Tag: Rant

bookmark_borderRights vs Privileges

Posted on by PaulaO

I recently read about a couple who had a civil union in VT. They’d previously lived in VA. After being together for several years, they decided to have a baby. One of them became pregnant via artificial insemination and gave birth to a daughter. Then, a little over a year later, the couple splits and the mother (Miller) moves to VA. She seeks to have the civil union dissolved and the partner (Jenkins) agrees. In court, the birth mother acknowledges that the other is considered a parent to the child.

Perfectly normal situation. People marry, have kids, divorce, argue over the kids, etc. It happens a lot.

Should it matter that the couple in this case are both women? Their VT civil union makes them as legal a couple as one with mixed-gender couples. The non-birth mother has the same rights as a non-birth father in the case of artificial insemination.

Except this case has exploded and dragged on for years. Miller has continually denied Jenkins visitation rights despite the court orders. On and on it has gone until finally, fed up, the VT judge grants Jenkins custody based on Miller’s continual contempt of court. Now Miller, who is an “ex-gay” and an Evangelical Christian, has disappeared with the kid.

The Virginia appeals court and state supreme court have all said that their Vermont civil union, at least in terms of the child custody, should be honored. Virginia has a law that specifically does not recognize same gender marriages/civil unions from other states. However, due to other federal laws designed to keep a parent from abducting children, they cannot ignore that Jenkins has legal rights as the other parent. The federal supreme court refused to hear the case.

Vermont law says that Jenkins has the same rights as the non-biological father in artificial insemination. The judge, the same judge has been with the case since it first started, is known as a conservative but a strict follower of the law. He granted Miller custody in the beginning but stipulated that, like any divorce and custody case, Jenkins is to be allowed visitation. Jenkins’ parents live close to where Miller lives. She traveled to VA every weekend for a long time although most times Miller wouldn’t let her see the kid or wouldn’t allow unsupervised visits. Miller even got VA Social Services involved saying the kid was acting wrong after any unsupervised visits. The case workers could find nothing wrong. Imagine that.

There’s a lot on the ‘net about this case. There’s rumors that when Miller’s attorneys next meet with the VT judge he will slap them with contempt of court charges. They’ve not made any statement about the location of Miller. I’ve been keeping up with it, hoping that Miller shows up and honors the court order. Today, I see an article titled “Custody Case Highlights Artificiality of Same Sex Marriage“. I should have known better than to click it but, alas, I did.

The article continually bounces back and forth, presenting facts one minute and propaganda the next. I prefer articles about facts with some emotional aspects and opinions thrown in to keep me interested. Another article, “Who’s Your Daddy? Or Your Other Daddy? Or Your Mommy?” deals with parental rights and mentions three twisted cases.

In comes down to this, in my opinion: We cannot ask for the cake and then ignore the calories. There, I said it.

We ask for equal rights (it’s on our agenda, ya know) and that includes the right to marry. And with the right to marry comes the right to divorce. And the right to have a nasty divorce. And to argue over who really owns that fugly lamp that cost far too much money. Yet, divorce is not something we discuss. For millennia, a marriage certificate was the signature on the UHaul rental contract and divorce meant we got boxes and moved out. Not any more. Boxes won’t do it. We demanded the right for equal rights in marriage now we need to demand the right for equal rights in divorce.

bookmark_borderThe Gay Agenda and Stonewall

Posted on by PaulaO

It seems that there really and truly is one. Not the joke one (which I found a looong, quite Queeny version and finally the shorter, better version) but a real one.

I started some research because I once again saw that phrase “gay agenda” and wanted to know more about it.

I did a Google search. There’s a news clearing house place called Gay Agenda, by the way.

