There’s never enough time to do all the nothing you want. – Calvin & Hobbes
Altogether, rather a busy week for links! I’m still working on catching up from all the various delays I’ve had since February (including the recent hard drive crash), so it was nice not to have to work too hard on this column. The race this week was very close; Jesse Walker was in the lead at first, then Grace overtook him, only to be passed on Friday by perennial champ Radley Balko. Everything down to the first video is his; the first three after the video are Graces’s, and the next three Jesse’s. The video itself is a parody of this rather unsettling Beyonce song which went so well with yesterday’s “Oscillation” I used it today. The second video is a mock newsreel referring to the events in Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness, and the links between the two were provided by Mistress Matisse (“Calvin and Hobbes”), Feminist Whore (“fallacies”), Aspasia (“Call of Cthulhu”), Walter Olson (“litigious”), Nine (“El Salvador”), Jemima (“negative impact”), and Krulac (“cronyism”).
- The proto-internet, established 1910.
- Anarchists target Spanish Catholics with exploding sex toys.
- Coroner claims man just happened to die of a heart attack while being beaten by cops.
- “Nice dairy farm you’ve got here, Granny; it’d be a shame if something were to happen to it.”
- Undercover cops trick a socially-awkward teen into buying weed.
- Teacher suspended for “inappropriate use of a banana”.
- Man fined $1000 for saving boy’s life.
- Inactive Dalek discovered in pond.
- The Mariko Aoki phenomenon.
- A chocolate zoetrope.
- Life lessons from Calvin and Hobbes.
- “Stop faking” results in yet another death.
- A hyperlinked taxonomic diagram of logical fallacies.
- If “The Call of Cthulhu” had been written by Dr. Seuss.
- Law student sues law school for implying he’s litigious.
- A new short-short story by Neil Gaiman, “Feminine Endings”.
- Nutella corporation demands woman stop liking Nutella so much.
- El Salvador declares dying fetus more important than living mother.
- Cops brutally beat man for trying to read bogus ticket before signing it.
- Ilford cops steal food and sleeping bags from homeless people to “reduce their negative impact”.
- Crony capitalist says it’s “necessary” for government to impose draconian rules that no citizen actually wants.
From the Archives
- Senators “discover” that G-men hire whores, feign surprise and outrage.
- Tracy Quan on a documentary about whores in three different countries.
- “Abstinence only” sex education is even worse than previously believed.
- “Sex trafficking” hysteria is really the old “Satanic Panic” in a new guise.
- Namibians prove they understand human rights better than Americans.
- Current events, Massachusetts Puritans and the Long Island cover-up.
- Another man convicted of “child pornography” for owning comic books.
- Prostitution is not an evil to be tolerated, but a good to be celebrated.
- Busting myths about migration, extramarital sex and mythology itself.
- Another study confirms what whores have been saying for decades.
- Los Angeles begins to realize that its condom law is unenforceable.
- “I’m pretty sure [pimps] are out there. Kinda like the Chupacabra.”
- How yesterday’s forbidden activity becomes compulsory tomorrow.
- What a “sex trafficking” trial reveals about the “Swedish Model”.
- My reviews of The Pyx, Soylent Green and Three Felonies a Day.
- The tale of a dedicated professional doing what is necessary.
- A Japanese service provides sex workers with cover stories.
- Phoenix jumps into “trafficking” hysteria with both feet.
- The arrival of armed drones on American soil.
- Another of Nick Kristof’s exercises in fatuity.
- A parable about sex work and restaurants.
- What I really mean by the word “myth”.
- The truth about Swedish snake oil.
- 69-year-old identical twin whores.
- The menace of rock and roll.
- Fake internet girlfriend.
The story about the homeless in Redbridge, Ilford was widely publicised on Twitter, with equal measures of incredulity and disgust. But only the Independent among the national dailies picked it up — and basically reprinted the original article. I haven’t seen what, if anything, happened subsequently.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/police-seize-possessions-of-rough-sleepers-in-crackdown-on-homelessness-8631665.html?origin=internalSearch
The aspect of the debate on Sex Education that always annoys me is; the Public Schools evidently cannot even accomplish their core mission of teaching children to read, write, and do basic math. Why the &^%$# are they taking on Sex Education? No matter how they do it, they are going to alarm some segment of the population, resulting in controversy and much wasting of time and other resources.
Come to think of it, maybe that’s the reason; get the parents all worked up over Sex Ed, and the school admin. won’t have to answer any embarrassing questions about why they are graduating students who can’t flipping read.
Actually, the public schools have been teaching people to read, write, and do basic math for decades. Unless you went to a private school, it’s how you learned.
But the schools are facing some huge, and rather recent challenges: Mainstreaming of special needs students into the classroom, many more students who don’t have English language skills, and more and more students coming from very poor homes.
Of course, in the USA, we certainly don’t want to address the later, we’re content to let Wall Street Crooks rob us blind. If we all learned our maths, perhaps we wouldn’t stand for that.
The biggest challenge that public schools are facing are …
Teacher’s Unions.
“Actually, the public schools have been teaching people to read, write, and do basic math for decades.”
And this would be, where, exactly? Certainly not in the inner cities in the U.S.. Not enough, anyway. Certainly not well enough that they should be spending time on issues and subjects guaranteed to generate controversy all out of proportion to they actual utility.
Hell, in some districts even the TEACHERS test as sub-literate.
Nobody can teach a kid who has adopted the Al Sharpton Attitude that learning is a waste of time.
If inner city schools would rather actually be racist than risk being called that for disciplining the kids who won’t bother, they at least need to kick them out. But it won’t happen while the teachers’ unions are in control, because it would make them look bad.
I’m at the point of concluding that there is so much evidence that exists on how any governmental power harms people that anyone who still believes in expanding government has an oppressive agenda themselves and should be outright opposed by all.
There really is no such thing as “government by the people” nor has there ever been nor will there ever be. You can elect people to serve democratically, but the institution of government is a large self-licking ice cream cone that eventually serves it’s own interests rather than the people’s.
A prime example was this EU olive oil ban. Let’s see here … what kind of real threats do Europeans face? Well – I’ll tell ya this – if they don’t get a handle on their social welfare and government spending – they are going to be up shit’s creek real soon – and without a paddle. Millions of people across the continent with destroyed lives – that’s what that looks like.
But hey … let’s prioritize olive oil safety shall we?
LMFAO!!
In case anyone here understands German, I’d like to direct your attention to this extraordinarily well-researched article about the Swiss erotic sector in the “Weltwoche”:
http://www.andana.ch/fileadmin/media/__default__/files/pdfs/WEW_32_024_KONSUMTEMPEL_DER_TRIEBE.PDF
As far as I can tell, it paints a realistic picture about the current situation, some of the problems sex workers face, the “professionalization” of the sector etc… without the otherwise ever-present moralizing and misrepresentation.
Thanks for the link. Die Weltwoche is a wonderfully Swiss publication; its articles are thorough, detailled, well written, well intentioned, yet it’s all a bit turgid. This article does seem to present an unbiased account of the “sex trade” there, and the very Swiss bureaucracy which surrounds (suffocates) most activities.
Good Gawd!
There is a place for police officers like “Daniel.” It’s the 8th circle of hell. Given the substance of his soul, he would be very much at home immersed in human excrement. But given his actions, being consigned to the ditch of fiery pitch and oil would also be appropriate. Maybe we can give “Daniel” equal time – half spent burning in pitch, half spent marinating in shit.
On life lessons Calvin-style, this from Mark Twain;
When I was sixteen, my father was the most ignorant man in the world. By the time I reached 21, I was surprised at how much he had learned in five years.
The antarctic expedition newsreel was a pretty impressive showing of intrepidity, especially with the tragedy in the end. One can imagine just such a broadcast in the event the Cthulu awakes!
On the Ilford homeless; Theft under color of law? I don’t know if the UK has such statutes; we have them in the US but they are almost never invoked against state actors.
On the Berkley Trucker beaten by the ChiP Heads;
Amazing how convenient the technology failures were, no dashcams, no dispatch records. And it looks like they tried every possible red herring including the logging of table salt as an unknown substance. If Holder had any real concern for the law, this would provoke a full-blown investigation with federal prison time at the end for everyone in the whitewash. But that certainly won’t happen.
Did anyone else see that the Ogden “cop killer” was found hanged in his cell? Remember, these are the same valiant boys in blue that put 3 in the chest of a man holding a golf club; subsequently they found one burnt roach and used that as justification for murder, plain and simple.
“Man fined $1000 for saving boys life.”
I would have appreciated this story better if the operator of the website this article came from wasn’t a homophobic bigot.
What’s next? Some “insightful” links from Stormfront?
I hope not.
If Stormfront writes something that is thought provoking … why not?
Also – that guy’s not a homophobe – he doesn’t sit cowering in fear each night of homosexuals – which is what “homophobe” means. I surfed around a bit on that site – and I agree he’s a bit closed minded (putting it mildly). However, he does make some very good points – and in many cases completely destroys them by making cheap shots at gays.
I’m not one to turn down news simply because I don’t like the messenger; Alternet, Jezebel and Huffington Post all irritate the hell out of me, but I feature links from them all the time (and HuffPo is as anti-whore as any American media outlet).
Also, I honestly don’t have the time to investigate the political opinions of the owners of every site I link a news story from; unless I already know it (as in the case of the Daily Mail) or it’s evident from the story, I tend to just treat it as I would a link from any other small news site.
Yeah, sometime I find a great story, but the source is iffy or one I’m hostile too. Heck, I’ve linked to Kristof stories before when he made a good point that did not involving sending successful bar girls to work in sweatshops for peanuts. (He wrote a good article about Pakistan once…)
The “Anarchists target Spanish Catholics with Exploding Sex Toys” headline almost got me thrown out of the library I was laughing so loud.
Links. I’ll come back.