Pics once we move after July 5.

Completely unrelatedly… What. The. Hell.
Some Muslims are insane.
It’s one thing to condemn a book, especially one that you haven’t read (a lot of people do, it’s true)… but quite another to call for the murder of the author and everyone connected to it… and worse still when you’re the leader of a country doing so.
Seriously, WTF.

I swear, religion in general pisses me off more and more every day. It seems like it’s doing so much more harm in the world than good.

Once again, completely unrelatedly… a completely out-of-context quote:

But deputy TSA administrator Gale Rossides said that morale is “very good” and that screeners “are very much turned on” and focused on security.

WTF are they screening? No wonder the TSA is fighting for the ability to “examine contents of laptop computers.”

This is absolutely ludicrous.

“Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal rather than religion-specific values,” Obama said. “It requires their proposals be subject to argument and amenable to reason.”
Dobson said the suggestion is an attempt to lead by the “lowest common denominator of morality.”
“Am I required in a democracy to conform my efforts in the political arena to his bloody notion of what is right with regard to the lives of tiny babies?” he said. “What he’s trying to say here is unless everybody agrees, we have no right to fight for what we believe.”

No, no that’s absolutely not at all what he’s saying. Read his quote again.
Obama is simply saying that you have to support your positions with non-religious arguments, not that you have to convince everybody that you’re right (and certainly not that you have no right to fight for your beliefs).

Ugh I hate evangelicals.
I reiterate that people who misuse religion (or use it to justify their actions) are destroying this nation (and, to a certain extent, the world).

On the flip side, why is this even an issue?

Bhutto’s killing was an “unfortunate event,” he said, but McCain’s “knowledge and ability to talk about it reemphasized that this is the guy who’s ready to be commander-in-chief. And it helped us.”
Asked if McCain would stand to benefit from a terrorist attack on U.S. soil, Black answered, “Certainly it would be a big advantage to him.”

I read absolutely nothing malicious in that. He was trying to emphasize that, in such an event, he believes McCain would be better suited to handle the situation. Perhaps he could have phrased it better (something like, “He would handle the situation better and, as such, would have an advantage over his opponent Barack Obama.”) but I don’t believe the meaning is lost.

Don’t even get me started about how people overanalyzed Mrs. Obama’s comments on being proud of her country (you know what she meant, seriously) and their “terrorist fist jab.”
What is wrong with politics these days?

The most common, widely publicized conflicts have involved pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control pills, morning-after pills and other forms of contraception. They say they believe that such methods can cause what amounts to an abortion and that the contraceptives promote promiscuity, divorce, the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and other societal woes.

You have your beliefs, fine, but once those beliefs start getting in the way of you doing your job you need to find different work. It is not okay to force the job (especially if it directly impacts customers) to adapt to you.
If you are paid to dispense drugs at a pharmacy, you had better dispense those drugs when someone comes to you with a prescription and you have that drug in stock. Don’t impose your twisted morals on other people.

This seems like a good idea… having pharmacies that don’t carry and sell them in the first place. That way this problem doesn’t come up.

The pharmacies are emerging at a time when a variety of health-care workers are refusing to perform medical procedures they find objectionable. Fertility doctors have refused to inseminate gay women. Ambulance drivers have refused to transport patients for abortions. Anesthesiologists have refused to assist in sterilizations.

This pisses me off so much.

Ugh… I feel like many of the problems with society today stem from religion (or the misuse of such).

Wheee!

I’ve had a really good day :)

Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion to religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I can’t simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke god’s will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.

Politics depends on our ability to persuade each other of common aims based on a common reality. It involves compromise, the art of what’s possible and, at some fundamental level, religion doesn’t allow for compromise. It’s the art of the impossible. If god’s spoken then followers are expected to live up to god’s edicts regardless of the consequences. Now to base one’s own life on some uncompromising commitments may be sublime but to base our policy-making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing.

No matter how religious they may be or may not be, people are tired of seeing faith used as a tool of attack. They don’t want faith used to belittle or to divide because in the end that’s not how they think about faith in their own lives.

Things like this are why Obama deserves to be elected president. Please do your part this November and bring some sanity back into our government.

Rewrote the entire thing. It’s now much, much nicer on the backend (no longer a single php file with all the logic in it) and, as a plus, it’s easily skinnable. Woot.

Tell me what you think.

Also, I managed to rip the green shirt I really like.

I’m so upset with myself :-\

If you are a homeless person in filthy, smelly clothes and you are going to come into a Mexican restaurant and steal food from their salsa bar (which has stuff like pickled radishes and carrots), it is not appropriate to push people at the bar aside, reach over their uncovered food so that your sleeves are all over it, and grab multiple handfuls of food with your visibly dirty bare hands… especially if you glare at everyone standing there afterwards as if they were in your way.

