Foxxes and Hoaxxes
In the news, as a footnote to the passage of the "Matthew Shepard" Hate-Crimes Act in the US House of Representatives, we've been treated to the sight and sound of the Republican Representative from North Carolina, Virginia Foxx, calling it a "hoax". It was a stupid and uninformed thing to say but, oddly, she refuses to apologize.
Regardless, the bill passed. To mark the occasion, Rachel Maddow interviewed Judy Shepard and talked a bit about Republican Representative Virginia Foxx's "hoax" remark. (I watched it at Joe.My.God.)
As an introduction, Maddow took a moment to explain, with unusual clarity amidst a wave of confusion and willful distortion by the self-righteous who oppose anything that might limit their expression of hatred towards gay and lesbian people. Here is my transcription of those remarks:
The concept behind [hate-crimes legislation] is often misconstrued, but here's the deal as I understand it.
The idea is that the Federal Justice Department can get involved in a case to help local authorities, or even take the lead on a case if need be, in prosecuting individual, serious, violent crimes and murders in which the victim was selected on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability, the idea being that crimes like that are intended not only to hurt or murder an individual, but to terrorize an entire community.
And so, there is a national interest in insuring that those crimes are solved and prosecuted, particularly if local law enforcement doesn't want to because they are blinkered by the same prejudice that led to the crime in the first place.
[Rachel Maddow, The Rachel Maddow Show, c. 30 April 2009.]
In additional Virginia Foxx news, Jim Burroway of Box Turtle Bulletin ("Another Hoax From Rep. Foxx?", 1 May 2009) relates:
After Congresswoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) was roundly criticized for describing Matthew Shephard’s hate crime murder as “a hoax” (in the presence of Matthew’s mother, no less), Foxx’s staff began floating rumors that Rep. Foxx has become the target of death threats.
The problem with that? The Capital Police say they are unaware of any threats and there are no ongoing investigations.
What happens when the foxx cries "wolf" one too many times?
In: All, Current Events, Faaabulosity
My Birthday Present
A few months ago I had occasion to visit one of my neighborhood car-parts stores. I got the part that it turned out that I didn't really need, but my visit was perked up by seeing a display of "Hello Kitty" steering-wheel covers.
Imagine! Such an unlikely item as a steering-wheel cover with "Hello Kitty" themed imagery. What could that be about?
For reasons that totally escape me I was fascinated. At the oddest times after that I might giggle unexpectedly and shake my head, thinking "A Hello Kitty steering-wheel cover!" You'll note that I'm unusually inarticulate in explaining this peculiar phenomenon, but some things simply must remain a mystery.
Time passed and I started to develop a yearning for this Hello Kitty steering-wheel cover. Why? Why! I could think of no reason but I was in the grip of this inexplicable but undeniable compulsion.
Today, as it happens, is my birthday. Yesterday, as I finished lunch, I chanced to glance out the window of the Taco Bell and note the nearby car-parts store, recalling that it was the same chain as the one where I had originally seen the HKSWC. Thoughts collided. Eureka! What a perfect birthday present this would be! What a perfect excuse for the inexcusable!
I was lucky, if you want to call it that. It took several minutes of scrutinizing shelves and displays but I finally found the sole remaining HKSWC in the store. (By the way, I should be precise: this is not just any Hello Kitty Steering-Wheel Cover but a Hello Kitty Sweetheart Steering-Wheel Cover.)
I snatched it up and bought it and installed it immediately. Such improved comfort and control over my steering, not to mention the delicate touch of pink and lavender that it brings to the otherwise drab black and gray interior of my car. Perhaps its contemplation will lead me to some insight into the Hello Kitty phenomenon and an understanding of the Japanese mind. Or, perhaps not.
Sigurdardóttir Elected to be Iceland's PM
Three months ago I was very pleased with the news that Jóhanna Sigurdardóttir, a social democrat, had been tapped to become Prime Minister of Iceland following the collapse of the previous government over Iceland's severe financial crisis.
