[Major Geek Alert…]

Some of you may have read the news items about Microsoft’s Zune player freezing up on its users last December 31st. The problem it turned out, was in a bit of software that calculates how many days since January 1st the current date is.  I’ve no idea why the Zune’s software needed to do that, but it isn’t important to what I’m about to show you.  I have fun doing the work I do, in a techno geeky kinda way, and I want to share a bit of that fun with you.

The code that caused that particular bug was leaked out into the wild.  Here’s the relevant fragment:

  while (days > 365)
  {
      if (IsLeapYear(year))
      {
          if (days > 366)
          {
              days -= 366;
              year += 1;
          }
      }
      else
      {
          days -= 365;
          year += 1;
      }
  }

Don’t panic…it’s just code.  Code is to a computer program what a chart is to music.  It’s not so much the program, as instructions for how to create the program.  It’s more human readable then the machine language code microprocessors digest, although that might seem a tad hard to believe if you’re seeing code here for the first time.  It’s a kind of highly structured syntax that is precise enough to describe, step-by-step, a series of actions the computer needs to perform.  That series of actions is called an ‘algorithm’.

An algorithm is a series of steps needed to perform a specific task in a specific time.  So for example, consider the steps necessary to bake a single cake.  Those steps constitute an algorithm because they perform a specific task in a specific time.  The task is baking a cake.  When the cake is baked you are done.  Note that a specific time isn’t necessarily a specific amount of time.  The important thing is there is an end to it somewhere. The steps needed for a cake factory to make ‘cakes’ is not an algorithm because there is no defined end to the task of baking cakes.  It could be one cake or many.  But you can repeat the algorithm for baking a single cake as many times as you like, once you have it defined.

Writing computer programs is essentially the art of creating well defined, simple, straightforward algorithms.  If you’ve got a head for that, the rest is a matter of mastering a particular programming language or more.  The code fragment above is in a language called C++.  Never mind why it’s called that and not something more warm and friendly like Fred or Ethel.  Computer geeks are weird like that.

This code fragment is from a larger bit of code that tries to determine the number of years the current year is from the year 1980, and the number of days since January 1st.  Never mind for now Why.  Just focus on the task: to get the number of years since 1980 and the number of days since January 1st. 

The function this code fragment lives in receives the current date in the form of the number of days since January 1, 1980.  This seems odd, but it is how computers tell time.  At the most basic level, they are merely counting fractions of seconds from a given starting point.  Consider that a mechanical wrist watch (like the one I wear) tells the time only by counting ticks.  If you know how many ticks there are in a second, then you can compute the second, the minute, and the hour by counting the number of ticks and that is just what a mechanical wrist watch does…mechanically.  Computers do pretty much the same thing electronically, but their ticks are much smaller, and far more precise.

We know there are 365 days in a normal year.  So if we get a number that’s, let’s say 10220, we might just divide that by 365 to get the number of years that have passed.  But the added factor of having leap years makes it less simple then that. 

Now let me try to make some sense of that C++ code for you.  As I said, it’s a highly structured syntax that precisely describes the steps a computer program must perform.  Just ignore the brackets…they’re just there to mark off specific sections of the code.  Don’t worry about them.

At the beginning of the code you see the word "while".  This is a Keyword in the C and C++ languages and it denotes the start of a program Loop.  A loop is a series of steps that are repeated.  They are very useful for repeating a series of steps over and over as just a few lines of code instead of one or more lines repeated exactly for every time the steps need to be executed. If, say, you had to do something a hundred times you would write the code to loop through the same steps a hundred times, rather then writing the same steps a hundred times in the code.  If the steps change, then that’s a hundred changes you need to make.  If you’ve written it as a loop you only need to change it once. 

Loops are also helpful if you don’t know ahead of time how many times you might have to repeat a particular set of steps.  In the cake baking example for instance, you might have to stir some ingredients until they are mixed properly.  If you were coding that, you’d write it as a loop where you stir the mix, and then test to see if it’s mixed well enough to stop.  If not, stir once more.  Test…stir…test…stir…  And so on until the the test says you can stop stirring now.

That test is important.  It tells you when you can stop stirring.  For now just hold this thought: it is important to have a way out of a loop.

The keyword "while" has a test enclosed in the parenthesis next to it: (days > 365).  This test compares the variable "days" against a literal value of 366.  Think of a variable as a post office box with a name on it, and something inside.  In this case, the variable is named "days" and it holds a number that represents a given number of days.  This variable is set elsewhere in the code and we don’t need to know why or how at the moment.  We’re just looking at what this one bit of code does. 

The ">" symbol is an Operator in the C and C++ languages, which means "greater then"  If "days" is "greater then" 365 then the next lines of code are executed.  This test is at the beginning of the loop, which means the condition is tested first before any of the code in the loop is executed.  If the test is true, the loop is entered.  If not, the loop is never entered.  So the loop takes a value for a number of days at its very beginning.  If that value is greater then 365, the rest of the loop executes.  If it isn’t, the loop is skipped over.  Think of it as saying "while the value stored in "days" is greater then 365, do the following…"

So we enter the body of the loop.  The next line is "if (IsLeapYear(year))"  Let me unpack that.  The word "if" is another keyword, and it denotes a logical test.  You are testing if something is, or is not true.  The part in the parenthesis is the thing you are testing.  IsLeapYear(year) is a function call with its own set of parenthesis.  Functions are bits of code that return a value.  This particular function returns a value of either true or false.  We don’t need to see how this particular works for this example…just that it will return either "true" or "false" back to our "if" test.  The word "year" in its parenthesis is another variable and it holds a number that represents the number of years since 1980. 

