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And here I was expecting a close race. I guess all there's left to say is...
WHOO HOO!
*happy dance*
Landslide, baby. LANDSLIDE.
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Edited to add: Yeah, my little rant seems so quaint, doesn't it? I meant to keep it updated, but oh well.
Dear family and friends, (and lady at the store overheard saying "...that Muslim Obama..."),
I don't like discussing politics. The main outcomes of political 'debates' are strife and indigestion. I do, however, try to stay fairly updated on current events so that I may cast an informed vote come November. Therefore, every time I hear an ill-informed opinion about the current presidential candidates the urge to correct it wells up in me. I can only suppress these feelings for so long. I needed an outlet that wouldn't start a dinner table fight, elicit a rant from a co-worker, or force me to start mainlining Tums.
( Read more... )
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Yes. We must be ever vigilant lest they flood our country with highly skilled artists. Because that's exactly why our economy is so shitty right now - if only we'd stopped foreign photographers from visiting earlier, we wouldn't be in this mess!
I'm so glad the border patrol spent so much time and effort on such a potentially dangerous person. I feel so much safer.
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A vet who lives in an area where pits and pit mixes are banned talks about the effects of BSL:
"Though it uniformly ensures that unclaimed "pit bull-ish" dogs are euthanized right-quick in a municipal shelter, people living with pit bulls or pit bull mixes might manage to do so unless someone reports them...Though inner city youths still parade them brazenly in certain areas... it's the coddled, family-pet pit bulls who moved here with their parents and settled into well-kept neighborhoods that are more at risk (of citations)."
And here's where BSL really falls apart. For a moment, let's ignore the ridiculous reasons that pits and pit mixes are singled out by BSL in the first place (a whole 'nother rant). Enforcement of such laws can only happen if you can identify a dog as being a "pit mix", and how the hell can that happen with any certainty? "Pit bull" isn't even a recognized breed. It's more of a category, with vague identifying specifications that no one can agree on.
Try to identify the pit bull terrier from this chart. Did you have a hard time? Now, how about going out on the streets and trying to pick out every mixed breed dog that is 1/4 or 1/2 "pit".
What you end up with is enforcement like in this vet's area:
"Miami-Dade's one breed ban enforcement officer is the sole arbiter. Even if you don't think your dog looks pit-ish, this guy decides—all by himself with little room for appeal. In one notable case, a dog purchased in a pet store as a (non-pit bull) purebred ... turned out suspiciously large and big-headed. A neighbor turned her in. In spite of her "papers," the county's pit man says she's enough of a pit to warrant a citation."
Dog genes are notoriously flexible, that's why it's so easy to create such an array of breeds and still have them be the same species. Even within a recognized breed there's potential for tremendous variation. Once you get into mixed breeds, almost anything goes. You can easily have "pure" pit bull terriers that don't look like it, and (quite often) un-related breeds or mixes that are misidentified as pit mixes. Hell, I've had more than one stranger say that Zelda looks like she has pit bull in her.
I've also had people remark that she looks like her ancestry includes bull terrier, basenji, Australian cattle dog, whippet, and dingo, respectively. She's actually border collie and Australian Shepard, but if her previous owners hadn't known that, what breed would the shelter have assigned her?
I'd hate to be in a position where the opinion of a single official decided whether my dog lived or died (or if I had to move to outside city limits to save my pet's life). Is every mixed breed dog with short hair and small ears at risk? What if your dog does have pit in their ancestry, but it's dilute enough to pass under a BSL law. Unless you have papers to prove a negative (and what owner of a mixed breed has papers?) you better hope that their head isn't too wide, or they don't look too stocky.
End the stupidity now.
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To get a marriage license in Benton County, you have to go to the basement of the 118-year-old courthouse in Corvallis http://arcweb.sos.state.or.us/county/cpbentonhome.html. The person we talked to was sitting at the desk labeled "dog licenses," which amused me. She ushered us into a small room filled with filing cabinets to a computer on a rickety table in a corner. The stone walls of the room were alarmingly crumbly-looking. It was very clear that we're in the basement of a 118-year-old building (in other words: very cool).
