
I suppose I could have done without this post, but I thought this picture was just peachy so I couldn't restrain myself.
What this actually illustrates is that many people are addicted to the excitement and fear of Terrorist melodramas. They crave some of that awesome 9/12 energy, where we overnight became The Greatest Generation and -- unified and resolute -- rose to the challenge of a Towering, Evil Enemy. Armao is angry and upset because the leader didn't oblige her need to re-create that high drama by flamboyantly flying back to Washington to create a tense storyline, pick up a bullhorn, stand on some rubble, and personally make her feel "safe." Maureen Dowd similarly complained today that Obama "appeared chilly in his response to the chilling episode on Flight 253."The more I think about it the more I'm against the routine use of full body scanners idea as well. As the ACLU has said, people expect privacy underneath their clothing. Unless the scanners are only used in situations that warrant more invasive security screenings, I can't help but feel like this idea violates our right to avoid unlawful search. (It's hard to think of these scanners of anything less then a strip search after seeing these images.) I also wouldn't be so concerned with the idea if the cost wasn't so high (it's got to be astronomical) and if our transportation options in this country weren't so pathetic. The fact most people will have no choice about having their body scan (because they have to fly) makes this all the more uncomfortable for me.
Freedom of expression, the simple freedom to say what you want, about whatever you want, is a right that most of us can enjoy without even thinking. Even more now that the internet has given us a forum for debate and criticism wider and more instant than ever before.The date to enter ended November 15th and Poster4Tomorrow has picked the top 100 design winners.
Online, or offline, it’s possible to say anything without any form of consequence, and most of the time we come up with nothing more profound than: Your album sucks. England is a shithole. Berlusconi is corrupt. But in many other countries freedom of expression is a much more serious subject.
People are persecuted and imprisoned simply for daring to criticise their governments, calling for more democracy and press freedom, or exposing human rights abuses online. It’s just not right.
So on behalf of those who don’t enjoy the same freedom of expression that you do, we’d like to invite you to create a poster for a better tomorrow – where we can all say what we want, whenever we want.
Our hope with “Poster4Tomorrow” is to spark a movement to inspire people to stand together against injustice across the world. A movement that will start next year and continue next year and every year until we change something. Because one poster is a start, hundreds, thousands will become a movement for a better tomorrow.
I myself repose no faith in any man-made text or made-man redeemer, so when it's Christmas I say "Merry Christmas" with a clear conscience, as I respect Ramadan and Passover, and also because "Happy Holidays" is so thin and insipid. I don't mind if Christians honor the moment by displaying, and singing about, reindeer (a hard species to find in the greater Jerusalem/Bethlehem area). Same for the pine and fir trees that also don't grow in Palestine. I wish everybody joy of it.
And so, humans adapt very quickly to solar UV. Prehistoric groups that migrated towards the equator got darker. Prehistoric groups that migrated away from the equator got lighter.
But this explanation fails for Europe. Northern Europeans are lighter than everyone to the south (Mediterraneans), to the east (Mongols and east-Asians), to the west (Native Americans across the Atlantic), and to the North (Inuit, Sammi, Chukchi, Aleut)
Clearly, there once was a factor at work in Europe other than dim sunlight.
At Amy’s request, she was sent home from Iraq, after a military psychiatrist determined that she was “too psychologically unstable” to remain, and diagnosed her with acute anxiety, PTSD, and depression. “They convinced themselves that anyone who would do a self-abortion is crazy,” Amy says. “It’s not a crazy thing. It’s something that rational, thinking women do when they have no options.”So sad.
In short, we must face problems which do not lend themselves to easy or quick or permanent solutions. And we must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent nor omniscient, that we are only six percent of the world's population, that we cannot impose our will upon the other ninety-four percent of mankind, that we cannot right every wrong or reverse each adversity, and that therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem. -JFKSomething you probably don’t know about me:
Stopmouth and his family know of no other life than the daily battle to survive. To live, they must hunt rival species, or negotiate flesh-trade with those who crave meat of the freshest human kind. It is a savage, desperate existence. And for Stopmouth, considered slowwitted hunt-fodder by his tribe, the future looks especially bleak. But then, on the day he is callously betrayed by his brother, a strange and beautiful woman falls from the sky. It is a moment that will change his destiny, and that of all humanity, forever.If you like dystopias and strange world building then this book is for you. I can’t wait to get my hands on the next installment of this series. It’s just great in that seriously fucked up kind of way (and that's my favorite kind). If I had to pick just one, The Inferior would be my favorite read of 2009.
