(no subject)

Ok, computerheads - help!!! I moved a bunch of System 9 font files (via USB memory stick) to OS X 10.3.5. The new machine won't recognise them at all - it's given them the icons for generic Unix text files, and FontBook and Photoshop can't see them. I don't think this is a font problem, but something to do with shifting files from 9 to X. Anybody got any suggestions??

Various Gay Stuff

Gakked from all over during the past few weeks - apologies to everyone I've failed to thank for pointing this stuff out!

CBS, NBC refuse to air church's television advertisement - see the ad online

NZ moves closer to civil unions for gays

God made me a lesbian: pastor facing trial

Some good news: High court won't review Mass. gay marriage law.

Australia's Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby on families - send an e-postcard to a politician

FBI Reports 14 Murders Among 7,489 Hate Crimes

Teens With Same-Sex Parents Well-Adjusted - results from a study of kids of lesbian couples in the journal Child Development, also reported in New Scientists. A letter in last weekend's Sun Herald argued that gays should not be permitted to be parents because their children would suffer discrimination, a superb example of begging the question. (Amusingly, the letter writer reckoned it was other people who were prejudiced. I'll just bet the same reason was advanced for anti-miscegenation laws.) Research shows over and over that the kids of gay parents turn out no worse off than anyone else's kids - and that's with the additional burden of prejudice. Gay parents must be bloody dedicated.

Caution in Court for Gay Rights Groups - fighting for civil unions rather than directly challenging gay marriage bans. One of those awkward compromises between long-term goals and short-term practicality.

Walking the walk on family values. "the highest divorce rates are to be found in the Bible Belt". (Check out a ranking of states' divorce numbers.)

hothead compares the text of state anti-gay marriage laws - and a few oddly similar laws.

(no subject)

*Spooky Lost in Space narrator voice* AS YOU REMEMBER, I want to find out why eukaryote cells (cells with nuclei, like the ones in mushrooms, daffodils, and me) have repeatedly evolved the ability to form tissues - that is, different cell types working together - and prokaryotes (cells without nuclei, like bacteria) never have. This was mentioned in passing in some book I was reading but I still don't have the answer. Anywho, what has emerged from my various nose-to-page encounters is that prokaryotes in fact do something jolly similar. Richard Fortey in Life: An Unauthorised Biography describes microbial mats, large colonies of different unicellular species living symbiotically. I've just come across an article in a recent New Scientist which describes biofilms - colonies of bacteria, glued together with polysaccharides, and communicating amongst themselves with chemical signals. Neither of these are exactly the same as eukaryote tissues, but they're similar in a lot of ways; obviously cooperation as a strategy had been around for a long time before the arrival of the nucleus, and eukaryotes just worked out how to exploit it in a new and spectacular way, ie by building bodies.