Friday, September 29, 2006

How far away is a challenge to the federal DOMA?

A judge has ruled that gay and lesbian residents of Rhode Island are allowed to marry in Massachusetts because the latter's law that such marriages can only take place when they are not considered illegal in the applicants' state of residence doesn't apply to the smallest state in the nation, since no such limitations exist:
A Boston judge has ruled that a Massachusetts law forbidding out-of-state residents from marrying in Massachusetts if their marriage would not be permitted in their home state does not apply to Rhode Island.

Superior Court Judge Thomas Connolly said that Rhode Island does not specifically ban gay marriage.
[...]
"No evidence was introduced before this court of a constitutional amendment, statute, or controlling appellate decision from Rhode Island that explicitly deems void or otherwise expressly forbids same-sex marriage," he ruled.
And it looks like the ruling won't be appealed:
Attorney General Thomas Reilly said he would not appeal. Reilly, a Democrat, is running for governor.
And once a couple from Rhode Island has married, they can file federal taxes as married. After that, their filing would be rejected because of the DOMA, and they could sue the federal government because the Constitution states that whatever "contract" is recognized by one state, has to be recognized by all others.

And marriage is a contract.

Let's just hope Bush doesn't get a chance to appoint another right wingnut to the Supreme Court before such a challenge reaches it.

Dark Sky Parks

Someday I'd like to go to the Cherry Springs State Park in Pennsylvania where apparently there's the best view of the Milky Way on the East Coast:
You can't, of course, but here at Cherry Springs State Park, you can get a better view of the heavens than probably any other place on the East Coast.
[...]
Pennsylvania's state park system designated Cherry Springs as a "dark sky" park, one of a small but growing number of parks around the country dedicated to preserving the night sky and offering stargazers a place to view the heavens with as little interference from man-made light pollution as possible.

At 50 miles northwest of Williamsport, the nearest city of any size, the Potter County park fits the bill. No streetlights illuminate the road. Visitors wrap flashlights in red plastic wrap to prevent blinding themselves and others. Drivers must turn off their headlights before turning into the viewing area. Most stargazers bring telescopes, and many are willing to let other visitors take a look if they don't have their own.
The good news is that parks like this are starting to sprout all over the country and the movement to reduce light pollution of the night skies is gaining ground:
To the Dark-Sky Association, light pollution is not just a problem for astronomers. Unnecessary light wastes energy and can interfere with wildlife, and "when you're not shining a bright light in your neighbor's window, you can basically sleep better," Gent said.
[...]
"What we're finding is, more and more communities are taking action with zoning standards. States are debating this," Gent said.
[...]
While no national park is currently designated a dark sky park, certification plans through the International Dark-Sky Association are in the works, he said.
I'd love to take the kids to see the Milky Way when they're a little older, so that they can understand what they're looking at and the beauty of it all.

I first saw the Milky Way during a vacation in Umbria, Italy, in 2003 with Ray. The view was breathtaking. It was a vision to behold. It's so sad that people nowadays can't see the stars anymore because of all the light that brightens the sky at night.

Where we live now, a couple times, I've actually been able to spot the Milky Way (once pretty well), but it has to be a particularly clear night sky, and that's rare.

I sure was spellbound when I saw it though.

Having fun and helping science

The new Playstation will analyze proteins' structure to advance the research for a cure for several illnesses whenever it's idle from playing games:
Sony worked with Stanford University's Folding@home project to harness the PS3's technology to help study how proteins are formed in the human body and how they sometimes form incorrectly.

Improperly formed proteins are linked to a number of diseases, including Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, cystic fibrosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gherig's disease, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy, better known as mad-cow disease.
[...]
Proteins start out in the body as long strings of amino acids and have to assemble themselves into complex shapes -- a process scientists call folding -- before they can do anything. The challenge for scientists is that folding is difficult to observe because proteins are so small and the process is so fast -- about 10 one-millionths of a second.

Scientists are using computer simulations instead, but that has its own limitations. It takes about a day for a computer to simulate a nanosecond (one-billionth of a second) so it would take about 30 years for that computer to complete one simulation.

