More stuff Amp has been reading

• For those who enjoy logical debate, Radgeek has an genuinely excellent post arguing against the “Roe v. Wade is judicial tyranny” school of thought.
• I’ve read so many stories about unethical prosecutors, and they virtually never seem to face any penalties at all. Via Talkleft, here’s an exception – the Arizona Supreme Court disbarred a prosecutor for lying in a death-penalty case.
• From Tim Wise’s blog archive, a good post considering the question of white boy riots.
  I just spoke at Minnesota State University–Mankato, where a few months ago there was a riot by white students. Not because of anything serious like police brutality, or other forms of oppression–ya know the kind of things that occasionally spark riots in communities of color. Nope, the white folks rioted for the reason white college students always seem to riot, and have done so over thirty times in the past seven years or so: namely because of the outcome of a ball game, or in the case of Mankato, merely the celebration of Homecoming.

  When the African American editor of the school paper (the first ever) noted in a column how such a riot was laden with white privilege (after all, only white folks at Mankato or anywhere else could possibly think they could riot and not all go to jail or even be shot by cops), he was called a racist and threatened by students who resented his pointing out the obvious.

• Good, short article in Time on the ridiculous stem cell controversy.
• Soylent Green Sauce is made of people! Well, made from people’s hair, anyway. If you’re in China, look out for soy sauce marked “blended” on the label. Via Copeland in the Body and Soul comments.
• Jessica at Feministing has a good point about how the big-pro-choice orgs talk about young women: “…Young women have more to offer than just their vote. Naturally it’s important to mobilize young women around voting, but when the only time we get attention is election time, there’s a problem.”
• World O’Crap fisks an ad for a men’s rights book on avoiding paying child support. She (he?) doesn’t get every tiny detail right (check the comments for Trish Wilson’s factual corrections), but the post is still wonderfully nasty fun to read. Via Trish Wilson, naturally.
• Hey, speaking of nasty fun, I have to admit that I’ve been enjoying Superstar USA far too much (we only watch it on tape, so we can skip over all the filler), and I’ll probably go to hell for it. Regarding last night’s episode, I’ll miss Nina-Diva’s “I am the world” attitude, but she sung that last song too well to keep her on. I’m betting on Rosa to win, if her dancing is even a tenth as bad as her singing.
• Remaining in the “nasty fun” category, Wonkette takes on a cultural conservative critic. It made me giggle, anyway.
• Respectful of Otters takes on eugenics – and also criticizes how mainstream media outlets tend to cover the issue.
  It concerns me that people may come away from the Slate series, and other modern discussions of eugenics, with the impression that eugenicists correctly identified a problem to which the solution was morally unacceptable. In fact, the eugenicists incorrectly identified a problem, to which they proposed morally unacceptable solutions. The difference is considerable.
• Amanda at Mouse Words and Oliver at Liquid List are both annoyed that Ralph Nader’s supporters are seeking ballot signatures from Republican voters. I’m not a Nader supporter nowadays, but I don’t get this issue; if Nader supporters honestly believe that they’ll do the most good from getting Nader on the ballot, then why not get the signatures from whomever they can?
• Check out this fascinating New York Magazine essay by a woman who was falsely accused by the press of having an affair with John Kerry. She describes vividly what it’s like being at the heart of a yellow-press storm, and also confronts some of the reporters who smeared her. Via The Corner.
• The Well-Timed Period has a “just the fact’s Ma’am” post regarding how many abortions take place in the US. In 2000, according to Ema, there were 1,048 third-trimester abortions, out of 1.31 million total abortions.
• Via Now What?, The New York Times reviews the evidence on abstinence-only education and finds that it doesn’t work very well.
  One national study, published in 2001 in The American Journal of Sociology, found that while some teenagers who promised to remain abstinent until marriage delayed sexual activity by an average of 18 months, they were more likely to have unprotected sex when they broke their pledge than those who had never pledged virginity in the first place.

  And Columbia University researchers reported in March that in a national study of teenagers who pledged not to have sex before marriage, a majority did not live up to their vows. The adolescents also developed sexually transmitted diseases at about the same rate as teenagers who had not made virginity pledges.

• The Washington Post has a story on the mounting evidence that fingerprints may not be reliable, after all. Via Balkinization.
• Weird suicide attempts department: 14 year old boy poses as spy on the internet and recruits his own murderer, another young boy. There’s something seriously wrong with this lad, clearly, but you have to admire his initiative. Via Electric Venom.

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