IYG’s executive director is Mary Byrne, a pillar of the LBGT community for decades. She was the producer of the National Women’s Music Festival for years, and also owned Outword Bound, the LBGT bookstore where Stephanie and I met. Mary was also my landlady for five years, which is why I have personal reason to know IYG is in strong, safe, competent hands. The organization has done good work in Indiana for decades, and like other youth advocacy non-profit organizations, they seek out important sources of fundraising from the community.

A few years ago, IYG applied for the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles Specialty Plates program. This program is a win-win for the state of Indiana and for non-profit organizations. They produce specialty plates at a low cost, and members of the non-profit and their communities can promote the plates and receive part of the revenue, with the rest of the profit benefiting Indiana. Specialty plates have become an important part of fundraising for non-profit organizations, and an important revenue source for Indiana as well.

IYG had to fight to get accepted into the program – they were initially denied entrance into the program by arbitrary changes in the requirements and a lack of transparency about what the requirements were, and IYG had to go to court to get accepted. It became clear during the legal fight that the BMV’s lack of transparency and arbitrary rule changes were based on homophobia. IYG’s acceptance into the program ended up making national headlines.

Unfortunately, IYG’s new specialty plate didn’t sit well with homophobic people in Indiana, and especially not with homophobic members of the the Indiana State Legislature, who immediately began seeking ways to prevent plates from being issued beyond the first year, and began drafting legislation to alter the way that specialty plates were issued, hoping exclude IYG in future years. Homophobes eventually struck gold, canceling IYG’s ability to issue plates based on another lack of transparency in the rules – organizations were not allowed to issue number plates to organization members who had given them support; something that is a regular practice among non-profits. In addition to canceling IYG’s plates, two other organizations, The Indiana Greenways Foundation and the Indiana 4-H Foundation also had their plates canceled for the same reason. Both organizations believe they were just caught in the homophobic crossfire. Karen Bohn, head of the Greenways Foundation, said she believed the real target was the gay youth group. “I think we were just collateral damage,” she said. “Unfortunately it doesn’t seem very fair.”

All three organizations were in negotiations with the BMV to have their plates reinstated when this past week, those negotiations were abruptly canceled by the BMV, who cited the state legislature’s new licensing commission, run by the state legislature, who will be the final approval for specialty plates. Under the new commission rules, Greenways and 4-H will probably get their specialty plates back, but even state legislatures admit that IYG will be denied due to homophobia:

“It depends on the committee makeup,” [Valparaiso Republican Rep. Ed] Soliday said. “I’d be disingenuous if I didn’t say there are some legislators who are very, very anti-IYG. I tried to separate the legislation from IYG for two years, and there were other folks who constantly wanted to drag it back in.”

Related posts:

1. More Indiana State Legislature Attacks on Gay People
2. Indiana Equality Presents “Our Families Count” Rally at the Statehouse
3. Anti-Marriage Equality Amendment Introduced to Indiana Legislature

It’s official – Governor Pence signed SB 621, the bill that drastically reworks Indianapolis city government to take power away from the Indianapolis City-County Council and hand it over to the Mayors office. If you want to understand a bit more about what this bill does, read more about it here: [The Brutal Republican Power Grab of Indiana Senate Bill 621 (SB 621)]

Congratulations, folks. We now have a Mayor King. You don’t need to worry about what’s going on in city government, because you won’t be able to change it anyway. Your council districts are so gerrymandered that only Republicans can get elected in Marion County, and so much power has been redirected to the Mayors office that the city council and other public offices are rendered impotent anyway.

Also, the rules about how long you have to live in Indianapolis before running for office have been relaxed drastically – so it’s now easy for the white folks who live in Carmel and Fishers and rural areas to “hop the line” and “reside” in Marion County just long enough to get into office and control politics, without actually having to live for very long next to the poors and the blacks and the Mexicans. Because god forbid rich white folks might have to mix with the great unwashed. Rule them via imperial fiefdom – yes. Live next to them? Certainly not.

Related posts:

1. Indiana Senate Bill 621 (SB 621)
2. Mayor Greg Ballard’s Many Tax Increases
3. The Brutal Republican Power Grab of Indiana Senate Bill 621 (SB 621)

For those of us who have been enjoying it the past few years, the “official” opening is good news, the trail has been completed and you can now walk and bike all around downtown, enjoying public art and visiting retail and cultural attractions without dealing with parking and without the fear of getting creamed by cars. For folks who haven’t explored downtown, the cultural trail is a great way to see a lot of the major sites in Indianapolis. Again, without getting creamed by cars. It needs to be emphasized how awesome that is.

Related posts:

1. Indianapolis: Super Bowl City
2. Urban Design Indianapolis
3. Indianapolis’ Unigov Disaster

Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard

In a Wish-TV news story on a fatal hit-and-run car/pedestrian accident, Mayor Greg Ballard was asked why there are no sidewalks on those streets where there is considerable foot traffic and where this accident and several other pedestrian fatalities have occurred over the years. In response, he said that we need about $800 million dollars worth of work on sidewalks in Indianapolis, and that the city “just doesn’t have enough money to put sidewalks everywhere we want them.”

As I mentioned in a previous post [Mayor Ballard wants cricket venue in Indy, but can we afford it?] Ballard is diverting $6 million dollars from the Department of Public Works funding that fixes broken bridges and crumbling infrastructure to build a cricket facility on the eastside of town, despite the fact that the Indy Parks system has failed repeatedly to maintain basic maintenance on the public parks we already own. But this cricket thing has been a fixation for Greg Ballard since he originally took office, so it’s not surprising that what the Imperial Mayor wants, he gets.

According to the Indy Star, contracts have already been awarded to begin building the controversial park.

In today’s “We Are City” newsletter is this little gem that appears to be promoting this cricket park:

Four? Six? or Out? Even though this is how most Americans view cricket, there are an increasing number of people who view cricket a little differently, and even as an American sport. Perhaps that’s why the Indianapolis Board of Public Works is moving ahead with plans for a 50-acre world sports complex on the far eastside. The complex would eventually include facilities for gaelic football, rugby, hurling, and cricket. / tag: sports, international / JB

That little write up gives me pause about “We Are City” and makes me want to take a closer look at who the folks involved in that group are, and how their bread is buttered.

Related posts:

1. Mayor Ballard wants cricket venue in Indy, but can we afford it?
2. Mayor Greg Ballard’s Many Tax Increases
3. Mayor Peterson outlines how Daniels is going to screw Indy

Why you should listen to Jackson Katz:
Jackson Katz, Phd, is an anti-sexist activist and expert on violence, media and masculinities. An author, filmmaker, educator and social theorist, Katz has worked in gender violence prevention work with diverse groups of men and boys in sports culture and the military, and has pioneered work in critical media literacy. Katz is the creator and co-founder of the Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) program, which advocates the ‘bystander approach’ to sexual and domestic violence prevention. You’ve also seen him in the award winning documentary “MissRepresentation.”

To learn more about TEDxFiDiWomen.

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)

Related posts:

1. V-Day: Until the Violence Stops
2. Indiana Intolerance – Day of Silence Leads to Anti-Gay Bomb Threats
3. Michael Jackson’s Original court documents

Included on this years’ list:

Anderson Athletic Park Pool, Anderson
Bowen House, Delphi
Brookview-Irvington Park & State Boulevard, Fort Wayne
Eagle Cotton Mill, Madison
Flanner House Homes & Phillips Temple, Indianapolis
Harmony Way Bridge, New Harmony
Kingsbury Ordnance Plant Employment Office, Kingsbury
Old Clarksville Site, Clarksville
Pantheon Theater, Vincennes
Walkerton Church, Walkerton

Related posts:

1. Giant Colgate Clock endangered
2. Man Charged With Molesting Adopted Child
3. Fishers, Indiana and “Best Places to Live 2010″

When I was a little kid, we still had milk delivered to a box on the front porch. Now the “Milk Man” is one of those obsolete occupations that kids today won’t recognize.