Folding@home uses a network of about 200,000 personal computers to simulate how proteins assemble themselves. Dividing the complicated calculations into smaller packets enables the computers to do jobs that would strain the most powerful supercomputers.
[...]
"It turns two years into one month, and that's a huge thing for us," he said. "It's more than us just being impatient, there are calculations that we don't run right now because any calculation that would take more than two or three years, we don't even start it."
I like it when we can put everyday machines we use for entertainment to good use when they're not in use.

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Tax polluters

Marching on in his fight to ward off global warming, Gore made this proposal, unlikely to ever be taken seriously by any American politician who hopes to receive a financial contribution from a company doing business in America:
Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore on Monday suggested taxing carbon dioxide emissions instead of employees' pay in a bid to stem global warming.

"Penalizing pollution instead of penalizing employment will work to reduce that pollution," Gore said in a speech at New York University School of Law.

The pollution tax would replace all payroll taxes, including those for Social Security and unemployment compensation, Gore said. He said the overall level of taxation, would remain the same.

"Instead of discouraging businesses from hiring more employees it would discourage business from producing more pollution," Gore said.
He sure has guts. Will he ever run for President again?

A Quote By:

Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou, who raised a rainbow flag given to him by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom over Taipei's City Hall on Sunday :
"Tolerance is a necessary virtue for any world-class city. Homosexuality is a natural phenomenon that cannot be suppressed away nor spread beyond its natural bounds. Gay rights are a part of human rights. We want Taipei to be a multifaceted city filled with love, peace and tolerance."

Friday, September 15, 2006

Uruguay stands up for gay's rights 2

This actually happened a while back, but I didn't know about it and I just found out.

Apparently, Montevideo, Uruguay's capital, is one of only five cities in the world to have a monument dedicated to gays and lesbians killed by the Nazis during WWII.

From CBSNews.com:
Uruguay has unveiled what gay activists say is the first monument in Latin America honoring sexual diversity.

The rose-colored block of granite shaped in the form of a triangle went up this week in the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo.

Set atop a concrete column, the monument is inscribed with the words: "Honoring Diversity is Honoring Life."
[...]
"From our little country we are telling the world that sexual diversity is something very positive," said Fernando Fontan, the head of a local gay rights group.
More from Americas.org:
Uruguay - Montevideo became the first city in Latin America and the fifth in the world to commemorate the homosexual victims of Nazism and to acknowledge the right of sexual diversity with a special monument and plaza.

"Honoring diversity is honoring life. Montevideo for the respect of all genders, sexual identities and orientations," reads a triangular granite monument in the heart of the Old City, 200 meters (656 feet) from the first Catholic church erected by Spanish Conquistadors in 1726.
[...]
The monument's shape and material were selected for precise reasons. In the concentration camps in World War II, the Nazis forced gay males to wear a pink triangular badge, while lesbians and prostitutes were forced to wear a black triangle. "The black and pink streaked granite combines both symbols," explained communal legislator Gabriel Weiss.
This is something very important. The Holocaust represents one of the most horrible tragedies ever happened to humanity and we should honor and remember all the peoples that were persecuted by the Nazi regime.

By the way, the other cities were you can find monuments honoring diversity are Amsterdam and Berlin in Europe, and New York and San Francisco in the United States.

Uruguay stands up for gay's rights

Uruguay is on its way to become the next country to allow same-sex civil unions. The law has already cleared the Senate and its passage in the lower house of Parliament is almost certain:
URUGUAY'S Congress will pass a law to legalise gay and heterosexual civil unions, granting those couples the same rights as married ones, a ruling party Senator said today.

The Senate already passed the Bill, and Senator Margarita Percovich told Reuters the lower house is expected to approve it easily given the governing leftist coalition's majority.

The legislation will allow gay and straight couples to form civil unions after living together for at least five years.
[...]
"If there is recognition (of the partnership), it's as though it were a marriage," she said.

The law would ensure inheritance rights for couples in civil unions and offer other advantages such as shared parental rights and pension benefits. [...]
The Argentine capital of Buenos Aires legalised same-sex unions in 2002, in a move hailed as a first in Latin America.
Great news. Uruguay could become a beacon of hope for gays and lesbians in South America, and its example might be followed by other countries in the future.

