Bloggy Monday | … And the Rest …

Summer is coming to a close, and that means that Bloggy Monday is ending its run on The Xenia Institute Web site. We’ve highlighted a batch of the blogs that the Xenia writers read regularly and draw inspiration from, covering topics from race and religion, the environment and going green, and sources of news from the mainstream to the alternative.

What’s left? I thought I’d close Bloggy Monday with a list of honorable mentions, some fun blogs that I like to read, but either don’t fall into any specific category or are just too off-beat or quirky. Bloggy Monday will return next summer, so keep watching.

Ecocomics

I’m an avid comic book reader, but I have a terrible head for math and economics, so when I came across Economics, I knew it was something I had to read. Not only does it provide little lessons in economics that sometimes might apply to real world current events, it answers some of those nagging questions that I sometimes have after reading an comic book issue, such as, “Which is more economically feasible: Time Manipulation or Cloning?”

(It involves the current Captain America storyline involving Cap’s assassination a few years back and his recent reappearance. In true comic book speak, I should warn you: spoilers ahead:

The infrastructure and planning required to carry out this particular devious scheme seems needlessly difficult. To enact his plan the Skull needed to first brainwash Sharon Carter to shoot Steve Rogers with a wacky time gun. Then the Skull needed to develop machinery to rip Steve out of time and place the Skull’s mind in his body. All elements of this plan need to be enacted in a perfectly organized manner and new technology must be developed to complete the goals set forth by the Skull’s scheme. This plot requires its own infrastructure of lackeys and scientists to work out all the elements that the Red Skull can’t himself. So this plot requires large amounts of money to be expended for materials and labor.

I’m sure it would be simpler just to clone Captain America. Or put your mind into his body without shooting him through time.

I’d like to see Paul Krugman take a shot at that!

Anyway, it’s just pure fun, and it also goes to show how you can find, as the Marginal Revolution guys have explained, that there are markets in everything.

Anthony Bourdain’s Blog @The Travel Channel

I don’t usually follow the blogs of television shows, much less the blogs from reality TV shows, but I’m a big fan of Tony Bourdain. No Reservations is, hands down, the best travel show on TV, and as I travel I try to keep the show’s motto in mind, don’t be a tourist, be a traveler. The blog Bourdain sporadically writes for the Travel Channel is a wonderful complement to each week’s show, and gives the reader/viewer a window into the thoughts that Bourdain didn’t get a chance to share on screen. He writes beautifully, and when you pair that with his alcohol-infused and experience-seasoned way of processing the foods he encounters and the relationships he forms in each country, you end up with a Web morsel that whets both the intellect and the appetite.He’s also a great travel promoter for each country he visits:

There is no place like Thailand. It is one of the greatest of foodie destinations and in marked contrast to the violence of their national sport–and the occasional outbreak of political strife, one of the least dangerous, most gentle and tolerant places I’ve ever been. Thailand, in my experience, is a country where a visitor can pretty much wander at will without anything resembling a plan, eating everything in sight, relying completely on the kindness of strangers–and only good things will happen.

I’m inspired to travel whenever I watch No Reservations, and I’m inspired to write about my travels after I read Bourdain’s blog. I also get pretty hungry …

BoingBoing

This is just wacky, offbeat and interesting stuff. Mostly centering around technology and all the odd-ball things that can arise from the highly intelligent and supremely creative people who inhabit the tech world, BoingBoing celebrates the art of thinking outside the box. It also lifts up news stories about how technology is being used in day-to-day life.

For example, BoingBoing recently commented on a story from Wired about the difficulty of going underground in the digital age:

What’s most interesting about this is how little esoteric tech there is in catching underground desaparecidos — tap a phone or two, look in their Google caches, wait for them to use their SSN or register their kids at school (how Ratliff Sheppard got caught). The database nation turns out to be a most banal panopticon.

If you look at nothing else on BoingBoing, check out the Michael Jackson tribute in Etch-a-Sketch.

That’s it for Bloggy Monday for the summer of ‘09! Thanks for reading!

Bloggy Monday/Going Green

Ever wondered, “How can I recycle this?” Well fortunately for you, a broad range of Web sites and blogs answer that question and many more.  From greenovations to green art, the Internet is seeking to meet the demands of the people and provide more ‘green’ information. People are increasingly interested in what they are putting in their mouths, what type of energy they are using and what size footprint they are imprinting on the Earth.  Following everything from green workplaces to green gardens (sounds simple, right?), green designs are defined and scrutinized by bloggers and readers.

WebEcoist

The first in my list of green blogs is the WebEcoist.  I came across this eclectic Web site late last year, and have followed it nearly every day since.  The WebEcoist features listed topics, such as “10 Simple Ways to Go Green” and “18 Natural Formations that Look Man-Made.” I peruse the site and enjoy the visuals, which are abundant and captivating, and always contain detailed descriptions that make them unique.  The WebEcoist also contains niche sites, such as WebUrbanist and Dornob, which offer more visual galleries, containing both natural and man made green designs.  On the site, I have seen everything from moss graffiti to images and descriptions of new GMO’s.  The bloggers share innovative green products and beautiful natural structures and species.  The site offers detailed descriptions of interesting greenovations that captivate anyone seeking to learn more about organic products and technological advances.