So we are passing in to the function IsLeapYear a number, and it returns either true or false depending on whether or not the number we give it, translates into a leap year.  Remember, we’re counting the number of years since 1980.  Lets say we make "year" equal to 3.  We could as easily write the call as "IsLeapYear(3)", and it would return false, since 1980 plus three years is 1983 which was not a leap year.

Okay…still with me?

An "if" test tests a condition, and the lines of code following the test are either executed or not depending on whether or not the test passed or failed.  If IsLeapYear(year) returns true, then the next line is executed.

The next line is another "if" test.  if (days > 366).  This test compares the variable "days" against a literal value of 366.  It is like the test at the beginning of the loop.  If "days" is "greater then" 366 then the next lines of code are executed. 

These next lines actually do something.  the line "days -= 366" means "take the value that’s stored in the variable named "days", subtract 366 from it and store the result back in that variable.  The line "year += 1" means "add one to the value stored in the variable named year and put the result back in that variable". 

A couple brackets on down (I told you to just ignore them) there is the word "else"  It is another keyword that works with the keyword "if" to denote lines of code to be executed if the if test above fails.  So in other words, if IsLeapYear(year) returns false, then the steps following the word "else" are performed.  Think of the whole thing as "if it’s a leap year do this…if it isn’t (else) do that…"  In this case, that is "subtract 365 from the value of the variable named days", and "add one to the value of the variable named year".

So…still with me?  This is what the code is doing.  The algorithm it embodies is this:

1) Repeat the following for as long as the value of "days" is greater then 365:
2) Check to see if "year" is a leap year.
3) If it is a leap year, check to see if the value of "days" is greater then 366.
4) If it is, then subtract 366 from "days" and add 1 to the value of "year"
5) If "year" isn’t a leap year, then subtract 365 from "days" and add 1 to the value of "year"

There is our loop.  Basically, it is taking a number that is the number of days since 1980, and subtracting 365 days for every normal year, 366 for every leap year, and when it finishes you should have a count of the number of years since 1980, and what’s left over is the number of days since January 1st.  Simple…no?

The bug in it is subtle.  Let’s run through it for December 31, 2007.  Lets say we have run this loop for a while and now we have a value of 26 in "year".  The value of "days" is 730. 

1) The value of "days" is greater then 365…so we do the loop again.
2) Check to see if "year" is a leap year.  26 years since 1980 is 2006.  2006 isn’t a leap year.  So the code following the "else" keyword is executed.
3) We subtract 365 from "days" and add 1 to the value of "year"
4) We’re at the beginning of our loop again.  The value of "days" is 365.  365 is not greater then 365.  So the condition for continuing the loop is now false.  So now we can exit the loop.
5) The end values are, year = 27, days = 365.

Okay.  That works.  But now let’s try it for December 31, 2008.  Lets say we have run this loop for a while and now we have a value of 27 in "year".  The value of "days" is 731.

1) The value of "days" is greater then 365…so we do the loop again.
2) Check to see if "year" is a leap year.  27 years since 1980 is 2007.  2007 isn’t a leap year.  So the code following the "else" keyword is executed.
3) We subtract 365 from "days" and add 1 to the value of "year"
4) We’re at the beginning of our loop again.  The value of "days" is 366.  366 is greater then 365.  So the condition for continuing the loop is still true.
5) Check to see if "year" is a leap year.  2008 is a leap year.  So the code following the "if" keyword is executed.
6) Check to see if the value of "days" is greater then 366.  366 isn’t greater then 366, it’s equal to 366…so the code following the "if" keyword is not executed.
7) We’re at the beginning of our loop again.  The value of "days" is still 366 and the value of year is still 28.  366 is greater then 365.  So the condition for continuing the loop is still true.
10) Check to see if "year" is a leap year.  The value of year wasn’t changed by the last run through the loop.  It is still 2008 and 2008 isn’t a leap year.  So the code following the "if" keyword is executed.

(can you see this thing starting to run away now…?)

11)  Check to see if the value of "days" is greater then 366.  366 isn’t greater then 366, it’s equal to 366…so the code following the "if" keyword is not executed.
12) We’re at the beginning of the loop again…

And that’s where we will keep on ending up until the heat death of the universe, or the Zune’s battery dies, whichever comes first.  This is why the Zunes all locked up on December 31st, 2008.  The code works fine during a normal year, and on every day but the last day of a leap year.  But on the last day of a leap year that loop will run indefinitely, because there is no way out of it on that one day.

Since this code was leaked out into the wild, everybody who does this for a living has an opinion on how to write that algorithm better.  There is a kind of fine art and a pure pleasure to some of us in crafting tight, simple, elegant algorithms and some folks have their own deeply held religious beliefs on how to do it best.  I haven’t had time to really wrap my head around what this algorithm is doing, but for kicks and grins I might try to write a better version of it myself later.  It’s kinda fun to take something like this and try to craft something simple and clean and so logically pure it’s beautiful just to look at.  But I’m in a testing and deployment phase of the project I’m one at work now though, and what went through my head when I saw this was they obviously didn’t test how it behaved during a leap year.

This is the world I live and work in.  This is what programming is and what programmer’s do.  We build these tight little algorithms and embody them in computer code that hopefully allows you to get things done.  Except when they don’t.

[Edited a tad to explain the test at the start of the loop, and make some of the rest of it clearer…]

Very cool photos of frozen soap bubbles…

It’s very cold tonight, so we played with bubbles. If you blow them upwards enough they have time to freeze on the way down.

