Like happy lovemaking

I was already having a good day. This made it even better. Hat tip to Wilful Damage (NSFW).

What the billions actually look like

This is the best illustration I've seen, to date, that puts all our spending in perspective. (Click the pic for bigger version.) From Information Is Beautiful.

Butterfly Tattoo rocks!

Flame-Haired Angel's most recent feature film, The Butterfly Tattoo, opens this week in the UK. Here's a great music video taken from the movie. Note how verily the costumes rock!

Bill & Houston's (Chocolate, Cinnamon, Coconut) Banana Bread

Gigi, a friend in Oz, was asking about banana bread recipes, over on Facebook. It's the end of winter in Oz, and it's the end of summer, here in the UK. So, it may be a perfect time for Gigi to make one last winter warmer, it's definitely a perfect time for me to dust off my comfort-food recipes. This recipe is originally from one of Bill Granger's books. (I think it's this one.) As good as Bill's banana bread was, though, I though it was missing a little oomph. So, I played around with a few warm flavours, modified it significantly, and this bread is now one of my favourite winter recipes. It is *not* low-cal, and it is not for those who are banana purists. And for those of you who need clear delineation between what can be called breakfast and what can be called dessert, this bread is *not* for you. Bill & Houston’s Chocolate Banana Bread Original by Bill Granger, modified by Houston Spencer Ingredients: 275 g (roughly 2 ¼ cups) plain, all-purpose flour. (For a full-on flavour explosion, I substitute about one third of the flour with dried, grated coconut.) 2 teaspoons baking powder 125 g (4 ½ oz) unsalted butter, softened 250 g (1 cup) caster (superfine) sugar 4 over-ripe bananas, mashed 2 eggs, lightly beaten 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 teaspoons cinnamon 250 g (1 ½ cups) good-quality dark or milk chocolate chips. (...but, go on, use the dark!) Method: Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F / Gas 4). Mix the flour, baking powder, and cinnamon in a large bowl. Mix the butter, sugar, banana, eggs, vanilla extract and chocolate chips in a separate bowl. Add the dry ingredients and stir to combine. Do not over mix. A looser mixture is best. Pour the batter into a non-stick, or lightly greased and floured, 19 x 11 cm (71/2 x 41/2 inch) loaf tin and bake for 1 hour 20 minutes, or until the bread is cooked when tested with a skewer. Leave to cool in the tin for 5 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool. Serve in thick slices. Makes 8 to 10 slices. Baking times for this bread vary a lot for different ovens. Also, as with many breads like this, the relative moistness is a matter of personal taste. More flour can create a firmer, slightly drier bread with shorter cooking times. ..

An unexpectedly poignant tribute to John Hughes

Flame-Haired Angel and I reckon The Breakfast Club was the most broadly embraced statement of our teen generation. For good or ill. It's creator, John Hughes -- once a name associated with a whole genre of film -- died last week. On a random web walk, this morning, I came across this tribute written by a woman who, as a teenager, had an extended pen-pal relationship with Hughes. It's humbly extraordinary. Sincerely, John Hughes

Beginning to get Brigitte Bardot

All my adult life, I've seen photos of Brigitte Bardot. Beyond being another vintage (to me) beauty, I never really got the mystique. Apart from Marilyn, perhaps no other pinup of her generation had the same lasting impact on the pop culture zeitgeist. But out of so many beautiful idealised women of the 50s and 60s, why did a generation fixate on Bardot? My own reaction to Bardot was mostly "meh". Then I saw this photo. And I think I begin, just a little, to get it.

One of the very best things I've ever seen.

Bar none. It just gets better and better. Be sure to stay through all the way to the end. Thanks to Jon Taplin for pointing it out.

