FYI – home internet connection still down; have acquired free replacement cable modem, but need an adaptor.
In other news, I’m link-spamming again, as you may have noticed. I don’t understand why Postalicious is not auto-posting, but it does give me this opportunity to customize this message before it goes out, so…
- Who You Calling A Slut? –
I feel much the same way about the word 'whore':
"[My dad] doesn’t get this. I doubt he’ll be calling me a slut again–he now knows that I don’t like it–but I’m not sure if he truly understands why I was so upset. This really concerns me. And I don’t quite know what to do about it, other than feel shitty that my usually very loving father feels it’s okay to call me a slut."
(tags: none) - From the Women Can’t Win Files –
"A female colleague of mine at work once remarked that when the elevator doors opened, she would often hear the group inside (if all male) fall silent, as though she had broken up the party. Small cues like that, dudes, are how you tell us you don’t think we get an equal share of the world. If you were making the kind of joke that would make a woman uncomfortable, the problem is not that she interrupted your fun. The problem is that you made the joke in the first place."
(tags: none) - Women’s Bodies Are Not Political Currency –
"Conservatives are not the only ones who are guilty of this. It’s just as bad when liberals defend themselves by citing the beautiful women in their midst, or by denigrating conservative women’s looks. Don’t play that game; all women lose."
(tags: none) - Toward a General Theory of Democratic Disgruntlement, Part I –
How come [Democratic voters] don't like a Democratically-controlled Congress as much as Republicans do when they control Congress? [...] If you look at the trend lines, the Congress was more popular when the Republicans were the majority in the first six years of this decade. That might seem surprising enough. But if you look closer, it's clear that Republican support prior to 2007 was higher than Democratic support after the takeover. What's going on here? To wit, a few possible theories to consider:…The Newhouse-Agne take is a solid situational explanation for the asymmetry in partisan support by Republicans and Democrats for their respective majorities over the past decade or so. But is there something more systematic at work here?I'll tackle that question in a follow-up post.
(tags: none) - House bill released –
You guys, I'm a big fan of any solution that involves f@#$%%^ing over the health insurance industry the same way they've f@#$ed us; this bill doesn't do that, but nevertheless I almost cried with happiness reading this:To no one’s great surprise, the House bill for health care reform includes a public option. When Nancy Pelosi says something is non-negotiable, you’d better believe her. In general, the bill is exactly what most of us thought it would be. The big thing is the Health Insurance Exchange that would allow people who aren’t covered for whatever reason to buy insurance through the exchange, which would increase competition and drive down prices. There’s also a mandate, which is uncomfortable but should help drive down costs. One big thing the bill does that will help a lot of people out is it not only bans denials based on pre-existing conditions, but it also bans premium increases. This was a major concern of mine, because simply mandating that insurance companies cover everyone doesn’t really help that much, if they just jack the rates up on the people with pre-existing conditions. The elimination on caps will also help people with catastrophic illnesses. What makes reading this summary of the bill really exciting is that not only did the House make sure to get the minimum basic decency standards covered, but they threw in a bunch of goodies on top of the necessities: # Guarantees that every child in America will have health care coverage that includes dental, hearing and vision benefits. # Provides better preventive and wellness care. Every health care plan offered through the exchange and by employers after a grace period will cover preventive care at no cost to the patient. # Increases the health care workforce to ensure that more doctors and nurses are available to provide quality care as more Americans get coverage. If you think about it, moves like eliminating the co-pay on preventive care will save a lot of money over the long run, because it will encourage people to get that preventive care. [...] Imagine a world where the flu shot is free and available everywhere you go. The enormous gains in productivity alone would make it worth it. [...] Stupak is either stupid or lying, because if his only concern is not using federal funds to pay for abortion, then the Capps amendment should satisfy him. But he’s threatening to try to shut down the entire bill unless there’s a stiffer anti-choice amendment attached. [...]The irony in all this is that I think that a lot of Americans who have abortion coverage in their insurance plan don’t realize it. As Amy Sullivan discovered, Focus on Family—who is throwing a mega shit fit over “federal” funding of abortion under the Capps amendment, funding that doesn’t exist—covers its employees through a company that, you guessed it, covers abortion. I’ve joked to friends that most anti-choicers who are freaking out over this probably have insurance plans that cover abortion, but they probably just never thought about it. The abortion freak-out is 100% red herring, an attempt to halt health care reform with bullshit tactics. The result of all this coverage of the issue might be that a lot more people are made aware that insurance plans usually do cover abortion, and there might be an uptick in people billing their insurance companies for it.
