Proving once again that the issue of gay rights is a fraught one, this week saw both the addition of Maine to the states that permit gay marriage (referendum pending) and the continued disappointment that a Democratic administration doesn't give half a shit about making it easier for gays to serve in the military.

Time will tell whether having two states in New England pass laws legalizing same-sex marriage is a bellwether for the country or just further proof to some that New England Yankees are extra-faggoty. The trend, however, seems to be that opposition to gay marriage is concentrated in the soon-to-die and likely to pose naked despite rock-solid Christian values.

At the federal level, there was mixed news on gay rights and in both cases, the direction the Feds are tacking should raise libertarian hackles. First, there is a bill to add gay-bashing to the federal hate crimes bill (complete with video of Alcee Hastings, a supporter of the bill, suitably outraged at a Republican attempt to belittle the problem). I confess that I am conflicted here: I am against hate-crimes legislation but… if we are going to have hate-crimes legislation I'm uncomfortable with gay-bashing being left out of the definition of "hate crime". But, because I'm not a big fan of hate-crime laws, my bigger beef is with the continued survival of the no-gays-in-the-military policy.

In what was supposed to be a helpful-to-gays modification of the no-gays rule, Clinton's Don't Ask, Don't Tell was supposed to allow gays to chill out in a closet while still serving in the military. This, it was said, was better than the pre-policy witch hunts for homosexuals. Of course, the law didn't actually ban witch hunts, it merely stopped the military from asking about sexual orientation during the enlistment process. Now that I think about it, it seems designed to allow gays into the military, keep certain individuals in the military as long as it served the military's interest, and then boot them at the convenience of the military. Crafty.

Obama pledged to repeal the policy but it doesn't look like he is sticking to that pledge. The latest proof that nothing is going to change comes in the form of the ejection of Lt. Dan Choi, a West Point graduate and Iraq War veteran, from the New York National Guard for publicly coming out on The Rachel Maddow Show.

I once hoped that my generation would be the one that 'normalized' gays in our society. I still hope this. I question now whether it will be under an Obama administration – the era of Hope and Change – that it will come to pass. I've always been skeptical of Federalism and usually consider it an anachronism – but maybe that's where the hope is after all.

Bill O'Reilly and Dennis Miller were discussing possible Republican challengers to Obama in 2012, and Miller threw out a Gingrich-Palin ticket, christening it "Newty and the Beauty." Showing a rare burst of creativity, O'Reilly immediately called them "Newty and the Blowfish."

Now, putting aside the shocking relevance of a Hooty and the Blowfish reference say 10 years ago, could this have been a slam at Palin? I'm pretty sure he was just trying to make a joke, but still, not a good idea to refer to the potential hope of your party (and that makes me smile..) as "the blowfish.."

This doesn't even get to the funniest part of the conversation, the idea of Newt "Hospital bed Divorce" Gingrich running for President.

Note from footnote 11, on page 15, Southern Co. v. Dauben, Inc., 08-10248 (5th Cir. 4-15-2009).

Though, misspelled words on the Internet are far from rare. See Christopher Rhoads, What Did U $@y? Online Language Finds Its Voice, WALL ST. J., Aug. 23, 2007, at A1 (describing “leetspeak,” a form of online language purposefully utilizing misspellings where “pwn” means “own,” “teh” means “the,” and numbers and symbols replace the letters of a word).

Just as you can put a hat and a pearl necklace on a pig, which remains a pig, the scholarly language and citation do nothing to mitigate this sentence's essential dumbness.

(Thanks to Brandy Karl for the tip.)

I got a chance to see the great Norwegian film Troubled Water last night as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival. As an added bonus, the Director, Erik Poppe, was on hand for a Q&A afterwards.

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A diner in upstate New York was enjoying some broccoli at a TGI Fridays when he noticed something gray in admidst the vegetables. Turns out it was a snake head, with part of the spine attached.

Now, maybe I am a little bit of a drama queen, but I'm pretty sure if I find a snake head in my broccoli my first reaction would be to run screaming, not snap a cellphone photo and call the waiter over. I did enjoy the droll note at the end of the article "Pendleton and his girlfriend weren't charged for their meals."

In an upset, Mr. Pendleton has announced that he has no intention of suing. That sound you heard was every attorney in the Albany-Schenectady metroplex sobbing.

Q: What do Peter Jackson, the director of the Lord of the Rings films, and Justice Antonin Scalia have in common?

