Posts Tagged ‘sex offenders’
Happy Captain Picard Day Links!
* Speaking of: a nice reflection on the first episode of Picard at the LARB blog.
* The more important observation at this point is that none of the Democrats have faced the full force of the contemporary Republican attack machine and none of them have demonstrated their capacity to survive it. I would argue that if Sanders seems unready, then all of his Democratic rivals are vastly more unready. And that all Democrats are now equally vulnerable to the way that the Republican Party now conducts itself politically, because the Republican Party no longer has any constraints on its behavior. Neither accuracy nor probity matters any longer. Legality is unimportant to a lawless party. The preservation of democratic norms and structures doesn’t matter to a party that no longer believes that the opposition has a right to govern if elected. The contemporary GOP and its base believe that by definition, only they have political legitmacy. The Democrats are still preparing to run in an election, while their opponents are preparing to go to war.
* Four ways America’s system of government is rigged against democracy (and Democrats).
* First Bernie, now this: Vermont might broaden license plate comedy forever by allowing emojis.
* Fair wages are anti-doctrinal: A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that Duquesne University’s status as a Roman Catholic institution exempts it from National Labor Relations Board’s rules on forming an adjunct union.
* The Age of Climate Authoritarianism Is Upon Us.
* Funded by the federal government, local governments in coastal states are buying out thousands of homes in vulnerable areas every year, reshaping and breaking up communities as they go. In their wake, the departed residents of these communities have left what may be the country’s first climate ghost towns, abandoned places made uninhabitable by the warming of the planet. The vacant lots of Arbor Oaks and neighborhoods like it provide a stark warning about the shortcomings of the government’s haphazard, market-driven response to climate change, and raise difficult questions about the rights of people who live in the path of climate disaster.
* Rewilding the Arctic could stop permafrost thaw and reduce climate change risks.
* Student group calls for university to divest in fossil fuels.
* How the gig economy leaves people poorer, in three or four tweets.
* The company that literally manufactured and sold Zyklon-B to the Nazis doing a Holocaust Memorial Day tweet is a great example of how the Holocaust exists in the Western imaginary as a decontextualized, abstract and perfect evil.
* The Curious Worldview of Michael Schur’s Television.
* This is exactly what Joe Biden sounds like, and I can’t understand how everyone doesn’t see it. Why does Joe Biden keep losing his cool with voters?
* It would sell! It would sell.
* Untitled Goose Game devs donate a percentage of profit to indigenous groups.
* Minneapolis police no longer to ticket for equipment violations under new policy. This seems like it could actually be good policy, as long as it’s not a smokescreen for surveillance or harassment.
* Here Are the Fare-Evasion Enforcement Data the NYPD Fought to Keep Secret.
* A constitutive contradiction in the law surrounding sex offender lists I hadn’t realized.
* What Earth Would Have Looked Like If It Spinned Clockwise Instead Of Counterclockwise.
Wednesday Links!
* CFP: Reading Lovecraft in the 21st Century. CFP: JOSF Special Issue on Environmental Studies.
* I saw some tweets tweets last night that turned my head a bit on the statement from the Tiptree Motherboard. I feel very conflicted.
* Academics calling for a boycott against Disability and Society.
* The latest from the Marquette free speech tire fire: University, attorneys differ on ‘permission’ in demonstration policy.
* Student debt is transforming the American family.
* No child grows up wanting to be a management consultant, and the fact that high levels of educational achievement strongly correlate with becoming a management consultant doesn’t mean people who become management consultants are any smarter than dental hygienists or taxi drivers or the unemployed. That’s where any honest accounting of meritocracy has to land, but the author can’t manage it.
* Wait — there are ethics in college admissions?
* U.S., France, Britain may be complicit in Yemen war crimes, U.N. report says.
* How Has Climate Change Affected Hurricane Dorian?
* How Does Waffle House Stay Open During Disasters?
* Incredible image of the devastating flooding in The Bahamas. Yellow lines are original coastline. Look at what’s left. Dorian‘s incredible stall over the island of Grand Bahama appears to set a new record for the slowest moving major hurricane over any 24-hour period since records began in 1851. Climate change is slowing hurricanes. Our first images of Abaco from air.
* As Rising Heat Bakes U.S. Cities, The Poor Often Feel It Most. New Elevation Measure Shows Climate Change Could Quickly Swamp the Mekong Delta.
* All good news is also bad news: Joe Manchin Will Stay in the Senate Because He Could Become Its Most Powerful Member.
* The wild corruption of Trump’s golf courses deserves more scrutiny. This Ireland one really is outrageously bad.
* The protesters engaged in a “rolling picket” on August 27, rallying at branches of HSBC, Vanguard, BlackRock, and Prudential in order to pressure the companies to divest from CoreCivic and GEO Group, which imprison immigrants for ICE.
* Under the law, a 16-year-old who has sex with a willing 13-year-old—a crime in Alabama, since the 13-year-old isn’t old enough to consent—could also lose parental rights decades later if he ever has a child, says Gar Blume, a longtime attorney in Tuscaloosa who has received national honors for his work on juvenile law. “It is so broad,” he says of the legislation, “that anybody ever convicted of a sex offense essentially is having their right to parenthood severely constrained, or there’s the potential for that to occur.” He described the law as “blatantly unconstitutional.”
* Nation that never abolished slavery getting a little angsty about it.
* South Dakota had a Democratic senator four years ago.
* Democracy Dies From Bad Fact-Checking.
* The voting machines don’t help, either.
* At least a little good news: North Carolina Court Says The State’s Districts Are Illegal Partisan Gerrymanders. North Carolina Court Strikes Down Gerrymander, Citing Smoking Gun Evidence in the Hofeller Files.
* “I feel like my kids have been part of a huge massive experiment I have no control over.”
* Neal Stephenson Wants To Tell Big Stories.
* Yeah, that sounds like a really bad show!
Richard Gere was set to star as one of two elderly Vietnam vets and best friends who find their monotonous lives upended when a woman they both loved 50 years ago is killed by a car. Their lifelong regrets and secrets collide with their resentment of today’s self-absorbed millennials and the duo then go on a shooting spree.
* She spent more than $110,000 on drug rehab. Her son still died.
* In Flint, Schools Overwhelmed by Special Ed. Needs in Aftermath of Lead Crisis.
* The app went down, so I couldn’t unlock my car.
* “Ben & Jerry’s new ice cream flavor is inspired by racism in the criminal justice system.”
* A glossary of dirty tricks websites use against their readers.
* Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair.
* A review of Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale sequel in the wild! I was told they weren’t giving copies to reviewers. Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale Sequel Is Already Being Developed by Hulu.
* This is a hell of a thread. If you’re concerned about unprovoked violence against peaceful demonstrators at political protests, you need to understand that the primary instigators of such violence are the police.
* And there’s no idea so bad you can’t make it worse.
Another Loose Firehose of Weekend Links!
* I’ve been so busy this little bit of clickbait isn’t even timely anymore: 3 reasons the American Revolution was a mistake. And this one isn’t timely either!
* New China Miéville story, in Salvage.
* A Laboratory Sitting on a Graveyard: Greece and the Neoliberal Debt Crisis.
* Campus cops are shadowy, militarized and more powerful than ever.
* How to Support a Scholar Who Has Come Under Attack.
* Guns, Prisons, Social Causes: New Fronts Emerge in Campus Fights Over Divestment.
* The final budget numbers that University of Wisconsin campuses have been dreading for months were released late Monday, prompting a mad scramble on campuses to figure out the winners and losers. Wisconsin’s Neoliberal Arts.
* In other words, states would be required to embrace and the federal government would be obligated to enforce a professor-centered vision of how to operate a university: tenure for everyone, nice offices all around, and the administrators and coaches can go pound sand. Sanders for president!
* Why College Kids Are Avoiding the Study of Literature.
* 11 Reasons To Ignore The Haters And Major In The Humanities. “Quality of life” almost barely sneaks in as a criterion at the end.
* On Fraction and Aja’s Hawkeye.
