Think of it as the Cliff’s Notes:
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The history of humanity in one GIF (abridged, ID version)
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Author Archives: wellsdc
The State Board of Education is up for grabs. Here’s why you should care.
!['Museum of Lincolnshire Life, Lincoln, England - DSCF1726' by Green Lane (Own work) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMuseum_of_Lincolnshire_Life%2C_Lincoln%2C_England_-_DSCF1726.JPG "'Museum of Lincolnshire Life, Lincoln, England - DSCF1726' by Green Lane (Own work) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons")
Due to some boring political machinations or something, all fifteen seats on Texas’ infamous State Board of Education are up for grabs this year. The SBOE has gone out of its way to embarrass itself, and by extension all Texans, in recent years. Some of the people who want those seats might even be able to find a way to make it worse.
For one thing, many of the Republicans who want seats on the SBOE have all but admitted that they wouldn’t actually do anything if elected:
At least 10 out of 27 Republicans seeking election to the State Board of Education (SBOE), which oversees public education across Texas, say they don’t agree that “it is the government’s responsibility to be sure children are properly educated.” Of 13 Republicans responding to a candidate survey sent out by a collection of religious-right groups, three said they “disagree” with that statement, while another seven said they “strongly disagree.”
Eight Republican candidates in the May 29 SBOE primaries didn’t respond to the survey. Six candidates who are unopposed in their GOP primaries did not get the questionnaire. Just three Republicans affirmed the importance of public education in Texas. The religious-right groups that sponsored the survey (all of which are nonprofit, tax-exempt organizations) didn’t question Democratic candidates.
Maybe “doing nothing” is not the best way to describe it. Doing nothing would be infinitely preferable to what the SBOE has done in recent years.
Another reason to care about this election is because the hijinks of the SBOE has given the Brits just cause to mock us:
Don McLeroy, chairman of the Texas State Board of Education from 2007 to 2009, is a “young earth” creationist. He believes the earth is 6,000 years old, that human beings walked with dinosaurs, and that Noah’s Ark had a unique, multi-level construction that allowed it to house every species of animal, including the dinosaurs.
He has a right to his beliefs, but it’s his views on history that are problematic. McLeroy is part of a large and powerful movement determined to impose a thoroughly distorted, ultra-partisan, Christian nationalist version of US history on America’s public school students. And he has scored stunning successes.
Seriously, what are these people thinking?
Photo credit: ‘Museum of Lincolnshire Life, Lincoln, England – DSCF1726’ by Green Lane (Own work) [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0], via Wikimedia Commons.
Monday Cuteness: The Slow Loris
Lorises are strepsirrhine primates that live in south and southeast Asia.
No, you can’t have one as a pet.
Free-form Writing
(Written in June 2012, not published until now for whatever reason.)
This was an exercise from a session I went to at the Writers’ League of Texas Agents’ Conference today [June 23, 2012 – ed.], called “Care & Feeding of Your Writer.” We were asked to tear out an image and two words from a magazine, then write something about them. I edited for typos, but this is what I wrote.
My creativity comes from my connection to others. I write as much to be read as to get the ideas out of my head. I do not necessarily need the approval of others, but it means a lot to have their attention. Also knowing I have the support of people who care about me gives me a sense of security and freedom to be creative.
Am I the person offering the helping hand, or the one receiving it?
Yes. I am both.
The two words I chose, “helping hands,” are an inextricable part of my creativity. None of this would be possible if I didn’t have opportunities and support.
VP Biden makes a gutsy statement about depression and suicide, but still gets a lot of it wrong
VP Joe Biden gave a speech today to “families of fallen soldiers” where he spoke about his own experiences with suicidal thoughts. If you learn anything from this, it should be that it can happen to anybody:
Vice President Joe Biden, in a moving speech to families of fallen troops on Friday, recounted the dark days following the tragic deaths of his wife and daughter and talked about understanding thoughts of suicide.“It was the first time in my career, in my life, I realized someone could go out – and I probably shouldn’t say this with the press here, but no, but it’s more important, you’re more important. For the first time in my life, I understood how someone could consciously decide to commit suicide,” he said. ”Not because they were deranged, not because they were nuts, because they had been to the top of the mountain, and they just knew in their heart they would never get there again.”
