Category Archives: blogging

Friday Links! (Captain America, dark matter, and fake bestsellers)

blogging,

Yay!
Yay!
It’s the first Friday of March. It’s March already? Wow! Here’s a collection of news and other things that struck me as worthy of being shared:

The Shamelessness of Professor Mark Regnerus. Designed his study intent on proving that gay parents are bad. When he couldn’t find the proof, he waved his hands and said his study proved it, anyway.

Religious right’s new panic: How can we practice religion if we can’t discriminate?.

Genetic and environmental evidence indicates that after the ancestors of Native Americans left Asia, they spent 10,000 years in shrubby lowlands on a broad land bridge that once linked Siberia and Alaska.

Virginia Legislature Unanimously Repeals Unconstitutional Oral Sex Ban.

Senate Rejects Blocking Military Commanders From Sex Assault Cases.

Unreal sales for Driscoll’s Real Marriage. Megachurch spent $210,000 to put pastor’s book on bestseller list. How many homeless people or poor children could have been helped with that money?

The Signed Contract That Helped Get Mark Driscoll’s Real Marriage on the New York Times Best Seller List. It details the methods of how the copies would be ordered, how fake gift messages are generated on the Amazon orders, many payment types used to disguise the bundled sales…

If only GnuTLS had been open source! Wait..

If the moon were only 1 pixel. A fun, interactive toy. Go try it. Scroll. Click on things. It’s pretty awesome!

It’s “Embarrassing That The United States Has To Thumb Rides From The Russians”.

Dark matter looks more and more likely after new gamma-ray analysis.

Why Can’t Hollywood Get Computers Right?.

The Captain America sequel is looking very good:

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The song is beautiful, and just released on iTunes. I’d heard the audio and liked the song before I saw the video, which is quite a downer:

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Steve Grand does wistful well:

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This year’s entry for Eurovision from Lithuania is a fun number:

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Though Finland’s entry is a bit more my thing:

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If the Captain America trailer above isn’t enough for you, here’s a longer scene:

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Contemplating one’s transgressions.

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Traditionally, Ash Wednesday is a day to contemplate one’s transgressions as the beginning of the 40-day observance of Lent. Except, of course, I was raised Southern Baptist, where rituals like a priest smearing ashes on one’s forehead are frowned upon. On the other hand, I’m taoist, now, and taoism is always open to the any traditions we find useful. Therefore, Ash Wednesday is a good day to post my monthly check-in on my goals/resolutions for the year!

When I set my goals for the year, I tried to set very concrete steps for achieving them. I tried to model the tasks on the notion how one trains a pet: if a dog shows a penchant for chewing up shoes, it isn’t enough to scold the dog and try to keep the shoes out of reach; you must give the dog an acceptable chew toy. In other words, replace a bad habit with a better one.

Goal: Reduce the outrage.

Step: Listen to the Wait! Wait! Don’t Tell Me podcast once a week, limit the amount of time I read news during work breaks.

Progress: I keep getting interrupted while listening to Wait! Wait!…, but I am still spending less time reading serious/upsetting news throughout the day.

Goal: Write more regularly.

Step: Spend the reclaimed break time writing. Find other ways to motivate myself to write rather than twiddle the keys.

Progress: I’m still only doing so-so with this. I still spend more time typing potential posts than working on my fiction, for instance.

Goal: See friends for fun more, as opposed to all of my social interactions being driven by various projects.

Step: I still haven’t thought of a good concrete step for that.

Progress: We were sick slightly less often during February. I did make it to a friend’s birthday get together in the middle of the month, but we’ve missed other social events we’d planned to go to because one or the other of us was sick.

We have failed to get the weekly get-together going again. Illness takes a lot of blame for that. There’s at least one vicious circle of related difficulty. If people are coming over, we need to clean up the house. If we’ve both been so rundown or tired after workdays that we don’t do minimal cleanup, there is so much to do before people come over (and just to be clear, here, since folks are always saying, “Oh, we’ll understand a little mess!” it isn’t just dealing with clutter. It had gotten a lot worse than clutter.), that trying to do it in just a few evenings after work left us both so exhausted, we needed to sleep through the period that friends would have been here.