Here is an example from one of the many galleries on the site.  This design is one of the 12 Liquid Technologies “Wonderful Water-Powered Designs:”

“Water-powered cell phones sound like something from the distant future, but they could be available as soon as 2010. Samsung has successfully developed a micro-fuel cell and hydrogen generator powered by nothing but water. The water and metal in the phone react whenever it’s turned on, producing hydrogen gas that reacts with hydrogen in the air to create power. Each micro-fuel cell produces up to three watts of electricity, so it can power small phones for up to 10 hours.”

Tree Hugger

TreeHugger.com includes an array of green information in over a dozen topics.  Anyone who is interested in learning about green-related information should visit this site.  I follow the site on Twitter, and it keeps me updated about news events through various associated blogs as well as through the blog itself, which posts excerpts about new green initiatives and political action.  The site includes everything from tomato haiku’s to discussions on building sustainable prisons; it can also provide a simple ‘how to’ for those interested in learning more about going green.

Below is an excerpt from “Tree Hugger” that briefly states the prevalence alongside the importance of buying local:

“The local food movement, eating local, being on the “100 mile diet” or being a locavore are all synonymous with local food, whose consumption has risen to prominence as an important part of the larger green movement. Taking the baton from organic food as a poster child for sustainable agriculture, local food integrates production, processing, distribution and consumption on a small scale, creating sustainable local economies and a strong connection between farm and table.”

The Huffington Post – Green

Reading the news day-in and day-out can sometimes be depressing, so when I need a laugh instead of a jolt, I know I can turn to “The Huffington Post” to lighten my mood.  And fortunately for those that love green, the Post now offers a green section for readers.  The section includes a bit of everything; one can read about current political events or view heart-wrenching animal photos that accompany facts, and every now and then a good-natured joke.

In this excerpt from a Huffington ‘Green’ Post article, the blogger provides a definition that explains why eating natural foods, in this case wild salmon, are better for your health:

“Wild-caught salmon is the only way to go, for many reasons. Although farmed salmon is much cheaper and available everywhere year-round, it has been undeniably proven that farmed salmon is loaded with toxins, including flame retardants and dioxins that are classified as human carcinogens. In fact, farmed salmon has a higher toxic equivalency potential score than any other food. And in terms of damage to the environment and to the wild salmon population, farmed salmon is devastating on many levels.”

Bloggy Monday | ‘BlogHer’

BlogHer is the leading network for women bloggers (although there are also men who blog on BlogHer), providing news, entertainment and opportunities for women who blog. It’s also the host of an annual conference that helps connect BlogHer members. I highlight BlogHer to introduce the focus of this week’s Bloggy Monday: blogs written by women. This isn’t to say that these blogs focus on “women’s issues” (which often are related to the lives of women but affect everyone) but that these blogs provide dialogue and perspectives from half the world’s population that often seem to be overlooked. So here are three blogs written by women that I particularly like:

Pandagon

It’s mostly a political site, but I enjoy the perspectives and the take-no-prisoners style of writing from the two main editors, Pam Spaulding and Amanda Marcotte. They aren’t afraid to be up-front and to honestly tell about how whatever political moves and machinations might affect or have affected their lives. And they also great about noticing when writers or commentators are being sexist or overburdened with privilege in their writings. Take, for example, Marcotte’s rejoinder to The Omnivore’s Dilemma writer Michael Pollan that feminism killed the art of cooking:

I say this as someone who likes to cook, and who actually tends to agree with Pollan that it’s an interesting enough way to spend your time, especially if you feel like you’ve got a lot of freedom to experiment and fuck up.  More men should pick up the past time, which I know is something Pollan would eagerly endorse, if he wasn’t so busy blaming feminism to notice that it would be more interesting to beat up on men for a continued lack of interest and a steady rate of doing less housework than women than make already overworked women feel guilty.  Even though he loves to cook, Pollan abdicates all male responsibility for the situation he finds so dire, which is that few Americans eat much home-cooked food, and instead frets about how jobs and gullibility to advertising claims have ruined women that should be in the kitchen right now doing something delightful, even if they’ll never get paid, called a “chef”, or probably even thanked by their families.

Cooking has always been labeled as “women’s work,” and so has been culturally undervalued, she says. What needs to change is the understanding that cooking is for everyone, and that it should be valued for the “real” (i.e. deserving of professional status) work that it is. Great perspective, and one that puts a finger on the sexism that’s built into the ways we see the world.

Feministe

One of the oldest feminist blogs on the Internet, Feministe tackles an entire smorgasboard of issues, from politics to pop culture and yes, “women’s issues,” that is, issues such as women’s rights, women’s health and safety, feminism, gender issues and so much more. I go to Feministe mostly for dicussions about gaming and other pop culture stuff,  but as often as I go, I get a good dose of education about things I really need to know about, but rarely find elseswhere on the Web. Last week Feministe spotlighted projects that support sex workers in the U.S. and brought attention to the need for more midwives in Afghanistan to combat maternal deaths.

The posts are written the way good posts should be: courageously personal and intensely educational. Feministe also has a thriving online community, and there’s often more to learn from the comments sections of the posts.

AdiosBarbie

AdiosBarbie is an online magazine dedicated to reshaping our images of health and beauty in order to promote healthy body image and self-image. It deconstructs the messages about beauty and women’s roles in society to inform and educate so that we can battle what’s harmful and uphold what’s helpful. One recent post linked to a Huffington Post article that took on commentators who say that Surgeon General nominee Linda Bergthold is “too fat” to serve the office. AdiosBarbie wrote:

Another sad day in the life of accomplished women being scrutinized by the media for their size and not their smarts. When will the madness end?

