Ramblin' with Roger

The Fagbug meets Equality House.

Arthur: “When I was a kid, I expected life to be a certain way, and that way did not include being true to myself. I simply couldn’t imagine that one day I might be a full citizen.” Here is his favorite speech (it IS a hoot) and his favorite moment in the marriage equality passage in New Zealand.

The Man On the Street: Three Decades of Street Harassment.

This month in 1889, the so-called “Unassigned Lands” in what is now central Oklahoma were opened to white settlement, the celebrated Oklahoma Land Run. “The Native tribes, you may be sure, aren’t quite so enthusiastic about celebrating.”

Mr. Frog re: Spike Lee’s School Daze and a Ramble About Racism.

10 Cover-ups That Just Made Things Worse.

27 science fictions that became fact in 2012.

Meryl: Logos: The power of grounding logic and expectations in our communications. Also, Optical Illusions and their role in Education, Brain Training, and Visual Literacy; at least check out the video at the end of the latter one.

J: The sexiest letter.

Neil Gaiman: There wasn’t anything in there that indicated that I was going to be a writer, a real writer, with something to say, except for one thing, and it was this: I was writing. There was lots of writing going on.

I whine a lot about writing, but I never have whined quite so persuasively as this.

Healing the Wounded Womb.

JEOPARDY! wiz Ken Jennings – he won 74 games in a row – gave a TEDx talk at Seattle University in February 2013 called The Obsolete Know-It-All. It runs about 18 minutes, in which he discusses the JEOPARDY! competition with Brad Rutter (human) and the IBM computer named Watson, as. He talks, among other things, about how a part of the brain shrinks when one uses GPS, or uses the cellphone to look up your friends’ numbers. This is one of those issues I respond to viscerally. Looking it up on Google may be more “efficient,” but it doesn’t compare with knowing stuff.

If the technologies fail us – power grid crashes, computers compromised by cyberattacks – what will we still know? What does it all mean in terms of our human interaction? By contrast, 5 ways robots can improve accuracy, journalism quality.

Andy Marx writes about the day he and his grandfather Groucho saved the television show ‘You Bet Your Life’ from ending up in a Dumpster. If he hadn’t answered the phone, the shows would have been lost forever. In the comments, there was an interesting link to a story of how much of our cultural history depends on one person’s decision to preserve something instead of throwing it away.

Speaking of TV, Ken Levine’s comment about the late Bonnie Franklin, and her TV show ONE DAY AT A TIME falling between the cracks prompted the question about why some shows remain perennially popular while others fade out. “It doesn’t necessarily seem to be question of quality.” Interesting responses in the comments section.

Mark Twain Captured on Film by Thomas Edison in 1909. It’s the only known footage of the author.

Ken Levine is a blogger I’ve been following for about five years, and whose observations about the entertainment industry I enjoy a lot. He is “an Emmy winning writer/director/producer/major league baseball announcer.” So I was interested in a book by a guy who both wrote shows I’ve watched, such as MASH, Cheers and Frasier AND has done play-by-play for Seattle Mariners and other baseball teams.

I put his new book on my Amazon wish list and received it for Christmas. The premise of the book he dedicated a blog post to is that:

Troy, who participates in ABC Wednesday, and has designed the last several logos for the rounds, and his wife Diann, have undergone a terrible family ordeal, which they describe in painful detail. Then Troy explains that injustice runs in the judge’s family.

The Unmitigated Disaster Known As Project ORCA, which was “a massive undertaking – the Republican Party’s newest, unprecedented and most technologically advanced plan to win the 2012 presidential election.”

Letter to a future Republican strategist regarding white people. “My name is Eric Arnold Garland and I am a White Man.”

Marriage equality legal precedents.

Paul Rapp believes we’re missing the most important story in the David Petraus case. Also, An interesting letter, which may or may not relate to Petraeus affair; the second letter.

I could list Amy Barlow Liberatore’s Sharp Little Pencil just about every month. Her poem Interview With Sgt. Davis, Kabul, 2012 addresses what we are fighting for, while Bitter Silence is a more personal reflection.

Black and White Vernacular in American Sign Language.

Give this man a Silver Star; a future President got one.

Why do you blog?

I’ve noted that I was inspired by my friend Fred Hembeck. Beyond that, though, there was stuff happening in the world and in my life that seemed to be worthy of noting, if only because they were important to me.

Some people write letters to the editor. I have, but I’m not very diligent about it. Some people write to members of Congress. Ditto. What I realized that I can do is write something in a blog, then send THAT to a member of Congress. And I have, a few times. Plus the piece stays out there is in the blogoverse.

But mostly, it was so I could maintain a modicum of sanity.

What was your goal in blogging?