sundries

[rm]

Rape and violence against women in post-earthquake Haiti.

kalmn alerts us to the story of a Ghanaian king who rules from Silver Spring, MD. Also, the king's a woman.

Hey, if a woman has ever had sex and then talks about sex professionally it's apparently perfectly reasonable to call her a hooker (and no, the headline's later change to "good time girl" wasn't actually better):

"Last week the Independent ran a feature with the exciting headline 'I was a hooker who became an agony aunt'. Sounded fascinating. Another tart with a heart story, perhaps?

No, reading the piece indicated the headline was wrong.

The feature described blogger and sex writer Zoe Margolis, better known as the Girl with a One Track Mind. It focused in part on Margolis work as an ambassador for sexual health charity Brook, raising issues about sex and relationships with young people.

Zoe Margolis is not, and has never been, a sex worker."

Question: more earthquakes lately or more coverage of earthquakes? Does a 4.4 in LA really merit coverage on this coast, as an example? Being in a non-earthquake prone region (although we do get them sometimes and are technically on a fault like) I can't tell if it's the coverage or the planet lately. Anyone?

The rules for getting an exit-row seat on an airplane are very specific. Which doesn't stop random people from requesting (and getting) them so they can have more legroom. Now some airlines just want to sell the seats at a premium price. Why that's not the best idea.

We've all heard about the private contractor assassination squad thing, right? Or do we have outrage fatigue again? But seriously: "'While no legitimate intelligence operations got screwed up, it’s generally a bad idea to have freelancers running around a war zone pretending to be James Bond,' one American government official said."

Did we all see Hayworth being horrifically condescending and having trouble with the definitions of things like "facts" and "opinions" on Rachel Maddow last night? Seriously: when you say something says "quote-unquote" whatever, the words you are quoting need to actually BE IN THE THING WHICH YOU ARE QUOTING. When you say something is a quote, and those words aren't in the thing you are quoting you are somewhere between incorrect and lying. It is not a difference of opinion.

I'm sorta on a tear lately about people not grokking the difference between opinions and facts. On the one hand, I don't think people should have to say "in my opinion" before stating an opinion. It's obvious, isn't it, when someone says a piece of art is good or bad that they are expressing an opinion and the way it is expressed provides the viewpoint and how informed a perspective said opinion is coming from? Right? We all get that? Okay. But at the same time, between politicians who tell the people who call them on flat-out lies that they merely have a "difference of opinion" and fandom discussions in which people assume that their emotional response not only should be, but is, in fact, true for everyone else, I'm starting to get a little tetchy.

Apparently, this facts vs. opinions confusion is making other people really frustrated too. Via billijean.

Oh hey, here's another example. Fresno prof in trouble for teaching anti-gay opinions as facts. Article, sadly lacks enough details for me to properly outraged, however.

Oh, look at that, action on DADT seems to be languishing.

Our census form came in the mail last night. Must wait to send it in until we get our little Queer the Census sticker though.

Read this White Collar fic last night. I was moved. This may be a case of fic smarter than show. We'll see.

Oh! White Collar realization: Peter and El don't have kids. So I think Neal is supposed to be their Tina the Troubled Teen, but this being the Internet, we're all like "oh man, they are so doing it" as opposed to seeing it all as a parental/mentoring relationship. But they are so doing it.

Actorly people: I'm an AFTRA must-join. I've put off joining AFTRA for YEARS because they keep threatening to merge with SAG, but at this rate I feel like it's never going to happen. More and more of the cool shows that shoot in NYC are AFTRA. Should I just suck it up and pay the horrific AFTRA initiation fees already?

Comments

[delchi.livejournal.com]

On the one hand, I don't think people should have to say "in my opinion" before stating an opinion. It's obvious, isn't it

Not always. It can depend on the person that you are dealing with. I have to deal with people who generate " facts " that are nothing but converted opinions - because what they think is 'right'.

For example when people tell me " Gays are bad - the bible says so therefore it's a fact" I say no. That's an opinion based on a narrow interpretation of a book that's been translated - re-translated, edited and re-written at the whim of kings, theologists or anyone who wants to take a crack at it.

What makes a fact for a person like yourself - who deals in facts and the accurate reporting of them , or myself when I 'show my work' by citing sources is quite different from facts as delivered by people who are more passionate than accurate when they state things as fact.