Next was Wikipedia with an article titled “homosexual agenda“. That’s where I hit pay dirt. It was first used in 1992 so it is a fairly new term and has been used a lot since then. But I was really intrigued by this:

In 2003 Alan Sears and Craig Osten, president and vice-president of the Alliance Defense Fund, an American conservative Christian non-profit organization, offered another characterization:

It is an agenda that they basically set in the late 1980s, in a book called After the Ball,[15] where they laid out a six-point plan for how they could transform the beliefs of ordinary Americans with regard to homosexual behavior — in a decade-long time frame…. They admit it privately, but they will not say that publicly. In their private publications, homosexual activists make it very clear that there is an agenda. The six-point agenda that they laid out in 1989 was explicit:

1. Talk about gays and gayness as loudly and as often as possible(…)
2. Portray gays as victims, not as aggressive challengers(…)
3. Give homosexual protectors a just cause(…)
4. Make gays look good(…)
5. Make the victimizers look bad(…)
6. Get funds from corporate America(…)[1]

After the Ball[15] is a book published in 1989 by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen. It argues that after the gay liberation phase of the 1970s and 1980s, gay rights groups should adopt more professional public relations techniques to convey their message. It was published by Doubleday and was generally available.

According to a Christian Broadcasting Network article by Paul Strand, Sears and Osten argue that After the Ball follows from “a 1988 summit of gay leaders in Warrenton, Virginia, who came together to agree on the agenda” and that

“the two men (Kirk and Madsen) proposed using tactics on ‘straight’ America that are remarkably similar to the brainwashing methods of Mao Tse-Tung’s Communist Chinese — mixed with Madison Avenue’s most persuasive selling techniques.”[16]

(source)

There is a real agenda. A 6-point list and everything! How cool is that!

But there’s a problem. If that is “our” agenda, it is kinda boring. I mean, isn’t that what religious groups have been doing for eons? Can’t we come up with something more original? Replace ‘gay’ with ‘Christian’ or ‘Baptist’ and you’ve got what I was being taught by the Baptist Student Union way back in ’85. (golly, that was nearly 25 yrs ago! i am so old)

I have a theory. Ready for it?

I think that as long as we LGBTQ folks keep being wusses, we ain’t ever gonna get civil rights. We keep trying one state at a time, quietly, somberly, accepting defeat after defeat. Sure, there’s civilized protests, there’s crying, there’s bitching and moaning. But there’s no real action. We need to be uncivilized. We need to stop crying, bitching, and moaning and DO something.

What if folks had voted to take blacks’ right to vote away? What if they were given that right only to lose it again, gain it again, lose it here and gain it there? Do you think for one single second they would be raising money for the next attempt? Making YouTube videos and Twitter-ing? Hell to the no! There’d be riots, protests, screaming anger in the streets. Blacks gained their rights because they truly believed they were entitled to them. As a group, they’d had enough and fought. Where’s the gay version of King? Of Rosa Parks? Of even Malcom X? Where’s our Maya Angelou? Our Jackie Robinson?

We queers need another Stonewall. We need another riot in the streets. We need to stand up and shout. Loudly. We need to come out of the closets and make our real numbers known. If every person who was truly gay were to wake up in the morning with purple skin, I betcha there’d be some changes. We wouldn’t be able to hide anymore. Our Clark Kent Cloak would be gone and we’d be forced to DO something. With hiding comes the luxury of civility and silence. We can’t afford either of those anymore.

There are groups out there who are Doing. There’s Soulforce but, bless their hearts, they are just too polite even while being arrested. UFMCC had great potential to do more but lacked the initiative gumption care balls/ovaries. (noooo, I’m not still bitter and angry)

Our agenda is wrong. If it is true that they come up with this Great Plan, then they must be have thought it would not take this long. ‘Cause it ain’t working. It is too gentle. It set the stage for us to continue to be gentle and polite and oh so civilized. We need to stop doing that. We need some queen to smack a cop with her purse again. We need a dyke to get fed up with being screamed at by women in the ladies room thinking she’s a guy. We need to put down the Wall Street Journal and take up the On Our Backs. We need to turn the television off of L Word and go outside to the Real World. We need to stop planning and be spontaneous. We need to stop blending in and stand out.

We need another Stonewall.

bookmark_borderInternet and Email Hoaxes

Posted on by PaulaO

Got another one today from a well meaning friend. I like her a lot which is why I am gentler with her than I am with other people who send me such stuff.

You get an email that says “X is free if you…” or “send this to everyone you know!” or “send this to X # of people and…”. And it sounds good. Real good. Something in you wants to hit the FWD button in your email program. If this is you, STOP.

