Friday, 30th May

"Over and over, we see that deference to armed authority by men who are not black is presumed to be indicative of decency, while even the most willfully misinterpreted "resistance" to armed authority by black men (Jonathan Ferrell, Oscar Grant, et. al.) is presumed to warrant deadly force. These are both deadly assumptions." Shakesville


>>><<<

"Ending abuse in the sex trade requires action that is less telegenic than a photo op or a gala. Last week, the International Labor Organization issued a new report on forced labor and recommendations to combat it with the collection of accurate data, effective protection of victims, and the support of workers in their own organizing. It’s a broader fight against poverty, inequality and vulnerability that goes far beyond a brothel’s walls." NY Times

>>><<<

"In interviews, Dr. Angelou used the term “prostitute” to refer to her previous employment without rancor or shame. She spoke candidly to her family about it. She told her mother, brother, and son she would redact the information from the book, but only if they were uncomfortable with it. She had no issue whatsoever with speaking her truth. So why do we not know about it, save for hushed whispers and the occasional salacious reference in reports about and interviews of her? What’s so wrong with our beloved and lovely Maya Angelou having been a sex worker and brothel manager?" Tits and Sass

>>><<<

This is a good discussion of gentrification, an issue which is often presented in an overly simplified way. 

"In cities, gentrifiers have the political clout - and accompanying racial privilege - to reallocate resources and repair infrastructure. The neighbourhood is "cleaned up" through the removal of its residents. Gentrifiers can then bask in "urban life" - the storied history, the selective nostalgia, the carefully sprinkled grit - while avoiding responsibility to those they displaced." Al Jazeera

>>><<<

Not sure about the rest of it, but this is a good point.

"The period when capitalism seemed capable of providing broad and spreading prosperity was also, precisely, the period when capitalists felt they were not the only game in town: when they faced a global rival in the Soviet bloc, revolutionary anti-capitalist movements from Uruguay to China, and at least the possibility of workers' uprisings at home. In other words, rather than high rates of growth allowing greater wealth for capitalists to spread around, the fact that capitalists felt the need to buy off at least some portion of the working classes placed more money in ordinary people's hands, creating increasing consumer demand that was itself largely responsible for the remarkable rates of economic growth that marked capitalism's "golden age"." Guardian

Wednesday 28th May

This article merely expresses general anxiety about the phenomenon of indirect cultural literacy (i.e. knowing *about* cultural works without ever having actually read, heard or seen them). NY Times

For a more interesting take, get a hold of Pierre Bayard's "How to talk about books you haven't read". Amazon

>>><<<

"[Google] had for several years been testing everyday cars equipped with sensors, navigation equipment and computers to drive themselves but in the meantime it has secretly developed a prototype from scratch that will have no facility for a human to take control, other than an emergency stop button." Guardian

>>><<<

A list of some amusing animal names in German. Twenty two words

>>><<<

Yep. Not something I picked up when I saw the movie for the first time as a kid, but created a major WTF moment when I re-watched it a couple of years ago.

"One of the major plot points of Revenge of the Nerds is Lewis putting on a Darth Vader mask, pretending to be his jock nemesis Stan, and then having sex with Stan’s girlfriend. Initially shocked when she finds out his true identity, she’s so taken by his sexual prowess—“All jocks think about is sports. All nerds think about is sex.”—that the two of them become an item.

Classic nerd fantasy, right? Immensely attractive to the young male audience who saw it. And a stock trope, the “bed trick,” that many of the nerds watching probably knew dates back to the legend of King Arthur.

It’s also, you know, rape." Daily Beast

>>><<<

Interesting stuff on how parenting styles differ by socioeconomic class, and how "adventure playgrounds" fit into this picture. Link

>>><<<

An experiment in hygiene via ADDING bacteria to the skin.

"The chairman of the company’s board of directors, Jamie Heywood, lathers up once or twice a month and shampoos just three times a year. The most extreme case is David Whitlock, the M.I.T.-trained chemical engineer who invented AO+. He has not showered for the past 12 years. He occasionally takes a sponge bath to wash away grime but trusts his skin’s bacterial colony to do the rest. I met these men. I got close enough to shake their hands, engage in casual conversation and note that they in no way conveyed a sense of being “unclean” in either the visual or olfactory sense." NY Times

>>><<<

More stuff about police brutality and unlawful evictions in SA. Con Mag

>>><<<

I'm not sure this dude totally grapples with his privilege, but it's interesting just to note how differently a parent with serious child care commitments is treated if he happens to be a man.


"No one has ever questioned my work ethic to my face because I’m a father. In fact, one day I was so tired from caring for my two children—at the time a 2-year-old boy and a 3-month-old baby girl with colic—that I simply lost my ability to speak coherently in front of my colleagues. I stood up to talk at a very important meeting and nothing came out. I invoked my exhausted state, apologized, and went home. There were no consequences. If anything, my role as a working dad raised my profile within my institution, even before I started writing about those issues for CNN." Chronicle

>>><<<

As a clever headline-writer pointed out in reference to the original scandal, the objection of MPs to having an "adult" shop situated near Parliament reveals only that they, ironically, just need to grow up. Sunday Times

>>><<<

It is true that, if you adopt a "generous" reading of Ariel Levy's book, you can find an argument about the role of cultural representations in shaping women's sexuality, and specifically shaping it so as to support men's sexual entitlement.

HOWEVER, it is unclear (or, actually, it's super clear) why she and other self-declared feminists are so persistent in focusing on the representations produced by the most marginalised people. Why focus on pornography and "the marketing of sex work on the Web" as opposed to, say, Disney or the mainstream film industry in general? In fact, probably the majority of cultural products produced in the Western world, insofar as they relate to sex, express or reproduce men's entitlement to women's bodies.

And attacks on sex work do NOT simply fall into place as part of a broader cultural critique - Disney animators are NOT at risk at having their jobs rendered illegal or being harassed by the police; whiny male novelists are NOT having their work censored or having the conditions of their work dictated by the state. Boston Review

>>><<<

A summary of what is known about alcohol intoxication generally and hangovers specifically. 

"If it’s correct that cytokines are the key to hangovers, then that would suggest a simple and profound approach to treatment. That is, if the mechanism of hangover is an inflammatory response—as to a wound or illness—then maybe anti-­inflammatories are the way to dispel it." Wired

>>><<<

Some statistics about the circumstances around cycles deaths in the US. One take-away: watch out for rear-end collisions! Vox

>>><<<

"I know why people have this attitude. For centuries, books were wisdom in paper form. Without Internet access or even widespread education, destroying books meant destroying perhaps-irreplaceable knowledge and history. And obviously nobody is advocating tossing out copies of the Gutenberg Bible or anything.

People, the world has changed. I feel it in the 75th printing of Fifty Shades of Grey, and I smell it in the local library's moldy copy of Protecting Your Child from Ritual Satanic Abuse. Book printing is now cheap, easy, and completely morally neutral. Just because you've stuck some words on paper, that doesn't mean that paper is sacred or worthy." Cracked

>>><<<

"That’s when I realized that my moral code in this virtual world was highly situational. When I was safe, clothed, and armed, my instinct was to help the girl that JB shot. When I was naked and alone, I felt no qualms about butchering a guy with a rock if I thought it would help me survive. What did I have to lose? It’s a lot harder to maintain one’s morals when you’re at the bottom of the food chain. I wondered if that rule would also apply if I were to lose everything in real life." Wired

>>><<<

Some interesting anecdotes about being a doctor (particularly in a system where doctors are placed as gatekeepers for accessing insured care and opiates). Cracked

>>><<<

A discussion of the AmPlats miners' strike and the broader changes in labour politics currently occurring in SA. Daily Maverick

>>><<<

"In short, I tend to avoid the “confessional” style of talking about my sexual orientation or my HIV status because I fear that the language of confession tends to erase the singularity of my existence as a human being and sets up a hierarchical opposition between “normal” people and poor “abnormal” me." Daily Maverick

>>><<<

"Despite several efforts made by ­organisations advocating sex workers’ human rights for progress to be made on Project 107 over the past 13 years – and while sex workers continue to be harassed, raped, assaulted and murdered – our efforts remain fruitless.

We call on you, President Zuma, to take urgent steps to address these ­human rights violations by decriminalising sex work." City Press

>>><<<

Well, this is very bad. There were rumours when I was at Bishops, but I never took them seriously until now. A gross failure of the school's duty of care towards it's students.

"The Sunday Times has since established that a second incident involving a teacher and a Grade 11 pupil has been kept under wraps since 1990, when the boy's parents lodged a complaint.

Incredibly, the teacher, Leonard Kaplan, was allowed to remain at the school for more than 20 years despite the matter being widely known among the school community. He retired four years ago." Sunday Times

>>><<<

The drug war is totally out of control. These police basically assaulted a woman because they suspected she was taken illegal drugs. She was, in fact, taking paracetamol, but how could this sort of action possibly be justified even if she WAS taking something illegal? Counter current news

Friday, 23rd May

"What is needed in South Africa, instead, is policy reform which is centred around sex worker rights, one informed by the insights and experiences of sex workers themselves. Considered in this light, full decriminalisation is the policy choice that makes the most sense in the South African context. In our context, Sisonke Sex Worker Movement – a collective of sex workers from across the country – has been advocating for decriminalisation for years." Ground Up

>>><<<

"What happens in a world, or at least a nation, where most of the population lives semi-comfortably (by historical standards) off a basic income, supplemented by occasional temporary gigs, thanks to the economic output of tomorrow’s technology; a small middle class works at the diminishing number of jobs which can’t be handled by technology; and a smaller-yet minority of the ultra-rich actually design the tech, and/or live off their inheritances a la Piketty? Call it a “low-scarcity” future, as opposed to the full-on Singularitarian “post-scarcity” future." TechCrunch

>>><<<

More research on sexual assault suffered by men, sometimes at the hands of women. It's a difficult topic to get a good handle on theoretically, particularly in the face of the overwhelming social advantages generally enjoyed by men. So I'd welcome any constructive engagement. Slate

>>><<<

"Growing up, I assumed that the newspaper on the breakfast table must be assembled by people who truly knew what they were doing; then I got a job at a newspaper. Unconsciously, I transferred my assumptions of competence to (among others) people who worked in government. Then I got to know a few people who did – and who'd admit, after a pint or two, that their jobs involved staggering from crisis to crisis, concocting credible-sounding policies in cars en route to press conferences, exactly as portrayed in The Thick of It.

And even then I found myself assuming, self-hatingly, that this might be explained by a certain bumbling Britishness, the perverse pride we sometimes take in shambling mediocrity. Then I started working in America. Where, it turns out, everyone is totally just winging it." Guardian

>>><<<

"This past weekend, Ancillary Justice, by American author Ann Leckie, took home the prestigious Nebula Award for best science fiction or fantasy novel... One of the book’s most notable conceits, for a linguist anyway, is its approach to gender and pronouns. The story’s first-person narrator, Breq, speaks a language that doesn't make gender distinctions, and, consequently, refers to all characters by the same default pronoun, rendered she in English. The only exceptions are in dialogue, when Breq is communicating with a person whose language does make gender distinctions, in which case she awkwardly guesses at he or she." Slate

>>><<<

"With the most aggressive males gone, however, there were far fewer confrontations among the remaining males. This much more benevolent culture persisted for more than a decade, even as new males joined the troop. The newcomers took their cues from those already there and maintained an unusually peaceful culture. “If that can occur in a troop of baboons, you don't have a leg to stand on when claiming the inevitabilities and unchangeability of human societies,” Sapolsky says." Slate

What is love?

The aim of this post is to develop a little idea I've been working on that, I hope, constitutes a contribution to the philosophy of love. For an introduction to the topic, check out the Stanford Encyclopedia entry here.

I begin with a few observations about love that I will take as basic data to accommodate in my account. These are:

1. To love someone means to have special care or concern for their desires and interests and, often, to wish to have a relationship of intimacy with them.
2. One can, nevertheless, love someone without wishing to have a relationship of intimacy with them, without particularly enjoying their company or feeling ambivalent towards them. An example would be a person who finds her parent to be obnoxious and unpleasant, but nevertheless rushes to the parent's side when he is seriously in need.
3. To love someone is to view their opinions, and particularly their opinions towards oneself, as of deep importance. I will be deeply disappointed if my beloved regards me with anger or contempt, and conversely overjoyed if my beloved regards me with affection and concern for my opinions and interests. 
4. Who we love is at least partly dependent on their properties or characteristics as people. I love someone, at least in part, because of their kindness, their beauty, their sense of humour, their intelligence, and so on.
5. Who we love is not solely dependent on properties or characteristics. If I love A, who embodies certain characteristics, I need not love B, even if B embodies those characteristics to the same, or even to a a greater, degree. I cannot simply "substitute" B for A or, at least, not without the loss of something important. 
6. A person can love several people simultaneously. Examples include non-monogamous romantic relationships or, less controversially, the love of a parent for each of several children. 
7. A person can cease to love another person. 

Having set out these observations, my basic account is as follows. To love someone is to understand them as essentially good, worthy and/or important. That is, the lover adopts a certain kind of interpretative stance towards the personal attributes and behaviour of her beloved, whereby everything the beloved says or does is understood in such a way that is compatible with their fundamental and unique (or very rare) goodness as a person. This accounts for statements 1 and 3. To regard a particular person as uniquely worthy and important is to have a special concern for their interests and desires, and to regard their opinions as uniquely valuable or worthy of attention. The other observations require more elaboration to account for fully.

