Political Craziness in the USA

Jim Wright, a political blogger whose writing I follow on Facebook (it's also over here at Stonekettle Station), writing about Donald Trump saying that he'd start closing mosques, writes, "And what if Muslims stand on their First Amendment rights as Americans and refuse?"

Which reminded me of a quotation that's come up in my class on urban social justice.

"Between equal rights, force decides." -Karl Marx

I think this batch of Republic candidates is the worse there has been since I was old enough to start paying attention to politics. They just keep getting worse. And the support they get is frightening.

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I note that this particular essay isn't on the website yet. You can find it in full here.

Homophobia?

I was in an informal, but probably still technically 'official' academic, setting with other students and a professor when the topic of Michel Foucault came up. The professor commented that Foucault was "a pervert," and that he had intentionally continued having sex with people when he knew he was HIV positive. I was taken aback by these comments, but knew nothing of their validity. Googling for more information, I read, in David Macey's biography of Foucault, that:

It is almost as impossible [as it is to determine exactly when someone contracted HIV] to determine precisely what Foucault knew about his condition in his last years. There was in fact little that could be known.... A possible viral cause had been identified and isolated in May 1983, but it was not until the following year that a link was established between HIV and AIDS. An HIV test was devised towards the end of 1984, but was not available for general use until mid-1985. Foucault could not, in other words, have taken an HIV test.

Now, this does not entirely answer my question. It may have been impossible to know that he had HIV/AIDS. He may not even have known what they were. But that doesn't rule out the possibility that he knew he was sick and contagious and was intentionally infecting people. I'm very skeptical about that possibility, but I don't know.

Do the professor's comments feel homophobic to you? I think they're clearly kink-phobic, but I'm more concerned with homophobia, especially in that context.

Unproductive Day

I've been having a difficult, and thoroughly unproductive, day. Well, not thoroughly. You know what's a silly but worthwhile happiness? Going into the bathroom having forgotten you scrubbed and swept it a few hours ago and being greeted with the surprise of shiny, white, freshly-cleaned porcelain in the toilet bowl. The little things can be big.

I need to get at least one piece of schoolwork done today, and I am going to actually concentrate on that for a while. But first, here's a photo of another thing that makes me happy.

This is the centerpiece of the Forevertron. That metal-banded glass egg is the capsule that Dr. Evermore will ride in as his great machine launches him into space.





The colors in a lot of the photos from this set aren't the greatest. The light wasn't very good, and I also hadn't learned nearly as much about light as I have now. Maybe my later sets will be even better. This was my first visit, in 2009, and I have a couple more sets too.