First thing you do is go to Snopes.com and look it up. Or do a simple Google search. In this case, I searched for “Ericsson T18 & R320 laptop promotion“. Yes, I already knew it was a hoax but I needed linkages. Oh, and both the “free” laptops? They’re cell phones. Old ones, too.

A few seconds will save yourself embarrassment and will help stop spam.

In the email I got today from my friend, there was even a statement that said “I did check it with Snopes and it is legit”. Don’t believe it. If a promotion needs such a statement, then it probably is false.

You know an email’s claims are a hoax if:

  1. There are more than 2 FWDs in the subject line.
  2. There are more than 3 exclamation points in the subject line and more than 3 in the post itself. (Unless they are really excited to get an A on that math test, delete it.)
  3. More than 2 words in all caps. THIS IS REAL!!!! THIS IS NOT A HOAX!!!!!!!!
  4. Tells you to send it to everyone you know.
  5. Tells you to send it to X number of people and something great will happen.
  6. Tells you to “keep this email going!!!!!!!”.
  7. Offers you something free or something free will come to you if you do what the email says.
  8. Says some sick kid wants X number of emails/cards/phone calls so he can get money to cure him of his cancer.

Just keep in mind that no business will give away free things based on number of emails you send; there’s no way to trace how many times or how long or how often an email is sent in order for something to happen to you or for you; and while our hearts go out to sick kids, puppies, and veterans, they gain nothing from forwarded emails.

Two final things: if you absolutely cannot resist forwarding an email, leave my name off of it and/or delete all the other forwarded addresses in the body of the email.

bookmark_borderA Matter of Words

Posted on by PaulaO

I see gender as one’s physical design. I see sex as being, well, what we do with that physical design. However, I also see gender as a thing of society, not a more simple thing of science.

Male is a gender with a penis, scrotum, and a ton of testosterone. Female is a gender with ovaries, uterus, and a lot of estrogen. Basically. But like gender and sex, male and female are not always that well defined.

I bring this up because of Caster Semenya, the 18 yr old African athlete who is going through something no 18 yr old should have to face. Her gender is being publicly examined, twisted, ridiculed, and discussed across the globe.

It all started when Semenya won the world championship for the 200m race. Several other athletes decided that the huge margin in time (I think it was nearly 2 minutes) meant that Semenya was actually a male. Not that she is an extraordinary athlete, no, that would have been too much into the spirit of the true competition.

And she’s just 18.

When babies are born, doctors look at one place on the body and announce boy or girl. The parents take that infant home and raise it according to what the doctor pronounced. Pink vs blue. Sometimes, a doctor looks and sees something different, something that is part one and part the other. If the infant’s anatomy contains some of this and some of that, the term is “intersex” (hermaphroditic is considered an incorrect term and is no longer used).

There’s a wonderful article on Medhelp.org that refers to another in Semenya’s shoes, María José Martínez Patiño. The article describes, in decent English, how a fetus becomes male or female. It also mentions a syndrome called Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. Maria Patino isn’t the only female athlete to face this condition. With a statistic of 1 in 20,000 births, it is not *that* uncommon. In 2006, Santhi Soundarajan, an athlete from India, faced the same scrutiny. The article says this (bolding is mine):

Since testosterone helps in building muscle and strength, an AIS case would not give an XY female athlete any kind of competitive advantage.

Seven of the eight women who tested positive for Y chromosones during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics had AIS. They were allowed to compete.

We can hope that this is what will happen to Semenya. That she will be allowed to keep her medal. But whether or not she will be allowed to compete again? Who knows. I hope they choose well.

Oh! Almost forgot!

Caster Semenya won the 800 metres race in style. The defending world champion came in second, and a full two minutes behind the speedster, Semenya. Semenya got the gold and some tongues began to wag. First they tested her for drugs and discovered to their chagrin that she was as clean as an unused whistle. Next they decided to confirm whether she was actually a woman.

(…)

At this point I expected women rights group to be up in arms, fighting for Semenya and stopping men from laying claim to one of their own. Whatever happened to the women who proclaimed in the streets and on the hilltops that whatever a man can do a woman can do even better? Here was Semenya trying to prove that, and the wicked men stopped her. And the women yawned and looked idly away.