Quite a quote

Women would be amazed if they knew what men desire about them. Yes, of course, they want to see women naked and supine and melting, but male desire is far more readily stimulated by what the oblique glance discovers: the parted lips, the micron of eyelash which the mascara brush missed, the changing angle and shadow of cleavage, the bra-strap alternately displayed and covered up, the ripe-camembert plumpness at the edge of hips. There is, inside every adult man, a relentless Peeping Tom, a perennial 14-year-old boy, still amazed by the phenomenon of women on display, flagging their sexuality, their availability, with every square inch of visible flesh, clothing, make-up and curve. … We desire the personality that we discern in the walk, the clothes, the laugh … We look, and sigh, and wish to do certain things to her, first urgently, then luxuriantly, and keep doing it indefinitely; but we also hunger to have her do certain things to us, unimaginable though it may seem – we want her to want us. We don’t just want her surrender, like a slave captured in battle; we want her approbation, her adoration; we want to enchant her to desire us back. For, no matter how humble we feel before the dizzying fact of female beauty, men are just as narcissistic as women. — John Walsh via Nightmare Brunette (via gauntlet) (via mandalay)

Passion, moldy browser tabs, and infographics that make the world more real

I'm one of those people who lets tabs build up in my web browser. I open pages that I promise myself I'll return to when I have a few minutes to squeeze in some reading. They stay open, sometimes, for months. The number of things I'm keen to read so dwarfs the number of minutes set aside for reading them, I occasionally have to go on a browser-tag-killing rampage. No telling what extraordinary pieces of prose and video I have zapped into oblivion, never to touch my mind, my heart, my life. Oh, well. It's just a part of being in the flowing river of content that is the privilege of our times. But sometimes I'll hang on to a piece for no good reason I know of, its browser tab opening every time Firefox fires up, for months on end. And then, eventually, in some interstitial moment, I'll start reading. ...and I'll be grabbed by my chest hair and pulled toward the screen. I was just about to delete this piece, from Rolling Stone, way back in mid March. But decided I should scan the opening sentence or two before obliterating this piece of months-old ancient history. Scanning those first words compelled me to the end of the first paragraph, and I was super-glued until the closing full-stop. Topic: Financial crisis and the US bailout of the banks. Not exciting, and we all think we've heard e-freakin'-nuff about it, by now. I know the facts. I can explain what a credit default swap is. I'm already angry. So, I was pretty sure I didn't really need to read this. Well, screw it. I needed to read it. Highly recommended. The latest bailout came as AIG admitted to having just posted the largest quarterly loss in American corporate history — some $61.7 billion. In the final three months of last year, the company lost more than $27 million every hour. That's $465,000 a minute, a yearly income for a median American household every six seconds, roughly $7,750 a second. And all this happened at the end of eight straight years that America devoted to frantically chasing the shadow of a terrorist threat to no avail, eight years spent stopping every citizen at every airport to search every purse, bag, crotch and briefcase for juice boxes and explosive tubes of toothpaste. Yet in the end, our government had no mechanism for searching the balance sheets of companies that held life-or-death power over our society and was unable to spot holes in the national economy the size of Libya (whose entire GDP last year was smaller than AIG's 2008 losses). So it's time to admit it: We're fools, protagonists in a kind of gruesome comedy about the marriage of greed and stupidity. And the worst part about it is that we're still in denial — we still think this is some kind of unfortunate accident, not something that was created by the group of psychopaths on Wall Street whom we allowed to gang-rape the American Dream. And if that ain't enough to get you there, have a look at this masterpiece of inforgraphics on the same topic. I am awed by great infographics -- the art of representing data/information in a visual mode so that the clarity and impact of the data is increased. This is a great infographic. Not 3d. Not in colour. Just monochromatic boxes. And yet... Simple task: compare the "total outlay for all the bailouts to date" with "every major one time expenditure of the USA, including ... the moon shot, the New Deal, Iraq, Viet Nam and Korean wars. (Omitted from the graphic are WW1&2 and the total of all NASA budgets, but when included the bailout is still bigger.) All historical figures are inflation adjusted. The article from which this comes is here.

“Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway” - John Wayne via Surfing With The Alien.

"They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea." -- Sir Francis Bacon (ripped off from Lawrence Wilkinson)

Wow.

His thesis project at art school.

Man desires a world where good and evil can be clearly distinguished, for he has an innate and irrepressible desire to judge before he understands. Milan Kundera, The Art of the Novel, 1986 (Hat tip to the Truck Man.)

That's how I roll.

