I’ll endure lectures on how gays don’t actually want marriage rights from a lot of people…even from some other gay people…but not from another gay person who refers to gays as "same sex-attracted" not once, not twice, but eight times in a single column, as though he just can’t bring himself to utter the word ‘gay’ let alone ‘homosexual’.  Still looking for that cure are we…?

From The New York Times…

When Vito J. Fossella Jr., the soon-to-be boy congressman, stood beside the young girls of a cheerleading squad at the Excelsior Grand catering hall in 1997, it seemed a particularly vivid version of Staten Island pageantry. Mr. Fossella — 32 and with Al Pacino looks — was on his way to becoming the sole Republican in New York City’s Congressional delegation at a spirited party billed as an evening of “pasta and politics.”

George H. W. Bush and Senator Bob Dole were there that night, strolling past the steaming trays of ziti and charging donors $1,000 each to pose for pictures. Sonny Bono was on his way from California to stump with them the next day. Mr. Fossella, the man of the hour, raised his hands, quieted the crowd, then launched into a rousing speech on cutting taxes and championing school choice.

…

Mr. Fossella, victorious with 62 percent of the vote, was so intent on getting to Congress that, according to The Staten Island Advance, he flew to Washington from Newark carrying the morning papers proclaiming his own victory only 10 hours after it was announced.

Once there, he established himself as a reliable member of his party. He voted to impeach President Clinton, followed President Bush’s war policies in Iraq, voted to eliminate financing for Planned Parenthood and supported a constitutional amendment against gay marriage.

And yet many of his Democratic colleagues did not regard Mr. Fossella as an ideological warrior…

Doubtless…not the gay ones…

Via The New York Daily News…

Fossella shuns his gay sister – source

Vito Fossella built a career as a staunch "family values" pol, polishing his image in his predominantly Catholic district with a string of anti-gay votes.

He even shuns his gay sister, Victoria Fossella, refusing to go to family events if she and her partner attend, a source close to the family said.

…

As congressman, Fossella voted to prohibit any funding for joint adoptions by gay couples.

He has voted for the Marriage Protection Amendment, a federal prohibition on gay marriage.

He also demanded housing funds be held back from San Francisco unless it repealed its domestic partnership law.

Nice family republican values kinda guy wouldn’t you say?

Oh yes…definitely…

In the nine days since the 43-year-old Mr. Fossella, who has served five terms in Congress, was arrested and charged after running a red light in Alexandria, Va., things have gone from not-so-good to pretty bad, with only a slender thread still staving off the worst.

Within days of his admitting that he was on his way to visit “some friends in Virginia” when he was stopped by the police, the New York tabloids began raising questions about the woman who came to retrieve him from custody, a former Air Force lieutenant colonel named Laura Fay. Then, on Thursday, he released a clipped statement from his office, saying that he had fathered a daughter, now 3, in an extramarital affair with Ms. Fay. 

…definitely…

Judgment Day For Congressman Fossella

Democratic and Republican Congressional officials are reportedly looking into Fossella’s mysterious and expensive trip to France in 2003 with his mistress, Laura Fay.

It was called a fact-finding mission to La Hague’s nuclear fuel reprocessing plants, according to the Daily News.

However, the Staten Island Republican was the only lawmaker authorized to go. And according to one committee member, it may have been less about nuclear power and more about fueling his relationship with the Air Force legislative liaison officer, the retired colonel who subsequently bore the congressman’s love child.

Should Fosella repay taxpayers for his travel expenses if investigators find he mixed pleasure with business? 

Listen for the right wing ‘phobes who bellyached about Tammy Baldwin’s domestic partner being allowed to fly with her, to blast Fossella for flying with his mistress to France on the government’s dime in, 3… 2… 1… Never.

If you have time to manage you’re neighbor’s personal lives it probably means you aren’t paying enough attention to your own.  Well adjusted heterosexuals don’t seek validation by trashing the lives of their gay neighbors.  When you see someone going on a crusade against homosexuality it’s probably because the stench of their own intimate lives has become too terrifying for them to contemplate.  Nobody goes looking for scapegoats if they don’t need any.

Via C/Net News…

Stolen Mac helps nab burglary suspects

A remote desktop access feature found in some Macintoshes is being credited with leading police to two suspects in the burglary of an apartment in New York.

In addition to flat-screen TVs, iPods, and DVDs, the thieves made off with two laptop computers, one of which belonged to Kait Duplaga, an Apple store employee, according to a report in the New York Times on Saturday. While police in White Plains, N.Y., were coming up empty with their investigation, Duplaga learned that her computer was being used on the Internet and turned on the Back to My Mac feature installed on her Mac from another Mac, according to the report.

