Articles of doom!

[conuly]

The Thanksgiving Wars? Just Say No
A holiday to recall our origins as immigrants
From powwows and sweat lodge ceremonies to church services, American Indians recognize Thanksgiving holiday in different ways. (Don't read the comments!
Having children abroad? Your country may not want them

The 9 most subversive children's books ever written. I must say, I don't agree with their analysis.

Backlash feared as some in GOP push social issues

Here's a very cute video of dolphins goofing around in front of a mirror

In a far corner of Greenland, hope is fading with the language and sea ice

TSA gets revenge on women who knows her rights, makes her miss her plane (Now with LJ commentary!)
And exactly how at-risk are we?

Africa is urbanizing.

So, here's this teen who wanted to blow up a tree-lighting ceremony. Don't read the comments. Note he didn't go after a plane - and why would he? There are so MANY options, and we can't defend against all of them. Useless to try. (You should also note that he failed. The system worked, and without strip-searching anybody.)
A fire has been set at his mosque. *sigh*

Lesbian cadet who quit seeks return to West Point

A bit on the unintended consequences of Prohibition
And a little more

And lastly, not an article, but pretty upsetting regardless: Woman on spectrum reports abuse- her credibility called into question...

Comments

[ginmar.livejournal.com]

Take the TSA and put them to work searching cargo holds and checked in luggage. Hand out free drinks in line, get the passengers loose and happy, thne spot the guy who's nervous.

[leora.livejournal.com]

I like the get the TSA doing something useful bit. Free drinks won't help everyone. (I, for one, would turn it down, nor does alcohol make everyone comfortable). But I do think if they're going to grope us, offering us drinks, flowers, and a meal is more appropriate than not doing so.

As to the books... not sure I like The Little Engine that Could one. So, all the male engines are either powerful or old, but too busy to do childcare and nurturing tasks. One female becomes unable to handle the childcare so another takes over and works really hard, all by herself, to make herself able to manage the incredible burden of caring for too many kids... how is that a good subversive message?

The one with the intern is horrible.

[ginmar.livejournal.com]

Free drinks would help enough people to make anybody who'd try anything stand out. Or just offer people chairs, newspapers, snacks, and so on. We're just not in that much danger. When has there been a suicide bomber on US soil? Where are the IEDs? If terrorists wanted to bomb anything, there's at least four points they're missing if they're trying to get on planes: the drop off point, the pick up point, the parking garage and the security line itself. The fact that they're not going after these weak points says that there's not too many people out there who are real threats. And I've dealt with real threats. These guys don't scare me.

[leora.livejournal.com]

Well, yes... we're not in that much danger. Especially not on the plane. Planes were a serious target once, because of the fuel, and the ability to use them as bombs, but that requires being able to fly them. The reinforcement of the cockpit doors changed things a lot. Now, I don't see why we treat them as any higher priority as any other large group of people as far as a target goes. If you do want to create terror, you can bomb any large group of people, and now and then, someone will try, and mostly fail, and every now and then succeed, and we'll still have far more people dying in car accidents.

*shrugs* Drinks would be good if they had a variety, including non-alcoholic. It would help make up for the fact that they stupidly confiscate them from you, so you can't bring ones with you and then have to pay extra high prices for them if you buy them in the airport.

I'm worried that the TSA is trying to extend its power, saying we need to protect trains and buses. If they do start "protecting" trains it will turn the US into a nearly unlivable place, since people won't be able to travel. And it'll be a huge increase in the degree to which the US is a police state (I view police statedom as a spectrum, most countries have some degree of it, but it becomes an issue if you have a lot). And the only country I could move to is Germany, and I don't speak the language (well, I could move to Israel, but I really don't want to, and I could try to move to Spain, but it'd be difficult and I also don't speak the language, so Germany it'd be) and I don't want to leave.

[ginmar.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's not just the TSA. It's the everything since the Patriot Act. They want power. And they want to make money off it.

[conuly]

Now, here's the question. Do they want the power as a means to make money, or is the money just a fun bonus?

