Tag-Archive for » economy «

July 03rd, 2010 | Author: sarcozona

AZ governor and strong supporter of the bad-for-business anti-immigrant law, Jan Brewer, lies about immigrants and her own past.

Anyone who grows such lovely hydrangeas couldn’t possibly be a spy!

Knowing a little history goes a long way towards refuting people who try to rewrite it.  It could also prevent our politicians from making the same mistakes that were made in the mid-1930s.

AZ cuts benefits for the mentally ill at the same time they cut services for homeless.  Stupid stupid stupid.

Public transportation helps the un- and underemployed while decreasing our oil use. So of course we’re cutting public transportation budgets.

Cap & trade won’t be as effective as population reduction.

Statistics is often taught to scientists as a set of “tests in a toolbox.”  But thinking about why you’re doing what you’re doing gets you a lot further.

We tell our own citizens to eat more fruits and veggies to be healthier.  So why don’t we apply that same philosophy to developing countries?

It’s not that we can’t afford clean energy.  It’s that we’re spending the money so oil industry executives can live like this.

The new “chick lit” is not about getting a man.  It’s about getting a life.

A fun mathematical theorem you likely haven’t heard of.

Lindsay Beyerstein takes John Byrne to task for shoddy and inflammatory science journalism.

The Kennedy School of Government at Harvard takes America’s newspapers to task for not calling torture torture.

Forced marriage isn’t just an issue for women.

Rojasianthe superba

January 30th, 2010 | Author: sarcozona

Dollhouse is over.  It was a great show.

When Americans say they want to cut NASA’s budget, they think they’re talking about a budget of more than 600 billion instead of about 15 billion.

Female orgasm described as ‘abhorent’ and  banned on film in Australia along with small breasted women.  Unsurprisingly, the standard does not apply to male orgasms or small penises.

Homoerotic subtext isn’t enough:

I want those main characters to fall in love and make out because it means that fans of their characters will have to come to terms with their gayness, exactly like they would have to do in real life. It’s one thing to start out a book … introducing your main characters as gay from the start. Because from the outset the reader knows, the reader can choose whether they approve, or tolerate, or whatever. They can put that book down and walk away.

But reality doesn’t let you choose. Reality is when your best friend turns to you and says, “the thing is, I’m gay,” and your entire world turns upside down.

The phenomenon of mansplaining; I am never sure whether to laugh at or smack the men that do this.

Women today aren’t more promiscuous than 60 years ago. They just don’t have to hide it.

bookstore

This is what my favorite used bookstore/cafe looked like after the 3rd day of snow. Then it snowed 2 more feet and flooded the place.

Pirates buy more music. The only music I don’t buy is music from labels in the RIAA.

We know remarkably little about soil, so very cool and basic discoveries happen all the time.  We just figured out that we were very wrong about which water is where when in the soil.

Suicide is labeled the #1 cause of death among Nepalese women.  A better label would probably be sexism or oppression.

owl wow

Rotifers are extraordinary.

Late term abortions in America are almost impossible to get and very dangerous to perform, despite their legality.

Toxification of our environment is a much more serious issue than most people realize.  This is just a little too close to A Handmaid’s Tale for comfort.

Michele De Lucchi

Michele De Lucchi

Transportation costs associated with sprawl probably contributed to the mortgage crisis.

Ghandi may have been good for India, but he was horrible for women.

Disgusting things like this are why mandatory partner notification for abortion is a bad, bad idea.

Stop blaming the victim!

Left to my own devices, I never would have been raped. The rapist was really the key component to the whole thing. I was sober; I was wearing sweatpants and an oversized t-shirt; I was at home; my sexual history was, literally, nonexistent—I was a virgin; I struggled; I said no. There have been times since when I have been walking home, alone, after a few drinks, wearing something that might have shown a bit of leg or cleavage, and I wasn’t raped. The difference was not in what I was doing. The difference was the presence of a rapist.

Domination without hegemony?

truth

Senator Jim DeMint: If we have the government making decisions about the most personal and private part of our lives, it is so naive to think that that coverage is not going to include a number of things that cause people of faith a lot of heartburn, whether it's funding abortions, whether it's rationing care, whether it's funding medical marijuana, whether it's euthanasia

September 12th, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

Oh so true snippets of fundie culture.

The Princeton Guide to Ecology just went to the top of my wishlist.  Yes, even above the lovely shoes I posted earlier this week.

“Government-run” health care has problems, but it still works better than private insurance:

Compared with the employer-coverage group, people in the Medicare group report fewer problems obtaining medical care, less financial hardship due to medical bills, and higher overall satisfaction with their coverage.

Conservatives freaked out about Obama’s speech encouraging kids to work hard in school, calling the action “unprecedented.”  I guess they weren’t paying attention during similar speeches given by Reagan and George H. Bush.  (Though perhaps if they’d paid better attention in school they would have developed some critical thinking skills and we wouldn’t have to deal with their craziness.)  I think the response of the right in this situation is very telling – they disagree with Obama, so they won’t listen to anything he says.  This is why Republicans have blocked health care reform at every turn, why Republicans have become the party of “no.”  I’m reminded of a child being told something she doesn’t want to hear who covers her ears and yells.

There isn’t much justice in our justice system.  How many innocent people have we executed?

The myth of overspending:

Whether families are spending more than they should according to some moral notion—consuming too much of the world’s resources or buying things they could easily live without—is not the issue at hand. These data give us no clue about the right amount of spending. But they give us powerful evidence that excessive consumption is not why families are going broke. There is no evidence of any “epidemic” of overspending—certainly nothing that could explain a 255 percent increase in the foreclosure rate, a 430 percent increase in the bankruptcy rolls, and a 570 percent increase in credit-card debt. A growing number of families are in terrible financial trouble, but despite the accusations, their frivolity is not to blame.

A lot of people claim that being queer is wrong because it isn’t “natural.” Weird how different cultures consider different sexualities “natural.”

Ecological/environmental refugees are becoming much more common.

A corporate sponsor of the Tea Party Express, many of whose members believe that health care reform is “a secret plot to kill old people”, is paying millions of dollars for killing old people.

A ton of feathers – why micro-inequities suck.

August 15th, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

Between things like steep fines and jail time for the “crimes” of being poor and/or a person of color and being unable to get a job because of poor credit, it’s almost impossible to escape poverty in the US.

Moonbow

Moonbow

Yesterday was the anniversary of Japan’s surrender in WWII.

Still sucks to be a woman in Afghanistan.

The Sri Lankan government doesn’t seem much better than the LTTE.

Plants can communicate and recognize self. Awesome.

No wonder we’re all addicted to the internet.

How and why patriarchy hurts men and who stands to benefit from feminism.

Scientists are grown-ups who refuse to give up their sense of wonder & curiosity.

It’s hard to keep believing Isreal is a “victim.”

Another evangelical caught fleecing his sheep.

from flickr user bobster855

from flickr user bobster855

I’m definitely going to make these cookies.

It’s hard to chastise other countries when you’re guilty too.

The Russian government doesn’t even try to hide it.

Attacking Iran would be idiotic.

Going home isn’t easy.

Cutting already insufficient education budgets means students pay more for less.

Odd and disturbing Time magazine cover.

David Trautrimas, Sprinkler House

David Trautrimas, Sprinkler House

Think people don’t use religion to escape responsibility for their actions? Think again.

Why taking physics is important:

Extreme Pool JumpCelebrity bloopers here

Major Prop 8 supporter gets divorce.

If ecology doesn’t work out, I’m applying at Netflix.

Incredible juxtoposition: US vs. Japanese representations of the bombing of Hiroshima.

Why we sleep: who knows?

August 08th, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

We’re cutting all the wrong things.

If I ever live somewhere humid enough, I’m going to grow these in my house.

How to stifle innovation and piss off your customers.

Dr. Isis might be the best mom in the world:

if … Little Isis does grow to prefer silver metallic heels to black wingtips, then that needs to be okay.  If Little Isis grows up to prefer boys instead of girls, then that needs to be okay.  My son needs to develop the identity that will lead him to become a healthy and fulfilled adult, not the identity I think he should have.  I can try to guide him and teach him to be a kind person, but I can’t force him into a mold.  I think that part of loving him unconditionally means loving the person he will ultimately become, even if it is different than whatever groundless expectations I had for him.

Maybe instead of just visiting your local park/arboretum/museum, you should volunteer for them.

Why I don’t buy music from RIAA members.

Lots of cool stuff in this study, especially the connections between different scales of biology – from an ecosystem all the way down to basic chem.

Another reason to like Darwin – he recognized that women could be awesome scientists.