New Eyes Update

Yes!! I just came back from my check up, and 5 weeks after the operation I have already hit 20/20!! I'm so happy. I knew I could see better, but I was curious to know just how much I could really see. I still have somewhat dry corneas but there's no sign whatsoever of the corneal dystrophy that affected my eyes up until the PRK surgery. The doctor said there's no trace left of it, and if one didn't know about it, they wouldn't find any sign of it. That was great news, since the dystrophy was the main reason I had the surgery in the first place. She told me the eyes look great but I still have a month or two to go before they are fully recovered, so, who knows, I might even get to have better than 20/20 vision by the end of the year. Let's hope.

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Whitney Houston files for divorce

CNN Breaking News:
Grammy-winning singer Whitney Houston has filed for divorce from husband Bobby Brown, her publicist tells The Associated Press.
Could this be the first of many steps on the road to recovery for this beautiful woman with a golden-voice? Possibly.

It's undeniable, and widely known, that Bobby Brown physically abused her, repeatedly, all the while professing his love for her. She clearly loved him, otherwise she wouldn't have stayed in such a marriage. But at what cost?

Has she finally reached bottom? Has she finally decided to pick up the pieces and attempt to glue them into a more normal existence?

Let's hope so. Good luck, Whitney. Hang in there.

The worthless media

This morning I was listening to NPR and heard the news that yesterday 65 bodies were found in Baghdad, Iraq, and the reporter referred to the deaths as "sectarian violence."

Sectarian violence my ass, that's civil war, why not call it what it is? How many bodies do they have to find before it qualifies as civil war? 100 per day? 1,000?

The Bush administration refuses to define the current situation as 'civil war' because it doesn't sound good, and they can't afford their poll numbers to dip further or they'll end up in the negative, but, last time I checked, the media is still free to say what they want. There's still freedom of the press in America, although maybe not for long thanks to the Republicans.

Why won't the media call it what it is? Who cares if the administration calls it something else, if the media were to tell the truth, the administration would be hard pressed to keep hiding the truth from us. This way, the media is doing us a total disservice: instead of keeping us abreast of what's going on in the world, they just become appendices and mouthpieces of the administration.

But obviously, silly me, there are politics at work here. NPR belongs to the government, really, so they have control over its content. And even the media that is privately owned has to respond to its shareholders and owners, who cannot afford to piss Bush off or they'll lose contracts somewhere else along the way, maybe for other companies that belong to the same big conglomerate.

The media has been losing ground in the way the public sees and trusts it for a while now, and it will only get worse.

They're just a bunch of patsies.

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

We humans love our superheroes and their catchy one liners, but we don't seem to follow their teachings in our daily lives. As a consequence, innocent life forms on our planet will perish and die long before their time:
Global warming over the coming century could mean a return of temperatures last seen in the age of the dinosaur and lead to the extinction of up to half of all species, a scientist said on Thursday.
[...]
Between 10 and 99 percent of species will be faced with atmospheric conditions that last existed before they evolved, and as a result from 10-50 percent of them could disappear. [...]
"We are starting to put these things into a historical perspective. These are conditions not seen for millions of years, so none of the species will have been subjected to them before," he added.
Thomas said scientific observations had already found that -- as predicted by the climate models -- 80 percent of species had already begun moving their traditional territorial ranges in response to the changing climatic conditions.
[...]
Not only had the animals, birds and insects started to react, but there was evidence vegetation was also on the move. [...]
Not only would some species simply find no suitable space to live anymore, but there would be confrontations with invasive species being forced to move their territory. This would produce not just wipe-outs but species' mixtures never seen before.

And the changes would all happen at a faster rate than ever before in evolution.
How sad. Scary and sad.

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

How COOL is this man?!

I'm talking about Brad Pitt, who just announced that he and Angelina Jolie (so I should really say, How cool is this couple) will only get married when everyone else in the US who wants to is legally allowed to do so. He's talking about us, guys, gays and lesbians:
Brad Pitt, ever the social activist, says he won't be marrying Angelina Jolie until the restrictions on who can marry whom are dropped.

