Friday morning roundup

The Sudan-South Sudan agreement is lacking.

Some people could learn a thing or two about tolerance from Honey Boo Boo.

Is shaming a necessary anti-obesity evil?

The Onion on the latest news in castration.

Unlike the sentence-ending preposition stuff, the which/that rule is one I quite like. I'm less interested in the prescriptivist-descriptivist debate (which is a linguistic one) than I am in the need for clarity. We don't abide by grammatical rules and conventions arbitrarily; we do so to minimize strain and confusion on the part of our readers.

I've never understood the logic of, "we live in an age of gender equality, so I will slam that door in your face," but some guys apparently cling to it and very much so. Like the author, I tend to stand on the Metro, but I'm nonetheless encouraged when men offer me their seat (or even when women (or men) pause before claiming a newly-empty seat to ask whether I had my eyes on it). I'm also discouraged by the aggressive seat-vying, in addition to other inconsiderate metro behavior (pushing blind people out of the way, seat-hogging, aisle-hogging with luggage, etc.). So civility is always warranted on the Metro and elsewhere. And even though I certainly don't think I'm any more entitled to a seat than a man, and as mentioned, I don't even want one, I still found it off-putting (or, douchey) just yesterday when a young man went out of his way to beat me to a seat. But even that douchiness doesn't hold a candle to some of the comments on that chivalrous guy's Facebook page or even on the HuffPo article, like this charmer.