| sigh |
[Dec. 4th, 2009|11:06 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | rant | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  melancholy | ] |
Maaaaybe a little bit jealous of all the people who are on vacation/working from home today. And it's not even snowing! |
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| NY same-sex marriage bill defeated, life goes on |
[Dec. 2nd, 2009|02:38 pm] |
The New York same-sex marriage bill, which passed the state assembly 88-51, was defeated in the state senate 38-24, which isn't even close. (Anyone who knows anything about NY politics: why is the state senate so against it while the state assembly is so for it? It seems weird to me.)
Between this and the Maine defeat, as @fivethirtyeight tweeted: "But boy, its been a rough couple of months for progressives." Indeed.
Perhaps it's time to change our strategy - it seems like the votes just aren't there in most places for same-sex marriage. Looking at the same-sex marriage map (which I apologize for linking every time I write about this stuff, but it's a good way to see at a glance where we are, and can't a guy self-promote a bit?) same-sex marriage is legal in 4 states (and will be in 5 when New Hampshire's law takes effect in January) and civil unions are available in 5 more, plus DC. I think we should focus on picking off more states where there are no civil unions and trying to push civil unions there - they have fairly broad support, and from a practical perspective there's not much difference, especially since no same-sex marriages are being recognized at the federal level anyway. Maybe Maryland, or Illinois, or Rhode Island, or (heck) New York?
Getting actual rights for gay couples in other states is a lot more important to me than getting their unions called "marriage". |
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| health care optimism? |
[Nov. 24th, 2009|05:17 pm] |
Based on the fact that the Senate health care bill barely got to the floor, and the fact that it sounds like 4 Senators (Landrieu, Lieberman, Lincoln, Nelson), were going to vote against it if it contained a public option, I was pessimistic!
But now after reading this article, I'm more optimistic that even if the bill that passes doesn't have a public option, it could still make a difference in health care costs. Also, that article is required reading in the White House! |
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| rethinking the plan |
[Nov. 24th, 2009|10:30 am] |
I signed up for the Houston Turkey Trot 5K with my family. Unfortunately, it starts at 8 AM (which is very early for me these days) and I'm not in great shape and it's going to be cold, which doesn't do so great on my lungs. Hopefully I survive!
Been working on WebOSJournal (the LiveJournal client for the Palm Pre/Pixi) - it's coming along decently but I'm running into some frustration trying to allow replying to posts/comments. The authorization scheme is tricky and of course you don't get useful feedback. I actually downloaded the LiveJournal source code to try to figure out what I'm doing wrong, but it's hard to find my way around...
Obama kicks off massive science education effort - yay! |
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| no-longer-quite-as-rainy link friday |
[Nov. 20th, 2009|02:59 pm] |
I finally took the plunge and ordered a 23andMe kit. I got the kit in the mail last night and spit into the tube (they wanted a lot of spit so it took 5 minutes to do), sealed it up and sent it off this morning. Now the waiting begins...
- The District of Columbia is proposing a same-sex marriage law. (yay!) The Catholic church, upon hearing this, warned that they would stop providing social services for DC if the law passed, despite the fact that they law specifically exempts religious organizations from having to recognize the marriages. They would, however, have to obey city laws preventing discrimination against gays.
- In other church news, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Church leaders have signed the "Manhattan Declaration", saying they will not cooperate with laws about abortion or same-sex unions that they don't agree with. Again, every same-sex marriage law that I'm aware of carves out a pretty wide exemption for religious groups, so I'm a bit put out by this. HRC responds along the same lines.
- In other other church news, the Catholic Church has found that gay priests were not a factor in the sex abuse scandal. Who woulda thunk it?
- Gay Marriage & Marijuana: You can't stop either. Why that's good. I agree, although his timetable for 10 years having all states recognize same-sex unions seems a bit optimistic given the current state of affairs. |
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| Test post |
[Nov. 17th, 2009|10:18 pm] |
First post from Palm Pre? |
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| origami dreams |
[Nov. 13th, 2009|12:54 pm] |
After spending so long with the origami units last night, I saw the folds when I closed my eyes, and had a dream that some origami bees were flying around trying to destroy my origami construction. It was weird :-)
Also, they found a "significant" amount of water on the moon! |
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| origami adventures! |
[Nov. 12th, 2009|10:11 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | origami | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  cheerful | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | George Michael - "Hand to Mouth" | ] |
I got a few new origami books and tried to make a few things, all of which ended in failure one way or another. (the most frustrating was trying to make a cute little tetrahedron, for which all the pieces turned out great, but apparently you need to be some sort of origami deity to assemble the 6 measly pieces) That's been disheartening, so I decided to go back to my old standby - using Sonobe units to make things. I've done 12 and 30 unit constructions before, so I wanted to try a 60 unit one.
Tuesday I made 40 units, and yesterday while I was home sick I finished up the latest 20 in front of "The Dark Knight". (still a good movie!) Last night was assembly time. It went surprisingly well at first - it's mostly hexagons and triangles which made it much more stable while putting it together than I had feared. I kept putting it together with the same pattern until I noticed that I was almost out of units, and the structure was nowhere near closed up. Usually this means that edges need to be joined together somehow, but I just couldn't figure it out. Eventually I did a little online research, and lo and behold the way you make the 60 unit structure is fairly different from the 12 and 30. What I was halfway putting together was the 90 unit structure.
So after a bit of deliberation I decided to take the whole thing apart and go for the 90. (I would have left it together while I folded the extra units, but then the extra colors would have been all on one side) I'll take pictures when/if I finish, since judging by the size of the structure I had it's going to be quite big! |
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| home energy usage vs. temperature |
[Nov. 9th, 2009|12:48 pm] |
I couldn't sleep last night so I whipped up this analysis of our home energy usage vs. temperature. It turns out that (spoiler!) we use more energy when it's hot outside. But I got to run my first linear regression!
People who know about statistics: feel free to criticize/suggest improvements. (I'm not even sure I was looking at the right R-squared value...) |
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| up yours, Maine |
[Nov. 4th, 2009|09:35 am] |
Same-sex marriage lost in Maine 47-53%. Angry profanity-laden rant behind the cut:
( Angry, profanity-laden rant )
Hmm, not as profanity-laden as I had thought. Still, I'm mad.
On the good news front, Washington's domestic partnerships vote is looking good (they vote by mail so it takes a few days to get final numbers), and Annise Parker (an open lesbian) is in a runoff for Houston mayor. But Maine really stings. |
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| election day! |
[Nov. 3rd, 2009|08:36 am] |
Not much in Austin is that interesting (but go vote if you haven't already, blah blah blah) - there are a handful of races throughout the country, but the big ones for me are in Maine and Washington.
In Maine, same-sex marriage is being put to a vote (after the legislature passed it and governor signed it, it was put on the ballot by a "people's veto"), and in Washington state the same thing is happening with domestic partnerships. Nate Silver thinks keeping same-sex marriage is favored by a little bit in Maine, but the truth is that same-sex marriage has never won when put up to a vote (although domestic partnerships have never lost when put to a vote...interesting, no?) so a victory in Maine would be huuuuge. Really hoping to turn Maine dark green on the marriage map (and turn Washington, um, slightly darker green!) - here's hoping! |
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bouncy
hyper
hopeful
tired
chipper
busy
geeky
angry
unsure
bored