This blogaround is brought to you by Shaxco, maker of Downtown Deeky's Miner's Helmets (NSFW explanation here)
I don't know about y'all, but this is what I'm reading right now:
Sujatha Sundar: Memory vs. Memory
nj.com News: U.S. Census allows same-sex couples in N.J. to identify themselves as married
Southern Fried Science: Ethical Debate: Captive whale sharks
Your Small Kitchen Garden: Start Seeds in Pots for Your Small Kitchen Garden
Two from Ed Yong: Requests work better than orders, even when we're asking or ordering ourselves; and
Attack of the killer tomato fungus driven by mobile weapons package
A Public Space: An Irrelevant Writer: Shen Congwen by Yiyun Li
Via Reading Local: Portland, the Writer's Dojo is accepting applications for their 2010 Writer-in-Residency program at Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. The application deadline is April 9th.
The Institute of Urban Homesteading in Oakland, California has added another Cheesemaking 101 class on April 27th, since their others are full. Here is a complete calendar of their classes. You might want to check them out if you are in the area and can afford $30-$50 in fees.
Leave your links in comments!
Friday Blogaround
Quote(s) of the Day
Dueling quotes from the same story:
"I think the press was muzzled, and I think the press self-muzzled. I'm sorry to say, but certainly television and, perhaps, to a certain extent, my station was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News. And it did, in fact, put a climate of fear and self-censorship, in my view, in terms of the kind of broadcast work we did.", Christiane Amanpour, on the press and the quality of reporting (re: being rigorous in questioning) during Bush years and the Iraq war.
"Given the choice, it's better to be viewed as a foot soldier for Bush than a spokeswoman for al-Qaeda.", Irena Brigant, Fox News spokeswoman, responding to what Amanpour said above.
I Am Inflamed!
Literally.
Over the past few days, a pain that hangs out in my left side on a fairly regular basis crawled into my chest, back, left shoulder, and neck, until I was in excruciating pain. There is no comfortable position in which to stand, sit, or lie, because even breathing is agony like I cannot describe. So I went to the doctor yesterday, and I was diagnosed with costochondritis, which is an inflammation of the cartilage and bones in the torso.
To which I can only say: OWWWWowowowOOWWWWOOOOWWWW!!! OW!
I've been prescribed a superstrength anti-inflammatory and rest. I've taken the first, and now I'm going to go do the second. While trying to breathe as little as possible, lolsob.
Touch wood, I'll see you Monday, Shakers.
(Yes, I am aware that chronic costochrondritis could be a symptom of Lupus or fibromyalgia. My doctor sent me for a complete blood work-up yesterday, and I've got a follow-up appointment in two weeks, so that's something about which to worry another day.)
Question of the Day
Assuming you had an unlimited amount of money to design & furnish it any way you want:
What would your "dream room" be like?
Myself, I'd have a three season room with huge windows, hickory hardwood floors, and the back wall would have a cozy wood burning fireplace. There would be bookshelves on the non-windowed wall space filled with books, and two giant overstuffed chairs in front of the fireplace (along with a lovely, soft rug). There would be lovely wood tables by the chairs, just the perfect size for setting a cup of hot tea, a book, and a Tiffany-style lamp.
It's not grandiose but it sure is perfect, for me.
For the life of me, I can't recall if we've done this one before. I searched the archives but I didn't see it.
Feel the Homomentum!
Gay marriage support is up almost ten percent among college freshmen:
Sixty-five percent of college freshmen surveyed last fall support gay marriage, up from 56% in 2000. Since the survey began asking about the topic in 1997, research indicates that support for same-sex marriage has jumped 21 percentage points among left-leaning students, 16 percentage points among politically moderate students, and two percentage points among right-leaning students.It's only a matter of time.
A "Conniving and Sinister" Classic
Originally published Thursday, October 15, 2009.
See the archive of all previous Conniving & Sinister strips here.
[In which Liss reimagines the long-running comic "Frank & Ernest," about two old straight white guys "telling it like it is," as a fat feminist white woman and a biracial queerbait telling it like it actually is from their perspectives. Hilarity ensues.]
Stupak to Nuns: STFU
I may be paraphrasing slightly:
Congressman Bart Stupak, D-Mich, responded sharply to White House officials touting a letter representing 59,000 nuns that was sent to lawmakers urging them to pass the health care bill.Surprise, surprise.
The conservative Democrat dismissed the action by the White House saying, "When I'm drafting right to life language, I don’t call up the nuns." He says he instead confers with other groups including "leading bishops, Focus on the Family, and The National Right to Life Committee."
Bat Peril Update
Pictured at left is a Virginia big-eared bat.
Last June, I wrote about White Nose Syndrome (WNS), a disease of cave-dwelling bats in the northeastern United States. Bats with WNS awake from hibernation frequently and fail to maintain enough body fat to survive the winter. The starving WNS bats have white fungus on their muzzles. The previously-uncharacterized Geomyces fungus species associated with WNS has now been named Geomyces destructans, but it remains unclear whether the bats have an underlying immune deficiency that renders them susceptible to fungal infection.
One of the species affected by WNS is the endangered Virginia big-eared bat. Five thousand of the remaining Virginia big-eared bats live in West Virginia's Hellhole cave, which is now affected by WNS. Last week, Wired Science reported that a desperate attempt to preserve the species by establishing a breeding colony in captivity is not going well. Brandon Keim writes,A fierce attempt to keep endangered Virginia big-eared bats alive in captivity has shown just how difficult that noble task may be.
