I’ve been slacking with the interesting articles sharing lately. Let’s fix that.

From The Raw Story: Global report: Decriminalization does not increase rates of drug use

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The report, A Quiet Revolution: Drug Decriminalisation Policies in Practice Across the Globe, “looks at over 20 countries that have adopted some form of decriminalisation of drug possession, including some States that have only decriminalised cannabis possession.” The studies’ objective was to examine all existing research and attempt to establish whether communities that adopted decriminalization policies saw in an uptick in use. “The simple answer,” said the report, “is that it did not.” After examining the 21 countries and their “decriminalization profiles,” including the U.S., Mexico, Australia, the Netherlands, Estonia and more, the global study concluded that “many countries adopt models that are ineffective, unworkable, or in some cases which result in greater harms for those who use drugs and for society more broadly,” but that ultimately a country’s policies concerning drug legalization and enforcement have “little correlation with levels of drug use and misuse in that country.”

From Greta Christina’s Blog: Unmixing Messages: Nudity, Sex, and Hooking Up at Atheist Conferences

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So yes, if you’re interested in hooking up at atheist conferences, knowing which other people might share this interest — as an interest in general, or with you in particular — is not always obvious. So if you’re at a conference hotel bar, and you’re trying to figure out which people there also want to hook up — and which among those number might be interested in hooking up with you — how are you supposed to know? You ask them. Not right off the bat, of course. There are some settings in which etiquette permits introducing yourself to strangers by asking if they want to have sex with you — but hotel bars at conferences are, as far as I can tell, not among them. So you start by conversing on other topics. You see if you establish a rapport. You behave in slightly flirtatious ways, and see if these are met with a withdrawal or a response in kind. If it seems that things are moving forward with this, you behave in slightly more flirtatious ways. If this seems to be moving forward, and you want to try establishing physical contact — you ask them if they would be interested in that. This seems to be a tricky concept for some people. So I’ll spell it out again: If you are interested in having sex with someone, the person you need to consult about it is the person you’re interested in. You do not, however, consult the question of whether some atheist bloggers posed nude for a calendar. Or whether they participated in a mock scientific experiment designed to make fun of the hypothesis that female immodesty causes earthquakes. Or whether they title their quick-summary-of-interesting-links blog posts with the mildly double-entendre title of “quickies.”

From Gamasutra: Video games and Male Gaze – are we men or boys?

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Male Gaze, then, has to do with the relationship between a heterosexual male viewer, and a female that is being viewed. The theory poses that in media like film, photography, and I would here add games, when a heterosexual male is in charge of the viewing of a female, the resulting media necessarily reflects that male’s gaze. In the case of games, this may be more of a collective gaze.  In cinema, for example, if a camera follows the curve of a woman’s body, or keeps her cleavage in primary screen real-estate, that is an example of Male Gaze. Or in games, consider the Golden Axe Beast Rider trailer in which the camera pans down from the protagonist’s butt to reveal enemies in the distance. This was a conscious choice someone made when creating this trailer. Note also that the two top-rated comments are in reference to this scene, which altogether should give you a pretty good idea of what Male Gaze means, and the simplest forms it takes. [Note: the original version of the trailer linked is this one which has more views, and has the mentioned top-rated comments. It was not viewable in the U.S., so was replaced. -ed.]Some folks argue that these women are strong, kill lots of men, and thus are positive characters. But take a look at these ladies from Tera Online. They may have crazy superpowers, sure. But they are nearly naked to the eye of the player, and the target player here is clearly male. All their power is stripped away; their primary function, the reason they were created, is to be sexy for a male gaze, to draw males to stare at them. When you look at that picture, do you see “powerful mage” or do you see “hot girl.” Let’s be honest here! I know what I see. 

