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.)

Post whatever you like, including links you like, to yourself or to someone else. If you love a link, set it free.

* * *

Kip emailed this to me, warning me that it was worth suffering through the introduction in order to see the video, which features (alleged) monks who have taken vows of silence, performing the Hallelujah Chorus. If you want to just skip the intro, skip to 1:30.

1. LGBT murders in Brazil up 55 percent. Trans people and sex workers have been particularly targeted: “‘A transvestite is 259 times more likely to be murdered than a gay man,’ says the study which is based on media reports, since there are no official statistics on hate crimes in Brazil.” I’d assume a study based on media reports is understating the true extent of the problem, since not every murder is reported.
2. Meowser’s post on airlines charging fat people extra is the best I’ve read on the subject. Go read this is you have any interest in the issue at all. She also brings up a factor that I haven’t seen any news reports mention: this is an issue in part because the airlines have been making the seats narrower and narrower in recent years.
3. Slut-Shaming From Sextexting Leads To Teen Suicide. So horrible. And as Renee says, “This is not about sextexting, this is about gender based harassment and slut shaming.”
4. Define Rich! “We have lost our definition of rich and I believe it was done intentionally. If you are rich, then what better camouflage is there than to undefine “rich”? And, what better way to undefine “rich” than to have an argument accepted that “rich” can not really be defined?”
5. Malcolm Gladwell, “Black Like Them.” “The success of West Indians is not proof that discrimination against American blacks does not exist. Rather, it is the means by which discrimination against American blacks is given one last, vicious twist: I am not so shallow as to despise you for the color of your skin, because I have found people your color that I like. Now I can despise you for who you are.” Via Ta-Nahisi.
6. It’s too cute, my brain may just explode.

Use this thread to discuss whatever. Self-linking is as welcome as hot chocolate on a cold day.

* * *

Okay, the smarmy news guy is annoying (especially at the end, when he gets all Paul McCartney on us). But I nonetheless found this story irresistible.

Also: Advertising photography, circa 1962. Then as now, the most common strategy seems to be: show happy thin white people possessing product, “good life”.

Also: The trailer for Charlyne Yi’s Paper Hearts, a semi-not-really documentary is astonishingly cute-looking (much discussion of this in the comments there). Via.

Post about what you want. It’s all about the love. Self-love (of the linking kind) is especially welcome.

* * *

This is a “Tweenbot,’ an art project. According to tweenbot’s creator:

“Given their extreme vulnerability, the vastness of city space, the dangers posed by traffic, suspicion of terrorism, and the possibility that no one would be interested in helping a lost little robot, I initially conceived the Tweenbots as disposable creatures which were more likely to struggle and die in the city than to reach their destination. Because I built them with minimal technology, I had no way of tracking the Tweenbot’s progress, and so I set out on the first test with a video camera hidden in my purse. I placed the Tweenbot down on the sidewalk, and walked far enough away that I would not be observed as the Tweenbot––a smiling 10-inch tall cardboard missionary––bumped along towards his inevitable fate.

“The results were unexpected. Over the course of the following months, throughout numerous missions, the Tweenbots were successful in rolling from their start point to their far-away destination assisted only by strangers. Every time the robot got caught under a park bench, ground futilely against a curb, or became trapped in a pothole, some passerby would always rescue it and send it toward its goal. Never once was a Tweenbot lost or damaged.”

Neat! Curtsy: Brad at WendyMcElroy.com.

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Also, via Boing Boing: “Danish photographer Peter Funch stakes New York City street corners out for two weeks at a time, taking pictures of passersby from the very same spot. He then uses Photoshop to composite the results into single images.” Very neat stuff.

Apparently Ann Althouse is marrying someone she’s known via her blog comments for years, although she met him in person only a short time ago. I don’t understand why this is something to make fun of; seems perfectly reasonable to me. There have been plenty of times when I’ve found Althouse unreasonable, terrible, and illogical, but on this occasion I think “congratulations!” is actually the appropriate response.

On the bright side, the controversy led me to this video (via Althouse), which is delightful:

Someone in Ann’s comments writes,

The video translates loosely to “Raising the roof at Antwerp Central Station”…with The Sound of Music…the Flemish have a strange sense of humor…

And then, via Obsidian Wings, this diagramtastic retelling of Little Red Riding Hood:

Post about whatever you like, with whatever links you want to share. Sluggo would want you to self-link!

