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Today is Fat Tuesday, the pinnacle of Mardi Gras. New Orleans, as well as most of the Gulf Coast region, has struggled to recover these last 6 months since it was devastated by the flooding of hurricane Katrina. The city still managed to put on parades and parties to continue the Mardi Gras tradition. The morning news shows reported from the Crescent City to highlight the events and also to lament at the poor condition much of the city remains.

The destruction of a US city should be hard to forget, but much of America tends to let painful memories slip down the memory hole. Let's review: Over 1400 people have been documented as casualties of the storm, and over 3200 more people are still unaccounted for. Hundreds of thousands of people remain evacuated from their homes with little hopes of immediate return. Electricity and water are still unavailable in many of the effected areas. The costs of the storm are predicted to run well over $100 billion.

Of course our friends in the Bush Administration are more than willing to put all of these unpleasant realities in the past. The remarkable ineptness of our government is something Karl Rove would prefer to never think about. Thankfully Mardi Gras allows the media to return the spotlight of attention to a subject that should not be forgotten.

The TV show "Good Morning America" recalled the experience of a woman who, along with thousands of other refugees, was stuck in the New Orleans convention center. She witnessed many of her fellow citizens suffering from the lack of food, water and aid. At one point a person with diabetes fell into shock as a result of going 4 days without insulin. Being a nurse, she knew exactly what needed to be done. For tense moments, she screamed loudly over the crowd in hopes to identify anyone who might have the drug. Luckily for this person there was someone in the crowd with a supply of insulin. She was able to inject the insulin (albeit without proper sanitary conditions) and the woman slowly recovered. Looking back at the event 6 months later, the nurse was still visibly shaken by her experience.

While watching this report, I also was shaken. Anger and resentment welled in me as I thought about not only the lack of emergency response by our government, but also the lack of commitment to helping the affected people and rebuilding the region in the months since. A reporter walked through the 9th Ward of New Orleans this morning and behind her were the untouched remains of the neighborhood, as if the storm had just hit yesterday. How can we commit hundreds of billions of dollars to a war in Iraq, mostly to benefit the industrial-war complex, while our own citizens wait for assistance to rebuild their homes and lives?

Mardi Gras celebrations will be taking place across the world. Thankfully the holiday events bring back into focus, at least for a short time, both the failures of our leaders and the needs of so many people in the Gulf Coast region. It would be criminal if all that comes out of these failures is a slap on the wrist. Remember Bush saying "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job!"? Eventually Michael Brown stepped down as FEMA director, only to the be immediately hired as a consultant for tens of thousands of dollars. Recently he was questioned by Congress, putting much of the blame on his supervisors in the Bush Administration. Of course the Bush crowd immediately pushed back, trying to shift the focus elsewhere.

If Bush had the courage to step out of his insulated bubble, he would be in New Orleans today at Mardi Gras. If he and his administration were not a miserable failure, he could be speaking to the citizens of that city and to the region about the success of the rebuilding effort in the wake of the terrible natural disaster. However, New Orleans post Katrina is not New York post 9-11. Katrina is not al-Qaida or Saddam Hussein and the Republicans cannot secure votes with a "war on hurricanes." Instead Bush travels to the other side of the world to coerce our partners Pakistan and India in the "war on terror." Good celebration and good luck this Mardi Gras. We all need it.

Last night we entertained ourselves by seeing a film. We had planned to attend "Good Night and Good Luck," however a slight miscalculation regarding the time it takes to walk to the theater resulted in getting there too late. Instead we watched another movie we were interested in seeing, "Capote."

"Capote" is the fourth movie we've watched in the last few months with prominent gay or transgender roles and topics. The other movies include "Brokeback Mountain," "Transamerica" and "Breakfast on Pluto." I was engaged and thoroughly entertained by each of these movies featuring unique stories and the capacity to show gay and transgender folks as human beings rather than stereotypes.