"Angie and I will consider tying the knot when everyone else in the country who wants to be married is legally able," the 42-year-old actor reveals in Esquire magazine's October issue, on newsstands Sept. 19.

In the article he reflects on "fifteen things I think everyone should know."
Now, that's making a statement. The media is always all over them to find out when they're gonna tie the knot, and so now, that too becomes a moot point.

And he had some good words for adoptive parents as well:
Though Shiloh, the world-famous daughter of Pitt and girlfriend/earth mother Angelina Jolie, hogged much attention upon her birth in May, Pitt says he "cannot imagine life" without adopted children, Maddox, 5, and Zahara, 1.

"They're as much of my blood as any natural born, and I'm theirs," says Pitt. "That's all I can say about it. I can't live without them. So: Anyone considering (adoption), that's my vote."
What a great guy.

Pat Oliphant... again

Man, this guy is brilliant.


I believe this is important too: to remember the inadequacy of the man who wanted to be President but didn't know how to be President. So 3,000 Americans paid the price that infamous day. And more then 2,500 others have died in Iraq for his folly since.

How many more will have to die before we stop him?

September 11, 2001 was this too. Let's never forget.

New York City's Skyline

'Tribute in Light' illuminates the sky over Manhattan, Monday, Sept. 11, 2006 in New York, marking the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Friday, September 08, 2006

The perils of fame and fortune

I've always loved Whitney Houston. I think she has one of the best voices ever heard singing a song and on top of that she was a gorgeous beauty.

Unfortunately, a few years back, she started down a path that has now reduced her to nothing more than a rich junkie.

How sad.

It really puts money and fame in perspective, because it makes you think, With all her money and connections, how could she let this happen to herself? She could have sought out the help of the best doctors and psychologists in the world, she could have checked herself into the most expensive rehabilitation clinics. Instead? She just ignored the problems, denied they existed, and reduced herself to an empty shell.

I really do hope that someday, before it's too late (although, judging by this picture, she might have already crossed the point of no return), she can find the inner strength to lift herself out of this misery and come back to life.

Her longtime friend, famous record producer Clive Davis, seems to have come to the rescue. Let's hope he will be able to help Whitney:
J Records founder Clive Davis, the man responsible for signing a teenaged Whitney Houston to his former label Arista Records in 1983, tells MTV that he and the troubled singer are currently working on songs for a new comeback album.

Davis says they've already chosen six tunes that she'll record, yet warns against fans having unrealistic expectations about the album's music production and lyrics, the latter of which will likely avoid mention of her recent challenges.

The politics of movies' ratings

A new documentary, This Film Is Not Yet Rated, targets the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings system and its bias, following politics more than artistic values or morals.

From AfterElton.com:
This Film Is Not Yet Rated raises the question of whether a focus on gay sex affects acceptance of gay people in the United States. If images of gay sex are taboo, does that impact straight people's perceptions of gay people? Could it make straight people more uncomfortable with LGBT people?

The documentary works because it shows how the Hollywood ratings process, coupled with the commercial nature of the film industry, leads to censorship, decreases filmmakers' artistic freedom, and stifles the audience's ability to decide on their own what they think about a film.
The director speaks out:
If you show a certain kind of straight sex and you are allowed to see a certain level of nudity, but the rating system does not allow that same level of nudity with gay sex, then what you are doing is subtly suggesting to the audience that there is something wrong with showing the same amount of gay sex that you might show in a straight sex scene.
[...]
To go further, when the MPAA spokesperson, Corey Bernards, was asked why there is this bias against gay sex, her response was not to deny it but to say that 'We don't set the standards, we reflect them.' I thought this was appalling, because what if the standards were racist? Would they reflect those standards? What if the standards were anti-Semitic? Would they reflect those standards?

Basically, her response was a tacit admission that there was a homophobic bias in the rating system, and I think that is completely wrong.
[...]
I think that the MPAA and the studios benefit politically by censoring films with gay sex in them, because the MPAA is the lobbying arm of the six major studios that control 95 percent of the film business, and the rating system is a small part of what they do. Their main focus is in Washington lobbying Congress to get laws passed - particularly onerous, intellectual property laws which benefit the studios' bottom line -— sometimes to the tune of billions of dollars.