Now take the case of Usain Bolt. Like Semenya, Bolt left the other men in the 100 and 200 metres races gasping for breath and looking at the back of his head. Even Michael Johnson, an Olympic medalist, has described him as a freak of nature. Bolt was tested for drugs and he came out clean. And the old school folks in IAAF rested the matter there and went their sloppy way.

And this sucks plenty because the treatment of Bolt is not fair (not fair at all) to Semenya. Have they thought of testing Bolt to see whether he is half animal and half man? No. Yet if you look at Bolt very closely, he would remind you of the last time you saw a horse. Why have they not tested him to find out whether he is more of a horse than a man? My submission is that the man has dual -species status ” he is part horse and part man. Yet IAAF is minded to allow this horse -man keep running and stop Semenya from running.

(source)

bookmark_borderThe NFL Rant

Posted on by PaulaO

Okay, here I go.

First we have Michael Vick who was a quarterback with the Atlanta Falcons. As a side note, I’ve never liked Vick and have never ever liked the Falcons. No real reason why for the Falcons but I’ve not liked Vick’s showoffy style or the concept it was a good thing that quarterbacks have almost as many run yards per games as their best rusher. But back to the topic: Vick spent 18mos (1.5 yrs) in prison for animal cruelty (or whatever the final charge was). He spent SIX years funding dog fights as well as torturing and killing dogs that did not win. Did I mention he was in this business for SIX years? He did not admit guilt until every available finger had pointed to him. None of the statements I have read mention that he knows TORTURING and KILLING the dogs was a bad thing. I’ve gotten the impression he thinks funding the dog fights was wrong. From the Wikipedia article, he gave conflicting information to the feds as well as never admitted to torturing/killing dogs. Did I mention he was doing this for SIX years? Vick was suspended by the NFL while he was in prison but has been allowed back on an allegedly tentative basis. The Philadelphia Eagles has signed him to a one year contract. Vick based his initial bankruptcy plan on being picked up by a team. I was thrilled when the first judge said “Nope, come up with another one that includes, say, selling things that you have like cars and a house or two.” To Vick, it is all about money. Who cares about the dogs he tortured and killed for SIX years. It’s the money. Funding dog fights is a big business as is any gambling trade. He had to have made a lot of money during those SIX years. He says he made a mistake and I say that surely to shit in those SIX years you didn’t once sit back and say “Ya know, I make more money in the NFL and if they find out about this, I could lose that money….” But I’m thinking that if it did occur to him at any point, he continued the self-conversation with: “Nah, I’m Mike Vick! I’m the best quarterback ever! The great Tony Dungy will wipe my ass for me if I am caught so it’s all good. Hand me the cattle prod.”

Next up is Donte’ Stallworth who is (was?) a receiver for the Cleveland Browns. (I’ve never forgiven the Browns for refusing to build a new stadium, losing their team because of it, then building a new stadium in order to get another one. And I’ve never forgiven the NFL for letting them have another team) Stallworth has plead guilty to a manslaughter charge of hitting a pedestrian with his car. Stallworth never left the scene, never tried to get out of the charge, settled with the family out of court, admitted on the scene to have been drinking, and basically has done all he can to face his mistake. He is currently suspended by the NFL.

Next up is Plaxico Burress, formerly of the Giants. Burress is a mess and is now about to start 2 yrs in prison on a gun possession charge. His base idiocy is first revealed in that he goes to a nightclub with a Glock pistol tucked into the waistband of his sweatpants. Not in his pocket, but tucked into the waistband. Second, the gun starts to fall down (imagine that!) and the idiot grabs the gun, hits the trigger and shoots himself in the leg. So not only did he have a gun tucked into the waistband of his sweatpants (you know, those things held up with a string?), he didn’t have the fucking safety on! Burress was released by the Giants back in April.

So there’s 3 players. You can guess on my feelings of Vick’s reinstatement by the NFL. It’s all about money. And given the attitude he had when he got out of prison, I’d bet money he got a lot of special treatment while in prison. He had all that time with a captive fan base. I feel very sorry for Stallworth. One mistake has one guy dead and another guy that probably should be put on suicide watch. But that’s the thing with drinking and driving. It only takes that one time, that one second less of response time, and someone is dead. As for Burress, he’s an idiot. A big heavy pistol in your sweatpants? Maybe he thought since cops do it on TV all the time, then he could, too.

