I think it's telling that it's taken four years before Obama has begun doing the things that everyone who elected him expected him to do. I remember thinking when he was elected that, as he promised, Don't Ask Don't Tell didn't have much time left. But then he delayed it, further and further, eventually caving to party demand before urging for its repeal. It seemed then that Obama was, unlike the image he projected during the elections, anti-gay rights.

He may still be. And it may again be party pressure that caused his latest announcement (I'm almost certain it is, what with Biden and his wife coming out in favor of marriage equality before he could do so). But that doesn't matter. What matters is that the right thing was done, and hopefully that will spur the right thing in the US. It's questionable as to whether or not Lincoln actually believed an end to slavery was good for the country or just good for his political career, but the result, regardless of the motives, is that the right thing was done.

The way this country has treated gay rights is disgusting, disturbing, and wrong. We are the best in the world when it comes to so many things, but somehow, we've fallen behind on civil rights.

Our descendents will look back on this era as we look back on slavery. And I fear that America may well end up looking like Britain in the story of Alan Turing.

Alan Turing, one of the many crowned as 'father of modern computing' invented and formulated a lot of concepts, cracked WWII enemy codes, including Enigma, and ultimately contributed enough so that we'd not only have a free world, but one with advanced computing. He contributed an amazing amount to the war effort, he invented the study of algorithms, he formulated computer science concepts that drive all progress today. I could go on and on, and I'd probably never stop. Alan Turing was extraordinarily important. He was the man.

He died at forty-one.

We're approaching his 100th birthday, very soon, and while I doubt he would have lived as long as this, there's no doubt that he should have lived longer. He should have lived to see the era of personal computers. He should have lived to see the beginnings of the internet.

But he was gay. And in the 1950s, being gay was illegal in the UK. Even if you saved that same country by cracking their greatest enemy's secret codes. The punishment was either jail or chemical castration. He chose the latter. And one year later, he killed himself. Put another way, the UK killed him. They killed the greatest computer science mind we have ever seen, all because he was different than the established "norms."

Denying someone rights, happiness, or life because of their sexual preference is just as wrong as doing the same on account of skin color, religious belief, gender. If we could have figured that out sixty years ago, maybe Alan Turing would have survived, and who knows where we'd be technologically today. But he didn't. Let's make sure we don't kill or otherwise destroy the next Turing. Let's start treating people equally so that we don't find ourselves in a similar situation.

It took Obama four years to announce support for marriage equality. Better late than never, but we still have a lot of work to do.

I'm referring, of course, to people who fail to cite their sources. People who quote someone, or who claim some statement or opinion as factual, without saying who that someone is, or where that statement or opinion comes from.

Of course, it's worst when numbers are involved, because numbers are inherently misleading. Without citing whatever source the numbers are from, I have to assume they are made up.

But it's not just people making up things. Sometimes there's a great story and I want to repeat it, but I want more facts. I was reading a blog recently that claimed that a politician once, in response to being called a "stupid c**t," stated that there are plenty of stupid c**ts, and they deserve representation too.

Great story, hilarious, probably didn't happen precisely like that. But because the author of this post failed to cite the name of the politician, I have no idea what was actually said, and therefore can only relate the story as above. It's alleged and supposed, it's not necessarily factual.

Contrary to the story above, however, I actually think that in blogs, this can be acceptable. Generally, sources can be Googled, blogs tend to be mostly opinion and should be taken as such, and very few blogs are of a caliber high enough to be considered a source of their own. But in books or television, this is inexcusable.

Recently, I looked into a book called "Historic Houston Streets" by Marks Hinton that provided insight into a post I did a few months back, on the names of streets in Downtown Houston. As you can see in the comments to that post, I was disappointed in the book. Though it did offer some suggestions to fill in the gaps of my own research, it failed to adequately cite sources of how information was found. It had sources, but generally they provided more information on the subject, not an explanation of the connection between the street and the subject. For instance, the source on Pierce was an encyclopedia entry on President Pierce, not Hinton's understanding of why the street is named after Pierce.

True, I failed to cite sources on that page as well (the source for my connection to Abel Head "Shanghai" Pierce, and not Franklin Pierce is a combination of early Houston Chronicle articles from the '20s and earlier, and the Texas State Historical Society's explanation of the naming of Pierce, TX.) but you get what you pay for here. I'm not selling a book, I'm not even selling ads.

I'm guilty, but perhaps less so. And now that I've written this diatribe, there will unquestionably be an increase in citations herein.

