More stuff Amp has read this week

A lot of these links have been hanging around on my desktop long enough that I’ve forgotten where I got them from; my apologies to folks who deserve one of them “via” links but aren’t getting one here.

• Another excellent New York Times article about worker safety, this time pointing out that in California – where worker safety rules are actually enforced – the government has been successfully changing employer attitudes. California both has the most prosecutions of employers for violating worker safety, and the fewest worker deaths in the nation. Via Confined Space, of course, which provides an excellent summary if you don’t want to read the whole article.
• Is there anything more fun than a well-done Jack Chick comic parody?
• Katha Pollitt reviews the good news for feminists from 2003.
• Check out The Futuro House, a 1970s housing revolution that fizzled when the price of oil (and hence plastics) shot up. Curvey.
• Dwight at Wampum has been bowling strike after strike lately (MB doesn’t seem to be posting as much – I think she’s busy with that silly “real-life” thing lately). First of all, check out Dwight’s fascinating discussion of the Winnie the Pooh vs. Mickey Mouse lawsuit.
• Then, an excellent post by Dwight showing how The American Life League, a pro-life group, is pursuing policies that will actually increase the overall number of abortions in the U.S. For them, opposing what pro-choice groups want has actually become more important than reducing abortion.
• And then an interesting post about the fear of being sued, which has by now far outpaced the reality. Dwight also debunks many popular myths about ridiculous lawsuits (drawing significantly from this post by Kip).
• Victimizing the Victim at Expository Magazine tells the story of Kirstin Lobato, a young woman who has been railroaded by the courts and convicted of a murder she’s almost certainly innocent of. Why? She’s poor, she’s not “respectable” (i.e., she’s a stripper), she didn’t have great representation at trial, and the prosecutors were unethical enough to use jailhouse informants as witnesses against her.
• 10 Ads America Won’t See. Too bad; some of these ads are fabulous. (And a couple are just sexist, but no worse than what’s already commonplace in the USA). Via The Volokh Conspiracy.
• A bit of good news – “For the first time since tracking began 20 years ago, U.S. women outnumber men in higher paying, white collar managerial and professional occupations.” The article, however, overstates the case by claiming it’s the end of the glass ceiling. As I understand it, the glass ceiling refers to barriers to upper-management positions specifically, and in those positions men still dominate. Via Diotima.
• Also via Diotima, I thought this National Review editorial – about biotechnology and happiness – was pretty interesting.
  We can see that the hope we place in biotechnology is based, in part, on our present desperation. In some ways — despite the wonderful and undeniable benefits we enjoy because of our technological successes, we find ourselves less happy than ever because we understand ourselves more than ever before as merely individuals. Family ties are weaker than ever, and even friendship is becoming merely networking. The critics are right that even our religion is often becoming cloyingly therapeutic or rather narcissistic, and we sacrifice and even deliberate hardly at all as citizens. We are more than ever under the libertarian spell of thinking that freedom means designing our lives without the constraints of others. We are more than ever merely “consenting adults.” Biotechnology, by itself, is far from offering any true antidote to our unhappiness as individuals; its central promise, of course, is to make our designer fantasies real. Our technological pursuit of happiness is never a cure for our real desperation; it can never be a replacement for virtue.
• David Shaw reviews “the lowlights” of the press from 2003.
• Nathan Newman reports on a study finding racism in temp agencies.
  The study that sent specially trained pairs of black and white job applicants to temporary employment agencies in Los Angeles and San Francisco found a “significant preference” for white applicants over slightly higher qualified African Americans…

  The agencies favored white applicants by a ratio of 4-to-1 in Los Angeles and more than 2-to-1 in San Francisco.

• The Bush Tax is a must-read website from the Dean campaign. They’re suggesting – rightly, I think – that Democrats should be describing the costs of Bush’s fiscal incompetence as a tax that we’ll all be paying for decades to come.
• Did you know that medical schools commonly let students perform pelvic exams on sedated women without the patient’s consent? This disgusting practice has grown a little less common lately, due to some students objecting. Via Expository Magazine.
• This Rolling Stone article by Robert Kennedy provides a convenient one-stop summary of Bush’s attacks on the environment.
• Have you ever wanted to dress your infant and offend your parents at the same time? Try DiaperDevil. They usefully divide their clothing into three categories: “Less offensive, Offensive, & Too offensive.” Via xiombarg
• The Times has an article on the increasing number of women in prison. The Fifty Minute Hour suggests that the increase may be at least partly driven by the increased use of “conspiracy and accessory charges” to convict women whose boyfriends commit crimes.

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