Endless summer

The Pentagon has started to survey the spouses of military personnel about their views of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell ban on gays serving openly in the military. The Pentagon apparently learned nothing from the uproar over the survey sent to the soldiers that recently concluded. This one panders just as much to homophobia. That leaves the military open to the charge, "They asked for our opinion and then they didn't follow it!" It also hands fuel to our opponents. A few of the questions are listed in the posting.


Richard Just of the New Republic has some strong criticism for Obama's position on gay marriage. When the Calif. ruling was released many hoped Obama would see the need to affirm what the court said. The Prez. did respond, but in a rather wimpy fashion. Obama has said, "I am not in favor of gay marriage, but when you’re playing around with constitutions, just to prohibit somebody who cares about another person, it just seems to me that that is not what America is about."

So states can ban gay marriage as long as they don't use their constitutions to do so?

Obama has also said that marriage is a religious institution and civil unions are an acceptable alternative. But marriage licenses are handed out by government and civil unions institute a Separate But Equal mentality.

Alas, Obama and his staff seem unaware that such narrowly shaved pronouncements are a problem.


Here's a neat interactive map that shows how support for gay marriage has changed since 1994, when support was 25% nationwide. It's now above 45%. You can cycle through the images automatically or step through them to study the changes -- especially how support dipped in 2004 when all those marriage protection amendments were passed.


There is a spacecraft named Messenger that is exploring the area between Mercury and the Sun, One part of it's mission is to look for vulcanoids -- asteroids that might exist in that area. As part of that effort Messenger took a picture that includes earth and moon. This is the view of home from 114 million miles.


Yesterday's edition of the comic strip Frazz offers a way of making summer last forever. With Labor Day only two weeks away (and given that this summer in Michigan has been quite pleasant) this sounds mighty nice. For those who don't get it, this should help.



One reason why endless summer is appealing is that I am going back to work after 3 years of retirement. I'll be teaching music theory at one of the small colleges in Detroit. It's a part-time job, only Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, and in the ways of adjunct faculty I'll be paid peanuts. I've spent much of the summer preparing lesson plans. If my rate of blog postings slows down this will be a contributing reason. I'll be on campus tomorrow morning to hear the college president's address to the faculty.