley products never failed to produce a fun activity. We sought to obtain a Monopoly; we lived the game of Life, where no Risk was too great. Times like those truly qualified as some of the happiest I can imagine.

When my parents divorced, and we moved across the country, such games ended. Though on rare occasion my mother, sister, and I would come together for a brief game of "Careers" or an occasional round of Tripoly, such events had nowhere near the heart of our old family games.

Do I need to go into depth on the effects the separation had? Or can I rely on your surely rich imagination to fill in gaps and make necessary assumptions about the psychological toll it took? I trust in your capability; I trust you can understand why I took such an interest in games, particularly those of the roleplaying variety.

So when I obtained, by coincidence and happenstance, the rules to AD&D 2nd Edition, what realistic course of action could anyone expect? The true surprise is not that I began to play, but that I found a group of others willing to play. Nate, best friend, easy convert, diehard dwarf; Pete, steam-venter, always willing to play a fighter or warrior class; Kostya, the Russian, picked up by freak coincidence in a social studies class, probably best DM of us all save for his crippling inability to prounounce key words such as "peasant", "wand", or "village"; Danny, off-and-on player who was in it for fun; Josh, perverted powergamer who taught us all to beware the rules lawyer; Alex, forever making crude jokes and jumping into danger; Baby Alex, the other Russian, who shall forever be remembered best for the many times he reacted to his own foolish mistakes of sheepish embarassment.

If you have never experience the kind of camaraderie a good game fosters, I cannot begin to explain it to you. The combined creative power of several minds bent to one unified purpose makes even the process of random number generation thrilling -- by which I mean that any fool can sit and roll dice, and cheer himself on for gaining a specific number, but the shared enthusiasm and sheer thrill of rolling a natural 20 at a critical moment, bringing your group salvation, is unparalleled.

To be continued.

So... I just posted three essays, written for my essay class.

If you feel like being helpful, read them and comment? I always appreciate input, and these are essentially my final paper.

If you feel like you want to get to know me better, read' em. And comment, 'cuz you read 'em.

READ 'EM! READ 'EM! AAAAH!

5. I think that the most surprising thing brought up in Richard Garland's lecture was what gangs have become in modern times. The common perception of street gangs, backed up by many of the articles I read in the course of preparing for the lecture, is that they have become more about turf and violence than anything else. The images associated with gangs are those we see in the media: tough punks who hold territory and kill each other for various reasons.

Richard Garland surprised me when he said that turf has become less important to gangs. Instead, they are about money. When I stop to think about that, it's a very chilling thought. If a nineteen year-old guy is capable of pulling in twenty thousand dollars a month from controlling and directing his gang activities, street gangs must be organized to Mafia-like proportions. The common perception, the perception indicated by the articles I read, and the perception I had going into the lecture, was just the opposite. Most people see gangs as formed on a sense of fraternity - people looking for someplace to belong, hanging out with each other, and having a sense of community and family. All in all, they're not an organized group in that vision. Even the crimes connected to gangs have a perception of chaos and anarchy attached to them. Graffiti is seen as a nuisance, a gang out just to mark up the town and commit some vandalism for fun. The much more sinister "gang" crime, the drive-by shooting, is so shocking and hated because of its randomness - such shootings, when aimed at a specific target, could easily kill several innocent people, and many perceive some shootings as completely random acts of mayhem, for no purpose other than fun.

In fact, neither of these common perceptions is true. The lecture Richard Garland delivered on graffiti gave me a startling perception of just how purposeful and organized it is. Graffiti serves as a way to mark territory, a way to announce identities, a warning system of sorts, an indication of gang activities, a propaganda machine, and much more. By failing to remove graffiti, people are bolstering gang activity much more than they could know - but so many people consider it nothing more than a nuisance, or don't bother to remove it or paint over it because they think it'll just get put back up again.

The scariest thing I heard in the lecture, though, was the fact that gangs have been moving away from drive-by shootings to execution-style. The cold, deliberate nature of these shootings, and the amount of planning and effort necessary to get someone into the position where they can be killed execution-style, demonstrates how dangerous gangs have become. People look at gangs and think that they're forces of random mayhem, when in fact they're much worse - they are cruel and deliberate machines, carrying out a purpose with cold efficiency. That purpose is money.

