December 2011
85 posts
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why i’m fat positive. →
None of this is new, exactly, but it is a lot of good reasons, well-articulated, in one place.
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“Finally controlling mercury and toxics will be an advance on par with getting...”
– David Roberts at Grist, on why the “New EPA mercury rules are a bona fide Big Deal,” 21 December 2011
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Top Longreads in 2011
Naomi Klein, “Capitalism vs. the Climate,” The Nation, 28 November 2011
Sady Doyle, “The Percentages: A Biography of Class,” Tiger Beatdown, 8 October 2011
Lester R. Brown, “The New Geopolitics of Food,” Foreign Policy, May/June 2011
Jose Antonio Vargas, “My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant,” New York Times, 22 June 2011
Mara Hvistendahl,...
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“I can’t believe how much money and how much of our lives this has...”
– Mother Jones human rights reporter Mac McClelland writes about fact-checking her book, For Us Surrender Is Out of the Question: A Story From Burma’s Never-Ending War, with a mixture of fascination, dedication, and frustration that is familiar to me. Fact-checking is awesome. And difficult....
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Our Economy Was Built on Bull. Until We Admit... →
As we move into an election year, in which U.S. residents will have prolonged debate over our collective priorities and values, we must pursue answers to a broader question. Since at least 1981, when the Reagan revolution overtook public policy, we have built an economy on two related fictions. The first is that boundless growth is sustainable. The second is that unrestrained capitalism,...
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“To contemplate the possibility of a broad movement that embraces the tens of...”
– Frances Fox Piven argues that for the Occupy movement to succeed, it needs more participation from/inclusion of the poor — and that the movement offers America’s poor an opportunity for transformation. (“A Proud, Angry Poor,” The Nation, 14 December 2011.)
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The House is expected to reject a Senate compromise today that would extend the payroll tax cut by two months but require the Obama administration to make a decision on Keystone XL within 60 days.
— POLITICO Morning Energy, 19 December 2011
From a purely climate-concerned perspective, this is most likely good news. The State Department has already said that if it is forced to rush the...
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Know Your Anti-Environment Congress →
The L.A. Times editorial board’s list of the top 10 anti-environment members of Congress. Heading the list are Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich), Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va), and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky). (h/t CP)
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For Haiti, climate change is more present fear... →
French and U.S. imperialism left Haiti deforested. Now the weak Durban deal, a mere disappointment to richer countries, has more immediate consequences for this environmentally vulnerable nation.
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You’re Not As Busy As You Think →
But busy isn’t the same as “fulfilling a purpose” or “walking a path.”
(via rachelhills)
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Center for Constitutional Rights: Connect the... →
Friends, let’s connect the dots:
1) The NDAA allows the military to hold American citizens indefinitely without trial if labeled ‘terrorists’ by the President while effectively making GITMO a forever prison.
2) Counter-terrorism units were all over Occupy encampments. The 1% is taking no chances with this movement.
3) SOPA is in the works to give the government power to blacklist the web,...
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Pro Tip: “Afghanistan, infinite no backsies!” is... →
Word. (h/t Wiley, Feministe)
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The 'Age of Thirst' in the American West: The... →
Consider it a taste of the future: the fire, smoke, drought, dust and heat that have made life unpleasant and dangerous from Louisiana to Los Angeles. New records tell the tale: the biggest wildfire ever recorded in Arizona (538,049 acres), the biggest fire ever in New Mexico (156,600 acres), and the all-time worst fire year in Texas history (3,697,000 acres).
The fires were a function of...
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“Why would the language of “class warfare” gain any traction or credibility...”
– Richard Rohr
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“In what alternate universe is it disorderly conduct for a journalist in a U.S....”
– Carla Murphy, “I Was Arrested at Occupy Bronx—for Writing About It,” Daily Beast, 10 December 2011 (via joshsternberg)
Also: “I got an uncomfortable feeling of déjà vu. I’d been detained by the NYPD before, except I wasn’t a journalist. I was a kid in high school. … Very...
