The Dirty Northwest

Finally a use for Web services: welcome to MappyHour. A happy-hour listing and Google Maps mashup.

Sweet.

Looks like those dang tree-huggers are trying to get rid of the gooey goodness that is the Willamette River.

Sprawling suburbs are more than just a visual blight and a provoker of a culture of isolation. They are also a tax on resources. Single-family homes are less energy efficient and poor urban planning leads to greater infrastructure costs as roads and utilities must be stretched to serve outlying developments.

There’s also the problem of increased driving from these areas. And increased driving means increased oil consumption and increased air pollution.

Regulators in California’s Central Valley have passed a rule requiring developers to make efforts to reduce air pollution or pay a fine.

NPR has the full story.

Here’s one tardy post that was delayed due to our AM talk radio friends…

Via Pandagon, here’s good news from the front in the conservative War On Women:

Walgreen’s has suspended four pharmacists already for refusing to help female customers because they disapprove of their sex lives. Naturally, the pharmacists are thinking of suing, because if there’s anything the pseudo-pious love more than getting up into someone else’s business, it’s pretending to be martyrs.
[…]
Instead of openly admitting that they want to use any means necessary to force their religious beliefs on women, religious wingnuts instead are pretending that they are actually being oppressed if they are forced by law to respect others’ right to their own beliefs.

The next time you’re enjoying an Angus steak, you may want to remember Buck.

The irony is that their logo looks kind of like a condom in its wrapper.

Got this email from Planned Parenthood the other day. I was worried something like this would happen, that my blue-state ideals might eventually require me to give up something I enjoy.

Those close to me know how much I love Target, and not just because it’s not Wal-Mart; I gave Target two years of my working life! I’m hoping this was just a random zealot who managed to forge a pharmacology degree, but just in case…

FYI, the standard note at PP is a little mealy-mouthed, and I would have written a stronger version but I don’t know the email address of “Target Corporation.”

Dear Friend:
Imagine walking into a pharmacy with a prescription and being told by the pharmacist, “I won’t fill it. It’s my right not to
fill it.” It’s outrageous to think this is possible, but this is exactly what happened to a 26-year-old woman who presented a prescription for emergency contraception at a Target in Fenton, MO, on September 30.

Join Planned Parenthood in demanding that every woman’s pills be filled — now!

What are the odds we could get Isaac Mizrahi and Martha to take a stand?

As we say, if the name “family” is in a group’s title you know that group is nuts.

ORLawGirl has been having ongoing fun at the expense of the American Family Association (AFA), and Dobson’s Focus on the Family is always good for a gaffe, but the Family Research Council’s (FRC) bullheaded ignorance and their flat-earthed hatred of science is killing people.

As we mentioned earlier, 290,000 women are dying every year of HPV. A vaccine has been developed to help in this fight, but the FRC is against it on the grounds that abstinence is a BETTER way of preventing this cancer from spreading.

Today, researchers deemed the vaccine highly effective and said that it could prevent 70 percent to 90 percent of HPV related deaths.

Let’s see if FRC picks up the battle where they left off:

“The best way to prevent HPV is through abstinence,” said Bridget Maher, an analyst at the Family Research Council, a conservative group that expects to campaign against making the vaccines mandatory for entering school. “I see potential harm in giving this vaccine to young women.”

And as I said before: I see potential harm in letting women get cancer.

Burberry and Channel dropped Kate Moss today as they were shocked (shocked!) to learn that the woman who made heroin-chic, well, chic, uses drugs.

Okay, so maybe not heroin itself, but the classy workaholic’s choice: cocaine.

The 80’s are definitely back.

And now, for your gratuitous Kate Moss photo… Read the rest of this entry »

In another tough blow for the radical theocrats that have taken over the GOP, more pesky things like facts, research and reality have surfaced to fly in the face of their crazy schemes.

A new study out in the British Journal of Medicine indicates that access to the morning after pill does NOT in fact turn women in to whoring dervishes who abandon their families for lives of dancing with strangers in jazz clubs:

Allowing ‘morning-after’ contraceptive pills to be sold over the counter does not increase their use, suggesting that easy availability does not lead to an upsurge in unprotected sex, British investigators report.

Looks like the legions (eh – 80 or so?) of radical right-wing “scientists” just got more work to do.

Paul Krugman’s 4th of July column brings us this bit of corporate altruism:

The Center for Consumer Freedom, an advocacy group financed by Coca-Cola, Wendy’s and Tyson Foods, among others, has a Fourth of July message for you: worrying about the rapid rise in American obesity is unpatriotic.

Aw, ain’t that sweet? The widdle-biddy mom-n-pop vittles vendors are standing up in honor of our flag to make sure we don’t defame her.

Their argument? The Founding Father’s enjoyed food and drink and so should you!

Yep… the guys that started a revolution for religious freedoms and fair taxation are now coming to the defense of overeating.

What’s next? Jesus working for Seagram’s?