Order =/ Action

An Executive Order has the full force of law. It is, essentially, a law. An executive action is something the President does. Like go poo. Or release his To Do List regarding guns. Obama totes did one of those things today. Guess which one? Wait. He probably also went poo. So, two things. ;)

So anyway, if you read his To Do List, it's mostly innocuous stuff and some pretty decent items that folks on all sides of the 2nd Amendment are down with. All in all, it seems as though the release of this list was designed to quell the masses.

His action list is essentially made up of multiple components:

1. Make government agencies gather and share information.
2. Train law enforcement to better handle shooter situations.
3. Educate the public on background checks and gun safety.
4. Work on mental health care in our country.

TSA v. Feminist Critical Thought

To the TSA, a thick book on feminist critical thought in the bottom of my borrowed luggage looks like a bomb. Unfortunately, this attitude is not uncommon.

Two Things

Two things:

1. Fuck Columbus Day.
2. Kashi Indigo Morning cereal is boss.

That is all.

On Children's Autonomy.

Slut-shaming as parenting.*

"I took slut looking pictures."

Not, I disobeyed. Not, I posted photos that could negatively impact my life. Not, I behaved inappropriately for my age. But, I took photos that implied that I owned my sexuality and body, which angered the people who actually own my sexuality and body.

On teh fattiez.

My fat ass hiking Mount Scott. :)

I wrote this for a friend who was interested, and decided to post it here as well. It's generally good info for... well, everyone.

On HAES.

HAES stands for Health At Every Size. The deal is that health is a real issue in our society, and we have erroneously linked it to weight. The fact is USians like being couch potatoes and 'cleaning' their plates of comfort and bored food, and that can be a problem. HAES focuses on health, rather than weight, so instead of using a scale and a calorie counter, HAES folks learn intuitive eating and enjoyable physical movement.

"Vell, Mitt's just zis guy, you know?"*

Dressage. Really. Although I have friends whom are avid riders, I had to search to see for the definition of 'dressage'. Apparently, it's horse ballet**, and is also known as the highest expression of horse training. Regular folks - folks who work and pay taxes and worry about a mortgage - don't own dressage horses. We also don't declare a tax loss of $77,000 for the care and feeding of a dressage horse that qualifies for the next Olympics. An interesting parallel is that in 2010, the same year in which they declared that loss, the mean yearly per capita income was less than $28,000.

But, hey, he totally represents me as a citizen!***

*Zaphod is equally well-suited to be our President, and for exactly the same reasons.

**I'm not being sarcastic. That's really what it's called!

***I am totally being sarcastic.

Mario Batali Is Fucking Starving

Jesus said: Feed the poor.
They said: Sorry, Jesus!
We spent $40 million on hate and fear.

“I’m [expletive deleted] starving.”

— Celebrity chef Mario Batali, while discussing his 'Food Stamp' diet, where he and his family are eating on a 'food stamp' budget (an average of $1.48 per meal, or $31 per week) in protest of potential cuts to the federal nutrition assistance program.

Unlike most people on food stamps, Mario Batali has access to a large variety of foods and has both the equipment and education to make the best use of it. This is something we should think about the next time that we're auditing what poor people eat, or their grocery purchases. I mean, this guy prepares food for a living - with every kind of equipment known to man - and he still cannot manage to do this without feeling like he’s going hungry.

Veterans' Day

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, more than 50 percent of nursing home residents have no close relatives, and 46 percent have no living children. These two facts are a major reason why an estimated 60 percent of nursing home residents never have visitors. If you're looking for ways to honor veterans, I recommend taking an afternoon or two out of each month and visiting a VA nursing home. Here's a list of VA nursing homes in Oklahoma and Texas:

Yo, Christians.

Malachi.

“Is there not one Father of us all? Did not one God create us? Why, then, does each one of us despise his brother, violating the covenant of our fathers?” -Malachi 2:10

Why do so many modern Christians despise gay people, people of color, poor people, etc.? Love them. Feed them. Heal them. LOVE THEM.

Checks and Balances

The Lovings

It always irks me when people speak as though voting were the e-all, end-all of our government. Today, I spied this gem on Facebook and had to respond:

"where as i personally have no problem with same sex marriage..unless i am mistaken wasn't this shot down in north carolina by a public vote? if so then the only people to blame is the supporters of same sex marriage for not getting enough votes...giving someone shit for voting their beliefs is WRONG no matter what side of the issue you are on in my opinion."

Dude. Dude, this kid has it right. (Randomly found in the Interwebs.)

"The world is pretty and everyone should be quiet and enjoy it."

A Horrible Irony.

A fellow Oklahoman gamer posted a video on Google+ today. I'm not going to link to it here, because I'm not going to send any traffic that way. Anyway, he commented that:

"If you want some good ideas on how to tackle the problem of harassment in online gaming, this is a great place to start. We need to change things as a group if we want it to stop. We need help from game developers and platform developers as well."

This is, in general, a sentiment with which I heartily agree. However...

On Welfare Queens

What!? No. That's asinine.

I keep seeing all of these hate graphics about poor people. They usually invoke the fantasy world wherein welfare queens receive free rent, free food, and can afford luxury items with the cash that they receive from the jobs that they don't have. It's pretty illogical, but the myth persists.

