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November 2008

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Nov 30, 2008
Nov 30, 20084 notes
Play
Nov 30, 20082 notes
Play
Nov 30, 2008104 notes
#music
“As you were breaking up with me, all I could think about were those mornings when you compared the Pop-Tarts and gave me the one with more frosting.”—

one sentence (via unicornology)

this blog is terrific!

Nov 29, 200833 notes
“I realize that if I wait until I am no longer afraid to act, write, speak, be, I’ll be sending messages on a Ouija board, cryptic complaints from the other side”—Audre Lorde (via scout)
Nov 29, 20084 notes
Why You Should Never Try to Steal a Law Student's Laptop - Switchedswitched.com

aja:

A thief learned the mistake of trying to steal a law student’s laptop last week after after becoming a punching bag for an Arizona State student he tried to rip off. Armed with a baseball bat, the intruder, Gabriel Saucedo, allegedly climbed through an open window into Alex Botsios’ apartment, waking the student and threatening to smash his head in.

Botsios was willing to let Saucedo take his wallet and guitars. Then the robber made the mistake that ultimately landed him in the hospital — he went for the laptop. According to Botsios, he said “Dude, no — please, no! I have all my case notes…that’s four months of work!” Saucedo, obviously underestimating the fury of an overstressed, overworked first-year, was unsympathetic. That’s when Botsios could take no more.

Wrestling Saucdeo to the floor, Botsios separated the bat from the thief and repeatedly punched him in the face. When it was all over, police had to get Saucedo stitched up before charging him with armed robbery and kidnapping, while Botsios only suffered some scrapes and a bruised knuckle. Most importantly, at least to the student, is that his laptop, which he called “his baby,” escaped unharmed.

Clearly it is important to know your limits as a thief and pick up on social cue, “like stay away from my baby/laptop” and other important things that can turn slam-dumk into slammed-in-the-head. 

Nov 26, 20084 notes
#technology
Nov 26, 2008
Nov 26, 20087 notes
Doctors unveil first ever whole stem cell organ transplant [LINK]dailymail.co.uk

jordanlyons:

A mother of two has become the first person in the world to undergo a whole organ transplant grown from her own stem cells. The British scientists are hailing a new dawn in transplant surgery.

I posted a video about creating this kind of organ in March.  At the time most of the testing was on rats. Now one has actually been used in a human transplant.  Science!

Nov 26, 20081 note
He no longer resides here

One sunny day in January, 2009 an old man approached the White House
 from across Pennsylvania Avenue, where he’d been sitting on a park
 bench. He spoke to the U.S. Marine standing guard and said, “I would
 like to go in and meet with President Bush.”
 
 The Marine looked at the man and said, “Sir, Mr. Bush is no longer
 president and no longer resides here.”
 
 The old man said, “Okay”, and walked away.
 
 The following day, the same man approached the White House and said to
 the same Marine, “I would like to go in and meet with President Bush.”
 
 The Marine again told the man, “Sir, as I said yesterday, Mr. Bush is
 no longer president and no longer resides here.”
 
 The man thanked him and, again, just walked away.
 
 The third day, the same man approached the White House and spoke to
 the very same U.S. Marine, saying “I would like to go in and meet with
 President Bush.”
 
 The Marine, understandably agitated at this point, looked at the man
 and said, “Sir, this is the third day in a row you have been here
 asking to speak to Mr. Bush. I’ve told you already that Mr. Bush is
 no longer the president and no longer resides here. Don’t you
 understand?”
 
 The old man looked at the Marine and said, “Oh, I understand. I just
 love hearing it.”
 
 The Marine snapped to attention, saluted, and said, “See you tomorrow,
 Sir.”

(via my mom)

Nov 26, 20086 notes
“In recent weeks, as Barack Obama has stocked his administration with one former Clinton official after another, the cry has gone up from the pundits and blogs: “Where are the new faces?” “You call this change?”

Actually, yes. For the first time in four decades, a Democratic administration is going to hit the ground running rather than fall on its face because it will be staffed by people who know how the federal government works. That’s change all right—the kind we can believe in.

Ever wonder why Republican administrations start fast and Democratic ones start ugly? It’s partly because Republicans draw on experience.”
—Peter Beinart (via apsies)
Nov 26, 20085 notes
Reasons Due South was Terrific
  • Dennis:This is the place. The furniture, appliances, and all of this great stuff is included. Utilities are extra. [He moves to the window] One a good day, you can see Canada just across the lake.
  • Benton Fraser:Canada is four-hundred and eighty-eight miles due North.
  • Dennis:You really have to squint.
Nov 25, 2008
FL's Gay Adoption Ban Ruled Unconstitutional!!google.com

julyshewillfly:

butnotmine:

“…Miami Dade Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman ruled Tuesday there was “no rational basis” for prohibiting gays from adopting children.