Accepting both 4 and 5 seems to result in a paradox, and addressing this apparent paradox is one of the major concerns in the existing literature on love. My thought is the following. Coming to love someone is, of course, largely dependent on the appealing characteristics they exhibit. But continuing to love someone is not dependent on the continued exhibition of those same characteristics. Rather, whatever appealing characteristics the beloved exhibits will be interpreted as evidence of the beloved's unique goodness and importance. Conversely, even if one's beloved exhibits unappealing characteristics, these will not be interpreted as resulting from any fundamental weakness of character, but rather from contingent errors of judgement or as responses to external circumstances. Adopting this particular interpretative stance towards a person means that one will attempt, in effect, to elevate their virtues and explain away their vices. 

My model for this account is Kuhn's notion of a "paradigm" in philosophy of science. Kuhn's claim is that scientists do not typically accept scientific theories by themselves, but accept them as part of a "package" of ideas and practices (the paradigm or "disciplinary matrix"). Importantly, part of the package includes certain evaluative standards, i.e. ideas about what problems a theory ought solve and what adequate solutions to these problems would look like. According to Kuhn, this means that scientists who have accepted the paradigm will tend to view it's central theoretical claims more favourably than those who haven't - they tend to regard the areas where it is successful as most relevant in evaluating theoretical success. Conversely, they tend to regard putative problems or anomalies as unimportant, likely to be solved at a later date, and so on. The paradigm only enters a "crisis" - and begins to lose adherents to alternative paradigms - when anomalies accumulate to such a degree that they can no longer be explained away. 

Kuhn's account is aimed at resolving an apparent paradox, that scientists are both responsive to empirical evidence in choosing to accept a theory and yet can be non-responsive to evidence which would seem to contradict a theory they already accept. My account of love aims to resolve an analogous paradox, that who a person loves is both dependent on the qualities of the beloved and yet is not simply a response to those qualities. And my account of love is similar to Kuhn's account of theory acceptance, as I claim that to love someone is also to adopt standards for evaluating their worth that would tend to reinforce the conclusion that they are worthy of special respect and esteem. With this account in hand, I will now try to make sense of some of the remaining observations.

Observation 2, which represents a phenomenon we might call "loving without liking", is one of the most difficult to account for. My current thinking on this is that we all can, and do, switch back and forth between the interpretative stance characteristic of love and a more neutral, or even negative, evaluative stance. Anyone who has been in love has felt that her beloved is the most perfect and wonderful human being in the world and also, perhaps simultaneously, recognised that this feeling does not represent objective reality. Many other people exhibit the qualities she praises in her beloved. This sort of tension animates Bernard Williams' "one thought too many" thought experiment. William's argues that, if forced to choose, most of us would rescue our beloved from death instead of a stranger, and be justified in this choice. And yet we also recognise that this choice would not be justified from the perspective of a neutral observer, who need not conclude that our beloved is any more worthy of rescue than anyone else. 

For one who is fortunate in who she loves, the loving stance and a more neutral evaluation do not pull too much in different directions - her beloved is not manifestly unworthy of the loving treatment he receives. But some of us are unlucky enough to love those who are unworthy - they repay love with scorn, abuse or just consistent unpleasantness. Someone who is unlucky in who she loves will, I think, manifest different behaviour depending on which interpretative stance dominates her thinking at any given time. Sometimes she may avoid her beloved, and sometimes she may seek him out. The "switch" between the two states is, I take it, something like a gestalt switch. Sometimes our beloved is a rabbit, at other times he is a duck. And while both perceptual possibilities are in some sense present at all times, only one can be actively perceived at any given moment. 

Observation 6 is relatively easy to account for - a person who loves multiple others simply adopts the relevant interpretative stance in respect of each of them. This generates no conflict unless our lover is for some reason forced to choose between the irreconcilable interests of those she loves. This, of course, is the dilemma of Sophie's Choice. One thing that is interesting about this story is that, while from a purely evaluative standpoint it might be acceptable to choose which of one's own children is more worthy of rescue, it is utterly devastating from the standpoint of love. Sophie is traumatised, at least in part, because she is forced to consider the worth of her children as if she does not love them. 

Observation 7, finally, is dealt with quite straightforwardly in terms of what has already been said. To stop loving someone is to undergo a more permanent "switch" towards an interpretative stance in which their words and actions are no longer evidence of their unique worth. Their virtues are merely the virtues shared by many other people, and their faults cannot be explained away. Such a switch will often be brought about by something analogous to a Kuhnian "crisis" - the extent to which Alice's beloved is flawed (or at least, not suitable for her) becomes too obvious to continue explaining away, and a competing interpretation of their behaviour becomes appealing. One final observation that links to this broader point is that, often, when a person is in the process of falling out of love, she may adopt an unusually negative interpretation of her beloved. Thus, every vice the once-beloved displays is evidence of his poor character, and every virtue is accidental or otherwise explained away. Perhaps this phenomenon can be thought of as an (overcompensating) attempt by the lover to return to a more neutral stance, in order more dispassionately assess whether it is worth maintaining a relationship with her beloved. 

Kuhn, in discussing the process of adopting a new paradigm (or rejecting a long-held one) frequently compares it to the process of religious (de)conversion. To undergo such a shift is to see the world through new eyes, to have the scales drop from one's eyes. To fall in, and out, of love is, I think, also to undergo an experience something like religious conversion. One who loves sees the world differently to how she did before, with all the emotions and potential traumas that attend such a change. 

Links, Thursday 22nd May

"A few weeks ago I think I actually groaned out loud when I was watching OBLIVION and saw the wrecked Statue of Liberty sticking out of the ground. The same movie makes repeated use of a degraded version of the Empire State Building’s observation deck. If you view that in strictly economic terms–which is how studio executives think–this is an example of leveraging a set of expensive and carefully thought-out design decisions that were made in 1930 by the ESB’s architects and using them to create a compelling visual environment, for minimal budget, of a future world." Marginal Revolution

>>><<<

Cycle lanes in Johannesburg? JUCA

>>><<<

Problems of interpretation abound, but nevertheless some interesting statistics.

"1994: Of the 23 063 910 eligible voters, 85,53 percent (19 726 610) voted while the remaining 14,47 percent (3 337 300) stayed away. The ANC received support from 53,01 percent (12 237 655) of the eligible voting population.

1999: Of the 25 411 573 eligible voters, 62,87 percent (15 977 142) voted while the remaining 37,13 percent (9 434 431) stayed away. The ANC received support from 41,72 percent (10 601 330) of the eligible voting population.

