Graeme

Okay, it's not just me, then Thank you! EDIT TO ADD: It seems to be back up. Also received confirmation that it was down for a period of time.

Is anyone else having trouble accessing Gay Authors at the moment? I tried last night and again this morning. I seem to have two different problems. The first is that the site appears to have disappeared from my ISP's DNS server (I'm using Australia's iiNet ISP). I switched over to using OpenDNS and that gave me the IP address, but I can't connect. It tried a tracert and it shows a problem somewhere in the USA: 9 26 ms 25 ms 26 ms ae2.br1.syd4.on.ii.net [150.101.33.22] 10 410 ms 186 ms 189 ms te0-1-1-3.br2.lax1.on.ii.net [150.101.33.195] 11 324 ms 201 ms 304 ms xe-7-0-3.edge2.LosAngeles9.Level3.net [4.53.230.45] 12 228 ms 227 ms 227 ms vlan70.csw2.LosAngeles1.Level3.net [4.69.144.126] 13 227 ms 226 ms 226 ms ae-72-72.ebr2.LosAngeles1.Level3.net [4.69.137.21] 14 226 ms 226 ms 228 ms ae-3-3.ebr3.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.69.132.78] 15 235 ms 228 ms 228 ms ae-63-63.csw1.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.69.151.133] 16 228 ms 228 ms 228 ms ae-61-61.ebr1.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.69.151.126] 17 384 ms 392 ms 521 ms ae-14-14.ebr2.Chicago2.Level3.net [4.69.151.117] 18 225 ms 226 ms 225 ms ae-205-3605.edge4.Chicago2.Level3.net [4.69.158.145] 19 226 ms 226 ms 225 ms EASY-ONLINE.edge4.Chicago2.Level3.net [4.35.103.10] 20 * * * Request timed out. 21 * * * Request timed out. Is anyone else having the same problem?

I know someone who uses text-to-speech software to listen to stories, and the different approach helps pick up on small errors that would otherwise slip through. I'm also an over-user of "that"... and "just" and ...

This sound similar to the story of Steven Stayner. I saw the TV mini-series many years ago -- very frightening. I can remember one scene where Steven is talking to a school-mate who mentions that Steven's "father" had tried to hit on him. Steven's reply was along the lines of "If he's doing that to you, then it means he's not doing it to me." Unfortunately, the school-mate didn't fully realise what that meant and didn't go to the police....

I'm also positive regarding the long term future of gay rights, for similar reasons. The article mentioned Wall Street as being a leader in LGBT rights for employees, but I'd have to say that I think the IT and banking industries wouldn't be too far off. I've worked for two large American multi-national IT companies and both had clearly stated policies regarding discrimination, and sexual orientation was explicitly listed as being a 'protected' status. Indeed, the anti-discrimination training course of one of them had an explicit example of discrimination against homosexuals as part of the training. As part of my job, I've also worked as a contractor at two leading Australian banks. Both of them require their contractors to go through a set of mandatory training courses, and both them included sexual orientation as part of their anti-discrimination training. So that's four large companies here in Australia, all with very similar policies. I suspect it'll be true of the other large companies, too. Of course, there's a difference between having a stated policy and active enforcement of that policy, but even there I've seen good signs. While I was at one of the banks, the leading social story on their internal website was about one of their employees coming out. It was featured as part of their internal ads, making it quite clear that the bank supported that employee. That's the most prominent I've seen, but there were signs at the other companies, too, that the policy wasn't just lip-service. I see it as a positive feedback cycle. By making it more acceptable to be gay, more people come out. As more people come out, the personal level of contact educates more people about being gay and makes it more acceptable, encouraging even more to come out. In at least most major Western countries, that feedback cycle has taken hold and it's becoming more and more acceptable to be gay.

I knew this was coming, but I didn't know when it would happen. What's different about this one is that it's unclear if anyone has the right to appeal the decision. The state officials have refused to defend the ban and hence won't appear, and the judge ruled that the National Organization for Marriage doesn't have standing and hence can't appeal, either. If so, then this is the final decision and Oregon is now another state where same-sex marriage is legal.

Maybe, maybe not. There are enough appeals in the pipeline that the Supreme Court is likely to take one, to either reverse all of them, clarify/revise the interpretation of Windsor that all the courts are currently using, or make it the law of the land that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right. It could be this one as much as any other. The interesting thing to me was the fact that the governor was talking about appealing even before the judge had announced their decision. The other tidbit of information is that in recent times, the decisions of the Ninth Circuit have been reversed by the Supreme Court more often than any other circuit. Being perverse, the Supreme Court may take this one just so they don't end up agreeing with the Ninth Circuit for once. I'm being facetious, but you never know....

Idaho Same-Sex Marriage Ban Nullified Again, the judge has not (yet) stayed the decision, which means that unless something happens in the next couple of days, Idaho can be added to the list of states in which it is legal for same-sex couples to marry At the moment, the decision takes affect from 9am (local time) on Friday. The interesting thing here is that the state's governor said before the decision was made that if the decision went against the state, they would be appealing for it to go directly to the Supreme Court, bypassing the normal process of a review by the Ninth Circuit court of appeals.

