When Obama announced his (legally unbinding) support for gay marriage, he cited gay people he knows – members of his staff, friends, families, neighbors, soldiers. When Joe Biden pre-announced his personal opinion, he cited Will And Grace. I’d say Modern Family. Both TV shows, humanizing gay families and bringing them into American homes. Which is how it happens. Exposure, basically. I think that’s how reconciliation and social justice ultimately happen.

I love Mad Men. I actually have a slight man crush on Don Draper. The first few seasons were a rollercoaster of depth and awesome as the characters slowly peeled, onion-like, to reveal different levels of both repugnancy and beauty. ie, humanity. The danger with the fifth season is that the characters are all largely revealed. I still like them, but it’s sorta like watching actors after a play. There’s a certain level of humanity which is just dull.

The US Resolution vaguely against Sri Lanka is the news around certain circles, but I’ve found that it actually doesn’t affect my life that much. Whatever the text of the resolution, it’s just become a political football. The government has framed it as a vote against Sri Lanka, and those that hate on SL have framed it as a vote against. If it passes, it won’t be the text that matters, it’ll be these stupid frames. I honestly think it hurts more than it helps.

This is a very interesting interview with Cho S. Ramaswamy, editor of the (Indian) Tamil weekly Thuglak. He says: “Suppose the US or some other country sponsors a similar resolution tomorrow on Kashmir. Are we going to honour it? We will say that the UN has no right to do this. The LTTE was the most powerful and ruthless terrorist group.” This is in regards to the ongoing brouhaha about America’s chiding UN resolution, even though they have their own issues with the UN.

This Daily Show episode highlights America’s foreign policy piece de retardance – the Israel-Palestine affair. Now the US is cutting off funding for UNESCO (largely humanitarian work) because they dared vote to recognize Palestine. That sucks, but the Daily Show has fully and hilariously called them on it. That’s what’s great.

The Soviet Union was a better villain than ‘terror’. It’s not an generic noun for one thing. There was actual competition at that time, in this case for space and the moon. In this War On Terror, they just went to Afghanistan. This video is Neil deGrasse Tyson talking about NASA and how America lost its capacity to dream therein, as he has before. He actually gets really worked up in this video, which is a mashup of some old school footage and him talking.

This is my Sunday column for the Nation. Joseph Kony is the LOLcat of terrorism now, but may not have reached people that read the physical. So this is a sorta briefer for that audience. It’s called Who Is Joseph Kony?.

I recently read/saw two pieces on space, and America’s role in it. One – testimony by Neil deGrasse Tyson – calls for the US to fund NASA and push for more exploration and innovation. The other – by John Yoo and John Bolton – says, essentially, that space belongs to the US and they can blow it up if they want to. deGrasse, as usual, is extremely forward thinking whereas You and Bolton are just cannibalizing the innovation of the past.

I watched the Kony video, because everyone is forwarding it. While I agree with the sentiment, the video itself is a serious case of white man’s burden. They state a goal as being to lobby billionaires and celebrities to lobby the US government to support US troops in Uganda. Which is kinda dubious.

I’ve been watching the Republican campaign for US President with alternate horror and glee. It’s kinda like Jersey Shore where one winner gets to be President and have nuclear weapons. Kinda awesome, but fundamentally really, really bad. You’ve got a bunch of crazy people, and one person (Romney) pretending to be crazy. This, however, is the best description I’ve seen so far: