Stories Old & New
Some of my stories have been published lately and I thought I'd mention them. Two of them are reprints; one has not been previously published.
Let's start with Bi Guys: The Deliciousness of His Sex, R. Jackson, editor, just published by Lethe Press. In 2004 I wrote the story "Duck Tails and Fins" for this anthology, originally published in 2006 by Haworth Press. In the summer of 1957 Todd and Trish have just graduated from high school; they're saving themselves for marriage, but that doesn't keep Todd from having a torrid affair with Trish's twin brother Paul. It was a chance to work with some love-triangle undercurrents I've been thinking about using in another setting. Of course, it's nice to have the book back in print.
In 2002 my new friend and editor Ron was putting together an anthology of bear-themed stories to be called Bearotica. I wrote my story "Blade" for it, about a middle-aged, neurotic suburban guy who develops an obsessive interest in a street-smart teenager named "Blade"; he can hardly believe it when he finds out his feelings are reciprocated.
There are many things I still like about "Blade" and it's great to have it back in print, too in the new Bearotica, edited by R. Jackson, just published by Bear Bones Books, an imprint of Lethe Press.
Bearotica was the first of a series of three bear-themed books of erotica. Ron Suresha, at Bear Bones Books, is bringing them back into print and finishing the series. The second book, Bear Lust, will be reprinted by Bear Bones Books in the near future.
The third bearotica book has just now made its first appearance: Bears in the Wild, edited by R. Jackson, just published by Bear Bones Books. This is the first appearance of my story "Bears Write Bare", which I wrote in late 2008. It recounts some events during a weekend writers' workshop at a clothing-optional camp, in which a can of spray-cheese figures prominently.
Publication gave me an excuse to reread the story and I was happy to find that I still quite like the way it came out. Whether it's arousing will depend, of course, on individual readers, but I thought it was rather funny–which had been my intent, I hasten to add.
In: All, Personal Notebook, Writing
Make a Crescendo to Reach a Climax
1962 saw the release of "The Manchurian Candidate", directed by John Frankenheimer, and starring Frank Sinatra and Laurence Harvey. Building to a shattering crescendo….
[John Farr, "Presidential Pictures: Top Movies About The Top Job", Huffington Post, 25 April 2010.]
Sorry, stop right there! "The Manchurian Candidate" is a perfectly good movie that I quite enjoyed watching, but it most emphatically does not build to a shattering crescendo, for the simple reason that crescendi are not built to–they are the build itself.
I would apologize for my persnicketiness but I've just been busy being a musician for several hours, playing my 'cello in the orchestra for our just-closed production of "Carousel", a show with lots and lots of nice music and plenty of crescendi and decrescendi.
Crescendo is an Italian word (plural: crescendi) used as a musical term to mean gradually growing louder; in Italian, literally "growing". It has come to be used as a verb, too. One may crescendo to a climax, say, a loud fortissimo; a crescendo may be used to reach a climactic part of the music or, by analogy, a dramatic point or climax.
But–please!–"crescendo" is a process, a route to a place, not the place itself.
In: All, Feeling Peevish, Such Language!
Beard of the Week LXXXIX: It's Cool that No One's in Charge
I think one of the defining moments of adulthood is the realization that nobody's going to take care of you. That you have to do the heavy lifting while you're here. And when you don't, well, you suffer the consequences. At least I have. (And in the empirical study I'm performing about interacting with the universe, I am unfortunately the only test subject I have complete access to, so my data is, as they say, self-selected.) While nobody's going to take care of us, it's incumbent upon us to take care of those around us. That's community.
The fiction of continuity and stability that your parents have painted for you is totally necessary for a growing child. When you realize that it's not the way the world works, it's a chilling moment. It's supremely lonely.
So I understand the desire for someone to be in charge. (As a side note, I believe that the need for conspiracy theories is similar to the need for God.) We'd all like our good and evil to be like it is in the movies: specific and horrible, easy to defeat. But it's not. It's banal.
[…]
No one is in charge. And honestly, that's even cooler.
The idea of an ordered and elegant universe is a lovely one. One worth clinging to. But you don't need religion to appreciate the ordered existence. It's not just an idea, it's reality. We're discovering the hidden orders of the universe every day. The inverse square law of gravitation is amazing. Fractals, the theory of relativity, the genome: these are magnificently beautiful constructs.
