Saturday Bag o’ Attitude

Keep that smart phone handy, peeps. Video every encounter you have with the police, and if you see someone else being roughed up by a cop, pull over and tape it. These taped encounters are making a difference. They’re going viral, popping up on the six o’clock news, and making people think.

We Don’t Get It

Most times, we on the left can safely laugh off the manufactured controversies of our brothers and sisters on the right. We know they don’t really believe Barack and Hillary killed four Americans in Benghazi. We know they know allowing Medicare to cover end-of-live counseling isn’t “death panels.” We know and they know it’s just about scoring points. But we don’t […]

See You in Hell, Haters

That’s my latest Facebook cover photo, which a friend (thank you, Pat Shields!) helped colorize in honor of Friday’s Supreme Court ruling in favor of marriage equality. After I put it up on my Facebook page, another friend told me she didn’t get it. What’s not to get? The right says everyone in favor of marriage […]

Terrorism & Hate Crimes

James Comey, the director of the FBI, says the murder of nine African-American churchgoers at a prayer meeting in Charleston, South Carolina, is not terrorism. His reasoning? Terrorism is act of violence done or threatens to in order to try to influence a public body or citizenry so it’s more of a political act and […]

Thursday Bag o’ Post-Racial America

Man. This church shooting in South Carolina. This white guy. Whose middle name is Storm (as in Stormtrooper or Stormfront?). Who sported an apartheid-era Rhodesian flag on his windbreaker. Who (but of course!) was given a gun for his 21st birthday. Pardon me if I roll my eyes the next time someone tells me everything’ll be […]

More Friday Slackness

Whoa, two posts in one day. Guess I wasn’t done earlier. I’m back from my dry run at the museum. I borrowed the volunteer golf cart and drove the tram tour route, talking about all the aircraft I plan to cover on live tours with visitors once I certify. If anyone saw me putting around, gesticulating […]

The Last Barrier to Racial Integration

The city of St Louis, Missouri integrated its public swimming pools in June, 1949. The experiment was short-lived. When I was five, my grandfather waded into a creek I was playing in and yanked me out. Some black kids my age had followed me into the water. “You’ll catch a disease,” he explained. This was in my home town […]

Sunday Bag o’ Links

This showed up on the io9 website today: I’m suffering from cognitive dissonance, because io9’s choice of a graphic to accompany its story about women dominating the Nebulas is the cover of a Nebula-winning book written by a man, Jeff Vandermeer. Granted, the strongest and most well-drawn characters in Annihilation, as in Authority and Acceptance, the other books […]