![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matt_doyleSeven pieces of political news, one piece of mad science, and one bit of smile-inducing randomness. Most of this comes from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jaylake , by the way, whose own link salads are a major source of my news these days.
First off, starting out with a discussion of the Republican primaries, one of the latest trends seems to be a disregard for the value of National Forests. This alarms me a great deal, especially as I've always thought such things were part of what conservatives wanted to, well, conserve.
Other things that irritate me: our nation's continued failure to support higher education. I happen to believe in American exceptionalism, but not as a continuous state of being: as a process, a goal, a part of the national dream. We could be, can be, sometimes are the greatest country in the world -- but that means we need to support learning. Without education, without science, without a supportive community, we cannot build our way back to greatness when we fail to achieve it.
Here are a few women's reactions to the contraception debate, and strangely, they don't seem too happy about a bunch of ignorant dudes trying to limit their health options to appease other people's ideologies. In that second link, the picture on the right of Five Serious Guys lining up to discuss why they should be the ones who get to decide about women's health is especially irritating -- because they were invited to come have that discussion, and women weren't.
There's also some interesting speculation here: would Congress do a better job if it was ten times bigger? Would we get some much-needed correctional reform going if people stopped plea-bargaining and went to trial? (And who among us would dare to do so?)
Pat Robertson supports legalizing marijuana. This blows my mind, but it actually ties in with the previous link a little, too: we have too much of our population stuck in prison for stupidly trivial things. I don't smoke pot myself, but for once, Pat Robertson and I are in agreement. Good God, it's weird to say that.
On to weird science: electricity can overclock your brain. Equally parts alarming and tempting to hear about for me, given my chronic inability to focus on aaaaanything. Artificially induced flow state? Sign me up!
(That said, last week I got something like seven thousand words written. So maybe I don't need it, after all.)
Last but not least, a cell-phone number for an angel. Just plain cool, although the church's attempts to monopolize a heartening pop-faith phenomenon seem amusingly misguided to me.
And that's the news for today from my corner of the world.
jaylake , by the way, whose own link salads are a major source of my news these days.First off, starting out with a discussion of the Republican primaries, one of the latest trends seems to be a disregard for the value of National Forests. This alarms me a great deal, especially as I've always thought such things were part of what conservatives wanted to, well, conserve.
Other things that irritate me: our nation's continued failure to support higher education. I happen to believe in American exceptionalism, but not as a continuous state of being: as a process, a goal, a part of the national dream. We could be, can be, sometimes are the greatest country in the world -- but that means we need to support learning. Without education, without science, without a supportive community, we cannot build our way back to greatness when we fail to achieve it.
Here are a few women's reactions to the contraception debate, and strangely, they don't seem too happy about a bunch of ignorant dudes trying to limit their health options to appease other people's ideologies. In that second link, the picture on the right of Five Serious Guys lining up to discuss why they should be the ones who get to decide about women's health is especially irritating -- because they were invited to come have that discussion, and women weren't.
There's also some interesting speculation here: would Congress do a better job if it was ten times bigger? Would we get some much-needed correctional reform going if people stopped plea-bargaining and went to trial? (And who among us would dare to do so?)
Pat Robertson supports legalizing marijuana. This blows my mind, but it actually ties in with the previous link a little, too: we have too much of our population stuck in prison for stupidly trivial things. I don't smoke pot myself, but for once, Pat Robertson and I are in agreement. Good God, it's weird to say that.
On to weird science: electricity can overclock your brain. Equally parts alarming and tempting to hear about for me, given my chronic inability to focus on aaaaanything. Artificially induced flow state? Sign me up!
(That said, last week I got something like seven thousand words written. So maybe I don't need it, after all.)
Last but not least, a cell-phone number for an angel. Just plain cool, although the church's attempts to monopolize a heartening pop-faith phenomenon seem amusingly misguided to me.
And that's the news for today from my corner of the world.
