Sterling Silver Monkey Straw
From tiffany’s: a sterling silver straw with a small monkey climbing up it. For $155.
How completely ridiculous and useless. But pretty.
Giant Pink Bunny in Italy
Lori pointed out this strange and sorta creepy big thing: A giant pink bunny constructed by artists on a mountainside in northern Italy.
Propaganda Posters – Remixed
Worth1000.com put together a great photoshopping contest of old WWII propaganda posters.
Along the same lines, only with a political purpose, The Propaganda Remix Project has numerous reworked posters, including some for sale.
Seems like I’ve seen another link like this someplace, but I don’t seem to have it bookmarked.
UPDATE: I found the link; it was Another Poster for Peace. I wrote it before. I linked to the Miniature Gigantic site in that post as well – they have peace posters, too.
My T-shirt collection, revised
What my t-shirt storage looks like, post t-shirt challenge.
[edit needed: update photos]
10 things to do during nesting month
This is an awesome list of stuff to do around the house before winter hits. I have a good portion of this stuff done already, with more lined up.
I have to ad winterizing the house (plastic over windows, adding insulation) to my list.
Library of Congress: Women of Protest
The Library of Congrss Photographs from the Records of the National Woman’s Party
The National Woman’s Party, representing the militant wing of the suffrage movement, utilized open public demonstrations to gain popular attention for the right of women to vote in the United States. Their picketing, pageants, parades, and demonstrations–as well as their subsequent arrests, imprisonment, and hunger strikes–were successful in spurring public discussion and winning publicity for the suffrage cause.
If I dig a very deep hole in my yard… where will I come out?
Yep, a google map application that shows where you’ll come out on the other side of the earth. Heh. I end up in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Just about where the Tsunami hit, after the earthquake. Uh Oh. Ididn’tdoit.
Ten Stupidest Utopias
From Strange Horizons. yep, stupid is a good assessment.
I know I shouldn’t say this out loud, but I will: you could add several of the all-female, feminist dystopias from popular lesbian sci-fi novels into the list of “stupidest,” like Daughters of a Coral Dawn, and the one I read recently, Ammonite.
As annoying as boys can be, I really don’t think we should kill them all off, even if we do perfect that Parthenogenesis. We should keep some of them to lift heavy stuff.
Indianapolis City Council figures it out
When an amendment to the city’s Human Rights Ordinance was proposed to the city council last year which would introduce protections for sexual orientation and gender identity, the council was bombarded with e-mail from the religious right — most of it from outside of Indianapolis, and some of it from even outside the state of Indiana (generated by a campaign from the extreme religious right).
Many councilors changed their votes to dismiss the legislation, only learning later that the mail against the ordinance was not from their constituents at all.
As you can tell from this Sunday’s Indy Star article, the councilors have figured it out, especially since they’ve sat down and had meals with Indianapolis residents who would be protected by this legislation.
The Normality of Gay Marriages
A New York Times opinion piece:
There’s nothing like a touch of real-world experience to inject some reason into the inflammatory national debate over gay marriages. Take Massachusetts, where the state’s highest court held in late 2003 that under the State Constitution, same-sex couples have a right to marry. The State Legislature moved to undo that decision last year by approving a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriages and create civil unions as an alternative. But this year, when precisely the same measure came up for a required second vote, it was defeated by a thumping margin of 157 to 39.
The main reason for the flip-flop is that some 6,600 same-sex couples have married over the past year with nary a sign of adverse effects. The sanctity of heterosexual marriages has not been destroyed. Public morals have not gone into a tailspin. Legislators who supported gay marriage in last year’s vote have been re-elected. Gay couples, many of whom had been living together monogamously for years, have rejoiced at official recognition of their commitment.
As a Republican leader explained in justifying his vote switch: “Gay marriage has begun, and life has not changed for the citizens of the commonwealth, with the exception of those who can now marry who could not before.” A Democrat attributed his change of heart to the beneficial effects he saw “when I looked in the eyes of the children living with these couples.” Gay marriage, it turned out, is good for family values.
Some legislators who strongly oppose gay marriages also switched their votes this year for tactical reasons. They realized that the original measure was headed for defeat, and they had never really liked the part that created civil unions anyway. They are now pinning their hopes on an even harsher proposal, endorsed by Gov. Mitt Romney, that would ban gay marriages without allowing civil unions.
We can only hope that this new appeal to fear and bigotry will stumble over the reality, already apparent, that gay marriage is no threat to the larger community. States that rushed to ban same-sex marriages after the Massachusetts court ruling were succumbing to misplaced hysteria.