By coming down on or appearing to come down on sex, particularly gay sex, that ingratiates them with the right, which now controls Congress and allows the MPAA to get the laws through Congress that it wants. So the studios, which control the MPAA, will use any tool that they have control of to benefit the bottom line for those corporations. If it means setting up a rating system that censors gay sex, they will go ahead and do it.
Bastards.

Thursday, September 07, 2006

In Memoriam

Marcus Fiesel, 3 years old.

This little kid was put into a foster family, a family supposedly safer than his biological one. Unfortunately for him, the screening process let this couple of subhumans enter the foster care system and he was assigned to them.

Apparently, in order to attend a two-day family reunion to which they did not, for whatever reason, want to bring the little kid, they decided to tie him up with tape and put him in a closet until their return.

When they came back, however, Marcus was dead. They tried to cover up their actions for a week or so, but eventually they were caught, arrested and jailed. They will now face the justice system for what I see as a horrific crime that goes beyond my comprehension abilities.

How could they do this to an innocent, harmless 3 year-old kid, whom they were supposed to protect and nurture? How could they think that it was "ok" to tie him up and leave him in a closet? How could they think that he would be fine during their absence?

Some crimes are just unexplainable and unforgivable to me. This is one of them. I hope they serve the maximum sentence possible and then get sued by the parents of the child for everything they have.

You know what I think? They should be tied up and locked in a closet for a couple of days, just to show them what they put that kid through. If they survive, then they'll start serving their sentence.

Just imagine the horrible last hours he spent on this planet. And now he's gone. Because of their stupidity and carelessness.

From CNN
:
The foster parents of a disabled 3-year-old boy wrapped him like a cocoon and left him for two days in a closet, where he died while they attended a family reunion, a prosecutor said.

The couple made several attempts to burn Marcus Fiesel's body and concocted an elaborate sham to cover up the boy's death, Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters said Tuesday.

"Marcus was wrapped in a blanket and wrapped in tape with his arms behind him -- and this was not the first time," Deters said in announcing additional indictments against Liz and David Carroll Jr.
[...]
Deters said the Carrolls left Marcus in the closet on August 4 when they went to a family reunion in Kentucky, and the boy was dead when they returned two days later.

A week later, Liz Carroll claimed Marcus wandered away from her at a suburban park, authorities said. Hundreds of volunteers joined authorities in the search for several days.

Authorities called off the official search on August 19. Liz Carroll pleaded for help finding Marcus at a news conference August 22 -- about the same time she and her husband were disposing of his body in a remote area of Brown County, Deters said.

"They went back repeatedly to burn his body -- two or three times," Deters said.

Authorities believe they have found the place where the body was burned, and they have brought back bags of evidence from the scene, Deters said.

He said the material will undergo DNA testing.

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Where is the big picture??

Labor day came and went and took with it the summer movie season. The studios, as usual, made a gazillion trillion dollars and the weekly reporting was always pretty upbeat, starting with something like, "receipts were up --% compared to the same frame from last year."

The problem with that kind of comparison, however, is that last year was the worst year Hollywood had seen in a couple decades (down several percentage points from the year before), which means that, by comparison, an average year is definitely an improvement.

Why don't they compare the ticket receipts to the year before last, when business was average (or rather good, I'd say) so as to give us a fairer picture of this year's crop of movies' performance?

Could it be that the studios want to show their Wall Street investors that this was an extraordinarily good year for them, while in reality they performed just as usual?

Hmm...

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, by John Berendt

A very good book about a small town that always fascinated me, even though I've never seen it, Savannah, Georgia. Unfortunately, it was an abridged version, and the abridgment caused the narrative to end up split in what felt like two different books.

I'm assuming the book isn't so clearly separated into two tales, that the characters intertwine more than they do on this audio book version. I sure would love to read the book to find out. I remember seeing the movie a few years back, but I really can't remember if I liked it or not.