2004: Of the 27 994 712 eligible voters, 55,77 percent (15 612 671) voted while the remaining 44,23 percent (12 382 041) stayed away. The ANC received support from 38,87 percent (10 880 917) of the eligible voting population.

2009: Of the 30 224 145 eligible voters, 59,29 percent (17 919 966) voted while the remaining 40,71 percent (12 304 179) stayed away. The ANC received support from 38,55 percent (11 650 748) of the eligible voting population." SACSIS

>>><<<

"Puberty blockers are not “sex change drugs”. They pause puberty. They’re completely reversible. The whole point of them is to allow the kids time to grow up and decide what they want to do. Seriously, they’re like the opposite of “sex change drugs”. They’re “wait and see how you feel in a few years” drugs. They’re caution drugs. In fact, why call them "drugs" at all? When doctors prescribe drugs for medical conditions in this country, we generally just call them "medicine". So no drugs, no sex change and no actual nine-year-olds on this trial. Don’t let that get in the way of a juicy headline, though. Sex! Transgender children! The NHS spending money on stuff that’s not cancer! Thank god they didn’t find a way to connect all this to house prices, or else the majority of Mail readers would be housebound indefinitely, glued to the floor by their own bodily secretions." Vice

>>><<<

"Rape and violence existed before porn, and would continue to exist if porn didn't. Why not focus on how rape is structurally permitted due to rape culture, how criminalization and incarceration permit and condone rape, how white supremacy reinforces poverty and institutionalized violence and how notions of moral acceptability make sex workers "rapeable" and "disposable"?" The Coast

>>><<<

"Everybody talks about the insane success of Kenyan long-distance runners, but the truth is that most Kenyans have no better stamina than the rest of us. The Kalenjin, who make up 1/10 of the Kenyan population at best, are the reason for the country's reputation -- for every 10 Olympic medals Kenya has won for running, seven are in Kalenjin hands. Of all the world running records held by Kenyans, only one is not held by a Kalenjin. Oh, and in all of recorded history, only 17 Americans have run a marathon in under two hours and 10 minutes. That's pretty neat-o, except for the fact that 32 Kalenjin have done it.

In October of 2011 alone." Cracked

>>><<<

The author could be more sceptical even of the claims that "Mam has done much for those girls", but this is a useful expose of a major figure in the so-called anti-trafficking movement. She has lied not only about her own story but, more seriously, about the scope and nature of the actual problem. I'll quote some of the relevant statistics:

"Thomas Steinfatt, a professor of statistics at the University of Miami, has done several reports on sex trafficking for the U.N.’s Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking. In a 2008 study, for which he spent months conducting surveys in all corners of Cambodia, he estimated there were no more than 1,058 victims of trafficking in Cambodia and has said the situation has improved markedly since then.

The number of children, both those observed as sex workers and those mentioned by management or by sex workers in the 2008 data, was 127, with 11 of the children verifiably under age 15 and six under age 13. The high-end estimate for the number of children likely involved in sex work in Cambodia in 2008 was 310 children." Newsweek

>>><<<

"If we cannot restore our democratic imagination, and ground it in democratic practices open to all, our future will be limited to a choice between authoritarian modes of containing our social crisis and authoritarian modes of resolving it. This challenge requires us to think of politics beyond the electoral terrain. It also requires us to think of politics beyond the realm of NGOs, the courts and the elite public sphere." SACSIS

>>><<<

A wall of motorised plastic cocks. Need I say more? Nerve

>>><<<

This article really shows how low the opponents of trigger warnings are willing to stoop, intellectually. It claims that "confronting triggers, not avoiding them, is the best way to overcome PTSD". But this claim is defended by reference to results from exposure *therapy", i.e. exposure to triggers under controlled, pre-arranged conditions. How this is relevant to the issue of being unexpectedly exposed to triggers in English Lit class or whatever is beyond me... Pacific Standard

>>><<<

Yep. "Be grateful to your benevolent white saviours!"

“There is a tendency among a lot of white mentors to see a personal betrayal in the movement of the black professionals whom they have ‘made’ which does not exist to the same degree with the white professionals who move just as often... Some of them have even been so bold as to use this perceived disloyalty of black professionals as a basis to avoid mentoring and training this category of employees.” M&G

>>><<<

Good for him, and his skill as an actor, but it's kind of gross that film-makers find it easier to cast a somewhat brown-skinned guy to play any non-white character they happen to need. Slate

>>><<<

The defence of the bedroom tax is gross, but this is a useful examination of some important trends. I tend to think that the best solution would be higher and more progressive property taxes. The supply side is also worth tackling, since having more spare rooms is obviously something people want...

"... The central failing of British housing is chronic under-occupation, which is getting worse. The 1971 census return showed Britons enjoying 1.5 rooms per person. Today, with a larger population, the figure is 2.5. Small households were moving into larger properties and staying there, even when children fled the nest. The rich are simply storing money in surplus rooms." Guardian

>>><<<

"The FDA claims there's no evidence that triclosan soap is any more effective at washing away germs than non-antibacterial soap and water. What's more, according to recent studies, triclosan can "disrupt hormones critical for reproduction and development, at least in lab animals, and contribute to the development of resistant bacteria." So not only is this chemical not doing you any real good, it could actually be harming you, too." Gizmodo

>>><<<

In the last ten years, there have been over 350,000 sex scenes shot in the adult industry without condoms with zero infections occurring due to sex on film in that period... AHF has used the 24 people who have tested HIV positive through the testing agencies performers use as a way to drum up evidence of a failing system, but these positives were performers who had not been exposed on set, but in their personal lives, or those who were testing in order to start in the industry, who found out their status before ever shooting." Tits and Sass

>>><<<

A couple of good articles on how racism has been defined by the political classes as a personal rather than institutional or structural problem, and thus swept under the rug. Multicultural Politic, Voice Online

Links, Tuesday 20th May

A Marxist perspective on the relatively high rate of return on capital.

"Money, land, real estate and plant and equipment that are not being used productively are not capital. If the rate of return on the capital that is being used is high then this is because a part of capital is withdrawn from circulation and in effect goes on strike. Restricting the supply of capital to new investment (a phenomena we are now witnessing) ensures a high rate of return on that capital which is in circulation. The creation of such artificial scarcity is not only what the oil companies do to ensure their high rate of return: it is what all capital does when given the chance. This is what underpins the tendency for the rate of return on capital (no matter how it is defined and measured) to always exceed the rate of growth of income. This is how capital ensures its own reproduction, no matter how uncomfortable the consequences are for the rest of us." David Harvey

>>><<<

An interesting piece about a home for retired sex workers in Mexico City. While the journalists do a good job, it would nevertheless have been preferable to hear these women's story in their own words. Slate

>>><<<

Terrible writing (including use of the P-word) and probably should be taken with a pinch of salt, but still an interesting character study. Metro

>>><<<

Making a case for transparency in business management. The case for salary transparency is strong too, though this is very seldom embraced.

