Post what you want, when you want, with whom you want, want not what you want, want post want want post post post want. Self-promotion is cool.
- Easter island heads have bodies!?? | Thinkbox
- Argentina Passes Gender Rights Law
- Don’t Take Away My Oxycodone!
- Free Pussy Riot | The Nation
- Why Romney could be a transformational president. Be frightened. Be very frightened.
- High-resolution video of Earth
- Can We Be Friends? « Family Scholars “We” being people who disagree about gay rights. I’m participating in the comments, a bit.
- How Much More Do Comic Books Cost Today? | The Awl Turns out that comic book prices have been rising much higher than inflation. Interestingly, the large majority of comic books that are really good and worth reading, came after the collapse of the huge audience comics used to have.
- What A Witch Hunt Actually Is Saying that people who believe they’ve been raped should feel free to name their rapists… Not a witch hunt.
- Want to know if you’re on the no fly list? That’s classified. And trying to get off of it? No one can tell you how.
- “Finally, it needs to be said more often and more loudly that opposing the legalization of same sec marriage is, in fact, a form of intolerant religious bigotry.”
- “This Executive Order appears to be an attack on Americans’ 1st Amendment Rights and Yemenis’ rights to self-determination… apparently the 1st Amendment had an exception about Yemen in it that I missed.”
- “this illusion turns beautiful celebrities as ugly as a frog peeking through ice. Be sure to keep your eyes on the cross in the center!” It is really amazing.
- The Anti-Science Streak in Federal Marijuana Policy – Conor Friedersdorf – Health – The Atlantic
- Waking up now responds to Maggie Gallagher on SSM
- Support for Gay Marriage Rising in Every Demographic » Sociological Images
- Is Mitt Romney the Keynsian choice? The argument seems to be that Republicans are so destructive and so devoted to partisan politics above what’s good for the country, that the only way to prevent Republicans from blowing up the country to hurt Democrats is for Democrats to never be in power.
- Who Killed Men’s Hats? Think Of A Three Letter Word Beginning With ‘I’
- Did 9/11 lead movie villains to start imploding things instead of exploding them?
- Rep. McCarthy: Pushing 300K Children Off Lunch Program To Protect Military Spending Is Trimming The Fat
- I don’t know what HBO’s series, The Weight of the Nation*, is going to say, but if the previews are representative, you might want to use this handy “viewers’ guide” to conserving sanity points.
- I laughed aloud at this cartoon by Matt Bors:
Re #9:
What a witch hunt is in terms of popular culture, is some or all of these:
1) Accusations are rapidly adopted as true by the public, and the accused may suffer immediate harm and/or punishment;
2) Guilt is assigned by the accusation, and less so by the (inconvenient, slow-to-come-to-light) facts;
4) The accused functionally bears the obligation of proving innocence, rather than the reverse;
5) Denials are held against the accused;
6) Confessions are encouraged when a guilty finding appears “likely,” even if guilt is unclear (see #1 and #2;) and
7) even someone who is not convicted bears a longstanding social stigma.
Suggesting that it only bears application w/r/t to torture is simply ridiculous. The phrase has been used for a long time in the context I describe.
I agree with G&W here – or, more accurately, while I don’t think saying that people who believe they’ve been raped should feel free to name their rapists is, in and of itself, a witch hunt, I feel that the extremely narrow definition of a “witch hunt” given in #9 is an example of misleading linguistic pedantry.
That Easter Island thing is really freaking cool. And kind of “duh” now that I see it. I also can’t believe that this has been known for years and yet not known by most people. Also interesting to see how detailed the carving is when it’s not eroded by wind and rain. It makes you wonder what the faces looked like when they were new.
I love that cartoon like a much-loved thing covered in tiny bits of love fluff
held on with love glue.Except that last bit sounds kinda skeezy and naughty, so leave that bit out.
People who believe they have been raped should be free to name their rapist publicly. And people so accused should be free to sue their accuser for slander if their accuser can’t back their accusations up in court.
Here A group of female Democratic senators have apparently declared “war” on the “gender pay gap” and have sponsored the Paycheck Fairness Act. In a recent press conference five of them – Barbara Mikulski (D., Md.), Patty Murray (D., Wash.), Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich.), Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) and Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.) – are calling for Congress to act on it when it returns from vacation.
