(Clarification: “troll” is not an insulting term for a conservative. A troll is a stranger who posts an insulting or deliberately aggressive comment on your blog or Internets in an attempt to anger, embarrass or put you in your place.)
I’ve been pretty outspoken on Twitter lately about the birth control debate (Really? This is a thing? In 2012?) and Rush Limbaugh. Of course, this sort of talk attracts trolls and I have yet to have one who seems to know anything about anything. I’m getting tired of repeating the same facts over and over, so I decided to write up a little primer, so I could simply point them toward it, pat them on the head, and tell them to educate themselves so they don’t have to weather the shitstorm I’m going to rain down on them.
I’m a layperson, in the sense that any woman can be a layperson about birth control, and I’m also pissed, so please excuse any messiness or disorganization or vulgarity in the delivery. And warning: there be snark in them thar hills. Snark. And maybe bitchiness.
1) Why do you think you deserve free birth control?
I don’t think that word means what you think it means. This debate is about insurance coverage of birth control. Is your insurance free? Mine isn’t. Mine costs a buttload of money every month. When you go to your doctor for a check-up that would cost, say, $300 out of pocket and you pay nothing, do you consider that free? Do you pat yourself on the back for pulling one over on the man? Do you dance your way to the parking lot, shouting, “I’m the most wily welfare queen in a world of welfare queens!!!!”? Somehow I suspect you don’t. It’s not free, it’s a service provided by a policy I pay premiums for.
Alas the resolution is imperfect, but what an interesting image of spiritual evolutions. Found at the website of Dr. Martin Packer, Developmental Psychologist, professor at Duquesne University:
Sacred Economics.
Lessig Blog, v2: On the absurd pandering in the Anti-Hilary-Rosen Campaign
Here’s what we know:
- Our society has not yet achieved sex equality.
- Women suffer that inequality differently.
So:
In an unscripted television talk show appearance, Hilary Rosen referred to that differently-experienced inequality. She said that Ann Romney has “never worked a day in her…
The Man Who Planted Trees
No matter how many times I watch this, I laugh and cry and smile so much, every single time. :)
We told Dads they’re going to be Grandpas
(Gay couple find out they’re going to be grandparents)
A Troll Primer on Birth Control
You’re bad at this, Rush Limbaugh. You don’t even understand how babies are made, let alone how people can have sex without making a baby, and you would like the government to take over decision-making on these issues on your say-so. And you don’t get it. You biologically don’t get it. You just don’t understand it. You were absent that day. - Rachel Maddow
Awesome commentary is awesome.
pyramid of capitalism
The First Look at Mars’ Ocean
We knew there was water in abundance on Mars, but we never saw its ocean. This is it, as uncovered by strong new evidence found over the course of two years by the MARSIS radar on board ESA’s Mars Express.
Before this discovery, scientists suspected what could have been the shorelines of such ocean. However, this is the first time that this Mars’ ocean has been shown in all its magnitude. According to ESA, Mars Express “has detected sediments reminiscent of an ocean floor within the boundaries of previously identified, ancient shorelines on Mars.”
The sediments are low-density granular material that have been eroded away by water. They have low radar reflectivity, and were detected through all the ocean’s area, 60 to 80 meters (197 to 262 feet) under the surface of the Red Planet.
According to Jérémie Mouginot, from the Institut de Planétologie et d’Astrophysique de Grenoble (IPAG) and the University of California, Irvine, the sedimentary deposit they have discovered may be ice-rich. They are “a strong new indication that there was once an ocean here.”
Scientists now believe that there were two oceans on Mars. The first was there four billion years ago, when the weather was warm. The second one was formed three billion years ago, “when subsurface ice melted following a large impact, creating outflow channels that drained the water into areas of low elevation.” The team believes that this ocean didn’t exist long enough to serve as a environment to life formation.
According to ESA’s Mars Express Project Scientist Olivier Witasse, there’s little doubt now that there were oceans there now. But the biggest question of them all remains a mystery: “Where did all the water go?”
via Gizmodo
Solar Loops
Image courtesy: SDO/NASA
Huge loops of plasma—superheated, charged gas—rise from an active region on the sun in a newly released picture from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. Each loop is as tall as several Earths stacked on top of each other.