[ginmar.livejournal.com]

Well, money is power. You can have power without money but money gets you a lot of power. They want both and they think if they have a lot of money, they should have power.

[leora.livejournal.com]

I'll vote for both too. But I also can't help but think of Eddie Izzard...

It's the American dream... to get a whole lot of money, stick it in your ears and go lalala! That's the American dream!

[leora.livejournal.com]

Alas, I agree. Although it probably goes much further back. It just significantly increased with the Patriot Act. It's kind of human nature.

It's just that the system of checks and balances set up in the US Constitution actually works pretty well. Not well enough (not nearly), but surprisingly well. But it did start getting really bad with the Patriot Act.

I have really been hoping things would improve, and I still do hope so. But it's hard holding out hope.

It has gotten quite bad before in the past. The 40s had internment of US citizens, the 50s had McCarthyism. I believe even up through the 70s it was common to take the children of natives away from their parents and give them up for adoption without parental consent. And the complicated changes with regards to how Blacks have been treated in the US are far too complex to summarize.

Sometimes rights do increase. Sometimes things do get better. It could happen.

I hate being monolingual with no aptitude for language acquisition.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

"I believe even up through the 70s it was common to take the children of natives away from their parents and give them up for adoption without parental consent."

Well, they got parental consent, but would fudge it. They would tell a new mother "She would have a much better chance in life" if you let these well-off white people adopt her. Oh yeah. So she'd sign it and let him go. The various nations are still trying to trace all the lost birds.

The Indian Child Welfare Act was a big help in '79, because now if an Indian child has to be adopted they have to first look for a family from her/his same tribe.

[leora.livejournal.com]

Ah, okay. Nothing quite like pressuring new moms.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

We didn't agree with some of the "subversive" titles either. All I remember us getting out of the Little Engine was the old lie "if you believe you can, you can". If there was a gender message in there, well, it was just females as nurturing.

On the other hand, Dr. Seuss? Definitely subversive, the non-message books more than the message ones.

[conuly]

Yes, there really isn't very much subversive about "Listen up, guys, cutting down all the trees in the world is a really bad idea, okay?"

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

"The Lorax" doesn't look subversive NOW. Mainstream culture swallowed its message whole. A few generations ago, the obvious story (especially a story for children) would be about the clever entrepreneur who went out into the wilderness and made his fortune taking stuff in great quantity. If the stuff from the wilderness is being used for a new, manufactured, desire (like beaver pelts for fashionable hats, or truffula trees for thneeds), it shows the entrepreneur's cleverness even more strongly.

Now we're looking at a second generation that's grown up since "The Lorax." (And the first Earth Day, and Silent Spring, and a lot of related cultural shifts.) There are still lots of people who value profit more than environmental protection--lots of people who value profit more than anything...but environmentalism has seeped into the common culture enough that they have to pretend they care about it. Any oil company has platitudes about protecting the environment and sustainable development in their statement of corporate values--a generation ago, they didn't, because nobody cared.

[leora.livejournal.com]

Yeah, having grown up very much not in the environmental culture and watched it developing in my childhood, I do think The Lorax was pretty subversive.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

This was even true at the time they came out. We were much less subverted by Yertle the Turtle (our cousin's favorite -- she even had the game) than by one fish two fish. We experienced it like Lewis Carroll or The Goon Show. Seuss was at his best when he wasn't preachy.

[queenlyzard.livejournal.com]

I saw cadet Katherine Miller on the Maddow show. She was amazing-- and her story made me cry. I hope DADT is on its way out.

Phoenix

[trustpects.livejournal.com]

I Love your icon of the phoenix - very nice! Are you a scorpio, as that is one of it's symbols? Either way, you're probably someone who's come back from hell, so to say, and all the better for it.

Re: Phoenix

[conuly]

Aquarius, actually - and as far as "come back from hell", I suppose I was bullied a lot as a child? (Actually, I was bullied a lot as a child, and as an adult at least one of them has apologized for it, but I try not to think about it.)