The nearly infinite set of dominoes that have fallen into each other in order for us to be here tonight is unfathomable. Truly unfathomable. But it is logical. We don't know all the steps in that logic, but we're learning more about it every day. Learning, expanding our consciousness, singly and universally.
As far as I can see, the three main intolerant religions in the world aren't helping in that mission.
For all their talk of charity and knowledge, that they close their eyes to so much—to science, to birth control education, to abuses of power by some of their leaders, to evolution as provable and therefore factual (the list is staggering)—illustrates a wide scope of bigotry.
Now, just to be clear. If you want to believe, or find solace in believing, that someone or something set these particular dominoes in motion—a cosmic finger tipping the balance and then leaving everything else to chance—I can't say anything to that. I don't know.
Though a primary mover is the most complex and thus (given Occam's razor) the least likely of all possible solutions to the particular problem of how we got here, I can't prove it true or false, and there's nothing to really discuss about it.
If Daniel Dennett is right— that there's a human genetic need for religion— then I'd like to imagine that my atheism is proof of evolutionary biology in action.
[excerpt from Adam Savage, "Food for the Eagle", speaking to the Harvard Humanist Society, April 2010.]
In: All, Beard of the Week, Common-Place Book
Thoreau on Credulity
It is remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound it.
–Henry David Thoreau, Walden
[Among his many professions Thoreau could claim surveyor. Early in 1846, while he was living at Walden Pond, he surveyed it thoroughly, including measuring its depth. He related that he had heard many stories about the lack of a bottom to Walden Pond. Having debunked that common notion, he made this observation. Although it has a correct literal meaning, its metaphorical meaning has hardly diminished over time, alas. I learned this today from reading in Henry Petroski's The Pencil; Thoreau also was, at times, a pencil maker, the humble pencil being a product for which his family name was renowned.]
In: All, Books, Common-Place Book, Plus Ca Change...
Those Gay Priests
The catholic church and its not widely loved leader has been making headlines lately, a combination of an outburst of child-abuse complaints about priests, cover-ups by the church and the Pope, and plenty of cardinals telling us that the Pope is a nice guy, he didn't know anything even though he signed the papers, and the real problem is all the homo priests anyway.
Fortunately, or almost fortunately, most of the old canards equating homosexuality with paedophilia are widely known to be old canards and the cardinals are generally seen as the hate-spouting, hypocritical, reactionary oafs that they are.
There is a real problem here, one that rarely gets noticed in all the kerfuffle: the self-hating homophobia of the catholic church itself. We know that many of the clergy are gay; thinking otherwise should lead one to reflect on the decidedly male-only profession that eschews marriage but is firmly in the "do as I say, not as I do" camp.
The internalized homophobia really has to stop. I suspect that it will someday, either through acceptance or the demise of the church.
However, if the Catholic Church is to go on with life as normal, it couldn't possibly ban gay priests. It needs its gay priests.
The Rev. Donald B. Cozzens, author of The Changing Face of the Priesthood, wrote that with more than half the priests and seminarians being gay, the priesthood is becoming a gay profession. Many who know the interior of the Catholic Church would argue that the priesthood has for centuries been a gay profession, and not to ordain gay priests or to defrock them would drastically alter the spiritual life and daily livelihood of the church.
"If they were to eliminate all those who were homosexually oriented, the number would be so staggering that it would be like an atomic bomb; it would do damage to the church's operation," says A.W. Richard Sipe, a former priest and psychotherapist who has been studying the sexuality of priests for decades. Sipe also points out that to do away with gay priests "would mean the resignation of at least a third of the bishops of the world. And it's very much against the tradition of the church; many saints have gay orientation and many popes had gay orientations."
The reality here is that as quietly as the Church has tried to keep it, the Catholic Church is a gay institution.
[…]
Eugene Kennedy, a specialist on sexuality and the priesthood and a former priest, wrote in his book, The Unhealed Wound: The Church and Human Sexuality, that the Catholic Church " . . .had always had gay priest, and they have often been models of what priests should be. To say that these men should be kept from the priesthood is in itself a challenge to the grace of God and an insult to them and the people they serve."