1. I Repeat-Quit Using ‘Tranny’ To Insult Cisgender Women
2. Mary Anne Mohanraj Gets You Up to Speed, Part II. This one, also terrific, is more narrowly aimed at white writers writing characters of color.
3. New relationship initiative in California would convert civil marriage to Domestic Partnerships for everyone. The compromise both sides oppose!
4. How a children’s book (Sam Llewellyn’s Lyonesse: The Well Between the Worlds) uses fat as a symbol of corruption and evil.
5. Why we think we’re post-racial, and why it’s a dangerous desire.
6. Citigroup used bailout money to lobby against labor rights bill.
7. I am not a foodie at all. For one thing, I’d rather spend the money on comic books. But darn, the extremely elaborate and wildly original meal described here sounds like an experience.
8. The case against objective definitions of rape.
9. The Untold Story of the World’s Biggest Diamond Heist. Really entertaining read. Via Boing Boing.
10. Billy Bragg and other rock stars speak out in favor of fans downloading music.
11. One-eyed filmmaker plans to install tiny camera in his empty eye socket. He thinks it’ll let him more intimate, natural footage when talking to people. This reminds me a little of Connie Willis’ short story “The Last of the Winnebagos,” which featured a photographer using a hidden camera to capture more genuine expressions.
12. Mzbitca considers Buffy Season one.
13. U.S. job situation now worse than in our previous five recessions.
14. Note to newspapers: “Rape” is not spelled S-E-X.
15. You know who didn’t cause the economic crisis? Women.
16. Bus bench in Netherlands publicly displays weight of whoever sits on it. It’s a promotion for a “health” club.
17. Intersectionality and violence against South African, and California, lesbians.
18. The Watchmen movie may disappoint, but fan culture does not.
19. Some horrible Bush administration policies that Obama is embracing; and in other cases, he doens’t continue Bush’s crimes, but he does cover them up. Obama’s a lot better than Bush, but a lot worse than he should be.
20. Bank ad featuring a trans women. And clearly being anti-trans bigotry. Neat.
21. California legislators propose legalizing pot for the tax revenue.
22. You’re right, Lisa, the way Vogue frames dieting, fat and “curves” is both sexist and racist. But I wish you had also pointed out that it’s a prime example of anti-fat bigotry (or “sizist,” if you’d like an “ist” word).
23. Really striking, huge-scale, anti-domestic-violence art project.
24. The argument against participating in Durbin II.
25. Gay marriage opponent jokes about same-sex couples being denied visitation rights in hospitals. Yeah, that’s a laugh riot.
26. Is food the new sex? Right-wing and wrong in a number of ways, but interesting if you can deal with that, essay on fat, sex, and self-indulgence.

You know one thing I really love? Great book design. Check out the elegant and striking cover design for the upcoming Nancy collection. Published by Fantagraphics, designed by Seth (who’s also a great cartoonist).

Once you’ve bought the book, xerox some pages on to thick-stock paper so you can play Five Card Nancy.

Update: Links # 5 and #11 have now been fixed.

Post as you will shall be the only law.

Self-linking is encouraged, because it’s blogging with someone you love.

* * *

1. Kentucky court denies rights to lesbian co-parent. Because allowing a co-mother to be ripped away from her child won’t be harmful to the child at all, right?
2. Ugly Betty and Affirmative Action.
3. “State’s rights” wasn’t always just a fig leaf to promote White supremacy over Black people. Sometimes, it was used to promote White supremacy over Native Americans too.
4. Social Class, Rape, and Intimate Partner Violence.
5. Does a flight attendant deserve ten years in prison because she gave her hair stylist discounted plane tickets in exchange for hair care, and unbeknownst to her, he was a drug dealer?
6. God Hates Figs. Awesome.
7. The US Army took a prostetic leg away from a prisoner and forced him to stand. You know the reason they hate us? Because we’ve earned their hatred, that’s why.
8. Good policy idea: subsidize people trading in old clunkers for new, cleaner-running cars.
9. Homeless taking over foreclosed homes. Excellent.
10. The economic crisis is all the fault of left-wing intellectuals.
11. Renee discusses “This Is Why You’re Fat” site.
12. Does racism end the death penalty? No, but the price tag might.
13. Little Light is missing living in the country. Not political, but lovely writing.
14. Mental Health and Promescuity.

Oh, and here’s a weird/creepy/gross animated video (via Boing Boing).

Use this thread to post whatever you want. It’s anarchy, I tell you, anarchy!

Self-linking is just blogging with someone you love, so go for it.