Another surprising fact, and a much more pleasant one, is that many gang leaders don't want their gang members to fall into this trap. A gang member does indeed have an undeniably large chance of being caught, sent to jail for a long period of time, and return unable to function in society except as a criminal. The surprise value that the fact has comes again from modern perception; we dehumanize gang members, choosing to think of them as malcontents and nuisances rather than people. We forget that these "devils" are in fact human beings, oftentimes ones who never intended to go as far as they did when they first begin hanging out with a gang. In doing so, we deny them any chance of redemption; we force them into a cycle of crime from which they can't escape.

I think that the lecture and the readings I did point to one thing: the public, at large, needs more education about gangs. Many of the difficulties we have with gangs come from misconceptions and incorrect ideas. Unfortunately, this will not be an easy process; as with so many other things, people have established gangs as a nuisance which they can feel justified in hating, and justified in not trying very hard to stop it. The truth that people will not like is that gangs are worse than they envision them, although gang members are not.

Still, these perceptions must be dealt with as soon as possible. Gang activity is spreading thanks to these misconceptions, and the denial they foster in the administrators and legislators who have the power to quell the threat. The schools, where intervention is most important, have yet to catch up with these new ideas - most of them have taken to banning "gang colors", when Richard Garland tells us they have virtually disappeared.

Gangs are a nationwide problem, and as such the nation must take steps to address these issues. The best thing the nation could do, judging from the lecture, is to ensure that the hate groups which many gangs are a part of, associate with, or simply draw ideas from, have as minimal effect as possible. The actions of skinhead groups such as the Neo-Nazis only encourage the soldier mentality among gang members - and the gang member who sees himself as a soldier, who will do anything for the gang unquestionably, is the most dangerous one of all. Although it is impossible and incorrect to ban such groups, the nation must make sure that they are not allowed to commit any criminal acts without being punished. The nation as a whole must send the message that illegal activities will not be tolerated, while the local communities work to show children that these groups are in the wrong.

I don't think we will ever be able to rid ourselves of gangs. The appeal they offer - fraternity, money, power, and prestige - is simply too great to prevent every child from wanting to join one. However, it is possible to channel the energy of a street gang into an outlet more socially acceptable than crime or drugs. To do so, however, requires that the people in charge have access to the facts, and that the public understands what they are dealing with and how to best combat it. Until that happens, street gangs will only become worse.

4. I think the current practice of pediatricians providing most of the information about cognitive and social development to parents is suitable, for several reasons.

First of all, having the pediatrician be the sole source of this information benefits the parents of the child. Just as with ordinary doctors, many parents have difficulty finding a pediatrician that they like and trust, and who they agree with on the important issues of childrearing. Think how complicated that process would be if the parents had to go through it twice - once for the pediatrician, once for the psychologist. In addition, such a process would generate an inordinate amount of excess bureaucracy for the parents, as they find themselves trying to justify a psychologist under whatever medical plan they follow, and account for visits and services rendered. The alternative to this is skipping the psychologist entirely, leaving the parents without any source of information about their child's cognitive and social development. The pediatrician as the source of this information is preferable.

For similar reasons, having the pediatrician alone benefits children. Children are typically not very fond of visits to any sort of professional; often getting them to the pediatrician is quite the task. How much worse would it be to get them to two practitioners regularly? Even a child who likes his or her pediatrician may not like the psychologist. Asking children to accommodate two professionals in their life like this is much more complicated than simply taking them to one, the pediatrician.

Furthermore, a good pediatrician would almost certainly prefer being the provider of this information for several reasons. The good pediatricians invest themselves into their patient, caring about the child's well-being, and as a consequence are concerned intimately with their patients' cognitive and social development. Trying to get a psychologist to worry about those issues, while confining the pediatrician solely to considerations of health and physical well-being, is an exercise in redundancy for that reason. Even worse, a pediatrician and a psychologist with the same child as a patient may disagree over developmental issues, leading the parents to receive conflicting advice. And even should the parents find two professionals who they like and who agree with each other, the two occupations overlap so significantly that working with the child would almost be impossible individually. A child's development and health are often closely related. In the course of an examination, a pediatrician covering all aspects of the child's well-being can observe, account for, and take steps to handle any problems that may arise. Conversely, a pediatrician only concerned with health would have to write referrals and pass many problems on to the psychologist, thus resulting in a loss of precision in both professions. For all these reasons, having one professional - the pediatrician - take care of both health and development issues is best.

