This shouldn’t come as any big surprise, but the world’s largest anthropological society says (original) that civilization does not in fact depend on limiting marriage to one man and one woman. The results of more than a century of anthropological research on households, kinship relationships, and families, across cultures and through time, provide no support whatsoever for the view that either civilization or viable social orders depend upon marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution. Rather, anthropological research supports the conclusion that a vast array of family types, including families built upon same-sex partnerships, can contribute to stable and humane societies. ...

I registered for BloggerCon II (original) this morning. The list of registrations is pretty cool; there are a number of people there who I look forward to meeting. David Pinto is conspiring to baseball blog, which sounds fun to me. Wouldn’t mind shaking hands with Oliver Willis at all. And the eponymous TPB, Esq. will be there — one of two people on my blogroll who I’d read for the quality of their prose alone. I’m starting to look forward to this.

Since I’m hopelessly behind, I’m going to combine WISH 86 (original): What can the GM or other players do to help “midwife” the character creation process? And WISH 85 (original): What inspires you to create characters? Do you have partially-developed characters in mind for use when you get into a new campaign? Do you shop characters around, or do you come up with new characters when you get into a campaign? Why? If you GM, are you bothered by receiving a solicitation for a “generic” character, or does it enthuse you to get a solid proposal even if it’s not closely tailored to your game? ...

Since Godzilla (Quicktime trailer) is being re-released in the United States in the original version, I figure it’s a good time to mashup that very movie. The scoop on all things Godzilla (original) is long and intricate; feel free to draw from any element of the mythos.

I caught Miracle this afternoon, and it wasn’t a bad way to spend a couple of hours. The acting was great, and the semi-final game against the Russians is enough to support the fairly bland script. If you don’t like sports, there’s nothing there for you, but if you do like sports it’s one of the great stories. The hockey is really well filmed. Couple of bonus points for the reaction shots of the Russians after the game. They look human and their pain at losing is clear. Beat the hell out of Rocky IV.

How to build an invisible firewall. Noted for later use.

The mayor of New Paltz, New York is about to start performing gay marriages. The story highlights an important aspect of this issue: namely, that the New York state constitution does not specify marriage as being between a man and a woman. Nor does the Massachusetts state constitution. The Massachusetts SJC, like the mayor of New Paltz, are in fact taking strict constructionist (original) approaches to interpreting the law. Does the state constitution say that marriage is restricted to one man and one woman? If not, by strict constructionist doctrine, it is not.

Last night was an important turning point for the Celtics; they started Brandon Hunter, the second round draft pick, and he responded very well. (6-12 from the floor, 9 rebounds). Up until last night, John Connor had been giving people more or less the same minutes as O’Brien. It looks like that’ll change now. However, he did have 15+ games with the team before then, which means we can compare apples and apples as far as his coaching and O’Brien’s. And boy, the result is illuminating. ...

Moriarty reviewed The Passion over on AICN; unlike most of the Passion reviews on AICN, his was fairly negative. I note his review not because of that directly, but because of some of the replies to the review: “Most movies that are made in Hollywood are anti-white? Hollywood is controlled by jews. Most Hollywood movies have British and German villains. Blacks are overrepresented on TV. They’re either seen as the “victim” or superior to Whites. Blacks are NEVER portrayed negatviely, whereas whites are always the villains. Clearly this is anti-white racism at the hands of Hollywood jews.” ...

Aw yeah. You know what’s good? Nocturnals is good. You know what’s really cool? The Nocturnals RPG supplement preview (PDF).