A letter to his young self

Readers outside the UK are unlikely to have seen this piece (excerpted below) from Stephen Fry, which was published in The Guardian some weeks back. (...and, moreover, are perhaps unfamiliar with the profound cultural treasure Stephen Fry is.) The piece is, ultimately, a state of the union on gay rights in the UK. But it is so much more than that. It is a letter to his 16-year old self. Dearest Absurd Child: I hope you are well. I know you are not. As it happens you wrote in 1973 a letter to your future self and it is high time that your future self had the decency to write back. You declared in that letter that "everything I feel now as an adolescent is true". You went on to affirm that if ever you dared in later life to repudiate, deny or mock your 16-year-old self it would be a lie, a traducing, treasonable lie, a crime against adolescence. "This is who I am," you wrote. "Each day that passes I grow away from my true self. Every inch I take towards adulthood is a betrayal." Oh, lord love you, Stephen. How I admire your arrogance and rage and misery. How pure and righteous they are and how passionately storm-drenched was your adolescence. How filled with true feeling, fury, despair, joy, anxiety, shame, pride and above all, supremely above all, how overpowered it was by love. My eyes fill with tears just to think of you. Of me. Tears splash on to my keyboard now. I am perhaps happier now than I have ever been and yet I cannot but recognise that I would trade all that I am to be you, the eternally unhappy, nervous, wild, wondering and despairing 16-year-old Stephen: angry, angst-ridden and awkward but alive. Because you know how to feel, and knowing how to feel is more important than how you feel. Deadness of soul is the only unpardonable crime, and if there is one thing happiness can do it is mask deadness of soul. I finally know now, as I easily knew then, that the most important thing is love. The rest is here.

The Good, The Bad and The Ukelele

Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain via The Rumpus

We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and let our illusions die. — W. H. Auden via Nightmare Brunette

God's love of silly stories

A few things from Simple Space Annex (which is not safe for work). God invented mankind because he loved silly stories. - Ralph Steadman There’s no such thing as old age, there is only sorrow. - Fay Weldon First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do. - Epictetus Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting. - Alan Dean Foster No, you never get any fun out of the things you haven’t done. - Thomas Nash Patience is a tree with bitter roots that bears sweet fruit. - Chinese proverb You have to go through the falling down in order to learn to walk. It helps to know that you can survive it. That’s an education in itself. - Carol Burnett Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money. - Jules Renard

“The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.” via Surfing with the Alien

How did I not know about this???

Old Jews Telling Jokes

“You can’t give your photograph soul with technique. I want my photos to be fresh and urgent. A good photograph should be a call to arms. It should say, ‘Fucking now. The time is ripe. Come on.'" Terry Richardson via That Obscure Object.

Two lovers celebrating his birthday

Walking along the Seine, in Paris, with my Flame-Haired Angel. Photo by Gabe Vizzard.

The Champagne stopper

I remember one of the tiny thrills of setting up house in Paris, years ago, was buying a Champagne stopper. Just the idea that we were likely to have Champagne in the house often enough, casually enough, to open bottles and not finish them, was thrilling. It felt as grown up as getting a mortgage. Then, when we had to replace the Champagne stopper, because we'd worn it out from use, I felt I had truly arrived in the world of presumptively casual glamour. And a little like a lush. ..

Music for the Flame-Haired Angel

We've been groovin' to the music at this juke joint. It's *made* for Flame-Haired Angel in party mode. ...but I think I caught my mom dancing to it, too...

Nyle: "Let the Beat Build"

From the vimeo site: "This video was filmed in one take, with audio being recorded simultaneously with the film." Pretty stunning. Nyle "Let The Beat Build" from Nyle on Vimeo.

Dedicated to my friend Bill Stuart, who recently became a dad

Spent a wonderful stretch with 1001 Rules For My Unborn Son, the other night. I like the lede mightily: "Let's get some things straight before I get old and uncool." As I was reading the whole damn thing, I became increasingly convinced that the author and I are very nearly the same person. The advice about white Oxford shirts and facial hair, aside, pretty much every line got me nodding or laughing. Every musical reference was a touchstone. And then it struck me that my old friend Bill Stuart is pretty much the one man in my life who actually lives by all these rules, rather than just aspiring to them. He may not like the New York Dolls, but that's forgivable. Here's to young Keane Stuart growing up to be just as fine a man as his daddy. A tall order. ..

days with my father

One of my guilty web pleasures is the blog Le Love. The folk recently tipped me off about this extraordinarily beautiful work. To say that it's moving doesn't begin to capture it's power. Le Love called it "insanely touching". That creeps in the right direction, but the experience of the work is its only appropriate summation. Have the experience. days with my father One small note for the anal retentive (like me): The navigation of the site is quite innovative, but also non-intuitive. You can scroll up, down, sideways. Don't worry about linearity. Just immerse yourself. It's part of the beauty.

