“It struck me that the GOP convention featured speaker after speaker talking about the hardships their grandparents had overcome. Last night we heard speaker after speaker talk about the hardships they had overcome themselves.” I don’t know because I didn’t watch but this is a blogger I trust.
A great article from one of my favorite bloggers on why traditional anti-porn arguments fail. I have already had intense discussions with very weird anti-porn folks on this blog who, as I eventually discovered, had no idea what pornography even was. So do head over to the linked article to read an insightful post on this subject.
“So, y’all know how much I hate public proposals, right? I haaaaaaaaaaaate them. I hate them as much as I love Jesus appearing on a piece of toast. I hate them for a slew of reasons, but mostly because they are inherently coercive. Even if the person (woman, usually) being publicly proposed to would have said yes under any circumstances, the context of a public audience when being asked to make a profoundly intimate decision, no less an audience who urgently sides with only one potential response, necessarily creates an imbalance that subverts meaningful consent.” And I really hate it when people throw around the word “coercive” in a context that empties it of all meaning. Obnoxious, stupid, OK. But coercive? If the presence of people makes it hard for you to say whether you want to get married or not, are you sure you are of legal age to get married?
Our resident Libertarian Izgad wrote a beautiful piece about his wife, himself, their love and Libertarianism. Do read it if you still think that Aspies lack a sense of humor.
“In the early 1960s, both oral and anal sex were illegal in 49 of the 50 states. In 10 of those states, sodomy—which was variously defined but could, in some states, include oral sex—carried a maximum sentence of 20 years. Citizens in Connecticut who engaged in oral sex faced 30 years in prison—60 years for people who lived in North Carolina. In Nevada it could mean life behind bars. It was a time when 37 states outlawed sex between unmarried people and 45 criminalized adultery. Two states even banned heavy petting.” Really?? I had absolutely no idea. Now the American television has finally started to make sense. Many of the incomprehensible comments people have been making on my blog have become clear. After reading this article, I walk around, exclaiming, “Ah! I now get it!” every two minutes.
Are you surprised that the horrible La Leche League is transphobic and pro-the most disgusting gender stereotypes ever? I know I’m not. These bigots would stoop to anything to bully women into housewifery and men away from their children.
“Speeches by spouses are one of the many aspects of American electoral politics that puzzle the rest of the world. As a reporter from VG (The Way of the World), the largest newspaper in Norway, was heard to ask, “What do these women do that their men can’t?”” Exactly. Why should I listen to anybody whose only claim to my attention is that she sleeps with a politician?
The $300 paper bag is finally on sale! Now it costs the modest sum of $290. What a great bargain! (For the especially humorless: the bag is real and my comment is a joke.)
And here is proof that for some intelligent people (OK, one intelligent person) my blog is the source of news on a very important subject.
“It’s certainly the case that education in the US needs to be improved but I’m not at all sure that the mantra of “college for everybody” would work. That seems to be based on a worldview where all American workers are managers or white-collar or pink-collar office workers. Who is going to do all the rest of the necessary work? Is it people in China and India? Or computers and robots?” Of course. That’s a fact of objective reality. We can neither turn back the technological revolution nor get the manufacturing, customer service, etc. jobs from China and India. In today’s America, we are moving towards a situation where people with no college education will simply not have any jobs available. Let’s just accept that and stop sighing about the 1950s because I can’t hear this any longer it’s so boring.
Philip Roth’s open letter to Wikipedia. It’s always funny when a writer begins to offer “the only correct reading” of his own work. The novel Roth discusses is so much more and is so much better than what he wants everybody to see in it that the whole thing is truly shocking. A work of literature is always much bigger than its author. Roth’s letter is a very boring and pathetic explanation of a wonderful book that he somehow produced against his own plans and goals.
How to write a good letter of recommendation.
“A woman who was groped by an off-duty DPS officer at a Flagstaff bar last summer says that comments to her by the judge during Wednesday’s sentencing were inappropriate and that the judge should apologize. Before giving the officer two years’ probation on his conviction for sexual abuse, Coconino County Superior Court Judge Jacqueline Hatch said to victim: “If you wouldn’t have been there that night, none of this would have happened to you.”” And if the Judge’s Momma had had the good sense to use contraception, Judge Hatch wouldn’t have happened to all of us.
A REALLY, REALLY, REALLY good sexual health platform.
Zoe Heller makes herself look like an idiot when she offers her public hissy fit of a frustrated prude upset about the existence of a healthy female sexuality. I cringed in vicarious shame when I read it. Heller should be visiting a sexologist, not writing articles based on her severe issues.