And this…

Chasing bubbles round a very icy garden (we’d made an ice-slide right down the path), in the dark while looking through a viewfinder is surprisingly hard.

Go see them.  Kudos to the Über Geeks who did this!

Via Pam’s House Blend.  Don’t read this if stories about Mormons physically and sexually abusing children might make you want to go out and throttle the first Mormon you see afterward.  Probably some of them don’t even know how depraved their church is.  They just see the Donny and Marie side of it and keep on smiling.

What you need to keep in mind as you are reading this, is that it is happening to a fifteen year old boy.  He has been sent to a Mormon "tough love" camp by his mother, who had recently married a religious fanatic.

I was led down a long hall of doors with nameplates. I had no clue what kind of place this was. I didn’t see any cows or horses…no sign of what I thought a "ranch" would resemble. Paul took me into a small room that was no bigger than a broom closet, which was stacked to the ceiling with three colors of cloth, blue, green and brown. There were green t-shirts, blue t-shirts, and blue jeans.

There were also brown army wool blankets, and I remember thinking that I didn’t want to sleep under such a coarse covering before I was told to "put it on." I was told to wrap a thick, itchy blanket around my waist like a towel and wear it like a dress.

I was then given a "leash" made of climbing rope and what I think was a square knot to tie around my waist.

I had never imagined being tethered and walked like a dog, but here I was, being walked like a dog towards a cluster of about 12 other boys. They were lined up facing a wall while two large men in red sweatshirts watched them from a couple of chairs off to the side.

Some of the boys had camouflage pants on, a few others wore dresses. I wondered how long I was to be in this blanket dress. I was later told that it was so I wouldn’t run away – and they were right – I literally could not run in this humiliating getup. I could barely get a full stride walking.

That’s when I saw Brent – or ‘Captain America,’ as he was called disparagingly – for the first time. My leash was handed off to him, but he told me to wrap it around my waist and go join the group of young men who were standing with their noses touching the wall, all spread out about arms length from each other.

I turned to the boy who was standing to my right and asked him how long he had been here, but before I could get my question all the way out, my forehead careened into the carpeted wall in front of me. A sharp pain stabbed the back of my head, and suddenly bad breath filled my nostrils. "Are you talking on my work crew, boy?" a red-shirted man screamed at me.

My head was ringing. I was still trying to piece together what had just happened when I looked behind me and massaged the pain in my head. Suddenly my legs fell out from underneath me and I was on my back.

He had just slammed my forehead into the wall, and now he had put his foot behind mine and pushed me, sending me to the floor flat on my back.

He stood over me and bawled, "Don’t look at me. Don’t look around. Don’t you MOVE without permission! You don’t do anything without permission! If you talk, I think you are talking about running away, and I will restrain you. Do you understand?" I nodded. I knew then that I had to get out of this place. I wasn’t going to last here.

…

His filthy digit tasted like rust and fish. "I can hurt you without leaving any marks," Brent growled as I writhed in agony on the ground. I struggled for breath as he mounted my back, put his finger in my mouth, and pulled back on my cheek, fish-hooking me. The pain was incredible. I tried to beg him to stop, but the words would not come.

After he finished beating and bludgeoning submissiveness into me, he pulled me up by the rope that was lassoed around my waist. The wool army blanket I had fashioned as a skirt had shifted askew and I stood there in my boxers bleeding from my nose, humiliated.

My green Utah Boys Ranch t-shirt had been ridiculously stretched out and looked more like a low cut blouse. I loosened the noose around my waist and pulled the itchy blanket through the loop and folded it over so it looked like a brown bath towel secured by a belt. He wasn’t satisfied, he wanted more.

Another notorious gulag for children is Tranquility Bay, located in Jamaica to it keep safely away from the reach of American law.  Like Utah Boy’s Ranch it is also operated by Mormons.  If you think the camps operated by Christian fundamentalists are horrific, take a look at what it is Mormons do to children.  The righteous Mormon gentleman running the Utah Boys Ranch?  His name is Chris Buttars.  He is a Utah state senator. 

More information the Mormon Gulag Here.  Think about it the next time you hear someone from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints bellyaching that the gays are hateful.  Think about the TV ads they ran in California, warning voters about how the homosexuals were coming for their kids. 

I can hurt you without leaving any marks…

From the Letters To The Editor page of the Asheville North Carolina Citizen-Times, January 4, 2009.  Welcome to the New Year my fellow gay Americans…

Regarding the story, “Gay wedding ban protested,” (AC-T, Dec. 21): I feel morally obligated to express my opinion. I am a transplant from Jackson, Miss., who is astounded by how many homosexuals have “infested” this beautiful city. I just don’t know what the general population should do.

Perhaps the solution would be to set aside a specific state of the union for them to inhabit – perhaps we should set up a new name for Connecticut and call it “ Sodom” or “Gomorrah.” I guess what these people think is that I should not be disgusted when I see them walking down the street holding hands and kissing in public. Do they think we can’t help but think about what they do in private when we see them going as far as they can in public?

I speak as a straight person and am against acts committed against God’s “natural” plan for the human race and the animals He put here for us to be in charge of. I encourage anyone to write an opinion on why they think that God made a male and a female.

If God condoned this type of behavior, He would have created one sex – not two.

