Post what you want shall be the whole of the law. Self-linking is awesome.
- The fashion industry in the US has absolutely no copyright protection. And yet it thrives.
- Does Copyright Promote Creativity? An Empirical Analysis. (pdf link). From the Vanderbilt Law Review. Short answer: No, it really doesn’t seem to.
- Compulsory Pregnancy in Poland. (I’d call it “compulsory childbirth,’ but whatever.) This is the future that pro-lifers want for the US, and it’s not pretty.
- Skyborne,
who is either an MRA or has MRA sympathies, writes a good post criticizing an homophobic MRA article. - It remains a radical act to be fat and happy. Plus, the most ridiculous anti-fat commercial ever made (I may have linked to it before, not sure).
- Texas Skateboarder Stops Christian Extremist From Burning The Qur’an For my money, the real heroes were the people who put their hands on the grill to keep him from lighting it.
- 5 Worries Parents Should Drop, And 5 They Shouldn’t
- An archive of illustrated “Fuck My Life” posts. Probably NSFW. I mean, depending on where you work.
- When Is Offering a Drink of Water a Crime?
- Prison Rape: Eric Holder’s Unfinished Business Sounds like Congress screwed it up by requiring any reforms to be budget-neutral, and Holder is making it even worse by refusing to preform a proper cost/benefit analysis. See also The Way to Stop Prison Rape and The Rape of American Prisoners.
- Terrific post by Meowser catalogs some of the many straw-fat activists we see so often.
- Immigrants Attracted By Work, Not Welfare
- Lessons from ex-U.S. diplomats
@6: Caught the video of the Texas skateboarder when you posted it in the “Amp is now reading” sidebar. So a skateboarder stole a Quran from someone who was about to burn it up on the conviction that such an act is so reprehensible that it’s worth defying the law to stop. Good for him, actually. But I wonder if he is willing to pay the price for his conviction should the Quran’s owner decide to press a theft charge. I wonder what would happen if the Quran’s owner went to the Imam (or whatever he is) to get the Quran back that was stolen from him.
I wouldn’t accord either him or the people who blocked the grille “hero” status. I don’t see that the act that they were looking to prevent was that awful that preventing it was heroic. I’d say the same if it was a Bible.
@3: “Compulsory Pregnancy in Poland”. That title sounds like someone held this woman down and inseminated her. She could have prevented getting pregnant but decided not to. She took a risk knowing the range of possible outcomes and that at least one of them was undesirable. I’m sure she knew she risked pregnancy regardless of not having had sex education in school. I’m old enough to have escaped sex education in school until well after I knew what the consequences of unprotected sex were. Actions have consequences, and the fact that the act is enjoyable and the consequence was unwanted doesn’t mean that the consequence is unjust.
@9: I’d disagree that leaving unopened bottles of water in a wildlife refuge isn’t littering. When my Scouts hike through a wilderness – or even simply a county forest preserve – I’d define leaving full water bottles around as precisely that. I strongly applaud the intent in this case, though. Yeah, illegal border crossers are committing a crime, but leaving something for them to drink is a simple act of compassion that none should condemn.
Reading the decision, though, I lose some sympathy for the defendant. Note that there was a procedure to obtain a permit to do this kind of thing and that another organization had in fact obtained such a permit and had left water (in this case in large drums) for just such a use. So, once again, the title is misleading. The DOJ is not criminalizing offering someone a drink of water. People breaking the law are in fact being offered a drink of water with no interference from the DOJ.
Now, in this case the nearest drum was 2 miles away so arguably there was a need for water in this particular location. But there was a process in place and an organization using it. If the defendant had either applied for his own permit or worked with the existing organization to put up some more water drums he would still have obtained his aim and would have not run afoul of the law.
In this case it seems the defendant may have gotten off because of a too-specific definition of what constitutes litter. That should change. My definition of litter is anything that does not occur in the location naturally. That includes full water bottles. Those full water bottles are going to become empty water bottles if they are used for their intended purpose and they’ll end up blowing all over the place and become litter under anyone’s definition (which I’ll bet is why the other organization’s approved method uses water drums). Again, I applaud the defendant’s intent but I think that he deserves to serve the community service hours. Work with people, don’t think you’re the only righteous person in the world and don’t put yourself above the law unless there’s no alternative. I hope that AG Holder continues to appeal this.
@12: This study addresses why people who are here legally came here, but it’s numbers regarding the motivations of legal immigrants cannot be presumed to apply to people here illegally as well. For example, it says:
Either this conflates legally resident people with illegal residents or it’s off the point. It is not at all clear whether “non-citizens” includes both resident and illegal aliens or simply refers to resident aliens. The study also cites data gathered about illegal aliens, but getting such data accurately is fraught with obvious potential for error. So I would caution that this study cannot be presumed to apply to people here illegally.
And finally – is there a translation for the lyrics for that video?
Thank you so much. I love these. These links are awesome for starting enormous arguments with my family on Facebook.
