commotiocordis

Harry Potter's Daniel Radcliffe gives major donation to The Trevor Project

The Trevor Project is "the only nationwide, around-the-clock crisis and suicide prevention helpline for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) youth", among other related services.

I still say this manchild is a gay. Not that being an ally means you're a homo, obvs, but because he sort of just feels like it to me. Idk. Claiming to like only "older women", and he's so polite, stuff like that. Maybe just because he's cute with guys in my head.

I'm interested to know what made him choose this organization to donate to. I hope it's not because he has a friend or somesuch who has benefited from such services, because that is sad. Also sad is that he will probably feel the need (or his publicist will) to make several high-profile appearances with a "female acquaintance" to temporarily stop rumors that he is gay.



Back from the DMV--totally forgot I needed to renew my license (didn't actually run out until September 19th, but I'm fairly sure I won't be back on a weekday before then and idk if I can renew it in a different county). Ran around all morning trying to find appropriate proof of residence. My name's not on any of the utility bills or other government documents with my parents' address. They say you can just bring one of the parents' items, but that you might need a signed statement or something as well (saying what they don't specify, natch), and I know I've never had a problem with it before, but the last time I was at the DMV was when I was actually getting my license for the first time, so Dad was with me. Also had to find the birth certificate, remember that my social security card was actually in my wallet from when I was looking into donating plasma and they had to have your card for whatever reason, etc. etc.

Want to guess what the lady asked me for? My old license. That was it. Last time, even just to get my actual license I think all I needed was the birth certificate and to tell them my social. I've decided that the entire purpose of the new "Show Me Proof" Missouri bring-a-bunch-of-crap-to-get-your-license-renewed program is just to intimidate people into not trying to renew your license if. . . idk, you've somehow un-naturalized in the interim or something.

Got the glasses restriction taken off my license, though, just to prove the guy at the Lenscrafters wrong (and, you know, because I went to the gym at 8 this morning to watch The West Wing and went by the DMV straight from there without grabbing my glasses like I'd intended to just in case I couldn't pass the eye test). This eye doctor man a few days ago was giving me the third degree about whether I wear my glasses driving or not (90% of the time, not; usually only going to and from Springfield and often not even then)--I told him yes, but for some reason he didn't believe me (perhaps because I didn't bring them and he didn't realize that my mom was his next patient and therefore, natch, I didn't drive). I swear, he was about to try a citizen's arrest or something. All "you know that's illegal!" I was like "yeah, but I'm pretty sure it's not a felony." I always figured that if somebody pulled me over and actually looked at that and cared, I could just claim contacts (and the once that the guy of non-turnlane-usage hit me, I don't remember if I was wearing them but I doubt it because I was on the way to the gym, and the officerchick didn't say anything).

Anyway, I'm only 10 past the limit (it's 20/40, I'm 20/50 or something), so I just faked it on the little machine thing. I was totally shaking afterwards, though, because I knew I got a bunch of them wrong--I focus really slowly, but usually if I stay there long enough, my eyes can get there. So I was on the the third set of letters (I think it was a second distance set at a different depth, while the middle was near) when the first distance set popped into focus, and I was like "oh, shit. She's going to call me on it," but I hadn't wanted to go slowly because then I'd arouse suspicion. (I'd already tried to get away with just reading the middle set, but was told to read all the way across). Nope. There was nobody in there, really, and everybody was all laid back, and it was fine. The picture wasn't even too bad though my Chinese food-induced vomiting yesterday caused, as usual, the petechial hemorrhages around my eyes that made me look like I'd been socked in the face.

Democratic lawmakers opposed to federal funding for abortions said Tuesday the House leadership's health care bill contains a "hidden mandate" that would allow taxpayer dollars to be used to end pregnancies.

God, that's a hard question. (Though first of all, I'd call it a loophole rather than a mandate--the bill just doesn't say anything about abortion, which means that insurers that already cover it will continue to do so, possibly funded by the public subsidies of low-income subscribers.)

I've hashed this out before--I'm pro-birth control and sex education and extremely anti-abortion, but I'm more or less reluctantly pro-choice because data says that if it's illegal, it'll still be done, just criminally and unregulated and people will die. (Like pot.) I take a more practical aproach to the whole issue--reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, and soon abortion won't be an issue. (Kay, that's really optimistic, but we can reduce the need for it drastically.)

If we change something, that's government interference with private companies, which people scream about. (Mostly the Republicans, which is probably why the article I read talked about how it's Senate Democrats making a fuss about closing the hole, LOL.) 90% of private insurers cover abortions (which flabbergasted me until I realized that they probably just cover it some minimal percentage that they cover any gynecological surgical procedure by an approved provider), so the government just steps in and is all "Umm, sorry. Change your practice. You don't get to cover that anymore, even if you have no publicly-subsidized clients, because, you know, how can we tell that you have no subsidized folk?"

