Linkety-Linkety

[moominmuppet]

When Hillary McLaughlin found out she was pregnant, she was unable to legally obtain the service she needed. So she looked for an underground contact. She got a woman's name--just a first name--and a phone number from a friend who advised her to destroy the evidence as soon as she made the call. When McLaughlin reached the woman, however, the woman told her she no longer "did that" and that she wasn't willing to risk going to jail for it anymore. Turned off by all the "whisper, whisper, cloak-and-dagger stuff," McLaughlin decided to "jump state lines" from Illinois to Missouri to find a legal provider.
Forty years ago, you might have assumed McLaughlin was looking for an unlawful abortion. Rather, what the small-business owner, 33, sought was a certified midwife who could deliver her baby at home in Edwardsville, Ill.

Inside the Great Reptilian Conspiracy: From Queen Elizabeth to Barack Obama -- They Live! -- I really do wonder what these folks think about V (either the original or the modern version, really).

Queering SFF: Where’s the Polyamory? (the comments partially answer the question)

Wow -- the Eyewear Industry Is an Incredible Ripoff, But There Are Alternatives -- My uncorrected vision is about 20/1200; issues of vision correction are rather near and dear to me.

6 Ways Religious Frauds Try to Make Gays and Lesbians Straight

Farewell, Craigslist Adult Services Section -- I'm vehemently in favor of legalization of sex work, so I'm unsurprisingly irritated about this.
Related: Craig Newmark: What I Should Have Said to CNN’s Amber Lyon When She Ambushed Me

2 abortion Drs. ordered to stop after Md. injury -- I'm damned glad to see them busted for this. Dangerous providers need to be removed, regardless of the speciality.

A glut of acorns, or a bad case of The Plague?

Sailing the Northwest Passage at night

Five Workplace Reforms to Fight for This Labor Day

Note to Jay Leno: Marijuana Is Not "Essentially Legal" -- More Than 800,000 People a Year Are Arrested for It

Pentagon Ignores Child Porn in its Ranks

Canada may send flight data to US Homeland Security

Great moments in collegiate marketing: Drake University’s ‘D+’ campaign

The best run-down of the details of the new LJ changes, and how they affect you.

Hawking: God did not create Universe

David Yost who played Billy Cranston the original Blue Ranger, broke his silence and revealed the reason he left the hit series was because he was harassed about being gay

At West Point, Hidden Gay Cadets Put in Spotlight

W Magazine Pokes Fun at Curvy Girls and Eating Disorders

BD Wong: William's Doll

How To Respect Sex Workers

Police exonerate selves in report on entrapment of gay men

Cookies by Douglas Adams (author: "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy")

7.1 magnitude earthquake in Canterbury, New Zealand

Mary Roach: Death In Space

Adorable baby octopuses, living happy and free

The Imp, a great journal about comic books, now as free PDFs

Resignation cake sender has invoice cake delivered to People.com

Cannabis Catering

The Student Loan Scheme: gateway drug to debt slavery

The physics of breaking stuff with your fists

Skepchick Quickies, 09.02.10

Smeagol! (the Aye-aye)

L.A. Celebrates the Hatching of 22 Dragons!

Blackpool Otter Time

Cleveland Rhino Mom Delivers 100 Pounds of Joy

Rare Crocodile Breeding Success in St. Augustine!

Hour-long goat attack sends man to ICU

German "secure" ID cards compromised on national TV, gov't buries head in sand

Kids' Rube Goldberg machine

White tiger turning black

Another oil rig explosion, and the science of dispersants

HOWTO: Organic, erratic gears

Laser cut and 3D printed decorative objects derived from geography

Homeroom Security: book about the insanity of zero-tolerance classroom policies

Neil Gaiman's Sandman coming to TV at last? -- appropriately skeptical of how this will go.