Hats off to beautiful femmes.  This might have made me cry.

May 23rd, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

A beautiful post on hierarchies and judgement within marginalized communities.

The Skeptic’s Book of Pooh-Pooh points out an awesome news story on the danger anti-vaxers create for children in their communities.  The anti-vaxers hypocrisy is also on display in their support of chemical castration for autistic boys.

We can’t expect toxic products to stop coming from China anytime soon.  Honesty and transparency are impossible with a government that actively represses knowledge of its own history.

Women continue to be kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and brutally murdered in Mexico.  Despite the hundreds of victims that are likely the victims of one or more serial killers, the police aren’t doing anything about it.

As the AZ legislature slashes education funding across the state, especially at the university level, the AZ Republic has a timely article about the importance of research – even if it sounds ridiculous.

Justice.”


Lindsay Beyerstein
explains that we do still need journalists and should be paying them – most bloggers provide commentary and synthesis, not reporting.

The role of partisanship in California’s economic crisis.

Something to have nightmares about: the rise of private policing in the US.

Right wing extremists kill more law enforcement officers.

Dr. Isis’s fantastic post Boys Talk About How Girls Should Talk About Science…

It’s easy to consider a civil discourse when you’ve never had your ass grabbed by a colleague, been called “young lady” in front of your peers, or been asked about your reproductive plans.  It’s easy to ask the participants to be calm, and minimize profanity, when you don’t have to keep in the back of you mind which which men to avoid at a meeting when they’ve been drinking.

Plants recognize themselves.

The representation of hetero men in conventional pornography vs. the spectrum of things hetero men actually enjoy.

FSP on “us and them.”

The next cake I’m going to bake.

Pennsylvania is starting to look like the deep south half a century ago.

Texas AND Alaska charge victims for their own rape kits.

January 26th, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

From Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed:

“The environment has to be balanced against the economy.” This quote portrays environmental concerns as a luxury, views measures to solve environmental problems as incurring a net cost, and considers leaving environmental problems unsolvd to be a money-saving device.  This one-liner puts the truth exactly backwards. Environmental messes cost us huge sums of money both in the short run and in the long run; cleaning up or preventing those messes saves us huge sums in the long run, and often in the short run as well.

January 24th, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

Obama is making good on his Guantanamo promises.

The hard times are hitting education especially hard.  Write a letter to save an important evolutionary biology department.

Jessica, as always, brilliantly captures a key difference between science and religion.

Jessica, as always, brilliantly captures a key difference between science and religion.

January 19th, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

By being so unbelievably and unnecessarily cruel, Isreal has finally lost the moral high ground in the eyes of the world.

(en)Gender has a great post up on Brazil and the current state of our country.

Xenophobia makes me sick.

The next part of “An Evil God,” my current favorite blog series, is up at Unreasonable Faith.

Another good idea that will never happen.

November 29th, 2008 | Author: sarcozona

While much of the news has focused on foreigners in Mumbai, Indians have borne the brunt of the attacks.

SublimeFemme weighs in on the gay-marriage issue – I agree with her:

But why should anyone have to be married in order to have access to a basic human right like health care?  I would like to see queers participating in a larger conversation about economic benefits and justice for all–one that recognizes the diversity of families, partnerships and households rather than requires people to conform to the traditional nuclear family (which is no longer a norm for most Americans, anyway).  Furthermore, for marriage equality to be inclusive of intersex, genderqueer and transgender people, marriage rights cannot be contingent on narrow definitions of sex, which the “same-sex marriage” movement has largely failed to interrogate.

Pharyngula points out yet another example of “real” Christian behavior:

After contacting the ACLU and filing a lawsuit, Bell and McCord became the subjects of hatred and even violence. Bell’s house was burned down by a firebomb. McCord’s 12-year-old son’s prize goats were slashed and mutilated with a knife. Bell was assaulted by a school cafeteria worker who smashed her head repeatedly against a car door. (School authorities praised the cafeteria worker, and she was forced to pay a $10 fine and Bell’s hospital bills, community residents raised donations on the assailant’s behalf.) McCord and Bell were both mailed their own obituaries.

The bailout is really, really, really, really, really, really, really expensive.

Arkansas may have made it illegal for queers to adopt and foster children, but Florida has just overturned such a ban.

Sarah Palin the poet.

Stereotypes.