The problem is that it doesn't have to originate from you. One of the examples in the NY Times comments was an acquaintance that thought it'd be amusing to put the person's name on a petition about something. That petition entry now appears whenever someone searches for that person, even though it was about something that the person would never support. The example I gave above about false accusations is another -- the accusation and the charging can be easily found on the Internet, especially if reported by a newspaper, but the dropping of charges isn't usually newsworthy and hence doesn't get mentioned. One option that's been suggested is to have search results being returned, but to allow someone to 'dispute' the links and to have that information available with the results. For example, in the case that triggered the court case, the lawyer could've reported that the debt issues that appeared in the newspaper were resolved more than ten years ago, so there's not need to think there's a problem. There are statutes the specify time limits on quite a few things. For example, I believe credit history details are only to be kept for seven years (from memory). However, the Internet keeps those details for a lot longer. In non-major cases, is there an argument that a person should be allowed to have those details purged, since that's what the law specifies? Maybe Google and the other search engines need a feature that when searching for people, there's a time limit on what the initial search returns. That is, web pages older than X years are not initially returned, but there's a link to allow the display older pages. That will satisfy a lot of concerns, in that someone doing a search for employment (for example) would see the relevant (recent) information, but the older information is available for research or extended checking purposes. Lots of options to address the basic concern, though meeting the EU's constitutional right to privacy will be tricky. As one of the comments in the NY Times article said, this is right at the conjunction of Freedom of Speech with the Right to Privacy. One is primary in the USA, and the other is primary in the European Union. Reconciling the two is tricky....

There's been an interesting ruling by the European Court regarding the right to privacy: Google must honor request to delete links, E.U. court says (NY Times) The NY Times has an editorial Ordering Google to Forget on the topic, expressing concern from the point of view of press freedom. I've been reading the comments on the first article and I have to say that I agree that there is an issue here that needs addressing, but I also appreciate that the court decision may not be a good way of doing this. Of course, as one commenter said, a bad decision may still be better than the status quo. To summarise, if a Google search only retrieves part of the relevant information, that can be damaging to people. There are numerous examples in the comments (such the the divorcee who was falsely accused by his ex-wife of molesting the children -- the original charge is easily found in Google, but the fact that the charges were found to be baseless and were dropped was not). Similarly, for out of date information being retrieved with no indication that it is out of date (such as a discharged bankruptcy -- Google may find the newspaper article about the bankruptcy, but not the record saying it had been discharged). And, of course, the embarrassing photos/articles from the teenage years.... Privacy is especially important for the gay community, for those of us who are no fully out. I've personally had someone make a post on a gay site with my full name (I still have no idea how they got it), but the host was quick to redact that information and it never appeared in Google. I'm still partially in the closet to protect my children -- I don't want the fact that I'm gay to be widely associated with identifying information about me, at least not until my boys are a lot older. One has already been bullied at school -- I don't want to give the bullies another reason to pick on him (though I'd love it if having a gay father was so blasé that it wasn't a potential bullying reason). What are other people's thoughts? It's not an easy topic and I'm waiting to see what Google does to address the court ruling before I come out strongly for or against the decision.

We made the time to read to our kids. There are a lot of kids books that are easy and fun to read, especially those like the Hairy Maclary set of books that rhyme and have a good rhythm. I especially loved Slinky Malinki... Slinky Malinki was blacker than black; a stalking and lurking adventurous cat. He had bright yellow eyes and warbling wail, and a kink at the end of his very long tail. That was the opening stanza from memory, so my apologies if I got it wrong After that, we moved onto books that the boys were able to read themselves, with help. There was a great set that involved two young boy characters, and were written more like a screenplay. The boys had fun reading one part each, while I took the part of the narrator. Our eldest boy didn't like reading, but we kept pushing him, starting with comics (the Footrot Flats series, which I'm lucky enough to own the first eighteen) and then an variety of children's novels. He eventually became hooked on the Percy Jackson series. From there, his reading took off. The younger boy never had a problem with reading. He's now into computer games, but that still encourages reading because he visits the associated wiki pages online to learn more about how to play the games, as well as picking up odd bits of trivia. He was introduced to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books through a computer game when he read an online fictitious account of Slartibartfast describing how the planets in the Kerbel Space Program game could be constructed (all the while denying that those planets were, in fact, built by his people). I bought him the books last year and he devoured them in a couple of days. There are lots of opportunities to encourage kids to read. The key is to find something that interests them. If it's first-person shooter games, then get them some books on weapons or tactics. Finding age-appropriate books in that genre may be difficult, but persevere...sooner or later you'll stumble across something that interests them.

Please add Arkansas to the list of states where gay marriage is legal Arkansas judge strikes down gay marriage ban The interesting thing to note is that the judge did not stay his ruling. All such recent rulings have had the judge stay the decision while the state appeals. This judge has not done so. However, since he made his ruling after business on Friday, the state will probably act before Monday morning, preventing any gay marriages from taking place.

