First: if you're not reading Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog, you probably should be (if you're interested in usually-US-centric cultural musings, at least). Even when he's mostly featuring a cast of guest-bloggers, there's almost always much to ponder.

One post particularly struck me yesterday. Among many thought-provoking things, there was:I've been ( Read more... )

• Scott, astute_reason and I saw The A-Team last Monday, and our lives were changed forever. It could very well be the greatest achievement in the history of motion picture arts & sciences. Hypermasculine yet not distasteful, it's pretty much the Platonic form of Shit Blowin' Up Real Good, which isn't something I typically go for but is so damned gleeful here ( Read more... )

Not the Giants defense, that's for damn sure. There my craw overflows.

• Wow: the Obama Administration is actually making good on part of that whole transparency-and-accountability thing.
• The successor to SpaceShipOne is finally ready. Space tourism grows ever nearer.
• Houston TX is now the largest city to elect an openly gay mayor, thanks to Annise ( Read more... )

• It's been a pretty good birthday week. There hasn't been anything incredibly awesome, but there's been a bunch of good things--a pleasant dinner with the family on Tuesday, seeing some friends, taking my mom to see the Lipizzaner Stallions and going out to eat with her again yesterday--with nothing particularly unpleasant interrupting it all. I'm ( Read more... )

The final notice has gone out: GeoCities is shutting down in nineteen daysIt feels a tad surreal to type that; coming from the generation that I do, it's difficult for me to imagine the internet without GeoCities. (True, the service didn't start until 1994 and I'd been on some local bulletin-boards for years before that; despite the similarities ( Read more... )

Darren Aronofsky, Martin Scorsese, Terry Gilliam, David Lynch and Alfonso Cuaron, among others, don't think that drugging and raping a child means you shouldn't flee the country to avoid punishment. Because it's been a really long time? Because his victim doesn't want the media circus surrounding her again (reasonable on her part, but not a reason ( Read more... )

• I thought I'd screwed myself out of a day's pay last week (long story short, I forgot about the Labor Day holiday when filling out the timesheet for the week I was on vacation, so the temp-agency people wanted to yank eight hours of pay I got for that week out of my next check), but when I got my check on Thursday it turns out that they were ( Read more... )

...was apparently last week. And was sponsored by a Christian group. And concentrated more on things like chronic pain and diabetes than mental illness, though one page I saw acknowledged cancer, eating disorders and mental illness. (Of course, I don't mean to imply that those don't all deserve attention.) Anyway, I saw jcdaredevil fill out this meme about it ( Read more... )

• Cats are incredibly cute, no matter their size.
• Most. Awesome. President. Ever.
• This Week in Deconstructing Hurtful Stereotypes: NewsWeek and this Flickr group highlight people engaging in athletic activity regardless of body size. Not everything about it is perfect, and there's no shortage of ignorant and hurtful comments on the NewsWeek site, but I ( Read more... )