Alternative Lifestyle

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I, Tony Wills [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia CommonsThe term “alternative lifestyle” has come up several times recently in social media discussions, generally in reference to LGBTQ individuals who are actually just trying to live their lives and not bother the person who thinks they are alternative. I realized that I hadn’t seen or heard that term in a while, which is at least partly due to my own self-selection of media sources, and the company I keep. It raises the question, though, of “alternative” to what, exactly?

In my own opinion, I lead a pretty “mainstream” life. I’m married to a woman, we own a house together, she commutes to work every morning, and I work via the internet. To others, though, my life may look pretty wacky. I don’t go to church, ever, on account of being an atheist. I occasionally do improv comedy and hang around with improvisers. I have about 20-24 hours’ worth of tattoo work on my body. I’m sure to someone somewhere, I seem sort of “alternative.” Going to church all the time and worrying about how God (or whichever god) might view my daily decisions—a lifestyle I used to lead—seems pretty “alternative” to me now, because it is different from my daily experience.

Referring to something as an alternative lifestyle suggests that the speaker views their own lifestyle as normal, standard, or preferable. To me, a truly “alternative” lifestyle might be someone who keeps a flock of ostriches on their property and makes them attend daily afternoon tea. One could raise legitimate concerns about such a lifestyle regarding, inter alia, public health and humane treatment of wildlife.

Now please, stop obsessing over the personal lives of grown, consenting adults who simply love one another differently than you, and go save some ostriches.

Photo credit: Tony Wills [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

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Porn and Prejudice: On and On We Go (UPDATED)

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UPDATE (01/29/2014): She got reinstated. I take no credit for it.

Sit down, Waldo!

Bonus points if you get the reference.

Yet another teacher has been suspended (which may or may not be code for “fired”) after daring to reveal that she is in fact naked underneath all of her clothing. This time she’s an elementary school special education teacher (or teacher’s aide, depending on the news source). An “anonymous source” sent copies of not-quite-nude pictures to the school’s administration, which is a real classy move:

A Fitchburg teacher’s aide who moonlights as a model of sexy lingerie has sparked a debate over what conduct is befitting of an educator outside the classroom.

Many people seem to have no issue with Kaitlin Pearson’s modeling portfolio, while others are questioning whether someone who works with young children should be posing for racy photos.

Regardless, Superintendent of Schools André Ravenelle placed Pearson on paid administrative leave early Friday afternoon after the district was anonymously sent a packet containing her modeling photos.

Pearson has been working in one of South Street Elementary School’s special-education programs as a full-time classroom assistant for a small group of students since November.

***

Ravenelle said he was not aware of Pearson’s modeling photos until school officials were mailed the anonymous packet. A similar packet was also sent to the Sentinel & Enterprise. Ravenelle placed Pearson on administrative leave before speaking with a reporter for this article.

A short note, typed in all capital letters, that was included in the packet sent to the Sentinel & Enterprise read, in part: “Can you believe that this girl was hired to work with special education children in the Fitchburg schools?!!” [Emphasis added.] Continue reading →

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The True Truth About the Federal Reserve

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I recently engaged in yet another attempted dialogue with a complete stranger on Facebook who wrote something generally indecipherable about the threat posed by the Federal Reserve System. It contained many of the usual tropes you might expect, held together by misspelled conjunctions, crimes against grammar, and explanations that the issue just makes the person so. angry. that. they. can. not. type. correctly……

It got me thinking, though. I don’t really know that much about the Federal Reserve, and it certainly has a not-insignificant number of people feeling threatened. It’s just that I can’t seem to find anything addressing the problems with the Fed that don’t quickly descend into conspiracy theorism. It seems as though anyone who has really looked into the workings of the Fed (or claim to have done so) come out as semi-coherent crazy people. And that’s when the truth hit.

It has been staring us in the face all this time.

The Federal Reserve is Cthulhu.

By BenduKiwi (Unknown) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC-BY-SA-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Think about it: it’s vast, it’s older than any of us, and to try to understand it leads inexorably to madness.

Perhaps Lovecraft himself said it best:

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of the infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.

He might have even written about an early foray into the depths of the Federal Reserve itself:

It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into the tainted outside air of that poison city of madness. … The Thing cannot be described—there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order.

Photo credit: By BenduKiwi (Unknown) [GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0 or CC-BY-SA-2.5-2.0-1.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

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A Quick Refresher on Defamation Law

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A Hypocrite and Slanderer by Franz Xaver Messerschmidt [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia CommonsStatements of opinion are protected by the First Amendment, and therefore are not actionable as defamation, e.g. “In my opinion, he has molested and tortured data…” or “I think he has molested and tortured data.” Your choice of words might make you sound like an ass, but you have the right to sound like an ass.

Untrue statements presented as fact are not protected by the First Amendment, and therefore may be subject to a defamation claim, e.g. “He has molested and tortured data…” It becomes a question of fact for a jury as to whether the statement is false, and whether the person made the statement with actual malice as to its falsity:

A judge for the D.C. Superior Court on Thursday refused to let libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and conservative news site National Review off the hook from a defamation lawsuit brought by climatologist Michael Mann, saying the sites’ musings about the accuracy of Mann’s research may not be protected by the First Amendment.

Mann had sued the outlets in 2012, claiming they published defamatory articles accusing him of academic fraud and comparing him to a convicted child molester, former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky. Specifically, Mann alleged that CEI published — and then National Review republished — an article calling Mann “the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet.”

