Today's Cultural Warfare Update

Signature-gathering irregularities appearing in Massachusetts anti-marriage drive;

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoes marriage-rights bill passed by California legislature - includes ACTION ITEM to thank him;

Focus on the Family clarification: The California-based American Baptist Churches USA _does_ have the anti-gay stance they want, but does not (as is typical with Baptist denominations) demand all member churches follow the national organisation's lead; the churches leaving are leaving because they demanded that the national church _do_ start requiring anti-gay positions from member churches;

"Alliance Defense Fund," an anti-gay organisation focused on fighting marriage rights, sues Utah mayor over DP benefits for same-sex couples, arguing they are illegal under their state DOMA;

Texas state judge orders 17 year old not to have sex;

Attempt to overturn Wheedon Amendment fails in DC court;

Senate passes resolution to support "Under God" version of the Pledge of Allegiance;

Dobson: Tom DeLay inditement is "a trumped-up political witch hunt" at "one of America's leading advocates of family values";

Focus on the Family action item for FIVE bills in Wisconsin; one bans embryonic stem-cell research; one expands the rights of heath care professionals to refuse care they dislike ("conscience clause" expansion); there's a "fetal pain" bill, an abstinence-education bill, and a bill about umbilical-cord stem cells;

Judge in Oregon rules nude dancing falls under the first amendment;

Netherlands triad gets one collective CU - fundamentalists go, "See? SEE?!";

Concerned Women for America unsure about new Supreme Court nominee;

Christian Post reports mixed reaction amoungst fundamentalist groups for new nominee;

CWA condemns abortion-services provider offering free services to Katrina victims;

Agape Press reports Massachusetts ministers across the state dedicating their Sunday sermons to overturning marriage rights in the state;

Faith and Freedom network declares Seattle Art Museum sculpture a "monument to pedophiliac grooming."

( Excerpts and the like )

asking for trouble

Since people have asked, here's the Seattle Art Museum's description of the statue for which funds have been donated. The ... interesting ... fundamentalist "Faith and Freedom Network"'s description does, of course, strike me as slanderous, but is standard old-school "homosexuality==pedophilia" rhetoric.

In nicer news, my carrots are sprouting! They're tiny things, little and green, kind of like unplucked pikmen! Only, you know, if you pull them up they don't walk around and help you kill bugs, find treasure, and stuff. But hopefully they will later turn into yummy food. They're still in a place that's getting a lot of sun, even though the weather really has turned - the heater has kicked on a couple of times already, and there'll be more of that to come no doubt.

I really liked what the horizon looked like this morning - so much so that I ran downstairs and got Paul's camera to shoot it:


Fog at Sunrise

Click here for a much wider view. Seriously, it's worth the click - it's just too wide for livejournal and I hate scrollbars in friends view, so I cropped down a sample to put inline and am just linking to the main shot.

I got out some, in the mid afternoon, just to walk about a bit since the sky had cleared up; it's easy to stay at home right now, since I still mostly can't talk. (I have a little voice back but I'm not using it. It sounds weird, is very quiet, and makes my throat hurt a little. Anyway, writing things out for people is annoying!) I'd planned to walk to market, even still, and take along paper, but it turned out risu was going, so I got her to get some bread and some more cough suppressant, so I didn't have to after all, which saved some time. (I'm researching for another article. And on that topic, I'd like to take a moment to say that RFC 3501 is one of the most opaque mail-related RFCs I've had to trudge through. I dislike it. And I'm no fan of the protocol, either, for that matter. But I digress.)

While I was walking, I was thinking more about energy - oil and its possible replacements, in particular; I'd just read a couple of articles on various estimates about maximum possible biodiesel output using best known technologies - and it kind of sank in that we're already kind of living the lite version of the post-cheap-oil lifestyle. (Note: this is not the same as the declining-supply lifestyle.) Oh, I'm not saying we're anything remotely like energy-independent, because obviously we're not. Nor are we trying to be. But we've succeeded in not being entirely dependent on our car - and personal transport makes up 70% of oil use, nationally. We have a car, we even use it - but it's generally optional. We don't drive it because we have to.

As a result, the price of gas hasn't affected us much directly, despite having been pretty edgy financially for a while. (That's improving, btw. Slowly. But improving!) If oil were to hit $200/barrel tomorrow (which, barring, I dunno, a nuclear exchange in the middle east overnight, it won't) and gas were to hit $12/gallon (or more), it wouldn't be a lifestyle-breaker for us. I'd probably have to stop going to Anime Night, which would be very sad, but that's... kind of it.

At least, not until the inflation wave hit, but hey, that'd be a fun ride for everybody everywhere. :-p

It's not that we're innately immune, it's that we've done a pretty decent job of positioning ourselves for significant oil cost issues. For a lot of the country, this is going to be kind of wrenching. Not life-destroying, but wrenching. For us - well, it'll be more expensive, but it'll also be something like business as usual. It's a pretty good position to be in.

That doesn't mean being finished with thinking about this, don't worry. There're too many ways in which I could be wrong! Not to mention the natural gas issue. That, we're more likely to feel. (Also, something I hadn't considered: the multiplier effect of higher natural gas costs on oil sands recovery costs. Note to self: think about that.) And I don't know enough about biodiesel energy ratios yet. And stuff like that. More stuff to dig into, I suppose.

Anyway, mostly, I'm happy about the carrots and having a nice walk. And the pretty fog this morning when I got up! ^_^

Finally, here, have a flower picture. ^_^ At the P-Patch on 25th, again:


Not Actually Plastic

( Quizzies! )