Gee Whillickers

I've never seen the show either. But I feel exactly the same way about stereotypes. It's strange, we seem to have a very hard time getting rid of stereotypes. When one becomes unfashionable and offensive, we simply move, as a society, onto something else. Another example of this is plain old-fashioned gender-stereotyping. Many of us may remember the old TV and print ads from years gone by, the ones stereotyping and ridiculing women, and placing them squarely into limited and defined roles. This doesn't much happen any more, but ads often seem to, for whatever reason, be written with some kind of derogatory humor, so now if it's present it's inevitably the guy in the ad who is depicted as the buffoon. Kind of sad.

I'm there now. Also alone :(

Happy Birthday Mike! Go ahead, take a break, you've earned it! ... Okay, that's enough. Now get to work posting those Halloween stories. I've got me some reading to do!

Did someone say hockey?!?

Oh, now you've done it. I started re-reading this wonderful story and am already into chapter 4. I do need to get some sleep you know! Harumph. Well...maybe just one more chapter...

Many, but not all, of our private and chartered schools here are religious in nature, and have morality clauses of various types. Even more annoying to folks like me is that we have, in my and in many jurisdictions, two parallel public school systems. The public school system, and the catholic school system. Both are funded through taxes. Parents choose which system their child will attend. Obviously, if I happened to be a Hindu, or a Buddhist, or a Bahá'ís, or what have you, I would and should have a valid argument for why my child couldn't receive equal funding for their education in my religion. How the funding works is this: during the census every few years, you mark down if you support the public or the catholic system. Funding for the systems is calculated based on the proportions for each. Again, one can quickly see the flaws in this system. Not to mention the wasted resources of having two complete, but competing, publicly funded systems in the same city. In any case, students (and staff to a large degree) face this sort of discrimination all the time in the publicly funded catholic school system. Sigh.

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/the-hidden-war-against-gay-teens-20131010?curator=MediaREDEF

Even worse, the studio apparently wants the movie to be "biblically accurate" while the director wants a bit more leeway to actually try and make a movie that someone might want to see. http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2013/10/18/source-studio-wants-noah-blockbuster-to-be-biblically-accurate-director-feels/

That's a great video! Very entertaining and well done. However, I see your Armstrong/Kaye and raise you Gangnam Style done in heavy metal:

In many parts of Canada, low-income housing (which often generates many of the social problems that lead to adolescent violence) is handled a bit differently than in other places. When developers build a new community, certain parts of it must be available for that community's low-income housing complex. Almost every neighbourhood, as a result, has such a complex in it or near it. The result of this is that the kids that live there are exposed to kids that aren't part of the self-defeating culture that often pervades those areas in other places. Those kids hang out with, go to school with, are involved in recreation with, kids from other backgrounds. And low-income people aren't all concentrated together in an environment. It works, kind of. Of course, it's not that simple (what ever is?) Higher income communities find ways around the rules, by building them in more rural areas with different standards, laws, and zoning. So they don't have to deal with the "riff-raff." Medium income communities tend to work hard to isolate the low-income complex with the use of retail strips, fences, placement of various facilities, etc. Developers, of course, follow the letter of the law, but know where the money comes from, so often do their best to muddy the issue. Also, the culture goes both ways. Kids from communities without the self-defeating culture can and do get exposed to the more negative culture and, if they don't have enough family and community support otherwise, get drawn into it where perhaps they would not have if the access wasn't so easy. Finally, of course, despite this some areas of every city obviously are lower-rent than others. So a natural build-up happens despite the best intentions of community activists.

That's the problem with censorship. There's never, and cannot be, a clear-cut dividing line between what is reasonable and acceptable and what is unreasonable and unacceptable. Once the line is there, even is it's in a spot that most are reasonably happy with, that line gets moved. In every culture, in every government almost without fail, that line gets moved. Slowly, but inexorably, things get added to it. A bit at a time. "Oh, well, this is obviously distasteful. We'll make that illegal, too." Then two months later, "Well, this is almost related to that. So it falls under the same category." In a few short years, more is illegal than not, and the choices of what is illegal have more to do with ensuring those with the resources can keep the resources and far less to do with objective consequences or cultural standards.