It was a simple process that took about 20 minutes, unremarkable except for one thing; for both the Groom and the Bride section, you can choose a gender. I gave it a little test before submitting, and you can, in fact, have both sections read MALE or both read FEMALE. I'm sure, since gay marriage isn't legal in Oregon, that if someone actually did fill out the form that way, it wouldn't be processed. But the point is, the choice is there. At some point when Benton County switched from paper to computer, someone put those little GENDER boxes in the menu. I've worked a little bit with the database here at work, and the interface we use to enter call logs, and this isn't the sort of thing that happens "by accident".
To me, it reads as something very carefully deliberate. If the only legal marriage is supposed to be "Male Groom" and "Female Bride," than no gender choice should be necessary. I like to think of it as Benton County being poised and ready for the rest of the state/nation to get it's head out of its collective ass and let gay civil unions be. When that day finally comes, (I'm certain it's a just a matter of time), I know one place where there will be less of a transition needed. At least as far as the paperwork goes.
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DDT debate halts Rachel Carson honor
The Associated Press
Sen. Benjamin Cardin's resolution had intended to honor Carson for her "legacy of scientific rigor coupled with poetic sensibility." But Susan Sullam, a spokeswoman for the Maryland Democrat, said he delayed the bill because Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., signaled he would use Senate rules to halt it.
In a statement on his Web site Tuesday, Coburn confirmed that he is holding up the bill. He blamed Carson for using "junk science" to turn the public against chemicals such as DDT that could prevent the spread of insect-borne diseases such as malaria.
DDT has had a sort of resurgence in the public mind ever since last year when the World Health Organization WHO stated they would actively support using DDT as part of their malaria eradication program. Suddenly, it's in vogue for conservatives to wax poetical about the good ol' days before DDT was banned and nary a mosquito or crop pest was to be seen, or so they want to believe. This Coburn fellow is a shining example. Despite being a doctor, he doesn't seem to have a clue about either Rachel Carson or DDT.
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Apr. 26th, 2006 @ 11:30 am
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Few things get my blood to the boiling point as quickly as walking through the MU Quad when the Anti-choice, church-sponsored, busy-body Red-Blooded Americans Against Whores Who Didn’t Wait Until They Were Married Like They Oughta, have set up their six foot high, full color posters of blood-covered fetuses. Complete with a twenty-something white male casually leaning against the fence surrounding their display and explaining how fetuses are just like adults with missing limbs or low IQ.
Thank you for misrepresenting the issue. Thank you for using crude tactics to try and scare/disgust people to your point of view. And, as always, thank you for trying to force your religious beliefs on others and calling it a ‘human rights issue’.
I also have to wonder if they got permission to display this image next to their stock photos of dead babies, since it appears they’re already violating one rule by not giving credit for the photo. I would have paused there longer to ask them, but I was afraid of losing my temper.
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Court rejects 'intelligent design' in science class
John Scalzi reminded me of this the other day, and handily provided a link to the ruling.
I enjoyed seeing not only Common Sense winning in a trial, but to see the issue (which I know I tend to get emotional about) articulated in clear, presise, legal language by a party without an agenda is pretty satisfying.
Let me give you an example (from the ruling):
"An Objective Observer Would Know that ID and Teaching
About “Gaps” and “Problems” in Evolutionary Theory are
Creationist, Religious Strategies that Evolved from Earlier
Forms of Creationism" (p18).
There. Let us have no more of this "Intelligent Design is science! Really! And it isn't at all related to creationism!" stuff.
That, or the numerous references Buckingham's (the school board member who tried the hardest to get itelligent design into his school's biology classrooms) complete, power-abusing, self-rightous, lying, bullying insanity:
"...there arose [during the trial] the astonishing story of an evolution mural that was taken from a classroom and destroyed in 2002 by Larry Reeser, the head of buildings and grounds for the DASD. At the June 2004 [school board] meeting, Spahr asked Buckingham where he had received a picture of the evolution mural that had been torn down and incinerated... Buckingham responded: “I gleefully watched it burn.” ... [Buckingham] demanded that the teachers agree that there would never again be a mural depicting evolution in any of the classrooms and in exchange, Buckingham would agree to support the purchase of the biology textbook in need by the students" (p 108).
"Subsequently, at the August 2, 2004 meeting, Buckingham opposed the purchase of Biology [legit science textbook], which was recommended by the faculty and administration, unless the Board also approved the purchase of Pandas [creationist textbook] as a companion text...At trial, Buckingham testified that at the meeting he specifically said “if he didn’t get his book, the district would not get the biology book.” (p 110).
Wow. That was a lot of quotationating. I will stop now. Happy Holidays!
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