From Dr. Nerdlove: On labeling women “crazy”

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There are certain words that are applied to women specifically in order to manipulate them into compliance: “Slut”, “Bitch”, “Ugly/Fat” and of course, “Crazy”. These words encapsulate what society defines as the worst possible things a woman can be. Slut-shaming is used to coerce women into restricting their own sexuality into a pre-approved vision of feminine modesty and restraint. “Bitch” is used against women who might be seen as being too aggressive or assertive… acting, in other words, like a man might. “Ugly” or “Fat” are used – frequently interchangeably – to remind them that their core worth is based on a specific definition of beauty, and to deviate from it is to devalue not only oneself but to render her accomplishments or concerns as invalid. “Crazy” may well be the most insidious one of the four because it encompasses so much. At its base, calling women “crazy” is a way of waving away any behavior that men might find undesirable while simultaneously absolving those same men from responsibility. Why did you break up with her? Well, she was crazy. Said something a woman might find offensive? Stop being so sensitive.

From Dispatches from the Culture Wars:  SCOTUS Overturns Stolen Valor Act

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From Pandagon, Rejecting the “self-discipline” framework 

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“Self-discipline” can’t really be extracted meaningfully in this debate from the concept of sin and punishment. Under the sin framework, gluttony is a sin, and the only proper response to sin is punishment. Therefore, if you accept the “self-discipline” framework, there is no problem here. The overeaters are sinners, and their health problems are punishment for their sin. The system works, let’s all go home. Indeed, you see this exact argument being trotted out in comments. But if you reject this notion and instead view negative health effects of overeating as a public health problem to be solved, then the question of “self-discipline” becomes silly. Let’s just say for the sake of argument that you accept this assumption, that people don’t have self-discipline and that’s why they overeat. If you’re still interested in solving the problem, the response then becomes, “So what?” There’s no real way to fix that problem with traditional finger-wagging, as thousands of years of scolding has so far proven ineffective. Leaving it be is also unacceptable, because real people are suffering and our health care systems are overextended. When you’re engaging in problem-solving, it’s best to start by looking at things you can control, and leave the discourse of sin and redemption to the wayside. 

From the New York Times, Last Ones Left in a Toxic Kansas Town 

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This April, officials abandoned their plan to turn Treece into a wildlife preserve. It had been a quixotic hope all along, dependent upon the desire of the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism, which had nothing to do with the buyout, to take over the land from the Department of Health and Environment. The Wildlife Department wouldn’t give an official statement, but one employee told me the agency wasn’t interested in the land. “It’s not because that couple stayed,” he said, referring to the Busbys. “Not only because of that, anyway. That land is inadequate for supporting wildlife, or from what I hear, any other kind of life.” Instead, another auction will be held this fall. The now-barren plots of land will be sold to buyers who can use the space to hunt deer and rabbits, or to grow crops (at their own risk). The land won’t be cleaned up further except to dismantle the remaining chat towers by hauling the stones away and using them to fill local cave-ins, where the effects of airborne lead are mitigated. This could take years. The state recently petitioned to remove the town’s name from maps. The “welcome” sign out on U.S.-69 has been taken down, and a visitor today couldn’t find the place unless she already knew the way. The Busbys will be allowed to stay in the ghost town as long as they like, but once they leave or die, it’s very likely that no human will ever live in Treece again.

From Powell’s Books Blog, Writing Across Gender 

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I don’t think it’s terribly controversial to note that women, from a young age, are required to consider the reality of the opposite gender’s consciousness in a way that men aren’t. This isn’t to say that women don’t often misunderstand, mistreat, and stereotype men, both in literature and in life. But on a basic level, functioning in society requires that women register that men are fully conscious; it is not really possible for a woman to throw up her hands and write men off as eternally unknowable space aliens — and even if she says she has, she cannot really behave as though she has. Every element of her life — from reading books about boys and men to writing papers about the motivations of male characters to being attentive to her own safety to navigating most any institutional or professional or economic sphere — demands an ironclad familiarity with, and belief in, the idea that men really are fully human entities. And no matter how many men come to the same conclusions about women, the structure of society simply does not demand so strenuously that they do so. If you didn’t really deep down believe that women were, in general, exactly as conscious as you, you could probably still get by in life. You could probably still get a book deal. You could probably still get elected to office.

