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Happy Halloween!
Have fun and stay safe!
HIV and AIDS have been here longer than we suspected…
According to a PageOneQ article, the virus first entered the country in 1969. Does this mean that the blood services will revise their “men who had sex with other men even once” will be changed from 1977 to 1969?
Randi Rhodes has something against me…
I attempted to sign up for The Randi Rhodes Show forum. Without explanation, my account was deleted several times. I hadn’t even posted anything. Now they seem to have blocked my IP from even looking at the boards. Thank you Randi. You’ve lost yourself a listener. I encourage anyone else who reads this to stop listening as well.
California
My sympathies and wishes for quick recovery go to everyone affected by the California wildfires.
Head Homo In Charge
By now you’ve heard the “news”. The late Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts was gay. Naturally, the revelation of the sexuality of a fictional character has sparked a gamut of emotion from disgust and outrage on the ridiculous right to praise and pride on the loony left and everything in between.
postmodernbarney.com calls Rowling craven for this after the fact tidbit. Time magazine states a similar line of thought, albeit less strongly worded. Comments on the more matter-of-fact CNN article are very diverse being both supportive and derisive. From these comments you can discern the fact that many, many Christian people are buying and reading these books despite the book burnings call for by the Dobson-like right-wing drones/clones.
First, a comment on the possible “satanic” nature of Harry Potter. There isn’t any. Wizardry in this fictional universe isn’t accomplished by calling on outside powers. It appears to be an innate ability of the magic users. This would seem to make wizards and witches a subspecies of humanity rather than ordinary humans selling their soul to defy the laws of the universe. Rowling’s universe contains no other dimensions, worlds, realms, etc… It’s merely differently talented people getting along in a world where they are outnumbered by the less powerful masses.
Second, is Rowling craven or an attention whore for her post-completion news? I don’t think so. First, the stories are told from the point of view of Harry Potter and his friends, not Dumbledore, the muggles, the ministry of magic or any of the Hogwarts faculty. Harry Potter has a lot of issues and is kept busy by the fact that someone is attempting to kill him. This would preclude him from noticing or attempting to discern the sexuality of his teacher; a man who is supposed to be approximately 110 years old. I know that in school, I really didn’t care who my teachers slept with, especially if they were old enough to collect social security, and I didn’t have anyone on my tail trying to blast me into atoms. I also speculate that Dumbledore wasn’t fully formed in the first couple of books and this may not have yet been a fact. Rowling started writing the first book in 1990 when Fraulein Thatcher was still in charge of the UK and Bush I was still infecting the US. Not exactly an ideal time to insert a gay character into a story aimed at children. This probably came about during the third or fourth book when Dumbledore’s role become much more prominent. Apparently clues are slipped in at this time, but my rather quick reading of the books a couple of years ago caused me to miss them. However, a coworker of mine says she kinda knew all along. I never claimed to have perfect gaydar.
Whatever you think of this, the fact remains that Dumbledore’s sexuality isn’t mentioned in the books and has no effect on the stories. For those on the right that are now calling the books garbage, enjoy them and do what you do best. Keep your children in ignorance of this fact. For those on the left claiming Rowling a coward, lighten up. It’s just a story.
Not So Unnatural After All
Same sex mating is seen in species other than homo sapiens sapiens. Sometimes with results…
Gotta keep ‘em separated!
A commentator from mysa.com reguritates the usual drivel about the separation of church and state. He states:
The Founding Fathers and the Supreme Court were quite clear that Christianity was the established religion and was to be involved in the government.
Someone should tell Mr. Kaye that the first amendment’s establishment clause does not include the words: except for christianity.
He should also be aware that a number of state constitutions have equal or greater protection for the separation concept. Ironically, Utah contains one of the strongest statements against the joining of church and state as evidenced in the Utah Declaration of Rights:
The rights of conscience shall never be infringed. The State shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office of public trust or for any vote at any election; nor shall any person be incompetent as a witness or juror on account of religious belief or the absence thereof. There shall be no union of Church and State, nor shall any church dominate the State or interfere with its functions. No public money or property shall be appropriated for or applied to any religious worship, exercise or instruction, or for the support of any ecclesiastical establishment.
He should also read some more James Madison, the primary author of the constitution. The Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assesments is particularly enlightening and even predates the constitution.
Feeling Nostalgic
Enjoy my favorite song from the eighties:
The Children of the Night, What Music They Make
Friday is the opening of “30 Days of Night”. I read the source material a few years ago and wasn’t overly impressed. However the trailer looks interesting. It conveys a real sense of hopelessness.
