Grand Rounds (week 8): Loomis on Professionalism and OSHA stuff

( notes, ok to delete this after I pass the class, no new info in here )

Girl Scout Org Accused of Being Radically Left Wing

I was a Campfire Girl, not a Girlscout or Brownie. So I don't know from the inside. But from the outside, having been a river guide and taking many screaming groups of Brownies rafting on whitewater rivers, the organization appears squeaky clean and rather conservative. I never would have guessed that the organization would teach girls about abortion. But who knows? Maybe they are. That's what the teenaged girls from Texas are saying, and they're making news on The Daily Beast. It occurs to me though that the organization will probably have its name cleared. The organization officially does not endorse any political party or birth control method. Meanwhile, the offended girls have started a blog to get their story out. The case they are making is that the official girl scout materials mention websites and people who are "pro-abortion" and so if you follow the links you will discover that these perspectives are ubiquitous. Big surprise. I wonder what fraction of the links in the girl scout material go to sites that hold the opposite viewpoints. It seems to me that the org would serve the girls best by exposing them to many opposing viewpoints so that they could learn to think and decide for themselves. Girls who want to be cloistered would be better served in a nunnery.

QotD: Tim Palmer on Rivers

Rivers are magnets for the imagination, for conscious pondering
and subconscious dreams, thrills and fears. People stare into the moving water,
captivated, as they are when gazing into a fire. What is it that draws and holds us?
The rivers’ reflections of our lives and experiences are endless. The water calls up
our own ambitions of flowing with ease, of navigating the unknown. Streams
represent constant rebirth. The waters flow in, forever new, yet forever the same;
they complete a journey from beginning to end, and then they embark on the
journey again.
--Tim Palmer