Blog Heap of Links for the day 1 July 2015

…the primary reason I'm against government sanction of homosexual relationships. Once you assert that marriage is something mankind just made up and could have made however we wished, then there is no defense against a whole host of ills: polyamory, incest, pedophilia, bestiality, necrophilia. Every perverted, abhorrent thing becomes not just "tolerated" (even those things, such as pedophilia, which should not even be tolerated), but celebrated.

The societal consequences will be enormous, whatever the idiots say. Yes, it will hurt the institution of marriage. Yes, it will hurt children. Yes, it will hurt society. Just because you can't see it yet doesn't mean it won't do it.

…This business has been around in the San Francisco area forever and a day. Imported into the local hetero scene from the gay world.

Human nature being what it is, poly relationships work until they stop working, and then they blow up *spectacularly*.

You haven't seen bitter jealous resentment until you've seen it from a self-described "open-minded, nonjudgmental" individual.

I know relatively few truly durable long term poly arrangements. Typically people experiment with it and ultimately either end up in a lasting monogamous setup, or back to short-time floating hookups.…

Indicates Newport-Inglewood fault more important than previously thought
Risk in the next 30 years of 'big one' increased from about 4.7% to 7.0%
However, study says risk of smaller quakes has actually gone down

Pappochelys is critical for understanding “a new stage in the evolution of the turtle body plan,” the researchers write. Prior to this discovery, a 220-million-year-old specimen from China, which displayed a partly formed shell and other turtle-like features, was the closest thing experts had to a seemingly sure-fire turtle relative. Other specimens, including a 260-million-year-old fossil from South Africa, were hypothesized to represent an even earlier turtle ancestor, but with such a large temporal gap separating them from the China specimen, researchers could not say for sure. Morphologically and chronologically, Pappochelys fits neatly between the two specimens, tying them together.…

…On this day in 1870 U.S. Grant signed into law an act of the radical Republicans in Congress creating a new federal bureaucracy, the Department of Justice. It immediately began growing by leaps and bounds.…