It all comes down to money and players in the NFL are being paid too much, especially rookie players. Unlike other jobs, it isn’t often that an NFL player has to work their way up to get the big bucks. A kid fresh out of college with their BA in accounting isn’t hired to run a Fortune 500 company. They’ve not learned true responsibility, learned how to live in the world (such as pay bills on time and be how to spend responsibly), or gotten experience. But the NFL allows teams to pay kids big bucks when they’ve not proven their worth to the team or to themselves.

In Newport News, mentors and others working with underprivileged youth sought to identify lessons to communicate to those who had seen him as a role model. “It’s difficult, because Mike (Vick) is someone who we held up as doing it right,” Bernard Johnson told the Newport News Daily Press. Johnson, who has coached kids, including Vick, in the Boys and Girls Club football program for 28 years, said the lesson to kids now is all about responsibility and accountability.[144]

After he apologized to the judge, his family and his children at his federal sentencing hearing on December 10, Judge Hudson stated:

“I think you should have apologized also to the millions of young people who look up to you.”[145]

(source)

bookmark_borderIPod Touch and Writing

Posted on by PaulaO

(note: the subject line has changed since I first wrote this. I decided to not get into the podcasts just yet).

I’ve been having fun with my iPod Touch. For those of you who don’t know, the Touch is just like the iPhone with one major exception – it’s not a phone. It uses wi-fi for internet connectivity while the iPhone uses the cellular carrier (which is exclusively AT&T). So far, I’ve used the Touch more for music and games than I have for internet stuff like email and web surfing. When/if I get the wireless network working again here at the house, I may use it more.

Anyway, the Touch is not a PDA unless you use M$ software such as Outlook. Ironic that the Apple device uses predominantly M$ stuff, eh? I had to enter in all of my contacts (granted, there’s not that many). Any notes I make using the built in application (herein known as ‘app’ or ‘apps’) cannot be transferred to the desktop.

Before I talk about what apps I have found useful, I want to discuss iTunes. I. Hate. It. You cannot add any app, song, etc to the device without using this software. While there are some programs that allow you to use the device like a USB flash drive (DiskAid), it is limited. The iTunes program is lousy. For example, I wanted to see what dictionaries, thesauruses (thesaurusi?), etc were available. Open iTunes, click on App Store, click on Reference. And there it ends. 20 apps per page, 121 pages. No way to further divide them into sections. You can filter them into release date, name, and most popular. And you can’t go directly to page 120 of the 121 because you are looking for something that starts with the letter Y. There is a Power Search available. You can narrow it down to section (applications vs music), box to select searching only the free apps, enter in a keyword and/or developer name, category (reference), and device capability (touch vs iphone). You click search and you get the results. Here’s the next major error. It doesn’t say “page 1 of 12” for the results. You click “see all” and get a list of 30 apps. Then, in the corner of the screen, in tiny little letters, there’s this “more results”. It’s not in the scrollable part of the screen, but on the frame of the software itself. Still no “page x of y”. So I have no idea how many results there are nor can I then re-search the results to narrow it down further. On the first page there is a list of developers, a very short list. Dictionary.com is listed but it only has two apps in the search result. So finding what you want/need can be difficult unless you know the exact name or are lucky enough to hit the right keyword.

Okay, rant mostly off.

Here’s some applications I found that I have tried:

I was pleased to find the WordWeb I use so much on the computer to be available as an app. And it is free so that makes it even better! It works much the same way as the desktop version so adjusting to it was easy.

I am trying out QuickWord (by QuickOffice for $4.99), an app that reads and edits .doc format documents. I think it can view .pdf, too, but not edit them. Transferring the documents from the desktop to the device is only possible through wi-fi transfer using the IP address. It sounds unnecessarily complicated. Why not just sync, upload, or download the same as I can music and podcasts? Also, the help files are only accessible via internet connection. WTF?

