I didn't take my laptop with me on my East Coast trip, mostly because I figured we'd be out and about a lot, especially in New York. I was mostly correct in this, so I fell a little behind on world events while I was gone, which is probably just as well.

• I found this overview of the violent protest in Berkeley this Saturday to be a good and ( Read more... )

Anyone else think that they referred to last night's speech as an address rather than his first State of the Union as a ploy to keep expectations low? Just me? Okay.

• If it was intentional, it sure seems to have worked -- mainstream media spent last night and today falling all over themselves to congratulate the president for his ability to read ( Read more... )

I had thoughts on the article about the agent who asked two authors to de-gay their YA novel (a story which has now come under dispute by the agent in question; my thoughts on the resulting pushback are best summed up in this tweet by Scott Westerfeld, but I digress). It turns out that
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Presumably most of you have heard by now about the awful homophobic retelling of "Hamlet" written by Orson Scott Card. I don't know whether to be happier that I stopped giving money to OSC years ago, or sorrier that I can't yank every penny away now.

On the bright side, it did inspire scott_lynch to write this brilliant parody of how OSC might re-imagine ( Read more... )

Tomorrow morning we leave for a week in New York City. Very excited to be taking our first real vacation in over two years, and especially excited that it's in New York, a city that I love. The last time I went there with T, it was 2003, and January, and in the middle of a cold snap that kept temperatures hovering around zero degrees for most of ( Read more... )

Straight guy complains about gay romance in Dragon Age 2 (including a blanket dismissal of women gamers, as a bonus); BioWare employee tells him to "get over it".

The BioWare response makes me so happy. It is just about perfect. He even cites male privilege. I thought about saying more, but the blog entry linked above pulls the right quotes and ( Read more... )

Though I haven't talked about it much, I've continued to follow the various Proposition 8 trials and tribulations with great interest. Right now it's at the appeals stage; the hearing was about a month ago, at the federal courthouse about a block from my workplace. I happened to head that direction for lunch that day -- not on purpose, just by ( Read more... )

I hope you have all seen by now the most excellent news that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was found unconstitutional by a district court judge yesterday. News that was, for me, made all the more welcome by the fact that I didn't even know the law had been challenged in court, and so it came as a wonderful surprise ( Read more... )

Two on the Proposition 8 decision. First, a "quick and easy summary", written in plain English, about the basis of the decision. It's probably the simplest explanation I've seen, good for passing on to people who don't know much about the issue.

For more detailed analysis, including lots of great quotes, I direct you to this Open Left article, " ( Read more... )

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