Trying out Hello for picture posting to blogs

This is me, un re-touched.

Don't be fooled by the joy on my face, it is not indicative of my immediate mood. The photo was from a summer-time picnic with the in-laws, lots of fun people that I get to be related to without the baggage of childhood.

It only took a billion years of searching through the Hello Online Forums to find out that there is no direct way to post a photo directly to my blog profile with Hello, it only wants to send it here as a blog entry. The profile page wants a url, but Hello doesn't tell you a url.

There is, however, a work-around, which I post here for the general edification of cranky people everywhere.

First, Hello seems to hate Netscape, so use the evil demon Explorer. (I haven't tried it with Opera yet.)

Use Hello as directed, it will post your photo as a new blog entry.
Reload and view the page. Your photo will (should) be there.
Right click the pic and open into a new window.
At the top is the URL where Hello/Blogger is storing the photo.
Select the URL.
Open the blogger dashboard and go to edit your profile.
Paste the URL onto the line that asks for a URL.


Also, you may be gratified to find that finally my photograph head on this page isn't still as big as my actual head.

The other happy bit is that Hello is FREE!

Sponge Bob has SQUARE Pants

What more is there to say? Sponge Bob is a secret square. Just like Paul Lynde.

Peter Marshall: In the "Wizard of Oz," the lion wanted courage and the tin man wanted a heart. What did the scarecrow want?

Paul Lynde: He wanted the tin man to notice him.

An old fashioned filthy little square. We can tell because just as Tinky Winky had a big winky on his head, Sponge Bob has square pants. Anyone can tell from the little asides, winks, and nods, that the Sponge is a Square. He doesn't drink; he'd rather binge on ice cream. He doesn't smoke. But he holds hands with the tin man, er, Patrick.


Focus on the Family has had it's sights on Sponge Bob for a while now. Cartoon characters as symbol, as representation of the terrible sign of the times, proof that "popular animated personalities are being exploited... agenda ... morally offensive" There are people who work hard to find these analogies. This excerpt is from Focus' Plugged In Online (an online magazine of Conservative Christian reviews and discussions of entertainment), an undated review of the Sponge Bob Square Pants Movie, by Marcus Yoars. I occasionally use this review site because they so completely give away the plot, content, jokes and ending, so I can informatively decide if I'm taking any of the children in my life to a movie. Most review sites work hard to give you a sense of the content without a blow by blow, but not FotF, oh no, they can really blow.

SEXUAL CONTENT

One of the times Patrick’s bareness is beheld, he has a pole wedged between his, ahem, cheeks ... a pole with a flag labeled “SpongeBob.” (Patrick asks SpongeBob, “Did you see my butt?) Plankton gives a (male) TV reporter an adoring "look" when he asks for an interview, then coquettishly replies, “Anything for you.” SpongeBob creeps into Squidward's shower and begins scrubbing his back for him. And Patrick prances about wearing women's high-heeled boots and stockings.

It's obvious, though I’m loath to write it, that The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie doesn't just allude to the building mystery surrounding its characters’ sexuality (see the Conclusion for more on this), it repeatedly plays with it. It revels in adult-minded asides that fly right over kids’ heads and straight into the disbelieving stares of parents.

“Is it just me, or do SpongeBob and Patrick act even more immature and effeminate than ever before?” asks Christianity Today movie critic Russ Breimeier. “I had to shake my head in disbelief at the site of Patrick in thigh-high leather boots and fishnet stockings—I squid you not. Do not take your kids to this if you felt that Shrek 2 was inappropriate.” Lawrence Toppman, in the Charlotte Observer, noted the peculiarities by quipping, “It took some guts to make Bob and Pat so apparently gay.”

...

So when a buzz began a couple of years ago about SpongeBob being gay, I shook it off as yet another sign of his not-so-innocent times. First Bert and Ernie, then a Teletubby, now a sea sponge? I was content to hear SpongeBob’s creator, Stephen Hillenburg, vow that his animated star was not homosexually inclined. Sure, he acknowledged the gay community’s affinity for the show that periodically features SpongeBob and his (pink) best friend holding hands. But his explanation seemed to hold water. “The attitude of the show is about tolerance,” he pointed out. “Everybody is different, and the show embraces that. The character SpongeBob is an oddball. He’s kind of weird, but he’s kind of special.”

