“My initial reaction to the word ‘calculus’ is not unlike a caveman throwing rocks at the moon in ignorance and fear resulting in blind rage. There is no such thing as ghosts creeping up behind me on the stairs, but there is such a thing as a polynomial monster, and it has hooked teeth and causes chronic yeast infections, I’m sure.”
I can’t speak to the yeast infections, but a new psychological study indicates that such reactions do have real, measurable physical effects. Specifically, when it comes to neural responses, math anxiety reads much the same as physical pain. It’s not the numbers themselves, but the anticipation of encountering them, that seemed to trigger anxious, painful responses in the test subjects.
There are many complicated reasons why people react this way, but one of them might be the fact that math is just so damned unyielding, the enemy of wishful thinking, dashing our most cherished hopes with its cold hard facts. And is it sorry? It is not! Like the infamous honey badger, math don’t care. Math don’t give a s$%.
Pennsylvania GOP Senate Candidate: Getting pregnant from rape is ‘similar’ to having a baby out of wedlock
And the quote for anyone who doesn’t want to click the link:
MARK SCOLFORO, ASSOCIATED PRESS: How would you tell a daughter or a granddaughter who, God forbid, would be the victim of a rape, to keep the child against her own will? Do you have a way to explain that?
SMITH: I lived something similar to that with my own family. She chose life, and I commend her for that. She knew my views. But, fortunately for me, I didn’t have to.. she chose they way I thought. No don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t rape.
SCOLFORO: Similar how?
SMITH: Uh, having a baby out of wedlock.
SCOLFORO: That’s similar to rape?
SMITH: No, no, no, but… put yourself in a father’s situation, yes. It is similar. But, back to the original, I’m pro-life, period.
Ugh. Having a baby out of wedlock is similar to having a baby as the victim of rape. When, you know, it’s not actually you doing the whole enduring the emotional and physical consequences. Pennsylvania residents, please do me a favor and don’t elect Tom Smith.
Defunding of Queer Health Resources Means It Kinda Sucks To Be Gay In Queensland Right Now
So, to recap: the Australian State of Queensland recently had a change of government from the marginally left-wing Labor Party, led by Anna Bligh, to the right-wing Liberal National Party, led by Campbell Newman. (Note that in Australia, “liberal” refers to economic liberalism rather than social liberalism, which is why the parties sound backwards to American ears.) The Newman government has a crazy majority right now; the Labor Party currently doesn’t even hold enough seats to form a minority government. And the Liberal National party seem to have taken this as a mandate to tread on the rights of those who it deems undeserving of them, including Queensland’s LGBTQI citizens.
The Queensland legislature has voted to strip down civil unions to something akin to registering your pets; couples can no longer even have a “state-sanctioned declaration ceremony.” Planned legislation would make it so only people who are in a heterosexual partnership of more than two years could use altruistic surrogacy to have children. Both are unconscionable attacks on queer families, but another action of the Queensland government has more immediate results. Queensland’s government health organisation, led by health minister Lawrence Springborg, has removed funding for the Queensland Association for Healthy Communities(QAHC), which supports LGBTQI health throughout the State.
QAHC started its life in 1984 as the Queensland AIDS Council. As poor health outcomes throughout the LGBTQI community were recognized, the organization changed its name and widened its scope (like many of the former AIDS Councils around Australia). Today QAHC provides HIV/AIDS prevention and services, drug and alcohol abuse counseling, support for LGBTQI Indigenous Australians, and a visiting group for LGBTQI seniors. Many of these programs are subsidized by grants, including two from Queensland Health, one for HIV/AIDS prevention and the other for drug and alcohol abuse prevention.
On May 20, Springborg announced that effective at the end of June, Queensland Health would be withdrawing its funding for QAHC. Reasons cited for this funding cut include supposedly rising rates of HIV infection in Queensland (more on that later) and QAHC’s political advocacy for LGBTQI Queenslanders. Interestingly, QAHC is losing its funding for drug and alcohol abuse prevention as well as its funding for HIV/AIDS prevention, but the government has only made statements about the HIV/AIDS funding. (A Queensland Health spokesperson confirmed that QAHC’s drug and alcohol abuse prevention funding expires on 30 June.) The money in question makes up 75% of QAHC’s funding.
