So, there is a group on Facebook called "If you can't afford to tip your server 20%, DON'T GO OUT TO DINNER." Being curious, I checked out the page. Unsurprisingly, there were complaints from servers about being stiffed on tips (which, yeah, they have every right to complain about), but also a lot of servers stating that they should receive 20% tips regardless of their level of service because 1) They need the money and/or 2) They shouldn't be penalized if they are having a bad day.

Wha?

I worked as a hostess in high school and as a server after high school and in college. I know what it is like to bust your ass serving obnoxious patrons who have enough money to buy alcohol and desserts, but somehow leave a tip that is nothing. It sucks. Really, it sucks. I can recall being stiffed on tips when I know I gave very good service. But, I also understood it came with the job description. It sucks, but it is what it is.

That said, I have two problems with this concept that servers (or anyone in a service industry where there is tipping) should expect a certain tip regardless of quality of service. A tip is synonymous with gratuity; according to the dictionary, the definition of gratuity is: "a gift or reward, usually of money, for services rendered." If you want a good tip out of me, there had better be service rendered. I'm not going to tip you well for just showing up and turning oxygen into carbon dioxide, okay? You have to actually do some, I don't know, work! I know there is a lot of behind the scenes stuff that servers do, but if my table has been sitting for over 20 minutes and you still haven't shown up to even say hi (much less take a drink order), don't expect a good tip! When I was a server and I was in the weeds, I would either ask another server to help me out or ask a manager to give me hand - I never just let a table sit there wondering what was going on. Second, where did the concept of 20% being the expected tip come from? When I was server, 15% was the norm for decent/good service. I don't know how in the last 15 years or so, that percentage has increased to 20%. I've heard some servers state that it is to keep up with inflation, which leads me to believe that they don't understand the concept of percentages.

I will say it unabashedly - I tip 15% for good service and 20% for great service. It's not that I can't afford to tip 20%, it's that I believe it's insane to keep raising the percentage expected. Hey, servers, if you don't want my 15% tip, fine. I'll just stay home, spend my money elsewhere, and not tip you anything. Try paying the bills with no tips and just your crappy attitude.

The Morning After

So, thanks to Scott Brown and the voters of Massachusetts, the Democrats have lost their supermajority in the Senate and now run the risk of not being able to pass important legislation. You know, I hear that, and I have mixed feelings. For six months, the Democrats have had a supermajority and what have they done with it? Did they pass healthcare reform? Did they put in new guidelines so that the banks couldn’t go nuts again and Wall Street wouldn’t cause the same financial mess to happen that we needed to bail them out of? Did environmental regulations that would help clean up our land, water, and air get passed? Other than the stellar nomination and approval of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, did any of the major reforms or proposals – the reasons why I walked door-to-door with my toddler, campaigning – get passed?

No.

We’ve had six months of cajoling and coaxing, hand-holding and deal-cutting that has delivered two healthcare insurance reform bills that do the bare minimum to actually reform how healthcare is paid for in this country. There is no public option. There is no cap on how high premiums can go. There is nothing that will slow down the galloping cost of health insurance and health care in general. As someone who has had to deal with insurance claim denials, both as a patient and as a provider, I have been wholly unimpressed with what the Democrats have done with their “supermajority.”

In a way, I think that the loss of Martha Coakley, the loss in Massachusetts, of all places, might be a good thing. Maybe it will be a wake up call to the Democrats in Congress that they need to get their butts in gear and start fulfilling some of those promises of change that they campaigned on. Maybe it will help them realize that all the lobbyist and Wall Street money in the country won’t get them re-elected if the voters are pissed off. Maybe it will make them realize that no Democrat has a “safe” seat and that each of them will actually have to get some work done, some legislation passed, in order to be re-elected.

At the same time, I can’t help but be ticked off that this one special election may mean that the current system of health insurance will stay in place. That the election of Scott Brown means people will continue to lose their ability to access health care if they lose their jobs. That a person could still lose his or her health insurance if he or she has one major illness. That after paying for insurance year after year, when a person actually needs care, it could still be denied so that a pencil pusher somewhere can meet his numbers and get a bonus.

Who needs Al Quaeda? We Americans are doing a pretty bang-up job victimizing ourselves already. Only difference is, instead of doing it for the hope of 70 virgins, we do it for a couple of dead presidents.

Pants on Fire

Ok, ok, ok. So, on Christmas Day, some Al-Quaeda nut tried to cause an explosion on a Detroit-bound jet using explosives he smuggled in his underpants. As is the case with most ideas pulled out of one's ass *ahem* the plot did not quite go as planned, and the bomber merely managed to light himself on fire. Not the best situation, to be sure, and definitely something to take a closer look at, but, as usual, TSA and the government are overreacting. Man tries to smuggle explosives in underpants?!? Time for virtual strip searches for all! He went to the bathroom in order to get the explosives out of his crotch? No potty breaks in the last hour! So, now, you have to take your shoes off, can't take more than 3oz of liquids through security, get virtually strip-searched, and have to have a full bladder (or worse) for the last hour of your flight (a flight, which, more than likely, is over-crowded, late, and over-priced).

Come fly the friendly skies?

You know, before more knee-jerk regulations go into place, how about trying this: enforce the regulations already on the books. The alleged bomber, Umar Abdulmutallab, had his British visa revoked in May 2009 - what did they know that we didn't (and should have known)? The man's father went to the American embassy in Nigeria in November with concerns that his son had become radicalized and might do something violent - why wasn't the bomber's visa revoked at that time, or, at the very least, re-evaluated? This isn't a case of the terrorists getting smarter, it's a case of the US Department of Homeland Security and TSA remaining ignorant. And, like the sheep we are, Americans are in an all-fire hurry to give up what little rights we have left in order to "feel" safe while traveling.

The terrorists are winning. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are, with each passing airline incident, becoming more and more passe.

Here's a radical idea, though, folks. Instead of everyone saying "Baaa" why not say "WTF TSA?!? Do your jobs!!!"

The Nature of Science

As alluded to in my last post, I do a fair bit of lurking at a site called Science Based Medicine. It's not generally the posts I'm terribly interested in, it's the comments that inevitably follow and the debates that go on that pique my interest. I really enjoy learning how other people think and make judgements.

One thing that comes up over and over again on that site is this theme: those who choose to question/delay/selectively vax, those who choose alternative medicine, and (now) those who choose to natural birth or homebirth are uneducated and making decisions not based in science. As you can probably infer, I take a bit of issue with this broad generalization. As I see it, science, in and of itself, does not dictate which choices should and should not be made. Science is a tool, a process, for gathering information in order to inform the decision that is to be made. Science is amoral - real life, and the application of science, is not amoral, and as such, when making a decision (especially about medicine and intervention), the realities of life and the individual values of those involved, as well as the science, play a part in the eventual decision that is made. For instance, say someone has a terminal condition, and science has shown that there is a treatment that will prolong life by several months, but this treatment also has the side effect of causing significant pain - is it anti-science for an individual to choose not to have the treatment? Is it to be inferred that if the person chooses to decline the treatment, he or she is uneducated?

As someone who is not religious in any way, shape, form, or manner, the amount of smugness that I have observed on websites like Science Based Medicine bothers me, as it seems to come from as much dogmatic fervor as might be observed in a fundamentalist religion: those who do what we do are good, everyone else is silly/stupid/damned. Science is not about being close-minded or entertaining only one theory - it is about exploring the possibilities and gathering as much information as possible.

Making a decision that is not in the mainstream of medicine is not necessarily a rejection of science. And to suggest that different people cannot look at the science and still come to different conclusions about how to treat in medicine betrays the ignorance of the one making that assertion, not the one making the differing decision.

A Good Smiting

I'll admit it. I experience schadenfreude from time to time. Now is one of those times.

Extremely vocal (and generally incredibly illogical) anti-homebirth advocate Dr. Amy Tuteur has found a new pulpit from which to preach her ad hominem attacks and general mouth-foaming about those poor, uneducated, foolhardy, and misguided women who eschew all that modern medicine has to offer and choose to have unmedicated or even *gasp* homebirths. The woman who generally employs a post-and-run approach to birth issues in a variety of online forms (or a delete-all-those-who-point-out-the-lack-of-science/evidence-behind-my-thinking on her own blog) has found a new home at Science Based Medicine.

*snerk, snort*

While Dr. Amy started off with a post that had the regulars at SBM nodding their head in agreement, it has only taken three posts for the the zealotry and lack-of-research that is Dr. Amy to have presented itself. In her post today, Dr. Amy begins by trying to convince the SBM readership that "natural childbirth was invented by a man to convince middle and upper class women that childbirth pain is in their minds, thereby encouraging them to have more children."

Um, yeah. Because for thousands upon thousands of years prior to the 20th century, women were having epidurals and c-sections. This whole unmedicated vaginal birth thing is *such* a newfangled thing.

Dr. Amy goes on to make a number of historical mistakes in her post and tries to paint the entire natural birth movement as possessing the same mindset of a particular male doctor from the early-to-mid 20th century. Ordinarily, this type of illogical writing would have me quite upset and quite possibly spending hours researching, commenting, and debating.

But Dr. Amy made a huge mistake. She posted her unresearched tripe on a board full of well-researched, scientifically minded readers. And while I do not agree with a good bit of the posts (or commenters) on the site, I do have to say this: there are all well-educated and can spot a logical fallacy (for the most part) from miles away.

And they are giving Dr. Amy a bit of a schooling.

Excuse me while I make a bowl of popcorn and sit back to enjoy the schadenfreude.

On Health Care

It's taken me several days to formulate my feelings about the health care bill that the House passed. Actually, it's taken me several days to find the words to express my anger and disgust about the Stupak-Pitts amendment that was added on at the last minute to the health care bill. And I still don't know whether my words will do my feelings any justice.

I'm angry. I'm angry at the Democrats - who I have supported with both money and efforts - for throwing women's reproductive rights under the proverbial bus in order to pass a flawed health care bill with a pitifully weak public option. I'm angry that in a country that supposedly has separation of church and state, Catholic bishops had so much power over the bill via the Stupak-Pitts amendment. I'm angry that the Democratic leadership is so weak that they allowed this "compromise" to occur in the first place.

I'm just angry.

In case you can't tell, I'm pro-choice. I've said it in a blog post before and I'll say it again: no one likes abortion. No one thinks it's great. But in the reality of our world, it is a necessary procedure. While the Stupak-Pitts amendment does not overturn Roe v Wade, it imposes such an effective economic barrier to access that for many low and middle income women, Roe v Wade might as well have been overturned. Abortions will still be available for those women who can afford it out of pocket, but for those women who can't afford the $300-$900 for a first trimester abortion, sorry...basically, we're telling these women: you can't afford an abortion, so you now have to pay for even more expensive maternity care and, more than likely, the raising of a child. You didn't conceive this child on your own, but if the father opts to not be responsible and pay child support, our courts aren't going to do much to help. We're not going to help you with maternity leave - chances are you will have to be back at work within 6 weeks. And on behalf of those who believe that the woman should be shown no sympathy or empathy because she made the decision to have sex in the first place, we're saying you're so irresponsible in the first place that we're going to force you to be responsible for raising another human.

Having known quite a few women who have had abortions for different reasons, it makes me angry that a bunch of people in Washington felt as though paying for a medical procedure that is utilized by 1/3 of all American woman was verboten, but the same people think it is ok to pay for Viagra. I'm angry that my rights and my access to healthcare are being determined by the leaders of a religion that I do not belong to.

I'm angry that the leaders I honestly believed in are showing themselves to be no more than mere politicians.

That's most coherant I can be about the subject at this point.

All Hallows Skanks?

I love Halloween. Really - it's probably my favorite holiday. My husband and I love decorating the front lawn with a combination of homemade and store-bought horrors, fill the evening with low-lying fog, and create an eerie atmosphere that does a good job of scary the neighborhood children.

I was the one who was frightened, however, when I opened up the latest Party City circular. Not by how scary the costumes were, but by how skanky they were.

Seriously. It seems like all of the female costumes were low-cut, mini-skirted, or sheer. Even the teen costumes left little to the imagination. There is something to be said for being confident in your sexuality and your body, but that doesn't mean you should parade it out there like a cow at the State Fair! I know Halloween is about fantasy and playing a character, but aren't you supposed to leave the sexual role-playing for the bedroom - you know, where the costumes that look like underwear should stay as well?