From MSNBC, Rachel Maddow’s update on the war on women:

Rage-inspiring video:

From the hairpin, The Best Time I Took My Baby to the Emergency Room 

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This is still a little too raw for me to really want to talk about it, but I got a bit of a guilt-nudge from yesterday’s post on criminalizing bad mothers. All parents do something stupid at some point, and most of us get away with it. That’s the truth. Usually, it’s not doing meth while you’re pregnant, or putting your baby on top of a bear in Yellowstone so you can film it. But it’s something, and you usually get away with it. And if you get away with it, it’s a funny story, and you’ll eventually laugh about it with other parents. If you don’t get away with it, people will make themselves feel better about their own mistakes by pillorying you. But there’s no difference between people who do something stupid and get away with it, and people who don’t get away with it. It’s luck. Don’t kid yourself.

From Religion Dispatches, A New Goal for Anti-Choice Activists: Targeting Sex-Selective Abortion 

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PRENDA could be this year’s Pence Amendment—named for its author Indiana Rep. Mike Pence (now running for Governor of Indiana) and his attempt to bring down Obama’s health care law over the federal funding of Planned Parenthood. PRENDA, like the Pence Amendment, is red meat for the anti-choice mission to defund and defame Planned Parenthood. It will also serve as a pure political tool to electrify the single-issue voter to recruit carloads of right-wing voters to the polls.
PRENDA, like the Pence Amendment, will likely not pass in the Senate. But if it passes the House we can expect a joint Boehner/Franks press conference designed to use the victory as reinforcement of a growing GOP meme: this bill will save millions of baby girls! The Democrats voted against saving the lives of potential women! Who’s waging the real war on women, Democrats? We are the true women’s rights advocates!
In a recent op-ed at Politico, “Battle Hymn of the Anti-Abortion Feminist,” Lila Rose begins, “In the ongoing debate over women’s health care, one voice has been mostly absent: that of the anti-abortion feminist.” Rose casts herself—and other anti-abortion activists—as the true champions of women, just like the rest of the GOP. Although PRENDA addresses “black genocide” again, this year’s focus is decidedly on sex-selection abortion.

From NPR, From Minister to Atheist: A Story of Losing Faith 

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MacBain glances nervously around the room. It’s a Sunday, and normally she would be preaching at her church in Tallahassee, Fla. But here she is, sneaking away to the American Atheists‘ convention in Bethesda, Md.
Her secret is taking a toll, eating at her conscience as she goes about her pastoral duties week after week — two sermons every Sunday, singing hymns, praying for the sick when she doesn’t believe in the God she’s praying to. She has had no one to talk to, at least not in her Christian community, so her iPhone has become her confessor, where she records her private fears and frustrations.
“On my way to church again. Another Sunday. Man, this is getting worse,” she tells her phone in one recording. “How did I get myself in this mess? Sometimes, I think to myself, if I could just go back a few years and not ask the questions and just be one of those sheep and blindly follow and not know the truth, it would be so much easier. I’d just keep my job. But I can’t do that. I know it’s a lie. I know it’s false.”

From Reason, Born This Way? Nature, nurture, narratives, and the making of our political personalities

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The human mind is a story processor, not a logic processor. Everyone loves a good story; every culture bathes its children in stories. Among the most important stories we know are stories about ourselves, and these “life narratives” are McAdams’ third level of personality. McAdams’ greatest contribution to psychology has been his insistence that psychologists connect their quantitative data (about the two lower levels, which we assess with questionnaires and reaction-time measures) to a more qualitative understanding of the narratives people create to make sense of their lives. These narratives are not necessarily true stories; they are simplified and selective reconstructions of the past, often connected to an idealized vision of the future. But even though life narratives are to some degree post hoc fabrications, they still influence people’s behavior, relationships, and mental health.Life narratives are saturated with morality. They provide a bridge between a developing adolescent self and an adult political identity. Here, for example, is how Keith Richards describes a turning point in his life in his recent autobiography. Richards, the famously sensation-seeking and nonconforming lead guitarist of the Rolling Stones, was once a marginally well-behaved member of his school choir. The choir won competitions with other schools, so the choirmaster got Richards and his friends excused from many classes so they could travel to ever-larger choral events. But when the boys reached puberty and their voices changed, the choirmaster dumped them. They were then informed that they would have to repeat a full year in school to make up for their missed classes, and the choirmaster didn’t lift a finger to defend them. It was a “kick in the guts,” Richards says. It transformed him in ways that had obvious political ramifications: “The moment that happened, Spike, Terry and I, we became terrorists. I was so mad, I had a burning desire for revenge. I had reason then to bring down this country and everything it stood for. I spent the next three years trying to fuck them up. If you want to breed a rebel, that’s the way to do it.…It still hasn’t gone out, the fire. That’s when I started to look at the world in a different way, not their way anymore. That’s when I realized that there’s bigger bullies than just bullies. There’s them, the authorities. And a slow-burning fuse was lit.”
Richards may have been predisposed by his personality to become a liberal, but his politics were not predestined. Had his teachers treated him differently—or had he simply interpreted events differently when creating early drafts of his narrative—he could have ended up in a more conventional job surrounded by conservative colleagues and sharing their moral matrix. But once Richards came to understand himself as a crusader against abusive authority, there was no way he was ever going to vote for the British Conservative Party. His own life narrative just fit too well with the stories that all parties on the left tell in one form or another.