* * *

1. A post about a study of the way multiracial people put together their own identities.
2. If only rich people had voted, McCain would have won the election overwhelmingly. If only poor people voted, Obama would have won even more overwhelmingly.
3. You can now watch all of Sita Sings The Blues online! Thank you, PBS. (Just to warn folks: Not a good choice if you can’t stand works that veer into cultural appropriation, however.)
4. Womanist Musings interviews Melissa of Shakesville.
5. The Pudge Police are Coming!
6. The Tarnished Beauties of Blackwell, Oklahoma. Do you like old portrait photos? ‘Cause I do.
7. Bear McCreary, who composes the music for “Battlestar Galactica,” has written a long and enjoyable description of everything he did for the episode “Someone To Watch Over Me.”
8. Comparing old and new editions of “The Joy of Cooking” Much more interesting than I would have guessed.
9. Teen Beaten By Police Speaks Out
10. FAIR has a good piece arguing that the way the media talks about Obama’s race, mainly reveals a lot about how people in the media think of race.
11. Netanyahu refuses to accept Palestine’s right to exist. And, relatedly, Palestinians Now Allowed To Eat Pasta. Also, Hamas got everything Hamas wanted.
12. Man executed because of a stubborn, horrible judge and a computer crash.
13. The Aboriginal News Group is a new “international grassroots collaboration of First Nations blog-journalists.” Link via Ojibway Migisi Bineshii.
14. Brits use fataphobic, ineffective scare tactics to try and frighten children into being thin.
15. Whoops! I just had a positive link to the Rudd Center. So, to make up for it, read this post at Fat Chicks Rule!, because the Rudd Center likes to counterbalance its good points with suckiness.
16. More on disability phobia and the BBC children show host.

Post what you like, with you like, for as long as you like. Self-link-love has been approved by Jocelyn Elders.

1. “We’re Making A Better World“: how large governing organizations corrupt and crush individuals in Joss Whedon’s work. I wonder how this will play out in Buffy season 8?
2. Speaking of Whedon, check out the original script to the first episode of Dollhouse. It’s not perfect, but I think it’s much better than what was actually broadcast.
3. A sweet story illustrating one way equal marriage rights are important to families.
4. “For [NAACP president] Jealous, mass incarceration is the civil-rights challenge of this generation”
5. Interesting post about trans people who are vets. Two takeaway points: First, trans women are apparently more likely than cis people or trans men to have been in the armed forces. Second: The VA discriminates against trans people and often provides inadequate medical care.
6. Musician Amanda Palmer’s record label wanted to digitally alter this music video because Palmer’s belly isn’t  flat enough for them. Palmer refused, and Palmer’s fans are very cool.
7. How the GOP could try to appeal to Black voters
8. To One Judge, At Least, Migrants Have Rights
9. Iran and Women’s Rights
10. “If you don’t belong to the marginalized group in question lay the hell off the demeaning language.”
11. The 39 Stairs, performed by Sesame Street. Awesome.
12. Obama’s housing plan, nutshelled into a blog post. And it really isn’t all about giving money to irresponsible homeowners, contrary to the right-wing spin.
13. Chevron trys to sic its legal bills on poor Nigerians who sued Chevron. The word “assholes” is so inadequate. But more importantly, “If the risk of trying to vindicate legal rights is bankruptcy, legal rights are worthless.”
14. White people insisting on all-white proms.
15. Interesting discussion of whiteness and Jewishness in America (or “Amerikkka,” as the author puts it). Curtsy: The Primary Contradiction.
16. “Laissez-Faire Capitalism Has Failed,” by Nouriel Roubini. For “Alas” readers who aren’t familiar with him, Roubini is the person who can most rightly claim to have seen our current economic collapse coming. As Eric Martin says, “isn’t it about time we started heeding the advice of the people that have been right about the major economic devlopments of the past decade or so?”
17. Well-placed rage can be fun — watch this video of Lansing, Michigan’s mayor Virg Bernero being interviewed by some right-wing tool on Foxnews.
18. “I am a Bisexual. Yes. No.” It’s a question you have to answer when applying to be an adoptive parent in Florida.
19. Judge rebukes prosecutor for withholding exculpatory evidence, and orders man released from prison after 17 years. (Unsurprisingly, the victim of the prosecutor’s railroading is Latino.) The prosecutor plays up his conviction record and toughness to voters, of course.
20. On imperialism and being a marginalized American teaching English in Brazil
21. Prosecution’s bite mark expert in MIssissipi caught on video creating fake bike marks on corpse.
22. Lowering expectations of what the US can do in Afghanistan.
23. Lifetime appointments aren’t needed to preserve judicial independence.
24. Why making the rich poorer can make the poor (effectively) richer.

