Some more totally unthinkable news sure to astound you!

The rapid spread in Latin America of the virus that causes AIDS is made worse by the Roman Catholic Church's stand against using condoms, a U.N. official said on Monday.


I know, I know, you're all thinking to yourselves, but Ethyl, how could this be? Don't these poor people know that they must remain pure and virginal until marraige?

But I'm telling you, it's completely true! People! Having sex! Maybe even right this very instant!

Shout-out

Hope everyone out in California is OK and that you are not getting burned down! Good vibes goin out to ya!

The Pharyngula Mutating Genre Meme!

Ok, even though I don't have enough friends with blogs to make this worthwhile, I'm going to play along because it's neat.

The story thus far: Pharyngula started this meme to see how it mutates over time, and I've been tagged by my sneaky cousin Joolya.

The rules:
There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is...".
Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations:
* You can leave them exactly as is.
* You can delete any one question.
* You can mutate either the genre, medium, or subgenre of any one question. For instance, you could change "The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is..." to "The best time travel novel in Westerns is...", or "The best time travel movie in SF/Fantasy is...", or "The best romance novel in SF/Fantasy is...".
* You can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is...".
* You must have at least one question in your set, or you've gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it yourself, or you're not viable.

Then answer your possibly mutant set of questions. Please do include a link back to the blog you got them from, to simplify tracing the ancestry, and include these instructions.

Finally, pass it along to any number of your fellow bloggers. Remember, though, your success as a Darwinian replicator is going to be measured by the propagation of your variants, which is going to be a function of both the interest your well-honed questions generate and the number of successful attempts at reproducing them.

The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is: Night Watch by Terry Pratchett
The best scary movie in documentary is: An Inconvenient Truth
The best sexy song in pop music is: Wicked Game by Chris Isaak (hope this counts -- don't know if there is any time limit on "pop music!")
The best cult novel in American 20th century fiction is: Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger (can't argue with this one!)
The best high-carb food in Italian cooking is: Fettucine Alfredo!

My great-great-great-great-great-grandparent is Pharyngula.My great-great-great-great-grandparent is Metamagician and the Hellfire Club.
My great-great-great-grandparent is Flying Trilobite.
My great-great-grandparent is A Blog Around the Clock.
My great-grandparent is Primate Diaries.
My grandparent is Thus Spake Zuska.
My parent is N@ked Under My Lab Coat

Now, I guess I'll tag....
Jason
and....um....
Mike, I guess....
If anyone else wants a piece of this, please go right ahead...

Well, DUH

Hey, just so you guys know, there's a bunch of new research out that will just ASTOUND you!!! You might want to sit down for some of this...


Feminists aren't ugly, lonely man-haters with lousy sex lives.

Abortion bans don't actually stop anyone from getting an abortion. Not to mention that the abortions people DO get under these bans are lethal.

Eating food that eats other food uses more food.

Hope none of this shocked your delicate sensibilities too much!

New funny for you!

This freaking awesome webcomic popped up all over Scienceblogs recently, and I just had to share. Enjoy!

Hometown Hullabaloo

My mum sent me this article today detailing a dust-up back home. It seems that one of the local NPR stations, WDUQ, accepted underwriting from Planned Parenthood, as did several other NPR stations in the area. WDUQ is part of Duquesne University, a Catholic university. When Duquesne found out, they ordered WDUQ to un-accept the underwriting support and pull the Planned Parenthood sponsorship messages, since Planned Parenthood is at odds with Catholic teachings on the subject of a woman's right to physical autonomy.

While I do think Duquesne University has every right to refuse funds from whatever source it deems inappropriate, I think they majorly dropped the ball on this in two ways. First, they are causing the editorial independence of WDUQ to be called into question. It seems a short, slippery slope to monitoring DUQ's broadcast content for Catholic "appropriatenes." Even if Duquesne doesn't ever plan on monitoring DUQ's content in this way, the perception is there that DUQ is not an independent news source.

Secondly, this might be very bad news indeed for WDUQ's fundraising efforts. People who donate to Public Radio are generally to the left of center anyway, and support the notion that women are actually full humans with the right to make their own choices about their own bodies. A lot of people are already pulling their donations, and many more won't make any in the future. It would be a real shame if WDUQ was forced to shut down because this brouhaha. I don't want to have to read a headline stating that religion killed NPR.

Further reading:
Planned Parenthood's Get Involved site.
WDUQ's contact page.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Run, Al! Run!

Congratulations to Al Gore and the IPCC, who have jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize for their work educating the public about antrhopogenic global warming! Thank you, Al, the world needs great popularizers of science. Now, run for president and repair the damage to our international reputation!

Happy National Coming Out Day!

Here's some interesting videos from Truth Wins Out discussing the damage that graduates of "ex-gay" programs do to the people they wind up marrying, in honor of National Coming Out Day.

In other news, Doris Lessing has won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Despite the fact that she is wary of being a feminist icon, she still kind of rocks.

Festival of Fear

Ok, ok, ok. I've finally got pictures worth posting from the Festival of Fear in Toronto that we attended. And now, without further ado...



Me and Mel and George Romero!!!!!! I'm not preggers, that's just the way that shirt hangs :) He was really very nice and friendly...



Joel and George!!! We got a very nice poster of Night of the Living Dead signed too!



Mel and her uncannily prom-like picture with Dario Argento.




General view of the con floor. Lots and lots of geeks. This was actually part of "FanExpo," which included comics, anime, video gaming, horror, sci-fi, etc. Other highlights of our trip were a Q&A with Adrianne Barbeau, who was incredibly engaging and charming and sweet, an "intimate" session with Dario where we tried valiantly to understand his broken English and where he claimed he wasn't a misogynist because he "loves women, and animals, and insects." Joel and I also checked out an interesting presentation on scoring horror films. We also saw lots of geeks getting very excited to meet people we'd never heard of. Oh and let's not forget the screening of Demons II on the big screen!

Also, we had an excellent dinner at Kit-Kat Italian Restaraunt. Highly recommended. The pasta was completely to die for.