Goal: Paint, draw, and make music.

Step: I was counting on the monthly Drink ‘n’ Draw gathers to help with this.

Progress: We were actually well enough that we could have attended, if half the region hadn’t gotten snowed in that day.

Friday Links! (Including Ed Sullivan!)

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Here’s a collection of news and other things that struck me as worthy of being shared:

Internet Trolls Really Are Horrible People.

The 6 Male Characters Women Never Get to See in Movies.

One in four Americans unaware that Earth circles Sun.

Chalk up 3 more lives decimated by anti-gay “Christianity”.

Tea Partier Chides Obama For Cuts To Medicaid For Which He Personally Voted THREE Times .

Prosecutor Told Mother Of Five Year Old Rape Victim ‘Boys Will Be Boys’.

Guardian mistakenly outs Patrick “Picard” Stewart as gay – he’s not. I just loved Sir Patrick’s responses on twitter.

Study: Homophobia takes 2.5 years off [the bigot’s] life.

STUDY: LGB INDIVIDUALS IN ANTI-GAY AREAS DIE 12 YEARS EARLIER. Note: showing it’s the anti-gay bias that is the problem…

Group claims study shows that family-friendly movies are beating out sex and violence; counts Fast and Furious 6 as “family friendly”.

National Review Is To The Right Of The Kansas GOP.

Cardinals Start To Copy Pope’s Simple Style.

Sex Is Not an ‘Economy’ and You Are Not Merchandise.

Religious Liberty Or Anti-Gay Animus?. Money quote: “…with devout Catholics, the acid test is divorce. The bar on divorce – which, unlike the gay issue, is upheld directly by Jesus in the Gospels – is just as integral to the Catholic meaning of marriage as the prohibition on gay couples. So why no laws including that potential violation of religious liberty? Both kinds of marriage are equally verboten in Catholicism. So where is the political movement to insist that devout Catholics do not have to cater the second weddings of previously divorced people? … Do we enshrine the right of, say, an Orthodox Jewish hotel-owner to discriminate against couples who might be inter-married across faiths?”

Google Offers a Guide to Not Being a ‘Creepy’ Google Glass Owner. So, so many straight lines in this one…

The Semicolon Is the Perfect Punctuation for the Digital Age.

An octopus steals his video camera and swims off with it:

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here. Thank’s to Nami for the link!)

Annie Feat. Bjarne Melgaard, “Russian Kiss” (Part of the proceeds from the song will go to the gay rights advocacy non-profit All Out):

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If you have somehow managed to miss the Guardian’s of the Galaxy trailor:

When I first heard they were adapting this Marvel comic as a movie, I was confused as to how it could possibly work. The problem was that I was thinking of the Guardians of the Galaxy comic book as published from 1969-95, which was a weird sort of resistance group made of of characters that had originally appeared in one-shot Marvel sci-fi titles of the 50s and early 60s, each of whom was the last survivor of a planet that had been destroyed by a n alien empire. I didn’t realize that in 2008 Marvel gathered a bunch of odd characters from some of their weirder 70s sci fi titles and created a very different group of misfits that seems to share more than a bit in common with the crew of both the Farscape and Serenity. Anyway, now that I know which characters they’re going with (and these guys were all involved in fighting Thanos, who was the “mysterious” bad guy in the after credit sequence of The Avengers), it makes a whole lot more sense. (And how can you go wrong with the Blue Swede cover of “Hooked on a Feeling”???)

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Speaking of Blue Swede’s version of “Hooked on a Feeling,” here’s a blast from 1974:

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The original was a hit in 1968 by B.J. Thomas (and yes, yes, I’m old enough to remember that, too). The only videos I found of him singing are from much more recent shows where he looks he doesn’t look quite as ancient as I feared. However I found this awesome clip from the Ed Sullivan Show, 1969, of B.J. Thomas singing his much bigger hit. And you really ought to watch it. Put up with the very cheesy background choregraphy, because a bit after the 2:00 minute mark it gets too silly:

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Friday Links! (for someone’s birthday)

blogging,

It’s a beautiful Friday which happens to be Zorkfox’s birthday. It is entirely appropriate that a man with such a large heart celebrates his natal day on February 14.

