Virginia to lock up women who have miscarriages

Well, pretty close anyway. There is proposed legislation to make it a crime if you have a miscarriage and don't report it in the first 12 hours. There's more information about this law on the Democracy for Virginia website.

"It sounds preposterous to talk about criminalizing women who suffer miscarriages, but one Virginia legislator is proposing just that. HB1677, “Report of Fetal Death by mother, penalty” is a bill introduced by John A. Cosgrove (R) of Chesapeake. Cosgrove’s bill requires any woman who experiences “fetal death” without a doctor’s assistance to report this to the local law-enforcement agency within twelve hours of the miscarriage. Failure to do so is punishable as a Class 1 Misdemeanor."

That means you can earn up to a year in jail and a $2500 fine. For having a miscarriage.

"The reality, though, is that countless women experience spontaneous abortions in the first few gestational weeks without even being aware of pregnancy, so not all pregnancies of early gestational age are reported."

Are those women criminals, too? This is a ridiculous law and it really should not be passed. If you live in Virginia, call your state congressman and tell them your opinion. Or send them an email. Women who have a miscarriage are dealing with enough grief-- there's no reason they should suffer this further indignity.

The fewer adapters I need, the better

Via Slashdot: This is way cool! A folding memory card that can be plugged into your usb port. It's very cute, too. Unfortunately, my Fuji camera uses XD memory cards.

The boy who cried wolf

The Washington Post reports today on Bush's tendency to depict every issue as a crisis, including Social Security, medical malpractice, and appointments to federal courts. He does this to create a gut response from people, but this overuse is going to lower his credibility even more:

"One of the key problems of this form of rhetorical leadership" is discerning the difference "between a genuine and manufactured crisis," said Jeffrey K. Tulis, author "The Rhetorical Presidency" and a government professor at the University of Texas. "People do respond to crisis -- if you think there is one, you tend to support the leader. The danger there is if it appears there is not one, you can have a credibility problem."

Science helps basketball fans be more effective

See! Science does have some practical value!

New Year's resolutions

Via Higher Pie: An article called "Resolutions For The Damned A new year, a Bush-gutted, storm-ravaged world and you in need of some juicy, heartfelt pledges"

First he convinces us that we need resolutions.

"Alas, many are dejected. Many of the blue or Democratic or progressive or open-minded persuasion are understandably heading into 2005 feeling a bit out of sorts, depressed and bitter and angry and still just a little appalled at the apparent widespread fear-induced ignorance of a country that somehow re-elected the worst president in U.S. history. Yes, still."

And so he offers some suggestions:

"1) Knowing full well that BushCo loves nothing more than a numb, dumbed-down, slothlike populace too uninformed and uncaring and spiritually comatose to speak out against his nasty war and various aww-shucks policy mutilations, vow this year to blow this inane perspective to the karmic ether."

And since most of my friends are too lazy to go read the article themselves, here's the end (which is the best part):

8)"Finally and perhaps most importantly, resolve to do all this even as you laugh more vigorously than ever at the divine circus of it all, at the great cosmic joke, realizing that these next four years are going to be just shockingly painful to anyone with a heart or a whisper of raw spirituality or the slightest hint of true environmental concern.

"And yet there you are, shaking your head and sighing and grinning mischievously and moving forward anyway, as you crank your own personal vibration as much as humanly possible because that, really, is all you can do, and all you can ever do, and it is so desperately needed right now I can't even tell you, and because if you resolve anything this year, resolve to realize how essential you are to moving it all forward, making it all better, bringing it all into more divine focus."

News from Space

On Friday night, Jan 7th, comet Machholz will pass by the Pleiades. It will be the size of two pinkies held at arms length (try to do that without hurting yourself!) It will be green in color. Read more about it at Nasa News.

Survival

Great survival story of a man who was washed out to sea by the tsunami and was rescued on Monday-- 8 days later.