The blog is also chock full of book reviews, videos and other articles that empower women’s efforts to find their own roads to healthy self-image.

Bloggy Monday | Alternative Media

One of the things that’s killing traditional newspaper and broadcast journalism is the free and easy availability of news on the Internet. News media giants such as the New York Times, the Associated Press and the BBC, as well as all the TV networks such as FOX News and MSNBC pretty much corner the market on getting out all the news and perspectives. Happily, the Internet makes it easy for other, independent voices who have different takes on the news of the day to get their messages out there, too. (I know a lot of people like the Huffington Post, but much of the HuffPo’s news still comes from the usual wires). Here’s a few lesser-known alt-media outlets that I like to watch. These are news outlets and like Xenia, they post daily, so instead of picking up examples, I’m just going to tell you why I like them and invite you to go check them out. You’ll be glad you did.

By the way, in last week’s Bloggy Monday I listed three blogs on economics that I’ve found useful and readable; it looks like the Wall Street Journal was drinking from the same creativity well; last week the WSJ posted a list of the 25 top economics blogs, and two of the blogs on the Bloggy Monday list made the WSJ list as well. Check it out here!

AlterNet

The first progressive news source I started reading when I began getting my news online, AlterNet is a daily alternative magazine that both highlights the best in independent news by posting and cross-posting articles from  independent media sources, and publishing its own home-brewed pieces. AlterNet publishes on a variety of topics such as health care, politics and globalization, and its daily front pages run the gamut from the serious, such as Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi’s searing examination of Goldman Sachs’ profits, to the silly, such as why the movie-watching public flocks to see crappy summer movies. In addition to publishing articles, AlterNet also has a healthy online community, and each article usually generates lively comments and conversations among its readers. I think this is its best feature, and like a good blog the comments are as informative and entertaining as the articles themselves.

Truthout

Like AlterNet, Truthout posts original pieces and articles from other independent media sources. While Truthout posts articles from mainstream sources such as Reuters or major metropolitian newspapers to highlight the big news of the day,  it also has a steady stream of articles and opinions from small, independent outfits. I like the design of the site better than AlterNet’s — it’s cleaner and easier to read — and Truthout’s articles are more timely than AlterNet’s, so it’s easier to keep up with the signs of the times. Truthout also has a special section of focus issues, such as health care, women’s issues and education, on which it keeps special tabs.

GlobalPost

GlobalPost is not only a new addition to my RSS feed, but it’s also a new addition to the world. GlobalPost is an American news outlet dedicated to providing on-the-ground coverage of world news, written and reported on from correspondents who live and work in the countries they cover. GlobalPost has partnerships with major media outlets like NPR, but it’s dedicated to being its own voice and following the traditional principles of journalism like integrity and transperancy. I’ve only been watching it for a few weeks, but I really enjoy GlobalPost’s takes on world news and events, which differ from the mainstream media’s. For example: GlobalPost joined the rest of the world in reporting on the week’s Harry Potter hype, but examined the boy wizard’s effect on London’s tourism industry (More people are flocking to site featured in the books and movies than to traditional tourist spots like Stonehenge). Like Truthout and AlterNet, Global Post is an example of what’s needed in the news industry today: Different perspectives on what’s going on in the world, and different ways of talking about the day’s events. The more voices, the better.

Bloggy Monday | Economics

If you’ve been following our News & Analysis, you’ve probably noticed that I don’t touch on economics (and most things related to funding, spending, markets, etc.) a lot. It’s just this: It’s complicated. Not my reasonings for shying away, but the subject of economics itself, at least it is for me. But I’ve been keeping an eye on a few blogs that explain the economic issues of our world, with the hopes of educating myself about the subject, and the nice part is, these blogs have a tendency to make the subject fun.

Marginal Revolution

Written by two economics professors at George Mason University, Marginal Revolutions is home to musings on the ways we deal with all things related to economics in our daily lives. They combine their critiques of books and articles, and off-the-cuff analysis of economic trends, with an easy-to-read style that takes some of the density out of the subject for novices to economics like me. My favorite feature is a link titled “Markets in Everything,” in which they highlight the odd or interesting economic angle to mundane things such as novels or TV game shows. Last week, blogger Tyler Cowen put an economic spin on Protestant Reformer John Calvin’s 500th birthday:

If you read John Calvin you will find a great deal of what we now call behavioral economics.

He wrote about non-convexity:

For there is no medium between the two things: the earth must either be worthless in our estimation, or keep us enslaved by an intemperate love of it.

Here is one reason why there is “evil” in the world:

Whatever be the kind of tribulation with which we are afflicted, we should always consider the end of it to be, that we may be trained to despise the present, and thereby stimulated to aspire to the future life. For since God well knows how strongly we are inclined by nature to a slavish love of this world, in order to prevent us from clinging too strongly to it, he employs the fittest reason for calling us back, and shaking off our lethargy.

Adam Smith and David Hume were influenced by Calvin:

If we see a funeral, or walk among graves, as the image of death is then present to the eye, I admit we philosophise admirably on the vanity of life. We do not indeed always do so, for those things often have no effect upon us at all. But, at the best, our philosophy is momentary. It vanishes as soon as we turn our back, and leaves not the vestige of remembrance behind; in short, it passes away, just like the applause of a theatre at some pleasant spectacle. Forgetful not only of death, but also of mortality itself, as if no rumour of it had ever reached us, we indulge in supine security as expecting a terrestrial immortality.

