Friday, July 25, 2014

Friday Links!

It's Friday! And we're getting ready to leave town to attend a wedding. So I'm running around a little crazed right now...

Here's a collection of news and other things that struck me as worthy of being shared:

Beware a bro who knows what he 'deserves': the friendzone is only purgatory if women's decisions are less valid.

Wingnut Nurse Sues Family Planning Center For Not Giving Her Job Just Because She Says She Won’t Do Job.

James Garner, Witty, Handsome Leading Man, Dies at 86. While I am old enough to have seen and loved him as Brett Maverick, he'll always be James Scott "Jimmy" Rockford to me... except when he's being King Marchand.

Fort Worth Is Recruiting Gay Cops, and They Won't Even Be Openly Harassed by Colleagues.

An important perspective... Even if I don't agree with all of his points. The Shifting Landscape on LGBT Issues in the Evangelical Church.

Really bad and inaccurate headline. Most progressives I know do completely understand this. What we continue to not get is why folks like the author keep apologizing for the irrational bigotry of the fundamentalists, and why he and others keep referring to the fundamentalist evangelicals as merely traditional. What progressives fundamentally don't get about traditional Christians.

Elephants' Superior Sense Of Smell Beats Out Other Mammals In Surprising New Study.

Calling for a Debate Over Pluto's Nature.

Moose drool can undermine grass defenses.

Why Has the Sun Gone So Quiet? - because it's plotting something nefarious!!!

Bats can navigate using polarized light.

All You Need To Know About the 10% Brain Myth, in 60 Seconds.

NASA releases never-before-seen supernova photos from Chandra Observatory.

'Weird Al' Yankovic hits No. 1 with 'Mandatory Fun'.

You guys, will you please pipe down so Sen. Rubio can dismantle your deserved freedoms?

John Boehner Finally Confirms Bush is Responsible for Immigration Crisis, Admits Obama is Trying to Fix It.

Michael Brown will save his waning movement by grouping homosexuality with incest.

Quickly And Quietly, Rep. Jared Polis Just Created A New LGBT Rights Bill.

Woman Says She Overheard IBM Execs Say They Won’t Hire Women Because They Get ‘Pregnant Again And Again’.

Tessa Hartmann: John Barrowman’s gay kiss at Commonwealth Games was ‘inappropriate for children’.

A New Face for the ‘Ex-Gay’ Movement.

Sci-Fi: why do so many gays love it?

Who Owns Science Fiction/Fantasy?

And I wrote about typos: I am the king of typos.



Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert battle for title of World's Biggest Star Wars Fan!:



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'Weird Al' Yankovic Explains the Internet to Fox business reporter:



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George Takei Tells How He Was Sent To An Internment Camp At Age 5. And Somehow It’s Not Horrifying!:



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Wicked Medley - Peter Hollens & Nick Pitera:



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MNEK - Wrote A Song About You:



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Futile & Fooled - Brett Gleason (Official Video):



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Pomplamoose covers Cher - Believe (In Life After Love):



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"Weird Al" Yankovic - Mission Statement:



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Friday, July 18, 2014

Friday Links (with Weird Al)!

It's Friday! Again. And this week I really, really, really am glad that the weekend's here.

Here's a collection of news and other things that struck me as worthy of being shared:

Red Lobster Comps Widow's Check on Anniversary.

In case you needed more proof that the ex-gay movement is a fraud: Pastor Duane Youngblood, author of the book Freedom From Homosexuality: No Longer Living The Lie, was arrested for molesting a teenage boy dozens of times. But wait! This should be a surprise to no one. Back in 2006, the very same year his ex-gay book came out, Youngblood was arrested for molesting a 15-year-old boy in his church office! And that 2006 arrest wasn't the first time...

One of the very few attempts to render a male superhero costume in the same ridiculously "sexy" female supers are routinely drawn: Why Must Dudes Ruin Perfectly Good Superheroine and Action Franchises with Their Requests for Diversity?

