Obama gave a very nice speech last night in Iowa.  And while he didn’t actually declare victory, he did state that they now have the majority required for nomination.  So I guess that makes him the winner…sort of…

His numbers don’t include Michigan or Florida, which they probably shouldn’t, but the Clinton campaign claims that they have to be counted.  And there are still Super Delegates out there that could go either way.  And the Clinton campaign keeps going on about how she’s still more electable and whatnot.  So this is all very far from over.

But, for the moment, it looks like Obama might actually win the nomination – which is a little weird, because I honestly didn’t think he had a chance in hell against Clinton.

Another cold night last night…  Some nearby towns actually had snowfall.  We didn’t, but it was damn cold last night and there was frost on the car this morning.  We had to close all the windows and turn on the heat yet again.  We’re halfway through May and it is still getting cold enough to snow around here.  There’s something wrong with that.

Last night, as I was dozing off, I heard something on TV that struck me as a bit odd. Not really surprising, because Terri left it on Fox News for a while… Everything on there is a bit odd. This particular bit was something out of Sean Hannity’s mouth.

Basically he was making the claim that the Democrats are using a lot of fear in their campaigning this year. And as evidence he pointed to the constant talk about healthcare and the cost of fuel. Now even if we ignore the fact that I think Hannity is wrong about pretty much everything he says… How are healthcare and fuel costs fearful topics?

They are certainly important topics, as are several others…like the war in Iraq. And the war in Iraq is certainly frightening… Any time you’ve got guns and bombs and tanks involved I think it’s pretty safe to throw the “fear” tag in as well. But healthcare? Fuel costs? Oooh…scary!

What sounds more frightening?

We want to provide basic healthcare for absolutely everyone.

…or…

If you don’t vote for me you will die.

The first is, more or less, what the Democrats have been saying. The second is, more or less, what McCain has been saying. And Hannity thinks the Democrats are rolling out the fear this year?

This is why abstinence-only sex education does not work.

There’s a post on the Blowfish Blog…about a question that showed up on Scarleteen…  Basically a couple of kids were fooling around, did everything except actually put his penis in her vagina…  But she thinks they might have slipped up and gotten the holes wrong and she’s worried that she might be pregnant now.

There are so many things that are just plain mind-blowingly wrong with the letter to Scarleteen that you really have to read the whole thing, and their terrific response to it…

These kids evidently thought that as long as his penis wasn’t in her vagina they’d be OK.  No reason to worry about pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases or anything else.  Furthermore, the girl seems to think that there’s something wrong with her vagina…that if she let him in her it would instantly ruin their relationship…  And it sounds like this was all basically his idea and she was just going along with it.  And apparently they’re both so unfamiliar with their bodies that neither one of them could actually tell for certain which hole they had it in.

Frankly, I think pregnancy is probably the least of their worries at this point…

And this is what is wrong with abstinence-only education.  People are taught that as long as you avoid penis-in-vagina sex you’ll be just fine.  That all the other stuff just doesn’t really count as sex.  And if you aren’t actually having sex then you don’t have to worry about pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases.

Sure, it’s great to tell people not to have sex.  That’s fine.  And abstinence is the only 99.9% effective way to prevent pregnancy.  And it’s also the best way to prevent diseases.  But just telling folks not to have sex ignores a couple very important things.

Human beings are sexual creatures.  We are attracted to eachother.  This is normal and natural.  If we didn’t want to touch/hug/kiss/fondle/grope/screw there’d be something wrong with us.  And part of growing up is discovering those feelings and dealing with them.  And you can’t just ignore the fact that people have these feelings.

Human beings are also very good at rationalizing things and coming up with justifications/excuses.  People have been playing games with the definition of “sex” since the dawn of time.

Good sex education can’t just say “don’t have sex” and leave it at that.  Good sex education needs to cover how to be safe(r) regardless of what you’re doing and whether it genuinely counts as sex or not.

Last weekend, sort of as a Mother’s Day celebration, we went to see Iron Man.  Now, I was never a huge fan of the comics…  And I didn’t think the previews looked all that good…  And I’ve been a bit burnt out on all these superhero movies lately…  So Iron Man certainly wasn’t high on my list of movies to see.  I basically intended to get it from Netflix eventually.  But I kept hearing good things about it from other people, the reviews were almost entirely positive, and there wasn’t anything else interesting at the theater.  So, Iron Man it was.

The good news is that it was a surprisingly decent movie.  Sure, I’ve got complaints – I always do – but I don’t regret spending the money to go see it.  It was entertaining pretty much from start to finish.

The special effects were very well done.  The robot suits were all surprisingly believable.  The fight scenes were a lot of fun.  The characters were mostly enjoyable.  The acting was pretty good.  The plot was generally engaging and interesting.