Related posts:

1. 10 minutes of Santana
2. Customer "Support" At A Phone Company
3. Poor Insurance Company Executives

No one was there to give me a drink, so I left.

Apparently this is a feature that has been around awhile, because people were writing about it in 2011. I missed that story.

Here’s how you can find buildings that you can enter – while you’re in street view, pick up the little yellow guy on the map, and you’ll see orange circles appear. Those are the stores you can enter.

That makes me a little bit nervous, given my previous interaction with Google Street View. Hey, what are you doing with that camera?

You’ll have to pardon me, I’m going to spend the morning popping in and out of shops in London. This was the place I was looking for when I stumbled into a bar…

Percy’s Passage, London

Related posts:

1. My ass can be seen from space
2. Women flipping omelets in the street
3. Writely integrated into Google

If you go to Wikipedia’s page for American Novelists, you might notice something strange: Of the first 100 authors listed, only a small handful of them are women. You could potentially blame this on the fact that there simply are more famous male authors than there are female (a-whole-nother can of worms), but the real reasoning is much more intentional. Wikipedia editors have slowly been moving female authors to a subcategory called American Women Novelists so that the original list isn’t at risk of “becoming too large.” Bad luck, ladies. They need to make room and someone has to go first. Why shouldn’t it be unimportant literary folk like Harper Lee, Harriet Beecher Stowe or Louisa May Alcott?

Novelist Amanda Filipacchi was the one who — very recently — first cottoned on to what Wikipedia was doing. The edits, she noticed, have been happening gradually and mostly alphabetically by last name though in a few special cases the editors jumped ahead because they just couldn’t wait for R and T to get Ayn Rand and Donna Tartt off the list. Filipacchi herself was one of the authors to get booted to the subcategory.

More reporting on this:

Wikipedia’s Sexism Toward Female Novelists [New York Times]

“American women novelists” segregated by Wikipedia [Salon]

Related posts:

1. Congress blocked from Wikipedia
2. Damsel in Distress: Part 1 – Tropes vs Women in Video Games
3. Wikipedia Fun

A picture I took from a television cartoon years ago.

The other idea I’ve been knocking around is a combo clock/cat bed tower.

Not sure whether to combine these into one idea – a pagoda/clock tower? Or to do one or the other. I have some rough ideas about starting this, but nothing fully formed.

Related posts:

1. Brainstorming and Groupthink
2. Cool Clock
3. Cool clock

Courtesy Wikipedia:

The Bem Sex-Role Inventory was created by Sandra Bem in an effort to measure androgyny. It was published in 1974. Stereotypical masculine and feminine traits were found by surveying 100 Stanford undergraduate students on which traits they found to be socially desirable for each sex. The original list of 200 traits was narrowed down to the 40 masculine and feminine traits that appear on the present test. Normative data was found from a 1973 sample for 444 males and 279 females and a 1978 sample of 340 females and 476 males all also from Stanford University undergraduates.

My score on the Gender Traits Test: -6

GENDER TRAITS SCORES:
Masculine: -20 and under
Nearly Masculine: -19 to -10
Androgynous: -9 to +9
Nearly feminine: +9 to +19
Feminine: +20 and over

Related posts:

1. The Geek Test
2. Gender Roles
3. The Goth Test

In the late nineteen-sixties, Firestone and a small cadre of her “sisters” were at the radical edge of a movement that profoundly changed American society. At the time, women held almost no major elected positions, nearly every prestigious profession was a male preserve, homemaking was women’s highest calling, abortion was virtually illegal, and rape was a stigma to be borne in silence. Feminism had been in the doldrums ever since the first wave of the American women’s movement won the vote, in 1920, and lost the struggle for greater emancipation. Feminist energy was first co-opted by Jazz Age consumerism, then buried in decades of economic depression and war, until the dissatisfactions of postwar women, famously described by Betty Friedan in “The Feminine Mystique” (1963), gave rise to a “second wave” of feminism. The radical feminists emerged alongside a more moderate women’s movement, forged by such groups as the National Organization for Women, founded in 1966 by Friedan, Aileen Hernandez, and others, and championed by such publications as Ms., founded in 1972 by Gloria Steinem and Letty Cottin Pogrebin. That movement sought, as now’s statement of purpose put it, “to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society,” largely by means of equal pay and equal representation. The radical feminists, by contrast, wanted to reconceive public life and private life entirely.

Few were as radical, or as audacious, as Shulamith Firestone. Just over five feet tall, with a mane of black hair down to her waist, and piercing dark eyes behind Yoko Ono glasses, Firestone was referred to within the movement as “the firebrand” and “the fireball.” “She was aflame, incandescent,” Ann Snitow, the director of the gender-studies program at the New School and a member of the early radical cadre, told me. “It was thrilling to be in her company.”

A very long article with lots of great background on the feminist movement. I’m nsure I would not be happy living in the complete upend of society that Shulamith Firestone envisioned, but looking at her background and how she arrived at the radical notions she did – I can see, given the open sexism they were fighting against even on the supposedly progressive left, how she arrived in that place. I wonder if I would have had a similar trajectory if I had been her age in that time period.

This bit… “That intensity emerged in Firestone early, and it was a source of antagonism within her family. She was the second child and the oldest daughter of six children—three girls and three boys…” emphasis mine. Interesting.

Related posts:

1. I am a feminist and I’m not afraid to say so
2. International Women’s Day/Feminist Coming Out Day
3. links for 2010-08-26

This is the thinking behind a new strategic plan called Velocity.

Led by IDI, this year-long process — with the help of dozens of community, political and business leaders — will come up with a five-year vision for Downtown Indianapolis. Under consideration are ways to drive economic development, make better use of public spaces and parks, improve transportation (yes, including transit), increase housing options, and add more arts and cultural attractions. A public launch is set for Tuesday.

But this isn’t planning for your father’s Downtown Indianapolis.

We’re talking Raymond Street to the south, 30th Street on the north, Tibbs Avenue to the west and Keystone Avenue/Rural Street to the east. That box includes a lot of up-and-coming neighborhoods that have benefited from Downtown’s growth, but it also includes a lot of neighborhoods that missed the rising tide that was supposed to lift all boats.

You can take a survey to give your opinions about what will improve downtown – your answers will help shape the advisory groups vision of what Indianapolis can be.

One of the things I emphasized in the comments of the survey is that we should concentrate on infill before density. There are hundreds of empty lots in downtown and “downtown adjacent” neighborhoods where homes have been bulldozed over the last 30 years. We have a lot of empty spaces to fill in – but rather than doing that completely with condos, townhomes and multi-story apartment buildings, consider strategically filling them in many of them with single-family residences. And where you are filling in with more dense residential construction – give apartments some breathing room. Make them three-bedroom rather than two. Make them two bedroom rather than one. Make them appealing to families with kids and dogs, not just single professionals. In short, concentrate on filling in the vast wasteland of empty lots up and down College Avenue with residences before building yet another downtown condo.

