This article was written on 13 Oct 2011 by Trigger warning for discussion of and graphic examples of threatening online harassment. The other day Mary posted Online harassment as a daily hazard, linking to s.e. smith’s On blogging, threats, and silence. I thought I might take the opportunity to talk…

1. Don’t eat at corner restaurants — they don’t have to be good to get a lot of traffic so they probably aren’t. 2. Eat different cuisines than the country you’re in. And I’m not referring to the lasagna from your hotel restaurant. Thai food in India is different than in Thailand – obviously. But…

I live the gay lifestyle, the gay lifestyle that is often mentioned by some Republican candidates for president. For those who are unfamiliar with the lifestyle, this is a typical day: 7:00 a.m. I wake up, and just as I have done every morning since puberty, I choose to be gay today. This will come…

Power and riches go together. But nowadays, they need political spin. Throughout history the very rich have usually also been the very powerful. And usually the very rich use that power to both protect themselves from the less well-off and to figure out ways to further enrich themselves. Often the…

by E.D. Kain on November 4, 2011 Will Wilkinson makes an important observation about the affinity between libertarians and conservatives. At the heart of the fusionism between the two groups, he explains, is the notion of individual responsibility. Whereas libertarians and conservatives attribute…

While I have a bone or two to pick with the God of the Old Testament, I've always found it interesting that threads of startlingly progressive ideas weave their way through the otherwise harsh world of ancient monotheism. Yes, Yahweh told His followers to slaughter the men, women, and children of…

Posted on October 28, 2011 by Patrick in Uncategorized If there was one course I could add to every engineering education, it wouldn’t involve compilers or gates or time complexity. It would be Realities Of Your Industry 101, because we don’t teach them and this results in lots of unnecessary pain…

During the last two weeks, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, by most accounts on the brink of a presidential candidacy, has reversed himself on the question of the proper venue for dealing with the two of the hoariest cultural issues in American politics, same-sex marriage and abortion. First, at a Republican…

The latest from the military dictatorship that benefits from progressives' favorite water. By Anna Lenzer on Wed. August 12, 2009 12:00 AM PDT THE INTERNET CAFÉ in the Fijian capital, Suva, was usually open all night long. Dimly lit, with rows of sleek, modern terminals, the place was packed at all…

In 2001, when I was 28, I broke up with my boyfriend. Allan and I had been together for three years, and there was no good reason to end things. He was (and remains) an exceptional person, intelligent, good-looking, loyal, kind. My friends, many of whom were married or in marriage-track…

Isn’t it easy to point at someone really successful, listing the reasons why he’s so successful, but also the reasons he made it but you can’t? We do this all the time. We see a famous CEO and point how “he took 5 companies public and got a Harvard MBA.” We see a successful children’s book author…

I am a female nerd. Apparently. I cannot tell you when it became trendy to be a nerd, but it definitely happened at some point in the last ten years. I think it was probably around the same time that all the hip kids started wearing big thick-rimmed glasses (actual vision problems optional) and the…

[Re-posted from earlier today.] I can't put it better than this longtime Dish reader: Personally, I am praying that Obama's messaging improves drastically. (It has failed on multiple occasions - not the least of which was during August/September of 2008.) The truth is that this President has done a…

Every generation finds, eventually, a mode of expression that suits it. Cavemen drew lines on their cave walls. Sixties kids marched. My generation, we Gchat, a million tiny windows blinking orange with hopes and dreams and YouTube links, with five-year plans and lunch plans. So as I began to search…

I am a baby boomer. Like many people my age, I have a high-paying and generally pleasant job, which features excellent benefits and a flexible work schedule. I’m also one of those people who, not long ago, would have dismissed the Occupy Wall Street protesters as just another bunch of spoiled kids,…

Skip to main content Wed Oct 12, 2011 at 09:01 AM PDT by Max Udargo I briefly visited the “We are the 53%” website, but I first saw your face on a liberal blog. Your picture is quite popular on liberal blogs. I think it’s because of the expression on your face. I don’t know if you meant to look…

Hello beauty. Glad to have you here. If you're one of my kind, sign up for my RSS feed -- or better yet, subscribe to my list in that box in the corner. I posed topless for a female photographer who specializes in boudoir. I’m lying on the bed in a man’s velvet smoking jacket, hair blown across my…