"Sharing information about individual salaries is still very rare, for obvious reasons. But consider: In the wake of the firing of Jill Abramson, executive editor of the New York Times, there were reports that Abramson had battled ownership over getting fair pay in comparison to her predecessor in the job. Salary transparency could put an end to these kinds of conflicts. Still, most open-book firms choose to reveal payroll outlays in the aggregate." Slate

>>><<<

An interview with the person who invented the "interrupter" approach to tackling street violence. Slate

>>><<<

"I used to say that the way I know I'm being accepted as a woman is when the average men's estimation of my intelligence drops by 50 percent," Huff Post

>>><<<

"Normally, self-affirmation is reserved for instances in which identity is threatened in direct ways: race, gender, age, weight, and the like. Here, Nyhan decided to apply it in an unrelated context: Could recalling a time when you felt good about yourself make you more broad-minded about highly politicized issues, like the Iraq surge or global warming? As it turns out, it would. On all issues, attitudes became more accurate with self-affirmation, and remained just as inaccurate without. That effect held even when no additional information was presented—that is, when people were simply asked the same questions twice, before and after the self-affirmation." New Yorker

>>><<<

This is actually quite useful: Cracked on negotiating tactics.

>>><<<

"Where I live, sex work is semi-decriminalized. While I was being trafficked, this helped me in a number of ways

• it meant I was able to work in safety
• i was able to be part of a supportive community with other women
• via working in a brothel, i was able to avoid my ex and his violence for periods of time
• i had access to peer-based organizations
• i had access to cost price condoms
• i had access to safer sex information via outreach workers
• i has access to free and confidential STI screening and vaccination
• i was able to avoid some of his abuse by supplying the money he needed to feed his drug habit with enough left over to take care of my family

If I was working under criminalization, none of this would’ve existed. I would have been subject to brothel raids (which could’ve resulted in my having a criminal record and the trauma associated with it), police violence, no confidential services (and trust me, if services aren’t confidential, people don’t use them), and unsafe working conditions." Rumplestiltsqueer

>>><<<

A good piece at Cracked about some of the difficulties faced by the deaf community. Cracked

>>><<<

An experiment in polyamorous communal living in Brooklyn. Poly in the Media

>>><<<

I wouldn't have it any other way...

"But however much morning people look down on those whose inner clock is set a little later, there’s an emerging understanding that there are some bright sides to sleeping in, too." New York Mag

>>><<<

"Culture" is definitely helpful as an explanation, but I always wonder exactly how it's supposed to function as a target for intervention...

"Education campaigns like DrinkAware.ie have been credited with changing perceptions about alcohol use and promoting responsible drinking – and, more importantly, most pubs in Ireland now serve food as well as drink. This might not seem like a big deal to outsiders, but it has been a huge shift in Irish life. The local pub has always been an important social center, except now, instead of knocking back drinks at the bar, Irish people can enjoy drinking and eating" Guardian

Links, Sunday 18th May

"Democracies, especially developing democracies, are bad at selling themselves. On the surface, they appear weak, riven with conflict and self-criticism. They air their corruption scandals in public. They allow public protests. By contrast, autocracies appear smooth and united—until, suddenly, they aren't." Slate

>>><<<

For a given value of "real"...

"The United States military has a plan to help defend you from the zombie apocalypse. It's a real plan, made by real military personnel, using real taxpayer's money. Kotaku

>>><<<

"Though Mody has been critical of her institution, she also has empathy for students who might only be realizing their privilege for the first time. “If what you’ve been told all your life is you’re really talented and you deserve what you have, it’s going to be really hard to find out ’Maybe I don’t deserve it, and all these other people equally deserve it but never even had a shot,’” she said. “Schools are not giving students a space to manage that loss of identity.”" Salon

>>><<<

"We have now reached a point in history where there are more women in the Thai sex industry being abused by anti-trafficking practices than there are women exploited by traffickers." Laura Augustin

>>><<<

The author of this article has been made relatively famous because his appearance on a panel recently provoked a serious disturbance at an anarchist conference. I think what he writes is problematic in various respects, notably in that he seems to push back at the idea of taking survivors at their word. But I also think some of his diagnosis of the underlying problem is correct. 

"The totalitarian impulse has found its expression, and it has proven so destructive, in part because we have consistently failed to find the means for handling disagreements, for resolving disputes, for responding to violence, and (yes) for holding each other accountable.  Without those tools, we rely––far too often––on ideological purity tests, friend-group tribalism, peer pressure, shaming and ostracism, as well as general shit-talking and internet flame wars.  Such behavior has been part of our political culture for a long time." Toward Freedom

>>><<<

"The racial lives of blind individuals disrupt the unthinking assumptions that we all make about race, whereby we naturalize the ability to see and experience racial difference as a basic part of life that is thought to be fundamental to our existence. This shows how sighted people are blinded by their sight. Vision itself seduces them into treating immediately perceptible human differences as obvious distinctions, masking the social practices that make these distinctions visible." Boston Review

>>><<<

"For all their concerns with their careers, many students go into economics with an idealistic presumption that it will help them understand, question, and change the world. The best economics programs seek to foster this sort of intellectual development, to be sure, but many of them have become increasingly narrow and arid. Economic-history courses were once standard; now they are much rarer. Courses in the history of economic thought and alternative approaches to economics were once pretty common; today, they are an endangered species." New Yorker

>>><<<

Links, Thursday 15th May

"We already have laws against rape and assault in this country. I don’t need a law against the purchase of sex to help me. What I need is to feel like the same laws that protect everyone else also protect me. If I am assaulted at work, I want to be able to go to the police and report the crime. Treating the purchase of sex as the problem undermines my experiences as a victim of sexual assault.

Criminalizing the purchase of sex frames all clients as abusers, when the reality is that they are not. Characterizing all of my clients as people who have exploited me completely discounts all of my experiences of actually being sexually assaulted at work." National Post

>>><<<

Most common languages in different US states, excluding English (and Spanish). Slate

>>><<<

"“So” at the start of a question often marks the beginning of a new topic that one of the parties wants to discuss, often called an “interactional agenda,” according to Bolden.

“When I ask—‘So how did your interview go?’—I indicate that I’ve been meaning to ask this question for a while, that it’s been on my mind, or incipient,” she explained." Slate


>>><<<

Two anecdotes from the same article, just because it's so good...

"Van Halen's live show boasted a colossal stage, booming audio and spectacular lighting. All this required a great deal of structural support, electrical power and the like. Thus the 53-page rider, which gave point-by-point instructions to ensure that no one got killed by a collapsing stage or a short-circuiting light tower. But how could Van Halen be sure that the local promoter in each city had read the whole thing and done everything properly?

