Wednesday Reads: Blame it on the moon…

Good Morning

After taking a few days break from everything, including blogging, I am happy to say that things are getting back to normal. Fortunately the hospital my OB/GYN is affiliated with is not a Catholic run hospital, otherwise my total hysterectomy would need to be scheduled some place else. Pourquoi? Well, those Catholic hospitals would not perform a hysterectomy on a 41-year-old woman…cause she still has some breeding years left in her. Damn, it sounds like I’m some sort of farm animal, but it is the truth.

So as I count down my days to achieving the ultimate joy and happiness, lets review a few news items that I found interesting and wanted to share with you.

I do wonder about one thing, if taking birth control pills to help with my god awful periods and ovarian cyst makes me a slut, than what will I be without those “womanly” organs?

Well, I guess it doesn’t matter, since the slime that is Rush Limbaugh has already disrespected me and so many other women by asking what the hell is wrong with white over-educated women…Rush Limbaugh Seriously Loses His Shit, Randomly Attacks Another Young Woman

It seems that after several days of mounting public pressure, Rush Limbaugh has finally cracked. How else could you explain his attempt to move beyond this whole “hating on young women” debacle by continuing to attack young women? Today’s victim? Author Tracie McMillan, who represents another one of those awful “overeducated” young unmarried women Rush so emphatically resents.

McMillan’s crime, apparently, was being a young unmarried woman who went to college and wrote a book about the way people in America eat. She took a year to work at places like Wal-Mart and Applebees in order to get a better understanding about the American food industry. Of McMillan’s attempt to educate people when clearly men like Rush Limbaugh know best, the giant pair of flapping gums said,

What is it with all of these young single white women, overeducated – doesn’t mean intelligent. For example, Tracie McMillan, the author of this book, seems to be just out of college and already she has been showered with awards, including the 2006 James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism. Social justice journalism. This woman who wrote the book on food inequality, food justice, got an award for social justice journalism.

McMillan doesn’t have a degree beyond her BA. She told Forbes that she wasn’t informed in advance that her book would be discussed on Limbaugh’s radio program. “My grandmother would be thrilled, because she’s a fan of his,” she said.

Oh, good for her! Let’s see what granny thinks of Rush after he berates her little grand-daughter.

So far the number is 35 advertisers had dropped Rush, and two radio stations will no longer air his show. Progress Reports – ThinkProgress That link will take you to the latest news on the boycott. Also check out StopRush.org.

The latest big company to head for the hills was Capital One.

In all my excitement about my surgery and Rush loosing all those sponsors, I forgot all about Super Tuesday. Boston Boomer had a live blog going: Live Blog: Super Tuesday Results « Sky Dancing If you missed the show, give that post a read through.

Here are the headlines this morning:

No Super Tuesday Knockout Punch – NYTimes.com

Romney Bags Ohio Prize, Wins More Than Half Of Super Tuesday Contests | Fox News

On Super Tuesday, Romney Ekes Past Santorum in Ohio – WSJ.com

After Ohio Primary, Kucinich Loses Seat in Congress – NYTimes.com

Since I was away from the blog for a couple of days, I just wanted to post a few links to stories that bothered me…maybe they bothered you too.

Romney to 11-year-old: Iran will get nuke if Obama re-elected | The Raw Story

Say what? Why the hell does the man have to go around scaring kids about nuclear war. Hey, I grew up in the age of the nukes with fears of the US and Russia going at it. It is not an easy thing to deal with.

Santorum: Single Moms Are “Breeding More Criminals” | Mother Jones

Geez, WTF about this statement…talk about livestock, does anything come out of this asshole’s mouth that isn’t about women, gays, sex and procreation?

It Doesn’t Matter if “Both Sides Do It” A good response to the Kristen Powers piece I wrote about on Sunday.

Winning the Battle, Losing the War Scott Lemieux looks at Virginia’s abortion legislation:

Although the new abortion legislation being signed in Virginia lets women opt-out of a transvaginal ultrasound, it’s still nowhere near a victory.

Tru Dat!

When Is Abortion Merciful?  this is one of a series of post about late term abortion…Posts Of The Year: It’s So Personal: A Round-Up, June 5, 2009 – The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan – The Daily Beast

Many readers have asked us to compile the various late term abortion testimonials we published this week (which are only a fraction of the ones we’ve received). Here they are, in chronological order:

It’s So Personal
It’s So Personal, Ctd
The Catholic Mother
The Trauma
A Doctor’s View (reader reaction)
A Target Of Terror
The Regret
Not Knowing For Sure
When Principle Meets Reality
Serial Abortions (reader reaction)
Preparing For The Worst
An Unforgiving Family (reader reaction)
The Guilt
Holding On
The Gay Fathers
What Guilt?
Ectopic “Miscarriage”

Still more to come. (And maybe a bound collection? We’re actively thinking of it, prompted by many reader requests. But this should be a useful link for now.)

If you have time take a look at some of these stories.

All this makes me ask one question: Why don’t men in favor of birth control speak up?

