I have lost my watch. It’s somewhere within a foot or so of my desk, or perhaps on my desk. I can tell because it beeps once an hour. But I can’t find it. I’m torn between being annoyed and amused by the situation.
Anyway, some links:
Ink and Incapability: 18th Carnival of the Feminists!
Written World: The 1st Carnival of Feminist Fantasy & Science Fiction Fans!
Obsidian Wings: Anti-Illegal-Immigrant Policy Could Throw Over A Million Americans Off Medicaid
A strong example of why – bad as Democrats are – Republicans are either thoughtless or malicious when it comes to writing policy. And see also Respectful of Otters.
Education Sector: “Boy Crisis” in Schools Debunked
There’s no doubt that some groups of boys—particularly Hispanic and black boys and boys from low-income homes—are in real trouble. But the predominant issues for them are race and class, not gender. Closing racial and economic gaps would help poor and minority boys more than closing gender gaps, and focusing on gender gaps may distract attention from the bigger problems facing these youngsters.
BallastExiztance: Being autistic is not a disease and requires no cure
An impressive collection of quotes from a wide variety of autistic people.
Blac(k)ademic: Why Are We All So Hostile?
why, then, do we continue to blog? obviously, no one is really engaing in any valuable exchange. we are waist-deep in valid arguments, experiences, ideas and perspectives, but we don’t see that because we are to quick to point out how “stupid” that other woman was when she said (insert anything that you disagree with right here).
Women’s Space/The Margins: Female Soldiers Die of Dehydration Trying To Avoid Rape
UPDATE: I’m not sure I can stand by this item. See Ginmar’s questioning of it in comments.
Capitalism Bad, Tree Pretty: Raising Children Should Not Be Treated As A Hobby
Official Shrub.com: Maybe your time could be spent better elsewhere, but you do not speak for me.
Good rebuttal to the “why are you wasting your time on activism that isn’t my area of interest?” line of criticism.
LA Times: Our Brains Are Hard-Wired To Ignore Global Warming
The fact is that if climate change were caused by gay sex, or by the practice of eating kittens, millions of protesters would be massing in the streets. [Curtsy: Feministe.]
Real Men Are Not: On Black Male Compensation and White Over-Compensation
I’d particularly recommend reading the exchange between Lindsey and Luke in comments.
Reappropriate: The Voting Rights Act and English as The Official Language
…When the government tells its people that those who do not speak English are “less American”, they not only challenge our access to basic constitutional rights and civil liberties, but send us the message that despite their best efforts, they — us, our sisters, our brothers, our mothers, our fathers, our aunts and uncles and grandmothers and grandfathers — non-English speaking immigrant populations — are not welcome here.
Feminist Law Professors: The Real Toy Story (photos from factories abroad)
Nathan Newman: Ulysses Grant: Best. President. Ever.
If Grant is not more respected, it is because the fight for racial justice and Reconstruction that he oversaw has been so rawly defamed over our history to the point of almost being forgotten. (Curtsy: Mahablog).
Big Fat Blog: Town To Fat People: We Don’t Want Your Kind Shopping Here
The Colorblind Society: Chris Matthews Defends Segregation
Granny Gets A Vibrator: Black Immersion Month
This is an experiment for me. I’m not trying to be black, or become black or pretend like I’m black or any of that stuff. I’m just very curious to learn how looking at the world through this lens will affect me, my white thinking, and my white perspective.
Red State Feminist: Some Men’s Rights Activist Sickos Defend Murder and Attempted Murder
Girl Wonder: The Sexist Treatment DC Comics Gave the Death of the Female Robin
Lots of activists demand monuments, but this is the only one I’ve ever seen demand a monument be erected in a fictional space. But I found the essay quite persuasive, and I hope DC gives in to their demands.
Feminist Allies: Alpha Male Feminism
Photo Essay: Our Weight-Obsessed Culture
Curtsy: Big Fat Blog
True Confessions of an Hourly Bookseller: Feminist Critique of Y, The Last Man
Pretty much gets at all the reasons I stopped buying this comic book. Curtsy: Melinda Casino
BlackProf: Still Struggling For Our Inalienable Rights
Today, another class of political elites–incumbent politicians and various partisan officials–seek to govern without the people’s consent. They do so by manipulating an ever-changing matrix of election practices, such as district boundaries, antiquated voting machines, and barriers to voting. These practices determine who votes and how votes get counted.
Egotistical Whining: Racism FAQ
Vigilance: Cross Burned At Gay Man’s House In Tennessee
Spiegelman was right! Cats Who Look Like Hitler
Curtsy: Punk Ass Blog.
PLEASE NOTE: Moderation on “Alas” is sometimes heavy-handed. If you’d like to avoid that, you can leave a comment at the same post on Creative Destruction.
