What if the Tea Party Was Black?

I am totally fascinated with this rap song, which asks listeners to consider what a black Tea Party would look like.
I like that this song questions how white people are given far more leeway when it comes to their behavior. They are allowed to make militant speeches or express anger without it being stereotyped as angry or dangerous.

Mother and Baby Giraffe

This is possible the cutest picture featuring giraffes I have ever seen. The Memphis Zoo is super lucky.

Charts and Graphs

Found this great bit from How I Met Your Mother featuring Marshall's graphs and charts. I know lots of people who organize their life this way (myself sometimes included.) I really love that he ranked U.S. Presidents by how dirty they sound. That strikes me as a surprisingly good party game.

Report Cards

There's this great little story today about a man who saved a small group of report cards from the Manhattan Trade School for Girls and the stories he discovered there. This is such a great moment of an amateur historian working with a primary source. I love that he contacted the families and gave them information they might not otherwise have.
That said, I'm not sure if I want my future family members seeing my report cards. Mostly they are decent, but if there are the kinds of notes that these have, then really, even I don't want to know.

Seperate and Unequal

So, a few days ago I wrote about how I didn't think men were obsolete/less important. And thankfully, someone agrees with me. Sort of. Christina Hoff Sommers talks about how men are more likely to run for political office, are more likely to win Nobel prizes, get patents, etc. But then she makes all kind of assumptions about gender that make me want to gag. She assumes men are by nature, more violent. She talks about their economic power as if it was their right and as if capitalism were okay. Oh, and she assumes there's nothing wrong with the military. She basically says that women are separate but equal, even though she should know better than that. And honestly, some of her claims make me feel like she isn't really talking about the original article that touched off all this debate in the first place.
All of this is so frustrating. The obsolete question seems like the wrong framework to even be dealing with this issue. We need to celebrate gains (especially for queer women, women of color, disabled women, etc.) and acknowledge all the work that needs to be done. Men are not inherently anything; it's all cultural, so they can't be obsolete; the only thing obsolete is the way some of them have been raised.

Hope Springs Eternal

So Hanna Rosin's article last year called "The End of Men" was just this totally talked about piece. And it poses some interesting theories, which I found myself revisiting when I read this interview with her.
I'd like to start off by saying that I find no use for men. By this I mean I find no use for the stereotypical bro/vague jerk that most men are. The only men I like are men who act like women and certain flavors of gentlemen. Otherwise, they just a waste. One of the problems I have with this article is its broad category of men. Even my categories are too broad for generalization, so this one is too.
At one point in the article, there's discussion of how men are nowhere near as successful as women, but there still people's boyfriends. And I find this troublesome because I don't want a deadbeat, and frankly, I don't think that should be heterosexual women's one option: someone useless. I'd rather be alone. I'd rather be with someone with goals, even if those goals exist outside of a capitalist framework of valuable work.
I also dislike the assumption that men are somehow going to have less cultural or political power just because they're losing other power. I suspect that male-centrism will probably hold on pretty tight, and there will unfortunately be plenty of women who, with false conscienceness, will let them. And you know, just because women are making money doesn't mean they are controlling it. Women's labor has been more prevalent for a much longer time than Rosin is talking about, but it hasn't been paid. Also, thinking of it within a framework of capitalism is misleading anyway, since everyone within a capitalist system is inherently oppressed.

Jane Austen's Bad Girls

So I read this really interesting little discussion of Jane Austen's bad girls. What struck me about these articles is that often Jane Austen's bad girls are bad for pursuing sex outside of marriage, which automatically makes them bad (and, you'll notice, are always punished for, both by society and by the men who sleep with them.) And, really, that's something I honestly can't get behind.