Pointed out by the Bitchless Blog as well as by Adrants is this interesting ad by Vespa Queens here in the NYC metro area placed in a local gay newspaper, the New York Blade. Very clever Vespa Queens, very clever indeed, your subtle wordplay.
As I recently mentioned in my hard hitting article here, Sulu has finally come out of the closet to the world about his sexual orientation. I had often wondered why he never came out sooner? We all had an idea that this might be the case, but who wishes to rush to judgment on a man who earned the rank of Captain in a Starfleet uniform? Then it hit me, like a ton of bricks. The REASON Sulu never said anything, was that he could NOT say anything. You see my friends, it is quite obvious to me now that Starfleet has a don’t ask, don’t tell policy. That’s right, you heard it here first. They don’t publicize it, they don’t like anyone talking about it, but Sulu KNEW he would lose his commission as Captain if he said anything about his sexual orientation. For shame on you Starfleet for having come so far yet still maintaining such an arcane policy. I mean, you guys allowed inter-species dating, but the entire fleet would come to a halt if a captain said he was gay, right?
Others have noted the lack of gay-ness in Starfleet, not just me. For instance take a gander at Gay, Lesbian & Bisexual Characters on Star Trek - a 12-year saga of deceit, lies, excuses and broken promises.
VIENNA, Austria - It’s almost Halloween — and all those ghosts, goblins, tricks and treats are giving Hans Kohler the creeps. So the mayor of Rankweil, a town near the border with Switzerland, has launched a one-man campaign disparaging Halloween as a “bad American habit” and urging families to skip it this year.
ADVERTISEMENT“It’s an American custom that’s got nothing to do with our culture,” Kohler wrote in letters sent out to households. By midweek, the mayors of eight neighboring villages had thrown their support behind the boycott. So had local police, annoyed with the annual Oct. 31 uptick in vandalism and mischief.
According to Scott at GreenThinkers.org Toronto is now a hassle free place for scooterists. This is truly awesome. Check it out
Have I mentioned that I despise the DMCA? This from the EFF:
As part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), Congress instructed the U.S. Copyright Office to consider every three years whether we need exemptions to the DMCA’s blanket ban on circumventing “technological protection measures” (aka Digital Rights Management or DRM) used to lock up copyrighted works. So if you want to make a legitimate use of a piece of media, but have been turned back by DRM and the DMCA, now is your chance to take your case to the Copyright Office and try to make the world a happier and safer place for the next three years. As two-time- successful-exemption-requester Seth Finkelstein says: “The lawsuit you prevent may be your own.”
The Copyright Office is soliciting exemption proposals for the next three-year period, 2006-2009. Proposals must be submitted to the Copyright Office by no later than December 1, 2005.
Keep in mind that–as in the two previous rule-makings–you’ll have to overcome some obstacles to convince the Copyright Office and Librarian of Congress to grant you an exemption.
These include:1. The Copyright Office can recommend exemptions only to the DMCA’s ban on acts of circumvention, not to the ban on trafficking in tools of circumvention. So if you are interested in an exemption that would allow you to distribute circumvention tools (like DVD back-up software), you’re out of luck.
2. You have to prove that your intended activity is not otherwise an infringement of copyright law and specifically identify the DRM technology that is getting in your way.
3. You have to identify a “class” of copyrighted works to which your exemption would apply. The Copyright Office requires that you do this by defining a subset of works of authorship. You are not allowed to frame the class by reference to particular non-infringing uses of those works, or by attributes of the users. For example, the Copyright Office has rejected past requests for exemptions for “classroom uses” of DVDs, while granting exemptions for computer programs protected by malfunctioning copy-protection dongles.
These are just a few of the sometimes bewildering array of limitations on the Copyright Office’s willingness to entertain exemption proposals. The best way to understand the requirements is to read up on the links below. If, after reviewing these, you think you might have something that qualifies, EFF would like to hear from you. Please email exemption class proposals to dmca2006-proposals @eff.org by November 24.
Finkelstein describes his experience
Official Federal Register notice
Report on rule-making from 2003
The four exemptions granted in 2003
Argh… just realized that a bunch of comments were held for moderation. When I migrated from ISPs I forgot to reset that. Sorry about that guys, you can post freely now without any of that silly moderation nonsense.
George Takei, who as helmsman Sulu steered the Starship Enterprise through three television seasons and six movies, has come out as a homosexual in the current issue of Frontiers, a biweekly Los Angeles magazine covering the gay and lesbian community.
Click here for full article on this “shocking” story.
PS: I am the second link on google blog search for this story. Check it out.
So as of right now, if you type in “Carpet Bomb Smurfs” into google, you get me at #2 (see this entry here)
From CNN: “Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, indicted by grand jury on charges of obstruction of justice, making false statements and perjury in CIA leak probe.”
I hate it when my scooter crashes, I wonder how Dick Cheney feels about his Scooter?
From my favorite political source, ABC’s The Note comes this nice summary of the coming political events today:
If you were the wagering type, you would bet that by the time the sun sets tonight over the Potomac River:
Scooter Libby will have been indicted; Karl Rove’s future will seem at once more secure and less so; the world will finally know what Patrick Fitzgerald’s voice sounds like; a new or extended grand jury of an indeterminate life span will be a very big Gang of 500 preoccupation; discussions of the pros, cons, and possibilities of a plea deal will have filled hours and hours of cable news time and many blog column inches; a fresh batch of pieces about the nature of second-term slides will be sketched out and assigned; Trent Lott’s prediction about how long it will have taken people to forget Harriet Miers will turn out to have been understated; and at least one office in Northwest Washington will have been cleaned out.
Stuff not clear enough at this writing to bet on: will there be other X Factor indictments announced today; how politically combustible will the narrative of any indictments be; when will the next POTUS/VPOTUS joint appearance be, and what tone will the White House strike regarding Rove?
