Blog Master G

Washington Post: “NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue promised a change in league policies Monday to avoid a repeat of a controversial halftime Super Bowl performance that included entertainer Justin Timberlake tearing a piece off Janet Jackson’s black leather bustier, exposing her right breast to a worldwide television audience estimated to include over 100 million viewers. The performance has also prompted an investigation by the Federal Communications Commission.”

It’s OK to show scantily-clad women in beer commercials and suggestive sexual imagery in ads for Viagra-like products, but show some breast during the Super Bowl and people freak out. Relax, people. It’s the human body. It’s natural. It’s beautiful. And so what if 100 million people saw Janet’s breast? Nudity on television is standard fare all throughout Europe. Americans need to take a deep breath and not make such a big deal about it.

Too bad the ad that CBS censored didn’t get as much press as the stupid half-time show. Censorship of the MoveOn ad is the real important issue here. It’s sad that the FCC didn’t investigate that.

A quick comparison of numbers from Google News shows the backward priorities of Americans: MoveOn Ad (913 results) vs. Janet Jackson (2,800 results).

Props to CNN for showing the MoveOn ad during the Super Bowl halftime show and again today (at least once around 11am Eastern Time when I caught it).

(Photo courtesy Reuters.)

Historical note: The last time I wrote a blog entry of the same title was August 21, 2002, not long after Jen and I had moved off Treasure Island and into our short-lived stint in Larkspur. The apartment in Larkspur was spacious and I miss features like a guest room, two bathrooms (including a private master bath), an upstairs, but the town just wasn’t for us.

Here in Saratoga Springs a year-and-a-half later (it amazes me how time flies), we are again settling into a new town and a new home. So far, so good.

We don’t exactly have many friends in town yet, but we do have friends all around the state. Thursday night Shannon and Mike came to visit from Syracuse. We neglected to take any pictures (shocker, I know), but had a fun time nonetheless. We stayed up late Thursday catching up and watching bad TV (Daily Show excepted).

Earlier on Thursday, we had a local dog sitter come by for a visit to meet Stella and Happy. Luckily, it went well. Stella didn’t bark once. We need to have her come back again for another meeting before we leave town the first time.

Thursday night we finally saw Winged Migration, the cinematographically stunning documentary about migrating birds. Visually, it was amazing, but I didn’t like the lack of explanation; there were many facts stated without detailing why birds migrate thousands of miles (“it’s a matter of life and death” was the most detail we got). The other detail that left me saying “Huh?” was that at the beginning of the film we see a disclaimer that no special effects were used; in the credits, there’s a huge chunk of names listed beneath the heading “Digital Effects.”

The film was shown by the Saratoga Film Forum, which has a different movie most weeks throughout the year. The organization also hosts an annual black-tie Oscar Gala that we’re considering attending.

Yesterday following a delicious brunch at Beverly’s, we begun an afternoon of more fun. Before Shannon and Mike left town, we hit a couple local pubs. After they left, Jen and I had dinner at The Original Saratoga Springs Brew Pub before hitting a wine reception that kicked off Winterfest.

Today we look forward to the Saratoga Chowderfest ’04. Oh yes.

Imagine Las Vegas. Now take away the free drinks, the open container laws, the arms from the one-armed bandits, the cling-clang of change hitting metal, and, oh yes, the desert. What’s left? The new “racino” video casino that’s the gaming part of the Saratoga Gaming and Raceway, the harness track and neglected little brother of Saratoga’s world-famous track. The racino opened its doors today as part of Gov. Pataki’s state-wide effort to bring in more revenue for schools.

It was bigger than I expected. It immediately felt like Vegas, but not. There’s a bar and cocktail waitresses, but the free drinks didn’t seem to be flowing, especially because you only have to be 18 and not 21 to gamble. That’s the other funny thing: That the slot machines are called video lottery in order to exploit a loophole in state law about gambling. But make no mistake about it. These were genuine slot machines…err, paper machines. They didn’t take coins, but they did take paper money and the certificates they spat out when you chose to cash out.

Whatever the nuances of the law, we had a good time. We stuck to the nickel and quarter machines. Yes, we’re high rollers.