* Deep cuts: Why Do TV Characters All Own the Same Weird Old Blanket?
* The plan creates, in effect, a parallel school district within Milwaukee that will be empowered to seize MPS schools and turn them over to charter operators or voucher-taking private schools. While there is, in principle, a mechanism for returning OSPP schools to MPS after a period of five years, that mechanism carries qualifications intended to ensure that no OSPP school will ever return to MPS. This, alongside funding provisions for OSPP and MPS spelled out in the motion, makes it hard to avoid the conclusion that the plan’s purpose is to bankrupt the Milwaukee Public Schools. It is a measure of Darling and Kooyenga’s contempt for the city and its people that they may sincerely believe that this would be a good thing for Milwaukee schoolchildren.
* The failure rate for charter schools is much higher than for traditional public schools. In the 2011-2012 school year, for example, charter school students ran two and half times the risk of having their education disrupted by a school closing and suffering academic setbacks as a result. Dislocated students are less likely to graduate and suffer other harms. In a 2014 study, Matthew F. Larsen with the Department of Economics at Tulane University looked at high school closures in Milwaukee, almost all of which were charter schools. He concluded that closures decreased “high school graduation rates by nearly 10%” The effects persist “even if the students attends a better quality school after closure.”
* The Verdict on Charter Schools?
* “Here is what I would like for you to know: In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body—it is heritage.” Letter to My Son.
* What If Everything You Knew About Disciplining Kids Was Wrong?
* On June 8, CNN unveiled “Courageous,” a new production unit and an in-house studio that would be paid by advertisers to produce and broadcast news-like “branded content.”
* Social networking and the majority illusion.
* “Colleges’ Balance Sheets Are Looking Better.” Happy days are here again!
* My Severed Thumb and the Ambiguities of Technological Progress.
* So much for “most unpaid internships are illegal.”
* Now that the Supreme Court has once again saved Obamacare, can we have an honest talk about it?
* From the archives! Liberalism and Gentrification.
* From the archives! The world’s oldest continuously operating family business ended its impressive run last year. Japanese temple builder Kongo Gumi, in operation under the founders’ descendants since 578, succumbed to excess debt and an unfavorable business climate in 2006.
* “Zach Anderson” is the latest outrageous story from the sex offender registry to go viral.
* Prisoner’s Dilemma as pedagogy.
* In its 2015-17 budget, the Legislature cut four-year college tuition costs by 15 to 20 percent by 2016 — making Washington the only state in the country to lower tuition for public universities and colleges next year.
* The end of “weaponized anthropology.”
* Keywords for the Age of Austerity 20: Pivot.
* Tumblr of the week: Every Single Word Spoken by a Person of Color in [Mainstream Film Title].
* New Jersey congressman pitches the least substantive response to the student debt crisis — SO FAR.
* Neither special circumstances nor grades were determinative. Of the 841 students admitted under these criteria, 47 had worse grades than Fisher, and 42 of them were white. On the other end, UT rejected 168 black and Latino students with scores equal to or better than Fisher’s.
* Thousands Of Children Risked Their Lives In Tanzania’s Gold Mines For $2 A Day.
* Kotsko has been blogging about his latest turn through the harassment grinder. He’s taking on Big Santa, too. He just doesn’t care.
* Climate science and gloom. But at least air conditioning might not be that bad.
* Weird day for computers this week. Anyway we should put algorithms in charge of everything.
* Scenes from the Olympic scam, Boston edition.
* Sci-Fi Crime Drama with a Strong Black Lead.
* The world of fracketeering is infinitely flexible and contradictory. Buy tickets online and you could be charged an admin fee for an attachment that requires you to print them at home. The original online booking fee – you’ve come this far in the buying process, hand over an extra 12 quid now or write off the previous 20 minutes of your life – has mutated into exotic versions of itself. The confirmation fee. The convenience fee. Someone who bought tickets for a tennis event at the O2 sent me this pithy tweet: “4 tickets. 4 Facility Fees + 4 Service Charge + 1 Standard Mail £2.75 = 15% of overall £!”. Definitely a grand slam.
