Double Reading

There has been a lot of news lately about the avian flu — scientists have recreated the strain of virus that caused the 1918 “Spanish” flu, Bush has called for production of new vaccine, experts are saying that nobody anywhere in the world is prepared for the flu, a man in Indonesia died from a [...]

Poor Kate Moss — and I am serious. I do feel bad for her. She was recently featured on the cover of the British tabloid The Daily Mirror doing lines of cocaine. After the image appeared, Moss lost her modeling contracts with numerous agencies, and it appears to be the end of her modeling career. [...]

I keep hearing people on the news use the word “fatalistic” to refer to someone who is being really negative/pessimistic about a situation. For example, “Is the mayor of New Orleans being as fatalistic about the situation as the Army Corps of Engineers?” The person asking the question was trying to find out if the [...]

Strangely enough, two of my daily reads, Salon.com and Slate, featured some “gender studies”-related articles yesterday. Reading them really made me miss college (which isn’t to difficult for me) and reminded me why I really should’ve been a women’s studies minor (which, it appears, my school has renamed to “gender studies”… there was a discussion [...]

Speaking of exploitation, I want to “exploit” the current disaster going on around New Orleans due to Hurricane Katrina and defer blame not to nature but to President Bush. (Yes, I am serious.) Sidney Blumenthal has a great article on Salon: “‘No one can say they didn’t see it coming’” My favorite quote: In early [...]

As far as I am concerned, life is based on exploitation. Everyone exploits everything, and that just seems to be how things are. The people who complain about that are totally missing the point. I find it extremely disturbing and ironic that while people are attacking Cindy Sheehan for exploiting her child’s death, we have [...]

The story about the guy from Brazil who was shot (8 times!!) and killed in London on Friday is probably one of the most upsetting pieces of news I’ve read in a long time… probably more upsetting than this whole Karl Rove scandal. Thank god we have The Huffington Post‘s “A Death in London” to [...]

Over the past few weeks my co-worker and I have been commenting on the rather bizarre news events that have seemed to captivate the nation this summer. Granted, due to my job and all that, I might have a heightened awareness of the drivel out there, but really: Yes, “Utah Boy” is a cute story [...]

I’m sure everyone and their mother and grandmother and great aunt and puppy have an opinion on the Michael Jackson case. Yesterday he was completely acquitted of all of the charges against him, in case you are living on Zeta Reticuli. As for my take: I think this case pretty much highlights all of the [...]