Though no one would ever think of using the term honor violence (we reserve that descriptor for brown people who live somewhere else, motivated by religious something-or-other or tribal something-or-other), one-third of women murdered every year in the United States are killed by their intimate partners. In 2005 that amounted to 1,181 women, or three women every day. To put that in perspective, the UN estimates there are 5,000 honor killings every year in the entire world. 5,000 in a world of 6 billion versus nearly 1,200 in a single country of 300 million. In other words, a woman in America runs a greater risk of being killed by her husband or boyfriend than a woman in Pakistan.
A woman in America runs a greater risk of being killed by her husband or boyfriend than a woman in Pakistan.
How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Feminists. (via popmuslim)
A woman in America runs a greater risk of being killed by her husband or boyfriend than a woman in Pakistan.
A woman in America runs a greater risk of being killed by her husband or boyfriend than a woman in Pakistan.
A woman in America runs a greater risk of being killed by her husband or boyfriend than a woman in Pakistan.
(via silverqueen)
Let me reiterate that for you all …
A woman in America runs a greater risk of being killed by her husband or boyfriend than a woman in Pakistan.
A woman in America runs a greater risk of being killed by her husband or boyfriend than a woman in Pakistan.
A woman in America runs a greater risk of being killed by her husband or boyfriend than a woman in Pakistan.
(via dank-potion)
I think you’ve missed a crutial point though, let me point it out:
A woman in America runs a greater risk of being killed by her husband or boyfriend than a woman in Pakistan.
A woman in America runs a greater risk of being killed by her husband or boyfriend than a woman in Pakistan.
A woman in America runs a greater risk of being killed by her husband or boyfriend than a woman in Pakistan.
(via themindislimitless)
This is false. Reported intentional homocide rate in Pakistan 2010: 7.3 per 100k. Reported intentional homocide rate in US 2010: 5.0 per 100k.
That’s just reported. The US has one of the best crime reporting infrastructures in the world and has a fairly open stance with regard to dissemination of crime statistics. Pakistan does not.
So unless you believe honor killings constitute a vastly higher density of homocides in the US than they do in Pakistan (in which case I think you’re an idiot), then it is not true that a woman in America runs a greater risk of being killed by her husband or boyfriend than a woman in Pakistan.
Honor killings are bad. But I happen to believe that spreading incorrect and inflammatory information is not going to help stop them.
Garlic Bread!
Here’s what I need:
Garlic Bread!
And a new avatar icon!
…
And now I shall go take all my books and put them into a giant pile and dive into them!
And, by these things, I will be happy at 3:44 am.
It’s a uniquely American prudishness. You can write the most detailed, vivid description of an ax entering a skull, and nobody will say a word in protest. But if you write a similarly detailed description of a penis entering a vagina, you get letters from people saying they’ll never read you again. What the hell? Penises entering vaginas bring a lot more joy into the world than axes entering skulls.
Just signed up for this. You should, too. →
Why?
1. It’s free
2. From the looks of things, it’ll cover quite a number of good poets
3. We can talk about cool poetry things
4. We can make fun of how uncool 3 is, both conceptually and as a sentence
5. If you follow the recommended prior-to-class reading, you’ll read “Song of Myself,” which should be required to be read by law if you’re going to attempt to write poetry anyway
6. Not to mention it’s brilliant. Especially if you read multiple drafts, even if it’s just the first and last. Which would require a good rainy weekend. But would be worth your time because it’s, at the very least, a deft display of editing.
6a. Which, admittedly, I’m not partial to in my own work most of the time (partly because of poetic principle, partly because of laziness, partly because of alliteration), BUT is important to know and recognize as an important part of writing.
7. Did I mention it’s free?
I’m in! …Too bad it doesn’t start til September. JEEZ. That wait is like… 0.5% of my life.
Tom Stafford takes a crack at that age-old question: Do we all see colors the same way? He makes sure to add in plenty of good biology, though, from the photoreceptors to the cortex.
Imagine the two of us, arm in arm, looking at a sunset, where the horizon is fretted with golden fire and the deep blue night encroaches from the opposite side of the sky. “What beautiful colours”, I say, and you agree.
And then, in the space of the following silence, I am struck by a worry. I can point at the sky and say it is blue, and you will concur. But are youreally seeing that blue the way I am seeing it? Perhaps you have just learnt to call what you see “blue”, but in actual experience you are seeing nothing like the vivid, rich, blue I see. You are an imposter, calling my blue by the same name as yours, but not really seeing it the way I do. Or, even worse, perhaps I am the one seeing a pale imitation blue, while you see a blue that is infinitely richer and more splendid than mine.
(via BBC - Future)
Just talked about this with a student of mine. She was like, “What if MY blue and YOUR blue are actually different colors?” I said, “Well. Blue is not a matter of subjective perception. It’s a matter of wavelength and intensity and these can both be measured with a machine.”
This article is much better and more interesting than my response.
Saturday, A Summary
Sleep from 5 am to 745.
‘Rest eyes’ in shower:
Declare life worst ever.
Work from 8:30 to 3:30.
Eat an awful Krispy Kreme donut somewhere there,
And ponder its inferiority to home-made bakery donuts
At Indiana (where grew up) and Blacksburg (where attended university).
Teach the little chilluns Le Chatelier’s principle, systems of equations, etc.
Return home and go to grocery store.
Visit family.
While visiting family, wield:
A) Kevlar-woven ‘Ove-Glove’ oven mitt
B) a wine glass with Malbec (that’s an Argentinian grape, mmm mmm tasty)
C) a toy Mjollnir, HAMMER OF THOR.
Chase two-year old nephew around,
Who be wielding the Shield of Captain America,
Scream, “THOR!” and throw at him as hard as possible,
Blithely ignoring child warnings: Do not hit or throw at persons and pets.
And simultaneously grill salmon with olive oil, encrusted with sesame seeds.
And later serve with panned spinach w/ sweet chili sauce (so good - trust)
And Parmesan smashed potatoes.
Later, sit at computer.
Write worst poem ever,
Declare: life best ever.
And scream THOR!,
For good measure.
A Duplicate Gene May Have Helped Our Brains Become “Human”
Among the ~25,000 or so genes in our genome, we find a handful of duplicates. Some of them, like the genes that make pieces of the ribosome (your cellular protein factories) are fully-functional exact copies. This allows your cells to make a whole mess of that gene product. But other duplicates are imperfect copies put there by accidents or errors, and often those copies can be a bit wonky.
One of those imperfect gene copies may have had a strong influence on our brains becoming more advanced and “human” during evolution. A group led by Evan Eichler looked at a gene called SRGAP2 and noted that it appeared to have been duplicated to a certain form about 2.4 million years ago, which is when the Homo lineage split from Australopithecus. That duplicate, called SRGAP2C, actually overpowers the function of the original gene.
Even cooler, when Franck Polleux at Scripps expressed that SRGAP2C in mice, it made their neurons look a lot more human! So perhaps when this imperfect duplicate popped up in our genome, it changed the way our neurons developed (as shown in the picture above). If those changes were significant enough, they could have helped our larger and more advanced Homo brains evolve beyond our simpler ancestors! It’s too early to make that claim just yet, but it’s a very cool idea.
This also means that because our neurons develop in a way that is so different from mice, we should reconsider whether they are a good model for disorders like autism. We may be looking at a brain that’s just too different from our own at its core.
For more, Ed Yong has some good coverage of this on his blog.