In-line though, because seriously, endnotes? Come on, MLA. Gimme a break. (Note: I'm aware the MLA actually advises against minimal notations, but I felt like picking on them anyway. Source: Mla Handbook for Writers of Research Papers.)

Not too long ago, there were two players in the drugstore industry as far as I knew: Walgreens & Eckerd. Then suddenly, as if overnight, Eckerd disappeared, leaving Walgreens, and soon, CVS, as it joined the scene.

Of course, in other parts of the country, a different story was told. When I lived in New York, there was RiteAid and Duane Reade, and Walgreens had a minor presence. But at one time, Eckerd was there as well. Yet today, no Eckerd.

And when I recall Eckerd, people say "oh yeah," because in their minds Eckerd has vanished as well. This isn't Montgomery Ward, a company that was once large, and eventually fell due to their inability to adapt, but still has a presence in business textbooks, and in the minds of those who once shopped there. This is no Washington Mutual, a victim of the financial crisis, whose former customers still remember it fondly. Eckerd? It seems like people have almost completely forgotten the brand, not saddened enough by the loss to bother remembering it unprompted.

And I suspect that's what happened to Eckerd. I suspect Eckerd was the AstroWorld of the drugstore world. Everyone was surprised when they closed, but who went there?

But it hasn't been long enough to justify a collective removal of Eckerd from our public conscious! The company was first split up in 2004, with many stores acquired by CVS, and their mail-order business becoming CVS Caremark. But at this point, Eckerd still existed. It wasn't until 2007 that the remaining thousands of stores were acquired by RiteAid.

2007! A company that was 109 years old disappeared only five years ago, and for most people, it's like they never existed! This is crazy, and yet as above, it makes sense. There was no great vacuum, no overwhelming void when Eckerd disappeared because who cared? It's self-fulfilling: Eckerd isn't important enough to hold a place in our minds, so when it disappears, we don't even notice it's gone.

Today, drugstores of all kinds fill the streets of America, but one fewer than there once was. Though Eckerd is gone, its name will not live in our hearts, its legacy will not hold a place in our memories. It is dead. And its eulogy, housed on the RiteAid website, is fitting for a company so unloved and so easily forgotten:

I did. And it was amazing.

Thanks to two different wedding gifts (a Kitchenaid mixer and a meat-grinder attachment) and my ability to use the internet, I recently ground six and a half pounds of beef. Most of it is now in the freezer, some of it went to my mom, and five patties worth have been used to make burgers. Some of the best burgers I've ever had.

These burgers are juicy, they are flavorful, they are better than most of the burgers I've had at restaurants. And most recently, we used fresh-baked rolls as buns, with Munster cheese and Rebecca-made chipotle-mayo, and they ended up better than most of the burgers I've reviewed in this blog.

It's easy to dream of these burgers. They are meaty, oozy, and all that flavor and amazingness comes from the meat – we did not season it but for a little salt and pepper on both sides of the patty. And it was cheaper than store-bought ground beef.

The recipe I used was half beef short rib, one quarter sirloin, slightly less than one quarter brisket, and a couple Italian sausages removed from their casings. Since we got the meat on sale and in bulk, we ended up paying less than we would have paid for the flavorless, of-unknown-origin, boring ground chuck that you've been foolish enough to buy all this time.

I cannot over-emphasize how worth it it is to grind your own meat. Now that I've done it, I'll never go back. Amazing.

At this point, I've done so many tours of breweries that I can recite every joke (they almost all say the same ones) before the tour guide, and for me the excitement is trying new brews. So I cannot honestly tell you if Independence offers a full tour of their facilities, because my "tour" did not include finding out that information.

I did, however, get to try three different beers, all of which were impressive. My tasting notes are below. The tasting was held outdoors, and it was very hot. Luckily, we joined some friendly people who brought a pop-up canopy. We actually didn't realize they had brought it and thought it belonged to the brewery, until they were ready to leave. We sheepishly thanked them and left soon after. Slightly embarrassing, but a lot better than sitting under the hot sun for too long.

Brouwer's Dubbel – Of the three I tasted, this was by far my favorite. It was beautiful in color (always a good sign) and even more pleasing to the taste buds, as its malty body contrasted and complemented its fruity scents. It tasted as a dubbel should taste, and it was as strong as a dubbel should be as well.

Easy Rider Stout – I've also tried their Convict Hill Oatmeal Stout before, but since I'm not a huge stout guy, my opinion that this one is better might not be that valuable. Nonetheless, I did find this to be creamy, flavorful, and as the name suggests, easier than many other stouts.