The last track on the CD was an interview with the author, and I was astounded to find out that the story I had just heard about was actually all based on real facts. Everything actually happened. Amazing.

The book is basically a love note to Savannah itself and its most eccentric (real-life) inhabitants, interspersed with detailed accounts of a murder investigation and its subsequent trial.

The reader is Anthony Heald, and he does an excellent job.

Grade: 8.5

A Quote By:

Rocky Anderson, Salt Lake City's Mayor:
"President Bush [is] a dishonest, war-mongering, human-rights violating president whose time in office [will] rank as the worst presidency our nation has ever had to endure."

Friday, September 01, 2006

America is falling apart under Bush's watch

And naturally, he's not doing anything to fix the problem:
A pipeline shuts down in Alaska. Equipment failures disrupt air travel in Los Angeles. Electricity runs short at a spy agency in Maryland.

None of these recent events resulted from a natural disaster or terrorist attack, but they may as well have, some homeland security experts say. They worry that too little attention is paid to how fast the country's basic operating systems are deteriorating.

"When I see events like these, I become concerned that we've lost focus on the core operational functionality of the nation's infrastructure and are becoming a fragile nation, which is just as bad - if not worse - as being an insecure nation," said Christian Beckner, a Washington analyst who runs the respected Web site Homeland Security Watch (www.christianbeckner.com).
[...]
The American Society of Civil Engineers last year graded the nation "D" for its overall infrastructure conditions, estimating that it would take $1.6 trillion over five years to fix the problem.
[...]
"If a terrorist group were able to knock the NSA offline, or disrupt one of the nation's busiest airports, or shut down the most important oil pipeline in the nation, the impact would be perceived as devastating," Beckner said. "And yet we've essentially let these things happen - or almost happen - to ourselves."

The Commission on Public Infrastructure at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, said in a recent report that facilities are deteriorating "at an alarming rate."
And, like I said in an earlier post, we're wasting hundreds of millions of dollars ($400 billion so far) in Iraq when we desperately need that money here in the US.

I can't wait for the day George starts packing and vacates the White House.

And to all those who are just rolling their eyes up to the sky right now, remember:
If you're not outraged,
you're not paying attention.

Time and Space

I always find it fascinating to think that the light we see in the sky from the stars has actually left those stars millions of years ago and has only now reached us. To think that some of those stars we see today might not even exist anymore. Some might have been swallowed up by a black hole, while others might have collided with bigger stars that slowly consumed them.

Astronomers just witnessed a supernova explosion for the first time (supernovae occur when huge, mature stars effectively run out of fuel and collapse in on themselves).

I was reading the article and than I saw this picture:


which was accompanied by this caption: "The stellar explosion occurred 400 million-light years away." And that's when I realized the implication: that star was 400 million light-years away from us when it exploded... 400 million years ago.

That's awe inspiring to me. That explosion occurred 400 million years ago, but just now we are able to see it, because obviously we're 400 million light-years away.

Amazing.

I remember once realizing that if the sun suddenly stopped emitting light, as if it just turned itself off, we wouldn't know it for 8.3 minutes, because we're so far away from it that it takes that long for its light to reach us. Isn't that incredible?

The Phallic Logo Awards

Here's their website for a complete list of the competitors (all authentic).

This is the winner. I had to post it, because I can't stop laughing when I look at it.


How did they not see what I see?!!

Startling Fact

From a popbitch.com newsletter:
In America, the richest and most powerful country in the world, the Census report has revealed that the number of people without health insurance rose last year to a record 46.6 million, and that while the proportion of Americans living in poverty held steady at 12.6%, half of that group were really, really poor, earning less than half of the poverty line cut-off of $20,000, "the highest percentage ever recorded", according to the New York Times.
See, this is yet another reason why we shouldn't be in Iraq anymore, besides that it had nothing to do with 9/11 and so we shouldn't have invaded it to begin with, but still being there now? It's crazy.

Imagine how many resources we're wasting over there that we could use over here to help ourselves. Imagine how much insurance coverage we could have bought for those 46+ million people with the $400 billion we already threw in Iraq.

Nice work George.

PS: how do people live with less than $10,000 a year in this country?