April 10, 2012

PAC-MAN The Movie (The Fan Film)

#!

April 10, 2012

Before OMGPOP Sold For $210 Million, CEO Hired Back Everyone He Laid Off & Made Sure They Cashed In

Before OMGPOP Sold For $210 Million, The CEO Hired Back Everyone He Laid Off And Made Sure They Cashed In

A few months ago, OMGPOP was about to go bust.

Its Facebook games weren't performing and prospects were so bleak, CEO Dan Porter was forced to lay off several of the startup's flash developers.

Then OMGPOP launched a mobile game called Draw Something, and everything changed.

<snip>

He was literally negotiating the deal and jamming the re-hires back into payroll to make sure they were covered with hours remaining in the close. Their options kept vesting and they benefitted from the sale.



More:
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-incredible-story-of-how-laid-off-omgpop-workers-got-hired-back-just-in-time-to-cash-in-on-the-big-sale-2012-4?op=1

April 10, 2012

BEST BUY CEO RESIGNS

Source: Business Insider

Just announced by the company:

Brian Dunn, the CEO of big box giant Best Buy, is resigning.

It was just on March 29 that the CEO announced a massive restructuring and layoff plan.

The company has been getting creamed on all fronts, especially in the world of media, where the rise of digital media has totally gutted a key part of the company's business.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/best-buy-ceo-resigns-2012-4

---

Best Buy Donates $100,000 to Anti-Gay Candidate Tom Emmer

So much has been parlayed back and forth in the media regarding Target’s $150,000 donation to support anti-gay marriage Minnesota GOP candidate Tom Emmer, but not much has been said about Best Buy’s $100,000 donation to the same controversial candidate. Were you aware that there is currently an effort to boycott Best Buy along with Target? If you were not previously aware, you are now. The official “Boycott Best Buy” Facebook page can be accessed here: Boycott Best Buy Until They Cease Funding Anti-Gay Politics. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Boycott-Best-Buy-Until-They-Cease-Funding-Anti-Gay-Politics/132453820129363

With awareness and knowledge comes responsibility and many around the world are calling for consumers to boycott two of the most beloved stores in the LGBT community– Target and Best Buy. Anti-gay homophobic GOP candidate Tom Emmer not only vows to veto any marriage equality bill that comes across his desk, he also has close ties to an anti-gay Christian rock band that advocates the hateful message of death to gays. Death to gays? Are we living in the 17th Century or something? This is extremely outrageous, hateful and beyond unbelievable.

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) has suggested referencing the following verbiage for anyone wishing to share their outrage and write to Best Buy and/or Target.

More:
http://www.shewired.com/g-spot/best-buy-donates-100000-anti-gay-candidate-tom-emmer

April 10, 2012

Marry ME - 80's Dance to Benefit EqualityMaine Sat, Apr 21, 2012

Description:
Time Pilots presents...Marry ME! An 80's Dance Party where EVERYONE is included (21+ I.D. Required). Emcee and Special Guest Drummer...Lori Voornas!
Location:
Seasons Grille
155 Riverside Street
Portland, Maine 04103
Area Map

Start date:
Sat, Apr 21, 2012 8:00 PM
Duration:
4 hours

Event details

Emcee and Special Guest Drummer...Lori Voornas!

April 21, 2012 at Seasons Grille, 155 Riverside Street in Portland. This is a beneficiary event organized by supporters of EqualityMaine to benefit the organization. 50% of ticket sales and all money raised at the event itself will be donated to EqualityMaine. Not authorized or sponsored by EqualityMaine

More:
https://ticketriver.com/event/3222-marry-me---80%27s-dance-to-benefit-equalitymaine

April 10, 2012

Protest Against Hate Groups Leaders Scott Lively and Brian Camenker Sunday, Apr. 15

See prior threads:

"Kill the Gays" Bill Is Back and Moving Faster Than Before
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=221x183026

Scott Lively, one of the men responsible for David Kato's murder in Uganda
Topic started by MNBrewer on Mar-14-11 04:29 PM (3 replies)
Last modified by Danger Mouse on Mar-14-11 08:28 PM
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=221&topic_id=174508

Too crazy for even the Tea Party? Meet Brian Camenker and his group, MassResistance
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8819680

Daily Show zaps Brian Camenker (anti-gay bigot, Article 8 Alliance, Mass.)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=303x284


See also:

18 Anti-Gay Groups and Their Propaganda

<snip>

*Abiding Truth Ministries
Springfield, Mass.