* The initial, back-of-the-napkin notes for Back to the Future 2 and 3.
* Nice try, parents! You can’t win.
* What my parents did was buy us time – time for us to stare at clouds, time for us to contemplate the stars, to wonder at a goiter, to gape open-mouthed at shimmering curtains of charged particles hitting the ionosphere. What it cost them can be written about another time. What I am grateful for is that summer of awe.
* The “gag law also forbids citizens to insult the monarchy and if someone is found guilty in a defamation or libel case, he or she can face up to two years in prison or be forced to pay an undetermined fine,” local media outlet Eco Republicano reported as the public expressed its anger against the law introduced by the ruling Popular Party.
* Wisconsin Democrats sue to undo the incredible 2011 gerrymander that destroyed the state.
* Obama Plans Broader Use of Clemency to Free Nonviolent Drug Offenders. This is good, but still much too timid — he could free many times as many people as he’s freeing and still barely make a dent in the madness of the drug war.
* EPA’s New Fracking Study: A Close Look at the Numbers Buried in the Fine Print.
* The central ideological commitment of the new Star Wars movies seems to be “well of course you can’t really overthrow an Empire.” Seems right. (Minor spoilers if you’re an absolute purist.)
* Brian K. Vaughn will write an issue of The Walking Dead.
* Dune, 50 years on: how a science fiction novel changed the world.
* So you want to announce for the WWE.
* This isn’t canon! Marisa Tomei is your Aunt May.
* I’m not happy about this either.
* A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving, or, Our Brains Don’t Work. I got it right, though I doubt I would have if it hadn’t been framed as a puzzle.
* Your time travel short of the weekend: “One-Minute Time Machine.”
* Or perhaps post-apocalyptic Sweden is more your flavor.
* Another round of the polygamy debate.
* Everything You Thought You Knew About Nic Cage’s Superman Film Is Wrong.
* Remnant of Boston’s Brutal Winter Threatens to Outlast Summer.
* And then there’s Whitesboro.
* The Lost Girls: One famous band. One huge secret. Many lives destroyed.
* Cellphones Do Not Give You Brain Cancer.
* 7,000 Fireworks Go Off at Once Due To Computer Malfunction.
* Sopranos season eight: How two technology consultants helped drug traffickers hack the Port of Antwerp.
* I never noticed how sexist so many children’s books are until I started reading to my kids. Preach.
* Aurora is out! Buy it! You don’t have to take my word for it! Excerpt! More! More!
* And there’s nothing sweet in life.
Monday Morning Links!
* The first cut of ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ was over 3 hours long. I’m sure that would have solved all the problems.
* Science Fiction and the Urban Crisis.
* In short, riots aren’t counterproductive because they do not achieve their goals. They are counterproductive because they are an expression of those who are already-counterproductive, those “individuals committing the violence,” those ever-ready to riot.
* Starfleet as the Federation’s “Dumping Ground for Orphans.”
* Keywords for the Age of Austerity 18.5: “Peaceful Protest.”
* Wow: Rebuilt slave sites being unveiled at Jefferson’s Monticello.
* The U.S. Civil War ended 150 years ago, but once a year, deep in the sugar cane fields of southern Brazil, the Confederate battle flag rises again.
* Parents call cops on teen for giving away banned book; it backfires predictably. They’re banning Sherman Alexie? Come on.
* Salvage Accumulation, or the Structural Effects of Capitalist Generativity.
* Executive Who Presided Over Nonprofit’s Fall Seeks $1.2 Million Payday.
* The names of the chemical elements in Chinese. More links below the chart.
* The Washington Post‘s Police Problem.
* Judith Butler’s talents are wasted on a “What’s Wrong With ‘All Lives Matter’?” piece that really should be obvious to everyone.
* The most amazing thing about this exchange is that Sam Harris thinks he won this argument so completely he needed everyone in the world to see.
* The headline reads, “Nepal’s Kung Fu Nuns Have Refused To Be Evacuated – They’re Staying Back To Help Victims.”
