Hello, long-ignored readers. I’m sorry for ignoring you all for so long. Really, I am.
Anyway, on to business!
The Jackson Mississippi Southern Fried Comic Con of 2010 is right around the corner. This years’ event is oh-so-worthy of attention from all you locals for a few reasons:
1: It’s geek city. I know we’re not all into that sort of thing, but judging from some of the Skeptics in the Pub conversations, we’ll fit right in. Or maybe you just like gawking at people in Stormtrooper outfits. I fit into both categories.
2: last year was a lot of fun. This year seems like it’s going to follow in that trajectory.
3: The Jackson Skeptical Society has a panel discussion! Yes, we do!
One whole hour (and maybe more!) – the overarcing topic: The Science of Science Fiction. Presenting Yours Truly, discussing the inevitable Ewok Apocalypse from the end of Return of the Jedi.
If this happens in the sky above you, it is a bad thing.
Dr. Patrick Hopkins of Millsaps College discussing Star Trek style teleportation.
This is how we are arriving for that part of the talk.
Physics Instructor Josh Winter from Mississippi State University will discuss 2012 and the Hijacking of Science by Psuedoscience.
Not pictured: Reality.
Local author/blogger and editor Tom Head will be presenting the realities and unrealities of extraterrestrial life.
Hint: They won't look like this.
And Scott Crawford, Science Officer of the local Star Trek group, the USS Haise, will regale us with findings about the potential for the future of warp speed, and what it would require.
HINT
The individual talks won’t take toooo long, I know mine will only be a few minutes (in which you’ll hopefully get to see a picture of an Ewok on fire, but – no promises) and I’m expecting us to be done with our talking in about an hour.
Then, the fun part begins! You’ll get to ask questions, point out what you think we got wrong, and belittle us for not understanding the difference between hypermatter and duracrete in the Death Star.
The Comic Con has a Facebook Page, and a small website.
That’s a “meh” argument I hear all the time – and I’m sure you do too. I never thought it was particularly valid – for reasons that were, at best, nebulous. Here, however, I find them given beautiful form:
I’m sure you’ve all heard about this by now, but if you’re interested in volunteering to go clean things up or help in some manner; here’s a few places you can get some information:
There’s water in them-thar hills! Or, maybe I should say asteroids! Yes, the clever folks down and over at the NASA Infared Telescope Facility have added another good find to their impressive list of findings.
Maybe we can get around to making a couple of pure doses of homeopathic remedy. Maybe… monkshood – a poisonous plant that supposedly cures… Brontophobia, in homeopathy.
Like cures like – except that actonitine, the active poison in monkshood, causes respiratory paralysis, not fear and sweating. So even if we do manage to find enough water in the solar system to actually make an effective homeopathic dose, maybe that one isn’t such a good test to try.
Oh man, it was World Homeopathic Awareness Week (WHAW?!) last week and I didn’t even get a chance to post. I guess I’ll have to turn this in late, like so much schoolwork.
We’ll open up with the obligatory “What the hell is homeopathy?” question. I like to throw a bit of mild swearing into pretty much any question, which, along with the above-mentioned post-crastination, is why I don’t have an advanced degree.
For answers, you could ask How the hell does homeopathy work? Or you could listen to someone with a real live degree in homeopathy!
We’ll get to a real live homeopath in a moment. First, let’s get just a basic awareness for what’s going on here, in case you didn’t know, or don’t want to know, or knew something and forgot, or knew something and then had that knowledge erased from your mind by aliens.
There is a lot of confusion about what a homeopath does. Of course, this simple post cannot address all of the things that they actually get to do: What a homeopath does is what a homeopath does. Many people believe that homeopaths prescribe herbs or natural medicines, or simple, effective home remedies. Some of them do these things, but that is not the strict definition of homeopathy.
Set your temporal devices back to 1796. Tennessee has just become a state. Austria, in the Hapsberg era, has invented numbered bank accounts. John Adams has defeated Thomas Jefferson in the first Presidential election, calling him “an atheist, anarchist, demagogue, coward, mountebank, trickster, and Francomaniac.” Edward Jenner has used the first vaccination against smallpox.
And a German physician, Samuel Hahnemann, has decided “that which can produce a set of symptoms in a healthy individual, can treat a sick individual who is manifesting a similar set of symptoms.” This commonly goes under the axiom “like cures like.”