The feature allowed Duplaga to see immediately how the computer was being used at the time, as well as operate it remotely. Recalling that she had a camera installed on the computer, the fast-thinking Duplaga snapped images of one of the burglary suspects before he realized what was happening, according to the Times. Duplaga showed the image to friends who recognized the suspect as someone who attended a party at the apartment.

The photo lead police to arrest two suspects on Wednesday and recover nearly all the stolen property.

"It doesn’t get much better than their bringing us a picture of the guy actually using the stolen property," Daniel Jackson, the deputy commissioner of public safety in White Plains, told the newspaper. "It certainly made our job easier."

The Back to My Mac feature runs on Leopard-based Macintoshes and requires a $99 subscription to the .Mac online service.

Don’t fuck with us…

Ryan Sorba, author of the forthcoming book "The Gay Gene Hoax", was brought to the Michigan State University by the campus Young Americans For Freedom group to tell the student body there that "The born gay hoax was invented in 1985 by pro-sodomy activists in effort to overturn anti-sodomy laws by way of minority status." The event was advertised by YAF with a flier called "Gays Spread AIDS".

During the course of his speech, in which Sorba falsely claimed among other things that Bruce Bagemihl’s Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity was not a "correct study" and had not been cited by other researchers, including Paul Vasey and Volker Sommer (Biological Exuberance was cited by Vasey and Sommer thirteen times), a group of gay folk got up and began chanting and banging pans to drown him out.  He eventually had to leave the stage.

Kyle Bristow, the chairman of the MSU chapter of the Young Americans for Freedom, said, "Sexual deviancy poses as a dire threat to our civilization; is an affront to God; corrupts culture with decadence; and is an attack on the institution of the family, which is the crux of our society." 

The kook pews naturally, are in an uproar, over this incident, and others where they claim gay folk are engaging in "homofacism".  Over at Pam’s House Blend, blogger Dagon says …

They say the glbt progressives will not allow free discussion of homosexuality, especially by Christians.  They compare glbt techniques of silencing Christians to Hitler in the 1930’s.  I think the Freepers go overboard.  But there is no doubt that the Smith students and the Toledo University President are stifling Christian oppositional speech against homosexuality.

Just like we would stifle speech advocating slavery, anti-Semitism, or racism.  When Andy Humm, the host of Gay USA on Free Speech TV, found himself on a TV Talk Show opposite a reparative therapy counselor, he refused to speak with the counselor.  Instead he spent the entire time speaking with the host of the show.  He wanted to know how the host dared invite such an irresponsible person as the reparative therapist to the TV show.  Andy went on and on about how the therapist and others like him hurt so very many people … but he never engaged the therapist … he ignored him completely.

I think Andy’s tactic was brilliant.  I have to admit, I think those bloggers who criticized the Smith women were wrong.  The Smith lesbian were right on the money.  We do NOT need to invite crazy people to our campuses, churches, or civic centers.  The whole western world already knows that homosexuality is completely normal.  The jury is back, the verdict is in, the case is over.  Case closed.  Debate over.  

The wingnuts can argue among themselves.  They can hold the debate right along side an explanation of the world being only 6,000 years old and the earth being flat.  Have at it.

But over at the Independent [sic] Gay Forum, John Corvino would politely disagree…

Increasingly, one finds people on both sides who object not merely to their opponents’ position but even to engaging that position. Why debate the obvious, they ask. Surely anyone who holds THAT position must be too stubborn, brainwashed or dumb to reason with.

The upshot is that supporters and opponents of gay rights are talking to each other less and less. This fact distresses me.

It distresses me for several reasons. First, it lulls gay-rights advocates into a complacency where we mistake others’ silence for acquiescence. Then we are shocked—shocked!—when, for example, an Oklahoma state representative says that gays pose a greater threat than terrorism—and her constituents rally around her. Think Sally Kern will have a hard time getting re-elected? Think again.

It distresses me, too, because dialogue works. Not always, and not easily, but it makes a difference. Indeed, ironically enough, healthy dialogue about our issues helped move many people from the “supportive – but – open – to – discussion” camp to the “so – supportive – I – can’t – believe – we’re – discussing – this” camp.

Corvino is right of course in the basic idea: dialogue works.  But was Sorba engaging in dialogue?

The born gay hoax was invented in 1985 by pro-sodomy activists in effort to overturn anti-sodomy laws by way of minority status.

If that amounts to dialogue, then I suppose so is a burning cross.

Yes…dialogue works.  Absolutely.  When it’s dialogue.  But dialogue has one inescapable prerequisite: good faith.  I have three conditions for dialogue with anyone on the other side of the gay rights issue.  I think they are reasonable ones.

