elkit in wonderland

Love and Marriage, Love and Marriage, Go Together Like A Horse And Carriage

From Tom Ackerman, via The Daily Dish:

Yesterday I called a woman’s spouse her boyfriend.

She says, correcting me, “He’s my husband,”
“Oh,” I say, “I no longer recognize marriage.”

The impact is obvious. I tried it on a man who has been in a relationship for years,

“How’s your longtime companion, Jill?”
“She’s my wife!”
“Yeah, well, my beliefs don’t recognize marriage.”

Fun. And instant, eyebrow-raising recognition. Suddenly the majority gets to feel what the minority feels. In a moment they feel what it’s like to have their relationship downgraded, and to have a much taken-for-granted right called into question because of another’s beliefs.

The Revolution Starts Now

This makes perfect sense to me: Obama's Victory: A Consumer-Citizen Revolt.

This column is dedicated to the top managers of American business whose policies and practices helped ensure Barack Obama's victory. The mandate for change that sounded across this country is not limited to our new President and Congress. That bell also tolls for you. Obama's triumph was ignited in part by your failure to understand and respect your own consumers, customers, employees, and end users. The despair that fueled America's yearning for change and hope grew to maturity in your garden.

Millions of Americans heard President-elect Obama painfully recall his sense of frustration, powerlessness, and outrage when his mother's health insurer refused to cover her cancer treatments. Worse still, every one of them knew exactly how he felt. That long-simmering indignation is by now the defining experience of every consumer of health care, mortgages, insurance, travel, and financial services—the list goes on.

Obama was elected not only because many Americans feel betrayed and abandoned by their government but because those feelings finally converged with their sense of betrayal at the hands of Corporate America. Their experiences as consumers and as citizens joined to create a wave of revolt against the status quo—as occurred in the American Revolution. Be wary of those who counsel business as usual. This post-election period is a turning point for the business community. It demands an attitude of sober reappraisal and a disposition toward fundamental reinvention. If you don't do it, someone else will.

Talk About Fear, Hate, Envy, Jealousy

News through UPI: Muslim clerics endorse anti-terror fatwa.

HYDERABAD, India, Nov. 8 (UPI) -- About 6,000 Muslim clerics from around India approved a fatwa against terrorism Saturday at a conference in Hyderabad.

Maulana Qari Mohammad Usman Mansoorpuri, president of the Jamaiat-Ulama-i-Hind, called terrorism the most serious problem facing Islam, The Hindu reported. He blamed Islamic radicals for their actions and the news media for failing to distinguish between the radicals and the majority of Muslims.

"We have no love for offenders whichever religion they might belong to," he said. "Our concern is that innocents should not be targeted and the career of educated youth not ruined. The government should ensure transparency in investigation."

India has the world's second-largest Muslim population after Indonesia, although Hindus outnumber Muslims. The meeting was also expected to address issues like national integration.

"Islam rejects all kinds of unjust violence, breach of peace, bloodshed, murder and plunder and does not allow it in any form. Cooperation should be done for the cause of good but not for committing sin or oppression," the fatwa written at the Darul Uloom Deoband, India's foremost Islamic seminary.

I think it's about time we realize that fanatical, radical hatred is a perversion of religion, and separate the two.

[found this on Roger Ebert's Journal]

I Wear My Sunglasses At Night

Sunglasses
Originally uploaded by elkit

Well, wuddaya know - looks like I have the same sunglasses as the President-Elect. Not that I look anywhere near as cool as he. Still, I'll drink to that! And this is *so* going in my novel!

(I found the photo of Obama in his Ray-Bans on the wonderful Big Picture blog. The photo of me is by imagonnablastyou.)

From Sea To Shining Sea

While the newspapers and television stations talk about Red States and Blue States, if you think about it for a moment, that's really not how it is. Instead of one state being all red and another all blue, they're just different shades of purple, depending on the percentage of votes for Republicans and Democrats. I was wondering if there was a map to illustrate this, and Rich and ayşe both pointed me to this page on Maps of the 2008 US presidential election results, set up by Mark Newman, from the Department of Physics and Center for the Study of Complex Systems, University of Michigan. Mr. Newman has licensed this work under a Creative Commons License. Thanks for allowing me to share!

Look how pretty (and much more harmonious) it looks:

And if you adjust the map for population rather than geographic size, it looks like this (the rural, more spread out areas tend to be redder than the more bluish cities):

OBAMA

President Obama
Originally uploaded by elkit

The front page of the New York Times at 8:15 pm Pacific.

Now I Am Beyond Belief

This is what I'm wearing today. Are you voting?

We've Seen All The Re-Rons Before

Monday Music for you: Gil Scott-Heron and "(We Don't Want No) Re-Ron"

Love and Marriage, Love and Marriage, Go Together Like A Horse And Carriage

Andrew Sullivan explains Why Marriage Matters:

... my parents and friends never asked the question they would have asked automatically if I were straight: So, when are you going to get married? When will we be able to celebrate it and affirm it and support it? In fact, no one — no one — has yet asked me that question.

When people talk about gay marriage, they miss the point. This isn't about gay marriage. It's about marriage. It's about family. It's about love. It isn't about religion. It's about civil marriage licenses. Churches can and should have the right to say no to marriage for gays in their congregations, just as Catholics say no to divorce, but divorce is still a civil option.

As I keep saying, I don't get to vote (I'm not a US citizen), but if I did, I would vote No on Proposition 8. I'm with the opponents in the belief that same-sex marriage is an issue of equality guaranteed in the constitution.

One of the things that really bothers me in the mudslinging is everybody's talk of school children and what they are taught. Supporters of Proposition 8 warn that "kids will be taught gay marriage in school". I find their choice of words strange and revealing. What does that mean, the kids will be "taught gay marriage"? They deliberately make it sound like brain-washing and indoctrination, and as if the same-sex version would be the only thing they would learn about marriage.

Opponents of Proposition 8 stress that schools are not required to teach on marriage. But just like the question of whether Barack Obama is a Muslim, it's the answer to the wrong question. If same-sex marriage is legal, why shouldn't your kids know? No good reason, really, except for denial of reality.

I Heard A Rumor, They Travel Far

Reading Dirt, one of my favorite gardening blogs, asks you to VOTE!

Dearest U.S. readers, consider all those who have struggled, fought, and suffered for your right to cast a private ballot in any election, from the Revolutionary War to the Suffragettes to the volunteers right now who oversee elections to make certain they are conducted fairly. Honor them by casting your vote on or before November 4. (For those in Virginia and other places where the dumb flyer went out telling people of a particular political party to vote on November 5th -- ignore it. It's a stupid, desperate attempt by some to negate the votes of others.)

But when you vote, vote informed!

Rumors are flying at the speed of electrons around the internet about both presidential candidates. Make abundant use of Snopes.com, obamafactcheck.org, and mccainfactcheck.org, and factcheck.org to check your facts.

... [snipped off a list of rumors that you can check for yourself on the sites mentioned above]

Vote informed! Look up the facts, read your voter's pamphlet, think, question, reason -- and most importantly, VOTE!