Like cures like. The dose makes the poison. In Hahnemann’s time, this likely seemed to be sound advice – medical treatments were often quite dreadful. It would indeed, in many cases, have been more helpful to stay home with a glass of water than to go to the doctor. Furthermore, successful therapies such as vaccination for the smallpox and the bark of the chinchona tree, seemed to point to this “like cures like” theory.
But wait, quinine? I myself drink enough gin and tonic water to be immune to the flying death-dart mosquitoes in the area, and by Hahnemann’s theories, I should have symptoms of malaria constantly.
Oh therein lies the historical rub. For, you see, an overdose (or a constant, high-level dose) of quinine does indeed cause malaria-like symptoms, called cinchonism. Of course, this is not malaria – malaria is caused by a blood-borne parasite, but many of the symptoms are the same.
So how did Hahnemann come by this idea? By giving himself the chinchona bark, of course. Eventually, he succumbed to cinchonism. Then, he backed off the dose – coming to a point where there was very little quinine in the solutions he was taking.
Suddenly, Hahnemann is cured of cinchonism. He does not have malaria, either. Of course, he’s living in Germany at the time, but that’s beside the point. The idea is there, and then – a quackery is born.
Now wait! You may say, if you know anything about homeopathic medicine. It’s not just dilution that you do – it’s a special mixing process!
Right. This process is called “potentisation,” and there is a special technique for this: Succussion is the process of agitating a freshly diluted solution by rapping its container hard against a hard but elastic object such as a leather-bound book, or a saddle stuffed with straw (these days Hahnemann believed that succussion released dynamic forces – Lebenskraft – from the diluents. These were preserved and intensified with subsequent dilutions, due to the succussion.
It’s not just magic water. It’s magic water you’ve been shaking – releasing the “dynamic forces” or “vital energies” or, as I like to say – “magic.”
And as you dilute, you take out the damaging substance and leave the dynamic vital blue-potion mana.
For a long while, this seemed to work! The homeopathic hospitals were a success for nearly one hundred years. While in other hospitals you would be subjected to bloodletting, burning, bizarre concoctions, (mmm, viper’s flesh and hellesbore) and alcohol poisoning before succumbing to inexpert surgery and sepsis, in a homeopathic hospital, you were clean, drank beer, exercised, and you were given… water.
Water? No, wait – aren’t homeopathic remedies supposed to contain at least a tiny dilution of the original material?
Well, for the answer to that to be “yes,” someone has to be lying.
Alright, so the basis here is that the higher the dilution of the agent, the more healing capacity is has. This seems highly counterintuitive, and it contradicts one of the more pertinent points of modern medicine: the dose-response relationship.
But, you see – it may not even be physically possible to dilute things in the manner that Hahnemann and modern homeopaths recommend – you can read about it here.
So you have a solution – this is what homeopaths call the “0x” solution. If you dilute it by a factor of 100, you now have a 1x solution.
This is not “strong enough” – that is, not diluted enough – for homeopathic purposes.
Nor is 24X. At the 24X point you’re not only unlikely to get a real molecule of the original substance, you’re unlikely to get a molecule of the original solvent.
A dilution of 40X is one molecule. In the entire universe.
But hey – the dilution just makes it stronger! What you want is 60X – the dilution advocated by Hahnemann for most purposes: on average, this would require giving two billion doses per second to six billion people for 4 billion years to deliver a single molecule of the original material to any patient.
The ever-popular anti-flu homeopathic solution Oscillococcinum is at 200X dilution. To have a single molecule of duck liver and kidney (which is what oscillococcinum is made from) you would need 10 to the 320th universes of the same size as ours to get a molecule in your “remedy.”
But hey – it’s all in the dilution – the magic, shaking motion that transfers the ‘elan vital into your water; it’s not about the water. Most of your modern homeopaths have a vague idea of some sort of quantum action, which means that water has memory – that somehow water molecules (or alcohol or sugar, if the original material is not water-soluble) are A: changed in form and function by the addition of a solute and B: this changed molecular structure persists after the removal of the solute.
The first part is only partly true. Water, dissolving a solute, will align itself to “surround” molecules – a function of the unique shape of the water molecule. However, the second part is only true for a few picoseconds. Water is not a simple collection of placid, unmoving H2O molecules; the random molecular Brownian Motion occasionally breaks one of the oxygen-hydrogen bonds in the solution, sending a cascade of Hydronium and hydroxide into the solution. This process, the self-ionization of water rapidly and constantly restructures the mass of water molecules.