And on the other hand, I'm way not comfortable with my tax money (that I pay way goddamn too much of for a kid who's only income is a freaking scholarship--I'll bitch about this again; I've got a full ride, room/board monies included, and all of that went straight back to the school, but because they didn't, idk, waive my tuition or something, they actually deposited money into my account, I had to pull some > $600 out of my savings to pay the taxes on it) going to abortions. And since the money goes to people who can then use it for whatever insurance provider they want, the only way to ensure that I'm not contributing to this is to stop all of them from covering it.

Huh. Legally, infringing the right to an abortion is a no-no, so they're just going to end up having to not do anything and leave the loophole or whatever in, but it might be yet another interesting fight to derail the healthcare bill (that I'm not paying nearly enough attention to considering I'll prolly have to buy into it when I age out of my parents' plans and still have mounting education debt).


Also interesting, a study from the Department of Transportation that was blocked from release in 2003 and just gotten under the Freedom of Information Act says that your driving sucks just as bad whether you're talking on a regular cell phone or a bluetoooth, handsfree thing. Makes sense--I mean, most of the distraction is cognitive. More so if you're a business type person or taking important calls, it says, because you've got to pay a lot more attention to that. At first, I was like "Okay, so places with cellphone bans move to banning even hands free stuff, but then isn't having a conversation with somebody in the car going to be just as bad? How about listening to NPR or other high-brow talk radio? Ban that too?" But you really can see how

It's funny, because most of the time when they talk about cellphone driving laws, it seems directed towards the stupid teenagers, when according to this, it's businessfolk that are the problem. Except for texting, natch. But it's not like you can really get caught texting like you can get pulled over when they see you with a phone in your ear, so that's rather impossible to enforce.


Moar news.

Prometheus Laboratories v. Mayo Collaborative Services et al. is heading for the federal circuit in early August. Hells yes. I've long been of the opinion that medical patenting has gone WAY too far. For instance, what this case is about: testing for metabolites of a drug to see how well the drug is working in somebody's system. Sure, patent your little kit for doing so, whatever, but if a lay person can walk up and say "Oh, because if there's lots, it means there's lots of drug being metabolized!" and get it just like that, it's way too common sense to patent the process.

If Prometheus wins, I kinda want Obama to step in there and be all "Dude. Judge-types. We're over here trying to make healthcare less expensive and you're on the other side of the beltway screwing us over by making sure that every one of this whole category of tests has to be run through your company. WTF. See if I put any of you on the Supreme Court now." I can see it coming out as sort of a compromise decision--the company gets the patent on testing for this drug because Mayo's simply changing the threshold numbers the test looks for is too derivative, but. . . I don't know. Mayo's kinda been a sneaky little bitch by trying to avoid the patent like that, but in my world, that kind of a patent is invalid anyway. I mean, what, can only one company in the word do a CBC too? Counting eosinophils, we did that in microbiology, should we have to have licensed that process first? No way.


And finally? Interesting food fact. I tried this out when we had a fire in the backyard a couple of times this week (it's been unseasonably cool and wonderful lately) and didn't feel like pigging out on s'mores but also didn't want to lose the opportunity to make them for later, so I made a bunch, wrapped them up (some in foil, some in wax paper--the latter first just because I couldn't find the foil at first, but then switched when I did because I had to tape the wax paper to get it to stay, and the tape didn't stick well) and froze them. I made the mistake of trying to eat the first two when they were still frozen, and then the graham cracker just turns to powder in your first bite, though the innards are good, but the other two I'm eating right now, and I let them thaw first and it's marvelous. So. Has discovered that that works. I mean, you lose out on the warm and gooey, but I can still taste that campfirey-marshmallow flavor. Win.

British, French nuclear subs collide in Atlantic

Way to go, guys. There are times I thank god I live in Missouri.

Clicked on a featured story on the Yahoo home page (one of the mini!featured stories listed in little links under the real featured one, actually; "Designer brings pajamas to the street" below "$43,000 suit sells well during recession"). And the tab that popped up (I haven't opened it yet) says "Yamamoto brings sleepwear onto t. . . " and whatever after that. Presumably Yamamoto is the aforementioned designer. And all I could think of was "but we killed Yamamoto!" LOLOL, West Wing geekage.

Finally got around to watching all of the Face of the Enemy BSG webisodes. The Gaeta plot twist in last night's episode makes more sense now, though I'm going to watch the webisodes again because I was (as per usual) sort of half paying attention and thus wasn't clear on the whole Gaeta/Sharon/people on the planet deal.

