May 2012
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25 Things I’ve Learned In My 20s →
You can’t date a jerk and expect to turn them into a good person. Jerks are fully committed to being unpleasant. Those brief moments of tenderness they give you are designed to trip you up and give you false hope. It’s best to stay away altogether.
The rumors are true: your metabolism does slow down as you get older! That means if you’re still eating whatever you want, there’s a good chance...
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“In Greek, “nostalgia” literally means “the pain from an old wound”. It’s a...”
– Don Draper
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An Amigurumi Fish That Transforms Into Sushi →
Irene Kiss has created a transforming crocheted Fish to Sushi amigurumi and posted its pattern (pdf) on Ravelry.
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Unusual clock →
Wow.
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How Yahoo Killed Flickr and Lost the Internet →
Flickr is still pretty wonderful. But it’s lovely in the same way a box of old photos you’ve stashed under the bed is. It’s an archive of nostalgia that you love dearly, on the rare occasion you stumble across it. You pull them out, and hold them up to the light, and remember a time when you were younger, and the Web was a more optimistic place, and it really was almost...
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3 ways to define a JavaScript class →
JavaScript is a very flexible object-oriented language when it comes to syntax. In this article you can find three ways of defining and instantiating an object. Even if you have already picked your favorite way of doing it, it helps to know some alternatives in order to read other people’s code.
It’s important to note that there are no classes in JavaScript. Functions can be used...
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A Dialogue With My 86-year-old Grandmother About...
http: //www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/29/gay-activists-grandparents-marriage-equality_n_1310537.html
I saw this article earlier this afternoon and I got suddenly curious how my 86yo grandmother felt about marriage equality and LGBT rights. Since she's often hilarious, I decided to interview her on the phone and post it here. I put it on speakerphone, recorded it, then transcribed it. She's in Miami, and Cuban-born, so this is translated from Spanish. She's a pretty feisty lady. I want to be her when I grow up. Here's what she said.
Me: Grandma, what do you think about this couple in their 90s supporting their gay grandkids in the fight for marriage equality?
Grandma: I think it's very nice. You have to support your family, no matter who they are. You can't reject people for things like that.
Me: If you had gay or lesbian family, would you do the same?
Grandma: I don't know if I could make a video like those people. They speak English.
Me: What about in Spanish? Would you make videos supporting marriage equality in Spanish.
Grandma: Ay... don't get any ideas. I don't want to make a video.
Me: But is it okay if I post this on the Internet? On one of my websites
Grandma: Ignorant people might yell at you.
Me: Oh, that's okay, I don't mind.
Grandma: Yes, you can put what I said on the Internet.
Me: Okay. So do you support gay and lesbian people getting married?
Grandma: I think gay people should be able to get married. Times have changed. Even my ideas have changed. There used to be a lot of ignorance and rumors about gay people, mostly because they had to live in hiding, you know, you couldn't be yourself out in public like they can be sometimes now. So I think people just made things up. But think gay people should be allowed to live their lives like everyone else.
Me: Would you go to a gay wedding?
Grandma: Yes, I would. It would probably be more lively than a regular one. I hate weddings. They're so boring.
Me: They really are. What do you think about people who protest gay marriage?
Grandma: Oh. Idiots.
Me: They're wrong?
Grandma: Idiots. Dumb people with nothing better to do. Out of all the things to protest. They should be out trying to do some good in the world instead.
Me: Do you think you would have felt the same way when you were my age?
Grandma: (Pauses) I don't think I gave it any thought. People didn't talk about these things back then. There was a lot of ignorance. Everybody knew gay people, of course, but people didn't talk about it in normal conversation, much less in public like on the news now. I think that's good. Talking is always good. When people know things, they can make up their own minds.I would like to think that maybe with a little information and thinking about it, I would feel the same way.
Me: Do you think gay people should be able to adopt kids?
Grandma: Of course.
Me: As a Christian, what do you think the Bible says about gay people?
Grandma: The Bible is very clear that Jesus doesn't care about race or gender or where you came from or anything. He loves everyone.
Me: What about the parts of the Bible that says gay people should be stoned to death?
Grandma: We don't stone people to death anymore...
Me: So you don't think that applies?
Grandma: I think God gave us some common sense to be able to figure out what parts were meant for forever, like "don't kill" and "don't steal" and "be good to people," and what parts were just a record of the society people lived in back then. We don't hide women in the dark during their periods anymore, either. Things like that.
Me: What about gays in the military? Do you think that should be allowed?
