January 2012
Wow, Jezebel commenters really, really hate me
Guess I must be doing something right.
Global Comment: Spartacus: Bloody Great or Just... →
Starz has had trouble with making original series stick and it seems proud of its success with this particular entry. As with The Walking Dead, the allure for viewers may be the violence, and some at least appear to be sticking around to see what happens next. We shall see if Spartacus has the endurance it needs; after all, the show’s historical counterpart was eventually defeated in a bloody...
this ain't livin': Female Candidates and the... →
Show emotion and you are too fragile, untrustworthy, and incapable for the serious adult work of politics. You are manipulative, and all the other things people like to say about women when they express feelings; you can’t approach situations objectively, you can’t be trusted to make the right decisions in times of stress, you clearly aren’t capable of setting aside your feelings on complex...
xoJane: Janet Howell Stands For Choice: A Love... →
Senator Howell took a stand for what she thinks is right, highlighting the absurdity of requiring costly testing and waiting periods to access routine medical care. People might say it’s ludicrous for the state to interfere in the practice of medicine by requiring a digital rectal exam before a Viagra® prescription, and it would be. It’s also ludicrous for the state to interfere with the practice...
David B. Lobell, Adam Sibley & J. Ivan... →
An important source of uncertainty in anticipating the effects of climate change on agriculture is limited understanding of crop responses to extremely high temperatures1, 2. This uncertainty partly reflects the relative lack of observations of crop behaviour in farmers’ fields under extreme heat. We used nine years of satellite measurements of wheat growth in northern India to monitor rates of...
Amanda Hess at Good: Brownwashing: Why Green... →
The Journal points out the obvious: Brown doesn’t necessarily mean green. Today, “white paper can be made from 100% recycled fibers and whitened without chemical chlorine, traditionally the primary complaint against it.” Seventh Generation actually adds a step to the production process—brown pigmentation—to make its diapers appear eco. It’s not clear whether Target,...
Enrique Gili at Grist: New Agtivist: Colin... →
In need of a second act, Archipley and his wife Karen pooled their resources to open the farm in 2007. Their mission is twofold; they hope to operate a successful small-scale organic farm and help soldiers make the transition from fighters to champions of sustainable agriculture and financial independence. Together the couple runs a program called Veterans Sustainable Agriculture Training...
Tom Heap at BBC News: San Francisco's rubbish -... →
Another San Francisco resident, Edward - on the streets from age 13 - reckons he can make six to seven dollars (£4) an hour collecting bottle cans and plastic.
“It’s degrading,” he says. “You’re not going to be picking up any chicks while you’re doing it.”
Note: the current minimum wage in San Francisco is $10.24/hour.
this ain't livin': Mentally Ill People Accused of... →
Cases where people do go to trial may end with the decision that the mental illness was a mitigating factor and should be considered in sentencing, but people still do time. Sometimes in psychiatric institutions, sometimes not. Their terms of parole may also include mandatory medications and counseling; in some cases, a court order can compel someone to take medication for life or face being put...
xoJane: How To Move Beyond Beauty →
It took me a long time to learn that personal style can be a mode of gender presentation and performance, but it doesn’t mean you have to allow your clothing to gender you. You can wear a dress and not be a woman, for example, and you can play with that and create jarring visuals by changing the way you style your hair or which accessories you wear. You can wear combat boots with a tutu or you...
Richard Fausset at Los Angeles Times: Food stamp... →
One key objection raised by the coalition — an objection the USDA echoed in its denial of New York’s demonstration project — is the possibility that further restrictions might lead to further stigma. Feeling ashamed or uncomfortable about being on public assistance, advocates believe, may deter people from signing up for food aid. Alleviating such discomfort is one reason SNAP recipients now...
Dan Eggen at Washington Post: Super PACs target... →
The powerful political groups known as super PACs, whose heavy spending has become asignificant factor in the presidential race, are also beginning to play a role in congressional races around the country. The groups have set off a scramble among candidates in both parties, who are now struggling to cope with a flood of negative ads run by organizations that are outside their direct control.
