The Abortion Sob Story--When Doctors Promote an Agenda by Encouraging Women to Have Abortions

 By now, everyone has probably heard of at least one woman who couldn't get an abortion and needed one because her baby had a fatal condition and would die soon after earth. The problem is that the conditions these babies have are not always fatal--therefore, the doctors in states where abortion has restrictions and who deliberately tell these women their child will "probably" die are not being good doctors. Any woman who is told by a doctor that her baby has a condition that will "probably" kill it but which does not qualify for fatal condition clauses in state laws should question the doctor.

I refused genetic testing for all five of my kids. There was no medical reason to conduct it in my opinion--if something is "found," I was told at the time there was nothing they can do about it to help the baby better survive. The sole purpose of genetic testing, to the best of my knowledge, is to encourage women who may give birth to a disabled child to have an abortion. The only other thing it can do is cause pregnant women to worry more--which is not good for the pregnancy. 

This is not the only story of a woman complaining that she had to leave her home state to get an abortion when she found out her baby had the almost always fatal Trisome 18. The problem is that like other stories I have heard where mothers are told their babies will die, these are almost old wives tales doctors are passing on. This woman, for example, lived to be at least 40 years old with Trisome 18. Doctors tell people their baby will "probably" not live past the first year, but 1 in 20 do. If you have an abortion, your baby will die immediately. Trisome 13 is another "fatal" syndrome. The oldest documented man alive was 31 years old. 

Then there is the Florida ad that is being banned by DeSantis. DeSantis is right: the ad is false based on what has been leaked about "Caroline" the Tampa woman in the ad. She was purportedly 20 weeks pregnant when she found out. Once again, doctors played on this woman's emotions and told her she would die and the baby would die if she did not have an immediate abortion. The last I checked, real medical scientists would never say something like this because no one can predict medical outcomes with 100% accuracy. That is the thing that was driven in to me and my father when he was undergoing cancer treatments. He died even without being pregnant. My grandma went through her treatments and lived--and is still alive.

Surgery and radiation are the main treatments for most brain cancers. 1 in 50 people need surgery during pregnancy, so this is a doable thing--although it is recommended to wait until 12 weeks. Her doctors apparently did not advise her of this. In the 1990s--i.e. 30 years ago, there wasn't the technology to pinpoint spots on the body like the head. Now there is. Radiation for cancer can be performed while a woman is pregnant. There are even some chemotherapy treatments that can be given after 14 weeks. Why were these doctors not telling her that at 20 weeks she could begin treatment while pregnant?

Finally, this baby was 20 weeks old. Old school rules that refuse to die state that a baby is "viable" at 22-24 weeks. What that means is that each hospital or government sets an arbitrary time between 22 and 24 weeks where they will attempt to save babies who are born. If the baby is earlier than that, they won't do anything to try to save it and basically will watch it die if it was born alive. This is solely a cost measure that was established to help deal with the ethics of letting a needy baby die. Premature babies--especially this early--cost a lot of health care services. However, AIDS patients cost $32,000 per month for their AIDS medication alone and are susceptible to diseases that do not effect people without it. Are we just going to let AIDS patients die because their care is expensive? 

Doctors justify allowing premature babies to die by saying the baby probably would have died anyway. The problem is (as the study above says) that when all babies who are alive at the start of labor are given survival care after birth (as is the law in Japan), 60% survive. 

Further, because age is sometimes not accurately predicted, many hospitals instead used weight averages. The hospital where I did an internship in the 1990s set it at 900g. (Don't quote me on that exact number--its been 30 years!) So, if your baby was born at 20 weeks, and it was struggling, they would immediately put it on a scale and see if it was heavy enough. If it met the weight criteria, the doctors would work to save it and even resuscitate it if necessary. Because the weighing was done in a hurry, a few "light" babies were worked on--and survived. 

These arbitrary "viability" numbers are so wrong in our medical world today. Babies as young as 19 weeks have survived and are fine. Babies as light as 212 g have survived and are still alive and doing fine. It is crazy that our doctors tell pregnant women they should have an abortion, instead of just letting them give early birth. 