Almost as many excuses as Bush has for Iraq
Now Senator Larry Craig claims he was profiled by the police.
Coincidence?
A mere day after I post my vampiric “Bush v. Liberty” tattoo image, one of Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish readers calls our current state of affairs “vampire politics“. Who woulda thought tattoo artists and southern university professors would think alike?
Childrens heal thyselves
Currently we have the two sides of the aisle in Congress wrangling over the extension of the SCHIP program. This got me thinking about the health industry and compensation as a whole. Doctors earn a lot of money to ensure a high degree of devotion and accuracy in the services they perform and to encourage research and advancement. A similar line of thought applies to pharmaceutical companies. Drugs have a high price, at least initially, because of high research costs and profit encourages the company to develop new and/or improved products to improve the human condition.
President Bush vetoed the current SCHIP bill because he believes that people should be finding their insurance in the private market. However, an insurance company is designed as an instrument to share risks among a group and transfer wealth from one party (the patient) to another (the doctor/health care provider). A private insurance company has the legal duty to enrich it’s shareholders to the maximum extent possible. It does this by collecting as large a premium from its policyholders it can and paying health care providers and pharmaceutical companies as little as possible for the services they render and products they sell.
The insurance companies have a vital row in allowing many people to afford treatment for which they would not be able to pay if the risk was not shared. However, the insurance company offers no innovation in this process. Now, here’s the point of this whole thing. Because of the importance of medicine in human survival and the value we place (or purport to place in some cases) on human life, should the insurance role, which while important is merely one of weath transfer, be allowed to be a profitable one? Would converting all insurance companies to non-profit or mutual organizations (where profits are re-distributed to policyholders in the form of dividends or reduced premiums), or high regulation (limiting the amount of profit, creating legal requirements for what treatments must be covered, who must be accepted or rejected as a policyholder or what rates could be charged) at the federal level of for-profit companies lower the price of insurance premiums to the point the every American (with an income) could afford it?
The movie Damaged Care describes an interesting view of the health care industry.
In the flesh…
Personally, I would think twice before committing myself to this type of an image forever embedded on my flesh. After all, Bush won’t be president forever. (Thank God.) But the image is just so visceral yet poignant I had to post it. Check out other tattoos that people regret or love on MSNBC.
Reap what you sow
Have you caught the CW Network show Reaper yet? I’ve managed to watch the first three episodes (after the fact, the show conflicts with House and it can’t compete with Hugh Laurie) and it’s actually better than I expected. OK, I had very low expectations. The concept isn’t the most original but the cast seems fresh and the somewhat talented. Ray Wise is a typical suave villain and Bret Harrison is they typical twenty-something lead. There is something very atypical about it.
This comes in the form of Tyler Labine. (Anyone know how his last name is pronounced? Is it La-Bean or La-b-eye-n?) Labine’s Bert Wysocki is a friendly, harmless slacker with a sometimes quick wit and a fierce loyalty to his best friend. Labine’s appearance is very atypical of our overly image conscious society. He’s a bearded, scruffy and not exactly taught bear of a man, exemplified in the second episode when he (and the other two members of team Soul Retrieval) wear skin tight scuba suits. Some might think this an example of talent overcoming appearance, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. To me, he’s the sexiest thing on the show; a lovely friendly, witty bearcub. I first encountered Labine in the movie Antitrust. This second rate Hackers (it’s less exciting and well written, but the computing part is much more accurate) didn’t give him a showcase for his talents, but I look forward to his other work. In fact Invasion is in the Netflix queue.
I suspect that Reaper won’t last past the original thirteen episode order and that some of those may never be broadcast, but I can hope I’m wrong in this case.
Can he swing from a thread? No he can’t, he’s a pig…
In the where are they now category, will we ever see Spider Pig (aka Harry Plopper) again?
Sweet merciful crap!
Time flies when you’ve got too much to do. I’ve been taking some night classes for work and here it is over two weeks since my last post. I even missed announcing my contest.
So here it is:
The contest will run from the time of this post to midnight on December 14th, 2007. It’s a contest for the most number of comments. The top four commenters will win a copy of “A Wrinkle in Time” by Madeliene L’Engle. Just a few rules:
- Comments must be at least five words long.
- Comments must reference the post or a previous comment that references the post.
- Any post is eligible.
- Multiple consecutive comments will count as one.
- You must be willing to provide a mailing address in the United States and to certify you are of age of majority in your state of residence.
I’ll attempt to write at least one post per day to accommodate the contest and I’ve removed the requirement for the first post to be moderated.
Happy commenting!