Grow Up, Ron Paul

Like most other little kids, all I wanted to do was eat junk food, play video games and goof around with my friends. I didn’t like being made to go to school, going to bed at 9 p.m., eating vegetables, doing homework after school, or taking out the garbage. And like most other little kids who don’t like abiding by the rules of their parents, I sometimes fantasized about what it would be like to run away from home. But when I packed my backpack full of clothes and individually-wrapped packs of peanut butter crackers from the pantry, I could never go through with my plan. I knew if I ran away, I’d be hungry, cold, lost, and eventually found by the police and returned home.

Like most other little kids, all I wanted to do was eat junk food, play video games and goof around with my friends. I didn’t like being made to go to school, going to bed at 9 p.m., eating vegetables, doing homework after school, or taking out the garbage. And like most other little kids who don’t like abiding by the rules of their parents, I sometimes fantasized about what it would be like to run away from home. But when I packed my backpack full of clothes and individually-wrapped packs of peanut butter crackers from the pantry, I could never go through with my plan. I knew if I ran away, I’d be hungry, cold, lost, and eventually found by the police and returned home.

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What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success

 Everyone agrees the United States needs to improve its education system dramatically, but how? One of the hottest trends in education reform lately is looking at the stunning success of the West's reigning education superpower, Finland. Trouble is, when it comes to the lessons that Finnish schools have to offer, most of the discussion seems to be missing the point. 

The small Nordic country of Finland used to be known -- if it was known for anything at all -- as the home of Nokia, the mobile phone giant. But lately Finland has been attracting attention on global surveys of quality of life -- Newsweek ranked it number one last year -- and Finland's national education system has been receiving particular praise, because in recent years Finnish students have been turning in some of the highest test scores in the world. 

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Pick a Number

by Paul Rudnick

Alfred Kinsey believed that human sexuality could be charted on a scale of 0 to 6, with 0 being “Exclusively heterosexual” and 6 being “Exclusively homosexual.” Owing to changing cultural boundaries and advanced research, Kinsey’s scale has recently been expanded:

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A great article about why Ron Paul is one of the most dangerous Republican candidates today, illustrating how America, under his reign, would become an uber-Plutocracy, a country lending absolutely no support to the poor, the middle class, minorities and everyone who isn't lucky enough to be on the right side of the market. More frightening? The fact that so many of his supporters misread Ron Paul's motivations, in that his rejection of any and all government involvement is often mistaken through correlation for partisan endorsement of a particular issue or stance.

Also, it seriously troubles me when a large chunk of your political stance is "throw the baby out with the bathwater."

The Five People You Meet as a Gay Dad

The hardest part about being a gay dad has nothing to do with raising your children. Sure, at two years old, my twins are already curious as to what a Mommy is and why we don’t have one. But explaining it to them is easy. My kids are smart, open-minded and I’m reasonably sure they’re not homophobic. It’s explaining my family to other people that gets tricky.

There are a lot of questions that can lead there. “Where’s your wife?” “Where’s their mommy?” “I wish my husband would take the kids to the park sometimes.” Or, when I’m out with my partner, the one we get is, “Which one of you is the dad?”

We could lie, but what kind of message would that send to our kids? That there’s something wrong with our family and we have to keep it secret? A much better message for them to get is that strangers can be clueless sometimes, and that it’s our job to educate them.

“We’re both the dad,” we say. And then… we wait. The next move is theirs.

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Yesterday's vote was a liberal jamboree, so I grant you a semi-comprehensive update of recent progressive political victories (list unceremoniously stolen from reddit, citations my own):

(Note: For some reason the below bullets aren't appearing like links in my browser, but clicking them should take you to articles on each of the points)

• Mississippi defeats life at conception bill.
  
  
• Ohio voters overturn anti-union bill.
  
  
• Houston votes to keep first ever openly gay mayor of a major US city.
  
  
• Iowa Republicans lose campaign for essential state senate seat, effectively preventing push for anti- gay marriage constitutional amendment.
  
  
• Successful recall of Russell Pearce, President of the Arizona Senate, author of SB1070.
  
  
• Conservative courts uphold key portions Obama healthcare reform law.
  
  
• Maine defeats GOP’s attempt to eliminate same day voter registration.
  
  
• Georgians can now buy alcohol on Sundays.
  