Now, if "Caroline" had been diagnosed with terminal cancer at 8 weeks instead of 20, then of course she should have been given the option--have an abortion, undergo treatment, and extend your life by possibly a few years or stall treatment, potentially die within the year (leaving your daughter and baby motherless), and have the baby (she might have had to go on life support the last trimester to continue allowing the baby to grow if the late treatment did not slow its progression). The latter would come with the extremely rare risk that the cancer could spread to the baby, but if they noticed the cancer metastasizing, they could have made the decision about inducing labor early. Instead, the doctors pushed a political agenda, telling her she would die and her baby would die no matter what if she did not get an abortion--at least this is what she says. 

Either the doctors lied to her or she is lying to us. Either way, DeSantis should stop it. I mean, I couldn't even make a post on Facebook during COVID that cited the CDC, FDA, and academic papers supporting my conclusion and was against mask mandates. This lady shouldn't be allowed to give out bad health information either. 

Free-to-Play or Pay-to-Win: Dungeons and Dragons Online vs. Clash of Clans

 This is not my normal type of post, but after my children convinced me to join Clash of Clans (CoC) about a month ago, and my dissatisfaction with its pay-to-win model, I decided to write this. With CoC and its appeal to young kids and teens, there is a significant risk for these age groups--if they have access to money. It seems that a lot of people are confused about what "pay-to-win" means. I attribute this to people who do pay to win games defending their investment as fair play. It also seems people are confused about what "pay-to-win" means.

So, what does pay-to-win mean? Pay-to-win is not simply being able to pay a price and be declared the winner of a game. Pay-to-win also does not mean that you can only get some necessary content by paying for it--that would be more of a "freemium" model. So, although a video game might be classified as "pay-to-win" or "free-to-play," if it gives you only a small portion of the game for free and you have to pay to get the rest (not earn points over time, but actually pay or the ending is blocked), it would be considered freemium. An example of this would be games like the Diner Dash series or the Delicious Emily series. You cannot get past a certain level of these games without paying real money. That makes them freemium.

Free-to-play is a subset of the freemium business model. This is where you get all the content of the game for free--although there may be some ads in the game. Solitaire or minesweeper would be examples of this. You can download them for free and get access to all the content, but they have ads and sometimes your gameplay is stopped to display them. 

Pay-to-win is a subset of the free-to-play model. A frequent mechanic of pay-to-win games is that you have to wait a certain amount of time before necessary content can be accessed. Both Dungeons and Dragons Online (DDO) and CoC use this model, as do other games like Candy Crush. However, there are vast differences in the way this model is implemented in these games that make DDO at pay-to-win that you cannot really pay-to-win and CoC entirely pay-to-win, with Candy Crush somewhere in the middle.

As I already said, I have played CoC about a month--I have never bought anything in-game with real money, nor do I ever plan to do so. I have been playing DDO about 8 years. I have occasionally bought in-game content with real money, and I plan to continue doing so. So why do I consider CoC pay-to-win and DDO not really pay-to-win?

Obviously, I cannot look at the actual programs. I can say that there is no way to determine if someone in DDO is VIP(regular subscribers who pay a monthly fee and may also pay additional fees) or Premium (what I am) or 100% free-to-play (they have never spent a real cent on the game). However, after playing CoC, I have begun to wonder if the programming itself is biased toward people who pay for things with real money. I have noticed that in player-vs.-player battles, I get constantly attacked by people who are a higher level than I am. My kids (who to the best of my knowledge have never bought anything in-game with real money because they do not have access to real money) agree that they also get constantly attacked by people of higher levels. When you get hit 20x in a row by someone who is higher level than you--no matter what time of day you play--and you only fight someone your own level on occasion, you begin to wonder how that can randomly happen. What are the odds of randomly drawing someone higher level than you and rarely drawing someone of equal level? In a regular attack on someone else, a person one level above you is difficult but not too difficult because you only have to get one star to win. But in a player-vs.-player battle, you have to score better than them. Getting stars is the priority. If you destroy 48% of their base and they destroy 13% of yours but happened to get your town hall and win one star--you lose. If both of you get 13%, but they lost all their troops quicker than you did, they win. In other words, you can fight people your own level and still lose on technicalities.

But the level differences are drastic. Between levels 3 and 4 at your builder base doubles the maximum number of troops you can field and the variety. It also doubles most of your defenses. After that, each level gives you a maximum of 8 more until level 7, where your maximum goes from 48 to 70. 

As I said, I can't see the programming--perhaps the imbalance can be easily explained by other reasons than that people who pay are given preference to battle people of lower level, but even if it is a programming oddity, the frustration of losing battle after battle after battle to people who are higher level, with more defenses and troops, is very real. 

And that is where the pay-to-win comes in. You only get a certain number of builders--you can either build one thing or upgrade one thing and there is no way to queue what you want that builder to do next. I spent the first three days of my game experience watching my phone like crazy so I could immediately start another project when my builder was free. More builders cost emeralds. Just like builders are in short supply, resources are also in short supply. It, for example, only costs about 20,000 elixir and 20,000 gold to get from level 1 to 2. It would take 5 hours of constant play. To get to level 4 with everything maxed out would take about 2 weeks and over 3 million elixir. (Once fully upgraded at this level you can make 228,000 gold/elixir per day-- so you have to battle to get more if you want to meet the 2 week goal.) However, to max everything out at level 5 takes almost 6 million elixirs and gold (combined-about 3 million each). It will also take about a month. And that is just for your main base. Oh, and when you work on your defensive structures they are useless.

And this is how you pay to win. You can buy gems to (1) speed up the work, (2) purchase gold or elixir you don't have (3) buy a shield so no one can attack you for 18 days every 35 days (4) get buffs. Not only can you build your own village quickly and max out your level, you can also build an entire clan with gems. Since the key to winning battles and defending your village is having a maxed out village, you can pay to get maxed out as quickly as you can click. Place a guard on your village while you are maxing everything out and leveling up your town hall, and you will always be the top of your level. When you are done fighting other people, put another guard on your village to prevent defeats. Since having more wins raises you to the top of the leaderboards, you can pay-to-win, especially since every defeat lowers your status. Obviously, if you are level 4 and have maxed everything out and going against another level 4 who hasn't maxed everything out, you will probably win. Or if you go against a level 4 who happens to be upgrading his/her archer towers (and therefore they cannot fight), you are much more likely to win. At least one of the people at the top of the leaderboards has admitted to spending over $2,500 on the game. 

This is why I think the algorithm is slanted in the vs. battles. As I said, it is easier to win multiplayer battles, where you just fight their defenses that it is to win vs. battles. If you win, you want to keep playing. If you lose every battle, especially after paying who knows how much, you are going to get angry and stop playing (and thereby stop paying). This is why I think the game is further slanted against those who do not play. Again, my suspicion is because I am constantly pitted against higher level players. Are there really that many more higher level players playing at any given time? But even if there is not a planned algorithm to make it easier for those who pay by pitting them against lower players, those who pay still have an advantage because they can instantly upgrade. 

DDO has a similar game mechanic. Instead of emeralds, you can purchase DDO points. Like CoC, you can also earn these points in-game. In CoC, you get emeralds by completing certain tasks. Each time you complete a task, the next task is more difficult or requires a higher and higher level to achieve with less of a gem payout. For example, if you loot 20,000 gold, you get 10 gems. If you loot 1,000,000 (x50), you get 100 gems (x10); if you loot 100,000,000 (x100) you get 1000 (x10). As you level up and fight higher level villages, you get more loot. However, after the third achievement is completed, you can no longer earn gems. To get your first extra builder for gems it costs 500. Finishing a building that takes 8 hours to complete can cost 100-200 gems the longer it takes the more it costs. 

In DDO, you earn DDO points for completing quests or you can purchase them. The quests give you favor--and you can get the most favor by completing the quest on elite difficulty. If you are a new character who is free-to-play, you can only open a quest on normal, so you have to run it three times to get the most favor out of it or run it with someone who can open it on elite or higher. Once you get to level 20 or above, you can start your character over (reincarnate) at level 1 again and re-earn the favor/DDO points indefinitely. The first time you reincarnate you can open quests on hard, the second time and thereafter you can open them on elite. Also, the first time you reach favor milestones on each of the 8 normal servers or on the hardcore server, you get bonus DDO points. You can then use these points to buy expansion packs for 100-4000 DDO points (they get cheaper the older they are). Further, most of the expansion packs are regularly offered for free or at greatly discounted prices. 

DDO points can make you stronger by purchasing quests to get gear out of them--but you still have to run the quests to get the gear (sometimes repeatedly). There is nothing to make a quest go faster. You can level up and make your character stronger, but you don't get XP if you are too high a level and running a lower level quest. You can get an XP potion in the store that makes you collect XP at a higher rate, but you also get these through daily dice rolls randomly or by trading other items in-game--and you still have to spend the same amount of time running the quests at level or above. You can buy a box in the store that quickly gets you from level 1 to 20 or from level 20 to 30, but again, you will miss out on treasure that might have made your character stronger by not running the quests. The only thing these are really good for is improving established characters. 

The best way a person could use money to make their character stronger is buy creating a guild--but even if you buy the best ship in the game (which is difficult to do immediately without DDO points), you cannot get any buffs out of it until the guild itself is leveled up. For example, you cannot get any buffs if you guild is below level 10. Again, you can buy potions to speed up XP (or get them free in daily rolls), but you still have to run the quests and do the work. 

Unlike CoC, DDO does not have a "leaderboard" except for the Hardcore League Server. There are two leaderboards there: Most Favor and Most Reaper XP. You can drink a potion to increase your XP, but you cannot drink a potion to increase your favor. Again, the only way to get on either of these is to run quests without dying. (If you die once on the Hardcore server, you need to create a new character--and as soon as you die you are removed from the leaderboard. There isn't something you can buy to keep you from dying.) You can fight other players in a tavern brawl, but there isn't really anything you get out of it except broken armor. Telling others you are king of tavern brawl won't impress them as much as saying you are a triple completionist (you have been from 1 to 20 forty-five times). But, let's say you wanted to buy the boxes and become a triple completionist as fast as possible. You can still only reincarnate once every three days. It would take you about five months to do that. At the end, you could tell people you were a triple completionist, but no one would believe you because you wouldn't have run the quests to get needed gear and your character would still not be able to survive. Considering there are some people who reincarnate every three days without having to buy the boxes, you really haven't given yourself an advantage over anyone else. And, when new classes come out, you have to run those three times, too, to keep the small buff triple completionists get. 

Whereas money in CoC gives you an advantage by allowing you to max up your stuff and win battles, in DDO it gives you wants not needs. If you want more bank space, that costs DDO points. Being able to keep a bunch of old junk or spell materials you aren't using doesn't give you a marked advantage over other players. It's a nice amenity. 

This leads me to the danger of CoC. Unlike DDO, which is not targeted to kids, CoC uses cartoons and easy play to attract children to it. DDO has a complex mechanic that makes it difficult to play without the help of the gaming community (many are more than willing to help new players). CoC can be figured out by a six-year old without parental guidance. However, kids are impatient, and many want the recognition of being at the top of game leaderboards. We usually get video game purchases or gift cards for presents at Christmas, but if a parent were to put their credit card information into CoC, the child could potentially keep making purchases. (This is also a potential problem with DDO--which used to allow parents to buy things for others and gave them a code for the child to put in, but now you have to put in and then delete your purchase information.) Again, parents have to be aware of this. We do not put our credit card information into games as a general rule, but had we done this our youngest child would have spent tons of money the first few years she was online gaming. We had to repeatedly tell her not to get into that screen and that they wanted real money. With CoC, its easy and cheap on the surface --99 cents here, $14.99 there. The cheapest packs from DDO points are $9.99 and expansions usually have three tiers starting at $39.99. Points and expansions also go on sale throughout the year. If you are a serial spender--constantly wanting new cosmetic armor, pets, or bank space to store them--who can't wait for purchases, you may find yourself repeatedly buying DDO points, but again none of these things are necessary for game success. Once the expansions are bought, they are yours permanently. They usually have one or two new expansions each year. We generally only buy points or expansions at Christmas when they are on sale. Are we paying to win DDO? It certainly doesn't feel like it. If I spent money on CoC it would feel like I was getting much more of an advantage. 