* “Cripples, Bastards, and Broken Things: Disability in Game of Thrones.”
* Porn data: visualising fetish space.
* Ideology at its cutest (hat tip: Justin I.): Vermont Teddy Bear introduces Bernie Bear.
* Big Bird Actor: I Almost Died on the Challenger and I Cry in the Suit.
* Report: Cop Dismissed Freddie Gray’s Pleas for Help as “Jailitis.”
* Christie signs law greenlighting fast track sale of N.J. public water systems.
* The Great Victoria’s Secret Bra Heist of Pennsylvania.
* Behind the scenes of the Game of Thrones map.
* It’s always worse than you think: The CIA has been organizing clandestine TED Talks.
* “Cool” is a bit of a moving target. Sixty years ago it was James Dean, nonchalantly smoking a cigarette as he sat on a motorbike, glaring down 1950s conformity with brooding disapproval. Five years ago it was Zooey Deschanel holding a cupcake.
* “Social media trend sees men ditching sit-ups for snack cakes.” My moment has arrived!
* Tesla unveils a battery to power your home, completely off grid.
* I hate to link to an SNL bit, but their parody of a Black Widow movie was really pretty good.
* Area X novella coming… eventually. I liked the first book in the trilogy much, much more than the latter two, but I’m still in.
* Can 3D printing save the rhino? Seattle-based bioengineering start-up Pembient believes it can. The company plans to flood the market with synthetic 3D printed rhino horn in an effort to stem the number of rhinos killed for their horns. But conservationists fear that the plan may backfire, undermining their own efforts to cut the demand for such products in China and Vietnam, the main black markets for rhino horns.
* The coming DC Cinematic Universe trainwreck, Suicide Squad edition.
* A University Is Not Walmart.
* Trustees are basically heroes, and the Chronicle is ON IT.
* And LLAP, Grace Lee Whitney.
Wednesday Links!
* Today at Marquette! Dr. Robin Reid, “Conflicting Audience Receptions of Tauriel in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit.”
* Tomorrow at Marquette! The English Department pop culture group geeks out over The Hunger Games.
* Solving prostitution the Swedish way.
“In Sweden prostitution is regarded as an aspect of male violence against women and children. It is officially acknowledged as a form of exploitation of women and children and constitutes a significant social problem… gender equality will remain unattainable so long as men buy, sell and exploit women and children by prostituting them.”
* Keywords for the Age of Austerity 13: Engagement.
The point of engagement in this sense is not to involve the public in making decisions, but make them feel involved in decisions that others will make. That this may be done with the best of intentions is important, of course, but ultimately besides the point. Like “stakeholder,” “engagement” thrives in a moment of political alienation and offers a vocabulary of collaboration in response. So if civic engagement is in decline, one thing that is not is the ritualistic performance of civic participation. The annual election-cycle ritual in American politics is a case in point here. In one populist breath, we routinely condemn the corruption of politicians who, it is said, never listen to the average voter. And in the next, we harangue the average voter for failing to participate in a process we routinely describe as corrupted. So it’s not the “apathy” or “disengagement” of the public that we should lament or criticize—it’s the institutions that give them so many reasons to be disengaged in the first place.
* A Few Questions About the Culture: An Interview with Iain Banks.
JR: In the past you have said that you are a short-term pessimist and a long-term optimist. Could you expand on this a bit: why are you pessimistic about the short term? What changes do you anticipate taking place between the near and far futures that change your pessimism to optimism?
IB: On a personal level, it’s damage limitation; a sanity-keeping measure. Expect the worst and anything even only half-decent seems like something to celebrate. The pessimism comes from a feeling that as a species we seem unable to pass up any opportunity to behave stupidly, self-harmfully (the Copenhagen climate talks being but the latest example). The long-term optimism comes from the the fact that no matter how bad things seem and how idiotically and cruelly we behave. . . well, we’ve got this far, despite it all, and there are more people on the planet than ever before, and more people living good, productive, relatively happy lives than ever before, and—providing we aren’t terminally stupid, or unlucky enough to get clobbered by something we have no control over, like a big meteorite or a gamma ray buster or whatever—we’ll solve a lot of problems just by sticking around and doing what we do; developing, progressing, improving, adapting. And possibly by inventing AIs that are smarter and more decent than we are, which will help us get some sort of perspective on ourselves, at the very least. We might just stumble our way blindly, unthinkingly into utopia, in other words, muddling through despite ourselves.
* “Gamechanging” climate deal that seems radically insufficient to the scale of the crisis. What could go wrong?
* Think Progress has a good rundown on King v. Burwell, the case that could kill Obamacare. Eight Reasons to Stop Freaking Out About the Supreme Court’s Next Obamacare Case.
* The growth of auxiliary activities was the primary driver in spending increases by the schools, the report concludes. From 2005 to 2012, $3.4 billion was spent on instructional and research facilities. The cost for nonacademic auxiliary facilities was $3.5 billion from 2002 to 2012. Limit athletic fees, check construction to control college costs, study says.
* The State Funding Sleight-Of-Hand: Some Thoughts on UC’s Proposed Tuition Hike.
* The Vitae Adjunct Retirement Survey.
* ProQuest says it won’t sell dissertations through Amazon anymore.
* Why Wall Street Loves Hillary
* It’s a start: Massachusetts Town Proposes First Complete Ban On All Tobacco.
* Inside America’s inept nuclear corps.
* The Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) is under attack by critics who say academe is colluding with the mainstream media to push a feminist agenda in video games. How deep does this conspiracy go?
* When we think about the collapse of communism, we should emphasize and celebrate the attractiveness of a social market economy — not free enterprise.
* Can You Gentrify America’s Poorest, Most Dangerous City?
* Today, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration announced through the New York Times that it may stop making arrests for low-level marijuana possession, opting instead to issue tickets without detaining the suspect. This would feel like an important step toward reasonable weed policy if New York state hadn’t already mandated it 37 years ago.
* The seminars offered police officers some useful tips on seizing property from suspected criminals. Don’t bother with jewelry (too hard to dispose of) and computers (“everybody’s got one already”), the experts counseled. Do go after flat screen TVs, cash and cars. Especially nice cars. Police Use Department Wish List When Deciding Which Assets to Seize.
* One in every 8 arrests was for a drug offense last year.
* Milwaukee Public Museum’s Sci-Fi Film Fest gathers large audience.
* Running a school on $160 a year.
* Is Pre-K academically rigorous enough? That’s a real question this real article is asking.
* Hello, My Name Is Stephen Glass, and I’m Sorry.
* Grace Dunham is now an adult and she read this book before it was published. She is managing her sister’s book tour and they are best friends. Are we really going to overlook this?
* Also on the subject of Lena Dunham: this is an extremely clickbaity headline, but the testimony from a juvenile sex offender is fascinating and horrible.
* Sorry I Murdered Everyone, But I’m An Introvert.
* In America, today’s parents have inherited expectations they can no longer afford. The vigilant standards of the helicopter parents from the baby boomer generation have become defined as mainstream practice, but they require money that the average household earning $53,891 per year— and struggling to survive in an economy in its seventh year of illusory “recovery”— does not have. The result is a fearful society in which poorer parents are cast as threats to their own children.
* Although it looks like a traditional typeface, Dyslexie by Christian Boer is designed specifically for people with dyslexia.
* Scientists Have Finally Found The First Real Reason We Need To Sleep.
* Wes Anderson might be making another movie with puppets.
* In its gentle sadness, its deceptively light tone, and its inherent contradictions, this is the perfect ending to The Next Generation. One of these days, the crew will be dispersed. The Enterprise will be put in mothballs. Starfleet will complete its transformation into a body that none of them particularly want to serve in. But for now, their voyages continue.
* Peak Prequel: Sony Rumored to Be Prepping Aunt May Spider-Man Spin-Off Movie.
* And the best news ever: HBO Will Make Asimov’s Foundation With Interstellar‘s Jonathan Nolan. I may lose my mind over this show. I may even do a podcast. And a lot of what went wrong with Interstellar wasn’t even Jonathan Nolan’s fault!
