Via Planned Parenthood on Facebook:

Bad news – National Geographic is being devoured by Fox.

The 127-year-old nonprofit National Geographic Society has struck a $725 million deal that gives 21st Century Fox a majority stake in National Geographic magazine and other media properties, expanding an existing TV partnership.

The agreement announced Wednesday will give the company controlled by Rupert Murdoch’s family a 73 percent stake in the new National Geographic Partners venture. The society retains 27 percent ownership. The move shifts the longtime nonprofit flagship magazine into a for-profit venture.

What could possibly go wrong?

Besides everything?

However, some observers are worried about the future of National Geographic’s educational mission in media if control is turned over to commercial interests.

Christopher Palmer, an environmental filmmaker and professor at American University, said Fox and National Geographic would seem to be incompatible to most people.

“Many people feel the National Geographic Channel has become more sensational and think that it’s due to the Foxification of the channel, and now Fox is taking over all these other media properties including the iconic National Geographic magazine,” he said. “So the question is: will National Geographic maintain its very high standards in the future under this new arrangement?”

It seems vanishingly unlikely that they will.

I watched a little of Stephen Colbert’s first Tonight show last night, and didn’t like it. I wanted to like it, I expected to like it, but I didn’t.

But Megan Garber at the Atlantic did.

…part of why politics has become so polarized, while we’re at it, is likely that we’ve come to see the workings of government as things that exist separately from the rest of our lives. The sociologist Pablo Boczkowski talks about the reluctance many people have to talk about politics in a work environment, where such discussions can create unnecessary acrimony; instead, we silo ourselves, discussing the issues of the day, for the most part, with people we know will pretty much agree with us.

That’s not a good thing, for people or for democracy. And Colbert’s latest debut suggested that late-night comedy might actually play a role in fixing it. The guest list for Colbert’s upcoming shows includes—along with the actors and comics you’d expect—Stephen Breyer, Bernie Sanders, and Ban Ki-moon. Those guests, my colleague David Sims noted, are “surprisingly highbrow.” They are also surprisingly political. And intellectual. They are the guests not traditionally of Letterman and Kimmel and Fallon, but of Charlie Rose. And that may well be meaningful. The Colbert Report, after all, was notable not just for its satire, but for its intellectualism: It introduced its audience to authors and thinkers who might not get an airing on typical late-night, or for that matter typical news, shows.

Well now that’s true. It had A C Grayling on, twice. That kind of thing is why I wanted and expected to like Colbert’s Tonight show, but in practice I just found it hyper and tedious. Watching him scarf all those Oreos made me feel queasy.

The Late Show’s debut suggested that Colbert might carry on that tradition, expanding it to a wider audience. It suggested a proposition that, until last night, seemed as absurd as it is simple: that late-night comedy, aired on a large network, can be funny and smart at the same time.

Well, I hope so, but that’s not what I saw.

A couple of minutes from The Life of Brian.

(I really need to see that again; it’s been way too long since I did.)

Have a fun quiz in the New York Times. It offers to say where you’re from based on your answers to 25 dialect questions.

It’s a little tricky if like me you have a habit of picking up bits of dialect from all over – but it’s not too tricky if you’re aware that you do that and can correct for it. I carefully gave the answers that were what I grew up with, not necessarily what I say now – and at the end there I was on the map. Good fun.

An interesting post from July that I didn’t see at the time – by Joel Nowak –

So I am watching this thing play out on “Free Thought” Blogs where a blogger is being harassed and bullied to the point where she may well leave the site because a pro-trans activist who was “monitoring her” saw her post this thread to a facebook gender critical group about how questions such as “Do you believe trans women are women, yes or no?” may be overly simplistic and “anti-thought”. I do not know this blogger but I feel for her predicament. For simply starting this discussion, not even on Free Thought Blogs, members there are accusing her of a “thought crime” and demanding that she be expelled from the community immediately. Those demanding her expulsion are insisting that of course all transwomen are women. Fair enough … however I do have something to say here.

I am still trying to sort things out for myself, but part of my lived experience was that I was for a long period of my life a transwoman who identified as female.

And then he changed.

