Puzzlements

I am going to ignore politics today. I would like to ignore politics every day if I could but politics affects us regardless of whether we ignore it or not. But today I have a couple of things that puzzle me that I would like to share with you. You may not see the connection between these items and I may be wrong that there is one.

The first one is from ABC and has this statement:

They did so (actively support California Proposition 8) not knowing that their now 14-year-old son, Jordan, was gay and would later contemplate suicide because of the church's steadfast belief that homosexuality is a sin that would cut him off from his family not only here on earth but in the afterlife.

Wouldn't committing suicide just make that (the separation from his family) happen that much sooner?

The second puzzlement is from space.com.

It has this on the upcoming "supermoon" on June 23rd:

Although some people have suggested that the supermoon might drive people crazy, cause natural disasters and wreak havoc on the tides, there is scant evidence in support of those claims, NASA assures.

"[S]cant evidence?" How about no evidence at all? Have we not had "supermoons" in the past? Of course we have. It is inevitable that a full moon would coincide with the moon's perigee. The moon is in an elliptical orbit. It varies in distance from the earth from 220,000 miles (the perigee) to 252,000 miles (the apogee) each month. And (I think this is key) the moon is not actually larger when it reflects the maximum solar light and, therefore, has no increase in mass or gravitational pull.

People are strange.