The life of an obituary writer

I saved this posting from Americablog so I could read the article when I got a chance-- I mean, how can I pass up an article by the man who writes obituaries for the Washington Post? As promised it was a great article. Here's a quote to whet your appetite:

"It was longstanding Post policy to include the cause of death in our obituaries, and we kept a mental tab of the more unusual ways in which people died. We once published the obituary of a psychiatrist who drowned in a sensory deprivation tank. We had a man who perished in a midair hang-gliding collision and a retired ambassador who died in an in-line skating accident. It was a sad and tragic death, but we all thought it was a class act that the former diplomat was Rollerblading at the age of 79."

Exciting stem cell results

One more thing tonight. Scientists in Japan have had some luck reversing the symptoms of Parkinson's disease in monkeys using embryonic stem cells. In case you forgot, the U.S. doesn't allow federally funded research on embryonic stem cells except for a few mouse-contaminated lines that were available 3.5 years ago.

sex habits unchanged

Well, it turns out that the availability of the morning after pill doesn't affect women's sex habits. Who would have guessed? Next they'll be telling us that "abstinence only" education doesn't affect sex habits either.

Should Gonzales be the attorney general?

Via Americablog. Excellent ad campaign against the appointment of Alberto Gonzales to attorney general. For the past 4 years he's been the counsel to the president. He's the one who wrote the famous torture memo, which claimed that the Geneva conventions didn't apply to those captured in the war on terror. As the Washington Post reported, "One of the most controversial provisions of the earlier memorandum, signed by Levin's predecessor, Jay S. Bybee, was an assertion that the president's executive powers were sufficient to permit tolerance of torturous acts in extraordinary circumstances."

Well, that depends on your definition of ethics

We should have known they were up to something. The Associated Press reports that House Republicans are still planning to weaken some of the ethics rules. As Americablog says: "the House GOP simply dropped a few of the most controversial provisions but IS STILL moving ahead with the rest of its plan to gut the ethic rules."

Ethics? What ethics? II

For more on the ethics rules they were planning on removing see Talking Points Memo

Oh, those ethics!

The House of Representatives just reversed the changes they made to their ethics rules. They had changed a rule that required House leaders to step down if they were indicted for a crime and they were considering making it more difficult to "rebuke a House member for misconduct." Instead they reinstated the indictment rule and kept the misconduct rules the same.

But don't be fooled-- they didn't discover the error of their ways or anything-- they're just trying to deny the Democrats an issue to harp on:

'Hastert spokesman John Feehery said that a change in standards of conduct "would have been the right thing to do but it was becoming a distraction" '

Translation: "We'd really like to abolish all accountability, but we'll just wait until no one is paying attention."

The Rapture Index. No, seriously-- read on

This is fascinating. There is actually a webpage which tracks the "Rapture Index." This index... well, I'll just let the founder explain it:

The Rapture Index has two functions: one is to factor together a number of related end time components into a cohesive indicator, and the other is to standardize those components to eliminate the wide variance that currently exists with prophecy reporting.

You could say the Rapture index is a Dow Jones Industrial Average of end time activity, but I think it would be better if you viewed it as prophetic speedometer. The higher the number, the faster we're moving towards the occurrence of pre-tribulation rapture.

Rapture Index of 85 and Below: Slow prophetic activity
Rapture Index of 85 to 110: Moderate prophetic activity
Rapture Index of 110 to 145: Heavy prophetic activity
Rapture Index above 145: Fasten your seat belts

At the moment the rapture index is 155.

Now, I found out about this site from an amusing blogger article called "White House Exploring 'Rapture' Contingency Plans." There is apparently some concern about who will run the country if Bush is taken in the rapture.

"The White House is reportedly exploring contingency plans in the event that President Bush and other prominent Christians are 'raptured.' But succession plans are complicated by Vice President Dick Cheney's poor health and the fact that Representative Tom DeLay, like President Bush, will be summoned to heaven along with millions of other Christians."

Of course, since Bush IS the antichrist, I have no doubt that he'll stick around.