What Other People Are Saying

By the way, if you have a link you’d like other “Alas” readers to see, or just something you’d like to say that isn’t on-topic in one of the other threads, please feel free to post it in these “link farm” posts.

What do people think of these big “link farm” posts? Do you like them? Would you like them better if I split each one up into a whole bunch of one-item posts instead?

Anyway, here’s some stuff I’ve read today and really liked. Note that the stuff in quote marks is written by the people I’m linking to, not by me.

The Best Post I’ve Read This Year
“I’ve decided that there must be a giddy sense of power that comes from being able to command poor people to stand in line, at the drop of a hat.” Kactus describes a monday afternoon at the welfare office. Via Bradford Plumer, whose post also quotes David Shipler on welfare cheats: “The more damaging welfare cheats are the caseworkers and other officials who contrive to discourage or reject perfectly eligible families.”

Carole Joffe’s Open Letter To Dalton Conley
“Like you, I am a passionate believer in public sociology, and think its recent revitalization is one of the best things that has occurred in our discipline in years. I commend you for your many writings that are accessible to an audience beyond sociology. But in the case of this op-ed, I believe you have acted irresponsibly, and have done harm to a cause in which you profess to believe. Quite frankly, rather than seeing your op-ed as authentic public sociology, I view it as inappropriate ‘private sociology.’ Based on your individual experience with a contested pregnancy, you are attempting to intervene in a policy arena that you seemingly know very little about.”

Twisty on Culture
“As you know, I am the world’s foremost authority on the status of women in Fiji, so you can believe me when I say that if chumps in their own government are advocating pickling women in the good old pre-feminist brine so that they’ll conform to some kind of quaint “national identity” dictated by crowd-pleasin’ hair-dos, it can’t be good. In fact, it looks to me like they’re wanting to put the kibosh on women’s rights because they fuck with Fiji’s brand.”

(By the way, take note of I Blame The Patriarchy’s shiney new URL.)

Yes, Virginia, There Are Mean People On Both Sides
Cathy Young points out what should be obvious about US politics: ‘There is nastiness and ugliness aplenty on both sides, regardless of the exact forms it takes. ” That should be a truism, but there are oodles of people on both sides who seemingly think that the other side has a near-monopoly on hate. I disagree with some of Cathy’s particulars, but her overall post is spot-on.

Sentenced to Death for Self Defense
“Let’s summarize: Cops mistakenly break down the door of a sleeping man, late at night, as part of drug raid. Turns out, the man wasn’t named in the warrant, and wasn’t a suspect. The man, frightened for himself and his 18-month old daughter, fires at an intruder who jumps into his bedroom after the door’s been kicked in. Turns out that the man, who is black, has killed the white son of the town’s police chief. He’s later convicted and sentenced to death by a [mostly] white jury. The man has no criminal record, and police rather tellingly changed their story about drugs (rather, traces of drugs) in his possession at the time of the raid. The story gets more bizarre from there.”

Battlepanda has a long, long list of blogs commenting on the Cory Maye – he’s running a competition to see if the rightosphere, the leftosphere, or the libertarians generate the most links publicizing this case.

Poll: Most Pharmacists Want Right To Refuse Women Birth Control
“The more relevant finding was that about 39 percent of the pharmacists felt they should be able to refuse to fill a legal prescription, apart from another 37 percent who felt they should be able to refuse with a referral to a more cooperative pharmacist. (Only 23 percent said that a patient’s legal rights should prevail over the pharmacist’s misgivings.) […] If nothing else, there seems to be a vast difference of opinion between pharmacists and physicians–a previous survey of doctors by HCD Research found that 78 percent of physicians thought that pharmacists should be obliged to provide emergency contraception.”

Link via Earl at Prometheus 6, who has a modest proposal: “Pharmacists that refuse to fill contraceptive prescriptions should have to raise the kid.”

Women In Their 20s Gain Income Every Year They Delay Motherhood
“So, if you have your first child at 24 instead of 25, you’re giving up 10 percent of your lifetime earnings. The wage hit comes in two pieces. There’s an immediate drop, followed by a slower rate of growth…right up to the day you retire. So, a 34-year-old woman with a 10-year-old child will (again on average) get smaller percentage raises on a smaller base salary than an otherwise identical woman with a 9-year-old. Each year of delayed childbirth compounds these benefits, at least for women in their 20s. Once you’re in your 30s, there’s far less reward for continued delay. Surprisingly, it appears that none of these effects are mitigated by the passage of family-leave laws.”

The full article has interesting details describing how this study was carried out; the researcher was very clever in her approach.

This entry posted in Anti-Contraceptives/EC zaniness, Choice for Men, Gender and the Economy, Link farms. Bookmark the permalink. 