1. Please go sign the petition for single payer health care. And (more importantly), go see if your congressional representative is on this list, and if they are, contact them and ask them to co-sponsor HR 676, the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act.
2. The torture conducted by the U.S. government includes rape.
3. Dollhouse first episode reviews at What A Crazy Random Happenstance, Art At the Auction, Constant Thoughts, and Art At the Auction again. If you only read one of those links, I’d highly recommend the last one.
4. Oh, and this post, arguing that Echo from Dollhouse is thematically the opposite of Dawn from Buffy.
5. Headless fatties. (The first use of the term?)
6. The Connection Between Blacks As Apes And Police Brutality.
7. Imaginary Fat Toys As Cautionary Tales
8. Slut Shaming And The Politics Of Tight Clothes
9. Madinkbeard analyzes a panel from an old David Mazzucchelli comic, “Discovering America.” For my tastes, “Discovering America” is the single best-drawn comic I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, it’s long out of print, and copies are expensive.
10. I am bored by sports, but sometimes enjoy sports writing. This NYTimes Magazine article, about a great basketball player whose greatness is invisible to conventional basketball stats, is quite good.
11. Over at Fat Chicks Rule, in comments, an employee of the Rudd Center responds to fat activist criticism of the Rudd Center, and the fat activists respond in turn.
12. Celebrate Black History Month At Walmart.
13. I love this gastric bypass t-shirt. A shame it’s not available in sizes above XXL.
14. Ten Cartoons from Sean Delonas. I’ve seen them before, but the awesome extent of his bigoted asshattery becomes clearer when seeing them all collected together like this.
15. Reflections by an Arab Jew. (I know this and the above link came from “Alas” comments, but I’m too lazy right now to go find out who I should give credit to, so apologies for that.)
16. The 1965 Dewey’s Lunch Counter Sit-In’s. “It’s the first documented instance of people protesting over anti-transgender discrimination. …  It was an African-American GLBT production.” Curtsy: TransGriot.
17. The Case For A Public Health Care Plan. A public health care alternative isn’t just worthwhile as a trojan horse for an eventual single-payer system; it’s a necessary element of making private plans work well.
18. Immigrant in “detention center” denied health care because it was assumed he was faking, dies of cancer. I hope the family’s lawsuit is successful. And see also: Abuses Rampant In U.S. Detention Centers.
19. On The Indefensibility of the Filibuster
20. Boldly sacrificing Mexican lives in order to make it marginally more difficult for Americans to get high.
21. Hilzoy explains why the Democrats never make the Republicans actually do a filibuster — it’s much harder on the majority party than on the party doing the filibuster.
22. Why Michelle Obama’s Vogue Cover Matters
23. In France, heterosexuals are flocking to the “marraige light” alternative created to avoid letting same-sex couples marry. So much for preserving marriage.
24. Our taxes pay for “you can’t rape a slut!” abstinence only messages.
25. Anti-earmark ideology hurts the country.
26. Free book on free range kids. We’re raising our kids to live fearful, constrained lives, and we shouldn’t be.
27. More responses to “Why Tom Zarek Was Right.”
28. Rape victim blamed for mistaken ID caused by a racist justice system, bad police practices and a DA ignoring evidence.
29. How Not To Write Science.
30. The idea that one should learn standard English in order to not be discriminated against is poisonous.

1. Interesting discussion of Sandman, focusing on the debate between “accept that change happens, adjust, and do your work” (Death), “accept that change happens and drop out” (Destruction), and “refuse to accept change, refuse to adjust” (Dream). Via Amberite.
2. Louis Menand’s 2002 evisceration of Stephen Pinker’s The Blank Slate, and of evolutionary psychiatry psychology in general.
3. Zuky on the Native American roots of the Seneca Falls declaration of women’s rights.
4. Debate: Should Feminists Endorse The Basic Income? (Via Crooked Timber.)
5. Crooked Timber on the conservative case against equal opportunity.
6. Bernard Avishai divides Israel into five broad groups. I think his analysis is well worth reading. His conclusion, almost dadaesque when decontextualized: “ORDINARILY, THEN, TRIBE Three hates Four, condescends to Two, and doubts One; Two hates One, resents Three and (for different reasons) Four; One is afraid of Two, patronizes Three and hates Four; Four hates One, proselytizes Two, and is afraid of Three. All four are afraid of Five.”
7. Piny at Feministe on Carol Lay’s new diet book (which I wrote about here).
8. Jay Rosen on the “donut” of acceptable thought in the US news media:
   

   It’s easily the most useful diagram I’ve found for understanding the practice of journalism in the United States, and the hidden politics of that practice. You can draw it by hand right now. Take a sheet of paper and make a big circle in the middle. In the center of that circle draw a smaller one to create a doughnut shape. Label the doughnut hole “sphere of consensus.” Call the middle region “sphere of legitimate debate,” and the outer region “sphere of deviance.”

   I’d recommend also this interview with Rosen, in which he argues that for most journalists, “savviness” is the single highest value to which they aspire.

Self-linking is beautiful and healthy and in no way makes you a pervert.

Via Our Decent Into Madness, jewelry by Melanie Bilenker. She creates the lines by using individual strands of her own hair.

So, umn: Wow.

Anyhow, please use this thread for whatever you’d like; self-promotion is extremely welcome.