I agree that urban sprawl is bad. I know that density is considered ideal in urban planning. But we have a lot of empty slate to work with here. We can be careful about how much density we’re adding, because Indianapolis is attractive to it’s current residents for a reason. Stephanie and I considered living in Chicago, New York and Toronto when we were deciding where to live; we didn’t just land in Indianapolis by accident, or because we grew up here. The reason we picked Indianapolis over those other cities is because we’re able to afford to have a private library in our own home, and keep a dog and a vegetable garden in the yard, even living downtown. It’s not that I love driving – I’d rather take a bus (or better yet, a streetcar! Lets bring those back) to my workplace. But Chicago and New York seem frenetic and stressful, like there are people living in your lap all the time. We can come up with a happy medium between our current sprawl and the density of a large city, and better public transit can get us from place to place.

We’re not Chicago, and we don’t need to be. In fact it’s better off if that isn’t our goal; if we take advantage of opportunities we have that Chicago does not. Indianapolis has a distinct advantage in doing this sort of city planning over larger cities; we don’t have to make the same mistakes they did. We don’t have to force people to live in 300-square foot boxes because we’re retrofitting blocks and blocks of 200-year-old buildings. We don’t have to screw up by making the Robert Moses mistake of displacing urban neighborhoods and local businesses. We don’t have to become unfriendly to families with kids who need space to raise them. We also have the advantage of having a built-in target market for new residents – the people just north of us – the folks who grew up in Carmel and Noblesville because their parents moved out of Indianapolis in previous decades. This generation of young Hamilton County adults is more culturally aware than the people of their parent’s generation who fled the city for the suburbs. They’ll see the advantages of living closer to their workplace and shortening their commute while broadening their cultural exposure and awareness. But they grew up with a backyard and a dog and room and bedrooms for kids, and they may still want that.

I’m sort of curious whatever became of the Ball State plan for Urban Design Indianapolis that was in the works back in 2007 and 2008. I linked to that project several years ago, and when I went back to reference the guidelines they came up with here, the link to the website where the plan resided is broken. I was wondering how much that plan might inform the current one. After a considerable amount of searching, I wasn’t able to come up with a link to the plan that worked.

Related posts:

1. Urban Design Indianapolis
2. Julia Carson and Fall Creek Place
3. Indy Star’s “2005 hotlist” is really not that hot

I didn’t realize it also had this awesomeness inside – plans for building Wonder Woman’s Invisible Plane:

My Desktop Comics just got 50% more awesome.

Related posts:

1. Somebody get these M-F liquids off this M-F Plane
2. How Much Is Inside Candy Hearts
3. We’re Hiding in the House With the Lights Off

More about this TED Talk:

When Colin Stokes’ 3-year-old son caught a glimpse of Star Wars, he was instantly obsessed. But what messages did he absorb from the sci-fi classic? Stokes asks for more movies that send positive messages to boys: that cooperation is heroic, and respecting women is as manly as defeating the villain.

Why you should listen to him:
Colin Stokes divides his time between parenting and building the brand of Citizen Schools, a non-profit that reimagines the school day for middle school students in low-income communities in eight states. As Managing Director of Brand & Communications, Colin helps people within the organization find the ideas, words and stories that will connect with more and more people. He believes that understanding the human mind is a force that can be used for good and seeks to take advantage of our innate and learned tendencies to bring out the best in each other and our culture.

Before starting a family, Colin was an actor and graphic designer in New York City. He starred in the long-running off-Broadway musical I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, as well is in several musicals and Shakespeare stagings. But he jokes that he seems to have achieved more renown (and considerably more revenue) for his brief appearances on two Law & Order episodes.

Related posts:

1. Saudis knew about planned war on Iraq before Colin Powell
2. Movies I’ve Seen: 2007
3. Quote of the Day: Reform

I think stepping back from the flood of information online – especially when I don’t know the veracity or relevance of it – is a good idea. I think a lot of my fascination with and time spent on the events in Boston was in observing how social media was spreading information around, which is an interesting inquiry, but I’m not exactly a viral expert (it’s not my job to watch these patterns of information), so it’s an exercise in navel-gazing that isn’t exactly productive or enriching to my psyche.

In contrast, though, I’ve started to see the “I don’t want to know who he is or why he did what he did” meme going around facebook already. I’m uncomfortable with that reaction. I agree that we don’t want to glorify people who do terrible things with a spot in history, but I also hate the idea that we just accept that things happen without assigning blame on the responsible parties. If we listen to the guy’s manifesto, we can counter it with messages about why he’s wrong, which I think is important.

Because I don’t believe we have to just accept that “bad things happen,” or that we can’t create change because we clearly can. I think holding people accountable is important, and proving that they are wrong in their wrong beliefs advances us culturally to be more civilized and to have opportunities for more rewarding lives. If you had told me 15 years ago that our country would accept and allow gay marriage in our lifetime, cynical me would not have believed it for a second. But change is coming on that front, and it a good way. We can change the way the world thinks, the way they believe. It may be a long and arduous process, but we have done it countless times in the past, and we can do it again.

Related posts:

1. Media Matters calls the mainstream media on their Bush Cheerleading
2. Why the media can’t get Wikipedia right
3. Local News and Online Reporting

It isn’t kosher to talk about the book before book club; in fact that is the first and second rules of book club. But I am a few pages away from the end of this book, and it’s not exactly a book that sits around waiting to be discussed, so the book club will probably forgive me, especially because I actually managed to finish a book for once instead of getting bored part way through and going off to look at comics instead. My ADD has gotten much worse over the last few years. My brain is shallow; I cannot help it.

So there are a number of things that you need to know about this book, and I’ll actually number them for you, just for entertainment, although none of these items actually takes priority over any other. Numbering shit is just fun.

