make an effort

Residents of St. Paul who happen to be queer: Don't make out in front of the Republicans attending the GOP Convention. You can identify delegates because they'll be wearing power ties.

On the one hand, the message of this ad seems to be that Republicans have horrible gaydar. On the other hand, it seems to be that Republicans are so intolerant that they won't even be able to handle the residents of a city they're visiting. I'm not going to make any argument about both or either of these being true, but I'm really intrigued by the ads. I can't imagine that they're doing much to discourage PDAs, especially among what's been a pretty politically active lgbtq community.

The organization responsible for the ads, the Unconvention, is a non-partisan group involved in participatory culture. The slogan is "unscripting the political process." To me, it seems like a kind of less interesting version of Otpor.

Landmark Achievement for Neverending Jeremiad

If you google "jeremiad" and go to the 34th entry, guess what you find. Us! Just as a reference point, Bercovitch's e-book is the 31st. We're famous!

The Old Negro Space Program- Ken Burns Parody

Japanese gadget to mask the sound of women pooping

Adjunct Professor Fired for Not Signing Loyalty Oath

Wendy Gonaver was hired by Cal-Sate Fullerton last fall to teach American Studies and Women’s Studies. As part of her American Studies course, she had planned to teach a section on McCarthyism. But she wasn’t allowed to teach at all because she refused to sign the loyalty oath that the state of California still insists that its employees sign...

http://www.progressive.org/?q=mag_mc050608

real man of genius

An Illinois man has had a PBR-can coffin designed for his own use when he dies. Since he's got a few years left in him, he's currently using it as a cooler.

Texas Showdown to close in May

See this in the Statesman.

What a bunch of codshit. Blah blah corporate real estate bastards blah gentrification blah development blah loss of character. What a shame.

Disney-produced propaganda piece used for foreigners waiting in line to be fingerprinted and retinascanned

the war on fat children

If you haven't come across it, I highly recommend Sandy Swarcz's smart as hell blog, Junkfood Science. She publishes assesssments of health science reporting, often exposing places where the reading public is being grossly misled. Particularly illuminating is a recent post showing some of the problems with reports on the healthy eating initiatives being deployed in public schools -- best she can tell, they're not lowering obesity (childhood obesity being a sort of troubling concept anyway, as children's weights fluctuate as they grow and the childhood obesity epidemic corresponding with the children who've had the best health and longest life expectancy of any children in history), and may actually be leading to some behaviors that are actually unhealthy (eating fewer fruits and vegetables in general, and undereating for girls).

Why don't we ever do this?

Students from Randolph College's Program in American Culture visit a brothel:

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8VVQARG0&show_article=1

Rick Perry and the Boy Scouts

Here's one for you, Danny. Do you guys remember when Mark used to tell us stories about fighting with Rick Perry on sleepovers? Here is a funny interview with Deborah Solomon in which Rick defends his decision to write a book and give all the money to the Boy Scouts' legal defense fund (yeah, they're defending their right to keep the Scouts hypothetically "gay-free").

shit

Let's not let this blog die!

loltheorists

loltheorists -- It's like cat macros, though somehow, even nerdier. And, of course, Henry Jenkins has posted about having his image used on loltheorists. So meta.

Eames, all day all night

Possibly only interesting to those in Jeff's class last year: the Eames are (or Charles Eames is?) getting a stamp, this summer.