It’s Saturday. It’s lunchtime. It’s 105.7°F in the shade on the back porch. You know what that means — it is time to fry us up (on the sidewalk, ‘natch) some tasty News Chum, using those links we saved earlier in the week. Better eat it quick, before it spoils in the heat:
- Turnabout Is Fair Play. I have no idea if this is true, but wouldn’t it be great if it was? According to the Dayton Daily News, Ohio State Senator Nina Turner introduced SB 307, which requires men to visit a sex therapist, undergo a cardiac stress test, and get their sexual partner to sign a notarized affidavit confirming impotency in order to get a prescription for Viagra and other erectile dysfunction drugs. The bill also requires men who take the drugs to be continually “tested for heart problems, receive counseling about possible side effects and receive information about “pursuing celibacy as a viable lifestyle choice.”” This is in response to a Republican house bill that would ban abortion if the fetus has a heartbeat, which is about six weeks after conception. Personally, I think a better bill (and a better parallel) would be a bill that require a man proven to be the father, or the state if no father is identified, to support a child if the mother signs an affidavit that she would have aborted it if the law had permitted. After all, if a life is so valuable, then it is equally valuable after it is born, if not more so.
- Duck, Duck, Goose. I used to be a stamp collector, before it became to expensive to keep the collection up to date. Thus I found this NYT article on Duck Stamps interesting, both for the rewards that go to the artists, as well as how this became a successful self-supporting program. Duck stamps are perhaps a more collectable stamp, as there are much fewer of them issued.
- In The Tunnels. Speaking of New York, Wired has some dramatic pictures of NY Subway tunnels as they are being constructed. They are from the official photographer of the New York City subway system.
- Back Pain. If you are like me, you are (a) getting older, and (b) dealing with back pain. Here’s an interesting article that claims that 40% of back pain is bacterial and can be addressed with antibiotics. Would be an interesting theory, especially as we’ve discovered bacteria to be behind a number of other odd problems.
- Conspiracy Theories. Here’s an interesting article that went around much of the net last week on why conspiracy theories refuse to die. Basically, the answer is that they cannot be disproven, because if someone believes in conspiracies, they will believe in a conspiracy to fake any evidence of the theory’s falseness.
- Berkeley v. UCLA. A few weeks ago, I linked to an article in the Daily Sundial about CSUN comparing itself to Berkeley. Here’s an article about Berkeley comparing itself to UCLA. UCLA wins in a number of areas, but (of course) Berkeley considers itself better.
Music: Memories (Barbra Streisand): “My Heart Belongs To Me”
