Those crazy progessive Iowans

Today, in a unanimous decision, the Iowa State Supreme Court ruled that the Iowa declaration that marriage is between a man and a woman violated the equal protection clause of the Iowa State Constitution. It also ordered marriage licenses to be issued to any couples so inclined within 21 days of the ruling.
Read a great analysis here by Law Dork 2.0 (via dailykos.com)
The cool thing about this ruling (other than it is an example of that famous Iowa-common-sense we all know so well) is that the justices tackled the elephant in the room: religious opposition.

• The sanctity of all religious marriages celebrated in the future will have the same meaning as those celebrated in the past. The only difference is civil marriage will now take on a new meaning that reflects a more complete understanding of equal protection of the law.

Right on.

Marketplace.org and Collateral Calls

Very interesting video by Marketplace on the reason AIG is paying out billions to others (known as the backdoor bailout).


Collateral calls from Marketplace on Vimeo.

Another American Genius

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The 10/31 Project
comedycentral.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor NASA Name Contest

Sixth Sense Genius

From TED.com

Breaking news: Science wins!

The Christian Gene

Holy crap that's funny

The Onion rules. Over and over again.
Here's a few items of note from the last week.

• 
  Are Violent Video Games Adequately Preparing Children For The Apocalypse?
• CIA Awkwardly Debriefs Obama On Creation Of Crack Cocaine
• 
  

Symphony plus

The Oregon Symphony sent out their 2009-2010 season packet last week. Matt and I have been season ticket holder for several years now and plan on doing it again this next season. Included in the packet is several additional concerts that are not part of the classical series but are fan favorites (like Pink Martini or Pops concerts).
Next season they have included a very strange thing: Video Games Live. I'll quote directly from their website:
Video Games Live™ is an immersive concert event featuring music from the most popular video games of all time. Top orchestras & choirs perform along with exclusive video footage and music arrangements, synchronized lighting, solo performers, electronic percussionists, live action and unique interactive segments to create an explosive entertainment experience!

The video is pretty interesting.

Holy crap, this is bad

This is a graph of actual jobs lost during the 1990 (blue), 2001 (red), and current recessions.
Wow.
http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/02/06/how-bad-is-it/
From time.com via dialykos.com

Making you feel old?

It was 23 years ago yesterday (January 28, 1986) that the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after takeoff. I remember that event vividly, as many of you may as well. I was a senior at William H Burges High School and was sitting in my Physiology and Anatomy class. Our teacher (head football coach Milton Henry) was interrupted by another teacher (another football coach) and announced that the shuttle had exploded. Back then shuttle missions were still a pretty big deal. Of course this mission had a public school teacher on board (the first non-astronaut in space) and was of particular interest to my family because my brother's teacher was a finalist and she was at the launch.

The Internets circa 1981

Pretty cool video of a 1981 KRON (San Fransisco) story about newspaper via the home computer. I love that it took 2 hours to download the newspaper feed from a computer in Ohio and the service fee was $1/hour.

I love me some Rachel Maddow

Lesley Stahl interviews Rachel Maddow of Air American Radio and MSNBC.

Rachel is so smart and funny and dorky. She was a Rhodes Scholar and has a doctorate in politics from Oxford. And she is beautiful. Awesome.

giant inauguration picture

Via gizmodo.com (again):
This is a 1,474 megapixel image stitched together from 220 images taken with a stationary camera. You can zoom in to an amazing level of detail. Here are a few of the things I saw while wasting, um spending time earlier today.

Yo-Yo Ma has an older iPhone. You can almost read the music on the stands of the U.S. Marine Band in front of Obama. Aretha Franklin's head was stitched on Rick Warren's body (hilarious). Clarence Thomas is sleeping. The people to the left of Obama near the top of the stands could have used Snuggies. You can see the sniper teams all along rooftops, even all the way near the Washington Monument (which is almost 2 miles away). In the section between Obama and the main TV tower, you can see P Diddy (or is it Puff Daddy), Denzel Washinton, and Harry Belafonte.
This is really cool.



view full screen here.

25 years

via gizmodo.com

This ad aired for the first time 25 years ago today during the 3rd quarter of Super Bowl XVIII (the Los Angeles Raiders beat the Washington Redskins 38-9).
Still amazing.

Daily Show roll up of coverage for 44

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Barack Obama: Path to the Presidency

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Times are a-changin'

I certainly can't imagine this kind of stuff going on when I was in high school or even in most parts of the country 10 years ago, but this gives me hope.

Blumenauer to the two-wheeled rescue

From Dailykos.com -
A minor provision tucked away in the $700B Wall Street Charity Bill allows companies to give up to $20/month tax free to employees who commute via bicycle for bike purchases and maintenance. Pretty cool.
Way to go Earl!

Stimulus on Two Wheels

Thanks, Pepsi

A few days ago, I read a blog post somewhere that right wing nut jobs (like the American Family Association and others) were advocating for a boycott of PepsiCo because of $1M donations to the Human Rights Campaign and Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG).  This post included a link to Pepsi's Contact webpage and encouraged others to tell PepsiCo that they appreciate Pepsi's support of diversity and to counteract the nonsense from the right.  So, I did that.

Today I received an email from a Consumer Relations Rep from Pepsi.  It was a nice email and is posted below:

Dear Cesar,

Thank you for contacting us at PepsiCo and for sharing your thoughts.

As a company, we made a commitment to promote and support diversity and inclusion in all aspects of our business. We’re proud of the success we’ve had in attracting some of the best and the brightest from around the world and in building a workforce that is truly reflective of the consumers we serve.

At PepsiCo, diversity and inclusion are among the values we have adopted for ourselves in the workplace because we see them as important to our viability and success—as individual employees and as a company. And we believe strongly that these values will enhance other businesses and work environments as well.

Again, thank you for your interest in our company.

Awesome

Via gizmodo.com

Those crazy Danes have outdone themselves.  This interactive exhibit of a 1000 year old rune stone is awesome.  I wish we could have things like this everywhere.

 

Bacon?

I'm not sure how I feel about this video of how bacon is made. Thanks, gizmodo, for your CES distraction post...

Is that Mike Rowe?

We were talking about infomercials the other day and then I came home and saw this on consumerist.com - The Wunder Boner!

Is that Mike Rowe's voice?