Pale Ale – Yeah, it's a pale ale. Hoppy, but not overly so. Good, but not amazing. I would put this in the same category as most other pale ales: if I'm at a bar that has this and not much else, I'd still walk away happy. But if the dubbel above was also available? I'd walk away much happier.

Obviously this is an important thing to be able to do. So I won't go any further in this direction. Instead, I'd like to focus on the words that have become most famous from this song, namely the delicious red berry (yes, tomatoes are berries), and the rhyming tuber discussed.

It's like this: who says tomahto or potahto? I'm not calling the Gershwins liars. I believe that in 1937, these were valid verses. Tomato-tomahto has survived in our language as common phrase, and this could not have been the case if people at some point didn't say tomahto with greater frequency than today.

When discussing this previously, my mother pointed out that Humphrey Bogart says "tomahto" in Sabrina, and that she could recall having heard the same in other old movies as well. At some point, this was a word people actually said.

It seems strange to me that a pronunciation of a word would disappear in so little time, especially after the invention of film. I would suspect the opposite to be true: film archives word pronunciations, so that they would not die out, and at the same time, as America becomes more diverse, an increase in acceptance of varying pronunciations would become acceptable. Sure, globalization leads to more standardization, but it also leads to the spread of minority opinions and customs.

In essence, unless a specific pronunciation of a word had an unreasonably small following, it should not die out so quickly without outside influences acting on it. And I think that in this case, the 'outside influence' was this song. The phrase "tomato-tomahto" became more famous than the song, and I believe that this served to standardize the pronunciation.

Though the phrase has come to mean "both of these are right," the song doesn't really express this idea. It actually gets across a different message: "One of these is right, and one is wrong, but I still love you even though you say it wrong." I believe that tomahto was probably used by a large enough group that was rarely challenged in their pronunciation until the Gershwins did exactly that. Suddenly, 'tomahto' went hand in hand with 'tomato' and everyone could judge just how right or wrong each pronunciation was.

And with tomahto went potahto. And today, both pronunciations are dead.

But there are other verses in the song! They focus on things that are much more prevalent, such as eether vs iither or pajamas vs pajahmas, and things that are less prevalent, such as after vs ahfter and vanilla vs vanella. The first, seemingly, could be explained away as a Britishism, but seriously who says vanella? Maybe it went the same way as tomahto. Maybe the Gershwins desparately needed another verse. I'm guessing the latter because it helps to also explain oysters vs ersters and also the fact that they have no rhyme for either. (So if you go for oi-sters and I go fer er-sters/I'll order oi-sters and cancel my er-sters.)

Why didn't eether or iither die out? Maybe one will at some point. However, I'm not convinced. I think when tomato and tomahto faced each other in a pronunciation battle royale, there was a clear winner, a clear right vs wrong. But when eether and iither face each other in the court of public opinion, the result is a hung jury. Both will survive because neither is inherently wrong. They are both right, and as a result, "eether iither" is a much better expression of "agree to disagree" than "tomato tomahto."

It's been a while since I've reviewed any Spiel des Jahres games, but this is the ninth in the series.

Ticket to Ride (by Alan R. Moon) was a wedding gift (we registered for it) but it took until this weekend before we finally played it for the first time. I had seen people play it in the past, and in every case, it looked awesome. So when we played it, I was happy that this was in fact the case. Some highlights:

Learning Curve – this game is really quick and easy to pick up. Unlike some Spiel des Jahres games, the rule book is two pages and it takes only minutes to set up and learn the game. The rules are simple and not convoluted, yet the game is still complex enough to be interesting.

Replayability - because the goals are randomly distributed, this game seems to have almost infinite replayability. We only played once, but I can't see a way in which we would be easily bored; the game changes based on goals, and also based on the cards you draw during the game.

Healthy randomness – generally I'm anti-luck in board games, but in this case the only randomness is what cards are drawn. However, this is mitigated by a face-up area of train cards (decreasing the randomness, though not eliminating it), by a lot of ways to get around needing very specific cards, and by the ability to discard strategy cards whenever they are chosen.

Narrative/game play – the story that accompanies the game is fun, but the game play is the real strength. It moves fast, and though not everyone is involved at every turn, turns are short enough that you are not bored waiting for others. And because turns are short, no one can run away with a victory early on, giving the illusion, if not necessarily the fact, that everyone is in the game at all times.

I was very impressed with Ticket to Ride, and I look forward to playing it again soon. It is clearly a well-developed game and I can see why it won the Spiel des Jahres. I highly recommend it.