The ruling will allow 47-year-old Martin Gill to adopt two young brothers he has cared for as foster children since 2004…”

This makes me so happy!

 YES!

Nov 25, 2008
“They shouldn’t call it rice milk. It’s not like someone is milking the rice teat every morning.”—Paraphrasing my hilarious friend Matt
Nov 24, 2008
Road Trip

dihard:

“The CEOs of GM, Ford and Chrysler may have told Congress that they will likely go out of business without a bailout yet that has not stopped them from traveling in style, not even First Class is good enough.” via ABCnews

“It’s almost like seeing a guy show up at the soup kitchen in high-hat and tuxedo.” Rep. Gary L. Ackerman of New York via NPR

Totally despicable, right? The CEOs of the Big Three US Automakers have the gall to fly to Washington in their private jets and ask for a $25 billion bailout. No wonder Pelosi sent them home!

But, in fact, it is not necessarily their choice to fly in style. The GM board, like many corporate boards, requires its top executives to fly on private planes for security reasons. Per the president of the National Business Aviation Association, about 11,000 U.S. companies operate jets or powerful prop planes, and more use smaller planes.

In response to the uproar, GM announced the elimination of two of its five corporate jets, though the top executives still plan to use the private jets. And Ford “explored” the sale of its private jets. They should consider NPR’s solution for December 8:

…if they really wanted to touch the purse strings of Congress and the public, they should have driven from Detroit to Washington in a hybrid sub-compact — the three of them taking shifts at the wheel during a nine-hour drive through Toledo, Akron and Pittsburgh, stopping to get out and stretch at all-night doughnut shops, calling in to all-night talk radio shows, as reporters sent iPhone snapshots from along the road. Then the CEOs could step out of their car just in front of the U.S. Capitol, stretch their legs, rub their all-night beard, and say, “Door to door, nine hours, not bad, and on one tank of gas. How ‘bout that!”

Oh, wait. U.S. car companies don’t make a hybrid sub-compact, do they?

Nov 24, 200816 notes
“Well, what really went wrong is that General Motors has had this philosophy from the beginning that what’s good for General Motors is good for the country. So, their attitude was we’ll build it and you buy it. We’ll tell you what to buy. You just buy it. Eventually, the consumer got smart and said, ‘You know what, I’d like a car that gets a little better gas mileage. I’d like a car that’s safer on the road,’ so they started to buy other cars. General Motors still wouldn’t change. They still kept building the wrong cars, and more and more people stopped buying them.”—Michael Moore on CNN (via somethingchanged) (via apsies)
Nov 24, 2008
“Breastfeeding is fine by me. But putting it out there for everyone to see is like chewing with your mouth open. It’s just not polite. And that’s all I have to say about that.”—

 Helen Philpot, and Margaret agrees Got Milk? « Margaret and Helen (via robotheart)

In agreement.

Nov 21, 2008
Nov 21, 200839 notes
Nov 19, 2008
Nov 19, 2008303 notes
Play
Nov 19, 2008
#music
“I think it was the first time in my life I ever felt like I looked “good”. Do you know what I mean? That nice feeling when you look in the mirror, and your hair’s right for the first time in your life? I don’t think we should base so much on weight, muscles, and a good hair day, but when it happens, it’s nice. It really is.”—the perks of being a wallflower (via playingdead) (via sarcastic) (via rainiscalling) (via elation) (via unicornology)
Nov 19, 200836 notes
Obama names 7 gays to transition teamwashingtonblade.com

notthatkindagay:

Three of the seven gays named to the transition panels — businessman Fred P. Hochberg, former San Francisco Supervisor Roberta Achtenberg, and labor attorney Elaine Kaplan — held high-level positions in the Clinton administration.

The Obama officials also named President Bush’s former ambassador to Romania, Michael Guest, to a transition panel assigned to review issues pertaining to the State Department.

…

The other openly gay members named to the transition review teams, in addition to Hochberg, Achtenberg, and Guest, include Rick Stamberger, president and CEO of SmartBrief, Inc., an online news publisher; Brad Kiley, an official with the Washington-based Center for American Progress think tank; and Thomas Soto, co-founder of Craton Equity Partners, a large “clean technology” investment fund based in Southern California.