Cue the brown M&M's. As Roth tells it, he would immediately go backstage to check out the bowl of M&M's. If he saw brown ones, he knew the promoter hadn't read the rider carefully—and that "we had to do a serious line check" to make sure that the more important details hadn't been botched either."

...

"But how can a Nigerian scammer tell who is gullible and who isn't? He can't. Gullibility is, in this case, an unobservable trait. But the scammer could invite the gullible people to reveal themselves.

How? By sending out such a ridiculous letter—including prominent mentions of Nigeria—that only a gullible person would take it seriously. Anyone with an ounce of sense or experience would immediately trash theemail. "The scammer wants to find the guy who hasn't heard of it," Dr. Herley says. "Anybody who doesn't fall off their chair laughing is exactly who he wants to talk to." Here's how Dr. Herley put it in a research paper: "The goal of the e-mail is not so much to attract viable users as to repel the nonviable ones, who greatly outnumber them.""

Wall Street Journal

>>><<<

"Information about the sex industry proliferates, but legislative and moralizing parties prefer to ignore those who provide it — the sex workers themselves — in favor of highly suspect accounts from arrested management figures, law enforcement, or figures of dubious credibility who create and inflate numbers with impunity.

What’s currently happening to sex workers across the world might best be described as willful erasure. At a time when sex worker voices are louder, more insistent, and more numerous than ever, many governments, pundits, and not-for-profits are determined to power ahead with their own agenda — ignoring the voices of those they claim to be concerned for." Jacobin

>>><<<

"During the Bush years, for example, documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) revealed, as the group put it in 2006, "new details of Pentagon surveillance of Americans opposed to the Iraq war, including Quakers and student groups". The Pentagon was "keeping tabs on non-violent protesters by collecting information and storing it in a military anti-terrorism database". The evidence shows that assurances that surveillance is only targeted at those who "have done something wrong" should provide little comfort, since a state will reflexively view any challenge to its power as wrongdoing." Guardian

>>><<<

"while American companies were being warned away from supposedly untrustworthy Chinese routers, foreign organisations would have been well advised to beware of American-made ones. A June 2010 report from the head of the NSA's Access and Target Development department is shockingly explicit. The NSA routinely receives – or intercepts – routers, servers and other computer network devices being exported from the US before they are delivered to the international customers.

The agency then implants backdoor surveillance tools, repackages the devices with a factory seal and sends them on. The NSA thus gains access to entire networks and all their users." Guardian

>>><<<

"Journalism has the same problem. What you get—4,000 words summarizing some historical and epidemiological stuff most people already know—is totally out of proportion to what it costs to make it." Rotten in Denmark

>>><<<

"No one knew how severe the epidemic was among drug users until 1984, when the still-under-development antibody test found that 50 percent of drug users in New York City and Edinburgh and 30 percent in Amsterdam were already infected...

Here’s where the differences come in. Almost immediately after those first tests, Western European countries installed needle-exchange programs, gave out free syringes, and established opiate-substitution treatment. Germany even got needle vending machines. By 1997, England and Wales were giving out 25 million free syringes per year. Anything to keep the virus from spreading, even if it meant making it a little easier to be a heroin addict that day.

The United States, on the other hand, refused to provide federal funds for needle exchanges or even fund research into whether they were effective." New Republic

Links, Tuesday 13th May

Credit where credit's due, this time to the EFF - she sounds like the sort of person we want in Parliament. City Press

>>><<<

"he slower, more sustainable route, through the development and elevation of young leaders, has been surer, delivering Lindiwe Mazibuko and Mmusi Maimane to the upper reaches of the party. On Sunday, it seemed to veer into a ditch, with Mazibuko departing stage left for Harvard amid talk of a clash with Zille. It is a serious loss. Mazibuko is no longer just a precocious talent. She is a skilled politician, case-hardened by facing down her internal critics and an angry Zuma. But not hardened enough for whatever is coming next in the DA. Maimane complements Mazibuko, but whether he can play the same role is an open question. The ANC can afford to squander some talent. The DA cannot, and black talent least of all. The DA needs Mazibuko badly, for the 2016 local elections, and for a Parliament where it will compete with the EFF." Business Day

>>><<<

A generally interesting and balanced piece on the public school system in Shanghai.

"If you don’t study, you’re not cool. That may be the most useful lesson the rest of the world can glean from what Shanghai is doing right." Newsweek

>>><<<

http://anarchyofproduction.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/ufo.jpg?w=530

>>><<<

"According to a 2006 French study, pedestrians are 1.4 times more likely to receive a traumatic brain injury than unhelmeted cyclists. We can also approach it from the perspective of injuries per million hours from a 1996 Australian study looking at head injury risk before the beginning of any helmet laws...

Risk of head injury per million hours travelled:

• Cyclist  -  0.41
• Pedestrian  -  0.80
• Motor vehicle occupant  -  0.46
• Motorcyclist  -  7.66"

Howie Chong

>>><<<

"Central to the South African story is a myth once embraced almost exclusively by whites but which has become embedded in the worldview of much of the middle class. It sees the poor as irrational barbarians, prey to the promises of any demagogue. And so any populist who seems to be urging the black poor to rise up and seize the wealth of the affluent is assumed to enjoy mass support. This explains why Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was assumed to be an icon of the poor and why Malema and the EFF have taken over this mantle.

This fantasy ignores overwhelming evidence that living in poverty is no bar to rational thought and that poor people are perfectly capable of knowing who represents their interests and who does not." Sacsis

>>><<<

"For the first time ever, many of the farmers who supply Mexican drug cartels have stopped planting marijuana, reports the Washington Post. "It's not worth it anymore," said Rodrigo Silla, a lifelong cannabis farmer from central Mexico. "I wish the Americans would stop with this legalization."" Mother Jones

Links, Monday 12th May

"... by pretty much any standard the work that an excellent teacher does is positive-sum for society — the more great teachers there are the more well-educated kids we'll have and the better off we'll all become. By contrast the work that excellent lawyers do mostly consists of zero-sum battles to outwit other excellent lawyers. And yet the work of teachers is much less rewarded financially then the work of people in legal and financial occupations that have lower social returns." Vox

>>><<<

This is something I've wondered about. Any thoughts?

"...on the neoclassical theory poor countries that successfully get rich should do so by liberalizing their financial systems, running trade deficits, and importing foreign money until over time they build up enough capital for the marginal productivity of labor to increase. In practice, successful catchup stories (first in Japan, then in Singapore and Taiwan and Korea, now in China) work the other way around — countries use financial repression and run trade surpluses to develop increasingly sophisticated local businesses." Vox

>>><<<

"Ressler and Thompson dubbed their plan the Results-Only Work Environment, or ROWE. The scheme involved some radical proposals. People could work from home absolutely anytime they felt like it, without needing a reason or excuse. There would be no such thing as a sick day or a vacation allotment—employees could take off as much time as they wanted, whenever they saw fit. Perhaps most provocative: All meetings would be optional. Even if your boss had invited you. Don’t think you need to be there? Don’t come.

