A must-watch clip of gay actor George Takei (Sulu from Star Trek) responding to Hardaway's homophobic comments.

Elonka :)

George Takei 0wnz Tim Hardaway

No one has to read they're local city newspaper to know that all of us live in a fucked up era. It surrounds on a daily basis no matter where we go or how hard we try to remember the good things and good people in our lives. Some people have overlooked the malevolence so well that they themselves become part of the habitual life. Others are so overwhelmed by the hate and grief that they are terminally depressed and become one of its victims. The rest of us find structure just outside madness and the rare few creates symphonies within it that builds positives out of the negative and the heinous evil.

Some things are so monstrous it forces me question life

Combine unsupervised teenagers, digital cameras and e-mail, and, given sufficient time, you'll end up with risque photographs on a computer somewhere.

There's a problem with that: Technically, those images constitute child pornography.

Amber and Jeremy were arrested. Each was charged with producing, directing or promoting a photograph featuring the sexual conduct of a child. Based on the contents of his e-mail account, Jeremy was charged with an extra count of possession of child pornography.

What a complete pile of bullshit. I can see the argument if either party had actually posted the pictures somewhere on the internet or sent it around to friends. I'm still not sure criminal penalties are the best way to prevent that activity, but I'll allow that there would be some wrongdoing in that case.

But that didn't happen, and I'm in full agreement with the dissenting opinion. It was a stupid thing to do, and I think they're naive with respect to any expectation of privacy they may have (especially with regard to each other... having the picture exposed through hacking is about 10000 times less likely than it being released as part of a nasty breakup, as almost all of them are at that age). Still, child pornography? Really? Psh.

FURTHER : You can read the sad story of Genarlow Wilson here and don't forget about Marcus Dewayne Wilson (google it) either, both of which are here in georgia and which beg the question of racial equality, quite aside from the direct question of sexual relations between minors, or a minor and a non-minor within a couple years of the same age.

I'll go on record as being against mandatory minimums categorically, so that aspect of these cases I'm clearly against. I will admit that there is some cloudy area in the middle, but I distrust the "family values" based "People under 18 shouldn't have sex, period, ever," argument as a political construct and note further that the redder the state, the lower the age of consent as a generalization. Perhaps these laws are simply out of date, but it's tough for me to see how the legal apparatus should get involved unless there truly was exploitation or rape.

Teens prosecuted for racy photos

Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell has applauded the British Fashion Council (BFC) for taking steps to tackle the issue of "size zero" models.

BBC NEWS | England | London | Jowell backs thin models stance

Deep in the bowels of Washington, hidden from public scrutiny and prying cameras, there is an illicit underworld where people are subtle, reasonable and interesting. I have occasionally been admitted to this place, the land of RIP (Reasonable in Private).

Private Virtue, Public Vice - New York Times

On the afternoon of Oct. 7, 1974, a mob of 200 enraged whites, many of them students, closed in on a bus filled with black students that was trying to pull away from the local high school. The people in the mob were in a high-pitched frenzy. They screamed racial epithets and bombarded the bus with rocks and bottles. The students on the bus were terrified.

A Death in Destrehan - New York Times

Decius writes:

This is infuriating.

Feingold, who today flat out called the program illegal and who last March... went on to attack Gonzales for a speech he made in November, where he said that critics of the government's warrantless wiretapping program believed in a definition of freedom that was "superficial" and a "grave threat to the liberty and security of the American people."

Feingold took issue with that and asked who in the country actually believed that terrorists should not be wiretapped.

Gonzales said he knew that it wasn't Democrats and his real targets were blogs, where you can find people who don't see that the government is trying to protect them.

Unfortunately, this is the closest thing I can find to coverage of this hearing. Transcripts do not seem to be available. If anyone has the exact quote from Gonzales, please post it. I DO have the exact quote and context for his statement in November.

Some people will argue nothing could justify the government being able to intercept conversations like the ones the Program targets. Instead of seeing the government protecting the country, they see it as on the verge of stifling freedom.

But this view is shortsighted. Its definition of freedom – one utterly divorced from civic responsibility – is superficial and is itself a grave threat to the liberty and security of the American people.

As Justice Robert Jackson remarked in the case Terminiello v. City of Chicago, “The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either. There is danger that, if the Court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.”

The central quote was decontextualized and passed around in the media. Of course, you can find crazy people on the Internets, but the people out there who "will argue nothing could justify the government being able to intercept conversations like the ones the Program tagets," and I have never, ever seen anyone make that argument, but they are clearly too far and inbetween to constitute "a grave threat to the liberty and security of the American people."

Gonzales is almost Chomskesque in his careful use of language which simultaneously means many things and nothing. If you support the idea that the executive need not get court approval for domestic surveillance, what you hear... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

Alberto Gonzales on Bloggers

flynn23 wrote:
I'd like to see this same graphic overlaid with the murder rate for each sector. "Military" casualties excluded of course. Just capita murder rate. I would expect to see an interesting corollary.

Thats an interesting question. Below I'll post Wikipedia's GDP graph on the left and their murder graph on the right. I'm not sure there is a correlation. One suspects that poorer countries simply aren't able to collect good statistics. There seems to be a relationship between poverty and murders on these charts, but the obvious exception is the United States.

RE: The Big Picture | How big IS the US anyway?

When Julia Roberts flashed under-arm hair at a film premiere there was uproar. But one woman, at least, wants to overturn prejudices and has taken a New Year's resolution not to shave.

BBC NEWS | Magazine | Letting your hair down

Edge Designs is an all-women run company that designs interior office space. They had a recent opportunity to do an office project in NYC. The client allowed the women of this company a free hand in all design aspects. The client was a company that was also run by all women execs. The result, well, we all know that men never talk, never look at each other, and never laugh much in the restroom. The men's room is a serious and quiet place, but now, with the addition of one mural on the wall......lets just say the men's restroom is a place of laughter and smiles.

I was sent this image and figured I would share. Unfortunately there are not embedded images here so clink on the linky

Men's Room Mural