1. The Fault in Our Stars is a really great book. (I never ever bury my lede.)
2. It is a novel about a 16-year-old young woman named Hazel, who is dying of cancer, so yeah, you’re probably going to cry. You should read it anyway. Don’t worry, I’m not spoiling anything by telling you about the cancer; you learn that on the first page.
3. The book is set in Indianapolis, so if you live here, you should especially read it, because it’s very cool to actually read a really good book that’s set in Indianapolis, with places you’ve been to popping up all over the text like delicious little surprise bonbons. I imagine this is how New Yorkers feel every time they read about their precious city: “Oh, yes, I’ve stood on that corner/eaten at that pizzeria, how droll.” Well I’ve been to that Speedway on 86th and Ditch, and I can say… it’s a gas station. But it’s OUR gas station. Wait, this is a better one: I’ve been to that Funky Bones sculpture in the 100 Acres behind the IMA, and watched kids playing on it, so I know exactly what the characters saw and felt at that particular moment, so I have better idea that any dumb New Yorker what it’s supposed to mean. I’m inappropriately chuffed that I understand one thing that New Yorkers don’t.
4. This is not a depressing book. Well it is in parts, but it’s also intelligent, and moving, and uplifting, and cathartic and ultimately not depressing at all. More than likely you will finish this book and be glad that you read it, and also feel very alive, which you have been reminded of because several of the characters in it are not. Unless you are actually dying of cancer, in which case, I am a huge asshole and should check my privilege. Yikes. Now do I delete this list item or not? Aw, fuck it.
5. Although you will recognize lots of the settings by name, the author inexplicably changed the name of the hospitals that appear in the book, which made me wonder throughout. You will still recognize them, though, especially if you, like I, have an unwanted familiarity with any of them. That only adds to the verisimilitude. That is both good and bad.
6. The author, John Green, is a resident of Indianapolis, and you have probably met him at one time or another, possibly without realizing it. He’s probably that guy you/I flipped off in traffic, or cut off to get in the grocery store line. Or was introduced to, and promptly forgot his name. (For me, most likely that one.) Unlike Vonnegut or James Whitcomb Riley, or George Ade, or Meredith Nicholson, he’s actually around here somewhere. I know it’s an assumption that we may, you and I, have met him, but it’s not that big of a stretch. Indianapolis is a city, but it ain’t that big.
7. I have not (yet) read his other works, but just based on this one, John Green is a huge literary asset to our city, on par with any of the dead literary figures I listed in the bullet point above. And he has the advantage over those dudes of being accessible to you and I – not in the sense that we could run into him on the street (although we probably have) but in the sense that he’s writing in a contemporary Indianapolis that we see every day, and not an historical city that doesn’t have the same sensibility that Indianapolis did back when true literary figures last walked the streets here. Aside from the characters residing in a city we recognize, they also reside in a time period we recognize, with pop culture and technology we recognize, and when they look in the mirror we see our faces reflected back. John Green is a voice of Indianapolis in the modern day, and his writing reminds us we are also intelligent, and moving, and uplifting, and cathartic, and that we have the power to move people with our words.
8. I once had a conversation with my friend Rachel about whether there could be another major literary figure in Indianapolis along the lines of Riley, writing works that were set in Indianapolis in a way that could be transformative, and she disagreed with my assertion that there could – she felt that there was nothing going on in the city culturally that would lead to Indianapolis being represented in that way. When I tried to suggest that a well-written literary work could spark a cultural change like that, she got irritated with me, and snapped “It’s not a tautology!” and ended the conversation. And went I back to my desk and looked up the word tautology. I knew what it meant, I swear, I was just refreshing my memory. Anyways, Rachel – this book proves you wrong.
9. Another thing about this John Green fellow, is that he is a huge asshole. I’m basing this not on having met the man, as I’ve already said I haven’t, or on anything specific that he’s written. I’m basing that assertion on the fact that he’s setting the curve. He’s raising the bar, and I don’t like it at all. He’s like my older brother who always got As and as soon the teachers met me, they were like “oh, yay, another Mineart” and then when I daydreamed my way through class, all my report cards said stuff like “not living up to her potential” and “she never pays attention; disappointing.” It was one thing to live in a city where all the good authors were dead ones, and their writing was mostly too boring to read (except Vonnegut, he was cool). I liked it that way. I could write whatever shit I wanted – I could write ridiculous things about sex in a way that I hoped would make people laugh and not worry about whether what I’m writing matters, because it’s only Indianapolis; it’s not like we’re striving to achieve here. Hell, our city motto is “no mean city” which is basically just a way of say “the city doesn’t suck too much.” (Can I point out this phrase, originating in the bible, is usually recognized as a reference to another city altogether? That’s the kind of thing we could expect from Indy, before John Green.) I was happy; I was writing something that I could self-publish under a pen name and push out there without worrying. Now there’s a fucking curve. So thanks, John Green, for writing a really good piece of fiction. You huge jerk.

Related posts:

1. Book Review Catch-Up – Spring 2008
2. Book Review: Indiana Curiosities
3. Book Review – Rough Magicke

Taggart Memorial Disrepair, courtesy zoesdare, CC license.

In a move that recalls his repeated “We need a chinatown in Indianapolis” public gaffe from early in his first term, Greg Ballard told business leaders in India today that he wants to build a cricket venue in Indianapolis [Ballard wants cricket venue in Indy, he tells business leaders in India., Indianapolis Star]:

Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard has told business leaders in India that he plans to build a cricket “stadium” in the Circle City and make the city a prime venue for international cricket events, according to an article today in The Times of India.

But the mayor was referring, a spokesman says, to an existing cricket field and plans to develop a $5.8 million, nearly 50-acre World Sports Park on the city’s Far-Eastside by fall 2014. The plans don’t include permanent seating, but temporary bleachers could seat thousands for events.

“Cricket is not exceptionally strong in the U.S. right now,” Ballard said in India today, according to the Times story. “I need to change that. When people around the world think of cricket, I want them to think of Indianapolis.”

As Louis Mahern helpfully points out, “During the Ballard administration spending on Indy Parks has fallen by 34% and he wants to build a cricket venue. What sort of alternate universe does this guy occupy?”

Indeed – among the many problems with the Indianapolis public park system, during the last few years, Indy has closed a popular public skating rink in Ellenberger Park, allowed an historical monument to an important Indianapolis public figure – Taggart Memorial in Riverside Park – to fall into disrepair and to land on Indiana Landmark’s 10 Most Endangered List, and repeated let the city parks fall behind on (2009) general upkeep of basic services like mowing (2012). We had a heck of a time getting a commitment from the Parks Department to repair the boathouse roof last summer at the Indianapolis Rowing Center, and there are undoubtedly dozens of other examples that could be provided by city residents who make common use of our public parks throughout the year.

So why would we suddenly spend this money on a sport that not many Hoosiers are actively engaged in?

Related posts:

1. Mayor Greg Ballard’s Many Tax Increases
2. Mayor Peterson outlines how Daniels is going to screw Indy
3. Indy Star’s “2005 hotlist” is really not that hot

Although it’s a little problematic that they cast the “newbie wannabe geek” that he yells at as a woman. In my experience, I know as many women who’ve read the books as men have. Although I do know a lot of book worms, so…

Related posts:

1. Books, Books, Books
2. A Song of Ice and Fire
3. I’m Free to do what I want any old time

And an article on The Atlantic about how the meme of the “Harlem Shake” went viral – not through word of mouth, but through a company promoting a song – How Memes Are Orchestrated by the Man

And an article on Al B, the dude who originated the Harlem Shake dance – Harlem Shake Inspired by Harlem Mom. He was imitating his mom dancing.

Related posts:

1. Chocolate Shake
2. Ballroom Dance Lessons for Same-Sex Couples
3. Mark Foley, and “real” gay relationships

Now, two new studies are giving us additional reasons not to stretch.

One, a study being published this month in The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, concluded that if you stretch before you lift weights, you may find yourself feeling weaker and wobblier than you expect during your workout. Those findings join those of another new study from Croatia, a bogglingly comprehensive re-analysis of data from earlier experiments that was published in The Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports. Together, the studies augment a growing scientific consensus that pre-exercise stretching is generally unnecessary and likely counterproductive.

Many issues related to exercise and stretching have remained unresolved. In particular, it is unclear to what extent, precisely, subsequent workouts are changed when you stretch beforehand, as well as whether all types of physical activity are similarly affected.

This was about stretching before a workout. I read the article wondering what they thought about stretching after, but they didn’t mention it. They do say that this is just about ‘static stretching’ and not about warming up with jogging or other exercises that mimic the motions that you’ll be doing in the workout itself.

A better choice, he continued, is to warm-up dynamically, by moving the muscles that will be called upon in your workout. Jumping jacks and toy-soldier-like high leg kicks, for instance, prepare muscles for additional exercise better than stretching. As an unscientific side benefit, they can also be fun.

Related posts:

1. links for 2010-02-09
2. Published Photographer
3. I have glue in my hair

Five presenters have five slides and 5 minutes to explain their vision for a project that would make Indianapolis a better place. The audience votes, and the winner gets $10,000 dollars to make their project a reality. I’ll update this post with more about the projects and the winner in the morning, when I’m not typing on my iPhone and drinking awesome wine from my all-time favorite beverage maker, New Day Meadery.

At the first event, I met and volunteered to help out one of the presenters, Lori Leaumont, with her Girls Stories project, which we’re working on now.

