He may not love you, but He sure is a super power in this universe

 

Let’s give a shoutout to science.

My hometown hits a high point

I grew up in a little town in the bible beatin’ beltin’ south called High Point, North Carolina.

High Point’s claim to fame — apart from a two mile strip of redneck cruising area — is that it was considered for a long time to be the furniture capital of the world.

There’s still an active furniture community and trade show there, but — like many things in this economy — not as boisterous as it used to be.

A friend of mine lives there with this wife and two kids in a ritzy neighborhood called Emerywood. For the most part, I thought my friend was conservative, and he may still be. I hope he is.

This morning, he posted a story about a local gay vocalist named Anthony Dean Griffey, a four-time Grammy award winning performer. It was printed in the High Point Enterprise, a bastion of liberal propaganda and immoral intrigue.

Just kidding.

The High Point Enterprise has traditionally gone conservative.

In recent years, this gay local named Griffey has threatened his career and local notoriety by becoming vocal about his homosexuality and helping to push for marriage equality in his community.

Part of me pinches myself when I hear these stories. It’s 2013 for fuck sake. How is it that homosexuality is so reviled in any town anywhere?

But then I remember, “The Yeshua Fog.”

I haven’t used that term in for-freaking-ever.

The Yeshua Fog is that dense, dumbheaded myopia that prevents otherwise smart people from seeing that their views are preventing them from joining the rest of us in a great society of progress and beauty. And by otherwise smart, I mean that in the most delicate way. Where else can you claim you’re educated and still eschew educated ideas like accepting homosexuality or evolution and still claim intelligence?

Some people think that homosexuals and their ideas threaten their faith, their ideals, their families and their moralities.

When is this morality battle going to be over? High Point rests its laurels on secular morality.

And besides, if believing folks realized how much of what they love and adore on a daily basis comes from the minds of people who prefer same sex over opposite, they’d shit their pants like Al Roker at the goddamn White House.

Why do I support marriage equality? Because I want my friends, who are lifelong partners, to have the same benefits that I have in my marriage with Tina. Socially and economically, as well as any health matters that might prevent non-spouses from attending hospitals or making decisions on their loved ones behalves.

I hope High Point gets this. I hope the sun burns the fog off the Yeshua-lovin’ south.

I care because I love my friends and family who live in the south. I want them to be happy and live in a bustling town of creativity and genius. Diversity — and its acceptance — is what brings that. Not closed-minded ideas that shun people on the basis of their sexual preference.

This issue is not a gateway to animal marriage, polygamy or whatever wild construct some people are concernstipated about. I live in Chicago because we’re open and way more honest about who we are individually. Even when I go back to High Point, I’m forced to hide who I am and what I don’t believe in … all while everyone else is praying in public and churching it up like it’s the best thing in the world.

The fog is dense.

Acceptance damn overdue.

I mean Yeshua H Christ.

finally! religious freedom.

It’s about time a protestant figured out how to marry a Catholic and be buried beside them.

 

Read more: Catholic wife and Protestant husband, separated after death by religious bigotry

I need to put this day in the can

Today was spent primarily on a video deadline, and Tina and I went live with some re-working of our professional site.

One day we’ll really hone that site into a more deliberate and focused site. We’re getting there.

We made some strides, though. We took off babies, families and dogs. We’re proud of that work, but there’s really no money in it. So why advertise it straight out?

It’s difficult to market your own business sometimes, but we don’t have that great of a marketing budget to hire it out.

There hasn’t been enough hours in the day lately to get everything done that I’d like.

“10 Things Most Americans Don’t Know About America”

I was awake for about four hours this morning waiting for sleep to come back between 1:30 and 4:30.

The hours afforded me such pleasurable reading such as catching up on blogs and Facebook.

This article called “10 Things Most Americans Don’t Know About America“.

And while I don’t agree with everything the writer spells out in his rant, I think it’s a good read, considering the fact (fact!) that there’s a mysterious psychology that affords many Americans the blinders that this is the country wearing the biggest foam #1 finger on the planet.

Take this line for example in reason 8: 

We’re status-obsessed. Our culture is built around achievement, production and being exceptional. Therefore comparing ourselves and attempting to out-do one another has infiltrated our social relationships as well. Who can slam the most beers first? Who can get reservations at the best restaurant? Who knows the promoter to the club? Who dated a girl on the cheerleading squad? Socializing becomes objectified and turned into a competition. And if you’re not winning, the implication is that you are not important and no one will like you.

Go check out the rest of the article here.

Thanks, Emily!

Covered up!

Today, I’ve got to be very productive. Yesterday, I took a full day off, the first in a LONG time.

But today, I’m concentrating on productivity.

So in the meantime, check out Obama’s corespondents’ dinner speech from Saturday night. It was great.

Better than any Bush era speech. And I watched them all.

A quick word — if you haven’t seen it already — go rent Django Unchained and watch it! It might be one of the best Quentin Tarantino films yet. Probably because the sense of humor is laid out better.

I laugh my way through most of his films, but the jokes in Django are much more obvious.

Great movie. Watch it!

This is 10 seconds you won’t regret watching.

You know you’ve watched a thousand videos and when you finshed them, you said, “Shit, who’s going to give me back those seconds or minutes that I just wasted?”

Well, this one is worth it. I swear.

 

The evolution of soft robots … without sex organs

The smart kids in the room — you know who they are — put together a project showing the evolution of soft robots made from multiple materials.

About the project:

More videos: http://jeffclune.com/videos.html

Here we evolve the bodies of soft robots made of multiple materials (muscle, bone, & support tissue) to move quickly. Evolution produces a diverse array of fun, wacky, interesting, but ultimately functional soft robots. Enjoy!

This video accompanies the following paper: Unshackling Evolution: Evolving Soft Robots with Multiple Materials and a Powerful Generative Encoding. Cheney, MacCurdy, Clune, & Lipson. Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference. 2013.

PDF: http://jeffclune.com/publications/201…

Parents of dead teen publish photo of their son’s last, unsent text.

When you find yourself reaching for your phone to text, tweet or update Facebook, put the fucking thing back down and wait till you get to your location.

Otherwise, you’re a gigantic asshole.

From Copyranter:

…

This makes for a much more powerful PSA than the usual violent, bloody images created by big fancy ad agencies (examples below).

More

 

 

RAW artist Chicago art show

Tonight I went to an event at the Double Door called RAW Artist Chicago.

You should have been there.

But if you weren’t, here are a couple images.

More to come.