The Reading List, 5/25/2014

I share a lot of links on Twitter and Facebook that I don’t blog about because I don’t have much to add. The reading list is a periodic feature where I share those links with my blog audience too. Of course, you’re still welcome to follow me on Twitter.

Around FtB

The Wider Web

  • What Atheist Community is For: Help Angelina Collier’s Children–“Angelina was a newcomer to the nonbeliever community, but she was definitely one of us.”
  • To pee or not to pee–“For people all over the world, the pen is mighty. But for mice, there is no pen. There is only pee.” With bonus poem.
  • Chilean activist destroys student debt records worth $500m–“There have been protests in Chile since 2011 calling for reform of the university system and for free high-quality education.”
  • The sea is full of life, but not quite that full–“There is nothing unusual whatsoever about this picture…except for that it’s based on a misconception.”
  • W Continues Fashion’s Tradition of Using ‘Exotic’ People As Props–“W magazine recently sent fashion photographer Tim Walker and supermodel Edie Campbell to Burma, where they shot an editorial that juxtaposed Campbell (so white! so chic!) against the a background of the nation’s ‘exotic’ landmarks and citizens.”
  • Dear Sudan: Stop ‘slut-shaming’ women with religious double standards–“If only the case of Meriam Yehya Ibrahim were unusual.”
  • All Ages–“Kids care about finding something in the world to relate to. Kids don’t give a care about sexual orientation, not the way adults do.”
  • Science Pseudonyms vs Science Sockpuppets–“‘He’s saying that scientists using pseudonyms is a form of misconduct!’ I thought to myself. It turns out that the story is rather more complicated – and very bizarre.”
  • Instability and Our Troublesome Inheritance–“We know conclusively, based on studies in marginal journals edited by racists, that this racial difference is largely genetic (and we have controlled for a deleterious environment by excluding poor students and poorly educated parents).”
  • What If We Admitted to Children That Sex Is Primarily About Pleasure?–“One day nine-year-old Elaine started asking me about birth control out of the blue. I said to her, ‘Listen, I need to call your parents and ask them if it’s OK for me to talk to you about this, OK?'”
  • Editing While Female–“It was predictably awful, and I was not in the least bit surprised. Because this has happened to just about every woman I know who has dared to take up a highly visible leadership position in our great but troubled news organizations. Including me.”
  • Frustrated by Columbia’s inaction, student reports sexual assault to police–“During that time, she said, the policeman to whom she originally gave her statement was standing outside the room, actively dismissing her story to the friends she had brought to the precinct office with her for support.”
  • What Farm-to-Table Got Wrong–“Yes, I was creating a market for local emmer wheat, but I wasn’t doing anything to support the recipe behind it. Championing Klaas’s wheat and only his wheat was tantamount to treating his farm like a grocery store.”
  • long hidden dialect roundup–“So, this anthology has been available for what, 10 days? 2 weeks? Anyway, it hasn’t been long, and already Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History has sparked a rich and necessary debate about the use of dialect in fiction.”
  • Alzheimer’s Patient Killed by her Children in Exorcism–“Irena, who is believed to have been suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease, was unable to comprehend what was happening and the siblings, belieing that her symptoms were caused by possession, took the exorcism even further.”
  • Attorney general says racial equality threatened in subtle ways–“‘This is the work that truly matters – because policies that disenfranchise specific groups are more pernicious than hateful rants,’ Holder told the graduates at Morgan State, a historically black college.”
  • Women Don’t Fear Power. Power Fears Women.–“Both were navigating the high pressures of their professional lives while simultaneously challenging everyone’s–-their employees’, their employer’s, the media’s–-embedded notions of gendered behavior: from their ‘brusque,’ ‘pushy’ and ‘aggressive’ dispositions, speech patterns, body language, ambition, confidence and more.”
  • Forgotten Heroes Who Changed the Course of American History–“For those wondering why we remember Paul Revere’s name above all the other successful riders from the Revolution, the simple reason is because Henry Wadsworth Longfellow found that Revere rhymes with a lot of things, including ‘listen my children and you shall hear.'”
  • Curbing Online Abuse Isn’t Impossible. Here’s Where We Start–“Too often, though, we talk about online abuse like we talk about bad weather: We shake our heads, shrug, and assume there’s nothing we can do.”
  • Sex Workers Deserve Health Care, Too–“What you should be wondering is why this GiveForward page—started to raise funds to help a very sick person—is no longer live. That would be due to WePay, through which payments are processed on GiveForward.”
  • Fingernails–“A major battle the no-choice side has won is that of convincing a great many people, including many of those who support abortion rights, that abortion itself is tragic.”
  • Big Picture Lessons from an Unfortunate Tweet–“You think the Director of a major university’s atmospheric sciences program (Go Dawgs) with a BS, MS, and PHD in meteorology from a top program (Go Noles) doesn’t know that the climate changes naturally?”
  • On the Origin of White Power–“Nicholas Wade is not a racist. In his new book, A Troublesome Inheritance, the former science writer for the New York Times states this explicitly.”
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The Reading List, 5/25/2014
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