Stan Taylor

The Richmond (Virginia) Times Dispatch reports on the activities of the state legislature:

With only a week left to act on all legislation introduced by their respective members, the House and Senate yesterday argued over matters ranging from “traditional marriage” license plates to state budget procedures.
The House of Delegates squabbled before tentatively endorsing the special state plates that would include the capital-letter words “TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE,” as well as a symbol, two interlocked golden wedding bands over a red heart.
Del. L. Scott Lingamfelter, R-Prince William, who sponsored the legislation, said it would merely embrace 4,000 years of history on marriage and show children that “traditional marriage is fundamental.”

I’m glad that the Virginia state legislature has state business so well in order that the legislators have the time to devote to such dire issues as this.

A recent study shows that abstincence-only sex ed did not reduce the incidence of teen sex. In fact, it seems to have increased it:

The study showed about 23 percent of ninth-grade girls, typically 13 to 14 years old, had sex before receiving abstinence education. After taking the course, 29 percent of the girls in the same group said they had had sex.
Boys in the tenth grade, about 14 to 15 years old, showed a more marked increase, from 24 percent to 39 percent, after receiving abstinence education.

Go, conservatives!

Oh my goodness.

The PetsCell™ will allow pet owners to talk to their pets as well as allowing owners to request assistance should they become incapacitated and require help. In addition, and perhaps more valuable, pet owners will have a peace of mind that if their pet is lost and someone finds their pet wandering the streets, with a simple press of a button on the PetsCell™, the auto dial function will dial the owners [sic] home alerting the owner to retrieve their pet.

The first selling point (calling and talking to your pet) is vanity. Whatever. Katie’s been known to call and leave a message at home for the pets, knowing that the incoming message is played from the speaker as the machine is recording it.
The second selling point sounds about the same as devices you can already buy for yourself: a small device that straps to your wrist with a button you can push to call for help. But if you want to use this device for that purpose, don’t put the collar on your cat. If you fall and can’t get up, he’ll just sit across the room and stare at you.
The third selling point sounds really stupid. If I understand it, it’s this: if your pet gets loose and someone finds him, they can simply press the button on the collar and you’ll get an automated telephone call. I guess it’s too difficult for the finder to read the telephone number off the tag and call you himself or to call the vet’s number on the vaccination tag.
The device claims to use GPS. Here’s what I need: if my dog gets out of the yard, I need a web page that will show me his current location so I can go get him. It appears that this device does not (yet) offer this feature. Well, actually, the company does not yet offer the product at all. It appears that they haven’t yet released any products.

James Naughton has an article in the Guardian about how portable music and mobile telephones have contributed to the decline of public social space. Not an earth-shattering observation. But he makes one claim that bothers me:

It’s not clear when [public social space started to decline] started, but my guess is that technology – in the shape of the Sony Walkman – had a lot to do with it. As the Walkman de nos jours, the iPod is simply continuing what Sony started. But not even Sony could have single-handedly destroyed the notion of social space. The coup de grce was administered by another piece of technology: the mobile phone.

In the U.S. at least, the decline of public social space has been quite well documented. And portable music devices and cell phones are really rather small, recent developments in the bigger trend. The rise of the suburbs, fear of strangers, dependence on automobiles for transportation are major factors in this decline.

This is so cool! This painting was created by Esref Armagan, a Turkish painter who has been blind since birth. Researchers are scanning Mr. Armagan’s brain, in an attempt to understand how he can realistically paint things that he has never seen:

Because if Armagan can represent images in the same way a sighted person can, it raises big questions not only about how our brains construct mental images, but also about the role those images play in seeing. Do we build up mental images using just our eyes or do other senses contribute too? How much can congenitally blind people really understand about space and the layout of objects within it? How much “seeing” does a blind person actually do?

(Click for larger image)

My friend Susan just called to tell me that her daughter Sophie was just diagnosed with leukemia. Please keep them in your prayers.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about socio-economic class. It started when we took my wife’s van in for repairs two weeks ago. The mechanic reported that it needed $600 in brake repairs, $1800 in A/C repairs and, in his opinion, the transmission might go out soon. He advised us to just get rid of it because it would cost us more trouble and money than it’s worth in the coming years.

From Ananova News Service: Police in Germany are hunting pranksters who have been sticking miniature US flags into piles of dog poo in public parks.
Josef Oettl, parks administrator for Bayreuth, said: “This has been going on for about a year now, and there must be 2,000 to 3,000 piles of excrement that have been claimed during that time.”
The series of incidents was originally thought to be some sort of protest against the US-led invasion of Iraq.
And then when it continued it was thought to be a protest against President George W. Bush’s campaign for re-election.
But it is still going on and the police say they are completely baffled as to who is to blame.
“We have sent out extra patrols to try to catch whoever is doing this in the act,” said police spokesman Reiner Kuechler.
“But frankly, we don’t know what we would do if we caught them red handed.”
Legal experts say there is no law against using faeces as a flag stand and the federal constitution is vague on the issue.

This is not a political post! I’m bugged by people using the word ‘inaugural’ interchangeably with ‘inauguration’ as a noun. Dictionary.com lists this as a valid usage of ‘inaugural’, but it really bugs me. And I strongly suspect that most people using it do so simply out of laziness: ‘inaugural address’, ‘inaugural celebration’, inaugural ball’ all get truncated to just “inaugural”. I may not be right, but that doesn’t stop me from being irritated by this.