Back and better than ever with volume four of Science. If this doesn't make you optimistic for the future, you're not paying attention. Science!

April was another good month for science. There were so many breakthroughs, I've had to lump some together below. Everyone saw Google Glass, which looks cool even if only as a concept, but here's some concepts and discoveries you may have missed this month:

Lots of Quantum Computing Stuff – Quantum computing is strange stuff. Since it's such an infant science, it's got a lot of breakthroughs. How many diamond qubits or 300-atom computers that take a room's infrastructure are we going to see when the dust settles? Who knows. But one thing is certain: quantum computers will have to talk to each other, and until this month, that problem remained unsolved. Using "optical cavities" to channel photons between atoms twenty-one meters away, scientists in Germany created a rudimentary 'network' of quantum computers. There's a lot of work yet to be done, but it's an important start.

Medicine & DNA – April 1953 was when Watson & Crick's DNA discovery was first announced to the world, and 59 years later, it's still perhaps the most important medical discovery ever. This month a new breast cancer gene was discovered by Melbourne scientists, opening the way to more research into prevention. There's still a whole lot more work to be done, and this does not represent the only indicator of breast cancer risk, but it's a good step. An even cooler step could come from a team of researchers in the UK and Arizona that have created synthetic DNA. The new XNA evolves, shows heredity, and could one day teach us a whole lot more about biology.

One step closer to moon oil – Thanks to the insanity and large sums of money possessed by Google execs and James Cameron, a plan has begun to mine asteroids of their minerals. This is only a step in the direction of having serious facilities outside of Earth, from observation areas to space depots, to more mineral mining operations. Of course, anyone who knows me knows that I think this is just one step closer to a pipeline between here and the moon.

I like to keep these posts to three items each, and even with that restraint I still managed to actually get six items in there. And yet April was so important for science those six items didn't include the print-your-own-robots-in-the-future story, or the story on a UCLA breakthrough where stem cells seek out and kill HIV as though they are Liam Neeson in Taken. So there. Eight for the price of three. Can't do better than that. Thank science!

The result? I'm removing some playlists (not as many as I'd have thought) and not really removing any music. But it is a good chance to reflect on how fickle musical tastes can be. In my case, the 'phases' I've gone through in terms of music have been varied and intense. Here's a timeline, if my memory serves me well, which it probably doesn't.

The Beatles

The first album I ever bought was Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. I still consider this album to be perfect, and there are very few other albums I would label with the same adjective. Today, I own nearly every Beatles album, and I still listen to them, though not nearly as frequently as I used to.

There was a day where Beatles music was my only jam. I recall a "party" in elementary school at my house where I put a few Beatles CDs into the CD changer and that was the soundtrack for the party. Today, the Beatles mostly flow through my speakers only when I'm going to sleep.

Classic Rock to Alternative Rock

Of course, the Beatles led to classic rock, and I spent most of my early youth listening to 94.5 KLDE, the Oldies station. The late '50s, '60s and early '70s were for me.

But about the time that KLDE switched dial positions with 107.5 The Buzz, my own switch was beginning to occur, and I'd find myself soon turned back to 94.5 in the new alternative format. I believe it started with the fact that my mom often played "Jagged Little Pill," or at least, that's the furthest back "alternative" album I recall hearing.

Middle school was all about alternative rock. A bootleg copy of "Hybrid Theory" by Hybrid Theory (now Linkin Park) was passed around the classroom. My copy came from a friend named Oliver. My ears were filled with music that was certainly more angsty, angry even, and my summers were filled listening to a tiny boombox-shaped radio that ate up AAs at an unreasonable pace.

Indie Rock & Ska

Alternative rock in middle school became indie rock and ska, around the time that I went to my first concert, Reel Big Fish headlined by Allister and Homegrown. I would see Reel Big Fish maybe three more times, Allister at least seven more. Drive-Thru records became my label of choice as I entered high school.

My iPod (third generation in 2003 – the one with the buttons in a row above the wheel) began filling up with artists such as the Arcade Fire (my super-hipster moment: I got Funeral when it came out in 2004. I had already stopped listening to AF when they won the Grammy seven years later and started the "who is Arcade Fire" panic), The Mad Caddies, The Flaming Lips, The New Pornographers, Stereophonics, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, and smaller bands that I barely remember, like Go Jimmy Go.

The '80s

Somewhere in there, during high school, I found myself listening all the time to '80s music. At least for a few months, my favorite radio station was 106.9 The Point ("Best of the '80s and more!") which of course no longer exists (it would eventually merge into the station that replaced 107.5 KLDE).

