March 09, 2006
I Thought I Was Reading The Headline Wrong
"New York Asks Help From Poor in Housing Crisis." Shouldn't that be for poor? Apparently not. The NYT reports that the New York City Housing Authority "has proposed narrowing the gap by charging residents new fees and increasing old ones for everything from owning a dishwasher to getting a toilet unclogged."
That's insane. Subsidized housing is what makes it possible for non-wealthy people, and working-class families in particular, to live in the city. Now the housing authority is scrambling to cover make up for "'a steady divestment' in public housing at the federal level" by charging restupidulous fees. The fees are really steep:
So it has proposed charging tenants $5.75 a month to run a washing machine, $5 a month to operate a dishwasher, $10 a month for a separate freezer. Parking fees will rise to $75 from $5 a year on April 1.
Apparently, some fees for services "like fixing damage to apartments beyond normal wear and tear" actually have been on the books for a long time but, de facto, were never imposed except in "extreme cases where a door was bullet riddled or somebody kicked the front entrance door and it was not based on wear and tear." You hear that? Bullet holes. That's extreme, people. That's extreme. Not like today, when it's one bad enchilada and you're being charged an arm and a leg to have your toilet plunged. Or whatever they do to make the shit go away. 'Cause call me crazy, but if there's one thing I like to think I, as a tenant, should not have to pay extra for-- that I am, in fact, entitled to-- it's fecalmania all over my floor. I'm crazy that way.
Posted by hissycat at 10:37 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
March 06, 2006
Google Library Project And Why Nigel Newton Is A Fuckwad
Nigel Newton is a bloody idiot. Guardian Unlimited Books ran his dumb-ass article, Google's Literary Land-Grab, on Saturday to let you know why he thinks you should boycott Google to protest Google Print's Library Project. Newton is, of course, a publisher, although even greed can't fully explain his insane animosity towards Google nor his rabid fixation on 'rights' that are against virtually everyone's interests save possibly his own (and even that is debatable). The only possible explanation for Newton's stance is sheer dim-witted lack of comprehension and technological illiteracy.
If you click on Great Expectations by Charles Dickens in Google Book Search, you may find yourself taking an unexpected journey. Google's ambient advertising programme hotlinks to a dating agency called Great Expectations Dating ("Find Your True Love Today"). How crass is that? We can be sure that Dickens would have thought it so. Indeed, he would probably have reserved a special vituperation for Google's literary land-grab.
There are two aspects to this land-grab. The first involves scanning out-of-copyright work, provided by the great libraries, and surrounding it with such advertising. That's not illegal, though it is of cultural concern.
That's some ballsy rhetoric, calling "scanning out-of-copyright work" a "landgrab" when it is not only perfectly legal but also will make those works more, not less, widely distributed. Landgrab has the connotation of hoarding. Stockpiling copyrights would be a good example of landgrabbing. Distributing works already in the public domain? Not so much.
And yes, a Great Expectations Dating Service is kind of tacky. But so is an Edgar Allen Poe Pizza, a(nother) spineless adaptation of an Austen novel, and the novelization of the movie adaptation of Great Expectations featuring a nude Gwyneth Paltrow draped on the front cover (I shit you not). The hyper commercialization of publishing does indeed concern me, but I think that perhaps there are other, more alarming examples of such crassness than Google's initiative to catalog information and make cultural works more accessable.
The second part of Google's literary predations, in the case of American libraries, involves scanning in-copyright works - for the purpose of publication - without direct prior permission of the copyright holder. That is to say, the author or his or her estate. Google's decision to scan first and ask permission later with copyrighted works is playing fast and loose. In America, it has already landed Google with a huge lawsuit from publishers.
It is authors who will suffer most. Dickens isn't around to defend the integrity of his work. Were he alive, he would certainly have tried. He campaigned with vigour on the issue of copyright. [emphasis mine]
Hey Nigel, let's play a game called, Spot The Logical Fallacy! Dickens "isn't around to defend the integrity of his work" because he is dead. How, exactly, will he suffer most? I'll get back to the issue of living authors in a moment, but let's stick with this Dickens fellow, on whom you are so obviously and yet so disengenuosly hung up.
A number of his works were copied in America and he was an early advocate of international copyright protection. In England, he went to court to stop someone writing a continuation of A Christmas Carol. He dedicated Pickwick Papers to Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd, who introduced the Copyright Bill in 1837.
If Newton is seriously proposing that no one but Dickens ever be permitted to make a profit from Dickens' work, then every publisher that prints 'A Christmas Carol' or 'Great Expectations' needs to stop their presses right now. I don't mean Google. I mean Harper Collins or Penguin Putnam or whoever because they don't own no fucking copyright so who are they to turn a penny off Dickens' work. Obviously, Newton has no idea what he is saying, or else he is lying through his teeth. There is a huge difference between plagerising a work in part or whole or reproducing and selling it at a profit without the writer's permission during the writer's lifetime, and making it available to the public cost-free after the author's death.
The problem with having absolutely no copyright protections isn't all about being unfair to the writer; having NO protections also hurts the community by making it disadvantageous for living writers or artists or inventors to share their works with the public. Readers of Dickens' books should be aware of his feelings for societies run entirely by the untempered profit motive, with no eye towards the common good-- NOT GOOD. The American publishers of Dickens' day, much like the caricatured capitalists in his stories, contributed nothing of value yet profited off of the work of others (in this case, authors). When the author of the book in question is dead, however, it's doing the author any harm to distribute that cultural work widely and freely (it's not doing them any harm to distribute it at a cost, either, which is what mostly happens to works in the public domain; I mean, debate the ethics if you must, but dead's dead: as of yet no author has actually "turned in her grave"). Meanwhile, depriving the public of access to the work definately does harm the community at large.
So I call upon internet users worldwide to boycott the Google search engine until it ceases to scan books in America without prior permission, and desists from its mission to place ambient advertising on the great literary works. Switch your search engine from Google to MSN or Yahoo today, until you hear Google has withdrawn from the type of activities that have been described in another context as acts of "kleptomania".
No. Just-- no.
The worst thing is that the actual money paid to authors and publishers for these silly ads is negligible. So is the number of book purchases arising directly from these links (certainly they were when Google's representative came to see me last autumn). Authors are being ripped off however you look at it. They need to say something about it, loudly.
Of course, that's exactly NOT what authors are saying, but it's so much easier for publishers to put words in the mouths of dead authors than to listen to what living authors are saying.
Publishers also have serious responsibilities in this matter. It is possible in Google's contract for publishers to withdraw any book at any time. I call upon all publishers to do so immediately until these critical matters are resolved. No one will write much in future if they don't receive money for it because books are suddenly free on the net.
Frankly, any writer worth her ink should care more about reaching readers than about hoarding her precious words, and the world would be better of without those kinds of books, which have been glutting the market anyhow.
Plus Newton is being willfully thick. He knows the books are not going to be "suddenly free on the net." He said it himself.
At the moment, Google only offers a proportion of a copyright book for free. But it insists on scanning 100 per cent of each book it loadsBut it insists on scanning 100 per cent of each book it loads and, moreover, on owning the rights to the resulting digital files of authors' works. This is a Pandora's box. It must be regarded as likely that a subsequent management regime at Google will pressure publishers to allow it to offer 100 per cent of the text as battles for market share are joined against the other mighty search engines.
Publishers also have the responsibility to make sure that when it comes to hosting electronic content in future, it is their own websites that host the downloads and the scans of text and audio. There is no reason to hand this content to third-party websites.
Now he's just making himself sound foolish. Newton does not understand the technology. Not that I'm a huge techie myself, but at least I get this much: Google Library, much like actual libraries, will index the books for content. People using Google Library, much like people using their local public library, can then look up books according to a particular subject that interests them or whatever. Now, since Google indexes content using computers, they have to scan the entire book into the computer in order to do this. To put this in somewhat condescending, anthropomorphic fuzzy speak, Google has to let the computers 'read' the entire books so it can can catalogue the books by topics. Otherwise you're just sifting through first sentences. Now that doesn't mean that Google has to let the user read the entire book they pull up-- Google can choose to show you just the first sentence-- but they have to first scan and index all the content in order for the search to make sense and to have results that are useful.
University and copyright libraries also have serious responsibilities in their dealings with Google. I believe that libraries such as the Bodleian and Harvard may have misinterpreted the missions with which their universities have entrusted them in handing over part of their collections for scanning. They may also have thrown away the biggest commercial opportunity in the history of their academic institutions by regarding content as somehow free (though they do get their own copy of the digital file). It isn't free of course.
Funny after all his bellyaching about commercialization, Newton thinks libraries aren't commercial enough. Because god forbid Universities might want to promote the exchange of knowledge and information for its own sake and for the common good instead of increased revenue.
