Wednesday roundup

There's a lot at stake for Afghan women.

This sentiment--aired in the Detroit rape kit saga--is so common that the author didn't think much of it:

She detailed a deficit elimination plan that had been recently placed on her desk from Wayne County CEO Bob Ficano’s office calling work on non-grant-funded sexual assault kit investigations and prosecutions “low priority,” and saying that the work “should be discontinued.”

This, in light of the fact that "to date, almost 100 serial rapists have been prosecuted from the backlogged kits."

(Some) conservative women suggest the rest of us really lean out.

Emotional trauma manifests itself physically; that's science, not new-age quackery.

In memory of Irene Fernandez.

I had not realized that Alan Greenspan had been involved in the Savings & Loan mess (until I read it in Charles Keating's obituary).

This is honestly a sloppy article about language discrimination, starting with the subtitle; the authors ought to define and use their terms more carefully. Are "native speakers" and those "born abroad" mutually exclusive? And, the way that the study is described, it's not clear that it's a language vs. culture thing (would you see the same results with Americans or Australians, or with Nigerians or Jamaicans?). Are you also controlling for class? Get that stuff straight before you generalize the results.

I got distracted before I managed to comment on this shameless click-bait about non-parents paying more in taxes (which we do anyway). I'm all about funding public services, like education, but the idea of taxing non-parents has got to be one of the dumbest ever. Never mind that we already pick up the slack for people who can't quite be full-time at work, etc. Let's focus instead on how this would essentially be a reverse-carbon tax. Or how it would be impossible to implement/enforce. How would you penalize people with fertility issues? Maybe, instead, make it easier for people to adopt?

 

Jezebel doesn't think Johnny Depp is allowed to say anything positive about China, even about its architecture. From the headline and the analogy to Dennis Rodman, I was expecting some political statement, but all he said was that his experience in-country was positive. I mean, you can say "China has cool architecture" without saying "I approve of China's government." Jezebel needs to chill the f* out and pick its battles.

On a lighter note: these pictures are pretty.