Afarensis is a 3.5-2.8 million year old hominin from the Kada Hadar member of the Hadar formation in the Middle Awash, Ethiopia. He is approximately 41 inches tall, weighs approximately 60 pounds and has a cranial capacity of a whopping 410 cc (approximately). Afarensis is currently considered to be transitional between apes and humans and displays some traits of both. Since he spends a lot of time on the couch watching monster movies, some observers question whether he is an obligate biped (although no one has observed him climbing a tree). He also has a blog called 
Health and Human Services Secretary Leavitt has a blog. Some of you may be interested in discussing the proposed rules for contraception with him. My advice be be to be polite, diplomatic, and reasonable if you chose to go discuss the issue. Leavitt believes that blogging can help set public policy:
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, who also blogs, said this week that blogging has the power to advance the debate on health care policy by allowing more interaction between members of the public and policymakers, according to the Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report.He called blogging a "very powerful engine for public policy setting," he said in Congressional Quarterly.
Leavitt said he writes about a range of topics, from his daily experiences to the decision-making process on various health care policies and issues such as Medicare, SCHIP and import safety, Kaiser reports.
So, let's help him set some public policy...
Comments
This is the text of the comment I put on Secretary Leavitt's blog:
Entirely unrelated, Secretary Leavitt, but I would like to see a blog post from you concerning the recent proposal to classify contraception as abortion. I side with my fellow members of the scientific community - besides the fact that I am pro-choice, I see no scientific basis for this (even a fertilized egg is unviable if it does not implant - the only way pregnancies are viable is if they do implant, and you can't verify if an egg is fertilized unless it has implanted).
To be perfectly blunt, by the logic in the proposal to classify contraception as abortion, every month, I have an abortion when I menstruate, as does every other woman who menstruates in the United States, and I'm not going to get into the 15 million ones that men have, by your logic, when they do other things.
A Zogby poll of individuals who probably are not familiar with the mechanisms of fertilization is unreliable when compared to scientific knowledge, and two medical dictionaries is not enough. I urge you to consult the directors of your sub-agencies; I am sure Dr. Elias Zerhouni and others would be happy to advise you.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Katharine (last name omitted)
Neuroscience student at University of Wisconsin - Madison
Posted by: Katharine | August 2, 2008 12:23 PM
Well said!
Posted by: afarensis FCD | August 2, 2008 7:02 PM