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Ex-Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson, Former... →
“We launched the Justice Party because the entire system is so corrupt,” Anderson says. “It’s so diseased. We know that the public interest is not being served by anyone in the system right now, particularly the two dominant parties who have sustained this corrupt system and who are sustained by it.”
— Democracy Now!, 13 December 2011
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“Indeed, one of the major benefits of a growth-based economy for elites is that...”
– Naomi Klein, Capitalism vs. the Climate, The Nation, 9 November 2011 (previously)
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"Yes" by Catherine Doty
onedayonepoem:
It’s about the blood banging in the body, and the brain lolling in its bed like a happy baby. At your touch, the nerve, that volatile spook tree, vibrates. The lungs take up their work with a giddy vigor. Tremors in the joints and tympani, dust storms in the canister of sugar. The coil of ribs heats up, begins to glow. Come here.
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What do you mean when you refer to "minorities,"...
A while ago over on Facebook, I was talking with friends about why referring to marginalized/oppressed groups as “minorities” is both inaccurate and problematic. My friends might have other reasons for why they personally don’t like the term as it is currently used, but here are my initial thoughts:
It has become common colloquially to refer to individual members of marginalized...
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“It’s my view that if you put the best scientists, science communicators, and...”
– Fiona Fox, Slate: What If There Were Rules for Science Journalism?
These guidelines seem like things that good medical science journalists would follow anyway, which they would learn are important in the course of learning about medical science in order to be good reporters. (Right? I hope?) Of...
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Jenny Turner: As Many Pairs of Shoes as She Likes →
ladyjournos:
Chicken pieces, iPods, A-level burb girls with jobs in Selfridges, unable to buy any of the stuff they sell: how often if ever are such things addressed by feminism?
London Review of Books || December 15, 2011
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“I’m not sure what will make me feel better other than wide open spaces and...”
– soft animal
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“I have bad news for all of us: Fox News killed the internet trolls. All of them....”
– Flavia Dzodan at Tiger Beatdown
Trolling: not just a fringe problem for bloggers anymore. “And we have somehow accepted this. We are no longer holding our media accountable for this violence.” Seriously, if you care about the quality of media, about “public discourse,” about...
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Reading about E. O. Wilson this morning, in case...
Howard W. French, “E. O. Wilson’s Theory of Everything,” The Atlantic, November 2011
Ed Douglas, “Darwin’s natural heir” (The Guardian Profile: Edward O Wilson), The Guardian, 16 February 2001
Preliminary thoughts: The man is very smart and important, no doubt, but I really prefer that natural scientists stay out of social science. At least, stop trying to...
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sociobiology
a field of scientific study which is based on the assumption that social behavior has resulted from evolution and attempts to explain and examine social behavior within that context.
… Criticism, most notably made by Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould, centered on sociobiology’s contention that genes play an ultimate role in human behavior and that traits such as aggressiveness...
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biogeography
the study of the distribution of species (biology), organisms, and ecosystems in space and through geological time … an integrative field of inquiry that unites concepts and information from ecology, evolutionary biology, geology, and physical geography.
— Wikipedia (12 December 2011)
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Guardian guide to the Durban deal
The news: Durban climate deal struck after tense all-night session
Two hours later the 16-day talks were effectively over, with a commitment by all countries to accept binding emission cuts by 2020. As part of the package of measures agreed, a new climate fund will be set up, carbon markets will be expanded and countries will be able to earn money by protecting forests.
Why it’s...
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Remember when those kids sued the government to...
It all started in May with a coordinated campaign of demonstrations and legal actions against multiple states and the federal government. Now, according to Grist (emphasis added):
While most of the state-level cases are facing motions to dismiss, Olson said she feels optimistic about the federal case. A judge in Washington, D.C., will hear arguments for a preliminary injunction in the case...