More neat stuff to share with you today, although this is beginning to make me feel like I am being lazy.

After all, commentary on links is literally the easiest form of blogging for me. I don’t have to figure out what I want to talk about, I don’t have to think of anything to say, I just plonk the link out there for you and write down whatever pops into my head about it.

Not exactly effortless, but it is the low energy state of my blogging. Oh well. I promise that tomorrow, I will do something more personal.

First up, we have the strange and touching story of the kidnapped baby that wasn’t.

Here’s the story : In 1964, a baby goes missing from a hospital. A woman dressed as a nurse had asked to take the baby to another doctor in a different part of the hospital, then both baby and “nurse” disappeared. This set off a nation-wide search for the baby. This search yielded no results.

But then, eighteen months later, a baby of the right age is found abandoned on a street corner in Chicago, and the FBI identified it as the missing child, and returned it to its parents.

Except it was not, in fact, the missing baby. It is another child entirely, and the original child has never been found to this very day.

Meanwhile, the baby the original family got has grown up thinking that his biological parents are raising him. But as he grew older, he began to have suspicions. He looked in the mirror, and thought “I don’t look anything like these people. ”

Finally, at the age of 49, he gets his DNA tested, and sure enough, he is not related to either of the parents who raised him.

In fact, he has no idea who he really is. And I find that quite tragic.

He told his parents about it (while assuring them they are still his parents in every respect except biological), which some people think was a bad idea. But I can’t imagine keeping a secret like that from them. Some secrets just have to be told whether it is a good idea or not.

From my own point of view, I don’t look a thing like either of my parents, and honestly, neither do any of my three siblings. But that’s just genetic diversity.

In the world of genetics, every child is a different variation on the parent’s two genomes.

Moving on. Next up, a very funny response to some of the Shit People Say To Lesbians.

LOL. I love that she made something funny with nothing but a watermelon, a very understanding Mom, and a willingness to be extremely silly.

As comedy, she belabors the point a tad and does not quite keep the ball in the air. The video could do with an edit to tighten things up.

But that’s not the point. The point is that the whole “if you love women, why don’t you dress like one?” question is a particularly stupid one.

After all, straight guys love women, and most of them don’t dress like them. And gay men love men, and some of them do dress like them.

There is really no connection. A more proper question would be “if you are a feminist, why do you reject all things feminine?”.

But even that has a whole Lilith Fair’s worth of cultural baggage about gender roles encoded in it.

After all, I am quite happy being male, yet I am not interested in most ‘masculine’ things.

And speaking of nontraditional gender expression (and funny lesbians), Ellen.

Her ultra sheltered childhood fits in with what I have been thinking lately about how conservatives basically construct an alternate reality and then go live there. Presumably, that’s what her Christian Scientist parents did. Their home life was their controlled universe where by never talking about unpleasant things, you could pretend that they do not exist.

And like all things conservative, it is basically childish. The ‘unpleasant things’ are almost always the difficult realities of adult life, like sex and politics, and by creating this alternate world for themselves to live in, the conservative avoids having to deal with them.

Christian Scientists even take it to the point where they do not even having to deal with the truths of frailty, disease, and doctors. Scared of the doctor’s office and hospitals? Just pretend that they are bad places and you can make people better with the power of wishing real hard.

Also, wow, super young adult Ellen! I forgot her hair used to look like that. She looks so much better now. Even in the Carson clip she looks frumpy.

Now she is all short-haired and well dressed. I bet that’s three quarters coming out of the closet and one quarter Portia de Rossi.

I still can’t watch her actual show. It has a vibe to it that all female-centric daytime shows seem to have, that women’s magazine feel that I just can’t stand.

But Ellen will always be tops in my books, because not only is she funny AND adorable, she has dedicated her life to the idea that you can be funny without being mean, and that makes her aces to me.

Finally, another bit of excellent poetry with a great message like we had yesterday.

I have often thought that the whole “they’re taking our jobs” thing was bullshit. It is just basic ignorant xenophobia and racism finding a tissue-thin justification that keeps people from blaming the people who are actually at fault when unemployment is high.

After all, economics is hard, and requires the kind of high level abstract reasoning that today’s conservatives vociferously reject.

Better to just go from the gut and blame the thing you don’t like on the people you don’t like. Simple.

In fact, I reject the very assumption that there is a “they” who can take “our” jobs. I am a hardcore humanist and therefore I don’t believe in such artificial and harmful divisions between people.

The whole idea that it is somehow a tragedy when someone who is not like you prospers is a deeply primitive, tribal, racist point of view, and should be treated as such.

That’s why it’s so depressing that Lou Dobbs falls for this shit. He is smarter than that.

But age makes primitives of us all, it seems.