From The Agitator, “Convicted defendants left uninformed of forensic flaws found by Justice dept.”

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Taxpayer-paid employees of the Justice Department had direct and exclusive knowledge that there may be hundreds of innocent people in prison, they knew that flawed forensics in these cases needed to be reviewed, and their justification for not doing more as these people continued to rot in prison was, Hey, we did the bare minimum required of us by law. The immediately obvious problem here is that the ethical requirements need to be strengthened. If the task force charged with investigating possible wrongful convictions is only required to report what it finds to the prosecutor offices that won those convictions—and who obviously have a strong incentive to keep the new information under wraps—what the hell was the point of forming the task force in the first place? And why keep the task force findings from the public? But even beyond the problematic ethical requirements, I’m having a hard time fathoming how no one on this task force felt morally compelled to go beyond those requirements—to, you know, actually reach out defense attorneys, or attempt to actually reach the convicts or their families. How in the world can you possess this sort of information, then still sleep at night, year after year, knowing that (a) the information obviously isn’t reaching the people who have an incentive to actually put it to use,  (b) you’re one of the few people who could make that happen, and (c) because the information was only available to select group of people, if you or one of your colleagues doesn’t act, no one else will?

From Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, Cops Slam Obama for Same Old “Drug War” Budget 

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“The president sure does talk a good game about treating drugs as a health issue but so far it’s just that: talk,” said Neill Franklin, executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition and a former narcotics officer in Baltimore. “Instead of continuing to fund the same old ‘drug war’ approaches that are proven not to work, the president needs to put his money where his mouth is.” The release of the drug budget comes just days after President Obama returned from the Summit of the Americas meeting in Colombia, where he was pressed to open up a debate on legalizing and regulating drugs by sitting Latin American presidents like Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia and Otto Perez Molina of Guatemala. “The chorus of voices calling for a real debate on ending prohibition is growing louder all the time,” said Franklin. “President Obama keeps saying he is open to a discussion but he never seems willing to actually have that discussion. Polls show that three out of four U.S. voters think the ‘war on drugs’ is a failure and a majority now support marijuana legalization. The time for real change is now, but at the Summit of the Americas President Obama announced more than $130 million in aid to fund the continued effort to arrest drug traffickers in Latin America. This prohibition strategy hasn’t worked in the past and it cannot work in the future. Latin American leaders know it, and President Obama must know it. Let’s stop the charade and begin to bring drugs under control through legalization.”

