- Guess the Dictator or Sit-Com Character. I haven’t come up with one it can’t guess. It’s darn good at guessing Buffy characters, too.
- The Council on Contemporary Families argues that marriage is not a cure-all for poverty. They would rather focus on providing college educations and career prospects to single mothers. “Coontz and Folbre point out that college-educated single mothers who work full-time actually have poverty rates lower than the national average.” The full paper is worth reading as an antidote for a lot of the “marriage initiative” discussions going on nowadays.
- One of my favorite comic books, Finder, has a website which includes a few complete sample issues.
- New to my blogroll: Professor Kim’s News Notes. Genuinely excellent blog with a focus on ” race, class, religion, gender and sexuality in the news.” There are loads of excellent posts there, but this disturbing memory from election day, 1980, is especially striking.
- There is still a gender wage gap. Excellent post at Feministe, springing off of a New York Times article. (And hey, while I’m at it, I’ll plug my own series on the gender wage gap).
- Is the “Fat Epidemic” a statistical illusion? From the Times:
But Dr. Jeffrey Friedman, an obesity researcher at Rockefeller University, argues that contrary to popular opinion, national data do not show Americans growing uniformly fatter. Instead, he says, the statistics demonstrate clearly that while the very fat are getting fatter, thinner people have remained pretty much the same.[…]
But Dr. Friedman said he was outraged by the acceptance of what he sees as a hurtful myth, one that encourages people to believe that if you are fat, it is your fault.[…]
Dr. Friedman points to careful statistical analyses of the changes in Americans’ body weights from 1991 to today by Dr. Katherine Flegal of the National Center for Health Statistics. At the lower end of the weight distribution, nothing has changed, not even by a few pounds. As you move up the scale, a few additional pounds start to show up, but even at midrange, people today are just 6 or 7 pounds heavier than they were in 1991. Only with the massively obese, the very top of the distribution, is there a substantial increase in weight, about 25 to 30 pounds, Dr. Flegal reported.
- An article in the Washington Post about “Whiteness Studies.” Wish they’d had that at my college.
- Professor Kim discusses how gay-marriage bans will effect the marriage rights of intersexuals. In some cases, the results will be counterintuitive.
I like it. Trump and evil chimeric growth Musk look properly creepy and snake Vance is so perfect that I'll…
Professor Kim’s blog crashes my browser (galeon), or at least uses really excessive amounts of CPU. Can someone find the contact address from the page?
OT: Barry, did you realize that your blog isn’t pinging trackbacks and isn’t showing as updated on blogrolling?
FYI.
Lauren, I wasn’t aware of that, but it fits a pattern of ways that “Alas” is generally screwed up, code-wise. I think it has something to do with how it can be accessed both from “amptoons.poliblog.com” and from “www.amptoons.com.” I have absolutely no idea how to fix it, alas.
Also, I’m planning to switch to WordPress pretty soon, which really drives down my motivation to spend a lot of time trying to figure out MT issues. (I’m sure that WordPress will have its own issues that I can’t figure out, too!)
Dylan, Professor Kim’s email is professorkim2003@yahoo.com .
re: Dictators & Sit-com Characters
it is darn good! i thought i almost had it by choosing Kendra from Buffy, but then at the last moment it nailed it (staked it?)… actually it said that it knew all along but was just stringing me along, snarky bastard.
it got Lister from Red Dwarf too…
i need to go test it on dictators now. thank you ever so much for discovering a new way for me to waste time! ;)
re: Dictators & Sit-com Characters
I chose Dabney Coleman’s character from Buffalo Bill and it got it! Worse, it was the 67th time someone tried this one….
I’ve been playing with WordPress and am thinking of switching over. The OS code is nice and plug-ins are aplenty.
I stumped it with Maude, but I might have answered a question or two incorrectly.
