1. Evolution of the female orgasm: a more serious essay than most on this topic.
2. Funnier than the Frankfurt School.
3. Totalitarianism Today, by Alina Stefanescu Coryell, back up and running.
4. A very good Twitter comment.
5. University of Michigan to go smoke-free.
University of Michigan to go smoke-free.
If you’ve been on UM’s campus in Ann Arbor, you know that campus and city buildings and streets are all mixed together. The idea of campus police running around and trying to bust students smoking cigarettes while walking along the sidewalks is ridiculous. Well, it’ll provide students a cheap, easy form of rebellion anyway.
UM’s North Campus (engineering, music, art, and architecture) is set off by itself and is fairly large. So for people that work at North Campus this is fairly significant.
The state of North Carolina banned smoking within 100 feet of campus buildings last year. At UNC-Chapel Hill, that effectively means that the only place on campus where you can smoke is in the very center of the quad, at a flagpole. Everyone gathers around it to smoke, and cigarettes are littered all around the quad center now. At least UMich is all-out banning it rather than going for the 100-feet strategy.
“We will be deliberative as we enact this change, with input from the campus community on how best to put our new policy into practice, ensuring that the needs of our University’s varied constituents are understood.”
I’m sick of bullshit.
5. I knew I wanted Michigan to go the freak down. But, deep down inside I knew it wasn’t because I hated freaking…smoke-belching…crash-killing auto-freaking-mobiles! I wish we could ban the producers of second-hand logic from the country. Go ban smoking 100 feet from the gotdam coal plants in China you freakwits.
It’s fine if universities want to rape the students, they’ll be gone in a few years and the new ones won’t know any better. And god knows, if you couldn’t bend over grad students there wouldn’t be a research university system as we know it, but professors shouldn’t have to put up with this bullshit.
How ’bout this. “Would you mind not smoking here” or “Maybe I’ll go over there.” No problem. I used to think people were just mean to me in particular, but I’m getting to the age where I realize that the only reason people aren’t more a-hole than they already are is that they just don’t have the time. We have this twit who keeps complaining about people smoking outside the building near his office because it gets blown in and he has to smell it. I mean, why should he have to smell a little smoke just so smokers could have the joy of standing out in the cold and rain. Could they make the building positive pressure? Hell no, why would they do that, it’s only a gotdam bio-lab building.
3. “What proves less understandable is the disconnect certain American Christians eagerly draw between the value of a life in embryo and the value of a life once it reaches its mother’s arms.”
It is very understandable. They are mistaken about the threat posed by outsiders and the reflexivity of aggression toward them.
“Abortion For the record, the life of a fetus is not more sacred than the life of a human being.”
Correct, it is exactly equally as sacred.
The OLC torture memos: Everything you wanted to know and should regret.
The OLC torture memos are causing ceaseless amounts of distress across the blogosphere. For those who have trouble imagining the efficiency of bureaucracy in carrying out evil, the memos prove an exquisite reminder.
Current Attorney General Eric Holder released a statement for the Obama administration claiming that ‘It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department.’
(Now we know what the change artist thinks about them, btw)
But what does everyone else think about the OLC memos?
* Andrew Sullivan was horrified, bringing Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil” to bear on the question of moral culpability.
* Digby felt like “vomiting”.
* Yglesias called the memos “chilling reading”.
* Kevin Drum felt “ill”.
* Craig Crawford thinks the Bush administration “needed a shredder”.
* John Hinderaker was impressed by “the concern that is shown for the health and well-being of the detainees”.
* Hugh Hewitt thinks everyone is blowing the torture stuff out of proportion when what is truly astounding is (get this) the “hypocrisy” of the legislators on the Hill. Only an intern could make such naive remarks.
* Glenn Greenwald believes citizens must push for “the law to be applied”.
* Dday criticizes the Obama administration for ignoring the Nuremberg precedent in granting immunity to certain members of the CIA who acted in accordance to orders.
* Steve Benen says criminal charges should be pursued against Bush-buds who sanctioned the torture.
* Firedoglake created a petition.
* Jeff Emmanuel refuses to call “torture” what he experienced during fraternity rush, military training, and other life moments.
* Carol Platt Liebau thinks releasing the torture memos will have “adverse effects on our national security”. As if everyone in the Middle East isn’t already quite familiar with the US policy on torture. As if the only people in the world who aren’t familiar with this policy don’t live right smack in the middle of it.
* Andy McCarthy prefers secrets.
* Ed Morrissey makes a good point: “Bybee and the OLC were asked what interrogators could do within the law, and instead the OLC reverse-engineered a legal opinion to allow them to violate it. I understand why they did, but it still violated the statute. That’s what was wrong with John McCain’s assertion that a president could just break the law and hope Congress justified it later, rather than rewrite the statutes to make plain what could be done in the ‘ticking time bomb’ scenario. The law is supposed to hold all people equally accountable. If we foresee a need to work outside the law, then change the law to make sure it covers those situations.”
* Steve Hynd makes a sound point about the missing discussion of sensory deprivation techniques.
* Experimental Theology delves deeper into Arendt’s “banality of evil” for answers, and better questions.
* Obsidian Wings puts the torture in perspective with actual physical evaluations of the victims made by physicians.
And Tyler Cowen felt like…ummm…pondering gay marriage, I guess. Goodwill is a form of currency and not divorced from economics. Maybe it even has something to do with global breakdown of free trade, probably one of the top 3 or 5 reasons for prosperity.
2. On a happier note, Autotune the news couldn’t have been better if they included the puffin.
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