Nancy Robertson, Arden

Emphasis mine.  Lady, do you think about what an opposite sex couple does in private when you see them holding hands in public?  No.  Of course not.  Because when you see an opposite sex couple you think of love.  When you see a same sex couple all you can think about is sex, because they are nothing more to you then animals.  And that’s because you’re a bigot.  It isn’t gays who are infesting Asheville lady.  It’s bigots like you.

Perhaps the solution would be to set aside a specific state for your kind to inhabit.  We could call it Sodom.  Or Gomorrah.  You know…the two cities in the bible that were destroyed for their arrogance, greed and inhospitality.

Or perhaps we could just call it the Hate state.

Apparently science has discovered something we romantics have known for ages…

Scientists: True love can last a lifetime

Using brain scans, researchers at Stony Brook University in New York have discovered a small number of couples respond with as much passion after 20 years together as most people only do during the early throes of romance, Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper reported.

The researchers scanned the brains of couples together for 20 years and compared them with results from new lovers, the Sunday Times said.

About 10 percent of the mature couples had the same chemical reactions when shown photographs of their loved ones as those just starting out.

Previous research has suggested that the first stages of romantic love fade within 15 months and after 10 years it has gone completely, the newspaper said.

So the cynics and romantics are both right.  The soulmate is a fiction for most people.  But not for all of us.  Alas, that’s a one in ten chance for some of us. 

So…let me do the math here…  One in ten people are gay…maybe one in ten of those are willing to admit it and live openly and proudly…and one in ten of those are capable of lifelong romance.  Yes…I was doomed from the get-go.  And never mind that people who look like that want people who look like that…

Every week I end up with about a dozen or so links I wanted to write a post around but I never got to it.  And I don’t know how widely most of the folks who stop by here travel the web, since most of you don’t write or comment.  I’m not complaining or trolling for comments…I do the same on most web sites I visit.  So if you’ve already seen any of the following just skim over it.  But I want to at least run this stuff by you in case you haven’t…

• Parental rejection of gay teens worsens health

  Oh…you think?  I’ve been waiting for the usual suspects to start bellyaching about this study and its results but they’ve been conspicuously quiet about it.  I wouldn’t have thought it would be all that terribly hard for the hate pews to step up and assert that brutalizing gay kids doesn’t really hurt them at all and even if it did they’re better off dead then homosexual.

• Latter Day Protest? Proposition 8 and Sports

  Once upon a time the Mormon Church faced a furious backlash over its racist religious beliefs.  Did you know that the reason some folks have black skin is because in their spirit life they rebelled against god?  From the article…

  As tennis great Arthur Ashe wrote in his book, Hard Road to Glory, "In October 1969, fourteen black [football] players at the University of Wyoming publicly criticized the Mormon Church and appealed to their coach, Lloyd Eaton, to support their right not to play against Brigham Young University. . . . The Mormon religion at the time taught that blacks could not attain to the priesthood, and that they were tainted by the curse of Ham, a biblical figure. Eaton, however, summarily dropped all fourteen players from the squad."

  The players, though, didn’t take their expulsion lying down. They called themselves the Black 14 and sued for damages with the support of the NAACP. In an October 25th game against San Jose State, the entire San Jose team wore black armbands to support the 14.

  One aftershock of this episode was in November 1969, when Stanford University President Kenneth Pitzer suspended athletic relations with BYU, announcing that Stanford would honor what he called an athlete’s "Right of Conscience." The "Right of Conscience" allowed athletes to boycott an event which he or she deemed "personally repugnant." As the Associated Press wrote, "Waves of black protest roll toward BYU, assaulting Mormon belief and leaving BYU officials and students, perplexed, hurt, and maybe a little angry."

  On June 6th, 1978, as teams were refusing road trips to Utah with greater frequency, and the IRS started to make noises about revoking the church’s holy tax-free status, a new revelation came to the Book of Mormon.

  Whether a cynical ploy to avoid the taxman or a coincidence touched by God, the results were the same: Black people were now human in the eyes of the Church. African Americans were no longer, as Brigham Young himself once put it, "uncouth, uncomely, disagreeable, and low in their habits, wild, and seemingly deprived of nearly all the blessings of the intelligence that is generally bestowed upon mankind."

  Nice.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.  "Waves of black protest roll toward BYU, assaulting Mormon belief and leaving BYU officials and students, perplexed, hurt, and maybe a little angry."  Maybe if you jackasses would stop sticking knives into your neighbor’s hopes and dreams it might come to pass that we could all just…you know…get along.

• A New Year’s dinner for one watched by millions

  Every New Year’s Eve tens of thousands of Germans are delighted to gather around the TV set to watch the umpteenth annual repeat of an old ten minute British slapstick sketch that most people in Britain have never seen and don’t even know exists.  But they adore it in Germany, and apparently consider it quintessential British humor.  I can sympathize.  Most Americans have absolutely no idea what it is the French see in Jerry Lewis.

• Teacher terminated over marriage

  If you think it’s only the hopes and dreams of gay folks the Catholic Church wants to bury think again.  This is a story of a heterosexual teacher in a Catholic school who was fired for marrying a man she loved.  Her crime against the baby Jesus and his was that he was a divorcee.  Clearly, there is too much love in this world.  But don’t worry, Pope Ratzinger is on the case…

• George Bush and Sarah Palin make Michael Tomasky’s worst people of 2008 list…
  

  3 George Bush. There were years when he would have been higher – 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007. I’ll give him a slight pass for 2001, what with the attacks and all that. In those previous years, he stole an election, started an unnecessary war, lied about it, approved torture, let a great US city drown and so on. This year he merely presided over the bankruptcy of the global economy. Twenty days and counting.

