solidhairity
My cousin came up with an interesting idea that involves sending your hair to the California Supreme Court:
some of us are married and straight. some of us are not. some of us have kids, some of us don’t. some of us are tall, others not so much. we are black and white and every shade in between. we are students and teachers, professionals, lay people, artists, writers, parents, activists, regular everyday folks. we go to church, we serve in the military, we volunteer and give our time and resources to causes we care deeply about. we are a little bit of everything you could possibly imagine.
then, something happened. now we are united by a common cause.
on november 4, 2008, Prop 8 was passed in California, overturning the constitutional right of same-sex couples to marry.
in the course of the campaign, we saw homes invaded, families separated, the private lives of our closest friends and loved ones dragged to centerstage to be mocked and ridiculed and mercilessly torn apart. we felt anger. we felt outrage. we felt panic and desperation and sorrow and a loss so profound that it has no name. the truths we hold to be self-evident were apparently and suddenly not so.
all of us felt these things.
all of us still do.we are nonviolent people deeply impacted by an inherently violent act. we see Prop 8 not simply as the revocation of one civil right from one minority group. rather, we see the implications clearly: we see a violation of all civil rights for all minority groups. because if you think your rights are protected under the law, this past election has shown that you are wrong.
that no group is safe.
that nothing is set in stone.and so, we give of ourselves. we’re cutting off our hair as an offering and a sacrifice. and we’re sending it along as a way of saying, we’re paying attention. we’re not going away.
we’re standing together, and we’re standing strong.stand with us and others by giving of your hair in Solidhairity.
Is this real life?
This kid’s post-anasthesia stupor just made my day. I’ve been there, man.
Squab Aubergine?
An Australian traveler was caught with two live pigeons stuffed in his pants following a trip to the Middle East, customs officials said Tuesday. The 23-year-old man was searched after authorities discovered two eggs in a vitamin container in his luggage. Officials also seized seeds in his money belt and an undeclared eggplant.
“The Gonzo of Coulter”
A interesting comparison of Ann Coulter to Hunter S. Thompson:
Binge drinking won’t make you gonzo, just as being blonde and opinionated won’t make you a cable-news celebrity, but these are the superficial notions harbored by the wannabe admirers of Thompson and Coulter—and also by their critics. There was a certain high-wire performance-artist ethos to Thompson’s outsized persona, just as it often seems that the entire purpose of booking Coulter on TV is the producers’ hope that she’ll finally utter the outrage that ends her career. Beneath these superficialities, however, the reader encounters writers of unquestionable talent. Thompson was capable of detailed and insightful reporting, and Coulter’s books are based on prodigious research—Guilty provides 34 pages of endnotes for a 264-page book. But in both cases, their reputations precede them, so that those who abjure the drug culture can’t get past Thompson’s stoned image to appreciate his reporting, and those who despise Republicans can’t get past Coulter’s right-wing image to appreciate her research.
Update: I also love the comments (look right of the article) which seem to confirm the overarching point, typified by one of McCain’s Thompson quotes: ““A sense of humor is not considered mandatory for those who want to get heavy into presidential politics. Junkies don’t laugh much; their gig is too serious – and the politics junkie is not much different on that score than a smack junkie.”
Star Wars a capella
via Puget News
Elizabeth Perry Drawing on Roger Ebert’s Blog
Roger Ebert reads newspapers. Does he read clusterflock?
(thanks, Jason)
quote out of context
“He cleaned up really well,” she said, “but still there were these little shreds of carrots that said, ‘I was here.’”
Hillman Curtis, Brian Eno and David Byrne
A short promotional video by Hillman Curtis for Brian Eno and David Byrne’s Everything That Happens Will Happen Today.
Hillman Curtis, One Minute Ads for Obama
I missed these lovely one minute ads by Hillman Curtis for Obama.
823 Ven, Cooper Esteban
For those who didn’t see it in comments, I wanted to point to Renner’s (aka Cooper Esteban’s) online chapbook 823 Ven. I and others consider him to be among the finest contemporary American poets. In fact, he was recognized by the New York Public Library in their poets of the 21st century. If you are interested in contemporary literature that stands with the best of the past, you should definitely take a look.
Walker Evans Postcard Collection
An exhibit of the photographer Walker Evans’ collection of 9,000 postcards is on exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Met acquired all of Evans’ postcards in 1994 along with all of his papers and negatives. The exhibit features primarily those produced before World War II, before postcards were made from original full-color photographs.
In the first room, patrons come face-to-face with 360 tightly arranged postcards of buildings, monuments and streetscapes from nearly every state. They’re grouped alphabetically; some even sparkle with glitter. New York is represented by the most cards, with scenes from every borough of New York City, where Evans lived most of his life.
The rest of the exhibition is arranged by subject, following Evans’ own methodical system of categories: Street Scenes, Summer Hotels, Fancy Architecture, Railroad Stations, Monuments, Beach Scenes, Bridges, Trains and Curiosities.
late clementine
I don’t know about the groundhog, but this clementine saw its shadow and is predicting six more weeks of winter.
