Some links that I found interesting, but don’t have time right now to comment on at length.
The Illusion of Safety/The Safety of Illusion. On the aftermath of sexual assault and trigger warnings. Via Feministe.
Pussy Riot: A Complex View From Orthodox Moscow. Those of you who read Rod Dreher will have seen this one already.
This may be twisted, but Leah Libresco’s objection to hookup culture in The Sad Secular Monks reminds me of Susie Bright’s objection to the “Not Me! Not Now!” campaign to get girls to postpone sex. Here’s Libresco:
Rosin may think she’s delivering a paean for the hookup culture, but she’s really giving a eulogy for intimacy. A life that has no room for serious romantic partners can’t have much space for deep friendships either. This should be the one culture war fight where we can all be on the same side: if careers preclude real relationships, something’s gone deeply wrong.
And here’s Susie Bright:
While at the last campus I visited, near Rochester, NY, I saw a local TV ad that shows a girl at a lab desk, piping up, “I’m gonna be an astronaut!” Cut to a sweet young thing doing her pliis at the barre: “I’m going to be a ballerina!” Both bright faces chime in together: “I’m not going to let sex screw up MY career goals.”
Then the big finale, with the words splashed across the screen: “Not Me! Not Now!”
Ta-Nehisi Coates on Fear of a Black President.
And Mark Mardell at the BBC is partly on the same page as Coates and partly not.
Noah Millman on Crisis and Character (and the way in which character matters in a President).
Razib Khan on A political animal in the genes and The educated and conservative think fatness is a choice.
Tim Minchin’s song “If I Didn’t Have You.”