Clipmarks | allisaurous's clips

On Female Athletes

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 02:20:50 GMT

clipped by: allisaurous

It seems that female athletes are either A. too manly, B. sexualized to the point where their athletic prowess no longer matters, or C. portrayed as suffering from the ultimate female problem: how to juggle work and family.

Bammer, ranked No. 29 in the world, is seen as remarkable not just because of her skill, but because she manages to have it all, a child, a boyfriend, and a career.

For these women to sell, and to be interesting to the general public, they have to be sexy. At least until they give birth, and then we can start puzzling out the difficulties of that equation.

Women who play sports, and do not conform to either the relate-able modern woman mold of the working mother or fall into the curvy sex pot role, must be either lesbians or secretly male.

Will female athletes ever be able to drop the female and be seen as just athletes

Tags: female, athletes, sports, jezebel, feminism, sexism, surfing, tennis, athletics

More on healthcare

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 13:18:49 GMT

clipped by: allisaurous
clipper's remarks: Ever since I did a report on public radio I've been a huge fan of non-profit business models in industries dealing in the distribution of basic human rights. Healthcare is one of these rights, and to ensure the most honest and fair administration of healthcare, insurance companies should be non-profit.

Clip Source: www.washingtonpost.com

The key difference is that foreign health insurance plans exist only to pay people's medical bills, not to make a profit. The United States is the only developed country that lets insurance companies profit from basic health coverage.

Tags: healthcare, insurance, medical, medicine, non-profit, human rights

American Healthcare compared to Others'

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 13:05:44 GMT

clipped by: allisaurous

Clip Source: www.washingtonpost.com

In many ways, foreign health-care models are not really "foreign" to America, because our crazy-quilt health-care system uses elements of all of them. For Native Americans or veterans, we're Britain: The government provides health care, funding it through general taxes, and patients get no bills. For people who get insurance through their jobs, we're Germany: Premiums are split between workers and employers, and private insurance plans pay private doctors and hospitals. For people over 65, we're Canada: Everyone pays premiums for an insurance plan run by the government, and the public plan pays private doctors and hospitals according to a set fee schedule. And for the tens of millions without insurance coverage, we're Burundi or Burma: In the world's poor nations, sick people pay out of pocket for medical care; those who can't pay stay sick or die.

Tags: healthcare, socialism, washington post, insurance, medicine, medical

Wikipedia: A Good News Source

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 08:34:24 GMT

clipped by: allisaurous

Clip Source: www.cjr.org

Indeed, what Wikipedia provides, ultimately, is information, pure and simple. And, perhaps just as significantly, it provides the implicit assumption that ‘information, pure and simple’ is enough. An encyclopedia entry has no mandate for a ‘colorful lede.’ It has no instinct for conflict. It assumes its audience’s attention, rather than feeling compelled to earn it, painstakingly—word by dramatic word.

Tags: wikipedia, news, journalism, tv, media

Depth in Journalism

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 06:43:30 GMT

clipped by: allisaurous
clipper's remarks: From an article explaining the benefits of explanatory journalism

Clip Source: journalism.nyu.edu

Too often when journalists use the term “in depth,” their reference point is not the user’s missing knowledge or the depth of field required to actually grasp a story, but rather other quicker, shorter forms of news. I can’t even count how many TV journalists have patiently explained to me that “four minutes is a long time in network news.” And it is… relatively speaking. But if journalists continue to think this way—measuring “depth” by relative length—they will never fix what’s wrong with the news system.

Tags: news, journalism, tv, information

Changing the Journalism Model

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 06:33:28 GMT

clipped by: allisaurous

Clip Source: www.newsless.org

As long as the news is structured solely around what just happened, journalists are going to be fighting a rough battle. With a latest-news-only approach, we stoke demand for journalism by trying to snag people’s attention with each new development.

There’s another way, one that leads to a more informed and more loyal public, and allows us to do better work. It involves:

Enlarging the market for journalism by making it easier for more people to understand the longstanding facts behind each story.
Increasing the appeal of journalism by letting folks in on the details of our quest to uncover the truth.
Expanding the appetite for journalism by explaining what we don’t know, and what we’re working to find out.

As news consumers, we should be demanding these things as well. After all, right now we’re only getting the lamest part of the story.

Tags: news, journalism, newsless.org, healthcare

Beth Ditto on the way the market really works

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 03:17:39 GMT

clipped by: allisaurous

Clip Source: jezebel.com

If people think you're rich they give you things. If they think you're poor, they don't give you anything.

Tags: jezebel, beth ditto, money, fashion

Real people movement

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 22:14:23 GMT

clipped by: allisaurous

Clip Source: jezebel.com

And yet, when Susan Boyle or Lauren Luke takes off, it's a novelty. It's an aberration. The thought goes, what's going on with us that this appeals to you? You're supposed to like models! Doesn't it strike people that, as soon as we have access to self-produced media, the opportunity to make our own choices, we're choosing "average?" Editors know that actors sell more magazines than models: does it occur to them that this has to do with accessibility and presuming to know a bit more about them? That we relate even more to regular joes? Or is this a bridge too far? Sure, people still love the aspirational ideal, and always will. But I believe part of this is because that's what's presented, not just as routine, but with conviction.