23 Responses to What Other People Are Saying

  1. Pingback: Battlepanda

  2. Pingback: feminist blogs

  3. 3
    Daran says:

    If ever there’s a moment when you or one of the other bloggers are wondering what to write for your next story, I would appreciate one of the subject of mail-order brides.

  4. 4
    Ampersand says:

    One of my former co-bloggers, Bean, wrote this post a couple of years ago. However, I’m not likely to write about mail order brides, simply because I don’t know much about the subject.

  5. 5
    Myca says:

    Personally, I would enjoy reading some feminist analysis of Battlestar Galactica similar to the feminist analyses of Buffy and Angel you used to post.

    Of course, if you’re not watching Battlestar Galactica, I can understand how that might make it difficult.

    —Myca

  6. 6
    Lis Riba says:

    If I’m allowed to self-promote*, I’d love more attention to my week of posts on female sexual dysfunctions. Considering it was partly inspired by something else in your blog, I’d love to spread the word about FSD to a wider readership.

    *BTW, any other women feel self-conscious about trumpetting your own abilities, like it’s somehow unseemly to brag? A sense that if your accomplishments are any good, they should stand on their own merits and you shouldn’t need to point them out? Is it just me or a general girl thing? That causes me so much problems when jobhunting…

  7. 7
    bg says:

    I enjoy your blog enormously regardless of how you do it.

  8. 8
    Lis Riba says:

    PS: I do like your link farm posts. Keep ’em coming…

  9. 9
    Wally Whateley says:

    I’m also a big fan of the link farms. :)

  10. 10
    Ann Bartow says:

    One of my co-bloggers at Sivacracy wrote a cool post here!

  11. 11
    Ann Bartow says:

    One of my co-bloggers at Sivacracy wrote a cool post here!

  12. 12
    Ann Bartow says:

    Arrgh, the link in #8 works, sorry about goofing up the previous one.

  13. 13
    Lis Riba says:

    This may be a bit circular, but Ann Bartow’s presence reminded me of this post about women’s representation in a NYPL panel. Mentions your racism post, too.

    Shelly of Burningbird has written a lot about gender-representation in tech

  14. 14
    Lizzybeth says:

    I was struck by the following post on fetal pain, from a doctor’s blog called Red State Moron. That a guy who links seriously to Protein Wisdom is reluctant to support legislature that would force a doctor to tell his patients that a fetus experiences pain after 20 weeks, only expresses how very thin the evidence is for the wingnut position:

    http://redstatemoron.typepad.com/red_state_moron/2005/11/fetal_pain_2.html

  15. 15
    Lizzybeth says:

    I was struck by the following post on fetal pain, from a doctor’s blog called Red State Moron. That a guy who links seriously to Protein Wisdom is reluctant to support legislature that would force a doctor to tell his patients that a fetus experiences pain after 20 weeks, only expresses how very thin the evidence is for the wingnut position:

    Fetal pain, 2

  16. 16
    Raznor says:

    Damn your link-farm posts!!! Damn them!!! I can barely get enough time to get any work done as it is without you giving me a ton of stuff that are interesting to read!

    Also, these damn intriguing comments threads. All of a sudden I’m stuck reloading every 15 minutes to see if someone said something when I should be grading papers. And yes, this is all your fault.

  17. 17
    Daran says:

    Also, these damn intriguing comments threads. All of a sudden I’m stuck reloading every 15 minutes to see if someone said something when I should be grading papers. And yes, this is all your fault.

    Don’t, whatever you do, look at the righthand column of this page. If by chance you do look at it, pay no attention to the fact that some of the names are clickable links. If, (God help you) you do notice that they are clickable links, don’t ever, ever, click on them.

  18. 18
    Lee says:

    Amp, I love your link farms. Keep up the good work!

  19. 19
    Josh Jasper says:

    I like the link farm posts, and the current style you use for them.

  20. 20
    ScottM says:

    I’m also a fan of your link farms, and prefer them smashed together into one big post, rather than scattered with a few lines apiece.

  21. 21
    Helen says:

    I’m right behind the idea of feminist analysis of Battlestar Galactica, if it’s watched by any blog-contributors. I can’t figure out if it’s progressive or just has the appearance of it (love the show, regardless).

    Count me in as one who loves the link farms but simultaneously curses when one shows up because I know I’ll be glued to the computer for some time ;-)

  22. 22
    MRain65 says:

    Helen:

    If you go to Televisionwithoutpity.com, the Battlestar Galactica general forum has a thread entitled “Gender and Battlestar Galactica.” It has some interesting, thought-provoking commentary. (The mods at TWOP rule with an iron fist, so the level of discussion is pretty high.)

  23. 23
    Helen says:

    Thanks, MRain65 (I only just remembered I’d commented here and came back to look). I’ll check it out at some point. I generally deliberately stay away from TWOP but I’ll look for this thread.