Sigurdardóttir formed a coalition government with the Left Green Party (as best I can piece together). Scanty reports that I've tripped over suggest that the new government has been doing a very good job of putting the country back together after the ruinous policies implemented by the previous government, headed by the conservative Independents party.
This past weekend Iceland had a general election and the coalition of Social Democrats and Left Green parties were handily returned to power in what is seen as a stern repudiation of the failed policies of the Independents. (More background on Sigurdardóttir from Queerty, "Iceland Elects World's First Openly Gay Leader", 27 April 2009.)
I like this photograph of Jóhanna Sigurdardóttir (left) and Left Green Party Education Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir (right) as they watch election returns. Photo credit: (AFP/Olivier Morin); my source.
In: All, Current Events, Faaabulosity
GRB 090423
This luminous blob is a "gamma-ray burster", and exceedingly distant from us: slightly over 13 billion light-years. In fact, it is the current record-holder in the "most distant object seen" category. It was spotted recently by NASA's Swift spacecraft (about the spacecraft; and about the Swift mission).
Just how a gamma-ray burst happens is still being studied — it's a big reason behind the Swift mission. GRBs seem to be associated with star remnants collapsing into black holes following a supernova event.
Following the explosion of a big enough star (see "A Star Explodes in Slow Motion"), a shell of matter is expanding around a core that is collapsing into the singularity known as a black hole. In all likelihood this collapsing matter is rotating at very high velocity.
It is thought that lumps of matter falling into the black hole cause some matter to be ejected at very high velocity away from the center in a narrowly collimated jet at relativistic speeds. As this jet passes through the expanding shell of matter around the object, interactions between the jet and the shell of matter produce radiation across a wide spectrum but still in a narrowly visible cone. Sometimes we are fortunate that one of those cones is headed in our direction.
Of this event the NASA press release ("New Gamma-Ray Burst Smashes Cosmic Distance Record"; also source of the image above) says
April 28, 2009: NASA's Swift satellite and an international team of astronomers have found a gamma-ray burst from a star that died when the universe was only 630 million years old–less than five percent of its present age. The event, dubbed GRB 090423, is the most distant cosmic explosion ever seen. […]
The burst occurred at 3:55 a.m. EDT on April 23rd. Swift quickly pinpointed the explosion, allowing telescopes on Earth to target the burst before its afterglow faded away. Astronomers working in Chile and the Canary Islands independently measured the explosion's redshift. It was 8.2, smashing the previous record of 6.7 set by an explosion in September 2008. A redshift of 8.2 corresponds to a distance of 13.035 billion light years.
"We're seeing the demise of a star — and probably the birth of a black hole — in one of the universe's earliest stellar generations," says Derek Fox at Pennsylvania State University [where the flight operations staff is located].
That is incredibly far away!
New Hampshire Verges on Marriage Equality
The New Hampshire House this afternoon passed a bill to bring marriage equality to that state. According to the brief report I heard on NPR news, the Senate had earlier easily passed the legislation.
The Governor of New Hampshire, John Lynch, has not indicated whether he will sign, veto, or ignore the bill. In a press release from 29 April 2009 ("Gov. Lynch Statement Regarding Passage of Same-Sex Marriage Legislation"), in which he tried to finesse the issue by stating his belief that New Hampshire's civil unions, created two years ago, took care of the equality question for same-sex couples. Of course, courts around the nation have been finding that not to be true, that separate civil unions have not been treated as equal to marriage–that "separate but equal" is still not a workable concept when it comes to civil equality.
If he chooses to veto the bill I will expect to hear right-wing outcries about a single individual legislating from the governor's desk and defying the democratic will of the elected officials of the people of New Hampshire. I would also expect to hear economic frustration about how Vermont and Massachusetts and Connecticut are getting all that extra marriage money pumped into their economies, but New Hampshire isn't.
I really think Governor Lynch has smarter things to do than veto this legislation. Vetoing similar legislation didn't make neighboring Governor Douglas look in charge of things in his state when the Vermont legislature rushed to override that veto.