[Irene Monroe, "The Catholic Church Needs Its Gay Priests", Huffington Post, 15 April 2010.]
In: All, Current Events, Faaabulosity
Beard of the Week LXXXVIII: Doppelgänger
Today's beard belongs to a man named Phil Jackson (b. 1945), unknown to me until today. A native of Montana (I like this bio in the "Cool Montana Stories" section of montanakids.com), Mr. Jackson is the current head coach for the LA Lakers basketball team; a position he held once before, Grover Cleveland fashion. He's had both hips replaced but, according to his girlfriend (quoted here), he's fully recovered, feeling great and moving younger. Here is his official NBA bio, in case that's of interest.
Mr. Jackson came to my attention thanks to a brief conversation I had with a relative stranger (I'd seen him before but we never talked) today at the Taco Bell that went like this:
"Hey," he says, "how many people have told you you look like Phil Jackson?"
"Up to this point," I responded, "none."
"Well, you look exactly like him–even your expressions. He is a little taller though, but you can't tell that if you're sitting down."
"That's cool," I said. "I've always wondered whom I looked like."
"Phil Jackson, definitely. Have a nice day."
"I'm sure I will now that I know whom I look like!"
The resemblance doesn't seem so striking to me, but I'm sure I see myself differently than others see me. On the other hand, I can see enough similarities that I can believe someone might feel that Mr. Jackson and I look rather alike. He is eleven years older than I, but I think he's looking quite good enough to be a model for how I should like to look when I reach 65.
Now while we're on the subject of look-alikes, I want to ask for some help identifying the circumstances or people in the photograph below. It is probably about 15 years old, this picture, evidently taken at a bear gathering of some sort. I ask because the middle of the three guys seated at the table in the foreground looks so uncannily like me–to me–that I sometimes wonder whether I was at this dinner and forgot about it. But how could I forget such delightful looking dinner companions?
In: All, Beard of the Week, Personal Notebook
To Be A Single Lady
Who could possibly be so cold-hearted that they would not feel an outpouring of sympathy for the plight of this young person, searching only for happiness but subjected to the whims of his gender-imperialist father? Bad father.
[YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player.]
(H/T Joe.M.God)
In: All, Faaabulosity, Laughing Matters
Philip Pullman, Happily Offensive
It seems that Philip Pullman has written a new book published with the title The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. In this short video, recorded at an event at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford on 28 March 2010, he responds to a man in the audience who says that, as a christian he finds the title offensive.
Pullman agrees that the title was a shocking thing to say, but his remarks aren't going to satisfy the questioner, I think.
[YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player.]
The remarks, as transcribed at BoingBoing (for which, thanks):
It was a shocking thing to say and I knew it was a shocking thing to say. But no one has the right to live without being shocked. No one has the right to spend their life without being offended. Nobody has to read this book. Nobody has to pick it up. Nobody has to open it. And if you open it and read it, you don't have to like it. And if you read it and you dislike it, you don't have to remain silent about it. You can write to me, you can complain about it, you can write to the publisher, you can write to the papers, you can write your own book. You can do all those things, but there your rights stop. No one has the right to stop me writing this book. No one has the right to stop it being published, or bought, or sold or read. That's all I have to say on that subject.
In: All, Common-Place Book, Writing
Adopt a Greyhound
Isaac tells me that April is National Adopt-A-Greyhound month, a concept sponsored by The Greyhound Project ("Adopt a greyhound, make a fast friend!"). 
They have a nice website with information about greyhounds as pets and adopting a former racer, as well as a database of adoption groups around the world, so there's no reason you can't find someone nearby needing a permanent home.
We took in our first hound, Dowland, in 1998, who came to us directly from a track in Florida and stayed with us for nearly 11 years before his death. It was only a few months before he was joined by Sandy, an older lady who had been bounced from her former residence. Sandy left us after only 2.5 years, making room for Arlo, our ADHD dog. Following Arlo, Azalea, who is currently with us, had a couple of years overlap with Dowland. After Dowland left last year, Grant came to live with us. It's hard to have just one at a time, we've discovered.
You can find plenty of facts and myths-dispelled about greyhounds with a bit of looking around. We do find that they are easy going companions, easy to live with and fitting in well with our generally lazy lifestyle. They also rarely bark–why do people get yappy dogs?–and they make other dogs look … wide. But I won't carry on right now; anyone who wants to talk greyhounds knows that Isaac and I are usually willing to do that.
My purpose was to share this charming little video (only 38 seconds). In it Cal, a former racer, essays a personal ad, looking for a permanent home. It was produced in 2008 by The Greyhound Project.
[YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player.]
See a Scientist Being Scientific
Today in my email I got a link to a video* with this startling title:
NASA Oceanographer Uses Science to Study the Sea
Right there, in a video under two minutes in length, we were being offered the chance to see an actual scientist using science! Not only that, it was an oceanographer using science to study the ocean, if you can imagine such a thing!
But now that I've mocked the title–but hardly more than it deserved for being so state-the-obvious ridiculous–we should perhaps look at the video.
Said video is a rather nice, short biography of one Callie Hall, who works at the Stennis Space Center (near the south coast of Mississippi; map). NASA posted it as part of their observation of National Women's History Month.
[YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player.]
p.s. I don't want to be tetchy, but why is she using that reasonably precise analytical balance to weigh that off-the-shelf bottle of whatever?
———-
* From a NASA mailing list this time rather than from some nefarious spammer.
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science, Such Language!
Beard of the Week LXXXVII: The Amazing Randi
This week's magnificent, brilliantly white beard belongs to James Randi, aka "The Amazing Randi". I like this succinct summary from his official biography (bio & photo source):
James Randi is a retired professional magician (“The Amazing Randi”), author, lecturer, amateur archaeologist/astronomer. Born in 1928 in Toronto, Canada, where he received his high school education. He was naturalized a U.S. citizen in 1987, and now lives in Florida. He is single.
Of course, many of us know Randi in his post-Amazing days when he is still amazing, working tirelessly as one of the world's leading skeptics helping to save the world from mysticism, superstition, and unscrupulous charlatans. When it comes to unmasking the tricks of the world's cheats, Randi's career as an extraordinary magician gives him lots of credibility. I'm thinking that I first encountered Randi, probably on "The Tonight Show" (with Johnny Carson), showing how the then popular Uri Geller "bent" spoons and keys with "psychic energy".
Anyway, the world is a better place for rational living thanks to Randi and the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). Although no one has yet successfully taken him up on his offer–no surprise!–for some year's he's extended his "$1 Million Challenge" (application):
I, James Randi, through the JREF, will pay US$1,000,000 [One Million Dollars/US] to any person who can demonstrate any psychic, supernatural or paranormal ability under satisfactory observing conditions. Such demonstration must take place under the following rules and limitations [given in the application]….
Anyway, this past week James Randi did something utterly banal yet still amazing: he came out as a gay man. You can read his statement here: "How To Say It?" (Swift [the JREF blog], 21 March 2010). He starts this way:
Well, here goes. I really resent the term, but I use it because it’s recognized and accepted.
I’m gay.
Okay, perhaps he still has a few personal issues to confront, but that's normal for anyone who has just come out. It's the odd phenomenon that no matter how much one tries to imagine and visualize the moment beforehand, there are still issues to take up only after one actually does it. Well, now he's done it and I hope he feels much better for it — it's difficult not to.
His statement is good to read for any number of reasons. Let's remember that Randi was born in 1928 and a lot — more than a lifetime's worth, I'd say — of change has taken place surrounding the lives of homosexuals. But it's also compelling to have a cool, rational, analytical statement from a man who's just coming out at the age of 82.
He says that the immediate prompt to making his statement was having seen the film "Milk", about the life of Harvey Milk. I can imagine why. He also says that he has seen things change around him so much that he feels there is now, with some exceptions, a very healthy acceptance. I believe I can also imagine other reasons why now was the time, or rather, why it just couldn't seem to wait any longer.
It's not a question, I must say, that really came into my mind, whether Randi is gay. Had I been asked I expect I would have simply assumed that he was. I tend to assume people are gay until I find out otherwise (it feels to me like parity of social convention to do so) and besides, he's just too fabulous to be straight.
And isn't it unremarkable just how little remark has been made. His blog posting, not surprisingly, has hundreds of good wishes from supporters and I've seen mention of his statement here and there, but were there blaring headlines? No, it seems that a period of "healthy acceptance" may indeed be upon us.
As banal and utterly unremarkable as one might hope coming out has become, it's still an amazing accomplishment for someone whose life trajectory started in such a very, very different place and time.
Congratulations, Randi!
In: All, Beard of the Week, Faaabulosity
Fantasies of Unintended Consequences
Following the signing by President Obama of the new health-insurance bill, and trailing off the spectacle of "freedom"-loving teabagging bigots pelting elected representatives with various slurs and epithets in the name of do-it-my-way-or-else "democracy", we have the new spectacle of states' attorneys general rushing to join a federal suit against the legislation. This, of course, is a time-honored tradition with Constitutional guarantees.
Apparently their contention will be that federal mandates for individual citizens are unconstitutional. Setting aside for a moment whether there's any merit to such an idea, imagine that the Supremes go along with the idea (gosh, could happen; who's crazier: a teabagger or Justice Scalia?) and rule that the requirement that individuals have health insurance in unconstitutional.
What in the world could congress do to rectify that [imagined] constitutional failure?
Implement universal, single-payer health care, of course.
Violence is not a Tool of Democracy
Armed insurrection has a mythic status in the US, with good cause. The emphasis, of course, is on "good cause". We have founding notions about our American revolution as an escape from tyranny and a bid for liberty and the freedom of self-government, all deemed a "good cause".
Residing inside the ivory tower of establishment science as I do, I've seen my share of fringe pseudo-scientists who like to claim legitimacy for their crack-pot claims by noting, e.g., that "they laughed at Einstein, too". Most of us quickly see the logical fallacy of assuming that laughter implies genius except for the poor slobs looking for the legitimacy.
Apparently teabaggers have the same logical inadequacies, assuming that threatening armed insurrection against anything that makes them angry, layers over them the patina of the American Revolution. Alas, it just reveals them as crack-pots.
I might have some ideological tolerance for threats violence made against recognizable tyranny, but I can't abide threats of violence in the name of democracy when they're made against the very democratic process that teabaggers claim to idolize above all else. How else to view such threats than as crazed attempts to shoot themselves in the feet?
I've been amazed in recent months: each time when I think teabagger hyperbole has gone way over the top we find out that it was just a foothill. What craziness comes next? How to ratchet up the rhetoric into something still more out out of proportion to whatever it is that makes them angry?
Speaking of which, does anyone have any idea what makes them so angry? In the attacks directed vaguely in the direction of the "health-care reform" legislation they throw their spears as such a vast army of straw-men criticisms that they don't even come close to scratching the surface of any of the large number of possibly valid criticisms of the legislation. Should we take their angry cries more seriously or less seriously when there's no sensible direction to them.
It was quite a spectacle the teabaggers made this weekend dancing their odd, conservative tarantella in anticipation of the legislative voting — voting by elected representatives being the recognized form our government of the people takes to do its work.
I think the roots of the mob "anger" among the teabaggers fairly revealed itself by the epithets and slurs yelled, apparently uncontrollably, towards legislators doing their work. Unwisely there were a number of opposition-party members who thought it helped their cause to stop the legislation at any cost — why? — by encouraging the teabagger mob.
Despite Republican claims that Democrats, by passing this legislation, have done damage to their party that will take years to repair, I think the Republicans who believe they can control the teabagger mob to their advantage will discover what history has always taught: mobs have a mind of their own, and they don't have a mind, either.
In: All, Current Events, Reflections
Lammy Finalists for 2010
The finalists for this year's Lambda Literary Foundation awards ("Lammys"), the 22nd annual event, were announced recently; winners will be announced on 27 May.
I am delighted to report that I am again nominated for about 7% of a Lammy. My memoir, "Tom Selleck's Mustache" (written under my usual nom de plume, Jay Neal), is included in I Like It Like That: True Tales of Gay Desire, edited by Richard Labonté & Lawrence Schimel (Arsenal Pulp Press), which was one of five titles nominated in the Gay Erotica category.