It is odd to call someone so famous an “underrated thinker” but indeed Calvin is.  You’ll find the whole text of the Institutes of Christian Religion here; it makes for good browsing.

I have a lot of fun with this blog, and it helps me see that, as much as I’ve tried to ignore it, that there really are economics in everything.

Angry Bear

This blog has been ranked by 24/7 Wall St. as one of the best independent financial blogs on the Internet. Because it mixes news and politics with commentary on economics, I find that it’s one of the best places to go to get thoughts on the stimulus, tax info, and THE economy, that is, the U.S. government’s overall fiscal and financial health. For example:

There’s also one very bad reason for the Fed to keep shoveling money out of the helicopter door: the mistaken but widely held belief that the system is suffering from a lack of liquidity. (The lack of liquidity belief is clearly false – as it happens – as Dean Baker has noted a zillion times, that lousy business models can’t get funding any more speaks to the demise of a particular widespread delusion rather than a lack of liquidity).

But here’s the problem. As is often the case, what we all know is false. Wrong. Bull$#%&. The Fed has not been pumping money into the economy lately, at least if you define lately as being “since December” and going through May, the last date for which data is publicly available in FRED, the Federal Reserve Economic Database maintained by the St. Louis Fed.

…

So during one of the lowest points for the US economy in decades, only the North Korean counterfeiting machine was doing anything to keep the money supply loose. I don’t have a copy of Bernanke’s textbook handy, but I’m pretty sure I’d remember if “let Kim Jong Il handle it” was the recommended prescription for dealing with a recession. It makes me wonder what other stupidity surprises Bernanke has in mind.

Kevin Drum @Mother Jones

While not strictly a blog on economics, Kevin Drum includes comments on economics throughout his newsy blog. It’s not an independent (that is, not affiliated with a national publication) blog, but I’d say that Mother Jones is pretty far out of the mainstream to nearly qualify for that status, and the attachment to the publication gives the blog a good, clean design that makes it easy to read. Drum’s posts are quick and clean, much like a good surgical cut. For example: Drum’s comments on a news article about bank overdrafts:

Say you have $100 in your checking account and four checks arrive at your bank in the following amounts: $15, $20, $30, and $150.  If you clear them in that order, the first three are fine and only the last one incurs an overdraft.  If you clear them in the opposite order, all four incur overdraft fees.  Ka-ching!  That’s why banks like to clear high to low.

In any case, if our Congress had any balls they’d fix this in a trice: simply regulate overdrafts as short-term loans, which is what they are.  The interest rates would be high, but nowhere near as high as the effective 1000%+ that banks charge now.  And it wouldn’t matter what order checks cleared.

Banks still have to make money, of course, and if overdraft fees went down then the cost of other services would go up.  But that’s fine.  There’s no reason that overdraft fees from their least prosperous customers should subsidize other business lines.  It’s better to charge everyone fairly and openly rather than trying to make outsize profits on the banking industry’s poorest customers.

And the chances of this happening?  About zero.  Why?  Don’t be silly.  It’s because the finance industry still owns Congress.

I think I like this blog so much because Drum seems to come at economics from the same level I’m at, the consumer. While I appreciate the other two blogs because I learn something about the bigger picture, with Drum, I see a conversation about where I’m living.

Bloggy Monday | Watching the Watchdogs

Even though the news industry is working to reformulate itself into one that can sustain itself in the era of new media, there are still aspects about it that can’t change. Journalistic integrity and standards for fairness and accuracy are a must, whether a reporter’s medium is made of ink and paper or gigabytes and silicone. Alas, news reporters are only human and are prone to blindspots and mistakes just as anyone. Luckily, there are groups out there who watch the watchdogs, monitoring the press’ problems, as well as its evolutions.

Do you have a blog that you think deserves to be spotlighted on Bloggy Monday? E-mail me the link at barbara@xeniainstitute.org, or leave a suggestion in the comments!

Media Matters

Dedicated strictly to monitoring conservative media for inaccuracies in reporting, Media Matters also often dings mainstream outlets for bias in their reporting. Media Matters doesn’t just go after mistakes, but targets “misinformation” put into the U.S. stream of consciousness by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and FOX News. For example, Media Matters recently berated O’Reilly Factor guest host Juan Williams (who is a senior correspondent for NPR and a columnist at the Washington Post, incidentally) for not challenging a guest who denies the existence of humanity-induced climate change:

During a July 1 O’Reilly Factor discussion about whether “the liberal media” are helping President Obama “advance his energy agenda by spreading global warming propaganda,” guest host Juan Williams advanced falsehoods about global warming. Williams did not challenge Fox News contributor Bernie Goldberg when he falsely claimed that if journalists “did some real reporting, they would find out that in the past 10 years, the world temperatures haven’t gone up.” But climate scientists reject the idea that the fact that, in most datasets, annual global average temperatures have not surpassed their 1998 level is any indication that global warming is slowing or does not exist. Scientists have identified a long-term warming trend spanning several decades that is independent from the normal climate variability — which includes relatively short-term changes in climate due to events like El Niño and La Niña — to which they attribute the recent relatively cooler temperatures. Williams also did not challenge Goldberg’s assertion that “this is déjà vu all over again. This is the 1970s, when journalists warned us of another climate, you know, catastrophe that was coming. That time it was global cooling. And they warned us of the coming ice age. They were wrong about that.” But it is false to suggest, as Goldberg does, that in the 1970s there was a widespread scientific belief that the Earth was cooling that is tantamount to the current scientific consensus on global warming.

