Feb
6
[From Los Angeles Times]
by Melissa Healy
Evolutionary biologists have long scratched their heads over homosexuality in men: If there is a genetic component to male homosexuality–a view for which there is considerable evidence–then why has that gene persisted to this day? After all, if one were disinclined to spread one’s seed in places where it would result in offspring and extend your bloodline, evolutionary reasoning would tell you that genetic propensity would disappear.
And yet they live among us–sons, brothers, dads and uncles. Especially uncles.
A new study conducted in Samoa suggests that gay men’s avuncular ways–their willingness to love, baby-sit, teach and buy toys for their nieces and nephews–may be the key to the survival of the gene that may predispose some men to sexual attraction to other men.
That’s the conclusion that emerges from a study that looked at the fa’afafine of Samoa–male homosexuals, who are considered a distinct gender neither male nor female, but who live their lives integrated seamlessly into their extended families.
The study, which appeared in the journal Psychological Science compared the avuncularity–the dedication shown to nieces and nephews–of the fa’afafine–with that demonstrated by heterosexual Samoan men and heterosexual Samoan women.
Spoiler alert: If you need money, go to your gay uncle first. He may be here today because of the greater likelihood that he’ll pull out his checkbook and deliver the goods. In fact, he might even drive you to the bank to deposit it, too.
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Feb
5
[From Aardvark I idea for reform of the political system in New Zeland, but applical most anywhere. An interesting idea. -RS]
What is Recoverable Proxy?
By Bruce Simpson
The recent arrival of ubiquitous technologies based on widespread communications networks have now made it possible for us to at last provide the citizens of the country with the checks and balances necessary to create a truly democratic parliamentary system.
To explain how Recoverable Proxy works we need to examine the existing system:
When voters elect an MP for a particular district, that MP is effectively given the proxy for all citizens in that district. If the electorate concerned had 35,000 registered voters then the MP for that region effectively represents those people in Parliament. To ensure even representation, electorates tend to have very similar populations even if this means that some are geograpically very large while others may only be a few square Kms in size.
The problem is that once your proxy is given to an MP, you can’t recover it. You no longer have any real say in the running of the country. If you voted labour and your local MP turns out to be National – that’s too bad.
MMP did go some way to addressing this problem through the introduction of list candidates, however, as we’ve seen with the events surrounding Ms Kopu, this is also not without the potential to create problems and adversely affect a voter’s representation in parliament.
The concept behind a Recoverable Proxy system is that it allows all voters to recover their proxy at any time they choose. Once recovered, they can exercise their own vote within parliament, thus ensuring that the citizens of the country have a simple and easy method of over-riding any attempt by government to act against the wishes of those citizens.
One MP one vote or 35,000 votes?
Under Recoverable Proxy, each MP will no longer have a single vote in parliament. They will have a number of votes equal to the number of registered voters in the electorate they represent.
Under normal circumstances, when voting in the house they will exercise almost all the proxies that have vested them. In this way, the operation of parliament and the democratic system remains largely unaltered, albeit the total number of votes cast will be significantly higher than under the present scheme.
Should a particularly contentious bill, or matter of widespread national interest amongst the voters of the country be before parliament however, many voters may choose to recover their proxy and cast their own votes.
In such a situation, an MP representing an electorate of 35,000 voters may find that 20,000 of those voters have chosen to recover their proxy, leaving that MP with just 15,000 proxy-votes able to be cast. The 20,000 voters who recovered their proxies will be able to cast their own votes to be counted along-side the remaining proxies exercised by the MP.
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Feb
4
February 4, 2010
Dear Friends,
First of all: Congratulations! Just since last Thursday, you have bombarded President Obama and Energy Secretary Chu with well over 4,000 letters opposing a tripling of the loan guarantee program for new reactor construction, which would put $54 Billion of your dollars at risk from large, greedy nuclear corporations.
And that’s on top of more than 3,200 letters you sent to the Senate against the Clean Energy Development Administration–a greenwashed name for an entity that could hand out unlimited taxpayer loan guarantees for new reactors and coal plants.
Great Job! BUT…..
We need to build on this momentum! We have a real fight on our hands, and if we’re going to stop this nonsense, we’re going to have to do more. We know we have the facts and arguments on our side: what we need is more outreach and more mobilization. We’re ramping up our outreach efforts. Will you help?
Here are a few things you can do to help:
Support Michael Mariotte’s 25th anniversary outreach extravaganza! That’s right, Friday will mark my 25th anniversary at NIRS. 25 years of working for you, supporting your tireless efforts to achieve a safe, clean, nuclear-free, carbon-free energy future. We’re not spending money on a big party or anything (in fact, so much snow is apparently headed our way tomorrow we may not even be able to get out of the office). Instead we’re asking you to make a special contribution of $2.50, $25.00, $250, or even $2500 (or, to be honest, any amount you’d like) that we’ll use for more outreach and more mobilization. After all, we know there are millions of Americans who agree with us that nuclear power is dirty, dangerous and extraordinarily expensive. We just need to be able to reach them. We hope you’ll support this effort here.
