Don’t emulate the horrible things about America, Australia!

So far, this sounds so much like the Constance McMillen story: school has a big dance event, young lady wants to go with a date, the school tells her she can’t because her date is also a young lady. This time, though, the story is set in Australia rather than Mississippi. I know there are many fine people in Mississippi, but trust us on this one, you shouldn’t copy the social mores of one of the poorer and more benighted states in the US.

Savannah Supski was told that she couldn’t bring her date, Hannah Williams, to her school’s formal, and the principal is amazingly clueless. She claims she isn’t being homophobic or discriminating against same-sex couples: she insists that it is entirely because they want to “promote a co-educational experience” — in other words, compel all students to follow heteronormative patterns of behavior — and that if they allowed lesbians to participate, “they [the students] would all bring females”. I doubt that the latter excuse is a real risk, unless Ivanhoe Girls’ Grammar school is somehow magically transforming every student into a raging lesbian, and even if it were, it’s still not a problem. If every couple who showed up at the dance were a boy and a girl, I can’t quite imagine the principal becoming concerned at all the uniformity and trying to think up rules to break it up with some more sexual diversity.

At least Melbourne hasn’t gone quite as far as Fulton, Mississippi: there they organized a fake prom just for Constance and other outcasts, and held the real prom in a secret location so the lesbos wouldn’t show up. Australians probably aren’t quite that sleazy, yet. I hope it’s not one of their aspirations.

Polling the anti-GM vote

There’s a debate going on in The Economist. Pamela Ronald is defending the proposition that biotechnology and sustainable agriculture are complementary, not contradictory, which is weird: agriculture is biotechnology, and just breaking ground with a sharp stick and throwing some seeds in is an example of an ‘unnatural’ human practice. I don’t understand how the opposition can make a case, especially when this is their opening statement:

Biotechnology is not a system of farming. It reflects no specific philosophy nor is it guided by a set of principles or performance criteria. It is a bag of tools than can be used for good or evil, and lots in between.

Yes? And? It’s a tool, sure, but that can’t possibly be an objection to a tool being unusable for sustainable agriculture. And focusing on genetically modified plants is odd: all of our crops are genetically modified, often beyond recognition. Modern corn looks almost nothing like teosinte, and is the product of thousands of years of human meddling with crops…this argument reduces to a complaint that the very subtle fine-tuning of specific genes with modern molecular techniques is somehow more troubling than the wholesale radical modification of a whole species by extreme artificial selection. I just don’t get it, unless it’s just some crazy Luddite bias. There are legitimate complaints about how agribusiness can use genetic modification to lock up strains for selfish economic reasons, but the topic of the debate isn’t about abuses of the technique — it’s about the potential for genetic engineering to improve sustainability.

Anyway, it’s a debate with an internet poll attached to it, and so far the kneejerk organic anti-GMO side has a slight edge, 54% to 46%. Read, assess the arguments, and vote yourself.

I’m still wondering, Mr Stewart

He’s a funny guy, but I’m still completely baffled by Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity. He supposedly addressed his many critics last night; somebody tell me what it means, other than that it was an amusing self-deprecating schtick.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
MSNBC Suspends Keith Olbermann
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Rally to Restore Sanity

It still doesn’t answer the question! He is aware that there’s a problem of perception here:

I do think the rally was about something, just not necessarily what they wanted it to be about or what they think it was about…

Excellent, I could have just missed it. I’m sure Jon Stewart will now take this opportunity to clarify. And here it comes, here it is, the ultimate meaning and message of the rally:

“be more judicious in our blanket slandering”

Insert trademark Stewart double-take, followed by disbelieving stare into the camera.

That’s…nice. Who would have thought that that could be a cause that would draw a few hundred thousand people together in a mass event? It really doesn’t address the complaint that it was an exercise in false equivalence, though, since gathering a mob of cheerful liberal/progressive folk and telling them to stop the blanket slandering of the right wing does sound like he’s complaining about the wrong people here.

He does mention that now he and his fellow liberal pundits can spend the next ten years debating the point of the rally, which is probably true if the primary instigator is going to be that reluctant to state his goals.

Speaking of mental illness…

David Hedrick, a failed Teabagger candidate for congress, has written a children’s book that has to be seen to be believed. It’s called The Liberal Claus(e): Socialism on a Sleigh, and it’s a fable about Santa Claus being deposed in a rigged vote by Barack Obama, who installs his evil cronies Pelosi, Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, as some kind of head elves. Then all the elves are forced to join an evil labor union, and they ship free candy canes to all the children to get them to accept their evil regime.

Seriously. If you want a glimpse of the delusional world the teabaggers live in, look at this book.

You aren’t really watching this

You can’t. Because the reptoids destroyed our network infrastructure with a massive electromagnetic pulse on the 6th of November, and they’re all going to be down for at least 6 months.

She starts off looking normal, but the first sign that there might be something amiss is the big cheesy Kinkade painting in the background. By the end, when she’s raving about Pleiadeans and Sirians and Bilderbergers, and how she’s the mother of every being in the galaxy, you’ll be feeling sorry for the poor dear.

She’s got a whole youtube channel that is a sad demonstration of an ongoing psychiatric collapse. I hope she’s got family or friends who are going to get her help.

(via Gawker)