In short, there is nothing wrong with pay-to-win games or those who can afford to pay in them. I am sure there are many people in CoC who play and who pride themselves on the fact they have never spent a dime (just as there are in DDO). However, when children are targeted or when people who can't afford it find themselves addicted to the must-complete gimmick, they can become troublesome. In DDO, this manifests in players who zerg through quests without concern for others who are enjoying it more than in people constantly hitting the "buy" button.

DON'T Say Their Name

Active shooters have one thing in common--they want to go down in an infamous blaze of glory with their names plastered across the news. Not only does the news media grant their dying wish and encourage others to do the same, but some news agencies try to look into the psychology of the person doing the shooting and empathize with them. Yes, when sociopaths and those with untreated mental illness attack others, those of us who are sane question why they would do that. The answer is simple: They are insane. Never should a news agency use mental illness as an excuse for what these people do--hundreds of millions of people suffer with mental illness every day and most who get treatment are still suffering due to the trial and error process that no scientist has been tasked with resolving. Poverty or abusive families is also not the answer--again hundreds of millions of children suffer abuse and poverty and do not shoot anyone. 

The Tennessee shooting, where we have evidence the shooter wanted to both die and to make it on the news--the real motives of this evil person, shows us that our media needs to be more discrete in granting these shooters wishes. Imagine if all news agencies stopped printing shooter names and pictures and solely focused on the victims. Imagine if all news agencies simply referred to the perpetrators as "the evil shooter" and solely stated the person did it because s/he was evil. Some shooters wouldn't care that they were considered evil, but all of them want their names and images in the press. 

I would love to say that people can fix this by simply not clicking on the articles, but unfortunately, you don't always know if an article is going to talk about the shooter or the brave souls who confronted the shooter and the victims. Everyone can complain to news agencies and block them for a month if they use shooter names or try to empathize with mass shooters. It is time for our society to stop making bad people seem justified in their action. Scientists have long realized that people who don't suffer any negative consequences for their bad actions continue doing bad actions. 

Unfortunately, bad scientists who grouped abusive practices in with spanking on the butt convinced parents they don't need to discipline their children. Worse scientists convinced everyone involved in children's lives to give them unearned rewards and praise that was not earned and to downplay half-hearted efforts. These humanists did what they could to push a lie: People are inherently good. Real science shows that people left to their own means will inherently do bad things (although the level of bad varies among them). People need to suffer consequences for their bad choices and putting a killer's name and image all over the news when that is exactly what they want is encouraging others to make the same bad choices. 

Now That We Know Bill Gates' Virtual Learning Fails Can We Stop Listening to This Guy?

 Bill Gates likes to think he is a genius and has revolutionary ideas on every subject from climate control to medicine to education. For years, those the subject of his generosity have seen it as a double edged sword--money given to them but which cannot be used to make things better because it can only be used to do what Bill Gates wants. What Bill Gates wants is rarely beneficial. 

Bill Gates was raised in one of those privileged environments where his parents only accepted winning. As might be expected, this created a man who will win--even if he must cheat to do it.

So far, the media has treated Bill as if he is a genius who knows everything about everything. Bill's house of cards is collapsing, but it is doubtful that he will be the one blamed for his failures. 

Consider virtual learning. Remember, Bill had made a heavy investment in this. Despite his previous New York educational failures, Cuomo turned to him to revolutionize Virtual Learning, believing as Bill Gates preached, that in-class learning was unnecessary. 