It was also something that, in my case, I outgrew because I realized that how I defined myself and how I came to understand the roles of sex and gender in my life had changed as I grew older. One thing I realized for myself, and this is very important for MY identity today, is that I was NEVER female in any way. I am male. I always was and I always will be. Now I know that by my saying that a lot of people will say “Ok this was a guy who just believed he was a transwoman and was mistaken.” Ok, you can think that if you want, but I assure you I WAS a transwoman. It is actually uncomfortable for me to say this, especially since I am doing the guy thing right now, but that is part of who I am and I can’t really be in denial about it.

This is one example – just one of many – of why I decline to answer “yes or no” questions unless they are such simple questions that it’s not a problem. What he says there is complicated. How we think of ourselves is complicated, and it’s subject to change over time. It’s a mistake to be absolutist and doctrinaire about it.

And I also think that is why I get a little peeved when I see all of this identity policing going on. When I see people like this current blogger getting beaten down for asking a fair question I am watching the same forces at work that make it hard for me to try to explore my own identity. Through intimidation it becomes yet another source of shame, scaring me back into my shell … almost.

See? See? This is what I mean, it’s what I’ve meant all along and still mean. We get to explore. We all get to explore, cis as well as trans, trans as well as cis. What the fools at Purethought Blogs did to me does not foster a climate friendly to exploration.

My journey has been real. I won’t let anyone define what sex I am or have been at various stages of my life based on their notion of political correctness. I am male and always have been … no matter what surgeries, legal name changes or social changes I have been through over the years. This is how I define myself. This is my right. You can define yourself as you please.  That is absolutely your right as well (and you too should defend it!) However, people should not be punished for asking questions based on honest and respectful  intellectual curiosity. That usually ends up pretty poorly for all of us.

Exactly so.

Wow. The Guardian:

A camera operator for a Hungarian nationalist television channel closely linked to the country’s far-right Jobbik party has been filmed kicking two refugee children and tripping up a man at the border hotspot of Rőszke on Tuesday.

Petra László of N1TV was filming a group of refugees running away from police officers, when a man carrying a child in his arms ran in front of her. László stuck her leg out in front of the man, causing him to fall on the child he was carrying. He turned back and remonstrated with László, who continued filming.

Sure enough:

https://youtu.be/e2kdd-B_RQg

Watch closely – at 4 seconds you can see her kick a girl, but it’s over in a flash. The tripping of the guy carrying a child is slower and more in the open.

Hungary’s leading news website Index had also caught László kicking a young girl and boy.

N1TV said László had been dismissed due to “unacceptable behaviour”. The channel’s editor in chief Szabolcs Kisberk said in a statement posted on the station’s website: “The camerawoman’s employment has today been terminated with immediate effect, the case is now closed for us.”

Hate campaigns are not harmless; they do their work.

Careful thinking.

Sabine ‏@ThatSabineGirl 21 hours ago
The sheer privilege of an oppressor class whining that they don’t like the word those they oppress use to describe them. It’s incredible.

And no, cis/trans is not a binary, no more than skin colour, sexuality, or gender is.

So…it’s not a binary, but we have no right to say it doesn’t describe us. Ok…

There’s more of that careful thinking.

Cis people are SO FUCKING WHINY.

Cis. Cis cis cis cis cis CIS CIS CIS. YOU ARE CIS. And more importantly, you treat trans people like dirt and you need to stop.

Really? We all treat trans people like dirt? I don’t think that has been shown.

You’re cis. Deal with it. Like we have to deal with being trans, only you have a position of normality & a load of privilege to soften blow.

Hint: Oppressor’s feelings on what word those they oppress use to describe their oppressor class: NOT IMPORTANT

But “their oppressor class” is what’s in dispute.

Having privilege along a certain axis is not the same thing as oppressing people along that axis. It’s not the same thing at all. The difference is pretty important.

Being cis merely means you aren’t trans. It’s not a slur, it’s not an identity forced on you, it’s just a word which means ‘not trans’.

If it’s just a word which means ‘not trans’ then what sense does it make to say cis people “treat trans people like dirt”? How can it not be a slur if it means “an oppressor class” that “treats trans people like dirt”?

It can’t. Sabine is energetically using the word “cis” as a slur while energetically denying that it’s a slur. That’s incoherent.

These things matter.