Here’s a collection of news and other things that struck me as worthy of being shared:

Possible woolly mammoth tusk unearthed in Seattle.

My Funny Valentine: Awkward photos show nothing says ‘I love you’ quite like tossing chickens, topless archers and photobombing llamas.

Evolution coming undone in Galapagos: human impacts on Darwin’s finches.

Family vow to solve mystery of war-torn love affair after finding besotted teenager’s letters to her WWII soldier sweetheart.

New fossil bed found by scientists hailed as ‘motherlode’.

V-Day Blues? Here Are Seven NON-Romantic Relationships You’ll Love.

5 Cute Couples Share Their Love Stories.

Same-sex Love Exists Since the World Was Created and Why Do Some People Still Have a Problem With It?.

Keep romance alive with double dates.

How biblical fundamentalism imprisons the mind.

The least scathing review I found of the remake of Robocop began, “It wasn’t bad enough to make me angry.” Another review recommended that instead of spending money to go see the blockbuster-budget remake, to instead watch this crowd-sourced Robocop remake for free: Our Robocop Remake. “As big fans of the original RoboCop, and as filmmakers and film fans admittedly rolling our eyes at the Hollywood remake machine, we’ve elected to do this remake thing our own way. Our RoboCop Remake premiered in Los Angeles on January 26th and New York on February 5th. On February 6th, it was released online. Because if anyone is going to ruin RoboCop, it’s us.”

A well-done self-portrait:

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This very sweet ad is for a product you wouldn’t associate with such a heartwarming moment:

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A capella goodness from Pentatonix:

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Friday Links! (with extra hypocrisy and work!)

blogging,

It’s yet another Friday, here’s a yet another collection of news and other things that struck me as worthy of being shared:

Cathy McMorris Rodgers Is A Horrible Lying Assclown in Response to State of the Union.

The U.S. hypocrisy over Russia’s anti-gay laws. On one level, I’ve been saying stuff like this for a while. I do quibble with that fact that in none of the states with similar “don’t say gay laws” are the police going around beating gay people and throwing them in jail en masse.

Coca-Cola’s “It’s Beautiful” Super Bowl Ad Brings Out Some Ugly Americans. You’ve probably already seen this, but I think it’s funny that the wingnuts are so busy being upset about “America the Beautiful” lyrics not in English, that they are failing to get apoplectic about the gay men ice skating with their daughter.

Neighbours New Year’s attack suspect Musmari charged with arson.

Hideous Londoners forced to travel above ground.

Stolen Stradivarius Reportedly Found By Milwaukee Police.

Pete Carroll makes a statement with Super Bowl victory.

High School Bully Apologizes To Gay Former Classmate After Marriage Proposal Goes Viral.

Spectacular Mars crater is a big blue boom.

The Unique Merger That Made You (and Ewe, and Yew).

KANSAS HOUSE PANEL ADVANCES BILL ALLOWING RELIGION-BASED DISCRIMINATION AGAINST GAYS.

‘Dallas Buyers Club’ Represents ‘Problematic Re-Writing Of History,’ According To David France. Warning! Video on page starts automatically!

SAD: GAY TEEN COMES OUT; GETS DEATH THREATS.

The Best Science Visualizations of the Year.

Retrocausality Could Send Particles’ Information Back to the Future.

A New Step In Evolution.

RNA sequencing of 750-year-old barley virus sheds new light on the Crusades.

Woolly Mammoths Ate Flowers In Lush Arctic Landscape, DNA Study Shows.

What It Means When an 11-Year-Old Attempts Suicide.

