politics – Page 7 – The Books are Taking Over…

Please, please read this Arthur Chu piece on “misogyny, entitlement and nerds”

Any of you people reading this blog, please go read this magnificent commentary in the Daily Beast by Arthur Chu (a fellow geek and historian famous for his Jeopardy appearances). It says so much that I could not possibly put into words myself, especially touching on the horrible event on that college campus in California and some of the strikingly awful responses to it generated by people who are overwhelmingly white, male, and angry, not to mention misogynistic on a scale that is literally hard for me to even comprehend.

If you are a nerd, and especially if you are a male nerd, you really must read it.

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The Internet tells me things

And today it has been telling me things with pictures. And so, I am telling them to you. A lot has been changing in the world and in our lives in the past few days, so you get pictures.

First, my favorite.

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A couple of clarifications

1) Yes, the bomb squad has had a busy day today in Boston. Yes, they did just blow up two things in controlled detonations (as in, within the last two minutes) at the Marathon Finish Line. Geoff and I are both fine and were nowhere near any of the controlled detonations today. Yes, there were more than just those two detonations, no, we were never in any danger.

2) To all the crazies/”patriots”/martyrs/whatever who think that today is a day for demonstrations of their ideologies by throwing backpacks full of stuff into random places: Go back under whatever rock you came from. We don’t want you, you will get caught and possibly killed, and your “message” just gets lost in the kerfuffle. Stop already, enough. April 15th is for paying taxes.

3) To the people heading up the security theater that now invades so much of our lives: I want my rights back. Catching the guy who tossed those backpacks into the middle of a heavily guarded street was no biggie. Stopping the guy who shot up KS yesterday? Not a whole lot of warning on that one despite his obvious history of hatred. Oh, and that was terrorism too, in case you missed the memo. Just because a white guy did it doesn’t mean it isn’t terrorism.

And finally, to leave the serious topics for a minute:

4) Geoffrey and Joffrey aren’t the same person, thank all the Gods. If you’re looking for information about the character on Game of Thrones who died, his name is Joffrey and that post is here. Geoffrey is my husband and he is a) not a psychopathic murdering boy king and b) very much alive.

~Kelly

ETA by Geoff: And c) I am very much loyal to the Starks and hate the Lannisters very very much. I am a true man of the North. Nyah.

As Long As an Unlivable Wage Exists, Someone Will Be Forced to Earn It

And as long as there are people willing to believe that we should just be thankful for work of any kind, this will continue. As long as there are people in positions of power who fight to keep the disenfranchised that way, this will continue. As long as those who claim the power, the money, and the moral high ground continue to do this, this will continue. I can refuse to apply for all the high skill/low wage jobs I want, but it doesn’t get my family any farther away from the edge when I stand on principle, it just means that somebody else more desperate is going to end up taking that job.

Wake up, America.

~Kelly

Mike the Mad Biologist

Image by Bettmann/CORBIS

In a society that lacks solidarity, misfortune, except that of the most random kind, is viewed as the fault of those who suffer from it. If we believe that poorly compensated workers somehow deserve lousy wages, then we absolve ourselves of the impoverishment we have inflicted upon them. Edward McClelland notes (boldface mine):

If you try hard enough, you can usually come up with a reason a low-wage worker doesn’t deserve to earn a living. If Kim Brown had been willing to move to Cleveland, she would still have her Web support job; if she had chosen a more marketable major than creative writing, she might have found full-time work in Chicago. But no matter Brown’s life choices, her $8.50 an hour job would still exist, not providing a living for someone else.

This is why the belief that education is the primary way to reduce…

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Internet in Greater Boston – fewer options for more money

Greater Boston, and especially our home of Cambridge, is undoubtedly one of the technology capitals of the United States, and certainly of the East Coast. And yet Kelly and I have struggled for years to find a decent, reliable Internet provider for a reasonable price. Currently we are using Comcast, because we simply could not get reliable service from Verizon no matter how hard we tried. It was depressing, but at least we figured it probably wouldn’t get any worse.

And then earlier this week I read that our Internet/phone/cable provider, Comcast, is going through yet another merger.

Sigh. No good can come from this.

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Today in Equality

With the opening of the Sochi Olympic games on Friday there are all sorts of things going on right now to remind us that the world is full of both hateful bigots (I’m looking at you, Putin) and wonderful people (Canada, Scotland, that would be you.)

This is what has popped up in the latter category in my various news feeds today. Enjoy.

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Recent news roundup- Political cartoon edition

These are mostly what has been popping up on my Google+ feed lately. Some of them are doozies. Enjoy.

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Poverty and the polar vortex

Today I read two very different but still related stories about things that happened in Hammond, Indiana due to the polar vortex. Both stories emphasize the plight of the working poor in the United States, and how extreme cold affects them in ways that many people may not have even considered.

The first was about a house fire that claimed the lives of three small children and put two others and their father in the hospital. The second was about a warehouse where workers were forced to continue working – without heat – even after the state had declared an emergency.

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This IS your Christmas Card

For a whole lot of very good reasons in the last few years, it’s proved impossible to get it together to send out our annual 100+ Christmas cards. Between the time investment, which requires starting shortly after Thanksgiving, and the cost of the postage, we just haven’t been able to do it. So, we’re going digital again this year. Yep, this is your card.

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VICTORY!

There’s been a lot of victory going around in the last few days, not the least of which was a few minutes ago when Geoff and I finally conquered the Massachusetts version of the ACA website. In the spirit of the season, it’s time to share some good news.

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