Looking forward to seeing this second event; one of the presenters is planning a local publishing project.

The event was held at Indianapolis Fabrications, a business that does fabrication and design work on the near east side. Its a cool space where they keep the materials that People for Urban Progress like the fabric from the Hoosier Dome and all of the fabric from the Superbowl banners, which gets made into items for sale that help fund projects. We were all about exploring the IndyFab space until we got yelled at for touching one of the projects.

Indy Pub Co-op, Brandon Scaaf
This was a plan to create a small not-for-profit publishing house in a storefront on the east side of town, where young people could go to publish their stories and see how they became finished works by participating through the whole publishing process. Stephanie and I were both not keen on the project after we heard the proposal – there’s a distribution aspect to publishing that seemed to be missing from the plan.

Making Gardens Grow: The mobile garden + grow with IndyGo pilot project by Dawn Kroh of Green3 Studio
This was an idea to put a garden on the back of a flat-bed truck and move it around town, with volunteers coming to work on the garden at various locations. I wasn’t sure whether it was also supposed to sell the food? I didn’t feel like the plan was completely clear.

“Tinkertown: an innovative space for creating, making, inventing, manufacturing and educating” by Jaron Garrett of Dreamapolis
This was the most well-thought out idea, and probably the one that will succeed as a functional project. It’s basically an idea to create an art space for people to come and created whatever project they are interested in building – fashion, digital, building – you’d bring in your idea and use the tools from the space to create it, from start to finish. They’d also do training on all sorts of design and creation tools, and certification programs.

Very cool idea, and it seems like it already has a solid plan in place, which was one of the reasons why we didn’t back it – they wanted the $10,000 for a feasibility study, not for the project itself. I felt that if they only thing the community was getting was a study done, it might not be the best use of the money.

“Urban Alley Infill: embracing the space in between” by Kyle Perry of PROJECTiONE
This project was an idea of selecting an alley space somewhere in town and creating an art sculpture/lighting project that would hang in the alley and make the space more visually appealing and lit at night so alleys would be a place of transit. It’s an interesting idea, but the sculpture they proposed wasn’t at all visually appealing to me. And they seemed to talk down about the state of design in Indianapolis, which in a really cool design renewal right now, so that didn’t sit right. And the other thing that bugged me was that the project was being proposed by a business that really seemed to have all the funds they needed to create this. So why did they need the $10,000?

“The Cool Bus” by Kirstin Northenscold of WORD ON THE STREET
This project proposal was for a reworked school bus that would become a literary center for kids, where they can go to get help writing stories and be given books to read, and it would move from one neighborhood to another to reach kids in urban neighborhoods. They planned to obtain books free from libraries and bookstores and give them to kids.

This idea – if it were executed differently – would be interesting. For one thing, the title of the project “The Cool Bus” – that’s kinda dumb. No one is going to think a reading and writing bus is “The Cool Bus.” And the designs for the bus interior were really pretty terrible- squares of primary colors. It was like being trapped in a kindergarten toy box. If it were a bus redone like this, we’d be getting somewhere:

Either of those would be a cool bus. In the end, we did vote for the cool bus, but neither of us were particularly thrilled with any of the presentations.

And the winner turned out to be The Cool Bus. I hope it doesn’t suck.

Sponsors of the event:

In all, I wasn’t as impressed by this even as we were by some of the presentations at the first event held at big car gallery.

Related posts:

1. Urban Design Indianapolis
2. Indy Star’s “2005 hotlist” is really not that hot
3. webzine2000.com

[Disclaimer! all of these characters are property of DC Comics. This is a parody work; no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.]

Related posts:

1. Wonder Woman, Batwoman and the new DC Comics
2. Subject: Re: The Vicarious Thrill Is Gone…
3. She Has No Head! – Is the Destruction of The Amazons The Destruction of Feminism in DC Comics?

“Single brunette female seeks same for hologram play and rope tricks” – glad they kept H.G. Wells in the mix. Fun explanation of her relationship with Mika.

Related posts:

1. Hitler reacts to the Warehouse 13 season 3 finale
2. Governor Howard Dean: “Democracy, Freedom, Action”
3. Outword Bound Bookstore seeks horse, sheep for Brokeback Mountain video release party

Do You Want To?

Actually, I’m kinda partial to capitalism. And the state. Can we keep those? And I’d add “For-profit prison systems” to the list.

Related posts:

1. Which political stereotype are you?
2. Which Serenity Character Am I?
3. 11 Reasons Why Prison Is Better Than Work

The Wild Hunt is an ancient folk myth prevalent across Northern, Western and Central Europe. The fundamental premise in all instances is the same: a phantasmal, spectral group of huntsmen with the accoutrements of hunting, with horses and hounds in mad pursuit across the skies or along the ground, or just above it.

The hunters may be the dead or the fairies (often in folklore connected with the dead). The hunter may be an unidentified lost soul, a deity or spirit of either gender, or may be a historical or legendary figure like Theodoric the Great, the Danish king Valdemar Atterdag, the Welsh psychopomp Gwyn ap Nudd or the Germanic Woden (or other reflections of the same god, such as Alemannic Wuodan in Wuotis Heer (“Wuodan’s Army”) of Central Switzerland, Swabia etc.)

Related posts:

1. Scavenger Hunt Ideas
2. Mutual Friends Scavenger Hunt 2003
3. Wild Divine

They walk through how a curriculum of teaching some basic concepts to young men in school…

1. Teach young men about legal consent
2. Teach young men to see women’s humanity, instead of seeing them as sexual objects for male pleasure
3. Teach young men how to express healthy masculinity
4. Teach young men to believe women and girls who come forward
5. Teach males about bystander intervention

… could help reduce the number of rapes, even though it probably won’t stop serial rapists from committing their crimes.

Studies of predatory males show that most rapists know they are committing crimes, and don’t care whether they have a yes or no consent. BUT… Predators rely on something that researchers have labeled “Social License to Operate”:

The Social License to Operate is the set of beliefs that make rape seem like a continuation or extension of normal sexuality, instead of an aberration and personal violation. By normalizing rapists and rape, by blurring the lines between rape and sex, we create a culture where instead of responding to the crime like we should, there’s always room to argue for and or excuse or mitigate the rape and the rapist.

Basically, Predators rely on stereotypes about women being sluts, about our judgement towards women who drink, and our willingness to not understand what is and isn’t a crime to get away with their serial rapist criminal behavior.

Teaching basics about consent makes it harder for serial rapists to use our societies Social License to Operate by making non-rapists more vigilante about how rapists engineer situations to get women into vulnerable positions.

Related posts:

1. Predator Theory and Rape
2. links for 2009-11-14
3. Anti-Gay Hate Crime Legislation

Performed at Women of the World Poetry Slam 2013
Promoted by Button Poetry

Related posts:

1. Top ten queerest straight people
2. Gay/Straight Marriages and the Georges tragedy
3. Gay for Good: Can straight guys become happy homosexuals?

Author: Tina Shaddox

Author Note: I did not write this pattern, it was an old pattern that I acquired and was written not only poorly but also incorrectly. It is a fun and cute hat and worth making. I hope I have improved upon it. — Tina Shaddox

Steph’s Note: I’m saving this pattern to my site because the only place it currently exists is the Wayback Machine, and it’s somewhat hard to read on that page.

Materials Needed:

1. 4 oz of a worsted weight wool-bright red if you want an authentic cap
2. 16-inch circular and a set of double points in your needle size.