It’s unashamedly an activist site, filled with not just Media Matters’ analysis, but also ways readers can get involved, such as information on writing letters to the editor.

Campaign Desk

Campaign Desk, a blog from the respected media industry magazine the Columbia Journalism Review, critiques the press’ coverage of politics and policy. It offers analysis, praise for what reporters are doing well, and constructive criticism for what they’re not. What’s great about Campaign Desk and the CJR is, they hold up the media to its highest standards. For example, Campaign Desk recently took the media to task for trumpeting Senate Democrats’ magic 60 without explaining its real significance or real-world applications:

The widespread use of the filibuster adds another element of counter-majoritarianism to a system that already has plenty of them (including the structure of the Senate itself). We are now in the uncommon situation in which a widely popular, recently elected president enjoys substantial majorities in both houses of Congress. And yet passage of his key domestic priorities is far from assured. This legislative gridlock isn’t a function of the people in Washington—it’s a function of our institutions, the filibuster chief among them. The political reporters who cover Washington know all this, no doubt. But somehow, widespread use of the filibuster has become normalized in short order.

There’s no simple solution to this situation: Stories about the minutiae of the legislative process aren’t likely to grab many eyeballs, after all. And once a reporter has written her one-time story about the rise of the filibuster, is it still “news”? But it’s a challenge that reporters would do well to grapple with, because in the long run, the rules of the legislative game will determine policy at least as much as the identity of Minnesota’s senator.

Campaign Desk is just one of many sections of the CJR’s site, and they’re all well worth checking out.

Romenesko

Probably a blog with which most non-media folks are not familiar, Romensko is more or less an aggregator site of the latest happenings in the news industry, complete with comments. Romenesko is a blog by Jim Romenesko of the Poynter Institute, a school for journalists and teachers of journalists that’s highly regarded within the industry. Hearkening to the days when journalists kept their editorial comments out of their pieces, Romenesko merely highlights the trends, troubles and triumphs of the industry. At first glance it might seem like only a site for media types, but it’s really a blog for everyone who wants to know what’s going on in this ever-changing, ever struggling field of community information.

Bloggy Monday | LGBTQI Blogs

The mainstream media doesn’t cover all the news that’s fit to print (or all the news that’s fitting), and one of the many topics that get short shrift are LGBTQI issues. There are several blogs that bring to insights not only to the hot button topics that make the mainsteam news, such as Proposition 8 updates, chatter about the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and anything that Perez Hilton might say, but also how most issues in the news contain an LGBTQI component. The blogs featured on today’s Bloggy Monday are blogs that both give a voice to the LGBTQI community and help educate and enlighten all members of the greater community to understand how the issues that affect one community can affect all.

Box Turtle Bulletin

Box Turtle Bulletin takes its name from a statement written (though not spoken) by Republican Sen. John Cornyn at the Heritage Foundation that:

It does not affect your daily life very much if your neighbor marries a box turtle. But that does not mean it is right… Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife.

Standing against such rude, crude and humanity-denying comments, Box Turtle Bulletin is a news-focused blog that dedicated to fact-checking comments and statements about the LGBTQI community that appear in the media, and clearing up the misstatements, half-truths and flat-out lies. The blog is updated daily and brings to light many stories about high- and low-profile members of the LGBTQI community that the mainstream media misses. It also holds politicians accountable to promises made to the community, and highlights any discriminatory actions or remarks.

For example, a story featured on last week’s BTB highlighted the U.S. government’s apology to Frank Kamney, who in 1975 was fired from his job with the U.S. Army Map Service when his supervisors found out he was gay. According to Box Turtle Bulletin:

We often think of the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York as being the start of the Gay Rights movement, but that assumption ignores the bold, aggressive action by Frank Kameny, Barbara Gittings, Del Martin and Phylis Lyon, along with other pre-stonewall landmark events like the Black Cat Raid and the White House pickets. Frank Kameny was right in the middle of many of those bold initiatives in demanding equality for gay people when relatively few gay people themselves believed they deserved equality. Remember, this was a time when the medical profession regarded homosexuality as a mental illness.

Frank would have none of that. He co-founded the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., which in 1963 launched a long campaign to overturn sodomy laws and remove homosexuality from the American Psychological Association’s list of mental disorders. He participated in the very first picket line in front of the White House on April 17, 1965. Along with other activists from New York they expanded those pickets to include the Pentagon, the U.S. Civil Service Commission, and, more famously, to Independence Hall in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia pickets would become an annual event for the next five years.

In 1968, Kameny coined the phrase “Gay Is Good,” basing it on the slogan “Black Is Beautiful.” It was a bold and radical gesture for many gays and lesbians who hadn’t before dared to believe that about themselves. While Frank points to that phrase’s popularity as his most proud accomplishment, it wasn’t his last. He became the first openly gay candidate for Congress in 1971 (he lost), and he played a pivotal role in the APA’s removal of homosexuality from its list of disorders in 1973 (he won).