Barcelona, 1945—A great world city lies shrouded in secrets after the war, and a boy mourning the loss of his mother finds solace in his love for an extraordinary book called The Shadow of the Wind, by an author named Julian Carax. When the boy searches for Carax’s other books, it begins to dawn on him, to his horror, that someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book the man has ever written. Soon the boy realizes that The Shadow of the Wind is as dangerous to own as it is impossible to forget, for the mystery of its author’s identity holds the key to an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love that someone will go to any lengths to keep secret.I actually found this book to be quite scary. I really like horror, but I can’t think of another book that left me as creeped out as The Shadow of the Wind. I stayed up all night to read it and I found myself being uncomfortable walking through my dark house and paying far too much attention to the random noises my house makes. The Shadow of the Wind is also really beautifully written and I cannot recommend it enough.
Meet the Female Chauvinist Pig -- the new brand of "empowered woman" who embraces "raunch culture" wherever she finds it. In her groundbreaking book, New York magazine writer Ariel Levy argues that, if male chauvinist pigs of years past thought of women as pieces of meat, Female Chauvinist Pigs of today are doing them one better, making sex objects of other women -- and of themselves. Irresistibly witty and wickedly intelligent, Female Chauvinist Pigs makes the case that the rise of raunch does not represent how far women have come; it only proves how far they have left to go.Some of you will remember that I did a video about this book not that long ago. This book is a quick and easy read that will make you think. And I love books that do that.
Young Sorcha is the seventh child and only daughter of Irish Lord Colum of Sevenwaters, a domain well protected from invading Saxons and Britons by dense forest where, legend says, fey Deirdre, the Lady of the Forest, walks the woodland paths at night. Colum is first and foremost a warrior, bent on maintaining his lands against all outsiders. Not all of his sons are so bound to the old ways, and that family friction leads to outright disobedience when Sorcha and her brother Finbar help a Briton captive escape from Colum's dungeon. Soon after, Colum brings home a new wife who ensorcels everyone she can't otherwise manipulate. By her spell Sorcha's brothers are cursed to become swans. Only Sorcha, hiding deep in the forest, can break the spell by painfully weaving shirts of starwort nettle--but then Sorcha is captured by Britons and taken away across the sea. Determined to break the curse despite her captivity, Sorcha continues to work, little expecting that ultimately she will have to chose between saving her brothers and protecting the Briton lord who has defended her throughout her trials.This is another book I mentioned before, but it’s so good I’m surprised I didn’t mention it a hundred times. This is a book that will make you laugh and cry and fall in love with the characters over and over. Daughter of the Forest really is that good and I dare you to read this book and not fall in love with Juliet Marillier.
Trying to make coffee when the water is shut off, David considers using the water in a vase of flowers and his chain of associations takes him from the French countryside to a hilariously uncomfortable memory of buying drugs in a mobile home in rural North Carolina. In essay after essay, Sedaris proceeds from bizarre conundrums of daily life-having a lozenge fall from your mouth into the lap of a fellow passenger on a plane or armoring the windows with LP covers to protect the house from neurotic songbirds-to the most deeply resonant human truths. Culminating in a brilliant account of his venture to Tokyo in order to quit smoking, David Sedaris's sixth essay collection is a new masterpiece of comic writing from "a writer worth treasuring" (Seattle Times).What needs to be said about Sedaris that hasn’t already been said? His books are great and if you need a good laugh about the mundane yet entertaining aspects of life then this book is for you. You can read my favorite essay from this book here.
Why Evolution Is True weaves together the many threads of modern work in genetics, paleontology, geology, molecular biology, and anatomy that demonstrate the “indelible stamp” of the processes first proposed by Darwin. In crisp, lucid prose accessible to a wide audience, Why Evolution Is True dispels common misunderstandings and fears about evolution and clearly confirms that this amazing process of change has been firmly established as a scientific truth.This book changed my life. Read it.
Tibo Krovic has been the mayor of Dot, a small town in an unnamed country on the Baltic Sea, for 20 years. He's hopelessly in love with his secretary, Agathe Stopak, who's miserable in a loveless marriage with her drunkard husband. After consulting a psychic, Agathe begins to see the good mayor in a new light, and after the two tiptoe around each other for weeks, Tibo gets up the courage to ask Agathe out for lunch. But being the good man he is, he finds it difficult to cross any other boundaries with a married woman, even as tension builds between them. Meanwhile, Agathe gets tired of waiting for Tibo to make his move and stumbles into a mistake that could have very far-ranging consequences. Told with fantastical detail, delightful insights and a touch of humor, this fairy taleish romance is a genuine treat.This book is essentially a simple love story. What makes it worth mentioning though is the amazing writing of this simple love story. To be honest I can’t really explain the whimsy or lyrical perfection the writing in this book is, but I promise you it’s good. Very good.
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
www.thedailyshow.com | ||||
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WOOSTER: Why did you choose the subject matter you did?
PRINCESS HIJAB: Guerrilla art is innocent and criminal, ancient and dystopian, intimate and political. I chose the veil because it does what art should do: It challenges, it frightens, and it re-imagines. I've also found that my media, guerrilla art, presents a mystery and an impishness consistently missing from serious discourses on the hijab. The terms "hijabizing" or "hijabism" continue to define my work.
W: Why did you choose the specific placement?
PH: I use the subway for the same reason the advertisers do: It's a place where the whole city is a captive audience.
W: What do you think your piece adds to or subtracts from to the community?
PH: I think my work might add to the intellectual dialogue on advertising, but I aim for the guttural response. My "desecration" elevates the models back to being people, and when the skin sticks to the pleather, that's the smile and the disgust that I can get out of people.
[Republican Carly] Fiorina's campaign is focusing on the exchange because it exemplifies the tone voters have come to expect from Boxer, said Julie Soderlund, a spokeswoman for Fiorina.And once again I am enamored with Senator Boxer’s straightforward nature.
"A member of the military calling somebody ma'am or sir certainly isn't something that's unusual," Soderlund said. "Most people who see the video recognize that and recognize the level of arrogance that Senator Boxer brought to the situation."
Boxer said her opponents' focus on the exchange says more about them than it does about her. She's not about to apologize.
"Once in 17 years that I've been a senator, I asked a witness to call me senator, because we were having a back and forth and I kept saying 'general' and he kept saying 'ma'am', and it went general, ma'am, general, ma'am. And I thought, you know what, this is one of those times we ought to call each other by our titles," she said in an interview.
"If this is what she thinks is the most important issue as people are struggling to get jobs, and housing, and health care, it's fine," Boxer said in reference to Fiorina.
On why so many romantic comedies are so terrible: One, the people making them have no fucking taste, two, they're morons, three they're insulting panderers who think they're making movies for the great unwashed and that's what they want. I love romantic movies. I absolutely do. But I literally don't know what's happening. I think it's depressing that Judd Apatow makes the best romantic comedies and they're about men. All power to Apatow, but he's taken and repurposed one of the few genres historically made for women. ….We had so few [genres] that were made specifically for the female audience and now the best of them are being made by Judd Apatow. But what are his movies supposed to be about? Nominally about the relationship between a man and a woman, but they're really buddy flicks. Funny People was supposed to have an important role for a woman, but she was uninteresting and an afterthought.The entire atricle was great and I definitely recommend checking it out if you haven't read it.
"Women are more likely to leave the military with a few less reasons to trust the system than men," said Eaves, who herself is a veteran of the U.S. Navy. "It's still true, today, that women suffer from humiliation, intimidation and sexual harassment."And yet people don’t understand why a woman might think that any man could be a potential rapist. Ridiculous.
A VA report from 2005 indicated that more than half of all female National Guard and Reserve military members report having been sexually harassed, assaulted or raped while serving in uniform. The problem is so pervasive and so psychologically debilitating that the armed forces have a name for it: "military sexual trauma."
"First of all, let me rule that out. Palin/Beck? Ridiculous…I was just thinking, what I’m gonna take backseat to a chick? While you’re at it, go shoot a bear! Make some stew! I’m hungry in here."Conservatives like to claim that the left is unable to see any of the treatment towards Sarah Palin as sexist (which is obviously false), but I don't hear anyone on the right commenting on Beck's comments. (And why hasn't Palin responded?)
Dear Friend,The message is from the Stop Stupak Coalition and I urge anyone who hasn’t signed the petition to do so now. Today is the National Day of Action against the Stupak-Pitts Amendment and you can find more information here.
We must act now to stop the Stupak/Pitts Amendment.
This amendment goes further than any previous federal law to restrict access to abortion - and it's up to us to ensure it is removed before the legislation is enacted into law. It would prohibit millions of women from getting coverage for abortion in their health insurance plans, even if they pay for it themselves!
We know our candidates in the House and Senate will fight tooth and nail to prevent this new restriction on women's rights from becoming law. They are the firewall against any new restrictions on a woman's right to choose, but they need our voices to join with theirs if we are going to win this battle. We must act now to tell Congress that we will not accept a new restriction on our rights.
I have already added my name to this call to action. Will you join me to send a clear message: We will not stand for health care reform that makes women less healthy and less safe.
Sign the petition.