The online journal, notebook and playground of HFM

• Judge Orders Injunction on ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ – NYTimes.com
  Awesome!
  (tags: dadt lgbt)
• I checked with Carol at the mini-golf hut and no pants were found on the fence.
  David proves that adhering to the letter of the law and ignoring the intent of the law will get you some really funny pictures of a dog wearing a bear costume, and also you will eventually be persuaded to change your mind.
  (tags: funny rules)
• Gay Sex vs. Straight Sex « OkTrends
  This is research arm of the OKCupid dating site, where they mine their data for trends. They have 3.2 million users, and LOTS of really interesting data on sexuality, comparing people who identify as gay and straight.
  (tags: demographics sexuality statistics analysis gay gender sex)

• lens culture: in almost every picture # 7
  "The chronological series begins in 1936, when a 16-year-old girl from Tilburg in Holland picks up a gun and shoots at the target in a shooting gallery. Every time she hits the target, it triggers the shutter of a camera and a portrait of the girl in firing pose is taken and given as a prize. And so a lifelong love affair with the shooting gallery begins. This series documents almost every year of the woman's life (there is a conspicuous pause from 1939 to 1945) up until present times."
  (tags: photo history chronology shootingGallery awesome)
• ALICE PAUL RETURNS HOME. – No Suffragettes to Greet Girl Released from English Jail. – Article – NYTimes.com
  From the NYTimes archives – January 21, 1910 – "Miss Alice Paul, the young woman of Moorestown, N.J., who went to England two years and a half ago and became a suffragette leader, arrived home to-night. She was met by her mother and brother, but not a single suffragist put in an appearance." Oh, just wait.
  (tags: suffrage funny nytimes)
• Settlement movement – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  The settlement movement was a reformist social movement, beginning in the 1880s and peaking around the 1920s in England and the US, with a goal of getting the rich and poor in society to live more closely together in an interdependent community. Its main object was the establishment of "settlement houses" in poor urban areas, in which volunteer middle-class "settlement workers" would live, hoping to share knowledge and culture with, and alleviate the poverty of, their low-income neighbors.
  (tags: quakers socialmovements poverty reform)

• Why is This GOP House Candidate Dressed as a Nazi? – Joshua Green – Politics – The Atlantic
  "Asked whether his participation in a Nazi re-enactor's group might not upset voters, particularly Jewish voters, Iott said he hoped it would not: "They have to take it in context. There's reenactors out there who do everything. You couldn't do Civil War re-enacting if somebody didn't play the role of the Confederates." – yes, because dressing like a traitor in defense of slavery is not at all problematic, either.
  (tags: republicans nazi teaparty GOP)
• AMERICAN POETRY DOT BIZ: Another Newly Discovered Ted Hughes' Poem to Sylvia Plath, Written on the Day of Her Suicide: Revealed!
  This is the best Ted Hughes poem ever. I can totally see why he was Poet Laureate.
  (tags: poetry funny douchbags)
• InfiniteJest Chart
  tracking the interpersonal connnections.
  (tags: infinitejest infographics visualization)

Sady Doyle’s succinct and painful summary of Sylvia Plath’s relationship with Ted Hughes [Ladies! Stop Being Mad At Ted Hughes!], now that his post-Plath-suicide poem has come to light

You’re talented. You’re really talented. You might even be a genius. And your gentleman, he’s talented too, though not to the degree that you are. But you type his manuscripts. But you go to his lectures, you nurture his stardom, you play the part of his loving support and fan club. But you are responsible for his domestic comfort. Oh, you have your own successes. He even encourages those. But he’s the talent; he’s the big man; he’s the star. And then you get tossed over, for someone who is nowhere near as talented and spectacular as you, because it turns out that the talented, spectacular part of you, the part that you thought made you a couple in the first place (“we kept writing poems to each other,” was how Plath described their courtship, “then it just grew out of that, I guess, a feeling that we both were writing so much and having such a fine time doing it, we decided that this should keep on”) was never enough to keep him interested. Was never essential to him, the way it was to you. Was never a part of the purpose of you — because he doesn’t need talent or spectacular qualities in girls, apparently. Because he prefers his girls to lack those. So you wind up with all the responsibilities — the kids, the house, the cleaning, the cooking — while he goes off to be a genius for some other girl who’s way more suited to play a supporting part in his life story. Who doesn’t have within herself the potential to eclipse him, to be the one that the story is actually about; who’s safer, that way. You wind up writing all your work — your work, your amazing work, your genius — at four in the morning before the kids wake up. Because that’s the only time you can write it. Because that’s what women do.