1. Stop lying.
2. Stop lying.
3. Stop lying.

When you have a talk with someone who angrily waves Paul Cameron’s junk science in your face, and you point out to them how Cameron’s facts cannot be trusted, and they concede the point and stop waving Cameron in your face, but then go on to angrily wave something else just as bogus in your face…yes, actually, you Are having a dialogue.  There is a willingness there to at least listen, even if it is a very slight one.  They really are engaging you…albeit between bouts of finger pointing at the perverted gay lifestyle.  But if that same person later goes on to wave Cameron in Someone Else’s face as though they’d never conceded the point at all when they were talking with you, there was no dialogue.  You need to see that for what it is.  There was no dialogue.  You may have thought there was, but there was no dialogue.  And there is no dialogue possible with that person because they are not and never were engaging you in good faith.  What was going on there is if Cameron doesn’t work on you, he can still work on someone else.  What was going on there is if they can’t make you hate yourself at least they can try to make other people hate you, and if enough people hate you then no matter how proud you are, you will still be afraid. 

That’s what’s going on behind the anti-gay mask of dialogue.  Not having an open and frank discussion of the issue, but hate mongering.  And you need to know the difference because when you sit down with hate mongers, people who have a history of falsifying the evidence, hiding the truth, ignoring the facts, you are elevating them by virtue of your own willingness to be persuaded.  You are granting them a status they have not earned, do not deserve, and in any case do not want apart from its usefulness as a tool in their Kulturkampf .  They are not interested in being persuaded.  They are not interested in listening to you.  That measuring gaze in their eyes as you tell them your story isn’t listening.  It’s calculating.  They are interested in only one thing: demonizing homosexuals.  The world must hate us, as much as they hate us.  That is all that matters to them.   And if they can get you to help them demonize you, so much the better.

This isn’t rocket science.   Starting in 2003, various anti-gay sources started peddling, as an argument against same sex marriage, a study by Dutch researchers led by Dr. Maria Xiradou which they claimed proved that not only were gay relationships very short lived, none that lasted longer then a few years were monogamous.  And indeed, none of the gay male relationships in that study were long lived, or monogamous.  But as Jim Burroway later found out by…well…actually reading the study…that would have been hardly surprising as it was intended to show how HIV infection was spreading through the young gay male population of Amsterdam and the researchers excluded older couples and monogamous couples from the study. 

When you see people doing that kind of thing it is telling you all you need to know about the possibility of dialogue with them.  You cannot sit down and have a dialogue with someone where you are trying your level best to understand their point of view and tell your own side of the story as simply and as honestly as you can and they are looking you right in the eye and lying through their teeth.  That is not a dialogue, and you are being used.  It is not that there is no point in sitting down with hate mongers.  It’s that sitting down with hate mongers makes them seem like something they are not, and that allows them to keep right on spreading their poison into the dialogue the rest of the human family needs to have. 

Earlier this year the Vermont legislature appointed an 11-member Vermont Commission on Family Recognition and Protection to explore the idea of gay marriage and hear how Vermonters feel about it.  They conducted hearings all over the state, and something amazing happened.  The conversation was civil.  There was no cat-calling, no screaming and shouting, no personal attacks.  Why?  Because the anti-gay opposition boycotted the hearings.  They weren’t silenced.  They weren’t shouted down.  They weren’t censored.  They simply chose not to participate, claiming that the hearings were stacked against them.  But with the hate mongers out of it, the people were able to have what they weren’t supposed to have, what the hate mongers didn’t want them to have.  Dialogue.  See how that works?

Religion doesn’t matter.  Party doesn’t matter.  Education and culture do not matter.   Only one thing matters when it comes to dialogue and that is good faith.  Unless that one thing is present, there is no dialogue.  At best there is only flag waving.  At worst, all you are doing is helping hate mongers to destroy the possibility of dialogue.  Because, yes, dialogue works.  Dialogue brings people together.  Dialogue kills hate.  And that is why the hate mongers want to be wherever there is a chance of dialogue occurring. 

In this country even hate has a right to speak it’s mind.  And that’s well and good.  Better hate comes out into the open where it can be seen for what it is.  But that doesn’t mean we need to engage hate as though it is something it is not.  I am perfectly willing to have a dialogue.  I am all about dialogue.  But if you want to wave your hate flag you will have to do it all by yourself because I was not born into this world just to help the likes of you make people hate me.  Here are my conditions for having a dialogue about homosexuality:

1. Stop lying.
2. Stop lying.
3. Stop lying.

The Scene: 

Soft introduction music plays…

"Are you embarrassed easily? I am. But it’s nothing to worry about; it’s all part of growing up and being British. This course is designed to eliminate embarrassment, to enable you to talk freely about rude objects, to look at awkward and embarrassing things and to point at people’s privates. The course has been designed by Dr Karl Gruber of the Institute of Going a Bit Red in Helsinki."

