JKane

I remain conflicted on the idea that celebrities like Bomer or Anderson Cooper must come out, even though it potentially limits them professionally. Many of us here are not out in our professional lives, if for no other reason than we don't believe our sexuality defines us and don't see how it's relevant. Would be nice if it becomes a world where a loving family man doesn't have to hide or be coy no matter his career though! But the politicians actively working against our interests while being closeted gays themselves does piss me off.

That poster does kinda seem in poor taste though, obvious ploy to cash in, and all the extra post-production time and money seems geared to expanding what was originally a pretty small part to my understanding...

I'm not so sure all the extra studio attention since her death will make it a better movie, but we'll see--when they finally release it!

Well, MS has backed failures too, but yeah, it'll be interesting to see what becomes of B&N with MS's backing! And while I resisted ebooks for a lot longer than you'd expect for a confirmed techie, when I finally did convert I found myself late one night trying to physically turn the page on one! So for those who think paper is the only way, I say try an *e-ink* device at some point. I continue to maintain that backlit LCD-type readers (Fire, iPad) are inferior for books, maybe good enough, maybe not--but a great medium for magazines and movies...

I knew a gay man who adopted a young boy, and the sniggering and innuendo by a few others I knew regarding him and his then teenage son speak more to their trustworthiness around teenage girls than anything else, in my opinion... We need to start taking a hard look at those kinds of people. Just like it's often the most homophobic in their actions and public lives who turn out to be living a very destructive double life (pastor Ted Haggard, Senator Larry Craig), people sure others must be molesting children (because it's what they would do given the chance...?) might deserve some extra scrutiny.

I'm kind of the opposite of what passes for a conspiracy theorist these days (Infowars drones that think anything calling itself a whitepaper must be true if it's long and pointless enough--with no understanding of accredidation or peer review...) but back in the 60s the people who were a real danger to the status quo sure did end up dead an alarming percentage of the time... JFK, RFK, MLK, John Paul I... But we likely will never know the truth, *if* there is a different truth from what is widely known. However, RFK happened here in LA and I have heard disturbing snippets from people who looked into what exactly went on in that ballroom. Though I'm not sure what good it would do should it be fully and publicly documented. There comes a point where if you start to "know" (either finally knowing the literal truth or believing every batshit conspiracy) how bad things were/are that it seems to me you have to simply accept that all is lost, there's no hope for the country and by extrapolation quite possibly the world. So one can go down that path, or one can hope for and work for betterment and justice on whatever scale they can manage. My deep thought for the day.

One of THE BEST pieces of advice I ever heard which has been of great help to me on my diet: If you don't LOVE IT don't eat it! If something's bad for me, why in the world would I continue to eat it, if it's not awesome? While I can imagine craving McDs or other things, there's nothing at PanEx I'd set out to have, especially as half the time it's going to be an hours-old congealed mess.

Except in the smallest towns or when you need something quick in a food court I can't imagine a town without several better Chinese restaurants. But you have to seek them out. Some will, in fact (hard to believe) be worse. But once you find the good ones! I have a Panda Ex walking distance to my place and haven't eaten there in 2+ years.

I'm not really sure what you're talking about, other than possibly the passage that JoHo's cite to refuse blood, nor how it really relates to the piece. NO, WE CAN NOT GIVE THE BIBLE THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT. It's a mysoginistic work of fiction written by a cadre of powerful males, at best from hearsay, then demonstrably EDITED over time by powerful male political leaders. It contains the most vile works sitting in every library in America and as Savage points out, while almost all of that is politely ignored, the 2 or 3 mentions of homosexuality are used against us to this day including inducing many to commit suicide! FUCK NO, IT DOES NOT GET ANY BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT! 2 Kings 2:23-24 Elisha went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head. And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty-two children of them. --42 children *slaughtered* for making fun of a bald man, yet this same book is used as a shield for those who belittle gays... ... 2 Kings 8:12 "You will set fire to their fortified places, kill their young men with the sword, dash their little children to the ground, and rip open their pregnant women." --A direct commandment from the lord YOUR god, mind you! ... "Behold, I will corrupt your seed and spread dung upon your faces..." Malachi 2:3 "...I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the light of this sun." 2 Samuel 12:11 "Their infants will be dashed in pieces before their eyes, their houses will be plundered and their wives ravished." Isaiah 13:16

Watched last night, fairly amusing as always, and I was a little surprised how hard Kimmel hit, Democrats and Republicans!

Hadn't seen Whoopi as the queen. Oscars aren't coming up again already, are they?

Yep, and neither of them a local store that's fun to visit! At least Texas has Half Price Books, though once people aren't buying them new anymore the secondary market will start to dwindle too, seems to me.

The more I think about it, that is probably one of the best, clearest pieces ever defending homosexuality from Christendom! That needs to be reposted everywhere!

