This one is way funnier.

Internet Archive: Details: Perversion for Profit (Part I)

Do they still make books this way? I hope so. I especially like the very bored old ladies putting signatures together. This is part of the "Americans at Work" series created by the AFL-CIO in the late 50s. Yay for the unions! And workers! And preserving literacy!

Internet Archive: Details: Bookbinders

Every now and then I will read a quote in an article that just appalls me with its appalling badness. Usually, these are quotes from religious fundamentalists. This is one of those quotes:

"This decision is a poster child for a half-century secularist reign of terror that's coming to a rapid end with Justice Roberts and soon-to-be Justice Alito," said Richard Land, who is president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and is a political ally of White House adviser Karl Rove. "This was an extremely injudicious judge who went way, way beyond his boundaries -- if he had any eyes on advancing up the judicial ladder, he just sawed off the bottom rung."

The "secularist reign of terror"? Who do these people think they are? What are the judicial "boundaries" that Jones supposedly crossed. How ignorant can people be? Well, at least the ruling was sane...

Advocates of 'Intelligent Design' Vow to Continue Despite Ruling

FBI Papers Show Terror Inquiries Into PETA: Other Groups Tracked (WP)

Very amusing.

Best Rejected Advertising Volume Three

This is pretty cool.

Online Exhibition - Bound for Glory: America in Color, 1939-1943 (Library of Congress Exhibition)

This is where I always go when I go home. In high school, I used to hang out underneath that pier.

California Coastal Records Project - Image 200407879 - "Crystal Pier Hotel, San Diego"

You can almost see my old house in this picture. This site is awesome, but it's making me a little homesick. I guess it's ok because I'm going home tomorrow, and I can look at the ocean all I want. I miss the Pacific.

California Coastal Records Project - Image 200507073

Hee hee hee.

SALTED WATER FOR BOILING Recipe at Epicurious.com

Ok, I'm getting way too into this right now. Of course, I'm a bit of a book hoarder and I'm not yet sure that I'll be able to bring myself to release my books into the wild, but I like the idea A LOT. I wonder how often people actually do track books, how well this whole idea works...hmmm.

BookCrossing - Home - FREE YOUR BOOKS!

There's always something new to amuse me when I finish reading the archives of my favorite cartoons. This one spamused me. Ha ha. Ha.

Spamusement! Poorly-drawn cartoons inspired by actual spam subject lines!

Scientists discovered a gene that explains the appearance of white skin in humans; they think it probably mutated as people moved further north, in order to make it easier to take in Vitamin D from the sun in less sunny regions.

This is the kind of genetic science that totally fascinates me. I wish they didn' thave to give so many disclaimers about people not misunderstanding this discovery and using it in bad ways. But I guess I resolved myself long ago to the stupidity of most people.

(And will newspapers stop running ads about fungal infections in fingernails. They're gross.)

Scientists Find A DNA Change That Accounts For White Skin (WP)

Ok, weird.

Columnist Says Bush Knows Who Leaked Name

I always knew there was something going on with that hot pie filling...

Scary Go Round :: Monday-Friday Comic by John Allison

Today I learned a new word. Thank you, Scary Go Round.

CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Belial

Ok, weird. Who sponsored this ad site?

Black Page

"Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev told reporters: 'The combination of extremist ideology, a warped understanding of reality and nuclear weapons is a combination that no one in the international community can accept.'"

And yet...the US has nuclear weapons, and no one is imposing sanctions on us...

Iran's President Calls Holocaust 'Myth' in Latest Assault on Jews (WP)

There is a lot in here that's true, and a lot in here that's ignorant. People think they can eliminate prostitution, but that's impossible if their understanding of it doesn't become a little more nuanced.

I wonder sometimes if it will ever be possible to eliminate it completely. The pimp guy quoted at the end of the article has a point when he says that this stuff goes back a long time (they don't call it the oldest profession for nothing). But does the belief that "some women like to be exploited" have to be a part of it? Would prostitution be less wrong if pimps were eliminated, and women had control over the selling of their own bodies? If the violence and coercion weren't part of it?