Abiding Truth Ministries serves mainly as a launching pad for an international anti-gay campaign. Its founder, Scott Lively, is also responsible for a book, widely cited by gay-bashers, accusing homosexuals of running the Nazi Party.

Lively first emerged as an anti-gay activist when he became communications director for the Oregon Citizens Alliance, which was backing that state’s notorious Measure 9 vote in 1992. The measure, which failed, would have added language to the state constitution listing homosexuality, along with pedophilia and masochism, as “abnormal behavior.” Lively later served as California director of the American Family Association, another particularly hard-line anti-gay group (see below).

Lively is best known for co-authoring, with Kevin Abrams, The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party. The book makes a series of claims that virtually no serious historian agrees with: that Hitler was gay, that “the Nazi Party was entirely controlled by militaristic homosexuals,” and that gays were especially selected for the SS because of their innate brutality. The claims are entirely false; in fact, the Nazis murdered significant numbers of gays and made homosexuality a death penalty offense in 1942. In the foreword, Abrams adds that homosexuality is “primarily a predatory addiction striving to take the weak and unsuspecting down with it. … They have no idea of how to act in the best interests of their country… . Their intention is to serve none but themselves.”

Lively has taken his message abroad to Eastern Europe (see Watchmen on the Walls, below), Africa and Russia. In a 2007 open letter to the Russian people, he asserted that “homosexuality is a personality disorder that involves various, often dangerous sexual addictions and aggressive, anti-social impulses.” In 2009, he went to Uganda to speak at a major conference on the evils of homosexuality, saying, among other things: “The gay movement is an evil institution. The goal of the gay movement is to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.” He also met with Ugandan lawmakers. A month after Lively left the country, a bill was introduced that called for the death penalty for certain homosexual acts and prison for those who fail to disclose gays’ identities.

In 2008, Lively started the Redemption Gate Mission Society, a church that seeks to “re-Christianize” the city of Springfield, Mass., where he lives.

<snip>

*MassResistance

MassResistance, “the leading pro-family grassroots activist group in Massachusetts,” began life in 1995 as the Parents’ Rights Coalition, became the Article 8 Alliance in 2003, and took on its current name in 2006. Its leader, Brian Camenker, is a programmer who was an official of the Article 8 Alliance and also headed the Newton, Mass., chapter of the National Taxpayers’ Association.

As president of yet another group, the Interfaith Coalition of Massachusetts, Camenker spearheaded the drafting of a bill that passed in 1996 and required that parents be notified of any sex education in their children’s schools. That same year, Camenker claimed that suicide prevention programs aimed at gay youth actually were “put together by homosexual activists to normalize homosexuality.” Later, MassResistance charged that groups like the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), which support school anti-bullying programs, actually want to lure children into homosexuality and, very possibly, sadomasochism.

At a 2006 religious right gathering in Washington, D.C., Camenker insisted that gays were trying to get legislation passed to allow sex with animals. "One bill in Massachusetts takes away all the penalties for bestiality," he claimed. "This is where this [homosexual] agenda is going." A little later, he added, "They [gays and lesbians] are pushing perversion on our kids."

In 2006-2007, Mass-Resistance pushed for an amendment of the 1996 statute that would have required that parents be notified of any discussion of gay or lesbian issues in the schools. The group proposed language that lumped sexual orientation (which includes heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality) in with criminal behaviors like bestiality and polygamy. During legislative testimony supporting the amendment, Camenker falsely claimed that no homosexuals died in the Holocaust and that the pink triangle the Nazis forced imprisoned gays to wear actually signified Catholic priests. The amendment did not pass.

Camenker, who has long focused on the purported “homosexual agenda” in the schools and frequently claimed gays are dangerous to kids, has repeatedly cited discredited claims from organizations like the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality that link homosexuality and pedophilia.

In 2008, Camenker made another accusation for which there was no supporting evidence at all — the claim that the state of Massachusetts had had to spend more money every year since same-sex marriage became legal in that state. That, he said, was because of “skyrocketing homosexual domestic violence” and because of the “extreme dysfunctional nature of homosexual relationships.”

This year, MassResistance called Boston Gay Pride events a “depraved” display that featured “a great deal of obviously disturbed, dysfunctional, and extremely self-centered people whose aim was to push their agenda.”

More:
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2010/winter/the-hard-liners

April 9, 2012

You JUST beat me to posting this.