From Casaubon’s Book, Context is Everything 

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Quite a number of readers suggested I respond to James McWilliams’ piece in the New York Times “The Myth of Sustainable Meat.” McWilliams has garnered quite a bit of attention by critiquing the idea of local food, and in some cases, some of his analyses, as far as they go, are right. For example, McWilliams is quite right that if everyone in America eats as much beef as they always have, but converts to grassfed beef his figures are roughly correct. “… If we raised all the cows in the United States on grass (all 100 million of them), cattle would require (using the figure of 10 acres per cow) almost half the country’s land (and this figure excludes space needed for pastured chicken and pigs).” In this case, the call for sustainable egg production I made last week (in response to a rather better New York Times article, in fact) would seem to be insanely misguided. After all, as several readers pointed out, eggs would be more expensive, and we probably couldn’t eat as many of them. Woah – so that means eggs are totally unsustainable, right? Well, no, it doesn’t – because while backyard and small scale egg production can’t produce as many eggs as cheaply, we don’t need them to – we need to eat fewer eggs and better ones..Neither McWilliams absolutism nor Kristoff’s are an appropriate response to the problem of an unsustainable agriculture – any more than “hey, we can’t raise billions of eggs easily in backyards and we couldn’t possibly adjust our diets, so hey, factory farms it is.”

From Blag Hag, Dear E.O. Wilson: Please retire or stick to ants

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I want to give Wilson the benefit of the doubt. Maybe when he said “no one responded” he meant “no one responded in a way that we think invalidates our hypothesis.” But even then, the rest of his talk was incredibly sloppy. He asserted that human eusociality evolved via group selection, but didn’t offer a shred of evidence the whole time. No proposed mechanism, no genetic evidence, nothing. He just waved the Wand of Group Selection and asserted it happened. He asserted that humans first ate cooked meat by scavenging carcasses from wildfires. That’s one hypothesis among many, but he presented it as a known truth and gave no evidence or citation for it. He asserted that eusociality only evolved recently but again gave absolutely no evidence as to why he thought so. I mean, maybe he’s right, but eusociality isn’t exactly something that fossilizes well, so it could have possibly existed in past species. At least put some sort of qualifier or explanation of your reasoning out there. When someone in the Q&A asked him to explain why people disagree with group selection so much, he didn’t explain the objections or why he thinks kin selection was wrong. He instead stated that his paper was reviewed by a mathematician from Harvard and that it got into the prestigious journal Nature. Therefore it is right, or something. Here’s an alternative hypothesis: Your paper got published in Nature because you’re insanely famous and it was incredibly controversial, which Nature eats up. Nature is more about prestige and sexy topics than good science nowadays. Its retraction rate has increased ten fold in the last ten years when its number of papers published has only increased by 44%. Look, I’m not a priori against group selection. Maybe Wilson is right and group selection is applicable in more situations that we currently think. But I’m not going to accept it until he presents compelling evidence, which he utterly failed to do. You can’t just say “Harvard” and “Nature” and leave it at that.

From Rationalist International, Sanal Edamarku under attack for exposing Catholic “miracle”

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On 10th March, Sanal Edamaruku flew to Mumbai. The TV channel TV-9 had invited him to investigate a “miracle” that caused local excitement. He went with the TV team to Irla in Vile Parle to inspect the crucifix standing there in front of the Church of Our Lady of Velankanni. This crucifix had become the centre of attraction for an ever growing crowd of believers coming from far and wide. The news of the miracle spread like wild fire. For some days, there were little droplets of water trickling from Jesus’ feet. Hundreds of people came every day to pray and collect some of the “holy water” in bottles and vessels. Irla was about to become a pilgrimage centre. But Sanal Edamaruku spoilt this prospect. Within minutes, he clearly identified the source of the water (a drainage near a washing room) and the mechanism how it reached Jesus feet (capillary action). The local church leaders, present during his investigation, were far from pleased.

From Casaubon’s Book, The Eggs are Yummy and Definitely Worth It!

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Anyone who doesn’t know that factory egg and poultry production is a nightmare – a nightmare of cruelty to chickens, contamination of your food, a nightmare of manure and dead animal disposal issues that threaten human health is not paying attention. Eating commercial chicken or eggs is an act of willful blindness, and the investigation into Kreider farms is just par for the course. This information has been available to everyone in the US for a decade and more, and promulgated in media, film, etc… Anyone who cares even a tiny bit about what they eat knows this. Most people who do not are actively choosing not to know.