Research: Human friendships based on genetic similarities beyond the superficial.

Church of England approves women bishops for first time in history.

CNBC's Climate "Expert": "Demonization Of Carbon Dioxide Is Just Like" Demonization Of "Jews Under Hitler".

ENDA: The Nightmare Scenario in Which GOPers Push a Bad Bill That Gay Groups Dropped.

Non-Believers Win A Decisive Court Victory In Indiana.

Churyumov-Gerasimenko is a contact binary!.

The distorting reality of ‘false balance’ in the media.

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) Calls for Death of Comic Creator.

A History of Throwing Shade for Black Women and Gay White Men. Before "white gays" copied it from black women, black women stole if from black gays...

Why do we have blood types? Scientists still trying to figure out the evolutionary reason for blood types.

Arizona Politician Mistakes YMCA Campers For Undocumented Children. Warning: auto-playing video on site (grrrr)

Marvel Comics Just Made Thor Female, And Conservatives Are Furious.

NBC STRAIGHTWASHES JOHN CONSTANTINE.

File this under "Duh!" Studies: Stand Your Ground Laws Lead To More Homicides, Don't Deter Crime.

Salem Mayor: ‘Apparently, Glenn Beck Is Not Happy With Us’. City hall inundated with angry calls from homophobes, starts donating to gay youth charity.

Blues Guitarist Johnny Winter Dies At 70.

‘Nano-pixels’ promise thin, flexible, high-resolution displays.

Connecticut Supreme Court: Same-Sex Marriage Rights Are Retroactive.

California Experiences Warmest, 3rd Driest Year Since 1895.

Robert Reich: Deadbeat 1 percenters endanger U.S. democracy.

'Bye Sierra': A Slightly Angry Queer Response to the Sierra Mannie Controversy.

In case you missed it, earlier this week I had a more concise, less angry response to the same weird op-ed piece: Confessions of a white homo devil, part 3.

Matt Alber Covers "Walking on Sunshine":



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National treasure “Weird Al” Yankovic is releasing a new video each doy this week of a parody of a hit song. This was Tuesday's, which is my second favorite thus far, Weird Al's parody of Blurred Lines, Word Crimes:



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Jenny Lewis - Just One Of The Guys [Official Music Video]:



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Church of England Votes to Allow Women Bishops:



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Exclusive "Weird Al" Yankovic Music Video: FOIL (Parody of "Royals" by Lorde):



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Sunday, July 13, 2014

Sunday Funnies, part 3

In my continuing effort to get more people to read some of my favorite web comics, may I recommend...

(The recommendations and short reviews are at FontFolly.Net.)

Friday, July 11, 2014

Friday Links!

It's Friday!

Again!

I mean, wow, where did the week go?

Here's a collection of news and other things that struck me as worthy of being shared:

Why Classic Rock Isn’t What It Used To Be. Five-thirty-eight dot com looks at the statistics of radio play. (Thanks to MintRainbow1 for the link)

BBC staff ordered to stop airing "debates" featuring members of the anti-science fringe. (Thanks to Wildrider51 for the link)

Five Legitimate Scientific Controversies. None of them are probably what you're thinking they are.

Physicists spot potential source of 'Oh-My-God' particles. This has nothing to do with the Higgs Boson.

New Species Found in an Everyday, Store-Bought Mushroom Packet.

World's biggest-ever flying bird discovered: Twice as big as the royal albatross.

New Horizons Enters ‘Pluto-Space!’ To Celebrate, Here Are Pictures Of The Dwarf Planet.

Listen to the Oldest Song in the World: A Sumerian Hymn Written 3,400 Years Ago.

Should the LGBT Rights Movement Forgive and Forget?

Supernova Reveals Origins of Universe's Dust.

Guy Finds FBI Tracking Device On Car, Posts Pics Online... FBI Shows Up Demanding It Back.