Bonnie Raitt "Right Down The Line"

The lead music video from Bonnie Raitt's extraordinary new album "Slipstream," shown here in the director & artist's cut.

Steve Lippman (aka FLIP) directed Bonnie Raitt's new video "Right Down the Line" on location at the abandoned New Mission Theater in San Francisco and shot portraits of gay and straight couples in San Francisco's Noe Valley neighborhood for this beautiful track about love, commitment, and equality. It was shot on Super 8mm and 16 mm film.

More:
http://randyreport.blogspot.com/2012/04/bonnie-raitt-right-down-line.html

April 9, 2012

Petition to support virtual LGBT rights

Petition to support virtual LGBT rights
http://www.allout.org/en/actions/theforce



Yesterday I wrote about the campaign against EA Games that is being waged by the dubious institutions the Florida Family Association and the American Decency Association. They do not want their young children, who should not really be playing the 13+ and 15+ video games Star Wars: The Old Republic and Mass Effect 3 video games, to have the option to choose a same-sex romance as part of their virtual experience. This morning I received an email from Andre and Jeremy at AllOut.org about their petition to support EA.

“Video games – like books, magazines, TV and film – are enjoyed by hundreds of millions around the world, and the fictional characters in them often inspire us, and teach us about the world we live in. This is exactly why anti-gay hate groups are targeting them – because they know that the more LGBT people are represented as regular characters, the harder it will be to deny them equality in the real world.

Games from Electronic Arts (EA) reach 100 million players in 75 countres around the world. When a major company like this makes the effort to create gay role models for all players, gay and straight, we need to let them know that we’ve got their back – especially in the face of an organized hate campaign.”

When organisations like the Florida Family Association and the American Decency Association organise campaigns based on myths and outright lies it is critical to demonstrate opposition. It is important to take a stand against the use of prejudice to intimidate. EA may not back off from its plans to implement same-sex romance options into its games, but the fight is on, and an organised LGBT front needs to be presented. So click here to sign the petition and support the ongoing work of AllOut.org in raising awareness.

http://www.allout.org/en/actions/theforce

More:
http://www.polarimagazine.com/bulletin-board/petition-support-virtual-lgbt-rights

April 8, 2012

Idea for new forum or group: Nerd Culture

April 8, 2012

[video] Jonathan Coulton at PAX East 2012

[video] Jonathan Coulton at PAX East 2012

&feature=colike

Above, watch the illustrious JoCo play his best-known song, "Code Monkey". It's an anthem for the nerd proletariats stuck in dead-end IT jobs with managers who lack web savviness. Especially those of us who are too shy to talk to people we have crushes on. Also known as, almost everyone who attends PAX East.

The next video features the song "Mr. Fancy Pants." Like most of Coulton's music, the song blends endearing bizarrity with just a hint of sadness. His use of a Zendrum only adds to the confusion and awesomeness.



If you haven't bought the man's new album, Artificial Heart, there is probably something wrong with you. Something that only an artificial heart can fix. Go get it.

More:
http://blog.thephoenix.com/BLOGS/laserorgy/archive/2012/04/08/video-jonathan-coulton-at-pax-east-2012.aspx?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

April 8, 2012

Pagan roots of Easter

Pagan roots of Easter

<snip>

The March or spring equinox is used as a determinant for what modern Christians celebrate as the holy day of Easter.

The Easter date depends on the ecclesiastical approximation of the March equinox. In 325CE the Council of Nicaea decided that the Easter date would be the first Sunday after the first full moon occurring on or after the March equinox. Easter is therefore delayed one week if the full moon is on Sunday, which lessens the likelihood of it falling on the same day as the Jewish Passover. Eastern Orthodox churches in many countries such as Greece still figure their Easter date based on the Julian calendar.

Though I was sent to church by my mom, and confirmed a Lutheran, my socialist dad and his friends were staunch atheists. My Baptist grandmother had already become a Bahá'í by the time I was born in 1947 and our neighbors in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn were Orthodox Jews, and around springtime they were at seders, which we attended.

Surrounded by multiple faiths, and non-beliefs, and absorbed by an early interest in anthropology and archaeology, my childhood was filled with books like The White Goddess, The Golden Bough, and Bulfinch's Mythology. As a young adult I discovered Joseph Campbell's The Masks of God.

More:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/04/08/1081429/-Pagan-roots-of-Easter?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dailykos%2Findex+%28Daily+Kos%29