Quickies
Skepchick Quickies 8.23
- Big Bang was actually a phase change, new theory says – The theory says that the Big Bang may have been more of a, “…moment when an amorphous, formless universe analogous to liquid water cooled and suddenly crystallized to form four-dimensional space-time, analogous to ice.”
- Mars Time: One family lives by the Martian clock – When doing Mars missions, NASA personnel switch over to Mars time. One flight director’s family has joined him in switching over this summer.
- Suit or sari? On professionalism and “ethnic” dressing
- Listen up ladies, here’s everything real men think is wrong with you – Best line, “I am neither an empty man-socket nor a fucking venus flytrap.” From Tiffany.
- Sheriff candidate would use deadly force to stop abortions – Let’s just hope he never makes it past candidate stage. From criticaldragon.
Amanda,
So scientist now think the big bang was more like liquid water freezing and becoming ice? So why are we still refer to the origin of the universe as we know it, as the big bang.
well, one scientist, via a press release. the paper the group wrote is much more reserved in its comments. http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/08/why-you-dont-overturn-the-big-bang-via-a-media-interview/
Terryp,
Thanks.
Amanda
I wonder how people living on Mars time would determine when to celebrate the Holidays we celibate here on Earth. I mean given the time different, how would people living on Mars determine when to celibate Christmas? I guess when people start celebrating the holiday on Earth. But a martian calender would not be the same as an Earth calender, nor any other planet have the same time scale. How will people deal with the different day lengths when we actually colonize other planets.
I would think it would be purely arbitrary – work out how many days in a month, space the holidays out so they fall in regular intervals. I imagine the first colonists won’t be much concerned with what people on Earth are celebrating and when, unless it’s birthdays of family left behind.
That’s actually pretty easy. For most holidays they’ll use the Gregorian Calendar. For certain local purposes they’ll create a calendar of their own. This would not be that different from what happens in quite a few countries today, where the Gregorian Calendar is not the only one used. The Hindi, Bengali, Jewish, and Muslim Calenders are all used officially alongside the Gregorian one.
Why on earth am I supposed to care what random men on the internet think is a turn-off? The only person whose opinion on beauty matters to me is my husband, and even that has limits. I wouldn’t be with any man who thought that seeing my dark roots was unsexy. Wanna know what’s a turn-off to this random woman on the internet? Men who are unhappy with how some women (certain women? all women?) dress/act/maintain themselves, but who are happy to stick their dicks in them anyway. ugh. Go buy a blow-up doll if that’s how you feel.
Amanda
I hope Frank Szabo loses his bid to become Hillsborough County Sheriff as well. I wonder how he thinks he can get away with what he says he wants to do. Regardless of his extreme beliefs, I find it hard to believe that he doesn’t know about Roe V Wade. If he actually tried to use force to stop a woman from getting an abortion, even if it wasn’t deadly force, he’d be braking the law, and could get arrested himself. The police are not allowed to enforce laws that don’t exist, just because they think they should exist.
If he actually tried to use force to stop a woman from getting an abortion, even if it wasn’t deadly force, he’d be braking the law, and could get arrested himself.
Arrested by whom? Has anyone managed to arrest Sheriff Joe Arpaio yet? I’m sure Sheriff Joe is one of this guy’s role models.
Pciszek
Has Sheriff Joe Arpaio ever done anything as obviously illegal as murder someone for doing something he thought should be against the law? He obviously won’t be able to even try arrest a women for having an abortion without being charged with a crime himself.
Well, this guy hasn’t, either. He SAID he would, but he hasn’t *done* anything. I’m not sure I believe him. Oh, I think he’s an asshole and he’d do everything in his power to fuck over women, but I’m not sure I believe he’d actually kill someone. It’s a lot of hyperbole. Which is almost worst, really. It’s just so fucking skeezy. He’s using the topic of abortion to get attention. Ugh. It’s terrible.
THAT SAID, Sheriff Asshole Joe has done some ACTUAL shady shit that has put some actual human beings into actual danger.
Joe Arpaio’s Deputy Told to Work Fraud Cases Instead of Child Rape Crime
Sheriff Joe dropped somewhere around FOUR HUNDRED cases. Most of them of the Latino persuasion. Quite a few of them involving rape and/or molestation — including at least one case of toddler rape.
HE DID NOT PURSUE THESE CASES. No one got justice.
Sheriff Joe has harmed many, many people. He has also caused a lot of deaths. But not directly. Oh, no. He’s too much of a fucking coward for that. And that’s somehow worse.
Now I have even more reason to NOT re-elect Apario.
Perhaps instead of questioning his racial profiling, maybe people ought to ask him why he ignored child rape cases. That ought to be enough to get more people pissed off at that asshole.
Speaking of which, I hope that asshole in NH never gets past his canidate stage.
First off, who does he think he’ll use deadly force against? The one that performs the abortion? Or the mother that wants it? If the latter, the guy is truly a jackhole.
Yeah, the NH guy hasn’t actually done anything (yet), at least that we know of, but this kind of rhetoric is enabling, like Sarah Palin’s infamous “target” ad directed at Gabby Giffords. Some psychopath somewhere is going to feed on this and use it as part of their self-justification for murder and mayhem.
As for the asshole sheriff, this is the first I’ve heard of his selective enforcement of laws meant to protect people (child rape laws.) Most of the national media attention, such as it is (at least here in New England) has focused on his racial profiling and harassing immigrants, i.e. rigorously enforcing laws meant to suppress people. Maybe, hopefully, this will be a wedge issue against him next election.
He’ll lose. He’s running in the GOP primary against a Republican incumbent. The incumbent doesn’t seem to have done anything to piss anyone off, OTOH Szabo just got told to leave the race by the Speaker of the State House.
His rhetoric sounds a lot like the Patriot movement, which claims the highest level of legitimate government in the US is the local Sheriff. Which is totally insane.
But in a Democracy you can’t stop people from running in a primary just because they’re delusional.
@pciszek:
This guy is a lot different then Arpaio. Arpaio’s an ass, but he’s very careful to restrict his assholery to things he can do legally. Shooting people for exercising their Constitutional rights just isn’t legal.
Granted he’s toned it down so he’d merely arrest these women, but you can’t do that either.
I think you need to change “Legally” to “get away with” because he’s done plenty of shady shit.
I’d love to read about the Big Bang article, but every time I visit Space.com, my computer contracts a virus. It’s so weird. Wonder if Phil Plait might have an article about it soon?
On the issue of what “real men” think about women….I say fuck those assholes that make those comments (not literally, obviously). Let them rot in their own imagined world.
In the meantime, I’ll just go through life being less than a “real man” if that’s what such viewpoints are supposed to be.