January 8, 2016
Yowza yowza yowza
Palaeontologist!
Bet your paycheck?
Cologne Police Chief Forced to Resign
After more than 100 women and girls came forward with reports of sexual assault and robbery by gangs of men in the German city of Cologne on New Year's Eve, Cologne's police chief has been removed from his post. [more inside]
How does that make you feel?
A third way: Non violent protest
The true meaning of turn the other cheek Roman law permitted soldiers to force civilians to carry their gear for one mile, but because of abuses stringently prohibited more than one mile.
If they ask you to do that, Jesus says, go ahead; but then carry their gear a second mile. Put them in a disconcerting situation: either they risk getting in trouble, or they will have to wrestle their gear back from you.
"You’re a survivor now, not a victim."
Most American rapes go unreported and unpunished. In part because ideas about what constitutes a ‘‘real rape’’ still hinder investigations and prosecutions, and many police officers continue to read vulnerability as complicity. But there is another unacknowledged side to the investigation of sexual assault: the huge numbers of victims who are children or teenagers. New Haven, CT detectives estimate that more than 80 percent of their cases involve minors — a number only slightly higher than national statistics. Such cases are rarely reported immediately, which means that there is rarely any physical evidence to investigate. "To Catch a Rapist:" How New Haven's special-victims unit fights a hidden epidemic of sexual assault that is disturbingly difficult to investigate. (Some may find the descriptions and topics in this article disturbing or triggering.)
A Modest Proposal, Texas-Style
Texas Governor Greg Abbott published a document, "Restoring the Rule of Law With States Leading the Way"[PDF], which addresses what he describes as the U.S. Constitution being "increasingly eroded with each passing year." His solution, which he dubs "The Texas Plan": nine constitutional amendments. [more inside]
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe
Safe and Unrestricted Access to Abortion
“To the world, I am an attorney who had an abortion, and, to myself, I am an attorney because I had an abortion." The Center for Reproductive Rights and law firm Paul Weiss submitted an amicus brief [pdf] to the U.S. Supreme Court signed by 113 attorneys, detailing the importance of abortion rights in their own lives. [more inside]
Latching onto bit characters simply because they look cool
WHO IS BOBA FETT? WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM THE PREQUELS - Noelle Stevenson (of Nimona and Lumberjanes awesome sauce) breaks down her theory of who Boba Fett really is.
because leaving isn't exactly an option
The psychological effects of fitness DVDs.
A study of 10 popular commercial exercise DVDs showed that the imagery in the fitness videos may be perpetuating and reinforcing hyper-sexualized and unrealistic body images, said Bradley J. Cardinal, PhD, a kinesiology professor in the College of Public Health and Human Sciences at Oregon State University. [more inside]
The Long Fall of Phoebe Jonchuck
"He was a schemer who used the courts for profit and revenge. He was a paranoid, angry meth addict who had been arrested for battery and domestic violence seven times. He had been involuntarily committed, by his family’s count. And yet, in its report on Phoebe’s death, the Florida Department of Children and Families concluded, “There was nothing in the preceding several years that could have reasonably been interpreted as predictive of such an event.”
“They knew this stuff was harmful, and they put it in the water anyway.”
In 1998, Rob Bilott, an environmental lawyer, took the case of Wilbur Tennant, a cattle farmer who believed DuPont chemical dumping was killing his livestock. Internal documents would reveal that DuPont had known for decades that the chemical—PFOA, used in the manufacture of Teflon—was highly toxic, connected to organ failure, birth defects, cancer, and more. DuPont decided to keep using it anyway. Factory workers were poisoned, as was the water supply of 70,000 people; the scale may be even greater, as “by 2003 the average concentration of PFOA in the blood of an adult American was four to five parts per billion”.
Diagnosing women
A writer for Gray's Anatomy on confronting the doctor who missed her rare cancer. I didn't question him when he prescribed anti-depressants—rather than another MRI—after I confided I was sleep deprived from constant knifing back pain. I convinced myself that his inability to fix me was my failure, not his. I wasn't tough enough. I weighed too much, exercised too little. It was my fault I couldn't walk to the grocery store without a cane and a fistful of Vicodin. He called me "impatient" and "emotional." It never occurred to me that being "female" was perhaps the most dangerous label of all. [more inside]
Though it's horrible to visit...
A Salute to MOOSYLVANIA Recorded Live at the Moosylvania Jazz Festival! The time: 12:45 AM - - the date: June 14, 1962 - - the temperature: 12 degrees above zero...
Power of Asian superheroes
To say that Asians cannot be superheroes because of “Asian values” erases traditional and contemporary Asian superheroes, assumes all Asians are the same, and echoes a long history of racist oppression. It tells Asians that we can only be part of someone else’s story, and never make our own stories. Having Asian superheroes is a way of changing all that.In response to their compatriot Umapagan Ampikaipakan's New York Times piece about the "oxymoron of Asian superheros", fellow Malaysian writers Amanda Ng Yann Chwen and Louise Tan speak of the importance of having relatable role models in fiction.
As Subtle as the Pose
Jennifer Moss on Fashion Photography: With this renewed awareness, I started noticing that it can be as subtle as the pose. I, myself, told models to hunch their shoulders, lean forward, angle the head. Industry standard. But why was it industry standard?
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