A: A dilemma about how to phrase certain words that are unacceptable in polite society.

Jackson is currently in production on a remake of the classic British war film, The Dam Busters, the story of RAF Wing Commander Guy Gibson's bombing raid on a series of German dams in 1943.  It's a true story, based on a book of the same name, and quite a good movie.  I'm sure Jackson's production, which he intends to keep true to history, will also be worthwhile.

It's just that the language has changed a bit over the past sixty years.  Even if you've not seen The Dam Busters, you may have seen excerpts of it, featuring a black labrador retriever, in Alan Parker's film Pink Floyd: The Wall.  The dog, owned by Gibson, was named, ahem, "N-word".

Except that wasn't his name. And believe it or not, the dog was very important to the story, in life and on film.  In fact, Gibson's operation was code-named for the dog:  "Operation N-Word."

Except that wasn't its code-name.  While Jackson is known as a meticulous film-maker, and says he wants to keep this production true to the facts, he's yet to come to a decision about this troublesome dog.  Some have suggested re-naming it "Niggsy."  Television networks which have shown the original film in recent years have dubbed in the name, "Trigger," leading to cries of censorship, which of course it is, and silliness, which, well …

It's a very offensive word, despite what fans of Chris Rock might tell you.

In some ways and circles, far more offensive than "F-word," which Justice Scalia couldn't bring himself to spell out. Personally I say the F-word all the time, but can't think of many situations in which I would say, or write, the word "Nigger," in other than a context like the present.

Personally I think Jackson, if he intends to remain true to the story, should probably leave it in and attempt to have a serious discussion about history and language before the film's release.

But I suspect that won't happen.

Health tip:  For those who suffer severe allergies to onions, pickles, and tomatoes, it might be a bad idea to take fast food restaurants (even those that suggest, "Have it your way") at their word that offending vegetables will not be served on hamburgers.  Better practice would be to open the burger, before biting into it, to determine its safety.

It's probably better still to inform the staff, "I have a horrible allergy to onions, pickles, and tomatoes.  I may die if I consume them.  I will sue you for $100,000 if you serve them to me." That will get their attention.

Or maybe one just shouldn't go to Burger King at all.  Darius Dugger of Portsmouth, Virginia claims he learned that the hard way.

In a suit filed in the Circuit Court of Virginia Beach, Virginia, Dugger claims that on April 10, 2007, employees of N & R Dining, Inc., a franchisee of Burger King, disregarded his request to hold the onions, pickles, and tomatoes.  Dugger, evidently a trusting soul who believed that he could "have it his way," grew violently ill when he bit into his hamburger, incurring medical bills, lost wages, pain and suffering.  Dugger, through his attorney Constantine A. Spanoulis of Virginia Beach, claims that the failure to remove all onions, pickles, and tomatoes from the sandwich was "tantamount to negligence."

Unfortunately the Virginia Beach Circuit Court's online records do not make copies of complaints available for public viewing.  Still, one assumes Mr. Spanoulis has also claimed breach of contract, and violation of the implied warranty that special orders don't upset us.  He seeks damages in excess of $100,000 on behalf of Mr. Dugger, as well as such other relief as the court may deem proper, including, if possible, extra ketchup and a golden paper crown.

Source:  The Virginian-Pilot.

3d Realms, which announced the still unreleased Duke Nukem Forever in 1997, is closing its doors effective tomorrow.

The game became a bad joke little more than a third into its development cycle.  While other games have gained reputations almost as legendary for vaporware, they were released.  Neither Daikatana, now vanished in obscurity, nor Team Fortress II, which proved to be a fine game and still has quite a following, could touch Duke  Nukem.

Hail to the king, baby!

Epistemology is complicated. Possibly it's because people prone to using the term "epistemology" are professionally obscure. But even if we call it "the whole question of how we know what we know," it's tricky, particularly as applied to Big Questions.

Or at least it used to be. Now, thanks to our friends in Texas, we learn that the vintage of the universe and its bountiful mysteries can be determined by a simple committee vote.

Hooray, Democracy!

A condom is a lousy toy surprise for a Happy Meal. Even in Sweden, it just seems like a bad idea. Maybe it was themed with a cartoon or something (is it bad that I can easily imagine Scandanavian children having a beloved cartoon character that is a condom?) They could have gone with a Sponge Bob tie in perhaps.