If there is to be money made out of scanning, the libraries themselves, not Google, should make it. Art collections provide a good example, as they often support themselves by licensing the images they have spent years (and millions) collecting. Yes, scanning a huge collection overnight is a huge expense but it does not have to happen overnight. The collections were written over two millennia; the online solution might decently take a long time.
It is all about making money. It's not about the authors and it's about the cultural implications of a Great Expectations dating service, and make no doubt about it, Nigel doesn't care one whit that without Google's inititaive it would take decades to digitize these books and even then it would be done with profit as a sole motive.
What Google is doing to books is, by contrast, positively indecent. It is a good search engine, frequently used by all of us. I for one would like to see it keep to that core business. Until it lays off literature, or else pays for it, I hope the readers of the Guardian and many others will join this boycott.
Yes, let's all of us stop using Google and Gmail and blogger and all of the other tools that Google has provided to literate people at no expense to us simply because you, Nigel Newton, happen to be the world's greatest fuckwad. Great idea.
Posted by hissycat at 09:16 PM | Comments (152) | TrackBack
March 02, 2006
Guess The Century: An Exercise In Institutional Brutality
1. During which century did American prisons shackle female prisoners during childbirth? Why, this one, of course! There is an article in today's NYT about the barbaric practice still practiced in many prisons of shackeling pregnant inmates in labor. I'm supposed to comment insightfully on the article now, this being a blog and all-- but really, what do I need to say? Read the article. It's enough.
There was a very interesting special on incarcerated mothers that was done on Forum this summer. I remember listening to it in the car and driving circles on my way to work so I could finish listening to the program. It covers a range of issues, and if I remember correctly, the first show dealt a lot with pregnancy, mother-infant bonding, and early childhood when the mother is an inmate. Highly recommended.
2. Name the year in which the federal government responded to concerns over mining fatalities by lowering safety standards? This one! The NYT has an article on how the Bush admin. has reduced the fines and/ or not collected the fines for potentialy lethal safety violations in mines.
"The agency keeps talking about issuing more fines, but it doesn't matter much," said Bruce Dial, a former inspector for the mine safety agency. "The number of citations means nothing when the citations are small, negotiable and most often uncollected."
Before the January disaster at the Sago Mine near here, where 12 miners died, the operator had been cited 273 times since 2004. None of the fines exceeded $460, roughly one-thousandth of 1 percent of the $110 million net profit reported last year by the current owner of the mine, the International Coal Group.
[At a House oversight hearing on Wednesday, agency officials repeatedly cited the frequency of fines against Sago in the year before the accident as proof of aggressive enforcement. Exasperated, Representative Lynn Woolsey, Democrat of California, replied that maybe those fines had little effect because many were for $60. That point set off applause from audience members.]
$60 is a freakin' parking ticket. The punishment for endangering the life and health of human beings (if you are a multi-mill company) is the same as forgetting to move your car for street-cleaning (if your are an individual). Actually, it's less-- they don't even get a yellow bootie.
Posted by hissycat at 02:09 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
November 09, 2005
At Least This
Prop. 73, which would have mandated that doctors notify the parents of a minor seeking an abortion 48 hours before performing the procedure was (narrowly) rejected.
Posted by hissycat at 08:32 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
October 18, 2005
OH FUCK
Fuckity fuck fuck fuck. The papers handed over to the White House include a record of her opposing abortion. It's not a surprise, per se. But still: fuck.
On the other hand, perhaps it is just as well that any illusions that Miers could be alright are drying up.
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October 07, 2005
Dear Abby, You Rock
Dear Abby opposes parental notification laws. (via bitchphd)
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September 30, 2005
This Confederacy Of Dunces (Better Late Than Never)
How on earth did I miss this? Ignatius J. Riley nominates himself for Head of FEMA, and I, for one, support him.
I also, incidentally, support this guy for president.
Posted by hissycat at 05:57 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
September 20, 2005
He Forgot To Ask About The Legal Status Of The Undead
I bring to you, in today's post, two wacky current events stories in a just-shy-of-timely manner:
1.
One of the most bizarre, fucked-up crazy and perversely-fascinating episodes of the Roberts conformation hearing was surely the abortion-issue "questioning" of Roberts by Senator Bareback-- oops, I mean, Brownback.
Let's just walk through this one, shall we?
In our legal system, everything's either one of the two: you're either a person or you're a piece of property.
Ok, ok, I can accept this premise. Let's go on.
If you're a person, you have rights; if you're a piece of property, you can be done with as your master chooses.