In: All, Faaabulosity, Personal Notebook, Writing
The Laws of Thermodynamics
You just never know what might come up in conversation sometimes. This did over dinner with friends tonight.
In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics.
— Homer Simpson
Here's the YouTube clip in case you'd like to hear it for yourself. The occasion, of course — I say "of course" because virtually everyone else seems to know this scene already — is Homer's displeasure with Lisa for building a perpetual-motion machine.
We thought it sounded even more masterly and authoritative to hear Homer say it in German (YouTube clip) but, alas, we couldn't quite make out all of it for this transcript. If anyone can supply the verb, please do.
In diesen haus wir _____ die gesetze der Thermodynamik.
— Homer Simpson
———-
[update added 20 April 2010:]
The consensus from several sources is that the missing verb is "gehorchen", so that Homer says
In diesen Haus gehorchen die Gesetze der Thermodynamik.
Dancing with Humanists
There are many times–unless I can think of a really snarky and sarcastic approach to take–that I take a pass on talking about the seemingly endless stories of self-righteously hypocritical homophobes and ultra-fundamentalist anti-science wackos responsible for many recent headline. There are several good reasons but largely it's because I really prefer to take a more positive tone towards things rather than jumping up and down too much and shouting "look at the stupid bastards!", because all that seems to do is raise my blood pressure unnecessarily. Some people are good at channeling all that negative energy into quite useful confrontations and awareness raising and I love for fighting the good fight. I just don't seem to work effectively that way, most times.
So I am very, very pleased at the positive turn that this story has taken combining, as it does, a positive affirming development that nevertheless provides a satisfying amount of comeuppance for the dastardly homophobes.
The story began: Constance McMillen, an 18-year-old senior at Itawamba County Agricultural High School, in the northeastern Mississippi town of Tupelo, wanted to go to her senior prom with her girlfriend. She also wanted to wear a tuxedo, according to reports. Based on the photos of ms. McMillen that I've seen, I think she would look good in a tuxedo.
Well, she was told she couldn't do that. If I have the sequence of events correct, Ms. McMillen then contacted the ACLU for help. the ACLU contacted the school and suggested strongly that the school not bar Ms. McMillen and her date. The cognizant school board got uppity and canceled the prom. Few people except the school board members found this to be a sensible response.
Consider, for instance, the opinions of one Ms. Diane Roberts:
"It's just a sad situation. I feel sorry for the children who ain't going to get to have their prom," said Diane Roberts, a hair stylist in Fulton, which is about 25 miles east of Tupelo.
Roberts said the school board's decision has placed the entire city of about 4,000 in a negative light.
"It's a small town and we have wonderful people here, don't get me wrong. But there are some people on the board who think they are the last word," she said. "You can't judge people like that. That's between them and their good lord."
[Chris Joyner, "Canceled Mississippi prom attracts national attention", The Clarion-Ledger [MS], 12 March 2010.]
Happily, Ms. McMillan has the full support of her father, Michael, her aunt, and her father's girlfriend — not to mention the ACLU and Ms. Roberts, quoted above. Predictably some people support the school board's actions, using words like "sin" and "lifestyle" in dull and cliched ways.
In what I'm sure was suggested in a mocking, smirking fashion, the school board piously hoped that perhaps some private concern (who could exclude whomever they liked) might sponsor a prom for the disaffected seniors lest their lives be permanently scarred.
Here comes the part that amuses me. Some group has stepped forward with a very generous offer to sponsor an independent event, with plans to invite everyone at the school:
The American Humanist Association (AHA) stepped forward today and offered to plan and fund a prom for the Itawamba County Agricultural High School in Mississippi. The Itawamba County School District made headlines earlier this week by cancelling their prom rather than letting a lesbian student, Constance McMillen, bring her girlfriend as her date.
“It’s shameful that closed-minded members of the school board are prepared to deprive an entire class of students their prom over their outdated religious mores.” said Roy Speckhardt, Executive Director of the AHA. "People can hold to any belief or no belief in this nation, but the school board misuses their position when they try to impose their beliefs on the student population in Itawamba.”
[press release, "Humanists Prepare to Hold LGBT-Inclusive Prom in Mississippi", American Humanist Association press release, 12 March 2010.]
