As has been noted previously, I love dates like this. (Thanks to Jake Squid for pointing this one out to me!)

Consider this an open thread. Post what you like, with whom you like, for as long as you like. Self-linkage is welcome.

Post what you like, when you like, about what you like, with whatever links (including self-links) you like, for whatever purpose you like, wearing whatever underwear you like, eating whatever food you like, and liking what you like because you like it. Like, wow.

* * *

The first two minutes of this piece are stunning. After that, it turns into a well-done cover of Toto’s “Africa,” which is one of these songs I like for the sound but the lyrics are annoying because they scream exoticization of Africa. And the earworm factor is not to be believed.

1. Wal-Mart Bans Gay Couple For Not Shoplifting
2. The Stupak Amendment might, in effect, make sure that insurance that covers abortion is unavailable to most women - regardless of if they use the public option, or the government exchange, at all. I really hope this shit never becomes law.
3. List of Democrats who voted for Stupak Amendment. They’re not all in very conservative districts, either. Let’s hope for some primary challenges.
4. Whose Health Care Victory Is It? Not Women’s. More on Stupak, from Ann Friedman.
5. GLAAD should lighten up about South Park using the word “fag.”
6. You know, every single chronic pain patient I’ve known in my life has had horrible experiences like this. Is it that way in other countries, or is it just another example of how much the US sucks? It seems to me that we could be doing so much better, be so much more humane.
7. “It’s time to admit that no amount of American lives can resolve the political disagreement that lies at the heart of someone else’s civil war.” Click through to see who said it.
8. This expectation that “good people” won’t be bigots is rather amazing.
9. It turns out DVR is good for television networks, after all.
10. Very impressive face paintings.
11. Diary of an Anxious Black Women discusses Rhianna, “Precious,” Toni Morrison, the quest for authenticity, and the representation of black women’s pain in media. Really good post.
12. Do Smart, Hard-Working People Really Deserve To Make More Money?
13. Cat and Girl: The Trap. Sometimes I love Cat and Girl.
14. Sex after mastectomy; Why aren’t doctors preparing women? Note: Reading this article will leaved you pissed off more than you might expect. (Via.)
15. On the White Anti-Racist Spokesperson
16. The Obama Administration is secretly pushing an incredibly awful international copyright treaty.
17. Study: The Government is Discriminating Against Asian Business Owners.
18. What if we spent just one year spending as much on internal infrastructure as we do on the Defense Department?
19. Spending $47,000 on dinner for five. Two points. One, that’s the right table to have been serving, as far as the tip goes. Two, couldn’t a restaurant that charges this month spring for a receipt-printer that was designed this century?
20. Why US health care is so expensive: Like the restaurant in the above link, It all comes down to prices. We simply pay more, for everything.
21. Pantshead asks Shoshana Johnson if she’s ever been to Iraq. No, really. Also, the country isn’t 93% white and 63-82% male, so why are MSNBC’s guests? (Via.)

This is an open thread. Post what you like, when you like it, and don’t let nobody tell you otherwise. Self-linking is a joy unto the blog.

1. My favorite post this week was the awesome photo gallery, compiled by Liss at Shakesville, of female farmers around the world. Check it out.
2. 25 Key Principles For Immigration Policy Reform
3. What is “disability”?
4. Video of fire-breathing, in slow motion. I eventually got bored, but before I reached that point I was enthralled.
5. Marlee Matlin is creating a well-placed stink about the lack of captioning available for online video. There’s a relevant “Alas” post about this here.
6. Intelligent anti-gay conservatives find discussing gay marriage painful, because they know they have no argument. Somehow, my heart isn’t bleeding for Ross. (Via The American Scene.) Be sure to read David Link’s response, too.
7. Anatomy of a Slur: David Link (again!) on anti-gay ads in Maine.
8. Global warming is a threat to national security
9. Paying attention to how citizens in Muslim countries view the US
10. End Fat Talk. Please, please end it.
11. Amazing images of pollution in China.
12. Graduating during a recession has big, long-lasing negative consequences. “If you’re graduating from college this spring, you’ll be sitting around at the age of thirty-five still suffering from the fact that Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, Ben Nelson, and Kent Conrad decided to make the stimulus bill stingier in order to better bolster their credentials as preening centrists.”
13. Video — the biggest gathering of bats in the world.  I loved the final two shots of the bats.
14. A collection of links to scholars arguing for and against smaller class sizes. The upshot seems to be that smaller class sizes make the biggest difference for young kids and in schools serving “underprivileged” populations.
15. Afghanistan is just not that important.
16. FWD/Forward describes a really amazingly offensive episode of Torchwood.
17. FedEx and UPS pay the post office to deliver their packages to rural areas.
18. Whoopsie, we destroyed all hope of a functioning government:
    “The supply-siders are to a large extent responsible for this mess, myself included. We opened Pandora’s Box when we got the Republican Party to abandon the balanced budget as its signature economic policy and adopt tax cuts as its raison d’être. In particular, the idea that tax cuts will “starve the beast” and automatically shrink the size of government is extremely pernicious.

    Indeed, by destroying the balanced budget constraint, starve-the-beast theory actually opened the flood gates of spending. As I explained in a recent column, a key reason why deficits restrained spending in the past is because they led to politically unpopular tax increases. But if, as Republicans now maintain, taxes must never be increased at any time for any reason then there is never any political cost to raising spending and cutting taxes at the same time, as the Bush 43 administration and a Republican Congress did year after year.”