(tags: none) - Unfunny conservative rejects liberal women, liberal women rejoice –
"Interestingly, this sort of enthusiasm for shoe designers is the sort of thing that a man trying to prove his masculinity in the eyes of the patriarchy should avoid, I’d think. See how impossible proving your manhood is? You have to like it when women mutilate their feet, but noticing how they do it is Teh Ghey. I’m personally not a fan of Birkenstocks, but nor am I as sold on the idea that what constant high heel wearing does to your feet is as hot as [this guy] thinks. Bunions, yum."
(tags: none) - Photo of the Day –
"Betty Byrd Boatner (C), sister of James Byrd, Jr. , embraces Judy Shepard (L), mother of Matthew Shepard, alongside US President Barack Obama after Obama spoke in honor of the enactment of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. , Hate Crimes Prevention Act during a reception in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, October 28, 2009. In 1998, when he was a college student in Wyoming, Shepard was murdered because he was gay. Byrd, an African American man, was dragged behind a pickup truck to his death in Texas the same year."
(tags: none) - Confession: this is not a blog –
"What I really want is to reach out to the bloggers who don't already care about accessibility. To do that, though, I felt like I needed to get all my information organized. If I was going to say "hey, you need to make your blog accessible!" then I should be prepared to tell them how, including instructions for their blogging platform. That's what I so appreciated about Dive Into Accessibility."
(tags: none) - 5 Free Ways to Bulletproof Your WordPress Blog –
"5 Free Ways to Bulletproof Your WordPress Site: Eric’s presentation from WordCamp Seattle that can also be watched on WordPress.tv Some of the interesting parts include backup, security, performance and general tips including improving search and usability, all with links to relevant plugins and tools. If you are new to WordPress or want to refresh your blog, this is a good read through."
(tags: none) - WordPress Plugin Releases for 10/22 –
TagspaceThe Tagspace widget lets visitors browse your blog’s categories in an dynamic & engaging 3D environment. A single click on any category tag changes the color of the category tag and propels the visitor further into tagspace, revealing additional category tags.WordPress Exploit ScannerThis plugin searches the files and database of your website for signs of suspicious activity. It will not stop someone hacking into your site, but it may help you find any uploaded or compromised files left by the hacker.
(tags: none) - Gravatar Encouragement –
"Back in August, I asked the following question: Why Is Gravatar Still Not Mainstream?. You folks supplied a wealth of answers to the question but many of the answers suggested something along the lines of making it easier to obtain a Gravatar through registration if they didn’t have one. While I’ve yet to see news on such an integration, there is a plugin that has been developed by Milan Dinic called Gravatar Signup Encouragement which enables you to encourage Gravatar registration to anyone who is not a registered member on your WordPress powered site."
(tags: none) - WordPress Plugin Releases for 10/18 –
Community Links Feed plugin for WordPress allows your blog or website’s community users to submit their favorite links to your website. Upon submission, the community links appear in the Dashboard where the administrator can approve or reject them as appropriate. Once approved, the community links feed appears in a customizable sidebar widget.Instant Weekly RoundupHelps you create the weekly or monthly or any span roundups of your blog posts in a few mouse clicks and within some seconds.GeoSmartGeoSmart automatically adds city-precise location information for each comment author to comment metadata for each comment and a map showing comment author location distribution. GeoSmart also ships with a multiple instance capable sidebar widget that displays a map showing the locations of the most recent visitors to your blog.Cute ProfilesCute Profiles is a free WordPress plugin which will bring all your Social Profiles at one location i.e. either left or right side of your blog pages in a well decent floating manner, saving your sidebar or footer space for ads or other important data and widgetsYOURLSYOURLS is a small set of PHP scripts that will allow you to run your own URL shortening service (a la TinyURL). You can make it private or public, you can pick custom keyword URLs, it comes with its own API. You will love it.Admin Post ReminderYou should never publish posts from your admin account. An alert is displayed, informing the user they’re logged in as admin and not to write posts.
(tags: none) - Theme Authenticity Checker –
"Outside of the WordPress.org theme repository and the GPL commercial theme vendors, there are few spots where you can download a variety of themes which do not contain some sort of sponsorship or encrypted code. One site still cranking out great, quality free themes is Themelab run by Leland. However, in most of the theme release posts that are published on WeblogToolsCollection.com, the theme has to be downloaded from the authors website. We do not install and test every theme mentioned in these release posts. However, if you are worried about downloading a theme that contains malicious code or obfuscated code, this somewhat new tool called Theme Authenticity Checker may help you out."
(tags: none) - Plugin Compatibility Beta –
"The number one reason people give us for not upgrading to the latest version of WordPress is fear that their plugins won’t be compatible. As part of our continuing efforts to make WordPress core, plugin, and theme upgrades as painless as possible, Michael Adams developed and launched a beta of a new “Compatibility” feature in the plugin directory, powered by your votes."
(tags: none)
The Links for October 28th through October 29th by Lee Salazar, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
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