Actions have consequences, and the fact that the act is enjoyable and the consequence was unwanted doesn’t mean that the consequence is unjust.
True, actions have consequences….but there’s no legitimate reason why “the consequences” in this case shouldn’t also include the option of a safe, legal abortion.
Nothing insightful or interesting to add. But I did love the video. :)
I am way behind in the fatosphere posts, so thanks for pointing out Meowser’s post – I am glad to see her back!
I’m self-linking to a post I just wrote about being fat at a cuddle party .
Bill Maher apparently desperately wants to paint the members of both the Tea Party movement and the Republican Party as racist. In fact, he wants to hear them use the word “n****r”. But they refuse to cooperate (because that’s not what they’re thinking, of course, but that’s off-message), so he decides to make a couple of jumps and stuff it in their mouths, here.
Boy, he loves saying that word, doesn’t he? Gives it the air quotes and that little significant pop of his eyebrows.
Now, I’m not sure why he’s bringing the Tea Party movement in here and then citing Haley Barbour, John Bolton, Newt Gingrich, Tim Pawlenty, Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney in here. Sarah Palin is the only one I know of who’s had a measurable interaction with them. Hell, the Mitt Romneys ofthe GOP is one of the major reasons that the Tea Party movement came into being. They really aren’t too thrilled about the GOP establishment as a whole. Anybody who links that group in general and Newt Gingrich in particular with the Tea Party is kind of clueless about where the Tea Party came from and what fuels it. The relationship between Newt and the Tea Party is at best arms-length and at worst Newt – after all, once the Speaker of the House – is seen as part of the problem. I don’t know about the others, I haven’t checked, but linking them to the Tea Party doesn’t immediately come to mind.
It seems to me that accusing someone of using code words for “n****r” is a fairly serious charge. If you’re going to put that word in someone’s mouth you should present some actual evidence. This is the kind of thing that devalues talking about and doing something about actual racism. BTW, “Kenyan” isn’t a code word for that. Kenyan is a code word for “not a natural-born citizen and ineligible for the office of the Presidency”. Not a position I share, but it shows that Maher is more concerned about political expediency than knowing what’s going on and telling the truth.
She could have prevented getting pregnant but decided not to. She took a risk knowing the range of possible outcomes and that at least one of them was undesirable.
A classic anti-choice argument. The classic pro-choice response is to ask whether people who drive without seatbelts (or drunk, fatigued, talking on a cell phone, texting, etc) should be denied emergency care if they have an accident because they knew that there were several possible outcomes, one of them undesirable.
“It’s Not That Bad,” Except When It Is: on how we talk as if there’s a threshold beneath which oppressive behavior becomes harmless.
Actually, I thought that Maher’s speech about the way the Right keeps throwing around the word “Kenyan” since it’s no longer acceptable to say “nigger” was quite relevant.
I mean, if you’re not trying to say “he’s not white, and that’s bad”, then why keep bringing it up?
Because the word “Kenyan” is meant to reference his nationality, not his race. The issue to many is either his eligibility to hold office or his loyalty to American ideals.
Also, saying that the Right keeps using the word “Kenyan” is an overbroad misstatement. There really aren’t that many people who refer to any controversy over his nationality. It’s mainly about his policies.
That really does not make it any better. The whole point is to turn Obama into an “other”.
I fail to see why you’re so taken aback by Maher criticizing Gingrich, yet don’t seem to bat an eye at all with Gingrich doing the same against the President of the United States.
The whole point is to turn Obama into an “other”.
What does that mean?
I fail to see why you’re so taken aback by Maher criticizing Gingrich, yet don’t seem to bat an eye at all with Gingrich doing the same against the President of the United States.
My comments above center on Maher demonstrating he’s clueless by seeming to link the Tea Party Movement and Newt Gingrich and then claiming that
“Kenyan” is a code word for a racial epithet. So I don’t see either what either the accuracy or the relevancy of your comment is.
The tea party connection doesn’t seem to be there, true.
Gingrich is definitely race baiting, though. If he wasn’t, then why would he have even brought up Obama Sr.’s Kenyan nationality? If his objection to the President of the United States is just his policies and nothing else,why did he even bring up his ethnicity?
He brought up his nationality, not his ethnicity. Which *is* relevant to his theory (which I don’t agree with, btw) that Obama picked up Kenyan anti-colonialism, which is a well-established set of intellectual doctrines from their independence movement, from his father.
“Kenyan” is a nationality, not an ethnic designator. Modern Kenya has any number of different major and minor ethnic groups.
Childhood obesity seems strongly linked to a virus.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-20/children-exposed-to-virus-weigh-more-in-possible-obesity-link-study-finds.html
I just saw a shout out in Boing Boing for an ebook that’s being offered to raise money for Lupus Alliance of America – and lo, and behold, there’s a story by Rachel Swirsky, whom many here know as Mandolin.
Unicorn Pegasus Kitten
Go donate!