Judge Frederick H. Weisberg on Thursday ruled that while “opinions and rhetorical hyperbole” are protected speech under the First Amendment, accusing a climate scientist of lying about his seemingly factual data is serious enough to warrant defamation claims.

“The allegedly defamatory aspect of this sentence is the statement that plaintiff ‘molested and tortured data,’ not the rhetorically hyperbolic comparison to convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky,” Judge Weisberg wrote.

In my opinion, the statements at issue in this lawsuit constitute defamation.

Photo credit: A Hypocrite and Slanderer by Franz Xaver Messerschmidt [CC-BY-SA-3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons.

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Monday Morning Cute: The Majestic Penguin

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A clever penguin via Reddit user adorablyfool, who notes, “He looks so proud of himself at the end.”

Here’s an imaginative, but doomed, little penguin: Continue reading →

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So You Want to Compare Something to the Holocaust

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Farhad Manjoo’s flowchart can help you determine if your comparison is appropriate.

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Behold the Cuttlefish

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“Imagine trying to move by vomiting out of a giant straw, and flapping your skirt around very, very fast.” The cuttlefish is a mysterious and majestic creature, with eyes “in the shape of Charlie Brown’s mouth when he misses a football.”

Another excellent video from zefrank1:

“Like a lactose-intolerant cheese maker, the cuttlefish is unaware of its own gifts.”

“Playing hide-and-seek with a cuttlefish sucks. They don’t move, they just change color.”

Here are a few more cuttlefish being colorful: Continue reading →

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Panem et Circenses, American-Style

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By WolfgangRieger [Public domain], via Wikimedia CommonsOver the past day or two, I have rather cynically shook my head at people taking to Facebook, Twitter, etc. to decry the proles’ shallow fixation on the latest Justin Bieber news—something about eggs and drag racing—to the apparent exclusion of more important concerns.

I generally figure that people’s preference for bread and circuses is a persistent feature of society, and has been since we first started having societies—and with them, issues of societal importance for people to ignore. Then I saw this headline, and decided it’s worth being at least a bit annoyed: “Watch a congresswoman discussing the NSA get interrupted for ‘breaking news’ on Justin Bieber’s arrest.”

The extremely cynical and conspiracy-minded among us might think that this was a deliberate distraction, orchestrated by the network or even by a government that only pretends to be just marginally competent. I, on the other hand, am thinking this was more likely to have been a combination of unfortunate timing and a hasty programming decision.

Would they have interrupted a report on, say, one of the Kardashians to report on Bieber? Who the hell knows? The fact is that Bieber seems more like news than the NSA to whomever runs these shows, and that’s more likely to be because they think more people will tune in for Bieber. In that sense, I guess I join those who bemoan the hoi polloi’s fixation on seemingly trivial entertainment news (more on the idea of triviality below.) Continue reading →

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The Downside of Working from Home, Texas Winter Edition

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First of all, this is what passes for a “snow day” in Austin, Texas:

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The patio furniture is having fond memories of its native Sweden.

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Do you know what the street value of this deck is???

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We could lie down and make, uh, icy dirt angels.

Do I get to sit on the couch, wrapped in a Snuggie, eating bonbons until it’s deemed safe to drive to work? No, because:

  1. I don’t have any bonbons;
  2. I don’t own a Snuggie, although I do have some nice blankets; and
  3. My office is in the same building as the couch where I would sit and eat bonbons, if I had any, so my daily commute never requires me to leave the area serviced by our HVAC system.

On the other hand, I still don’t have to wear pants if I don’t wanna.

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This Week in WTF, January 24, 2014

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– See my vest? Some fashion editor wore a coat made from a gorilla out in public recently (h/t Laura). Her response to criticism was that she “received the coat as a gift from a friend who is vegetarian.” Maybe the gorilla died of natural causes.

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(In other news, last week was Diane Fossey’s birthday. Go figure.)

Photo context: The Vegan Police scene from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

Via Twitter

Via Twitter

– And they say romance is dead: Back in November, an Oklahoma State football fan managed to get his homemade sign in the background of ESPN’s College Gameday. The sign made some off-color comparisons between the inadequacy of Baylor’s defense and pornographic actress Lisa Ann’s, uh…..the sign said “Baylor’s defense has more holes to fill than Lisa Ann.”

(Not all of you know who Lisa Ann is, and others of you will pretend you don’t. The hyperlink on her name goes to her Wikipedia page. Her pictures of Wikimedia Commons push the NSFW boundaries. For anything else, do your own Googling.)

She apparently thought the sign was funny, or charming, or something, and the two kept in touch. (I can’t believe I just linked to TMZ.) They were both back in the news because he was her date to the AVN (Adult Video News) Awards last weekend. Did I mentioned he’s a freshman at OSU? My freshman year of college was kind of dull—it certainly did not involve a trip to Vegas with a 41 year-old woman who received a “Hottest MILF” award.

The OSU student tweeted the picture to the right, and of course the internet’s mind went straight to the gutter.

– We make the news around here: A news drone, which I did not know was a thing until just now, was flying above Cape Town, South Africa, trying to get a better view of a guy who was threatening to jump off the top of the city’s Civic Centre. The reason this is news is because the drone almost knocked the man off the building. Luckily he didn’t fall, but it’s just one more data point against drones.

News drones??? Really????

 

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