Benvenuto!

My posts are about 74/26 locked/unlocked.

If you add me, I'll probably add you back eventually. Comments re: friending are appreciated, though. I still have some flimsy illusion of privacy.

Holy shit. I'm sitting here just shocked.

ETA: I wonder how many posts exactly like this have appeared in the past hour or so. Anyone else have a lot of trouble getting on to LJ? Did ONTD break the site again? Thankfully it seems to be over now.

tbh, i'm kind of offended...

Your results:
You are James T. Kirk (Captain)

James T. Kirk (Captain) 65% Uhura 65% Deanna Troi 65% An Expendable Character (Redshirt) 60% Chekov 55% Will Riker 55% Mr. Scott 45% Worf 45% Data 31% Spock 30% Beverly Crusher 30% Geordi LaForge 30% Jean-Luc Picard 20% Mr. Sulu 15% Leonard McCoy (Bones) 10%

You are often exaggerated and over-the-top in your speech and expressions. You are a romantic at heart and a natural leader.

Click here to take the "Which Star Trek character are you?" quiz...

You can have your drama, but I'm living in mortal fear over here!

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers on my list!

So, as you probably know, Bea Arthur died today. Since armchairshrink already posted the world's best macro, I'll have to content myself with telling someone else's hilarious story... er, in tribute.

Rufus Wainwright's song "California" includes a line about Bea Arthur:

I don't know, this sea of neon
Thousand surfers, whiffs of freon
And my new grandma Bea Arthur

He explained the lyrics in an interview, possibly also in concert (I've heard the story a couple times, can't remember exactly when/where). When he first came to L.A., he found himself at a party with Bea Arthur. He'd watched Golden Girls a lot with his own grandmother, and had all of these warm memories associated with the show and, by extension, the actress. I guess he went to her, thanked her for her work on the show, and said something to the effect of "It's almost like you were my grandma too!"

Her response? "Kid, I'm not your fucking grandma!"

In other words, awesome. I'm sure Rufus, like me, is a little bit sad tonight.



Btw, isn't it wacky that she was actually a year older than Estelle Getty?

I heard this on a Guardian Daily podcast yesterday, and I'm kind of disturbed that I haven't heard about it anywhere else. Hmm...

---

Big Brother is watching: surveillance box to track drivers is backed

The [U.K.] government is backing a project to install a "communication box" in new cars to track the whereabouts of drivers anywhere in Europe, the Guardian can reveal.

Under the proposals, vehicles will emit a constant "heartbeat" revealing their location, speed and direction of travel. The EU officials behind the plan believe it will significantly reduce road accidents, congestion and carbon emissions. A consortium of manufacturers has indicated that the router device could be installed in all new cars as early as 2013.

However, privacy campaigners warned last night that a European-wide car tracking system would create a system of almost total road surveillance.

( It even has an Orwellian name! )

---

Maybe this makes me one of those fringe "privacy campaigners," but I find this rather worrying. Especially since once that technology is implemented throughout the EU, there's no way it won't spread. :(

Right now, I am eating warm, freshly-baked homemade bread with homemade Nutella.



It is divine.

ETA: a banana was a fine addition to this meal. I'm practically purring.

I've been working on becoming more organized. Having a planner, using it, figuring out what I'm doing more than fifteen minutes ahead of time.

Unfortunately, I'm not all the way there yet: I just realized that I missed submitting an abstract for my discipline's big conference because I had the date wrong. How annoying. :(

Precinct-by-precinct analysis and other data shows party, ideology , church attendance and age drove vote, debunking myths about African-American voting on marriage equality. Support for freedom to marry grows across nearly all demographics

WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 — An in-depth analysis of the Proposition 8 vote released today shows that party affiliation, political ideology, frequency of attending worship services and age were the driving forces behind the measure’s passage on Nov. 4. The study finds that after taking into account the effect of church attendance, support for Proposition 8 among African Americans and Latinos was not significantly different than other groups. Through a precinct-by-precinct analysis and review of multiple other sources of data, the study also puts African-American support for Proposition 8 at no more than 59 percent, nowhere close to the 70 percent reported the night of the election. Finally, the study shows how support for marriage equality has grown substantially across almost all California demographic groups — except Republicans. 

( Read more... )

A while back, seriesfinale mentioned seeing a particular picture during his daily runs that always cheered him up.

This picture, particularly the boy in the green circle (but really, take your pick!), reminds me of that:

From the Obama family's recent visit to a southside Chicago school. More cute pics here

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all!

...because really, I'm sick of talking about it.

BUT, I might be sorta famous.. or something. On Friday, I sent the following ( email )

And today, this appeared: ( Prop 8 Myths )
Sure, it might not have had anything to do with me. And he didn't do exactly what I asked. But still, it's nice to dream. ;)

I'm getting a little closer in my search for numbers.

CNN exit polls here.
Awesome DailyKos post here.

Obviously cross-posted (most recent thanks to imfallingup):

Because there's been a lot of vitriol being hurled at folks of color due to certain less favorable election results, bias_cut brings out the numbers here with lots of links:

But let's pretend for a moment that there were no people of color in the U.S. Let's pretend that this past Tuesday, all voters who went to the polls were white. How, then, would the election and the ballot measures have fared?

Nationally
* McCain would have won the popular vote, 55% to Obama's 43%.