Right. For example, let's take women. Ok, so if women are people, then they have rights. They have self-determination. Gotcha. But if, on the other hand, we consider women to be but property, then they can be done with as those in power please. Without self-determination or recognized moral agency or, um, complete personhood, a woman could be made to, you know, do things against her will, according to the will of those who have greater power. Like carry a pregnancy to term, for instance. Alright, Brownback, I'm wit'cha.
And I believe everyone agrees that the unborn child is alive. And most agree that biologically it is a life, a separate genetic entity. But many will dispute whether it's a person.Wait, what? Oh-- oh, I see. . . you're not talking about whether women should have the rights of persons. No, no, no. You were talking about fetuses. Ri-ight, and we all agree that-- wait, wait, we do? Oh, you just mean "alive" as in "a seperate genetic entity" like, um, a virus or, um, a spore. Things that have genetic codes but aren't independently viable and certainly not pers-- oh, wait, are you saying fetuses are persons? Yeah, um, NO? But hey, maybe this is more of your cutting edge "Kansas science." The kind that has really broken ground in the political arena, if not in the scientific or intellectual ones.
I hope you would agree with me that this is at the core of the issue, obviously, the competition between the woman's right to choose and the legal status of the unborn.Phew. See, for a moment I thought you weren't going to get back to the issue of women. Silly me! Of course you are going to address the rights and status of women. I mean, there's no way you were going to just skip over the rights of half the population that is definately alive--
In Plessy v. Ferguson, it's been cited yesterday along with the Brown decision, which my state is the proud home state host of Brown v. Board of Education. And I personally knew two of the lawyers that practiced in that case, and they were noble gentlemen.So, you're not going to talk about women?
And I want to take another point on that to tell you -- we talked a lot about the disability community, and well we should, and the protection needed for the disability community. And that's important, because I think it really helps people that need help, but it helps the rest of us to be much more human and caring.
Well, we're moving right along, aren't we?
Senator Kennedy is helping me with a bill because a number of children never get here that have disabilities. Unborn children prenatally diagnosed with Down's Syndrome and other disabilities -- I don't know if you know this, but there was a recent analysis, and 80 percent to 90 percent of children prenatally diagnosed with Down's Syndrome never get here -- never get here. They're aborted in the system.That's what he said, never get here. Because of prenatal genetic testing (evil, evil, non-Kansas science!), pregnant women and their partners now have access to the information that allows them to chose whether carrying the fetus to term is the correct choice for them or whether terminating the pregnancy is the more manageable, feasable, moral-- yes moral-- action. Outrageous! Those fetuses never get here, the man said. They're aborted in the system. Notice he didn't say in a uterus. He said "system." Because women aren't really individuals, just extensions of the "system," tentacles extending from the Senate floor. And of course he spoke in the passive, because it's not as though women are full agents capable of acting. It's like, women don't make ethical choices. Stuff just happens. They don't choose abortions, or anyway, if they do, they're just being manipulated by the system. Big government. Or something.
I'm gonna warn you: it's just gonna get wackier from here on out.
And people just say: Look, this child's got difficulties. And we even have waiting lists in America of people, today, willing to adopt children with Down's Syndrome. And we will protect that child -- as well we should, under the Americans with Disabilities Act and other issues -- when they get here.We even have waiting lists in America of people, today, willing to adopt children with Down's Syndrome. You did know that, right? And Sen. Bareback is one of them. You know, the financial, not to mention emotional and psychological, cost of raising a child with Down's Syndrome is so overrated. Because this country so obviously has an affordable, accessable health care system as well as schools with fantastic, widely available Special Education programs for students with severe developmental disabilities. Not to mention the subsidized childcare that allows mothers to ensure that their children are adequately cared for while they working.
But so much of the time, and with our increased ability of genetic testing, they don't get here. Diagnosed in the womb, system that encourages this child to be destroyed at that stage -- and this is all in the records.It's a damn shame all the opportunity, all the resources. If only there were Americans who actually need opportunity and resources. America's offer of opportunity, protection and equality is just withering up on the branches as it waits for any takers. But there aren't any. And we a are a poorer society because of it.And we are the poorer for it as a society.
All the members of this body know a young man with Down's Syndrome named Jimmy. Maybe you've met him, even. He runs the elevator that takes the senators up and down on the Senate floors. His warm smile welcomes us every day. We're a better body for him.
See? This isn't about women at all. Never was. It isn't even about the disabled. This is about us, isn't it Bareback? This is about how much more fun Senate hearings can be when they begin with a good-natured ribbing of retarded Jimmy in the elevator. Every abortion deprives you, Sen. Bareback, of more lovable "characters" like Jimmy from the elevator.
