Future Generations In The Deep Freeze

Future Generations in the Deep Freeze

As a woman that has used birth control during her entire child bearing years, I am one hundred percent in favor of a woman’s right to choose when and if to have children. In our mid-thirties, my husband Blake and I finally had that serious discussion about parenthood and were in mutual agreement to remain a childless couple.

With that said, I continue to feel that Facebook and Apple’s decision to pay for female employees to freeze their eggs is a mixed bag of tricks. I can’t help but wonder about the motivation behind high tech companies paying up to $20,000 in egg freezing expenses. A woman’s most fertile and easiest childbirth years coincide with most companies’ career-building years. I question the wisdom of intentionally postponing pregnancy until later in life for a career opportunities.  I would prefer to see corporate America put these dollars into family leave, child care and flexible work arrangements for both parents.

In addition this feels like a quick fix and a Band-Aid measure that side steps the real issue–how hard it is for a woman to have a career and raise a family concurrently. The playing field has never been level when it comes to gender. Women make less and I wonder if paying them off with higher salaries, to not get pregnant, because it could inconvenience a company is wise or fair. Will those women who want to have the safest and easiest pregnancies be stigmatized as uncommitted to their careers?

There is also the issue of marital status. If a woman is single and maybe doesn’t intend to get married, will that influence an employer’s willingness to fork out so much cash? Has this been tested in the courts? Then if a young woman does freeze her eggs, will promotional opportunities be withheld because she’s seen to be on the “Mommy” track? Would she move up the ladder to reach the top only so she can take maternity leave? I’m sorry, I haven’t made up my mind completely, but there seems to be something, “Beyond Cuckoo” about all of this high tech  corporate  parental planning.

 

Future Generations In The Deep Freeze

Ghost Guns

Ghost Guns

Recent news stories about vetoed “Ghost Gun” legislation and the security breach at the White House has gotten me more nervous than usual.

Ghost Gun is a term applied to Cody Wilson’s “Defense Distributed” organization’s first fully 3-D printed gun. This “maker” movement has enabled anyone to create a working, lethal firearm with a click in the privacy of his or her garage. He has now moved on to a new form of digital DIY gunsmithing. And this time the results aren’t made of plastic.

Wilson’s latest radically libertarian project is a PC-connected milling machine he calls the Ghost Gunner. Like any computer-numerically-controlled (or CNC) mill, the one-foot-cubed black box uses a drill bit mounted on a head that moves in three dimensions to automatically carve digitally-modeled shapes into polymer, wood or aluminum. But this CNC mill, which sells for $1200, is designed to create one object in particular: the component of an AR-15 rifle known as its lower receiver, the body of the gun—remaining parts can be ordered from online gun shops. It is now easy to create a semi-automatic weapon with no serial number or required background check. It’s illegal to re-sell your monster creation, but there’s no law against making one.

Wilson (as a self-proclaimed anarchist and anti-government rebel) makes every effort to undermine governmental regulatory control over most things, but especially firearms. If you connect the two news stories, you can’t help but wonder about the Obama family’s safety, and our own.

In addition Wilson’s releasing his creation on the heels of a debate in California over a state law that would ban the manufacture of all guns without serial numbers. The bill, widely known as the “Ghost Gun ban” and introduced by Los Angeles state senator Kevin de Leόn was designed to criminalize either 3-D printing or finishing an 80 percent lower without a government-assigned serial number in California. The legislation passed California’s senate and assembly, but was vetoed Tuesday by the state’s governor Jerry Brown, who wrote that he “can’t see how adding a serial number to a homemade gun would significantly advance public safety.”

I’m a huge supporter of Governor Brown, but I do wonder if in this case, his decision is Beyond Cuckoo.

Ghost Guns