Getting Gauge:
4 stitches to the inch to make a 19.5″ hat (good for a 22 inch head – adult male)
4.5 stitches to the inch to make a little over a 17″ hat (good for a 20 inch head – adult female)
5 stitches to the inch to make a smaller hat of 15.6″ (good for an 19″ head-older child or teen)
Start your gauge swatch with a size 8 needle. If you don’t know the head size of the recipient, aim for 4.5 stitches to the inch. The average head size is between 20-21″.

Cast on 78 stitches. Join, being careful not to twist. Place a marker at the beginning of your round.

Knit 1 Purl 1 for 2 inches.

Begin stockinette stitch, knit for 4 inches (excluding ribbing).

1st decrease round: Knit 16, Knit 2 together, Knit 3, Knit 2 together, Knit 32, Knit 2 together, Knit 3, Knit 2 together, Knit 16.

Knit 3 rounds

2nd decrease round: K 15, K 2 together, K 3, K 2 together, K 30, K 2 together, K 3, K 2 together, K 15

Knit 3 rounds

3rd decrease round: K 14, K 2 together, K 3, K 2 together, K 28, K 2 together, K 3, K 2 together, K 14

Knit 3 rounds

4th decrease round: K 13, K 2 together, K 3, K 2 together, K 26, K 2 together, K 3, K 2 together, K 13

Knit 3 rounds

5th decrease round: K 12, K 2 together, K 3, K 2 together, K 24, K 2 together, K 3, K 2 together, K 12

Knit 3 rounds

6th decrease round: K 11, K 2 together, K 3, K 2 together, K 22, K 2 together, K 3, K 2 together, K 11

Knit 3 rounds

7th decrease round: K 10, K 2 together, K 3, K 2 together, K 20, K 2 together, K 3, K 2 together, K 10

Knit 3 rounds

8th decrease round: K 9, K 2 together, K 3, K 2 together, K 18, K 2 together, K 3, K 2 together, K 9

Knit 3 rounds

9th decrease round: K 8, K 2 together, K 3, K 2 together, K 16, K 2 together, K 3, K 2 together, K 8

*NOTE Knit 2 rounds

10th decrease round: K 7, K 2 together, K 3, K 2 together, K 14, K 2 together, K 3, K 2 together, K 7

Knit 2 rounds

11th decrease round: K 6, K 2 together, K 3, K 2 together, K 12, K 2 together, K 3, K 2 together, K 6

Knit 2 rounds

12th decrease round: K 5, K 2 together, K 3, K 2 together, K 10, K 2 together, K 3, K 2 together, K 5

Knit 2 rounds

13th decrease round: K 4, K 2 together, K 3, K 2 together, K 8, K 2 together, K 3, K 2 together, K 4

Knit 2 rounds

14th decrease round: K 3, K 2 together, K 3, K 2 together, K 6, K 2 together, K 3, K 2 together, K 3

Knit 2 rounds

15th decrease round: K 2, K 2 together, K 3, K 2 together, K 4, K 2 together, K 3, K 2 together, K 2

Cut yarn leaving a 10 inch tail. Thread through remaining stitches and knot off, weaving in end on inside of hat.

Optional Tassel: Wind yarn 15 times around 4 fingers to make a loop. Remove loop from your fingers and tie together with a 10 inch long piece of yarn. Pull loop down so that it is suspended from your 10 inch tie. Take one end of the tie and wrap it several times around the loop, close to the area that is tied. You are going to make the top of the tassel look like a ball, or the head of a yarn doll. Tie off the wrapped end and let the remaining length hand down. Cut the loops that are hanging down so that the ends are even. Trim off any unwanted length. Use the remaining tie to thread through the end of your cap and fasten it off securely on the inside.

Historical Note: These caps were worn by the Voyageurs that made a name for themselves in the woods of Canada and in the Minnesota region for their hardiness and strength as they worked the fur trade. These are also similar to the style worn by the revolutionaries in France as heads rolled in the later 1700′s. It was not uncommon to have such words as “Liberty” or “Fraternity” stitched into the caps near the brim and they also go by the name “Liberty Caps”.

Related posts:

1. Super Swirl Scarf Pattern
2. links for 2009-11-17
3. links for 2009-11-07

Yep, so I’m going to do Camp NaNoWriMo 2013 for April. My project for this writing commitment is to finish the novel I worked on (and “won” with) in 2011 and 2012. Prior to today’s additions, it was at 78,391 words. (I wrote 50,000+ words for it in November 2011, threw out over half of them, and wrote 50,000+ additional words in November 2012.)

I had a solid start this morning with 1,061 words. My goal (you can be flexible and set your own goals for Camp) is 30,000 words, so I’m on track for this month.

I gave myself a guilt trip to spur myself along by buying the shirt for Camp NaNo. Now I have to finish so I can wear it without feeling like a fraud.

I’m behind on where I wanted to be with this novel; I set an ambitious plan to have a working manuscript to self-publish by April, and I haven’t finished or recruited beta readers. I still want to get all this done in the early part of the year so I can move on to planning another writing project. And see what self-publishing is really like.

Related posts:

1. NaNoWriMo Update: Still on target
2. NaNoWriMo 2012 – Day 9
3. NaNoWriMo 2012 – Validated

“The Boat Race” is this weekend on Sunday, and we’ll be watching at a pub before joining the rest of the family for Easter dinner.

Helpful summary from wikipedia:

The Boat Race is an annual rowing race between the Oxford University Boat Club and the Cambridge University Boat Club, rowed between competing eights on the River Thames in London, England. It is also known as the University Boat Race and the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race, from 2010–2012 for sponsorship reasons as the Xchanging Boat Race, and from 2013 as the BNY Mellon Boat Race. It usually takes place on the last Saturday of March or the first Saturday of April.

The first race was in 1829 and the event has been held annually since 1856, except during World War I and World War II. The course covers a 4.2-mile (6.8 km) stretch of the Thames in West London, from Putney to Mortlake. Members of both teams are traditionally known as blues and each boat as a “Blue Boat”, with Cambridge in light blue and Oxford dark blue. As of 2012 Cambridge have won the race 81 times and Oxford 76 times, with one dead heat.

The race is a well-established and popular fixture in the British sporting calendar. In 2010 an estimated quarter of a million people watched the race live from the banks of the river and millions on television.

If you have Universal Sports on your cable network provider, you can watch it too, or apparently you can watch it online.

UPDATE: Oxford won this year.

Related posts:

1. Indiana Governor’s Race: Dumb vs. Dumber
2. Rory Gilmore Sex Boat
3. Weekend Update

The Eames House

Related posts:

1. House of Bush, House of Saud
2. We have a house
3. Nuvo Article about the house across the street

Italian tradition of ‘suspended coffee’ takes hold elsewhere in tough economic times | The Raw Story.

Can’t afford coffee? No matter. In Bulgaria, an old Italian tradition that sees good souls buying hot drinks for those who struggle to make ends meet has taken hold after weeks of tensions over deepening poverty.

More than 150 cafes across Bulgaria have joined a goodwill initiative modelled on the Italian “caffe sospeso” tradition, which literally means “suspended coffee”, according to a Facebook page devoted to the movement.

The tradition — born in the cafes of Italy’s southern city of Naples — sees people pay in advance for one or several coffees without drinking them.

Related posts:

1. You Know You’ve Had Too Much Coffee When
2. Kids suspended for massive food fight
3. Overnight Coffee Cake

Basically, a typography prototype is a single web page that consists of the project’s actual content. It’s designed in the browser using real web fonts and tools like Typecast. A typography prototype includes font choices, styles for the basic text content and a typographic scale, but nothing else.