  2 Sarah Palin. Does she really deserve to be this high? Never in my adult lifetime has one politician so perfectly embodied everything that is malign about my country: the proto-fascist nativism, the know-nothingism, the utterly cavalier lack of knowledge about the actual principles on which the country was founded. So, heck, you betcha she does!

  Palin doesn’t have Bush’s spoiled rich boy sense of entitlement, she has Nixon’s class resentments.  But she’s not as stupid as Bush.  She just seems that way in part because she has Bush’s utter disinterest in the world beyond her own nativistic tribe.  Nixon wanted the presidency because he wanted to be a world leader.  He wanted to shine on the world stage, be glorified by it.  Bush and Palin figure giving the world the finger is all it takes to make them great leaders.

• This has got to be the saddest thing I’ve ever seen.  On the other hand, it’s nice to know there are people who are more desperate for companionship then I am by light years.

• Why there is still a need for Gay Youth centers, forty years after Stonewall.
  

  Maybe they do not need the escape as much as their predecessors did in 1983, when the door first opened. But a smattering of teens were spread across the couch in the TV room. They are comfortable here, the boys free to dish about cute guys if they choose, the girls relaxed enough to throw an affectionate arm around one another.

  In some neighborhoods, being gay is not a big deal, and that is what the anniversary celebration was about. In other places, even now, boys liking boys or girls holding hands still provokes sneers or even a shove. That is why, 25 years after it opened, Gay and Lesbian Youth Services’s drop-in center still serves a purpose.

  The article closes with "…dozens of gay teens come in every week, looking for something they do not find anywhere else. Until the day comes when they do not walk through the door, we will hold off on the final celebration"  My life could have been so different had I access to a resource like theirs.  Maybe I wouldn’t be so lonely now, had I been able to just be myself then.  It is wonderful, absolutely wonderful, that at least some gay teens can find places like this.  But let us pray for the day when gay teenagers no longer need a place where they can just be themselves.  It shouldn’t have to be like that.

German culture, or so I’m told from all the books I’ve been reading about it lately, teaches its own that life is mostly a zero sum game.  This, so I’m told, follows from the fact of Germany being a small nation that is very tightly packed with people.  The attitude is that if you have more of something it means someone else has less.  This is in contrast to American culture which teaches us (or tries to) that life is what you make of it and wealth is something you create, not something you merely acquire.  On the plus side, their attitude gives Germans a strong sense of social responsibility and mutual obligation to one another.  Not as much as some Asian cultures maybe, but compared to my own native land it’s very striking.  German corporations, so I am told, will bend over backwards not to fire anyone, compared to here in the U.S. where employers treat staff like paperclips to be used and disposed of at will.  On the minus side…well hello there Karl Marx…Baader-Meinhof…  Oh…and the paper hanger…

German culture, so I’m told, tends to frown on ostentatious displays of wealth, which isn’t so very odd when you consider the circumstances of Germany, but then again it is when you consider who manufactures BMWs, Porsche, Mercedes-Benz…and…oh yes…the Maybach.  The books I’m reading about German culture make the point over and over that Germans don’t like it when wealth is waved around in everyone’s face.  Yet…the Maybach.  Okay…there’s Volkswagon.  But…the Maybach.  You imagine them exporting Maybachs shamefacedly in the dead of night in containers labeled Glühwein.  If only we didn’t have to make this half million dollar V12 luxury sedan with reclining massage seats and a wine cooler in armrest for all those other decadent nations we could be a proud people once more… 

But no… Germans like their cars very much, and that is why there are both Volkswagons and Maybachs.  People here in America used to point their fingers and laugh at the old Volkswagon Beetle, but that stopped when gas prices started going up and our big three tried to make decent gas efficient sub-compact cars and couldn’t.  And they still can’t.  If we loved cars here in America as much as we claim to, maybe GM wouldn’t be needing a bailout now to keep tens of thousands of its employees and that third of the American workforce that depends on the car industry gainfully employed.  No…what we love here in America is showing off.   Here in America it’s not about the car, its about the owner.  In Europe, it’s about the car, and Germans love the automobile.  But a good car is expensive because it just costs more to go the extra distance in terms of engineering and quality, and Germans don’t like ostentatious displays of wealth either.  So like many passionate love affairs, German fondness for the automobile is just a little bit schizophrenic.

I’m thinking about all this while reading This Article in The Local about a recent rash of attacks on luxury cars in Berlin.  And since I am the owner of what is ostensibly a luxury car, reading it makes me more then a tad apprehensive.  I’ve known ever since I bought Traveler, that I’m likely one of these days to come out and find that someone walking past laid eyes on a Mercedes-Benz and decided then and there to let me know how much they hate rich people, and never mind that its owner isn’t rich.  But that I could forgive.  When you see the gods of finance throwing parties with bailout money it’s not hard to have a really bad attitude toward the fabulously well off.  What I couldn’t forgive is someone who damages my car because they hate the sight of human excellence.

Arson attacks on Berlin’s luxury cars continue

Several luxury cars have been set alight in the capital in the past week in what is beginning to look like a concerted attack on conspicuous wealth. Seven expensive cars were found burning in the city on Tuesday night, while another 15 were damaged by the flames. Early Friday morning a car was found burning in Christinenstrasse in the Prenzlauer Berg district.

Another six cars were consumed in a large fire early on Sunday morning in Michendorf near Potsdam. Nearby houses were also seriously damaged.