Let's see, what else. Umm, pissed that I'm not home this weekend, because it's the weekend of the open call for extras for Clooney's On the Air that's filming in the STL. To add insult to injury, the open call's at the mall that's all of a 10 minute walk from my house. And I can't just fill out the form and send it in because they need a picture as well, and I don't have a color printer here. May try to make the family do it for me and just drop it by the casting office (right down the road from aforementioned mall) once I pick out a picture (I don't have any recent ones that make me look oldish, which I have the feeling is what they're looking for), but first I've got to figure out the answers--I spend most of my time in t-shirts and workout pants now, both because of the comfort factor and the way my weight keeps bouncing around, so I've got very little idea on my clothes' sizes, and absolutely none on a dress size (especially because I'm still quite busty, so though I'm okay in pants and shirts because I can size them individually, I might have to go up one or two from the size for the rest of my body to find a dress that'll fit my chest).

CDC's sexually transmitted infections report came out a bit ago. Still not ever going to have sex in St. Louis, kthx: #1 again in gonorrhea and chlamydia. Umm. . . at least we're not the most dangerous anymore? Though LOL, I suppose that depends on how you define "danger".

Heard some people talking at brunch this morning (meaning, erm, yesterday morning) about the inauguration (a word which I still cannot spell--I leave out the first 'u' every time) music being taped. I think they misinterpreted the story, though--thinking, I believe, of the story with the little girls in China where one sang the anthem and another lip-synched it because the first wasn't attractive enough. This is Yo Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, Anthony McGill, and some pianist whose name I didn't recognize but is undoubtedly of the same caliber. There is no one else who could stand behind them and play that music while they waved their bows/fingers. It was still them, just prerecorded.

And still. Have you ever tried to play in the cold? I have, fairly often with Fiddlers. Think about how your fingers feel when they're exposed in the winter. Stiff and painful, no? Now add to that your instrument gumming up in much the same way and bitter wind blowing around while you're trying to pull a light wood-and-horse-hair bow in a smooth line across a very narrow target that will produce the optimum sound. From what Yo Yo Ma says, that's SOP for these events--they did it at Bush's goodbye thing a few days ago as well.

Oh, and so I don't forget. Was in Dillon's (grocery store down here, part of the Kroger chain, none of which we have in St. Louis) and picked up a Star Trek Magazine issue to flip through. At the end of Nana Visitor's interview, she says something about how cool it would have been to have there have been (wow--spend too long looking at those last few words and you'll really get confused) a switch between Kira and Intendant Kira that nobody knew about, so at the end, you've got everybody running off in different places leaving her in charge, and imagine all of the mischief she could have gotten up to with Ro Laren. Now I really want to write that, maybe tying it in with the Annika overthrowing her in the Dark Passions books (as the impetus for her semi-permanent defection to our realm), but I'd have to watch the 7th season again--I haven't seen most of the whole plotty section of DS9 with the war and all, just knowing it through fanon and the semi-canon of the novels. Still. Would be great.

An internal intelligence assessment, obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday, says the high visibility of the event, the presence of dignitaries and the significance of swearing in the country's first black president make the inauguration vulnerable to attacks.
Feds say inauguration attractive terrorist target - Yahoo! News

I bet we paid them a lot of money to come up with that profundity, too. File this one under "no duh", joint FBI and HHS task force.

And in other news, OMFG, I just made one of the most delicious dinners I've ever eaten totally by accident. It was one of those spontaneous, "What do I have in the fridge? Ooh! this will be good added in" things: just fresh broccoli all chopped up and softened in the microwave for a minute with spaghetti sauce my dad made (that was actually not one of his better batches, as the spices were wrong), that I ended up adding a bit of corn, a cooked and chopped up egg white and half a slice of fat free sharp cheddar cheese to. Warm it all up, mix it together, and I tried to fix the spices a bit--the thing was that Dad made the sauce for the meatballs he also made that were both delicious and sort of spicy, so to compensate the sauce itself was rather bland as the meatball spicy leeched out, but I got mine from the non-meatball batch, thus insufficiently spiced. I figured it needed more oregano, but though I'm a fan of that in the spaghetti in small amounts, by itself not so much, so when I picked up the jar and sniffed it, I decided a no on that one. So instead of trying to make it really spaghetti-saucey, I threw in some cumin and more garlic (because garlic:me is like butter:Paula Deen--everything needs more) AND SOMEHOW IT WAS AMAZING. And then just to make it more food, because it looked kinda small (and because I watched Top Chef at the gym and decided to make it into a blintz even though I've got no idea what a blintz really is, because this felt like one) I split the mixture in half and wrapped each bit up in a lettuce leaf that folded up all nicely like a cool wrap/sandwich(/blintz). But since it was Dad's sauce and the philosophy in our house with spices is that there is no measuring involved, there's going to be no way to recreate it.

