Fairly excited for Phase 2 of the Marvel Universe movies... more excited about the rumors that it all leads up to Planet Hulk after Avengers 2...

If anyone wants to read more about Stephen and LGBTQIA youth, here is the NYT article.

The New York Time's

Generation LGBTQIA

By MICHAEL SCHULMAN

Published: January 10, 2013

STEPHEN IRA, a junior at Sarah Lawrence College, uploaded a video last March on We Happy Trans, a site that shares "positive perspectives" on being transgender.

In the breakneck six-and-a-half-minute monologue - hair tousled, sitting in a wood-paneled dorm room - Stephen exuberantly declared himself "a queer, a nerd fighter, a writer, an artist and a guy who needs a haircut," and held forth on everything from his style icons (Truman Capote and "any male-identified person who wears thigh-highs or garters") to his toy zebra.

Because Stephen, who was born Kathlyn, is the 21-year-old child of Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, the video went viral, garnering nearly half a million views. But that was not the only reason for its appeal. With its adrenalized, freewheeling eloquence, the video seemed like a battle cry for a new generation of post-gay gender activists, for whom Stephen represents a rare public face.

Armed with the millennial generation's defining traits - Web savvy, boundless confidence and social networks that extend online and off - Stephen and his peers are forging a political identity all their own, often at odds with mainstream gay culture.

If the gay-rights movement today seems to revolve around same-sex marriage, this generation is seeking something more radical: an upending of gender roles beyond the binary of male/female. The core question isn't whom they love, but who they are - that is, identity as distinct from sexual orientation.

But what to call this movement? Whereas "gay and lesbian" was once used to lump together various sexual minorities - and more recently "L.G.B.T." to include bisexual and transgender - the new vanguard wants a broader, more inclusive abbreviation. "Youth today do not define themselves on the spectrum of L.G.B.T.," said Shane Windmeyer, a founder of Campus Pride, a national student advocacy group based in Charlotte, N.C.

Part of the solution has been to add more letters, and in recent years the post-post-post-gay-rights banner has gotten significantly longer, some might say unwieldy. The emerging rubric is "L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.," which stands for different things, depending on whom you ask.

"Q" can mean "questioning" or "queer," an umbrella term itself, formerly derogatory before it was appropriated by gay activists in the 1990s. "I" is for "intersex," someone whose anatomy is not exclusively male or female. And "A" stands for "ally" (a friend of the cause) or "asexual," characterized by the absence of sexual attraction.

It may be a mouthful, but it's catching on, especially on liberal-arts campuses.

The University of Missouri, Kansas City, for example, has an L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Resource Center that, among other things, helps student locate "gender-neutral" restrooms on campus. Vassar College offers an L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Discussion Group on Thursday afternoons. Lehigh University will be hosting its second annual L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Intercollegiate Conference next month, followed by a Queer Prom. Amherst College even has an L.G.B.T.Q.Q.I.A.A. center, where every group gets its own letter.

The term is also gaining traction on social media sites like Twitter and Tumblr, where posts tagged with "lgbtqia" suggest a younger, more progressive outlook than posts that are merely labeled "lgbt."

"There's a very different generation of people coming of age, with completely different conceptions of gender and sexuality," said Jack Halberstam (formerly Judith), a transgender professor at the University of Southern California and the author, most recently, of "Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal."

"When you see terms like L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.," Professor Halberstam added, "it's because people are seeing all the things that fall out of the binary, and demanding that a name come into being."

And with a plethora of ever-expanding categories like "genderqueer" and "androgyne" to choose from, each with an online subculture, piecing together a gender identity can be as D.I.Y. as making a Pinterest board.

BUT sometimes L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. is not enough. At the University of Pennsylvania last fall, eight freshmen united in the frustration that no campus group represented them.

Sure, Penn already had some two dozen gay student groups, including Queer People of Color, Lambda Alliance and J-Bagel, which bills itself as the university's "Jewish L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Community." But none focused on gender identity (the closest, Trans Penn, mostly catered to faculty members and graduate students).

Richard Parsons, an 18-year-old transgender male, discovered that when he attended a student mixer called the Gay Affair, sponsored by Penn's L.G.B.T. Center. "I left thoroughly disappointed," said Richard, a garrulous freshman with close-cropped hair, wire-framed glasses and preppy clothes, who added, "This is the L.G.B.T. Center, and it's all gay guys."

Through Facebook, Richard and others started a group called Penn Non-Cis, which is short for "non-cisgender." For those not fluent in gender-studies speak, "cis" means "on the same side as" and "cisgender" denotes someone whose gender identity matches his or her biology, which describes most of the student body. The group seeks to represent everyone else. "This is a freshman uprising," Richard said.