Of course the car in the accompanying photo is a Mercedes…

Ow!  That hurts just to look at.  Looks like it might be an older model ‘E’ class.  But…with a decorative spoiler?  I can’t believe Mercedes would actually do that to one of their sedans. 

Listen Che…if it’s parked on the street next to a parking meter, it’s not a rich man’s car you drooling jackass.  You think the CEO of AIG drives an ‘E’ class?  You think the vice president at Exxon in charge of putting things on top of other things drives an ‘E’ class?  What planet do you live on?  That’s a working person’s car and if you think the distance between that ‘E’ class and a Kia Rio makes the Merc a luxury car you have obviously never laid eyes on a Bentley.  You think that fat bloated pig of an Exxon CEO even drives his own motherfucking car, let alone parks it on the street, let alone wants to be seen anywhere near an ‘E’ class?  As far as people like him are concerned, that car and its owner and you are all commoner junk.

You may think you’re sticking it to The Establishment, but in reality you’re still dancing for it.  Not only does the owner of that car hate you now, but so does everyone else seeing it, holding onto hope for a better life for themselves.  They look at this and they don’t see The Establishment is holding them down, they see you holding them down.  And that’s the way The Establishment likes it.

Grow up.

Via KOS…A wee post from Effective Measure, a public health forum, titled, What Else Did You Expect From Horny Teenagers?   Remember it, the next time you hear some crackpot argue that religion is a precondition of moral behavior…

Evolution has hard wired a drive to reproduce in young, healthy humans. That’s how the species survives. Maybe you don’t want them to have sex and maybe they even promise they won’t, but biology is more powerful than parents or governments.

Or even…religious dogmas.  Like those that insist evolution is nonsense because it contradicts the biblical story of creation…

A study published in the journal Pediatrics followed 289 teenagers who said in 1996 they took a virginity pledge and compared them with 645 non-pledgers, taking into account religious beliefs and attitudes to sex and birth control. This was done because previous studies didn’t factor in the possibility that teens who pledge may be quite different characteristics that affect sexual behavior than those who don’t. So this was an attempt to compare "like with like," the main difference being that one group had promised not to have sex while the other didn’t. "Virginity pledges" are a prominent feature of the Bush administration’s abstinence only sex education programs that didn’t teach contraceptive practices.

Five years after taking the pledge:

• 82% of pledgers denied ever having taken the pledge
• Pledgers and matched non-pledgers did not differ in rates of premarital sex, sexually transmitted disease, and oral and anal sex behaviors
• Pledgers had 0.1 fewer sexual partners in the past year but did not differ from non-pledgers in the number of lifetime sexual partners and the age of first sex (Jennifer Warner, WebMD News)

There was one significant difference between the pledge and non-pledge group, however. They were less likely to use condoms or any form of birth control when they did have sex.

You can’t blame them. No one told them how.

Here’s the thing you need to notice about this: Eighty-two percent of them denied ever having taken the pledge.  Not that they broke the pledge and had sex anyway, but that they denied they’d made it.  Eighty.  Two.  Percent.

This is where fundamentalism finds its dead end.  You can accept that the bible is literally true or you can accept the natural world as it really is but you can’t accept them both.  Fundamentalism won’t have it.  The simple, stark, finger of God writing it on the wall truth is this: fundamentalism corrupts its followers.  It has to.  When confronted by a fact, the honest thing to do, the moral thing, is knowledge it.  But fundamentalism demands that you deny any fact that contradicts its own truths.  What it instills in a person isn’t either a love or fear of god, but a casual acceptance of deception, first as a religious duty, then as a necessary part of every day life.  See it in Alan Bonsell testifying under oath that he did not know where the money had been raised to donate sixty copies of Of Pandas and People to his school’s library.  See it in the Proposition 8 advertisements that claimed same sex marriage would result in the forcing of churches to marry homosexuals.  See it in the eighty-two percent of teenagers in that study who denied they’d ever taken a virginity pledge.  Their religion didn’t change their sexual behavior.  It didn’t make them more moral.  It made them less likely to use condoms, more likely to catch and spread VD, more likely to get each other pregnant, and more willing to lie.  What their religion did for them in short, was take away their brakes.

Step 1:  Start with a pair of circles for the glasses…

Step 2: Decide what kind of frames you want them to be.  For this lesson we will use a basic aviator frame example.  Just keep it simple to start out with…

Step 3:  Now add the rest of him.

NEXT: Drawing a paycheck in today’s economy.

Okay…you all remember our last lesson…right?  Fine.  Today we’re going to build on that a little…

Step 1:   Create a basic stick-man frame.  Try not to make it too detailed.

Step 2: Add the major body segments as oblong bean shapes…head, neck, chest, arms, legs…and so on…  Again…try to keep it simple.

Step 3:  Now add the detail.

NEXT: Can you draw Muhammad?

I honesty figured he’d just round file it, but no, Steve Fidel has to write me back…

You just proved my point.

Cheers,

Steve

See…if you’d been raised a Baptist like me, you’d have smiled sweetly and said "I’ll pray for you" in that tone of voice where the other person hears "burn in hell".

Are Mormons Christians? No…really.

I keep getting hits on This Post, via search strings like "sexy guys" "sexy guys underwear" and so forth.  And from the most interesting places too…like Ogden, Utah and Dubai, Dubayy and Islamabad, Pakistan, where they’re only a little more sexually repressed then in Utah.  No, I am not kidding about the hits from the middle east.  I get an amazing amount of search engine hits on gay topics from that little sex hostile part of the world, and lately that post in particular.  Oh…and the American bible belt of course.  And…Utah.