It is also not appropriate to force the back doors of a bus to open (by reaching through the gap between the closed doors and pressing the bar) so you can board without paying, particularly if you are again a filthy, smelly, homeless person who will then subject the people there to your stench.

I hate the world and everyone in it. It’s like today is just adding up to be one huge mess after another.
What the hell is wrong with people?

Maybe it’s time to buy that desktop that I wanted and delegate my laptop to true portable status.

I need to get out more and meet people. I feel like I’m having a lot of trouble with that now that I’m not interacting with large groups of peers 24/7.

Wheee.

The CS diploma ceremony was the best thing ever. Lightsabers, a robotic bagpiper, and Mark taking my photo when I went up to shake his hand. Also, we all got Rickrolled. Win.

Now we all leave and it’s really, finally over.

It’s still sinking in…

A lot has happened in the past four years. It seems like just yesterday that I was a freshman moving into Mudge and being scared at the big, scary school and all the new people and needing to fit in. Tomorrow all of us are going to walk across the stage and get a piece of paper that says, “You paid us lots of money, congrats.” and then we’ll all go off and get jobs or go to grad school or be bums on the street and pretending we’re pregnant to get money.
Even though I technically left all this last semester, it still seems awfully final this time. Before there was always the possibility of me visiting and everything being just like it used to be… midnight walks home from halfprice with friends, randomly going to Tim’s room for games at random times, having people stop by at any old time for any reason, going to events, being in groups where the most random and socially-unacceptable things could spontaneously happen…
College is so much more than an education, and no matter how many times people said that to me before, it never really sank in until now. Yes, I learned a lot about computer science here, but now somehow that seems far less important than the relationships that I’ve forged here. And now those relationships are going to be strained by distance and life pulling us all different directions. It feels like I’m losing the most important thing that has come out of these past four years.

I’m not really sure what I’m saying, so I suppose I’ll just wish everyone a happy graduation (and hope that it doesn’t rain tomorrow during the main ceremony) and hope that we don’t all lose touch with each other.

Under these circumstances, we cannot find that retention of the
traditional definition of marriage constitutes a compelling state interest.
Accordingly, we conclude that to the extent the current California statutory
provisions limit marriage to opposite-sex couples, these statutes are
unconstitutional.

Accordingly, in light of the conclusions we reach concerning the constitutional questions brought to us for resolution, we determine that the
language of section 300 limiting the designation of marriage to a union “between a man and a woman” is unconstitutional and must be stricken from the statute, and that the remaining statutory language must be understood as making the designation of marriage available both to opposite-sex and same-sex couples. In addition, because the limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples imposed by section 308.5 can have no constitutionally permissible effect in light of the constitutional conclusions set forth in this opinion, that provision cannot stand.

Kudos to the California Supreme Court. Makes me glad to be living in a state with sane judges (and mostly sane politicians).

Can’t wait to hear the “Oh noes they’re destroying our families, or so we claim with absolutely no evidence to back up the crap we spew” responses that are sure to follow.

Allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry “will not deprive opposite-sex couples of any rights and will not alter the legal framework of the institution of marriage,” (Chief Justice Ronald George) said.

In addition, he said, the current state law discriminates against same-sex couples on the basis of their sexual orientation - discrimination that the court, for the first time, put in the same legal category as racial or gender bias.

He also noted that state laws and traditions banned interracial marriage until the California Supreme Court, in 1948, became the first court in the nation to overturn such a law. “Even the most familiar and generally accepted of social policies and traditions often mask an unfairness and inequality that frequently is not recognized or appreciated by those not directly harmed,” the chief justice wrote. “

Here’s hoping that either the case isn’t appealed or, failling that, that the US Supreme court refuses it. That court is filled with too many Bushlings right now, and the wrong ruling would set the US back decades as far as equality goes.
Edit: Never mind: The parties cannot appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Herrera said, as no federal constitutional questions are at issue.

Edit 2: I’ve now had time to read over the “dissenting” opinions (which are actually “concurring and dissenting” opinions) and I can see many of their points. It seems that the dissenters basically reason that, “Since California already has domestic partnership laws that confer the same rights as marriage, at least at the state level, and voters have passed a law that reserves the term ‘marriage’ for a man and a woman, it is not the court’s place to redefine that term, in particular because there are already ’separate but equal’ institutions in place.”
I actually mostly agree with that statement. However, I still think this is the right ruling, in no small part because people would have twisted a negative ruling to their own benefit, ignoring the very logic that would have led to that decision in the first place (such as using the ruling to argue against any rights for same-sex couples when that was clearly not the court’s intention). In particular, a negative ruling would have set a dangerous precedent for other states that currently do not give any rights to same-sex couples.

I wish the stupid fundies who’ll raise hell about this would give logical, thought-out arguments similar to these dissenting opinions instead of spewing garbage.