In other news, Jen made these amazing eggplant-almond enchiladas last night:

…and Stella wanted some, too:

I’ve never been called a “semi-famous blogger” until now, but hey, I’ll take the compliment. It also seems to suggest that my blog was single-handedly responsible for turning around the poll: “Of course the AFA didn’t realize the power of weblogs and social software, so when Gabe (semi-famous blogger) posted the poll on his website, it spread across the GLBT community like wildfire, igniting the opinions of over 500,000 gay marriage supporters to flood the site and toss in their $ .02.” I can’t take all the credit, of course, but it’s a good feeling to know that my blog played a small part in turning things around.

Thanks, Mike, for the props.

If you’re not a teenage girl, a member of a frat, or Demi Moore, then you probably aren’t very into Ashton Kutcher. But if you can get past that, then give his latest movie, The Butterfly Effect, a chance. Feeling a bit stir crazy and the need to get out of the house, Jen and I took a drive twenty miles north (to Glens Falls) last night to see the film. It was a lot better than I had expected.

I have long been intrigued by and incredibly interested in the concepts of time and Yin and Yang. These notions, along with the butterfly effect itself, are what this movie is all about. So it was a perfect recipe for my interests. Kurt Vonnegut is one of my favorite authors and two of his novels, Slaughterhouse Five and Timequake, are among my favorites. The movie was not unlike one of these books. And it works.

If you can look past the occasional bad acting (though not necessarily by Kutcher), the film is intense, interesting, and well made. The audience is not slapped in the face with moronic explanations of plot details, as too many big Hollywood films often do, and the movie ends with a feeling of satisfaction. The ending also conveys an important life lesson: That sometimes you can’t have everything. Finding balance (Yin and Yang) requires sacrifice. Sometimes things just aren’t meant to be.

Jen and I have long talked about the domino or butterfly effect at constant work in the world. We can even pinpoint the beginning of our relationship — the day we met — to a particular event and a specific person. Without this event and this person, Jen and I may not have met. We may not be married now or living the lives we are. We may not have met many of our great friends, adopted our dogs (would they have been put to sleep?), or found the happiness and balance we now enjoy. I’m a strong believer that every action — every little detail and every decision we make throughout every day — determines the course of and can drastically alter our lives.

And then there’s the discussion about the fabric of time, that pesky fourth dimension. “I am a Tralfamadorian, seeing all time as you might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains. All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is.” -Slaughterhouse Five

Or is it? Does the course of one’s life exist as a predetermined path? Or are there alternate existences of our lives that might have happened (or are happening simultaneously to ours) had we made a different decision along the way? A clock is a human construct that does not represent time itself, but the physical forces at work in our world. Enter Einstein’s theory of relativity and everything I learned in Morton Tavel‘s class on the same at Vassar. His book, Contemporary Physics and the Limits of Knowledge, discusses this topic. Which reminds me: I own that book and have been meaning to read it. Maybe I’ll do that today. But I digress.

The Butterfly Effect is a good movie that gets me thinking about all these philosophical issues. All that and one of its stars is the exquisite Amy Smart, also seen in Rat Race.

The Objective: Create a page that displays the full text of entries X, Y, and Z, which are a subset of category A.

The Problem: Existing category display templates are designed to show only a listing of contents with links to individual posts. Additionally, the need is to display a subset of the category and not the entire category.

The Solution: Create a new index template, specify an output file, copy the template contents of a template that does display full text from each entry (like monthly archives do in my blog). Next, leverage Brad Choate’s excellent MTSQL plugin by inserting the following code (tweaked however you need) in place of the <MTEntries> tag:

<MTSQLEntries query=”select entry_id from mt_entry
where entry_title like ‘%Cross Country%'”>

Voila! That’s it. Use the existing code to display the entries as you’d like.

The Result: Cross Country 2003. This page contains the full body of all entries whose titles contain the text “Cross Country.” Note that these entries are all categorized in my relocating category, but now I have a custom page only for those entries relating to my cross-country trip. Also note that this implementation is far more flexible than using only entry titles; you could create a custom page with specific entry IDs, post dates, etc. MTSQL allows you to build a query leveraging any of your data in the MT database.

Boston.com / Infiltration of files seen as extensive: “Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary Commitee infiltrated opposition computer files for a year, monitoring secret strategy memos and periodically passing on copies to the media, Senate officials told The Globe.”

