Political Tuesday

I'm a little nervous about today's entry, since I'm sitting at home, several hundred miles away from the easy access of my son, whose been at my "beck & call" the last few days, helping me get this blog off the ground. Today is truly a solo effort. We'll see if I can actually get the link posted on FB all by myself.

I'm also not in a particularly good mood. I've been having cluster headaches off-and-on for the last month or so; in no way comparable to the hideous outbreak I had in the spring & early summer of 2013, which, I am convinced, contributed to my current sabbatical, but enough of a cluster to interfere with my sleeping patterns (4:30 this morning), overuse of my headache meds, contribute to my general anxiety disorder, & interfere w/my travel plans. Thursday I'll see my neurologist. But enough about me. You wanna talk about the Supreme Court's recent decisions? Yeah, I'm not sure I want to either. Let's see how this plays out.

And there was no manly coffee for me to make this morning, so I had to make some of Lois' girly coffee, but caffeine is caffeine, know what I'm sayin'?

From Norfolk Daily News (6/25/15), "Obama to heckler: 'You're in my house.' President Obama took on a heckler head-on at a gay-pride month reception at the White House Wednesday, scolding the protestor for being disrespectful in "my house." The heckler had interrupted Obama's remarks . . . The president responded, "Hold on a second." When the heckler persisted, Obama, flashing an exasperated look, countered, "OK, you know what?" Wagging his finger & shaking his head, Obama said, "No, no, no, no, no," repeating the word more than a dozen times. As the heckler continued to talk over him, Obama took it up a notch. "Hey. Listen. You're in my house," he said to laughter & woos from the crowd." [Kudos to the President. Bet you never thought you'd read that from me! Too bad we never read anything like this when hecklers shout down conservative speakers.]

From Jackson Hole Daily (6/15/15) *, "Off-the-cuff comments costly for Nobel winner. A week ago, Tim Hunt was a well-known Nobel prize winner who was promoting science education throughout Europe & the world. Today's he's widely perceived as a sexists who has been stripped of most of his positions because of inappropriate comments about women in science . . . Hunt's fall followed a speech Tuesday at the World Conference of Science Journalists in South Korea in which he said that 'girls' cause trouble in labs because 'you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, & when you criticize the, they cry.'" [My experience in science classes was that I tended to be the one who cried because, while I loved explosions, dissections, liquids changing colors, etc., my results had a tendency to, shall we say, flounder. The only thing that got me through most of my high school & junior college science labs was partners who let me do the dirty work while they handled the calculations, calibrations, incantations, permutations, exhumations, etc. Oh, I am absolutely shocked that the international science community is influenced by political correctness. Shocked, I tell you.]

Re:  recent Supreme Court decisions:  While all of them are disappointing to me, none of them are surprising. That's all I'm going to say for now, because emotions on both sides are running so intense. On second thought, I'll say this. This appears to be a triumph of feelings & emotion over reason & rationality. Also, it appears as if the same justices who ruled that the DOMA was unconstitutional, because such laws have traditionally fallen within the realm of states' rights, have now decided that laws restricting gay marriage are unconstitutional, because states don't have the power to restrict them. Wait . . . what? [I cannot take credit, by the way, for that insight. I heard it from Rush Limbaugh while we were on the road, traveling back from MN yesterday. I apologize IF that offends you.]

* Yes, I tried to keep up with the occasional newspaper while we were on our 40th Anniversary Odyssey. And it was free.