19. Another stunning photo gallery, this time of Diwali celebrations around the world.
20. “I’m so tired of stories that take place in the same three neighborhoods in New York or LA. I’m tired of young white people and their love problems. I’m tired of FBI agents.”
21. Farmer grows pumpkins with human faces. (In 1938.) Creepy.

This is it! The place! For what you want! How you want! Good linking! Self linking! Crap that’s been moved from other threads where it was off-topic! It’s all here! I’m so excited!

My vacation continues, by the way. It keeps on snowing and looking very pretty, but it isn’t sticking. But the fire is warm and I feel terribly relaxed. Unsurprisingly, there will be fewer links than usual in this link farm.

(Via Womanist Musings:)

1. White people policing young white men who dress “too” “black”
2. Damn, I miss Hilzoy. Read her response to the argument that it’s a good idea for the US to invade other countries to “liberate” the residents. “Saying that the problem is that we lack the wisdom and virtue to do this is like saying that the problem with the USSR in the 30s was that Stalin was not sufficiently wise and virtuous to really make totalitarianism work for the people of Russia.”
3. Gender Presentation, Disability and Intersections
4. A bit of perspective: July 1863 rioting in New York City.
5. What’s wrong with saying that Donny Osmund is Blacker Than Michael Steele. (Click through to Global Comment to read the whole thing.)
6. The increasing meaninglessness of the term “Anti-Israel”
7. Why Huckabee can’t win the Republican primary — and why whoever beats him can’t win the general.
8. On the subject of “useful” advice given to disabled people
9. Reappropriate examines anti-Asian bias in college admissions: Part 1, Part 2. While you’re there, check out the spiffy new superhero-themed blog header.
10. Is getting rid of lead paint empirically the most successful anti-crime policy of all time? (And see here, as well.)
11. Fat people are underrepresented as governors. I liked the word “Flintstonian.”
12. Schrodinger’s Rapist. “When you approach me in public, you are Schrödinger’s Rapist. You may or may not be a man who would commit rape.”

Say what you want, link what you want. Self-linking is the stuff.

By the way, the bad news is I’ve been posting less often because I’m working hard on the Hereville graphic novel. The good news is, I’m working hard on the Hereville graphic novel.

Via LL, Eugene on My Modern Met writes:

The sculpture “What You see Might Not Be Real,” by Chen Wenling, was displayed at a Beijing gallery Sunday. A bull, meant to represent Wall Street, is seen ramming the biggest con man of all time, Bernie Madoff, into a wall. Totally deserving, if you ask me.

The huge cloud coming out of the bull’s rear not only refers to the end of a greedy era, but also symbolizes the danger of virtual bubbles in international financial markets. In a society based on desire and money, some people choose to create many false impressions, while others sadly fall for them.

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1. A defense of gender-neutrality in early childhood.
2. Tiger Beat Down on Polanski excusers. (Via)
3. Reading about this case of a couple kept apart as one of them died reminds me: People who are against same sex marriage are hateful and cruel. That’s all they are, that’s all they’ve ever been.
4. Oh, and they’re insincere about not being bigots, too.
5. $41,000 to $470,000. That’s the lifetime financial cost of being a same-sex, rather than opposite-sex, couple.
6. Controversial All Black School Opens in Ontario
7. CBS Feeling the Pressure to drop Lou Dobbs. (This alternet story on the same subject is interesting, as well.)
8. The Right’s Smear Campaign Against Kevin Jennings.
9. Life In Four Bottles Bint quotes a correspondent, who says “Damn! I’m already on the third one!” Sometimes I feel like I’m not even at bottle two yet.
10. Racism or Free Speech? Maybe both. An Asian student puts up a racist flyer full of “funny” racist jokes about Asians.
11. Is mandating that Americans buy health insurance Constitutional?
12. Looking at this chart of job loss in this recession, compared to past recessions, may make you weep. And if you’re an elected Democrat, it should definitely make you weep, and perhaps panic.
13. Disclosure is not information.
14. Texas prepares to cover up the execution of an innocent man.
15. Rabbi Brant on the Goldstone Report, and why he finds it trustworthy.
16. Why women have sex, why men have sex, and why the hell is the media so determined to pretend that the reasons are vastly different?
17. How “paper sons” were part of the Chinese American immigration experience. (And by the way, go welcome back Reappropriate to active blogging!)
18. Glenn Sacks, the least horrible MRA, is hosting a debate on his blog between two scholars, one from a feminist perspective, one from an MRA perspective, about domestic violence.

Consider this an open thread. Discuss whatever you like, for as long as you like. Link whatever you like, including yourself. Be free!

* * *

Given Myca’s post, I thought it would be a good time to list some of my favorite right-wing blogs. (There are probably another couple I’m just not thinking of at the moment.)

These are all blogs I can expect to disagree with on a regular basis, and sometimes to be pissed off by. Nonetheless, in most cases, these are conservative dissenters, not mainstream conservatives. I do read some mainstream conservative blogs on a regular basis, because I feel I should, but I can’t honestly claim to admire their thinking.

Eunomia. Daniel Larison is one of the smartest bloggers on foreign policy, period.

Independent Gay Forum. They do tedious partisan comments fairly regularly (trashing the Dems for the many times the Dems aren’t good allies of queer rights — which would be fair if they had one-tenth the passion for trashing the Republican party for its even worse anti-gay bias). But they have great analysis of same-sex marriage issues here. Jonathan Rauch is their most famous writer, but David Link is the blogger who makes this a great blog.

The American Scene. Multiple bloggers here, but Conor Friedersdorf is the one to read. He’s bracing to read because he genuinely wants the right to be intellectually rigorous and honest.

The Volokh Conspiracy features a number of mediocre, paint-by-numbers conservatives, and one (David Bernstein) who is even worse than that. But Eugene Volokh himself is very often worth reading, and Dale Carpenter is one of the best bloggers out there on equal marriage rights and other queer legal issues.

The Agitator. Radley Balko, on 99% of issues, is a generic right-wing libertarian, who worships the market and hates eeevviiiiillll big government. But that’s okay, because he spends 99% of his blogging focusing on documenting how the police and the justice system brutally abuse ordinary Americans, and there’s no blogger out there doing a better job at that.

Marriage Debate Blog. Although run by people who are anti-equality (mostly by Eve, who’s a very nice person) — and the bias does show, in that they’re far more likely to link to a mediocre anti-gay marriage piece than they are to link to an equally mediocre pro-equality piece — this blog does a fairly good job at linking to a lot of interesting news related to marriage, marriage equality, and families and the law in general.

This is an open thread. Post what you like, when you want to. Self-linking makes you smell better and will put a spring in your step in the morning.

1. It’s science! Researchers hooked a dead fish up to an fMRI machine. The fish was then “shown a series of photographs depicting human individuals in social situations. The salmon was asked to determine what emotion the individual in the photo must have been experiencing.” The salmon did great! This shows that dead fish are very smart; or, as Figleaf suggests, it shows that brain-scanning experiments without strong statistical controls have dubious validity.
2. “The stars are aligning for a winnable and worthwhile fight on U.S. policy in Afghanistan in the next several weeks: stopping the Obama Administration from sending more troops.”
3. Former deputy chief of the counterterrorist center at the CIA: Preventing a “terrorist haven” in Afghanistan isn’t worth the costs.
4. Female lawyers with masculine names are the most likely women to become judges. (But sexism is just a myth, right?)
5. “I am female bodied, but I do not identify as a female or in a feminine way. My gender presentation is masculine, but I don’t identify as a man or male. I am on the trans spectrum, but not in the sense that I’m transitioning…”
6. Awesome Golden Girls tattoo.
7. Both rape and false accusations of rape result from rape culture. (Via.)
8. The singular “They” and the many reasons it’s correct
9. Why does Ms. Michelle Bachmann get more attention than all the other ridiculous far-right Representatives? I’m not sure I agree — I’d have to compare the statements of the other contenders and see if they really are as extreme as Bachmannisms are — but it’s a reasonable concern.
10. Did you read Newsweek’s article on how infants and young kids learn about race — and how by pretending race isn’t there, adults encourage racism? If not, you should go read it.
11. If if the jury finds you “not guilty,” you can still be sentenced to prison for the crime. This has been upheld by higher courts, and the Supremes chose not to examine the issue. Scary. (Via.)
12. More on the politics of Black hair
13. The History of Jobs in America. I’m linking mainly because the graphic is so pretty.
14. XKCD presents: The Search For Intelligent Life Out There
15. Matt Bors gives out the first award for excessive labeling in a political cartoon (the winner is Anne Cleaves). The cartoon in question is a doozy.
16. Juan Cole provides a good round-up of links about Iran’s apparently non-existent nuclear weapons program.
17. Once again, pundits are claiming that women’s happiness has plummeted. And once again, Language Log is pointing out that the statistics don’t support that claim.
18. Contrary to what I and many other lefties have claimed in the past, the SATs are actually pretty accurate at predicting success in college grades.
19. Siditty discusses the definition of racism.
20. Yet Another White Person Who Feels Entitled To Touch Black Women’s Hair
21. Inside Edition On Nightclub Sexual Predators.
22. The UN Human Rights Council could become worthwhile — but only if the US puts a huge amount of effort into remaking it.
23. Asshats of the world, please stop calling Kayne West a nigger.
24. Great post by Little Light: “Let’s let vulnerability be radical. Let’s embrace it.”
25. “The problem with making health care reform “cheaper” by lowering subsidies is that if since people will still be required to have insurance, all you’re really doing is making middle-income people spend more money, in order to spare the government the pain of taxing rich people to pay for subsidies.
26. In defense of the claim that better family planning can help save the environment.
27. The UK offers paternity leave for the first time. Molly calls this a baby step forward for working moms, and she’s right, but I’d add that it’s also a step forward for working dads.
28. What ACORN hysteria is distracting us from.
29. Reading, Pennsylvania: Where you get three years in prison for taking consensual nude pictures of your girlfriend, but cops who expose their penises in the office aren’t penalized at all. UPDATE: Figleaf follows up on this, and finds that it’s a heck of a lot more complicated than that.
30. Counterpunch Magazine, which has published a lot of articles I like in the past, publishes a pile of anti-Semitic lies. So, fuck Counterpunch, I say. (Via.)
31. In Iraq, Freedom Is Marching Backward
32. Five Hard-To-Kill Houseplants For Your Home Or Office
33. And finally, via Womanist Musings:

Please use this thread to post whatever you’d like. Self-linking is awesome.

The Third Carnival of Feminists!

Insurance companies consider domestic violence a pre-existing condition.

A white reporter who was beaten up for no reason tries to understand what happened. Ta-Nehisi has an interesting take.