Buddy Boy–a review
The film Buddy Boy apparently came out in 1999, and I don’t know how I’ve missed seeing it. I watched it on IFC’s On Demand over the weekend. This film is fucking great. The storyline involves a lonely introvert named Francis, played by Aidan Gillen (maybe you remember him in Queer as Folk), who works at a photo processing store and cares for his ailing stepmother who apparently has fistula. Read more
Forever Leather
For people who like their leather supply infomercials with a side of political commentary.
(via sullivan)
Care to
join me in a whistle?
If the very
sound of this doesn’t make you happy, then I fear there is nothing I can do for you.
The Tiddy Bear
You’ve got to dig it to dig it, you dig?
More of Thelonius Monk’s advice to saxophonist Steve Lacy (1960).
What do women want?
A NYT article on female sexuality is filled with all sorts of interesting quotables and observations:
A compact 51-year-old woman in a shirtdress, Meana explained the gender imbalance onstage in a way that complemented Chivers’s thinking. “The female body,” she said, “looks the same whether aroused or not. The male, without an erection, is announcing a lack of arousal. The female body always holds the promise, the suggestion of sex” — a suggestion that sends a charge through both men and women. And there was another way, Meana argued, by which the Cirque du Soleil’s offering of more female than male acrobats helped to rivet both genders in the crowd. She, even more than Chivers, emphasized the role of being desired — and of narcissism — in women’s desiring.
It seems that they really are a mystery since women’s physiological responses do not seem to always match up with their psychological ones.
The GRE
Micheal Bérubé, a fellow whose mind I like more than not, retakes the GRE 25 years after he entered graduate school:
But after I finished the test, tabulated my score, and had some geeky fun finding out which questions were “easy” and “hard” according to the correct-response rate, I decided that the whole thing was decidedly disappointing. Very little of the test, as far as I could see, had anything to do with gauging someone’s aptitude for graduate study in literature; it was, instead, as if I’d played an arduous two-and-a-half-hour parlor game. And that’s apparently how some departments of English treat the English GRE. Although many programs require it, my own does not, and back at my old haunt, Columbia, the graduate-admissions Web page declares, “Our department does not require the GRE Subject Test in English literature, which we regard as unsubstantive and not predictive of the quality of graduate work.” Over all, according to the most recent “MLA Guide to Doctoral Programs in English and Other Modern Languages,” 41.5 percent of English departments require the subject GRE test, whereas 96.2 percent require a writing sample. When I asked my department head whether I’d wasted my time with a test that would have no significance if I were an applicant to my own program, she said, “Pretty much, yeah. But it does sound like fun.” A supposedly fun thing, in the words of the late David Foster Wallace, that I’ll never do again.
All of this, of course, should confirm most people suspicious about the usefulness of the test. The problem, however, is that many departments still take it seriously and even use it as a benchmark for stipends despite the test’s apparent worthlessness, so saith Bérubé: “That aspect of the system strikes me as a necessary evil, since fellowship money has to be divvied up somehow, and there are no reliable qualitative measures of applicants’ talents — no good way to determine whether an incoming class is 8 percent philosophically deeper than its predecessors, or 12 percent more capable of historicizing a cultural formation.“
Truth be told, my GRE scores were one of a major reasons I gave up academics.
More on the snow
in England. This article contains video and stills both.
By the way, am I the only one who finds magic in the words East Anglia?
The 2007-2012 World Outlook for Electric Blankets
Looking for a post-holiday gift to treat yourself? Look no further than this eight hundred dollar economic treatise on the global demand for electric blankets. Sold by Target, the 185 page tome can be gift-wrapped.
Yeah, I don’t get it either.
(thanks, Jill)
what the left hand is doing
Some facts about left-handedness.
1. 8 of the 44 presidents have been left-handed. Almost double the incidence of left-handedness in the general population.
2. Favoring a particular hand is unique to humans. Neither chimps nor gorillas favor a hand.
3. The incidence of left-handedness seems to be constant throughout history.
Some of the oldest evidence of left-handedness comes from Kenya, where of a 500,000 year-old cache of 54 stone tools made by one of our pre-human ancestors, six (or about 11 percent) were chipped using the left hand. Similarly, Neanderthals working with meat and stone tools more than 150,000 years ago left marks on their teeth at left and right angles – indicating opposite hand use – in almost perfect proportion with today’s 9:1 ratio.
4. Whereas language is usually processed in the left-hemisphere for right-handed people and in the right-hemisphere for left-handed people, left-handed people also process some language in the left-hemisphere — providing for the possibility that some sort of evolutionary advantage exists for lefties.
Football IQ
The NFL uses the Wonderlic Personnel Test, a general intelligence indicator, to assess draft prospects. The test has fifty questions and has a twelve minute time limit. The questions range from basic true false, to algebraic word problems.
The minimum scores Thomas recommends to his teams are a 20 for quarterbacks, a 23 for offensive linemen, a 20 for middle linebackers and safeties, and a 15 for wide receivers and cornerbacks. “They’re more built for speed,” he says. “I don’t want to say that that’s where you put the dumb cookies, but in general that’s where they end up.” High numbers can also raise doubts—they flag potential smartasses, and a lack of the mental malleability that coaches need in players. “Another scout would figure, ‘Oh my God, this kid’s going to come in and argue with me about everything on the chalkboard,’” Thomas says.
Unrestrained capitalism?
Who’s getting rich? (Thanks to Russ’s email newsletter.)