Things I've been meaning to jot down...

The next in what will hopefully be a short-lived series. Some more serendipitously accumulated stuff I've been meaning to share. Enjoy. Some of these are a little bit sexy. So, if that bothers you, avert your tender eyes. For me, what’s compelling about sexuality is the way that desire transforms what we take in through our senses, the ways in which our bodies betray us or rescue us by insisting on their own non-negotiable truths. — Catherine Brady via Nightmare Brunette She’s aware of her power but she isn’t sure yet how to use it, what to do with it, how much she even wants it. That body is still new to her, she’s still trying it out, thinking it through, a bit like a kid walking the streets with a loaded gun and deciding whether he’s packing it to protect himself or to begin a life of crime. — Philip Roth, The Dying Animal via Nightmare Brunette Here's one I don't agree with, but found catalytically provocative. A good brain push. Some people labor under the delusion that happiness is mankind’s natural state of being. But happiness has never been our birthright; anger, sadness, and death are our birthrights. Sleepless nights and haunted days are our birthrights. Heartbreak, anxiety, and self-doubt are our birthrights. Death, decay, mourning, failure, and rejection are our birthrights. Happiness is more like a pleasant surprise we get every once in a while, like a rainbow. Or a blowjob. via For Her Eyes Only -- which is WAY not safe for work. People only see in us the contemptible skirt-fever which rules our actions but completely miss the beauty-hunger underlying it. To be so struck by a face sometimes that one wants to devour it feature by feature. Even making love to the body beneath it gives no surcease, no rest. What is to be done with people like us? — Lawrence Durrell, Justine via Nightmare Brunette We can deny everything, except that we have the possibility of being better. — His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama via Nightmare Brunette via Big Fun Move away from home, get a menial job, fall for as many untrustworthy men as it takes to get all that nonsense out of your system. Don’t even think about college until your mind is parched and you are frantic to learn. Don’t marry in your twenties. Don’t be kind to yourself. Keep in touch. — Jincy Willett, The Best Of Betty via Nightmare Brunette You were born an original. Don’t die a copy — John Mason via Big Fun I’m as confused as a baby in a topless bar. - Anonymous via Unpolitically Correct Lastly: I'm sure lots of folks know this history, but I sure as hell didn't. If you've ever grooved to Lou Reed's iconic "Walk on the Wild Side", then you've heard these words: “Holly came from miami f.l.a. Hitch-hiked her way across the u.s.a.” and... “Candy came from out on the island In the backroom she was everybodys darling” What I never realised, until Bohemia clued me in, was that those aren't fictional characters. They're Reeds buddies from Andy Warhol's Factory. And here they are. Holly (Woodlawn) and Candy (Darling) are bottom and right, respectively.

Oz "Great Firewall" crumbles. Houston's faith restored.

I haven't been writing about it much (or about anything much, recently), but I've been passionately following the debate about the Australian government's attempts to put a national "great firewall" in place to monitor and censor *all* internet traffic going into and out of Oz. After so many years of the ridiculously imperious John Howard government (non-Aussies: think of a short, unattractive ideological copy of George W Bush), one would have hoped that a policy as anti-populist as this would never have gotten up under current Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd. I wondered about Rudd's motivations on this issue in a previous post. Packaged under a cynical and false ribbon of protecting us all from child porn and terrorists, the proposal was, in essence, to give the Aussie government the same powers over internet content that the Chinese government has (and uses). Well, it appears to be over. About a week ago, this was in my industry's trade press: Oz telecoms minister backtracks on mandatory Internet censorship proposals After all the macho posturing and endlessly-repeated bloodly-minded determination to ignore outraged public opinion, the Australian government is now suddenly back-tracking on its much-vaunted and virulently-criticised plan to pass legislation that would impose Orwellian levels of censorship on the Internet browsing habits of its citizens... Read the rest HERE, and have a beer. (And on a side note, that is some damn fine writing for an industry trade rag. It's got snap and real pace. Kudos to Martyn Warwick of TelecomTV.) ..