Please fill out a brief questionnaire about our Alerts here. We want to know how useful they are to you and what we can do to make them better. As an added incentive, we’ll give free copies of our full-color booklet Nuclear Power: The Critical Question to 10 respondents selected at random.
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Feb
1
[From Truthdig ]
By Chris Hedges
Corporate forces, long before the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, carried out a coup d’état in slow motion. The coup is over. We lost. The ruling is one more judicial effort to streamline mechanisms for corporate control. It exposes the myth of a functioning democracy and the triumph of corporate power. But it does not significantly alter the political landscape. The corporate state is firmly cemented in place.
The fiction of democracy remains useful, not only for corporations, but for our bankrupt liberal class. If the fiction is seriously challenged, liberals will be forced to consider actual resistance, which will be neither pleasant nor easy. As long as a democratic facade exists, liberals can engage in an empty moral posturing that requires little sacrifice or commitment. They can be the self-appointed scolds of the Democratic Party, acting as if they are part of the debate and feel vindicated by their cries of protest.
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Jan
21
From
Chris Csikszentmihalyi, Director of the M.I.T. Center for Future Civic
Media: an important note to techies who are concerned with the
situation in Haiti.
In the response to the earthquake in Haiti, many
organizations have created sites where people could find one another,
or least information about their loved ones. This excellent idea has
been undermined by its success: within 24 hours, it became clear that
there were too many places where people were putting information; each
site became a silo.
People within the IT community recognized the danger of too many
unconnected sites, and Google became interested in helping. Google is
now running an embeddable application at:
http://haiticrisis.appspot.com/
We recognize that many newspapers have put precious resources into
developing a people-finder system. We nonetheless urge them to make
their data available to the Google project, and standardize on the
Google widget. Doing so will greatly increase the number of successful
reunions.
I am not affiliated with Google — indeed, this is a volunteer
initiative by some of their engineers — but this is one case where
their reach and capacity can help the most people.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about the
reasoning behind this request. Any questions about the widget or its
functionality or features are best directed to Google.
Christopher P. Csikszentmihalyi.
Director, MIT Center for Future Civic Media
csik@media.mit.edu
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Jan
21
[From Cagle at MSNBC]
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Jan
21
[From Washington Post]
Supreme Court rules 5-4 to ease restrictions on spending by corporations and unions in political campaigns.
By MARK SHERMAN
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has ruled that corporations may spend freely to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress, easing decades-old limits on their participation in federal campaigns.
By a 5-4 vote, the court on Thursday overturned a 20-year-old ruling that said corporations can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to pay for their own campaign ads. The decision, which almost certainly will also allow labor unions to participate more freely in campaigns, threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states.
It leaves in place a prohibition on direct contributions to candidates from corporations and unions.
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Jan
21
WASHINGTON–Former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) fathered a daughter during the 2008 presidential campaign and after denials, admitted on Thursday the child was his and he lied about it.
NBC News Lisa Myers has the scoop in an interview with Edwards longtime political advisor Harrison Hickman and in a written statement from Edwards, who did not appear on camera in her report. Edwards finally admitted he is the father of Frances Quinn Hunter; the product of an affair with Rielle Hunter, a videographer who followed Edwards on the campaign trail.
“I am Quinn’s father. I will do everything in my power to provide her with the love and support she deserves… It was wrong for me ever to deny she was my daughter and hopefully one day, when she understands, she will forgive me,” Edwards said in the statement.
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Jan
20
[From NO H8 Campaign]
January 20th, 2010
In the year since we’ve started the NOH
Campaign, we’ve often been surprised at some of the different
individuals who have approached us showing their support. Few,
though, have surprised us more than Cindy McCain –
the wife of Senator John McCain and mother to vocal marriage
equality advocate Meghan McCain.
The McCains are one of the most well-known Republican families in
recent history, and for Mrs. McCain to have reached out to us to
offer her support truly means a lot. Although we had worked with
Meghan McCain before and were aware of her own position, we’d
never really thought the cause might be something her mother would
get behind. We have a huge amount of respect for both of these women
for being brave enough to make it known they support equal marriage
rights for all Americans.
Aligning yourself with the platform of gay marriage as a Republican
still tends to be very stigmatic, but Cindy McCain wanted to
participate in the campaign to show people that party doesn’t matter
– marriage equality isn’t a Republican issue any more than it is a
Democratic issue. It’s about human rights, and everybody being
treated equally in the eyes of the law that runs and protects this
country.
Meghan McCain was asked to be the keynote speaker at next month’s
National Equality Week at George Washington University for her
advocacy. In an odd bit of timing, a student Republican organization
has become upset that she’ll be giving that speech — and have
publicly voiced their disapproval over the ordeal
(you can read more about it here:
http://gayrights.change.org/blog/view/meghan_mccain_is_redefining_republican).
The group was hoping Meghan would speak under the banner of
"Redefining Republican: No Labels, No Boxes, No Stereotypes."
We can’t speak for the GWU Republicans, but we at the NOH8 Campaign
feel "redefining Republican" is exactly what Cindy and Meghan McCain
are doing. They weren’t afraid to speak out about what they believe
in, and they both made it a priority of theirs to get involved. We
can only hope that more politicians will follow the McCains’
example.
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