Links (most recent first) that caught my eye, but did not warrant full-blown blog entries ….
- Stunningly stupid Christian argument against gay marriage. – Wow. Yeah, that’s one of the more stupid fundie arguments against gay marriage I’ve run across.
- Jim Wallis and Believe Out Loud, Part 2 – “Anyone advocating the full equality of women in the church has to contend with the presence and use of the usual clobber verses wielded by those who oppose such equality. The prooftexters swinging such clobber verses will always loudly proclaim that anyone failing to submit to their clear teaching is ‘denying the authority of scripture,’ but the fact is that such authority is meaningless unless one rightly determines what the scripture actually means. Determining that requires much more than prooftexting and arrogantly assuring oneself that one’s supposedly common-sense, face-value reading of an English translation needs no further confirmation.”
- The Results of an Atheist Sex Survey – Glad to know I’m amongst the most guilt-free-about-sex Christian denominations. Hubba-hubba!
- Punishment – One can legitimately question whether the criminal population in Norway is comparable to the criminal population in the US (and counter-question why that is as well), but it’s difficult to argue against the characterization of American prisons as more or less warehouses of problematic members of society, keeping them out of circulation for a given period of time before simply dropping them back into the general population. And we really expect that to help, except for that short term?
- Those who can, teach – I’ve been there. Even the least hard-working of the teachers had to work their asses off. I’d argue that nobody should be in education administration — up to and including superintendent — without having spend a minimum of five years in the classroom.
- Ford Cars To Get Smarter With Google Prediction – This sounds incredibly clever … and I’ll be amazed if it’s ready for prime time any time soon.
- All Hail the PUBLIC Library | Common Dreams – “Libraries make citizens of us all.”
- What does a trillion dollars look like? – And pretty soon you’re talking about real money, as Everett Dirksen said.
- Microsoft Structured Acquisition Of Skype To Avoid U.S. Taxes – Well, that certainly makes up for overpaying for Skype.
- Why It’s Getting Harder and Harder to Remember Things as You Get Older – Posting this so I can reference it in the future, if I can remember to do so.
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Why am I not surprised about MS doing a deal and avoiding taxes? Most firms that large do that, and “there oughta be a law”. Of course, SCOTUS will rule for the corporations these days, so what good is that?
Regarding public libraries: if “Libraries make citizens of us all”, the corollary seems to be “Libraries are the province of those who can afford them”.
One of my comments to that article:
One thing that has not been mentioned yet in the issue of privatizing libraries and similar public institutions where women are the greatest proportion of employees, is the effect on their quality of life, especially when retired. Until what age will they have to continue to work before they can afford to retire from a private company more interested in “the bottom line” than in the service they’re supposed to provide to the public, or the welfare of the staff?
In many cities across the US, public sector workers are seeing their salaries, benefits, hours, and pensions–and thus their quality of life AND the quality of service to the community–slashed, with the exception of primarily male departments: fire, police/sheriff/jails/prisons? Has no one noticed this, and stopped to think (they might have, but never started up again)? This resembles the GOP/TeaParty “war on women”, primarily in health care, but also in collective bargaining unit jobs and membership, with no safety net.
In Jane Austen’s day, the gentry/upper classes and nobility males were supposed to provide for their womenfolk, who were by and large unable to make a living wage. Much of her work details what happens when this system fails. These days, many North American women are socially able to earn a decent living, but not all do. Looks like even women in the degreed and “professional” employment arenas may shortly lose their ability to work one job and retire.
Jane, are you listening, from your current place of residence?
Regarding memory of recent events:
If it weren’t for my strong visual memory of events, places, etc, I might also have considerably less memory of current recent events.
I hadn’t considered the war on public sector employment in feminist terms, to be honest. An interesting thought (though fire and police departments have not been immune to cuts, either).
We are having cuts in “public safety” departments as well–the firefighters and uniformed police force unions agree to some concessions, but those in the same departments NOT in uniform, mostly women, just find unnegotiated cuts.
I wouldn’t have thought about it had not either Ronn Owens or Gil Gross, program hosts on KGO-am radio in SF, mentioned it while discussing Bay Area city budgets.