Big Fun

I haven't blogged in a while, but that doesn't stop the stockpile of stuff I *want* to blog about from growing and growing and growing. Here's a whole mess of stuff Big Fun has been pointing me to. I've been meaning to write a little about each of these, but that's just keeping me from posting them, at all. "...Instead of gathering on collective farms, we gather in collective worlds. Instead of state factories, we have desktop factories connected to virtual co-ops. Instead of sharing drill bits, picks, and shovels, we share apps, scripts, and APIs. Instead of faceless politburos, we have faceless meritocracies, where the only thing that matters is getting things done. Instead of national production, we have peer production. Instead of government rations and subsidies, we have a bounty of free goods." Kevin Kelly in Wired, “The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online” (via somethingchanged) “ This is why our problem is not just economic; it’s spiritual. We have mistaken consuming for living." Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, in the Atlantic “ I want to remind you that financial success is not the only goal or the only measure of success. It’s easy to get caught up in the heady buzz of making money. You should regard money as fuel for what you really want to do, not as a goal in and of itself. Money is like gas in the car — you need to pay attention or you’ll end up on the side of the road — but a well-lived life is not a tour of gas stations!" Tim O’Reilly (via poortaste, via wreckandsalvage, via klaatu) “ I cannot walk through the suburbs in the solitude of the night without thinking that the night pleases us because it suppresses idle details, just as our memory does." Jorge Luis Borges (via affremblequotes) “ The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently." Friedrich Nietzsche

For lovers

Just waved goodbye to the Flame-Haired Angel for a couple of days. So, here are a few topical vids from the good folks at Le Love.

Ten Things I Hate About Commandments

In my little world of giddy mischief, I'm not sure the brilliance of this can be overstated.

The same sentiment...

...as Suzuki-roshi's "beginner's mind". The more opinions you have, the less you see. Wim Wenders Hat tip to Big Fun.

Middle-aged thought for the day

I bet orthopedic surgeons love these guys. .

David Brooks on Obama's first 100 days

Charlie Rose, delivers an exceptionally good interview with conservative NY Times columnist David Brooks. There's some incredibly insightful stuff, here. This is not a sound-bite, but a conversation with real depth.

500 Days of Summer

I think I might like this. A lot. Hat tip to Le Love.

If I were to wish for anything I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of what can be, for the eye, which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or Hat tip to Nightmare Brunette.

Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it. Mark Twain (via BigFun) (via poortaste) (via figuremeout)

Dude Tango!

I really like posting things I have no particular reason to post...they're just cool.

Dumb, but compelled

“ One of the biggest wake-up calls of my career was when I saw a record contract. I said, ‘Wait — you sell it for $18.98 and I make 80 cents? And I have to pay you back the money you lent me to make it and then you own it? Who the fuck made that rule? Oh! The record labels made it because artists are dumb and they’ll sign anything’ — like I did." Trent Reznor, Nine Inch Nails Found on Big Fun, but originally at Underwire.

Vale Glass-Steagall !

The below ripped directly from BoingBoing. I haven't heard any pundit say, simply, "Reinstate Glass Steagall." I wonder why not? And I'm still finding it scary that Larry Summers continues to have such a prominent voice. New York Times warns that new financial rules could "wreak havoc" -- 1999 From the 11/5/99 New York Times: "CONGRESS PASSES WIDE-RANGING BILL EASING BANK LAWS By STEPHEN LABATON": ''Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century,'' Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers said. ''This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy.'' The decision to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 provoked dire warnings from a handful of dissenters that the deregulation of Wall Street would someday wreak havoc on the nation's financial system CONGRESS PASSES WIDE-RANGING BILL EASING BANK LAWS (11/5/99)