And the post of the week: on how to publish more if you are a academic. A beautiful article on a very important (to me) subject.
Clarissa's Blog 
I wrote about why I’m working so hard to help elect legislators who aren’t even in my district.
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Thanks for the link! 🙂
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If I remember correctly, the U. S. Army still has prohibitions against adultery. The punishments are pretty severe. I also seem to recall that it is illegal for more than two people to be nude together. I know that some Pagan events are clothing-optional, but never in Virginia.
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Sorry. The prohibition against nudity by more than two people to be nude together was in Virginia, not in the Army. I should have proofread before posting.
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“The prohibition against nudity by more than two people to be nude together was in Virginia,”
– What a brbarity.
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Here’s a great article from one of my favorite bloggers on why anti-sex-work arguments/interventions sometimes fail.
I also find public proposals creepy. I find even more so “shotgun interventions” (especially televised on talk shows) of the type made famous by Montel Williams (the current standard-bearer of this tradition being apparently Anderson Cooper). This is the infinitely replicable (and yet somehow there’s an audience segment that never gets tired of it) “we’ve got a car outside ready to take you into treatment RIGHT NOW…”
As I write this I’m preparing to read your article by aspie libertarians. I know aspies have a sense of humor, but I have yet to see evidence of one in libertarians. This should be interesting.
OK, finished reading. It reminds me of the token libertarian in my circle of friends. Back when I was in kollege he talked me into reading Atlas Shrugged. Not being a very fast reader, especially with “dry” material, and of course having classes to keep up, I finished this reading project in the course of about a month. About a third of the way into this project, I ran into my friend on the bus, and asked whether what an Objectivist looks for in a lover is a worthy opponent.
Here is a nice take-down of gender essentialism.
I would say that, in America and worldwide, we are moving towards a situation where people with or without college education will have no jobs available. If there are no jobs for non-graduates, that does not somehow imply that there are jobs for graduates. There probably isn’t any job that won’t eventually be automatable. Outsourcing, I believe, is a temporary phenomenon. There’ll probably be a phase 2 of outsourcing in which the Chinese jobs get outsourced to somewhere truly desperate like sub-Saharan Africa, but ultimately there will be no pool human labor cheap enough to compete with capital as a factor of production. So I say again, which will it be, UBI (universal basic income), or gated communities for the rich? At the risk of being denounced for not “renouncing violence” I’m becoming more convinced that the only workable strategy for most of us is taking whatever direct actions will make gated communities the more expensive option.
At the risk of incriminating myself, I’ve experimented with cannabis, using also in my experiments such rudimentary creativity tools as (paper) notebooks, tape recorders, and even computers. The results are clear. The cannabis-creativity is 180° bass ackwards.
Here’s another sexual health platform.
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“I find even more so “shotgun interventions” (especially televised on talk shows) of the type made famous by Montel Williams (the current standard-bearer of this tradition being apparently Anderson Cooper). This is the infinitely replicable (and yet somehow there’s an audience segment that never gets tired of it) “we’ve got a car outside ready to take you into treatment RIGHT NOW…”
– They are not just creepy, they are also completely useless. You can’t force anybody out of an addiction.
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“There probably isn’t any job that won’t eventually be automatable”
– These fears had a huge currency in the 1960s. Today, however, we have seen that the development of technology creates more better-paid jobs. Translators, for instance, were terrified of the rise of machine translation until they saw that now MORE, not less, translators were needed. You can only automate boring mechanical jobs that nobody wants to do anyways. Eventually, we will all end up with creative, wonderful jobs and one of the greatest tragedies of humanity (survival drudgery) will be over!
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Laughing again! I love it. La Leche League is a most necessary and beautiful organization, *in my experience.* I am just grinning at your characterization of it. I’m not interested in debating it or anything, I just appreciate people with very different points of view.
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“La Leche League is a most necessary and beautiful organization”
– Religious fanatics who bully women right before and right after giving birth. One has to be extremely “beautiful” to badger and persecute a woman who is on her way to give birth.
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Ah, yes, agreeing to disagree is what I’m doing… not sure what you’re up to, but, I’m content with it all.
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Oh, did you see this amazing letter? http://m.deadspin.com/5941348/they-wont-magically-turn-you-into-a-lustful-cockmonster-chris-kluwe-explains-gay-marriage-to-the-politician-who-is-offended-by-an-nfl-player-supporting-it
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Public marriage proposals put me in mind of Darcy’s first proposal to Lizzie Bennett – an act of egotism. What – you aren’t sure? After I went to this trouble??
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