In: All, Current Events, Faaabulosity
On the Death of Mr. Handel
George Frideric Handel died 250 years ago, as Alex Ross ("For the Late Mr Handel") reminded me.* Mr. Ross suggested the video below as a tribute and I thought it was a swell idea.
Perhaps because I am an instrumental musician, my education in the vocal arts lagged by decades and it's only in my middle age that I have developed an appreciation of vocal writing and of singing.
Here's the thing that seems funny to me about Handel: he wrote a great deal of fabulous vocal music — my favorite Handel is virtually all vocal music — but sometimes his vocal writing was awful as vocal writing. Rarely does he write in a characteristic "vocal" way, more often expecting singers to perform music that sounds more instrumental than vocal. Could this be why I find his vocal writing so appealing?
Not only that, but it is frequently clear from the awkward way he sets his English texts that English was not his native language. Next time you listen to your favorite arias from "Messiah", note how peculiar some of the syllabic stresses are.
Nevertheless, despite those things, Handel's vocal music is great music and stirring to listen to. It's also great fun to sing, even when the seams show.
On to the tribute. I've mentioned before that the aria "Ombra Mai Fu", from the opera "Xerxes", is one I find immensely beautiful. In that instance I suggested a performance by my favorite countertenor, Andreas Scholl. I have also mentioned before that I like listening to the singing of the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson.
Therefore, "Ombra Mai Fu", sung by Lorraine Hunt Lieberson:
———-
* Okay, 250 years and 15 days; I've gotten a little behind on things.
Equality Advances, Pie Charts Decline
Via Joe.My.God I learn that a new CBS News / New York Times poll shows an amazing 42% of those polled in favor of legal marriage for same-sex couples. That's amazing because the previous poll by the same group only one month ago found only 33% in favor of legal marriage. This increase of 9 points lies well outside the sampling error of the poll and must represent some significant fall-out from the addition of Iowa and Vermont to the growing list of states with marriage equality.
That's interesting enough, but this graphic from CBS (source for graphic and poll results) is also interesting:
One thing to note is that fully two-thirds of those polled support some sort of legal recognition for same-sex couples.
The other thing to note is that there is a 5% wedge missing from the pie chart. Add up the percentages and you get 95%. Now, while it is not at all unusual to have some 5% of those asked who are undecided or who wish to give no opinion, it is not kosher to leave them out of the pie chart and sort of fudge the other wedges around to fill in the space.
Does this chart make it clear that there is a 5% wedge unaccounted for? Not at all. Somehow the wedges are made to look as though they fill 100% of the circle and yet they should not. You might think that 5% is small and wouldn't be visible, but it amounts to one-fifth of the "civil unions" wedge, an amount that would be quite noticeable. So, the chart is inaccurate and misleading. I wonder which wedge, or wedges, got the undecideds?
Shame on CBS. I hate it when big corporations who could have science and math consultants without even noticing the cost can't be bothered.
—–
[Updated a few minutes later:] In thinking about the poll results and the remarkable shift since the previous poll, Timothy Kincaid at Box Turtle Bulletin ("Americans Shift Sharply in Favor of Marriage") gives a long list of significant steps that have been taken towards marriage equality in the interval between the polls.
In: All, Faaabulosity, It's Only Rocket Science
Endangered Species Act Less Endangered
More signs today of a return to policy supported by science rather than science perverted to the will of policy.
Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar today announced that the two departments are revoking an eleventh-hour Bush administration rule that undermined Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections. Their decision requires federal agencies to once again consult with federal wildlife experts at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – the two agencies that administer the ESA – before taking any action that may affect threatened or endangered species.
“By rolling back this 11th hour regulation, we are ensuring that threatened and endangered species continue to receive the full protection of the law,” Salazar said. “Because science must serve as the foundation for decisions we make, federal agencies proposing to take actions that might affect threatened and endangered species will once again have to consult with biologists at the two departments.”
