poukledden

Ed Brayton rips on Rich Lowry. For good reason, I might add. Go read it. Then maybe take a shower and try to scrub off the icky feeling.

While you're at it, read a bit about political correctness gone horribly wrong at Brandeis (which, uh, has developed a bit of a tendency in that direction).

That should do you until I have something coherent to say. Work yesterday was a bitch and fried my brain, as did a night of bad sleeping (as in not much sleeping at all). Off to work soon, stumble through shift, come home, collapse. Bleh.

Some really old jokes.

Read the comments on this Digg post. And the title. And the lame-ass op ed it links to. But mostly read the digg comments, because they are proof  that knee-jerk libertarian assholes have turned Digg into one ginormous sinkhole of suck. Frankly, watching the Digg frontpage anymore is a study in moronic, adolescent male behavior.

I'm sure one of you, at least, (*cough willshetterly cough cough*) will be amused by one of the comments, which says about Obama:

This disgusting, how can people root for this status quo socialist?
Go Barr and Baldwin!

Thanks to the road work being done in these parts, last night's run was an exercise in breathing in tar fumes and getting a big old headache. Decided not to run tonight, will probably try again tomorrow night, maybe a different route (to the U of A farm, perhaps) that doesn't involve tarred streets.

Biking on those streets is also fun. The other night I had to pick tarry pebbles out of my hair when I got home from work. Luv-lee.

My sister shared a cool op ed from the New York Times about the emerging dialog and changing societal consciousness on animal right issues, written by a non-vegetarian who nonetheless gets it. Definitely worth a read.

I had a celebrity pop in over at Atheist A Go-Go!. There's actually a really cool link in that post that you want to read anyway, an interview with a gay Christian pastor who is, to say the least, Pretty Damn Cool. It's one of those things that will make you feel good about this silly species of ours.

One of the joys of following links on the intertubes --

Deeper in the Game ( "Media Analysis and the border of rational discussion"), which in general has been stoking my interest in looking at games and such from the perspective of power relations (racism, sexism, heterosexism, you name it), pointed me to this discussion of fascist imagery in games, which clued me into Umberto Eco's must-read essay on Ur-Fascism, and also to Merlin Missy's "How to Be A Fandom Jerk in Just a Few Easy Steps."

There's so much awesomeness in there, so much thinking to think. If you can only read one, read them all. And man, that last one reminded me of more than a few encounters on the intertubes.

Yeah, I've been a bit quiet. Just been that kind of week, storms in the head that can't be translated, right at this moment at least, into words. In the meantime: LInkage!

True Colors: an archaeologist brings the colors of ancient statues to life. Nifty.

Head Fake: the common idea now is that depression is a matter of chemical imbalances. New research is showing the story is far more complex and interesting.