Case closed, right? Believe me, I wish it were that easy.
Not that nods to sexual uncertainty are the only trouble spots for parents to consider before allowing little ones to cozy up to Bikini Bottom.

The larger issue, of course, is one which gets lost underneath this drama. It is a simple one. Which members of congress attended the incredibly partisan event, at which James Dobson, head of one of the most powerful anti-gay, anti-diversity groups in the US proclaimed this shocking announcement? Which members of congress do Mr. Dobson and the other political activists claim as their own?

The answer to the first, according to the sponsor of the event, the Family Research Council, is Senators Bill Frist (R-TN,) Sam Brownback (R-KS,) and Representatives Mike Pence (R-IN,) Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) and Joe Wilson (R-SC). The second is 106. One Hundred and Six members of Congress threw a no-hitter in the eyes of the anti-diversity, anti-equity right.

The FRC press release the following morning tells you all you need to know about this event at which these congressmen and women were honored and a cartoon character vilified (should that be your perspective on gayness):

Washington, D.C. - Last night at the Historic Willard Hotel, 106 members of Congress were honored for their unfailing commitment to protect pro-family values at the 4th Annual True Blue Awards Banquet. Among the nineteen Senators and eighty-seven House Representatives to be honored, Senators Bill Frist (R-TN,) Sam Brownback (R-KS,) and Representatives Mike Pence (R-IN,) Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) and Joe Wilson (R-SC) were on hand to receive an award.

To qualify for the prestigious conservative award, members must have voted 100% in favor of a pro-family stance on a number of critical issues during the second session of the 108th Congress. Votes taken in to account include, for the House, The Unborn Victims of Violence Act, rejection of legalized prostitution, protection of "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance and sponsorship of a Marriage Protection Amendment. In the Senate, votes included opposition of "hate crimes" legislation, approval of pro-life judge confirmation and sponsorship of a Federal Marriage Amendment.

Tony Perkins, President of Family Research Council was on hand to present awards and Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Gary Bauer of Traditional Values and the Honorable Claude Allen took the stage as key speakers for the over 350 attendees.

Featured speaker and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist hailed the November election as an historic victory for the conservative movement. Senator Frist pointed to the election of five pro-family senators as a huge boost to overcoming filibusters to the president's judicial nominees. The majority leader announced plans to build on last year's pro-life legislative victories and vowed to push the mandate given by the "values voters" to fully protect marriage.

The Family Research Council has been kind enough to prepare a complete voting list on these issues.

Don't be distracted by Sponge Bob's Squareness. The real issue is one hundred and six members of congress who voted "100% pro-family" in the last session. They voted against millions of people and their human and civil rights, Sponge Bob isn't just a sign of the times or an analogy, he's a distraction.

More info

I heard while in the car. Like most human interactions, the issues are complex, and this points a few more of them out.
From The Tavis Smiley Show, Dr. Ian Smith, from Wed. Nov. 17th. Dr. Ian Smith, Race Specific Drugs

Of particular note is the fact that this FDA approval request will extend the patent - and therefore the high price -- on this drug. Imagine that, a pharmaceutical company finding a way to increase profits on a drug that already exists. A secondary issue that the good Mr. Jennings missed.

Without the FDA approval, Doctors could prescribe it off-lable. But once the patent runs out it becomes a cheaper co-pay, or lower cost generic.

This is an interesting in depth examination: How a Drug becomes Ethnic:

Peter Jennings is a Big Weenie

Tonight, because I was too lazy to get up and change the channel to West Wing, the administration we should have, I found myself wallowing in the murky world of the ABC Evening News. I never watch mainstream news on television, for reasons that will become obvious in a moment, preferring to read progressive papers and magazines, or watch Democracy Now.

So suddenly Peter Jennings interrupts my hard-drive-utility-upgrading by asking if researchers were unfairly using "race" to get a drug through the FDA process. "...race-consciousness offered a faster way through the FDA's regulatory maze." It seems that African Americans in particular respond to something this new drug does for those who have had heart failure. This is wonderful news for people who suffer from heart disease at a high rate.

Unfortunately, I didn't really get a good sense of what the drug does from this bit of news, because that wasn't actually what the piece was about. This piece of journalistic integrity was about calling it a "race-based therapy," and how it is wrong to target a group of people like this. It seems they fear that it might make us think that there were genetic differences between people and isn't that racist. The implication was that this single study could serve to reinvigorate a particular kind of racism that pops up in certain ultra-conservative circles every decade or so and explicitly exists in neo-nazi and white supremacist circles -- the idea that there is a definitive genetic or biological category of African American or Black folks.

