Not the news I want to read

Publishing houses slashing themselves.

"Black Wednesday" or "Overly-emo-slash-'I need attention' Wednesday"?

My first novel is two-thirds done. I'd actually welcome news that would encourage me to finish faster, not slower.

revelation

Sheldon Rampton discusses the LDS and homophobia, with context:

As a high school student in 1974, I felt privately uncomfortable with the "Negro doctrine," but like many members of the church, I didn't think about it very much. It didn't become a personal thing for me until one day in gym class, when a black kid came up to me and angrily said he had heard that Mormons didn't think blacks like him should go to heaven. What did I think of that? He wanted to know.

Technically, he was wrong about the theological details. Mormons actually believed that blacks could go to heaven. They just couldn't have the priesthood. I tried to make that distinction the basis for a joke to defuse the situation. "No, we think you can go to heaven," I replied. "We just think you don't deserve to." The black kid glared at me for a minute, and that was the end of the conversation. Today, more than 30 years later, I don't remember his name, but I remember the moment very clearly. I imagine he walked away thinking he had wasted his breath by even talking to me. He certainly didn't get a satisfactory reply. But the conversation had an effect on me. It left me feeling profoundly shaken and uncomfortable about a church practice that until then had seemed like a theoretical abstraction of no particular relevance to my own life. Over time, that discomfort helped inform my thinking and changed my attitudes.

Self-knowledge

The Middleman, pilot episode:

WENDY: Is it true what you said? That if there’s one thing you hate more than scientists trying to take over the world, it’s scientists who twist innocent primates with computer enhanced mind control to live out their sick and perverted fantasies of criminal power?

THE MIDDLEMAN: Why would I lie about that?

WENDY: It’s a very specific thing to hate.

THE MIDDLEMAN: Self-knowledge is the gateway to freedom.