The Wikipedia entry on cat-blogging states that it consists of blogging about cats. But it’s not just that. Oh no. It is, in fact, secretly ironic (just like me). The idea is not to have a blog about kittens, but to point out that blogs are not just pictures of cats, but in fact are citizen journalism.
Anyway, here’s a picture of my cat hogging the damn remote:
Security companies also have been crying foul over the new OS–and they might have been heard if only they had gotten into a meeting scheduled to field their complaints. Microsoft had set up such a meeting with security companies to discuss some of the changes it has promised to make to Windows Vista in response to competitive concerns. But the conference, which used Microsoft’s Live Meeting technology, crashed about 15 minutes after it started, and both Symantec and McAfee were unable to log back in.
They just are.
I’ve started a page on gay marriage and I’m having a hard time being balanced about it– the vast majority of arguments against it are “I HATE GAYS.”
One that almost makes sense is pointing out the fact that health insurance is tied in to marriage and employment, and that gay marriage could increase insurance costs borne by employers — at least, those that have a lot of married same-sex employees. But that’s a problem that needs to be fixed in the insurance policy, not in marriage policy. (That sounds like a software engineer blaming the hardware, but it’s true. As an aside, I wonder whether a better health system in the US would reduce the urgency of the gay marriage fight.)
I did, however, find one old article in the Weekly Standard, that brings up points I hadn’t thought of before. It’s a pretty conservative magazine, and I expected it to be full of the same “the queers are trying to push religion around” vitriol that everyone else spouts. But instead it starts with Catholic Charities, the Boston-based adoption agency that shut down rather than comply with the anti-discrimination laws of the state, and moves on to a Catholic high school that expelled a couple of homosexual students. If a religious school can’t prohibit actions and proclamations that it believes to be sinful, is it even a religious school any more?
Well, maybe. There are, after all, still segregated groups and schools which oppose interracial dating. Awhile back, Bob Jones University lost tax-exempt status over its (now, finally, abandoned) policy of prohibiting interracial dating. Before that, back in the 50s, there was a program of massive resistance to integration, which led several Virginia school systems to close down completely rather than integrate. Private, segregated schools (often supported by early school-voucher programs) cropped up in their place. But as segregation became less acceptable to the world, and as the IRS started taxing them like for-profit enterprises they closed or integrated.
Just like racism hasn’t disappeared, anti-discrimination law will never force groups to abandon their beliefs that homosexuality is a sin. But groups that actually do discriminate against same-sex couples will have to do so without state recognition, without state favors like tax-exemption, and without sympathy from the public. In the long run, people who don’t accept the equality of same-sex unions will be regarded in the same way that we now regard the segregationists of the past.
Way back in 2003, (as Brad Delong reminds us often enough), Daniel Drezner asked the following question:
Can anyone, particularly the rather more Bush-friendly recent arrivals to the board, give me one single example of something with the following three characteristics:
1. It is a policy initiative of the current Bush administration
2. It was significant enough in scale that I’d have heard of it (at a pinch, that I should have heard of it)
3. It wasn’t in some important way completely fucked up during the execution.
Well, can you?
Powell’s Books presents The Pat Robertson Coloring Book, as drawn by artists from around the world.
See also Law and Order: An Adventure to Color.
The Big Picture lists the nine things you need to know about personal finance. It’s pretty reasonable advice, but it’s also a lot like saying “eat right and exercise and you’ll lose weight and live longer.” Yeah, yeah, I know, but I still love my fried ice cream with bacon on it.
I just KNEW Elmo would turn on us some day. The TMX (“tickle me until I cackle like a madman”) Elmo doll was probably a sign.
Salon’s got a nice profile up about Richard Dawkins and his bulldogging for Darwin. He’s not just a defender of science, though– he’s added in attacks on religion in general. I disagree.
Faith is not a bad thing– and that it is, in fact, quite important in the world, even though I’m not a believer myself. A lot of good things get done because of faith. A lot of people are able to endure a lot of hardship because of faith. Faith gives you a reason to exist. Faith in bad things is bad, faith in good things is good, but faith without reason is not always bad.
What I’m arguing is that things don’t have to be true to be good. Same with the belief that children are wonderful. Statistics show us that people are happy before their kids are born, and after they leave the house, and that they look back on their children with fondness– but that for 18 years, children are mostly drudgery and hard work. Nonetheless, it’s important to believe that children really are bundles of joy — otherwise humanity would die out. Faith works the same way: even if it’s not true, it makes the world go round.
I agree with Dawkins that fundamentalism is dangerous to our society, that evolution over millions of years is the only reasonable explanation of the world we see around us, and that God does not in fact exist. Where we differ is his line that religion is always a bad thing. Religious faith — blind faith in anything, religious or not– has done plenty of harm. But it’s also done plenty of good. He reels off examples of terrorism, the crusades, and so forth. But he neglects examples like Stalinism (faith in secular falsehoods that led to evil) and Mother Teresa (religious faith, religious good).
Of course, I am still annoyed that a lot of people think a lack of faith is always a bad thing. Apparently, few Americans think the country would be ready for an atheist president (heck, only sixty percent think a woman could win). That’s foolishness. If you respect faith you must also respect doubt.
Paris Hitler covers Huey Lewis. And it’s fun.
From a discussion about copyright and YouTube/Google:
The purpose of fair use was to allow use of works when transactions were impractical. In that spirit we should acknowledge that if you use someone’s song in a basement skit that never leaves your basement, that should be fair use. But if 50 million people see the skit on YouTube and it generates $1 million in advertising revenues, that should not be fair use.
In other words, everyone who posts their version of the Numa Numa dance has to get express written permission from the RIAA on the off chance that it will become their 15 megabytes of fame.
Why not just piss on the my birthday cake while you’re at it?
Secretly Ironic 