The government might have a point about HIV/AIDS services. HIV and AIDS are no longer a “gay disease.” In Queensland, the highest rate of new HIV infections is among heterosexuals, a population which QAHC did not serve. Perhaps it is time for a re-evaluation of where funding for HIV and AIDS services best support patients.
This, however, was not a re-evaluation. It was more of a proclamation. QAHC was never consulted or told that their services were inadequate. They discovered they were being defunded through the newspaper instead of any direct communication with Queensland Health. Queensland Health has said that they will form a ministerial committee (the members of which were announced recently) to determine the best use of this funding. But to remove funding from an organization providing vital services without examining the impact of that action is foolish at best, especially when this is the only non-government organization that has lost its funding. QAHC themselves have even said they welcome the dialogue - but in order for dialogue to happen, the other party must be allowed to speak.
Another reason that has been given for QAHC’s defunding is their political advocacy for LGBTQI people, particularly around same-sex marriage. Springborg has said many times (including in his official statement) that the organization is too political. QAHC believes they are just advocating for their community, which, as we well know, has poor health outcomes due in part to the way they are treated by mainstream society. Asking an organization committed to a community’s health to ignore the reasons that their community is experiencing poor health incomes seems, at best, counterintuitive. As QAHC Executive Director Paul Martin said in this interview:
“The overwhelming focus of our work is providing frontline services to LGBT people and working in partnership with mainstream services to increase their capacity to respond to the needs of LGBT people. Following the World Health Organisation’s ‘Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion’ we do promote healthy public policy. This means raising policy or legal issues that help or hinder the health of LGBT people. This has included supporting civil partnerships. Advocacy on healthy public policy is specifically written in to our contract with Queensland Health, but is only a very small amount of the work that we do.”
A QAHC SAFER SEX CAMPAIGN
In the context of the recent actions of the Queensland government, it’s hard not to see this as an attack on LGBTQI Queenslanders. The way that Queensland Health has conducted its business is not helping their case in any way.
Regardless of whether or not QAHC continues to receive funding for its HIV/AIDS services, its drug and alcohol abuse prevention services are vital. As we have discussed many times on this site, queer people are much more likely to abuse alcohol and other drugs due to disenfranchisement within the larger community and cultural expectations. It’s not necessarily reasonable to expect a mainstream drug and alcohol abuse prevention program to be effective in LGBTQI spaces because of the additional challenges that we face. QAHC is trying to fill that gap, and they cannot do that without money.
What can we do? For you local Autostraddlers, you can write your member of parliament. Even if QAHC’s funding cannot be returned immediately, we can at least help prevent further erosion of LGBTQI rights in Queensland. For those of us interstate or overseas, consider making a donation to QAHC to help them continue their work. You can also find a list of more things to do here.
That’s fucking bullshit. As if I needed another reason to hate the conservative parties in Australia. Boosting the shit out of this- I have family and followers in Queensland.
*sigh* State Government in Australia is such a clusterfuck at the moment. Reblogging and boosting.
This is my home state and this is complete bullshit. Unsurprising, given the state’s history of conservatism and the Liberal National policies, but utter bullshit nonetheless.
Virginia GOP is calling for armed revolt if Obama is re-elected (PDF)
Remember what I was just saying about the GOP being detached from reality?
Compare their reasons for an armed revolt with what the actual economic/government spending numbers from Obama’s administration I posted earlier.
(via abaldwin360)
Can we just be like “THIS IS TREASON” and be done with them?
(via sageoflogic)
GODDAMMIT VIRGINIA, STOP
(via goblinhoarder)
it’s times like these that make me embarrassed to hold a driver’s license from this place. VIRGINIA, Y U NO SANE
(via utterclareity)
I would just like to point out that later in that newsletter there is a recipe for a “Conservative Potato and Egg Delight.” And also the insistence that public schools are teaching that Islam is the superior religion. K.
(via onlyslightly)
(via onlyslightly)
Here’s the video of President Obama confirming his support for same-sex marriage.
(Source: rawstory.com, via cheatsheet)
Quote of the day regarding my state election. I voted Green, you fuckers.