[ via iProtest ]

Is it any surprise that CBS will gladly take money from the Bush White House’s anti-drug office, but not from PETA or MoveOn.org? The organization is trying to run an ad that won a contest to get the truth out to the American people about the damage Bush has done to this country. Running this ad during the Super Bowl would be a huge win. But CBS won’t run it, even though MoveOn has the money to pay for it. Read the below message for the political connection that’s at work here between Republicans in Congress and CBS.

Please help protect free speech and sign this petition to CBS.

Subject: The ad CBS will not air

Dear friend,

During this year’s Super Bowl, you’ll see ads sponsored by beer companies, tobacco companies, and the Bush White House. But you won’t see the winning ad in MoveOn.org Voter Fund’s Bush in 30 Seconds ad contest. CBS refuses to air it.

Meanwhile, the White House and Congressional Republicans are on the verge of signing into law a deal which Senator John McCain (R-AZ) says is custom-tailored for CBS and Fox, allowing the two networks to grow much bigger. CBS lobbied hard for this rule change; MoveOn.org members across the country lobbied against it; and now the MoveOn.org ad has been rejected while the White House ad will be played. It looks an awful lot like CBS is playing politics with the right to free speech.

Of course, this is bigger than just the MoveOn.org Voter Fund. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) submitted an ad that was also rejected. We need to let CBS know that this practice of arbitrarily turning down ads that may be “controversial” — especially if they’re controversial simply because they take on the President — just isn’t right.

To watch the ad that CBS won’t air and sign the petition to CBS to run these ads, go to: http://www.moveon.org/cbs/ad/

MoveOn.org will deliver the petition by email directly to CBS headquarters.

Thanks.

(Thanks, Glenn, for reminding me to post this online.)

Our cross-country drive began one month ago today. How time flies. The trip took us a total of nine days, including the short jaunts on Day 1 from San Francisco to Roseville and on Day 9 from Kinderhook to Saratoga Springs. That leaves seven days of intense driving, with an average of 548 miles driven each of those days. The longest stretch we drove was on Day 5 from Alanreed, Texas to Little Rock, Arkansas (736 miles).

Of course, that distance doesn’t seem like much compared to the 1,085 miles Jen and I once drove in a single day from Cheyenne, Wyoming to Sacramento, California (summer 1999 during my second East-West cross-country drive of that summer), or the 869 miles that my bro and I once drove in one day in a 24-foot moving truck from Sacramento to Tucson, Arizona.

Our 2003 cross-country trip spanned 3,899 miles from San Francisco to Saratoga Springs. We used 162.487 gallons of gas, which cost $279.87. We paid an average of $1.71 per gallon of gas, whose octanes ranged from 91 to 94. We got an average of 24.50 miles per gallon, with a station-to-station low of 16.94 and a high of 29.27.

For more details and daily mileage numbers from our trip, refer to the A_nderson Cross-Country Trip 2003: Mileage/Gas Data spreadsheet. Yes, I love tracking and analyzing data like these. But you’ve probably figured that out by now.

Even though we’ve long since concluded our cross-country trip, I wanted to wrap things up with a Day 9 post. Day 9 is not only the 62 miles we drove from Kinderhook to our new home in Saratoga Springs, it is the next phase in the journey of our lives.

On December 18, 2003 I linked to and commented on the now infamous gay marriage poll conducted by the anti-gay American Family Association. I became part of the Internet movement that ultimately showed the AFA what the American people really think — and that if they want to conduct a poll like this, they’d better open it up to everyone, not just their supporters.

At first, the organization touted that it was going to present the results of the poll to Congress. Now that the numbers have overwhelmingly shown that Americans who were fairly exposed to the poll favor gay marriage, they’ve changed their minds, claiming that the poll was hijacked by “homosexual activists.”

A week ago today I was contacted by a writer for Wired News on the topic. The story was published on Wired’s site at 2am this morning:

Wired News: Gay Marriage Poll Gets Annulled

An excerpt:

Against the wishes of the AFA and its members, the poll leaked to the outside. And soon, people like Gabe began posting it to blogs, social-networking sites such as Friendster and sundry e-mail lists. When A_nderson posted it to his blog on Dec. 18, 2003, the anti-gay-marriage position was leading, with 51.45 percent of respondents opposing gay marriage or civil unions.

It’s pretty exciting to be quoted in and linked by a publication as reputable as Wired News. This is a first for my blog and I’m really excited about it. Already I’ve noticed tons of referrals to my site from Wired. Rock on.

And more power to my fellow homosexual activists.