Links of the Day – 2008.03.18

• A book excerpt about VNRs – video news releases. Learning about VNRs in MCO 110 (Fall 1999, 8:40-9:30, J. Russomanno) pretty much killed TV news for me. Of course back then VNRs were distributed in physical format. It’s only gotten easier to regurgitate crap. [Machinist/Salon]
• The Staffer has a meeting with his Senator, his LA, and Ben Bernanke. That’s not a link, it’s just cool.
• If you haven’t heard of the intersex fish in the Potomac, well, there are intersex fish in the Potomac. I’ve seen snide insinuations that it’s the fault of us wimminfolk with our new-fangled birth-control, peeing estrogen into the water and feminizing the fish. (I can’t cite that, but I’ve seen it. K?) Well, this just in: the top suspects are actually components of pesticides, insecticides, soaps, and fragrances. So I’m going to keep taking my Sprintec, guilt-free. [WaPo via DCist]
• Greta Christina has an interesting post on coming out as gay and as an atheist. In fact, I’m going to quote it a little because I don’t trust you to actually follow the link:
  

  When I was coming out as queer in the 80’s, coming out was still a hard thing to do. And you had to be a special person to do it… You had to have a strong personality, an independent spirit, a huge amount of self-confidence, a passion for social change… So it was easy to be deceived into thinking that there was something inherently special about being queer… It was easy to forget that the difficulty of coming out was a powerful self-selecting filter for amazingness… But as the movement progressed, and coming out became easier and safer, the amazing specialness of the queer community became… well, less and less special and amazing. Which is exactly as it should be…

  [R]ight now, the atheist community is largely made up of people with a very mature, well-thought-out sense of morality and ethics. We’ve had to be. The assumption that morality comes from religion is very deeply ingrained in our culture, and those of us who’ve rejected religion have had to think long and hard and carefully about what our morality is and why… As we succeed in making the world an easier place to be an atheist, we’re going to see more and more atheists who haven’t agonized over their atheism to the same degree that most of us have… We’re going to see more and more atheists who are pretty much regular folks who just want to get on with their lives…

  Just… go read it! [Greta Christina’s Blog]