-Monty Python’s Flying Circus

Every Friday evening now for almost a year, I’ve made it a point to drive down to D.C. and hang with my gay friends down there.  We have a regular happy hour/dinner end of week gathering.  It keeps me sane.  I’m single, I live all by myself up here in Baltimore, and if I don’t actively seek out companionship I just go nuts.  I wasn’t cut out to be a loner. 

This week I decided I wasn’t drinking.  My body really isn’t used to regular drinking nights, and alcohol was never my favorite form of relaxation.  So I just drank Cokes.  One of my friends later blamed that for how embarrassed I became at the…erm…low altitude of the dinner conversation.  But I don’t think so.  You have to expect when you’re with a pack of gay guys in a gay bar in a gay neighborhood in a city with a large gay population, that the conversation is going to get a tad sexual.  I strongly doubt that’s really any different from the tone of most conversations in straight pickup bars either, but I wouldn’t know about that.  Last night however, thanks to a few folks at the dinner table the conversation got really really raunchy.  So I did what I usually do when I’m not enjoying myself.  I tuned out.  Ironically, I suppose that was a tad rude of me.  I really felt sorry for our waiter.

I blame my Baptist upbringing for the modesty to the point of paralyzing inhibition I’ve been stuck with ever since puberty.  But it may also just be in my blood.  I wish I could be more of a gay peacock.  I was a cute little dickens when I was younger and I’ll go to my grave regretting I didn’t make more of that.  And I get embarrassed.  So much so that I’ve been asked outright on occasion if I really am gay.  I think people mistake my embarrassment for disgust.  But if I am anything it’s sexually frustrated, not turned off by the idea of sex between guys. 

But I’ll cheerfully admit to being grossed out by some of the kinks people get into.  Some heterosexuals get into those same kinks too and I don’t confuse my libido’s sexual tastes for a moral sensibility.  As long as people consent to whatever it is they’re doing and as long as it’s done with some degree of care and sympathy it neither picks my pockets nor breaks my leg what they’re doing with each other.  I don’t expect people to accommodate my embarrassments.  Matter of fact I’m usually grateful when they don’t.  But not last night.  I wish I didn’t get embarrassed so easily, but I do not regret being a romantic in the least, which is the polar opposite of raunch, and there were other people in that dinning room besides us.

The night that started out with my making my first ever iTunes buy from my iPhone.  Before heading downtown I was at a friend’s house when I heard Dionne Warwick singing This Girl’s In Love With You on his Pandora station…

You see this girl, 
This girl’s in love with you 
Yes I’m in love 
Who looks at you the way I do 
When you smile I can tell 
We know each other very well

Somehow I’d never gotten around to buying that one…probably because I never saw it on the singles rack back when I was a teenager.  But I sat there listening to it at my friend Jon’s house and next thing I know I’m calling up the iTunes store on my iPhone.  My inner teeny-bopper has been grooving to it all day today.  Probably as a tonic to last night’s raunch.

My hands are shakin’ 
Don’t let my heart keep breaking 
‘Cause I need your love, 
I want your love 
Say you’re in love 
And you’ll be my guy…

Am I really gay?  As I was sinking deeper and deeper into my chair last night in embarrassment, one of the guys, who had been briefly married, started talking graphically about a certain way straight guys can make their ladies happy and That was when I started getting grossed out.  No offense to my heterosexual readers here…I know some of you would probably get grossed out by a graphic conversation about the same sex version of that kind of sex, and that doesn’t make you homophobic.  It’s just your libido grimacing.  One person’s sweet delight is another’s gross-out and that’s just the way it goes.  That part of us just has its own way of looking at the world and all you can do is just try to deal with it honorably. 

I was embarrassed, not disgusted.  But I think I have a plan.  From now on I’ll save my drinking for when the conversation starts looking like the letters page of Screw magazine.  Then I’ll walk up to the bar for a shot or two.  They say people in a bar generally look better when you’re drunk.  Probably they make better sense too.

I have a confession to make.  I have this…tragic…habit of falling madly in love with guys who tell me after I’ve become completely twitterpated on them that they’re straight, and later go on to lead thoroughly heterosexual lifestyles (and yes, I am using the word ‘lifestyle’ ironically here…).  Either they tell me they’re straight, or do so in so many words.  Not always…’K’…my ex…is certainly not presenting himself as a heterosexual…at least not to his friends.  And I’ve had the random crush on guys who were unambiguously gay.  Alas, none of those ever seemed to have a crush back on me.

What I find…interesting…after having just had a brief email chat with one…is that almost without exception none of these straight guys I’ve ever crushed deeply on have ever gone on to get married.  The exception being, ironically, my first crush back in high school.  He got married, or so he says…to a girl he seems to have met in his college years, and is still married after thirty years now.  But he’s the only one of the lot who ever married.

And none of them…not a one…has ever had kids, or even expressed the slightest interest in having kids.  The only guy I’ve ever been in love with who ever expressed an interest in having kids, ironically enough, was ‘K’…the openly gay one.  And…interestingly…he Did get married.  For a little while.  After his parents pressured him into it.  Then he got divorced…and called me up…and came up to Baltimore for a visit…  But that’s another long and tragic story…

So…about a half dozen serious crushes in my life who present themselves as heterosexual.  And of the lot, only one ever got married and none have kids.  Most of them are single now, as I write this.  In their 50s.  Most of them have been single for most of their lives.

I have no idea what this means, but it isn’t random.  I take any other random group of six heterosexuals who I know and there are kids there, and the ones who don’t have any are the exception.  But there are no kids by any of the heterosexuals I’ve ever fallen in love with, and only one outright marriage.

There’s an obvious conclusion here, and maybe I just don’t want to look at it.  But at least I’m not blaming myself anymore.  Time was I used to think of myself as the cure for homosexuality that NARTH has been searching for…

The attorney of the 14 year old boy who shot 15 year old Lawrence King in the head thinks he has a new and improved version of an old strategy…

Lawyer blames school in shooting of gay Oxnard student

As 14-year-old Brandon McInerney prepares to be arraigned today in the slaying of 15-year-old Lawrence "Larry" King at E.O. Green Junior High School in Oxnard, his lawyer is advancing a defense that at least partly blames school officials for the tragedy.

Educators should have moved aggressively to quell rising tensions between the two boys, which began when King openly flirted with McInerney, said Deputy Public Defender William Quest.

No.  The tensions pre-existed that.  The flirting was Kings way of dealing with the abuse he was getting from the other kids.  But look at this carefully.  Quest is hanging a dead skunk on a sliver of truth obvious to everyone in hindsight.  Educators should have moved aggressively to quell rising tensions between the two boys…  Yes.  And right here is the poison Quest is trying to slip in along with that…

Instead, administrators were so intent on nurturing King as he explored his sexuality, allowing him to come to school wearing feminine makeup and accessories, that they downplayed the turmoil that his behavior was causing on campus, Quest said.

You’d think the boy was going to school in drag…which is exactly the image Quest is creating there.  Quest is slyly turning a murdered 15 year old gay kid into a drag queen exploring his sexuality on other terrified teenagers.  He’s pushing all the usual buttons there.  But look past that.  King’s behavior was creating turmoil on campus.  Quest has probably figured out that blaming a 15 year old gay kid for his own murder isn’t going to play well…at least with California juries.  He might get away with it, but considering Matthew Shepard’s killers couldn’t even in Wyoming, it’s a risk.  So what to do?  Simple.  Blame the school for not blaming the victim. 

Instead, administrators were so intent on nurturing King as he explored his sexuality, allowing him to come to school wearing feminine makeup and accessories, that they downplayed the turmoil that his behavior was causing on campus…

Isn’t that a neat trick? The school was siding with the gay kid, which left the other kids in turmoil, which caused Brandon McInerney to bring a gun to school and shoot Lawrence King in the back of the head.  Poor Branden was so traumatized over having a gay classmate, and even worse being flirted at, that he couldn’t even look him in the eye when he pulled the trigger.  And it’s all the school’s fault.  For nurturing the gay kid.  When they should have been keeping him under control.  So the other kids wouldn’t be in turmoil.  So Branden McInerney wouldn’t have been in turmoil.  

You have never seen the gay panic defense so slickly inserted into a murder trial. 

Hey kids!  Microsoft’s super good music player, Zune, is becoming Double More user friendly!!!

Information Week: 

Microsoft Gets More Social With Zune Update

Users of the portable media player can now download friends’ nine most recently played songs, as well as nine tunes flagged as favorites.

Microsoft, which trails far behind Apple in the portable media player market, tried to narrow the gap Tuesday with the release of new technology that enables Zune users to share more of their music libraries with friends.

The latest update to the Zune software that synchronizes the player with a person’s music library on the PC and Microsoft’s online store reflects how Microsoft is hoping to grab market share from the Apple iPod by encouraging Zune users to build online social networks. Microsoft last November launched a music community Web site called Zune Social, where users could browse each other’s playlists and share opinions on songs and bands.

Neato!

PC Week:

Microsoft Looks to Social Networking for Zune 2.0

Along with the three new Zune players, including Microsoft’s first-ever flash-based model, Microsoft announced a new community site, dubbed Zune Social that it will fire up as beta in November. According to Microsoft, Zune owners can automatically share their current playlists with friends using a Zune-to-Zune Social sync.

That sync will rely on user-made profiles that Microsoft’s calling Zune Cards; other Zune owners will be able to view a friend’s Card, then play short samples of those tracks and/or buy the tunes at the also-redesigned Zune MarketPlace online store. The sharing concept isn’t new, as several services — notably iLike — already promote something similar.

