+ Newspapers in my home state may be folding. (Quote: “Soon Jersey residents will have to go back to getting all their news from Springsteen lyrics and Kevin Smith movies.”)

+ Knit historical tyrants.

+ This tool that analyzes browser history is 95% certain I am female.

+ We haven’t done a Polygamist Watch in a while. Check out these photos in the Times about the women of FLDS. Also, practices are being defended in court. Also, Warren Jeffs got indicted.

+ When Batman was gay.

+ Corollary: How awesome was The Dark Knight? I know, right?

+ This will make you happy:

*sigh* I’ve been out of town without my computer. Here’s what’s come up since last we met:

+ Studying E. coli is demonstrating interesting things about evolution.

+ Is the New York Magazine cover with the girls from SATC with duct tape over their mouths telling the movie to shut up or telling women to shut up?

+ Polygamist Watch! Kids allowed to go back to their parents, but there were a few proven cases of sexual abuse. The church won’t accept marriages of underage girls anymore, allegedly.

+ Cool random historical thing: Construction in my neighborhood is unearthing some old trolley tracks.

+ And speaking of odd historical things: pneumatic tubes in New York.

+ And also from historical New York, the 1840s equivalent of a skin mag.

+ And also bad driving in 1928. Look out for the cameo by a constipated-looking Babe Ruth!

+ Blogging is good for you! I should do it more!

+ Props to the MBTA! The Boston transit authority is running ads targeting harassers.

+ You might be going to hell if you’re a sports fan.

Some of this has been sitting in my queue for five days or more. Apologies if this is old news.

+ Terrifying story of a girl who was attacked after rebuffing a cat-caller.

+ One woman combats street harassment by getting naked.

+ Polygamy watch! Creepy photos of Warren Jeffs and his child brides. And an appellate court ruled last week that Texas had no right to take the children, but did not order that the children be returned. Hmm.

+ A desk for fun-loving executives.

+ Speaking of corporate stuff, watch this video from 60 Minutes on Millenials”

So, here’s the thing. Millenials were, according to this segment, born between 1980 and 1995. I was born in 1980, so I guess that includes me, but my personal experience is so far removed from these kids who allegedly arrive at the workplace unprepared and yet entitled. Some of these shenanigans would have gotten me fired but quickly from some of my previous jobs. (Also, you know, I started working when I was 16 and spent the better part of my middle teenage years on a competitive debate team where there were definitely winners and losers, so I guess I managed to escape the expectation that everything should be handed to me.)

One thing I do like: there’s a movement away from sacrificing all to The Corporation. Of course, someone grumbles about the economic consequences of that, but I would argue that letting your workforce breathe occasionally would actually increase productivity, because you’d have a pool of well-rested eager people working for you instead of strung-out disgruntled people.

Thoughts?

+ This makes me laugh every time I look at it.

+ Is it just me, or are there a lot of copyright infringement lawsuits going on right now? Here’s one: Starbucks is suing the Rat City Rollergirls to change their logo. Judge for yourself, but the only similarity I see is that both are… round?

+ A gay superhero may be coming to TV.

That’s all for now. You ever notice how these quickies posts have no theme?

+ PZ Myers noticed that the romance genre is lousy with vampire novels. People I know in the industry are saying vampires are so last year, so PZ is late to the party. The trend now? Werewolves.

No, seriously. I am not making that up.

+ Interesting post up on Galleycat contemplating the relative merits of having a separate African American section in the bookstores. I don’t know. I guess I can see having a separate table, just like you’d have a table of books by women or a table of books about baseball, but shouldn’t all novels be shelves in their appropriate genre regardless of who wrote them? I mean, yeah, Toni Morrison belongs on the same shelf as Faulkner and Hemingway, but also, there are plenty of trashy novels written by white writers that we’re calling “fiction” these days, so why segregate? The argument for a separate section seems to be that customers would like to more easily locate black writers, but… I don’t know. Do your research before you go to the bookstore? Or ask me, I can tell you some good ones.

+ Polygamist watch! A second teen mom gives birth; she claims she’s 22, authorities think she’s actually 17, and this was her third child. — Tricky economics on the compound.

+ Current TV has an awesome take on yogurt ads targeted towards women. Best line: women who eat yogurt have that gray-hoodied, “have a masters but then I got married.” Indeed.

I mean, come on. You can’t deny that “In the Air Tonight” is a great song.

+ A friend of mine is working at Starbucks part time, so stories about Starbucks are much more amusing than they might otherwise be to my non-coffee-drinking self. Thus I knew about the new (old) Starbucks logo even though I am not a frequent Starbucks customer by any stretch. And the logo (which always makes me think about Leviathan) has boobies. So, of course, some crazy Christian group is boycotting.

