Marriage Equality in Indiana

As expected, the new state legislature has already taken up proposals to deny the possibility of marriage equality. The bills in question are HJR 0006 and SJR 0013. Since SJR 0013 was filed first, let's take a look at it.

SJR 0013 provides "that only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Indiana. Provides that a legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be valid or recognized." Of course, Indiana Code 31-11-1 states "(a) Only a female may marry a male. Only a male may marry a female. (b) A marriage between persons of the same gender is void in Indiana even if the marriage is lawful in the place where it is solemnized." So why are they bringing it up again? Quite simply, this is an attempt to place a marriage equality ban in the state constitution. The state Republican party has been trying to get this amendment on the ballot for years, but have been prevented from doing so in the past because the Democratic party controlled the Senate. After the 2010 elections, that's no longer the case. So where does SJR 0013 stand now? It was introduced on 6 January 2011 by Senators Jim Tomes (R, District 49), Dennis Kruse (R, District 14) and Travis Holdman (R, District 19). That same day it passed its first reading and was referred to the Senate Committee on Judiciary. On 13 January, Senators Jim Smith (R, District 45), Johnny Nugent (R, District 43), Jim Banks (R, District 17) and Brent Waltz (R, District 36) were added as coauthors. At this point, it's still in committee. I'm pretty sure it will be reported out with a recommendation to pass, which will be done quickly. That brings us to...

HJR 0006, which is worded the same as SJR 0013. It was introduced on 20 January by Representative P. Eric Turner (R, District 32), with Representative Dave Cheatham (D, District 69) as coauthor. It passed its first reading and was referred to the House Committee on Judiciary. It's still there, but I suspect will soon be reported out. Chances of stopping the bill in the House are better than in the Senate, but still not good. The House is split 60-40 R-D. If you are an Indiana resident, please contact your legislators and let them know this bill is unnecessary and a distraction from the work on jobs and the state economy they were elected to do. If you don't know who your legislators are, you can find out here.

Fortunately, Indiana has one of the most difficult state constitutions to amend. A proposed amendment must pass two consecutive General Assemblies, and then be placed on a subsequent general election ballot where it must be approved by a simple majority of those voting. Of course, as we saw in the last election, if the electorate is ill-informed or particularly interested in an amendment, this procedure can be met. The earliest we could expect a general vote on this question would be 2013, although I suspect 2014 would be more likely. However, the time to organize against it is now.

Messed Up My Netbook

I've had Ubuntu installed on my netbook for some time now. Recently, I've been getting error messages saying the system is very low on disk space (not surprising, since it's only 4GB on the drive). So after thinking about it for a while, I decided to remove Ubuntu and install one of the lighter versions of Linux. I did some research, and decided the best options would be either Puppeee or SliTaz Linux. I've tried them both now, and they both run very well in RAM. My netbook is faster than ever. Both of them will install to the internal drive. But neither of them will boot from the internal drive. Grub errors. I suspect what's going on is that the mount point of the internal drive changes when the external drive is no longer attached, and the Grub can't find the operating system.  I don't have any more time to work on it today, but I'm going to do some more research and see if I can find a solution.

If anyone has suggestions, I'd be glad to hear them. Thanks.

International Languages

I enjoy languages. You'll probably see posts here in other languages from time to time. That's just the way it is. Recently, I've been looking at some international auxiliary languages (IAL), seeing which one I like best. Here's my thoughts so far.

Esperanto - Probably the most popular and widely used IAL today. I've tried to learn it before, but I just can't seem to do it. It uses some odd diacritics which make it more difficult to use in the electronic age (I still don't know how to get them on my BlackBerry). The vocabulary is an odd mix. Some of it's familiar and some isn't. As far as grammar is concerned, it's needlessly complicated. Case in point: pick up any Esperanto grammar and find the "Table of Correlatives." I'm sorry, but that's just a mess! I'm going to give up on Esperanto for a while.

Interlingua - A very attractive language, in both written and spoken form. My guess is it's probably the second most widely used IAL. If you know any of the Romance languages (Italian, French, Spanish or Portuguese) the vocabulary will be pretty familiar. The pronunciation occasionally seems to be a little vague, though. The grammar is pretty simple. I think it's still a little more than necessary. I mean, who really needs an accusative case? Still, I like it a lot, and can generally sight read texts.

toki pona - A fascinating concept, and I like the way it looks and sounds. Both the vocabulary and the grammar are extremely simplified. The entire vocabulary is 118 words. Or maybe as many as 125 (some words might not be official yet). Of the four languages, toki pona is probably my favorite. It may be too simple, though. I have real trouble trying to communicate anything beyond simple sentences in it. As for understanding it, I need a lot more study time yet.

Lingua Franca Nova - Another Romance-based language. Pronunciation is simple, phonetic and well designed. The vocabulary seems more familiar to me than Interlingua's. I think it came more from the Spanish side of the family. The grammar is simpler than Interlingua's, which is something I like. To be honest, it's even easier than English grammar. I believe this is going to be the language I focus on learning.

If you've looked at any of the IAL's, I'd be interested in hearing your views. Especially if it's a language I've overlooked.

Playing Catch Up

After being sick with flu all last week, I'm trying hard to get caught up on things. I'm behind at work. I'm behind in my classes. I'm behind on housecleaning. There's just not enough hours in the day to do everything. Maybe if I do a little extra every day, I'll be back where I should be in a few weeks.

So. What is Idea Smörgåsbord?

That's an easy question. It's this site!

More seriously, it's a space for me to write about whatever attracts my attention. It could be something about computers, or design, a book I've read, or just something bizarre that happened during the day. You can pick and choose what you want to read, comment on what you like (or don't), and ignore what doesn't interest you. I'm not sure myself how it will work, but it'll be interesting to see what happens.