Biden was 29 and had just won his seat in Congress when his wife and daughter died in a car wreck in 1972.
[h]e said well-wishers would express their condolences and often tell him that they knew how he felt, something he resented.
“You knew they were genuine. But you knew they didn’t have any damn idea, right?” Biden told attendees at the TAPS National Military Survivor Seminar and Good Grief Camp in Arlington, Va.. “That black hole you feel in your chest like you’re being sucked back into it.”
He found a way out of his grief. Not everyone finds that.
I don’t appreciate the suggestion that people who commit suicide are “deranged” or “nuts.” It took tremendous courage to say what Biden said, but he still had to preface his words with assurances that he’s not one of the crazy ones. For having the courage to speak out about this issue, I applaud VP Biden. For still linking suicide to “craziness,” he can bite me.
He is absolutely right that the rest of us cannot fathom how the pain of his loss felt. No one can truly understand another person’s pain, so it is disappointing that he would write it off as “deranged.”
People contemplate suicide for an infinite number of reasons. In a period of six months in 2011, I lost two friends to depression. It scared me, not because it didn’t make any sense, but because it sort of did. For some people, the dark times are bad enough that they will try anything for relief, and no one else can fully understand. All the rest of us can do is live well and try to help our friends who struggle to do so too.
It’s not always a “crazy” thought in and of itself, but unless you’ve experienced depression, it’s impossible to describe or explain. A close friend once described the circumstances and thoughts that led to his suicide attempt: “Let me be clear: I don’t want to die. I just need it to stop.”
Until we can accept that people can have those types of thoughts without calling them “crazy,” this won’t get better.
(For the record, I haven’t had thoughts like that in a long time. But you never forget.)
The strangest science fiction film you will ever see
And I’m posting it to my blog!
Since I won’t be blogging for a few days on account of being near a beach, I present Fantastic Planet, or La Planète Sauvage, a 1973 animated film by French animator René Laloux. The trailer is at left, if you don’t want to watch the whole thing. It is, simply stated, a mindfuck (via Wikipedia):
The film depicts a future in which human beings, known as “Oms” (a homonym of the French-language word hommes, meaning men), are creatures on the Draags’ home planet, where they are seen as pests and sometimes kept as pets (with collars). The Draags are an alien species which is humanoid in shape but a hundred times larger than humans, with blue skin, fan-like earlobes and huge, protruding red eyes. The Draags also live much longer than human beings – one Draag week equals a human year. Some Oms are domesticated as pets, but others run wild, and are periodically exterminated. The Draags’ treatment of the Oms is ironically contrasted with their high level of technological and spiritual development.
The movie is pretty damn dark. It opens with a group of Draag children (who are around 50 feet tall) toying with a human female and her baby. Eventually, one of them picks up the woman and drops her to her death. One of the children keeps the human baby as a pet, and, well, you can see where this is going. It’s fair, in my opinion, to call this a science fiction masterpiece, in its own strange way.
(Alternate English and French versions on YouTube.)
Just when you thought it was safe to look in the mirror
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Beard Slap
My one regret, as a University of Texas graduate…
…is that I never took any classes in “Pubic Affairs.”
UT’s prestigious LBJ School of Public Affairs found itself in a hairy situation this weekend when the school’s commencement booklets were distributed with an hilarious unfortunate error. Despite going through “lots of layers of approval,” the booklets welcomed guests and graduates to Commencement 2012 at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Pubic Affairs. We’re sure those in attendance bristled at the error. Coupled with the school’s motto “Unlimited Possibilities,” the new name actually makes for punlimited possibilities.
Thank you, University of Texas, for being you.
In space, no one can hear you scream, still.
By now everyone has probably seen multiple Prometheus trailers. My favorite is actually still the first teaser trailer, which has almost no dialogue and a lot of loud, scary sound effects:
Maybe it just fits with my ADHD.
What I did not realize, until someone helpfully posted it to YouTube, is that the original trailer for 1979’s Alien used the same creepy sound effect, and it is just as scary. I’ve seen Alien dozens of times, and this still creeps me out:
Less than three weeks to go!