Month: June 2007

Among the many sane, pragmatic and serious moves the defense secretary has been making – he’s on the side of the grown-ups on torture, for example – this one hasn’t gotten much attention. It’s a clear sign of relaxation on the gay issue, and an acknowledgment for the first time of the great job so many gay servicemembers do and have always done. The more you learn about Gates, the better he looks. He may be critical to rescuing us from the Iraq sinkhole in the coming year.

Coulter appears to be cracking up, if this hysterical rant on MSNBC this morning is any guide. Will Mickey come to her aid? Has she called him yet?

The mind drifts …

Some Catholic theologians are proposing a re-think:

Lawler and Risch say their proposal reflects Catholic tradition. They noted that in the 13th and 14th centuries couples were often first betrothed — a mutual consent to spend the rest of their lives together — before they were actually married. "The first sexual intercourse between the spouses usually followed the betrothal — a fact of the Catholic tradition that has been obscured by the now-taken-for-granted sequence of wedding, marriage, sexual intercourse," Lawler and Risch wrote.

They called for a modern-day betrothal, marked by a public ceremony in which the man and woman agree to marry in the future. Then the couple could live together and have sexual relations if they chose. Then the couple would marry. This process would bring the Catholic Church more in line with today’s social norms, Lawler and Risch wrote, saying about 5 million unmarried couples already live together in the United States.

The usual objection about the "intrinsic evil of fornication" followed. But it makes a lot of sense to me.

He voted for it before he voted against it.

Cartography was once a very elitist and top-down activity. And yes, even maps have agendas. What they include or leave out or annotate has always reflected the decisions of very few people. But that’s changing fast, with Google Maps and Google Earth. Places once ignored are now quite prominent, and the details and annotations are gettig much more democratic:

John Hanke, the director of Google Earth and Google Maps, zooms in for a closer look at Bangalore. At first, the city appeared in Google Earth as little more than a hi-res satellite photo. "Bangalore wasn’t mapped on Google’s products," he says, "and it really wasn’t very well mapped, period."

Now, however, hundreds of small icons pop up on the screen. Pointing at one brings up a text bubble identifying a location of interest: a university, a racetrack, a library. An icon hovering over the Karnataka High Court calls up a photo of its bright red exterior and a link to an account of its long, distinguished history. Another, atop M. Chinnaswamy Stadium, links to a Wikipedia entry about the legendary cricket matches played there. "As you can see, it’s very well mapped now," Hanke says, pulling up a photo of a Hindu temple.

The annotations weren’t created by Google, nor by some official mapping agency. Instead, they are the products of a volunteer army of amateur cartographers. "It didn’t take sophisticated software," Hanke says. "What it took was a substrate — the satellite imagery of Earth — in an accessible form and a simple authoring language for people to create and share stuff. Once that software existed, the urge to describe and annotate just took off."

(Hat tip: Jesse Walker.)

"Michael Moore has teased and bullied his way to some brilliant highs in his career as a political entertainer, but he scrapes bottom in his new documentary, "Sicko" …

In each country, Moore interviews doctors who speak proudly of how well their country’s system works. But the candor of these doctors is no more impressive than that of the corporate spokesmen Moore has confronted in the past. No one mentions the delays or the instances of less than first-rate care…

Moore winds up treating the audience the same way that, he says, powerful people treat the weak in America — as dopes easily satisfied with fairy tales and bland reassurances," – David Denby in the New Yorker. I’ll force myself to go see it and review shortly.

New York, New York, sunset.

For a newly updated, global gallery of Dish readers’ window views, click here.

"We do expect Senator Obama to significantly outraise us this quarter," – Howard Wolfson, Clinton’s campaign manager. Ambers has the full memo.

The family often got together in the same room at night and turned the lights off:

”It was just a time to totally be yourself,” Tagg says.

Ooookaaay. Was the dog invited?

Outside the extremist, activist base, regular GOP voters turn out to be relatively tolerant when it comes to sexual minorities and private sex lives. They’re not well represented by their party leaders, as far as policy is concerned. This is good news for Fred Thompson. The man has had a colorful and wide-ranging sex life, as I’m sure we will soon find out.