Questioning Transphobia

Questioning Transphobia comments on news from the transgender/trans-sexual community and occurrances of transphobia and violence against the trans community. It also includes musings on life from its bloggers Lisa and Queen Emily. I have found that this blog is a great place to learn about a segment of the community that receives very little coverage or empathy from the larger society and calls for cisgender folks (those whose gender matches the social appearance of their gender) to reflect upon the areas where they may be participating in harmful privilege or discrimination against the trans community. According to the blog’s “About” section:

Our gender is (as transgender and transsexual people) not respected, invalidated, insulted, and hated. We are denied personhood because our gender is not heteronormative enough: Proper men do not want to become women, and proper women do not become men, never mind the nuances of transgender identities, from two-spirits to androgynes, to ftm-spectrum and mtf-spectrum people who choose not to go all the way. We have trouble finding jobs and when we do Social Security is required by federal law to out us to our employers (in order to fight terrorists, you see). Trans people are murdered at a rate of 2-3 per month in the United States, and in states where violence against trans people for being trans people is not a hate crime, the “trans panic” defense is often used successfully. Trans people of color and with disabilities have to deal with oppression due to race, disability, or both in addition to oppression due to trans people, and the number of trans people of color who are murdered every year is disproportionately high, compared to the number of white trans people murdered. When we come out to our families, we risk losing them and getting thrown out on the streets (if we still live at home). Many of us turn to prostitution to survive when that happens. When we try to transition on the job, we are often fired.

Not for the faint at heart, in other words, but definitely the place to go to learn something about an injustice in our society that few have given attention.

Queers United

Another news-focused blog that brings attention to discrimination or action against the LGBTQI community, Queers United also provides bits of information about life within and without the community. One of my favorite features is the “Word of the Gay,” where a word or phrase used by the LGBTQI community or slang or slur against them is defined. For example:

Gay Word of the Day: Barsexuals. “Barsexuals” are straight girls who only make out with other girls when drunk for fun and/or attention.

Queers United also spotlights other LGBTQI blogs, and keeps readers informed about legislation on LGBTQI issues, same-sex marriage and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell actions, support events and protests, and any boycotts against companies that discriminate against the LGBTQI community.

Bloggy Monday | Going Mainstream

Our past Bloggy Mondays have started a grand tradition of bringing high quality suggestions to add to your RSS feed readers that come from outside the mainstream media establishment.  This is a grand tradition that I will unceremoniously buck. I don’t have any insights to quote or even anything nice to say about the mainstream media – too many times I feel they are missing the boat – but on occasion, there is a outlet within the establishment that provides some really useful and poignant material.  So without any further unwarranted delay, I present you the “mainstream” edition of Bloggy Monday.  And of course, if you’re following a blog that is really worth the read, please let us know.  Email suggestions to barbara@xeniainstitute.org, and be sure to put “Bloggy Monday” in the subject line.

On the Ground :: NY Times

This week’s first recommendation is about as mainstream as it gets, since Nicholas Kristof is a columnist for the New York Times.  He writes his blog as a supplement to his twice weekly columns, but his posts read just as profoundly on their own as they do when read in conjunction with his “official” work.  Aside from a list of educational and travel experiences that I will only be able to jealously admire, Kristof qualifies himself as a must read through his provoking choice of topics and the fact that the is just downright ethical.

A fine example of this trait is a post he made concerning the plight of Mukhtar Mai, a Pakistani woman who has turned the horrific experience of her rape into a positive for all the women of Pakistan by raising funds to establish schools and shelters.  Naturally, her work bucks the patriarchal culture of much of rural Pakistan, which has made her many enemies.  Kristof lifts up her most recent plight:

In particular, one local feudal lord who has a minister’s seat in the federal government has been trying hard to undermine Mukhtar. In the latest front, the electrical company raided Mukhtar’s home, school and shelter, accused her of not paying electrical bills, and cut off electricity to thousands of people. I’m not there, but I would bet dollars to doughnuts that Mukhtar has paid her bills and that this is just one more way of harassing her and threatening her.

What is so impressive about Kristof’s work is not only the fact that he raises awareness about important people like Mukhtar, but even provides links to other websites and agencies through which one can offer financial support or even engage in activism on her behalf.  This combination of journalism and activism marks his writings and is worthy of being on your “to read” list.

Danger Room :: Wired.com

As a self-professed technophile, it may come as little surprise that I avidly read my subscription to Wired Magazine throughout high school.  Yes, I just flew my geek flag loud and proud.  I found it fascinating at the time, and frankly, I’m not carrying my subscription now for reasons of price and time.  However, Wired.com offers the next best thing.  In sharing the Danger Room blog, I’m really lifting up the entire site, since I subscribe to the majority of them.  However, I chose Danger Room for its unique perspectives on the national security complex.

One of the interesting behind-the-scenes battles going down on the beltway between Capitol Hill and Arlington, VA is the military budget battle.  An incredible portion of our national budget is devoted to defense spending and for the time being, war supplemental bills.  Why we should be concerned is that the face of warfare is changing, and in spite of calls by both current and former defense secretaries to change priorities to meet this evolving need, Congress continues to insist on funding more Cold War-style military projects.  Unfortunately, programs like the vaunted F-22 Raptor have moved from the realm of desired national defense priorities to hometown pork barrel initiatives.  This post notes that the Democratic congress managed to tow the line on Secretary Gates’ budget requests until this last week:

Yesterday, however, things changed. Republicans managed to peel off just enough Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee to add $369 million to keep up production of the Air Force’s prized F-22 Raptor stealth jet. That means 12 more fighters built next year — 12 fighters Gates has made clear he doesn’t want or need. If the Raptor increase is approved by the other relevant congressional committees, that could open up the flood gates of opposition, with other ad hoc coalitions forming to keep funds for the Airborne Laser missile-zapping boondoggle, or the Navy’s massive (and massively overbudget) DDG-1000 destroyer. “[The Pentagon] needs to learn who’s in charge, and the Congress is,” House Armed Services Committee Democrat Neil Abercrombie told the Christian Science Monitor.