Kim Davis is (or soon will be) out of jail, and her deputies are issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

U.S. District Judge David Bunning ordered Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis freed on Tuesday, five days after he held Davis in contempt and sent her to a Kentucky jail amid an escalating standoff over marriage licenses.

Davis was jailed at the Carter County Detention Center on Thursday after she refused to issue licenses to same-sex couples. The following day, her deputies began issuing licenses in her absence.

Five of the six clerks who work under Davis swore under oath that they could comply with the court’s order to issue marriage licenses. In a status report filed to Bunning’s court Tuesday, the couples who had filed suit against Davis after she first denied them marriage licenses said they were able to obtain them.

So there you go. All Davis has to do is stand back and let the deputies do the job. If she doesn’t, the court will consider appropriate sanctions.

I hope she won’t worry too much about Jesus crying heartbrokenly about the same-sex couples in Rowan County, Kentucky getting married.

What would be even better than that, though, would be if she did start worrying more about Jesus’s terrible priorities, and by extension, hers. It would be a good thing if she started to wonder why she objects so much to same-sex couples getting married when she could be worrying about things that actually are bad instead. If you’re going to worry, why not worry about refugees drowning in the Mediterranean? Why not worry about the women enslaved by Boko Haram and IS? Why not worry about climate change? Why not worry about human and/or animal suffering instead of something that causes no suffering or harm to anyone?

Originally a comment by Rob on Currently being pulled from libraries, schools and bookshops.

Part of the problem here is that giving a book designed to be read by teens an R18 classification is a de facto ban. Having spent far too much time on the comments section of one of our main newspaper publishers yesterday I can conform that the overwhelming reaction to the ban has been that it is a bad thing, driven by conservative Christians out of step with modern NZ society. The commonality from the few commentators supporting the ban seemed to be “think of the 10 year olds” and “the author is old, writing about teen sex and therefore a pervert” and “these comments all confirm Christians are persecuted”.

Frankly I was shocked when I saw the headline yesterday. I couldn’t have told you when the last time a book was banned in NZ was. The last time I remember any significant debate about it I was in my teens, which makes it well over 30 mumble years. The last time I remember any real debate about the purpose of even having censors in this day and age there was actually quite a good bit of journalism where they interviewed the then chief censor. He explained how the work was carried out, the standards of assessment and how the censors work. They also showed a brief clip from a hard core porno while the censor explained the rationale for banning the dvd. In that case there was no overarching narrative, no examination of motives or consequences, absolutely nothing that might be regarded as art or social commentary. It was a fuck movie in which a girl of indeterminate age (but almost certainly too young) was coerced into doing something she did not want to do. The atmosphere was threatening, unsafe and the girl was either the best actress I have ever seen or she was clearly scared out of her wits. In short it was abusive and degrading. Quite different from the run of the mill ‘reluctance’ of much commercial porn. To the NZ censors sexual violence in the absence of some kind of meaningful social commentary or narrative that justifies its use is a no no.

In the author’s words, the book is really about bullying. The sex and drugs is simply window dressing to try and get the teen (boy) audience to read the book to expose them to the bigger message. I haven’t read the book, so I can’t comment on how well integrated the theme is, but given that it has won a reasonable award it is probably fairly well done.

My real problem in all this is the role of the classification board. These people are not professionals like the censors. they are private citizens. Some are nominated by interest groups. Some nominate themselves. They are appointed by a Government Minister. In this case the professional censor(s) and the lay board are clearly at odds and the head of the board has used his power to enact the temporary ban. In my view it is an abuse of power, but one that was always likely given the structure of the system. This is certainly a view shared by others, see more here. Don Mathieson QC is apparently known to have conservative social values.

I watched Dr Strangelove again last night, for the first time in way too long – I don’t know why I haven’t stirred my stumps to watch it before.

It holds up amazingly (except it doesn’t amaze me at all).

The performances Kubrick elicited from Peter Sellers and Sterling Hayden and above all George C Scott make my hair stand on end – as does the writing, as does the cinematography. General Jack D Ripper filmed from below, shadowy and mad.

This is perhaps my favorite scene.

https://youtu.be/vuP6KbIsNK4

A viral cartoon by a friend who wants to be anonymous (but wants the cartoon to be shared) via South Jersey Humanists –