R u up?

Usually get these before 5am, sometime between 4-7pm, or after 10pm.

See all issues here.

Just listened to this All Things Considered story ( via Amanda). A few immediate thoughts:

1. People this dense and bigoted should not be allowed to serve in Congress.

2. People this dense and bigoted should not be allowed to serve in the military.

3. Gay men and lesbians are already serving in the military. Officially labeling them as gay men and lesbians is not going to change anything.

4. The most common (and probably the most logical, actually, if there is any logic to this) argument against repealing DADT is that there will be sexual tension among soldiers and that this will prevent them from doing their jobs properly.

So, since Duncan Hunter and Melissa Block are both heterosexual, there must have been some sexual tension there, right? The interview seems to have gone just fine. What’s the problem? Another example: I work with people of the opposite sex all the time in my lab, and I have done plenty of experiments without being bombarded with sexual fantasies involving them. Maybe I am singular in having had this peace of mind, but I doubt it. The heterosexual people in the military who are making these claims shouldn’t be so quick to flatter themselves.

I would much—much—rather have a gay man or lesbian serve in Congress or in the military than someone who is honestly afraid of the looming transgender and hermaphrodite infiltration. If anyone is not doing his or her job properly, that is the reason.

Its tommow!

One of those pesky typos where you forget the whole middle of the word and replace it with a single letter. Or you’re drunk.

See all issues here.

High,lookk at other

No idea.

See all issues here.

From an email I just got from Zipcar:

I spent literally the entire morning on the phone with tech support for two separate companies. It wasn’t because I was on hold for an unreasonable amount of time or because the support people were like you might have initially suspected.

It was because AT&T repeatedly dropped my calls. It happened five or six times throughout the course of the morning—inconvenient, sure, but even more so because I never talked to a single human.

Then I got wise and I called them over wifi with Skype! And I called the second one over 3G with iCall! And neither of them dropped my calls! And the sound quality was perfect!

Why am I giving so much money to AT&T? I essentially have no need for their services at this point outside of data. It’s painful to be forced to pay arbitrarily for something that is so dysfunctional when free, clearly superior alternatives are out there. Between RCN and AT&T, it’s enough to drive this Chicagoan crazy.

It seems like we are gradually getting to the point in politics where new members of Congress will, upon running for subsequent terms or bigger and better positions, be judged not by their voting records, but simply by their party affiliation. With all this party-line voting, individuals’ voting records will quickly become obsolete.

A message to Congress: Have some courage, use your own brain, vote for what you believe in, and let the Constitution oversee the process as it was always intended. You are individuals in a system that was designed to limit the power of any single person, and yet you walk around making empty threats as though you’ve overestimated your place in the world.

I’m talking about Democrats and Republicans here. (Update: I’m also talking about the Supreme Court, too.) I’d love it if some Republicans voted for the Senate health care reform bill, for example—there must be one or two of them who want it to happen, right?—but I’d also love it if some Democrats voted against it—there must be one or two of them who would rather wait for something better, right? They all have brains, and let’s be honest—every single person in a party rarely agrees with every other person in that party, so why even pretend but for political reasons?

This is an MCAT prompt recently presented to a group of students I teach:

Politicians too often base their decisions on what will please the voters, not on what is best for the country.

How timely, yes? They’re asked to explain a situation in which this might not be true. These days, this assignment is getting tougher and tougher, as such situations seem fewer and farther between with each vote, each threat of filibuster, and each election.

An even better prompt might be:

Politicians too often base their decisions on what will please voters, lobbyists, themselves, party motives, individual benefactors, corporate benefactors—basically anything other than what is best for the country.

Were I taking the MCAT again, my response would be: “There exists no such situation to the contrary. I agree wholeheartedly.”

To ames 4 parent wkend on 26th w/H-WANNA Come?

A. My brother is not my child.
B. For those of you not well-versed in the art of texting, make sure to capitalize random words just because.

See all issues here.

The way we should respond is by pushing for an alternative that gets us a system of funding elections that doesn’t leave people to wonder whether it’s money, rather than sense, that is producing a political result…an alternative that allows us to believe once again that our government is guided by reason or judgment or even just the politics of the people in their district and not by the need to raise money.

—Larry Lessig, in response to the Supreme Court’s decision on corporate election funding

People. Get behind citizen-funded elections.

Because why hasn’t Black Rapid sued these people yet?

There is yet another virtually identical strap on the market: the Sun Sniper Strap.