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I have lost my watch. It’s somewhere within a foot or so of my desk, or perhaps on my desk. I can tell because it beeps once an hour.
Yeah, I avoid setting my cell phone to vibrate, and I set my watch alarm for 3:30pm each day, just because I know I’m gonna lose them and I’m gonna need the noise signal to find them again. I hate to annoy my colleagues, but they haven’t complained yet.
(By the way, if you ever hear some guy’s watch go off at 3:30pm and he just kind of ignores it, walk up to him and say, “Aren’t you Nobody.Really?” I’ll be completely floored, or you’ll be completely embarrassed.)
“The Truth About Boys and Girls” was very disappointing. They attempt to frame the problem as “Boys aren’t worse off — they are getting better. Girls are just getting better faster.” But it’s really the relative comparisons that are important, since the boys and girls are sitting in the same classrooms.
Would you except, “There’s no problem with the wage gap — the poor are getting richer. The rich are just getting richer faster!” If not, you should accept that girls are just getting smarter faster.
More importantly, though, they identify that males and females enroll at the same rate at four year colleges, and state that the only problem is retaining boys (who graduate at a lesser rate). Completely missing is the open secret that colleges give men affirmative action to achieve gender equality — and that perhaps the male attrition rate is correlated to the fact that they are less qualified. (Also, that the over-abundance of girls at 2-year colleges noted in the article is a direct result of those marginal women getting bumped from four year colleges by less qualified men!)
Would you accept, “Look, black people are equal! There is no problem. Look! They are represented in proportion to their population at this school that has a strict racial quota!” If not, you shouldn’t accept it for a school that has a strict 50% male quota.
There’s a lot of problems with the female soldiers avoiding rape by dehydration. Everyone has bottles of water around them, and female soldiers have been known to try to keep piss bottles, too. Aside from which, there are latrines everywhere on VM. On other posts, not so much, but Karpinsky wasn’t on other posts.
We heard rumors of rapes committed during individual PT, which is the only time soldiers are allowed to leave their weapons behind. Every other moment of the day, you have at least one weapon with you, plus ammo.
Something stinks.
Karpinsky got demoted from general to colonel? Well, well, well, isn’t that interesting? I can’t recall a male general ever getting the same treatment.
I can’t recall a male general ever getting the same treatment.
John Maher, demoted from two-star to colonel (Army).
Thomas Fiscus, demoted from two-star to colonel (Air Force).
John Riggs, demoted from two-star to one-star (Army).
Richard Macke, demoted from a four-star Admiral to a two-star at retirement (Navy) – first four-star to be demoted since Kimmel got railroaded.
Richard Dunleavy, demoted from three-star Admiral to two-star at retirement (Navy).
Ralph Tindal, demoted from two-star Admiral to one-star (Navy).
That’s what a superficial Google search shows in the last decade or so. I imagine I’ve missed some.
The post at Fem. Law Profs made me want to throw out pretty much everything I own–starting with each and every one of my kid’s toys.
Seriously–how hard is it to “buy American” these days? It’s almost next to impossible.
Robert, how many of these cases were huge scandals?
I corresponded with David Hackworth myself before he died. Karpinsky, I have to say, is no favorite of mine.
Dunleavy was demoted as a result of the Tailhook scandal. You may remember it – biggest story of 1991. Dunleavy took the fall for pretty much the same reason as Karpinsky – “you were the top dog in the alley when the fight took place, so it’s your fault.”
Riggs was a minor scandal because it was felt he was pressured out of the service for criticizing top brass. Macke was a minor scandal because he said some gross things about a rape case in Okinawa. The others were all sex scandals.
Pretty much all demotions of flag rank officers are because of scandals.
Ah, yes, Tailhook—did they ever convict anybody of the crimes in that case? I seem to remember that one of the victims was driven out of the military. Funny about that.
“Are you really going to say that girls are comprable in the power equation to the rich, and boys to the poor? Really?”
Certainly not. I was just comparing the logical leap made in the article. The analogy need not match 100% to be instructive.
There was a good article in the NYT about gender imbalance in colleges.
It seemed to address all the main viewpoints, and included what is perhaps the dumbest explanation for affirmative-action-for-men at Dickinson College that I have ever heard:
“But it’s really the relative comparisons that are important, since the boys and girls are sitting in the same classrooms.”
It’s really the relative comparisons that can be problematic.
For another example, consider birthrates among married and unmarried women. When the rate drops in one group and plummets in another, it’s clearly going down in both groups…but it’s impossible for the % of babies born to married women and the % of babies born to unmarried women to both go down, because the sum of those two percentages is constant at 100%. Hence outcries of “unmarried women are breeding more!!!” when the birth rate among unmarried women goes down and the birth rate among married women goes down faster.