(no subject)
Feb. 5th, 2013 12:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwydion* "As Extremists Invaded, Timbuktu Hid Artifacts of a Golden Age:" http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/04/world/africa/saving-timbuktus-priceless-artifacts-from-militants-clutches.html?google_editors_picks=true&_r=1&
The rumors are true! I have no words for how happy I am. Those manuscripts were irreplaceable. It's terrible to have lost even 5%, but I had imagined so much worse.
* Looks like Marriage Equality is moving forward in England and maybe France! Yay progress! It's not for sure yet in either place. The house of Lords gets it next in the UK and the French thing is more a first step than a full push.
* Even though things like the Superdome power outage, the service outages after Sandy and other storms in the past few years are more evidence we need to upgrade to a 21st century infrastructure for basic utility services, Republicans continue to argue that a modern infrastructure is a waste of time and money because the jobs it would create are somehow not "real" even though the pay checks, the economic stimulus those paychecks would generate, and the hardened infrastructure all would be. Riiiiight.
* I am having trouble taking the skeet shooting tempest in a tea cup both because it's pointless, but also because I know what skeet means in slang. Every time I hear it mentioned on TV, I hear David Chapelle yelling "Skeet! Skeet! Skeet!" with the hand gesture....
* Re: Alabama kidnapping case. I am, of course glad the child is safe again. The thing I keep thinking is that the kidnapper has been allowed to go around threatening to kill his neighbors and their pets, killing people's pets, and shooting guns off indiscriminately in the middle of the night. His neighbors were terrified and had begged authorities to do something, but his second amendment right to be as violent as he wanted with his gun trumped the safety of everyone around him. As a white man in Alabama he literally had to murder someone and kidnap a child for the authorities to decide they should maybe consider intervening. Just saying.
I keep thinking of Victorian London, whether it's this case or the huge list of young men like Trayvon Martin hunted and killed by white men because of ALEC's "stand your ground" laws making it essentially legal for white men to murder unarmed black people, and all the women imprisoned for defending themselves from violent attackers. Part of what made it so hard to find Jack the Ripper was because there were so many violent men who had beaten and/or stabbed women in public places in the East End that they had a suspect pool of literally hundreds of proved to be violent misogynists in their suspect pool and no means to narrow that down. After all, the authorities didn't care if men went around stabbing women in pubs and the streets as long as it the women being hurt were working class. It took something as terrible and as flashy as the Ripper murders for people in charge to decide maybe the laws against assault and murder should protect to lower class women and not just the well off. Since they couldn't catch the Ripper specifically by name, the police went into the slums and simply collected all the men known to have seriously harmed women with knives, teeth, or fists and sent them either to prison or a sanitarium. It didn't do a thing about domestic violence, but it literally made the streets rather safer as assaulting a poor woman was now considered a crime for which you might be arrested rather than clapped on the back. It's too bad our country believes white men should be allowed to get away with this sort of violent and dangerous behavior.
* Stephen Colbert on the Skeet Shooting fracas:
* Stephen Colbert on immigration reform:
* "It's Trayvon Martin's 18th Birthday:" http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2013/02/its-trayvon-martins-18th-birthday.html
* "On Police Conduct & Collateral Damage:" http://yaseen101.livejournal.com/55690.html
* "What Will You Do In a Dystopia?" http://www.fangsforthefantasy.com/2012/12/what-will-you-do-in-dystopian.html
* Yet another horrifying old timey medical idea you should not try at home. "The most uncanny look." http://thequackdoctor.com/index.php/the-most-uncanny-look/
* Brain Food - Episode 28: Robopocolapyse:
* O.o: http://thedevilspanties.com/archives/8379
The rumors are true! I have no words for how happy I am. Those manuscripts were irreplaceable. It's terrible to have lost even 5%, but I had imagined so much worse.
* Looks like Marriage Equality is moving forward in England and maybe France! Yay progress! It's not for sure yet in either place. The house of Lords gets it next in the UK and the French thing is more a first step than a full push.
* Even though things like the Superdome power outage, the service outages after Sandy and other storms in the past few years are more evidence we need to upgrade to a 21st century infrastructure for basic utility services, Republicans continue to argue that a modern infrastructure is a waste of time and money because the jobs it would create are somehow not "real" even though the pay checks, the economic stimulus those paychecks would generate, and the hardened infrastructure all would be. Riiiiight.
* I am having trouble taking the skeet shooting tempest in a tea cup both because it's pointless, but also because I know what skeet means in slang. Every time I hear it mentioned on TV, I hear David Chapelle yelling "Skeet! Skeet! Skeet!" with the hand gesture....
* Re: Alabama kidnapping case. I am, of course glad the child is safe again. The thing I keep thinking is that the kidnapper has been allowed to go around threatening to kill his neighbors and their pets, killing people's pets, and shooting guns off indiscriminately in the middle of the night. His neighbors were terrified and had begged authorities to do something, but his second amendment right to be as violent as he wanted with his gun trumped the safety of everyone around him. As a white man in Alabama he literally had to murder someone and kidnap a child for the authorities to decide they should maybe consider intervening. Just saying.
I keep thinking of Victorian London, whether it's this case or the huge list of young men like Trayvon Martin hunted and killed by white men because of ALEC's "stand your ground" laws making it essentially legal for white men to murder unarmed black people, and all the women imprisoned for defending themselves from violent attackers. Part of what made it so hard to find Jack the Ripper was because there were so many violent men who had beaten and/or stabbed women in public places in the East End that they had a suspect pool of literally hundreds of proved to be violent misogynists in their suspect pool and no means to narrow that down. After all, the authorities didn't care if men went around stabbing women in pubs and the streets as long as it the women being hurt were working class. It took something as terrible and as flashy as the Ripper murders for people in charge to decide maybe the laws against assault and murder should protect to lower class women and not just the well off. Since they couldn't catch the Ripper specifically by name, the police went into the slums and simply collected all the men known to have seriously harmed women with knives, teeth, or fists and sent them either to prison or a sanitarium. It didn't do a thing about domestic violence, but it literally made the streets rather safer as assaulting a poor woman was now considered a crime for which you might be arrested rather than clapped on the back. It's too bad our country believes white men should be allowed to get away with this sort of violent and dangerous behavior.
* Stephen Colbert on the Skeet Shooting fracas:
The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive
* Stephen Colbert on immigration reform:
The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive
* "It's Trayvon Martin's 18th Birthday:" http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2013/02/its-trayvon-martins-18th-birthday.html
* "On Police Conduct & Collateral Damage:" http://yaseen101.livejournal.com/55690.html
* "What Will You Do In a Dystopia?" http://www.fangsforthefantasy.com/2012/12/what-will-you-do-in-dystopian.html
* Yet another horrifying old timey medical idea you should not try at home. "The most uncanny look." http://thequackdoctor.com/index.php/the-most-uncanny-look/
* Brain Food - Episode 28: Robopocolapyse:
* O.o: http://thedevilspanties.com/archives/8379