ProPublica reports on a terrifying prosecution in Mississippi.

Rennie Gibbs’s daughter, Samiya, was a month premature when she simultaneously entered the world and left it, never taking a breath. To experts who later examined the medical record, the stillborn infant’s most likely cause of death was also the most obvious: the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck.

But within days of Samiya’s delivery in November 2006, Steven Hayne, Mississippi’s de facto medical examiner at the time, came to a different conclusion. Autopsy tests had turned up traces of a cocaine byproduct in Samiya’s blood, and Hayne declared her death a homicide, caused by “cocaine toxicity.”

In early 2007, a Lowndes County grand jury indicted Gibbs, a 16-year-old black teen,

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Yes but does gender stereotyping actually matter? Isn’t it just some trivial thing that floats past like dandelion fluff but doesn’t actually do anything? A couple of researchers decided to ask the question.

A duo of researchers at Oregon State University hypothesized that playing with sexualized dolls not only hurts self-esteem, it influences the way young girls think about their adult lives.

Past research in the U.K. has shown that nearly a third of female teenagers want to be models, while only 4 percent wanted to be engineers. Adolescent girls, it seems, are drawn to careers based on appearance, not knowledge.

That’s a pretty shocking finding, if it’s true. Models? Nearly a third? One of the most brainless and … Read the rest

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The Tories look out for the little people, don’t let anyone tell you different.

Grant Shapps MP @grantshapps

#budget2014 cuts bingo & beer tax helping hardworking people do more of the things they enjoy. RT to spread the word pic.twitter.com/5vbL7RDAg5

Qu’ils mangent de la brioche, eh?

Update: This makes a nice commentary. H/t Maureen.

… Read the rest

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It’s conventional wisdom. It’s common sense. It’s what everyone knows. It’s for sure. It’s obvious. It’s dangerous for women to walk around alone, especially after dark or especially in places like parks where there aren’t a lot of people around. Imagine how dangerous it is to go into a park where there aren’t a lot of people around after dark!

It’s common sense, and it’s bullshit.

I’ve been treating it like bullshit my whole life, and I’ve been right to do so.

Think about it. Do rapists and thieves hang around in parks hoping someone will fall into their trap? Are parks after dark crawling with hopeful rapists and thieves, wasting their time while all the victims stay away?… Read the rest

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Even Time – never a radical, lefty, groundbreaking, nonconformist magazine – gets it that words do matter, because they say things and people pick up the things and believe them.

So, in an attempt to save you — writers, speakers, humans, journalists — from falling into the gender bias trap unintentionally, we’ve put together this handy guide:

Don’t Call Girls Bossy. Or Grown Women Aggressive.

Seriously, don’t do it. And while you’re at it, don’t call them pushy, angry, brusque, ballbusters, bitchy, careerist, cold, calculating — you get the point. Also: shrill and strident, both of which imply high-pitched and screechy women a la your mother, finger pointed, scolding you to clean your room. Bossy is the subject of

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And then, RAINN has

Avoiding Dangerous Situations

which is kind of them, because otherwise women would just keep seeking out dangerous situations, because women are so stupid that way.

• Be aware of your surroundings. Knowing where you are and who is around you may help you to find a way to get out of a bad situation.
• Try to avoid isolated areas. It is more difficult to get help if no one is around.
• Walk with purpose. Even if you don’t know where you are going, act like you do.
• Trust your instincts. If a situation or location feels unsafe or uncomfortable, it probably isn’t the best place to be.
• Try not to load yourself down with packages or bags

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Ah the ever-popular response of busy school administrations to a bullying problem – they tell the person being bullied to stop doing whatever it is the bullies think is bad.

There’s a fundamental mistake being made here. The mistake is taking advice on what’s “bad” from people who think bullying is permissible and suitable.

In this case it’s a nine-year-old boy who wore a “My Little Pony” backpack to school.

Grayson Bruce said other students picked on him and bullied him because the backpack was “girly.” His mother, Noreen Bruce, said her son was punched, pushed down and called names over the fuzzy blue pony bag with ears.

“They’re taking it a little too far with you know, punching

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David Salmanson has a beautiful takedown of Christina Hoff Sommers’s piece in Time bashing feminism and “Free to be You and Me.”

So let’s look at how Sommers misreads the context of Free To Be.  First there is the assertion that Free to Be’s main goal was to create gender-free children.  For evidence, she points to a dialogue between two babies wherein the boy wants to be a cocktail waitress and the girl a fireman.  Except she neglects to mention that the babies are voiced by Mel Brooks and Marlo Thomas and the skit is clearly played for laughs.   (Watch it here if you don’t believe me).   She also targets Ladies First, which is not about destroying concepts femininity

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Hmm. I’d seen some comments about finding a bible in the Harlem explosion, and I was going to say something erm challenging about it, but I avoided Fox and the Daily News and chose the CNN version, and…well given the story CNN tells, I really don’t feel like looking down my nose at it.

On the third day of a grueling recovery effort from the three-story pile of rubble, firefighters early Saturday pulled a large waterlogged Bible from the ashes and ruins of the Spanish Christian Church, which occupied the basement and first floor of one of the two destroyed buildings.

“One of our members found a Bible, the original book they tell me of the founders of the

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If you want to make yourself pissed off – and who doesn’t?? – you could do worse than checking on the Twitter account of Christina Hoff Sommers now and then. Here’s my crop from a quick scroll through just now:

Sexual McCarthyism in military is result of phony study.Sex assault genuine problem;but won’t be solved by fake data.

General Sinclair broke rules by having affair:Bad.But military pursued rape charge it knew not true:Horrifying. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/13/us/how-a-military-sexual-assault-case-foundered.html

Wow!Pentagon pursued sex assault case even though it knew accuser lying.Sexual McCarthyism no longer just on campus. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/11/us/judge-in-generals-assault-case-weighs-claim-that-prosecution-was-tainted.html

Wait a minute. I thought women were supposed to be the cooperative sex. http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2014/03/hierarchical-differences/ …

Iraq just legalized spousal rape. American feminists organize to “Ban Bossy.”

Uh-oh! The

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Remember that schoolteacher who bullied the Buddhist kid for not “correctly” answering the question she asked on a test:

“ISN’T IT AMAZING WHAT THE _____________ HAS MADE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

when the “correct” answer was supposed to be “the Lord”? Remember that?

Well a judge has said that’s a no-no.

6th grade science teacher Rita Roark taught students that the Bible is “100 percent true.” She told them God created the Earth 6,000 years ago and called evolution a “stupid theory made up by stupid people who don’t want to believe in God.” What follows is a test question she gives to students.

“ISN’T IT AMAZING WHAT THE _____________ HAS MADE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

The answer Roark looked for was “The Lord.” But “C.C.,” a

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I don’t know what this is, but it’s making me laugh until I have to get up and walk around the room to regain my composure.

Lileks Institute: Knudsen’s, the Very Best.

Excuse me, I have to blow my nose again.

 … Read the rest

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