"Microsoft must find a way to grow the coolness of the Zune," said JupiterResearch’s Michael Gartenberg. "This isn’t a bad strategy, and at least it’s found a way to differentiate from Apple."

Super Cool!  And…oh look…here’s another way they can differentiate themselves from Apple…

Microsoft May Build a Copyright Cop Into Every Zune

If you like to download the latest episodes of “Heroes” or other NBC shows from BitTorrent, maybe you shouldn’t buy a Microsoft Zune to watch them on.

A future update of the software for Microsoft’s portable media player may well include a feature that will block unauthorized copies of copyrighted videos from being played on it.

…

Late Tuesday afternoon I reached J. B. Perrette, the president of digital distribution for NBC Universal, to ask why NBC found Microsoft’s video store more appealing than Apple’s.

He explained that NBC, like most studios, would like the broadest distribution possible for its programming. But it has two disputes with Apple.

First, Apple insists that all TV shows have an identical wholesale price so that it can sell all of them at $1.99. NBC wants to sell its programs for whatever price it chooses.

Second, Apple refused to cooperate with NBC on building filters into its iPod player to remove pirated movies and videos.

Microsoft, by contrast, will accept NBC’s pricing scheme and will work with it to try to develop a copyright “cop” to be installed on its devices.

…

Mr. Perrette said the plan is to create “filtering technology that allows for playback of legitimately purchased content versus non-legitimately purchased content.”

He said this would be similar to systems being tested by Microsoft, Google and others that are meant to block pirated clips from video sharing sites. NBC is also working with Internet service providers like AT&T to put similar filters right into the network.

… 

Adam Sohn, a spokesman for Microsoft, declined to discuss details of this effort other than to say that the software company is exploring anti-piracy measures with NBC. He said Microsoft, which suffers from its own piracy problems, is sympathetic to Hollywood’s concerns.

Let me unpack that for you: NBC agreed to let its content be sold by Microsoft, because Microsoft is willing to make it’s products block the playback of unauthorized copies.  They’re talking about videos there, but does anyone doubt for a moment that same technology will be used to prevent the playback of music too.  And remember, The Music Industry Regards Copying From CDs To Players Like The iPod As Theft. 

Microsoft is going to help the industry make that impossible.  If they can get the technology developed, the industry will then press congress to make it manditory.  Never doubt it.

Oh…wait…  Microsoft says it’s all been a terrible mistake…

In the Zune Insider Blog, Cesar Menendez, a member of Microsoft’s Zune team, refers to this post, and the blog discussion it prompted. He writes:

We have no plans or commitments to implement any new type of content filtering in the Zune devices as part of our content distribution deal with NBC.

Microsoft, let it be said, is second to no one in its skill at deploying tactical syntax.  Let’s unpack all the weasel words in that statement, shall we?   We have no plans…  Right.  Why not say "We will not…"?  as opposed to "We have no plans…"  How about, "We are not in the planning stage, but the proof of concept stage."  Any new type of content filtering…  Why not just say "Any content filtering"?   New Type?  Fine.  They already have something on the drawing boards.  It isn’t new.  As part of our content distribution deal with NBC.  Fine.  But that isn’t the only deal you have with NBC is it?  So are you developing any content filtering, based on an already existing "type", apart from any deals you may have made with NBC, or anyone else…?  Do you have any internal efforts directed at content filtering or blocking?.

No…no…  It’s just not possible to get straight answers out of Microsoft if they don’t want to give you any.  And besides, all you need is to look at Windows Vista to see how devoted Microsoft is to DRM.

Windows Vista is the bloated pig it is, in large measure because of all the DRM technology packed into it.  Vendors are having nightmares getting it to work with hardware because of the DRM requirements Vista imposes and Redmond mandates.  Your video and audio circuitry must literally have no possible point on it for a user to tap a signal from before it can be certified and Vista will allow the highest quality signals through it.  Otherwise it cripples the output.  That Redmond would develop technology to allow the music and film industries to control what you can and can not play on your own playback devices is as unsurprising, as the fact that they’ll be deploying it on paltforms running their software with or without the owner’s consent. 

They say that men don’t change, they reveal themselves.  Once upon a time I made my living programming exclusively on Microsoft platforms.  And I felt proud to be a part of a revolution that was bringing power, as the slogan of my generation went, to the people.  But empowering the common folk was never what Bill was in it for.  He just wanted to own the world.  Bill Gates is to computer technology what Mao was to government.  He spoke the language of revolution, he posed as a friend of the common people against the powerful.  He told them he was about returning to them the power that was rightfully theirs.  The computers would be taken out of the big data processing centers and put right there on your own desktop.  Your data would belong to you, not big business or big government.  Information you need would be directly accessible to you.  Bill Gates promised the world would be at your fingertips.  And if he really meant that, I wouldn’t care if he was ten times as rich as he is.  Instead, he became one of the biggest despots the world ever saw.  Your computer belongs to him now.  And to his friends in the penthouse board rooms.  Men don’t change, they reveal themselves.  Here’s to the new boss…

[Edited a tad…]

Atrios says…

I always found it truly bizarre how nice the weather is but how difficult it was to enjoy it.

