Bomb the Moon.

manaphy: aw even the perverted old man has grown up with the...

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 18:45:16 -0700

aw even the perverted old man has grown up with the game improvements

Truncated transcript from today's SCOTUS argument

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 14:28:30 -0700

courtneymilan:

SCALIA: Tell me, Counsel. Gay marriage: Bad for children, or the worst for children?

COOPER: We really don’t know. Gay marriage is so new. We have no evidence. It could be that gay marriage will cause aliens to descend on this planet and eat the flesh of all children under the age of sixteen. Or maybe not. We just don’t know. We have to think of the children.

KENNEDY: This is extremely persuasive to me.

This is delightful.

knowledgeequalsblackpower: oldenough2burmom: isthisableism: Wa...

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 22:14:07 -0700

knowledgeequalsblackpower:

oldenough2burmom:

isthisableism:

Washington Post: Grand jury rejects criminal charges in death of Robert Saylor, man with Down syndrome

Robert Saylor, a 26-year-old man with Down syndrome, sat in a movie theatre after having watched a movie, acting as if he was going to sit through the movie again without buying another ticket.

That prompted three police officers to kill him.

Friday, a grand jury determined that no crime was committed, even though his death was ruled a homicide.

He was suffocated as three officers struggled to handcuff him and drag him out of the theater. A movie ticket probably costs $11.

The court system is corrupt.

mohandasgandhi: Oscar loves a white savior If you’ve been to...

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 18:59:29 -0800

mohandasgandhi:

Oscar loves a white savior

If you’ve been to the movies in the last half-century, you know the White Savior genre well. It’s the catalog of films that features white people single-handedly rescuing people of color from their plight. These story lines insinuate that people of color have no ability to rescue themselves. This both makes white audiences feel good about themselves by portraying them as benevolent messiahs (rather than hegemonic conquerors), and also depicts people of color as helpless weaklings — all while wrapping such tripe in the cinematic argot of liberation.

This, of course, is the backbone of Spielberg’s “Lincoln.” As historian Kate Masur recently wrote in the New York Times, it is yet another “movie devoted to explaining the abolition of slavery in the United States” but one in which “African-American characters do almost nothing but passively wait for white men to liberate them.” The result, she writes, is a film that ignores actual events of the 19th century, “helps perpetuate the notion that African Americans have offered little of substance to their own liberation” and thus reinforces “the outdated assumption that white men are the primary movers of history and the main sources of social progress.”

Coming from Spielberg, this isn’t particularly surprising. He is, after all, the creator of one of the most unself-consciously archetypal White Savior movies of all time: “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.” In that cartoonish adventure, a whip-wielding white archaeologist drops from the sky into India and quickly becomes the only person able to save destitute peasants from the rein of a tyrannical human-sacrificing cult.

Spielberg’s Abraham Lincoln is certainly a more nuanced character than Dr. Jones, just as his latest film is more sophisticated (if not as exciting) than the second iteration of his 1980s archaeologist-superhero franchise. In return, he has been rewarded with an Oscar nomination — but probably not just because “Lincoln” plays to the academy’s general love of historical drama. It also plays to Hollywood award organizations’ specific affinity for the White Savior.

Indeed, in the last quarter-century, 10 White Savior films have received major Hollywood award nominations, with fully half of those coming in just the last five years. In chronological order, here’s a look at them, and how they channel the same old story of white people saving the day for people of color who supposedly cannot help themselves.

(Continue reading to see the full list of films…)

Among the films listed are the following:

Cry Freedom (1987)

Mississippi Burning (1988)

Glory (1989)

Dances With Wolves (1990)

The Last Samurai (2003)

Gran Torino (2008)

The Blind Side (2009)

Avatar (2009)

District 9 (2009)

The Help (2011)

Related: Best-pic Oscar noms come under scrutiny - for racism, historical accuracy and political ideology

vicemag: Here’s Why Taylor Swift Will Never Be Called a...