On a brisk Tuesday night in November, about 40 students crowded into the L.G.B.T. Center, a converted 19th-century carriage house, for the group's inaugural open mike. The organizers had lured students by handing out fliers on campus while barking: "Free condoms! Free ChapStick!"

"There's a really vibrant L.G.B.T. scene," Kate Campbell, one of the M.C.'s, began. "However, that mostly encompasses the L.G.B. and not too much of the T. So we're aiming to change that."

Students read poems and diary entries, and sang guitar ballads. Then Britt Gilbert - a punky-looking freshman with a blond bob, chunky glasses and a rock band T-shirt - took the stage. She wanted to talk about the concept of "bi-gender."

"Does anyone want to share what they think it is?"

Silence.

She explained that being bi-gender is like manifesting both masculine and feminine personas, almost as if one had a "detachable penis." "Some days I wake up and think, 'Why am I in this body?' " she said. "Most days I wake up and think, 'What was I thinking yesterday?' 

"Britt's grunginess belies a warm matter-of-factness, at least when describing her journey. As she elaborated afterward, she first heard the term "bi-gender" from Kate, who found it on Tumblr. The two met at freshman orientation and bonded. In high school, Kate identified as "agender" and used the singular pronoun "they"; she now sees her gender as an "amorphous blob."

By contrast, Britt's evolution was more linear. She grew up in suburban Pennsylvania and never took to gender norms. As a child, she worshiped Cher and thought boy bands were icky. Playing video games, she dreaded having to choose male or female avatars.

In middle school, she started calling herself bisexual and dated boys. By 10th grade, she had come out as a lesbian. Her parents thought it was a phase - until she brought home a girlfriend, Ash. But she still wasn't settled.

"While I definitely knew that I liked girls, I didn't know that I was one," Britt said. Sometimes she would leave the house in a dress and feel uncomfortable, as if she were wearing a Halloween costume. Other days, she felt fine. She wasn't "trapped in the wrong body," as the cliché has it - she just didn't know which body she wanted.

When Kate told her about the term "bi-gender," it clicked instantly. "I knew what it was, before I knew what it was," Britt said, adding that it is more fluid than "transgender" but less vague than "genderqueer" - a catchall term for nontraditional gender identities.

At first, the only person she told was Ash, who responded, "It took you this long to figure it out?" For others, the concept was not so easy to grasp. Coming out as a lesbian had been relatively simple, Britt said, "since people know what that is." But when she got to Penn, she was relieved to find a small community of freshmen who had gone through similar awakenings.

Among them was Richard Parsons, the group's most politically lucid member. Raised female, Richard grew up in Orlando, Fla., and realized he was transgender in high school. One summer, he wanted to room with a transgender friend at camp, but his mother objected. "She's like, 'Well, if you say that he's a guy, then I don't want you rooming with a guy,' " he recalled. "We were in a car and I basically blurted out, 'I think I might be a guy, too!' "

After much door-slamming and tears, Richard and his mother reconciled. But when she asked what to call him, he had no idea. He chose "Richard" on a whim, and later added a middle name, Matthew, because it means "gift of God."

By the time he got to Penn, he had been binding his breasts for more than two years and had developed back pain. At the open mike, he told a harrowing story about visiting the university health center for numbness and having a panic attack when he was escorted into a women's changing room.

Nevertheless, he praised the university for offering gender-neutral housing. The college's medical program also covers sexual reassignment surgery, which, he added, "has heavily influenced my decision to probably go under the Penn insurance plan next year."

PENN has not always been so forward-thinking; a decade ago, the L.G.B.T. Center (nestled amid fraternity houses) was barely used. But in 2010, the university began reaching out to applicants whose essays raised gay themes. Last year, the gay newsmagazine The Advocate ranked Penn among the top 10 trans-friendly universities, alongside liberal standbys like New York University.

More and more colleges, mostly in the Northeast, are catering to gender-nonconforming students. According to a survey by Campus Pride, at least 203 campuses now allow transgender students to room with their preferred gender; 49 have a process to change one's name and gender in university records; and 57 cover hormone therapy. In December, the University of Iowa became the first to add a "transgender" checkbox to its college application.

"I wrote about an experience I had with a drag queen as my application essay for all the Ivy Leagues I applied to," said Santiago Cortes, one of the Penn students. "And I got into a few of the Ivy Leagues - Dartmouth, Columbia and Penn. Strangely not Brown.

