(Untitled)

[silver_wolf101]

The moon has always been reminiscent of women, with the menstrual cycle being compared to the ebb and flow of the ocean, controlled by the moon's pull. The phases of the moon are compared to the way a woman's body changes throughout the course of the month. There are thirteen lunar months in a year

Comments

[silver_wolf101]

*grins* But which do you think is more prominently shown and publicized?

IN the modern era, I'd say totally linear.

[lord_of_entropy]

The quantum mechanical idea that cause & effect are largely illusionary & stem from our inability to view events outside a linear view of time implicitly states that time is viewed in a linear fashion.

Besides, as Twain put it, history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.

Re: IN the modern era, I'd say totally linear.

[fergusop]

Um... what? This is probably mostly irrelevant, but quantum mechanics doesn't say anything like that. If you're referring to the EPR paradox that's what Einstein called "spooky action-at-a-distance" but does not violate causality.

[sheepfairy]

I've been a little suspicious of the claim that pharmacies invented PMS - I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to use the discomfort of it to sell medicines that people don't actually need, and there is a lot of evidence that the current form of birth control that still lets you have your period on a monthly schedule was based less on the period being necessary to a woman's health and more a misguided attempt to make things okay in the eyes of the Catholic church, but women have been having periods since the dawn of time, and they still have them even in places without any access to modern pharmacuticals. And a lot of women who claim that women of the past had fewer periods tend to ignore the fact that women of the past were also pregnant a lot more than their modern counterparts. People have started having their periods earlier in life too, but that could be a result of better nutrition and faster development instead of hormonal alterations. (I had a lot of research on all this once, I wish I could find it

[silver_wolf101]

I see your point with the idea that women are having earlier periods due to better nutrition since obviously the body would allocate resources toward survival rather than bleeding once a month. Still, the reason girls are developing at such a younger age is more because of the high fat content of our diets. Girls are starting puberty at ages so young it's insane! I mean, three year olds are being found with pubic hair. Girls are starting their periods at age 7-8 more and more often

wow, I am really tired, and it's possible I'm both misreading your arguements and mis-stating my own

[sheepfairy]

I suspect that hormone injections into the food supply probably have an even bigger impact on early developement than fat content does. And... okay, there are problems with that, obviously (in addition to three year olds hitting puberty, there was a case where young boys drinking form a well corrupted with hormones began developing female secondary sexual characteristics, but that was obviously an isolated case), but... has anybody actually ever discovered any real health risks associated with starting your periods earlier? I mean, it's certainly not what's happened in the past, but that doesn't necessarily make it 'unnatural'. Human society and living conditions are changing, so that it turn would obviously change human physiology some. But a lot of these changes are seen as being obviously bad, when honestly we have no idea. I mean on the one hand a modern diet in the West can have a lot of negative health effects, but we still certainly live a lot longer than our ancestors did (although I guess that has a lot more to do with

PART TWO! I can't believe I actually busted the comment limit. Feel free to ignore if it's tl;dr

[sheepfairy]

Hmm... I wouldn't actually have thought to really separate the idea of 'time' from 'history', especially since you don't seem to be speaking in a strictly scientific usage of the. Then I guess I'd have to go with a combination view, where it's both cyclical and linear - after all, spring will come again, but it will never be the same spring. Or, maybe it's not really cyclical at all - eventually, there won't be any spring, because the Earth will burn up. But maybe once this universe dies another will start, and that would re-introduce the idea of cycle. Or, maybe the next universe will be so different from this one that it can't be considered part of cycle - who knows?

[tiredstars]

I wonder if people haven't often misrepresented quantum physics and the challenge it poses to science. If anything, quantum physics pushes science in to a kind of super-science realm, because it's so based on maths and experiments. It is the greatest scientific achievement of the twentieth century (greater even than relativity), but its effects on other fields are much more questionable (if indeed they are significant at all). Quantum physics doesn't so much bring into question science as bring into question the use of language, common sense, heuristics, metaphor and the like as a means to understand the universe.

[tiredstars]

ps. interesting question: what is the proportion of women working in quantum physics compared to other areas of physics?