The reality is that America has a long history of welcoming immigrants who will never be able to check that white box on the census, and unfortunately that means America also has a long history of discrimination against those people regardless of their status in the country. So says Christian Lander, white Canadian American and [...] [Posted: 30 Apr 2010]
Abominations such as apartheid do not start with an entire population suddenly becoming inhumane. They start here. They start with generalizing unwanted characteristics across an entire segment of a population. They start with trying to solve a problem by asserting superior force over a population. They start with stripping people of rights and dignity – [...] [Posted: 29 Apr 2010]
Photo by notfrancois. Found on Flickr. French is now spoken mostly by people who aren’t French. More than 50 percent of them are African. French speakers are more likely to be Haitians and Canadians, Algerians and Senegalese, immigrants from Africa and Southeast Asia and the Caribbean who have settled in France, bringing their native cultures [...] [Posted: 25 Apr 2010]
So this week, Nightline decided to revisit the topic “Why Can’t a Successful Black Woman Find a Man?” Sigh. Please excuse me while I put my eyes back in place because you know I rolled ‘em. A problem with the panel Let’s begin with the panelists. Reppin’ for the ladies: Sherri Shepherd, a fantastic comedic [...] [Posted: 25 Apr 2010]
But it’s worth remembering that the advantages of homeownership are frequently exaggerated. The mortgage-interest tax deduction doesn’t eliminate the cost of borrowing money; it merely reduces it. The freedom to paint your house any color you wish comes with the responsibility of paying for a new roof when the time comes. The $15,000 or $30,000 [...] [Posted: 21 Apr 2010]
The myth of an avant-garde serves the same market forces avant-gardism pretends to overthrow. Art may challenge authority … But art doesn’t actually overthrow anything except itself, and never has, not in 19th-century France or 20th-century Russia or 21st-century China or Iran. Even when it manages to tilt popular thinking, it still ends up within [...] [Posted: 18 Apr 2010]
Resistance is what you begin to embody when the culture changes and you find that you stand for values that are no longer fashionable. … I don’t get up the morning and decide to resist. But I have an impulse towards critical speech and then the culture resists me. That is the counterintuitive truth about [...] [Posted: 17 Apr 2010]
Finally, always remember that it’s more important to be happy than to be rich. Sure, studies show that money generally increases well-being, and there’s nothing wrong with trying to have more, but don’t make choices that sacrifice your long-term happiness for the sake of a few bucks. Don’t work at a job you hate. Don’t [...] [Posted: 16 Apr 2010]
Try Donovan Schonknecht’s Amazon S3 PHP Class because it supports large uploads and doesn’t require PEAR. Set your Content-Disposition request header to ‘inline’ if you want files to display in your browser rather than forcing a download Use S3::inputFile() when copying data from a source file — when uploading, for example. You don’t need to [...] [Posted: 12 Apr 2010]
Our work must be not just about marriage equality, it should also be about equal marriages, and about equal rights and security for those who opt out of marriage altogether. From Melissa Harris-Lacewell‘s post Reflections on Marriage (via Twanna). Yes. Read the whole thing. Harris-Lacewell captures most of my fears and concerns about marriage and [...] [Posted: 8 Apr 2010]