Another week of articles gleaned mostly from the Twitterverse. There’s a lot wrong with Twitter but there’s no way I would be exposed to such a range of interesting articles without it. This week’s links include such diverse topics as Lord of the Rings, the evolution of language, research into hunter gatherer societies and abortion.
One day I’d like to not read about abortion, but while it remains illegal in so many countries, including my own, I’ll have to keep reading about it and speaking about it.
(I’ve also, just now, decided that for Weekly Links posts I am going to always use photographs I’ve taken myself. And they will be selfies. If I think of more rules I’ll let you know.)
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“There is a growing dissatisfaction with the established political parties. One of the great changes in recent political history has been the erosion of the old ideological divisions that characterized politics for a long time.” on brexit, borders, being offensive (but not being in a hollywood movie)
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“What we would today call cash assistance for the differently abled could in a different era permissibly have been called welfare for cripples. The terms welfare and crippled sound somewhere between loaded and abusive today, and yet once were considered civil by educated, sensitive people.” Euphemise this
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“Long before the advent of social media, human social networks were built around sharing a much more essential commodity: food. Now, researchers reporting on the food sharing networks of two contemporary groups of hunter-gatherers in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on July 21 provide new insight into fundamental nature of human social organization.” What hunter-gatherers can tell us about fundamental human social networks
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“Merely asking the question about spousal income led to enormous shifts in men’s preferences in the upcoming presidential election.” Even the Thought of Earning Less than Their Wives Changes How Men Behave
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“I would counsel people to pray for healing. That’s dangerous. That’s harmful. People die from that. And I acted irresponsibly with my health, because I knew that God was going to take care of me.” The fundamentalist Christian preacher who became an atheist
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“What do you do when people adhering to a faith or ideology insist that others with different convictions submit themselves to taboos outside sacred places?” Why I Published Cartoons of Muhammad and Don’t Regret It
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“Populism is when courting popularity becomes an ideological goal in itself, through the advocacy of policies which over-simplify the world. These policies usually also scapegoat and dehumanize some people, while flattering others, as well as distorting truth, and making promises which are either vague (“I’ll make you safe”) or the keeping of which would only spawn new evils (“We’ll deport them all”, “Our sole priority will be our own country” and so on).” Where does humanism stand at a time of crisis?
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“We were granted leave that afternoon to bring a legal challenge and it felt like we had won the first round of what I was sure would be a long-running battle against the Irish Blood Transfusion Service and the State.” Tomás Heneghan on his High Court case: Why was I shaming the family? Why was my sex life being opened up to public scrutiny?
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“Her book, My Life on the Road, opens with a dedication to the doctor who performed her abortion in 1957, when it was illegal to do so without health reasons. He asked her to promise that she would do what she wanted with her life. “I’ve done the best I could with my life,” she writes.” ‘You can’t control the flesh of a person. That’s called slavery’
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“A month and a half after L. C. submitted the request for an abortion, but the medical board of the hospital denied her the procedure, saying that her life was not in danger, without mentioning the danger to her mental health.” PERU: ABORTION GUIDELINES ESTABLISHED AFTER 90-YEAR DELAY
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“Clinics in some states must provide them with medically inaccurate information on the risks of abortion. After all that, women often cannot have an abortion without waiting an additional one to three days, depending on the state.” Fertility clinics destroy embryos all the time. Why aren’t conservatives after them?
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“Behold the King’s daughter, fairest among maidens. Lips red as a rose, hair black as ebony, skin white as a Keith Urban concert. No wonder a handsome foreigner was smitten when he saw her. And his love didn’t go unrequited. This is how the Tale of Beren and Luthien begins in The Silmarillion. Boom! See that misdirection? You thought it was some Snow White shit, but it wasn’t. I mean, it is that, but it’s also Tolkien.” Snow White Is A LOTR Sequel: A Mind-Blowing Theory
