Poster Child

Congratulations to my very good friend Nicole and everyone else who's had to endure the dehumanizing degradation of "Don't Ask Don't Tell" these past 18 years just because Bill Clinton made a stupid political compromise.

Before 12:01 a.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, a return to the Navy wasn’t something Nicole Barbe could even consider. Twelve years ago, she was forced to leave the Navy, one of about 13,000 people discharged from the military under the 18-year-old “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy barring gay men and lesbians from serving openly in the military. Even before Tuesday’s repeal of that policy, she had begun talking to a recruiter about re-enlisting in the Navy Reserve.

“It feels like — I don’t know, like Christmas morning,” Barbe said Tuesday.

Gay and lesbian communities across the nation celebrated the reversal of the controversial policy enacted in 1993 under President Bill Clinton.

It was no different at the Boondock bar in the French Quarter, which was adorned with signs Tuesday evening announcing “Goodbye, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Barbe hosted the celebration on behalf of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, which helped her receive an honorable discharge after the Navy sent her packing in 1999.

Tuesday digest

Busy and tired today so not a lot of Yellow Blog going on. Obviously we don't have the game re-cap ready but Wang has one (or part of one) up which is what you should be reading anyway.

I can report that there lots and lots of Bears fans sitting near us. They were a little scary at first but seemed to become more and more tame as the game went on for some reason. One of them even let us have a prize which the kids are holding up in the picture below. By the end of the day she just didn't want it anymore.



Let's see, what else is there today? Oh look oil on the sea floor doesn't degrade. What's the matter? Is it no longer Magic Microbe season?

Okay next thing.. um. Oh, going on right now! The Lens is hosting a live web stream of a community forum about conditions at Orleans Parish Prison. I'm told you can access the video by clicking here.

Also, there's this.



I call it T.P. Rex. I hope King Logan doesn't sue me because of that.

Finally, today is the official repeal of DADT. Consult your internets for news stories like this one on the event. There's an informal gathering this evening in the Quarter to commemorate the passing of this singularly stupid policy. I'm planning to drop by there for a while but not for too long as I'm exhausted. And on that note, I think that's enough for now. More football later in the week. Try to stay out of any bar fights in the meantime.

Time Killing Game of the Week*

Google Books Ngram generator.

See this NYT article for an explanation.

With little fanfare, Google has made a mammoth database culled from nearly 5.2 million digitized books available to the public for free downloads and online searches, opening a new landscape of possibilities for research and education in the humanities.

The digital storehouse, which comprises words and short phrases as well as a year-by-year count of how often they appear, represents the first time a data set of this magnitude and searching tools are at the disposal of Ph.D.’s, middle school students and anyone else who likes to spend time in front of a small screen. It consists of the 500 billion words that are contained in books published between 1800 and 2000 in English, French, Spanish, German, Chinese, Russian and Hebrew.

The intended audience is scholarly, but a simple online tool also allows anyone with a computer to plug in a string of up to five words and see a graph that charts the phrase’s use over time — a diversion that can quickly become as addictive as the habit-forming video game Angry Birds.

I don't even play Angry Birds but I could play this all day long. For example, wondering if the internet really is killing journalism? The graph suggests perhaps.

And in this one we see that bicycle lanes clearly have no impact on global warming.

The dip at the end of this one suggests that NFL defenses may finally be reclaiming the upper hand.

This seems about right.

As does the obligatory comparison.

My favorite so far compares seven common vices. I wish these graphs were embeddable but you should really click on this one and take a close look. I find it interesting to see narcotics, prostitution and even gambling all appear to have peaked while liquor and bacon are in the midst of a resurgence.

We could go on and on making more and more nonsensical graphs, and, since we are attracted to the power of lines on a graph to "prove" whatever point we assign to them, we probably will keep making them.

I mean, clearly "Don't ask" and "Don't tell" have been in decline since 2002 at the latest. In light of this, is today's cloture vote on repealing the policy any surprise?

*T.K.G.O.T.W. always requires a h/t to Timshel