Then there is DocsToGo (by DataViz for $4.99) is another .doc format app. Again, transfer is done via wi-fi or through Microsoft Exchange (a paid-for additional program). It’s got a “getting started” help guide but anything other than that is only available online. The plus for this app vs the other is that it’s available options are scrollable along the bottom so there’s more to use.

Next up is FileAid (by DigiDNA for free). While FileAid allows me to view even OpenOffice.org formats, I can’t edit anything. It is for viewing only.

I just downloaded another one called Notebooks (by Alfons Shmid for $5.99). I’ve not tried it yet, though. It is touted to be for thought processing and organizing.

The recent software upgrade allows for the iTouch to do cut/paste, something the users have been screaming for. Doing so is relatively easy as long as you don’t have big huge fingers.

Speaking of typing, the keyboard is not that bad. It is much much easier if you are a touch-typer vs hunt and peck. I type mostly with my thumbs. Letters are on the screen with numbers and most punctuation accessible via another key that changes the keyboard. Another key on that one takes you to another punctuation keyboard. Hitting the space bar automatically takes you back to the letter one. This would be a major PITA if you needed to enter a series of numbers. The comma is on that second screen and, again, hitting the spacebar automatically takes you back to the first one. QuickOffice has the spreadsheet capabilities and I wonder if it works the same way. You can turn the device sideways to make the keyboard wider and more accessible.

The word completion capabilities are a device thing, not an app thing. So far, I don’t like it. I’ve had several arguments with it on the spelling of a word I was trying to enter in a note. But I’ve never been a fan of word completion doohickeys anyway.

I was reading a review of an app and learned how to take screenshots within the device. Now if I can figure out how to transfer them to the desktop, I’ll have some images of my later reviews for these apps.

If anyone uses any of these or some other I haven’t found yet, please let me know! I’d love to hear from other writers about how or if they use the Touch or if they use a PDA instead. I opted for the Touch because the industry says PDAs are a dying breed and software is getting difficult to find and maintain.

In another post later, I’ll share all the apps I have installed so far. I love the Touch, I just wish it didn’t have that obnoxious “iPod” in front of it. Cannot tolerate the “iThis” and “iThat”. In yet another post, I’ll discuss the value (or lack thereof) of podcasts.

bookmark_borderMob Mentality

Posted on by PaulaO

In the chaos after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, thousands of Japanese-Americans were put into “camps”. After the events of 9/11, thousands of Muslims or assumed-to-be Muslims were harassed, some killed, some deported, others sent off to that horrid thing called Guantanamo Bay. Why? Because of Mob Mentality.

Far too often something sparks a riot or a small mob that then does something stupid like beating someone to death or tossing rocks at police. People who normally don’t have a mean streak find themselves being swept up by the wave of emotion and physical energy.

It is this Mob Mentality that has created a huge mistake in California. Thousands of individuals are being denied the basic right of marriage to the person they love simply because that person is of the same gender. No other reason. And it is allowed to happen and is condoned by the California state Supreme Court.

There’s a reason why we have Senators and Representatives in the state and federal government. It’s to protect ourselves from ourselves. To prevent the Mob Mentality from doing something stupid that will have to be cleaned up later. The Senators and Representatives are supposed to help the people get what they want through legislation. In a nutshell, that’s how it’s supposed to work. But even they get caught up in the furor and emotion of events. Such as that poor lady in Florida who was allowed to slow starve to death. The federal and state government tried to stop it. Why? Mob mentality.

The thing is, we never know when the Mob is going to turn on us. When will we find ourselves on the wrong side of the street? When will it become not a good thing to, say, live in New Jersey? Remember all the people getting kicked out of school and homes because they had AIDS? Remember the Japanese-Americans? Remember the people locked up in hotels for weeks because of the swine flu? What about breed specific dog laws?

The courts cannot allow the Mob Mentality to rule. It cannot. It isn’t there to say “The People want this.” It is there to say “This is the Law, this is the Constitution, and this is the decision based on those two.”

Someday, “they” will come for you. “They” will come for your children. “They” will come for your dogs, your parents, your job, your lifestyle, your personal choice that is no one’s business but your own. They will hate you because you are different from whatever the norm of the moment is. They will come for you because you aren’t one of them.

