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I’m a sucker for war propaganda: my master’s work looked at propaganda aimed at the recruitment of women in the ranks of the African National Congress (as violent fighters & activists – otherwise known as “the recruitment of terrorists”) in South Africa during the 80s, and I got to page through lots of goodies. So, […]

“Karate is a form of martial arts in which people who have had years and years of training can, using only their hands and feet, make some of the worst movies in the history of the world.” – Dave Barry “Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who

Because I haven’t been keeping up with Jon Stewart. Here, John presents “a step-by-step demonstration of what editing a book at 3am looks like from the writer’s own eyes.” It is absolutely, inarguably accurate.

A roundup of thoughts on The Obesity Panic, stolen from BigFatBlog: Commentary from Nick Gillespie: Thus the United States turns from nation building abroad to nation bodybuilding at home. In a world beset by terrorism, poverty, and malnutrition, who could have imagined that being fat would become the subject not simply of the derision and

I just about flipped when I found this: Fatima Mernissi and the Size 6 Harem It was during my unsuccessful attempt to buy a cotton skirt in an American department store that I was told my hips were too large to fit into a size 6. That distressing experience made me realize how the image

What Christian Fundamentalists tell us is Evil about Muslim Fundamentalists: – They hate liberated women and all that symbolizes them. They hate it when women compete with men in the workplace, when they decide when or whether they will bear children, when they show the independence of getting abortions. They hate changes in laws that

ActivistGradGirl has a great series of posts up about sex, gender, and sexuality here, here and here. Some really great thoughts on the gender binary we get banged on the head with. I think my biggest surprise regarding aguments for gay marriage was that nobody played these two big cards: 1) If you’re going to

More writing work today. See you all tomorrow. “The mind I love must still have wild places, a tangled orchard where dark damsons drop in the heavy grass, an overgrown little wood, the chance of a snake or two (real snakes), a pool that nobody’s fathomed the depth of – and paths threaded with those

There’s a professor who’s done a study about the origins and use of the word “dude”: the interesting part? Kiesling says in the fall edition of American Speech that the word derives its power from something he calls cool solidarity — an effortless kinship that’s not too intimate. Cool solidarity is especially important to young

So, yesterday I was doing my daily lunchtime walk at the Wildlife Preserve across the street from where I work. This is a low-crime suburb area (I have a long train commute out of Chicago), so I don’t carry much trepidation with me. But yesterday I passed a questionable character – you know, you just