I find it charming that a bunch of "godless" humanists have decided to demonstrate to the pin-headed school-board members how to plan an event that can be enjoyed by all.
In: All, Current Events, Faaabulosity, Reflections
Tutu: Lesbians & Gays in Africa Living in Fear
Our lesbian and gay brothers and sisters across Africa are living in fear.
And they are living in hiding — away from care, away from the protection the state should offer to every citizen and away from health care in the AIDS era, when all of us, especially Africans, need access to essential HIV services. That this pandering to intolerance is being done by politicians looking for scapegoats for their failures is not surprising. But it is a great wrong. An even larger offense is that it is being done in the name of God. Show me where Christ said "Love thy fellow man, except for the gay ones." Gay people, too, are made in my God's image. I would never worship a homophobic God.
"But they are sinners," I can hear the preachers and politicians say. "They are choosing a life of sin for which they must be punished." My scientist and medical friends have shared with me a reality that so many gay people have confirmed, I now know it in my heart to be true. No one chooses to be gay. Sexual orientation, like skin color, is another feature of our diversity as a human family. Isn't it amazing that we are all made in God's image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people? Does God love his dark- or his light-skinned children less? The brave more than the timid? And does any of us know the mind of God so well that we can decide for him who is included, and who is excluded, from the circle of his love?
[excerpt: Desmond Tutu, "In Africa, a step backward on human rights", Washington Post, 12 March 2010.]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Current Events, Faaabulosity
Husbands and Husbands
In this very short, very cute video (via Joe.My.God), a young boy learns about "husbands and husbands" for the very first time.
He's so traumatized by the experience that he says "You must love each other very much — I'm going to play ping-pong now — You can play too, if you want to." Alas, another child unprotected from same-sex marriage who doesn't really give a hoot anyway.
[YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player.]
Friday Soirée X: Stephen Fry is QI
I'm told that the internet is a morass, a quagmire of links into which, after just a few innocent clicks, one can disappear and never bee seen again. I'm usually much more focused in my clicking and manage to stay out of the quicksand and keep my head above water–except that tonight I succumbed.
I blame Stephen Fry. Now, I don't mind blaming Stephen Fry, nor do I mind saying he's at fault, because I think Stephen Fry is funny, literate, intelligent, and articulate–a perfect role model to my mind. It's also nice that he happens to be gay. So to my mind, an evening wasted with Stephen Fry is far from wasted.
Just last week we enjoyed listening to Stephen Fry tell us why "The Catholic Church is not a force for good" in the world. At that time I was able to control my clicking; I must have been distracted by something or other.
Tonight however, I innocently decided to watch a short clip of Fry telling some silly old woman how ridiculous her excitement about the Ten Commandments as the basis of all possible human morality was and, before I knew it, it was several hours later. The main problem turned out to be quite interesting.
"Quite Interesting", or "QI" as it seems to be familiarly known, is a BBC show previously totally unknown to me. It's described on their YouTube channel as
A comedy quiz show hosted by Stephen Fry. The questions on QI are so difficult that the panel almost never get a right answer, so points are only awarded for interesting answers.
I ended up watching available clips compulsively and I haven't had such a good laugh in some time. So for our soirée tonight, quite interesting and funny things are the theme, and Stephen Fry is our guest.
QI : What's the difference between a cake and a biscuit?
There is an organization called "Quite Interesting, Ltd", that seems to be the production company for the program "QI". I don't know yet if they actually do quite interesting things other than produce the program, but that in itself may be enough. According to their website
The activities of Quite Interesting Ltd are organised around a central concept or set of attitudes – those of curiosity, discovery and humour. These, we believe, are what make us human and they should therefore be nurtured.
Now there is a mission after my own heart. "Curiosity, discovery, and humour" are at the top of my list of important things that make the world livable.
Here's what seems a typical clip from the show (if there is anything "typical") in which we learn about the significant differences between biscuits (i.e., cookies) and cake. We also get an aside about why cookies, called "biscuits" in the UK, are also called "digestives", providing a perfect opportunity for fart humour. NB, all of this is done on a set decorated with Fibonacci spirals and such things.
[YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player.]