Russia Declares Discrimination Newest Olympic Sport:

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Eurovision, Finland’s entry: Softengine – Something Better:

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SOUTHERN BAPTIST SISSIES – Official Trailer (2013):

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Chromeo – Come Alive (feat. Toro y Moi):

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Autoheart – Beat The Love (The band calls this fun, jaunty number an “anti-Valentine’s ballad” – was too buy dancing to notice)

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Ryan Adamés feat. Todrick Hall covers (and improve, IMHO), Britney’s “Work Bitch”:

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Making progress, making plans

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I set some goals for the year, and since this sort of thing often does not go as well as we hoped, I tried to set some very concrete steps for the goals. I tried to model the tasks on the notion how one trains a pet: if a dog shows a penchant for chewing up shoes, it isn’t enough to scold the dog and try to keep the shoes out of reach; you must give the dog an acceptable chew toy. In other words, replace a bad habit with a better one.

Since being accountable to someone seems to keep me motivated, I also planned to post updates throughout the year. The beginning of a new month seems like a good time to do that:

Goal: Reduce the outrage.

Step: Listen to the Wait! Wait! Don’t Tell Me podcast once a week, limit the amount of time I read news during work breaks.

Progress: I have been limiting the amount of time I spend reading the during breaks and listening to the Wait! Wait podcast each week. I’m still getting riled up about certain kinds of news, but I also feel as if I’m laughing at the antics of the wingnuts slightly more often than I was.

Goal: Write more regularly.

Step: Spend the reclaimed break time writing. Find other ways to motivate myself to write rather than twiddle the keys.

Progress: I have been writing during part of my lunch break at work, though I’ve been writing blog posts more often than fiction. I’ll keep working on this.

Goal: See friends for fun more, as opposed to all of my social interactions being driven by various projects.

Step: I didn’t have a good concrete step for that. Which may be just as well, given that for most of the month of January, my husband and I have been sick or trying to get over being sick, et cetera.

Progress: We haven’t been able to resume our weekly get together and chat night. I didn’t have to cancel Writers’ Night nor miss out on the AFK Tavern meet-up with out-of-town friends, so I wasn’t a total hermit.

My friend, Anthony, has been trying to get folks together for a regular “drink and draw” on a Sunday afternoon at AFK Tavern, and I’ve put the next one on our calendar. Which may help with the next goal.

Goal: Paint, draw, and make music.

Step: I didn’t have a good way to make myself do that instead of other things.

Progress: If I can manage to attend the Drink ‘n’ Draw meet ups, I should get some sketching done there, as well as seeing friends just for fun. I still need to come up with some more steps to push this one along.

Friday Links (Super-habitable Edition)!

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It’s yet another Friday, here’s a yet another collection of news and other things that struck me as worthy of being shared:

We’re All Still Secretly Using Our 1990s AOL Screen Names. Why? (Thanks to Seashellseller for the link!)

Let Love Define Family: Becoming Dads Again.

And Journalists Wonder Why Anarchists Don’t Trust Us to Be Fair.

New York Gives Sean Hannity the Finger With Daily Show Musical Number.

How We Know Gravity is Not (Just) a Force.

Early Europeans had dark skin and blue eyes.

Alpha Centauri B may have “superhabitable” worlds.

Yet Another Study Validates Same-Sex Parenting.

Rise of the Cetacea: Part II – The Ambulocetids.

FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR TODD STARNES HAS TWITTER MELTDOWN OVER GRAMMY WEDDINGS.

How the Colors Got Their Names.

NOM determined to divide GOP, define it by discrimination.

It’s Raining Men becomes anti-Ukip protest song. Three decades after its original release, the single re-enters the charts thanks to a social media campaign launched in response to David Silvester’s remarks that the bad weather is a punishment for its gay marriage laws

Here’s The 2014 GLAAD Award Nominees, From ‘Blue Is The Warmest Color’ to Lady Gaga to ‘Orange Is The New Black’.

Stop Beating a Dead Fox. I disagree with Rich’s conclusion for reasons I may go into elsewhere, but: “With a median viewer age now at 68 according to Nielsen data through mid-January… Fox is in essence a retirement community.” and “Hard as it may be to fathom, Fox Nation is even more monochromatically white than the GOP is, let alone the American nation. Two percent of Mitt Romney’s voters were black. According to new Nielsen data, only 1.1 percent of Fox News’s prime-time viewership is (as opposed to 25 percent for MSNBC, 14 percent for CNN, and an average of roughly 12 percent for the three broadcast networks’ evening news programs).”

