We’re going to Seoul at the end of May for our son’s wedding, and we’re going to spend about a week there (wish it could be more, but we have obligations back home).
So, besides the wedding at the end of our visit, is there anything we should not miss in our brief stay in South Korea?
This is a painfully common story: parents give child a deadly weapon as a present, child accidentally kills someone (because CHILDREN SHOULD NOT BE PLAYING WITH GUNS), and everyone shrugs it off because, well, these things just happen. It’s no one’s fault. Nope, no blame anywhere. This is a rifle intended for children, so it was being used properly. Of course, it was used by a five year old boy to accidentally slaughter his two year old sister, but hey, It’s just one of those nightmares, a quick thing that happens when you turn your back,
say the police, as if there was no agency involved anywhere in the whole tragic series of events. It just happens.
And then Grandma has to come along and open her mouth.
Riddle said she is devastated, but comforted knowing that her granddaughter is in a better place.
It was God’s will. It was her time to go, I guess,she told WLEX.I just know she’s in heaven right now and I know she’s in good hands with the Lord.
Fuck you, Grandma.
North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) late Wednesday night signed rushed legislation that, as is widely known, eliminates local governments’ ability to pass anti-discrimination measures to protect gay and transgender individuals. But what received less immediate attention was that the new law guts workplace discrimination protections for virtually everyone.
The bill also pre-empts local employment ordinances governing wages, benefits, employee protections and leave policies. It would prevent schools from allowing transgender people to use the bathroom of the gender with which they identify.
The law also prohibits local ordinances regarding child labor.
Basically, assholes like businessman Art Pope used anti-LGBT bigotry to pass anti-worker legislation without a lot of people noticing (or caring–some people value their bigotry more than their welfare).
Gov. Mike Pence made Indiana the second state in the nation to ban abortions sought because the fetus has a disability, signing into law Thursday an expansion of the state’s already restrictive abortion laws.
HRC and Georgia Equality, the statewide LGBT advocacy organization, called on House Leadership and Gov. Nathan Deal to put a stop to the so-called “First Amendment Defense Act of Georgia,” H.B. 757. The bill, which just passed the Georgia Senate by a vote of 38 – 14 goes far beyond protecting the right to practice one’s religion and would instead put LGBT people couples, single parents, and unmarried couples at risk for discrimination.
The dangerous legislation goes far beyond protecting the right of free exercise of one’s religion. While falsely framed as prohibiting the state government from making funding or tax status decisions based on an organization’s views on marriage that are driven by religious belief, in reality it threatens to create a breakdown of state government services, opening the door to discrimination against same-sex couples, their families, and those who love them. Taxpayer-funded adoption and foster care agencies could refuse to place children who are in desperate need of loving and caring homes with LGBT couples. State-funded homeless shelters could turn away unwed couples and their families. Government employees could refuse to file tax forms for same-sex couples or provide state benefits to single mothers.
The battle over transgender rights has flared at the State Capitol as a group of Republican legislators unveiled a proposal Wednesday that would require people to use bathrooms and changing rooms that match their “biological sex.”
…
Gov. Mark Dayton on Wednesday decried the legislation, saying that he was “appalled” and that he would veto it if it were to reach his desk. “This is about pandering to their extreme issue,” Dayton said.
He added: “They just keep bashing people for their own political advantage. … They’re wrong on the issue, and they’re wrong on the morality.”
It’s kind of weird. Dayton is an extremely wealthy businessman, and once upon a time he would have been stereotyped right into the Republican party. But he’s a Democrat, and he’s also got all these liberal, progressive views and doesn’t think his position of power should be used stomp on the poor and give more advantages to his wealthy cronies.
Hey, I recognize that octopus illustration!
It’s an illustration of the “eight armed cuttle” from the Crystal Palace exhibition of 1871. It’s used on a new article on “The Octopus That Ruled London”, about the “cephalomania” that swept across the city when people were first able to get a close-up look at the majestic mollusc. It’s not a mania, though, if everyone is doing it. Then it just becomes a sign of a normal, balanced, healthy mental state.
Wait…maybe it’s too complicated. I have a simpler guide: just vote Democrat. The time for thoughtful consideration of policy on a case by case basis is over, until we get an opposition party that hasn’t lost its collective mind.