Although $369 million sounds like a drop of water in a very large bucket, when we consider that DOD recommendations are sometimes regularly ignored so that some U.S. Representative can bring home the bacon to the hometown defense industry, then we might come to the conclusion that Congress continues to nickel-and-dime us to death.  And this is just a glimpse of the content that shows up on Danger Room.  If you’re interested in issues of national security and the defense establishment, this blog is worth the read.

Democracy in America :: The Economist

The Economist also falls into the category of another print magazine that I would read if I had both the time and the money, so I instead turn to the online alternative.  Democracy in America offers insights from the snide to the sublime, and is perhaps all the more interesting because its team of writers blog anonymously.  However, it’s content that makes it a worthwhile read.  Aside from their analysis, they also include the results of the weekly Economist/You Gov polls which are enlightening in their own right.

A recent post takes a look at the Republican push to discredit President Obama for not taking a public stand on the disputed Iranian elections.  Democracy in America takes on their negative comparisons between Obama’s alleged inaction and Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy proclamations and puts them into historical and sadly, painful perspective:

This is all very amusing, but Republicans are losing sight of Mr. Reagan’s actual foreign policy. His approach toward Iran was brutal realism that resulted in the sale of missiles to the mullahs’ regime. His approach towards South Africa was also pure strategy—support for a racist regime as a way of hurting the Soviets. Many of the anti-communist forces backed by his administration (in Asia, Africa and Latin America) were also hostile to their own people. In other words, he rarely exhibited the woolly-headed, we-support-you idealism that his party is now advocating.

The debate in Washington is often controlled by politicians and pundits who have little vested interested having an open and honest discussion.  To be frank, they often have a strong interest in controlling the debate through selectively ignoring history or declining to provide information in its entirety.  It’s refreshing to have a blog coming out of the mainstream challenging the half truths and outright false assertions of Washington establishment.

Bloggy Monday | The Ivory Tower

Last month, Felix Salmon @Reuters wrote a piece about how academics can make much better bloggers than journalists. Blogging, he says, is a discussion, whereas traditionally journalism is a heated competition for originality:

Being original (the fetishization of the “scoop”, even if it’s only by five minutes) is vastly overpraised in journalism, and journalists as a group tend to imbue everything they do with an incredible amount of secrecy. Try asking a magazine writer what she’s working on: she probably won’t tell you. After all, you might scoop her!

This is why, he says, that academics took to blogging much more sharply than journalists. Academia is a discussion — oftentimes a very long-winded one — but at least people are talking. Today’s Bloggy Monday focus is on blogs by academics. Got a professor or learned scholar whose blogs deserve some attention? E-mail the links to me at barbara@xeniainstitute.org.

The Kitchen Table

Two for the price of one, The Kitchen Table is a blog consisting of conversations and letters between two Princeton professors, Melissa Harris-Lacewell, an associate professor of politics and African American studies at Princeton University (and ocassional guest on the Rachel Maddow Show!) and Yolanda Pierce, an associate professor of African American Religion and Literature at Princeton Theological Seminary. Harris-Lacewell and Pierce wield both a sharp wit and their honed expertise in their fields. Like a good bloggers, they state their positions clearly and offer their personal thoughts that at the same time reveal insights about the world around them.

The blog is taking the summer off (they’re professors, remember) but the last post by Pierce was an inspiring piece about the value of outstanding teachers and programs geared toward helping students succeed, and asking readers to lift them up for the praise they deserve:

As the school year comes to a close, as we celebrate graduations, commencements, children moving to the next grade, and all the year-end educational achievements, I would love for all our readers to weigh in on whatever thing, either large or small, contributed positively to their educational experiences. Here is your space to thank those teachers, programs, writers, neighbors, and family members (or favorite bloggers), who taught you the power of education as a priceless gift. For me: my thanks to John Hoffman, the founder of the Oliver Scholars Program, and Albert G. Oliver, distinguished New York City public school educator and activist who devoted his life to the children of New York.

The Reality-Based Community

Written by a host of professors of public policy and social research, this blog likely gets its name in opposition to a quote by an unnamed aide to President George W. Bush who chided liberals for being part of a reality-based community that sought solutions by studying that reality. The Bush administration, he said, created its own reality. The tagline for the blog is “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”

A news-oriented blog, the writers spend most of their time skewering hypocrisy and the blatant disregard of reality in those news stories. They also have a habit of reminding readers of one very important yet oft-forgotten fact: “All of this has happened before and will happen again.” For example, blog author Mark Kleiman noted that power shifts in Iran this weekend have precedent and have been commented on before:

It looks as if the Supreme Leader has decided that his supremacy will be more secure if he aligns himself with the Revolutionary Guards. But is he right? Will they obey him, or Ahmadi-nejad?

As Machiavelli also says, “It has always been the opinion and judgment of wise men that nothing can be so uncertain or unstable as the reputation of power not founded on one’s own strength.” And “Between an armed and an unarmed man no proportion holds, and it is contrary to reason to expect that the armed man should voluntarily submit to him who is unarmed, or that the unarmed man should stand secure among armed retainers. For with contempt on one side, and distrust on the other, it is impossible that men should work well together.”