Now, let's keep in mind that Bill Gates has never been overly fond of education and dropped out of Harvard after his second year. Bill Gates and Joe Biden also have one major thing in common--neither of them seem to care that plagiarism is illegal. Both of them have also managed to plagiarize without being panned for it. Bill Gates stole the API from CP/M to make MSDOS and Biden plagiarized his schoolwork among other things.

Well, as children have failed Bill Gates' Virtual Experiment and as he grew richer from their failure, we should immediately recognize him for the parasite he is and ignore anything else he tells us we should spend our money on--since he is not an unbiased academic but rather a person who will collect big bucks when we take his advice. However, since the news is not mentioning him in any of the articles that I have seen on the failure of his educational idea, I doubt people will make the connection that he was behind it on their own.

Effectiveness of Gun Control Laws

I am so glad Illinois has some of the toughest gun control laws in the nation. Consider this article: What It Takes to Obtain a Gun License in Illinois.

As you can see from this article: Chicago Appeals for Help After Dozens Shot Over the Weekend. Tough gun laws really have helped Chicago, Illinois gun violence issues... <sarcasm>

My solution:

1. Get rid of violent video games and movies- require an ID to purchase and if the content is shared with children under 18, enforce the same legal penalties as if the adult shared alcohol with children.
2. Get rid of violent television shows (and news) viewed on public stations between 7 AM and 10 PM.
3. Create a government regulated "KinderNet" that parents can set up as the sole source of Internet for their children with no PG-13 or higher content. 
4. Encourage monogamous relationships where raising children is the most important thing and encourage one parent to stay home with children while raising them.
5. Offer more government aid,including healthcare, to families with at least one working parent. 

• Numerous studies have shown that children who are raised in preschools are more violent than those raised by their parents. It is impossible for a child to develop a long term relationship with an adult when that adult is constantly changing from year-to-year or month-to-month as they do in preschool environments.
• Numerous studies have shown that children who view violent or sexually explicit material at young ages (under 13) are more violent. 
• Numerous studies have shown that money is one of the major things couples argue about. Take away that stress and provide better access to healthcare so parents can seek therapy and improve communication without having to find thousands of dollars to do so.

I recognize that single parenting is sometimes necessary. There are also people out there who should NOT be parents. But for the most part, making it easier for families to raise children and making it more difficult for children to view violent explicit content will lower gun violence. That is what the research shows- the problem is, media is a big lobbyist. People who hate "welfare" and "government handouts" don't seem to recognize that the people who truly need it are not jobless scam artists. People with low paying jobs need government help for their families and the government should encourage people to work instead of cutting off all services once families do work. Still the government takes their payoffs from big Media and makes promises about squelching "free-handouts" while in actuality they cut-off working families from needed aid. Restricting guns does nothing to reduce gun violence as anyone in Chicago should know. It is time for America to wake up and address the real problem instead of trying to stick a cheap bandage over it.

How bad are M rated video games?

This time of year, many parents purchase video games for their children. Frequently, they ignore the M rating (similar to a movie's R rating) - after all, how bad can they be? Well, as a gamer, I want to let you know exactly what your child(ren) is getting when they talk you into purchasing that game. All M rated games contain material that few parents would want to expose their children to; however, I cannot post excerpts from all the games. Instead, I am posting videos from youtube of gamers playing some of the more common ones. These will give you an idea of what you can expect.

At the same time, when you click on these videos, expect to see graphic depictions of violence, nudity, and sex as well as inappropriate language. (Not to mention immature gamers commenting in the background - comments you can expect your kid to be hearing if they play online or interactively - after all these are the people they will be playing with.) Please note, you may need to watch these at least 5 minutes each because some have only mildly offensive material in the first minutes. Keep in mind, though, that you kids will be playing these for hours, often repeating the same scenes over and over again as the master it:
Assassin's Creed:

(Assassin's Creed always likes to throw in a little sex, too:)

Saints Row:

Grand Theft Auto V:

Far Cry (not the only graphic sex scene in this one):