From Greta Christina’s Blog, Prostitution Is Not Sex Slavery 

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Yes. Prostitution is often abusive and exploitative. So is the garment industry. So is the chocolate industry. In fact, abuses in both the garment and the chocolate industry are so widespread as to be endemic. It does not follow, however, that wearing clothes and eating chocolate are inherently and by their very nature abusive and exploitative, that nobody ever freely chooses to enter these industries, and that anyone who participates them is either an abuser or a victim. If we’re going to work to stop abuses and exploitation in the garment and chocolate industries, shaming and marginalizing people who wear clothes and eat chocolate — or who make clothes and pick cocoa beans, or who work in clothing stores and chocolate shops — is not a good place to start. Yes. Prostitution is often abusive and exploitative. I absolutely stand with you against any form of prostitution that is enslaving, patriarchal oppression, violent, not freely chosen, abusive, or in any way harmful. I am eager to find solutions to the all-too-common abuse and exploitation of prostitutes. But these solutions need to be based in reality. They cannot be based in the denial of the real experience of thousands upon thousands of people.

From Pandagon, The general election has started and the stupid levels are already off the charts

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Oh boy, Rick Santorum is out of the race for five minutes and already there’s stupid and disingenuous media outrages stemming from the general election. Buzz Feed has the story. It started when Mitt Romney started saying he understands the concerns of working women because he’s married to one of those lady-things. This, of course, is part of his larger plan to appeal to female voters, which goes like this: 1) Act like the only woman he’s met in his life is his wife. She is All Women.
2) …….
3) Win the female vote.  Hillary Rosen sensibly goes on TV and points out that this claim doesn’t even make sense, since Ann Romney is hardly the expert, being a lifelong housewife married to an incredibly rich man who doesn’t know the first thing about what it’s like to try to live off a paycheck. But Romney has a secret weapon up her sleeve: Housewife Romanticization. She knows the feminine mystique still runs strong in this country, and that there’s a strong tradition of idiotic platitudes about the greatness of housewives that exist to conceal very real concerns about inequality and female dependency, concerns that were raised in the 60s and haven’t ever been completely killed off despite heavy use of meaningless platitudes.

From Roger Ebert’s Journal at the Chicago Sun-Times, Hey kids! Anybody here not heard the F-word?

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If a director wants to make a film against bullying, it is not for a committee of MPAA bean-counters to tell him what words he can use. Not many years ago, the word rape was not used in newspapers, on television–or in the movies, for that matter. But there is a crime, and the name of the crime is rape, and if you remove the word you help make the crime invisible. This is yet another example of the MPAA sidestepping ethical judgments by falling back on the technicalities of its guidelines. It is even more insidious because the MPAA never clearly spells out its guidelines, leaving it to filmmakers to guess–although they often judge by past experience. It seems to me that either the f-word word is permissible, or it is not. If impermissible, nobody should use it at all in a PG-13 film. If permissible, nobody should count. Is it a magic word, a totemistic expression that dare not say its own name? Is it a vulgar equivalent of such a word as G-d?

From Bloomberg View, Fight Birth-Control Battle Over the Counter: Virginia Postrel

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Unlike most medications, the article noted, birth-control pills require no medical diagnosis: “A woman herself determines her need for oral contraception; she assesses her own risk of pregnancy … and the costs and benefits of both pregnancy and alternative contraceptions.” Nearly two decades later, birth- control pills look even safer than they did then, and recent research indicates that women are both able and eager to manage their own purchase decisions. Requiring a prescription “acts more as a barrier to access rather than providing medically necessary supervision,” argues Daniel Grossman of Ibis Reproductive Health, a research and advocacy group based in Massachusetts, in an article published in September in Expert Review of Obstetrics & Gynecology. Birth-control pills can have side effects, of course, but so can such over-the-counter drugs as antihistamines, ibuprofen or the Aleve that once turned me into a scary, hive-covered monster. That’s why even the most common over-the-counter drugs, including aspirin, carry warning labels. Most women aren’t at risk from oral contraceptives, however, just as most patients aren’t at risk from aspirin or Benadryl, and studies suggest that a patient checklist can catch most potential problems.

