tingilinde

democracy as been hacked

Al Gore gives an impassioned speech at the Stephen Schneider memorial at Stanford last week.

Al Gore @ Stanford | April 23, 2013 from Cyperus Media.com on Vimeo.

on women

The GOP made it sure women don't have equal rights under the Constitution and seem to be blocking equal pay laws ...  of course this may be moot as they block all labor laws that are aimed at the 99%.  Society has changed but there is still a distance to go.

It is curious that most of the young women I've mentioned equal rights to believe they have Constitutional protection.  Somehow news of the ERA's defeat hasn't made it down through time.

the ghost of gun control

fading away - a video editorial in the NY Times

gun control and political suicide

On the difference between politicians in Australia and the US

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Too often the shows like this and the Colbert Report get to the heart of the matter while mainstream media fails.

a great editorial on how many politicians have given up on people in favor of special interests

Gabby GIffords in the NY Times.

and gun deaths since Sandy Hook are nowover 3,500 (this is a lower bound) - quite a bit greater than 9/11.

 

 

a contracting market

The PC market appears to be beginning a contraction - there is much gnashing of teeth with various sources being suggested -- Windows 8, non-Windows tablets, the economy, and so on...

Horace Dediu is one of the few blogging analysts who goes beyond shallow analysis.  His post on Asymco makes some interesting points on economic value in the market.   Near commodity markets with razor thin profit margins are not exactly healthy...   Not a good time to be someone  in the Wintel ecosystem.

 

 

boston

We were in Boston yesterday leaving shortly after three, but were completely unaware of the event as we weren't listening to the radio during the long drive back to New Jersey.

Such a sad thing..

I worry that the media and people in general will rush to judgement to reflect their own biases.  I hope not, but that seems to be the norm.

 

the temperature of hell must be less than 0° C

The Mormon church's shifting position on the politics of gay marriage. 

Proposition 8 as a pyrrhic victory

snip

...

The church's anti-gay positions and lobbying on gay marriage have always been divisive. In 2000, during the fight over the Knight Initiative, a young gay Mormon named Stuart Matis killed himself on the steps of a Mormon ward in Los Altos, California. In a letter to his cousin shortly before his suicide, he despaired over the impact of the church's political activities on Mormon families: "On the night of March 7th, many California couples will retire to their beds thrilled that they helped pass the Knight Initiative. What they don't realize is that in the next room, their son or daughter is lying in bed crying and could very well one day be the victim of society's homophobia. The Knight Initiative will certainly save no family. It is codified hatred. It is anti-family, anti-love and it is wrong."

But Matis' death didn't slow the church's efforts to beat back same-sex marriage initiatives. In 2008, after the California Supreme Court briefly legalized gay marriage in the state, the Latter Day Saints lent their formidable organizing skills and networks to the Prop. 8 effort, sending canvassers door to door by zip code—sometimes as many as 25,000 per weekend—much as they send out missionaries to spread the Gospel. The church has been credited with almost single-handedly getting Prop. 8 passed, despite a well-funded opposition with backing from Hollywood.

...

 

code switching

An interesting new blog from NPR on the cultural practice of mixing language and other methods of expression.

from their intro

You're looking at the launch of a new team covering race, ethnicity and culture at NPR. We decided to call this team Code Switch because much of what we'll be exploring are the different spaces we each inhabit and the tensions of trying to navigate between them. In one sense, code-switching is about dialogue that spans cultures. It evokes the conversation we want to have here.

Linguists would probably quibble with our definition. (The term arose in linguistics specifically to refer to mixing languages and speech patterns in conversation.) But we're looking at code-switching a little more broadly: many of us subtly, reflexively change the way we express ourselves all the time. We're hop-scotching between different cultural and linguistic spaces and different parts of our own identities — sometimes within a single interaction.

When you're attuned to the phenomenon of code-switching, you start to see it everywhere, and you begin to see the way race, ethnicity and culture plays out all over the place.

 

 

danish energy policy and american delaying tactics

Ted notes a video piece on Danish energy efforts.  By American or Chinese standards the goals are very aggressive.  Notably conservation and efficiency are addressed.  Most tend to only consider energy production.



And Yale's environment360 comments on Copenhagen's plans.

Meanwhile in the US some politicals invoke religious fairy tales to delay change and protect the very powerful fossil fuel interests they represent.