Thursday Morning Links
* There’s Literally No Evidence That Restricting Where Sex Offenders Can Live Accomplishes Anything. The article goes on to suggest these kinds of laws may actually be worse than useless by increasing recidivism.
* According to the Cato Institute, more than 9 percent of reports of police misconduct in 2010 involved sexual abuse, making it the second-most reported form of misconduct, after the use of excessive force. Comparing that data to FBI crime statistics indicates that “sexual assault rates are significantly higher for police when compared to the general population.”
* Bill for Ferguson enforcement coming due.
“All this workforce out there has to be fed,” he said. “We used up all of our tear gas and pepper spray.”
When you factor in the coming police brutality lawsuits I don’t know that Ferguson will be able to survive as a municipality at all.
* Against a leftist Hamilton. Almost makes you feel Founding Fatherless. We’re Founding Orphans.
* Trolls drive Anita Sarkeesian out of her house to prove misogyny doesn’t exist.
* DNA tests show that much-praised Chicago cop stuck gun barrel in suspect’s mouth.
* There’s (still!) hope for a Deadwood revival.
* Sprung from the pages of Harmontown, Schrabbing hits the mainstream.
* Through the looking glass: A Nevada gun range today defended having children fire automatic weapons despite the fatal accident at a nearby shooting range that occurred when a 9-year-old girl was unable to control the powerful recoil of an Uzi she was shooting.
* Vox issues a classic non-retraction retraction on its controversial David Chase story.
* I’d always wondered why I often have the urge to take a nap immediately after ingesting caffeine. It turns out I’m just really in touch with my body.
* And on the local art beat: Whenever there is a discussion about public art in Milwaukee, it often begins and ends with bellyaching over Mark di Suvero’s “The Calling.”
Wed!nes!day! Links!
* The greatest Tumblr of all time forever: Wes Anderson’s X-Men. Above: Bill Murray as sad Professor X.
* A Snowpiercer Thinkpiece, Not to Be Taken Too Seriously, But For Very Serious Reasons.
* Ours is truly an age of miracles: How to cut a bagel into two interlocking rings.
* Now we see the violence inherent in the system: Cheered by tourists, tolerated by regulars, feared by those who frown upon kicks in the face, subway dancers have unwittingly found themselves a top priority for the New York Police Department — a curious collision of a Giuliani-era policing approach, a Bloomberg-age dance craze and a new administration that has cast the mostly school-age entertainers as fresh-face avatars of urban disorder.
* Feminist Science Fiction Is the Best Thing Ever.
* BREAKING: Law school is the absolute worst.
* The Ebola epidemic has reached Lagos. That’s horrifying.
* How NCAA’s Concussion Deal Affects Current, Former, and Future Athletes.
* Spending Shifts as Colleges Compete on Students’ Comfort.
* The University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth owes $200,000 in damages to a professor of English who says she was denied a promotion based on her race and gender, a state equal opportunity board has ruled. That’s on top of the board-ordered back pay and promotion the university has already awarded Lulu Sun.
* Can World of Warcraft Save Higher Education? Can it? Can it?
* Write Your Own Irish Memoir!
* Yes we can: Sonic Cannons Are Going To Wreck US East Coast Ecology In Search Of Oil.
* There is ‘No Constitutional Right Not to Become an Informant.’
* The net affect of the ordinance is that most of Milwaukee is off-limits to sex offenders.
* Over the past few weeks the stories of child refugees fleeing unspeakable violence in Central America, as well as their uncertain fate in the hands of U.S. policymakers, has been the focus of headlines around the country. What has been more difficult to follow is what is happening to the influx of refugee mothers who have recently fled to the U.S. with their children, many just toddlers and babies. I went down to Artesia, New Mexico last week to see for myself what has become of these vulnerable families.
* On sticking to your guns: Hess’s Triangle.
* Kapitalism, With Kim Kardashian.
* And, alas, it’s not all good news: BP Oil Spill Is Much Worse Than People Think, Scientists Say.
Gerry Canavan 