Re “Whiteness Studies” – it’s interesting that the “white race” is the only one that tends to expand over time, as turn-of-the-last-century immigrants were considered “non-white” and considered to be “inferior races,” particularly Southern Europeans, Jews, and Slavs.
I’m wondering if the Hispanic category is a similar transitory category, although the fact that Hispanics continue to come into the United States in large numbers may prevent the powers that be from acknowledging that.
Either people aren’t nearly as predictible as I thought, or there’s several different entries for George W Bush (as a Dictator), since I was only the fourth person to pick him.
A cool thing about this site is that you can add people to it (I’m in there somewhere, but probably couldn’t find myself)
It wasn’t easy, but I won this time. You are player number 1824 to have chosen Vicki from Small Wonder. Vicki from Small Wonder was a tough one, but I’ve had a lot of practice. Thanks for giving me something to do. Please visit again soon.
I’ve got to get more obscure. I’ll let you know if I break it.
Ha! I broke it on my 3rd attempt. I did Jose Napoleon Duarte (former dictator of El Salvador) and it guessed Carlos Castillo Armas from Guatemala. Woo Hoo! Yay me!
Well, that was disappointingly anticlimactic. I got it on the first try. I tried Mr. Hall (Wallace Shawn from the movie and TV series Clueless), and it guessed Mr. Belding from Saved by the Bell.
I stumped it with Maude, but I might have answered a question or two incorrectly.
I think you may have, in fact, answered a question or two incorrectly — because it guessed Maude pretty quick for me (and there were several thousand people who thought of Maude before me). In fact, it even guessed Maude’s next door neighbor (played by the woman who played Blanche in Golden Girls)
Stumped it on the first try using Jeff from the British sitcom Coupling.
Re: Guess the Dictator or Television Sit-Com Character
Everyone should go check out what happens when you guess George W. Bush. It is absolutely hilarious. Unfortunately I was only the tenth person to have guessed him, so not many have yet shared the mirth.
I stumped Guess the Sit-Com Character! It thought I was David Blunkett from UK but I was Basil Fawlty from Fawlty Towers. I have no idea who David Blunkett is.
That made my day. I beat the computer. ;)
Damn, I did it again! I stumped Guess The Sit-Com Character with Father Dougal from Father Ted. It thought I was Tyres from Spaced, whatever the heck that is.
I’d better stop before the computer gets depressed.
David Blunkett is an MP. He used to be Minister for Education and Employment, and is now the Home secretary (In case you were wondering). Hardly a dictator or a sitcom character, though I’m sure some critics might describe the new school exam system as a farce.
Oh, and Spaced is yet another British sitcom.
it guessed drew carey for lbj. http://www.20q.net is a similar game. http://www.20q.com?
“jones has a BA in white studies from Rikers, and is a graduate student at Attica State” is a not uncommon usuage in certain cicles.
gender wage gap:
“dear applicant: based on your qualifications, we found two jobs for you. job B pays $7.20 per hour.
job B pays $10.00 per hour. Job B has 14 times the risk of death as job A. Please let us know by tommorow which job you prefer.”
i was suprised by amp’s data on gender differences in risk of death on the job. there may be other ways in which ‘equal pay for equal work’ isn’t really about equal work after all.
i would guess that more often than not, a job which seems equal will in practice involve more shitwork and less autonomy when held by a woman,
but there may be other ways besides risk of death
that men have hidden costs of employment.
i tend to prefer market solutions to the coercive power of the patriarchal state hierarchy, in resolving these concerns, but i’m just some anarchistic aardvark.
Keep in mind, AA, that although men are far more likely to be in highly-paid jobs, and men are far more likely to get killed on the job – very often we’re not talking about the SAME men.
For instance, I remember reading a NYT article about a plumber who got killed when the drainage tunnel he was digging collapsed on him. He was getting paid $10 an hour. In contrast, the plumbers who charge $40 an hour to come and fix your home toilet don’t seem likely to have life-threatening accidents on the job.
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Anthony
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