A large chunk of the rest.

I said there was more. Today for me was tour day. This is good, as it's a paid tour. Thursday will be training day, also paid. Just have a few other things to do and then next week I get to start working at my internship. This will be most interesting.

The rest is a very long list of link-type things. Any further ramblings not related to them will appear in a separate post, most likely.

Starving American soldiers ask Iraqis (and their families back home) for food. There's a saying about this: "An army travels on its stomach." If you can't feed them, then how do you expect them to fight? (Of course, with all things, grains of salt may be applicable here. But I'm not sure how much of this is true and how much isn't.)

What can a boarding pass tell an identity thief about you? Too much. Shows how much of our information is available unsecured to those who mine castoffs and play confidence tricks. And it's not just limited to things like these. Think new technologies like RFID are the wave of the future? Not really, RFID is still very hackable and changeable. We'll have to go through a few more iterations, I think, before it starts resembling things that even play at being secure.

From an earlier sequence: Remember that earlier article about Mexico decriminalizing drug laws? Well, it's not going to get signed. Rats.

Dolphins have names. More evidence of language sophistication in the aquatic species. Now we just need a dolphin-Gaian translator.

What happens when nerds behave like transforming robots. There's a connection here, somewhere. I just don't get it right now.

The Vatican's astronomer talks smack about Young Earth Creationism, calling it a "kind of paganism". Of course, not many pagans believe in biblical accounts of the world's creation, so that's not quite an accurate statement. Still, it's been a while since we heard from the Catholic Church distancing themselves from sects, if I recall rightly.

Massachusetts wants MySpace to raise its age to eighteen. In the name of protecting children from predators, of course. Regardless of the unenforceability of such a requirement, unless sensitive data is used for verification, this is another example of what can happen because parents are not paying attention, and not wanting to pay attention, to their children. It's not going to be feasible to completely stop predators, but a little parenting and some sense will help them catch warning signs. Not to mention that I don't necessarily see the appeal of MySpace, not having fiddled about with it, so maybe there's something I'm missing. This is useless, looks-good-but-does-nothing legislation.

Wal-mart wants to trademark the smiley-face. A symbol such as that, being trademarked and then aggressively defended by a corporate giant? Smacks of a hypocrisy, to me, but then again, I'm just a blogger - Sam's got money enough to make it happen.

A list of Harry Potter titles we'd rather not read. There's a good chance, though, that at least one of them will be made before the books are finished and all the publicity and hubbub dies down from them.

For our friends with petrol-based vehicles, Things to improve fuel efficiency. Most, however, involve driving defensively and maintaining the speed limit and no faster. Tough to do in places that believe the speed limit a suggestion rather than a law.

And lastly, something that seems to make an appropriate amount of sense for such a posting as this: Don't believe everything you read. If people can put hoaxes over on the mainstream media, they can just as easily do it to bloggers and naive people like me. So always keep your towel and salt shaker on hand.

Part Two: Musing of a different sort

Recent events in the 'net world and the real world have me thinking again. You may run like hell now, if you so choose. You'll make it to the bunker before I say anything that could be strange.

Anyway, I was pondering the decision made by D.C. Simpson recently to express herself as a female to the public and society at large. (Have to be careful with those pronouns - first thing I typed was "himself", and then I realized, while that would make the point and cause the appropriate double-take, it's not really worthwhile. This probably figures into a point somewhere later.) The reaction from the commentators in his journal has been overwhelmingly positive and accepting. May be a matter of preaching to the choir (and her statement that she has nothing to fear from the comments probably confirms this), but the case is that Dana finally decided that it was time to tell the truth.

Welah knew much earlier than he told me. He, too, eventually decided it was time to tell the truth and stop hiding. These are decisions with large ramifications, many positive, many negative. I've met a lot of people who don't orbit anywhere near what American society considers "normal", for whatever reason. These people are interesting, and they have considerable courage to be what they are publicly.

What I find equally interesting, though, has been my reaction (perhaps more accurately, lack thereof) to these decisions and new information. Specifically, it doesn't bother me. While it may take time to make my pronouns reassign themselves properly (the example above proves that point), there's nothing intrinsically odd or bothersome to me about someone identifying with a different gender. (Until I get hit on by another man, and realize it as such, the jury's out on whether or not I'm disturbed by that. I don't think it will, though, once I get over the initial shock of someone thinking I'm cute.) Nor about someone who is attracted to their same gender. Or someone who identifies as androgynous or hermaphroditic. There's no intrinsic revulsion at finding out any of these things. (Must be Ann Arbor's influence. Around such people too much, starting to think they're okay and normal. I'm straying from my roots and young-age influences. Does it show too much?)

That's interesting, as it appears to be a counter-normal thing by itself. At least, according to the ways that people voted, according to the ways that people act, according to people who claim a religion, contort it, and then their programming on the airwaves. They have enough like minds that they receive enough in money to continue their plague. According to what one hears at water coolers, reads in newspaper stories of brutal degradations, according to what one sees on the faces of those still trying to find the courage to live their own lives without fears. According to what the apparent normal is, being okay with these things is very not normal (sinful, even, some of them might say, or "morally relativistic").

It shouldn't be. The injunction "Go and sin no more" comes after the declaration "Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone." Those who would throw stones are reminded that they, too, have non-normal behaviors, things that their society would probably frown upon. They are called to work on their own difficulties before condemning others for theirs. "Brother, there is a speck in your eye." only works when you've taken the plank out of your own.

So, in any case, I wonder whether this really is not-normal, or whether I'm just not seeing how normal it is, and if it isn't normal, then is it a good deviance or a bad one? Both from the "society" standpoint, as well as personal standpoints. It's stuff worth thinking about - so tell me what you think.