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 19:21:33 -0800

vicemag:

Here’s Why Taylor Swift Will Never Be Called a Whore

I know this puts me in the minority, but I’ve never been a huge Taylor Swift fan. It’s great that she’s the highest grossing pop star under the age of 30 and everything, and that she’s worth $56 million and everything, but her music is dog-doo awful town. And with great power comes great responsibility.

Anyway, a few weeks ago, Ken Baker of E! News tweeted the above image.

Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat here so I don’t have a bunch of fellow feminists jumping down my throat: Neither Taylor Swift nor Miley Cyrus are “sluts.” As Ryan O’Connell points out: “While it’s nice that people are starting to realize that calling Miley Cyrus a slut is bad news bears, that doesn’t mean we should deflect all of that sexist energy to Taylor Swift.” I agree completely! And what is a slut anyway? Especially with regard to giant pop stars? I’m pretty sure that being slutty or not slutty has nothing to do with a woman’s musical abilities. But that doesn’t stop us from judging a female musician on her neckline.

My problem with Taylor Swift is her lyrics. It’s not that she only writes about boys and love (even though I find this problematic and totally unprogressive).

It’s that Taylor Swift slut-shames other women constantly and no one says anything about it.

Here’s a fun little thought experiment. Try to think of a Taylor Swift song that isn’t about boys and boyfriends and lovey-dovey girl feelings. In her songs, romantic relationships usually end because of the actions of another woman.

Read the rest over at NOISEY.

Kardashians Get 40 Times More News Coverage Than Ocean Acidification

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 16:17:20 -0700

Kardashians Get 40 Times More News Coverage Than Ocean Acidification

'Hunger Games' fans split hairs over blond star Lawrence

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 06:00:00 -0700

'Hunger Games' fans split hairs over blond star Lawrence:

I read this article in the newspaper the other day and thought it was really… I don’t know, stupid? It puts so much focus on hair color and ignores the reason why someone who is naturally blond playing Katniss Everdeen is problematic. That would be race. Only white people are born blond. The character is described in the books as more racially ambiguous; dark hair and olive skin. Jennifer Lawrence is unquestionably white. That’s why people were upset. Since Jennifer Lawrence has blond hair and fair skin she should have been unsuitable for the role, but since she has blond hair and fair skin it doesn’t matter.

vicemag: Whitney Houston Was Killed So that Blue Ivy Carter...

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 15:54:46 -0800

vicemag:

Whitney Houston Was Killed So that Blue Ivy Carter Could Live:

Was Whitney murdered? It all makes sense when you think about it. You really think it’s a coincidence that Whitney Houston, one of the biggest stars in music, died just weeks after Jay-Z and Beyonce had their child, Blue Ivy? Just a few days after Madonna’s Super Bowl performance? Just one day before the music industry(-al complex)’s grandest spectacle, The Grammys? Pull your head out of your arse and look at the facts. Continue reading here

Yes.

The Boy Who Lived Forever

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 17:09:17 -0700

The Boy Who Lived Forever:

The latest issue of Time has an article about fanfiction, specifically those that feature the Harry Potter series, but it mentions a couple of different fandoms as well.

Hermione Granger and the Failures of Feminism

Sat, 09 Jul 2011 16:31:32 -0700

Hermione Granger and the Failures of Feminism

This photo was used in during a lecture in my Biogeography class...

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 17:24:45 -0800

This photo was used in during a lecture in my Biogeography class today. It was used to illustrate local extinction compared to global extinction. While the range of the bison has greatly declined since this photograph has been taken, during the 1880’s, free range populations still exist in North America. The Michigan Carbon Works located in Detroit received 5,000 boxcars of bison bones a year. They were used for making charcoal, glue, china, to whiten sugar according to my professor, and you know, oppress Native Americans and such.

Wolves don't like Creed either.

Sat, 22 Jan 2011 14:26:00 -0800

Wolves don't like Creed either.:

Recently I watched the move Frozen. There are a lot of things wrong about this movie. I don’t ski, but I plan on keeping the experiences of these three stuck on the ski lift tucked away safely in my mind so I remember what not to do if I ever find myself in a similar situation. The wolves are a bit more tricky. In elementary school they taught us to ring bells, sing loudly, or play dead as a way to defend against bears, which has always been kind of confusing to me. I don’t remember what they said about wolves. Apparently Creed works, but I have no idea how to feel about that. If I ever found myself listening to Creed I would hope to be devoured by wolves.

