the Scott Stein

We're all more fortunate than we often acknowledge.

Four years ago today my son was born. My wife started having contractions the morning before, July 24, and at 8:00 p.m. we went to the hospital. She wasn't "in enough pain," so they sent us home. By around 10:00 p.m. she was in lots more pain, so back we went. We walked the maternity wing hallways for a good part of the night, hoping gravity would convince this kid to come out. No luck. Hours and hours passed. Finally at 6:00 a.m. they gave my wife an epidural. Then we waited, had some meds to encourage dilation, waited some more. At around 3:00 p.m., the doctors finally concluded that my wife was not going to dilate, so they rushed her into the O.R. and performed a C-section. I had time to get into scrubs and play doctor. All went well, and at 3:44 we had a healthy baby boy.

Two days later, a cousin visiting us in the hospital, after hearing that my wife hadn't dilated and the baby had to be removed via surgery, innocently wondered aloud, "What did they do back in the old days, before modern medicine and technology?"

The answer was simple, if cold. One need only look at infant and mother mortality rates back in the good old days.

"They died," I said. "That's what they did."

I'm really happy that this will help paralyzed people. Is it wrong that I'm even happier that we're all on the way to having very cool super powers?

Some Americans like to throw around the word censorship, when in an effort to please its listeners, a privately owned radio station doesn't give the Dixie Chicks airtime, for example (please don't bother me with talk of public airwaves, as if any station has an obligation to play the music of every band out there). The Dixie Chicks are hardly oppressed, appearing on the cover of national magazines and making the rounds on television talk shows seen by millions of people.

In case anyone has forgotten what censorship actually is, here's a reminder from our friends in China, just in time for Independence Day. The good news:

The government tries to block Internet users from foreign Web sites of human rights groups and political activists, but many have found ways to evade the controls.