Published in the November/December 2010 Humanist The following is adapted from Bill Nye’s speech in acceptance of the 2010 Humanist of the Year Award, presented at the 69th Annual Conference of the American Humanist Association in San Jose, California. First of all, thank you very much for this…

Marijuana is currently regulated by the United States government as a Schedule I drug, placing it in the same category as heroin, MDMA and LSD. This is largely due to the first condition of Schedule I drugs, which is that the substance “has a high potential for abuse.” The language in that clause is…

"The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion" When the Anti-Choice Choose By Joyce Arthur Copyright © September, 2000 ** A supporter has translated this article into Belorussian: click here to read the translation** Abortion is a highly personal decision that many women are sure they'll never have to…

A doctor’s primary responsibility is to heal, and all of our efforts and resources should be devoted to that goal. At times, it is impossible to restore a patient to perfect health and he or she must unfortunately deal with some degree of chronic disability. Still other times, though, the line…

(Photo: Carolyn Tiry / Flickr) Barbara Stanwyck: "We're both rotten!" Fred MacMurray: "Yeah - only you're a little more rotten." -"Double Indemnity" (1944) Those lines of dialogue from a classic film noir sum up the state of the two political parties in contemporary America. Both parties are rotten…

Today I’m feeling 101-y, I guess, so let’s talk about privilege. It’s a weird word, isn’t it? A common one in my circles, it’s one of the most basic, everyday concepts in social activism, we have lots of unhelpful snarky little phrases we like to use like “check your privilege” and a lot of our…

This is — by far — my favorite aspect of working at GitHub. Everything is asynchronous. GitHub didn’t have an office for the first two years. Chat rooms (in our case, Campfire) is where things got done. Today we’ve moved into our second office, and Campfire is still where we get things done. There’s…

August 16, 2011 You're reading part one of , a three-post journey into how we work at GitHub. They're all separate posts on different topics, but if you're interested you can also read the other two soon. Frederick Winslow Taylor wrote the seminal analysis of management and efficiency in 1911 with…

EDIT: Comments on this post are now locked. Some jackhole came onto MY blog and insulted my wife. I cannot be fair, impartial or unbiased about that. Full disclosure: I am a former Permanent Member of the Drupal Association. While I am no longer associated with the organization, I do have reasonably…

Here’s a guest post by Justin Griffith. Justin is well known for his fight against the idea that “there are no Atheists in Foxholes”. He was recently profiled in the New York Times for his activism. A little while ago, news broke about a Pastafarian winning the right to wearing a pasta strainer on…

What would happen if you got to work one day, went into the kitchen, and saw a list of your employees' salaries taped to the fridge? Would you freak out? Would you expect to find half of your staff weeping and the other half waiting with pitchforks outside your office door? Because salary…

Well, this is a positive development: a reader sent me a link to an article about people who originally became vegetarians for ethical reasons, but are now converting to being “ethical” meat-eaters: A feisty vegetarian since age 12, Berlin Reed was a self-described “punk” who swore to abstain from…

Posted 4 months ago 75 Notes Excerpt from “How To Play In Traffic”, Penn Jillette and Teller, 1997 (out of print). This is long, but for my money, it’s the best thing about the space shuttle ever written. Buddy Hackett said, “Ask me what’s the secret of comedy.” Johnny Carson started to say, “What’s…

How our brains fool us on climate, creationism, and the vaccine-autism link. By Chris Mooney on Mon. April 18, 2011 3:00 AM PDT Read also: Kate Sheppard on the smear campaign behind Climategate. "A MAN WITH A CONVICTION is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts…

This article could easily be subtitled “The Study That Tells You Everything You Need To Know About Insulin, Blood Sugar, Carbohydrates, Satiety, And Obesity”. Yes, I admit to a degree of hyperbole—but this study is so well instrumented and controlled, and its results so informative, that I believe…

While at Drupalcon I couldn't help but want to get involved in core development of Drupal. I have been involved on the fringe of Drupal core development for a number of years, and I've found bugs, submitted patches, tested others' patches, fixed others' patches and contributed documentation, but to…

Creative Commons License April 2, 2011 Let’s come up with an analogy and then torture it like we’re the Cheney administration: imagine you’ve just purchased a plot of land. What are you going to do, mine or farm? If you farm, you’ll have to purchase seed up-front, and work on it for a season before…