Instead of a "Mean Girls 2", I would've liked a movie about Glen Coco. Hopefully explaining why he got four candycanes.

Wed, 08 Dec 2010 15:47:04 -0800

The Dawn of Miss Kitty Fantastico, or why I'm pretty sure Dawn Summers is actually a cat.

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 15:37:00 -0800

Miss Kitty Fantastico was a kitten adopted by Tara in television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The cat makes her first appearance near the end of the fourth season (episode 20, the Yoko Factor) and continues to appear throughout the end of the fourth season only to be never seen or mentioned again until the end of the series. What if the kitten never left? What if instead of simply disappearing, Miss Kitty Fantastico took on a new form, the form of a young girl.The two are both young females, and while it seems obvious that the major difference between the two characters is that one is human and the other is a cat, it is also important to remember that Dawn originally is not human. Is it possible that the monks who created Dawn were able to do so with nothing? If energy cannot be created nor destroyed then Dawn’s life had to come from somewhere. Perhaps from the brief life of a kitten.

Dawn is Buffy’s younger sister, but not through natural means. She was created as a device for the protection of a magical key. Though Dawn’s homecoming was referenced to as early as the third season, it isn’t until the beginning of the fifth season that she actually arrives, after Miss Kitty Fantastico’s mysterious, and at the time, unexplained disappearance.

Though Miss Kitty Fantastico was technically Tara’s cat, she found her and kept her in her dorm room, she asks Willow to help her raise her. The two of them discuss getting a cat during the season four episode, New Moon Rising. The kitten is recognized as belonging to both Tara and Willow. After the death of Dawn’s mother and the second death of sister, Willow and Tara become parental figures for Dawn. Even after Buffy is revived, Dawn retains a sort of mother-daughter type relationship with the two witches.

Miss Kitty Fantastico is finally mentioned again during the seventh and final season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (episode 21, the End of Days). It is in a reference to a memory that Dawn has regarding her.

“Xander, my crossbow is not out here. I told you, I don’t leave crossbows around all willy-nilly… Not since that time with Miss Kitty Fantastico.”

This implies that Dawn’s carelessness lead to the demise of the cat. It seems that this line was added to fill the hole left by the kitten’s sudden and unexplained disappearance, despite the several year delay. However, since Dawn’s memories before her appearance on the show are artificial, this does not provide a convincing explanation. It does however support that Dawn is the reason for why Miss Kitty Fantastico is no longer present, but not for the reason that the show provides.

Pokemon Explained

Sun, 28 Nov 2010 22:50:00 -0800

Pokemon Explained:

I haven’t played Pokemon since Gold and Silver on the Gameboy Color, so I’m a little out of the loop and saw this article for the first time last night. It’s pretty fantastic. I fucking love Pokemon.

On listening to Katy Perry and liking it.

Sun, 21 Nov 2010 00:11:00 -0800

I can’t escape from Katy Perry. It used to be something I actively avoided, but I’ve come to realize that not only is there no point; I’m actually quite comfortable being wrapped around her bicurious little fingers. In interviews she is funny, charming and seems to be pretty self aware, but it seems to be that my relationship with Katy Perry is more complicated than love or hate. I’m not some sort of pretentious music snob that hates something because it is popular; I’m the kind of pretentious music snob that hates something because it is fucking bad. But for whatever reason there gets to be a point where I actually get kind of excited when her song comes on the radio. I’ve come to accept the parasitic nature of Katy Perry songs, the first listen is painful and uncomfortable, but it forms a little niche inside of your brain and once it makes itself feel at home it is actually kind of nice. I honestly cannot tell if it is because deep down I actually enjoy her songs, or I’ve just heard them so many times that I have been brain washed into liking them. Do I only think she is funny and cool because I’ve been brain washed by her? I can’t tell what reality is anymore. It feels so wrong but I can’t help thinking about how fine, fresh and fierce she is. Katy Perry has given me Stockholm syndrome.

Teenage Dream is the second single from her second mainstream album of the same title. Katy Perry sounds a lot like Humbert Humbert in this song, with the running away towards California and “going all the way” in the motel room. Actually, the first dozen times I heard it I was uncomfortable and a little grossed out by the subject matter. The questions started to flood my mind. Why is Katy Perry singing about having sex with teenagers? Why is a song that plays like an anthem for statutory rape blowing up the charts? Then I realized it to be the public’s response to policies that promote abstinence only sex education. We as a nation may be ready to move towards a more comprehensive sex education that resembles nations that have had more success in this area than us. There is even a line about building a fort of sheets, which seems to be an allusion to safe sex. If the response to the information that Katy Perry wants to sex up our nation’s teenagers is to turn up the radio then I would assume the answer to be yes, we are ready.

Lolita complications.

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:40:00 -0700

The Tokyo Metropolitan government is working on legislation that will ban provocative images of characters that appear to be eighteen years old and younger. It will amend current youth welfare law dealing with child pornography to make sure “nonexistent youths” are represented in addition to, you know, actual youth. This also includes filtering images on the internet and on mobile phones. Though this law would apply in Metropolitan Tokyo and not elsewhere in Japan, Tokyo pretty much sets the pace for the rest of the country.

There are a couple of reasons as to why this is fucked.

1. Unless behavior is harmful to actual people, it is not the government’s job to play moral police. One can’t decide what is provocative for another person.

2. All of this effort going into protecting imaginary children should go towards the protection of actual children. While selling child pornography is illegal, owning it without intention to distribute isn’t.

3. Tokyo officials care more about the exploitation of fake kids than real ones as demonstrated by the idol industry that uses models young as four years old.

And I understand why people would feel the need for this kind of law, and it is the same kind of reasoning that goes behind the banning of media that is considered violent. And it’s old news that shit isn’t true. I like shooting things in video games, but the thought of shooting anything in real is terrifying. The box set of Neon Genesis Evangelion sits on my shelf and I’ve watched all 26 episodes at least six times and I have no desire to bang a 14 year old, I just don’t.

Children, real or not, should not be viewed as sexual objects for adults to toy with. But at the same time, I would much rather prefer people perusing the image of an animated girl on a pillow, rather than an actual little girl. Non evil pedophiles do exist, but I don’t even think it is about sexual attraction to actual children. It has something to do with the society that drives men to this unhealthy place of isolation where love that is 2 dimensional is preferable to no love at all. The fact that the images are of prepubescent girls may only be the beginning of a much larger issue.

Mangaka are pissed about the bill and it has been delayed. Real talk: Japan’s gaming, anime and manga industry without sexy minors? I hate all of those terrible harem series and I still can’t wrap my head around the thought. It is so finely ingrained into the culture. And that itself pretty messed up but I do not think attacking the byproduct of a certain cultural mindset will do anything to fix any of the actual problems.

Via Kotaku.

Sex education and the reasons for the teardrops on my guitar.

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:14:00 -0800

Confession: I have a weird fascination with Taylor Swift. She’s like, America’s darling of both country and pop and she dated a Jonas brother and Kanye West interrupted her acceptance speech at an awards show and all these other things that do not matter. I should care less about this teen pop sensation. I mean, pop-country is pretty much the bottom of the barrels when in regards to musical genres. This combined with my love for Mr. West (not to mention Beyonce) should be enough for me to really dislike Taylor Swift. However, whenever I’m at work and a Taylor Swift song comes on z100 I have to fight the urge to sing along. The exception being Our Song, of course, because it is atrocious, I’m sorry.

