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For those of you who are, like me, “Pro-Mo,” I need you to sign the petition to keep Lt. Dan Choi from being kicked out of the army for being gay. Particularly since the Obama administration has its collective thumb in its butt, waiting for some kind of magical fairy to give them permission to rescind discriminatory policies. And no fairies are likely to show up because they keep kicking them out of the military.

That is all.

I was never a huge Michael Jackson fan, but I freely admit that he was probably the greatest pop entertainer ever. My fondest memory: going somewhere on vacation with my wife, I don’t remember where, and I don’t remember if this was before kids or if Charles might have even been with us, but we listened to Sarah’s Best of Michael Jackson CD and sang every song at the top of our lungs. Even as casual MJ fans, we knew every word.

I dreamt about Thriller last night; it was the least scary nightmare ever.

I keep hearing from people who “aren’t into” Facebook and Twitter. You know what those people are saying? “You know what I hate? Keeping in touch with my friends and family. I’d like to distance myself as far from them as possible.”

Facebook is what you make of it. Think it’s lame to be “friended” by someone you barely knew from 10th grade biology? Then don’t befriend her. Want to avoid old girlfriends and/or enemies? Don’t befriend them. Facebook has allowed my wife to rekindle old grudges by conspicuously denying friendships to people she hasn’t seen in 10 years. It’s fantastic!

The common complaint about Twitter is: “I don’t care about what my friends are doing at all hours of the day. ‘Cleaning the toilet! Lots of skidmarks!’ How silly!” You’re a putz. Twitter has a measure of that, to be sure, but it also has friends and celebrities sharing links and information, tossing off witty bon mots, and the occasional photoshopped horrible eye stabbing (WARNING: DO NOT CLICK THAT LINK UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES). If you have a friend who tweets nothing but Sartre quotes and poop stories, and you’re not into that, don’t follow him. Don’t want random people seeing your Godot quotes and hemorrhoids anecdotes? Protect your entries.

Not using Facebook and Twitter doesn’t make you cool any more than not using email does. Is your grandmother cool? Well, maybe she is, but that’s because she lets you drink from her flask and got you a bong for your 18th birthday.

People sometimes ask me, hey, you like to read, why you ain’t got no Kindle? Here’s Reason #1. Reason #2 is more complicated, so follow along and keep up.

Let’s pick some books at random, and see what the Kindle savings is like:

Book	Amazon Paperback Price	Amazon Kindle Price	Kindle savings
Oliver Twist	$3.50	$2.00	$1.50
Dave Barry’s Guide To Guys	$6.99	Unavailable	N/A
Networking for Dummies	$16.49	$14.84	$1.65
American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House	$11.47	$9.99	$1.48
Drinking: A Love Story	$10.88	$9.99	$0.89
Bacon: A Love Story	$12.23 (hardcover)	$9.99	$2.24

Ignoring the book that’s not available, we get an average savings of $1.52. In order to make up the original $359, I’d have to buy approximately 231 books, if the average holds. I buy approximately 20 new books a year (I buy dozens of used ones), so no, I won’t be buying a Kindle, thanks anyway Amazon.

Someone told me not long ago that many European gentlemen “dress up.” I don’t mean that they put on their mother’s housedress and heels and dance to the Pet Shop Boys in front of a full-length mirror (though many do), but that they, well… You know how men at a tailor’s are asked “Do you dress right or left?” In case you aren’t aware, that’s code for “Do you tuck Junior down the left leg, or the right?” Apparently European dudes often point Mr. Splendiferous towards their navels. A Frenchman might put his pants on one leg at a time like the rest of us, but once his pants are on he can get pee in his nombril if he laughs too hard.

I don’t understand this at all. One of the 3 main purposes of The Deliverer is to protect the nards! When I was about ten, I was riding my bike around the neighborhood, looked down to see what gear I was in, and rode directly into the bumper of a car. I hit it so hard that instead of racking the yarbles on the horizontal bar, I actually slammed my package into the handlebar post, hard enough that I saw stars. I actually bruised my wang! That’s right: my dongle was black and blue. My sister can attest, as I later showed it to her, something that I’m sure causes nightmares to this day. I can only assume that, had Dr. Schrempf been pointed upwards, Sam and Dave would have been simply severed from my body.

The idea of habitually leaving Tweedledee and Halliburton unprotected makes my knees hurt. Has anyone else tried it?

Heh: ObamasPlanForGayRights.com

I’m frustrated with this Administration’s inaction on gay rights, but I haven’t yet run out of patience. Andrew has, for which I don’t blame him in the least; it’s a little more Real for him, since he may well be deported in a few years if the federal policy on HIV-positive immigration and civil marriage doesn’t change.

This president, however, is the shrewdest politician of my lifetime, and has the opportunity to be the greatest president in our country’s history. I cannot believe that he personally intends to screw gay people out of their rights; he is a Democrat, after all. He’s waiting for the right time. Why that right time isn’t now, with the right-wing elements reeling and incapable of resisting, I don’t know.