By the end of last week, congressional Democrats and a few moderate Republicans succeeded in requiring most employers to include contraception as part of health insurance coverage, in spite of deep opposition from the GOP majority. Across the Potomac in Virginia, Democrats and, again, a few Republican moderates were able to soften or kill GOP bills that would have put into place humiliating obstacles to abortion. These are good things.

Thousands of ordinary women across the country have been writing letters, sending e-mails, leaving phone messages, and buttonholing state and national lawmakers in support of cheaper contraceptive methods and greater access to abortion.

Though they didn’t get everything they want, many are, I suspect, thankful for the partial victories so far.

But I have to ask — where in these recent debates are the voices of ordinary men? Why aren’t we hearing publicly even now from husbands who are not ready to have children they would have to support? Or from boyfriends who do not have the means to support a child?

Why don’t we hear more from fathers who are working two jobs so that their daughters can attend college and, if they wish, start on a career unencumbered by child-raising responsibilities?

We are fortunate to have some readers with balls who are vocal about women’s rights and speak out against the war on women. Kudos to you, we appreciate it. Maybe you can let us know what is keeping other dudes from speaking out.

This next link is dealing with the countries of China, Great Britain and Russia: Rights Erode Before Women’s Eyes – NYTimes.com

Han QiOn Valentine’s Day in Beijing, women dressed in white bridal gowns smeared with red paint to protest domestic violence. The women’s posters read, left to right:  “Love is no excuse for violence”; “Only Equality is Harmonious”; “Violence is not a Special Zone”; “When Violence is around you, are you still silent?”

Check out this science news link: Futurity.org – Spider silk conducts heat better than silicon

In the search for organic heat conductors, researchers have discovered spider silks transfer heat better than silicon, aluminum, and pure iron.

Hot damn! As someone who spins thread from raw fiber, this kind of stuff just blows my mind. It is just very cool to think of what amazing things nature and animals/insects can produce…

And lastly, lets all just blame the moon.

Two articles for you on that heavenly orb…Ancient Skies of Northern Europe: Stars, Constellations, and the Moon in Nordic Mythology

Our understanding of ancient astronomy in Northern Europe has been limited because no record exists of the native constellations among the Germanic tribes in ancient times. They certainly did not know of the constellations of the south have become our standard ones today. However, it would be unusual to suppose they never had any, only that the knowledge of them has not come down to us.

Fortunately, the surviving mythology of Scandinavia has left us enough clues to allow us to piece together this forgotten knowledge of the past. At the time these myths were recorded in 13th century Iceland the people no longer believed in the old religion. However, even back during the Viking Age, before the year 1000 AD, when the religion was still strong, many of the beliefs held then seem already to have been understood only in abstract terms, while the naturalistic explanations they embodied went back even further.

It is now clear that the mythology of Scandinavia as we know it arose from a fusion of traditional local gods with several other more widespread traditions. While the myths attained their present form within the Iron Age, some elements and aspects of it go back even into the Stone Age, when humans were first trying to make sense of their universe.

Click here to read this article from Timothy Stephany’s website

And…in connection with those Norse travelers exploring the northern seas in their viking ships, another ship hundreds of years later crossing the same Northern Atlantic meets with disaster.

Titanic Sunk by “Supermoon” and Celestial Alignment?

Just weeks before the Titanic shipwreck’s hundredth anniversary, scientists have a brand-new theory as to what might have helped spur modern history’s most famous maritime disaster. (See pictures of Titanic’s rediscovery in 1985.)

An ultrarare alignment of the sun, the full moon, and Earth, they say, may have set the April 14, 1912, tragedy in motion, according to a new report.

R.M.S. Titanic went down on a moonless night, but the iceberg that sank the luxury liner may have been launched in part by a full  moon that occurred three and a half months earlier, scientists say.

That full moon, on January 4, 1912, may have created unusually strong tides that sent a flotilla of icebergs southward—just in time for Titanic’s maiden voyage, said astronomer Donald Olson of Texas State University-San Marcos.

Blame It on the Moon?

Even at the time, spring 1912 was considered an unusually bad season for icebergs. But figuring out why this happened has been a mystery.

Olson believes the iceberg boom was the result of a rare combination of celestial phenomena, including a “supermoon”: when the moon is full during its closest monthly approach to the Earth. (See supermoon pictures.)

During new and full moons, the sun, Earth, and the moon are arranged in a straight line, with the sun and moon intensifying each other’s gravitational pull on the planet. The result: Low tides are lower than usual, and high tides are higher—a phenomenon called a spring tide.

What’s more, on the January 4, 1912, the full moon—and therefore the spring-tide alignment—ended just six minutes before the moon made an unusually close swing by Earth.

It was the closest lunar approach, in fact, since A.D. 796, and Earth won’t see its like again until 2257. That combination of a very close moon and the celestial alignment added up to an especially strong gravitational pull on the Earth and therefore very high tides.

Give that link a click to read more on this fascinating theory. And for those who would appreciate another Sting link…here is one with the moon. Sister Moon.

It really makes you think…Santorum can just start blaming everything on the moon. I mean, if Gingrich wants to start a colony, it could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.