In return for this absolute freedom, workers would need to produce. Bosses would set macro expectations (e.g., increase sales by 10 percent) and then assess the results without micromanaging (e.g., keeping tabs on who arrived at the office earliest in the morning or left latest at night). If the goal was met, there were no complaints from your boss about that Tuesday afternoon you spent at your kid’s soccer game. If the goal wasn’t met, no amount of face time around the office would substitute for the lack of results." Slate

>>><<<

I spent 28th April to 5th May in Tankwa Karoo for Afrika Burn. My "gift" was to set up shop along a well-travelled road - the "Binnekring" - in a deckchair, with an umbrella and a sign saying "Ask Me Anything".

Many people came up to me to ask questions, and to listen to the questions others were asking. I attempted to answer any question I received as honestly as possible, including saying "I don't know". I also wrote down all the questions as best I could. Some of the questions quoted here are paraphrases, and I also missed writing some down if I received a large number in a short space of time. What follows is a transcription of my actual notes, in the order I wrote them down. Some of the questions following each other were asked by the same person, but I leave it to the reader to infer logical connections between them. I have also left uncensored the (thankfully very few) instances of bigotry and personal rudeness. Dean's Assorted Thoughts

>>><<<

"But the cyclists are probably in the right here. While it's obviously reckless for them to blow through an intersection when they don't have the right of way, research and common sense say that slowly rolling through a stop sign on a bike shouldn't be illegal in the first place." Vox

>>><<<

More on the culture of internal authoritarianism in the DA, centred on the departure of Lindiwe Mazibuko. Business Day

>>><<<

I have problems with this article, notably in its distinction between begging and "legitimate" ways of making a living, but it at least *attempts* to offer some nuance. Synapses

>>><<<

"Roland Anderson, a retired biologist from the Seattle Aquarium, tells author Katherine Harmon Courage that octopuses are the “smartest invertebrate,” and to prove the point, he lists a set of very human traits: 

They are a predator, they go out to find food, they build dens and then modify them, they use tools, they use spatial navigation, they have play behavior, they recognize individual people.

In one experiment, Anderson and his colleagues gave a female giant Pacific octopus named Billy a plastic bottle of herring with a childproof cap. In 55 minutes, she figured out that she needed to push and turn the lid simultaneously and was able to open it; with practice, she could do the trick in five minutes." Weekly Standard

>>><<<

"Hampton Creek’s CEO, Josh Tetrick, wants to do to the $60 billion egg industry what Apple did to the CD business. “If we were starting from scratch, would we get eggs from birds crammed into cages so small they can’t flap their wings, shitting all over each other, eating antibiotic-laden soy and corn to get them to lay 283 eggs per year?” asks the strapping former West Virginia University linebacker. While an egg farm uses large amounts of water and burns 39 calories of energy for every calorie of food produced, Tetrick says he can make plant-based versions on a fraction of the water and only two calories of energy per calorie of food — free of cholesterol, saturated fat, allergens, avian flu, and cruelty to animals. For half the price of an egg." MIT Technology Review

"Ask Me Anything" - questions I heard at Afrika Burn

I spent 28th April to 5th May in Tankwa Karoo for Afrika Burn. My "gift" was to set up shop along a well-travelled road - the "Binnekring" - in a deckchair, with an umbrella and a sign saying "Ask Me Anything".

Many people came up to me to ask questions, and to listen to the questions others were asking. I attempted to answer any question I received as honestly as possible, including saying "I don't know". I also wrote down all the questions as best I could. Some of the questions quoted here are paraphrases, and I also missed writing some down if I received a large number in a short space of time. What follows is a transcription of my actual notes, in the order I wrote them down.