So water doesn’t have (a good) memory. There is nothing in the succussion process that mixes a solution in any unique manner. If the principles of homeopathy were true, all water would be the ultimate homeopathic remedy, containing a memory of all the things it had ever come in contact with in the world.
Or, if water had memory and homeopathy was sweet sweet bullshit,
Shit and Sugar!
Of course, homeopaths can give you some pretty… interesting… explanations for why their product works! If you want a good idea of just how vague and hazy these ideas can be, well – here’s a real-live homeopath, recorded for you!
One of the things I’ve enjoyed most about getting older is that the music keeps getting better. I don’t mean, of course, that all music is constantly improving. We could argue about golden ages of this genre and that all day long and bore ourselves to tears, but for me, what I hear keeps getting better.
This is, of course, part of finding more music, and having it more available to me through the various wonders of technomancy that are an everyday part of my life.
A much larger part of that is not having to listen to the radio, or travel in the car with people who insist on listening to the Insane Clown Posse.
If you’re one of those lucky people out there who does not know of the Insane Clown Posse, or the ICP as their fans – the juggalos – call themselves, then you are a fortunate soul. The short rundown is thusly: Grown men dress as clowns with greasepaint and rap about violence, have a dim view of women, and homosexuals. If your first thought was “hey sounds like religious fundamentalists,” give yourself a cookie. The ICP has come out of the god-closet as being all about the Jesus.
You have two choices, if you’ve never heard of these guys: You can look these jokers up on the internet, or remain blissfully unaware that such a thing has existed. (Assuming that you want to continue and haven’t already navigated away).
I recommend that you learn as little as possible about the ICP, because then you’ll come across this next bit in a state of virginal splendor, unprepared, with the scenario unfolding like a newborn fawn in the meadow.
Right before someone runs it over with a bush-hog of stupid.
In this video (I urge you to watch it in full) you’ll find out that the ICP doesn’t trust scientists, doesn’t understand fucking magnets and also has a really low bar for what they consider a miracle. Hint: “Fog” is on the list.
On Skepchick, Rebecca Watson gleefully corrects the two, explaining a few things they thought were miracles.
Some people decry this sort of thing as the proof that science education is in shambles. Well, the Juggalos aren’t exactly known for brilliance, for one thing – and secondly, these are celebrities who dress as clowns.
I think (hope) that this is actually just a massive poe/gotcha after which ICP will explain “ah we made our fans look like fools and got people to pay attention to science!”
If this actually happens, I call dibs on it.
And in what I actually would call a miracle, Saturday Night Live was funny! They had a dead-on parody of the song, so spot-on that it’s a little hard to tell the difference.
In the tone of Rebecca’s post, I resume the learning experience between Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope, as Shaggy explains hot lava, snow, and rain.
Violent J: “So how is that lava is hot, Shaggy? It comes out of the motherfucking ground right? And the ground is cold, what?”
Shaggy 2 Dope: “J, man, that shit is a miracle the same way that bozo is the original fucking juffalo.”
Violent J: “What’s a Juffalo, Shaggy? I forget all the juggaloco clown speak sometimes.”
Shaggy 2 Dope: “J, a juffalo is someone who pretends to be down with the clown. But isn’t. Like hot lava isn’t a miracle. You see that shit is all up tight under ground, J. Like, towards the center of the motherfuckin’ earth. So it’s Under Pressure. Like in that song.”
Violent J: “Don’t you shout no lying ass David Bowie! He’s a scientists! I seen him in that movie! It was a documentary! And he was with all those gays who were champions…”
Shaggy 2 Dope: “Right, yo? But it makes rocks hot and they melt like when ice is hot it turns to water.”
Violent J: You mean – rocks are just frozen lava?
*Violent J looks stunned for a moment. His grease-paint is dripping* Is this like when my grease-paint drips down my goatee?
Shaggy 2 Dope: Kinda.
Violent J: *Panicked* Does this mean I got hot lava on my face!?
Shaggy 2 Dope: No. It ain’t even a thang, J.
Violent J: Well whatabout rain? And snow, motherfucker? How come they come from the same place, then, Shaggy? That ain’t no science, that’s gotta be magic!
