Yavin4
Yavin4's JournalAnother disturbing take on the Anti-Abortion laws: Allowing religion to legislate medical procedures
It's a sign of a backwards, primitive culture when it elevates religious superstition above science. Dictating what procedures health care officials can, and cannot do, based on an invisible man in the sky is a sign that, in many parts of this country, we are a barbaric nation.
Medicine uses the scientific method, which relies upon years of study and observation. Established medical procedures are required to demonstrate its effectiveness through hypothesis testing and experimentation. It's not based some guy wearing a fancy hat in Italy nor is it based on some sweaty preacher spewing nonsense.
If the SCOTUS allows these laws to stand, it will be taken as a sign that religious beliefs must be given more legislative power than science.
Tom Waits - I Hope I Don't Fall In Love With You
For George RR Martin book lovers, please see this video
A big criticism of the show is about the lack of character development and the rushed nature of the last two seasons. Also, that the books will be much, much better. Although I agree somewhat with the first sentiment, I don't necessarily agree that the books will be all that much better at character development than the show.
The video at the link supports my thoughts on this. The creator of the video is an auditor and did a metadata analysis of the word count per Point of View chapter and projected that count forward onto the next book in the series. What he found was that GRRM is going to have to cut down the number of chapters per character in order to fit the Winds of Winter into the Winds of Winter. IOW, GRRM is not leaving him enough physical space to deliver the character development that people are complaining about.
Did Chernobyl Cause the Soviet Union To Explode?
That might sound like an audacious proposal, but it’s been advanced by none other than the man who oversaw the dismantling of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev. He states flatly that the Chernobyl explosion was “perhaps the real cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union.”
Sovietologists “don’t like monocausal explanations” of the fall of the USSR, said Michael David-Fox, a professor of Russian and Soviet history at Georgetown University. Still, “there’s a case to be made” that Chernobyl occurred early enough in Gorbachev’s first phase of glasnost to hasten the process and eventually drive the state into the ground.
https://slate.com/technology/2013/01/chernobyl-and-the-fall-of-the-soviet-union-gorbachevs-glasnost-allowed-the-nuclear-catastrophe-to-undermine-the-ussr.html
So, no, Reagan did not end Soviet Communism.
Is our presidential election process enough of a check on a president's power?
I'm hearing a refrain that the best check on Trump is simply vote him out of office instead of impeaching and further investigations. But given our electoral college system, an election may not be the best check on his power. Without a popular vote, the ability of the people to throw Trump out of office is throttled by an electoral college system which can be easily manipulated to give Trump another victory, and with that victory, he can claim that the American people absolved him of any real criminal acts.
IOW, he doesn't need to convince the entirety of the American voting public just enough voters in a few states. Think of a criminal defendant needing only one juror to hang the jury and then walking out free.
Buddy the Beagle playing the piano and sings for you
Buddy gets me. He truly, truly gets me.
--On Edit--
Two treats is pretty stingy after that performance. Just another sad example of an artist not receiving just reward for their craft.
This video will make some of you feel old as hell. OMG!
I'm praying that this isn't real, but it is:
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