Lazy linking

I'm still busy with work things these days, so I neither blog much nor read much of other blogs at the moment. However, I have come across a few things that I thought I'd share with my readers.

Via Ed, I read Todd A. Heywood's piece about stepping out of the HIV closet. I think this is an important piece, that everyone should read.

There has been a dust-up in the feminist blogsphere, which I largely missed, but which I've caught up on now. I am not going to link to any of the posts related to that, except to a very moving post by Jill about blogging from a position of privilege.
I am currently thinking about the issue, and will post something on it as well - living in a homogeneous and rich country like I do, poses some really hard challenges when it comes to facing your own privileges and assumptions.

Cleaning out some old bookmarks, I came across a link I saved back in 2004, but which I though I should share.
The Unfeeling President by E.L. Doctorow

I fault this president for not knowing what death is. He does not suffer the death of our 21-year-olds who wanted to be what they could be. On the eve of D-Day in 1944 General Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He knew what death was. Even in a justifiable war, a war not of choice but of necessity, a war of survival, the cost was almost more than Eisenhower could bear.

But this president does not know what death is. He hasn't the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the weapons of mass destruction he can't seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man.

I still think that it describes President George W. Bush rather well.

Another item from the old links - a science fiction short story by Marta Randall: The View from Endless Scarp

I forget where I came across this link, but I found this Slate article quite good.
The Paranoid Style in American Science by Daniel Engber.

RealClimate has a good obit of Ed Lorenz. If you don't know who he is, and why he is important, then go to that obit.

Update – Neurodiversity Subpoena Quashed! at Skeptico