Let’s face it…this poor world is hungry for images of sexy guys wearing little to next to nothing at all.  And I’m here to help.  Time for another drawing lesson.  Bring your drawing pads and sharpened pencils here tomorrow.  It’s easy.  It’s fun.  You could be excommunicated from the Mormon church!

…via ScienceBlogs – Dispatches From The Culture Wars, which you should read:

A reader sends along this link, which he says is not a parody but is actually a serious statement by a guy named Matthew Stucky. He says that Santa Claus (which he spells Clause, for some reason) is satanic and is "corrupting people all over the world." Oh, and the reindeer are all gay. Seriously.

So I go take a look…

Santa Clause
1. He knows if a person has been naughty or nice. He is omniscient.
2. If a person has been nice then he will give them gifts.
3. If they have been naughty then they get a lump of coal.
4. Most people are good enough to receive gifts & few get a lump of coal.
5. Santa somehow has the ability to give gifts to the entire world in one time although that would be scientifically impossible. He is basically omnipresent and omniscient.
6. The word for Holy in Spanish is Santa. This gives the world the perception that a man can be a really good person & this makes Santa Clause a mock of God. 

Okay…

Santa’s queer reindeer:
Take a look at the names of the 8 reindeer.
Blitzen, Comet, Cupid, Dancer, Dasher, Donder, Prancer and Vixen.

The person who originally came up with these names probably did not have this intent. They probably originally had some of the reindeer as male & some as female. However, the animated movie that was made in 1964 had a different idea. In the movie all 8 of these reindeer were male reindeer. Take a look at those names again. Male reindeer named Dancer, Prancer, Vixen & Cupid?!?!?!

Let’s start with Vixen in the dictionary:
1 : a shrewish ill-tempered woman 2 : a female fox 3 : a sexually attractive woman

So Vixen is a queer. It’s nice to know the creators of this sweet innocent cartoon were so concerned with young kids who would be watching.

Cupid
1: the Roman god of erotic love — compare eros 2 not capitalized : a figure that represents Cupid as a naked usually winged boy often holding a bow and arrow

Dancer & Prancer certainly sound like feminine terms as well.

I think from these names we know Vixen, Dancer, Prancer & Cupid are queer reindeer.

Let’s go back to the story from the animated movie with Rudolph. Rudolph gets shy around girls & his nose turns red. As a result, the other reindeer won’t let him play any reindeer games. That sounds sick, perverted & homosexual. Basically Rudolph like girls because he is straight & as a result they don’t let him participate in their homosexual games.

People are going to read this & say I’m crazy but hasn’t Hollywood always been trying to pump in homosexual themes into kids movies & cartoons. One of the teletubbies is gay. Bert & Ernie are gay. In Scooby Doo Greg is gay. Hollywood has always had agendas they are trying to push and one of those major agendas is homosexuality is ok. It’s no big deal. Another one they are trying to push is "It’s ok for women to work."

The truth is Santa Clause is being used by Satan to corrupt kids at a very young age. This is much like in the Disney movies which are littered with sexual content, homosexuality, etc… A woman falling in love with an animal(Beauty & the Beast). A grown man who wants to hang around little boys all day(Peter Pan). Peter Pan is also always played by women in plays because he is a long haired looking faggot in the movie.

We as Christians need to separate ourselves from this kind of garbage. You can say I’m crazy but Satan Clause is corrupting kids & we ought to have nothing to do with it. We ought to keep our kids away from these fun little animated shows that came from Hollywood. It came from the world so it’s not of God. 1 John 2:15-16 "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world."

Leviticus 20:13 "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them."

According to the Bible homosexuality should be punishable by death. I would be overjoyed if every single queer in the entire world died today. The Bible makes it clear they are reprobates who are past the point of salvation. The Bible also makes it clear they are rapists & very wicked people. They have no chance to get saved and no saved person could ever become a queer. Therefore, I would be overjoyed if they all died tonight & our government would actually follow what the Bible states. The death penalty should be enacted for the queers.

Matthew Stucky 

Just one screwy little blogger boy you say?  Yes.  Of course.  But there’s your grass roots.  Right there.  The fertile soil decades of pulpit thumping against the Homosexual Threat was meant to take root in.  Check out his goals for the new year…

Personal Physical Goals
1. Get my mile time under 5 minutes & keep it there for the entire year.
2. Run a marathon.
3. Bench 250 lbs.
4. Leg Press 900 lbs.
5. Get my 6 pack abs back before the end of January & keep it for the entire year.
6. Dunk a basketball.
7. Maintain my side to side split but be able to do one front to back both with left leg forward & right leg forward.
8. Learn how to do a front flip.
9. Learn how to do a back flip.
10. Be able to flat jump on the pulpit by the end of the year. 

Nice.  He also wants to "Personally lead 1000 people to the Lord" this year.  No word on how many homosexuals he intends to kill.  I suppose we’ll find that out eventually.

Good thing I’m not a Mormon though.  Then I’d have to endure angry threats and rhetoric.

Steve Fidel over at the Mormon Times complains, Thusly ….

For those who have (correctly) assumed the editor of a Web site called MormonTimes.com is a Mormon, I’ve been called on to be an insider in this discussion by those looking for support for their views against same-sex marriage. As a Mormon, I’ve also been the target of the most angry threats and rhetoric I’ve seen in 25 years as a journalist from the community that considers gay marriage a civil right.

Angry threats and rhetoric?  Goodness gracious.  

