caliarch.net

(From the NY Times, 1.26.08)

“Between 2000 and 2005, the last year in the study by the Guttmacher Institute, the number of abortions performed yearly dropped from 1.3 million to 1.2 million, the fewest since 1974. The proportion of pregnancies ending in abortion also declined significantly.”

The National Right to Life Committee says it’s because of all the hard work they’ve done to make abortions harder to obtain and convince people of what an abominable practice it is.

Uh, not so much.  And here’s how we know.  In the states where such campaigns have been most successful, the number of annual abortions has not appreciably changed one way or the other.  On the other hand, the greatest declines in abortions have been in states like New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois, California, Oregon, and Washington — in other words, states that have made a firm commitment to providing comprehensive, medically-vetted, “full disclosure” sex education, making contraception widely available, and have not passed laws that make abortions harder to obtain.

You do the math.

Heh.

Normally when I race I get angsty about getting beaten by girls who are my same age or younger.  In my most recent race I finished 6th out of 106; the youngest of the top five finishers had 18 years on me.

Something else delicious looking / sounding that I need to try.

Mulled Red WIne

Ingredients:

3 3-inch cinnamon sticks
10 cloves
10 black peppercorns
1 teaspoon allspice berries
2 bottles full-bodied red wine
4 2-by-1/2-inch strips orange zest
1/2 cup sugar
2-4 tablespoons brandy (to taste)

Directions:

1. Toast spices in a large, heavy-bottomed pan over medium heat until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Add wine, zest, and sugar. Cover partially and simmer, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat to low once sugar has dissolved, and simmer one hour. Do not boil.

2. Strain wine. Return to saucepan, discarding spices. Stir in 2 tablespoons brandy. Taste and add up to 2 tablespoons more sugar and 2 tablespoons more brandy, if desired. Serve immediately in mugs.

An MIT computer scientist & a mathematician-slash-voting reform advocate have devised three new methods for securely casting and tabulating election votes.

Rivest & Smith describe their ideas as “more ‘academic’ than ‘practical’.” Given the scarily defunct and insecure state of many of our current voting protocols, though, the clunkiness might actually be worth it.

…quite possibly the world’s most perfect pairing.

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster, for when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I’ve read (& quoted) excerpts of The Gift of Fear in the past (most notably here, here, & here), but I’ve only just finished reading the whole book. While he does spend a lot of time discussing women & violence (a pet topic of mine), he also spends plenty of pages talking about how the ways that society views violence and violent people often undermines how effective we can be in understanding and preventing violent behavior. (more…)

One of the guys on the polo team has been experimenting lately with a helmet cam. If you’ve ever been curious about what it’s like to play polo but aren’t quite as excited about the associated risks to life and limb, helmet-cam-polo may be for you.

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