From the LaCrosse Tribune, Iowa high school assembly stirs protest

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DUNKERTON, Iowa — Administrators, teachers and students did not get what they expected Thursday during an extended school program. Everyone anticipated the message from Junkyard Prophet, a traveling band based in Minnesota, to be about bullying and making good choices. Instead, junior and senior high students at Dunkerton High School and faculty members said they were assaulted by the group’s extreme opinions on homosexuality and images of aborted fetuses. “They told my daughter, the girls, that they were going to have mud on their wedding dresses if they weren’t virgins,” said Jennifer Littlefield, a parent upset with the band’s performance.
Her daughter, Alivia Littlefield, 16, is a junior, and called Littlefield after the event. “I couldn’t even understand her, she was crying so hard,” Littlefield said. Littlefield also did not appreciate what she described as gay bashing. “They told these kids that anyone who was gay was going to die at the age of 42,” she said. “It just blows me away that no one stopped this.”

From Addicting Info, Fox News: There Is Definitely A ‘War on Women Voters’

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When the propaganda arm of the Republican party admits that there is a war on women voters, it’s time to accept that the recent attacks on women’s rights are not coincidental, that they are, in fact, an orchestrated political strategy. Sally Kohn of Fox News writes,

While women voters might rather focus on jobs and the economy, watching Republicans jeopardize women’s health and reproductive freedom while slandering those who try and stand in their way is enough to make women demand not only good jobs and fair pay but political leaders who respect the liberty and rights of women in America. 

President Obama’s campaign may be paying for fliers and advertisements to attract women voters, but in this regard, Republicans are giving him the kind of help that money can’t buy.

Now, to be fair, Kohn does seem to be a token liberal. She’s openly gay and was hired as part of Fox’s new “kinder, gentler” approach. And of course, Kohn doesn’t speak for the talking heads at Fox News. Bill O’Reilly, for example, denies that there is a war on women, going as far as to say, “It’s not about women,” much to the dismay of even one of his own correspondents. According to O’Reilly and his radio counterpart, Rush Limbaugh, the war on women isn’t because of Republican actions, it’s a Democratic conspiracy.

Also…..this ain’t readin’, but it’s definitely worth watching (or, okay, watchin’):

From The Guardian, Wired for Culture by Mark Pagel; Beyond Human Nature by Jesse J Prinz; Together by Richard Sennett – review

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Central to his thesis is the fact that humans do not co-operate mindlessly, unlike other creatures that establish elaborate societies, such as ants and termites. In these cases, the role of the individual is suborned totally to the greater good of the nest or hive. Humans are still capable of expressing great individuality within a society. So think of our role in society as more like that of a venture capitalist who is trying to invest money, says Pagel. We seek out individuals with whom we can form the best alliances needed to set up friendships and businesses. The rewards are bountiful and can be seen in all the glories of modern civilisation, though we have to take care. This process only works if we select good candidates for co-operation and are selected, in turn, by others. To make sure this happens, says Pagel, we need to have good reputations. “Reputations act as the currency we use to buy trust and co-operation,” he states. Thus we hold open doors, stand aside for others, help the elderly, give to charity and even risk our lives to save animals. It is all done to build up our own reputations so that others will seek us out and co-operate with us. But sometimes, says Pagel, it all goes a little bit too far and reputations are elevated to an almost religious status. They are considered to be heritable and are reckoned to run in families. As a result, those who are thought to be endangering a family’s reputation are attacked by their close relatives. The result is an honour killing. Seen from this perspective, the act is a co-operative one taken to a grotesque, overzealous level. “A reputation acquires the worth of a human life,” as Pagel puts it.

From TV By the Numbers, Syfy Original Series ‘Monster Man’ Will Showcase Hollywood Creature-Making Family Beginning Wednesday, March 14

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Syfy will premiere its latest original docuseries Monster Man on Wednesday, March 14 at 11PM (ET/PT), immediately following the second season finale of Face Off at 10 PM (ET/PT). Monster Man will return to its regular timeslot, Wednesdays at 10 PM (ET/PT), the following week on March 21. Monster Man goes behind the scenes of one of Hollywood’s most respected practical effects workshops. For more than thirty years, when studios want a bizarre creature or out-of-this world alien, they turn to Cleve Hall and the team at SOTA FX. Only the horrifying monsters they build match the craziness of this extremely talented family. 

