Sex, plants, GOP, mass extinctions, crack, dirt, IUD

Slush and sleet. Winter sucks.

* Female desire
* Old Newsweek article on the Bible and gay marriage
* Old Chomsky interview on anarchism; as vague as most things on anarchism I see, plus talk of "spiritual transformation".
** I saw someone say today that the anarchist conception of the state is of minority (including traditional elected representatives) ruling a majority, and that if I think of their vision not as no-state but as direct-democratic state it'd make more sense. That does help, though at the same time they often talk about direct representation, which I favor but isn't clearly not-minority, and of having no money, which makes no sense.
* Using plants in RPGs.
* Urban farming
* Mercury found in corn syrup
* Kansas GOP: cut the school budgets!
* Yesterday's Krugman column, Bad Faith Economics, was listed on the front page as "Bad Economics". Also appropriate, but an interesting difference.
* No unified theory for mass extinctions. Impact here, vulcanism there and there, glaciation over there...
* Caltech's magazine "Engineering and Science has an article (PDF) on the crisis, by two Caltech economists.
* Tracking Obama campaign promises
* Perspectives (by a nuanced pro-lifer) on birth control, abortion, and adoption in the Philippines.
* 1990s crack baby epidemic: didn't happen.
* Babies eat dirt for health
* Wikipedia on the IUD. I'd never known much about them. Seem pretty effective, even usable as emergency contraception, oddly unpopular in the US.

ER doctors sue state, say emergency room system near collapse

Behold

California has seen 85 hospital closures in the last decade. An additional 55 facilities have shut down emergency rooms. The state now ranks last in the country in access to emergency care and is last in emergency rooms per capita with only seven per 1 million people. The national average is 20 emergency rooms per 1 million people.

“Patients are suffering every day,” said Irv Edwards, one of the doctors represented in the lawsuit and president of Emergent Medical Associates, which staffs 12 emergency rooms in Southern California. “There are emergency rooms throughout the state where people, we believe, have died. Some have died in the lobby before they were seen. Some have died shortly after being placed in a bed after having waited in the lobby for hours. Are people truly suffering consequences? Absolutely.”

HMOs apparently shortchange ERs.

Gitmo Case Files Missing

President Obama's plans to expeditiously determine the fates of about 245 terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and quickly close the military prison there were set back last week when incoming legal and national security officials -- barred until the inauguration from examining classified material on the detainees -- discovered that there were no comprehensive case files on many of them.

...

Evidence gathered for military commission trials is in disarray, according to some former officials, who said military lawyers lacked the trial experience to prosecute complex international terrorism cases.

In a court filing this month, Darrel Vandeveld, a former military prosecutor at Guantanamo who asked to be relieved of his duties, said evidence was "strewn throughout the prosecution offices in desk drawers, bookcases packed with vaguely-labeled plastic containers, or even simply piled on the tops of desks."

Bush Administration incompetence knows no limit, it would seem.