Actually I suspect you can skip the first 8 if you just do the last one.
But the first 8 give you so much excellent fodder to write about! ;-)
Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived -
Best. Footnote. Ever:
“One could vaguely construe that Tesla’s cat was responsible for the second industrial revolution, which arguably makes it the most awesome cat who ever lived.”
On International Day, UN warns about link between racism and conflict -
From a March, 2012 article:
Two UN experts in the fields of racism and minority issues have issued their own statement, stressing the need for greater attention to prevention and early action in response to the first warning signs of tensions caused by racism and discrimination that may lead to violence and conflict situation with serious violations of human rights.
“All relevant actors should pay attention to early warning signs, including the marginalization and social exclusion of specific groups of individuals; discriminatory legislation and policies; the persistence of racial prejudice and negative stereotypes; hate speech by public officials and the media; and violent attacks and harassment targeting ethnic groups,” said Mutuma Ruteere, the UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.
Worth noting: the U.S. has systemic cases of all of those warning signs. I think it’s only because of the significantly greater visibility of today (thanks, Internet!) and their prominence in the world that we’ve had so few violent outbursts as a result, there. (The Gabrielle Giffords shooting is one such example)
We think we’re so sophisticated and elaborate with our technology and our science, yet while we build special computers to try and compute the Golden Ratio (down to 17 million digits so far!), Nature spits out an exact application of it many millions of times a day.
The infinitely mathematical precision and scale in which the universe operates and “runs” itself is, to me, nothing short of wondrous and mind-blowing.
If I were to believe in “God,” then, Nature itself would be my deity.
At this point, the routine is familiar. -
The culture problem is only part of it, and restraint isn’t a long-term solution. A fully equitable, mutually respectful world isn’t built on restraint — it’s built on respect and understanding. Making people stop saying sexist shit is only the first step. The goal is that they stop being sexist.
…
A fantastic post by Corey Caitlin.
Greetings from Sanibel! (Taken with Instagram at The Beach)
Nice! I’ve been there, it’s *so* gorgeous! Enjoy it :)
If freedom of speech were absolute, threats would be legal. If freedom of speech were absolute, person A could say to person B, “I have a gun. If you say a word or even just make a sound, I will shoot you in the head,” and it would be perfectly legal for them to do so. Would person B, in this scenario, still feel like they have the right and freedom to say whatever they want? Surely they’d feel at least a little bit curtailed in their ability to speak up, if not completely so. It instantly invalidates the “absolute” freedom, thus making the very idea of “absolute freedom of speech” a contradictory of terms, and impossible to maintain a society with.
This is why freedom of speech is subject to limitations. It protects the people by giving them the freedom to express themselves, provided that their expression does not infringe in the rights of other people. The moment your “free expression” infringes into someone else’s ability to be a free person, there is a demonstrable imbalance. Not just that, you’ve now argued that you are a somehow superior human being that gets to infringe upon the rights of others in whatever way you choose to. Because your rights are supposedly absolute, but other people’s aren’t.
And you don’t think there’s a problem with this.
This may be an alien concept to some Americans, who interpret the First Amendment to stipulate an absolute freedom of speech (if so: look at where that got your country: Sarah Palin, still not tried for incitement to violence; Gabrielle Giffords, still shot in the head because of her—thankfully doing remarkably well now).
But this is why Fox News is banned in Canada; this is why the Westboro Baptist Church are banned from Canada and the UK, and why, in the latter country, serious expressions of racism can put you in jail for 56 days.
If you do not understand that expressions of hate speech are an incitement to crime, you and I have nothing more to discuss here. But I advise you to think about what expressions of hate speech result in; about what they have historically always resulted in. And mull on the idea that expressions of racism do, in fact, contribute to a racist culture wherein innocent people get killed simply for being black.
We’ve had law for more than 4300 years, and the ways in which it has been practiced and debated all that time has always involved more than reading a couple documents and simply “forming your own opinion” on the matter.
Freedom of speech is a really important part of society, which is why countless people have spent years researching it, debating it, and codifying it. To think that you’ve figured out a better way in the span of a couple hours of reading articles or blog posts, is an exceptional form of arrogance that displays a great lack of respect to the people whose job it has been for centuries to practice this.
![astudyinmovement:
I’m intrigued by what he would be thinking about here.
theatlantic:
Photo of the day: Obama sits on the Rosa Parks bus
[Image: Pete Souza/The White House]
This. *sniffle*](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2qhh2Wfwr1qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
I’m intrigued by what he would be thinking about here.
Photo of the day: Obama sits on the Rosa Parks bus
[Image: Pete Souza/The White House]
This. *sniffle*
(via friendlyatheist)
[video]
A must-read, by desliz:
It doesn’t mean I’m religious.
Because I’m not.
It doesn’t mean I hate LGBT community.
Because I am a supporter.
It doesn’t mean I force women to give birth.
Because I never will.
Take what you want from my blog, but never assume I’m just your stereotypical pro-lifer. It is VERY possible to ask questions, state your opinions in a civil manner on this blog. I am respectful and I enjoy answering all questions received!
Thanks for following! :)
-speakfortheweakLet me tell you some things.
I used to investigate child abuse and neglect. I can tell you how to stop the vast majority of abortion in the world.
First, make knowledge and access to contraception widely available. Start teaching kids before they hit puberty. Teach them about domestic violence and coercion, and teach them not to coerce and rape. Create a strong, loving community where women and girls feel safe and supported in times of need. Because guess what? They aren’t. You know what happens to babies born under such circumstances? They get hurt, unnecessarily. They get sick, unnecessarily. They get removed from parents who love them but who are unprepared for the burden of a child. Resources? Honey, we try. There aren’t enough resources anywhere. There are waiting lists, and promises, and maybes. If the government itself can’t hook people up, what makes you think an impoverished single mom can handle it?