Dan Savage may have just put the machine in overdrive! Fucking awesome! A great brouhaha is stirring in the nation's conservative publications over comments Dan Savage made two weeks ago while addressing the JEA/NSPA National High School Journalism Convention. The convention was entitled "Journalism On The Edge," which you'd think would prep participants for a certain amount of edginess in the presentations. Alas, the audience was not prepared for edginess. Savage's subject was to be bullying, and he got right to the point: The Bible. We'll just talk about the Bible for a second. People often point out that they can't help it -- they can't help with the anti-gay bullying, because it says right there in Leviticus, it says right there in Timothy, it says right there in Romans, that being gay is wrong. We can learn to ignore the bulls**t in the Bible about gay people. The same way, the same way we have learned to ignore the bulls**t in the Bible about shellfish, about slavery, about dinner, about farming, about menstruation, about virginity, about masturbation. We ignore bulls**t in the Bible about all sorts of things. The Bible is a radically pro-slavery document. Slave owners waved Bibles over their heads during the Civil War and justified it. The shortest book in the New Testament is a letter from Paul to a Christian slave owner about owning his Christian slave. And Paul doesn't say "Christians don't own people." Paul talks about how Christians own people. We ignore what the Bible says about slavery, because the Bible got slavery wrong . Tim -- uh, Sam Harris, in A Letter To A Christian Nation , points out that the Bible got the easiest moral question that humanity has ever faced wrong . Slavery. What're the odds that the Bible got something as complicated as human sexuality wrong? One hundred percent. The Bible says that if your daughter's not a virgin on her wedding night -- if a woman isn't a virgin on her wedding night, she shall be dragged to her father's doorstep and stoned to death. Callista Gingrich lives. And there is no effort to amend state constitutions to make it legal to stone women to death on their wedding night if they're not virgins. At least not yet. We don't know where the GOP is going these days. People are dying because people can't clear this one last hurdle. They can't get past this one last thing in the Bible about homosexuality. Um, one other thing I wanna talk about is -- [chuckles] -- so, you can tell the Bible guys in the hall that they can come back now, because I'm done beating up the Bible. It's funny, as someone who's on the receiving end of beatings that are justified by the Bible, how pansy-assed some people react when you push back. I apologize if I hurt anyone's feelings. But . I have a right to defend myself. And to point out the hypocrisy of people who justify anti-gay bigotry by pointing to the Bible, and insisting we must live by the code of Leviticus on this one issue and no other. As Savage noted, Christian students in the thousands-strong audience fled from his address, first in a trickle, and then in a great flood. The exodus began right around the time Savage started talking about slavery. Very soon, the offended students were talking to the press... Read more: http://www.towleroad.com/2012/04/dan_savage_journalism_conference.html#ixzz1tNhCRadS

But on the other hand, I love keyboards. AKA hensteeth. I might be persuaded to give it up in exchange for an HD resolution screen plus the power/ability to play stuff I've downloaded in various formats NOT blessed by Google/ATT/Whoever... Touch is pretty close, as 1280X800 is a little better than the 720p resolution... but I'd also prefer unlocked/maybe direct from google... So happy they're selling phones directly again, though wish they'd just pony up and put all the radios in!

Can't stand heights, couldn't even finish watching that comfortably. But if one fell it's Darwinism at work!

I still haven't gotten into it, despite being a huge sci-fi geek and hearing good things. But knowing it's 100 episodes, and uneven at that... it may be a while.

I'll keep an eye out for one to poke at, but am already locked into Kindle purchases plus don't have much faith in the longevity of Barns and Noble...

The Note does seem pretty cool. Odd that a stylus is again a selling point. My last 3 MS phones had them...

Supposedly some companies/interviewers ask you to login to facebook so they can see even your non-public stuff, it's against Facebook's terms of service and some lawmakers even made a little noise. For me it would just help me to know that's not an employer I'd wish to have. And I'm not even on Facebook! But yeah, common sense and nothing wrong with having a separate identity for your more questionable activities. Problem is many of the social networks want you to prove your identity...

I skipped the Fire because the screen is the same backlit LCD I already have many of, combined with not much horsepower for doing stuff like watching videos (especially stuff not bought through Amazon...). Kindle Fire is just an even more locked down plus underpowered version of everything my Android cell phone can already do. But having an e-ink Kindle for reading books is great.

I like my old-school Kindle because of the e-ink screen. If I want to look at something on a fatiguing backlit LCD I'll use my laptop or dust off the netbook I play with every 6 months or so. Or my cell phone... so yeah, also not seeing the need for a tablet.

I signed up for google's drive, and was tempted by Microsoft's SkyDrive as I started to play with Win8 the last couple of weeks, but really Dropbox gives me the space I need, is available on everything, and I already have my stuff on it. I trust Google (or Microsoft) with my email, from personal to work to naughty, so why wouldn't I trust them to apply the same standards to files I keep in a repository instead of emailing to myself or others?

Pointing out hypocrisy from Newt Gingrich is like pointing out drops of water in the sea...

I love AB and don't generally like Flay, never heard of Giada.