I also feel that pediatricians have the time necessary to deal with these issues. Cognitive and social development is as much a part of health for a child as is physical well-being and immunizations, and a pediatrician who truly cares about the well-being of his or her patients will be concerned with this. The biggest time-eater that Dr. Hofkash recommended is taking the time to speak with the parents about their child. Although Dr. Hofkash recommended half an hour of speaking with the parents, that time may also be broken up across a few visits. A pediatrician could certainly save time by not doing this, but who would?

I believe that a good pediatrician will make time to speak to parents, perform developmental assessments, observe the child, and in general gauge how well the child is doing. To my way of thinking, the issue at stake is not how much time a pediatrician has to devote to individual patients and their families, but how much time the pediatrician is willing to devote. Giving each child the attention he or she needs is best for both the child and the parents. Even those (hopefully rare) pediatricians who pursue the career for reasons other than to help children will find benefit in this model, as whatever goals they're pursuing can only be helped by having parents and children feel comfortable. In the end, pediatricians, families, and children all benefit when the pediatrician takes the time to take care of the child as well as possible.

What is ADHD?

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder is a pattern of behaviors which demonstrate a developmentally inappropriate level of inattention, impulsivity, or hyperactivity. Diagnosis relies on several criteria: six or more inattention and/or hyperactivity symptoms, the presence of impairment before seven years of age, impairment in two or more settings, and significant impairment in social, academic, or occupational functioning.

Wait, don't all children suffer from this?

Most definitely. Many parents are concerned that their child might be diagnosed incorrectly just for acting his or her age! The increased media coverage of this syndrome fuels the perception that many parents are using medication to stop normal child behavior and control their children.

How can I be sure my child really does or doesn't suffer from ADHD?

Many people wonder this, and it doesn't help that diagnostic criteria keep changing. However, your pediatrician's most valuable sources on which to base the diagnosis are you and your child's teacher. Pediatricians can't make diagnoses based on observations alone. They will assess your child in multiple settings to obtain a comprehensive and function idea of his or her impairment, but that isn't enough either - they need you, since you're around your child much more and can provide a much better look at your child's behavior. Your child's teacher is also a valuable resource, as teachers are generally familiar with how children act, and if your child is acting unusual. Other disorders are usually considered during a diagnosis as well.

How common is this syndrome?

Currently, about three to five percent of children are diagnosed with ADHD. Of these, boys are five times more likely to be diagnosed than females.

Wait, what happened to Attention Deficit Disorder?

ADHD has gone through a lot of name changes and terminology - it's been known in one form or another since the early 1900's. Originally it was called Minimal Brain Damage, reflecting how little we knew about what actually caused it. Once it was determined that the symptoms were not caused by brain damage, the name shifted to Hyperkinetic Reaction of Childhood, Hyperkinesis, or Hyperactivity in the 1960's. The presence of attention deficits and the occasional lack of hyperactivity led to another reclassification as Attention Deficit Disorder in the 1980's. From there, hyperactivity was brought back in and the disorder was renamed Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Finally, to show that attention deficits and hyperactivity were related, but could be present or not, the syndrome was finally renamed to its current name, Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.

What causes this disorder?

ADHD is not environmental disorder - in other words, nothing anyone does or doesn't do can "make" your child have ADHD. ADHD tends to run in families, in fact, along with Antisocial Personality Disorder, which could be considered an extension of ADHD into adult life. Alcoholism and mood disorders, two inherited traits, are also more present in families of children with ADHD, lending further weight to the idea that ADHD is an inherited or genetic flaw.

However, many environmental factors can contribute to ADHD - not its biological basis, but how much it affects the child's life. Children with ADHD tend to live in families undergoing economic hardship, marital difficulty, or stress in general. These environmental factors can all make ADHD worse.

But my child will grow out of this, right?

Maybe. Two-thirds of all children diagnosed with ADHD still meet the criteria for diagnosis into adolescence, and there is some concern that ADHD may become Antisocial Personality Disorder. The visible signs of ADHD do decrease, often convincing an ADHD-diagnosed person into thinking the disorder is gone when it is not. In addition to its persistence, an ADHD sufferer may experience difficulties in relationships, academics, and employment, and is more at-risk for substance abuse.

