On February 10 I went up to Los Angeles to observe the Project Chanology protests against the Church of Scientology. My photos are up on Flickr.

I don't live on campus with most other graduate students and I don't live in a sterile Orange County suburb. I live in an apartment complex. I'm glad. It occasionally brings me into contact with more of the world than under-30 drinking.

On a weekend night a couple of months ago, I kept hearing sporadic woman's screams from somewhere outside my apartment. I live next to the complex parking lot, so the occasional drunken hoots (especially around 1 to 3 am) aren't uncommon, but this sounded different. The screams sounded agitated, frustrated, frightened.

So I put on my slippers, grabbed a flashlight, and trekked out into the parking structure. No luck tracking down the source. After about 20 minutes searching, and on my way back to my apartment, I stumbled across the source: a man and a woman arguing in the apartment just below mine and one over. I must've passed it during a lull.

I went back to my apartment and listened from my balcony to try to figure out what was going on. She was crying and occasionally yelling. He was yelling, "You don't understand!" like a frustrated adolescent. Something or somebody was thumping against the wall.

At this point I dialed 9-11 and called in a potential domestic abuse incident, then got my voice recorder and waited for the police. The track says it was September 15. Once I heard the woman's voice yelling "Stoooop! Stop! Stop hurting me!" I dialed 9-11 again, reported what I'd heard (to which the operator replied that yes, the police are on their way), and waited.

It turned out that the violence seems to have been minimal. He hurled her purse out the (ground level) balcony door; she was crying and picking it up when the police arrived. From what I could make out afterward, she was a minor but determinedly did not want to go home; I think they handcuffed her and took her to the police station. The two officers spent some time questioning the boy, but I don't know to what result.

Tonight I heard a woman crying while walking nearby with an acquaintance; she was saying something about leaving, and he took a phone call long enough to say there'd been an incident and he'd have to call them back. Sometime later I heard the woman walking toward the street while being asked to stop by a loud, frustrated young man. She was saying that he didn't understand her mother, that her mother had a disease. I hope she didn't turn back.

For the record, this was *ahem* SOMEONE ELSE'S search that sent them to my blog.

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link to screenshot, because MySpace is balking at the URL

My Virb and Facebook profiles can automatically import blog feeds. I can post tripe once and have it propagate to all of my major social networking presences. Ironically, the only social networking blog that can't do this is MySpace, so to use the other sites' functionality I have to write the post in MySpace's crummy editor. Go figure.

I don't know what to make of this one yet. My analyticals caught a press release about a new book: The Adventures of Stemmie, The Little Stem Cell. Yes, really:


The book is 202 pages long. I'm tempted to buy it just to know who is putting it out and why.

At Right Wing Watch:

Rod Parsley's Center for Moral Clarity is calling its supporters to urge Congress to maintain federal funding for abstinence-only sex ed programs, which have come under fire in the past for inaccuracy and religious content, as well as plain ineffectiveness...Meanwhile, a report in the Nation examines how the billion dollars spent on abstinence-only has created an industry marked by "a mix of back-scratching cronyism, hefty partisan campaign donations, high-dollar lobbyists, a revolving door for political appointees and a lack of concern for results."

So, erm, iron-belted triangles, then.

I don't enjoy Orange County, but sometimes I really, really don't enjoy Orange County. For instance: I just found out that a Holocaust denial organization held a conference in Irvine a couple of months ago. Search Technorati for "IHR Irvine"; I refuse to link to it.

The most unintentionally funny book title I've seen in awhile:

Backdoor to Eugenics

Because if the feebleminded would just do it in the butt, they wouldn't reproduce?

Yes, some of these are just for me.

Were I a mad eugenicist, with access to sterilizing retroviruses, genital-seeking explosive drones, vagina dentata fembots, and whatnot, my first task would be to identify the substandard men. (Men can breed more frequently than women, of course, though there's the side benefit of eliminating some competition.)

I think I would employ direct marketing. Create thousands of ersatz profiles on a popular social networking service, each ostensibly of a scantily-dressed, attractive tart, ample protrusions protruding in invitation. Issue mass friend invites to the men. Record who accepts. Prioritize those who also respond with variants of "Hey babe Thanx for the add! You're hot, whas up?"

*fffffssssst* *whoosh* *SNAP*

Why am I just now finding out about Time Cube?