Getting concerned about Obama's approach to individuals' rights

A string of not very happy appointments, decisions and court interventions is making me nervous about just how much change Obama will be bringing to the fight for civil liberties, which has been under assault for years. In the last week alone, the Obama DOJ (a) attempted to shield Bush's illegal spying programs from judicial review by (yet again) invoking the very "state secrets" argument that Democrats spent years condemning and by inventing a brand new "sovereign immunity" claim that not even the Bush administration espoused, and (b) argued that individuals abducted outside of Afghanistan by the U.S. and then "rendered" to and imprisoned in Bagram have no rights of any kind -- not even to have a hearing to contest the accusations against them -- even if they are not Afghans and were captured far away from any "battlefield." These were merely the latest -- and among the most disturbing -- in a string of episodes in which the Obama administration has explicitly claimed to possess the very presidential powers that Bush critics spent years condemning as radical, lawless and authoritarian. Glenn Greenwald, on CommonDreams.org. (Hat tip to OneGoodMove.) This is happening at the same time that incidents of overzealous and over-reaching law enforcement continue to mount across America. Here, just the most recent of dozens of examples of someone having his rights trampled by badge-bedecked boys in blue, who clearly felt they could act with impunity. Border patrol alleged to have beat up and tazed pastor, smashed his car, on US soil, because he insisted on 4th Amendment rights Respect for civil liberties is fostered by example. Preferably examples from on high. But disrespect for civil liberties is bred in exactly the same way: by example. If the President -- or his appointed agents -- can beat people up without pesky due process, why can't I? America is no longer a beacon of respect for individuals' civil rights. Not even within its own borders. And, to add to all of that, the Recording Industry Association of America -- the RIAA, that record industry trade group that enforces intellectual property rights by extorting money from downloaders by threatening law suits -- seems to be in favour in the Obama White House, as well. Obama adds yet another RIAA attorney to Justice Department roster (now there are 5) Nervous. I had hoped for better than this. ..

An oldy but a goody. And a Tar Heel.

Hadn't seen this in a mighty long time, but tripped across it over the weekend. ..

Evening Reading: Reversal of Fortune

Read this, from Vanity Fair, during my evening stroll around the village. It's a few months old, but it's a fine, compelling rant by a Nobel Prize winning economist, Joseph E Stiglitz. Ideology proclaimed that markets were always good and government always bad. While George W. Bush has done as much as he can to ensure that government lives up to that reputation—it is the one area where he has overperformed—the fact is that key problems facing our society cannot be addressed without an effective government, whether it’s maintaining national security or protecting the environment. Our economy rests on public investments in technology, such as the Internet. While Bush’s ideology led him to underestimate the importance of government, it also led him to underestimate the limitations of markets. ..

A touch of post-Easter fun

Tickled my funny bits. If you don't get it, you need to eat more sushi. Hat tip to That Obscure Object.

Heck, I'd watch her eat a hamburger.

Is it just me going on a jag missing Flame-Haired Angel, or it this as dead brilliant as I think it is? Oh, hell. Why choose? ..

Dorothy Parker to an editor

“I’ve been too fucking busy. And vice versa.” Except, sadly, the "vice versa" part just ain't so, as Flame-Haired Angel is still playing in the sand. Hat tip to Carnal Knowledge for the quote.

I bet he can dance, too.

Was surfing around for more info on the Iowa Supreme Court decision, and this little photographic blessing popped up. Re-blogged from here.

Iowa Supremes: Gay marriage is a no-brainer.

We are firmly convinced the exclusion of gay and lesbian people from the institution of civil marriage does not substantially further any important governmental objective. The legislature has excluded a historically disfavored class of persons from a supremely important civil institution without a constitutionally sufficient justification. Iowa Supreme Court, in their unanimous decision, legalising gay marriage. My first reaction was "Iowa?!?!" But, then, Wikipedia tells me I shouldn't be surprised: Iowa has always been a leader in the area of civil rights. In 1839, the Iowa Supreme Court rejected slavery in a decision that found that a slave named Ralph became free when he stepped on Iowa soil, 26 years before the end of the Civil War decided the issue. In 1868, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that racially segregated “separate but equal” schools had no place in Iowa, 85 years before the U.S. Supreme Court reached the same decision. In 1873, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled against racial discrimination in public accommodations, 91 years before the U.S. Supreme Court reached the same decision. In 1869, Iowa became the first state in the union to admit women to the practice of law. Go, you corn-eatin' hog-raisin' heroes of the heartland! And, hey, look, it's right there on their flag! Hat tip to Bohemea's blog for the tip-off. ..

How did Kevin Rudd get his government associated with such inane policy?

A Blacklist for Websites Backfires in Australia. This is one issue on which Oz ought to look across the water at the Land of the Long White Cloud. Citizens in New Zealand have told the Kiwi government exactly where it can stick its 'net censorship. ..

What it feels like to fall in love

I love this representation of how the feeling of falling in love changes everything about the way life feels. Watching it while Flame-Haired Angel is thousands of miles away, however, may not have been the best idea. (Note to self: Might want to put off re-watching Once.) Found thanks to Le Love.