["Salazar and Locke Restore Scientific Consultations under the Endangered Species Act to Protect Species and their Habitats", NOAA Press Release, 28 April 2009.]
In: All, Current Events, It's Only Rocket Science, Speaking of Science
Happy Weddings in Iowa
Marriage equality arrived in fact for couples in Iowa on Monday, 27 April 2009.
Just one snippet:
As television cameras surrounded dozens of couples in line [for marriage licenses] in Des Moines [Iowa], Lori Blachford talked about how life with her partner of 25 years, Karen Utke, was about to change.
Blachford first introduced Utke as “my friend,” then stuttered and settled on “my Karen.” They have two sons, age 13 and 17, conceived with an anonymous sperm donor.
“They’ve grown up with us just acting like a married couple and in a normal family,” Blachford said. “But they understand the legal issues. They realize the inequity. They don’t understand why we should be treated any different.”
The couple plan to marry in the summer.
“It’s a little anti-climactic to us,” Blachford said. “Twenty-five years of married life, it kind of seems silly to organize a ceremony. But we’re thrilled to be able to do it.”
[Tony Leys, Reid Forgrave, and Grant Schulte, "Wedding-day wait ends for same-sex couples", Des Moines Register, 27 April 2009.]
No doubt in the name of "balance" there were also opponents of marriage equality quoted saying silly or slimey things, but this is a happy time so we'll just relegate them a bit early to the trash heap of history.
In: All, Current Events, Faaabulosity
The Eleventh Commandment
[Joseph E. Kurtz, Archbishop of Louisville, who leads a panel of U.S. Catholic bishops set up to fight marriage equality: ] "With regard to marriage [equality], this implicates the right of Catholics to practice our beliefs. Here we are talking about the bedrock of society, it's not just a belief, it's written on the hearts of every human person."
[Michael A. Lindenberger, "Will Gay Marriage Pit Church Against Church?", Time, 26 April 2009.]
Gosh! Conservatives are really, really good at ratcheting up the hyperbole when they run out of ideas, aren't they? (Yes, it's a rhetorical question, but feel free to answer anyway.)
First things first: his bigotry clearly is not "written in the hearts of every human person" since many, many people have examined their hearts closely and found a yearning for fairness, equality, and justice.
Now, about this "bedrock of society" business: why are the over pious and self-righteous so obsessed with gay people? By a stretch of whose imagination can it possibly be thought that keeping two men from marrying each other is the only thing that holds civilization together?
Besides, if this were the single most important thing to civilization, wouldn't that mean old testament god have made it a commandment instead of vaguely alluding to it in a dusty old set of laws that most Jews don't even remember?
If it were really that important I think he/she/it could have found room to inscribe "11. Though shalt not marry someone of the same sex" someplace on those tablets. Perhaps he was too busy worrying about all those biblical heroes and their multiple wives?
More likely: even he thought it too silly sounding to carve into stone.
In: All, Faaabulosity, Feeling Peevish
Beard of the Week LXXVI: Barbe en Château
This week's stylishly modern-looking beard belongs to the unidentified subject of a painting, known as "Portrait of a Red-Bearded Man", attributed to Dutch painter Jan Anthonisz van Ravensteyn (c. 1570–1657), a man for whom I can find virtually no biographical information. Judging from dates painted on the canvas (outside the frame of my cropped image of the man), it was probably painted between 1604 and 1607.*
This lovely portrait comes to our attention here at BoW HQ thanks to Bill M., friend of this blog, who recently returned from a trip to France. He spotted the BoW potential of this painting (his original photograph) on a visit to the château de Chenonceau, near Tours, where it hangs. (In what room seems to be information I don't have anywhere, or have since misplaced. Bill did mention that it hangs next to an "Adoration of the Magi" by Peter Paul Rubens)
This château, even if its name is not familiar, will probably look familiar in the photographs: it is the one we always see with its dramatic, long gallery built over the river Cher. (The official website, and one of Bill's photographs.) Here is a charming short history of the château from a group that organizes tours to that destination (and their website has a nice virtual tour):
Built in the early XVIth century by Catherine Briçonnet, the Château de Chenonceau got its splendor from the successive women who kept expanding and enhancing it throughout the centuries, including Diane de Poitiers and Catherine de Medicis, respectively best mistress and wife of Henry II, before Louise de Lorraine, Madame Dupin and Madame Pelouze.
(I'm thinking that "best mistress" might be an awkward translation of the original French "favorite", where just plain "mistress" would probably do. But I am not versed in the nomenclature and protocols of hierarchy of Royal French extra-marital affairs of the time.)
———-
* Dates near 1600 seem to keep popping up in relation to things that I find interesting. There were interesting things happening in music, for example, not least among my favorites in England with the Elizabethans. Shakespeare was active. Art was blossoming. Tycho Brahe was still alive and making the measurements that his assistant, Johannes Kepler, would soon use to deduce that planetary orbits are elliptical. Galileo was active, Newton had not been born yet, and John Napier didn't publish his invention of logarithms until 1614, nor had Descartes published his book on analytical geometry yet. Imagine: plane geometry, as taught in Euclid, was the most advanced mathematics of the time.
In: All, Beard of the Week, Music & Art
Leaning Towards Equality
From yet another article trying to "understand" how Iowa could go for marriage equality:
This month, the Iowa Supreme Court found a state law banning same-sex marriage to be a violation of the state Constitution, in essence deeming the practice legal, as of this week. […]
In Des Moines, the state capital, observers of the court said the unanimous decision surprised them. Mark S. Kende, a law professor at Drake University, said he had viewed these justices as “more a lawyerly court than left-leaning or willing to stick its neck out on something like this.”
[in Monica Davey, "Same-Sex Ruling Belies the Staid Image of Iowa", New York Times, 25 April 2009.]
I object! That may be the problem right there. Marriage equality is not a left-leaning thing, it is a good-leaning thing.
I've saved the following quotation for awhile, thinking to write something about it, but I've found I really don't have much to add to Maupin's observation about how homosexuality — during my lifetime! — has been both a mental disease and a criminal offense — at the same time, no less. Does this shed any light on the "left-leaning" action of the supreme-court justices in Iowa?
We [Milk and Maupin] had come of age in a time when homosexuality was not only a mental disease but a criminal offense, so to be oneself and make lemonade from such long-forbidden fruit was exhilarating beyond belief.
Armistead Maupin, forward to the book Milk : A Pictorial History of Harvey Milk, Newmarket Press, 2009; quoted by Andy Towle, "EXCLUSIVE: Armistead Maupin on Harvey Milk's Last Love", Towleroad, 20 February 2009.]
In: All, Current Events, Faaabulosity
For Dummies Only
Yesterday in the check-out line at the supermarket I saw a small-format book with the title Numerology for Dummies. It promised to explain the important and mysterious effects that numbers have in one's daily life.
"How singularly appropriate!" I thought. How likely is it that Numerology for Really Smart People who Know what a Crock of You-Know-What Numerology Is would be a best-selling title?
In: All, Laughing Matters, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
What Gentlemen Fought Over
Yes, a woman. Gentlemen didn't fight over men in those days.
–Cary Grant as Victor, explaining the immediate cause of an historic duel, from the 1961 movie "The Grass is Greener".
Sound Enhancements
I was watching some video today, a presentation about something that had cute little graphics animations to go along with it. Every few seconds something would plop onto the screen or shoot across it. Inevitably, I suppose, each plop was accompanied by an unlikely "thump" sound, and each dash across the screen was indicated audioly by an equally unnatural "swoosh" sound.
You'll know what I'm talking about because each of these types of sounds, along with the wholly unnatural thud that accompanies the fist of one man plowing into the flesh of another, are ubiquitous in current cinema. So common is this palette of sound, in fact, that when we watched a movie recently our attention was drawn to the refreshing lack of the usual unnatural digital foley artistry.
