Wikia Search results, from what I’ve noticed, loads in Google Chrome with less hangups than it does in Firefox.
Also, I wonder why infoAnarchy tends to have so many database errors all the time.
Finally, I’m getting a loan to pay off the debt to that-school-which-shall-not-be-named (so that I can get the transcript from them and continue with school). Not that I’ve ever had a loan before, for school or anything.
Ahh, good times and debt warrants.
A WP article that I posted on Monday, "2008 Zimbabwean cholera outbreak", was linked on the front page yesterday.
Furthermore, its an ongoing incident, with hundreds dead and tens of thousands infected.
I regret that I didn’t post this article last month, when cholera was already wreaking havoc in Harare and other areas with poor sanitation.
Worse, its becoming an international issue, with over 160 diagnoses of the disease across the border in South Africa, which has an extremely large Zimbabwean community in econopolitical exile.
This also comes during a stalemate between ZANU-PF/JOC and the MDC (both factions), as the government is functionally moribund without any new ministers appointed from the coalition agreement reached a few months back. While Zimbabwe’s government has allowed this to happen by extension of their utter lack of economic savvy or forethought (why would sanctions against certain ZANU-PF-affiliated persons, not the whole of the state, tie into why Zimbabwe’s plight is so frighteningly dreadful?), a few of the Western states are (reluctantly) giving emergency aid to the country, just enough to (supposedly) suppress the outbreak.
This guy has a point: If hate crimes/hate speech are a form of "thoughtcrime", then why is it that the social conservative demographic (in most nations) has supported the legislation of moralist laws on deviating individuals, and will either protest/legislate/rule/rampage against such individuals?
So while it is true that hate crime/hate speech are a form of thoughtcrime, should the comparison go both ways in the debate over the treatment of LGBT people in more religiously-inclined regions, including those of this nation?
I received a letter from MSC over the weekend, dated Nov. 11; it stated that my transcripts from Oglethorpe had not been received, and that I had thirty days to obtain them until they would cancel my registration from the school.
Problem is, Oglethorpe’s policy prevents me from obtaining the transcripts from them unless I pay off my "financial obligations" to the Business Office.
Worse, registration for next semester ends on Dec. 1. So I only have until then, rather than Dec. 11, to get this debt settled.
So how to settle this…..how many options do I have?
My mother tells me that the debt to Oglethorpe is hovering around $12K. At one point, we recall that it had gone down to $9K, and had spiked at another time to $25K.
Despite the I wonder if selling some stuff on eBay or some other auction/pawning service will help.
As someone who is bi and was against the passing of Prop 8 (but not against the ballot), I’m conflicted about this list.
I mean, sure, protest groups do this all the time: find any record of businesses and individuals who contributed to something which those in the protest group were against, and then post them publicly in a "tar-and-feather" manner for the sake of boycotts and pickets:
However, lists of perceived enemies have been made by those who valued their self-interests to the detriment to someone else’s own life, liberty and/or property, including gangsters/mobsters (the "hitlist") and even Richard Nixon (his "Enemies’ list").
Plus, interest and protest groups who use the "name-and-shame" tactic tend to be viewed as vindictive, mobbish, sometimes ideologically-headstrong types. Plus, I remember "name-and-shame" being used by a tabloid newspaper in Uganda to specifically target gays and lesbians in that country, since homosexuality is looked down upon and outlawed with prejudice by that country’s paranoid leaders (both religious and political); this action was decried by LGBT-specific media outlets and organizations throughout the world.
So I know that LGBT activists are ready to switch to different, more forcefully vindictive tactics as a result of Prop 8’s passing, and I can’t blame them: "playing nice" may no longer be an option. But I can’t say that "name-and-shame" is a useful tactic for a demographic that is a tinier minority than most major ethnic and religious groups, since, taking a Malcolm X-like view, the vast majority is opposed to the idea of same-sex marriage and could care less about the LGBT existence lest we assume an increasingly separatist stance.
"I hate the picture that you have of me." – her closing comment to MSNBC anchor Mika Brzezinski during a short interview at c. 1:00 PM EST on her reaction to the election win of Barack Obama.
What is to be done? Sure, Obama has won, but since Florida and Arizona have already passed same-sex marriage bans and California seems like it will pass a similar ban/de-recognition, what is to happen now?
Apparently, even though California has one of the highest concentrations of same-sex-identified residents and couples in the world, the state’s general populace has apparently shown that it cannot be trusted to weigh same-sex relationships along same or similar criteria as "traditional", heterosexual relationships.
