Photo by Louise Rosskam, from the Library of Congress. Found on Flickr. Ask yourself: Can I afford to buy a house without financing? If I can’t afford to buy a house without financing, would I mind living in a house or my desired neighborhood for 15, 25 or 30 years (the probable length of your [...] [Posted: 27 Feb 2010]
Canada has shown it is possible to provide universal, publicly funded lifetime coverage, achieve better overall health outcomes and reduce health disparities while spending substantially less than the United States. From an economic standpoint, a system such as Canada’s makes sense. Canada’s universal health care and the Canadian social safety net combine efficiently to generate [...] [Posted: 25 Feb 2010]
I just want women to know they aren’t alone & if they *aren’t* super sad like everyone says you should be, it doesn’t mean you’re inhuman Angela “Anti-Theist Angie” Jackson on why she is live-tweeting her medical — meaning with RU-486 instead of surgery — abortion. That’s some brave sh*t. Also see: Angie’s blog, the [...] [Posted: 25 Feb 2010]
The evidence presented here powerfully refutes the widespread popular belief that America’s Hispanics have high crime rates. Instead, their criminality seems to fall near the center of the white national distribution, being somewhat higher than white New Englanders but somewhat lower than white Southerners. Taken as a whole, the mass of statistical evidence constitutes strong [...] [Posted: 24 Feb 2010]
So now that credit card companies have to limit interest rates and overdraft fees, some industry analysts suggest that they will hike international transaction fees. And who will go to bat for us poor, widdle upper-income international travelers to get these fees regulated? Exactly. Which means your only one recourse is to use a card [...] [Posted: 24 Feb 2010]
Oppression renames its victims, brands them as a farmer brands his cattle with a common signature. It always aims to subvert the individual spirit and the humanity of the victim; and the victim will more or less struggle to remove oppression and be free. Nigerian author Chinua Achebe in his essay “Spelling Our Proper Name,” [...] [Posted: 23 Feb 2010]
And in the absence of alternative models of masculinity, many low-income men will compensate for their lack of respect and resources by cultivating a hypermasculine identity that scorns traditional definitions of responsible manhood. Stephanie Coontz, in “For Women, Redefining Marriage Material: The Good and the Bad” on the New York Times’ Room for Debate blog. [Posted: 22 Feb 2010]
Score one for the choicers — for now. Oklahoma County District Court struck down an abortion law ruling that the law addressed too many topics, and therefore violated the Oklahoma constitution’s “single-subject” rule. But what galls me? This shit right here: One of the most contentious parts of the law was the creation of a [...] [Posted: 22 Feb 2010]
If we think we have physical imperfections, obsessing about them is only destructive. Low self-esteem involves imagining the worst that other people can think about you. That means they’re living upstairs in the rent-free room. — Roger Ebert [Posted: 18 Feb 2010]
One reaction is to diversify: Hotmail instead of Gmail, MapQuest instead of Google Maps, AOL Instant Messenger instead of Google Chat ’ though that would mean losing the accumulated benefits of linked services. Another reasonable response is to focus efforts on improving our (new) media literacy so that we’re more mindful of how much even [...] [Posted: 18 Feb 2010]