{"id":12123,"date":"2011-01-16T14:01:21","date_gmt":"2011-01-16T21:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theangryblackwoman.com\/?p=1663"},"modified":"2011-01-16T14:01:21","modified_gmt":"2011-01-16T21:01:21","slug":"links-for-the-new-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=12123","title":{"rendered":"Links for the New Year"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"links-for-the-new-year\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Hey you all! Hope those who celebrated holidays in the last few months enjoyed it, and those who didn’t had some good days!<\/p>\n

Lots of stuff has been going on in the world, I see. Lets have a closer look, shall we?<\/p>\n

Al Jazeera English has the most complete coverage on the Uprising in Tunisia that I have seen<\/a> Go thou and learn. And in case you have no idea where and what Tunisia is…Wikipedia<\/a> is a good starting resource.<\/p>\n

Another Food Price Shock is in the pipeline:<\/p>\n

Latest Food Crisis Brewing for Months<\/a><\/p>\n

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UNITED NATIONS, Jan 10, 2011 (IPS) – The United Nations, which is trying to reach out to nearly a billion undernourished people, some living in perpetual hunger, is anticipating another food crisis later this year.<\/p>\n

And the signs of impending trouble have been there for some time.<\/p>\n

The Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warned last week that world market prices for rice, wheat, sugar, barley and meat will remain high or register significant rises in 2011 – perhaps replicating the crisis of 2007-2008. MORE<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And its not always a matter of producing food. Its a matter of distribution.<\/p>\n

Worldwatch report highlights how lopsided discussion is about Africa, food, and biotechnology<\/a><\/p>\n

Via jhameia we have The Pursuit of Harpyness ruminating on: The Pressure of being expected to know: Reflections on sexual fluidity<\/a><\/p>\n

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The thing is \u2013 as a culture, we\u2019re suspicious of people whose sexual attractions and identities appear to change over time, crossing gender boundaries or causing them to adopt new language to speak about themselves. There is pressure to interpret the past in light of the present \u2014 and with a strong heteronormative bent \u2014 so that women who have been in same-sex relationships but are currently partnered with men often experience the loss of lesbian fellowship and find that their families and friends are eager to understand their previous partnerships as a \u201cphase\u201d or \u201cexperimentation\u201d that they have since \u201cgotten over.\u201d<\/p>\n

Women who shift from straight relationships to same-sex relationships, conversely, are often expected to interpret that shift as a \u201ccoming out\u201d experience in which they discover, acknowledge, or embrace an aspect of their sexual identity (or a more authentic identity) that has previously been kept a hidden, shameful and secret. This has, indeed, often been the case, historically, and continues to be today as people wrestle with internalized homophobia and social contexts in which being openly non-straight is hazardous to one\u2019s health.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

The problem is not with what actually happens in women\u2019s lives. Rather, the problem lies in how those experiences get explained through the lens of our understanding about how human sexuality works: i.e., that who we are attracted to (particularly the gender of the people whom we desire) is not only fixed but knowable. And that it fits within the context of the gender binary: one is either attracted to \u201cmen\u201d to \u201cwomen\u201d or to both women and men. And from the time you are aware of your sexual yearnings, you know which category you now and forever fit into.MORE<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Abortion & Sons Of Anarchy<\/a><\/p>\n

Reflecting On MTVs ‘No Easy Decision’<\/A><\/p>\n

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This one is was posted in the middle of last year but I only recently stumbled on it.Tour Diary Day Four: Rock and Roll is Dead<\/a> by Amy, who is: 1. guitarist and violinist of rock band Titus Andronicus.<\/a> .2. singing her own psych-folk songs under the name Solanin.<\/a> 3. in a two-girl noisy rock band called hilly eye<\/a> with my friend Catherine. 4. blogs<\/a> about all this and more.<\/p>\n