1. What's the answer to world peace?
2. Where's the kite camp?
3. How much tequila should I drink?
4. What's it all about?
5. Do you go on Reddit often?
6. Where is the centre of the universe?
7. Where can we get  cellphone reception?
8. Do you have Google?
9. How is your GPS working?
10. How does a car exhaust catalyst work?
11. How does advertising work?
12. What are the seven deadly sins?
13. How old am I?
14. How old am I?
15. What is my favourite colour?
16. What is the most interesting question you've been asked today?
17. What is the time?
18. [Some mathematical gibberish]
19. How many people live on Mars?
20. What am I going to do today?
21. How are you?
22. Do you know anyone gifting party bags?
23. Would you like a cigarette?
24. What is the meaning of life?
25. Why are we here?
26. Have you got any acid?
27. What's your name?
28. What's your favourite colour?
29. Can we use your shade while we're working?
30. Are you enjoying yourself?
31. Are you in the right business?
32. Are you writing down the questions?
33. Is the point of this to find out what questions people will ask?
34. Are you enjoying yourself?
35. Did you have a good time last night?
36. What did you do?
37. What are you studying?
38. Do you have Google?
39. Is Jesus real?
40. How old am I?
41. Where is the Love Space?
42. What's my name?
43. Which way is the prevailing wind?
44. Where can I buy ice?
45. Which dinosaur had three horns?
46. Which dinosaur was the biggest plant-eater?
47. What is the most important thing?
48. Anything?
49. Which dinosaur was the biggest meat-eater?
50. What is the group name for plant-eaters?
51. What's your name?
52. Are you a scientist or something?
53. What was the first dinosaur to fly?
54. Are you expecting more questions about Afrika Burn?
55. What's the answer?
56. What's the time?
57. What's the time?
58. You've heard that douchebag question before?
59. Does my dad ride a motorbike or not?
60. Do you know I ride a dirtbike too?
61. Can I use some water for my hands?
62. Can we use some of your shade?
63. Do you know where Radio Aaarrr is?
64. How about the recording studio on this side?
65. Is life fair?
66. Is this your gift?
67. What's your name?
68. Do you know where Michelle is?
69. What going on here?
70. What's it all about?
71. What's the population of China?
72. Why are these rocks flat?
73. How many toes does a penguin have?
74. What would a chair look like if our legs bent the other way?
75. What is the most interesting question you've been asked today?
76. What question would you ask if you could ask one?
77. What must I ask you?
78. Are these just the questions people ask?
79. Do you know where my friend Gemma is?
80. Who would win in a fight between Winnie the Pooh and Scooby Doo?
81. Do you think it's possible to have fun every day?
82. Who would win in a fight between a fully grown male gorilla and a fully grown male lion?
83. What is the wind going to be like on Saturday?
84. Do you think we choose this existence?
85. Why can't I find love?
86. Would you fuck a male rhino to save the whole species?
87. Why did Europe colonise Africa?
88. Star Wars or Star Trek?
89. What time did you wake up this morning?
90. Will we see you later?
91. Can we hang out and listen to some questions?
92. Do you think I'll go far in life?
93. What are you writing down?
94. When will the human race end?
95. Are there aliens?
96. Democrat or Republican?
97. Apple or Samsung?
98. Which came first: chicken or egg?
99. Theseus' ship
100. Where are my upper abs?
101. What's in your box?
102. Have you had much success?
103. What is the most interesting question you've had?
104. What's the significance of the Higgs boson?
105. What do the lasers look like they curve?
106. What are the winning lottery numbers for next weekend?
107. Who was the Greek mythological figure who flew too close to the sun?
108. Who won the 1996 football World Cup?
109. Who marched elephants over the Alps?
110. How many licks does it take to finish a lollipop?
111. Who was the song American Pie about?
112. What is love?
113. Have you seen my daughter?
114. Is anyone giving out free beer?
115. What's your favourite colour?
116. How long am I going to live for?
117. How long is a piece of string?
118. What is the meaning of life?
119. What has been the best bit of your life so far?
120. How hot is it?
121. Why do rainbows form after a rain storm?
122. What is the most interesting question you've had so far?
123. What is the most interesting question you've had so far?
124. What can you tell me?
125. Can I totally use your hand for a second?
126. Do you know where the gin place is?
127. Why are you writing down questions?
128. What's in the box?
129. How long are you here for?
130. Answer to life, the universe and everything?
131. Why do babies float?
132. Have you heard the aquatic ape hypothesis?
133. What do you do?
134. Why do you know so much?
135. If you ate yourself, would you double in size or disappear?
136. Do you have long risla papers?
137. Do you remember my question from earlier?
138. Do you have information in your brain?
139. From any domain?
140. Why do fires smoke when you start them?
141. Why don't M&Ms melt?
142. Why they bring Rascals back?
143. Is Tupac coming back next year?
144. Do you believe I have healing hands?
145. What is the most interesting or boring question you've been asked?
146. Do you have acid?
147. Do you like hash or mushrooms?
148. Why do our eyes form images upside-down?
149. Am I likely to get laid like this?
150. Would I have to work on my personality?
151. I've become a teacher. Is that good or bad?
152. Can I offer you a drink?
153. What is the meaning of like?
154. How many hot dogs would it take to make an elephant fall asleep?
155. What colour is the sky?
156. Why is it blue?
157. What is the ice albedo effect?
158. What number is blue in the rainbow?
159. What is the most famous quote from Richard Feynmann?
160. How frequently do cicadas breed?
161. What colour socks is my mom wearing today?
162. What is on Zee's mind?
163. Do you think you're good at this job?
164. What do you think is the fate of humanity and the planet?
165. Would you like to suck my dick?
166. How are you?
167. What's my name, bitch?
168. Did we meet at Emmarentia dam?
169. How's your mother?
170. What am I going to ask next?
171. How many questions do you answer "I don't know"?
172. Do you like bubbles?
173. What will. be the result for the Champions League finals?
174. Yes or no?
175. What has been your most interesting question so far?
176. What's the time?
177. How are you doing?
178. If Pinnochio said "My nose is about to grow", what would happen?
179. Why do I have this? [gestures to belly button]
180. Why?
181. Why?
182. Why does he keep asking "why"?
183. What are you doing?
184. What are you doing?
185. Why is it only possible to tell people they're beautiful when you're on E?
186. Are you having fun?
187. Are you writing everything down?
188. Why did you come to Afrika Burn?
189. Did you by any chance end up with our sun cream?
190. Where's the cold beer?
191. Do you answer all the questions?
192. What?
193. Whither?
194. Why?
195. Is it guaranteed?
196. What's the craziest question you've had?
197. Are you writing all the questions down?
198. What are you going to do with them?
199. What's your name?
200. What's the blue box from Dr Who called?
201. How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
202. Why?
203. What time is it?
204. What's the most interesting question you've had so far?
205. Have you been sitting here the whole day?
206. What's the meaning of life?
207. How did Burning Man start?

Links, Tuesday 6th May

Some backlog...


"Last month, psychologists at the University of Southern California published a meta-analysis of 58 research experiments that tested whether a woman’s preferences for masculinity, dominance, symmetry, health, kindness, and testosterone levels in her male romantic partners actually fluctuate across her menstrual cycle. The answer: They do not." Slate

>>><<<

Mind = blown 

"As a movement of the urban poor, we think our priority is to vote out the ANC. We do not agree with the DA fundamentally on many core issues. This decision is not one that is based on ideology. Poor people do not eat ideology, nor do they live in houses that are made out of ideology." Ground Up

And some analysis of this at Daily Maverick

>>><<<

"Dodson has a mouth like a sailor and the easy manner of a wisecracking Scorsese character. She looks incredible, with a zest for life that belies her age. She credits "masturbation, pot and raw garlic"." The Guardian 

>>><<<

A suggestion that elections are funded by "vouchers" that voters can donate to political campaigns

"... every registered voter in America gets $50 per election cycle to give to candidates for federal offices, whether they're running for president, the Senate or the House. Ackerman and Ayres call these vouchers "Patriot Dollars."" Vox

>>><<<

A chilling reminder of how people are willing to deny life-saving treatment to women they perceive as sexually unworthy.

"Many sex workers claim they need to lie to access medication. "I don't say I am raped every time I go for post-exposure prophylaxis – there are times that I say that the condom burst," says Akoth, 26. "One thing I never dare say is that I am a sex worker, or that I have more than one sexual partner, because if the healthcare providers find out you are a sex worker seeking post-exposure prophylaxis, they send you away saying it is a self-made problem."" Guardian

>>><<<

"This process works within the vegan movement as well, with an open embracing of veganism as inherently feminized and sexualized. This works to undermine a movement (that is comprised mostly of women) and repackage it for a patriarchal society. Instead of strong, political collective of women, we have yet another demographic of sexually available individual women who exist for male consumption." Sociological Images

>>><<<

"Takes a wife" - is this a thing that we still say? The Daily Sun

>>><<<

"In her rebuttal to Leon and Johnson last year, Zille said: "It is pure mythology that our predecessor parties embodied [a] liberal purity from which we are now departing." In the past, "liberal purity" included implicit support for white supremacy.

The question is whether the DA can rid itself of this pernicious form of whiteness and chart a new way forward for South African liberalism in the 21st century. Executing this daunting task will determine its relevance in the 2019 elections." Mail & Guardian

>>><<<

"President Jacob Zuma has amended the terms of reference of the Marikana commission to prevent government ministers from being implicated, said the Right2Know campaign’s Rehad Desai..." SA Breaking News