Gay Marriage Ban Overturned in Colorado, But Utah Just Made Things Really Interesting.

Astronomers Discover Milky Way Galaxy's Most Distant Stars.

Claiborne Richardson Wants Pictures of a Kid's Cock. Richardson is an Assistant Attorney General in Manassas, Virginia, who is trying to prosecute a teen-age boy on the charge of "creating child porn" not because the teen-ager created porn, but because the teen-ager sent a picture of himself naked to his teen-age girlfriend. Claiborne has ordered police to take pictures of the kid naked, and then got a warrant from a judge ordering the kid to be taken to a hospital, pumped full of drugs to make him have an erection, and take pictures of him like that in order to prove that the pictures the kid sent his girlfriend are him. This is insane. If a kid taking a picture of himself naked with his cellphone is producing child porn, isn't all this picture taking by the police also producing child porn?

Adam Lambert channels the hell out of Freddy Mercury. Wow (and awesome to see Brian and Roger still rocking!):



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Freaks Like Me by Todrick Hall:



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Jessie Ware - Tough Love:



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My secret boyfriend, Mika, sings a wonderfully bouncy tune in French while rocking a Fist Full of Dollars/Lawrence of Arabia/James Bond/Maltese Falcon/is there a classic movie they didn't hit homage!:



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Friday, July 4, 2014

Friday Links - Happy Independence Day!

It's Friday! It is the first Friday in July, it is a big holiday, and by the time you read this, I will be two days into my vacation where I am attending both a tabletop gaming convention and a My Little Pony: Friendship is magic convention. My husband and I are such nerds!

Here's a collection of news and other things that struck me as worthy of being shared:

I wrote about our experience at this year's Pride Parade (and included a bunch of picture) Show Your Colors.

Avoiding “Sagan Syndrome.” Why Astronomers and Journalists should pay heed to Biologists about Extra Terrestrial Intelligence. This is awesome for the explanation of time scales alone!

GOP Candidate Charges Opponent Is Dead, Replaced By A Body Double. Also issues pledge that he, unlike dead, replaced opponent, is human. Wow. Big thanks to Deeptriviality for the link!

GOP Hopeful: My Public Masturbation Fetish and Felonies Were Bad Ideas.

The Normal Heart's Problematic White Men. Not quite what you think.

"Rarely have so few overlooked so many to claim so much based on so little." A review of a book by two guys patting themselves on the back for joining the marriage equality fight a couple of years ago.

Drain on My Parade: Did the Human Rights Campaign Sell Us Out on ENDA and Outsource LGBT Rights? Well, yes.

[GUEST POST] Catherine Lundoff on LGBT Science Fiction and Fantasy in the 1990s.

Extinct Humans Passed High-Altitude Gene to Tibetans.

5 states trying to make their kids scientifically illiterate.

SEATTLE DRAG QUEEN MAMA TITS CONFRONTS CHRISTIAN PROTESTERS AT PRIDE - VIDEO.

Not a Former Lesbian: Bisexual Women Discuss Their Long-term Relationships with Men.

Funnel-Shaped Animals Invented Reefs Prior to Cambrian Explosion.

Fantastically Wrong: The Legendary Scientist Who Swore Our Planet Is Hollow.

'Jesus' Went To The Chicago Gay Pride Parade With A Very Important Message.

Kentucky Baptist Church Agrees To Hold Its First Same-Sex Wedding.

N.H. Supreme Court sides with birth mother’s ex-partner in custody case.

John Oliver on Uganda's Anti-Gay Laws and the Role of American Hater Scott Lively:

Continuing the Daily Show's tradition on his new HBO series by covering a serious, important story that the big media ignores. It really is worth the full 17 minutes. It's funny, sad, horrifying, and an incredible interview at the end. (If embedding doesn't work, click here.)



♫ Ginsburg's Hobby Lobby Dissent | Song A Day #2007: