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10:37 PM | link
Sign the Hunger Site Petition, which will be delivered to the United Nations Security Council in October 2000. The petition urges the UN to dedicate more resources to the fight against global hunger. And don't forget to tell your friends, family, co-workers, etc!
4:59 PM | link
When will people catch on? The war on drugs does no good:
"The Drug War doesn’t need another martyr," Peter McWilliams wrote last November. "It has too many already." McWilliams, a best-selling author and activist who was arrested on federal marijuana charges in 1998, was explaining his decision to plead guilty and throw himself on the mercy of the court.
Mercy was not something that U.S. District Judge George King seemed to have in abundance. King had prohibited McWilliams, who used marijuana to fight the nausea caused by his AIDS medications, from presenting a "medical necessity" defense at his trial in Los Angeles.
12:31 PM | link
What sucks about working this much is that I open up my browser maybe once a day if I'm lucky. I feel so out of touch.
This made the rounds a while back, but I didn't post it when I got it the first time. It's from Rex Wockner's May 16th editorial in Toronto's The Globe and Mail:
Laura Schlessinger -- a.k.a. Dr. Laura, based on her PhD in physiology -- has been taken to task by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council for characterizing homosexuality on her radio show as 'deviant,' 'dysfunctional,' 'aberrant,' 'abnormal' and biologically 'an error.' ... What is most astounding about 'Dr. Laura's' proposition is that she clearly missed taking a course in evolutionary biology. Biology is all about deviance. Species arise because variant traits are selected for by the environment. Because you can never tell which traits are going to be selected for, as a general principle, biology favours significant genetic variance in populations. Homosexuality seems to be among the variations favoured by nature in humans. We say this because, as far as we can tell, it is found in all cultures and throughout human history, not to mention in other species. ... 'Dr. Laura's' central intellectual failure is not that she gives offence to homosexuals, but that she gives offence to biology as it proudly proclaims: Variancy is part of normalcy. Back to school, Ms. Schlessinger.
Check out Stop Dr. Laura to see if there are any protests going on where you live...protesting is fun!
11:10 PM | link
Abstinence-only programs urge you to abstain from sex, with no mention of contraceptive devices and how to prevent STDs. Gee. That sounds smart. And lookee here, we just approved $50 million more in funding for these programs. [via metafilter]
Do we really need the government trying to convince us to wait until marriage? Sexuality is a part of our culture and a significant part of our identity. Sex is not evil. But it can be dangerous. We should be spending that same money on educating people on contraceptives and STD prevention -- not on abstinence-only programs.
What's worse, there's been no proof that abstinence-only programs decrease teen pregnancy or the spread of HIV.
Teenagers who hear sermon after sermon about abstinence will still have sex. Trust me on that. But teenagers who know how to use contraceptives will at least have safe sex. Now who's gonna tell Congress?
3:28 PM | link
Yes, I've been a naughty girl for not posting for so long. I deserve a spanking. Work has been kicking my ass lately, but it's bound to let up soon.
By the way, Alan discovered that if you use Internet Explorer and you link to a site with frames (like mine), IE stores a copy of the frameset locally. So if the site changes the frameset (like I just did), you'll get an error when you visit the site via the bookmark. So if you're an IE user and you bookmarked me, delete your bookmark and try again. That reminds me of a Toad song that's been stuck in my head lately:
take your cautionary tales
take your incremental gain
and all the sychophantic games
and throw 'em all away
burn your tv in your yard
and gather 'round it with your friends
and warm your hands upon the fire
and start again
take the story you've been told
the lies that justify the pain
the guilt the weighs upon your soul
and throw 'em all away
tear up the calendar you've bought
and throw the pieces to the sky
confetti falling down like rain
like a parade to usher in your life
take the dreams that should have died
the ones that kept you lying awake
when you should've been all right
and throw 'em all away
with the time i waste on the life i never had
i could've turned myself into a better man
'cause there ain't nothing you can buy
and there is nothing you can save
to fill the whole inside your heart
so throw it all away
won't fill the whole inside your heart
help me empty out this house
the wool i've gathered all these days
and thought i couldn't do without
and throw it all away
12:35 AM | link
Consider me freaked out. A mechanical body controlled by the brain of a fish? Okay, it actually sounds damn cool. "Laudably perverse," even.
The advent of "cyborgs" has been brought a step closer by the creation of a strange hybrid creature with a mechanical body controlled by the brain of a fish. As ghoulish as this chimera sounds, it may one day allow people to be fitted with prosthetic devices that are controlled directly by their brain.
Light sensors housed in the mechanical body feed the brain sensory information. The brain tissue processes this information to generate command signals which tell the robot's motors which way to turn in response to its environment. Steve Grand, a expert in artificial life with Cyberlife Research in Somerset, describes the work as "laudably perverse" and likely to bring the world of cyborgs one step closer.
5:42 PM | link
The 10 myths about military spending, debunked. [via ethel]
3:10 PM | link
Eddie Izzard kicks ass! I caught his "Dress to Kill" special on HBO a few months back and ever since then, my friends and I have been quoting the crap out of him:
Guns don't kill people. People kill people. And monkeys kill people, if you give them guns. [via lance]
1:03 PM | link
Guess who's going to the national convention as a delegate! Aw, yeah. Maybe I'll get to meet Bradley again!
6:02 PM | link
Remember the Starbucks logo parody? I decided to write Starbucks a letter about it:
I can't believe the ridiculous lawsuit you've waged against that comic book artist. Have you no sense of humor? Better yet, have you ever heard of the first amendment?
I'm sure you have better things to spend your money on than lawsuits like this.
I hope you do realize that by filing this lawsuit, you've increased exponentially the attractiveness of owning one of those t-shirts.
Oh, and I should mention that I'm never buying your products again.
I was mildly interested in buying Cranium, the game. But after seeing who's selling it...nuh-uh. Within the hour, I got the expected pat response:
Dear Kelly,
Thank you for taking the time to contact us. We appreciate your comments concerning the lawsuit against Prodigal Turd and its owner Kieron Dwyer over their commercial use of an adulterated version of the Starbucks logo. We have a long-standing policy of not commenting on the specifics of ongoing litigation; however, we would like to take this opportunity to provide you with a general statement of our position.
On Friday, May 26, the court decided that Starbucks was entitled to a preliminary injunction based on its opinion that Mr. Dwyer's use of the adulterated logo on T-shirts and stickers was unlawful trademark dilution because it was commercial in nature and tarnished the Starbucks logo. Starbucks did not ask the court to stop Mr. Dwyer from criticizing Starbucks. Rather, we asked the court and the court ordered Mr. Dwyer to stop his commercial use of the Starbucks logo.
The Starbucks logo is a valuable and meaningful icon to our customers, symbolizing high quality products and service. The logo represents years of hard work by thousands of our Starbucks partners (employees) in developing all that the trademark symbolizes. We believe it is unfair to the public, our partners and our shareholders to allow others to use our logo (or insulting or confusing variations) for their own profit. Further, failing to stop Mr. Dwyer from profiting off of our logo could hamper our ability to stop others from misusing our logo in the future.
We are certainly not trying to stop legitimate, non-commercial comment or criticism of Starbucks or its products. While we may not agree with the substance, we recognize that people have the right to comment on or criticize Starbucks, and sometimes their criticism may include variations of the logo that we do not like. They do not, however, have the right to use the Starbucks logo or even a parody of the Starbucks logo in an attempt to make money.
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to respond to your concerns.
Regards,
Cynthia B.
Starbucks Coffee Company
Oh, get off your high horse, Lil Miss Corporate Flunky. If someone making fun of the symbol that represents your company is too much for you to handle, perhaps your company wasn't built on anything special in the first place.
8:26 PM | link
There's hope for Texas, after all:
A Texas appeals court declared the state's sodomy law unconstitutional Thursday, throwing out the case of two Houston men who were arrested inside a home in 1998 for having sex with each other. Texas has had a sodomy law since 1860 but dropped criminal penalties for partners of the opposite sex in 1974.
In a 2-1 ruling, the 14th Court of Appeals said the law violates the Texas Constitution's equal-rights protections. "The simple fact is, the same behavior is criminal for some but not for others, based solely on the sex of the individuals who engage in the behavior," Justice John S. Anderson wrote.
10:56 PM | link
Ooh, reading this sent shivers down my spine:
Not only that, but we should all expect each other to delve deeper into ourselves, stop running on neutral and challenge ourselves once and while, get our minds going, get something worth reading up there! "My cat is on my screen and is purring" -- WHO FUCKING CARES??? You have the power to put it all out there for all to read, for all to marvel and be astonished with your acumen and all you can come up with is "Julia Stiles is way cool"???!?!!!But wait! There's more!
6:23 PM | link
I've been working like a dog for about a month now. I got into work at 9:30 this morning and at 5:30, I decided I deserved a break. If I'm only out in the sun once a day, I go bonkers. So I took a drive, bought some music (Elliott, Liz, and Louis), what looks like a good book, the latest Mother Jones, and a double latte. Three quarters of a latte, halfway through MJ, and an hour later, I feel oh so much better. Now back to work. Heh.
3:22 PM | link
I'm so tired of seeing all the friggin' Jesus paraphernalia on cars here in Austin, so I decided to get my own. It'll go on my car tonight.
2:12 PM | link
Visit Death Row Roll Call every month and click on the prisoners' names to send a letter to their governor and ask for a stay of execution.
4:52 PM | link
So do you support a woman's right to have an abortion? I do, for many reasons. I'm also a member of the Responsible Choices Action Network.
12:46 AM | link
Oh, how I hate corporate America. [via marginalia]
C'mon, it's a parody! (Think Georgy Bush.) And because I'm a rebel, I'm posting the logo, dammit. I say we all post it. They can't stop us!
Too bad he can't sell the shirts right now. I really want one!
12:16 AM | link
I signed it. Your turn. [via blogit]
Kelly HOLMES, who has signed the Manifesto 2000 for a culture of peace and non-violence, pledges in his/her daily life, family, work, community, country and region, to:
- respect the life and dignity of every person without discrimination or prejudice;
- practise active non-violence, rejecting violence in all its forms: physical, sexual, psychological, economical and social, in particular towards the most deprived and vulnerable such as children and adolescents;
- share my time and material resources in a spirit of generosity to put an end to exclusion, injustice and political and economic oppression;
- defend freedom of expression and cultural diversity giving preference always to dialogue and listening rather than fanaticism, defamation and the rejection of others;
- promote consumer behaviour that is responsible and development practices that respect all forms of life and preserve the balance of nature on the planet;
- contribute to the development of my community, with the full participation of women and respect for democratic principles, in order to create together new forms of solidarity.
12:00 AM | link
I finally added The Hunger Site to my personal toolbar folder so I can remember to visit it everyday. Don't forget to sign up for their newsletter. They make a donation of 5 cups of food for each new subscriber. [via rebecca's pocket]
11:40 PM | link
File this under "no shit", indeed. [via gliff]
The heroin-chic, stick-thin, waifish woman with the perfect tan, perfect hair and perfect outfit has become an icon for our times. But, according to the British Medical Association, the image has had some profoundly negative effects.
That's why I support About-Face.
11:05 PM | link
Dumie Upright! [via sugar+brine]
11:03 PM | link
I hate prescriptive grammarians, but I occassionally enjoy the quizzes at the Word Police Academy. This week's quiz is particularly useful, as it tests whether you know the correct reference books to use in certain situations.
Congratulations! We are pleased to inform you that you have passed the exam for the Word Police Reference Division.
10:18 PM | link
I am truly scared:
The closest thing Texas has to an EPA is the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission - abbreviated TNRCC and usually just pronounced as "Trainwreck." It was established in 1991 to monitor air quality and grant state permits for new refineries, chemical and industrial plants, and landfills. One of Shrub's first actions as newly elected governor of Texas in 1995 was to rid Trainwreck of its three appointees by the previous governor. He replaced them with a flunky from the Texas Farm Bureau (which, while purportedly speaking for Texas farmers, is really not much more than a large insurance company with a portfolio loaded with agricultural chemical stocks), a man who'd worked with Monsanto chemical for 30 years before becoming a lobbyist for the Texas Chemical Council (a chemical industry promotion group), and a fire-breathing evangelist who's slotted to become the next head of the EPA should Bush win in November (whose first act in his previous job had been to dismantle a program for posting signs in pesticide-sprayed fields for the safety of the farmworkers).
Like that? Order Shrub: The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush. [via cluttered]
3:47 PM | link
I am a technical writer, so let this be a lesson to you: always double-check your work!
A new monk arrives at the monastery. He is assigned to help the other monks in copying the old texts by hand. He notices, however, that they are copying copies, not the original books. So, the new monk goes to the head monk to ask him about this. He points out that if there wer an error in the first copy, that error would be continued in all of the other copies.
The head monk says "We have been copying from the copies for centuries, but you make a good point, my son."
So, he goes down into the cellar with one of the copies to check it against the original. Hours later, nobody has seen him. So, one of the monks goes downstairs to look for him. He hears a sobbing coming from the back of the cellar, and finds the old monk leaning over one of the original books crying.
He asks the old monk what's wrong, and in a choked voice came the reply..."The word is 'celebrate.'"
8:30 AM | link
She's at it again, exposing Dubya for the cold-hearted dumbass he is:
I know you've helped the oil industry and the insurance industry and the funeral industry and the herbal-diet industry and the utility industry and all those air polluters with your new voluntary clean-up program. All those people who have given so generously to your campaigns. But everything you have ever done that touched the life of the Reynas has made it harder for them...You wanted to keep 200,000 Texas children like the Reynas off the new federal children's health insurance program, even though it would hardly cost the state. But then, maybe you agree with your Health Commissioner Reyn Archer that health insurance isn't important.