DON’T GET SCAMMED! TWELVE CLASSIC CONS TO AVOID.

We’ve all made bad investments before. Something sounds like a great idea, you’re so excited, and then, uh, it doesn’t work out. It is common to feel shame when you’ve made a bad call. Shame is a powerful emotion. You don’t want to tell anyone. You’re embarrassed. Everything feels murky. You’re confused about
what went wrong. You don’t want people to know. And that, my friends, is why con artists thrive. 

HOW CAN MY FAVORITE ANIMAL GET PROTECTION UNDER THE ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT?

Critically endangered black rhinoceros.

Despite this fabulous photo of a rhino, my favorite endangered animals are whales.  You’ll have to read to the end to see an amazing whale photo.  Just this morning my friend told me that when humans are out trying to capture baby orcas and put them in prisons (like Sea World) the daddy orcas swim along the surface trying to lure the humans in one direction while the mommy and baby orcas swim underwater in the other direction.  If we didn’t have helicopters and sonar the trick might work, but we do and it doesn’t.

HOW TO CHANGE YOUR LEGAL GENDER IN SEVEN STEPS

The other day my son, who is five, announced to no one in particular but generally in my direction that he could use the pink crayon since he was home and nobody would see him.  Boys, he explained, aren’t allowed to like pink.  I wasn’t surprised. Despite my efforts, the Rules of Gender and Color have been shaping my son’s world since he first opened those baby blues.  

Normally, I would have jumped on the opportunity to get him thinking a little deeper about the Rules of Color, but I had just watched an interview with the fabulous Laverne Cox so I decided to tackle Gender instead.  “You know, some people are born with boy bodies but they are really girls on the inside.  Do you think they are allowed to use pink?”  “Yes,” he replied with certainty,  “any kind of girl can use pink.”

I MARRIED MY DOMESTIC PARTNER! WHAT HAPPENS TO THAT OLD AGREEMENT?

Back in the dark ages (last spring), many gay and lesbian couples in California entered into domestic partnership agreements as a way to confirm their promises to each other because they did not have the right to marry.  A marriage is basically a three way agreement between the government and the couple that includes all sorts of statutory rights and obligations the starry-eyed lovers may or may not be aware of.  A domestic partnership agreement, however, is similar to a pre-marital agreement in that it is completely individualized to the particular couple involved.  (My post on pre-marital agreements is called “Do I need a pre-marital agreement if I love my fiancé?”)

NOT MILK? CAN I CALL MY FROZEN VEGAN CREATION “ICE CREAM"?

Here is a little t.m.i. for you all (by the way, t.m.i. stands for “too much information” if it’s been awhile since you were around teen-speak): my mother likes to joke that after I was born she understood the meaning of the term, “snot-nosed kid.”  I know it will come as a shock to all of you that yours truly was ever disgusting, but we all have some color in our pasts and mine, apparently, was greenish yellow.  Eww!  Did I forget to tell you to put down your food before reading this?  So, um, moving right along I will report that, after the hassle of an elimination diet, we determined that the cause of this minor blip in my otherwise perfect nature was a sensitivity to dairy.

I WANT TO ROCK OUT MY PODCAST WITH OTHER PEOPLE’S SONGS, ANY ISSUES?

So you’ve decided to start dj’ing for your internet fans and want to show off your prodigious talent for selecting cool tunes. Maybe this will kickstart your international empire of cool. Except, you don’t want to pay anyone to play.


Before you get rolling, I want to introduce you to a little friend of mine. He is called “copyright law”— and he is ever so cute. No, actually, I take that back. He isn’t cute at all. Copyright law in the United States (yes, this is federal U.S. law) applies to creative and expressive works, which are most of the things that are included in a podcast. This includes, for example, performances, scripts, interviews, musical works and sound recordings. Under current US copyright law, copyright attaches automatically to creative, expressive works once they have been “fixed”, i.e. written down or recorded. Copyright law gives the owner of copyright the exclusive right to control certain activities in relation to their work. Here are some examples of what a copyright owner can control: