What is the most effective thing the government could do to immediately lower the number of rapes committed in America?

Stop putting people in prison because of drugs.

Bonus question: where do you think the most entrenched rape culture is in this country today?

Quick thought: Yale should never be the most prestigious university, because then the ruination of its student body will be complete.

The monochromatic era was nasty, brutish, and short

http://www.theawl.com/2012/05/visualizations

Let's play a little game. Think about the First World War for a minute. Good. Now think about the Renaissance. Okay: Which one did you think of in black and white? Did I just BLOW YOUR MIND? Anyway, yes, the reasons are obvious, but it's still kind a neat trick.

h/t TKB

Apropos the TSA

A hat tip to DLB for this one: http://www.marriedtothesea.com/index.php?date=052812

Why suburbs suck

This article hits the nail on the head:

The result of this structure is that people only meet people they want to know.

The entire idea behind suburbia is the exile of important features of regular life from geographic proximity to the home. Because the car has enabled us to move between great distances with a relatively low cost, the dichotomy between "access" and "no access" has been broken by "significantly delayed access." And as a result, people end up at exactly the wrong distance to form communities. In a city, everything is easily accesible; in the country, only a few things are accessible, but they are all nearby. In the suburbs, everything is accessible, but accessing anything is a pain in the ass.

The result is the near impossibility of spontaneity. "Out" does not exist as a place in suburbia; the relatively high cost in time of transportation means that people perpetually exist in some particular place before retreating back at the end of the day to their far-away home. The consequence is the hyper-scheduling of life, the ordering of activities into predetermined blocks, and the play-date theory of adult life.

Unsurprisingly, the near-randomly selected members of a neighborhood rarely align with anyone's personal preferences for a social network, and so geographic communities are completely dissolved. It should surprise no one that "communities" that consist solely of a list of appointments are not communities at all.

NOW silent on fake SE Cupp photo, Roseanne not...

I stumbled across this today...

On Wednesday, we reported that Hustler magazine published a fake, explicit photo of conservative commentator S. E. Cupp in what they call the "Celebrity Gallery."In response to a tweet by Ms. Magazine's Robin Morgan, Green Party presidential candidate Roseanne Barr said defending conservative commentator S. E. Cupp "is more disgusting" than Hustler's explicit photo. "Larry Flynt and the editors of Hustler [have] the apparent IQs of inebriated gnats," Morgan tweeted Wednesday.Barr - who is running as a feminist candidate in the Green Party presidential primary - responded by saying "your defense of women who hate women is more disgusting than putting pics of penises in their mouths, excuse me!"Sandra Fluke and Planned Parenthood's political action committee have condemned the photo, but NOW has remained silent as Larry Flynt, the publisher of the magazine, defended it. (Article Here)

Ignoring the absurdity of Roseanne's comments, which I think speaks for itself, that NOW hasn't spoken up about this is unsurprising. NOW has proved itself to be an organization that prioritizes the left over women as a whole. In their mission statement, it says:

The purpose of NOW is to take action to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now, exercising all the privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men...IN THE INTERESTS OF THE HUMAN DIGNITY OF WOMEN, we will protest, and endeavor to change, the false image of women now prevalent in the mass media, and in the texts, ceremonies, laws, and practices of our major social institutions. 

It seems to me that an upcoming (and already very accomplished) commentator would have the support of an organization that wants equality and progress for women in this country, especially when the offense involves such a denigrating "false image." I would also think they'd support people like Sarah and Bristol Palin or Nikki Haley against relentless attacks over the past four years (see Bill Maher). 

By ignoring the plight of conservative women in America, NOW demonstrates it is a partisan organization that is looking out for its own political interests rather than the interests of women. While I disagree with much of NOW's perspective, standing up for hard-working women against attacks based on gender seems like something almost anyone can get behind. When the organization fails to do this by putting politics above the "human dignity" of women, I think NOW reveals something crude about its organization and destroys its credibility.

"Food science" strikes again

According to The Atlantic, the so-called Cornell Food and Brand Lab has discovered a way to get people to eat less potato chips:

Study subjects were divided into two groups. One group was told to snack on a set of unadulterated chips while watching a video; the other group watched the same video but munched on a supply of chips in which one in every seven chips was dyed red. Researchers then repeated the experiment, inserting a red chip for every five normal ones.

Apparently, test subjects eating red chips ate less overall than the people eating regular food. This is supposed to be some sort of great victory for science because now there's a convenient and easy way for chip companies to get their customers to eat less chips.

Leaving aside for a moment why any company would ever want to do such a thing, I just want to remind everyone how horrifying it is that there are so-called "food scientists" out there sitting in laboratories plotting new ways to "nudge" people into making FDA-approved correct healthy choices. And it's all funded primarily by tax money.

More Ammo

The Weekly Standard had the same thought on "Birther" statistics. (And when TWS comes out and calls right-wingers "kooky" for believing something, you know this "movement" has absolutely zero support among conservatives of any kind... it's the fringe of the fringe.)

People Believe the Darndest Things--and not just "Birthers"

If you exclude the Southern results of the Daily Kos poll, more Americans believe that Obama was born in Hawaii than believe in heaven--and in the northeast, more Americans believe Obama was born in Hawaii than believe in God. And no matter how you choose to analyze it, twice as many Southerners believe Obama was born in the US as believe he wasn't, 47% vs. 23%.

These "Birthers" exist but they are hardly a movement, they're not serious, and their beliefs are no more delusional than lots of other weird Americans. Being angry at a "Birther" is like arguing with the tin-foil hat homeless guy waving an "END IS NEAR" cardboard sign. But if the weird and disproportionate anger toward these crazies continues to exist, here are some more crazy statistics you can throw in people's faces when they are outraged that anyone could believe Obama was born in Kenya:

-- 34% of Americans believe in ghosts*

-- 34% of Americans believe in UFOs*

-- 29% of Americans believe in Astrology*

-- 25% of Americans believe in reincarnation*

-- 24% of Americans believe in witches

* Democrats are more likely than Republicans to believe in these things--by 8%, 5%, 14%, and 14%, respectively.

Furthermore:

-- 66% of Americans believe the JFK assassination was a conspiracy (Democrats more than Republicans by a 15% margin)

-- 36% of Americans believe 9/11 was an inside job

-- +25% of Americans age 18-25 expressed doubt that humans have been to the moon (6% of all Americans believe it was faked)

All of these numbers are a greater percentage of all Americans than the percentage of just Southern Republicans (23%) who believe Obama wasn't born in the US--and if you exclude the Southerners (4-7% everywhere else) these comparative percentages are far larger.

People believe some ridiculously stupid things, and it cuts across party lines. The only thing Bill Maher got right was that every crazy idea can get traction with some group of people. But it has nothing to do with "the religious right" or the far-right wing, it's just incidental to this particular issue. And if you balk at that, look at those numbers above and tell me Republicans are the crazy ones on some of those beliefs.

Good ol' sloppy Joe

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Ukraine on Monday to reassure its leaders that Washington has not forgotten the country (Moscow Times)

High bar there.

The streets of Kiev were shut down as a security precaution for Biden’s visit. Ordinary Ukrainians, however, were largely indifferent to the vice president’s arrival, and newspapers had little coverage ahead of his visit.

Keep up the good work. Note that Biden is supposed to have experience dealing with Slavs (SALT II, "lift and strike" Balkan strategy in the 90s, etc).

Obama was less than warm with Medvedev and Putin; now Biden is giving the impression that we'll "support" Ukraine in its NATO bids ("We are going forward, we have chosen a European path," - isn't Yushchenko just adorable?)-- hopefully they don't think "support" has anything to do with, y'know, aid- military or monetary.

Many observers say the combination of Russia’s base, Ukraine’s NATO aspirations, and Crimea’s mostly Russian-speaking population is a diplomatic tinderbox waiting to explode.

We'll get your back like we got Georgia's, no worries, man. And if the Russians turn off the gas again, oh, dude, we're so there.

It looks like the Ukrainians have come off their 2004 Orange Revolution high, though, so maybe they'll be smart enough never to buy into western promises. Otherwise it looks like all we've done this month is piss everyone off and set ourselves up to disappoint.

In other news, even Britney Spears is smart enough to keep her kids out of Russia.

After the St. Petersburg gig, where she played to 15,000 fans at the Ice Palace, Spears immediately left the country, deciding to spend the two nights before her Moscow show in Stockholm instead. A spokesperson in Moscow confirmed that she left the country between gigs.

There's almost too much warm fuzziness going around. My oh my.