Chaos Theory

Note to gay kids: you're not allowed to come out in middle school.

Or else you get a shot to the head in junior high. Seriously, the tone of this article is pissing me off from the first page. How DARE that kid answer a question that was uh, pretty obvious from just looking at him from the age of ten? I'm not saying the kid didn't have issues (clearly, he did have a lot and his behavior towards certain people was Not Okay), but...ugh. This one example doesn't necessarily apply to everyone.

"California's Supreme Court has just legalized gay marriage. There are gay characters on popular TV shows such as "Gossip Girl" and "Ugly Betty," and no one seems to notice. Kids like Larry are so comfortable with the concept of being openly gay that they are coming out younger and younger. One study found that the average age when kids self-identify as gay has tumbled to 13.4; their parents usually find out a year later.           What you might call "the shrinking closet" is arguably a major factor in Larry's death. Even as homosexuality has become more accepted, the prospect of being openly gay in middle school raises a troubling set of issues. Kids may want to express who they are, but they are playing grown-up without fully knowing what that means.

"My name became a punch line very fast," says Grady Keefe, 19, of Branford, Conn., who came out in the eighth grade. "The guidance counselors told me I should not have come out because I was being hurt."

More from Living Oprah

"I feel as if Oprah's gigantic persona clouds her mission. With her face, name or logo on every product, she becomes the focal point rather than the service she's offering. In accepting this as "normal" and in following her guidance for living our "best lives" I have to wonder what legacy we're helping her create. And what is the trickledown effect of her ego? Are we being taught to be generous and compassionate only as long as our names and faces are attached to our deeds?"

Depressing, but true

Caregiving issues being discussed on NPR. I love how either you have to get divorced, or spend yourself broke, or become the 24-hour sole caregiver. Great options, America.

Last year, he killed a man. Not intentionally.

Interesting, albeit depressing (duh), discussion of people jumping in front of trains. This line in particular makes me shudder. And then there's this one. And this one. Ouch.

"What jobs don't take 'A man jumped in front of my train?' as a reasonable excuse for being late, and how can I avoid ever working there?"

Similar theme this week at This American Life.
 

Makes about as much sense as it sounds

"Gentleman proves Christianity is the one true religion by electrocuting a pickle"

Why you should hate the Amish

Metafilter has a link to a girl's story about escaping her abusive Amish family. (Alas, not all online yet.) Then here come the comments...

• "I hate the Amish with the white hot passion of a thousand stars."
  
• "Did your girlfriend run away with an Amish guy or something? Sheesh."
  
• "The reason we think of Amish as "peaceful gentle folk" is mostly because they don't sue everyone and try to recruit celebrities."
  
• "See? People are like, "dude, why you hating on the Amish?" and then four comments later someone posts a link describing a small girl getting raped by her brothers. I guess I hate the Amish with the white hot passion of a thousand stars because they exist largely outside of the law, and outside the educational system, and their culture has some serious problems with sexual abuse and discrimination and a variety of genetic abnormalities resulting from inbreeding and so on and so forth and when you point that out people are like, "but their noodles are so delicious and Amish-y!"

The guy certainly has a point here, doesn't he? Alas, after about that point the thread goes berserko, especially that particular poster.

Guilty for life, no matter what.

How To Clear Your (Formerly) Good Name on NPR. The answer is: there's NO way to clear your name.

And you thought it was bad trying to catch a man

This makes me want to drink heavily, and I'm not even an orthodox Jew.

People think that's a joke until they find out for themselves.

Unfortunately, this is not a typo: (NYT)

"As long as my mother still had assets and could pay for her $14,000 a month room, the insurance benefit went to the nursing home and reduced her bill accordingly. When she ran out of money, in fairly short order, she was eligible for Medicaid, not because she was old but because she was impoverished. Then the insurance benefit went to the federal government.
All of these mistakes would have mattered less if the trajectory of my mother’s decline had been different. But that trajectory, alas, is unknown and unknowable but for its certain ending. So every decision we made — residential, medical, financial — was a crapshoot that changed the landscape for the next decision, usually by limiting options I didn’t even realize we had."

"We knew nothing about entitlement programs. What do you mean Medicare doesn’t cover the cost of home care or assisted living or a nursing home? We knew nothing about the advantages and disadvantages of hiring companions and aides through agencies or word-of-mouth. What do you mean that the agency aide needs permission from a supervisor before picking my mother off the floor if she falls? We knew nothing about hospital discharge planning. What do you mean she has to leave tomorrow when we have no place to take her? We knew nothing about geriatric medicine. What do you mean emergency rooms and intensive care units can cause a form of psychosis in the elderly, or that a catheter can lead to an undiagnosed urinary tract infection and even death?"

Lost laptop hell

"don't be one of 12,000 people who lose their laptops at airports every week. That's right, that ain't no typo—12,000 dudes and dudettes somehow manage to misplace their portable computers every seven days. That's 600,000 machines a year, many containing sensitive information that companies need to account for. According to a study by the Ponemon Institute and Dell, only 30 percent or so lost laptops are ever recovered. Los Angeles' LAX airport reported having the most lost laptops out of any other airport, with 1,200 going missing every week. The most likely place for you to lose your computer is at security checkpoints and departure gates."

"Clarion West, the famed Seattle science fiction workshop, has suffered a terrible theft: four student laptops were stolen yesterday. Clarion West (like Clarion in San Diego) is a grueling, six-week intensive boot-camp for science fiction writers. Students often quit their jobs and save for years to attend and it goes without saying that they can hardly absorb the cost of a new laptop in the middle of the workshop."

I feel SO sorry for them.