Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Tim Burgess: No friend of mine!

Published with permission from Seattle Gay Blog:

As the saying goes: A friend of the right-wing is no friend of mine.

That's the message that NARAL Pro-Choice Washington relayed to reporters during a morning press conference at a Seattle hotel. The organization released a slew of fundraising letters Seattle City Council candidate Tim Burgess supposedly wrote during a decade of consulting work he did for the right-wing group Concerned Women for America (CWA).

The letters, uncovered in the files of the People for the American Way, a liberal watchdog group, use derogitory language toward Gays and outline CWA's opposition to pro-choice advocates.

Karen Cooper, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Washington, said Burgess told her organization during an endorsement meeting that he wrote the fundraising letters during his comapany's years of consulting work for CWA between 1995 and 2005. Seattle Gay News Publisher George Bakan, who also participated in the press conference, reminded reporters that Burgess told The Stranger during an interview that he was a "copywriter" on CWA projects, a well understood trade term meaning that he wrote, edited and approved much of the language used in the letters.

Among CWA's accusations in the letters:
  • Radical homosexual activists and their allies plan to turn America's public school system into full-fledged gay propaganda and recruitment camps
  • Homosexuality and pedophilia are both sexual orientations
  • Emergency contraception is the same as an abortion
  • The National Education Association seeks to promote the "homosexual lifestyle" in America's public schools

One letter dated January 1997, which had been blown-up to poster size and circled in red by press conference organizers, talks about the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, a piece of legislation still under consideration in Congress.

The letter reads: "...ENDA was a blatant attempt to destroy our society's moral foundations. This bill would have forced Christian businessmen and women and other decent Americans to hire homosexuals and those with a variety of 'sexual orientations,' including transvestites and pedophiles."

Bakan said as a newspaper publisher he's turned away advertising from groups professing beliefs he disagreed with, such as "ex-Gay" groups. He said that--in Seattle--few companies would take work from groups such as CWA.

Althought NARAL Pro-Choice Washington and the Seattle Gay News have endorsed Councilman David Della, Burgess' opponent, in the Seattle City Council Position Seven race, Cooper and Bakan said they are releasing the letters Wednesday only in hopes of providing voters with more information from which to cast their ballot.

Monday, February 12, 2007

Event for geeks and tech lovers

Geek and tech lovers unite!

Ignite Seattle is a geek event that combines on-site geekery, sharing, and innovation (and drinking). The next one will be held upstairs at the CHAC on Tuesday, February 13th. The Make Contest will begin at 6:30; the Ask Later talks will begin at 8:30.

First Set of Talks (8:30 PM)
Second Set of Talks (9:30 PM)
  • Hans Omli (Shoestring Ventures)- Elevator Pitches and Parallel Entrepreneurship
  • Sarah Davies (Freedom For IP) - Share and share alike: GPL, Creative Commons, and the future of digital freedom
  • Lars Liden (Teachtown) - Utilizing Web Technology to Help Children with Autism
  • Kurt Brockett (Identity Mine) - A Look at Windows Presentation Foundation
  • Marcelo Calbucci (Sampa) - Dr. Watson for AJAX
  • Lee Lefever (The World Is Not Flat) - Adventures from a Year of Multimedia Travel Blogging: A few inspiring stories from a year of travel blogging across 29 countries that produced 500+ blog posts, 24 original videos and 14,000 photos.
  • Barry Brumitt (Google) - MapReduce: Simplified Data Processing on Large Clusters
Third Set of Talks (10:30 PM)
  • Ellie Lum (R.E.Load Bags) - “How R.E.Load Makes Their Bags”
  • Leo Dirac (Rhapsody) - Transhuman technology trends and their implications for a theory of morality
  • Deepak Singh (business|bytes|genes|molecules) - An Open Scientific Future
  • Mike Acuri (Ontela) - Escaping the Empire: how to leave a big company
  • Heater Ralph - Art or science? A multi-person pogo stick
  • Jordan Mitchell (CEO, OthersOnline) - Distributed Social Networking and a New Metaphor for Search
  • Corprew Reed (American Society for Information Science & Technology) - What the heck is the Pacific Northwest Chapter of ASIS&T?For more into check outIgnite Seattle's website, here
For more information about Ignite Seattle or their events, visit www.igniteseattle.com.

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Seattle role in astronaut toilet technology?

From the L.A. Times:

The sordid saga of a love-struck, diaper-clad astronaut has transformed a somewhat obscure NASA undergarment into a cultural phenomenon. 
...
According to a 1998 Associated Press article, astronauts were outfitted with Depend adult diapers and an inserted pad called Rejoice, made by a Seattlecompany. 
But a spokesman for Kimberly-Clark, which makes Depends, insisted the product isn't used in space. And the Seattlecompany apparently went out of business. 
... 
A NASA spokeswoman said the official brand used now is Absorbencies, manufactured by a company that has folded. 
Fortunately, NASA owns a huge stockpile. The agency snapped up 3,200 of the diapers about 15 years ago, the spokeswoman said, and "we still have about a third of the supply left." 
On space shuttle missions, each crew member receives three diapers — for launch, reentry and a spare in case reentry has to be waved off and tried later.

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Windows VISTA humor

Windows VISTA humor...

I'm more of a PC guy myself, but this cartoon has some truth to it. Courtesy of  JoyofTech.com.