Now, being an old fart who is in my prime, these sounds strike me as silly and unnecessary. I feel perfectly capable of buying the visual-effect utility of a sword slashing across a movie screen without the helpful reminder of an amplified "woosh" sound to help me remember or figure it out, thank you very much.
Other old farts who are in their prime will probably quickly guess what these silly sounds remind me of. Think Victor Borge. Think "Phonetic Punctuation".
So, on to the entertainment. I invite you to watch this 4-minute routine and try not to laugh aloud by the end.
In: All, Feeling Peevish, Laughing Matters
Cheney: Giving 'Dick' a Bad Name
Some of the news this week concerned former Vice President Cheney's speaking here and there trying to convince people that he should not be prosecuted for torturing prisoners, called "enemy combatants" as an escape clause, detained without recourse to habeas corpus. Obama keeps talking about his desire to "move forward", but I hasten to point out than any such prosecutions would actually take place in the future, not in the past, said prosecutions therefore landing squarely in the "moving forward" category.
Anyway, Cheney, like Nixon before him, is doing everything he can think of to be a nuisance and, to be frank, he's giving "dick" a bad name.
Speaking as a gay man, I'd like that to stop.
In: All, Faaabulosity, Feeling Peevish
It's the Law, Actually
Some years ago I frequently drove past a road sign in College Park [MD] that said "State Law: Obey All Traffic Signs". I thought it very odd that there was, apparently, a law stating that one must obey other laws; furthermore, it was expressed in a sign stating that one must obey all signs. How self-referential. It's the Russellian Paradox of road signs. Or the Cretan paradox.
What I hadn't realized at the time is the widespread belief among fundamentalist christian soldiers that they need not obey that road sign if they find it in any way objectionable. To do so would violate what they perceive to be their religious freedom to live according to their book of parables in which, it turns out, people driving ox carts had no road signs to obey, so road signs are deemed unnatural and against their god's ordained law. Road signs may even be anathema, although I don't think they're explicitly mentioned in ancient Jewish law.
I'm afraid that it doesn't surprise me in the least that Iowa's Attorney General, Tom Miller, has taken the step of informing the state's county clerks that they are required to follow the law and comply with the Iowa Supreme Court’s unanimous decision on marriage equality. And how tiresome to learn that the court's decision applies everywhere in Iowa.
County Recorders must Comply with Supreme Court’s Varnum Decision
April 21, 2009
We expect duly-elected county recorders to comply with the Iowa Constitution as interpreted unanimously by the Iowa Supreme Court, the highest court in Iowa. Our country lives by and thrives by the rule of law, and the rule of law means we all follow the law as interpreted by our courts — not by ourselves. We don’t each get to decide what the law is; that would lead to chaos. We must live by and follow what the courts decide.
Iowa’s recent Supreme Court ruling concluded: “The language in Iowa Code section 595.2 limiting civil marriage to a man and a woman must be stricken from the statute, and the remaining statutory language must be interpreted and applied in a manner allowing gay and lesbian people full access to the institution of civil marriage.”
The Court’s ruling applies everywhere in Iowa, in every county. Recorders do not have discretion or power to ignore the Iowa Supreme Court’s ruling.
As we have advised recorders for several days: All county recorders in the state of Iowa are required to comply with the Varnum decision following issuance of procedendo from the Supreme Court, and to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples in the same manner as licenses issued to opposite gender applicants.
If necessary, we will explore legal actions to enforce and implement the Court’s ruling, working with the Iowa Dept. of Public Health and county attorneys.
(via Mike Tidmus: Blog)
In: All, Current Events, Faaabulosity, Feeling Peevish
God Couldn't Make It
Legislative hearings are going on in Maine on the question of a bill that would create marriage equality in that state. Apparently the hearings are very, very well attended with many, many supporters.
There are, of course, also some detractors reportedly foaming at the mouth. Andy Towle described* one woman as saying that "she was there to speak for God because he couldn't be there."
I have to admit that I have long been confounded by the remarkable inadequacies of the fundamentalist-christian god. Now, I don't mean only that, in their early days they made the strategic error of adopting the curmudgeonly, vengeful, multiple-personalities god of their old testament and tried to graft it onto the allegedly loving and peaceful one of their new testament.
