Moving farther along - 28 June 2007

Methinks there’s laundry in my future - maybe tomorrow. I got more detergent when I refilled my cupboards today. Memo to self - attend wedding on Saturday. Do not get wrapped up in other things. Do have a flash of inspiration allowing you to write things well. If I can do that, I’ll be good. Much of tomorrow will probably be spent looking for that inspiration. While it might be tempting to go somewhere public and engage in the sport of enjoying the people as they walk by, that may not be in vogue at the moment.

Anyway, you all came for the links, so here they are. Enjoy.

June 28 marked the 38th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in New York, a singluarly flaming event that helped to bring to the forefront that there were, indeed, homsexuals, and no, they were not deviants, sinners, mentally ill, or criminals (well, okay, that last one took a while here in this country). American Samidzat wants the world to realize these things, to stop stoning their homosexuals and discriminating against them or forcing them to be fearful of accepting themselves as they are. That, at very worst, they might be vices, which would only do harm to themselves, and not crimes, which do harm to others (the original is actually mostly about how spirits and liquor are not criminal things, nor do they make criminals, so long as the people enjoying the liquors don’t go and do crimes. I think that the general premise probably extends past liquor to a lot of things). For a crash course primer on why that’s somewhat difficult in nations that pride themselves on their Christianity, we present, in PDF form, a short comic about what the Christian Right believes. (Although, between you and me, if they really do believe all that, we’re in trouble every time we let someone like that into power. They’ll probably do something like try to hasten the Apocalypse of John, or something.)

A complaint about the noise of the church bells get them shut down, because, well, they were too loud for the noise ordinance. Shows that one complaint really can do things. Even if it does seem a bit more like the complainer didn’t really pay that much attention when moving in that there was, y’know, a church there.

Something on the side of law and order, a 72-year old ex-Marine who was also an accomplished boxer beat the stuffing out of a would-be-pickpocket. One of those problems with being a pickpocket, thief, or burglar - on occasion, you’re wrong, and it usually hurts. It’s safer to stick to those exercises that will make the rich richer and the poor poorer, like capitalism, business, and political lobbying. Speaking of mud-tossing, it turns out that presidential candidate Mitt Romney once strapped a dog carrier to the roof of the family station wagon and left it there for a twelve-hour drive. (Or would that be more like poo-flinging?) I’m not doubting that’s cruel to the animal, and hopefully there haven’t been any such incidents since, but this somehow seems to be more inclined as a rather pedestrian attack rather than something worth devoting an entire article to in Time. Maybe it’s me.

Iowa Sate University’s football coach, denied permission to hire a chaplain, has instead renamed the position to "life skills assistant" and got it approved, much to the annoyance of those who started the petition that got the chaplaincy shut down. It goes to the President’s office for final approval or disapproval. I like how it’s pointed out that there are plenty of on-campus services and clubs for those seeking spiritual wisdom or life skills assistance. But having one that travels with the team must be better for all around. If they’re in college by now, I’d say those who have strong faith will be more than willing to help out everyone else or lead unofficial events. Unless that chaplain is fluent in the daily required prayers for Muslims, the proper procedure for casting a circle, and several other religious rituals, I’d say that the position’s catering to a certain denomination.

Phil Rockstroh exhorts progressives to dismantle the Democrats, sooner rather than later, believing that all the political elite believe themselves better than the average voting populace and lying to us to spare us the gory details. Where Rockstroh cites Strauss, I’d rather he cite Plato, whose Republic also utilizes such fictions in the favor of harmony, or Buddha, who talked about convenient fictions, although for a much nobler goal, that of enlightenment, than Strauss. He’s not thinking far enough back. Anyway, at whatever point the two major political parties crumble into dust and real progressives arise, Rockstroh says, is the point where we can start to rebuild.

One can take the following in two ways, either that furry as a fandom/alternative thing has reached sufficient levels of mainstreamness that the writers thought this would be possible and a good idea, or that someone’s looking to push furry into the mainstream and possibly inundate it with hordes of noobs, much like other alternative cultures. Either way, there's a furry musical coming out. Which, all told, might be worth seeing, just to see what goes into it and how it turns out. And possibly as a reference point for directing people who think it’s the greatest thing from seeing said musical. We’ll see if it’s a hit, and whether the community could take an influx of noobs and not try to tear them apart.

Something a bit funnier - political candidate names are rather tough to translate into Chinese, often resulting in rather nonsensical combinations of words and phrases. It sounds just right, but that’s kind of the problem - going by the sounds is kind of like speaking heavily accented Engrish.

Cool Stuff rings in with creative uses for old CDs, 101 things to do with old CDs, and 101 uses for an AOL CD (do they even send those things any more?). Although, that last list is short about 24 items, so you may have to fill in the blanks.

The Last Thing before Memery is Essentialist Explanations of langauge - things that take the form “X language is essentially Y in these conditions.” - which could very well describe a lot of things, kindly or unkindly, and with language that may or may not be safe for work. Read at your own risk, and such.

Shunted all the way to the bottom, I took a Greek Mythological personalities test, and came up with none other than... ( Orpheus, singer of songs, son of the Lord of Dreams )

So, all told, going to bed. Hoping inspiration strikes tomorrow before too long.

