elfs | Three days of brain, continued...

Women feel no emotions during orgasm.: The story goes that women are very defensive and protective, and their emotions center on suspicion and self-control, and to have an orgasm their emotional centers must shut down. Huh. Forgive me for being doubtful.
US Soldiers did "Dirty Work" for Chinese Interrogators: "U.S. military personnel at Guantanamo Bay allegedly softened up detainees at the request of Chinese intelligence officials who had come to the island facility to interrogate the men -- or they allowed the Chinese to dole out the treatment themselves." Lovely!
Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani suggests armed resistance against American "permissible.": This guy is supposedly our biggest stick in the Iraqi patchwork of religious leaders. And yet he's been issuing edicts suggesting that al-Sadr may not be wrong in fighting the Americans. Greaaaat.
Israel appeases Syria: Quick, John McCain! Stick your foot in and advise Israel against this "reckless behavior!"
Atheists are only the ninth biggest danger America faces?: Damn, I thought we were doing so much better. Pro-homosexual indoctrination is higher? Well, evolution is higher. That's okay.
One in seven American biology teachers is a Young Earth Creationist.: This is incredibly sad information. While the majority of teachers do understand that evolution is the central and unifying principle of the biological sciences, one in seven is downplaying evolution and preaching creationism.
Clinton Campaign Threatens "Open Civil War": Hilzoy has some interesting analysis of the past couple of days of Hillary's campaign. Her comparison of her losses to those of suffragetes or Zimbabwean opposition leaders (really? People have been raped and killed for supporting Hillary?) and accusations of sexism are creating a toxic campaign environment. I think Hillary's trying to say that if her party won't let her have the Whitehouse, then nobody from her party can, and fuck the American people.

Hillary should admit defeat. She faced a better candidate. She's going to go down an embittered and resentful woman, not the healer who helped the Democrats take back the White House.
Anti-Vaccine Nuts vs. Kathleen Seidel, take 2: A few weeks ago, I blogged about Kathleen Seidel, an observer of the anti-vaccination wars, and how she had been subpoenaed by a lawyer for an anti-vaccination group. The subpoena was squashed and the lawyer was ordered to show cause. His response is hilarious; it took the judge less than a day to deny it. But among his assertions: (1) that Miss Seidel's husband can covertly control Wikipedia, (2) that criticism, advocacy, and strong sustained interest in a matter of public policy in a blog constitutes "criminal harassment," and (3) that skill in using publicly accessible documentation and library resources renders one legally vulnerable to invasive scrutiny. Oh, and he adds that those skills are "well in excess of that available to the mother and housewife she claims to be."

If you've got an hour to spare (and who doesn't?) you should read the response in full. It's screamingly funny.
Van driven onto Seattle runway. TSA shrugs.: Lt. Colonel Greg Alderete drove onto the runway at Sea-Tac without anyone stopping him or questioning his credentials, and now wants to know how the hell that could happen.
McCain Distorts Foreign Relations: Matt Yglesias points to a Washington Post article showing how John McCain's dismissal of Obama's foreign policy is a "distortion of history," that ignores that Reagan negotiated with Iran, and that US success with Libya depended upon negotiation. Negotiation is not haggling, and it's not on the continuum between warmongering and appeasement: it's orthagonal to it, a way of trying to figure out how to deal with another country without doing anything necessarily along that continuum.
Supreme Court Carves Out New Exception to First Amendment: When I first heard about this ruling, I kinda shrugged. It seemed reasonable. Given what we've been hearing about child pornography on the Internet and how it seems to have evolved into some truly horrible and nasty stuff, I didn't object strongly to the ruling or the law. But Ed Brayton points out that the supremes have created a new exception to the freedom of speech: you may not solicit to commit a crime. I mean, it used to be that you could say "I want to buy drugs," but the cops had to actually sell it to you before they could bust you. Now, the Supremes have said that just saying the first can be made illegal. This makes the line between legalization advocacy (for anything currently illegal, not just drugs) and solicitation much, much harder to find.
Knot Tying Cards: There's an outdoors version, a boater's version, and a fisherman's version. Damn, no dungeon version!