Brains: Today We Have Cookies!

[elfs]

It was a gorgeous Autumnal day this morning. Cool, crisp, and with that special clarity that only happens in here as Fall comes around and the winds start blowing toward the southwest. Too bad it's mid-July, but we Seattlites don't really miss summer. We don't even understand summer ("Seattle Summer" from Almost Live, featuring Bill Nye as a "drunken beach loon", 1:40), right?

Anyway, today's list of newsie things:

HHS moves to redefine hormonal contraception as abortion

Because the statutes that would be enforced through this regulation seek, in part, to protect individuals and institutions from suffering discrimination on the basis of conscience, the conscience of the individual or institution should be paramount in determining what constitutes abortion, within the bounds of reason. As discussed above, both definitions of pregnancy are reasonable and used within the scientific and medical community. The Department proposes, then, to allow individuals and institutions to adhere to their own views and adopt a definition of abortion that encompasses both views of abortion.

Everyone got that? What they're basically saying here is that, contrary to all obstetric practice, some individuals believe that pregnancy begins not an implantation but at fertilization, and hormonal birth controls block implantation. These people should not be discriminated against.

California Conservatives Turn On Each Other Over Gay Rights

Apparently, there are two anti-gay groups in California working to "protect marriage" and propping up Proposition 8, the law that would overturn the state's Supreme Court ruling allowing for gay marriages. Apparently, both groups see themselves as losing and both want to secure their place in history as the group that sounded the alarm before the hand of judgement squashed them flat. Or something.

AFA: If we lose California, we lose everything

Donald Wildmon is at it again, telling supporters that they must support Prop 8, because if they don't then gay marriage will "flood the other 49 states." Oh, we can only hope.

Christianists Wringing Hands Over McCain's Gay Adoption Stance

I mean if you're going to say that you're against gay adoption then why not just stick with that view rather than trying to massage it? McCain had an opportunity to add the gay adoption issue to his Evangelical checklist and now it's muddy.

PZ Meyers bags one

So, PZ has been in a bit of a kerfluffle over the whole "It's just a cracker" story I posted about last week, and he received some rather nasty hate mail over it. Some of them contained death threats, and now one of those people has been tracked down and fired for their stupidity.

WND: How Dare Atheists Publish In Christian America!

Grief, this is funny. David Kupelian tries to explain to his followers how it is that atheists can publish with such impudence. After all, he says, "America was founded by Christians. Its very purpose for being was the furtherance of biblical Christianity."

I love the fact that one of the "anti-Christian" values Kupelian lists is "holding pacifist beliefs." Kupelian then goes on to claim that "atheists are smart" and "most of us are intimidated by a superior intellect and knowledge." The rest is typical Christian blather: atheists have distant Dads, evolution is a religious belief, atheists can't explain love, yadda yadda yadda. (via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)

The perfect chocolate chip cookie?

I'm not convinced of the crispy chocolate cookie's superiority, but loathe the artifice of "soft-baked" cookies. I wonder if there's a way to get something in between.

Understanding Closures in Modern Programming Languages

This guy gets it half-right. He explains how to use closures, and why you would want to, but he fails to get into the nitty-gritty details that can, if not attended to, commit some serious ass-biting. Closures sustain the existing frame of execution, which will be reaped when its parent frame is reaped. His example is toyish; if the closure were dependent upon outside references, and the objects referred to change, then the values the closure uses when triggered will also change. But it's still a good start to explaining closures in Python.

Comments

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

Errr... "Other 49 states?" I guess Wildmon must have blocked Massachusetts's little change in policy from his mind. And I do like the description in the first article about the two conservative groups having been "bosum buddies." Heh,

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

What they're basically saying here is that, contrary to all obstetric practice, some individuals believe that pregnancy begins not an implantation but at fertilization, and hormonal birth controls block implantation. These people should not be discriminated against.

Indeed. Instead, they should be shot.

[urox.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking some straight, married peeps need to go over and yell in their faces about how they had to take birth control pills not for the birth control, but because it reduced the massive amount of cramp pain and related cycle anemia...

Oh.. that would be me. And unfortunately misses the point about how the egg doesn't get released!

[sirfox.livejournal.com]

i think Carlin already knocked this one out of the park
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=1vSCkjws3oI
(between 0:20 and 1:40)

I can't possibly see this thing standing up to a judicial review.

[lucky-otter.livejournal.com]

If you think closures are hard in Python, just wait until they're in C++. C++0x, which is due roughly next year, includes closures, but if you include variables by reference, there is still nothing preventing them from being destroyed when the frame in which they were created is destroyed.

Another push in the direction of smart pointers in C++, for me.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I just read N2550. Grief, I see a disaster looming. But then, that's always been true of C++.

[(Anonymous)]

There are countries with a much longer history of Christianity than the United States, which is a toddler in comparison to say Italy which obviously enough houses the Pope. They don't have this whole nonsense about atheists etc though, and I doubt most European countries would call themselves a "Christian nation". "Predominantly Christian" is possible, but saying the state exists to be Christian is just frankly a huge crock of excrement.

I wonder if it's because the US itself hasn't had as much strife as a result of religious edicts as Europe. The Spanish Inquisition springs to mind especially.

[gromm.livejournal.com]

The atheist says "I'll believe it when I see it". The theist says "I'll see it when I believe it".

What the Christianists believe is that America was built for them and them alone. And so it is so.

When faith is your only tool, enough belief will make anything possible. :)

[edichka2.livejournal.com]

"atheists have distant Dads" -- ??

I guess I missed that one.

- E

[bldrnrpdx.livejournal.com]

God = "Our father who art in heaven". You would think that would seem to be pretty distant. But I guess not.

chocolate chip cookies

[hydrolagus.livejournal.com]

Slight crispy resistance on the outside; soft middle that is just cakey enough to hold milk if dunked but isn't dry. nbarnes has been working on it and has come pretty darn close to perfection.