• The very best thing to happen recently is Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, overturning prop 8 and granting homosexuals the right to marry in California.  The whole decision can be downloaded here, but there are articles all over the place dissecting the good bits.  The most important part, though, is this:

Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples. Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis, the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.

Thank you, Judge Walker, for doing your job well.  And, as C. E. Petit notes, for being willing to take a correct position that will probably make you permanently unable to ever be confirmed to an appellate court.

• It is not a good thing at all that Christopher Hitchens has esophageal cancer which has metastasized and will likely soon kill him.  But his essay in Vanity Fair on the experience of learning about it and getting treatment is as powerful as anything he’s written.  Speaking simultaneously about the side effects of chemotherapy and the militaristic language which is so frequently used when discussing cancer, he writes, “In the war against Thanatos, if we must term it a war, the immediate loss of Eros is a huge initial sacrifice.”  It’s a piece well worth reading.  “Tropic of Cancer.”

• Charles Stross has been thinking some very clever thoughts about the hard limitations of space colonization.  Most recently he has written an excellent explanation of why the practice is fundamentally incompatible with libertarian ideology.  It’s an important reality check against having read too much Heinlein.  (And yeah, I love me some Heinlein, but that joke is spot-on.)

• RadioLab is one of the best programs on the radio, and lately they are increasingly on the internet as well.  To go with a recent podcast they have released a beautiful video exploring the concept of a moment.  Utterly lovely.

But Tom Barber, who worked as the head of social studies at the three biggest textbook publishers before running his own editorial company, says, “Texas was and still is the most important and most influential state in the country.” And James Kracht, a professor at Texas A&M’s college of education and a longtime player in the state’s textbook process, told me flatly, “Texas governs 46 or 47 states.”

This only a local election with regard to who gets to vote in it.  McLeroy needs to go.  There are 19 days left.  Here’s the opposition movement website again: District 9 Citizens for a Smart State Board of Education.

This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.

This sentence is now a part of the state’s constitution.  So it is to be supposed that, for any existing marriages to be legal under Texas law, one must somehow make the argument that traditional marriage is neither similar nor identical to itself.

How I dearly wish Molly Ivins was around for this one.

EDITED TO ADD: For a sense of who Molly Ivins was, and for how absurd things sometimes get on the floor of the Texas House of Representatives, I recommend this nine minute excerpt from the documentary Dildo Diaries about the bizarre doublethink nonsense that underlies our state’s sex toy laws.  Which actually seem comparatively sane in light of this marriage thing. (Probably NSFW.)