From Digital Life on Today, The “lost” cell phone project, and the dark things it says about us

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At 6:30 a.m., the finder opened the calendar, private pix, social networking, online banking, HR salaries, remote admin, corporate e-mail and passwords. For the rest of the day, there was near continuous rummaging through the phone, including the eventual launch of File Manager to see the entire phone’s contents.  “It’s relentless. He can’t get into online banking so he goes back to the file that has passwords in it, checks the passwords again and tries again,” Haley said. “He tries to log in remotely to the computer, can’t get on so he goes to password to get the password and tries again.” By nightfall, activity on the phone stopped, and it remained relative dormant until it was moved to New York City’s Chinatown area at 5:35 a.m. Feb. 9 — one week after it was lost — and wiped clean, probably for sale on the black market.

From Dispatches From the Culture Wars,  Badass Quote of the Day

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‎”Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders and millions have been killed because of this obedience. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves and the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.” — Howard Zinn.

From Amnesty International News, Amnesty International Urges Stricter Limits on Police Taser Use As U.S. Death Toll Reaches 500

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On Monday, Johnnie Kamahi Warren was the latest to die after a police officer in Dothan, Al. deployed a Taser on him at least twice. The 43-year-old, who was unarmed and allegedly intoxicated, reportedly stopped breathing shortly after being shocked and was pronounced dead in a hospital less than two hours later. “Of the hundreds who have died following police use of Tasers in the United States, dozens and possibly scores of deaths can be traced to unnecessary force being used,” said Susan Lee, Americas program director at Amnesty International. “This is unacceptable, and stricter guidelines for their use are now imperative.” Strict national guidelines on police use of Tasers and similar stun weapons – also known as Conducted Energy Devices (CEDs) – would effectively replace thousands of individual policies now followed by state and local agencies.

From Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance, International Sex Worker Rights Day

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Saturday, March 3rd, is International Sex Worker Rights Day, which is being celebrated around the world by groups and individuals who seek to recognize and defend the rights of sex workers.
According to Woodhull’s Executive Director, Ricci Levy:

“Research has demonstrated that the criminalization of sex work is associated with violence against sex workers, decreased access to health care, barriers to reporting human rights abuses, and disempowerment in condom negotiation (whether a sex worker’s wishes regarding condom use are respected). Governments should recognize and address the relationship between laws criminalizing sex work and the human rights violations that result from these laws.  

We see the affirmation and defense of the rights of sex workers as an integral part of our work to affirm sexual freedom as a fundamental human right. International Sex Workers Rights Day isn’t just about securing the rights of sex workers; it’s about securing human rights.”

From Dr. X’s Free Associations, Jim Hoft is shocked! Stunned! 

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Always slow to process the world around him, Hoft also seems to believe that some sort of trick was played on him because Fluke is a law student and reproductive rights advocate rather than a ‘coed.’ It was just assumed in the conservative blog world that “Georgetown student” means “coed,” which is, by the way, an anachronistic term that hasn’t been used in decades except by conservative values voters, porn producers and horny frat boy types.Of course, there was never any deception involved. From the beginning, Fluke was identified in the mainstream media as “a third-year student at Georgetown Law and past president of the school’s Students for Reproductive Justice group.” That was reported 15 days before Hoft was stunned by the news that Ms. Fluke wasn’t a character from a movie entitled D.C. Coed Sluts.

From Dispatches From the Culture Wars, Politician Stands Up for Church/State Separation

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We in the United States, above all, must remember that lesson, for we were founded as a nation of openness to people of all beliefs. And so we must remain. Our very unity has been strengthened by our pluralism. We establish no religion in this country, we command no worship, we mandate no belief, nor will we ever. Church and state are, and must remain, separate. All are free to believe or not believe, all are free to practice a faith or not, and those who believe are free, and should be free, to speak of and act on their belief. 

At the same time that our Constitution prohibits state establishment of religion, it protects the free exercise of all religions. And walking this fine line requires government to be strictly neutral.

Who said that? Known communist Ronald Reagan.