Of course, that wasn't really what they meant, what they meant was "whine whine whi are we spending money on something that won't help mee ee ee." whine whine whimper.

Plus and besides which, the concept of biological racism has nothing to do with actual science, and although it comes and goes in the conservative intellegencia's publishing cycle, it's main stream America still holds on tightly to notions of white supremacy. Afterall, it's foundational to our nation.

Plus and besides which also, no other group of people have ever been studied to the detriment of others (assuming "detriment" is even the case here).

Oh wait, they have.

White men have been used to represent "average people" in medical studies for years. Not only have we extrapolated the impact of myriad of drugs from white men to white women, and men and women of color, we have also consciously limited research to white men. A quick Google search found this on the second page of results, "Now a team of researchers including members from Washington University School of Medicine has evidence that drug developers might have better luck focusing their leptin-related efforts on white men." (http://www.biostat.wustl.edu/overview/Leptin.html ) They then did so. Study white men that is. Of course, that didn't show up on the ABC Evening News, although I bet it could have, being on the second page of a google search and all.

The report didn't examine or even reference the veneer of racism that colors the lenses of doctors, the vast majority of whom are white, who don't percieve illness or treatment the same way in people of color as in white men. (Another quickly Googled search found a study in the New England Journal of Medicine that indicated "that the odds that Blacks and women presenting with chest pain would be referred for cardiac catheterization were 60 percent of those of whites and men. The disparity was most dramatic for Black women, whose odds of being referred for catheterization were 40 percent of those of white men" http://www.pww.org/past-weeks-1999/Medical%20treatment.htm )


So this ABC news piece wasn't about how fantastic it is that a group of suffering people have had some attention by the medical and pharmaceutical establishment. It wasn't so much about the science, which was articulated in a peer-reviewed article in the New England Journal of Medicine published on the web today, and in print on the 11th,(http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/NEJMoa042934 ) as it was about piggybacking on a perspective piece in the same journal about "Race-Based Therapeutics." http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/NEJMp048271
That opinion piece stated, "Proponents of exploiting these biologic differences to create new race-based therapies often say this appoach treats race as a placeholder -- a crude marker for genetic variations, not yet discovered that lead to differences in responsiveness to drugs." This simple statement is likely true. The socially constructed category of race is a crude marker for anything. The social category of race is a lousy, socially created gobbledeegook. It is used to pre-judge and limit and oppress. It's been used in recent history to produce genocidal science like the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. It is also a reality that race is used all the time in determining what subjects to use for research. Every time research is done on white men, it is race-based research.

But it's wonderful that someone has connected the existance of certain genetic markers in some individuals who fit into that arguably crude category of African Americans, and the possible receptiveness of those genes to this particular medicine is fabulous!

To minimize the science because saying "race as a placeholder" is so much more sexy for television is unacceptable journalism. Sure, they found a couple of talking heads to blurb a sentence or two in disagreement with that idea, those pink elephants of the invisible negative*, so what will people remember? They'll remember that studying black folks is racist and bad for America, and bad drugs will be wisked through the FDA without proper study.

If you're not with me yet, imagine this scenario:
"Proponents of exploiting these biologic differences to create new gender-based therapies often say this appoach treats gender and sex as a placeholder -- a crude marker for genetic variations, not yet discovered that lead to differences in responsiveness to drugs."

..."Sex-consciousness offered a faster way through the FDA's regulatory maze."

Can you spell V - I - A - G - R - A ?

I mean, really, popping Viagra has been a boon to women and children all over the United States. Golly, it is a good thing that they didn't study it for a particular group of people or rush it through the FDA.

Oh wait, they did.


So one minute I'm tweaking my computer, and the next thing I know Cranky Cindy is starting a blog. I should never watch mainstream news.

Keep an eye out for Happy Cindy, my other blog. I haven't written anything there yet, but it could happen...

* I frequently mock self help books, except when I find them helpful myself. I must admit to finding this one helpful so far. Drop the Pink Elephant: 15 Ways to Say What You Mean...and Mean What You Say, http://www.wiley.ca/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1841126373.html