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Inside the truck stop, it smells like old hot dogs and gasoline. The guys browse the contents of the tiny magazine rack, which seems to be mostly made up of porn. I see them poring over the cover of a magazine with a naked woman on it, and look away, instinctively feeling that this is not my scene.<\/strong> However, my curiosity gets the better of me, and I walk closer to see what\u2019s going on. My suspicions are confirmed: There\u2019s a naked woman on the cover. But it turns out that I\u2019m wrong in assuming the guys are looking at porn, <\/strong>because the magazine is Rolling Stone.<\/strong>
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\nAfter the guys have gone back to the van, I peruse the pages of the latest edition. I see a lot of photos of guys playing guitars, and ads for guys who play guitar featuring other guys playing guitars, and a photo of Lady Gaga wearing pasties and not much else<\/strong>. I begin to feel increasingly alienated by this magazine. Once again, I\u2019ve got a suspicion that\u2019s rooted in the back of my mind\u2014that the issue will not contain a single image of a woman holding an instrument of any kind.<\/strong> Perversely, I want to see if I\u2019m correct. The sensation of knowing what I will find is already sad. It\u2019s like discovering a letter in which the guy you\u2019re crushing on declares his love for some other woman, and still, inevitably, reading the whole thing down to the last painful line.<\/p>\n

Of course, Rolling Stone contains only one image of a \u201ctoken\u201d woman holding an instrument. It\u2019s Taylor Swift, dressed in a diamond studded ball gown, holding a matching silver diamond acoustic guitar. Good for her!<\/strong> As America\u2019s large-scale concert industry pretty much collapses around her feet, she\u2019s single-handedly (okay, alongside Justin Bieber) holding down the fort. Other than Taylor, the closest thing I can find to a woman with an instrument in Rolling Stone is a tiny photo of Cat Power holding a microphone at Lilith Fair, the image wedged into a short write-up way at the bottom of the page. There is also a photo of two women in their late thirties or forties called the Wilson Sisters, one of whom is holding something that looks like the neck of a guitar down below her waist. The guitar itself has been cut out of the photo. <\/strong>Besides them, and Lady Gaga, and the naked, airbrushed star of True Blood on the cover, who incidentally, is pictured with a guy grabbing her boob, I can\u2019t find any other women in the whole magazine.<\/em> This means that Taylor Swift, Cat Power, and the Wilson Sisters are not only the only women that Rolling Stone depicts as musicians, but also the only women that Rolling Stone depicts as wearing clothes<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/span>.MORE<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Report: People in South TX and and Central LA are really really stoopid<\/a><\/p>\n

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Portfolio <\/em>released a report in early December that ranked the\u00a0\u201cleast brainy\u201d cities in America<\/a>. The cities are listed below; I added some demographics information because\u00a0Portfolio <\/em>conveniently left it out.<\/p>\n

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  1. Merced, CA [26.4% Latin@,\u00a012.4% Asian (mostly Hmong)<\/a>]<\/li>\n
  2. McAllen-Edinburg, TX \u00a0[88% Latin@<\/a>]<\/li>\n
  3. Brownsville, TX [91% Latin@<\/a>]<\/li>\n
  4. Visalia, CA [40.6% Latin@<\/a>]<\/li>\n
  5. Bakersfield, CA [32.5% Latin@, 9.2% Black<\/a>]<\/li>\n
  6. Yakima, WA [33.7% Latin@, 21.97% “other races”<\/a>]<\/li>\n
  7. Laredo, TX [94.9% Latin@<\/a>]<\/li>\n
  8. Hickory, NC \u00a0[14.09% Black, 7.69% Latin@<\/a>]<\/li>\n
  9. Fort Smith, AR [at least 10% Latin@, 8.65% Black<\/a>]<\/li>\n
  10. Modesto, CA [50.8% Latin@<\/a>]<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Well well well\u2026ain\u2019t that a brown list?<\/p>\n

    ….<\/p>\n

    According to\u00a0Portfolio<\/em>,\u00a0this is the criteria<\/a> they used to determine where all the dummies are:<\/p>\n