Nov 19, 200815 notes
“If Barry chooses Hillary as secretary of state, a woman who clearly intimidated him and taught him to be a better pol in the primaries, it doesn’t signal the return of the Clinton era. It says the opposite: If you have a president who’s willing to open up his universe to other smart, strong people, if you have a big dog who shares his food dish, the Bill Clinton era is truly over.”—Maureen Dowd, NYT Team of Frenemies
Nov 17, 2008
#politics #obama
“Growing up is never easy. You hold on to things that were. You wonder what’s to come. But that night, I think we knew it was time to let go of what had been, and look ahead of what would be. Other days. New days. Days to come. The thing is, we didn’t have to hate each other for getting older. We just had to forgive ourselves for growing up.”—Daniel Stern, The Wonder Years (via thoughtsdetained)
Nov 17, 20086 notes
Play
Nov 17, 20081 note
Nov 15, 2008
Nov 15, 2008
Nov 11, 2008
“I’ve always been amazed that the very people forced to live in the worst parts of town, go to the worst schools, and who have it the hardest are always the first to step up, to defend us.”—Michael Moore, Fahrenheit 9/11
Nov 11, 2008
“But just continuing to make sure that our first priority is getting them into schools that make sense for them, making sure that they have activities that they care about, that we’re there for them to help them with their homework, that we go to their parent-teacher conferences, that we go to all their events. It’s important to continue to do that, no matter what their father’s job is. And he has to continue to make them a priority even as he’s the leader of the free world. I think that’s an important thing for him to model for others. It’s this notion that if he can do it, then we all have to really fight for it. Because what we’re going to be fighting for, for our kids, is what we have to fight for, for all of our kids. They have to be center in this society and this nation. We have to put their education, their needs, their well-being first and foremost. As adults, we can balance the other stuff. We’re the grown-ups.”—Michelle Obama, Interview: Michelle Obama Readies Family for D.C. (via robot-heart)
Nov 7, 2008
10 Social Networks And What They Say About The People Who Use Themheartlessdoll.com

wayne-remy:

(via sraz)

5. The Tumblr user: creative, impatient, likes new toys
Tumblr is a relatively new blogging platform, one that lets you add pictures and links super quickly without having to do the back-end work of something like Wordpress. That means easy startup and fast results. In short, it’s like candy. Delicious candy.

Candy is a great discriptor and c'mon, who doesn’t like candy?

Nov 7, 20082 notes
“The most important thing that Barack Obama brings to the presidency is his willingness to reason. He won his presidency not as a black American but as a reasoning American who happens to be black. America needs a change from the reign of “obtruding false rules pranked in reason’s garb” — to use John Milton’s words. Attacking Iraq for an imagined link with 9/11 was daft. Having unaffordable health care is not a reasonable way to run a rich society. Destroying the environment is not smart. Spreading the wealth a bit in a deeply unequal society is not as offensive to reason as it appeared to Joe the noncertified Plumber.”—Amartya Sen, Nobel Prize–winning economist (via soupsoup)
Nov 7, 200812 notes
“Obama may speak beautifully and inspirationally about hope and change, about bipartisan cooperation and a better America. But he clearly understands that you just can’t sit around talking about all the good things you want to do when you get to the White House and then expect them to happen all by themselves. Which means you can’t hire a staff that’s going to gather at work every day, hold hands and sing Kumbaya.

Instead, you bring in a guy like Emanuel, the most hard-headed, no-nonsense, foul-mouthed, smart-as-hell, get-it-done-or-get-out-of-my-way Washington insider of his generation. And you put him in charge of a White House staff whose task it is — and this is putting it conservatively — to conceive, propose, promote and somehow push through Congress the most ambitious agenda any President has carried forth at least since Ronald Reagan rode into town with a lopsided grin in January 1981. “Rahm does not sing Kumbaya,” laughs an old friend and colleague. “He barks orders.” His hometown paper, the Chicago Tribune, calls Emanuel “a brutally effective taskmaster.”

”—Rahm Emanuel: A Tough Taskmaster for Obama - TIME (via julyshewillfly)
Nov 7, 200820 notes
Obama's Best Quote Yetecogeek.org

jordanlyons:

Obama was caught by a live mic saying about the debates, “I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, ‘You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.’ So when Brian Williams is asking me about what’s a personal thing that you’ve done [that’s green], and I say, you know, 'Well, I planted a bunch of trees.’ And he says, 'I’m talking about personal.’ What I’m thinking in my head is, 'Well, the truth is, Brian, we can’t solve global warming because I f—ing changed light bulbs in my house. It’s because of something collective’.”

