{"id":579,"date":"2004-01-30T13:51:16","date_gmt":"2004-01-30T21:51:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/01\/30\/some-links-amp-has-read-lately\/"},"modified":"2004-01-30T13:51:16","modified_gmt":"2004-01-30T21:51:16","slug":"some-links-amp-has-read-lately-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=579","title":{"rendered":"Some links Amp has read lately"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Lots of great stuff on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.msmagazine.com\/blog\/default.asp\">Ms. Musings <\/a>(so what else is new?). <a href=\"http:\/\/www.msmagazine.com\/blog\/recommended.asp?id=567\">Start with this post<\/a>, collecting many good quotes and links about the politics of first ladies. There&#8217;s even <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tnr.com\/doc.mhtml?i=fisking&#038;s=sullivan012704\">a good piece from Andrew Sullivan<\/a>, of all people.\n<li>Also on Ms. Musings, Sepp Blatter (what a name!) has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.msmagazine.com\/blog\/recommended.asp?id=563\">recieved much well-deserved derision<\/a> for his suggestion that professional women soccer players try to increase their league&#8217;s popularity by wearing skimpier uniforms. The sad thing is, this idiot is actually the president of the international soccer federation.\n<li>And again via Ms.Musings, three new (to me) blogs that seem interesting. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.veronicas.org\/choiceblog\/\">Bloggers for Choice<\/a> is pretty much what it sounds like. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rebeldad.com\/\">Rebel Dad<\/a> is a blog by, and focusing on, stay-at-home fathers. And <a href=\"http:\/\/respectfulofotters.blogspot.com\/\">Respectful of Otters<\/a> is a very well-reasoned political blog about &#8220;politics, HIV, health care, psychology, baseball, feminism, et cetera.&#8221;\n<li>In the <i>Village Voice<\/i>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.villagevoice.com\/issues\/0404\/goldstein.php\">Richard Goldstein discusses the election<\/a>, Kerry&#8217;s cultivation of macho, and why people made such a big deal of Dean&#8217;s &#8220;scream&#8221; (which to me, watching the clip, seemed like nothing at all).\n<div class=\"snip\">Why was Dean&#8217;s performance so unsettling? The most common explanation&#8217;that it wasn&#8217;t presidential&#8217;doesn&#8217;t get at the gut-level distress even many of his supporters felt. No self-deprecating shtick can overcome this blunder. Dean still has the fans and the funds to be a player, but no matter how well he does in New Hampshire, he&#8217;ll be haunted by that manic moment for the rest of his political life.<\/p>\n<p>Dubya couldn&#8217;t remember the names of foreign leaders, but that didn&#8217;t ground him. No one ever lost macho points for being stupid. Male hysteria is another story. Most women recoil from it, and most men show contempt, which is why late-night comics (all of them guys) rushed to piss on Dean. In a more relaxed time, his performance might have been regarded as passionate and roguish. But in this anxious age, it tapped into one of the worst nightmares for many men: losing your grip in a clinch. For a wannabe dude-in-chief, that&#8217;s not just a sign of instability; it&#8217;s a violation of gender expectations.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mahablog.com\/2004.01.25_arch.html#1075287495259\">The Mahablog<\/a>.<\/p>\n<li>While I&#8217;m quoting Goldstein, this article on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.villagevoice.com\/issues\/0350\/goldstein.php\">male opposition to gay marriage <\/a>is good. (According to polls, men are more against gay marriage than women &#8211; even though women are more likely to be religious than men.)\n<div class=\"snip\">Submissive women and downcast gays were once living proof of straight-male supremacy. Now, both groups refuse to accept subordination, and it&#8217;s macho that stands to be stigmatized. Straight men still hold the lion&#8217;s share of wealth and power, but their prestige has definitely eroded. No wonder they have such strong feelings about gay marriage. It&#8217;s not a question of faith or preservation of the family. The real issue here is the &#8220;acceptance&#8221; of homosexuals, which, for many straight guys, represents yet another blow to their already fragile status.<\/div>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.com\/2004_01_01_echidneofthesnakes_archive.html#107532906053288413\">Echidne <\/a>is all over a <i>Washington Post <\/i>editorial praising the jobless recovery. (Gotta love that liberal media!)\n<li>Quote of the day, from my housemate Phil.\n<div class=\"snip\">You know the best part of owning a bubble machine? Setting it up in some not-too-visible place in the living room and then not turning it on until everyone is doing acid. Then, everyone would be like, &#8220;Where are all these bubbles coming from? They can&#8217;t be coming from the sky, we have a ceiling.&#8221; You know what would be even better than a bubble machine? A lizard machine.<\/div>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2004\/US\/Central\/01\/29\/sex.allegations.ap\/index.html\">Colorado University is using sex parties to recruit athletes<\/a>. &#8220;They told us, you know, &#8216;This is what you get when you come to Colorado.&#8221; There have been at least two complaints of rape, but the University is going to continue the practice because they don&#8217;t want to lose their recruiting edge, according to a local DA. Via <a href=\"http:\/\/betweenthelakes.blogspot.com\/2004_01_01_betweenthelakes_archive.html#107540465715792379\">Frogblog<\/a>.