Personally, I'm really curious as to how people can tell when people are using food stamps, since it's a plastic card that looks and works exactly like the average debit card. How can you tell the difference between my brown CNB bankcard and someone else's brown SNAP card? How close are you folks getting to the people in front of you? Usually, I'm still unloading my cart while the person in front of me is checking out, and I can't really see what their card looks like, so all I can see is if they're using a check, a card, or cash.

So the next time you see a graphic like that, you should ask the poster, "Exactly how close are y'all getting, and why?".

A timely reminder...

A timely reminder about the importance of separating your religion from your government:

"I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

The Internet is for... Kids.

I was recently involved in a discussion regarding how we allow our children to use the Internet. I was surprised to see so many negative responses, especially concerning viruses and pornography. Many parents cited protective reasons to severely restrict their children’s Internet usage, and made with clear (with their terminology, concerns, etc.) that they, themselves, were not strong Internet users. This attitude strikes me as ridiculously short-sighted. Just like with other boring or worrisome topics, we have a responsibility to educate ourselves about Internet usage so that we can educate our children.

Myth: Charter schools take money from traditional schools.

So this is how it works.

Schools have two sources for funds. The first is local, which means a portion of your property taxes, any bond issues or sales taxes that you vote to go to schools, and any local fundraising efforts. (Think Box Tops for Kids and similar programs.) The second is state, which means both state and federal funds. These funds go through the State Department of Education and are dispensed to schools based on a complicated bit of math called ‘State Aid’ formula. In a nutshell, each student has x amount of money attached to them. X is determined by taking a base amount and ‘weighting’ those funds for students whom are lower-income, have disabilities, or a variety of other needs-based factors.

Charter schools don’t get to dip from both funds. Charter schools only receive state funds, meaning no local taxes, no bond issues, etc. For instance, we live in Lawton, so our property taxes go to Lawton Public Schools. Our children attend Epic Charter School, so our State Aid funds go to Epic Charter School. The take-away is that our charter schools receive less money than our traditional brick-and-mortar schools, not more, as some critics would have you believe.

Do charter schools take money from traditional schools? Yes, when they take students. However, the traditional school no longer has to pay for that child, and gets to keep the local funds. So not only do they not lose money on state funds, but they are able to spread those local funds among fewer students. A win-win for traditional schools, which is why almost all Oklahoma charter schools are run by traditional school districts. You might notice that these districts are happy with their own schools. It’s the other schools that are villainous.

Random Thoughts.

I really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really want to convene a Civics 101 & Source Vetting course on my Facebook feed. Really. The President is not magic and a jpeg with some text and Obama's face is not a reliable source. Really. I promise.

Banned Book Week

Remember, folks, read a banned book for Banned Book Week! We picked up And Tango Makes Three, with no problems. Also, here's a funny article about a few banned books.

On Government Identification and Gender

Yay! Australians now have another option for gender on their passports.

Transgender people and those of ambiguous sex will be able to list their gender as indeterminate, which will be shown on passports as an X.

So this is great, buuuuuut... Can anyone tell me why gender is listed at all? Because I have yet to hear a useful reason and if you just remove it, then no one can use your passport to single you out for abuse. Let's think about it. There are more than two genders in the world, so it's not an either/or choice. Google 'intersexed' and then think about the numbers:

If you ask experts at medical centers how often a child is born so noticeably atypical in terms of genitalia that a specialist in sex differentiation is called in, the number comes out to about 1 in 1500 to 1 in 2000 births. But a lot more people than that are born with subtler forms of sex anatomy variations, some of which won’t show up until later in life.

That's alot of future passport holders, so let's break it down:

What's the point of identification? To identify someone, right? Well, gender doesn't do that. Right now, most countries require you to 'fill our your form' with the gender assigned to you at birth, which may have nothing to do with your actual gender or your actual genitalia or your actual appearance. So if your mom's OB wrote down 'boy', based on intersexed genitalia that looked more boy-like than girl-like, and then you hit puberty and grew tits to go with your girl-like frame and face, you're still going to have to put 'male' on the dotted line and you're still going to look not-traditionally-male. As you can see, gender does nothing to describe someone, even if the slot were open like hair color is open. I mean, we all agree on what 'brown' and 'blonde' mean, but 'male' and 'female'?

More importantly, gender is not an identifying feature unless you are looking at someone's genitalia. It is akin to listing penis and breast sizes on a passport. Sure, it would be a fairly accurate descriptor, but ultimately not useful. Since that's not a reasonable means of identification, it should be dropped. (Especially since it can be used to single people out for abuse.)

To take another tack, let's think about this with analogies! Intersexed people (As in, biologically outside of the gender binary.) are almost as prevalent as redheads so I'll try that.

If gender were hair, then current wisdom says that we should list only blonde and brunette as hair color options, without regard to either the natural redheads, people whom are bald, or people who have chosen to change the outward color of their hair, for whatever reason. Listing only two hair colors would not be useful, because those two options don't help to describe people.

This has nothing to do with what you think about intersexed or transgendered people, nothing to do with political correctness, and everything to do with the intended purpose of a passport, which is to describe the identity and nationality of the holder.

Random Thoughts

"The Fukushima situation has exposed a grave danger to our world. But the danger isn't radiation, it's the poor state of science education."

and

An Austrian atheist will be allowed to wear a colander on his head in his driver's license photo after successfully arguing that it counts as "religious headgear" for Pastafarians.

As a contrast, more people are upset about the Austrian atheist than the sad state of American education.