"But even these measures cannot keep pace with the demands of incoming students, who are challenging the curriculum much as gay activists did in the '80s and '90s. Rather than protest the lack of gay studies classes, they are critiquing existing ones for being too narrow.

Several members of Penn Non-Cis had been complaining among themselves about a writing seminar they were taking called "Beyond 'Will & Grace,' " which examined gay characters on shows like "Ellen," "Glee" and "Modern Family." The professor, Gail Shister, who is a lesbian, had criticized several students for using "L.G.B.T.Q." in their essays, saying it was clunky, and proposed using "queer" instead. Some students found the suggestion offensive, including Britt Gilbert, who described Ms. Shister as "unaccepting of things that she doesn't understand."

Ms. Shister, reached by phone, said the criticism was strictly grammatical. "I am all about economy of expression," she said. "L.G.B.T.Q. doesn't exactly flow off the tongue. So I tell the students, 'Don't put in an acronym with five or six letters.' "

One thing is clear. Ms. Shister, who is 60 and in 1979 became The Philadelphia Inquirer's first female sportswriter, is of a different generation, a fact she acknowledges freely, even gratefully. "Frankly, I'm both proud and envious that these young people are growing up in an age where they're free to love who they want," she said.

If history is any guide, the age gap won't be so easy to overcome. As liberated gay men in the 1970s once baffled their pre-Stonewall forebears, the new gender outlaws, to borrow a phrase from the transgender writer Kate Bornstein, may soon be running ideological circles around their elders.

Still, the alphabet soup of L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. may be difficult to sustain. "In the next 10 or 20 years, the various categories heaped under the umbrella of L.G.B.T. will become quite quotidian," Professor Halberstam said.

Even at the open mike, as students picked at potato chips and pineapple slices, the bounds of identity politics were spilling over and becoming blurry.

At one point, Santiago, a curly-haired freshman from Colombia, stood before the crowd. He and a friend had been pondering the limits of what he calls "L.G.B.T.Q. plus."

"Why do only certain letters get to be in the full acronym?" he asked.

Then he rattled off a list of gender identities, many culled from Wikipedia. "We have our lesbians, our gays," he said, before adding, "bisexual, transsexual, queer, homosexual, asexual." He took a breath and continued. "Pansexual. Omnisexual. Trisexual. Agender. Bi-gender. Third gender. Transgender. Transvestite. Intersexual. Two-spirit. Hijra. Polyamorous."

By now, the list had turned into free verse. He ended: "Undecided. Questioning. Other. Human."

The room burst into applause.

Correction: January 10, 2013, Thursday

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: An earlier version of this article and a picture caption referred incorrectly to a Sarah Lawrence College student who uploaded a video online about being transgender. He says he is Stephen Ira, not Stephen Ira Beatty.

Source NYT

Fair Use

Starting from 1986 all new cars had to be able to run on unleaded petrol, but the actual end date for sale varied according to where you were... but around 2002 (it was pretty uncommon anyway once most cars ran on unleaded, I thought it had been phased out years earlier). Given that there is a 20 year lag between changing lead levels and behavioural changes, it should be showing up starting from 2006.

Lead based house paint hasn't been common since 1970 (source).

Which figures did you find fishy?

Couple of thieves, making sure they don't have to wear their ski masks later that night during the breaking and entering phase.

OK so I went through this as well.
Both my kids are certified Geek.

I started with super heroes and Star Wars but my kids went through all the phases from Transformers, to Mutant Turtles, X-men, Batman, Star Trek, Planet of the Apes, and Buffy and every possible direction.

What I found is you can't force one over the other. Expose kids to everything Geek and let them decide. When you see them heading into a certain direction, just go with it. If they see you are interested in it, then they will be too. There is always something new and geek right around the corner.

Today's kids have a wider range than we did, there is just too much out there. my kids are knowledgeable on most Multi-verses but every time I turn around there's something new - and sometimes it's them introducing it to me (Ben10, Naruto etc.) All you can be expected to do is put it in front of them and be involved.

My kids (now 11 & 15) constantly surprise me. My daughter can correct any of her male peers on the geek of Marvel Comics, Buffy, Dr Who, Dragonlance and so much more. She reads 4-5 new books a week and gets straight As in school for the last 5 years straight.

My son has gone through all the multi-verses (and loves them all.) He wears a Tick T-shirt, loves Big Bang Theory and understand every side-joke. Now he is the one introducing me to stuff. Books in his room include E=Mc2 and the complete biography of Einstine. Loves video games and can beat most of them over a weekend.

Don't hold back, throw it all at them and don't hold back.


Stay away from the ol'time evils: Tomas the train, Dora, Babar, Caillou, Disney's Cars and all that stuff.