* McCain would have won the following blue states with the following percentage of white votes: Florida (56%), Virginia (60%), Ohio (52%), Indiana (54%), New Mexico (56%), Nevada (53%), Iowa (51%), Wisconsin (54%), Pennsylvania (51%), Delaware (53%), New Jersey (50%), Maine (58%), Connecticut (51%), New Hampshire (54%), Michigan (51%), and Maryland (49%).

* Super blue California would have barely gone for Obama with 51% of the white vote.

* McCain would have won the election in a landslide with a total of 342 electoral votes to Obama's 170.

Arizona
The ban on gay marriage would still have passed with 55% of the vote.

Arkansas
The ban on gay couples adopting would still have passed with 58% of the vote.

California
Prop 8 would have been defeated by only a small margin of 51% to 49%.

Colorado
There is currently no exit poll data on race, but 51% of Colorado voters voted to end Affirmative Action. According to the most recent census estimate, Colorado is 90% white.

Florida
The ban on gay marriage would still have passed with 60% of the vote.

Nebraska
There is currently no exit poll data on race, but 58% of Nebraskans voted to end Affirmative Action. According to the most recent census estimate, Nebraska is 91.5% white.

Two other interesting facts that I haven't heard any of these critics mention:

* In Arkansas, 54% of black folks voted to ban gay couples from adopting versus 58% of white voters.
* In Michigan, 59% of black folks voted for stem cell research versus 51% of white voters.

Read the whole entry with links and all, and please please please remember: queers and transfolk come in all colors.

Same-sex marriage ban wins; opponents sue to block measure
John Wildermuth,Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writers

(11-05) 12:48 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- After a heated, divisive campaign
fueled by a record $73 million of spending, California voters have
approved Proposition 8, which would change the state Constitution to ban
same-sex marriage. Opponents promptly filed suit to try to block the
measure from taking effect.

With 96 percent of the vote counted, Prop. 8 was winning by a decisive
400,000-vote margin, 52.2 percent to 47.8 percent. It piled up huge
margins in the Central Valley and carried some Democratic strongholds such
as Los Angeles County. The measure lost in every Bay Area county but
Solano.

As the vote counting continued this morning, opponents of Prop. 8 filed a
lawsuit directly with the state Supreme Court - whose May 15 ruling
legalized same-sex marriage - asking the justices to overturn the measure.

The suit argued that Prop. 8 would change the California Constitution in
such fundamental ways - taking important rights away from a minority group
- that it amounted to a constitutional revision, which requires approval
by the Legislature before being submitted to the voters. The case was
filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, Lambda Legal and the National
Center for Lesbian Rights.

The same groups asked the court before the election to remove Prop. 8 from
the ballot on those grounds. The justices refused, but left the door open
for a post-election challenge.

"A major purpose of the Constitution is to protect minorities from
majorities," said Elizabeth Gill, an ACLU lawyer. "Because changing that
principle is a fundamental change to the organizing principles of the
Constitution itself, only the Legislature can initiative such revisions."

( Rest of article here )
***
I'm really curious to see how this turns out. I've been complaining a lot lately that a proposition shouldn't be enough to amend the constitution. It's ridiculous—especially with the outright lies, intimidation, and blackmail used by the Yes on 8 people—that a mere 52% of the populace should have that kind of power. I'm glad this is the argument they are making, because I think it's absolutely correct.

Poll #1291685 Voting times
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

How long did you have to wait to vote?

The ride on Bus #2 today was dominated by a cell phone conversation a young woman in the back was holding. She was clearly very angry, and a little more listening gave me some indications why.

"You need to stop threatening me."
[...]
"If I have to make that call, I will. I don't give a fuck."
[...]
"Yeah, I'll make the call if I need to. You just have to stop bothering me."
[...]
"If you want to start some funk, I'm there. I'm ready. I don't give a fuck."

And so it went on, the one-sided conversation telling all I needed to know. I could fill in the blanks in the most predictable ways, and there's a good chance I'm right: ex-boyfriend, possibly abusive, but now they had broken up and he was threatening her. She was going to call a friend, possibly someone better-connected, to "encourage" him to stop, but if necessary she would go at him herself.

She was a scrap of girl, too, probably in her late teens or early twenties. The abuse I inferred from the particular rhetoric she'd employed, as well as the hard, cold, yet scared look in her eyes. I wondered about the phrase "I don't give a fuck." She obviously did give a fuck. She was terrified, but far too tough to show it.

It made me think about a lot of things: how so many women go through these situations every day, how the phrase "I don't give a fuck" is just as much of an obvious lie as "I'm classy" or "I'm a real man," whether or not her threat of "calling someone" necessarily involved gang activity and whether or not it would end in more violence. Mostly, I just felt a lot of sympathy for her, but I knew better than to let it show.

Okay, I just sent this to a few people, but it's so hilarious that I wanted to share with my whole flist.

Can someone explain what's going on here?

WATCH THE WHOLE THING—YOU WON'T REGRET IT. IT REALLY GETS GOOD AROUND 1:51...

Thing is, they're not bad. Just... why? It reminds me of something a friend once said about a Schumann piece, maybe the Konzertstück for four horns? Anyway, "it's like an exquisitely decorated cake, but made entirely of broccoli."

Every once in a while, someone on my flist will decide to stay away from LJ for a while, or possibly end their journal all together (why didn't I friend oblomova while I still could?). Both of these things have happened recently, in fact, and it got me to thinking. The result was this poll.

( Read more... )