  
• Kentucky Democratic Governor cruises to a reelection win.
  
  
• Michele Bachmann says we should add three more heads to Mt. Rushmore.
  
  
• Republican Rep Joe Walsh totally loses it at his constituents at one of his events.
  
  
• Romney reiterates that he believes not bailing out Detroit was a good strategy.

Some good news on the LGBT rights front from abroad: The United Kingdom has elected to lift its discriminatory prohibition on blood donations from men who've had sex with men.

Sadly, this good news is tempered by the fact that the policy has been replaced with a one year deferral, which still effectively prohibits all men living an active gay lifestyle from donating blood. Still, this policy change is a step in the right direction, and any movement away from homophobia should is a good sign.

Lessons from Sharing the Story of My (Possibly) Gay 6-Year-Old Son

"On August 16 I learned what viral meant.

I wrote an essay about my oldest son and his love of a popular gay television character, Glee's Blaine, and how this crush led to him telling me he wanted to kiss boys, not girls. I naively posted it to a blog, thinking some fans of the show might think it was cute.

Within 24 hours it had been reposted and "liked" over 30,000 times on the blog's website. It wasn't long before messages started flooding in, other websites began posting it and people were commenting. The response was overwhelming positive. What I thought was a simple story about my kid and our family had clearly stuck a chord with a lot of people.

It also made some people uncomfortable. Of the criticisms, the most common is that my son is six years old and doesn't know anything about sex. While I fully acknowledge this may not be the end-all-and-be-all to my son's sexual orientation, I object to the idea that being gay is only about sexual acts. Our emotions and feelings, our attractions and compulsions, all contribute, not just our body parts. If my son had a crush on the star of iCarly, I doubt people would be saying he was too young to have those sexual feelings towards a girl. I think they would think it was an innocent schoolboy crush, which is exactly what it is."

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Mitchell Hurwitz Promises an ‘Arrested Development’ Movie, and New TV Episodes

Now that is a large crocodile.

Article

Rainbow Frog Not Extinct, Looks Like it Rolled in Nerds Candy

Meet the same-sex parents next door

And here is the moment I hate: the Explaining of the Situation (EOTS). Most of the time, the EOTS is not a big deal at all, but then again, we live in New York City. Not just New York City, but a liberal enclave in Brooklyn called Park Slope, where, depending on the time of day at the local playground, same-sex parents just might outnumber straight ones.

I recognize, though, that not everyone is down with two women or two men raising kids together, so there's the chance this family might quietly pack up their stuff and build their own campsite somewhere else upon the EOTS. Will our impromptu party suddenly become unbearably awkward?

"No, we're not sisters," I say, as I have hundreds of times before (Emily and I do look somewhat similar). "We're partners."

My new friend brightens and says, "Oh, who carried?" Who carried?! After I tell her that it was me who carried, we swap birth stories. Her husband leans over to tell Emily that he gained 25 pounds worth of sympathy weight. "Did you have the same problem?" he asks.

Clearly, the only person there with any judgments or preconceived notions was me. I shouldn't have been surprised. In the five years that Em and I have been married (no, it's not legal), and in the three and a half years since we had the boys, that's pretty much the way it's gone.

I'm here to ruin your day with this one:

Yet Another Adorable YouTube Sensation Actually Predicated On Cruelty

"The only reason the loris isn't biting the person holding it in the video is because it has had its teeth ripped out with pliers."

- Animal rights activist Chris Shepherd tells you what's really going on in those viral videos which show slow lorises—tiny primates native to Southeast Asia—being tickled and holding up cocktail umbrellas. While the clips seem awww-worthy, the reality is far more sinister: "Although the creature may look happy, it submits to being tickled as a passive defence-mechanism to deal with stress. The loris is a nocturnal animal and is effectively being blinded by the daylight in the videos. Disoriented, it grasps at the umbrella believing it is the bamboo of its natural terrain."

Confirmation from Eliza:

"Yale Law School, renowned for competitiveness and its Supreme Court justices, is embarking on a pilot program next week in which students can check out a “therapy dog” named Monty along with the library’s collection of more than one million books. While the law school is saying little so far about its dog-lending program, it has distributed a memo to students with the basics: that Monty will be available at the circulation desk to stressed-out students for 30 minutes at a time beginning Monday, for a three-day trial run."

God damn it, I want a therapy dog! I'm going to pull some strings and get this thing underway.

Check out this article about the surprising survival of Japan's wind farms post-tsunami, making the kaput nuclear reactors that are hate-vomiting out radiation look positively archaic in design. An excerpt:

"Even the country's totally bad ass Kamisu offshore wind farm, with its giant 2 MW turbines with blades big as the wings on a jumbo jet, and only 186 miles from the epicenter of the largest quake ever recorded in Japan, survived without a hiccup thanks to its "battle proof design." As a result, the nation's electric companies have asked all of its wind farms to increase power production to maximum, in order to make up for the shortfalls brought about by the failure of certain other aging, non-resilient 20th-century technologies."

I really want to know what "battle proof design" means. I'm imagining some sort of wind-powered Koopa Fortress, and I very much so want that to be accurate.

I adore the title of this short item:

Kids Are Dumb, Think Cartoons Make Cereal Taste Better

A new study confirms that marketing has a tremendous influence over kids (or they just have a hankering for delicious penguins). University of Pennsylvania researchers gave 80 children, ages 4 though 6, a "new" cereal from one of four boxes. The cereals were called Sugar Bits and Healthy bits, and one box of each type featured characters from Happy Feet while the other had no characters on the package. Kids who had cereal from the boxes with cartoons said it tasted better than the kids who ate from the plain box. Surprisingly, they liked Healthy Bits more than Sugar Bits, but the illustration on the box was still the most important factor. "When there was a character on the box, they liked the cereal a lot, and it didn't matter what the name of the cereal was," says lead author Sarah Vaala. "Once you put a character on the box, that overrides their judgment of the health merits of the food."

The rumor mill is saying that the Yale Law School Library has recently made a hypoallergenic border terrier available to students for 30 minute reserved play sessions. His name is General Montgomery, shortened to Monty the Therapy Dog for efficiency.

I am beyond envious: why aren't my tuition dollars going toward the adopting of precious animals for me to cuddle in-between classes? Is this something the SBA can get done for me? Who do I talk to about this?

Inb4 discussion of the negative effect this kind of rental plan could have on the dog's well-being. I have to imagine playing with law students all day is more emotionally fulfilling than sitting alone on your owner's couch for ten hours.

I hate to report half-news, but it seems like the big hullabaloo of the day is the partially-confirmed, partially-denied end of Cap'n Crunch cereal.

This local ABC affiliate states that the cereal, targeted by Michelle Obama for carrying about half of a child's recommended daily sugar intake, is kaputt. Of course, it's a local news affiliate, so take anything they say with a grain of I guess there were no drive bys to report on.

This advertising article, clearly another source I'll be citing to in my law briefs, claims the opposite: they attest that Quaker assured them first-hand that these boxed teeth-rotters will continue to fester away on supermarket shelves until the second coming of Christ or we all start breathing glucose.

The only thing you should take for certain from these articles? Diane Sawyer doesn't give a shit about Cap'n Crunch.

Check out this interesting article about Askers and Guessers. The general idea of the article is that there are two types of people: those who will make a request regardless of the likelihood of approval (askers), and those who will analyze a situation to decide the likelihood of getting a "yes" and not ask at all if approval seems unlikely (guessers). Guessers, they say, find asker requests uncomfortable, rude and overly forward, because they assume that everyone else is an asker and only makes requests when they believe they'll get a yes (and meaning they assume the guesser will say yes to their "outrageous" request, which the guesser clearly does not want to do). Askers, conversely, just ask, with the belief that the other will say no if they don't want to do the request.

If that was unclear - and I'm almost certain it was - read the article. I don't know why I try to summarize things already concisely written.

Anyway, I know that I am a lifelong guesser, and have always felt like askers are socially inept simpletons. However, the article suggests that neither strategy is wrong, but rather that it is the clash of the two that causes problems. Apparently Russian culture is an asker dominated culture, and they find Americans (who are predominately guessers) rude and pretentious.

Anyway, an odd look at human behavior. I would argue that guessers, as people who consider their surroundings and try to think out situations, are arguably more intellectual than their asker counterparts. A dog can ask for anything he wants - but no dog will think through the likelihood of whether he'll be successful with his request.