...
Jackie Ashley at The Guardian: Comment is free:... →
So the question is, what can be done? The first thing is the proper, widely cast investigation the committee is doing: among Monday’s witnesses will be companies such as L’Oreal, Boots, Unilever and Proctor & Gamble, as well as the publishers and editors of young people’s magazines. An earlier hearing brought some electric evidence from Susie Orbach, psychotherapist and...
Cindy Rodriguez at NPR News: The Clash Over... →
Besides Arizona, New York is the only place where the policy still exists. New York was one of the first states in the country to use digital imaging to take people’s fingerprints back in 1996. Three other states eventually adopted the practice, but two of them — California and Texas — ended fingerprinting last year. New York City remains the only place in the state that fingerprints food...
Mark Mardell at BBC News: Deflating a military... →
America will still have more fighting troops in the future than it did in 2002 and dramatically out-spend its nearest rival, China.
Size isn’t everything. America and its allies won quickly in Iraq and Afghanistan, but neither war is ending with a solid sense of “mission accomplished.”
After these cuts, the US will still be the most formidable fighting force the world has...
Kate McAlpine at Science: North Star May Be... →
The North Star, a celestial beacon to navigators for centuries, may be slowly shrinking, according to a new analysis of more than 160 years of observations. The data suggest that the familiar fixture in the northern sky is shedding an Earth’s mass worth of gas each year. Some researchers caution, however, that the conclusion depends on certain assumptions about exactly where the star is in...
this ain't livin': Raunch: Romance or Literary... →
There is something deeper in this resistance to the idea that female raunch is for women only, and it revolves around the idea that women don’t have a sexuality of their own, but are instead pulled by the men around them. As participants in male-centric raunch, women may appear to enjoy themselves, they may even initiate some acts, but they are subordinate to the main character. Women who are...
Tim Adams at The Guardian: Picasso, Tate, 1960:... →
It was also the moment when Picasso, and modernism, finally arrived in Britain. That arrival had been a long time coming. As a new Tate exhibition will show, Picasso had been a prime influence on more radical British artists since the first showing of his work here in 1910, but if he was known to the wider public before the second world war, it was often as the butt of cartoonists’ jokes.
...
Phil Zabriskie at Washington Post: After ‘The... →
“We are talking about a throwaway population that adults think are too far gone,” Sohn says later. “We’re talking about kids that people have given up on over and over and over again. They don’t feel like anyone is there for them. They may have parents who love them, but they’ve been falling back on themselves for so long that if you come in front of their faces talking, and not backing it up...
Marianne McCune at NPR News: 'I Am A Boxer':... →
This summer in London, female boxers will compete in the Olympics for the first time. The women competing for a spot on the U.S. team will make history, but few know who they are — and why they box.
Women who box love it for the same reasons men do. Boxing requires intense physical and psychological discipline, the ability to overcome fear and anger.
Gosh, are you implying that women are just...
this ain't livin': Organising: My Mind's Oasis of... →
Sometimes the buzzing and demands for attention and thoughts become too overwhelming and I feel like I’m going to explode with all the things happening inside my brain. This is the point where I bring out the, so to speak, big guns, the most effective and delicious way of calming my brain: cleaning and organising. There’s something about organising that allows me to concentrate just on what I am...
Corey Dade at NPR News: Why New Photo ID Laws Mean... →
By all estimates, those least likely to have a government-issued photo ID fall into one of four categories: the elderly, minorities, the poor, and young adults aged 18 to 24. The Brennan Center estimates that 18 percent of all seniors and 25 percent of African Americans don’t have picture IDs.
Seniors traditionally have been the most consistent voting group, particularly in absentee...
Egon at NPR: It's A Buyer's Market: Crate-Digging... →
The recession has wreaked havoc on serious record collectors and the dealers who service them, from those who invested a precious fortune in major-label, early-’90s rap 12”s to those who thought there would always be a market for European sound library albums. Sure, changing trends have something to do with this depreciation — I have boxes of off-brand “deep funk” 45s...
I seem to have accidentally turned off all image...
Oops.
Vanessa Thorpe and Lucy Fulford at The Guardian:... →
The extraordinary catalogue of personal testimony, collected by theShoah Foundation Institute since the film director made Schindler’s Listin 1993, is housed at the University of Southern California, but on Friday it was formally shared with academics and students at the research centre at Royal Holloway to mark Holocaust Memorial Day. The archive footage, which can be viewed by members of...
Paloma Esquivel at Los Angeles Times: California... →
A bill being drafted by a state legislator would limit local law enforcement from holding arrestees on behalf of immigration authorities seeking to deport them. Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) said he is finalizing amendments to a bill that would be the first statewide measure to counter the Secure Communities enforcement program, which requires law enforcement agencies to forward to...
Nona Willis Aronowitz at Good: Rick Santorum Says... →
Let’s get one thing straight: Rick Santorum is about as educated as you can possibly get, and not from insular religious institutions, either. He got himself a bachelor’s degree from Penn State. Then a M.B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh. Then he went back to Penn State to get his law degree. Would he be a millionaire running for president if he hadn’t gotten those...
Seth Freed Wessler at Colorlines: Muslim Americans... →
Dozens of community and religious leaders gathered on the steps of City Hall Thursday to call for the immediate resignation of both the commissioner and his top spokesperson. The Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition convened the press conference following reports that NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly and spokesperson Paul Browne had lied about the police department’s use of the video, which...
Emily Deprang at Texas Observer: Occupy Houston’s... →
Occupy Houston a group of about 30 activists, most of them young men, has plenty of ambition but limited resources. Since their first rally on October 6, 2011, attendance at their nightly General Assembly in Tranquility Park has declined from an estimated 300 to their current 30 or so. But those remaining are committed to a variety of activist projects, from picking up trash and donating labor...
this ain't livin': Gold Definitely Doesn't... →
The wake left behind can be brutal. Gold guts indigenous communities, who may be displaced by mines or by their toxic runoff. Tailings ponds overflow and spew harsh chemicals into the environment, destroying farmland and ruining habitat. Workers at gold mines receive a pittance for their labour and work in unsafe conditions, with few protections from the dangers all around them. The volume of...
Dana Farrington at NPR News: Women's Car-Shopping... →
Rebecca Lindland, a senior automotive analyst with IHS Automotive, tells Sonari she’s often ignored or talked down to while car shopping.
“We know that people expect us to fail, to some extent. That people think that we’re not going to know what we’re talking about. So we overprepare, we overcompensate,” she says. “We don’t go into a dealership to...
Edward Rothstein at New York Times: Life, Liberty... →
These projects are difficult and ambitious, not just for Monticello but also for the African-American museum, which is scheduled to open in 2015. Lonnie G. Bunch III, the museum’s director, emphasized in a conversation that the Washington show is part of the institution’s attempt to explore how slavery might ultimately be presented.
Could any example pose a greater challenge? Jefferson didn’t...
Irish Independent: Cocaine sacks accidentally... →
TWO sacks of cocaine were accidentally delivered to the UN’s New York headquarters after apparently getting lost in the post.
The drugs, worth around $2 million (€1.5m), were hidden in hollowed-out books inside of bags that carried the global body’s famous blue emblem.
Police said the sacks were shipped from Mexico but that when parcel sorters in Ohio were unable to find an address...
Michael Muskal at Los Angeles Times: Gang violence... →
Gang homicides are less likely to be drug-related than many people think — and more likely to be the result of factors such as retaliation to ongoing gang violence, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday. The report is from the first such study based on the agency’s National Violent Death Reporting System.
Using data from 2003 through 2008, the analysis...
this ain't livin': Tools: Not Just For Boys →
Just once, I’d like to see a tool advertisement featuring a woman in exactly the same role as a man. Excitedly opening a package wrapped in neutral paper to uncover a nifty looking tool that isn’t pink or sparkly, but comes in your default sober, basic colors, and being excited. Turning to thank the person next to her; maybe that person is a son or daughter, or a romantic partner. That woman is...
