gravity’s rainbow

Abortionclinicdays proposes that a special notice to patients be displayed in places where caregivers are allowed to refuse reproductive care to women if it interferes with their religious rights.  It begins”I follow my own religious beliefs ahead of your medical needs.  Therefore, I will not support, offer, or approve any of the following checked off below.”

Fears of skin cancer may be leading to vitamin D deficiencies.  My grandmother is definitely on to something with her strategy of “everything in moderation.”  Though this rule doesn’t seem to apply to chocolate.

Helen Boyd has a link to a leaked Bush administration memo that defines the pill as abortion.

The most damning political attack ad I’ve ever seen.  Via The Edge of the American West.

Swing Kids - I’ve been learning to swing dance this summer, and I really loved a lot of the dance bits in this movie.  The historical aspect is really interesting and pretty depressing.  Parts of it (especially the very end) were kind of over-dramatic, but it’s a pretty good movie overall.

The Dark Knight - I had to cover my eyes.  To the parents with the 8 and 10 year old behind you, what were you thinking?  Batman and the Joker are both absolutely crazy.  I left the movie feeling pretty terrible about the world.  Which I think is what was supposed to happen.  Gotham is a pretty terrible place.

Lars and the Real Girl - Absolutely wonderful.  I’ve never seen a movie deal so well with the topic of mental illness.  A little understanding can go a long way.

The Man Who Planted Trees - Very short, but very wonderful.  More than a little idealistic.  I kind of wanted to become a tree planting hermit after watching this, but decided that I couldn’t give up wearing cute shoes.

I took a course this summer that required quite a bit of fieldwork.  Toward the end of the class, we split into small groups and planned our own projects.  My group wanted to ask about forest succession.  We went on an exploratory jaunt through the Michigan State University’s Experimental Forest the first day of the project.  It was not very successful.

First of all there were MOSQUITOES.  I put that in all caps because I have never seen such a high density of such hungry insects.  I would have eaten DEET to keep them away.  Jenny was stung by a bee and was quietly disgruntled about having been “bitten on her bum” for the rest of the afternoon.  Joanna made the mistake of sitting down and was treated to a large number of very irritated bug bites in awkward places.  I ended up bleeding from a briar with my face in poison ivy.

Overall it was kind of terrible, but we bonded over the experience and were better prepared the next time we went out.

We’re halfway thru the year!  So how’d those New Years’ Resolutions turn out?

***edit***

Several people have complained that July 17th is not exactly halfway thru the year.  I know July 17 is not the midpoint of the year.  But today is the day I realized that at least half the year has gone by already.

From The Life of the Cosmos by Lee Smolin.

No wonder physics is so hard to learn.  As it is usually taught to students, Newton’s physics does not make complete sense, for they are almost never told the whole story.  Position, velocity, and acceleration are usually introduced as if they have simple and obvious meanings, but the do not.  Even more difficult are the concepts of force and mass; the definitions given of them in textbooks are almost always circular.  The students are seldom told that if they are puzzled it may be for good reason, or that the things that confuse them have been debated for centuries.  Some figure it out for themselves.  Many go away with an unjustified sense that they cannot learn science.

The Scientific Activist reminds us of the damage that animal rights extremists do to people’s lives and valuable research.

An NY Times article on a disappearing Albanian custom: women take an oath of virginity and are allowed to live as men.

Why is there so much anti-American sentiment in the world?

Police suck.

Rove is a criminal, on vacation.

Knowing about the economy is important if you’d like to be president, McCain.

No, I’m not a big Heinlein fan.

Rich people use drugs (poor, brown people go to jail for it).

Why having the legal protection of marriage is important for queer couples.

From The Life of the Cosmos by Lee Smolin.

In science, as in politics or love, one can have all the good arguments and still be in the wrong.  When it comes down to it, what matters is not whose story is more logical or beautiful, but which leads to the greatest effect.

From The Life of the Cosmos by Lee Smolin.

Does the world consist of a large number of independently autonomous atoms, the properties of each owing nothing to the others?  Or, instead, is the world a vast, interconnected system of relations, in which even the properties of a single elementary particle or the identity of a point in space requires and reflects the whole rest of the universe? The two views of space and time underlie and imply two very different views of what it means to speak of a property, of identity, or of individuality.  Consequently, the transition from a cosmology based on an absolute notion of space and time to one based on a relational notion - a transition that we are now in the midst of - must have profound implications for our understanding of the place of complexity and life in the universe.

So I’ve gone to the movies twice since I’ve been here.  Generally, I would consider this a silly thing to do since going to the movies is so expensive.  Not so here in nowhere, Michigan!  A student ticket at the local theater is $3.50 and on Thursdays they have giant bags of $1 popcorn.

So far I’ve seen Wall-E and Hancock.  Wall-E is really beautiful and fun and has a timely message about consumerism, though Jay Smooth over at Ill Doctrine points out some problems with it.  Hancock is also fun, but you are required to not think to enjoy it.

The term “algebraic resource” is considered slang.