He told me the other day -- he frequently gives me a hug in the elevator afterwards. I know he does Senator Hatch often, too, who kindly gives him ties, some of which I question the taste of, Orrin...(LAUGHTER)
... but he kindly gives ties.
Heartwarming, indeed. Let's all share in a good-natured laugh about Jimmy and those ker-aazy ties Orrin gives him because he thinks it is funny to see a retard in a kooky tie. Ha ha ha. Christ's asscrack, this is creepy.
2.
If in the midst of Katrina, the hearings, and the public radio pledge drive you missed this story about incensensed parents intent to rid the school libraries from "horribly obscene, explicit, pornographic books" by Toni Morrison, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Francesca Lia Block, E.L. Doctorow, Julia Alvarez, Bret Easton Ellis, Alice Sebold and that perennial favorite of book-burners, Judy Blume-- well, consider yourself lucky.
Laurie Taylor, the indignant mother who demanded the school library purge its shelves of such filth, and her organization, the sinesterly titled Parents Protecting The Minds Of Children has posted on its website not only a list of the offending titles but synopsis and juicy excerpts as well. On the page titled Shocking Pornographic Children's Sex Education Books in Arkansas School Libraries the featured link, in bright purple font about thrice the size of the next largest on the page, is Link to Shocking Pictures in Elementary books at Fayetteville, Arkansas School Library. Because we all know that there is nothing that anti-"pornography" nuts love to look at more than anything else, it's porn.
Not that it's not obvious that children need to be protected from vile pornographic images such as this:
or this:
No joke, these images are posted there as examples of pornography. Poor Taylor, what a sad, sad life hers must be for her to see a cartoon woman drawn seemingly by the hand behind a whole line of Hallmark greeting cards examining her vulva in a hand mirror and think "porn! evil, sexy, graphic, obscene, hard-core porn!" Or the couple. I mean, the corny cartoon couple, who are clearly in a loving, committed relationship, as they are shown in a bed canopied by a goddamn sprinkling of hearts-- hearts, for god's sakes, hearts. But maybe it was the caption that offended her so:
Most often, they have sexual intercourse because it feels good
Putrid vice, indeed.
Posted by hissycat at 03:11 AM | Comments (17) | TrackBack
September 16, 2005
Here's Something I Don't Understand
I don't get it. Why do so many people think that pointing to the negligence of state and local government (or, more maliciously, to the negligence of the storm victims themselves) is somehow an adequate defense of the federal government's inaction? I sure as hell do not know enough about the intrastate workings of Louisiana or standard disaster relief protocol to conscionably add my two cents on exactly where the blame should be parceled out and how and in exactly what measurements. Nevertheless, I think it is awfully obvious why most people find it extremely troubling and upsetting that, independtly of the egregiousness of failings on the state and local levels, the federal government's response was so woefully inadequate. One hopes that in times of crisis and chaos and when local authorities are AWOL that the big guys-- the president, the army, the FEMA, the what-have-you-- are there to step up/ swoop down and set things (at least somewhat) right and maintain (at least some degree of) order, to be the deus ex machina, the soldiers at the end of the storm.
On different yet not completely unrelated note, I think that, as far as the Roberts' hearing, this just about sums it up. (via BitchPhD)
Posted by hissycat at 10:30 AM | Comments (13) | TrackBack
September 15, 2005
"Active Evil Men"
I am in the car as I type this. Brett is driving and I am typing away and Bush, on the radio, is spewing hot, shit-strewn air over the radio. Bush just made what I find a very insensitve comment. In tooting his own horn about going down to Biloxi and talking to firefighter, he relayed one firefighter's message: "I lost my house. I lost my cars [carS!]. But I still have my family. And I still have my spirit."
Maybe it's just me, but seeing as how there are people who don't still have their families, that this particular message is maybe not the most comforting.
Brett is cracking up because Bush just read a Call Now! phone number. Not really funny, I know: refugees from the storm listening on the radio obviously really do need that information. But Brett's right: Bush sounds like he's hawking ProActive. Especially if you've been listening to a radio pledge drive all week.
Actually, this is probably the best-written speech he's given in his life. Not that he wrote it. No way. But he certainly sounds prepped. Maybe they hired some of Clinton's people.
