not as brief as it ought to be

I think I did okay on my second Japanese test. One question was kind of funny; we had this table of information about these three made-up students and some sentences with blanks in describing the people in the table. We were supposed to make the sentences make sense. One of the questions was "Ken-san is not <foo>" (more or less) which I read and thought, "well, he's not a ham sandwich..."

I'm pretty sure what they wanted was "not Japanese" (because the other two students in the table were Japanese) so that's what I put, but then (still in Japanese) I added, "Also, he's not Godzilla. ^_^" If I had been braver or had a couple of more minutes I'd have tried to figure out how to say "also, he's not a ham sandwich" and maybe listed a few other things (large suburban airport, hovertank, pocky) but I didn't. And I know how to spell Godzilla. ^_^

So anyway, I think that went okay. Also, I did well on the first Bio midterm, which is good, since when I was studying for it I discovered that all those chapters I read while under the anti-seizure meds didn't really make it into my brain. If they hadn't mostly been chemistry, I'd probably have been screwed, but as it was, I wasn't. Apparently the class as a whole did not do very well, mostly going splody on the essay/long-form questions, which I thought were much easier (and less ambiguous) than the multiple-choice section, which is where I lost all my points. Go fig.

New CWU tonight. I have no tests tomorrow OR homework due, so I can get to stuff like that, at least a little. Today will be busy, but I should be able to do at least a small CWU tonight that hits the highlights.

Today's Cultural Warfare Update

There would be a lot more Focus on the Family in this update, but their website is down for maintenance. So this is only a very partial update, as I suggested it might be. But I wanted to get at least a partial update online today, so here it is. More hopefully tomorrow.

But now, the news:

Focus on the Family - yet another get out the vote effort, also links to their endorsement sheets and their election site;

FotF: Kansas Attorney General Phil Kline gets some of the medical records he's been trying to get from abortion providers;

Focus on the Family worries that "more liberal churches" are too soft on queers, specifically regarding lesbian and gay couples with children;

Focus on the Family claims credit for a 1991-present trend of teen-birth reduction, claiming it's "abstinence-only" education;

FotF email-only bulletin advertising its election website and reminding everyone to vote theocon;

Focus on the Family Canada says there's lots of support for "revisiting" marriage rights in Canada, and also lots of support for business discrimination against GBLT people, fun; Canadians should note that Focus on the Family Canada has borrowed the US theoconservative movement's approach that if they can't discriminate against GBLT people, their religious liberty is being destroyed;

Canada Family Action Coalition version of the same story;

Institute for Canadian Values version of the same story;

Fundamentalist suing over college classwork requiring her to write in support of adoption rights for GBLT people; American Family Association supports the fundamentalist, of course, says colleges shouldn't be assigning material they find objectionable;

AFA predicts victory in Virginia anti-gay amendment - not exactly going out on a limb there, gaybashing is Virginia's national sport;

AFA scare article about videogames, talks about how The Sims (rated E for Everyone) can be turned into pr0n by t3h internets;

AFA runs article of the Traditional Values Coalition condeming Jim Webb (candidate for senate from Virginia) as a "pervert;"

AFA: U. Wisconsin discriminates against Christians in favour of neopagans; basically, there's a "Christian" group that wants to be recognised, but it requires that its leadership have certain religious beliefs. U. Wisconsin doesn't recognise clubs that discriminate on the basis of religion, so doesn't grant the group official status. Apparently the neopagan group doesn't do this, since they've been approved - some religious groups don't. But not allowing fundamentalists to discriminate against other people is, as always, presented as a violation of _their_ rights;

College Republicans at U. Wisconsin complain that they aren't a protected class;

AFA runs a series of attack newsbriefs on various Democratic candidates; I quote the one that implies Ted Strickland is gay (the "boy toy" claim) and condemns him for being endorsed by Equality Ohio, a GBLT political rights group. Plus, there's an appearance of the "special rights" language being used to refer to equal treatment under the law, which is one of their standard twistings of language;

Andrew Sullivan is surprised that theocons get their kids to write anti-gay letters to the editor, and points at this example in Virginia.

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