All joking aside, the last sentence in the article is absolutely terrifying: "..an analysis was being done to determine if the condom posed a health risk." In what world would a condom in one's fries not constitute a health risk?

A mindless web forum for everything, and for everything a mindless web forum. My one tip, roid rage and trolling are probably a bad mix. Still, I can't help but be fascinated by the very existence of this place. Although, perhaps this explains some of MSDuncan's reactions…

Duke political science professor Mike Munger flew all the way to Europe to watch the movie Ocean Godzilla Versus Space Godzilla Versus Mogera.  In badly dubbed German.

The resulting film review is about as cool (from a geek perspective) as a fight between Sonny Chiba, a Predator, the Orks from Warhammer: 40,000, a samurai played by Toshiro Mifune, Ash from The Evil Dead, and Darth Vader.

I strongly urge you to read it.

Last night at a Taqueria we got to catch some glimpses of the fabulous Telenovela, Man˜ana es Para Siempre. The episode we watched involved a suitably buxom nurse being chased by two bungling thugs (dressed as orderlies) all over the grounds of a mansion. At one point, she found some conveniently stacked barrels of some gooey liquid (possibly egg creme's) which she, of course, kicked over on the thugs. Why those buckets were sitting at the top of a hill near the mansion is a question of cultural signifigance to Mexicans, I'm sure.

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You know, I thought that my simple advice about just shutting up for a while when accused of misconduct was easy to follow. And it's free! But it's too rarely followed.

Part of the problem is that people think — incorrectly — that if they don't admit to misconduct, they can just kind of hem and haw and mumble about the subject without getting in trouble. Generally, this is not so. Anything more complicated than "I'm innocent, fuck you, talk to my lawyer" is full of peril. That's because when we are facing the stress of an accusation and of scrutiny, and gasping for "safe" things to say, we often wind up just blurting out something that sounds awful. There's a great scene in the movie version of Presumed Innocent that illustrates this — Rusty Sabitch has just been accused by of killing his colleague and secret lover at her home on a particular date, and Rusty blurts out something like, "What was that, a Tuesday?"

This week's case in point — California Democratic Congresswoman Jane Harman.

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Alone among the millions of websites that have addressed the topic of Boston talk radio host Jay Severin's suspension, for saying, among other things:

• "So now, in addition to venereal disease and the other leading exports of Mexico – women with mustaches and VD – now we have swine flu."
• Later, he described Mexicans as "the world's lowest of primitives."
• "When we are the magnet for primitives around the world – and it's not the primitives' fault by the way, I'm not blaming them for being primitives – I'm merely observing they're primitive."
• "It's millions of leeches from a primitive country come here to leech off you and, with it, they are ruining the schools, the hospitals, and a lot of life in America."
• "We should be, if anything, surprised that Mexico has not visited upon us poxes of more various and serious types already, considering the number of criminaliens already here."
• "Yeah, well, [emergency rooms have] become essentially condos for Mexicans."

I will suggest that Severin should not have been fired.  Not because I feel any sympathy for Severin, a professional bigot of the crassest sort.  Not because I have some misbegotten notion that the First Amendment protects creeps like Jay Severin from reaping the harvest of social and professional disgrace they sow when they spout these opinions.

Rather, it's because his employer, Boston talk radio station WTKK and its parent Greater Media, Inc., profited from Severin's work and encouraged him to say this sort of thing, at least until the kitchen got too hot.  And a hot kitchen it must have been indeed, considering that years ago, discussing Muslims in America and their deadly fifth column threat, Severin said:

"You think we should befriend them; I think we should kill them."

No, I blame Severin for what he said no more than I would blame a vicious attack dog for ripping the scalp off of the neighbor's kid.  Severin, like the dog, was just doing what he was rewarded for doing.  Severin, like the dog, should simply be put down, painlessly, because he's a mere brute who was trained to behave this way.  Just as the law holds the owner of a vicious beast responsible for its actions, we should hold Severin's owners responsible, rather than the dumb animal.

The Federal Communications Commission should strip Greater Media, Inc. of all its broadcast licenses.  While I'm, in principle, a free speech absolutist and disagree with any governmental penalty for speech, I bow to the superior judgment of the Supreme Court.  If the First Amendment allows FCC to impose financial penalties on those who merely broadcast Carlin words, it surely allows penalties for those who would broadcast, and profit from, years of tirades from a dumb beast like Jay Severin.