To all you other Canadians out there: Happy Thanksgiving!! To everyone else wondering why their Canadian online friends are ignoring them today: It's because they'll be too busy sitting on the couch groaning after over-eating turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes while watching hockey games. Try again tomorrow.

Just read the story, Lug. A fun romp, in more ways than one. I liked the banter, and though I don't know much about drag racing, motorcycles are more my thing, it made me want to go out for a ride just to feel the engine purring beneath me. After tuning it properly of course. :) The fuel, air, spark, and timing thing for both the cars and the boys was well done.

...and then this kind of thing happens. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/police-charge-19-year-old-in-violent-attack-on-gay-n-s-man-1.2053308

Okay, that makes sense. But as for the California Proposition 8 results, how does that explain the results from the votes in Canada and in other countries that were fairly strongly in favor of gay marriage?

Very interesting, but desperately needs corroboration and peer review, and maybe more controls? I'd really like to hear more about this study. The study recruited participants online. How was this done? Sounds already like a self-selected group, which means biased results.

As always, I wrestled with the almost insurmountable urge to read this tale chapter by chapter as they were posted or to be patient and then like a labrador retriever loose in a dog treat factory, gobble everything down whole, at once, and as fast as possible. The retriever won. I blame Cole's sigpic. Of course, he is also to blame for me losing hours and hours of writing time in trying to complete my Halloween story. So if it doesn't come to fruition, now you all know who to blame, so allow me to carry on with my thoughts. Wow. What a story. Opening chapter I immediately felt like a kid again reading one of my Dad's old pulp novels. I was drawn in, and desperately trying to figure out how and where the theme I was expecting could be woven into this story. Silly me. Of course, it was done masterfully and fit perfectly. The POV change was handled with skill and without the often jarring effect this can produce. The character development was all Cole Parker, and that is the highest compliment I can think of to explain this. The plot ufolded in a wonderful and skillful blend of an old detective pulp and a coming-of-age tale. Thanks for writing this, Cole. It was thoughtful, provocative, elicited memory and emotion both past and present, and had me cheering and rooting for our characters. I was even grinning madly when the middle aged heterosexual man proposed to his female heterosexual girlfriend and she said yes. How about that?

I had to laugh at all your news stations showing a countdown timer to the government shutdown yesterday. Here's one: Up here in Canada, we too had our countdown timers on CBC yesterday and today. Only, ours looked like this: Yes, it's that wonderful time of year, the start of the new hockey season!!!!

...Can I come and plunder resources? Set up a few city-states? Maybe just annex Washington, Montana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Vermont, and Maine? (Sorry about skipping North Dakota, but, well, you understand) So I guess I should be expecting a marked increase in day-to-day efficiency for the next little while? I can barely imagine the sudden productivity surge here if my government got out of the way for a wee bit, and can only imagine it must be somewhat similar down there.

Take a look: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/28/straight-men-defriended-gay-brother-wedding_n_4003126.html

I can't imagine writing in longhand. I'm one of those people who struggles to read back what I've written in longhand, unless I take great care and attention and write slowly. It's that atrocious. My teachers almost completely gave up on trying to get me to improve legibility by the time I was twelve or thirteen, and just asked the I print instead of write. I can type, however, with the best of them. I could never write anything except fridge notes and grocery lists in longhand. And I admit, sometimes I find myself in aisle 7 at the grocery store scratching my head and thinking, "What the *#?$ does this say?"

I just finished the English version. Bravo to both Engor for the wonderful world building and characters and to David Clarke for the translation. I am eagerly awaiting book 2!

What I like about it is the consistency and normality of it. She knows enough that showing her son that nothing has changed is the best way to say, "I love you." And she does that in spades. In this case, "clean your room," means, "I love you, son."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzFnV3vwqD0