Interestingly, three of those Senators, Boxer, Murray and Feinstein, pay their female staff members significantly less than male staffers. The gaps in their offices are 7.3%, 41% and 35.2% respectively, the latter two being well above the 23% that they claim exists nationwide and that has sparked their actions.
No, I haven’t read the Paycheck Fairness Act, so I can’t comment on it’s provisions – other than to offer to bet here and now, unseen, that it’s got a provision exempting Congress from being subject to it. But what I’m wondering is what arguments these folks can use to defend themselves that can’t be used by the opponents of this act?
O.K. So, somehow I didn’t close the link in the above comment correctly. But the system now tells me I don’t have the right to edit it. Sorry about that.
I am seriously awed by the Easter Island picture and article. Just … oh. thanks so much for posting that.
The bit about non-white babies outnumbering white babies in the U.S. turns out to be a function of how you count Hispanics. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, “Hispanic” is ethnicity but not race. About half of all Hispanics identify themselves as white so white babies still outnumber all others combined. See here.
And that doesn’t even account for the Zimmerman one-drop rule, wherein if you have any white ancestry you’re white despite how many Hispanic or black ancestors you have.
Well, that’s a relief.
You mean it turns out that race is a social construct dependent on definition according to human foibles, arbitrary and capricious, with no scientific, evidence-based foundation? (Because among some peoples and times, the one-drop rule went the other way.)
I’m shocked. Shocked!
Grace
And now for something completely different: Dolls.
In fact, dolls of movie characters that a gentleman purchases from the factory and then repaints the facial features in such a fashion that in a couple of cases you might think you’re looking at a picture of the live actor/actress. Remarkable work.
(Because among some peoples and times, the one-drop rule went the other way.)
Indeed. Foolish, isn’t it?
I did want to make one note about Hispanic/Latino racial identity. I can speak best to Mexican ideas around race, but given that a substantial majority of Latinos in this country are of Mexican descent, I think it has some relevance.
First, let me just say that Hispanic/Latino is not a race but an ethnicity. The census is correct in that. Latinos can be of any race or any combination of races. But the census, after allowing people to identify as Latino or Hispanic, asks them to pick a race. And the choices then are white, black, Asian, Native American.
The vast majority of Latinos are some mixture of white and indigenous Americans and/or black – depending on the country of origin. In many countries in Latin America, being black or Indian is 1) heavily stigmatized and 2) an identity limited to a much smaller subset than in the United States. In Latin American countries with significant African-descended populations, only very dark-skinned people are considered “black.” Most people who are considered “black” in the U.S. would not be considered “black” in the Dominican or in Brazil. In Mexico and Central America, only people who speak an indigenous language as their first language are considered Indian. Most people who phenotypically speaking have significant Indian ancestry are not “Indian.”
For most of the last century, Mexican racial identity has centered around the concept of “La Raza Cosmica” – the Cosmic Race – the idea that Mexicans in particular and Latinos in general are the result of a blending of all the world’s peoples into one people. Columbus Day is recognized in Mexico as Dia de la Raza – Day of the (Cosmic) Race, the day of encounter between Europeans and indigenous Americans that began the process of mestizaje – mixing – that created La Raza Cosmica. Some Mexicans are very fair – lighter than I am – and there is definite colorism in Mexico – but I have never experienced that light-skinned Mexicans identified themselves – in Mexico – as white. They’re just Mexican.
But then people immigrate to the United States, where our categories are white, black, Native American and Asian. What should they put? They’re not “black.” They’re not “native.” They’re not “Asian.” So they put white.
Some of the Hispanic/Latino people who mark white on the census look like what most Americans think “white” people look like and function socially as white people. But many of them do not.
So … yes … it’s all a social construct and I don’t lose sleep over whether white people remain a majority or not in this country. However, when that story first came out, I predicted that in a few more generations, we would start considering Hispanics and Asians “white,” the same way we started considering Italians and Jews and Irish “white.” However much we need to expand whiteness to stay a “white” country, we’ll do it, just so long as someone has to be not-white. But maybe I underestimated. Maybe it will not even take a generation. I wonder … if you mark yourself as “white” on the census, is your brown-skinned baby no longer an anchor baby?
HOLY CRAP! Has an Open Thread gone this long without a reference to the Boy Scout’s policy on homosexuality?
Oh, wait — I see a reference just now. Ok, never mind. Whew.
Chingona, that’s pretty interesting stuff. Thanks!
The mix of origins that all get called “Hispanic”, and how people tend to lump them together despite very real differences between, say, Mexicans and Puerto Ricans minds me of the situation here in Chicago among the various European ethnic types. All people who are essentially 100% European ancestry are considered white, racially. But there are very definite ethnic differences between Germans and Poles, and between Poles, Lithuanians, Czechs, Slovaks, etc., etc. – not to mention the Irish! Heck, even amongst themselves the Poles differentiate between Lowlanders and Highlanders. Lump them together and you’ll end up insulting someone, or being viewed as ignorant.
People in the U.S. tend to lump Jews together into a single ethnic group, too. But Jews identify a large number of Jewish ethnicities or sub-ethnicities or whatever they should be called. And have the insults and stereotypes to go along with them.
Well, meanwhile Wisconsin Governor Walker is being subjected to a recall today. Reputedly 1,000,000 signatures were collected to have him recalled. About 640,000 people actually voted for one of his opponents in the recall primary – and Gov. Walker outpolled them all combined in the GOP primary. No non-partisan sources predict a win by Milwaukee Mayor Barrett (his opponent), although a few call it close. Gov. Walker’s actions regarding public worker unions is what moved the organization of the recall, but Mayor Barrett ran away from the issue during his campaign. Walker’s actions in getting a law passed that restricts collective bargaining privileges for public workers inspired a lot of protestors in Madison. Madison is the Wisconsin State capital and home of the University of Wisconsin, one of the more left-wing campuses in the country. The left-wing bent of the faculty and students of the school and hangers-on has led Madison to be described as “Fifty square miles surrounded by reality.”
But what has really whacked the public worker unions has been a much less-publicized feature of the law. The State no longer automatically collects union dues from public workers’ paychecks. If the union wants to collect dues, the union has to bill the worker directly or get them to sign a document giving the State permission to deduct union dues from their pay. The various public worker unions have seen dues payments plummet to 1/2 or even less of what it had been before. The teachers’ union had to lay off 40% of their staff.
Another feature of the law was that the unions could no longer require school districts and other such bodies to buy health insurance through the union. Unexpectedly (as the New York Times likes to say about economic news that indicates that Obama’s economic policies are not working quite as he had hoped), once that happened the union’s health insurance organization dropped their premiums by substantial amounts, saving school districts across the State $100,000’s or more each. Several school districts have cited this as having saved teachers’ jobs or even as having enabled them to hire more teachers.
There’s been a lot of speculation as to why Pres. Obama hasn’t campaigned for Barrett. Most of it centers on a guess that he figures Barrett is going to lose and doesn’t want to be associated with it or take the blame – but, again, that’s speculation. Barrett hasn’t distinguished himself in the debates. The Democrats have already tried to spin this as being a victory for unfettered campaign spending by corporate interests (although unions nationwide funneled a comparable amount of money in for Barrett); the GOP is trying to spin it as a referendum on Obama. Either way, I do think it’s fair to say that it’s a very significant political event. If Walker wins I think you’ll see a lot more Governors and Mayors take a second look at how to save money and restrict the influence and costs of public worker unions.
On the Hispanic identity thing — I had a friend in high school whose ancestors were Polish Jews. In the late thirties, they got on the first boat they could heading anywhere but Europe, which turned out to be Colombia. So my friend was raised in Colombia until her family moved to the US when she was in fourth grade. Her parents had lived in Colombia their entire lives until then. Her grandparents had lived in Colombia since they were young adults. Her first language was Spanish, and she identified as Colombian. She was also really, really light. Pale skin, white-blonde hair, blue eyes. When she was taking the SATs and applying to colleges, in the section for race, the white option was “white, non-Hispanic.” She refused to fill in that option, since she did consider herself Hispanic, as someone whose first language was Spanish and who grew up in Colombia. She would have been OK with just “white,” but not “white, non-Hispanic.” So she marked “Hispanic,” which got her sorted into the “non-white” group.
My neighbor has a similar situation, though she’s one more generation removed from it. Her mother’s family landed in Uruguay. Her mother grew up Uruguayan, then came to the U.S. as an adult, met my friend’s father, also Ashkenazi Jewish. Perhaps because she is only “half” Uruguayan, she has never felt comfortable claiming Hispanic identity, but many of her cousins and friends she grew up with did. But their origin and appearance was the same as American Ashkenazi Jews. I don’t think either one is wrong, but it is not a simple matter.