Somedays I wish I could vote again just for emphasis.  High five, Mr. President.

Nov 7, 20081 note
Nov 7, 2008
“At the end of August, as Hurricane Gustav threatened the coast of Texas, the Obama campaign called the Red Cross to say it would be routing donations to it via the Red Cross home page. Get your servers ready—our guys can be pretty nuts, Team Obama said. Sure, sure, whatever, the Red Cross responded. We’ve been through 9/11, Katrina, we can handle it. The surge of Obama dollars crashed the Red Cross Web site in less than 15 minutes.”—

McCain Camp Retools, Targets Obama | Newsweek Politics: Campaign 2008 | Newsweek.com (via squashed) (via julyshewillfly)

This campaign has been stunning.  The shear numbers of people who have been inspired to vote, contribute and participate in the process is beyond comprehension. 

I once heard Yolanda King (daughter of Martin Luther King), speak and she said something that has stuck with me, “[we need to]…get up off our apathy.”

Maybe we finally have.  She died last year without witnessing the Obama victory.   

Nov 7, 200824 notes
“But it would be fair for the new administration to point out how conservative ideology, the belief that greed is always good, helped create this crisis. What F.D.R. said in his second inaugural address — “We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics” — has never rung truer.”—The Obama Agenda - NYTimes.com (via robot-heart)
Nov 7, 2008
“

This is a country which has habitually, sometimes irritatingly, regarded itself as young and vibrant, the envy of the world. Often this is merely hype. But there are times when it is entirely true.

With Barack Obama’s victory, one of these moments has arrived.

”—This BBC article (via frannyandzooey)
Nov 6, 200823 notes
Nov 6, 20084 notes
“The final moments of the election were covered in obsessive detail far from America. In Australia, radio stations interrupted their shows to broadcast the Obama acceptance speech. In Berlin, newspapers printed special editions.

Perhaps one of the most poignant accolades came from Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s former president, who said in a letter to Mr. Obama: “Your victory has demonstrated that no person anywhere in the world should not dare to dream of wanting to change the world for a better place.””
—Election Unleashes a Flood of Hope Worldwide - NYTimes.com (via robot-heart)
Nov 6, 2008
“On a cold midmorning in January 2007, Hillary sat in the sunny living room of her house on Whitehaven Street in Washington, a well-to-do enclave off Embassy Row where she lived with her mother and, on occasion, her husband. She was finishing a last round of policy prep with her aides before getting on a plane to Iowa for her first big campaign swing. In a moment of quiet, she looked around the living room and said, to no one in particular, ‘I so love this house. Why am I doing this?’ Her policy director, Neera Tanden, and her advertising director, Mandy Grunwald, laughed, a little too lightheartedly. Clinton went on. ‘I’m so comfortable here. Why am I doing this?’ Tanden spoke up. ‘The White House isn’t so bad,’ she said. ‘I’ve been there,’ said Clinton.”—

Newsweek: How he did it

Funny how things all work out the way they are supposed to. I think Hillary is going to flourish in the senate, it’s a good place for her. (via apsies)

(via robot-heart)

Nov 6, 20083 notes
Nov 6, 200834 notes
Nov 6, 20081 note
#Seattle
“The Congressional committee that puts together the inauguration ceremonies announced that the theme would be “A New Birth of Freedom,” to mark the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, symbolically linking one president from Illinois who freed the slaves to another who broke the ultimate racial barrier in politics.”—

NYTimes

Lovely :) Wish I could be there… perhaps, perhaps.

(via spintree)

Nov 6, 20084 notes
Play
Nov 5, 2008
Nov 5, 200827 notes
Nov 5, 2008426 notes
Gay Rights In America: In the Midst of History, A Sad Reality Check

robot-heart:

mayagantt:thedailywhat:

Arizona’s Prop 102 and Florida’s Amendment 2, banning gay marriage, both pass.

Arkansas’s Initiative 1, banning gay adoption passed as well.

California’s Prop 8, which will not only ban gay marriage, but will also strip those gay and lesbian couples who have already married of their license, is still too close to call, but it’s not looking good.

As far as we’ve come, this is a stark reminder that we have not come far enough. While some are gaining a renewed sense of equality, others are presently being stripped of theirs.

The next battle begins…

The struggle continues.

Nov 5, 200844 notes
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