Tuesday, September 10, 2013

The Good, the Bad, and the Curious (Links!)

Here's what I've been reading that's made me smile (The Good), cry (The Bad), and think (The Curious).

The Good

"What Does the Fox Say" went viral, and my daughter insisted on watching it so many times in a row that she literally fell asleep on my iPhone and then woke up imitating the noises. Speaking of those noises, did you know that the video is actually more or less scientifically accurate? Isn't that awesome?
 

 

At the age of 64, Diana Nyad swam from Cuba to Florida after having attempted the feat and failing several times since 1978.

This Guinness commercial is a nice change from the typical beer ad. Here's a good analysis.  



Lucky for all you single ladies, your dream man is advertising his availability on Craigslist.  

Sociological Images (one of my favorite blogs, ever) has instructor guides of their blog content organized by topic! 

The Bad

My state's (Missouri's) rising hunger statistics leave us with a depressing national distinction

A company that makes stickers and decals decided that the way to drum up business would be to create a realistic-looking decal of a woman hog-tied in the bed of a truck. It has even caused some drivers to call police to report a real abduction.

An 8-year-old child bride in Yemen died after the internal injuries she sustained on  her wedding night from her 40-year-old husband. 

A grown man shot an 8-year-old boy in the face while he was playing outside his own apartment complex in Texas.

The Curious

This Slate article examines the claim that women make 77 cents to a man's dollar and concludes that it isn't true

My colleague wrote a post for the other blog I co-write. In it, she makes a case for intrusive advising, including calling students when they miss class. It's a step I don't take, but she has me almost convinced that I should.

The feminist parody of Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" was banned from YouTube for a while because of its "inappropriate" content.  



Azie Mira Dungey takes her experiences acting as a slave at re-enactment projects and turns them into an unsettling, poignant, and funny video series called "Ask a Slave."

Some more thought-provoking (and hilarious) fitness coverage from The Toast:
So, okay, great, yay for me, feminism, etc., but what is the precise thing that makes changing your body through the adding of muscle cool and awesome and right-on, while trying to change your body by removing fat is kind of a miserable hellscape? This is where “strong is the new skinny” starts to become grating. Is it all the same thing? Well, no. I don’t really think it is. Ideally, being strong is about functionally improving your body’s ability to do things, as opposed to being about BITCHING TRICEPS. And you’re trying to add something to your body, instead of trying to remove something. You can make a decent case for it, and that’s the way I try to think about it. But I don’t know, I’m not a wizard, this is not a clean line for me. It’s very easy for me to decide that the thing I think about a lot is really healthy and good and fine, as opposed to the things I try not to think about anymore, and hard to know if you don’t wind up just swapping obsessions.
This op-ed on The Feminist Wire talks about our strange cultural responses to someone saying they have chosen not to get married or have babies:
 I’m always a bit baffled by this argument when it’s thrown at me, but I think the reasoning is something like this: competent parenting requires selflessness (correct), so if you choose not to parent you must be selfish (faulty logic). Let’s be honest here – weddings and procreation are the ultimate acts of me-me-me. I’m glad that other people do them, because I get to go to parties and do stupid voices with other humans’ small and pre-rational humans, but then I also get to go home to drink beer and write uninterrupted and book flights to Africa.
 Annie of PhD in Parenting has a great post about the complications of parenting and policing our children's food:
 Ultimately, I want them to care about their health more than they care about their cravings. But how do I do that when I haven't necessarily fully achieved that myself?
This is a great post from Offbeat Families about being a grandma and a new mom at the same time.


What'd I miss?

 

3 comments:

  1. The story about the child in Yemen makes me want to quit life. :/

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  2. I know. I actually couldn't even read it all in one sitting it made me so upset. I can't even wrap my head around a man who would want to do that and a family who would accept that for their daughter or the cultural and economic pressures surrounding the entire exchange. It is unfathomable for me.

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  3. Hey, Shell (the grandma) is a good friend of mine and an amazing writer and teacher! All of this is good stuff. Calling students is great practice, but we don't get paid enough to do that IMO. That's a common practice at proprietary education, fyi.

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