equality!

the california supreme court just held that the state must permit same-sex couples to marry. they said that domestic partnership, which currently gives same-sex couples all the same rights as marriage under state law, except under a different name, is not good enough. having a separate system makes same-sex couples second-class citizens, which our constitution doesn't permit.

check out the opinion here. (it's long!) (for you legal nerds, note that the court also held that sexual orientation is a suspect class, and therefore distinctions based on sexual orientation are subject to strict scrutiny. that's pretty bold and exciting, too.)

this is so freaking awesome i can't even believe it. i love california!

test/update

trying to make some changes to the sidebar, and having problems getting them to appear. just ignore this!

update: oh good, it finally worked. it just took a thousand years and as many attempts. don't know if the problem was my browser, or my internet connection, or blogger.

but now, as you can see, the sidebar features the most recent lovely picture i sent from my iphone to mobog, followed by the three latest witty and perceptive messages i sent to twitter, for your up-to-the-minute viewing and reading pleasure.

oyez

interesting etymological discovery from my spanish studies: i'm learning about the imperative tense right now (i.e., commands), and i today i saw that the second-person informal singular imperative form of the verb oir ("to hear") is "oye". pronounced "OH-yay". as in "oyez! oyez!", said to call a court into session. which means "hear ye, hear ye". ("oyez" is some form of old french or bastardized "law" french, which made its way into english-language courts courtesy of the norman invasion.)

in other words -- it's the SAME WORD.

awesome.

spanishpod

i've been trying to learn spanish for a few months now. to supplement the classes i'm taking, i've been looking for audio lessons i can download to my iphone and listen to for extra practice. most of the free stuff i found sucks, but one podcast is completely super amazing compared to the rest: spanishpod.

i mostly listen to the elementary lessons, and the two hosts, JP and liliana, are so freaking adorable i can't stand it. JP is a huge grammar nerd and linguist like me (except, you know, better educated and more qualified). i basically have a giant crush on both of them. also i just figured out today from google-stalking him that JP has a blog or two. excellent! now i can get my grammar-nerd fix in multiple media.

the show is really high quality, and they have hundreds of lessons available on their website for free, and you can download the latest episodes for free to itunes. i'm not sure how they make money giving all that away, but i'm very grateful that they do.