'80s music served as a digression, and at the same time I was still listening to indie rock and soon, hip hop. If anything, '80s music was not a primary genre, it was a guilty pleasure that would pave the way to some of the garbage I listen to today.

Hip Hop/Rap, part I

I was introduced to the Unicorns, also definitely in the indie genre, by Simon, who also taught me of Blackalicious and J-Live, two rap acts that produced extremely intelligent music. J-Live's "All in Together Now" and "One for the Griot" were lyrically complex and impressive feats that played with language in a way unlike any music I'd ever heard before. And Blackalicious' "Chemical Calisthenics" was fast, unreasonably fast, but yet all about Chemistry. Soon Quannum Records was my favorite label, and I listened to everything produced by every artist thereon. And my iPod filled up with Lateef, Lyrics Born, and the Lifesavas.

Much earlier, still in middle school, a similar, but unknown force pushed me to the Beastie Boys, which oddly enough pushed me to Ludacris and Tupac. But this had always been a subliminal preference, always below the indie rock. With Blackalicious and J-Live, hip hop was pushed up to the top of my musical tastes.

Anti-Folk

But somehow, around the time I graduated high school, hip hop seemed to fade away. Suddenly I found myself listening to much, much calmer music. Some of the indie rock flared back up, and during my year in Israel, and the summer after, I found myself listening to the Moldy Peaches, Regina Spektor, Joanna Newsom, and finally Ani DiFranco before this phase would die out. Today these songs, like the Beatles, find themselves playing mainly when I'm going to sleep.

Hip Hop/Rap, part II

Somehow, Kanye West ignited the second phase of my hip hop love. Like before, I had not stopped listening to hip hop, but it had definitely taken a back seat. But Kanye kept it relevant, and eventually he would be joined by more mainstream hip hop. Lil Wayne and Jay-Z especially. Much later, this would become Eminem, Snoop Dogg, and Rick Ross.

And at the same time, a love of my city reinvigorated some of the music I hadn't heard in years, like Devin the Dude, Bun B, and Scarface. The south was represented by TI, and 8Ball & MJG, for example.

And just like before, the more lyrically complex and intelligent stuff shone through. Talib Kweli, for instance, maintained a permanent home in my iTunes (by this time, the iPod was basically useless, and anyway music was the permanent state of my dorm room.)

Today

Somehow between there and here, I got into the Grateful Dead and Phish, and bluegrass like Railroad Earth. I kept the rap taste, and my preferred station, when I have to listen to the radio, is 97.9 The Box. I've certainly moved far from the angsty days of indie rock, but I hate to say I've also moved away from the more intelligent music. While the hip hop I prefer is lyrically complex, clever ("real Gs move in silence like lasagna"), and impressive, I would be lying if I said I didn't also have a taste for some music that can only be called garbage.

Mash-ups also became my main fare, especially at the end of college. Girl Talk led to the White Panda, Torpeedoh, and the Super Mash Bros. Because these artists combine all the tastes in my music history, the music thrills me. It excites me, it overwhelms me, and every time one of these or other mash-up artists comes out with a new mix, I listen to it too many times, until it becomes sickening.

Kind of like I did with Bambooyah, the latest White Panda album, and the album that pushed me to write this post in the first place.

Sorry, I mean sometimes it can be eosinophilia. Ugh. Let me try again. Sometimes, the words it suggests instead of the word I want to type are dipsticks.

And since I so frequently use this word ('ridiculous'), it shocks me that Swype so often thinks I'm typing something else, such as words that I've never heard of (tussocks, fasciculus, dioecious, epididymis) or words that I would be very unlikely to use (windsocks, tonsils, foxhounds, woodwinds).

Though windsocks are awesome, and I remember loving them as a child, I much more frequently find myself trying to type 'ridiculous' than express my childhood fondness of windsocks.

The weirdest part is that usually, when Swype displays the wrong word, among the suggestions I can usually find the word I wanted. Yet, when I'm typing 'ridiculous,' it seems that the suggestions are often weirder than the displayed word. They have never contained 'ridiculous' as a suggested alternative.

Swype has learned my preferences in other areas: it knows my name, it knows names of people I follow on Twitter, it knows when I want to capitalize some things and not capitalize others. But it has yet to learn my desire to use the word 'ridiculous,' frequently and in many situations. Not a single time have I opted for stopcocks or fossils, yet Swype continues to suggest those words. I would say that it's ridiculous, but perhaps 'drosophila' is a better word for it. Completely drosophila.