O.K. How is this blog not noting the passing of Grand Master Bradbury? WTF is the matter with you people?
I am minded of the hours I spent sitting in the library reading room in my old home town reading Bradbury – hard cover novels, beat up paperbacks, stories in Analog and F&SF. And then there were the scripts he wrote for The Twilight Zone. I would always watch the credits to see who wrote those stories. His stuff was the real thing.
The Arabist is bleakly funny.
STOP THE PRESSES.
David Blankenhorn is now in favor of gay marriage.
And I had to go back a full month to find an open thread! What, are you finishing a book or something? We have needs!
Good for him. Even though he holds opinions on what marriage is, what it is for and how it is best utilized that I find wrong-headed, at least he – at long last – realized that he could no longer deny the raison d’etre of the anti-SSM crowd. Once he’s acknowledged that truth, he is a decent enough human being to see how odious that is and disassociate himself from the movement.
I’ll continue to oppose Blankenhorn’s assertion that marriage is about children, that it’s necessarily better to marry than “merely” cohabitate, etc. But I congratulate the man on doing the right thing even though it runs counter to his beliefs on the issue.
I agree. I winched through most of his op-ed. But I think there is something decent about acknowledging that the way things are going and saying that supporting gay marriage will do more to strengthen marriage and protect children than opposing it. I also think there is something decent in acknowledging that something very dark motivates most of your fellow travelers.
This is me with my mouth actually hanging open.
Here I thought chingona’s first report was a sarcastic one. But no.
This is not actually that far off from the direction in which my national professional organization (AAMFT) took its first baby steps toward supporting SSM about six years ago. Their “task force on families” had come back unequivocally saying “The literature supports gay parenting, gay parenting is a good thing, we should support gay parents and gay marriages” but the org wasn’t ready to quite go that far, so they hedged with a statement that sort of boiled down to “well if we support families, these families are going to exist no matter what, so there doesn’t seem to be any reason why we shouldn’t oppose measures meant to discriminate against them, and it seems like they benefit from actual recognition and support so there’s no real reason we should stand in the way of legislation that would help them out…”
The pace of change has accelerated since then, to the dismay of the religiously-oriented training programs and members, but as infuriating as the initial wishy-washy support was to the LGBTQ and ally members, it was a useful way of kind of backing the dinosaur into the 21st century.
German Court rules that circumcision is bodily harm. No religious exemptions.
“Because we figure, fuck the Jews. They’ve been whining for 65 years now. Time to get on with getting everything to be the way we Germans like it.”
Well, well, well. The ACA was upheld by the Supreme Court. But not using the Commerce Clause. And not using the Necessary and Proper Clause, either. It’s a tax, which the Congress can do. Of course President Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Sen. Reid swore up and down, repeatedly, that it was not a tax. And President Obama swore that he wouldn’t raise taxes on people earning less than $250,000/year. So I’m sure that they’ll immediately move to repeal it.
Expect to see Obama get hammered with this during the campaign.
I suspect RonF is right: The opposite conclusion may have helped the election of Democrats. But honestly, I suspect the economy will swamp all other concerns. For most people, ObamaCare will become simply one more rationale people cite to justify their vote — but it won’t actually alter their vote.
Moreover, even if Obama’s second term has been sacrificed to promote the welfare of the nation, what better cause? The Democrats realized that passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act would trigger electoral losses in the South — but pulled the levers anyway. Those pieces of legislation have endured and transformed the nation, and are a credit to all who had a hand in their adoption. I know it’s quaint to say so, but elections aren’t everything.
NORTHERN Democrats pulled the levers. Southern Democrats voted against CRA-1964 and VRA overwhelmingly.
Leaving the electoral speculation – I agree that it’s an Obama-killer, but who knows – the ruling has some pretty important impact on the limited-government movement.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/what-did-scotus-just-do_647932.html
I found this article to be interesting.
Daniel Russell is teaching a class– six 50 minute videos which will be available for 2 weeks. I’m not sure whether the videos will continue to be available after that, but the class is set up to make it easy to have contact with other students for those two weeks.
The classes will be released daily starting on July 10.
Some tips
Registration is open from June 26, 2012 till July 16, 2012.
I found out about it at Less Wrong.