Graeme

New Zealand will have their own general election either late this year or sometime next. I don't think Des will want to flee the Australian election and run straight into a New Zealand one (especially since the current party in power is a conservative one).

An interesting keyboard. It looks short (not the normal range) and the way the upper keyboard mimics the key depressions of the lower keyboard was fascinating. I managed to work that one out just before the video showed him playing the upper keyboard -- there's a different set of pipes configured for the upper keyboard. With the two keyboards linked, he gets the full set from both, but if he plays the upper keyboard, he gets the reduced set. I love pipe organs. The tone and texture is so rich

LOL -- very true. It's like any art form. Knowing what it is is very different to being able to create something yourself.

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence: Pink nuns that briefly dominated the NT gay rights movement

I agree with Cole's analysis, but when you look beyond bathrooms to change rooms, things get more complicated. Most male change rooms I've been in do not have a private area for a transgender male to get changed in. I don't know about female change rooms.

Just finished it today. Very nice. I agree that "heartwarming" is a very apt description

I usually prefer to wait for a story to be finished before I start reading. I'll hopefully have some time over the next couple of weeks to get to this one

Excellent news!

Ditto from me. Driver was one of the early authors that I fell in love with. I missed all the controversies that happened, but I'm more than pleased with the stories we still have access to.

I received an email last night letting me know that one of our members, ken84050, passed away last week. Ken was one of my editors for the early chapters of Leopards Leap before he became too sick to continue. Before that, he provided lots of positive feedback on my earlier novel Leopard Spots. I've asked Mike to post chapter 7 of Leopards Leap early as a dedication to Ken. R.I.P. Ken

Philippines elects first transgender politician

Dayne has just changed the name of the story. That's because the original title (Efrain and Cory) didn't match the way the story was turning out with two couples instead of one. He renamed it to "Wolf Like Me" but he's planning a second book, tentatively called "Wild Card". Oh, and chapter 19 was posted on the weekend...

I heard this on the radio this morning when I woke up. Shocking news. They reported that there had been other similar deaths but no one has been charged so far.

I've just read an article about how a bum-breathing turtle is helping to bring farmers and conservationists together. However, I still can't get past the idea of a turtle that breathes through it's bum... There are some truly weird and wonderful things in nature.

Sorry Colin, but I agree with Rutabaga on this. We all know that the ! is the negation operator. It's the use of the negation operator in a way that has nothing to do with a logical negation that's the hack. In this case, the term 'hack' is being used to mean using a function/feature in a way that it wasn't intended to be used to achieve a result that has nothing to do with the purpose of that function/feature. Indeed, I find the way it converts an undefined to true to be unsettling. I've worked with trinary logic for years, and the negation of the third value should not be true (or false). The negation of undefined should be undefined. For example, using SQL as a parallel case a boolean function can return one of three values: true, false, or null. The negation of these is: false, true, and null. That is, the negation of "null" in SQL is "null". Similarly in Prolog 2 (which I did my honour's thesis on), there were three possible results: true, false, and indeterminate. Again, the negation of indeterminate was indeterminate. This use of the negation of undefined in JavaScript to make it a defined value is at odds with other common uses of trinary logic in IT.

Very nice, though the thread title was a little misleading. It failed to indicated that the gay couple were already locked up and were simply being moved to a new secure location.

I've heard the same. I've also heard that some of the charges involve prison time if they're proven and that based on the information released to date, plus the large number of FBI agents involved in the investigation, they're not looking at misdemeanor charges. All in all, I know that both sides of politics are spinning this the way they want to spin it. That means that the truth as to what is going on is extremely well hidden. I'm going to wait to see what happens without any expectations as to what will, or will not, result.

Sorry, but most of the documents were classified after the fact, not all. I don't believe the FBI has stated she didn't break any laws -- they're still investigating. Who they charge (if anyone) remains to be seen. There are certainly arguments for why Hillary Clinton won't be charged, but there are also arguments as to why she should (given certain assumptions as to what has happened, since all the facts are not in the public domain). Personally, I'm still waiting to see what happens.

Nothing really surprising there, though the current era of ultra-partisan politics make the art of compromising extremely challenging. For many politicians, trying compromise is not worth it because they will lose needed support internally within the party and with their constituents if they're not seen to be ideologically pure. This applies to both sides of politics -- it's not a left- or right-wing problem (as the article indicates).

It's a cyclic thing. We've had this discussion before when the forums have gone quiet, though Colin's comments on lack of posting on stories is a valid one. In my case, I'm not getting a lot of reading done due to real-life commitments and I've developed the habit of preferring to wait for a story to be finished before starting to read it, which also constraints my ability to post about the stories as the chapters are published.

There's an interesting article at the Australian ABC: Australia's secret history of sexual fluidity Some of the things that I never knew were how in the early convict days, same-sex relationships seemed to relatively common and apparently accepted. The story of the prostitute who turned out to be a guy was also amusing...

It's going to be an election issue later this year. One major party says they'll legislated for marriage equality within 100 days of gaining office. The other says they'll hold a non-binding national plebiscite at some unknown stage after the election to find out if Australians really want marriage equality, and when (based on opinion polls they get the answer 'Yes') several members of that party have said they'll ignore that result and vote against marriage equality, anyway... Having said that, the leaders of both major parties are in favour of marriage equality. Unfortunately, both parties have members with strong views against marriage equality (such as the aforementioned politicians who want to have a plebiscite that they can then ignore if it doesn't go their way). There's a push to allow a conscience vote on the subject (that is, the politicians are not bound by party policy but can vote however they want), but only one party has currently agreed to do that... It will happen here, I'm confident of that, but we're going to have to wait until after the next federal election (which could be as early as July, or as late as November). Depending on which party wins the election will determine how quickly marriage equality occurs here.

I've seen reports of between 2% and 10% for the gay population. I suspect the lower number is for solely homosexual and the upper number is for solely and mostly homosexual. It may also depend on the question being asked (activity vs attraction). Interestingly, some major organisations have had to publicly list a figure for one reason or another. The UK government, for example, included a number (I can't remember what it was, but I think it was around 3%) as part of an impact assessment for some proposed legislation. The AFL here in Australia lists 8.6% of males and 15.1% of females reporting some same-sex attraction as part of their vilification and discrimination policy.

I remember listening to a tape of Tchaikovsky's music when I was in university (one of my friends loved classical music). I was amazed at how many of the pieces I knew. Things like the music from the Army Reserves ad (1812 overture), plus various cartoons (as already mention). I think the music of over half the tape was familiar to me, even though I hadn't ever explicitly sat down to listen to classical music before then.

'Inspiring' mother's regret at transgender son's story going viral I thought the original story had been posted here, but I couldn't find it. What I love about this article is the way it ends. The mother and son have written a book. Here's what they say about it: