My Pitt address will expire at the end of this month. Anyone who still has me at an e-mail @pitt.edu should message me in the next three weeks for an update....

[California] Supreme Court says same-sex couples have right to marry

(05-15) 10:24 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- Gays and lesbians have a constitutional right to marry in California, the state Supreme Court said today in a historic ruling that could be repudiated by the voters in November.

In a 4-3 decision, the justices said the state's ban on same-sex marriage violates the "fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship." The ruling is likely to flood county courthouses with applications from couples newly eligible to marry when the decision takes effect in 30 days.

Current Mood: ecstatic

I WANT!

via the wonderfully-named Words For Nerds...

Current Mood: dorky

I don't know if anyone who reads this has ever heard of Amaya, a combination HTML-editor and web browser put out by the group that creates the definition of what HTML is.
(I don't know if anyone reads this, actually, but that's beside the point I suppose, and I'm not sure I actually want to find out....)

The spell checker, in at least the two most recent versions of the program, knows the word Californium.... but not California.

(Actually, it doesn't seem to know any of the states' names.... or, for that matter, Mexico.)

Addendum:  Perhaps the best 'word-not-found', however, is it's suggestion that by 'Christ' I really meant 'Thrust'.  Thus forming.... the United Church of Thrust.

You know, I could get behind that.

• ManMan will be at Mr Small's in Millvale Sat Mar 22. They'll also be in Austin for SXSW and again on April 30; while there are assorted dates in New York, Baltimore (tonight!), Boston, and all over the Deep South (WTF?), it looks like nothing in Philadelphia or Seattle. Look for yourself (and buy tickets) here.
• From the NY Observer, via Inkless Wells: Hillary Clinton campaign forces reporters to work in the bathroom at a campaign stop in Texas. Another great photo over at Huffington Post. Apparently they were served dinner there, too---tamales.
  
• This one especially for byzantine_ruins  , from the Chronicle of Higher Education's blog: Are Private Student Loans the Next Subprime Mortgages?
• Several more links, including the full text of the Chronicle post (which may be blocked for those not on a university campus), what if the Dutch had never left New Amsterdam?, and the weaknesses, excuse me, future strengths, of academic libraries, are here.

Just in case you'd been wondering about the state of France's president recently (not good), check out the blog of Maclean's Canada columnist Paul Wells, such as this post from Feb. 7:

Depending how you measure these things, today [Feb. 7] just happens to be a strong contender for the worst day of the Sarkozy presidency. Largely this is because Thursday, in France as in Canada, is when the newsweeklies hit the newsstands. Here's a tour of the headlines:
Le Point: Picture of Sarko looking worried. "What's Not Working."
L'Express: Near-identical picture. "The Disappointment: Why The French Are Abandoning Him."
[js: this one's my favorite:]Le Nouvel Observateur: Picture of Sarkozy and his new wife out for a stroll. "The President Who Goes Pschitt," i.e. like a balloon losing air, although the word is pronounced as you suspect it might be.

It's been nearly two entire months since I changed my username, and I still find myself trying to use the old one 3/4 of the times I log in. . .



On the off chance you're interested in reading things I've found interesting elsewhere on Teh Net, try here: my Google Reader shared items pseudoblog. It's largely librariany stuff, because, well, that's most of the blogs I read off-lj, but there's other stuff there, too, like this review of a Tallahassee restaurant ("Chance I’d eat here again: 100%") which contains, more importantly for those of us unlikely to ever actually get to Tallahassee, a recipe for Deep Winter Oyster Chowder which looks utterly fabulous. (While you're over there, check out also this fabulous excerpt from a soon-to-be-published essay of hers, The Outlaw Bride...)

Kimchi in space!!

When South Korea’s first astronaut, Ko San, blasts off April 8 aboard a Russian spaceship bound for the International Space Station, the beloved national dish will be on board.

Three top government research institutes spent millions of dollars and several years perfecting a version of kimchi that would not turn dangerous when exposed to cosmic rays or other forms of radiation and would not put off non-Korean astronauts with its pungency.

The first of Pine Township's Frequently Asked Questions is Who do I call to have someone pick up a dead deer?

so about a year ago, Detroit's Metro Times weekly did a cover story about the All Media Group, the Ann Arbor company behind the All Music Guide.

It came with a sidebar, cleverly titled The name game: Monitoring marvelous musical monikers.

For some unknown reason, each of the real bands or performers listed decided to name themselves something that is a little off the beaten path. Below is a document featuring a list of the funny band names that we have been keeping a running tally on.

SF Chronicle: Living Dead Join Forces For Obama

OK, that's not exactly the headline on the article, but I couldn't pass it up.

Evangelicals a Liberal Can Love - Nicholas Kristof:

At a New York or Los Angeles cocktail party, few would dare make a pejorative comment about Barack Obama’s race or Hillary Clinton’s sex. Yet it would be easy to get away with deriding Mike Huckabee’s religious faith.

kdavoli

The AP is reporting that Bill Richardson will drop out of the race for President tomorrow.

This makes pretty much every candidate I'd actually considered worth the effort of supporting, gone already after less than a week. Way to go, Democratic Party. Awesome demonstration of the power of rich white people in small, nearly meaningless states Democracy.

Current Mood: apathetic

Perhaps I'm just sour because I live in a state---Pennsylvania---whose primary is so late as to be almost meaningless, but I hope both of you will reconsider your decisions to abandon your candidacies for President.

The Times reported this morning that a record number of people went to Iowa caucuses last night---over 239,000. That's barely 3/4 the population of my city, Pittsburgh, alone, and only 1/6 the population of my county. I urge you both not to let such a small---let alone such an unrepresentative---sample of people decide the future of the nation.

[see also NY Times Editorial Board's blog post from yesterday afternoon, "Report from Iowa: Democracy It Ain’t".]

juicycat is now mrfishes

From the Cincinnati Enquirer:  Robbers: Tuition Was Motive

quick, because i'm at work, but i thought i'd share this interesting piece about learning to lose gracefully. . .

I have a file which is essentially a list of discrete objects, organized into groups. (In this case, they're recipes grouped by main ingredient, but they could also be jobs grouped by type for a resume, or whathaveyou.)

I would like to make it possible to abstract things so that I can pick certain items out (for example, for a "book" of my fiancee and I's favourite recipes, or the recipes using ingredients from the farm share we bought this summer; or for a particular type of resume. . .) without having to copy and paste all over the place, which of course leads to data loss or at best inconsistency of style.

Additionally, while things are currently written in LaTeX, I'd love to also be able to wring HTML+CSS out of this thing, so I can post things online if I want.

I was never very good at object-oriented programming, which I fear this has become. . . .
Can anyone give me some ideas, or at least point me at some places where I can find some ideas to beat up and kidnap?

(xp tex_latex and the_corner_geek, in addition to my own journal.)

"Spirit in the Sky" has been stuck in my head for most of the last half hour. . .this is getting kinda old.

Current Mood: annoyed

i'm turning 25 in six weeks. eeep.


so, there'll be a party. the question is, which week should we have it? my birthday's on a damned Thursday, so we could do it either the Saturday before (the 22nd) or the Saturday after (the 29th). [Either way, the schedule will probably be something like: food and drinks at our house from 6ish to 10ish, then adjourning to the Monterey Irish Pub so we'll be less likely to wake up the neighbors' newborn.]

neither of us much care which weekend we have it on, so i'm opening it up to the horde, especially all you out-of-towners (which is most of you): Should we have my birthday party on Yom Kippur (the 22d) or Sukkot (the 29th)? Which would you be better able to/make you more likely to drag your ass(es) into town for?

sometimes the midwest is an interesting place.

last night we came home to find bits of our bedroom window screens all over the floor and the porch. . . .

based on the feather bits tangled in some of the screen bits, and the blood on one of the curtains that didn't come from any of our animals, we think one of the red-tailed hawks that live in the area thought one of the cats would make a tasty dinner.

all animals, however, were accounted for---and in one piece. Now we just need to get those screens fixed. . . .