But now, after California has rejected the recognition of same-sex marriage (and, by extension, the many long-term same-sex relationships in the state), it is time for the LGBT rights organizations to reassess the security of the place of the LGBT demographic in U.S. society, even in such a place as California, and to rethink just how welcome they are within the de-facto democratic process in these states.
Outside of the marriage issue, for example, the movement towards the establishment of the first LGBT-centric high school in the state of Illinois was brought to a halt a few weeks ago by Chicago’s mayor Daley, who "fears" the effects of "segregation" of LGBT students from non-LGBT students. Only two other such schools have already been established in the U.S., one in New York City (which has faced opposition from conservatives) and one in Milwaukee.
The issue of same-sex relationships in prisons has not been resolved at all; neither have LGBT adoption, LGBT migration and asylum provisions, nor standards of municipal provisions for gay/LGBT villages, nor any special assessment of the needs of the LGBT elderly. Even organized self-defense of LGBT individuals, relationships, gatherings or communities has not been considered save by a few LGBT gun rights organizations like the Pink Pistols. Even the homeless and under-poverty-line LGBT demographic (including the LGBT youth) has not been fully considered, nor has empowerment of the LGBT identity in all areas.
But now let’s look at the issue of the seemingly few-and-far-between LGBT population in rural areas, where the movement for "traditional" marriage may draw its highest support and where the stereotypically. Is this demographic as spread out and unconcentrated as we may assume, or is it possible to encourage a better entrenchment of the LGBT population in rural areas?
What can be defined as LGBT values within a rural context in Middle America? How different is the rural LGBT experience compared to the urban LGBT experience, and how should LGBT organizations in these areas be focused and organized towards their empowerment in these areas? And can a full reachout to the LGBT population, closeted and non-closeted, in non-urban areas, including Califiornia, help to redefine how the public views the LGBT demographic?
I think that the answer to all of the above questions is an emphatic "Yes." Rural, Middle American visibility matters in any political situation. Establishing a stronger presence in such areas could potentially push the LGBT rights agenda’s advocacy to new heights of respectability in the political arena.
I think it is time that PFLAG, the HRC, GLAAD and other LGBT-centric organizations begin to assess their rural efforts and outreach if they hope to reverse the tide of same-sex marriage bans that have been passed by most state’s electorates within the last decade. But the only question that remains on such an effort is "How?"
OK, CNN International has a documentary on polygamy around the world while I’m writing.
But reading this was pretty hilarious. The automatic repudiation of the very thought of gays and lesbians sharing the now-publicly-unpopular institution of polygamy with straight polygamists is pretty obvious, particularly in the heavy usage of the word "homosexual" (nowadays more used by conservative anti-LGBT activists) throughout.
But then I wonder, if this repudiation and the accompanying ill-will is unfounded upon reason, then has the idea of gay polyandry or lesbian polygyny been explored yet?
If you haven’t heard, Dr. Richard Florida of the University of Toronto has been positing that the creative class – a social class consisting of creative, cultural and intellectual professionals – is a natural outgrowth of the latter industrial era’s need for connection and communication.
However, are those who are involved in the distribution of the information which serves as the main drive for the media-centric industries and professions, including the pirates (as in "The Pirate Bay", "Pirate Party", etc.) forming a part of the creative class, or forming an increasingly-vital component for such a class? It is an interesting thought, to think that the folks who assist in the distribution of information play a role in the empowerment of such a class.
Plus, I think that the pirates and distributors measure the value of information based upon the context and depth which the information may contain, not to mention the hyperlinks to and from the information. Money and financial empowerment plays far less of a role in the worry of the information distributors compared to the worry of information management and distribution.
But what if "pirates" and other information distributors are a distinct subclass of the creative class, not being primarily creators but living in a symbiotic relationship with the full-time creators? The creators make the information, the distributors channel the information to a wide audience, other creators make modifications, additional contributions and remixes of that same information, the distributors channel that information to a wide audience, and so on.
The methods of information distribution and management have gotten as complex and illustrious as the methods by which the media is created or captured, if not more than the latter. I think that freer distribution, however, will come to play the greater role in the years to come, where the "creative class" will have to become dependent upon it for the ups and downs in the value of created information.
So maybe the pirates are in a class of their own.
It’s just that the Wikipedia article on the new party being formed by the former South African defense minister Mosiuoa Lekota has been copied verbatim onto the new party’s website. I started and almost entirely revised it by myself, with a few unregistered IP addresses which I used, even though this is an important event in South Africa’s history (why aren’t others from down there helping with it?). So I find it interesting – flattering, even – that this article was copied verbatim to the official website of the party, but they do need to format the sections of the article.
Maybe I should go into writing.
