Here’s an interesting tidbit in Slate that discusses a viewpoint of the current state of Creationism that I hadn’t thought of before.

I was just saying Saturday night at a holiday party, after jumping off from the base topic of Brokeback Mountain, that the backlash against gays and same-sex marriage we’re seeing is the final push of a conquered bigotry. We will get the right to marry. It will happen. As any shift toward a more accepting society has taken place, be it anti-slavery, voting rights for women, desegregation, or any other of a truckload of issues, the final push of the close-minded is inevitable, rearing up as a more vocal, more angry, more serious threat than it really is in the end. Bigotry won’t be erased, but it will be less powerful in the end.

I hadn’t thought about that in the case of the whole Intelligent Design thing. Read the article and see what I mean…

It just gets sillier and sillier. Now the music companies (not the record companies, though often they are all the same conglomerate anyway) are trying to get rid of song lyrics sites. Yes, you read that correctly. Can you believe this? Now that the iPod and iTunes can store lyrics for songs, seems another cranky baby in the big cradle of music is throwing a tantrum over nothing. How embarrassing for human kind that such people exist.

Read the article at BBC News and commentary at Ars Technica. UPDATE: Here’s another article, from Macworld, with a smidgen of new info.

The articles note that PearLyrics, a little app that searches the Web and pulls song lyrics to use in iTunes, has been forced to be pulled from distribution thanks to the particularly whiny baby Warner/Chappell. I use this software and have found it very helpful. I’m slowly attaching lyrics to all my iTunes music. It’s not perfect software, but it saves lots of time. If anyone wants to try it out, I’d be happy to send it to them. Really. this sort of thing gets me so mad, I can’t stand it, so I don’t mind getting PearLyrics out to anyone else who might find it handy.

Grrrrrr!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Instead of wasting another post, I’ll include this relevant musing from Engadget here. What a mess it all is…

WICKED NEW UPDATE: The PearLyrics link above takes you to an updated page wherein the guy who made PearLyrics discusses getting a call from Warner/Chappell. Click the link again and read what has happened. I am surprised that the music industry semi-apologized, but not surprised PearLyrics is not back up for download. This small turn does not make the music industry unevil, just a teensy weensy tiny winy bit less evil. Just a bit. Just a tiny teensy bit. A negligible amount, really.