Of course you can enjoy it, in the planned physical activity sense. Go hiking! Go to the beach! But it isn’t integrated in your day to day life in any sense because you’re in your car.

He’s linking there to a Matthew Yglesias post about how, ironically enough here in the U.S., all our walkable cities are in areas with not so wonderful weather most of the time, whilst out in parts of the west and southwest where the climate is great for walking most days, the cities are designed mostly around the automobile.  But that’s because they came of age at the same time the automobile did.  The old eastern cities remember the days of horse traffic. They are walkable, because that’s what most people in them had to do when they were busy becoming cities.  There weren’t any cars.

I actually walked in to work today…an achievement of sorts.  I’ve been…reluctant…to leave my car at home ever since I bought it.  Partly it’s for fear that a Mercedes-Benz all alone in a quiet city neighborhood is a target.  But mostly its I haven’t wanted to let pass any little opportunity to drive the thing, I’m still so bedazzled by it.  The sane thing to do with gas prices being what they are is let the car sit and walk to work.  That way I save gas for errands and pleasure driving.  And also, a lot of one mile each way trips is hard on a car.

When I got up this morning the sky was bright and sunny and blue like it is almost all the time in southern California but seldom here in the Mid-Atlantic states except briefly in spring and fall.  It was Pleasantville weather.  Much as I’m still in New Car Love I knew I’d be nuts to let it pass by and not enjoy the walk to work.  There are people in this region who would kill to have the commute I do.  And…it was a lovely day.  We just don’t get many of those here.  So for the first time since I bought the car, back in October, I left it home.

Soon it will be sweltering summer again and I’ll be driving in to work anyway, for the car’s AC, so I’m not a dripping mess of sweat soaked clothes by the time I get to work.  Tomorrow they’re calling for rain so I’ll probably drive.  But from now on I think I can let myself take advantage of the nice weather when it comes, and start walking to work again.  Actually, walking has been an integral part of my day to day life ever since I learned the trick. I walk to the store…I take a walk around the neighborhood I live in most days.  I’ve done these things ever since I can remember.  I bought the house I did because it was within walking distance of where I work.  The closest I’ve ever come to practicing a sport was wilderness backpacking.  I love to drive, but I am a walker.  It’s only been lately that I’ve been driving this much.

From my server logs…

Referring URL: http://www.google.co…her means.%E2%80%9D

Search Engine: google.com

Search Words: 2. explain the statement: "war is a continuation of politics by other means."

Okay…write this down…  "War" is the sequel to the PlayStation game "Politics By Other Means", by D.C. LaRue Novelty and Business Software, the brash gaming upstart that revolutionized bash console 2D sprite games. Written entirely in ADA, a programming language created by the U.S. Department of Defense, "War" takes "Politics By Other Means" to new heights by introducing Higgs boson controllers, dark energy, lead free sprites and support for Hercules graphics mode.  A version for Microsoft’s Zune player is in the works.

That should get you through finals week…

I don’t think a pit bull is spec for a ’98 Ford F100…but let me double check…

(Story Here) 

From our letters to the Get A Fucking Life Editor department…

Mannequin spoils outing

During a visit to Salt Lake City, just blocks from Temple Square at the Gateway Mall, I was aghast to see in the Victoria Secret’s display window a sexually positioned mannequin dressed in skimpy black underwear with garters and black stockings. I credit them for not including whips and chains, but the implication was surely there for the world to see – including small children and teenagers. A nice little Mormon family outing turned into a lesson on immorality with an explanation to my kids why they should wear their temple garments after they are endowed in the temple.

Why should I be exposed to that lewdness unless I choose to walk into the store? At least then I can walk out if I am offended, but please, don’t throw it in my face. It is sad to see that Babylon prospers so well in Zion, and that apparently no one cares enough to protest the perils of pornography. Well, I’m standing up to protect children from exposure to it.

In my childhood, the public was sheltered from inadvertent exposure to pornography by the use of brown protective wrappers on magazines. What a concept! I live in the country and I don’t get out much. Thank goodness.

I have a question.  How is it that a moral woman in a nice little Mormon family who grew up protected from pornography by brown paper wrappers and lives in the country and doesn’t get out much knows about including whips and chains with skimpy black underwear, garters and black stockings? 