Khamene’i, having put Ahmadi-nejad and the Revolutionary Guards in the driver’s seat, should heed Machiavelli’s other warning: “He who is the cause of another becoming powerful is ruined.”

The Monkey Cage

Blogs often have the mission of bringing under-represented voices into the public listening. As The Kitchen Table highlights the under-represented voices of women of color in the blogosphere, so The Monkey Cage is dedicated toward highlighting the thoughts and understandings of political scientists. Their mission is not just to provide readers with thoughtful, expert commentary on political happenings, but also to engage in the fine art of thinking. They mostly bounce their thoughts off of the news, but they add astute political analysis and ask questions that aren’t being asked in the mainstream media. The writers also looked at the Iranian elections this weekend, and wondered whether political science had yet properly categorized Iran’s system of government (if you followed our series Grasping Democracy, you’ll have an understanding of what The Monkey Cage is talking about):

To greatly (and unfairly) simplify an enormous literature, we essentially have three working regime types these days. There are democracies, where leaders are elected in free and fair competitive elections. There are the classic non-democracies, ranging from autocracies to totalitarian states, where elections are either not held or only sham elections (e.g., only one party can compete) are permitted. Then there is the world’s newest, and increasingly popular, regime type, which Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way have labeled competitive authoritarian regimes.

…

What exactly do we call Iran then? Does a simple authoritarian-theocracy capture it? Or does that miss the fact that apparently competitive elections can and do occur in this country, even if they are in many ways limited (but not completely controlled) by the authorities?

While this analysis could seem a bit navel-gazing to the uninformed, what The Monkey Cage does is provide the bits of theory that readers can use in order to more effectively deal with reality. Theory is a practical tool, one that lets us see patterns of what has happened before so we can see it happening again (or hopefully catch it before it happens) and to understand the best and worst ways those patterns have been dealt with in the past.

Bloggy Monday | Race & Racism

This week’s Bloggy Monday focus is on blogs that offer good insights and ground for learning on issues of race and racism. They tackle not only the blatant issues of racism that occur in daily life or are highlighted in pop culture, but also the more sublte aspects of privilege and power that harm efforts toward mutuality and harmonious pluralism. The great part about these blogs is, no matter how uncomfortable the issues can make us or how hard they are to deal with, they always tackle these issues head one.

Don’t forget, if you’re a reader or lurker of a blog that deserves to be on the Xenia Institute News & Analysis RSS feed, let us know! E-mail suggestions to me at barbara@xeniainstitute.org, and put “Bloggy Monday” in the subject line.

Links for the day include:

Racialicious

Racialicious is a blog that discusses race, ethinicity and pop culture and the myriad awkward, painful and occasionally wonderful ways that they meet. Commentary by Racialicious staff and guest writers range from celebrity mistakes, musings about race and politics, relationships, friendships and work, and links to issues in the news about all these topics. Often they lift up issues of vital concern that are being ignored by the mainstream media.

One example of their work came last week in a post about hate speech and media reform. Guest writer Hannah Miller wrote about the National Hispanic Media Coalition’s efforts to get the FCC to consider taking action against rising hate speech online and on the radio airwaves against Latinos. Miller writes:

The percentage of our time that the American public spends with media has been steadily climbing for 40 years, and with that, its influence over our lives. The media is our environment, and the battle I am engaged in is over the nature of this environment: whether it is an environment in which ordinary people have a voice – or whether we are to passively absorb content controlled by a small number of people and corporations. Whether the media is democratic, and reflects a variety of voices.

Stuff White People Do

Written by Malcom D, this blog is one white man’s attempt to examine whiteness in the U.S. The gift of this blog is Malcom D’s ability to take pieces of pop culture minutiae or current event zeitgeist, find the angles in which white privilege or racism are at play and then explain to people (usually white people, although Malcom D says that part of the blog’s point is to help him figure out the “white part”) the why and how. For example, SWPD commented on a recent KFC commercial that featured two Asian men dressed in ethnic costume … for no apparent reason:

Law Professor Frank Wu calls the racist phenomenon exemplified by this ad the “perpetual foreigner syndrome.” The term should be self-explanatory, but for many, it’s not. Wu’s label basically identifies a common American conception of Asian Americans as outsiders, as “un-American,” no matter how fully they signal their American-ness.

Advertisements like this one play up to and perpetuate this syndrome. Ordinary Americans demonstrate that the syndrome has penetrated and infected their psyches when they laugh along with such portrayals, and when they think of those who object to them as oversensitive purveyors of “political correctness.”

He ends the post by explaining how readers can contact KFC to express their displeasure with this commercial.

Racism Review

Racism Review provides solid, credible information, and research and analysis about race and ethnicity and racism. Its writers are primarily scholars in the social science field. Its writers have been turning over thorough analyses of recent hot topics such as the race discussions about Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor. For example, Tim Wise recently took down the extreme right’s screeds about Judge Sotomayor:

The law is not, as some appear to believe, a fixed, scientific thing, free from differing interpretations. This, after all, is why so many Supreme Court opinions are split, rather than unanimous, 9-0 renderings. Rational and fair minded people, all of them legal scholars, can and do come to different conclusions about the same set of facts, the same legal precedents, and the same Constitution to which all are sworn. And when considering the reasons why two judges may look at the same facts and see totally different realities, race, gender, class and other identity markers might be found among the answers. Not because there is something inherently different about whites or people of color, men or women, which leads them to different conclusions, but because our social location can mightily influence what we see and what we don’t see.

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