Or, things I will yell at my children to make them see how easy they have it.

• The Internet (Ok, fine. The World Wide Web)
  “In my day, Google was called the library, and ran on the blood, sweat, and tears of librarians! Craigslist was published in the newspaper! YouTube was hosted by Bob Saget!”
• Cell Phones (Ok, fine. Modern (2G+) cell phones)
  “In my day, when you left the house, that was it! You were incommunicado. If you wanted to reach someone, the best you could hope for was that at some point they would come home. Also you had to dial the phone with a fucking wheel.”
• MP3s/Digital Video/eBooks
  “In my day, the only way to steal music was to outsmart the security guards at Sam Goody! Also, sometimes I had to rewind things!”
• Digital Cameras
  “In my day, you couldn’t just take pictures willy nilly! You had to buy film, and lug around your gigantic, expensive camera, and afterwards take it to some guy who would charge you for every photo, even the ones where your finger was in front of the lens. The only way to tag your friends was to bring the photo over their house and say ‘Look, that’s you!’”

So I have been terrible at blogging lately, and I won’t stop now, but here is a pittance for the month of June.

The only thing worse than people who don’t reply all when they should, is people who do reply all when they shouldn’t. Not replying all on a mail when what you’re saying is pertinent to everyone is rude. Replying to everyone when your potentially private message is just for the sender makes you look incompetent, and possibly like an asshole.

Mind your Tos and Ccs!

The key to strong, solid ice cubes that pop out of the tray whole and don’t crack into pieces is to not stack the trays. The bottom one is always crap. Totally worth the extra freezer space.

This article about a white (naturally) Tea Party “rapper” from NJ is priceless. Some highlights:

The Brick resident, a born-again Christian who is currently unemployed, mixes conservative manifestos with hip-hop beats.

“I’m just doing this because I don’t know what else to do with myself.”

He took the stage to perform the anthem, “Patriotic People,” which contains such lines as “This is the USA, not the USSR. We need more Ann Coulter, less Bill Maher.”

“I figured, rather than relying on Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity to get the message out there, I could rap to reach younger people because it’s coming in a format they understand. They don’t understand Bill O’Reilly using words like ‘pithy,’ his little catchwords.”

He did go through a gangsta phase, celebrating the lifestyle by partying (not the tea kind) and selling drugs, which led to 14 months in county jail.

“This isn’t a bunch of boring people who just listen to one kind of music. Don’t get me wrong. I love country music, but we have an edge, too.”

“Hip-hop needs more positivity,” says Cal. “It should be telling people to get off of welfare, get off the corner, stop selling drugs, stop disrespecting your beautiful black queen.”

Cal is happy to call himself Mr. Conservative and rap exclusively at Tea Party gatherings. “I’ve limited myself to rallies and marches because any other hip-hop venue I’d get booed off stage.”

Is he angry about paying taxes on his unemployment checks? Or worried that Obama will take away the health insurance he likely doesn’t have? Just curious.

In the course of doing his job being an ignorant religious bigot, Mike Huckabee said the following:

“You don’t go ahead and accommodate every behavioral pattern that is against the ideal,” he said of same-sex marriage. “That would be like saying, well, there are a lot of people who like to use drugs, so let’s go ahead and accommodate those who want who use drugs. There are some people who believe in incest, so we should accommodate them. There are people who believe in polygamy, so we should accommodate them.”

Oh, right! Because that would be like saying: “There are some people who believe in evangelical Christianity, so we should accommodate them.” But that would be ridiculous! Since evangelicals are

• more likely to have their teens get pregnant
• more likely to be racist
• more likely to support torture
• less likely to be educated

That can hardly be considered to be “the ideal” behavioral pattern. Perhaps it should be illegal, Mike?

Or maybe we could just practice tolerance toward consenting adults who make different decisions than we do.

I have such a huge crush on Neil deGrasse Tyson. He’s so passionate when speaking about science it practically makes me cry. Between 2:00 and 3:00 is my favorite.

It was a good day to visit the Union Square farmer’s market:

With some friends:

There was a big pillow fight (which was somewhat hard to see from where we were):

Then we had coffee (mine is the boring one):

Fun.

A recent meta-study showed that strong religious belief is positively correlated with racism. Of course, correlation does not imply causation. So it’s not clear whether religious belief causes people to become racist, racism causes people to become religious, or some third factor causes both (poor critical thinking skills, for example).

In any case, it’s yet another nail in the coffin of the idea that religion is a source of morality. In fact, the two seem increasingly to be in conflict.

That’s right, suck it, James

The Hurt Locker wins Best Picture, with director Kathryn Bigelow picking up Best Director (the first woman to earn the prize, ever). Avatar gets Art Direction, Visual Effects, and Cinematography. I completely agree.

Avatar was a special effects extravaganza, and James Cameron deserves props for pulling off another mega-successful blockbuster. But the movie was entirely about the visuals. The story was cookie-cutter: predictable and trite. The characters were one-dimensional; the acting was mediocre. It was like these elements were after-thoughts, like Cameron needed something to wrap around his (admittedly impressive) new technology. An extremely accurate and ridiculous review here.