It would have been a kindness, given his historical views.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
The effects are good: the court has denied appeals on same sex marriage rulings.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up the hotly contested issue of gay marriage, a surprise move that will allow gay men and women to marry in five states where same-sex weddings were previously banned.
By rejecting appeals in cases involving Virginia, Oklahoma, Utah, Wisconsin and Indiana, the court left intact lower-court rulings that struck down bans in those states.
Other states under the jurisdiction of appeals courts that struck down the bans will also be affected, meaning the number of states with gay marriage is likely to quickly jump from 19 to 30.
Science magazine has updated their list of Twitter Science Stars to add a few of the people they missed before — so now I’m #18, rather than #10. I am crushed.
This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
Status: UNMODERATED; Previous thread
I read on Jezebel that Susan Miller is sick. I had no idea who Susan Miller is until I read the article, and then I was aghast on multiple levels.
Susan Miller is the unrivaled Queen of Astrology. She is known for her affable delivery, her reverence in the world of fashion and, most importantly, her accurate horoscope forecasts which she publishes monthly to her site Astrologyzone.com.
Miller’s monthly forecasts—generating 6.5 million unique monthly visitors—are released on the first of each month as her readers anxiously wait to see, they believe, what their future holds and to use the readings to help guide their real life decisions. Her fans are devoted and some might even say rabid. Many readers will begin to panic if an updated forecast isn’t published on AstrologyZone on the first of the month. If such a horror occurs, the anxiety only increases as the horoscope-less days tick away.
When the sides are divided, when they start making accusations, it’s always enlightening to look at what each side considers an insult. On my side, we see the other as agents of oppression, misogynists and racists, people who want to discriminate and maintain an unjust status quo. On their side…
Demonstrators intrude on St Louis Symphony Orchestra concert with a little musical interruption.
We had a brief intrusion by a few trolls over #gamergate: they were trying so hard to seem polite and rational while being obsessive and repetitive and tedious, clearly hiding their true goals under a veil of politeness. I’ve seen similar behavior from cultists, and it’s rather creepy.
In an opinion piece in a Turkish newspaper, Melis Alphan considers the ongoing national debate on the appropriate clothing for women — the veil, for instance, was once imposed on women as a marker to distinguish them from prostitutes and slaves. What’s interesting, in particular, is that she has a view that the West is more liberal than we really are.
All right, Larry Moran, why did you post about this paper now? I finished the unit on the origins of life in my cell biology class over a week ago, and this summary of the metabolism first model of abiogenesis would have been very helpful. I first gave them a review of redox reactions in chemistry, and then some general ideas about events in deep sea vents that generate a source of energy that early chemistry could have tapped, but this paper is full of specifics — probably a bit too heavy going for college sophomores, but they could have appreciated some of the diagrams.
