emergency contraception: access denied

Morality clauses, EC, and broken condoms

An enraged and enraging first-person account of someone's unsuccessful attempt to get access to EC in rural Ohio.

a compendium of last words

Guardian Unlimited: "I'm Ready"

Regardless of your opinion of capital punishment, you should read this. We're all (indirectly) responsible for this --in the same sense that we're responsible for each justice and injustice done in our country--and I think that it's good to be confronted with the ultimate consequences of decisions such as this.

just because

from BoingBoing:

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/09/21/wedding_procession_l.html

A wedding procession involving a little girl in a Darth Vader helmet. Why didn't we think of that?

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/09/21/how_physics_killed_s.html

"I don't know how well I'm reaching my students, or the readers of my book, but if I can teach a homicidal maniac like the Green Goblin about change of momentum, then _I'm making a difference!_"

:)

Give 'em a (Working) Hand

from Quinn Norton (hi, tildequinn at Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71797-0.html

Open source prosthetics. Gotta like it.

the Brazilian mirror

I know basically nothing about Brazilian politics, but I found this article very interesting:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/09/22/news/brazil.php

The essential facts appear to be that the Brazilian president's party has got in a lot of trouble over the past few years due to corruption problems. However, the president himself is still very personally popular and is likely to win re-election, based largely on his support among the poor. It's an interesting read.

Makes you wonder what this election cycle in the US might look like if we'd never went to Iraq or involved ourselves quite so publically and *ahem* tortuously in the War on Terra. The Republican party is having problems all over the place due to corruption, but it's been at least partially masked by the continuing disintegration of Bush's popularity due to various the Iraq situation...and the Republicans are running away from Bush rather than the other way around.