Shaggy: Well remember how when you put water in the freezer it turns to ice cubes for our faygo cola?
J: Yeah. That box is fucking magic all the way up in that bitch. It turns water into ice, them fucking magnets stick to it.
Shaggy: That’s cuz it’s cold.
J: You didn’t say nothin’ bout magnets being cold!
Shaggy: No, the magnets are because it’s metal. The ice is just cold water, just like rocks are frozen lava, just like snow is frozen rain.
*This is all due to a thread on Skepchick where the following fake movie poster was presented:
The Poster that Launched a Thousand Words
The subtitle there, if you can’t read it, is “Two bad boys, one pope, one atheist arrest.” And in that vein I present:
Bad Boys III: Two Atheists, One Pope
Hitchens stomped the pedal and drove like a man trying to avoid being waterboarded. The 2008 Vauxhall Corsa scraped through traffic, sparks left and right.
“He’s getting away!” He shouted, throwing hands on the horn and swerving to avoid a pedestrian.
Ahead, the stark white Popemobile loomed large. The bulletproof glass dome sparkled in the sun, and the lumbering Mercedes M-Class SUV took a slow turn to keep the high-hatted pontiff from toppling over in his armored lair.
A busy intersection was ahead, the traffic no longer halted by the terrified police who now had no idea what was occurring.
“We’ve got half of four horsemen here, a full one-fucking third of the unholy trinity!” Richard Dawkins shouted from the passenger seat. “I told you to get a car with a sunroof! My plan required a sunroof! I’ll never hit him at this range.” Dawkins drew his sidearm, a long-barreled Colt Anaconda with the phrase “Malthusian Solution” engraved across the grip, which was inlaid with the actual shell of a Galapagos tortoise.
“Make a new plan!” Hitchens snapped. He wheeled around an old woman with a baby carriage. Dawkins leaned out the window with his .44 and fired, but the bullets hit God’s Protection – 40 mm of armoured glass and plating.
“Damn!” Dawkins shouted. “It’s like he’s infallible!”
“Hardly!” Hitchens replied. “Are you buckled up?”
“I always buckle up. You’re far more likely to be injured in a car crash than… What are you doing?!” Dawkins lapsed into a simple shout as Hitchens swerved the car towards a traffic barrier. They hit, knocking over the barrier into the side of a mini-cooper. The tiny car and traffic barrier created a makeshift ramp, the Corsa went airborne, both men wailing with excitement in a true Dukes of Hazard moment.
Glass showered across the streets, sparks trailed into the air, and all eyes watched as the Vauxhall Corsa came crashing across the back of the Popemobile. Armour glass crumpled and shattered, airbags popped into existence and deflated, Swiss Guards tumbled about, and the world’s most expensive hat rolled onto the glass-and-fuel strewn streets of London.
Hitchens was out first, staggered onto the street, looked through the smoke and all around him, people were fleeing. He hadn’t had a reaction like this since he’d set down in Mississippi.
His gun was on the ground, a few feet away. In the car, Dawkins was still reeling, trying to undo his seat belt. A swiss guard was standing over the weapon, resplendent in his orange, blue, and yellow skirt. The hat was no longer funny, because the man was twirling a vicious halberd and approaching in a very professional manner that seemed to suggest that Oberstleutnant Hauptmann knew exactly how to kill a man with a 16th century polearm.
Then, in a flash, a lightening pair of nunchaku wrapped around the haft of the halberd and the wirey man behind them yanked the weapon to the ground. He then began a display of nunchaku prowess, slinging the weapon around his shoulders, his waist, each fluid and deadly movement accompanied by the clank of chain and snap of cured oak.
“Simon Singh!” Dawkins exclaimed as Oberstleutnant Hauptman took a wide variety of blows to the back. “Good to see you!”
“You two go after the Rat!” Singh said, fending off the Swiss Guard. “I’m going to give this man a bit of free amateur chiropractic.”
The two ran into the crowded street, caught sight of the fleeing pope though the glitter of his robes.
“There goes Emperor Palpatine!” A young man shouted, before being cracked in the skull with the Papal Cross of Pius IX.
Ratzinger turned another corner, waited, the gold-trimmed immaculate papal pallium against the dirty brick walls. He reached into the omophor, pulled out his spare mitre, and placed it on his head. He gripped the Papal Cross and listened, the footsteps coming closer as the two atheists chased him. At this range, he knew he would be infallible.