Abolish poverty. Do you have any idea how much childcare costs? Daycare can cost as much or more than monthly rent. They may be inadequately staffed. Getting a private nanny is a nice idea, but they don’t come cheap either. Relatives? Do they own a car? Does the bus run at the right times? Do they have jobs of their own they need to work just to keep the lights on? Are they going to stick around until you get off you convenience store shift at 4 AM? Do they have criminal histories that will make them unsuitable as caregivers when CPS pokes around? You gonna pay for that? Who’s going to pay for that?
End rape. I know your type errs on the side of blaming the woman, but I’ve seen little girls who’ve barely gotten their periods pregnant because somebody thought raping preteens was an awesome idea. You want to put a child through that? Or someone with a mental or physical inability for whom pregnancy would be frightening, painful or even life-threatening? I’ve seen nonverbal kids who had their feet sliced up by caregivers for no fucking reason at all, you think sexual abuse doesn’t happen either?
You say there’s lots of couples who want to adopt. Kiddo, what they want to adopt are healthy white babies, preferably untainted by the wombs and genetics of women with alcohol or drug dependencies. I’ve seen the kids they don’t want, who almost no one wants. You people focus only on the happy pink babies, the gigglers, the ones who grow and grow with no trouble. Those are not the kids who linger in foster care. Those are certainly not the older kids and teenagers who age out of foster care and then are thrown out in the streets, usually with an array of medical and mental health issues. Are they too old to count?
And yeah, I’ve seen the babies, little hand-sized things barely clinging to life. There’s no glory, no wonder there. There is no wonder in a pregnant woman with five dollars to her name, so deep in depression you wonder if she’ll be alive in a week. Therapy costs money. Medicine costs money. Food, clothes, electricity cost money. Government assistance is a pittance; poverty drives women and girls into situations where they are forced to rely on people who abuse them to survive. (I’ve been up in more hospitals than I can count.)
In each and every dark pit of desperation, I have never seen a pro-lifer. I ain’t never seen them babysitting, scrubbing floors, bringing over goods, handing mom $50 bucks a month or driving her to the pediatrician. I ain’t never seen them sitting up for hours with an autistic child who screams and rages so his mother can get some sleep while she rests up from working 14-hour days. I don’t see them fixing leaks in rundown houses or playing with a kid while the police prepare to interview her about her sexual abuse. They’re not paying for the funerals of babies and children who died after birth, when they truly do become independent organisms. And the crazy thing is they think they’ve already done their job, because the child was born!
Aphids give birth, girl. It’s no miracle. You want to speak for the weak? Get off your high horse and get your hands dirty helping the poor, the isolated, the ill and mentally ill women and mothers and their children who already breathe the dirty air. You are doing nothing, absolutely nothing, for children. You don’t have a flea’s comprehension of injustice. You are not doing shit for life until you get in there and fight that darkness. Until you understand that abortion is salvation in a world like ours. Does that sound too hard? Do you really think suffering post-birth is more permissible, less worthy of outrage?
“Pro-life” is simply a philosophy in which the only life worth saving is the one that can be saved by punishing a woman.
[video]
This is an exert from the article Why There’s No Such Thing as Reverse Racism. It is a fantastic article and I encourage you to read it in it’s entirety. For now, I want to highlight the explanation/definition of three specific words.
Prejudice is an irrational feeling of dislike for a person or group of persons, usually based on stereotype. Virtually everyone feels some sort of prejudice, whether it’s for an ethnic group, or for a religious group, or for a type of person like blondes or fat people or tall people. The important thing is they just don’t like them — in short, prejudice is a feeling, a belief. You can be prejudiced, but still be a fair person if you’re careful not to act on your irrational dislike.
Discrimination takes place the moment a person acts on prejudice. This describes those moments when one individual decides not to give another individual a job because of, say, their race or their religious orientation. Or even because of their looks (there’s a lot of hiring discrimination against “unattractive” women, for example). You can discriminate, individually, against any person or group, if you’re in a position of power over the person you want to discriminate against. White people can discriminate against black people, and black people can discriminate against white people if, for example, one is the interviewer and the other is the person being interviewed.
Racism, however, describes patterns of discrimination that are institutionalized as “normal” throughout an entire culture. It’s based on an ideological belief that one “race” is somehow better than another “race”. It’s not one person discriminating at this point, but a whole population operating in a social structure that actually makes it difficult for a person not to discriminate.
:up:
(via chelseyesque)
Tax code unfairness as depicted in a pretty infographic.
Dear Team Obama,
This is a pretty infographic, yes. However, it is not a good infographic. Some suggestions to make infographics like these be better, more effective:
It’s gonna take more than Shepherd Fairey’s art direction wrapped around great oratory skills to win this year’s elections. The Obama of 2008 had great speeches with great promises; some he lived up to, some he didn’t.
This year, being able to convey the reality of our economic and social situation—a.k.a. the facts—both easily and quickly to the people is going to be of even greater importance than before. Why? Because the GOP has a head start in establishing a huge swath of lies and bullshit about everything, thanks to all these debates, and the vast majority of people aren’t invested enough to fact-check their claims.
That means that your infographics need to be so damn good that people can skim them quickly and still know exactly all the things that mattered most in it.
Playful typography catches the eye. Effective typography conveys its message.
Excellent.
Irony of being printed on paper: high.