Since private businesses aren’t subject to things like the Freedom of Information Act, they can pretty much do whatever the f*** they want.
I mean, what are people gonna do—take their business elsewhere?
The Problem with Monopolies
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This Week in WTF, August 15, 2014
Ferguson, MO.
Robin Williams.
Border refugees.
Gaza.
ISIS.
Ukraine.
Other current events that don’t immediately spring to mind on this particular Friday morning.
Too much sh!t to be flippant this week.
What I’m Reading, August 14, 2014
The Domestic Cat Genome Has Been Fully Sequenced, and It’s Fascinating, Annalee Newitz, io9, August 11, 2014
Now that we have this complete, annotated genome sequence, scientists will be able to analyze cat genetics much more effectively. Cats suffer from many of the same diseases as humans, including versions of leukemia and AIDS, so the cat genome may help us understand the development of these conditions better. Don’t worry — that doesn’t mean scientists will be experimenting on kitties. It just means that we can compare their genomes to ours to see whether there are similarities that shed light on why we are vulnerable (or not) to the diseases.
Cats also have what biologists call “a highly conserved ancestral mammal genome organization,” which means that many stretches of their genome haven’t changed much over evolutionary time. Put simply, domestic cats haven’t changed much since they first evolved. This could allow us to understand mammal evolution better. It could also answer a question that remains a mystery: why did dog domestication change canines so much, whereas cat domestication didn’t change cats much at all?
As migrant children face backlash, communities mobilize to drown out hate, Laurie Smolenski, Waging Nonviolence, August 10, 2014 (via Yes! Magazine)
LEGO and Petrochemicals
I got an email the other day about a petition started by Greenpeace urging LEGO, the world-famous toy company that was a mainstay of my childhood (continuing on into my adulthood), to cut its ties with Shell, the world-infamous oil company that has faced major opposition for its plans to drill in the Arctic. I am a huge fan of LEGO, and not at all a huge fan of Shell, but I decided to look into this campaign a bit more, in part because the LEGO/Shell partnership didn’t seem like a new deal to me. In fact, I was pretty sure I had a LEGO Shell gas station as a kid.
I was close. It was a LEGO Exxon gas station.
Via Brickipedia
According to Brickipedia, LEGO had a licensing deal with Exxon for sets sold in the U.S., beginning as early as 1979, when it released a fuel tanker set. It released the gas station set in 1980, along with a tow truck that had Exxon logos on the doors. It also released another fuel tanker set—with room for the minifigure to sit behind the wheel—in 1984. I’m pretty sure I had all of these sets. LEGO used the Esso brand until the Exxon brand largely replaced it in the U.S. in the 1970’s.
As for Shell, I remembered seeing Shell sets in LEGO catalogs. LEGO began making Shell-branded products, such as the “Shell Service Station,” in 1966: Continue reading
Virginity
Even some evangelical Christians (specifically, evangelical Christian women) are starting to think it’s overrated.
One could be tempted to hope this will mean the end to memes like this:
Two out of three people on the meme site seem to get it:
origami_isopod gets it:
My phone is an expensive and important material object and not a useless social construct put in place to shame and commodify women.
RompahRolleh gets it:
It means we’re finally on our way to shedding a social stigma used to shame people for sex and maintaining support for people who’ve lost important things like phones with their ability to communicate and hold contacts.
phattytenorio, not so much:
we live in a world where material things are much important than those once in a life time experience, we blind ourselves not knowing which has greater importance.
This Is No Way to Do Law Enforcement
One cop chooses to apply the “I know you are, but what am I?” theory of criminal justice:
A New Jersey police officer is under investigation after video is posted that shows him violating the rights of someone doing nothing more than videotaping a public building and justifying it by saying that since Obama has “decimated” the Constitution, he can too.
He apparently resigned after the story broke, which seems like the least he could do.
What I’m Reading, August 13, 2014
The Rise of the Ironic Man-Hater, Amanda Hess, Slate, August 8, 2014
“Misandry”—literally, the hatred of men—is an accusation that’s been flung at feminists since the dawn of the women’s movement: By empowering women, critics argue, feminists are really oppressing men. Now, feminists are ironically embracing the man-hating label: The ironic misandrist sips from a mug marked “MALE TEARS,” frosts her cakes with the phrase “KILL ALL MEN,” and affixes “MISANDRY” heart pins to her lapel. Ironic misandry is “a reductio ad absurdum,” explains Jess Zimmerman, an editor at Medium and the proud owner of a “MALE TEARS” mug. (“I drink them to increase my strength,” she notes.) “It’s inhabiting the most exaggerated, implausible distortion of your position, in order to show that it’s ridiculous.”
On its most basic level, ironic misandry functions like a stuck-out tongue pointed at a playground bully: When men’s rights activists hurled insults at feminist writer Jessica Valenti on Twitter last month, she posted a picture of herself grinning in an “I BATHE IN MALE TEARS” T-shirt, and dedicated the message to the “misogynist whiners.” But ironic misandry is more than just a sarcastic retort to the haters; it’s an in-joke that like-minded feminists tell even when their critics aren’t looking, as a way to build solidarity within the group. “A lot of young feminists who I follow on Instagram and love this shit are teenagers,” Valenti says. (Search the tag #maletears and you’ll find dozens of young women—and a few young men—posed with a novelty mug.) “The feminism they grew up with was the feminism of snarky blog posts, and this is a natural extension of that.”
Logic and feeling, Ophelia Benson, Butterflies & Wheels, August 10, 2014 Continue reading
Wednesday Afternoon Cute: All in the Game
Sorry I’m a bit late with my cute entries. Hopefully this makes up for missing this past Monday. This is an adoptable dog from Austin Pets Alive! whose name and description ought to make TV geeks chuckle a bit (h/t Lindsay).
Are you looking for a dog to keep you in the game? Check out Avon Barkstail. He ain’t no suit-wearin’ businessman. He’s just a sweet dog looking for a home where he can learn to become a great family pet.
Mr. Barkstail is a major player in the Austin dog scene. Major. We’ve put him under heavy surveillance to monitor his daily movements. Here is the 411: He leaves his kennel several times each day for walks. His leash manners are fairly good, and we are working to improve them. Once a day he likes to meet up with other dogs (no sign of Stringer Tail or Wee-Bark). He hasn’t shown any reactivity to other dogs, but also not a whole lot of interest in playing with them. Additional socialization is recommended.
It is important for Mr. Barkstail’s new family to know that he is good at jumping fences – even tall ones. It makes for a handy escape route when Omar is on his tail, but his new family won’t want Mr. Barkstail to be escaping their yard. So a primarily indoor environment, with continued surveillance on all outdoor activities, is heavily recommended for Mr. Barkstail’s new home.
Okay, it’s cheesy. But it’s cute, right?
What I’m Reading, August 12, 2014
War in the womb, Suzanne Sadedin, Aeon Magazine, August 4, 2014
The cells of the human endometrium are tightly aligned, creating a fortress-like wall around the inside of the uterus. That barrier is packed with lethal immune cells. As far back as 1903, researchers observed embryos ‘invading’ and ‘digesting’ their way into the uterine lining. In 1914, R W Johnstone described the implantation zone as ‘the fighting line where the conflict between the maternal cells and the invading trophoderm takes place’. It was a battlefield ‘strewn with… the dead on both sides’.
When scientists tried to gestate mice outside the womb, they expected the embryos to wither, deprived of the surface that had evolved to nurture them. To their shock they found instead that – implanted in the brain, testis or eye of a mouse – the embryo went wild. Placental cells rampaged through surrounding tissues, slaughtering everything in their path as they hunted for arteries to sate their thirst for nutrients. It’s no accident that many of the same genes active in embryonic development have been implicated in cancer. Pregnancy is a lot more like war than we might care to admit.
The Trials and Tribulations of a Token Pretty Girl, Giana Ciapponi, Ravishly, July 23, 2014 (via Huffington Post)
Is This a Serious Argument at All?
I don’t understand many, many things about the anti-gay lobby, but I am particularly mystified by the claim that adoption by lesbians and gay men is a secret* plot to convert children to, uh, gayness or something, which they have to do because they can’t reproduce naturally.
The only way this would make any sense at all would be if this plan, or something like it, has already been in place for decades, because otherwise, where are all these gay people coming from?????
It’s almost like, I don’t know, parents who aren’t gay might have children who are, and parents who are gay might have children who aren’t gay. And that’s not even close to all the possible permutations.
Okay, I know it’s probably not a serious argument in the sense that the pundits making it genuinely believe in it. I suspect it’s a ploy to trigger fear responses in their readers/listeners/viewers by invoking the specter of the “danger to the children.” What both sad and frightening is how often that ploy works.
* But not so secret that these folks can’t see right through it!!! Checkmate, Satan!!!!!