Well, boys and girls. This is what we call a rather BIG swing.
If that translates into the next federal election, goodbye Labor for a long, long time.
Labor in Queensland barely have enough seats to even be considered a party.
Back to conservative government.
Federally, the only hope would be the Greens hold a balance of power in the Senate.
Just for the record, since I know it causes confusion amongst non-Australians, the Labor and Green parties are left-wing(ish), and the Liberal Nationals and the Australian Party are more conservative.
Mitt Romney isn’t doing, or saying, anything he hasn’t done every day for the last eight years. Neither is Newt Gingrich. Neither is Ron Paul. Neither is Rick Santorum. They all have the same strengths, and weaknesses, that they’ve had all along. At this point, we can say with absolute reliability that the Republicans will pick one of these four guys, some time after Super Tuesday, maybe as late as the convention, and then the actual campaign begins. Until then, there is no actual news that can’t be summarized in at most two sentences per day: any recent poll numbers if any, today’s six-figure contributions if any, and maybe, if it’s a slow news day, pick one of the candidates and tell which of their generic stump speeches they gave today in which state.
Then go on to the actual news.
For the love of all holy gods. Libya and Egypt are both hovering on the brink of civil war; Syria already has one. Israel is threatening to nuke Iran. The Obama administration, through the usual surrogates, is threatening to invade both Iran and Syria. Major developments happen at least once a week in the ongoing criminal investigations of the mortgage bubble, and at least once every couple of weeks yet another big-money “health provider” gets indicted for Medicare billing fraud. There’s a rising wave of hate crimes against the disabled being reported out of the UK, driven by anti-disability rhetoric by the Tories. Greece is hovering on the edge of a default that could take down the European Central Bank and the Bundesbank; if you don’t read Paul Krugman’s blog, you’d never know that there’s finally a serious discussion going on, at the top levels of the EU, finally admitting that austerity measures that drive down GDP are just as bad for debt-to-GDP ratios as running up higher debt is. Vladimir Putin and Dmitri Medvedev are getting ready to swap places again, demonstrating how far into strong-man dictatorship modern Russia has fallen, and Russian protesters are being squelched and being framed for terrorism. Thanks, ironically, to the Citizens United decision, Shell is in actual danger of finally being held liable in civil court for their long-standing role in inter-tribal massacres in Nigeria. Meanwhile, back here at home, Amnesty International just tallied the 500th American killed by taser-wielding cops, there have been a couple of really big prison industry scandals, and, oh yeah, Anonymous and Occupy are still out there getting things done.
And that’s just stuff that could have dominated the news, just in the last couple of weeks. But instead, all of my usual news sources are dedicating half to three quarters of their time to in-depth analysis of the latest stupid-sounding thing that some Republican presidential hopeful said; no matter how many times they’ve said the same thing before, it’s apparently worth bringing in the same reliable talking heads to say the same things they said about that stupid thing the last time the candidate said it.
"……….
Sexist son of a bitch.
Nuh-uh, he didn’t say this.
There’s no way.
There’s no way someone is this stupid.
*twitch*
You have got to be kidding me
As much as I loathe the man, the above is false.
He’s a disgusting person on his own merits, no need to put words in his mouth to make him look bad.
Somali Rapper May Sue Romney Over Use of Song
The rapper K’Naan has threatened to take legal action against the Mitt Romney campaign for using the song “Wavin’ Flag” during his victory speech after the Florida primary this week. The Canadian rapper – who was born in Somalia – said Mr. Romney’s campaign never sought permission to use the song, which was an international hit in 2010 when it was used by Coca-Cola as an official anthem during the FIFA World Cup in South Africa.
“If I had been asked, I would certainly not have granted it,” K’Naan (pronounced KAY-nahn) said in a statement released on Wednesday. “I would happily grant the Obama campaign use of my song without prejudice.” (More)
(Source: newsflick)
Revealing private info time: I make $27,000 before taxes, all benefits included (because I don’t have any). Despite my 40+ hour weeks, I am considered a temporary employee, and therefore not entitled to benefits. Anyway, I digress.
802 years. Wow.
Get yours here.
