The Friendly Hermit

via kyburg:

Article on art project supposedly using miscarriage blood.

Now claimed to be a hoax by school officials. The artist denies it is a hoax, although she does acknowledge the blood could be menstrual blood, but that it is the ambiguity she is interested in.

We saw 300 on DVD last night. I'm not sure what to make of it. As novelized history, and I hesitate to use the term, it is clearly more fiction than history. It was too preachy to just be an action flick. On the surface some of the ideology seems nice enough, but ends up pretty disturbing:( Spoileresque stuff here )

This is surely the best news for fan fiction ever:
It's official: Albus Dumbledore is gay.

In other news, I carved a pumpkin tonight. I'm really proud of it. Shall post a picture or two later.

To "celebrate" the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, a pro-life group has placed a huge set of banners on the mall depicting aborted fetuses. There is also a praise choir singing praise music. Not somber hymns that speak of human suffering or injustice, mind you, but cheery "praise God" stuff. Thus walking through the mall becomes an exercise in cognitive dissonance. This might actually be the plan, since cognitive dissonance is supposed to be an opportunity for acquiring or modifying beliefs, but I think it possibly is creating subconscious connections these people don't intend.

acceptmyreality offers commentary wondering why we allow such a display while sexually explicit material or artistic expressions that might be construed as debasing of religion are censored as "obscene." One reason might be because it's being portrayed as violence - murder to be exact - and our culture is highly tolerant of depictions of violence. For example, it doesn't take much sexual content to press a movie into NC-17 or "X" categories, while rather gruesome depictions of violence merit only an R. Perhaps we should start a campaign placing these pro-life propaganda pictures (and perhaps some other violent imagery) alongside pictures of couples having sex and asking "why is this ok to display in public, but this not okay?"

...

Intramural softball is starting on campus and the Sociology dept is fielding a team (the Sociopaths). I'm going to try to participate this year since it's on Tuesday evenings.

* Go to OSCR to get Sophos fixed (Replaced with AVG)
* Pick up print outs from CCIT
* Attend first working group meeting
* Work on master's paper revision
* Find a preface to discuss in FM class for Thursday (Nickel & Dimed)
* Finish my GPSC travel grant application