Batch of links

- Because this made me laugh: 15 food blogger trends that need to go and 8 food blogger trends that need to stay (since this is subjective, there are some contradictions, but I agree with the bulk of each post).

- I’ve always been under the impression that spinach contained TONS of iron, but it turns out that’s been debunked as early as 1937 – it was a transcription mistake, where moving a decimal comma changed a value by a whole order of magnitude. And yet most people are unaware of this nearly 80 years later, because of how the information was spread in the first place!

- There’s a new gadget, Codlo, that promises to turn one of your existing appliances, like a slow cooker, into a sous-vide machine simply if you plug the latter into Codlo, and Codlo into the outlet. It overrides the slow cooker’s mechanism and sets the temperature precisely for sous-vide cooking. It should be on the market in the fall, and I can definitely see people buying it to try sous-vide cooking at home without buying a whole new appliance.

- Bad news for Christians who are gluten intolerant, gluten sensitive or allergic to wheat: the body of Christ cannot be gluten-free, so forget about those rice wafers. (Personally, I think the failure of the Church to get with the times, regarding so many topics, is the main reason it’s losing followers.)

- Looks like I spoke too soon, as the latest Texas abortion bill is expected to pass state legislature, maybe even today. Overturning the will of the people really didn’t take long. No more filibusters to interrupt voting! I even read an article this morning where Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst basically says that this is a democracy and the process will not be interrupted by the people. (I understand what he meant to say, but hopefully you get my point as well.) Not only would this force the vast majority of the state’s abortion clinics to close (leaving a total of 5 clinics for what is essentially the largest of the contiguous states and second most populated in the country), but it would ban all abortions after 20 weeks of gestation. I don’t even know where to direct my anger first!

Women who get abortions after 20 weeks are most certainly not using this medical intervention as a form of birth control; abortions at that point are usually done for the health (both mental and physical) of the pregnant woman, and even that is restricted enough as it is. I mean, here’s just one example of why I think that a fetal heartbeat should not be the only criterion to decide whether or not an abortion is optional – “This is not science. It is the tyranny of a metaphor.” I know two women who have been in that situation in the second half of their pregnancy and had to terminate it, and believe me when I say that it certainly wasn’t a decision they took lightly. I’m happy for them that at least, they were in Quebec and got more humane health care than they would have in some American states.

Governor Rick Perry has actually been quoted as saying, “Until the day Roe v. Wade is nothing but a shameful footnote in our nation’s history books, we won’t give up the good fight.” I think he’s a misguided idiot. On the bright side, he won’t seek to get re-elected next year, but I just hope that means he wants to quietly retire instead of trying to be the presidential candidate again…

- In Ohio, Democratic Senator Nina Turner’s erectile dysfunction bill (SB307) is an attempt to fight back. “The bill is meant to inflict the same sort of humiliation and violation of privacy on men as mostly male legislators are inflicting upon women across the country, but is wisely being sold under the exact same disingenuous ‘concern’ as Republicans sell their attempts to control women’s wombs.” You should really go read the specifics; this bill is a thing of beauty, in light of recent events.

- Did you know there’s a small town right here in the US where cars have been banned since 1898? Now I really want to go there on vacation.