I thoroughly enjoyed watching Tony Stark develop his suit.  I enjoyed seeing the trial and error it took to get the thing working right.  That was probably the best example I’ve seen in ages of the Scientific Method at work.  No, of course none of this is actually scientific…  It’s a movie, from Hollywood.  It’s all fluff and fiction.  But the process of developing the suit…  Coming up with designs in the computer, prototyping it, testing bits and pieces out, having mishaps, refining the design, discovering new problems…  That’s science in action.  And it was fun to watch.

But, honestly, Iron Man was not as good as I expected after listening to everyone rave about it.

I guess I’ve got two big complaints…  And my wife has a third that I don’t really agree with…

The biggest problem, for me, is that we see precious little of Iron Man.  We see an awful lot of Stark…  We see the prototype thing he develops over in Afghanistan…  We see him developing the Iron Man suit…  We get one good “trial run” type fight where he flies overseas and stops a small attack…  And then we get the big showdown with the evil supervillain.  We don’t really get to see Iron Man doing his thing.

We don’t see him fighting crime, saving kittens, stopping evil, etc.  And half of the time we do see Iron Man, the suit is in some kind of disrepair…or malfunctioning…or being tested…  We only get the briefest of glimpses at a fully-functioning Iron Man.  And I wanted to see more.

Another major problem for me was the fact that about 75% of the way through the movie Pepper Potts goes from being a very impressive woman to a simple damsel in distress for no other reason than to advance the story.

Throughout the movie she is very, very capable of handling pretty much everything the world throws at her.  She is supremely competent and self-assured.  Stark would literally be unable to function without her.  And then he sends her off to hack the computers for no other reason than to put her in peril.  And she happily agrees.

Why not hack them remotely?  Why not use your crazy-impressive supercomputer AI thing?  Why not walk into the offices yourself?  Why send Pepper at all?  Just so that she can be put in danger and then you can rescue her.

And there’s absolutely no attempt made to explain the situation at all.  There’s no “oh, no, I can’t hack in remotely because they cut the lines” or “I can’t go in to the office because they’ve suspended me.”  Nope.  Just send in the woman so you can save her later.

And Terri’s complaint, one that I don’t wholly agree with, is that Obediah Stane doesn’t seem the type to jump into a giant robot suit and go on a killing spree.  I guess I can see her point…  Obediah is more of a businessman.  He’s got underlings to do his killing for him.  He obviously doesn’t have a problem with murder or mayhem…but he seems to want to keep himself removed a bit from the action.

The end result is that by the time the movie ended I was feeling pretty dis-satisfied.  I didn’t like how Pepper had turned into a simple damsel in distress, I wanted to see more of Iron Man saving the day, and Terri didn’t like the supervillain.  It was still enjoyable…  But I really think it could have been a much stronger film.

They’re obviously going to make a sequel.  You don’t even need to hang around to see the teaser after the credits to know that – everything’s got a sequel these days.  Hopefully, now that we’ve got some of the exposition out of the way, we’ll see more of Iron Man doing his thing in the sequel.  And maybe the next time around they can find a better villain and a new damsel to throw to the wolves.

There’s a story on Slashdot today about some Mormon text being posted to WikiLeaks and some attempts to get that text taken down.

Now, the text itself is pretty boring…  It’s just basically an operating manual – how to hold meetings, how to distribute money, things like that.  No juicy secrets like you might see in a Scientology book, for example.  Nothing about aliens or volcanoes or anything like that.  So I’m not sure why the Mormons are trying to get the text taken down…

And, of course, now that they’re complaining it’ll never disappear from the Internet.  WikiLeaks isn’t known to back down or remove items…  And several people on Slashdot have already announced that they’re hosting torrents of it.  So that information is out in the wild now for better or for worse.

What I find most interesting about this whole thing is how the discussion has devolved on Slashdot.  Sure, there are some useful posts discussing copyright law and things like that…  But a number of the posts are from various non-Mormons who are criticizing the Mormons in various ways – claiming that it’s a cult, saying that Mormons aren’t Christians, questioning the origins of Mormonism, etc.  And it’s interesting when some of these people compare Mormonism to their preferred religion, because it sounds like two little kids arguing over who’s imaginary friend is better.

KutuluWare said it best…

Their origins are a bit flaky, but only because they happened in the 1800s and not 1800 BC. Just about every major, currently active religion started out with one guy who claimed some special knowledge that only he could know, and was tasked him with spreading that knowledge to the world. See: Moses, Jesus, Mohammad, Gautama Buddha. The fact that people thousands of years ago didn’t blink an eye when people made claims like this doesn’t make the claim any more or less crazy.