+ fshk blog idol Toni Morrison sets the record straight about calling Bill Clinton “the first black president.”

+ Interesting story on NPR about raising boys who want to be girls in different ways. One kid got hurt on the playground for playing with a Barbie, so the mom and the psychologist worked hard to socialize the boy as a boy. The other boy’s parents are letting him be a her, and she seems to be all the happier for it. Makes you think about trying to stick kids in specific gender boxes.

+ Presidential candidates as represented by groups of New Yorkers. My favorite comparison? “John McCain Supporters and Tourists Who Stop in the Middle of the Goddamn Sidewalk”

+ Some history for ya: Evelyn Nesbit as forerunner of Lindsay Lohan: here’s a woman whose whole career happened from age 14 to age 21, attracting public scandal and being indirectly responsible for the murder of one of New York’s great architects. Well, so, I guess Paris, Lindsay, or Miley haven’t gotten anyone killed. Yet.

+ Polygamy Watch: Creepy story about teen cult led by a scraggly old guy. The clips will make your skin crawl. — Tim Gunn on polygamist fashion — Of the teen girls taken from the Eldorado ranch, nearly half have babies or are pregnant.

+ I just thought this was interesting: Ashley White was featured in the movie Spellbound, but her dream was deferred more or less by the birth of her daughter. Now she’s finished college and plans to do more. There’s a lesson in here about race and opportunity, but I’ll let you ponder it out.

+ Speaking of race, Mildred Loving died recently. (See Jezebel) When I was in high school, all seniors were required to take this basic civics class, and we watched the cinematic classic Mr. and Mrs. Loving starring Timothy Hutton and Lela Rochon. I kid, but it was actually pretty good for a made-for-TV movie. I remember it being one of those, “How could that have ever happened?” moments for me, as I hadn’t realized at age 17 that there had been a time so recently that people could not marry who they loved. Hey, wait, we still live in that time. *sigh* Anyway, Mildred Loving was a trailblazer and deserves to be recognized as such.

I mean, come on. Is “Against All Odds” not one of the greatest breakup songs ever? You know you sing it in the shower.

+ Chocolate may help prevent heart disease in women and preeclampsia in pregnant women. Awesome!

+ Someone’s been altering ads on the subway and turning them into art. Awesome!

+ Fox News gets the wrong Douglas. Dumb!

+ Galleycat asks why JK Rowling isn’t suing everyone who does anything related to Harry Potter, like the wizard rock bands. My guess is that JKR is suing the Harry Potter Lexicon people because they intend to publish a book similar to the encyclopedia she intends to write specifically, but still. Voldemort can’t stop the rock! Awesome!

+ Want to feel sad about how little you’ve accomplished? Here’s a list of things some people accomplished by age 29. I’m turning 28 soon, so I feel pathetic. Sad!

+ “Women’s Fiction” book covers and disembodied female body parts. Maybe not what you think. I may have more to say on this topic later. Sexist!

+ More on the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints: Newborn baby of a teenage mom taken into custody; Boys may be getting abused, too. Scary!

Last night, I went with my mom to see The Dhamma Brothers, a documentary about a program to teach Vipassana meditation to inmates at a maximum-security prison in Alabama. She reviews the movie here and I don’t have a whole lot to add beyond that the movie’s main point, or what I took away from it at any rate, is that the US prison system is totally FUBAR and that it’s worth a look at possible alternative rehabilitation programs, even (or maybe especially) when they fly in the face of tradition or what’s been tried before. Teaching a Buddhist meditation method should not be controversial, even if it is being taught in the Bible Belt.

I thought a bit while watching the film about the goal of prisons. One of the subjects of the documentary commented that the prison is pretty much just a warehouse for men who have done bad things. So, is the goal of our penitentiary system to segregate criminals from the rest of the general population? And if that is the only goal, what do we owe the prisoners? I would argue humane conditions and hopefully freedom from violence, but what do we do beyond that? I don’t know the answer. If the goal of the prison system is to rehabilitate, what is the purpose of life sentences without parole, or of the death penalty for that matter? If the goal of the prison system is to punish, what punishments are appropriate? I appreciate prison as a means of deterrence, also; don’t do crime because you will end up here. So prison should be bad to a certain extent, but is being locked up punishment enough? (Probably yes, thought I’m sure people will argue the point.)

This all has very little to do with the film, which doesn’t seem to take a stance beyond, “This particular prison is Alabama is really violent and this program got some dudes to mellow out a little bit so now there is slightly less violence. Success!” Well, that sells the movie short a little bit, I think it has a larger message than that, but that’s really about the sum of it.