@dag said "If you have been here six years- more than likely you know the ropes and how things function here and should therefore have more power to change things than someone who has been here for less time."

Change what, dag? What can a new person to the Sift change?

As for the Sift now having more nuance than before, I say phooie on that. I still remember how completely flummoxed I was by all the bells and whistles and promotes and power points and it was all so overwhelming, I lurked for years.

In my opinion, this limitation feels like a punishment for success. Somebody charges in, susses things out quickly, and starts posting quality videos? How is that a problem?

I've seen this before -- sifters who can't get a video into the Top 15 resenting the success of others. Instead of working on their skills to figure out what OTHER SIFTERS WANT, they grouse. I see this limitation as the ultimate grouse against success.

I also know it is a fact that success breeds success, and it can be hard to get noticed. Creating the Talent Scout badge should obviate that -- if a Sifter helps noobs, they will get rewarded for it (dang, where was that badge when I was heavy into my helping newcomer phase?)

I guess I am too much an American -- we love our capitalist system where efforts are rewarded, for the most part. A slogging along, almost communist system grates -- two years before you can earn something. Dang. Although the flip to this is -- if you have real, honest to god money, you can buy your way into power points. Which means this new system is the opposite of egalitarian.

The world is not a dull gray place where everyone is the same. @Drax with his silver tongue? Good lord, that is amazing. @punkinandstorm with her deep reserves of charm and smarts who figured this site out in record time, on top of a great eye for an interesting vid? @eric3579 who has a beautifully tuned sense of quality and works hard to maintain the excellence? @mintbbb who also can spot a winner vid at 25 paces? @kymbos, who delights me with his point of view? @radx who privately keeps me informed on the most amazing worldwide events that otherwise I wouldn't hear about?

Everyone brings something to the table here, in this rich tapestry that is the Sift. I love it here. Mostly.

But I get back to my first question -- how can a noob "change" anything? What are they changing?

Arm yourself with knowledge, people, or succomb to ignorance found in conspiracies..

Facts: Yes, the Federal Reserve banks are privately owned, but they are controlled by the publically-appointed Board of Governors. The Federal Reserve banks merely execute the monetary policy choices made by the Board. In addition, nearly all the interest the Federal Reserve collects on government bonds is rebated to the Treasury each year, so the government does not pay any net interest to the Fed.

Facts: No foreigners own any part of the Fed. Each Federal Reserve bank is owned exclusively by the participating commercial banks and S&Ls operating within the Federal Reserve bank's district. Individuals and non-bank firms, be they foreign or domestic, are not permitted by law to own any shares of a Federal Reserve bank. Moreover, monetary policy is controlled by the publically-appointed Board of Governors, not by the Federal Reserve banks.

Fact: Independent accounting firms conduct full financial audits of the Federal Reserve banks and the Board of Governors every year. The Fed is also subject to certain types of audits from the Government Accounting Office.

Facts: The Federal Reserve rebates its net earnings to the Treasury every year. Consequently, the interest the Treasury pays to the Fed is returned, so the money borrowed from the Fed has no net interest obligation for the Treasury. The government could print its own currency independent of the Fed, but there would be no effective safeguards against abuse of this power for political gain.

Facts: The Federal Reserve banks have only a small share of the total national debt (about 7%). Therefore, only a small share of the interest on the debt goes to the Fed. Regardless, the Fed rebates that interest to the Treasury every year, so the debt held by the Fed carries no net interest obligation for the government. In addition, it is Congress, not the Federal Reserve, who is responsible for the federal budget and the national debt.

Facts: Kennedy wrote E.O. 11,110 to phase out silver certificate currency, not to issue more of it. Records show Kennedy and the Federal Reserve were almost always in agreement on policy matters. He even signed legislation to give the Fed more authority to issue currency.

Facts: McFadden was incorrect regarding the Fed costing the government money. However, later economic analysis agrees with him that Federal Reserve policy blunders had a substantial role in causing the Depression. However, his implication that this was done deliberately has no basis in fact. Moreover, for a dozen years prior to his rant, McFadden had been the chairman of the House subcommittee that oversaw the Federal Reserve. Why didn't he do anything to reform or abolish the Fed while he had the chance?

Facts: The banking system is indeed able to create money with a mere computer keystroke. However, a bank's ability to create money is tied directly to the amount of reserves customers have deposited there. A bank must pay a competitive interest rate on those deposits to keep them from leaving to other banks. This interest expense alone is a substantial portion of a bank's operating costs and is de facto proof a bank cannot costlessly create money.