\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.crescatsententia.org\/archives\/week_2004_01_25.html#002967\">Matthew Yglesias <\/a>at (oddly enough) Crescat Sententia and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.andrewsullivan.com\/index.php?dish_inc=archives\/2004_01_25_dish_archive.html#107526329968381529\">Andrew Sullivan<\/a> at (not so oddly) AndrewSullivan.com attack <a href=\"http:\/\/www.weeklystandard.com\/Content\/Public\/Articles\/000\/000\/003\/660zypwj.asp\">the latest anti-gay-marriage meme<\/a>: that same-sex marriage has somehow caused a decline in straight marriage in Scandinavian countries. One big problem with this theory: They don&#8217;t <i>have<\/i> same-sex marriage in those countries. Whoops!\n<p>Update: <a href=\"http:\/\/gabrielrosenberg.typepad.com\/galois\/2004\/01\/kurtz_on_marria.html\">Gabriel Rosenberg <\/a>has written an excellent response, too.<\/p>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/coldfury.com\/reason\/comments.php?id=P1469_0_1_0\">Arthur Silber <\/a>correctly points out that the decision to invade Iraq &#8211; and to spin intelligence to make Saddam sound as dangerous as possible &#8211; were both policy decisions, and shouldn&#8217;t be fobbed off on &#8220;bad intelligence.&#8221; as he points out, the Clintonites had the exact same &#8220;bad intelligence&#8221; Bush did, yet they didn&#8217;t decide to invade Iraq.\n<li>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wtev.com\/news\/state\/story.aspx?content_id=E869E80A-99FE-44A9-B32C-01A03281127A\">news from hell on earth <\/a>&#8211; pardon me, I mean Florida:\n<div class=\"snip\">Prosecutors in Seminole County say they might ask a veteran judge to be removed from a rape case because of comments the judge made about the victim.<\/p>\n<p>Court records indicate Circuit Judge Gene Stephenson made the comment earlier this week while looking at a photograph of the victim. The record quotes the judge as saying, &#8220;Why would he want to rape her? She doesn&#8217;t look like a day at the beach.&#8221;<\/p><\/div>\n<p>They might ask him to be removed? <i>Might?<\/i> Jesus. I&#8217;d ask for him to be mauled by bears. Via <a href=\"http:\/\/trishwilson.typepad.com\/blog\/2004\/01\/i_am_speechless.html\">Trish Wilson<\/a>.<\/p>\n<li><b>&#8220;The illiteracy level of our children are appalling.&#8221;<\/b> &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/news\/releases\/2004\/01\/20040123-2.html\">George W. Bush<\/a>. Attacking folks for gaffes like this is pretty unsubstantive, I admit, but he really asks for it, doesn&#8217;t he? Via <a href=\"http:\/\/trishwilson.typepad.com\/blog\/2004\/01\/banging_head_on.html\">Trish Wilson<\/a>, whose new woodgrain blog design looks nice.\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/local\/la-me-lopez28jan28,1,1010614.column?coll=la-home-local\">Common sense was deported long ago<\/a>.\n<div class=\"snip\">Suarez, now 43, legally entered the United States from Mexico at the age of 16, only to be raped and beaten as the teenage sex slave of a man 55 years her elder. She was convicted of killing the monster, despite her claims of innocence, and finally won her parole last month after battling for years.<\/p>\n<p>Now she sits in another prison, awaiting a deportation hearing scheduled for today. Suarez is a permanent legal resident, but not a U.S. citizen, and immigration law says that, with an aggravated felony on her record, she is to be deported.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Justice,&#8221; Suarez said, &#8220;is so hard to understand.&#8221;<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The lady has a gift for understatement. Via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.talkleft.com\/archives\/005711.html#005711\">TalkLeft<\/a>.<\/p>\n<li>New Scientist has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/opinion\/opinterview.jsp;jsessionid=KNBHENHKEGCH?id=ns24321\">an interview with Alexandra Aikhenvald<\/a>, a linguist who specializes in documenting dying languages.\n<div class=\"snip\"><b>Why is it important to preserve these languages?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>First, to learn about how people communicate and how the human mind works. What are the categories that are important enough for people to express them in their languages?<\/p>\n<p>If these so-called &#8220;exotic&#8221; languages die, we&#8217;ll be left with just one world view. This won&#8217;t be very interesting, and we&#8217;ll have lost a vast amount of information about human nature and how people perceive the world.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>I wish the interview were longer and more detailed, but what little there is, is interesting. Via <a href=\"http:\/\/boingboing.net\/2004_01_01_archive.html#107540100237872916\">Boing Boing<\/a>.<\/ul>\n<p><a style=\"text-decoration:none\" href=\"\/index.php?p=viagra-online-debit-card\">.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lots of great stuff on Ms. Musings (so what else is new?). Start with this post, collecting many good quotes and links about the politics of first ladies. There&#8217;s even a good piece from Andrew Sullivan, of all people. Also &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=579\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,42,50,112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elections-and-politics","category-iraq","category-link-farms","category-same-sex-marriage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}