Because *somebody* has put off doing her CLE until the last minute.
In the meantime, enjoy some links:
Gary Taubes in the NYT Magazine about the limitations of epidemiological studies when it comes to diet, exercise, and other health matters.
Jeralyn Merritt and Glenn Greenwald discuss former U.S. District Judge Michael Mukasey, who’s being floated as a candidate for Attorney General. Surprise! He’s actually not a party hack. We shall see.
Jesse Wendel has a little more evidence that evolutionary biology psychology [oops -- z.] is pretty much crap, and all those “innate” differences between men and women may not be so innate after all.
Sara Robinson riffs off a Susie Bright piece on why political wives stand by their men.
Amanda has some thoughts on “the personal is political.” See also tigtog.
Jane Smiley reviews The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. The Guardian also has a special feature, with excerpts from the book and opinion pieces both agreeing and disagreeing with her thesis.
Katherine Mieszkowski at Salon has a piece about Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, who claims that bike and pedestrian paths are stealing money from roads and bridges, and led to the collapse of that bridge in Minneapolis.
Over at Shakesville, Jeff Fecke has a terrific post on the trial of FLDS sect leader Warren Jeffs and the testimony of a young woman who was married off to a much older man she didn’t want. When he raped her, she sought help from Jeffs, who told her her duty as a wife was to submit. He’s got another post about male entitlement, which shows that you don’t need to be a separatist fundamentalist to think women are your playthings. Trigger warnings apply.
On a lighter note, I made some fantastic soup this weekend.
I assume you mean that evolutionary psychology is crap. Evolutionary biology is not crap.
Er, not sure if this went through before…
I assume you mean evolutionary psychology is crap. Evolutionary biology is not crap.
Lovely, it doesn’t seem to want to show my comments or even deign to inform me that they’re being held for moderation.
I think “evolutionary biology” in the fifth paragraph should be changed to “evolutionary psychology.”
Fixed!
Sorry, Anne, you got sent to the spam filter for some reason.
Oh, so *that’s* how the spam filter takes action. Weird.
WTF?
Bike and pedestrian projects make bridge repair funds unavailable? Do these people ever listen to what they are saying? Or do they believe that the U.S. citizenry are really that stupid as to believe the lies?
Well, I’m currently living in a country where there are bike lanes on every street, wide pedestrian sidewalks, and amazing public transportation — and as a result, Germany is notorious for it’s horrible roads, totally slow highways, and extreme inefficiency.
Except, wait, not at all. It’s the most efficient and well-run place I’ve ever seen. But they’re efficient and they have great infrastructure because German citizens accept the fact that if you want things to work well, you have to pay for them. And so taxes are high. But you can get where you’re going easily, everything is environmentally-friendly, and bridges aren’t collapsing and killing people.
Transportation funding is not fixed. We can increase funding to bridge repairs and we can fund pedestrian projects. But our enormous debt from our little Iraq project isn’t helping us to do much of anything domestically.
I really really wish there were a term out there to denote the silly gender essentialism that calls itself “evolutionary psychology” that doesn’t tar the entire discipline with the same brush. There are plenty of people studying evolutionary psychology that don’t let wishful thinking and stereotypes dictate their results. They just don’t get any press.