Posted by hissycat at 07:49 PM | Comments (30) | TrackBack
September 14, 2005
I Didn't Intend To Write About This Today
John Roberts is reminding me of Joe Pitt, the Mormon who is Roy Cohn's law clerk in Kushner's Angels in America. Maybe it's the Reagan connection. Maybe it's the scrubbed, wholesome personna he projects. Maybe it's the utter obliviousness to the moral and ethical consequences of his decisions. Everytime he is asked about a memo he authored he insists that he was acting as the administration's yes-man. I keep thinking of the scene in Angels where Louis confronts Joe about being Roy Cohn's butt-boy. Louis is aghast at the memos and briefs Joe wrote in support of rulings that were anti-gay or otherwise unfair and nasty, and Joe keeps repeating that he was 1. just doing his job and 2. not responsible for the merits of a law only for upholding it. Or something like that.
After listening to creepy pro-life, religous, mysoginistic Senators on the commute to work, I was so, so glad when I got back to my desk after lunch and tuned in just as Chuck Schumer was taking the floor.
just say, sir, in all due respect -- and I respect your intelligence and your career and your family -- this process is getting a little more absurd the further we move.
SCHUMER: You agree we should be finding out your philosophy and method of legal reasoning, modesty, stability, but when we try to find out what modesty and stability mean, what your philosophy means, we don't get any answers.It's as if I asked you: What kind of movies do you like? Tell me two or three good movies. And you say, I like movies with good acting. I like movies with good directing. I like movies with good cinematography.
And I ask you, No, give me an example of a good movie. You don't name one. I say, Give me an example of a bad movie.
SCHUMER: You won't name one. Then I ask you if you like
Casablanca, and you respond by saying, Lots of people like 'Casablanca.'
(LAUGHTER)
You tell me it's widely settled that Casablanca is one of the great movies.
Damn that Schumer made me proud to be a New Yorker.
Diane Feinstein was no slump either. Oh, and watch how his eyes positively glow with evil as he writes off his snide remark about how it is not a good idea for homemakers to become lawyers as just a an old (boys' club) lawyer joke.
Posted by hissycat at 12:01 PM | Comments (23) | TrackBack
August 24, 2005
Heather Has Two Mommies Who Have A Custody Hearing
 | Currently Listening Misery Is a Butterfly By Blonde Redhead see related |
My understanding is that theruling not only mandates that gay and lesbian parents have to paychild-support if they break up with a partner with whom they hadchildren who are not biologically or legally (by adoption) theirs butthat those parents are also entitled to custody of those children inthe event that the couple seperates.
That, to me, is a prettyobvious step forward in that the state must now recognize that a personwho makes a decision with her or his partner to raise a child is familyto that child regardless of biological or adoptive status. So saymy hypothetical partner and I were to have a hypothetical messybreak-up and she, the biological mother, were to take the hypotheticalchildren, who I did not legally adopt while we were a couple, to livewith her, I would be entitled to visitation and/ or custody ofthe children who I decided to have and to raise. So I don't seethis as a case of getting the responsibilities but none of the rightsor benefits of being a recognized family.
And I don't think that this isabout getting the government to butt into peoples' lives or tell themhow to live. To me it is more like holding people to a contract--only instead of a legal document, it is a different kind of contractthat a person enters into when he or she becomes a parent to achild.
Not to mention that it doesgive a new kind of legal recognition to gay relationships insofar as itacknowledges that there a kind of contract between partners, whatevertheir sex. Obviously, this is not full legal recognition and nota substitute for legalized gay marriage (and on this point,I think theargument that this is a case of 'responsibilities without the rights'is most serious and convincing), but I do think it is a stepforward. This recognition is not nothing.
And of course, from a practicalpoint of view, of course it is good for the remaining parent andchildren that they are now entitled to childsupport, as it really can'tbe overemphasized how much more difficult it is (and financiallyuntenable, in many cases) it is to raise children with one parentrather than two.
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Posted by hissycat at 10:53 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
August 19, 2005
Roberts. Ick.
 | Currently Listening Is This Desire By PJ Harvey see related |
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August 12, 2005
Kansas School Board Scientifically Demonstrates There Is No Such Thing As Human Progress
| Currently Listening Muscler's Guide to Videonics By Tracy + the Plastics see related |
? Also, what business does this websitehave using the words "intelligent" and "design" together, in anycontext at all? Oh, and I love their slogan: "Taking Life Back toits Origins." Um, yeah, you could use that slogan to describewhat they're doing. You could also use, "Taking Science Back tothe Middle Ages" or "Taking Civilization Back to Square One" or "TakingGovernment Back to Before the Bill of Rights."
This joke is getting pretty fucking old. Haven't we had enough already?
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Posted by hissycat at 11:48 AM | Comments (24) | TrackBack