Grandma: You know, when I heard President Obama had helped made that legal, I was surprised it already wasn't. If you're willing to pick up a gun and go fight in some war somewhere for my freedom, I'm not willing to do that, so if you are, I don't care if you have a boyfriend or a girlfriend or fifteen cats.
Me: Yeah, I think most people supported that one.
Grandma: It's like I told you. God gave us common sense for a reason.
Me: I know you've had a few close gay male friends. Have you ever had a lesbian friend?
Grandma: I did in Cuba. She was my neighbor and she did everyone's hair on the block. You couldn't really tell she was a lesbian, but she told me, after many years of knowing her.
Me: What do you mean by "you couldn't tell she was a lesbian?"
Grandma: Well, she was very glamorous. She looked like a movie star all the time - that's why she did everyone's hair. Some lesbians, you can tell.
Me: In English, they call the ability to tell if someone's gay "gaydar." Like "radar" but for "gay."
Grandma: Oh! I think I have that.
Me: You think you have good gaydar?
Grandma: Well, I was an artist, so I was around a lot of gay men. And I can usually tell, but Paula fooled me.
Me: The slang term for lesbians who are very conventionally feminine in English is "lipstick lesbian."
Grandma: She did wear lipstick!
Me: Do you think a lot of older people think like you do?
Grandma: I think so. A lot of older people keep up with the news better than you think. And you get to be my age and you realize a lot of past mistakes in your thinking. You realize that a lot of things you think mattered, really don't. And the people who don't think like that, it's mostly because they don't know any better. But even at my age, people can be taught.
Me: Thank you, Pupa.
Grandma: You should show me your website when you put this up. I hope a lot of people read it.
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Search for "zerg rush" on Google. :) →
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April 2012
11 posts
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Watchmystinkybutt:
“No,” the wire whispered. “You can’t—you’ll burn—”
The branch smiled sadly, looking up at the tree that had protected her for so many years. But, the branch needed to know for herself the heat and passion of the wires. “I would rather burn a hundred times over,” she said softly, “than live an eternity away from you.”
“But, I’m right here! You can see me every day!” The wire...
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“The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past...”
– Marcel Pagnol
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“It’s not the broken dreams that break us. It’s the ones we...”
– Will Schuester, Glee
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March 2012
42 posts
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A BIG CHAIR TO FILL →
endersgameblog:
It took us all a second to realize Asa was right when he said Ender’s Game was an amazing book from “the late 1900s.” We use that phrase all the time now, like, “Clinton was President in the late nineteen hundreds!” Most of us read Ender’s Game when we were young and wondered when it would become a movie. We never dreamed then that we would all be part of the team to bring it...
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No Apologies: On The Killing of Trayvon Martin And... →
People, and by people I mostly mean our society as a whole, tells us that if we just do the right things and follow the rules we will be safe and our kids will be safe. But these things are lies. The onus is not on the victim to wear a longer skirt when she goes out on night. It’s on the guy who thinks it’s OK to rape her.
The impetus is not on the kid walking home from the 7-11....
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Apology To My Brown Boy →
You don’t sleep
you take nightfall as suggestion
welcome most morning before the sun
you dimpled face and brown
run on both solar and lunar energy
before you came, this was my only worry
that you would watch morning from the wrong side
that you would be all moving parts and jump starts
I wish this was my only fear for you
Now that you no longer occupy my womb
you have taken over my...
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Where The Killing Of A Fictional Black Child... →
… there’s a sickening bottom line in this country, and it is simply that certain people’s lives are valued less than others. I don’t know how we continue on as a society knowing this. Because a society where mothers of black boys have to worry that when their children run out for candy, they might never come back–that society is broken. A society where the Muslim mother of five children...
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“People of color, women, and gays—who now have greater access to the centers of...”
– Teju Cole, The Atlantic
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Racist Hunger Games Fans Are Very Disappointed →
*sigh*…
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“As much as death takes from us, it also gives. It teaches us what’s truly...”
– Mary Alice, Desperate Housewives
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Death by Caffeine →
88 shots of espresso. Good to know. :P
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When Same-Sex Marriage Was a Christian Rite →
Edit: Hey, Everybody! This has gotten a lot more attention than I thought it would, so let me clarify that it was written by ThosPayne at the Colfax Record, but then taken down, so I copied it here to save for posterity. It’s not my work- all credit goes to ThosPayne, whoever that might be.
The Article:
A Kiev art museum contains a curious icon from St. Catherine’s Monastery on Mt. Sinai in...
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Sir Jonathan Ive: The iMan cometh →
“We don’t do focus groups — that is the job of the designer. It’s unfair to ask people who don’t have a sense of the opportunities of tomorrow from the context of today to design.”
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