Do you take vitamins? Did you ever travel with vitamins? Oh, well… if you take a lot of vitamins, and they’re not the kind that says "Joe’s Vitamins" on the side "the plain-looking vitamins" and you have a whole lot, and you don’t the whole big jumbo thing on the road, you take as many as you need – and they’re not marked. And the jar you put them in isn’t marked. If a policeman really wants to give you a hard time, he can hold you overnight while they check the vitamins. That’s why I travel with Flintstones vitamins!

-George Carlin 

Unfortunately…that’s not a plan that works anymore…

The pills? Pain relief. The arrest? That hurt.

SARASOTA — When the police stopped him one night in Sarasota, Villis Sanders told officers that the small blue pills in his car were Aleve, an over-the-counter medicine for his aching wisdom teeth.

A patrolman used a drug kit to verify what the pills were.

The test said the tablets were amphetamines, Sanders was jailed and his car was impounded.

But it turns out that the test was wrong. Prosecutors took the pills to a laboratory before Sanders’ trial and found out that they were Aleve, after all.

In typical fashion, the DA’s office never bothered to tell Sanders that the charges were dropped because…well…he was innocent.  He found out when he went to court and they told him to go back home. 

Experts say that "false positives" are rare, but when the police department tested additional pills — including an Aleve tablet provided by the Herald-Tribune — the results were the same: Aleve shows up as amphetamines.

No one knows why the test keeps getting it wrong.

The manufacturer said that officers might not have been properly trained, or that Aleve might contain a compound similar to one found in amphetamines.

Officials from Bayer Health Care, which makes Aleve, did not immediately respond to questions.

And Sarasota police officials questioned both the kits and the compounds in Aleve — but say that they did everything they could to figure out what Sanders was carrying that night.

Well…not quite Everything… 

In this case, both of the tablets found in Sanders’ car were blue and oblong, and each was stamped with the word "Aleve."

I’m waiting for the day when I read a news story about a man who was arrested and jailed and had his car impounded for possession of a quarter pound of cocaine that turned out upon further examination back at the lab to be a Quarter Pounder With Cheese.  Well the test said it was cocaine so we arrested him…

Via Brad DeLong…

EzraKlein Archive | The American Prospect: Nothing is misspelled, and the grammar all seems in order, but something seems wrong with an article headlined "Dueling Appeals On Taxes From Obama, Clinton" that never explains what the dueling tax appeals are…

Emphasis mine.  This is the fucking Washington Post he’s talking about there, not People Magazine.  This one sentence sums up what is completely fucked up about American journalism better then any I’ve seen to date. 

Morgan has posted to YouTube the rough cut he currently has of the opening sequence to This Is What Love In Action Looks Like. It looks to be a fantastic documentary when he gets it all put together. And for the first time, people will get a chance to hear Zach speak for himself about what happened to him.

In this clip via the historical footage Morgan managed to dig up, you get a taste of what it was like before the gay rights movement came of age. The captioning Morgan adds to it captures the sense of the times perfectly…

Once upon a time…
There were some monsters…
Everybody was scared of them…

I was a gay teen back in those days, although I spent most of it in a comfortable cocoon of ignorance. But that’s exactly how it was. Homosexuals were monsters. And then one day I realized I was one of the monsters they were talking about. Watching those clips Morgan found brought that whole period of time back to me. And for the haters, it’s still true to this day. We are monsters, not human beings. That is why the Ex-Gay ministries appeared. Not to save our souls, but to impress upon us that we are monsters.

There’s only a small portion of the interview Zach gave Morgan here. And I think I can say now that this is out, that I was privileged to be there to witness and photograph it (I agreed that Morgan would have the copyright to the photos). There is so much I haven’t been able to say these years, biting my tongue while others waved Zach’s first blog post after leaving Love In Action as proof that he had taken LIA’s side of things and ultimately agreed with what had been done to him. And Zach, let it be said, isn’t interested now, and wasn’t really then, in being the center of a media storm. The poor kid just wanted to live his life. When he cried out for help, it was to his friends. That it quickly spread all over the Internet and became an international media storm was as much a surprise to him as to anyone. But he’s smart, he’s got a good heart, and he’s perfectly capable of speaking for himself when he wants to. I think that comes through pretty clearly in the few moments you see of him in this clip.

There will be more of the interview with Zach, and much more of the events surrounding the Love In Action protests, when Morgan finally finishes his edits and premieres the documentary. I have no ETA and I don’t think Morgan does either…he’s working hard on getting it right, because its so important. It’ll be done when it’s done.

And before you ask…yes, I am listed as an Executive Producer on this documentary. But seriously…all a producer does is produce money. The film is 100 percent Morgan’s, and I cannot speak for or about anyone involved in the production or anyone interviewed in it beyond what you can already see here. Morgan and crew can all speak for themselves, and probably will if you ask them. Morgan can be reached Here, at the Sawed-Off Film’s web site. You can see a collection of Sawed-Off YouTube clips Here.