QI : At what temperature does water boil?
This is such a dorky and sciency — but still quite interesting — question. How thrilling is it that Dara O'Brien should actually mention something so arcane as the triple point of water! But how horrified was I to listen to him get it wrong (just a little bit wrong, really), right there on television where uninformed children might be watching!! More on this in a moment.
[YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player.]
Fry & Laurie : Piano Masterclass
Well, now it's time for a musical diversion; this is a musical soirée after all. What to do since tonight's guest, Mr. Fry, is evidently many, many things, which list does not include "musician"?
Aha! Here is a sketch — one of some notoriety, it seems — in which Mr. Fry proves that he is not a musician by actually performing, both on the piano (in a manner of speaking) and vocally. The sketch is performed with his long-time partner in comedy, Hugh Laurie who does, it turns out, have some skill at the piano.
[YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player.]
QI : Dara O'Brien gets corrected
My respect for "QI" was cemented with this clip from a later episode than the one above. You'll recall (from moments ago, presumably), that Dara O'Brien thrillingly mentioned the triple point of water in answer to a question; he described it almost perfectly but got one fact wrong : the triple point is not at 0°C. It's not far away from the freezing / melting point of water, but neither is it identical.
How delighted was I that the misspoken slight untruth got corrected! I try to imagine this happening, say, on an American talk show, or even a new broadcast, and I don't think anyone responsible would think it worth doing should anyone even have bothered to point it out. Certainly no American television host would see so much potential for comedy in the situation.
[YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player.]
Dessert : Fry and Laurie present "The Silver Dick" to John Cleese
As if Fry, or Fry and Laurie weren't funny enough, let's toss John Cleese into a sketch with them. They are allegedly giving Cleese a lifetime achievement award and so they mock him for his masterpiece of comedy, "Fawlty Towers". Fry is perfectly dismissive: he doesn't even remember Cleese's name quite correctly.
[YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player.]
In: All, Friday Soirée, Laughing Matters
Perpetually Park
Bob Park, in his "What's New" this week (5 March 2010) had two items on perpetual-motion machines, an idea, like creationism, that seems not to go away but just to get repackaged on a regular basis, said new packaging bagging lots of new, credulous believers–rather like creationism.
I particularly enjoyed 'it's not a perpetual motion machine, but it's "so efficient that it keeps on producing power when it's unhooked from an outside power source."' Wow.
As for the case law on perpetual motion machines, you'd think that the second law of thermodynamics might be enough but apparently reality is not a form of legal truth.
2. MANNA: ISN’T THAT A GIFT FROM HEAVEN?
The town of Odessa, MO, population 4,818, located somewhere east of Kansas City, needs jobs. So when a company, Manna of Utah, said it wanted to build a plant there employing 3000 people, folks cheered. All the town had to do was provide $90 million in revenue bonds and a site. The company even flew local officials to Florida for a demonstration of the "world-changing" technology that would be built there. It's a home generator developed by Maglev Energy in Largo, Florida, which is leasing the technology to Manna of Utah. State Representative Mike McGhee (R-Odessa) said the product would be the "equivalent of the light bulb." Steve Everly of the Kansas City Star thought it might be a good idea to check with scientists and engineers, including Bob Park. The mayor of Odessa, Tony Bamvakais, who went on the trip to Florida, says it's not a perpetual motion machine, but it's "so efficient that it keeps on producing power when it's unhooked from an outside power source."3. PATENT NONSENSE: CASE LAW ON PERPETUAL MOTION MACHINES.
When Joseph Newman was refused a patent for his Energy Machine he sued the US patent office. Legendary US District Court Judge Robert Penfield Jackson ordered Newman to turn his machine over to the National Bureau of Standards for testing. It was found to be a motor/generator of a design vastly inferior to those on the market. The case, Newman v. Quigg (Quigg was the patent Commissioner) is cited as case-law giving the patent office authority to reject perpetual-motion claims out of hand. The only effect is that they are no longer called "perpetual motion machines." They are called over-unity devices, or zero-point-energy machines. Coverage of the Joe Newman case in Wikipedia is terrible. It's a remarkably useful encyclopedia, but you need to verify.
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science, Snake Oil--Cheap!