All our decisions should start from the content out, not canvas in. This means we shouldn’t start doing any design work before having the project’s actual content on hand (or something that is very near the actual content). That’s because the content and the language used has a big impact on how our typography will work. This is especially true with display type and headers, but also with paragraphs and line-lengths. Having the real content also helps to judge if the font choices fit the mood correctly.

Very nice instruction on how to prototype for typography as a part of design.

Related posts:

1. Web Typography Sucks Panel Notes (SXSWi 2007)
2. Typography, believability, and what literacy means
3. SxSW 2010 – Saturday Recap

The Course Syllabus

Class hasn’t started, but I can already tell by the reading materials that I’m going to be FIRED UP about some of this week’s subject, because I’ve written about it before! The readings from Lorber are definitely a feminist take on gender, but it’s a take from the mid-90′s before the great feminism vs. transgender wars started. I believe the trans folks have successfully proven their arguments in that war by now, so some of the ideas in Lorber’s writing need to be adjusted to be less “all gender is a social construct” and more “many parts of gender are a social construct.” Science, people. It can stop wars.

If Ruth Hubbard’s ‘The Social Construction of Sexuality’ is actually intended to be a course subject and isn’t just tacked on the end of the other paper, things get really interesting. Hubbard is laying the groundwork for the sexual fluidity argument, and the course selections from Strangers In Paradise seem to carry that subject on. I sure hope that Afterellen’s Senior Editor Heather Hogan is taking this class, too. It would be really fun to fight the sexual fluidity war with her in an actual academic setting.

I understand some feminists’ desire for “all gender is a social construction” to be true – it certainly makes it easier to break down arguments of one gender having greater social value than the other. But it’s too simplistic and really leaves out the experiences and soul-searching that trans folks go through in arriving at an understanding of themselves. The same is true for the “all sexuality is a social construct” argument – it undercuts the experience of both Kinsey 6 gay people and Kinsey 0 heterosexuals.

Week 1 Reading Assignments:

Comic Book reading assignments
Strangers in Paradise 1-3 (Vol. 1), Strangers in Paradise 1-9 (Vol. 2), and Rachel Rising #1

Course Additional reading
Article: “Night to His Day”: The Social Construction of Gender by Lorber

(Note that this PDF also has The Social Construction of Sexuality by Ruth Hubbard included.)

My Additional Reading

Male-to-Female Transsexuals Have Female Neuron Numbers in a Limbic Nucleus
“The present findings of somatostatin neuronal sex differences in the BSTc and its sex reversal in the transsexual brain clearly support the paradigm that in transsexuals sexual differentiation of the brain and genitals may go into opposite directions and point to a neurobiological basis of gender identity disorder.”

Transsexual differences caught on brain scan – 26 January 2011 – New Scientist

Reader Response to “Night to His Day” by Judith Lorber | hannahcylkowski

See also, my own post on Sexual Fluidity: Sexual fluidity, Skins US, and labels! labels! labels!.

Related posts:

1. Gender Roles
2. Gender Through Comic Books Online Course
3. Sexual fluidity, Skins US, and labels! labels! labels!

The Beasts of battle is a poetic trope in Old English and Old Norse literature. It consists of the wolf, the raven, and the eagle, traditional animals accompanying the warriors to feast on the bodies of the slain. It occurs in eight Old English poems and in the Old Norse Poetic Edda.

The term originates with Francis Peabody Magoun, who first used it in 1955, although the combination of the three animals was first considered a theme by Maurice Bowra, in 1952.

The beasts of battle presumably date from an earlier, Germanic tradition; the animals are well known for eating carrion. A mythological connection may be presumed as well, though it is clear that at the time that the Old English manuscripts were produced, in a Christianized England, there was no connection between for instance the raven and Huginn and Muninn or the wolf and Geri and Freki. This mythological and/or religious connection survived for much longer in Scandinavia.

Related posts:

1. The End of the Raven (by Edgar Allen Poe’s Cat)
2. Free Will Astrology Analysis
3. Wikipedia Fun

The EPA’s equal pay for equal work goals have not been completely achieved, as demonstrated by the BLS data and Congressional findings within the text of the proposed Paycheck Fairness Act. President Barack Obama said in March 2011 that he will continue to fight for the goals in the Paycheck Fairness Act.[4] The bill was reintroduced in both houses of Congress in April 2011.

Related posts:

1. Very powerful Public Service Ad
2. Feminism 201: The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)
3. Schwarzenegger will veto equal marriage rights bill

But it’s well worth reading the whole article to tease out the details, especially if you are a member of IMA or if you care about where the arts are headed in Indianapolis. In really simple terms, the IMA director Venable decided to cut the budget to keep their draw from endowment under 5%, which will result in laying off staff. But their endowment is quite high and could easily retain that staff given the current state of the economy. And the board is supporting that decision, even though it will result in a reduced quality of services and cultural impact for Indianapolis.

Especially disturbing are the suggestions that there was a whisper campaign that past directors of the IMA were profligate about spending – there’s no real evidence of irresponsibility, and IMA stands as an example of a very well-run and quite popular institution given it’s size and the size of the metropolitan Indianapolis community.

I urge you to pop over and read the whole article, it’s worth your time.

IMA’s 100 Acres

Related posts:

1. Save Public Funding for the Arts
2. Indianapolis City Council figures it out
3. Another Military Heavyweight Backs Dean Presidential Bid

You might remember that when Sarkeesian started this Kickstarter project, there was a huge surge of harassment directed at her for even starting the research, before she had even expressed her ideas on the subject [Slate article: Online Misogyny: Can't Ignore It, Can't Not Ignore It]

Sarkeesian’s story is a doozy, by the way. She started a Kickstarter page to raise money to make a documentary about the tropes used by video game designers to portray female characters. She hadn’t expressed an opinion about video games yet, but simply by stating that she would at some point in the future do so, she had to endure an absolute avalanche of misogynist abuse from men who hoped they could silence her before her too-scary-to-be-heard opinion could be voiced. Every access point they could exploit was used to try to get to her, especially her YouTube page. Her Wikipedia page was repeatedly vandalized with lies, links out to porn sites, and pornographic pictures.* Eventually, Wikipedia shut it down. Unfortunately for the misogynists, this sort of thing generated a lot of sympathy for Sarkeesian, and she was able to fundraise well beyond her original goals. Like, more than $90,000 beyond what she originally wanted to raise.

Related posts:

1. Video Games I’d Love to Play
2. Red Marble Games (Mac video games)
3. Video of some of the figure skating from GGVII

Dr. Widder is the president, senior scientist and CEO of the Ocean Research and Conservation Association. And she is a total bad ass. A really cool example of women doing important and fun stuff.

Related posts:

1. Giant Red Arrow Coming to Indianapolis
2. Holy Crap. And… Cool!
3. New Monkey Species Discovered

Team Pie and Team Cake Shirts, for sale on redbubble.com.

Related posts:

1. Chocolate “Save a Day” Cake
2. Reworked Shirts and Other Gear
3. Commonplacebook.com Shirts and Gear

I’ve mentioned this bill before in another post, but let me break it down more completely.

It does several really heinous things:

1) removes “at large” city county council seats
The goal of this is clear – to reduce Democratic representation on the city-county council. Indianapolis’ city council districts are gerrrymandered like CRAZY. There are far more Democrats than Republicans in Indianapolis, but Republicans have rigged the districts so well (?) that they keep council seats election season after election season. The only way that Democrats get on the city-county council is through “at large” seats where voters can finally put the people they actually want to represent them in office. Eliminating these “at large” seats is terrible for both parties and serves no justifiable purpose from a pure government point of view, but it definitely helps the Republicans continue to have unfair respresentation in Indianapolis city government. (And a side note – there’s also some serious homophobia driving this. Zach Adamson getting elected to an At-Large City Council seat in Indianapolis really terrifies Republicans, so much so that they are trying to eliminate his seat altogether.)