Still. Man. Delish. Kinda dampened by the fact that before I ate it, I had to run to the bathroom so I stuck the whole wrapped thing into the microwave on half power for a minute while I ran there and back, and though the lettuce stayed decently crispy and the insides stayed warm, it was enough heat to cause the vegetable cooking phenomenon of doom: everything gets watery. And because it was all wrapped up and in a dish, I didn't notice until I carried it back to my room and picked it up to eat. While sitting on my bed. For whatever reason, I'd pulled over this section of newspaper to set the dish on, and thank god for that because otherwise there'd have been reddish tomatoey water all over my sheets. So flavor still magnificent, presentation got killed a bit there.

And in other, other news: DIE, UTERUS. That is all.

From Jerry Brown asks California Supreme Court to void gay-marriage ban

Voters are allowed to amend other parts of the Constitution by majority vote, but to use the ballot box to take away an "inalienable" right would establish a "tyranny of the majority," which the Constitution was designed, in part, to prevent, [California Attorney General Brown] wrote.
. . .
In an interview, Andy Pugno, the lawyer for Protect Marriage, called Brown's argument "an astonishing theory."

Bullshit. That's nothing astonishing. That's an argument I made in PoliSci 101. (Actually, it's 110, but whatever.) That's an argument that 90% of the rest of my mostly-oblivious PLS class could have come up with as well. You know why? Because it's basic and it's true.

Oh, and in computer news? CD drive doesn't work. I don't remember if I mentioned that. I'm pissed.

Commentaries on teh nooz.

Rooster arrested in Benton, Ill.
"Police Chief Mike O'Neill says the rooster has been bothering people lately, trying to keep them from getting where they want to go. O'Neill says officers had enough on Monday and took the rooster into custody after what he described as a brief scuffle."

Cape Girardeau woman kills man who returned to rape her second time
You go, girl. And at age 57, too.

I did not know we had low-density lipoprotein (LDL) apheresis machines for, you know, public use. And in St. Louis, too--though I suppose I shouldn't be that surprised about either, as it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch from all the other apheresis machines, and what St. Louis doesn't have in being a huge population center, it makes up for with being huge in biotech lately. Only worth it for familial hypercholesterolemia and other such non-responsive to medications, but still cool to have around.

Re: the 71 year old who backed his car up over the hood of the police car that was pulling him over (can't find a link to the story online yet, but they just reported it on CNN). A $200 fine and a defensive driving program? That's assault with a deadly weapon. That guy needs thrown in jail.

From the Google News thing.

Obama votes 'Present' on new economic rescue plan for now
Los Angeles Times - 1 hour ago
CORAL GABLES, Fla. -- Sen. Barack Obama today met with some of his many economic advisors and made an announcement that he was not going to make an announcement about any new plan to plan plans.

But the link to the actual story isn't working, sadly. Still. Must have been intentional hilarity, that.

Re: troopergate.

How do you just "not honor" subpoenas? I say just throw the whole lot of them in jail for contempt. Reaffirm to America that working for the government doesn't mean you can flout its laws.

'He also said the employees would refuse to appear unless either the full state Senate or the entire Legislature votes to compel their testimony.'

Erm, I would be like "Speak for yourself, Republican Attorney General and appointee of Governor Palin Talis Colberg, sir! I, as an employee not wanting a jail sentence, will cooperate fully. I don't even like this Palin person."


Re: House promos. 58 seconds in to this one on YouTube (with annoying watermark, grr).

Probably just in House's head, I think most of us have pessimistically decided. (Is this not irony, however, considering what I just posted about earlier today re: Remy and patients?) But the question is which episode is this occurring in? I'm thinking next week's; this was a pre-premiere promo, thus not giving them too many finished eps to draw footage from. Plus, I've been looking at cast credits, and I think she resembles Christine Lucas, possibly? But I've never been good at that.

And her name is now "Rena"? It took me so long to get used to "Remy" because that's such a weird name. Thanks, tptb. Looks like somebody on the House crew just screwed up, as it was changed on the website and then changed back.

Well, however it plays out, Olivia Wilde needs to stop being so hot. (What is this strangeness, you ask? Alexandria's got the hots for a celebrity who's not at least 1.5x her age? I know, innit?)

In other news. As of 8am this (Wednesday) morning, citizens of Baytown, TX (where my family is) can now in an hour and a half get their booze on again, after alcohol sales were prohibited last Thursday by emergency Mayoral order. Because hurricane survivors and looting and such are hard for a police force to manage. Drunken hurricane survivors (and drunken anybody in a place where water/food are questionable or you have to do special stuff to make sure they're comestible) would be hell to deal with.

And speaking of weather, O THANK YOU WEATHER GODS. Because since that nasty storm, it's been beautiful. As in, high of 57 one day beautiful. And will continue to be so, if forecasts are to be believed (they are not) until the middle of next week. When it gets rainy again, guh.