Photo by Kay Gaensler. Found on Flickr. Read: “My Lost Decade, Part I” For years, I have questioned whether it was me or the city. I thought my own inability to create deep, intimate friendships or find a community was internal. But I noticed something curious when I traveled. When I am away from Atlanta, [...] [Posted: 30 Nov 2010]
Photo of downtown Atlanta by stuckincustoms. Found on Flickr. I moved to metro Atlanta 10 years ago. Compared to the small, rural South Carolina town I was living in, Atlanta was, and is, a booming metropolis. Being a Strong Island native, I missed people and traffic and things to do besides attend church on Sunday [...] [Posted: 29 Nov 2010]
African? American? Both? Or neither? “Black” seems to be an accepted hybrid term that falls short of claiming either entity yet still denotes exceptionalism in this society. Nonetheless, this ambiguity isn’t entirely neutral, as black people generally seem prone to distance themselves more from Africa, than America — either consciously or sub-consciously. So says Malik [...] [Posted: 25 Nov 2010]
But when it comes to abortion I am the one that wears the pants in the decision because in the end it would be me going through the procedure. Even though my husband’s opinion and beliefs matter to me, I, as the one carrying the baby have the final say about my body and our [...] [Posted: 25 Nov 2010]
Ad agencies are notorious for exploiting, and then burning out, their employees. Employees are expected to work long hours, work weekends, and exhibit a willingness to drop anything in order to serve a client. For me, that’s the money quote from Peter Merholz‘ post The Pernicious Effects of Advertising and Marketing Agencies Trying To Deliver [...] [Posted: 24 Nov 2010]
And many slaveholding Southerners begin to realize that that means that many whites cannot afford to gain entry into the slaveholding system any more. A book published in 1857 by a white South Carolinian, a deep racist named Hinton R. Helper, argued that non-slaveholding Southern whites ought to wake up to their economic exploitation by [...] [Posted: 15 Nov 2010]
Taste is not stable and peaceful, but a means of strategy and competition. Those superior in wealth use it to pretend they are superior in spirit. Groups closer in social class who yet draw their status from different sources use taste and its attainments to disdain one another and get a leg up. These conflicts [...] [Posted: 14 Nov 2010]
They don’t care that these mortgages wouldn’t have been available in the first place if the banks hadn’t found a way to sell oregano as weed to pension funds and insurance companies. Matt Taibbi just made me snort laugh. I know someone who actually did cut his weed inventory with oregano to boost profits. The [...] [Posted: 13 Nov 2010]
CodeIgniter 2.0 – Now with more Awesome CodeIgniter drops support for PHP 4 and now requires PHP 5.1.6 or greater. An Open Letter to the White Right, On the Occasion of Your Recent, Successful Temper Tantrum Anti-racist essayist and activist Tim Wise lays a verbal smackdown on the Republican’s right-most wing while pointing out that [...] [Posted: 12 Nov 2010]
All my life I’ve heard Latin America described as a failed society (or collection of failed societies) because of its grotesque maldistribution of wealth. Peasants in rags beg for food outside the high walls of opulent villas, and so on. But according to the Central Intelligence Agency (whose patriotism I hesitate to question), income distribution [...] [Posted: 7 Nov 2010]