Rawles argues that Uhura isn’t diminished by romance in the new Trek film: “Uhura is a black girl and there is no angle from which her actually being allowed to have consensual sexuality, being desired, and being loved (in addition to having her job and intellect, no less) is a fundamental downgrade from what she had before.”

Whedonverse fans should be sure to check out the archive of “Feminism and Joss” related posts at This Ain’t Livin’.

Recursiveparadox has an interesting post discussing, among other things, male privilege from the point of view of a trans woman. (Curiously, when this post was crossposted on Deeply Problematic, it was illustrated by one of my cartoons. Was the cartoon added by RP, or by the DP editor?)

The Terrible Bargain We Have Regretfully Struck

“As long as you’re unconscious, he’s fantastic.” On dealing with sexist doctors.

Interview with John Marcotte, Author of the 2010 California Protection of Marriage Act: “…We are trying to ban divorce. People who supported Prop 8 weren’t trying to take rights away from gays, they just wanted to protect traditional marriage. That’s why I’m confident that they will support this initiative, even though this time it will be their rights that are diminished.”

Alabama Supremes uphold criminalization of sex toy sales; store owner will continue to sell them

For Africans and African diasapora, Caster Semenya Case Opening Old Wounds.

Botfly maggot removed from head — the video

Ben Caldwell drawings of Wonder Woman. He draws real good.

Report Shows Rise in Reports of Sexual Misconduct by Federal Prison Workers (Via.)

Egg and sperm donors shouldn’t be allowed to be anonymous, and shouldn’t be seen as parents.

Why is Afghanistan so hard? Stephan Walt discusses why all “advances” we make in Afghanistan work against us.

Mexico will probably be providing health care for undocumented immigrants from Mexico.

(via)

This is an open thread. You may post whatever you like here, including links to your own work, as long as you do so with a pure heart. After you press the post button, clap three times and place your left ankle over your right foot for a period of not less than four point three seconds.

* * *

1. Check out these photos of 210 lb Savannah Sanitoa running the 100 meter sprint at the world championships in Berlin. Yes, she ran three seconds slower than the world champion — but damn, is she cool.
2. Good Immigrant-Bad Immigrant: codifying a caste system
3. Andrea Dworkin on Transgender Not perfect (she wrote this in the 70s), but hugely more trans positive than you might expect.
4. Create your own assisted suicide debate! Arguing in favor of legalizing doctor-assisted suicide, novelist Terry Pratchett, who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. (ignore the Daily Mail’s opening paragraphs and skip to the part written by Pratchett).
5. For the rebuttal, read this lengthy essay by medical ethicist Ezekiel Emanuel (brother of Raul Rahm). This is the same Ezekiel Emanuel who has lately been accused of plotting “death panels.”
6. TransGriot on the gender policing of successful black female athletes. (Via.)
7. On the same subject, see this post at the Gender Sociology Blog. “Maybe, at some point, these institutions could have a discussion pertaining to accepting the fact that there may be more than two genders or that the gender categories themselves have to be reconsidered.”
8. Quote: “By now many readers are wondering why I am so concerned about the plague of graffiti in our cities. I am concerned because there is a close parallel between graffiti and same sex marriage. Both are warning signs that our society is very sick indeed, and may be entering its final crisis.” - Mike Heath, Maine Family Policy Council
9. Dana Gioia pays tribute to fat male actors in classic movies, and in particular Sidney Greenstreet (1875-1954) and Eugene Pallette (1889-1954).
10. The song “Total Eclipse Of The Heart” in convenient flowchart form. And be sure to watch the literal version of the video.
11. The first commercial for marriage equality (aka gay marriage) in Maine is out, and it’s good.
12. John C. Wright is recoiling in craven fear and trembling, and I don’t feel so good myself.
13. On “fairness,” free markets and history. “The Verizons and AT&Ts of the world don’t get to start the analysis on a blank slate where the status quo magically transforms into a perfectly free market.”
14. Free markets require government intervention to exist.
15. The Obama Adminstration’s broken promise to make immigration reform a priority in the first year.
16. French Muslim woman wearing ‘burkini’ banned from Paris swimming pool (via)
17. I love historic photos. Case in point: filing clerks in The US Patent Office, 1925. Makes the huge filing room in “How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back” look small.
18. Gender Conformity and “Gaydar” (Porn-sounding URL, although it’s not porn.)
19. Anti-trans bigotry on the Conan O’Brien Show
20. Bike dancing — or is it bike gymnastics? Anyhow, it’s cool.
21. What has the world been like for the class of 2013? Women have always outnumbered men in college; “Womyn” and “waitperson” have always been in the dictionary. (Those two examples completely swiped from Ann Bartow.)
22. “…being classified by others as White is associated with large and statistically significant advantages in health status, no matter how one self-identifies.”
23. Heron61 discovers unconscious racism in his novel collection. (And he’s working to change that.)
24. Curt Smith of Tears for Fears on “the value of musical sharing” (via)
25. On white people who display “cute” little racist brik-a-brak
26. The Risks Afghan Women Take to Vote (via)
27. A great story about reducing the gender gap in higher ed
28. The Best Way to Insure Worker Safety Probably Isn’t to Deport Workers. (Porn-sounding URL, although it’s not porn.)
29. Senator Grassley takes a moment away from trying to destroy health care reform to do something genuinely useful: fight corporate ghostwriting of medical studies.
30. Aging is not unnatural. Good post, great photos. (Nudity warning, might be nsfw.)
31. Material Girls: Talking about Gender and Consumerism at the Islamic Society of North America
32. Traffic laws, street markings, etc, don’t make the streets any safer. They just allow cars to go faster. And do watch the video.
33. One woman takes on King Coal. And wins.
34. “If people over 65 in each state made the laws, zero states would have gay marriage; if people under 30 made the laws, 38 states would have gay marriage.” (via)
35. No, American does not have “the best health care in the world.”
36. Three months in jail for possession of breath mints.
37. Labor Department To Begin Enforcing Own Regulations. (Note to MRAs: This will do more genuine good for men, by preventing workplace injuries and death, than anything any MRA has done, ever. Maybe you folks should think of that before you overwhelmingly support Republican politicians.)
38. 40 years ago today, Hiram Fong became the first Asian-American ever elected to the US Senate. (via)
39. So what’s “replacement tongue” a reference to? To Cymothoa Exigua, a parasite that kills the tongues of fish — and then replaces the tongue. Here’s a photo.

40. PETA ad repaired, by Jessiedress.

Awesome wall art, from the Fame Festival website. They have a lot of photos of “upgraded” walls, and also this speeded-up video of a wall being painted.

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Post whatever you like! Feel free to publicize your own blog, too, or someone else’s. Just dance and be free, hippies!

* * *

And here are some links for you, my lovlies:

1. Is it now a crime to be poor? Barbara Ehrenreich runs down some of the many ways cities are criminalizing poverty.
2. Gay men are being systematically tortured and murdered in Iraq
3. An in-depth interview with the word “racism.”
4. Why it’s never okay to say “so-and-so looks like a tranny.”
5. Burqa Tourism at its Finest: How to Become an Expert on Muslim Women in Just One Week
6. Painting dolls brown is not enough.
7. NASA unlikely to put people on the moon by 2020.
8. It turns out white people do see race… when mistaking people of color for service employees.
9. Trans women in male prisons: Cruel and unusual punishment
10. It’s always been the case that cops push around people for no good reason.
11. The DOJ has filed another motion in a Defense of Marriage Act case — but this time, they’re trying a lot harder not to offend the LGBT community.
12. Some good news: The HIV Travel Ban seems likely to be ended soon. Long overdue, imo.
13. Delaware’s new statute makes it possible for children to have three legally recognized parents.
14. Stargate:Universe’s casting call for an actress to play a disabled character is full of fail. “Do you have any idea how much most disabled people hate the oh-so-familiar story where a disabled character (always in a wheelchair) gets to *drum roll* WALK AGAIN?”
15. Why the word “lame” hurts
16. Kevin Moore draws The Continuum of Misplaced Skepticism. Nice one!
17. Hillary Clinton has a moment of perfectly reasonable umbrage, and is roasted for it. Gosh, I hate our media.
18. The important thing about the “death panels” nonsense is that it’s going to mean that more people won’t live any longer, but will die more painful, uncomfortable deaths.
19. Health care reform goal posts have moved a lot over the years. The health care reform we’ll be disappointed to get this year, would have been amazing four years ago.
20. A Tale of Masks and Mobile Consciousness
21. US planning to shoot Afghan drug dealers without trial.
22. And one more street painting, this time by Greek artist B. Check out B.’s gallery here (not safe for work, possibly.) (Via.)

This is an open thread. Post what you will, including self-linking, if that makes you happy.

* * *

Bobby McFerrin plays the audience like an instrument:

I ran across this list of the 17 best romantic comedies of the last decade, and the eight on the list I’ve seen, I either liked (Waitress, About a Boy, Juno, Punch-Drunk Love, Wall-E) or loved (Sideways, Amélie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). I guess I should see the other nine films on this list.

On the other hand, I definitely won’t be seeing The Ugly Truth after reading this reviewer’s very feminist take on it. I particularly liked that the review noted how insulting this movie’s view of men is.

I really enjoy Alyssa Rosenberg’s blog, but Little Wild Bouquet has, imo, entirely won their inter-blog debate about 30 Rock and race. I laugh a lot while watching 30 Rock, but that doesn’t mean its politics aren’t screwed up.

This is an open thread. Go wild! Self-linking is like a double-entendre about masturbation: always appreciated.

* * *

I love the interwebs. Time from not even knowing an art form exists, to seeing that there are dozens of examples of it on Youtube: 30 seconds.

1. Immigration Raids Routinely Ignore Fourth Amendment.
2. The American Family, Kate & Allie, and Co-Parenting.
3. Research data on racial profiling ignored by mainstream media.
4. Olbermann’s and O’Reilly’s corporate owners shut them both up, because GE didn’t like being criticized on TV. Thank goodness for a free press! (And shame on Olbermann and O’Reilly for going along with it.)
5. Apparently, only 25% or so of white Southerners think that Obama was born in the USA.
6. The Fat Woman Stereotype. (Via this post on “The Challenge of Writing Fat-Friendly Fiction.“)
7. Are Fat Rights today where Gay Rights were 30 years ago?
8. The Birthers are right! Finally, a compelling argument proving that Obama is not a natural-born American.
9. “The National Organization for Marriage is right. Gay marriage IS a religious freedom issue. They’ve just identified the wrong party as victim.”
10. What if modern-day Republicans had been around when firefighting was made into a government function, instead of left to the free market?
11. How Medical Innovation Really Happens. Hint: It’s not all the free market.
12. “In 28 of 33 Gitmo detainee cases heard so far, federal judges have found insufficient evidence to support keeping them in prison.” Also, poll shows that Americans favor torture more than the people of almost all other nations. Plus, we tortured a young teenage boy. In short, we suck and we’re evil.
13. The argument for a free market in selling human kidneys.
14. The argument against a free market in kidneys.
15. The Future Of Book Banning?
16. Links about polyamory.
17. Power Your Car With Pee
18. The best of The Question (a superhero character). “The plastic tips at the end of shoelaces are called aglets, and their true purpose is sinister.”
19. This magazine design is so much cooler than I’ll ever be:

