The milieu through which we swim
The second in my set of Three Wise H’s. Poor, tragic Heloise was one of the great minds of the twelfth century. Eventually Abbess of the Oratory of the Paraclete, she was not a nun by vocation, but through the medieval systems of sexual repression and ultra-strict gender role enforcement, along with a good sized dollop of bad luck.
Is any single one of Barry O’Farrell’s proposed new laws that are meant to curb alcohol-fueled violence evidence-based? Or is it all based on good old “common sense” knee-jerking?
What news story/commentary/analysis has grabbed your attention lately?
Caleb Hannan wrote a wanna-be-gonzo journalist-as-protagonist article outing a trans woman, shortly after that woman committed suicide after explicitly warning Hannan that his journalism was leaving her no other option: Hannan has committed an utterly reprehensible failure to emulate an ethical human being. Grantland’s ethical failure in publishing Hannan’s article is equally appalling.
So what happens when a woman who has been blogging and livetweeting her treatment for breast cancer for many years decides to keep on livetweeting once she receives a terminal diagnosis of metastatic disease?
Columnist Emma Keller decided that it was her place to get all finger-pointy about “the ethics of tweeting a terminal illness” on the opinion pages of a prestigious international masthead, that’s what. And then NYT columnist Bill Keller (her husband) decides to tag team on the finger-pointing and double down.
There are some questions you should never ask in an interview.
And the Abbott government is loving that everybody’s looking at Bernardi instead of keeping an eye on them. C’mon, we’re smarter than this, right?
What news story/commentary/analysis has grabbed your attention lately?
While we sit around waiting for someone with some political muscle to actually weigh in on the issue of ARC funding cuts and the disrespect being shown to expertise, let us occupy ourselves in a positive way by opening up eilish’s suggested Totally Esoteric Thread. Please take this opportunity to share with the rest of us which esoteric pocket you can be popped into, especially if you are generally a lurker, and let’s find out what we, collectively, know.
Unfollowing Bora by Dana Hunter at Freethought Blogs summarises all that’s wrong about Bora Zivkovic’s blithe attempt to just come back to science blogging as if nothing ever happened.
In yet another example of white feminist cluelessness, Singer Ani DiFranco will hold her annual songwriting retreat this year on Nottoway Plantation in Louisiana. Righteous Retreat Song Camp is billed as a feminist songwriting retreat, and DiFranco’s choice to hold the event at this locale has drawn ire from Black women who note the offensiveness of the location.
This is a Lazy Summer repost of an old post, with some highlights from comments on the original post added, since they add to the snarkfest. Given that the Abbott government seems to be full of “rationalist” policies owing more than a small debt to Objectivist Libertarianism, it seemed like a good time to remind folks what unregulated government of prime movers for prime movers would actually look like.
Hoyden About Town 