| USAians and Canadians, time change tonight |
[Oct. 31st, 2009|11:19 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | world | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | awake | ] |
This is the "Fall back" switch from Daylight Savings Time, so set your clocks to 11 pm at midnight or whenever: you can always check timeanddate.com, just to be sure. I'm going to try and think of it as an extra hour to sleep in or get things done.
ETA to add Our Neighbors To The North |
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| California Prop 8 Fail |
[May. 26th, 2009|10:48 am] |
The fail was back in November when a small majority of voters went against equal marriage rights. The state supreme court just upheld the proposition, because they are bound to decide on the law rather than principle. At least they also confirmed the legal marriages during the interim. But it's not the court's fault, it's the voters' fault, so that's where we have to fight it next.
MarriageEquality.org has a list of protests and actions (mostly in California).
DayOfDecision.com has another list
There are twitter reports from the Sacramento protest at twitter.com/stop8dotorg and from San Francisco at twitter.com/geminiwench with lots of pictures. More coming at twitter #rejectprop8
Couragecampaign.org is proposing a Meet in the Middle demonstration reaching out from the coastal liberal cities to the more conservative inland California.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win -- Ghandi |
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| WTF, F/SF? Learn to listen, k? |
[May. 18th, 2009|04:02 pm] |
I've been quiet about Mammothgate (Racefail 09 part deux), partly because it's so easy for me to understand the blindness going on there. I doubt I would have even noticed the assumptions, much less thought of speaking out against them. I just didn't see it either, completely missed the wrongness of handwavingly undoing the existence of all Native Americans for the sake of an interesting story.
Though I have learned that listening is a whole lot better than trying to justify oneself about things that matter like this. The author and defenders didn't think: would they have argued so much if it was a huge anachronism they missed, or a quote from someone 100 years later? Why not shut up and learn, and maybe say Oh shit, I screwed up.
Following a bunch of links I found a fabulous essay by a woman of color writing Science Fiction/Fantasy, Nalo Hopkinson: Looking for clues It's all good, articulate, emotional and inspiring. My favorite bit is this:
... by Samuel R. Delany, which comes from a speech he gave at the Studio Museum of Harlem: "We need visions of the future, and our people need them more than most."
Which is true and right and meaningful but she follows immediately with this:
And yet, that isn't really why I write science fiction and fantasy. It's more like the result, not the reason. Or like the air I'm breathing when I sit down to write.
I hope, very much, we can go on from there. |
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| Swine Flu is not gonna kill you |
[Apr. 28th, 2009|10:56 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | world | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | quixotic | ] |
a) "pandemic" just means it's everywhere, not that it's killing everyone. don't panic
b) there have been no deaths outside of Mexico, at this point
c) my tame scientist says that there are probably a lot of infected people in Mexico who have not reported symptoms, so even if there is a death rate of 0.01%, that's enough to explain those numbers
d) wash your hands, a lot. If you work with kids, make them wash their hands
e) some good sources of real information (inspired by  linaelyn )
panic is silly |
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| US DST and funny videos |
[Nov. 1st, 2008|10:33 pm] |
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