(no subject)

Reviewing the Evidence has updated for the week. This time, my review of Sugar Cookie Murder is up, along with a home page note about it. I also see that they have a new reviewer who just loved a series whose previous book I trashed, so I guess there's something for everyone out there.

I also found irony in the newspaper recycling bin. Monday's headline: "13,000 DEAD." Tuesday's headline. "23,000 DEAD." Today's headline: "58,000 DEAD." Today's picture was a shot of the peninsula. It took me a moment to realize that all those white patches were foundations, that all but one house had been swept away.

David Attenborough (sp?) was vacationing there with his family. He's lost at least one daughter and granddaughter. And has anyone heard from Arthur C Clarke?

Musings on floods and reproductive rights

I saw a bit of footage about the tsunami today. Unlike the Hollywood images of a wall of water slamming into a town like Godzilla, this showed water just rising. No waves, no ripples at all, just rising - and rising and rising and rising, at the rate of about an inch per half-second. Slow, quiet, relentless.

I have a sudden understanding of the Genesis flood story. I know that Bob Ballard supposedly discovered "how the Biblical flood happened," but can't you also see this? Another earthquake. Another tsunami. The water washes all into the sea, and over time the story goes "the village was covered and almost all died," to "the island was covered and they all died" to "the world was covered," to "the world was covered and stayed covered for a week" "No a month!' "Forty days and forty nights..." And so on, whisper-down-the-alley style until legends are put into writing.

Closer to home, I'm ending up in a reproductive rights sidebar fight/discussion with someone in ginmar's comments. Basically, she asked for Gin's comments on her thoughts on abortion. (Boiled down: for the life of the mother/cases of rape=okay For contraceptive failure=not okay. In those cases, the mother should bear the child and put it up for adoption or otherwise face the consequences. She later pointed out that she meant "consequences" and not "punishment" because kids aren't really all that bad.)

She got my comments instead, and you can probably imagine them. (Kefir, I did mention your brother as a rebuttal to the notion that kids are naturally good.)

I've invited her here to discuss the issue, or at least to look at the news I've found on the subject. This is the open thread for discussion on the topic.