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.
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.
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.
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.
Back in 1997, when I was visiting my friend Cate in Germany, we took a trip down the Rhine River. We started in Cologne , and traveled on a tourist boat to Drachenfels Castle at Konigswinter, where we took a trip up the mountain on the Drachenfelsbahn to see the castle, then walked back down.
While we were on the boat floating down the Rhine, passing all the vineyards and wineries that make the Rhine’s famous Rieslings, Cate pointed out a resort hotel high on a mountain above the river and mentioned that it was one of the meeting places for the Bilderberg Group, which was a secret society of world leaders that met to discuss world affairs.
At the time, I had no clue what the heck Cate was talking about. Since then, I’ve heard the term mentioned a handful of times, and gathered that there were conspiracy theories surrounding it.
Then, I checked out Them: Adventures with Extremists by Jon Ronson, which deals heavily with the organization because the group is central to the conspiracy theories of almost all major terrorist and extremist organizations; including radical Islamists, white supremacists, and radical right-wing ideologists like Timothy McVeigh.
Over the past five or six years, more information has become available about the Bilderberg Group, especially because of Jon’s book, in which he was able to witness the participants enter a meeting, and later interviewed members of the group. He was also able to witness a ceremony at the Bohemian Grove, whose attendees had a very similar guest list.
But I wonder how Cate knew as much as she did back in 1997.
Stephanie and I are planning to have a Dance Dance Revolution get together sometime soon; a small gathering, not a big one, where people can play in the comfort of my living room. We’ll probably wait until Dan and Doug get back from Europe, because they want to play too.
If you want to come, let me know. The key is that you have to actually dance in front of other people.
Conservative pundits have been hammering the idea that there were “2000 school buses” that New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin could have commandeered to get the poor people of the city evacuated. According to Media Matters, this falsehood has been repeated over and over again.
In fact, the city of New Orleans has 364 school buses, of which 70 were in the shop for repairs and were not driveable. There were not drivers available for the remaining school buses to take people out of town, or personnel to gas them up, etc. Or a way to round up residents and get them to a single meeting point. The logistics of it would have been impossible.
According to the Wall Street Journal:
Congressional Republicans, backed by the White House, say they are using relief measures for the hurricane-ravaged Gulf coast to achieve a broad range of conservative economic and social policies, both in the storm zone and beyond.
Some new measures are already taking shape. In the past week, the Bush administration has suspended some union-friendly rules that require federal contractors pay prevailing wages, moved to ease tariffs on Canadian lumber, and allowed more foreign sugar imports to calm rising sugar prices. Just yesterday, it waived some affirmative-action rules for employers with federal contracts in the Gulf region.
Now, Republicans are working on legislation that would limit victims’ right to sue, offer vouchers for displaced school children, lift some environment restrictions on new refineries and create tax-advantaged enterprise zones to maximize private-sector participation in recovery and reconstruction. Yesterday, the House overwhelmingly passed a bill that would offer sweeping protection against lawsuits to any person or organization that helps Katrina victims without compensation.
In other words; “thank god we got all those pesky black people out of the way so we can build our big businesses where their houses used to be.”
Nevermind that his big businesses caused the tragedy in the first place by developing oil refineries on the wetlands. They’re going to roll out more refineries there.
My friend Lori sent me this movie someone made of a smoking monkey — People have the weirdest things in their heads sometimes.
It’s offered to your attention the “space pants” for macaque small monkey to wear it during the experimental space flight. This pants has been used for animals (monkeys) experiments in 1950-s – 1960-s in the USSR Institute of Biomedical Problems (IMBP, Moscow). The monkey’s “space pants” are designed with many clasps to fit bigger or smaller monkey.
No, I’m not bidding.