2) makes changes to the Indianapolis goverment roles
The paragraphs about county treasurer, county auditor, and county assessor and controllers are hard to parse – essentially it gives the mayor a lot more power and removes power from other officials and from the city-county council, which means you have less representation.

3) reduces the amount of time someone must reside in Indianapolis before running for elected office.
There’s never good justification for reducing the amount of time someone should live somewhere before running for political office there. In Indianapolis we have a carpetbagger problem with Republicans who don’t live in Indianapolis moving into the city (sometimes from Hamilton County and other surrounding wealthier counties, but also from outside central Indiana) specificallly to try to get elected office in Indianapolis, where they can try to influence politics for Democrats who have been living in Indianapolis all of their lives. It’s a “have your cake and eat it too” win for Republicans, who don’t want to actually live in Indianapolis, but who want to control the politics here.

4) makes counting absentee ballots more difficult in key counties and eliminates ballots from being counted after polls are closed.
Those three counties in the last paragraph are listed for a reason – they’re heavily Democratic. Forcing absentee ballots to be counted in a central location makes it more likely that ballots will be eliminated, and helps the Republican party.

Indiana Senate Bill 621 (SB 621)

Here is the full text of the bill:

Local government issues.

Provides that the consolidated law enforcement department of a county having a consolidated city is a division of the department of public safety under the direction and control of the director of public safety.

Eliminates the requirement that the city-county council approve the director and deputy appointments of the mayor of the consolidated city.

Eliminates provisions that allow the city-county council to require the capital improvement board of managers to make payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTS) for deposit in the consolidated county fund.

Allows the mayor of a consolidated city to appoint two additional members to the metropolitan development commission, and eliminates the appointments of the county board of commissioners (consisting of the county treasurer, county auditor, and county assessor).

Allows the controller of the consolidated city and county to allot amounts appropriated to an office, department, or agency of the consolidated city or county.

Effective January 1, 2016, reduces the membership of the city-county council from 29 to 25 members by eliminating the members elected at large.

Requires a candidate for mayor of the consolidated city to reside in the city for at least one year (instead of five years) before taking office.

Requires a candidate for member of the city-county council to reside within the council district for at least one year (instead of two years) before taking office.

Provides that if the division of the county into city-county council districts is reviewed by a panel of judges, the clerk of the court must keep a record of the method and process of selecting the panel and make the record available for public inspection and copying.

Provides that in Marion County, a township board consists of five (instead of seven) members. Provides that members of the initial five member township board are elected at the November 2016 general election.

Requires absentee ballots in Marion, Lake, and Allen counties to be counted at a central location unless the county election board unanimously adopts a resolution that: (1) requires absentee ballots to be counted at individual precincts; and (2) states the county election board’s basis for adopting the requirement.

1) To figure out your district and state legislators visit this link: District Look Up and enter your address. Contact information – usually a phone number and the legislator’s website – is listed. Call their 1-800 number, or visit their website and find contact information for an email.

Related posts:

1. Indiana Senate Bill 621 (SB 621)
2. Indiana Bill Amendment Would Make Illegal Local LGBT Non-Discrimination Policies
3. Support Early voting in Marion County, Indiana

The Marching Delinquents. Now that’s a school band I imagine I could fit into.

Related posts:

1. Captain Marvel T-Shirt
2. Aesthetics Department T-Shirt
3. The Great T-Shirt Challenge: Day 2

Maybe that’s not your cup of tea, though. (Tea, get it?) Maybe try this instead.

Or, it could be that you like drag queens. That’s your choice. You’ll probably love Dina Martina.

Related posts:

1. Oh, Yeah…. Happy St. Pats Day.
2. OMG Ponies! (LOL Presidents)
3. Happy Easter! All Your Eggs are Belong to Us!

For the last few months, a talented university teacher named Christy Blanch has been putting together a college-level course called “Gender Through Comic Books”–but it’s not limited to college students. It’s the world’s first comics-related Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)–meaning that it will be FREELY AVAILABLE to ANYONE across the world who has web access and who’s interested in comics and in the creative process. There’s no obligation, NO COST, and all you have to do is take thirty seconds to enroll at the following site:

https://www.canvas.net/courses/gender-through-comic-books

This course is presented by (my alma mater) Ball State University on this very interesting Canvas Open Online Course platform that I’ve heard of several times before.

It’s about comic books, gender and women’s issues, writing. Boy is this up my alley. I signed up for it. If you’re interested in similar topics, you should too.

Related posts:

1. Comic Book Ads
2. 50+ Awesomest LGBTQ Comic Book Characters
3. Subject: Re: The Vicarious Thrill Is Gone…

There’s been an ongoing discussion about the lack of women speakers at Tech conferences in the intervening years, with some of the best and the brightest tech conferences making an engaged and active commitment to gender diversity.

But as designer and tech speaker Sarah Parmenter discovered after speaking publicly at several public events this past year, female tech speakers are still the targets of harassment from men in the tech field. [Speaking Up] After Sarah spoke out about her experience, others have come forward: Relly Annett-Baker [Also Speaking Up].

If your wondering why there is such a climate of hostility towards women in the tech field, Milo Yiannopoulos’s incredibly sexist post on Kernel [Put A Sock In It, You Dickless Wonders] will go a long way towards shining a light on it:

For this is the technology industry: there are more men in it because the male mind is, in general, better primed with the sorts of skills the industry values; men are simply better suited to most technology jobs.

Women therefore tend to work in roles that require finesse and communicative skills, where they pop up in this world at all. What is hard to understand about this, or offensive about pointing it out? The sexes are wired differently, and that’s perfectly fine.

There will be exceptions. Women who succeed should be celebrated – though on their merits, not because they have a vagina (hello, Evening Standard). But there will always be more men. It’s a biological inevitability.

It’s certainly nothing to feel crippling guilt about.

Obviously a load of pure hogwash; there’s no evidence that men and women are wired differently or that such sweeping generalizations are even remotely true. [Susan Fisk, Is the female brain innately inferior? subject: Josef Parvizi, Clayman Institute fellow and assistant professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford University]

But that this attitude is published on a tech blog is very telling about what men in the tech industry think as they listen to women speak. It’s not surprising that women would be reluctant to step up to a podium, given this sort of a climate. The experiences that Kathy Sierra, Sarah Parmenter, Relly Annett-Baker faced were not meant merely to silence them, but also to silence women in general in the tech industry.

It goes beyond just women speaking in tech to working every day in tech fields. There are times I’ve felt at my own tech job that I was in a climate I felt wasn’t welcoming or respectful towards female employees. If this kind of harassment is aimed at women who step up and speak out, what can those of us working every day in the industry expect to do about it? It’s disheartening to say the least.

Fortunately, there are some organizations like the The Ada Initiative working actively to change things for women in technology, by providing guidelines for tech conferences on how to handle harassment of women speakers and attendees, conducting research and surveys about women in the industry, holding their own conferences and a half dozen other great programs design to make things better. Support them if you can, and promote their work.

Related posts:

1. Why Women Leave Technology Careers
2. Ada Lovelace Day – Blogging About Women in Technology
3. Kathy Sierra, hate comments, and women bloggers