Now that chapter 15 is posted, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone, and to say that I'm working on the sequel. The sequel, 'Leopard Spots' will pick up from where Leopard Skin Cover finishes. I expect it'll be one or two months before I start posting the new story, though, as the writing is going slowly....

No idea on the exact rules, but I believe you need to show a reason for having a gun. For farmers and hunters, that's easy. I believe most gun ownership would fit into one of those two categories, with the majority of firearms being rifles. Handguns would have their own subset of users, but apart from gun clubs, there aren't a lot of reasons to own a handgun unless you work in the security field.

James is correct on the cultural differences, though. Guns are generally in rural communities in Australia -- there is little in the way of genuine gun ownership in the cities and towns. The vast majority of Australian citizens do not own a gun. That's in contrast to the USA where not only is there a sizeable percentage of people who own guns, but they are across the country -- rural and cities/towns. What works in Australia will not work in the USA. The culture/mentality is different, and the number of guns in the community already makes it implausible (if not impossible) to bring the percentage of gun ownership down significantly.

Thanks, Chris. Yes, it was exciting, but in many ways that was because of how low-key it was. The reason for people being there was acknowledged and there were some banners around, but otherwise it was just another suburban football match. There were no negative reactions that I saw. I saw a few guys that I suspected as being gay (including at least one couple), but they were just more faces in the crowd. Nothing special. And that's the way I hope it will always be in the future -- nothing special

The inaugural Pride Cup was played between the Yarra Glen and Yarra Junction Australian Rules football clubs on Saturday 3rd May. I was there (after receiving an email from one of the players) and I took a few photos. I'm uploading them over the next few days into my Australian Rules Football gallery over at GA. The Pride Cup is an example of a grassroots movement against homophobia. One of the major driving forces behind its creation is Jason Ball -- an openly gay player for Yarra Glen. The official footy record booklet for the competition from the Yarra Valley Mountain District Football and Netball League included a full page article under the heading of Country football takes on the homophobia challenge with pride. Before the game, both teams lined up and a few words were said regarding the occasion. The minister of the local Uniting Church then spoke for a couple of minutes before the national anthem was sung. The game then started. It turned out to be a largely one-sided affair. Yarra Glen dominated the game. I left at 3/4 time as I had to get home, but at that point in the game, Yarra Glen had kicked 14 goals to Yarra Junctions 1... The game made the national newspapers even though it was only a local competition, not an national or even statewide one. It was also supported by the AFL (Australian Football League), the very top level of Australian Rules Football competition.

Thank you! Australian Rules Football has some similarities to Gaelic football -- enough that there's an international challenge between the two codes each year. Sadly, the Irish have easily won the last couple of years. The international rules are a compromise between the two codes, using a round ball instead of an ovoid, as well as other changes. I used to know someone who played Australian Rules Football, Gaelic football and American football. He was a keen sportsman....

I've stumbled across this interesting story over at Gay Authors: 32 Faces It's only the second story I've ever read where the narrator is autistic, the other being The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. There's a lot of similarities between the protagonists in the two stories, especialy in their skill with mathematics, but the stories are otherwise very different. I'll admit that one of the endearing things in The Curious Incident was the narrator's decision to not number the chapters sequentially, but rather by using the Fibonacci sequence (meaning that there were two chapter 1's). However, I'm getting off track... 32 Faces takes its title from the number of different facial expressions the narrator recognises in his brother. I'm currently up to chapter 7, and it's completely taken my interest away from working on my own novel. I know I'm not going to get any writing done until I finish it....

Thank you, Chris I wasn't aware that there was a law that made it a misdemeanor for a church to conduct particular religious ceremonies. That law appears to be clearly unconstitutional. The law can state that certain religious ceremonies don't have a legal recognition, but they can't easily make those ceremonies illegal (human sacrifice being an obvious exception....)

To be fair, one of the comments on the article points out the major flaw with this approach: However, as someone else pointed out in the comments, it's a great counterpoint to those who use religious freedom arguments for denying gay marriage, even if legally it probably doesn't have a leg to stand on.

While I love reading SF, I hate writing it. Coming up with a self-consistent set of rules and restrictions is my biggest bugbear. What's the nature and limits of the telepathy? I think I'd be too much constrained by John Brunner's Telepathist (I picked up a copy a few years ago, though I originally read it when I was a teenager).

Just found it: Hey Mikey by Steve Thomas. The twin isn't introduced until chapter 9.

I read a story on Nifty with a similar concept -- identical twins separated at birth. When they encountered each other and started to share their stories, they realised that both had had imaginary friends as children, with the name being the nickname of the other twin. They also slowly developed a telepathic connection as well as a deep love for each other. Things got complicated when one of the twins, who was raised as a Mormon, went off on his mission....

As an aside, as I understand it the majority of Muslims don't live in the middle east. Indonesia is the largest (by population) Islamic country, and they're not (as a general rule) radicals. Also, to reinforce something Nigel said above, it's the second generation of immigrants that are forming gangs in western Sydney and making the news with the problems they're causing. The first and third generations are typically not involved to any significant degree.