(no subject)

The NSA is on the line -- all of them: An intelligence expert predicts we'll soon learn that cellphone and Internet companies also cooperated with the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on us -- the VAX makes the news

Chertoff: National Guard on the Border Would Be "Horribly Over-Expensive and Very Difficult"

found at DailyKos

Web Braille Shut Down for "Security" Reasons

(no subject)

The scary thing is, I can imagine myself (or someone like me) bending down to my own children years from now, telling them, "I remember when abortion was legal." You know, how someone today might remember when LSD and pot weren't illegal.

The possibility itself is frightening.

I am not pre-pregnant. If anything, I'm post-pregnant. I've been pregnant before. I'm not planning on being so again any time soon. But if and when I do, that decision should be on my terms.

I already take vitamin supplements, folic acid, zinc, magnesium, iron--just about everything they recommend for women except calcium. I don't smoke. I drink socially. I'm not in the best physical health, but a good reason to get me to exercise is not because I might, at some point in the future, become pregnant. That's not a motivator for me.

I remember remarking to dionysus1999 not too long ago that there is a crackdown on women's rights in this country, and he kind of looked at me like I was spouting crazy talk. As a child born in the wake of Roe, I see it. The backlash some pseudofeminists predicted in the '80s and early '90s is finally hitting us. The movement just needed a president receptive to the ideas of regressive ultraconservatives. (Because the only way to make America strong is to make the family strong, which means a nuclear family, which means rolling back the freedoms privileges that women have enjoyed since the end of WWII. Never mind that the age that these people idolize lasted for less than twenty years.) To be honest, I can see things, if they get a foothold, going all the way back to when women were diagnosed as "hysterical" and confined to bedrest until they went somewhere mentally like in The Yellow Wallpaper.

I am not a descriptor of my womb. My reproductive status does not define me.

someone's tag line

Arrogant lips are unsuited to a fool--how much worse lying lips to a ruler
--Proverbs 17:7

(no subject)

By the way, Stanley Kunitz died this weekend.

He was a giant in modern poetry, not just because of his longevity. He lived to be 100.

If anyone wants to post a poem by Kunitz here, feel free. In the meantime, I'll see if I can dig something up....

In case you missed it (like I did)....

Al Gore showed up on SNL last weekend and gave a presidential address to the nation.

challenge what you know to be true

Lactic Acid Is Not Muscles' Foe, It's Fuel

Everyone who has even thought about exercising has heard the warnings about lactic acid. It builds up in your muscles. It is what makes your muscles burn. Its buildup is what makes your muscles tire and give out.

[...] But that, it turns out, is all wrong. Lactic acid is actually a fuel, not a caustic waste product. Muscles make it deliberately, producing it from glucose, and they burn it to obtain energy. The reason trained athletes can perform so hard and so long is because their intense training causes their muscles to adapt so they more readily and efficiently absorb lactic acid.

[...] When [George A. Brooks] graduated and began working on a Ph.D. in exercise physiology, he decided to study the lactic acid hypothesis for his dissertation.

"I gave rats radioactive lactic acid, and I found that they burned it faster than anything else I could give them," Dr. Brooks said.

It looked as if lactic acid was there for a reason. It was a source of energy.

Dr. Brooks said he published the finding in the late 70's. Other researchers challenged him at meetings and in print.

"I had huge fights, I had terrible trouble getting my grants funded, I had my papers rejected," Dr. Brooks recalled. But he soldiered on, conducting more elaborate studies with rats and, years later, moving on to humans. Every time, with every study, his results were consistent with his radical idea.

Eventually, other researchers confirmed the work. And gradually, the thinking among exercise physiologists began to change.

(no subject)

What Do We Tell the Children? (as seen in bush_sucks)

The Kingdoms and the Power

Confidence In GOP Is At New Low in Poll

(no subject)

The Male Privilege Checklist -- I hadn't seen this before.

(no subject)

Consumer Price Report Shows Signs of Inflation

Dow Plummets 214, Nasdaq Declines 33

Hey simianpower

Monkeys use sound sequence to convey command

(no subject)

If one brings up the Holocaust without mentioning Hitler, does that still fall under Godwin's Law?

IM snippet

VAXJedi: I feel so bourgeois
novapsyche444: *laugh*
VAXJedi: wait, no thats not the right word
VAXJedi: wait, yes it is
novapsyche444: *giggle*
VAXJedi: I can never spell that one
novapsyche444: Yeah, those damned French.
VAXJedi: yeah, those french and their french fries and french toast...
novapsyche444: And us with our freedom fries! And ... freedom toast ... !
VAXJedi: freedom kissing and freedom ticklers, etc
novapsyche444: *snigger*
novapsyche444: I rather like the sound of freedom kissing.
novapsyche444: I shouldn't laugh at our Sovietization. That's so gauche.
VAXJedi: Sovietization? Does that mean we get more vodka
novapsyche444: Yeah, but it's not real vodka. Cheap knockoffs, that's the American way.
VAXJedi: yup
VAXJedi: McVodka
novapsyche444: To wash down our freedom fries!
novapsyche444: Wait. Vodka and potatoes... are those the same food group?
VAXJedi: yup.
novapsyche444: That's what I thought!
novapsyche444: Then it fits right in with the American diet, I suppose.
VAXJedi: (this trivia paid for by the US Pototo Farmers Coalition)
novapsyche444: This is very important to notate, since a copy of this conversation is being logged by someone in the government. Good to quote your sources.
VAXJedi: They won't trace it to me. They'll see the spelling of
VAXJedi: potato and assume it's Dan Quayle
novapsyche444: You know, I'd prefer him as President these days. Sheesh.
novapsyche444: At least he seems honestly like an imbecile.