SublimeFemme brought the music of the wonderful Sabrina Chap to my attention this week. I knew about Sabrina Chap through the incredible collection of stories and art, Live Through This: On Creativity and Self-Destruction
Now that you’re as an entranced with her as I am, I recommend reading this interview over at the Queerist and then buying her album Oompa!, which she’s selling on a sliding scale.
More evidence that our drug policies are just wrong.
Evolving to eat meat helped humans live longer.
American evangelical influence is likely to cause Ugandan gays to be executed.
How did health care reform turn into a subsidy for health insurance companies?
It makes me livid when good ideas get shut down because politicians are more interested in support from corporations than their constituents. Pharmaceutical companies freaking out about having to become more competitive are how we lost one great cost-saver in the health care bill this week.
HIV is a tricky bastard. A promising microbicide failed to work in large scale trials.
If we found other intelligent life, would we be able to communicate in any meaningful way? I recommend we start trying with octopuses.
A great story demonstrating that the pay gap is alive and well, sexism still has large effects in women’s lives, and that women are just as qualified as men.
I made these pancakes, but with whole wheat flour and extra buttermilk. They will make any day better. I promise.
Sexism makes you worse at math.
Bill Smith, untitle (calibreted arterial system), detail, 2006, mixed media
You aren’t funny, you’re an ass.
Dear Obama, please stop being such a failure.
Except for a secret crush on Annie Lennox in middle school that played not a small part in the realization that I was a big queer, I’ve never been the type to become infatuated with people I haven’t met. That might have changed.
It’s more expensive to be gay.
The Straight Girl’s Guide to Sleeping with Chicks. I’m beginning to think straight women don’t actually exist.
Mac vs. PC hilarity.
Another health insurance company screws over another sick person.
Frat boys that aren’t awful human beings. Hooray feminism!
cute attack: baby pygmy hippo
Nike resigned from the board of the Chamber of Commerce in protest of the chamber’s position on climate change. Other companies flat out resigned their memberships. It’s good to see companies recognizing climate change is going to start affecting their profits.
I feel like the appropriate punishment for these sorts of crimes would be to deny them modern medical care.
Second wave feminism has a bad reputation, but without it, women would still be writing songs like this:
Every native fish in AZ is in trouble, and several have already gone extinct. Drastic times call for drastic measures.
A new spider species was recently discovered and named after David Bowie.
Heteropoda davidbowie
Warming can fundamentally change interactions in an ecosystem. This means that many of our predictions about what’s going to happen to ecosystems with climate change could be very, very wrong.
The Finance Committee killed the public option this week and then approved money for abstinence only sex-ed, which is the proven best way to up teen pregnancy and std rates. I’d like to point out that democrats Lincoln, Conrad, and Baucus voted down the public option. I suggest letting them know how you feel about their vote, especially if you come from Arkansas, Montana, or North Dakota.
Laurent is finally blogging again – I adore his silly botany posts. Here’s a great one about how purple toothwort protects its nectar.
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.
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
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
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.
Cutting already insufficient education budgets means students pay more for less.
Odd and disturbing Time magazine cover.
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 Jump – Celebrity 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?
On May 28, the hosts of KRXQ’s “Rob, Arnie, and Dawn in the Morning” devoted half an hour to promoting abuse of trans children and making very cruel and untrue statements about trans children. Now lots of big sponsors like Bank of America are pulling their advertising.
It’s about entitlement, stupid.
Dr. Isis gives advice to a grad student who works with a scientist that won’t stop looking at her boobs. Then she responds to the commenters who suggest it’s the grad student’s fault.
Really, being a girl doesn’t make you bad at math.
Beavers are being reintroduced in Scotland – after 400 years.
Patriarchy isn’t good for men either.
My roommate just got her first dyke haircut.
American troops in UN peacekeeping missions – definitely not leading.
If the US were in the Organization of the Islamic Conferences…
Lesbian stereotypes are so much fun to play with.
The conservatives on the Supreme Court think pregnancy discrimination is ok. I don’t get it – shouldn’t they consider it double discrimination?
Fathers with daughters often become more liberal. I’d say that’s good evidence that current conservative policies hurt women. Of course, you could also say that spending too much time with women makes men too “soft.”
Choosing Sotomayor was a pretty good political move.
A memorial day thought that made me cry.
PZ on the horrific crimes of the Irish Catholic Church: Can we stop equating religion and morality now? They never seem to have much to do with one another.
This woman deserves to go to jail for murder. And maybe her pastor, too.
The Sri Lankan government has been leveling all sorts of terrible accusations against the Tamil Tigers. Looks like the pot was calling the kettle black.
How to get straight couples to understand why the right to marry is important.
The Christian god isn’t the only real god according to the Bible. He just thinks he’s better.
Delara Darabi – if there had been more news coverage in the West, she may have lived.
I think The Onion does a good job summarizing my views so far on the Obama Presidency: Obama Revises Campaign Promise Of ‘Change’ To ‘Relatively Minor Readjustments In Certain Favorable Policy Areas’
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