The effort was prompted by the discovery of white nose syndrome, an extremely virulent disease that has killed more than a million bats since 2007, in one of the handful of caves where Virginia big-eared bats live. Of 40 bats moved to the Smithsonian National Zoo last November, only 11 have survived.
“We were not under the illusion that it was going to be easy. It’s certainly not a surprise to us that the bats died. But the number of bats that died is greater than we had hoped,” said Jeremy Coleman, white nose syndrome coordinator at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
[snip]
Unlike fruit-eating bats, insect-eating bats like the Virginia big-eared are notoriously difficult to raise in captivity. Accustomed to catching insects on the wing, many of the bats refused to eat worms from pans. Stressed from relocation and habituated to cave-specific temperatures and humidity, others developed runaway bacterial infections. Despite constant attention from researchers, 29 of the bats died.
The surviving 11 big-eared bats may yet breed, so here's wishing them luck. It might be too late for this species.
Another development in WNS work is more encouraging. The journal Science reports that Geomyces destructans has been found in healthy European bats. In "Europe's Bats Resist Fungal Scourge of North America", Erik Stokstad reports thatThe same fungus that has devastated bat colonies in the northeastern United States has been identified for the first time in Europe—in a healthy bat. "The astonishing thing is that [the fungus] affects North American bats so devastatingly, but that European bats can get along with it," says Christian Voigt, a bat physiologist at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) in Berlin.
[snip]
On 12 March, Sébastien Puechmaille of University College Dublin (UCD) spotted a mouse-eared bat (Myotis myotis) covered with fungus in a cave 130 kilometers northeast of Bordeaux, France. Microscopic examination of the spores and two molecular markers showed that it was G. destructans, the team reported online 29 December in Emerging Infectious Diseases. Another group, led by Gudrun Wibbelt of IZW, has also identified the fungus in bats from three other European countries, none reporting bat deaths. Their results have been submitted to the same journal.
Now the challenge is to figure out why most European bats are not infected and why those that are remain healthy—and whether that knowledge can be used to help ailing bat populations in the United States. One scenario is that G. destructans has been present in Europe for a long time, and European bat species have evolved immunity, says Emma Teeling of UCD, the senior author of the December paper. Or perhaps the fungus evolved greater virulence after arriving in North America, a possibility that could be investigated with further sequencing.
It's going to take much work and luck, but I hope that more information about the natural history of G. destructans infection in European bats leads to prevention or treatment for threatened U.S. bat populations.
Lt. Dan Choi Arrested
The whole story is here at Towleroad. (Refresh the page at the link, as the story is still being updated.)
The long and the short of it is Lt. Choi and Captain Jim Pietrangelo chained themselves to the White House fence today in protest of DADT and were, after a time, arrested by the Secret Service.
The protest began this afternoon when Lt. Choi requested persmission to speak at a Kathy Griffin/Human Rights Campaign "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" rally. HRC President Joe Solmonese nixed the idea, saying the event was "Kathy Griffin's rally."
Griffin, who is, to the best of my knowledge, neither gay nor in the military, let Choi take the stage anyway.
Choi and Pietrangelo then led a about a hundred or so fellow protesters to the White House fence where they chained themselves. About an hour later the two were arrested.
Blog Note
Liss took a little time this morning to take care of some personal business. Now it looks like that is going to take all day. Expect her back tomorrow, Shakers.
This is a real thing in the world.
(Mildly NSFW, more after the jump.)
Oral Sex Light. "Don't go down without it!"
I guess if it helps you get the job done, and you don't mind looking like a Time-Life operator, give it a whirl. Could double as a book light too, in a pinch. Personally, I prefer a miner's helmet, myself.
Today in Post-Racial America
Sunday evening at a suburban Wal-mart in New Jersey, someone took control of the store's PA and calmly announced "Attention Wal-Mart customers: All black people leave the store now."
Wal-Mart officials said they're reviewing security tapes to find out who made the announcement. Washington Township police, with the assistance of the Gloucester County Prosecutor's Office, are investigating the episode as a possible hate crime.
A company spokesperson called the incident "unacceptable," according to the AP, and "the retailer is looking to prevent it from happening in the future."
If only Wal-mart could end racism in America so easily.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker Phledge: What's your favorite excuse?
I'm going to have to call it a tie between "I was delayed; I was waylaid—an emergency stop, I smelled the last ten seconds of life. I crashed down on the crossbar, and the pain was enough to make a shy, bald Buddhist reflect and plan a mass murder." and "I was on the moon. With Steve!"
(Mozza and Izzard. I'm nothing if not predictable.)
Nuns to Bishops: STFU
I may be paraphrasing slightly:
A group of Catholic nuns is urging Congress to pass health care reform, breaking ranks with bishops who say the current bill does not do enough to block federal money from being used to fund abortions.Interesting, that.
"We write to urge you to cast a life-affirming 'yes' vote when the Senate health care bill (H.R. 3590) comes to the floor of the House for a vote as early as this week," a group of nuns wrote in a letter to members of Congress released Wednesday by NETWORK, progressive Catholic advocacy organization.
NETWORK said the 55 signatories represent tens of thousands of Catholic nuns in the United States.
The letter argues that the legislation "will make crucial investments in community health centers that largely serve poor women and children."
"And despite false claims to the contrary, the Senate bill will not provide taxpayer funding for elective abortions," the letter reads. "It will uphold longstanding conscience protections and it will make historic new investments – $250 million – in support of pregnant women. This is the REAL pro-life stance, and we as Catholics are all for it."