Let me stress that this thing that I have for Taylor Swift really is not sexual. Let’s be completely honest, her face is kind of weird. I think it is the shape of her eyes and I might be a little intimidated by how much body her hair has. That’s not why I like her. Taylor Swift is the embodiment of the teenage girl experience. Grant it, it was not my teenage girl experience, but it was definitely someone’s and judging by her success it was probably a lot of people’s. The bad analogies to classic literature (Taylor Swift probably had to read The Scarlet Letter in high school, but based on the lyrics from Love Story I’m under the distinct impression she didn’t actually read it), staying up late talking on the phone with the person you like, seeing your best friend with the captain of the cheerleading squad and knowing, in your heart, that you two were actually meant to be, it’s like the contents of Sweet Valley High put to catchy arena pop. It is no wonder she is the most popular country artist on MySpace. Do you think Garth Brooks knows anything about the pains of being a girl at sweet sixteen?

The other day I was watching the video for You Belong to Me on YouTube. I was reading the comments and I became offended when anyone made any sort of sexual remark about her. How could someone say something like that about Taylor Swift? I was baffled and a little upset. Later I was thinking about it and I was really surprised by the fact that someone making a sexual remark on the internet offended me. Growing up in an age of 4chan and, well, the internet in general, I was practically raised by sexually offensive comments made on the internet. It made me think about the kind of things that I found offensive. In the end, I couldn’t think of any good reason for feeling the way I did and instead came up with two arguments about why I shouldn’t have been offended:

1. I don’t know Taylor Swift personally. In fact, it doesn’t even register to me that she is a real person. It would be like someone making a sexually offensive comment about Arwen from Lord of the Rings. Instead of shock, my reaction to such comments should have been,”cool, you want to do it with an elf; I really could not care less.”

2. Taylor Swift is older than me; it wasn’t like it was some sexually charged comment directed towards some prepubescent child star. Taylor Swift is probably sexually active or at least has sexual feeling or desires. If it was someone else, say Emma Watson (who is younger than Taylor Swift), I wouldn’t be offended, I would probably be the one making the sexually charged comments.

It was the second argument that really struck me. I was upset because I refused to recognize Taylor Swift as a sexual being. I began to realize that I was just as bad as the people responsible for why sex education in America is so ineffective compared to other countries around the world. It’s because I’m under the impression that it you like Taylor Swift you are supposed to leave her a note in her locker and if she checks ‘yes’ for ‘I like you too’ then maybe you guys could go out for milkshakes and maybe you would hold each other’s hands and talk about what a drag Mr. Druce’s English class is. Then you can fall in love and get married and have babies and it won’t matter that you grew up on the wrong side of town because it’s a love story, baby, and all you have to do is say, ‘yes’. Sex education in the US is unsuccessful because we’re so stupid, we think that Taylor Swift is mature enough to understand love, but not ready to understand her own body.

Nearly a billion dollars in state and federal funding goes towards abstinence-only education, and yet the US is the industrialized nation with the highest rates of teen pregnancy, abortion, and STDs. In Denmark, where teens have similar patterns of sexual activity compared to those in the US, the rates for teen pregnancy and STDS are much lower. Instead of being taught that sex should be equated with danger, disease, and even death, Danish students are given a comprehensive sex education starting in elementary school. Do you know what stuck with me from my sexual education class from my freshman year of high school? A STD slide show and a movie that pretty much said, “if you have sex before marriage then you are probably going to die in a horrible car wreck.” Other countries trying to figure out what they should do about sex education for their youth don’t even care about what the US has to say, because we are world renown for being terrible at teaching sex education. *

It’s this myth that innocence is defined by the ignorance of sex. Like, instead of giving a child a real answer about where babies come from, a parent feeds him or her some story about a stork. The truth is not going to be jading. Sex shouldn’t be viewed as something dirty, it should be viewed as something that makes people human. Even now, after I have come to terms that there is a good chance that Taylor Swift did it with a Jonas brother or that werewolf from Twilight, it doesn’t tarnish my view of her. She is still the epitome of a youthful innocence, like rainbows, unicorns, Lisa Frank stickers, and the fact that someone on the internet wants to do it with her doesn’t change that.

*”Going too Far? Sex, Sin and Social Policy” by Susan Rose Sex Matters 3rd Edition