Tags: beauty, lauren luke, jezebel, real people

Those times: 1981 & Suburban Lawns

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 05:40:44 GMT

clipped by: allisaurous
clipper's remarks: "your lead singer is practically catatonic"

Clip Source: www.dangerousminds.net

there’s my harder to quantify sense that those times felt more accommodating to musical oddness in general. Whether it was Wall Of Voodoo or The B-52s, oddness of a very real-feeling kind was nurtured, accepted. Allowed to thrive, shielded from the threat posed by a low score on Pitchfork. And in the case of Su Tissue, her genuine oddness feels very different to me than the coolly calibrated oddness of Pink, Gwen, or Avril. Theirs is an oddness without any mystery at all—self-possession for the sake of self-possession. But all this, of course, is not to say that oddness and self-possession of a more authentic kind isn’t alive and well today.

Tags: music, suburban lawns, new wave, su tissue

Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog; SUBLIME

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:08:37 GMT

clipped by: allisaurous
clipper's remarks: This is me, standing on the edge of Dead Man's Bluff in Lincoln Park, SF.

Clip Source: www.boingboing.net

In time, the sublime came to be associated with Romanticism, especially German Romanticism. The 19th century German landscape painter Caspar David Friedrich is the poster boy for brooding, fog-haunted sublimity. His "Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog" (1818) is a textbook example of the human psyche overwhelmed by the illimitable vastness and awful grandeur of nature, whose monumental scale and mysterious workings and, more to the point, utterly alien lack of purpose (teleologically speaking, at least) or meaning (in any human sense, anyway) combined to make the viewer's sense of self dwindle suddenly to a guttering spark, alone in the cosmos.

Tags: sublime, caspar david freidrich, boingboing

Responce to the Princess Problem (Jezebel)

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 23:30:52 GMT

clipped by: allisaurous
clipper's remarks: What I dig most about princesses is the escapism and the beauty-- not the princess' beauty, but their dresses and stuff. So I guess that makes me materialistic, rather than vain.

Clip Source: jezebel.com

Tastes and attitudes change, children grow into adults, and can be encouraged to shed ideals, beliefs and fantasies (Santa Claus, digging to China) formed years before. Perhaps the overwhelming princess-ization of toys and media for girls is a problem, but can be solved by a good education, complete with teachings of critical thought and tossing aside of unrealistic expectations.

Of course, more "modern" gals like Mulan, Ariel in The Little Mermaid , Belle, and Pocahontas may act differently in the movies, but when marketed as Princesses? It's just about being pretty.

boys obviously don't identify with the princesses, but they know that princesses are girls and when they see that little girl out on the playground, aren't they going to automatically associate the two? and therefore expect all little girls to be pretty, to clean their houses, to depend on the boys to save them, to be dainty and sweet and quiet and have a strong moral compass?

Tags: disney, jezebel

Bees

Sun, 18 Nov 2007 21:04:03 GMT

clipped by: allisaurous

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

A successful male is a dead male. A failure lives to stagger home and beg to be fed and to try again tomorrow. After a week or so of lekking, that’s it. The drone is deemed a drain, and if he won’t die for love, he must die for its lack. “The workers will start withholding food, the male gets weakened, and at some point the workers will grasp him and dump him out of the hive,” said Gene E. Robinson, who studies bees at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Tags: bees, honeybees, nytimes, bee movie, male, men

Finger length determins SAT scores

Thu, 24 May 2007 01:11:03 GMT

clipped by: allisaurous
clipper's remarks: wtff

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

Kids with longer ring fingers compared to index fingers are likely to have higher math scores than literacy or verbal scores on the college entrance exam, while children with the reverse finger-length ratio are likely to have higher reading and writing, or verbal, scores versus math scores.

Tags: sat, science, wtf

Afterlife in Conclusion

Sat, 12 May 2007 02:57:56 GMT

clipped by: allisaurous

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

If we are to eventually have our answer, our proof, it will no doubt come to us courtesy of quantum theory, or whatever takes its place. Few of us will understand it well enough to take much comfort, however, if indeed comfort is what it offers. I recommend that you enjoy life without worrying about the "after" bit, and keep in mind that one day altogether too soon, bad luck or genetics will hand you the answer. In the meantime, be nice to sheep.

Tags: afterlife, soul, death, new scientist

More on the afterlife

Sat, 12 May 2007 02:56:33 GMT

clipped by: allisaurous

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

If consciousness is energy, then I suppose you don't need proof that it survives death, because proof already exists: the First Law of Thermodynamics - energy is neither created or destroyed. Though it's hard to take much comfort from this. Who wants to spend eternity as a blip, a gnat's fart, of disordered energy, with no brain at your disposal to help you remember or imagine or solve the Sunday crossword? What would it be like? Would there even be a be? Nahum uses the analogy of the computer: perhaps you'd be the operating system, stripped of its programs and interfaces. Heaven as the back of the closet where the broken-down Dells and Compaqs go.

Tags: soul, energy, thermodynamics, gnat