The Problem with “Don’t Feed the Trolls”: Steph Guthrie at TEDxTor (Thanks to Sheryl for the link!):

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Google Street View does seem to go just about everywhere…. (Click on the double arrows!)

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A nice cover of “Say Something – A Great Big World” (Thanks to Zacky for the link!)

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Ms Ana Matronic and Bright Light, Bright Light created a cool cover of “West End Girls” for a charity gig:

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Friday Links!

blogging, ,

It’s yet another Friday, here’s a yet another collection of news and other things that struck me as worthy of being shared:

Soap Has a Gender?.

Pastor, 53, arrested at the airport after ‘stabbing his wife to death was heading to Europe to marry his boyfriend’.

Christians aren’t being driven out of public life – they’re just losing their unfair advantages. Money quote: “The venues’ uncertainty was not about hosting Christians; it was about hosting a political event covered in religious fairy dust.”

Labor Board Rules Against Bakery Taken Down By LGBT Protest.

How the Geocentric Model of the Universe Worked [Video]. Great video! You really need to see it.

Michigan GOP official: ‘Herd all the Indians’ to Detroit, build a fence and throw in corn. This is NOT a reprint from the 1800s…

A meditation on a random stranger’s slur.

The five best punctuation marks in literature. More specifically, the author explains five instances where famous writers used punctuation in a particularly interesting/important way.

A Newly Deciphered Babylonian Tablet Details Blueprints for “Noah’s Ark”. More accurately: “…blueprint for the Noah’s Ark myth.”

Why is mathematics the language of the universe? Though the real answer is given in my soon-to-be-published fantasy novel…

An Evolutionary Theory For Why You Love Glossy Things.

Robert De Niro Debuts Documentary About His Late Gay Father At Sundance.

UK Lawmaker’s Gay Marriage Claim Prompts ‘It’s Raining Men’ Facebook Campaign.

Ten literary quotes we all get wrong.

No, buddy, you have NOT been friendzoned. She has been girlfriendzoned by you…. (Thanks to Sky for the link!)

Best family Christmas vid ever:

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Friday Links!

blogging, ,

www.chuckleaduck.com
That would explain the aim… (Click to embiggen)
It’s Friday, already? Well, here’s a collection of news and other things that struck me as worthy of being shared:

Sherlock and the Adventure of the Overzealous Fanbase, or Whose wankfest is this anyway?.

“Saving Mr. Banks” Erases P.L. Travers’ Queer Identity, Misses Amazing Opportunity.

Man Poses as Woman on Online Dating Site; Barely Lasts Two Hours.

Op-ed: What Is Hollywood Still So Scared Of?.

Why Do Poor White Folks Vote Republican? Dog-Whistle Politics Explained.

Photo of gay black couple & their children causes twitter freakout.

Duck down! ‘Duck Dynasty’ returns to lower ratings after controversy. Maybe there is such a thing as bad press?

Animated map of what would happen to the Seattle area if all of the world’s ice sheets melted. Note that this worst-case scenario would take millenia to transpire, so we still have some time…

Robert Downey, Jr sings a duet with Sting… and it’s good!

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King’s Road (a capella group) has a new music video out:

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And Chris Salvatore’s video made me reach for a tissue…

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Bad at herding myself

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Kitten falling asleep on an Apply keyboard.
I haven’t had a lot of energy lately.
Coming down with the bad cold that’s been going around a bit over a week ago really messed up my schedule. Besides having to cancel several planned events with friends, taking some sick time and working from home a few extra days, I haven’t had a lot of energy. Some nights I’ve had trouble sleeping. Even when I don’t, I just haven’t had much energy. On those nights that I don’t conk out shortly after dinner, I wind up staring at the computer attempting to write and not getting a lot done.

So, for instance, when I wrote and scheduled the post called, “I don’t mean to be a jerk, part 1,” I had the opening sentences of a related part 2 post sitting in the draft queue. Continue reading Bad at herding myself →