GAYS & STRAIGHTS FOREVER

On a positive note, there have always been and always will be gay (bi-, gay, lesbian, transgendered) people. Laws, threats, oppression, torture, and death have not been able to stop them. Just as, on a negative note, there will always be hurtful affairs outside marriage, spousal and child abuse, addictions, hypocrisy, greed, corruption, injustice, and poor people. The flawed wiring of human creatures demands it....Now, is it possible to stop hitting our societal heads against the wall of fact, and start improving the sad, often tragic lives of us all?

RUBBER & REAL DUCKS GO VIRAL IN CHINA

COMMUNISTS AND OLIGARCHS HAVE NO SENSE OF HUMOR.....

JOSS WEDON, DIRECTOR

GRADUATES:  Action is more important than words....but words are more important than nothing.  Here are 13 minutes of funny, serious, true words than can help you, if you occasionally think of them.

The two professor-administrators at the front, who probably invited him, get his dark entertaining humor and agree. The professor in the back is probably bored and thinks he's a jerk.  You can make your own decision.  (The English is clear and non-academic.)

The problem is that at graduation ceremonies, students are thinking about partying, their dates, supportive and non-supportive families, no job, the terrifyng future, being hot or cold, holding on to their caps in the wind, eating, texting, boredom, and having a good night's sleep, hopefully with someone.

Still, the Graduation Speech Ritual is one of civilization's more useful inventions, too often unused.

http://www.upworthy.com/behold-the-bluntest-funniest-and-deadliest-graduation-speech-in-the-history-of-the-known-universe?g=2&c=upw1

POLITICAL ART CAN BE GOOD ART

ARTISTS: Self-promotion is not wrong and doesn't pollute art...if you have something worthwhile to promote.


http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/27/arts/design/ai-weiwei-dioramas-depict-his-imprisonment.html

FLAPPERS

Women were allowed to own and drive cars in the 1920s and 1930s. They could go dancing, have fun, have sex, explore life, make their own decisions, and live independently....

Then World War 2 came, and women worked physically hard in factories building guns, tanks, boats, and planes for America's (male) Armed Forces....

Then Peace came, and women were sent back into the home to do dishes, clean, cook, and take care of babies.

Now woman can serve in the Armed Forces, where they are often raped like Comfort Women. They can also go into battle and get killed equally with men.

Progress.

AMERICA 2013 . . .

AMERICA

Non-Americans must understand that America is not culturally insulated, cloistered, monolithic, evil, or good. America consists of people from every other country, culture, religion, race, and language in the world....including Americans who are brilliant, stupid, open-hearted, prejudiced, terrified, brave, creative, boring, super-rich, homeless, nationalistic, internationalist, fundamentalist, atheist, power-mad, immoral, amoral, moral, greedy, charitable, humanists, environmentalists, and people who hate people, nature, and the Earth.....America gives wrong and even insane people the freedom to be wrong and insane, but not to legally kill, rape, or abuse each other.... America is full of lofty philosophical ideals and destructive hypocritical reality, because America is not Heaven, and Americans are not gods...only human, and very flawed.

PERFECTLY BRILLIANT FACEBOOK SITES

THESE ARE THE GREATEST SITES

I've discovered on Facebook so far..

They are so powerful, creative, sublime,

often sad, absurd, moving, and visionary.

Nearly every post is stunning.

Your life can be inspired and changed:

Hamza Nesrate

Chung-Ting Huang

台灣行道樹 (Community)

StreetArt in Germany

Creativity & Life

TwistedShifter

Al Jazeera English

The Guardian

ABUSE

From New York Times

Payment for Afghan Debt: Daughter, Age 6

If a man at a refugee camp who borrowed $2,500 for medical care for his family cannot repay his debt, his daughter will have to marry the lender's 17-year-old son.

Comment

Immediate response: Pay the father's debt. Long-term solution: Birth control, sexual and moral education..... The physical, sexual, and psychological abuse of children, girls, wives, women, and non-married lovers has been going on in every tribe, every culture, every country, every religion, for as long as human history. Because of improved media and the internet, we now know about some of it.....Our response must be immediate, unyielding, ethical, practical, effective, and long-term. This can only be done, for more than a handful of abuse cases, at a national and global level. Yet the moral and political corruption at that level is endemic.... "Think Tanks" abound in the civilized world, yet nothing seems to change.  Are there any realistic solutions?

DIFFERENT REALITY

TV IS SERIOUS

One of the greatest moments ever on television.

Not 100% true about "old" glorified America, 

but as close to the political Truth as you can find on TV.

(The Wire" was even closer social truth.)

Pilot: "THE NEWSROOM" (2012, HBO). 

Created and written by Aaron Sorkin ("Studio 60").

Starring Jeff Daniels.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16K6m3Ua2nw&feature=youtu.be

MONEY AND THE SOUL

Mr. Kalayanasundaram worked as a Librarian for 30 years. Every month in his 30 year experience(service), he donated his entire salary to help the needy. He worked as a server in a hotel to meet his needs. He donated even his pension amount of about ten lakh rupees to the needy.

He is the first person in the world to spend the entire earnings for a social cause. In recognition to his service, United Nations Organization adjudged him as one of the Outstanding People of the 20th Century. An American organization honored him with the ‘Man of the Millennium’ award. He received a sum of Rs 30 cores as part of this award which he distributed entirely for the needy as usual.Moved by his passion to help others, Super Star Rajinikanth adopted him as his father.

VICTORY OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT

Human beings worldwide desperately want to put a face to the brutalized Indian girl who was raped and killed. That is why the Facebook photo (real or not) went viral....because we all want to mourn a real person we can see and try to know....Any female photo can be the girl, because all women are equally vulnerable, in India and every country. Male lust is not the cause, abhorrent international cultural male barbarism is. It not only brutalizes women, it brutalizes children, the elderly, gays and lesbians, and those of other races, castes, religions, political views, and economic levels. Male barbarism is not animal instinct, it is human insanity.

from NY Times,  1/7/13, by Sohaila Abdulali 

I Was Wounded; My Honor Wasn’t

THIRTY-TWO years ago, when I was 17 and living in Bombay, I was gang raped and nearly killed. Three years later, outraged at the silence and misconceptions around rape, I wrote a fiery essay under my own name describing my experience  for an Indian women’s magazine. It created a stir in the women’s movement — and in my family — and then it quietly disappeared. 

Then, last week, I looked at my e-mail and there it was. As part of the outpouring of public rage after a young woman’s rape and death in Delhi, somebody posted the article online and it went viral. Since then, I have received a deluge of messages from people expressing their support.

It’s not exactly pleasant to be a symbol of rape. I’m not an expert, nor do I represent all victims of rape. All I can offer is that — unlike the young woman who died in December two weeks after being brutally gang raped, and so many others — my story didn’t end, and I can continue to tell it.

STATISTICS

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVE!
Statistics lie. 
Statistics are used to support anyone's viewpoint.
Statistics are great gossip.
Statistics are not true.
Here are the latest "official" U.S. Government Statistics.....

VALUES

     For Sale: $65-million.

     Phoenix, Arizona.