Oh, and here’s some dancey fun for the Buffy/Angel fanatics among (amongst?) us, via Buffyfest:

OOPS! I originally posted this with comments turned off (not sure how that happened). It’s been fixed now. Thanks to everyone who contacted us to let us know! –Amp

(Picture of Dutch “walk” sign, from Spacing Toronto, via Bean.)

Post what you like, as long as you like, with whomever you like. Self-linking (or any kind of linking) is splendoriferick.

1. Should we be in a war (or whatever you call it) in Afghanistan? Eric Martin thinks it’s a futile and destructive effort (and I tend to agree), but fairly quotes an intelligent case for the war, as well.
2. The case for the singular “they”
3. Israel has agreed to a temporary settlement freeze, which is a great start. I worry about if they’ll really go through with it, but David correctly cautions against making the perfect the enemy of the good.
4. Press Release: Company Denies its Robots Feed On The Dead
5. Obama sucks department: There is an independent watchdog over TARP, and the Obama adminstration is working hard at undercutting him, if not shutting him up entirely. Apparently, Obama thinks that actual accountability for big finance is a bad thing.
6. It would take a long book to describe everything horrifying about Arizona Sheriff Arpaio’s racist police state policies, but Womanist Musings scratches the vile surface, as does this Shakesville post. This post at Feministe is also worth reading. The Unapologetic Mexican has a video of the results of Arpaio’s immigration raids. Arpaio also associates with neo-nazis. And his office has been accused of laxness in investigating rape cases.
7. Ann at Feministing comments on what I find most frightening about Sheriff Arpaio: His popularity. “Arpaio is popular because he’s hateful. He racially profiles Latinos, his ratings go up. He divides families and goes out of his way to deport peaceful people who are just here to make a living, his ratings go up. He treats jail inmates — some of whom have not even been convicted of a crime — as subhuman, his ratings go up. He sort of functions as a conduit for the worst impulses in our society.”
8. Pharmacy Refuses To Fill Trans Woman’s Prescription
9. Isn’t it funny how all powerful women in politics get slammed for having an abrasive personal style? “Doesn’t everyone know that politics is a business in which the only people who get ahead are soft-spoken sweethearts like Rahm Emanuel and Chuck Schumer?”
10. Jews censoring chilling the speech of Jews department: The controversy over a documentary about Rachel Corrie being shown at a Jewish film festival, as well as over whether or not Cindy Corrie (Rachel’s mother) should be allowed to speak: “this woman has no business attending and speaking at a Jewish event like the film festival.” Disgusting.
11. On being white and using the N-word.
12. The court-appointed attorney came to visit. He noted that the household was “comfortable and physically safe for the infant” and the child “seemed to be doing well.” And he filed a motion to order the Department of Health and Human resources to remove her “from physical placement in homosexual home.” (via.)
13. Probably you’ve already seen the dancing wedding processional video, but if not, and you want to see something adorable… (Via).
14. Really interesting blog post about rape jokes, and the five ways the author sees of responding to them. (Via).
15. This John Stewart bit making fun of “birthers” — people who believe, contrary to a mountain of evidence, that President Obama wasn’t born in the USA — really cracked me up.
16. Does the way we compensate cops make it too difficult to fire or discipline them?
17. My friend Dylan is selling some swell stickers, to correct the poor punctuation that is all too common in advertisments. Are these stickers really needed? Yes.
18. Three Myths About the Consumer Financial Product Agency. I know it sounds boring. But if you’re sick of getting bilked by credit cards and banks hiding their gouging rules in six pages of ultra-fine print, then this is an issue you should be paying attention to.
19. The Swiftboating of Human Rights Watch. But they criticized Israel, so they must deserve it.
20. “Let’s not pretend that taxes on the very very rich are somehow the same as taxes on middle America.”
21. The grid of shadows created by the new roof of the Great Court of the British Museum is breathtaking. (Via).
22. Margaret Cho: “And I think that it’s time to take into our own hands this power and to say, “You know what – I’m beautiful – I just am. And that’s my light – I’m just a beautiful woman.” And I am just going to start talking about how beautiful I am, and people will start talking about it after I start talking it.” More at Pursuit of Harpyness.
23. An analysis of where we’ve seen the trailer for “Whip It” before. (And yet, I’ll probably watch it — it looks like the sort of familiar teen crap that I sometimes enjoy.)
24. “In this study, the participants (psychology students no less), were given a booklet explaining how cognitive biases work that described eight of the most common ones. They were then asked to rate how susceptible they were to each of the biases and then how susceptible the ‘average American’ was. Each rated themselves as less affected by biases than other people, instantly causing an irony loop in the fabric of space and time.” (Via.)
25. Neat photo gallery of what’s in people’s fridges (thanks Bean).
26. God does deliver justice, but only on a small scale:

I love stuff like that. (Thanks to Matt S. on my college alumni list for pointing this one out to me).