Someday, I will be able to openly display affection for my partner of nearly 19 yrs. But that day isn’t today.

Because they’ve come for us.

bookmark_borderAmazon Ranking

Posted on by PaulaO

Amazon.com, Amazon.com – wherefore art thou brains? Thou hast filled them with shit and verily I say unto you, thou hast really fucked up. Again.

Here’s the short story: Amazon.com has a thing called “ranking” that is based on the number of sales. So the higher a book is on that sale, the more likely the books is to show up on various related pages. The lower a book’s sale ranking, the less likely it will show up anywhere, including searches. Sounds reasonable in some realities. The problem now is that Amazon.com has decided to de-rank a bunch of books that they consider “adult”. Again, sounds reasonable in some realities.

However, and this is a big however, their concept of “adult” is very narrow. Almost all GLBTQ books have been de-ranked. Not just the erotica, but romance and non-fiction. Playboy’s books are still up there as are Kuschiel’s Dart (and related books). Why are they not considered “Adult” and have their rankings removed?

I could go on but I won’t. Instead, read more from these fine folks:

Okazu: Amazon De-ranks “Adult” Books
In Protest of Amazon’s new “adult” policy (an online petition site; the information is in the small, scrollable window at the top and you can click the “view whole petition” link on the left)
Mark Probst – Amazon Follies
Booksquare’s “Open Letter to Amazon Regarding Recent Policy Changes”
Kelley Eskridge – Tell Amazon They Are Wrong

And the Smart Bitches have gotten in on it, too. As someone else said, “Heaven help Amazon now!”. With their post “Amazon Rank”, they’ve come up with the perfect solution. A non-violent, non-name calling, mature method based on proven results: a Google bomb. A Google bomb is when folks across the great Internet use similar words that all link to the same thing. This worked well a while back when some of us had trouble from a nasty pseudo-agent. Every time her name was mentioned, a link was used to point to an article proving her lack of ethics. This meant that any search for her name resulted in the article being in the top five or so of the search results. The idea was to warn any newbie writer to stay away from her.

The Smart Bitches have created a new definition to go into the Internet lexicons: Amazon Rank. The idea is that whenever someone uses the term Amazon Rank, they link back to the page they created that has the definition. Try it now. Go to Google and type in Amazon Rank. What pops up first? Other search engines don’t react as quickly to this kind of trend. But they will.

Here is a screenshot of a Harry Potter book set:

Now here is my book:

So, bad example to use mine anyway since it never got very far up the rankings. Here is Lee Lynch’s “The Swashbuckler”. A classic that has been around a long time so it should have a decent rank, right?

Funny thing is, other books that somehow got rankings outside the Lesbian/Gay bits still have rankings showing. Here’s Brenda Adcock’s “The Sea Hawk”.

I was about to make a big purchase from Amazon. I was going to get two music CDs, several books, and an iTouch. The shopping cart total sits at about $600. Not now. There are other places to shop from. Depending on how they handle this, I may never shop there again. If my queer book isn’t good enough to be in the rankings, then my queer money isn’t good enough to line their pockets.

bookmark_borderGays Are, Like, So Freakin’ Powerful!

Posted on by PaulaO

We are! Really! We are so powerful an enemy to God that He punishes everyone for supporting us. Really! We are so terrible a species of human that God wreaks havoc on cities and nations just because they have gay marriage rights and stuff.

Okay, stop laughing, Paula.

I could get angry. I mean, really, why would God kill thousands of people on 9/11/01 just to punish everyone for supporting homosexuals? Kind of odd, really. Why not rain terror during the Gay Pride March in NYC? Or smack Orlando upside the head during Disney’s Gay Days? Now THAT would hold a message, don’t you think? No, “they” think that Hurricane Katrina was punishment to New Orleans. Please, the levees were the punishment, not Katrina. Hurricane Rita did more damage in Texas than Katrina did to New Orleans. Katrina and Rita wiped entire towns off the map, but we never hear about that, do we? But I digress into another rant.

Where was I? Oh, right.

I got onto this particular rant when I read an article on LiveScience: NY Pastor: God’s Wrath Is Near (Again) by Benjamin Radford, LiveScience’s Bad Science Columnist.