Pitt's HR system has got to be one of the worst websites I have ever had to deal with---worse even than Pitt itself's website.

But, I have now applied for a OMG-real-person-job in Pitt's library system, in Acquisitions somewhere (so probably out at Point Breeze again, sigh):

Incumbent performs a range of tasks associated with ordering, receiving, cataloging, tracking and monitoring the status of Web-based electronic databases and electronic books. Incumbent collaborates with colleagues in Technical Services and Information Systems in order to gather and maintain accurate data about these electronic resources. Incumbent monitors and loads weekly approval and firm order bibliographic record files for English language materials in both electronic and print format, as well as sets of bibliographic records for microform materials.

Current Mood: happy, and a little anxious

In a Consumer Reports study, AT&T’s signal ranked either last or second to last in 19 out of 20 major cities. My tests in five states bear this out. If Verizon’s slogan is, “Can you hear me now?” AT&T’s should be, “I’m losing you.”

A letter I just sent to Bill Peduto, probably the only Democrat likely to challenge Luke Ravenstahl for mayor of Pittsburgh this fall:

Dear Mr. Peduto,

I am writing to strongly urge you to once again consider running for mayor of Pittsburgh this fall.

I have found Luke Ravenstahl's actions as mayor, from the recent police promotions to the Tiger Woods incident at Oakmont to the New York trip---not to mention all the lies about these incidents that have come out of his office---to be deeply embarassing to the City of Pittsburgh, and under no circumstances will I consider voting for him.

In seven years as a registered voter, I have never voted for a Republican, but I've never been more disgusted with a Democrat who claimed to represent me. If Ravenstahl has no other opposition for election in November, I will in all likelihood vote for Mark DeSantis.

Sincerely,

Jonathon Isaac Swiderski
Fineview

From hearings to confirm Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute as 'war czar', "to oversee policy and execute strategy for Iraq and Afghanistan"---essentially what the National Security Adviser does, apparently:

I mean, frankly, Afghanistan, Iraq, and, related to that, Iran, are the most critical foreign policy problems we face. And the national security adviser to the United States has taken his hands off that and given it to you? Well, then he should be fired.

I wonder if I can get second-hand bad piano classified as a carcinogen, and have it made illegal to play the Union piano except during a scheduled performance. . . .

Current Mood: annoyed

I was a little surprised when I saw this line in one of my textbooks:
"A classic work on the development of Classical Arabic is Fück (1950)"

However, he apparently was a somewhat prolific linguist, mostly of Arabic, although unfortunately he seems to have written only in German. . . .

I may live in Pennsylvania now, but Carl Levin is still my favorite senator.... ( Letter sent to Senators Specter and Casey ) The LOC says it hasn't gotten the text of the bill from the GPO yet---although it does appear in searches by bill sponsor or for bills referred to the Senate Banking Committee---but you can read the bill in the Congressional Record, starting at the bottom of page S6135 (PDF). Levin's speech introducing the bill starts at the bottom of S6131 (PDF). (They're also available in plaintext, buried in this file, which contains about 15 pages of yesterday's CR for the Senate. . .

Current Mood: hopeful

In the last two weeks, in no particular order:

• pontiuspilates and I finished moving into our new house. Now we just have to unpack. . . .


• We got a really pretty, happy dog. Then, after about two days, she tried to eat the cats, in addition to barking at just about every other dog or person we passed walking or driving her. . . . We had to take her back.


• My parents came for a few days. My father helped us move; my mother helped clean a little, but mostly acted like a brat. More on this later.

nebulawindphone

• K & I are getting married, too. Real ceremony won't happen till after she finishes grad school, but we might get the paperwork sooner depending on things like how long I can last without health insurance :). It'll probably happen in Pittsburgh. There's a ring, but only the one so far...