Get Cynical

“The barometer of where one is on human rights questions is no longer the black community, it’s the gay community. Because it is the community which is most easily mistreated.” – Bayard Rustin

48 more states to go:

Surrounded by cheering, clapping gay-rights activists and legislators, Governor Deval Patrick today signed a bill repealing a 95-year-old statute that had prevented gay and lesbian couples from most other states from marrying in Massachusetts.

“It’s a good day,” said Patrick, declaring that the repeal will “confirm a simple truth: that is, in Massachusetts, equal means equal.”

Massachusetts will “continue to lead the way as a national leader” and affirm “all people come before their government as equals,” Patrick said in a bill-signing ceremony at the State House’s Grand Staircase. Gay marriage “is still troubling for some of our citizens,” he said, “but it is still the law.”

Patrick, who turned 52 today, also called the bill “a great birthday present.”

Marc Solomon, executive director of MassEquality, a gay-rights organization, said, “This is really a new day. We welcome everyone from New York to come here and get married. We think it’s a shame people can’t get married in their own states.”

The repeal took effect immediately, making Massachusetts the second state after California to allow same-sex couples to marry, regardless of residence. It opened the borders for potentially thousands of nonresident same-sex couples. That includes an estimated 49,000 couples from New York, where Governor David Paterson has instructed state agencies to recognize and grant benefits to gay couples who marry elsewhere, even though the Empire State does not authorize same-sex marriages.

Want! I think I’ll get this for the packaging alone.

(via Shakesville)

(via Atheist Media Blog)

Related:
John McCain on Abortion.

From Weburbanist:

Adaptive reuse used to be a tactic of necessity – people didn’t have the time, energy or money to build something new so they made the best with what they had. Today it is a way to stand out, make a statement, go bold and try something completely different. From airplanes, chapels and garages turned into houses to airplane hangers turned into tropical rain forest resorts, the possibilities are essentially endless.

(via Make:Blog)

He’s in cat fur. Do not want!

And I’m not blogging from the theater so no updates until much later. (I lied, there’s a two o’clock trailer update scheduled for 3:00pm.)

Update:

I ended up having a small kernel of popcorn embedded in the back of my throat during most of the movie so perhaps I was a bit grumpy but the movie was good. A bit overrated IMO and about 30 minutes too long. Yes, Heath Ledger is great in it. Yes, Maggie Gyllenhaal took over Katie Holmes role of “speed bump” where the movie slowed down every time she appeared on screen.

Now, excuse me while I go scrape the back of my esophagus with a coat hanger.

A letter from a librarian to a patron who was upset about a book about gay marriage:

Recently, a library patron challenged (urged a reconsideration of the ownership or placement of) a book called “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding.” Honestly, I hadn’t even heard of it until that complaint. But I did read the book, and responded to the patron, who challenged the item through email and requested that I respond online (not via snail-mail) about her concerns.

I suspect the book will get a lot of challenges in 2008-2009. So I offer my response, purging the patron’s name, for other librarians.

Here’s an excerpt from the letter which really is the main point:

I fully appreciate that you, and some of your friends, strongly disagree with its viewpoint. But if the library is doing its job, there are lots of books in our collection that people won’t agree with; there are certainly many that I object to. Library collections don’t imply endorsement; they imply access to the many different ideas of our culture, which is precisely our purpose in public life.

(via Kottke)

Related:
Kurt Vonnegut – I Love You, Madame Librarian:

And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.

From PCPro:

It is early days, admittedly, but as soon as you officially launch you open yourself up to analysis and ridicule. The complaints are valid, too; these results certainly don’t seem to be on a par with Google, and for an underdog to succeed it needs to not only match, but surpass the market leader.

Some of the complaints are extremely serious – with pornographic images popping up on search results, out of context, and even with the safe search feature turned on. If you can’t trust the site for use at work, or by your kids, how much will it actually get used?

There are also worrying problems with Cuil as a business. It obviously doesn’t have the same sort of cash behind it that Google does, but how long it will actually hang on to its meagre $25 million investment?

Sarah Carey, The Sunday Times columnist, also works for Cuil, and recently posted on her personal blog about how quickly the company is burning through this VC cash. The post has since been removed, but thanks to Google’s caching feature (not available on Cuil), the post can still be read here.

“I have a secret life. You may know me as a domesticated, rural housewife and while this is true, for the past year I have also tasted the life of an international software executive,” says Carey, before going on to describe day-to-day life at Cuil.

“Lunch is ordered in every single day. Huge fridges burst with snacks and drinks. Bowls of strawberries and muffins lie around the rest area. The company pays for a personal trainer and gym membership for everyone. A doctor calls round each Friday, after the weekly barbeque, to see if everyone’s in good health. Employees drift in an out at times that suit themselves,” she continued, before temporarily expressing worry about the spending.

Never mind all that. A search for “Cynical C” doesn’t lead here nor does a search for “Cynical C Blog”. That’s not a cuil we can believe in.