[links] Link salad stabs with its steely knives
I am at the top of the City of Milwaukie web page - Local hero?
The Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop: A Founder’s Perspective
But, but, but - WHY does magic have to make sense? - N.K. Jemisin makes sense. My first reaction to her essay was "b-b-b-but…" My second reaction was, "Duh, she's talking to me, Mr. Forest-for-the-Trees". Darn it, now I have to go think. (Snurched from Steve Buchheit.)
he Incredible Resilience of Books - Books will not go away, no matter what happens to publishing. (Thanks to tillyjane.)
Pulp Sci Fi - ZOMG! SF movies reimagined as classic pulp covers. (Via @jeremiahtolbert.)
The Avengers Intro - Firefly Style - Haha. Magnum geekery here. (Snurched from Lisa Costello.)
‘Star Trek: TNG’: Jonathan Frakes light years past ‘Farpoint’
Huge Moon Crater's Water Ice Supply Revealed
Police: Man claims leprechauns beat him up for dancing - (Via danjite.)
This is how you beat the Tea Party - A very clever video about framing in a local election over library funding. (Via David Goldman.)
Stop trying to convert me - Religion is a private thing, kind of like masturbation. And what happens if you masturbate in public? Heh.
The NPH and why evangelical Millennials can’t trust their elders - Shorter version of this post: Gays are people, too, Christian conservative leaders have been lying their asses off for the past generation about that, and the lies are becoming too obvious.
Candy canes and the manufacture of evangelical resentment - Ah, the self-valorization of the allegedly persecuted Christian. I have a number of otherwise perfectly reasonable Christian friends who honestly believe they are being persecuted in today's America. It's a bizarre narrative, to say the least, when viewed from outside their lens. Apparently none of them have ever asked any Muslim, Jew or atheist about who's persecuting whom.
Why I Gave Up On Being a Republican - What this writer does not acknowledge is the role that he and many other Republican moderates played in enabling the overwhelming growth of Republican extremism. That same Reagan Republicanism he laments was founded on the votes of bigots and extremists deliberately and cynically cultivated as useful idiots by GOP strategists like Atwater and Ailes, who never dreamed their pet lunatics would wind up running the asylum. I don't have much sympathy for woe-is-me conservatives who wake up today and wonder what happened to their party, given how clearly visible this trend has been since the 1980s, happily supported by those same conservatives when all it meant was trolling for votes. (Snurched from Slacktivist Fred Clark.)
Joe the Plumber Claims Holocaust Happened Because of German Gun Control - Shorter version of this post: Conservatives are revisionist idiots.
Obama's America: Transcending Whiteness - Although conservatives are adept at the language of national unity, many of them ignore inclusion, and even speak in an explicitly exclusionary way. The "we" the Tea Party speaks of, for instance, is carefully defined to exclude as much as include. White anxiety--the negative reaction to our increasing diversity--is one of the main drivers of support for Tea Party conservatism. It is thus a primary obstacle to increasing support for an inclusive national unity, as Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson argue in their recent groundbreaking book The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism. Reducing white anxiety must then become a priority, not only for progressives, but for anyone interested in this country's future. This is where I tend to fail as a progressive and as a compassionate human being. My response to this kind of white anxiety, which pretty much is the conservative movement these days, is disgust. I want to denounce the arrant bigotry and dismiss these people as ignorant and foolish. That is neither constructive nor accurate, but I have to work pretty hard to try to get past the impulse, and often fail.
?otD: Can you kill the beast?
6/21/2012
Writing time yesterday: 2.25 hours (work on outlines of Going to Extremes and Other Me, copy edits on Love in the Time of Metal and Flesh)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 5.75 (solid)
Weight: 239.2
Currently reading: Shattering the Ley by Benjamin Tate
The Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop: A Founder’s Perspective
But, but, but - WHY does magic have to make sense? - N.K. Jemisin makes sense. My first reaction to her essay was "b-b-b-but…" My second reaction was, "Duh, she's talking to me, Mr. Forest-for-the-Trees". Darn it, now I have to go think. (Snurched from Steve Buchheit.)
he Incredible Resilience of Books - Books will not go away, no matter what happens to publishing. (Thanks to tillyjane.)
Pulp Sci Fi - ZOMG! SF movies reimagined as classic pulp covers. (Via @jeremiahtolbert.)
The Avengers Intro - Firefly Style - Haha. Magnum geekery here. (Snurched from Lisa Costello.)
‘Star Trek: TNG’: Jonathan Frakes light years past ‘Farpoint’
Huge Moon Crater's Water Ice Supply Revealed
Police: Man claims leprechauns beat him up for dancing - (Via danjite.)
This is how you beat the Tea Party - A very clever video about framing in a local election over library funding. (Via David Goldman.)
Stop trying to convert me - Religion is a private thing, kind of like masturbation. And what happens if you masturbate in public? Heh.
The NPH and why evangelical Millennials can’t trust their elders - Shorter version of this post: Gays are people, too, Christian conservative leaders have been lying their asses off for the past generation about that, and the lies are becoming too obvious.
Candy canes and the manufacture of evangelical resentment - Ah, the self-valorization of the allegedly persecuted Christian. I have a number of otherwise perfectly reasonable Christian friends who honestly believe they are being persecuted in today's America. It's a bizarre narrative, to say the least, when viewed from outside their lens. Apparently none of them have ever asked any Muslim, Jew or atheist about who's persecuting whom.
Why I Gave Up On Being a Republican - What this writer does not acknowledge is the role that he and many other Republican moderates played in enabling the overwhelming growth of Republican extremism. That same Reagan Republicanism he laments was founded on the votes of bigots and extremists deliberately and cynically cultivated as useful idiots by GOP strategists like Atwater and Ailes, who never dreamed their pet lunatics would wind up running the asylum. I don't have much sympathy for woe-is-me conservatives who wake up today and wonder what happened to their party, given how clearly visible this trend has been since the 1980s, happily supported by those same conservatives when all it meant was trolling for votes. (Snurched from Slacktivist Fred Clark.)
Joe the Plumber Claims Holocaust Happened Because of German Gun Control - Shorter version of this post: Conservatives are revisionist idiots.
Obama's America: Transcending Whiteness - Although conservatives are adept at the language of national unity, many of them ignore inclusion, and even speak in an explicitly exclusionary way. The "we" the Tea Party speaks of, for instance, is carefully defined to exclude as much as include. White anxiety--the negative reaction to our increasing diversity--is one of the main drivers of support for Tea Party conservatism. It is thus a primary obstacle to increasing support for an inclusive national unity, as Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson argue in their recent groundbreaking book The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism. Reducing white anxiety must then become a priority, not only for progressives, but for anyone interested in this country's future. This is where I tend to fail as a progressive and as a compassionate human being. My response to this kind of white anxiety, which pretty much is the conservative movement these days, is disgust. I want to denounce the arrant bigotry and dismiss these people as ignorant and foolish. That is neither constructive nor accurate, but I have to work pretty hard to try to get past the impulse, and often fail.
?otD: Can you kill the beast?
6/21/2012
Writing time yesterday: 2.25 hours (work on outlines of Going to Extremes and Other Me, copy edits on Love in the Time of Metal and Flesh)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 5.75 (solid)
Weight: 239.2
Currently reading: Shattering the Ley by Benjamin Tate