I wonder who would be elected president of the US if the candidates were:

1. a black baptist lesbian
2. a straight white male atheist

Assume the candidates have equivalent platforms, and neither is trying to cover up their identity.

On the one hand, atheists are the most selected-against demographic in US politics. On the other, candidate 1 has a whole list of strikes against her.

I think the thing that might work in candidate 2’s favour is that he only has one “hurdle” to overcome; if he can spin his way around that he’s good, but candidate 1 will be accused of favouring each of ethnic minority rights, women’s rights and gay rights over the “real issues” — and will probably be unable to evade all three long enough to focus on whatever she’s actually campaigning on.

I like Jake’s comment: “There would be no president that year”

Update: upon further inspection, being gay is not far off from being an atheist in terms of being selected against. Maybe it’s cuz nobody could be one a them fags iffen they believed in the Word, so they gotta be a devil-worshippin’ atheist! :P But wow, look at the breakdown by political ideology!

Weedmaster P sets us straight. When will the rest of us learn to see the world as clearly as Weedmaster P? When we look at it through a red-eyed pot haze I suppose.

Also, if you don’t already read Overcompensating by Jeffrey Rowland you oughta.

It’s been a while since I’ve raved about seeing a t-shirt or some other swag that I want to own. Okay, so it’s also been a while since I blogged anything with content. But here, check this shit out:

I’ve been toying with this idea for a while, and hopefully this summer I’ll get to work on it more. The idea is that I create a database-driven comic strip. All the characters, plots and so on are stored in a MySQL database, and get interpreted by PHP and turned into SVG.

The amusing thing about this is that, as I work on it and tweak it, the art will retroactively get better. For instance, if a particular character’s template is badly drawn, and I update it as I create new strips, the old strips will automagically get an art update as well :)

Anyway, I’ve been having fun so far, working on this for an hour at a time, once every couple of months over the past year. Now I’ve got a framework that looks like it’ll speed up development immensely. So long as I create a database schema that conveys all the information I need it to.

It’s like the webcomic author knows me!

is awesome.

I love this bag: it is rugged, has six compartments, sits flat on the table — beautiful. And it’s 10$, which is nothing to sniff at, but isn’t as much as I would have expected. Of course, it’s meant as a utility item, not as a luxury, so that makes sense. Seriously, check this out:

Rob’s Fantastic Dice Bag

Last night I was given a fortune cookie. The English side was a little harsh:

“Enjoy your own company. If you don’t, who will?”

But the French side was sexay:

“Il faut savoir se plaire à soi-même. Sinon, qui d’autre peut le faire?”

… because Gary Gygax has appparently gone to meet his player. Yes, the honcho of hack-and-slash has failed his final saving throw, and the dungeon crawl has lost the head of its pantheon.

No word on how he died, but I’m assuming it was a band of flumphs led by a tarrasqolich. Oh, and apparently he made a last-minute edit to the “religion” field of his CS as he saw the end approaching. No comment.

Note: this will probably be of interest only to UTSC students.

So I’ve gone ahead and started circulating a petition around campus. It lists the ways in which the current VP Students & Equity has not been doing his job properly, and demands that he resign. If he doesn’t, it demands that the Board of Directors remove his powers.

This comes on the tail of months of trying to get him to perform the duties outlined in his job description, with no appreciable progress. It’s ridiculous that this guy is being given 14,000$ of student money to sit on his ass and not represent student needs.

The full text of the petition is below; you can also get this in PDF format, and if you feel inspired to spread the word, print out a few copies of the signature sheet and circulate the petition. Drop off the petition in the LGBTQ Lounge before 5 on Friday, March 7, so I can bring it to the board meeting. Note that this is for students of UTSC only — love and support from elsewhere is greatly appreciated, but reasons of legitimacy I need to limit the actual signers of the petition to current students.
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OMG, this sounds awesome: Shadowrun mashed up with Don’t Rest Your Head. Fred Hicks calls it Don’t Sleep on the Run. drool.