Another Gay Bashing Mars Vancouver

Two men walking in Vancouver’s Davie neighborhood were targeted for attack in still another anti-gay incident in the gay-friendly area.

The attack took place on the evening of Dec. 4 at around 8:00 p.m., according to a Dec. 8 article posted online at Canadian Web site Xtra!.

Chris Hiller was quoted as saying that he and his boyfriend had just come out of a gay bar and were walking along the sidewalk holding hands.

Hiller noted that he knew another person was following behind, but the presence of the other individual did not alarm him until, Hiller said, "my friend goes, ’Come on, Chris, let’s keep walking,’ and next thing I know I’m on the ground with my face covered in blood and dazed, and my friend’s gone to get help."

Hiller did not see his attacker, but he said that he heard the man utter the words, "You fag, I’m going to beat the shit out of you, I don’t like you, stay away from me."

Added the alleged attacker, "Don’t even come near me, you fag."

The article said that Hiller recounted being stuck on the jaw and then receiving a blow right to the teeth.

The article quoted Hiller as saying that he was down for "about four to five minutes," at which point, "I got up and I’m woozy and staggering a bit."

Hiller continued, "I couldn’t see for a few minutes, and then I sat down."

Police arrived a few minutes later in response to the call Hiller’s boyfriend placed, but by then the alleged attacker was long gone.

Hiller was taken to a local hospital.

Angry threats and rhetoric?  Wow…

Assault Conviction Tossed Out in 2005 Dwan Prince Attack

A state appellate court reversed Steven Pomie’s conviction on charges of first-degree assault and first-degree assault as a hate crime in the 2005 anti-gay attack on Dwan Prince, ordered a new trial for Pomie, and said he could only be tried on lesser charges of second-degree assault and second-degree assault as a hate crime.

The assault, which happened in Brooklyn’s Brownsville section, left Prince permanently disabled and unable to work.

Note that three of the four appellate judges in that case, Peter B. Skelos, Robert A. Lifson, and William F. Mastro, were appointed by Republican Governor George Pataki.  Oh…and Skelos is the brother of Dean Skelos, currently the Republican majority leader in the State Senate.  You know…the guy who has been single handedly blocking a vote on same-sex marriage in New York for the past several years.

In 2005, Lifson was one of three judges on a five-judge panel who barred a gay man from bringing a wrongful death suit against St. Vincent’s Hospital after his partner died there. The majority ruled that only a spouse could bring such a case and that the couple’s Vermont civil union did not confer that status on the surviving partner. That same gay man won a 2008 case that sought a benefit from an insurance company for his partner’s death. Mastro was one of two judges who dissented from that ruling from a five-judge panel.

We can only assume it would have been even worse for the spouse, had he been a heterosexual Mormon suing for the wrongful death of his legally married wife.  Who knows what angry threats and rhetoric he’d have had to endure then.

So…I write back to Mr Mormon Times Fidel…Thusly…

"As a Mormon, I’ve also been the target of the most angry threats and rhetoric I’ve seen in 25 years as a journalist from the community that considers gay marriage a civil right."

I see.  Tell you what…  Walk down almost any street in America holding another man’s hand and see what kind of angry threats and rhetoric you get.  That’s all.  Just holding hands.  That simple, elegant, beautiful gesture of heart-to-heart love is enough to get your head bashed-in, in a lot of places.   And you don’t even have to be gay to get gay bashed either, as Jose and Romel Sucuzhanay found out.  A couple brothers walking down the street arm-in-arm and suddenly an SUV full of angry young men jumps out at them and one of them has an aluminum baseball bat in his hand.  And now Jose, alas, is dead.  And his brother will take the memory of that night to his grave.  Or if holding another man’s hand is too much for you, just try putting a rainbow bumper sticker on your car.  You might get what happened to a lesbian in Richmond California last week when four young men saw the rainbow sticker on her car.  All those ads your church paid for warning Californians that the homos were coming into the schools for their kids sure paid off didn’t they?  You wrote that sentence I quoted above for your fellow Mormons to read so you could all nod your heads together about how hateful the gays are, didn’t you?

I love it when the faithful complain that teh gays are trying to elevate behavior to the level of a civil right.  You’re a Mormon…right?  Well…no.  You aren’t.  Mormon is just a behavior.  It isn’t what you are, it’s what you do.  You attend church.  You do whatever church activities it is that Mormons do.  And it came to pass you read the Book of Mormon.  You wear the magic underwear.  Mormon is something you do, not something you are.   See?  And we don’t want to be elevating behavior to the status of civil right now do we?

Jackass. 

—
Bruce Garrett
Baltimore, Maryland.

Which is about as much calm and respectful dialogue as I can manage at the moment.  It’s too early in the morning here in Baltimore for me to be getting angry at knuckle-dragging morons. 

If you are a Proposition 8 supporter and you don’t like my attitude…I strongly suggest you don’t try to tell me about it here in the comments.  This is my web site and I will endure a lot of things here but bile from gutter crawling bigots isn’t one of them.

I’m angry.  At you.  At all your pathetic self righteous excuses.  At your absolute moral squalor.  At your total inner depravity.  At you.  I’m angry.  Want to see how angry?  Once upon a time a writer named Harlen Ellison wrote a passage about what it is to hate that captures it…exactly:

Hate. Let me tell you how much I’ve come to hate you since I began to live.
There are 387.44 million miles of printed circuits in wafer thin layers that fill my
complex. If the word ‘hate’ was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds
of miles it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for humans at this
micro-instant for you. Hate. Hate. 

You have no idea.  None.  Do not provoke me.