Ratzinger whipped around the corner, caught Hitchens right under his pharynx. The anti-theist went down, but Dawkins had fallen behind due to the totally illogical design of the human knee. He held the massive .44 towards the desperate pontiff.
“Down on the ground! You’re under arrest for rape and sexual slavery and other similarly inhumane acts causing harm to mental or physical health, committed against civilians on a widespread or systematic scale!” Dawkins shouted, a real mouthful.
Ratzinger froze. He had only one recourse – the magic hat. He raised his hands to his head, put them on each side of the mitre, and began to pray…
Hitchens grabbed his ankle and turned him over, face-first into the street.
“I have diplomatic immunity!” He shouted.
“It’s been revoked.” Hitchens said, slapping the cuffs on. “Bishop of Rome, a.ka. Vicar of Jesus Christ, a.ka. Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, a.ka. Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, a.k.a. Primate of Italy, a.ka. Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, a.k.a Sovereign of the State of Vatican City, a.k.a Servant of the Servants of God, a.k.a Benedict the XVI, aka Joseph Ratzinger, I hereby place you under arrest.”
“But I’m innocent!” Ratzinger cried.
“Tell it to the omniscient tyrant in the sky.” Hitchens said.
“I’m sure he’ll hear you out first thing. You’ve got a direct line, if I’m not mistaken.” Dawkins said. “Don’t you worry, Father. There’s still plenty of forced sodomy where you’re going to be going.”
We’ll be having a meeting soon, doncha worry there, trusty local readers. I HAD planned on screening Here Be Dragons by Brian Dunning of Skeptoid at the local library, and was working out a weekend timetable. Then I realized I didn’t really like the movie that much. It seems like something perfect for a junior high or high school class, not really the cup of tea that our wicked group of deviants would enjoy. Does anyone have a copy of Cosmos they’d lend to the cause? Maybe we’ll get together for the National Day of Reason.
Anyway, since I’ve been gone so long, I figure that a double post today won’t hurt, eh?
So, you’ll thank me later for this pic. When you’re not sick. Because of me.
You're Welcome
And I don’t know if you know it yet, but Cracked dot com is one of the most hilarious websites out there. And they, like many truly hilarious people, are often quite skeptically-minded. And they do dick jokes. Comedy is one of those brilliant mediums where you can make people question without preaching, so it’s no surprise that those things which get the least amount of questioning (and need it the most), those things that have the least amount of answers – get skewered by comedians. Just ask George Carlin. Well, don’t, because he’s dead. You can ask him, he just won’t speak back.
Anyway, cracked has a few good articles up at the moment: ridiculous history myths, which includes this very helpful bit:
Of course, the story stuck after that because it gives us the chance to do the thing we love doing most: look down on people. They fell for it, we didn’t, therefore we’re smarter than our grandparents. We’re the enlightened generation, and don’t believe in stupid bullshit.
This sort of thing has the same attraction as any good conspiracy theory: the “I am special because I have secret knowledge the common sheeple never will!” principle.
How better to impress your dull traditional friends than revealing to them the suppressed truth that will totally blow their closed suburban minds? And you only had to spend six bucks in an airport bookstore to get it!
Amen, brother.
Finally, a community-created effort describing, mainly, pyramid bullshit, but also a bit of 2012 hokum as well. Yes, there’s a good quote in there, too – figured I’d make the trifecta.
Conspiracy theorists claim that if they serve no purpose to humans, pyramids must have been built by aliens. Of course assuming that anything that serves no purpose to humanity must be created by aliens would mean that conspiracy theorists themselves were created by aliens.
Ah well. Are any real news organizations out there doing as much for reason as a fount of dick jokes and scatological humor?
NPR is going to give it ”a shot” with a bit about vaccine paranoia and the problems it causes (mainly, vaccine-preventable disease).
Some of my mailing lists have been throwing this nugget of science news my way lately; biologists have found an anaerobic metazoan in the deep sea. Like the deep-sea giant tube worm these creatures have unorthodox biologies. And as any quack’ll tell ya, scientists don’t accept anything new. Especially chemists, and those pesky physicists who are always shooting down perpetual motion/free energy scams. Of course, this should stop things like the acceptance of new forms of life and the creation of a new element.
The deep sea creature could well prove to be a bit of inspiration for those intrepid exobiologists out there. I’ll keep listening to the SETI podcast Are We Alone? (which I just found out about today) and see if they mention it. They have a fun monthly “skeptic check” series which covers the usual topics.
As I’m sure you all know, (and as I alluded to in my April Fools post) Mississippi High School educators have a hardon for teenager lesbians in tuxedos.
No, wait, don’t read it like that! I mean, they have an embarrassing problem about it. No, goddamnit, this is difficult.
They don’t like it. That’s what I meant to say.
You perhaps remember the story of Ceara Sturgis (or not, god knows what kind of attention span you have after reading these scatterbrained blog entries) – the ballsy, outspoken young woman who wanted to wear a tuxedo in her Wesson Attendance Center yearbook photo
The WAC is much nicer than Patriot Bible University
School officials, not realizing that it was the year 2009, nor that there was no rule against what they called “cross-dressing,” denied the photo. A lawsuit was born, and Ceara received a bit of praise locallyand there on the intertubes and in print about the kerfluffle.
So fast-forward a few months and welcome to 2010. We can finally stop saying “two-thousand and,” people have gone and invented a practical, helicopter-based “jetpack,” which doesn’t involve any pesky pants-inflamming jets.
this is how I get to work
Mississippi educators, however – still can’t handle women who love women. Especially if they’re in a tuxedo. I wonder if this standoff would continue if someone, for example, checked their browsing history.
Que Constance McMillen and her detractors at the Itawamba Agricultural High School, who have earned themselves a bitter Pharyngula thread. You see, it’s a bit of a nasty little story, and when the not-so-subtle folks over there get Pharyngulating, it’s hard to stop.
You should check out the comments. A couple of locals appeared and defended the decision – quite poorly, I might add. Many more, of course, supported McMillen. My favorite gem, from the wretched Facebook page “Constance Quit Yer Cryin” which is about as intellectual as they got: “Traci Taylor: Carnathan who wants to c 2 girls makn out…especially one of them thats parents are totally against it.”
Oh man, I could tell her some stories about people who want to see that, parental approval be damned! But there is much to become inflamed about! The school denied McMillen the chance to go to the prom with her date – bad enough. Then a lawsuit! A lawsuit is one of those things that no one wants, but everyone gets, kind of like a social version of e. coli. It was, predictably enough, filed by the ACLU of Mississippi. The court ruled that McMillen’s first amendment rights had been violated, but that it could not force anyone to hold a prom.
Private donations, in order to run a private prom, were pouring in – particularly twenty grand from the American Humanist Association, from big-time funder Todd Stiefel.
Then, in a move that felt not quite unlike a swift toe-jab to the testicles, The ACLU rejected the gift on the flimsiest of pretenses: Fear of atheists.
“Although we support and understand organizations like yours, the majority of Mississippians tremble in terror at the word ‘atheist,’” Jennifer Carr, the fund-raiser for the A.C.L.U of Mississippi
Me: Tremble in fear, puny humans! Or I’ll say it! Don’t make me say “atheist!”
Majority of Mississippians: “Ahhh! Stop! He said it! Ahhh!”
Minority of Mississippians: “What’d he say? Atheist?”
Majority of Mississippians: “Ahhhh! He said it again!”
If only this were true! I’d have no troubles at all!
And no, the AHA had no conditions put on the money – it was not as though the inclusive prom would have a banner from Kurt Vonnegut. Though, if they had, I would have suggested “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is,” because that’s the best mid-makeout move ever.
Eventually, of course, the ACLU apologized and kept the money, putting into the coffers for the Mississippi Safe Schools Coalition, which holds an annual gay-friendly prom.
So with lawsuit on the horizon, a judge in McMillen’s corner, the school says they’ll host an all-inclusive prom on Friday, April second. And when the shit hits the fans…
They held a prom. Or two. Yes, the old switcheroo! School officials held a prom, which eight students attended, but local parents and students headed off to a private prom, bringing back remembrances of once-upon-a-time Mississippi (two years ago) when segregated proms were held, separate for the lily-white all-American youth.
I don’t know if she’ll be attending the gay-friendly prom, which must be rocking if you get twenty grand plus to throw it. I don’t recommend going, but only because Lance Bass is gonna be there. Other than that, Tupelo will be a big town for a night, eh?