Trump2016trauma was exaggerated
It’s become the standard trope: college students are whiny, delicate, over-sensitive wimps who can’t take the real world and demand safe spaces
and trigger warnings
. These complaints about students are usually made by ignorant jerks who don’t know any, and who will also be complaining about too PC
and of course, the regressive Left
, and before you know it, they’ve put all college folk into the cultural Marxist
category. Those phrases are good tells to let you know you’re dealing with an idiot.
The latest cause célèbre for the regressive trolls is an incident at Emory University, in which someone scrawled “Trump 2016” on the sidewalk. As the right-wing twits tell it, the students were shocked and horrified and demanding protection from the administration, and the administration rushed to coddle them.
It was all a lie.
The Australian Giant Cuttlefish aggregation is truly one of nature’s great events. Thousands of cuttlefish congregate in the shallow waters around the Spencer gulf in South Australia, to mate and perpetuate the species. The cuttlefish like alien beings, display an array of patterns, textures and colours to indicate their intentions. As male courts a female or wards off other males, and entourage of suiters stay poised for an opportunity to mate with the female. A visual delight and a rare glimpse of nature in all its glory. Scott Portelli
Lately, my genetics class has taken a turn, by intent. I start the semester with the basics: Mendel, simple crosses, learning the terminology, all of that simple stuff that most of them see as a review of high school biology. But then, once I’m reasonably confident they know the commonly understood rules, I start adding all the complications that Mendel knew nothing about, and then we start getting into epistasis and the complicated business of translating genotype into phenotype, and I essentially end up telling them that everything they learned before wasn’t exactly true, because real world heredity is a heck of a lot more complicated. You can’t usually reduce complex traits to one gene with alleles that are dominant or recessive.
So what do you know, the New Yorker comes out with an excellent article that highlights complexity and real world genetics: Runs in the Family, about the genetics of schizophrenia.
It’s going to be playing here in Morris this weekend. And while I’m usually quick to get in line for escapist fantasy, I think I’m just going to sit this one out. I’m going to catch up on my grading, instead, which sounds like more fun.
The problem with this movie that I can see coming is that it’s a Zack Snyder film, and takes everything far too seriously. 300 was fun in the sense that the joke was on him — it went so far over the top that it became campily bad, and you could watch it for the meta-mockery of raging ahistorical libertarian machismo (and of course Snyder is an acolyte of Ayn Rand.) Battling ubermenschen is right in Snyder’s wheelhouse, and he’ll stuff it full of pseudo-seriousness and completely overlook any human story.
And that humanity is what I’m looking for. Let’s all remember these are all comic book stories — they can deal with big themes, but there should always be a bit of light-heartedness beneath it all. These are stories about people with impossible powers dancing about in brightly colored leotards, after all. A sense of humor is required, but Snyder doesn’t seem to have one.
Of the superhero movies I’ve enjoyed, there’s an inverse correlation between the scope of the story and the pleasure of experiencing them. Those Avengers movies with a giant cast and city-demolishing cosmic enemy? Thud. Boring. The fun movies? Deadpool, Ant-Man, Guardians of the Galaxy? The magnitude of the drama has to be compensated for with sufficient silliness. Man of Steel was possibly the worst of a bad bunch because there wasn’t a scrap of joy in the whole thing — they might as well have painted a scowling face on a wrecking ball and filmed a day of it smashing stuff. It would have been just as entertaining.
So, yeah, I’ll choose to grade papers over watching self-absorbed Comic Book Guy pander to the oblivious hero-worshipping demographic — you know, the kinds of people who think critics ought to be raped for disliking the object of their idolatry. I’m pretty sure those papers will contain an occasional bit that will make me crack a smile — inadvertently or intentionally — so that sounds like a lot more fun than watching angry cartoons punch each other.
The people who occupied the Malheur refuge were more than just sanctimonious criminals — they were also disgusting. Here’s a gallery of photos illustrating the wreckage they left behind. They trashed the place. They wrecked the land. They disrespected the property of the people who worked at the refuge while demanding that their property rights were paramount.
That photo is of their legacy: a shit-filled trench.
That’s how I’ll always remember the Bundys.
