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December 15, 2009

Home for the Holidays

I am headed to Croatia tomorrow. I haven't been there in four and a half years, and I am really excited about this trip. I used to go home more often, but once you reach the end of your graduate student career and enter the "real world," things become incredibly more complicate and you stop doing many of the things that you used to take for granted.

A lot has happened since I had been there the last time. My brother has had two adorable little baby girls, Vida and Jana, and I can't wait to see them in person for the first time. This past year I had actually been talking on the phone with Vida, who turned two in June, and she is such a character.

I'll be in Croatia for three weeks, and I am also planning on seeing my uncle and his family in Mostar. I am really excited about my trip, but I am not happy that I'll be away from Sharmin for so long. Hopefully she'll be able to accompany me on my next trip there, which, I hope, will not take another four years to happen.

I am taking my wonderful new Canon camera with me, so stay tuned for some great photos of one of the most beautiful countries in the World.

December 13, 2009

That didn’t take long

Earlier today I tried starting a petition on www.change.org to appeal to US public officials to end abortion. As I had suspected, the ultra-lefty website didn't like that kind of change, so they have removed it. Just like that – no explanations, no warning, nothing. So I am definitely adding "change" to my ever-growing list of four-letter words, together with "diversity," "sustainability," "social justice," and so on. The list, just like the number of Tiger Woods' mistresses, keeps growing. One day I may write a whole dictionary. Ambrose Bierce may need an update for the twenty-first century.

Changing Abortion

Change has been getting a lot of traction over the past two years, but mostly the kind I don't believe in. Apparently, change also has a website. Predictably, it is a very left website catering to all the usual liberal hot-button issues: "Global Warming," "Gay Rights," "Women's Rights," etc. You get the idea. However, www.change.org purports to be a general-purpose petition website that "empowers people to take action with leading nonprofits." It seems to be trying to become some sort of social-networking website that gets people in touch with nonprofits and other lobbying groups. So I started to wonder. I was curious to see if they would let a non-liberal cause on the website, something that would reflect the kind of change that I would really like to see. So I started a petition to recruit people to write to US politicians and urge them to end Abortion. After all, abortion is the norm in the US right now and ending it would in fact be a change. When I was asked for a category to which my petition would belong, I chose "End Genocide" since none of the others really fit. So far, the petition has been allowed to stay on the website. If you would like to endorse the petition please go here. Here is the letter of my petition that I quickly put together:

"There is a terrible practice affecting our communities today, causing deaths of millions of innocent lives at the stage when they are most vulnerable. That is the practice of abortion. Since this practice had become completely legal in all of its forms in the United States it has been estimated that close to 50 million innocent lives have been lost. In terms of comparison, the total number of casualties in World War II, which was the deadliest war in human history, has been estimated at about 60 million. And that is for the entire World. I think that these numbers speak for themselves about the gravity and seriousness of this affliction and I would urge you and all those who influence public policy to work in whatever capacity you can to bring this terrible practice to an end."