What can I do if my child has ADHD?

Currently, ADHD is treated with both medication and behavioral treatment. Parents are taught techniques and skills to help control the children's behavior - children with ADHD need more structure and clear expectations as to what is expected from them. Interventions must be made in school to ensure the child's disorder is accounted for. Most children receive medication of some form.

What medication will my child get?

Most children receive either Ritalin, Dexedrine, or Adderall, which together can help three-quarters of all children with ADHD. Many parents are worried about an under- or over-dose, which is possible with these drugs. In many cases, a child may not need as much medication to learn well as he or she does to behave well. These drugs also cause side-effects such as appetite suppression, irritability, and insomnia.

Ritalin has one major drawback: its effects peak in a couple of hours, and it can stop working as soon as three and a half hours after it's taken. New drugs, such as Concerta, are merely variants of existing drugs designed to solve this problem - Concerta, for example, is a time-release variant of Ritalin, meant to be effective much longer.

My school isn't being accommodating - they think I just made ADHD up! What can I do?

Let's hope it never comes up, but a student with ADHD may be entitled to free and equal accommodations under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act or Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. ADHD is considered a disability under federal law. Accommodations can vary, but they can include preferential seating, cueing the student to remain on task, assigning a homework buddy, providing assignments or a syllabus in writing, breaking assignments into smaller segments, oral quizzes, tasks that involve movement, and many others.

Should I be worried?

Not particularly. ADHD is fairly easy to handle in general, although a definite issue. The availability of medication and the relatively frequent occurrence of ADHD make it easy to find literature, advice, or other sufferers. Children with ADHD may have extra problems to contend with in their youth, but they can grow up happy and successful just like any other child.

The average American citizen assumes that because we are a wealthy nation, most children live in safe, healthy, and supportive environments. As was apparent from the lecture by Dr. Sites, this is not true. First, what was your reaction to the data you heard in class? Second, if you were running for political office what type of a platform might you have concerning child welfare issues and how would you convince the public to support your ideas.

The data Dr. Sites cited - in effect, that American policies are destroying women and children in poverty - are for some reason not surprising to the very cynical me. For the average America citizen, I think the data would be surprising retroactively - the sort of thing that people know, vaguely, is true, but do not actively process until it is pointed out to them. That idea goes hand-in-hand with the idea of campaigning for public office on a platform for child welfare issues.

The primary focus on a political campaign platform on children would be to improve child welfare - not Child Welfare, the organization set up by the government, but the abstract concept that every child should have the best environment possible. Dr. Sites cited data indicating that 25% of all children live in families below the poverty line, and ten percent of them live in "extreme" poverty. Getting a majority of the public behind me is simply an issue of raising public awareness of that fact, and having evidence to prove it. I believe an adequate foundation for the platform would be these facts.

My answer to this problem would be almost exactly what Dr. Sites recommended: a higher minimum wage, improved public education, and improved health care. A higher minimum wage not only helps to decrease poverty, and thus improve the well-being of the children living in poverty, but would also decrease several other negative factors correlated to low income, such as crime. If at all possible I would cite the examples of those places Dr. Sites mentioned as having enacted a similar law - if the data we heard were correct, and these places benefited from decreased crime and poverty rates without job loss, then the situation is ideal.

Naturally some people would still oppose this sort of plan for whatever reason. But, as Dr. Sites said, the cost of an increased minimum wage now is significantly less than the cost of all the programs necessary to repair the damage of poverty and its associated troubles. Less poverty means less crime, which means less expensive criminal justice and enforcement; less poverty means less child abuse or neglect, which in turn means less expensive Child Welfare divisions. A few simple numbers and projected expenditures should suffice to prove the point adequately, and as an added bonus the money saved could be spent in other places such as education, or returned to the people.

Having brought up Child Welfare, I would then proceed to address the controversies surrounding it. Dr. Sites mentioned several in the lecture. State intervention in family has always been a sticking point for several people. The criteria for an acceptable intervention, along with the connected problem of how to determine parental competency in such a diverse nation, can be vastly divisive topics which undermine the program. I would campaign towards establishing a clear set of circumstances in which intervention was acceptable, while being sure to include input from various cultural perspectives. A firm and reasonable list will improve public perception of the program and make its interventions seem more justified and palatable. It would also cut down on unnecessary public reports, while increasing reports of situations that do need to be addressed, allowing for reductions to be made to the current $15 billion budget allocated for investigations. In addition, an evaluation of current Child Welfare operations would be necessary.

However, in my opinion, the best solution to any Child Welfare controversies is to make the program completely unnecessary. Child Welfare is a solution to problems; the best way to deal with these problems is make sure they don't come up in the first place. As Dr. Sites said, poverty seems to have a greater impact on abuse and neglect than any other common factor; thus, the answer to addressing abuse and neglect is to address poverty. Again, this ties back into the program to reduce poverty.

The best way to address the issue of child welfare is not to attempt solve the problem, but to prevent it from occurring entirely. To that end, any political platform I might pursue would focus on reducing the circumstances that result in child welfare issues - and, as is evident, these changes would benefit both individuals and society as a whole.

This part of the midterm came about after we listened to the story of the Better Baby Institute, a place that claims to give you a method to teach your child to read, learn foreign languages, play music, even do math problems that no ordinary person could hope to accomplish. Our professor has appeared on several programs to dispute the claims of this sort of place. This essay is on why people are so drawn to places like this despite their dubious claims.

1. Parents are, of course, drawn to the early years entirely too much. Human nature dictates the various psychological motivations behind parents' desire to improve their children in the early years; society reinforces these beliefs through media representations.

Parents can have any number of reasons for being drawn to the Better Baby Institute and its brethren. The optimistic viewpoint holds that parents want the best for their children, and feel that they cannot afford to miss this sort of opportunity, especially with "proven" results. These parents are trying to give their children an edge in a fiercely competitive world. The flip side of this is those parents who enroll in this program for all the wrong reasons - to mold their child into a particular vision they may have, to live vicariously through their children, to "keep up with the Joneses" - all manner of less-than-sterling motives.

Regardless of their true motivation, all parents are essentially trying to do one thing: give their child or children every advantage in a culture that, increasingly, judges people by their intelligence. Literacy is more crucial to our culture than it has ever been throughout history - and the Better Baby Institute offers to teach your child to read early and well! Math, science, and computers are the jobs which hold both money and a measure of prestige in this culture - and the Better Baby Institute claims to have your child doing mathematical equations you yourself couldn't do without a calculator and an instruction book! Modern communications makes it possible for a budding garage band to publish their songs electronically and become an instant sensation - and the Better Baby Institute will teach your child to play an instrument!

Although the intellectual elite (defined here as those with IQ's of approximately 147 or greater, commonly defined as "potential genius") has never ruled the world, it certainly controls it. Our lives are defined by science and technology. What parent would - could- in good conscience deny their child an opportunity to be in the upper crust, to be a Nobel prize-winning scientist, a groundbreaking mathematician to be compared to Einstein, or any number of other pipe dreams.

The media fuels this controversy in several ways. First, its method of reporting research has led to the common perceptions of the effect of nurturing. Many parents have come to believe that they can override the natural constrictions of physiology with sufficient care and effort - this mindset is obvious in those parents who think that "patterning" for a disabled child will somehow cure the child and allow it to live a normal life. With every report on the correlation between parental reading and intelligence, or what have you, parents leap into the fray with both feet, following the policy that "more is better" while failing to account for diminishing returns. The media has also encouraged the perception of early childhood as a critical period for growth. This is not intentional; it is simply a repercussion of how they report. Early childhood is, in fact, a critical period for many activities - language, for example. The media demonstrates this, leaving parents with a "use it or lose it" impression generalized to almost everything. The idea of a young brain being more plastic, the concept of unused brain cells dying, the stories of children's ability to learn - these are what parents see, and what they make their judgments on. Is it any wonder that they conclude that early childhood is the critical period for all learning?

The problem with the Better Baby Institute and its ilk is that they don't really have the answer they claim to. They promise that their methods will produce results - but in fact, as Glenn Doman himself admitted during the interview, the actual secret is simply parents paying attention to their child, helping them learn and guiding them. In short, parents should be parents. Unfortunately, many parents prefer the quick-fix solution, looking for a "magic formula" to make their children better without much real effort on their behalf.