According to the founding pastor of New York City’s Times Square Church, David Wilkerson, denizens of the Big Apple should stockpile survival gear and a month’s supply of non-perishable food in preparation for an “earth-shattering calamity” that could happen at any moment. The threat is not from foreign terrorists this time, but instead from God.

Wilkerson, claiming he was prompted by the Holy Spirit, recently wrote in his blog that “An earth-shattering calamity is about to happen… It will engulf the whole megaplex, including areas of New Jersey and Connecticut. Major cities all across America will experience riots and blazing fires… There will be looting — including Times Square, New York City.” (Only a Manhattanite would assume that God’s destruction of the world would begin with New York City).

(…)

This is far from Wilkerson’s first prophecy; in fact he has made something of a cottage industry of cranking out bible-based predictions. In 1973, Wilkerson issued a nearly identical message in a book titled “The Vision.” He described the great tragedies that would befall the United States if Americans continued to pursue homosexuality, greed, and sin. Nearly 40 years later, the issues include gay marriage, abortion, and stem cell research.

Most of his prophecy did not come to pass, but it is a common theme. Rev. Jerry Falwell infamously blamed pagans, abortionists, gays, lesbians, the American Civil Liberties Union and others for bringing about the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. In Falwell’s view, God had enlisted Muslim Saudi Arabians to punish Americans for their decadent ways. In 2005, Rev. Gerhard Wagner suggested that Hurricane Katrina was “divine retribution” for New Orleans’ tolerance of homosexuals and sin.

(source)

The God I know and follow doesn’t do things like that. God knows that with the knowledge of science, we would need direct intervention, not far flung things like Katrina and 9/11. We are no longer the superstitious God fearing peoples of long ago. We have faith in spite of science, in spite of our knowledge. Now, ain’t that a good thing for God and us?

bookmark_borderFertility Treatment Myths

Posted on by PaulaO

5 Myths of Fertility Treatments

Just as the invention of contraceptives freed sex from the concerns of baby-making, new reproductive technologies have freed baby-making from sex.

Yet despite 5 million such technology-assisted births, plus the recent eight by Nadya Suleman, there remain common misperceptions about “test-tube” and “designer” babies.

The article addresses 5 common myths about fertility treatments.

Myth 1: Designer babies are coming soon

Reports that we will someday be able to artificially choose a child’s traits, “from a scientific point of view, are totally totally made up,” said Sarah Franklin, researcher, author and keynote speaker at The Politics of Reproduction conference held Saturday at Barnard College.

(…)

Myth 2: In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) is easy

“The media tends to report the success cases,” said Debora Spar, president of Barnard and author of “The Baby Business,” but failures are the norm.

(…)

Myth 3: Egg donation is common

“It is egg sales,” Spar corrected. Because no one wants to think about money in relation to their child, the baby business talks about “delivering hope” not “profit,” she said, but it is a market like any other.

(…)

Myth 4: IVF increases fertility

Actually, a woman undergoing IVF must first take hormones to shut down her fertility cycle, Franklin explained.

(…)

Myth 5: The children will be fine

“The voice that gets lost in all these debates is that of the child,” Spar said. No one knows the long-term effects of spending, as an embryo, a few days in cultured media or exposed to surges of synthetic hormones, she said.

(…)

The end of the article discusses the recent octuplets births and includes a link to another article.

The Ethical and Legal Implications of Octuplets

We all know about the old woman who lived in a shoe, the one with all those kids and who didn’t know what to do. Well, one thing she didn’t do was have eight more kids. And this wasn’t because nothing rhymes with octuplets.

Having eight children at once — or seven, six, five or four, for that matter — is not healthy for the children. Such human litters rarely occur naturally because, the sad truth is, the children rarely survive to adulthood to mate and to pass along a genetic predisposition to multiple births.

It’s a simple medical fact that the more babies in the brood, the lower their average birth weight. And the lower their birth weight, the more they are susceptible to a lifetime of health and social challenges.

The article, which is much more articulate than my previous post about this, is written by Christopher Wanjek, LiveScience’s Bad Medicine Columnist. He does a good job of discussing the future of those babies and any others in their positions.