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The God of the Gaps, one of classical set pieces of religious nonsensical arguments, lurks in the shadows waiting to prey upon the unprepared rational atheist. Fear not team-godless Minute Physics delivers the facts you need to set the record straight when it comes to cosmology and the Big Bang (err or big stretch in their parlance).
‘Nuff Said.
Currently reading Democracy Incorporated by Sheldon Wolin. He speaks of totalitarianism in a different form as opposed to that described by Hannah Arendt, but of what he terms inverted totalitarianism in which the state is hollowed out to serve corporate interests rather than those of the public. Thus quote originates from chapter 4 in which two ways in which nations can slip into autocratic rule.
“Tocqueville democrat comfortable with despotism and Hobbes’s free rationalist who opts for absolutism share an elective affinity. Tocqueville imagines a despotism made possible because citizens have chosen to relinquish participatory politics, which he and singled out as the most remarkable, widespread, and essential element of American political life. By abandoning their intense involvement with the common affairs of their communities in favor of personal ends, they, like signatories to Hobbes’s contract, have chosen to be apolitical subjects rather than citizens.
The contemporary moral to be drawn from our detour through Hobbes and Tocqueville is this: while it may prove possible to mobilize voters around the slogan “Anything to beat Bush!” it take more persistence, more thoughtfulness to dismantle Superpower and to nurture a democratic citizenry. The lesson of Hobbes and Tocqueville can be boiled down to a brief but chilling dictum: concentrated power, whether of a Leviathan, a benevolent despotism, or a superpower, is impossible without the support of a complicitous citizenry that willingly signs on to the covenant, or acquiesces, or clicks the “mute button.”
– Sheldon S. Wolin, Democracy Incorporated p.80-81.
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Pain is an essential part of the grooming process, and that is not accidental. Plucking the eyebrows, shaving under the arms, wearing a girdle, learning to walk in high-heeled shoes, having one’s nose fixed, straightening or curling one’s hair —these things hurt. The pain, of course, teaches an important lesson: no price is too great, no process too repulsive, no operation too painful for the woman who would be beautiful. The tolerance of pain and the romanticization of that tolerance begins here, in preadolescence, in socialization, and serves to prepare women for lives of childbearing, self-abnegation, and husband-pleasing. The adolescent experience of the “pain of being a woman” casts the feminine psyche into a masochistic mold and forces the adolescent to conform to a self-image which bases itself on mutilation of the body, pain happily suffered, and restricted physical mobility. It creates the masochistic personalities generally found in adult women: subservient, materialistic (since all value is placed on the body and its ornamentation), intellectually restricted, creatively impoverished. It forces women to be a sex of lesser accomplishment, weaker, as underdeveloped as any backward nation. Indeed, the effects of that prescribed relationship between women and their bodies are so extreme, so deep, so extensive, that scarcely any area of human possibility is left untouched by it.”
— Andrea Dworkin, Woman Hating
Link.
I think I’ve posted this before, but for stuff like this I don’t have a problem with the repetition.
In response to the Steubenville, Ohio teen rape case, West Virginia U.S. Attorney William J. Ihlenfeld is launching a program to teach high school athletes not to post evidence of rape online.
It’s called “Project Future,” and his goal is to teach teens how to avoid getting in trouble with the law by using cell phones, cameras, and social media “responsibly.” Instead of teaching teens not to rape, the U.S. Attorney wants to teach them not to get caught.
The rape case “definitely played a role in causing us to think, ‘Who do we need to focus upon?’ ” Ihlenfeld told The Associated Press. “We thought, ‘Let’s start calling athletic directors and coaches to see if they’re interested.’ That investment of time hopefully will pay dividends down the road, not only because you hope the kids are going to stay out of trouble. Social media creates so many distractions off the field for coaches. Maybe we can help them avoid that situation as well.”
The program was unveiled in Wheeling, which is 26 miles south of Steubenville. It comes on the heels of a drug education program started by Ihlenfeld’s office last year called “Project Future.” The latest program, dubbed “Project Future Two-a-Days,” includes 15 minutes focusing on drugs and alcohol and 15 minutes on social media.
“We bring the perspective of ‘OK, if you do this, this is what can happen. We don’t want to see you in court,’ ” Ihlenfeld said.
” We don’t want to see you in court! It’s too bad a young girl’s life was changed forever and she had atrocious, felonious acts performed on her – but “Project Future” definitely won’t be talking about rape. We’ll spend 15 minutes on drugs and alcohol and 15 minutes on social media. If only the Steubenville rape hadn’t been taped and everyone wasn’t so drunk those fine young gentlemen would still be playing football. That’s the real lesson here, isn’t it?” – mommyish.com
“This is rape culture at work: The very people who are in charge of enforcing our laws look at a cruel, brutal attack on a young girl and think, “If only the teens hadn’t posted photographic evidence online.” – the Bewilderness
Patriarchy sucks. :(
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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