Silly computers. - 29 June 2007

Well, in the middle of something, some part of my computer crashed. I think it’ll take a reboot to bring everything back up, but that means I should draw down as much of my material as possible and post before the reboot. I wrote something for my essays today, and finished another application, so it wasn’t a complete loss. And, probably despite my better interests, I downloaded and played some Nethack. I’ve already died once, thanks, but I did at least get my score over 1K. Yay. I also managed to get a Literati score over 300, because my opponent, annaonthemoon had letters left over. (299 without - and some beauty bingoes - AILMENTS on a 3w, ENNEADS on a 3w, for 62 and 58, respectively) Also ran a couple of words I didn’t know about - AIRN and NALES. Sometimes it pays to be lucky.

Beware of the latest of the social-engineering scams. There is no Bulletin MS07-0065. Which might say that it’s getting harder to use simply technological means to cause harm. Of course, this is pretty good social engineering, preying on people’s worry about technological malfeasance to infect them. If it’s suspicious, don’t click it. Instead, open a new tab/window and go direct to the source.

On the other hand, when companies start building things that scream "Hello! Exploit me!" into their chips, and allow them to work even when the computer is powered off and the CPU is dormant, it may just be a matter that we’ve managed to catch up for the moment on all the technological Bad Things.

Awesome reporter refuses to report on Paris Hilton, is mocked and ignored by co-workers. There’s at least one person in TV who’s got their head on straight, and is willing to say so on the air.

Chinks in the “ex-gay” armor, from within? One co-founder and one former leader of Exodus International, and one leader of a ministry that referred people to Exodus, apologized for their actions, saying that their message had caused people to harm themselves and their families. More proof that trying to change someone in that kind of manner isn’t easy, nor is it necessarily a good idea, and if it causes harm to them, then I doubt whatever it is that’s supposed to declare them cured doesn’t stick too well.

In other religious matters, Self on-line takea look at what happens when doctors refuse to give treatment, based on their moral objections. The starting story is of an emergency-room doctor who refused to give someone who had been raped any EC. I think that strongly violates “do no harm”, myself. And because most of the “moral objections” involve things like birth control and/or abortion, the effects of this are being felt much more strongly by women than by men.

Unfortunately, the “liberal media, my tailscales” department lashes back with a vengeance with Americans United for Separation of Church and State's deconstruction of "A Wall of Separation", a program meant for PBS. The program does its best to convince people that the United States’ Founding Fathers really intended to have a Biblically-based Christian Nation, when the opposite is true, among other things, trying to paint the country as happily Christian and prosperous until atheists/the Supreme Court waylaid it and forced it to do all sorts of things it didn’t want to do.

I’m sure the creators of “Wall” would be thoroughly pleased with this Supreme Court, which in another 5-4 decision, strongly limited the ability of public schools to utilize race in ensuring a diverse school. Oh, and they used Brown v. Board of Education as part of their ruling basis. Sounds like a large part of what the Roberts court intends to do is make things more “race-neutral” everywhere, which, if the society were ready to take on those roles, would probably be a laudable goal. With stories such as nooses being hung in retaliation for blacks sitting at a "whites-only" tree (it was so by an unwritten rule), and the aftermath from that, of which six people were arrested, the D.A. pushing hard for maximal sentences and trial as adults, an all-white jury is likely to be selected, and which, by now, the first of the six has been convicted, one could probably say that things are still a little touchy, if you wanted to understate things. Almost like clockwork, Jesus' General offers his thoughts on the matter.

According to The Fund For Peace, the United States is only a moderately sustainable country, unlike Canada, which is fully sustainable. This comes from the Failed States Index scores for this year. We’re close, though. If we could tighten up some of those scores, like adhering to the rule of law, balancing out our economic gaps, and have better disaster-relief, then we’d probably make it to sustainable. All it would take would be a little effort and some wise spending, right? Or, perhaps, we could take a page or two from bradhicks, who offers advice for those going to see Sicko, Michael Moore's newest film, about how much private insurance companies are working against the people they claim to cover. Update: Brad is back from the movie and says that the idea that universal health care would be bad for all of us has been proven wrong for decades now, despite whatever objections people want to raise. Some nice single-payer programs with universal coverage would be nice to have, assuming that the accountability was also there to ensure that the corruption stayed small (or, hopefully, doesn’t start, but we’re not sure that’s possible.) Although, from bradhicks‘s account of the movie, even a somewhat corrupted system would be better than what we have now. Further Update: - Jesus’ General offers a sampling of some conservative blogger responses to Sicko, all concentrating on Mr. Moore’s physical appaearance.

Cool Things says "Have a look at my clockwork guitar!", which is quite the cool thing to have. I wonder if it took great care and delicacy to ensure that the guitar itself was not harmed by this? Chalking up another point for imprinting, a family has a hippopotamus for a pet, that behaves and is in all senses domesticated.

I’ll pair that idea with a new scientific discovery, saying that for longer than we previously thought, cats choose their humans, not the other way around. And it’s probably been this way ever since there were grain storage areas with mice, so that cats could eat them.

However, the Ultimate Cool Thing for tonight, which is, as you note, last, and thus should be read by all, is an exonerated defendant is suing the RIAA for malicious prosecution. Someone has the stones to fight back against the cabal, and is trying to leverage RICO, among other things, against them. If she’s successful, a nice class action can’t be too far behind, coming from all the people who have been harassed by the RIAA so far. And maybe it’ll make the other *AA swallow hard and possibly change their course of action away from what would be a suicidal move. We’re really rooting for this one to go through and be found against the RIAA.