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May 25, 2007

Star Wars: 30 Years

This is a message sent to us by Danacasso 

Well, I'm sure that you must know that today is the 30th anniversary of the release of Star Wars, now called Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. It didn't have that longer title until after 1980, but then you knew that.

On May 25, 1977, I was twelve years old and living in King Salmon, Alaska and although the local Air Force station did have a theater, I never saw Star Wars there. Instead, I saw The Great Waldo Pepper and Airport 77, both aviation movies.

However, I did know about Star Wars after a fashion as one of my dad's magazines had an ad for the famous poster by the brothers Hildebrandt; I just didn't know it was for a movie.

Then, in August of 1977, my brother and I travelled back to our home state of Oregon to live with our mom. Right after we got there, the big news was not a movie but the death of Elvis. Then, one day in a store, we saw a magazine about the movie, and it was then that I realized what it was. Then my cousin mentioned it and how good it was.

Finally, my dad came down to visit us and he took my brother and me to see Star Wars. This was at one of the last old single-screen theaters in town.

It's been a long road, and a difficult one, since then, but I still haven't forgotten that August evening in 1977 when I got my twelve-year old mind blown away. Thanks, George, you changed my world.

Danacasso

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Transgendered Children

Riley Grant, 10-year-old trangender girlAccording to the mother of the 10-year-old girl Riley, she has a birth defect--a penis.  The preteen transgender girl, who is biologically a boy, finds self-identity as the opposite sex.  Even as a toddler, Riley wanted "girl" toys and clothes.

On the flip side, 14-year-old girl Rebecca wrote Mom a letter saying "she" wanted to be a "he."  Rebecca, now known as Jeremy, was "a boy in a girl's body."

Most modern societies, and most historical ones, force people to be identified as either "male" or "female."  This dictates what clothes, activities, professions and people they can marry.  But this division into two boxes reflects neither psychological nor biological reality.  People range from a wide spectrum of "feminine" to "masculine" thoughts, feelings and behaviors that doesn't always fit biological gender.  And genetics don't produce only the "female" XX and the male "XY," but also XXY, XXX, X, XXXY, XYY and other combinations.

Read about Riley at http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=3072518&page=1

And learn about Jeremy at http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=3077906&page=1

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May 17, 2007

Sex and Google

Do search engines such as Google violate copyright laws?  Is the display of a low-pixel image in a search engine illegal?  The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco just said no.

It's fascinating how technology changes law and our very concepts of our world.  Before printing became commonplace, and even for quite a while after, there was no such thing as "copyright," nor even a clear concept of how a piece of work could belong to its creator.

Now we're questioning whether a computer-interpreted phone line or satellite link that displays a lower pixel version of an electronic image that's computer code interpreted by a personal computer and electronically put together on a visual monitor is a copyright offense.  Weird.

 Read about the decision at http://blogs.abcnews.com/scienceandsociety/2007/05/sex_and_google.html#comment-69784414

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