A poignantly relevant quotation from Teddy Roosevelt's biography of Cromwell:

Self-governing freemen must have the power to accept necessary compromises, to make necessary concessions, each sacrificing somewhat of prejudice, and even of principle, and every group must show the necessary subordination of its particular interests to the interests of the community as a whole. When the people will not or cannot work together; when they permit groups of extremists to decline to accept anything that does not coincide with their own extreme views; or when they let power slip from their hands through sheer supine indifference; then they have themselves chiefly to blame if the power is grasped by stronger hands.

As quoted in Sidney Blumenthal's new book, and as read in Salon.

Venophage

Why does intravenous contain ravenous?

Blastomere

Just reading this story on DNA testing in today's Times. The tests include the creation and destruction of embryos. I have been struggling to articulate my feelings on this. Part of the problem is that while I disagree with those on the right who say that life surely begins at conception, I am not ready to say when it does. Nor am I willing to concede that an embryo is no different than a fingernail or cut hair -- clearly it is the beginning of a human life, and has a special status.

I think it boils down to a slippery slope. Let's take a scale where 1 is a newly-fertilized embryo, and 10 is a new-born infant. Nobody would freeze an infant for later use, or discard it. Nor would many accept the same for a late-term fetus. There is a point on the scale made by each of us according to our conscience, and the collective design of those points is our cultural view on the matter.

If we permit the destruction of embryos, will the grade change? The common term for "sperm meets egg" used to be conception. Now we say fertilization, moving from a term connoting human agency to one of pure biology. Is that movement on the slope?

Modern Times

Why, though our modern lives are longer, do they seem briefer? Are they too illuminated? Does the harsh white light of hospital corridors reveal every moment in antiseptic relief, and render them featureless, without surprise, like a vast plain?

Think of fairy tales, books, The Painted Bird. Dense, rich, dark, interleaved, full of symbols. They're stories, not lives, of course, but they map onto lives. The hero doesn't know how it will end. The giant may win and gnaw his bones. We don't know, or pretend, intend not to know.

When we hear the story again, even a fifth time, we hold our breath. We suspend our knowledge. We need to think the hero can fail, or it's a dull certainty. Can we suspend belief or knowledge when the entire genome is mapped? When we know that we will die of a terrible disease before 50? That 30% of our friends will die during a dirty bomb attack?

Is it knowing the facts, or knowing only the facts?