Rather, I'm mystified by the idea of a god who is, I'm told, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent, and yet frequently impotent in the face of the silliest of opponents. Here is a god who can flick away the evil scourge of satan with a little finger (if he/she/it actually had one, but he/she/it can evidently create a little finger to do the job as necessary), and yet this god is incapable of the least action in the face of the menacing homosexual threat without calling upon his faithful christian soldiers to do his/her/it's bidding. What's that about?
We know that this god can smite with great precision, and yet it seems that he/she/it is unable to muster the skill necessary to wipe out, say, a few thousand gay men at a decadent weekend in New Orleans, instead sending a broad-stroke hurricane to do rather a sloppy job of it. Perhaps he/she/it is bedazzled by the glitter of all the assembled fabulosity.
We are, after all, talking anathema here! Homosexuals and gay marriage, we are told, is the thing most hated by this omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent god and yet, when the opportunity for some easy smiting shows up, this god doesn't. His/her/it's soldiers try to tell us that they're doing their god's work but I just don't believe that he/she/it wouldn't–or couldn't–show up# for the thing that matters most: stopping marriage equality in another US state. Is there a message there, perhaps? Is it possible that the christian soldiers have mistaken situational impotence for indifference or–worse!–tacit approval?
And now, for dessert, also provided via Towleroad† (where I first saw it), some video entertainment. You may recall the hubbub a couple of weeks ago when a nation hate group (who may be a front for the Mormon Church–that's still under investigation) started an anti-marriage ad campaign–in the name of "protecting" marriage–with a ridiculous spot whose name referred to a "gathering storm".
Well, that ad stirred up some excitement, but not the sort the hate-group had hoped for. You may have seen the New York Time column in which Frank Rich announced, in the wake of this ad, that the first against marriage equality has effectively been lost by these folks and their omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent god who doesn't find this issue anathema enough to show up for.
But the battle continue to rage at YouTube where there has been a spate of "response" ads that parody, satirize, and otherwise mock the silliness of the original stormy one. Some are done to better effect than others, but all are inspired by the idea countering evil done in the name of this omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent god.
This one, "We Will Weather the Storm", from a group called "Love, Not Laws" (my punctuation), I thought was worth watching and worth promoting.
———-
* Andy Towle, "Maine Judiciary Committee Holds Marriage Equality Hearing", Towleroad, 23 April 2009.
# I'm a big fan of Kevin Smith's movie "Dogma", so I know of at least one credible impediment to god's participation.
† Andy Towle, "", Towleroad, 23 April 2009.
In: All, Current Events, Faaabulosity
In the World of Linguistic Peevery
In the world of linguistic peevery, there are several levels of hell.
[Arnold Zwicky, "Prejudices, egocentrism, impositions, and intransigence", Language Log, 21 April 2009.]
I don't really feel the need to explain, beyond saying that I found the sentence great fun to read and I thought I'd like to read it again sometime.
In: All, Common-Place Book, Such Language!
Domestic Right-Wing Terrorism Threat
In case you missed it despite the sounds of patriot hearts a-flutter and conservative jaws a-jawin, we've recently learned (via The Raw Story; they have a link to the report) that the Department of Homeland Security has released a report saying that right-wing extremist groups are the "most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States."
Apparently the only ones surprised by the assessment were extreme right-wing ideologues.
Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or ejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.
Groups mentioned include white supremacists, anti-government militia, racist hate groups, and the like. This would appear to include seditious secessionist movements–Texas governor Perry take note. There is no word on how teabaggers fit into the scheme.
It is nice not to have gays and lesbians as the biggest threat to the US for a little bit (OK rep Sally Kern: "Studies show no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted, you know, more than a few decades. So it's the death knell in this country. I honestly think it's the biggest threat that our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam, which I think is a big threat." Alas, she didn't specify the "studies", but I think we can exclude this DHS report.)