Fact: The term 'lawful money' does not refer to gold or silver coin, but to types of money which the government would permit banks to use when tabulating their reserves. These types of money included, but were not limited to, gold and silver coin.

Screenshot won't help since it's a monitor thing, not videocard. I tried to take photo of the monitor but it doesn't show up there. It is a really faint jiggling/fuzziness of sharp contrast page elements that are near such background. Like word "sarcasm" next to the checkbox when writing comments has vertical fuzziness.
It is kinda similar to when you connect some LCD monitors with VGA cable their menus have options like "pixel clock" and "phase"...Except I use DVI and can't adjust those.

Your video, Moon phases for 2013, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Haha, nothing phases that guy on the bike.

I never said that.

I do suffer from Rommesia though...

>> ^eric3579:

Ellis emerged the victor, ultimately purchasing the piece for $1.8 million (all prices include 20% buyer’s premium).
http://www.johnmoran.com/latest-news/46962-first-phase-navajo-chiefs-blanket-headlines-successful-summer-antiques-auction-at-john-moran
s
>> ^Payback:
>> ^eric3579:
I'm guessing there is a 20% auction fee which would put the sale at $1.8 mil.
>> ^gwiz665:
Was only $1.5 mil.


Wrong direction. Seller pays the fee, so Big LT gets $1.3 Million.
Barely worth the effort IMHO.

Ellis emerged the victor, ultimately purchasing the piece for $1.8 million (all prices include 20% buyer’s premium).
http://www.johnmoran.com/latest-news/46962-first-phase-navajo-chiefs-blanket-headlines-successful-summer-antiques-auction-at-john-morans
>> ^Payback:

>> ^eric3579:
I'm guessing there is a 20% auction fee which would put the sale at $1.8 mil.
>> ^gwiz665:
Was only $1.5 mil.


Wrong direction. Seller pays the fee, so Big LT gets $1.3 Million.
Barely worth the effort IMHO.

>> ^messenger:

So would two pendulums of the same length hung from the same string (like on the Wikipedia page) be considered in phase, even though they have opposite patterns? What about the Wilberforce pendulum? Is it considered to be in phase?>> ^crotchflame:
You're right: a double pendulum is a coupled oscillator and is a good example. It's a coupled oscillator with multiple normal modes that can give it a complex motion even for small oscillations where it isn't chaotic - some would argue that at larger amplitudes it's no longer a simple oscillator so a lot of the terminology in use here doesn't apply. The point is that it doesn't settle into one coupled mode that is stable against perturbations the way phase locked oscillators would.



The two pendula on a string can be put into motion where they are in phase but they aren't phase locked because they don't have to stay that way. Like the example being shown on the wikipedia entry, they are mode coupling where one oscillates but loses amplitude as the other begins to move - this is the motion it will be in if you start one of them but not the other. If you set them both swinging at the same time from the same height they would be in phase but if you then perturbed them they would go into a more complex modal behavior so you couldn't say they are phase locked.

The Wilberforce is the same - if you just twist the spring, it will be twist back and forth for a while until it loses energy to the pendulum motion; it will eventually stop as the pendulum takes over and then it will start coupling back the other way. You can put the system in phase where the rotations and the swings are aligned in phase but the strong coupling allows them to share energy more rapidly and to take on more complex modal interactions.

So would two pendulums of the same length hung from the same string (like on the Wikipedia page) be considered in phase, even though they have opposite patterns? What about the Wilberforce pendulum? Is it considered to be in phase?>> ^crotchflame:

You're right: a double pendulum is a coupled oscillator and is a good example. It's a coupled oscillator with multiple normal modes that can give it a complex motion even for small oscillations where it isn't chaotic - some would argue that at larger amplitudes it's no longer a simple oscillator so a lot of the terminology in use here doesn't apply. The point is that it doesn't settle into one coupled mode that is stable against perturbations the way phase locked oscillators would.

>> ^messenger:

I'd imagine very few of them phase lock, no? Most of them result in chaos, I'd think, assuming a double pendulum counts as coupled oscillation.>> ^crotchflame:
>> ^draak13:
Actually, the answer is known as coupled oscillation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscillation#Coupled_oscillations

Oscillators have to be coupled to phase lock but not every coupled oscillator phase locks.




You're right: a double pendulum is a coupled oscillator and is a good example. It's a coupled oscillator with multiple normal modes that can give it a complex motion even for small oscillations where it isn't chaotic - some would argue that at larger amplitudes it's no longer a simple oscillator so a lot of the terminology in use here doesn't apply. The point is that it doesn't settle into one coupled mode that is stable against perturbations the way phase locked oscillators would.