As a future parent, I too feel the seductive call of the Better Baby Institute. I know its claims and principles are false, yet a part of myself chides me for passing up an opportunity to give my children a chance to be better than they ordinarily would. Of course, this part of my is stupid, so I will ignore it. I think the best thing I could do for my children is to be a parent - to invest time, effort, and love into them. Humanity has existed for millennia without the Better Baby Institute; Copernicus, Plato, Einstein - none of them attended a Better Baby Institute. I like to think that, just because one suddenly exists, we won't abruptly be unable to raise our children without it.

I wrote this for a midterm. I know this applies to one or two of you out there, and may someday to more... the readership of my journal is all female for some reason. :) Now, I know I'm in waaaay over my head, spouting out opinions about a biological process I'll never undergo and can't possibly understand, but I gotta pass the class, right? So here goes:

2. I believe that the major philosophical division between alternative birth centers and the traditional medical profession is that of the role of the patient. While traditional medicine views the patient as an object, alternative care views the patient as a partner in the process.

Traditional medical care typically treats the patient as a machine. The process of birth is simple - the doctors facilitate the machine's production of a child. Because of this, birth becomes a procedure with certain protocols that must not be deviated from. Kathy McCain pointed out many of these in the course of her talk. The "machine" must be prepared in a specified way - in other words, the woman must be in a given position, sterilized, and so forth. The machine is given a set time to produce the child, after which doctors will assume it is malfunctioning and manually override it. Most of the women I have talked to who have had children report that their labor was induced. They speak of it as nothing special, a testament to how common the procedure is, but I cannot comprehend why it is okay to rush the process unnecessarily. If the machine seems like it is not working perfectly or as expected, the doctors will remove the baby manually. Again, in speaking with women, many of them indicate that they had C-sections performed, even though they were not having serious problems. Again, I cannot understand this.

Conversely, the alternative birth centers seem much more open to the needs of a patient as a person. By allowing the patient a choice in how the birth will proceed, from position to medication to actions, the patient is treated as a person rather than an object. By making the patient feel more active, more responsible, and more in control of the birth, she will feel more comfortable and be more confident. In addition, the patient is less likely to suffer from complications that might occur during normal hospital birth, such as possible side-effects of induced labor, or the risk of infection that a C-section carries.

Both birth paradigms seem committed to the best possible medical care, as opposed to acting out of social or political motivations, but in different ways. Hospital care views "best possible medical care" as an absolute and general concept. Each woman is set up to receive the absolute best. They are positioned so as to ensure that doctors can intervene best if something goes wrong; their labor is induced, in theory to minimize how much of it they have to endure; they are given C-sections not only when necessary, but to prevent any mishaps or difficulties. Although this is an effective and efficient procedure, it suffers from two serious problems. First, the whole process of preparing for disaster is usually not necessary, and can lead to a doctor feeling that he has to use the techniques available to him, rather than let them go to waste. Second, the patient is given very little choice in the matter, and may feel uncomfortable and helpless.

Conversely, alternative birth centers acknowledge that patients may not always want what conventional medicine says is "best" for them, such as a C-section, and offers them the right to choose. The policy of these birth centers is that birth is a normal and natural life process, and as such, medical intervention will not be necessary in many if not most cases. That being the case, women should be allowed to have as much control over the process as possible. Recognizing the differences between patients may not be what traditional medicine views as the best practice, but it is definitely better from a humanistic perspective, as it is more conducive to the emotional and psychological well-being of the mother in question. It is also more realistic - as Kathy McKain pointed out, only in recent years has birth become the province of the hospital. Hospitals seem to offer more benefits, but in reality those benefits are only necessary in some cases.

If my spouse was expecting a child, she would deliver that child wherever she darn well pleased. I wold have absolutely no intention of deciding for her how she was going to deliver that baby! That said, however, I believe I would encourage an alternative birth center. By nature I am a very anti-technocratic, naturalistic person. Though I'll never experience it, and probably have no real right to say so, I believe in keeping things simple and natural. If inducing labor is not necessary, it shouldn't be done; the same applies to C-sections. I also believe that women should have as much control over the process as possible, considering they are the ones giving birth. From practical experience as well, I know of one person currently planning to have a midwife-assisted birth, and she seems pleased with the choice. This is not to say that I don't believe in the ability of hospitals to handle difficulties or give care; I simply feel that a birth should not be treated as an emergency waited to happen without a reason to do so. I believe the natural emphasis of an alternative birth center is the best option.