Movies and TV featuring gay people in prominent roles have existed in the past, but I would argue that frequently these characters are shallow and replete with tired stereotypical displays. For example "The Birdcage" was entertaining, but it reinforced the idea that gays men are silly queens living in South Beach, Florida. With the exception of the film "Philadelphia" there have been few movies that have used gay and transgender roles and themes to tell us stories about multidimensional people.

It is encouraging to see these four films and imagine that Hollywood may break away from the "Queer as Folk" model and instead tell stories which may include gay and transgender people who are capable of having a wide range of emotions and personalities. GLBT persons can be femme, but also quite butch. We are capable of love and compassion as well as violence and destruction. "Capote" was an excellent example as the author was not a black or white character. At times I was charmed by his personality, but at other times I was revolted by his egotism and selfishness. Capote was gay, an important aspect of Capote's life that also deserves attention. He was feminine and quirky, but he was primarily human, remarkable for his accomplishments and achievements.

Kudos to Phillip Seymour Hoffman's performance in this movie. He is gathering accolades by winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor and being nominated for the Oscar. Please take some time to see these movies and tell your friends. These films are well worth your time.

I was delighted to come across several articles today discussing some findings of a group of scientists at UCLA. These scientists found that there was at least some evidence that male homosexuality has a genetic component. They looked at the X chromosomes of the mothers of hetero and homosexual sons.

I was even happier when I read who the scientists involved in the study were. I had known one of the scientists as a good friend during my first year living in Europe back in 1998. I had lost contact with him, but thought fondly about him since. I had never been successful at tracking him down. It made me really happy to know that he was following his dream of doing research into the biological components of homosexuality.

While this study does not conclusively prove anything, the difference of genetic expression of the X chromosome in 4% of mothers in the sample of mothers with no gay sons, 13% of mothers with one gay son, and 23% of mothers in the sample of mothers with 2 or more gay sons is statistically significant. This data suggests that genetic factors are involved in homosexuality.

Here is a link to the abstract of the article Extreme skewing of X chromosome inactivation in mothers of homosexual men

You can find more about this at:
Netscape's Why Some Men Are Gay,
PlanetOut's Gene trait suspected in moms of gay sons,
LiveScience's Mom's Genetics Could Produce Gay Sons and
HealthDay's Moms' Genetics Might Help Produce Gay Sons.

Tags: gay, gene, chromosome

I wrote in December about how Diebold voting machines with no paper trail, which were used in both Florida and Ohio (and other states) in the last presidential election were proven to be an easy hack, resulting in intentionally skewed results. Now new evidence of just such fraud come to light in Palm Beach County, Florida.
Someone accessed 40 Palm Beach County voting machines in November 2004.

Since the machines in question were built by a company with strong ties to the Republican party and were used in two states where the vote was extremely close, this smells of election stealing. Think the mainstream media will ever pick up on this story?

You can read more comments about this story at Slashdot: Florida Voting Machine Logs Reveal Anomalies.

The same moronic guy that said "Brownie is doing a heck of a Job" referring to the debacle that was the head of FEMA's inept handling of the Katrina aftermath now declares that Cheney handled hunting accident 'just fine'

In a "facts are stranger than fiction" moment, our Vice (P)Resident shoots a lawyer.

Read about it in the Houston Chronicle.

An update from the BBC about the tension around the cartoon images. Anger grows over Muhammad cartoon

Do these cartoons qualify as hate speech? Do you think that they could cause violence against Muslims? I am still up in the air on all this. Do you have an opinion?

On story I have been following with interest is the Danish newspaper cartoons satirizing the prophet Muhammad that have caused an international incident. Muslims around the world have said they are offended by the cartoons and some have threatened violence. In a show of support for Denmark as well as for western freedom of the press, several other European newspapers have now republished some of the offending images. You can read more about the situation from BBC News Muhammad cartoon row intensifies

I had a conversation with a friend of mine about this on Monday and she suggested that it was insensitive to Muslims to print these cartoons. My feeling is that religion is not and should not be immune to criticism or ridicule. So while I am conflicted about it, I believe that the paper has every right to run these images even if it is in bad taste.

One cartoon is visible from Google images. It is the image of the prophet with a bomb in his turban. I have been unable to find any others.