Geologic Timescale
Here is one of the best illustrations of Geologic Time I’ve seen in a while, and certainly the best I’ve seen online. Most of them, inadvertently or not, end up magnifying our time at least a little, so that it is somehow disproportionate to the rest. This one seems much better about that. Check it out, and have fun scrolling along!
(Saw this on Pharyngula)
Leadership
I meant to blog about this in March, and never got around to it. Now I’m all nervous after my last post! Anyway.. A couple of months ago I was trucking along as usual, when I came a cross a link on one of my favorite blogs to a story about this. The link goes to a current story, but I only heard one kernel of it back in March..It’s about the South Dakota abortion ban that’s coming through the works now. The chief of the Oglala Sioux Tribe in South Dakota said that if the abortion ban goes into effect, she will have an abortion clinic opened on tribal land. In the state boundaries, but outside state jurisdiction. I was in awe..here, finally, was a leader taking a strong and brave stand on something important! She was in a unique position, and used it to stand up for women’s reproductive rights while thumbing her nose at the state government. This was no photo-op-based maverick macho posturing, but the real thing..
Now, there are movements fighting the abortion ban every step of the way, and maybe the challenges will work, and/or maybe a court will strike the ban down… But I remember what it felt like to read her words..and to see someone with the power and the capability to stand up to the anti-choice movement actually doing so, straightforward and unabashedly saying NO. And I think I had a taste of what an actual leader does.
Frightening about my hometown
So it turns out that the Chtorr really are attacking. This mystery disease eerily reminds me of parts from that sci fi saga about aliens invading the earth first with their ecology… slowly turning the planet hospitable to them and in the process giving us horrible plagues and true ecological warfare. Yikes.
And Austin is a city with one of the highest rates of infection. Double yikes.
*Update*
So my mother took it upon herself to fact check this fantastical little story, and it seems, indeed, too out there to be true. Sorry y’all..I just wasn’t skeptical enough… Most likely delusions on the part of people involved, with maybe a little hoax mixed in on someone’s part. She sent a link to this discussion board with some relevant comments..scroll through..halfway down or so some medical research folk pop in.. As an added bonus, we now know that I have a crack fact checking team backing this website up- my mom and, um, whoever else helps out!