I haven't really thought about any of this since I was in school. It's always been something I was very opinionated about, and reading articles like this, where the complications remain under the surface the whole time, can be frustrating. But it's good to know that there are some things that politicians are willing to set aside ideological differences for.

In a Shift, Anti-Prostitution Effort Targets Pimps and Johns

From the Oxford English Dictionary:


girl power, n.

Brit. /gl pa/, U.S. /grl pa()r/ Forms: 19- girl power, girl-power, girlpower, (in sense 2) grrrl-power. [< GIRL n. + POWER n.1 In sense 1, formed in contradistinction to MANPOWER n. In form grrrl power (see sense 2, quot. 19922) after GRRRL n.; cf. RIOT GIRL n.]

1. The number of girls available to perform a task; girls considered collectively in relation to their capacity to perform work. Contrasted with MANPOWER n.
1952 M. LOWRY Let. 24 Nov. (1967) 323 Nearby is a Catholic church within which it says: ‘We want girl-power for our convent.’ 1963 Population Index 29 356 A dowry was required for a girl's marriage. Her farm family..needed cash more than it needed girl-power. 1989 St. Louis (Missouri) Post-Dispatch (Nexis) 18 June 1D, The St. Louis Boy Scout and Girl Scout councils and the Missouri DeMolay, the Masonic youth organization, quickly supplied the boy- and girl power. 1996 News Tribune (Nexis) 10 Mar. C1 Why waste so much manpower (more precisely, boypower and girlpower) in holding dozens of games designed to fill footnotes in a record book?
2. orig. U.S. Power exercised by girls; spec. a self-reliant attitude among girls and young women manifested in ambition, assertiveness, and individualism. Although also used more widely (esp. as a slogan), the term has been particularly and repeatedly associated with popular music; most notably in the early 1990s with the briefly prominent ‘riot girl’ movement in the United States (cf. RIOT GIRL n.); then, in the late 1990s, with the British all-female group The Spice Girls.
1986 Los Angeles Times (Nexis) 16 June V. 1 ‘Girl Power: Health Power’ motivates girls to assume long-term responsibility for their health and fitness. 1992 Star Tribune (Minneapolis) (Nexis) 14 Mar. 1B, Beatrice Joseph, 7, helped dissect a sheep's heart Friday to learn about the heart as part of the Minneapolis YWCA Girl Power program. 1992 Houston Chron. (Nexis) 4 Oct. (Lifestyle section) 3 Places like girl bedrooms, girl bathrooms and punk-rock clubs such as 924 Gilman in Berkeley, Calif., that have specially arranged girl nights, when girl bands sing songs about girl power. 1994 Rolling Stone 16 June 24/4 It has four all-girl bands... All amazing. Part of the grrrl-power underground that's so exciting. 1997 J-17 June 44/3 If something you've bought isn't up to standard, remember you're entitled to complain. Use your girl power and don't let the shop assistant fob you off! 1999 Times 2 Aug. 43/4 This was the fabulous, horrible lie of Girl Power as a movement with absolutely no meaning, it became a disembodied slogan capable of being slapped on any act. Girl Power, it seems, is simply Anything A Girl Does. 2001 Dreamwatch Mar. 24/1 Cameron has done it by mixing the sober feminism of his Terminator and Aliens characters with the sexed-up Girl Power of a Britney Spears concert.

I am fully in favor of taking up the first definition again--"I think we'll need 300 units of girlpower for this one, sir." Hee hee.

The 1999 example could pretty much be directly related to the 1997 example (in part two of the definition).

Sweet.

Scary Go Round :: Monday-Friday Comic by John Allison

Dude, could I get any more bored-er? I think not.

Oh..so THAT'S what's up with Christopher Walken.

Yes, I get paid to do this all day.

Niego

Heh! Exactly my sentiments...

Niego

An excellent method for solving moral conundrums--"What Would President Jimmy Carter Do?"

Scary Go Round :: Monday-Friday Comic by John Allison

New comic addiction. I recommend going to the chapters link and starting from the very beginning. Oooh, scary comics. It's kind of like Scooby Doo. With scary sentient gasses and gingerbread houses. Very odd. But then, I always like odd.

Scary Go Round :: Monday-Friday Comic by John Allison

How many times must these things be said before the saying actually matters?

Nobel Lecture - Literature 2005

This is awesome for so many reasons.

Politics or Not, Bronx Warmly Receives Venezuelan Heating Oil

Because boyfriend is just an annoying word.

Thesaurus.com/boyfriend

I'm all about bringing back "gentleman friend."

I have a mild fascination with old postcards. They are about the only thing I ever look at in antique shops. I guess everyone thinks they're a little cool.

The Morning News - Real Photo Postcards, by Harvey Tulcensky & Laetitia Wolff

I heart Barbara Ehrenreich. Here she talks about her most recent book, Bait and Switch, activism, the frustrations of the white-collar job search, faith-based services providers, and her love of battle scenes in cheesy historical epics. Excellent. Always insightful. She's awesome.
The Morning News - Barbara Ehrenreich, by Robert Birnbaum

Alright. I read this story because I thought, "Cat-fox! Now that's news that won't be depressing! Who wouldn't want a cat-fox?"

Then I got to the part where the WWF says that their plans to further study this potentially new species might be stymied by the Indonesians' plans to build a palm oil plantation in this rainforest.

Sigh.

CNN.com - Researchers to trap mysterious cat-fox animal - Dec 6, 2005

Yet again, these people are crazy.

WSJ.com - Business

Ok, they say it all better-like. I ain't much of a writer.

Put Christ in Christmas or Wherever Else He Belongs - Wonkette

This is completely ridiculous. The fundies are running amok, going crazier than the secular lefties ever did, and really? Really? People are going to get pissed that a card says "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas"? They can't think of anything better to receive their ire, to focus their energy on? Is this really what christianity is all about now? Blech.

'Holiday' Cards Ring Hollow for Some on Bushes' List

I will never understand why it's ok for the US to decide who gets to have nuclear weapons.

Iran Plans to Build Two More Reactors

This seems a little bit wrong to me.

WHO Stops Hiring Smokers

The Washington Post has been running some interesting stories lately. Here's another one about CIA practices in the war on terror. Hopefully all of this coming to light will force some changes. But I doubt it.

Wrongful Imprisonment: Anatomy of a CIA Mistake

You know, I've started to notice that reporters will write about grassroots, internet-based activism that comes from the right, but much less often about those same efforts from the left. If journalists write about MoveOn or the Human Rights Campaign, it's often in an article expressly about progressive internet activism. But right-leaning organizations and efforts are mentioned in articles like this one, about Alito. Their planned campaign to get him confirmed is mentioned, but not MoveOn's ongoing campaign opposing him. Why is this?

Alito Distances Himself From 1985 Memos

So sad. I grew up reading the Berenstain bears (and especially my mom's old altered version, heehee). This is kind of an odd obit, though. In the end, Farhi questions whether the world presented by the Berenstains is really the world we want to teach our children. I say, there children's books. Let them rest in peace.

Stan Berenstain's Honey-Coated Medicine

Oh for the love of god. I especially like the part where Rumsfeld claims that Iraq isn't really our responsibility, and we should stop feeling like it is. Er. Yeah.

Rumsfeld's War On 'Insurgents'

"Bush cautioned that victory will require continued sacrifice. He became emotional as he read a letter left on the laptop computer of Marine Cpl. Jeff Starr, who was killed while fighting in Ramadi this year.

'If you're reading this, then I've died in Iraq,' Bush read, his voice cracking. 'I don't regret going. Everybody dies, but few get to do it for something as important as freedom. It may seem confusing why we are in Iraq, but it's not to me. I'm here helping these people, so they can live the way we live.'"

It probably would have been wise to first find out if they want to live the way we live.

Bush Presents Plan to Win Iraq War (WP)