Palinofeminism Redux

It’s really cool to see a New York Times op-ed co-authored by Rebecca Traister and Anna Holmes. Women are still underrepresented on op-ed pages, and these two have the distinction of getting their start online (at Salon and Jezebel, respectively). Maybe this is the start of feminist bloggers storming the NYT? Their piece – “A [...]

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Catnip Caturday

If Reno the leopard is Cheech, then Zabu the tiger must be Chong. Both of them remind me of Grey Kitty’s frenzy whenever she’d get her paws on a bag of nip. (Click here if you can’t see the clip – or just drop in at Kittywampus, where we’re longtime supporters of legal catnip for [...]

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Celebrating Women’s Equality Day in the Trenches

A whole bunch of feminist blogs commemorated the 90th anniversary of the 19th Amendment today – that’s 90 years of American women having the constitutional right to vote. Of course, Jim Crow laws kept a lot of black women from exercising that right, and well into my childhood it was common for wives to follow [...]

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The Contagion of Poverty (or, Why Wine Is Safer than Water Tonight)

Americans who oppose “big government” usually oppose “handouts” to the poor. But here’s the thing: You may be comfortable. You may think you have all you need. And yet, if there’s poverty anywhere in your vicinity, you will not be immune to its pernicious effects. This came home to me again – twice -  in [...]

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Salmonella Culprit DeCoster: His Morality Is a Big Goose Egg

By now, you may have heard that the source of the recent salmonella outbreak is a single egg baron in Iowa, Austin “Jack” DeCoster. What you might not have heard: He’s just as reckless with his human employees as with his hens. At Grist, Tom Philpott reports that in 2002, five undocumented female migrant workers [...]

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To My Promiscuous Readers

And yes, you likely are promiscuous, even though you may not think of yourself that way. At least, that’s the implication of a quiz that appeared at Big Think this week. Now, you know I’ve got a soft spot for internet quizzes, but it usually runs toward Hello Quizzy (aka OK Cupid) and similar silliness. [...]

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Caturday Celebration: Simon’s Back! (And He’s Found a Box)

In my expert opinion, this is the best Simon’s Cat video yet. It’s the cattiest. Watch, and you’ll see what I mean. There’s no baseball bat, no shattering glass. Just classic cat behavior, exaggerated by a mere whisker. My kids forced me to watch it three times. We were still laughing on the third run. [...]

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Nostalgia for Decent Republicans

I am just old enough to recall a time, in the 1970s, when racism wasn’t yet endemic to the Republican Party and many of its leaders still stood for decency and dignity. Yes, Nixon had just exploited his Southern strategy, and his minions undermined fair campaining with their ratfucking. Racism as strategy and tactic was [...]

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The Traveler’s Guide to Colonoscopyland

Wondering where I’ve been? Why, I just took a little trip to colonoscopyland. This is what I learned on my travels, presented for your edification and guidance: My colon is free of all dread diseases. That’s a relief, because I’ve had weird digestion since I first got sick in January of 2009, and because my [...]

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In Which I Acquire a Hypodermic Needle

I’m not planning to convert my Ph.D. to an M.D. anytime soon, nor to start mainlining heroin. But I did purchase a hypodermic needle this weekend. I’m using it to doctor … my summer squash plants. Yes, that’s right. I’ve been shooting up my squash. My old enemy, the squash vine borer, has taken up [...]

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Zen Caturday

What is it about Japanese cats? They seem to span the most athletic (Maru, of course) to the most contented. The reigning Zen master of Japanese felinity is Shironeko. I love how he’s often smiling. The commenters at I Can Has Cheezburger accused Shironeko and his humans of photoshopping, but I’m not so sure. Lots [...]

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Teaching Ayn Rand in the Cradle?

Why let an ideology or worldview compete on its own merits when you can spread it as propaganda to tender young minds? Better yet, how ’bout paying to download it into young brains? That’s what’s happening with Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, which – as best I understand it – is a mishmash of “reason,” capitalism, untrammeled [...]

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Why Marriage Equality Needs a Jaded View of History

The prospect of marriage equality raises basic questions of what marriage is, how it came to be that way, and how it’s evolving. Here’s how Judge Vaughn Walker addressed those questions in his smackdown of Proposition 8: The right to marry has been historically and remains the right to choose a spouse and, with mutual [...]

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A New Option for Emergency Birth Control

Actually, this isn’t a truly new option, just one that has gotten no press up to now: using an IUD for emergency birth control: A copper intrauterine device was 100 percent effective at emergency contraception in a study of almost 2000 Chinese women who had the device implanted up to 5 days after unprotected sex. [...]

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The Shifting Sands of Radicalism

Digby posted this quotation under the heading “Crazy Left Wing Hippie,” along with a challenge to guess who said it: Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter [...]

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Marriage Equality Caturday

Here’s hoping for the day when we’ll all have an equal chance to marry … (From ICHC?) … and to love, in spite of the odds. (From ICHC?)

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A Little Prop 8 Irony

Via Andrew Sullivan: A new study finds that the crucial swing group who decided to vote for Prop 8 wasn’t African Americans; it was composed mainly of white parents of young children. Their fear, stoked by TV ads? That their kids would come home from school having learned that they could marry a person of [...]

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Transitions Profound, Bemuddling, and Lightning Bright – an Awesome Return to the U.S.

So I just flew back from Germany with my family, and what’s the first thing I see at the screens at JFK? Not my connecting flight – lordy, we’d missed that already, because JFK is still JFK, and it is dysfunction beyond any mere family dynamic. No, the tube is tuned to CNN, and Prop. [...]

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“Dropping a Baby?” Oops, Someone’s Dropping the Ball

I’ve been bowling. I didn’t really bowl. I just sort of dropped the ball. I’ve played softball. Right field. I ran from those long pop flies. Ran away, just to be clear. If, by some odd twist of magnetism the ball landed in my glove anyway, I … just sort of dropped the ball. But [...]

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Not Quite Safe-for-Work Garden Fantasies

My time in Berlin is almost up. I’m excited to see my garden in a couple of days, but I have to admit it’s been pretty neglected this year. It got more love from my friend (and friend of this blog) Hydraargyrum in my absence than it did from me all spring. For the first [...]

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