Let’s call this an open thread. Feel free to discuss what you want, or post whatever links you want (self-linking is totally cool).

As usual, use this thread to post or link whatever you’d like. Self-linking is entirely welcome.

1. Raising a child to be neither girl nor boy, just “Pop.” Unapologetically Female and Feministing both comment.
2. It’s like a sick Onion headline come to life: Texas police raid gay bar on 40th anniversary of Stonewall. One bar patron is seriously injured.(Via.)
3. Ten things wrong with the President of France’s wanting to eliminate the burqa.
4. And at Global Comment: “Banning women from wearing the burqa is not about freedom, it is about the normalization of the Western performance of femininity.” (Via.)
5. Like a dictionary, but better, and crowdsourced: Wordnic. (Via.)
6. Ezra on Obama, taxes, and giving in to the Republican framing.
7. My God, who wouldn’t want a wife? (I wish she had posted this on “Alas.”)
8. If we wipe out the financial managers, that would solve many problems.
9. How Spike ruined Buffy, and Buffy ruined vampires. (Via.)
10. Israel has made some improvements in response to Obama.
11. How Obama’s big speech in Egypt gets a “C” at best on women’s rights. Although unlike Cathy, I’m not against mentioning that America has problems too; I don’t believe that Obama makes an equivalence just because he mentions them both in the same speech. (It’s a matter of contextual analysis, however, not a hard-and-fast rule.) In the end, the real question is: How could Obama have put it that would have been more likely to make a positive difference? I’m not sure what the answer is.
12. Womanist Musings on prison rape.
13. Unexpected allies department: The Corner gets it right on prison rape.
14. Posted because it’s of interest, not because I agree with all of it: Does it make sense to “ally” with Iranians when I have no idea what I’m talking about? (Via.)
15. Evolutionary psychology is still nonsense.
16. On being a Christian who wants to treat lesbian and gay people justly.
17. No, the financial crash was not caused by the Community Reinvestment Act. It really wasn’t.
18. Little Wheel. You’re a robot trying to wake up a dozing robot city. “Nothin’ too complicated, not really what I’d call a “game”, more like an animated story with a bit of interactivity, but nevertheless, beautiful and enjoyable.”

Post what you like. Posting links, including self-linking, is totally cool with us.

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John Hodgman, speaking in front of President Obama, takes the opportunity to discuss the nerd/jock divide. (Via Ezra, where you can also view the President’s fairly funny speech.)

1. Racism’s Hidden Toll. Does the stress of living in a white-dominated society make African Americans get sick and die younger than their white counterparts? Apparently, yes. (Focuses on the research of Arline Geronimus, who I swiped from a lot when writing this post.) (Related thought: If discrimination and bigotry causes bad health, what does that say about the claim that fat people have health problems more often than middle-weight people?)
2. How copyright stifles progress, and how it could be rethought to encourage progress.
3. Video: Christians exorcising the gay out of teens. Very disturbing. Except that you can no longer view it, because the people who apparently abused a gay teen in the name of religion, have claimed that allowing the public to see the evidence violates their copyright.
4. I really wish I could be in China a month from now, to view the full solar eclipse. Boing Boing quotes Roberto Casati:
   

   A total eclipse is by far the most impressive natural phenomenon that we terrestrials can witness. The staging doesn’t lessen its brutal effects. The temperature drops. A mysterious cold wind starts blowing. The shadow comes running up like a hurricane on the sea. The light collapses, and in just a few seconds, a metallic night falls–it comes on so fast the mind is not ready for it. On the horizon, unreachably far away, are the vestiges of daytime: an orangy twilight all around, as if a set designer made a mistake in projecting a sunset. In the midst of all this is a sun that’s no longer a furnace but just an unlucky rock: its shining fringe is like the silver mane of hair of some aged celestial divinity; and stars glitter again, caught out of place in this out-of-joint nighttime.

5. “The idea that the US doesn’t ration health care is absurd. We certainly do. We just make people do it to themselves out of economic hardship.”
6. It’s both gratifying and weird to see Rad Geek, a libertarian who is not a right-winger or an anti-immigrant racist, completely school another libertarian who is a right-winger and a racist. Gratifying because Rad Geek rocks and the person he’s arguing against has genuinely offensive opinions, and weird because some of the particulars of the argument — like, which one of them is being more genuinely radically anti-government? — are places I’d never even think to go.
7. Under Misspelled Banner, Buchanan And White Nationalist Brimelow Argue For English-Only Initiatives. Irony has a liberal bias.
8. Awsome colorist Steve Oliff is interviewed about comics coloring techniques and technology in the 1980s, when a lot of innovation was taking place. What, me nerdy?
9. Dear Andrea Dworkin, a critique of Dworkin’s views on women, sex and pornography. (Via).
10. I Feel Pretty, I Feel Coerced Into Being Co-Opted By the Patriarchalist Beauty Myth (Via).
11. The assumptions made when discussing “trafficking”
12. 77 members of Congress call on Obama to improve enforcing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, by ordering that the Army stop asking, and stop listening to snitches.
13. If you’re putting off donating to Democrats until they stop putting off gay rights, here’s an awesome FAX you can send.
14. Katie Roiphe reviews the stripper-memoir genre and finds it formulaic and, disappointingly, slut-shaming. Good article, except when Roiphe criticizes other writers for their trite use of feminism, I truly want someone to shove a pie into her face. (Via Amanda’s Facebook.)
15. A Graphical Overview of Same Sex Marriage Debate
16. No, the DOJ brief did not say gay relationships are like incest and pedophilia. Yes, it was offensive.

This is an open thread. Post whatever you like, including links, including self-links. Discuss what you want.

* * *

But to get us started: Holly of The Pervocracy writes:

I don’t think there’s much difference between our culture telling women to cover their breasts and other cultures telling them to cover their hair.

(Via.)

* * *

• In the US Civil War, hundreds of women on both sides disguised themselves as men and joined the army.
• Life with a closeted, dying boyfriend. Heartbreaking and sweet.
• Radley Balko interview: To improve the justice system, we need to stop using statistics to measure how successful cops and DAs are.

You are not a number! You are a free person! So post whatever links or thoughts you like. And if you’d like to self-promote, go wild.

* * *
Same-sex marraige will inevitably lead to sex with ducks, and that’s an outcome Garfunkel and Oates are willing, even eager, to accept. (Via Pandagon.)

1. Excellent series of posts arguing that, despite the setbacks, pursuing equal marriage rights (aka gay marriage, aka same-sex marriage) through the courts as well as through other means has been an extremely successful strategy.
2. “I didn’t know what homophobia was until I left the reserve.”
3. Interesting article about Unitarian Universalism in Africa, which isn’t the same as UU in the West. (Via.)
4. “If you are an education reformer who believes teacher quality is the single biggest factor affecting student achievement, here is compelling evidence that you should also actively support existing desegregation programs.”
5. How far to the right has the Supreme Court gone? Very, very far.
6. Sotomayer is no bleeding heart jurist, alas.
7. Slavery 101: Clearing up misconceptions about African slavery
8. I like the anecdote in the second half of this post.
9. Language Log examines the study which Ross Douthat cites to imply that feminism has made women miserable: “the effect under discussion is a shift of a few percentage points, mostly accomplished by shifting the opinions of around 5 women in a hundred from ‘very happy’ to ‘pretty happy’.” (Via.)
10. Well-done post discusses how anti-fat bigotry is different, without devolving into oppression Olympics.
11. Poor people pay more for daily necessities of life than rich people.
12. It turns out that laws protecting labor don’t lead to increased unemployment.
13. If you’re a member of Threadless, please vote for this design by my friend Jenn, so I can buy it.
14. So which sex is “the sex class,” men or women? An argument over terminology that actually has some interesting stuff underlying it.
15. Thank goodness the Israeli Supreme Court is there. (Seriously.) More here.
16. Obama hasn’t remembered a single promise he’s made to LGBT Americans (and he made eight). We should remember that.
17. The Pervocracy discusses the clothed female/naked male sexual fetish. (Via.)
18. If I was a coin collector, I’d really want one of the godless dollars.
19. This article on health care costs in The New Yorker examines why some places in the US (such as the Mayo clinic) provide excellent, relatively inexpensive health care. Where is the extra money going in areas of the US which spend much more money for care that’s not any better? He argues that the difference, frankly, comes down to how much the system in any town encourages doctors to make as much money as they possibly can.
20. Texas mayor resigns and leaves the country, because homophobic US immigration & marriage laws don’t recognize his Mexican partner.
21. American voters are less white every election.
22. How to be Mike Lester, political cartoonist: 1) Find something that someone dislikes. 2) Compare it to abortion. 3) Repeat, repeat, repeat…
23. An argument in favor of Palestinians embracing nonviolent struggle against Israeli oppression.
24. Sixth grader censored for doing a school presentation about Harvey Milk.
25. On what is “normal” and what is “fetish.”
26. World’s most interesting bridges. Great photos!
27. I lovelovelove So You Think You Can Dance. But this homophobic garbage has got to go.

Post whatever you like. Links (including self-links) are delightful.

Elle, PhD discusses her and her family’s experiences driving while Black in east Texas.  (Via Art at the Auction.)

“Colorado has taken a giant step forward in reforming the interaction between a state and its citizens on issues of relationship recognition.”

The Degrees of Immigrant Bashing (Via)

As a former New Yorker, I’m very excited by this article about the changes brought by NYC’s traffic commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan. Basically, she’s travelling around the world and swiping the best ideas for New York — closing lanes of traffic to build pedestrian malls, seating, bike lanes, etc.. I can’t wait to see the new Times Square — where Broadway has been turned into a car-free pedestrian mall. If all goes well, they may convert all of Broadway into a pedestrian way.

Sexism, Uhura, and the new Star Trek

Method Actors Say The Most Ridiculous Things (Val Kilmer edition)

It’s not anti-feminist to ask about the Bergmann effect (even when an anti-feminist is doing the asking)

More cats in socks

Post what you like, about what you like, with who you like, including whatever links you like. (Self-link love is welcome too).

Sorry I haven’t been blogging much lately — a combination of a lot of work on the Hereville graphic novel, combined with some non-serious but tedious health problems, have been keeping me away.

* * *

This video is super-cool, featuring a collaboration of a variety of musicians (mostly street musicians, from the looks of it) and some film and sound editors. Thanks to Bean for showing it to me.

Also, Don Heck once did really cool-looking horror work, reminding me a bit of Charles Burns’ work. This may not be interesting to most readers, but when I first got into reading comics Don Heck was the epitome of “mediocre hack,” so seeing that his work once had a spark is surprising.

Also, read the “user reviews” of this t-shirt on Amazon. (Thanks, Mandolin.)