I’m not even convinced that he really believes that marriage should be “between a man and a woman.” Even if he does, I think he’ll come around on it, particularly as more Americans do the same.

As a father who is also a geek, I have a question for nurses, childcare professionals, physicists, etc. Can someone explain to me why I can’t warm breast milk in a microwave?

Sarah and I got into a small argument the other day, and I acceded to her wishes, but it doesn’t make any sense to me. When you heat a liquid in a microwave, it tends to heat unevenly. This is why anything you heat in a nuker usually have to be stirred halfway through. So when heating breast milk, you end up with small sections of the milk that still cold, and sections that are infant-searingly hot. Obviously this is bad. The recommended technique is that you heat up a bunch of water in the microwave, and then sit the bottle of milk in it for a few minutes to warm it.

I did that the other day, and left the bottle in for longer than anticipated; the outside got quite warm, while the inside was sort of tepid. So: I shook it up. This caused the colder milk in the middle to mix with the hotter milk on the outside, bringing the whole thing to just about body temperature.

Why can’t I do that when microwave heating? Throw the thing in the nuker for 5 seconds and then shake the bejebus out of it. I don’t stick it in Josephine’s mouth without testing it on my arm either way, so what’s the problem? Why can’t I do this? Why?

I’m watching the situation in Iran with absolute awe. I said earlier that I’ve never seen anything like this, and I supposed that’s not true; tearing down the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the USSR are similar, but not even half as well communicated. Even in a country where the government is continually blocking access to websites, preventing people from reporting on the situation, news is getting out. People around the world are setting up proxy servers to enable Iranian bloggers to post pictures and videos, and as has been noted elsewhere, Twitter has finally made it clear what a spectacular application it can be.

Andrew Sullivan, it should be no surprise, has taken the lead on coverage, with links to the Twitterers on the scene, commentary on how the cable news networks have just about ignored the situation, and good snarky comments on how the Neo-Conservative movement appears to be supporting Ahmedinejad. He’s even redone his blog theme in green to show “solidarity,” a strange word to hear from a conservative blogger.

I’ve added a bunch of Iranian folks to my twitter feed and the stories they send out are insane. They’ve made it possible to find things out like Basij thugs firing AK-47s into crowds and university dormitories being assaulted by government troops. There is a downside, of course; the government is opening its own Twitter accounts to disseminate fake information. If you’re interested, look at @StopAhmadi and @change_for_iran, both of which are reportedly very real.

BTW: lest we all forget, this is why we have a Second Amendment. “But this could never happen here,” you say. You keep thinking that.

this story caused me both great mirth and a certain nostalgia for my teen years.

A Philadelphia school teacher is under investigation for allegedly throwing a stapler that struck a student in the head.

When I was in the 11th grade, I took “Honors Chemistry.” You would expect for someone who is, theoretically, very smart, I’d do well in that class, but I think I was barely making a B. (I was never what you would call “studious.”) Nevertheless, the teacher, Mr. Eshleman, and I got along well, despite the fact that Josh Lewis and I spent the entirety of each class period passing a notebook back and forth which contained our hand-written conversation, in outline form. It was the dork version of passing notes in class, except that since the pages were still attached to the metal spiral, it merely looked like we were sharing important chemistry-related information. (I oughta arrange to have some of the notebooks published after everyone described therein is dead. They were routinely hilarious, and contain detailed descriptions of girls we admired, particularly some of their softer portions.)

Anyway, one day Mr. Eshleman was discussing the difference between potential and kinetic energy. His technique was to take the piece of chalk in his hand and hold it in the air. “This,” he would say, “is potential energy. Raising the chalk in the air gives it the potential to fall, and release that energy. This is kinetic energy,” he would add, and throw the chalk as hard as he could against the wall in the back of the room. At least, that’s what he had done for 30+ years of teaching; on this particular occasion he threw the chalk directly into my eye.

I’m no stranger to having things thrown at my face, particularly now that I’m married to a woman who gets my attention by winging table lamps around the house. But I was completely unprepared for this; I don’t think I even ducked. I remember it hurt like the dickens. Mr. Eshleman was mortified, which actually made me feel a lot better; part of our daily ritual was to try and find ways to irritate him, because his pithy comebacks were amusing. I’m sure he thought he was about to be sued, but since I’m not a completely wuss, I rubbed the chalk fragments out of my eyelid and commenced with the wisecracking.

Our band teacher, Mr. Satcher, was also known to throw shoes at people who misbehaved. Probably doesn’t do that anymore. Those were the days.

Gene Weingarten, with his usual wit, explains the filibuster:

Okay, say the Yankees and the Orioles are tied in the bottom of the ninth inning, but the Yanks have the bases loaded with nobody out, and the count on the batter is three balls, no strikes. The O’s are facing imminent defeat, but their pitcher is a wily veteran. He just stands on the mound, fidgeting and spitting and scratching himself for 22 hours and 34 minutes, refusing to throw the ball, until the umpires call the game a draw.

On the other hand, forcing the Senate to require 60 votes to do anything does probably have the effect of keeping the Senate from doing anything. That’s a win, in my book.