A syllabus and book list for novice students of science fiction literature -- lots of critique and other suggestions in the comments

What science fiction writers can learn from the flood of SF lit novels

Max Headroom predicted my job, 20 years before it existed

Supernovas could be directing the development of life throughout the universe

Could self-aware cities be the first forms of artificial intelligence?

Ask a Physicist: What ever happened to magnetic monopoles?

Comments

[ajollypyruvate]

The acorn thing doesn't make sense. All cultures for which I've read Plague accounts didn't bother with goofy euphemisms for it. For some STDs, yes, eventually. But not Plague.

[keelywolfe.livejournal.com]

Wow -- the Eyewear Industry Is an Incredible Ripoff, But There Are Alternatives -- My uncorrected vision is about 20/1200; issues of vision correction are rather near and dear to me.


I've bought several pairs of glasses from zennioptical.com and recommend them highly. Takes a couple of weeks but when you're only paying fifteen bucks, it's worth it.

[jajy1979.livejournal.com]

I'm getting very close to going with online options for optical ware, but the problem is getting two of the measurements used for the lens placement from providers. They don't write them down on your material (it's the centering numbers for your eyes). The other issue for me is frame fit. Solve those two problems and I'll happily pay less, and yes I was aware of the mark-up, trust me I pay more than most because of how bad my vision has gotten. Without my glasses even the big "E" is fuzzy.

The problem with the abortion doctors cases is that this will become yet another rallying cry to shut down all providers because this 'shows' that they're all 'evil'. I wish it had been done more quietly (though it certainly had to be done).

Sadly, I was considering Drake for my post baccalaureate work, but this makes it hard to take them seriously.

It's that quoted text which bothers me the most. Just as a general rule I would prefer comments not be able to transfer. I don't want mine showing up there, and I don't really care for the idea of private responses to my private posts showing up on other people's social media for world consumption. Another annoyance about this? The additional repost settings have meant that I can't change log in names here without logging out completely and then logging back in. I noted this the other day when I tried to log in to post a comment to a community (which I do under my alternate name). Stupid Farcebook, DO NOT WANT!

I've tried using the CSS code to disable the facebook/twitter repost option, but it won't accept it. It's probably the style I'm using, though it reads as if it were set to S2, so I don't know why it hasn't worked.

I hate double word standards, where one segment of the population uses it as an insult and the other uses it as an identifier, and the use of it by a non-member of the community is an insult while completely acceptable within community. (This rant brought to you by the word "whore").

Self-investigations are about as useful as the average lottery ticket. They cost money, get you nothing, and you still think it was a 'good investment'. Bullshit.

Don't remind me about student loans. I'm $40,000 in debt, and I'm hardly alone in that. On a ten year plan, that's $11,000 in interest and that's considered a relatively low amount. The average is actually about $26,000 (private) and $18,000 (public) as of 2008, but that's going up not down. Oh, and that's federal student loan debt numbers, not the private loans which constitute a huge amount of the debt out there.

Most of that about board breaking I knew already. Seeing as I can bend steel with my fist, which isn't a typical martial arts trick, I don't make a practice of wasting time with pine boards.

The dragon article is wrong. Komodo's are one of a number of venomous lizards. Linky Linky. Fry's work has shown that venom systems exist in both the monitor family (30 species) all the way to the iguana family. Probably more than 1,500 species all told with at least rudamentary venom glands. Nature Article

I hate data encryption "secure" cards. I refuse to be party to it because the data is NOT safe, and the more of it that is out there digitally the easier it is to get screwed, tracked, or otherwise subjected to the whims of malcontents, government, and vigilanties. Think what the idiots outside a porn store would do if they could get more than your license plate, but rather your entire data? Or the data of one of the abortion providers just by using a hand held scanner. Big brother bothers me less than next door neighbor, and I trust neither.

[calialleykat.livejournal.com]

Wow, talk about a day and a dollar short!!! I just spent about 350$(With insurance) for my new glasses. Grump.