Dierdra Funcheon at Broward/Palm Beach New Times: To Hug a Porcupine

…here was another sad example of the historically troubled agency failing the very children it claimed to protect.

BBC News: Nigeria ethnic violence leaves ‘hundreds dead’

The latest attacks are said to have been reprisals for the January killings.

Robert Fisk at The Independent: Once again, a nation walks through fire to give the West its ‘democracy’

And always we defend these miserable results with the same refrain.

Laura Northrup at the Consumerist: Eddie Bauer Outlet Destroys Unsold Clothing, Throws It Away

“I would rather find nothing at all and give up diving if it meant that retail outlets and other stores would donate or recycle their unused/returned items.”

Carol Nader at The Age: More power for human rights watchdog

”The view I take is as a community we’re all harmed when discrimination occurs. Harassment or unfavourable treatment can have substantial tangible effects on a person’s mental and physical health.”

kaninchenzero at Rabbit Lord of the Undead: Pollan v. Rabbit Lord of the Undead

What this is—what this always is, as Mr. Pollan has exactly one trick—is classism, naked and unashamed.

Some recommended reading, in light of my post last week which was not about Michael Pollan which people tried very hard to turn into a post about Michael Pollan.

Mitu Sengupta at rabble.ca: Altruism at the Oscars: Legitimizing racism, inequality and imperial design (via abby jean)

The denials of humanity and agency we see in Precious and Slumdog are not without consequence.

J. Adrian Stanley at the Colorado Springs Independent: Urban Jungle

Using this logic, Gallagher believes he can escape having to build to current codes, including those that might require buildings to be elevated in order to protect them from flooding.

Chally at Zero at the Bone: Without and within, part two

Ignoring what’s within each person means a feminism without relevance or rightness, a feminism that does not serve women.

Patrick Yeagle at the Illinois Times: Illinois Prisons: Standing room only

…the state’s prison system has about 50 percent more prisoners than the prisons were designed to hold, with 25 of the state’s 28 prisons operating over capacity.

Kevin McLean at Fast Forward Weekly: Red, white and green

Each bottle of wine can produce as much as a pound of waste and release 16 grams of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere.

Nashville Scene: Katherine Carroll The Battlefield Professor

This immersion in the culture of war, Iraq and the military was very stressful for the self-described “cocktail-drinking gal from a wildly leftist family” whose father was an English professor.

Daily Mail: Mysterious image of snake appears on 400-year-old painting of Queen Elizabeth I

A serpent was sometimes used to reflect wisdom, prudence and reasoned judgment, but the scaly creatures are also linked to notions of Satan and original sin.

Matt Davis at the Portland Mercury: Let’s Fix the Portland Police Bureau!

“We don’t call it an accident, a shooting, or a wrongful death—not even negligent homicide. What happened to Aaron was straight-up murder. There was no reason for him to be taken out like that.”

Tim Vanderpool at the Tucson Weekly: Death by Study

But many residents heard only this: Blah, blah, blah.

Nathaniel Hoffman at Boise Weekly: Take a Village

But no matter the difficulty of life in the refugee camps, Niyonzima says now she never would have left if she had known what would happen to her children in the United States.

Stephen Lemons at the Phoenix New Times: Blood’s Thicker Than Water

Fife shot back, “You better check with your chief because every one of your sector chiefs has said that we are not required to contact you at all if we’re giving food and water and medical aid to migrants.”

George Mannes at More Money: Don’t sweat it: Canceling a credit card won’t hurt your score

In any case, Watts says that if you already have a score in the upper half of the 700s or above — that’s about 40% of the population — losing a few points shouldn’t hurt you at all, practically speaking.

Tomokazu Kosuga at Vice: MEOW MEOW MEOW

Cat cafés are huge in Japan right now.

Trevor Scott Howell at Fast Forward Weekly: Prostitutes peddle co-operative brothels to protect sex workers

Since establishing the West Coast Co-operative of Sex Industry Professionals in 2007, Davis has been pushing for wide-sweeping reform of Canada’s prostitution laws.

Nina Shapiro at the Seattle Weekly: All Choked Up

“They raped us when we were small, and now they’re doing it all over again with this bankruptcy,” says Sanchez, 54, a social worker on the Colville reservation who says she gave away her settlement money.

Kera Abraham at Monterey County Weekly: Solar Frays

The proposals herald the entrance of Big Solar – an industry Californians recently confronted with Proposition 7, which would have directed the state’s electric utilities to provide half their power from renewable sources by 2025.

Ed Yong at Not Exactly Rocket Science: Sanajeh, the snake that ate baby dinosaurs

There are many reasons to think that this prehistoric tableau represented a predator caught in the act of hunting, rather than a mash-up of unconnected players thrown together by chance.

Will Parrish and Darwin Bond-Graham at Counterpunch: Who Runs the University of California?

The Board of Regents is a corporate entity formed in 1879 for the explicit purpose of thwarting a populist social movement of small farmers who demanded that the the university become more responsive to their needs.

Today’s sites of interest is a very special theme edition. I think the title speaks for itself.

Democracy Now: Following String of Racist Incidents, UC San Diego Students Occupy Chancellor’s Office

The Black Student Union at UC San Diego has declared the campus climate for racial minorities to be in a “state of emergency.”

Los Angeles Times Editorial: Beyond a ‘Compton Cookout’

Many of these recommendations are not new. They were put forward by the Black Student Union as far back as 2006, when students warned they were becoming increasingly uncomfortable, alienated and even fearful on campus.

Jason Kobely at News10: UC Davis: Swastika carved into Jewish student’s door probed as hate crime

“I was scared when I saw it and confused. We all really like each other in the dorm. I don’t know who would do it. It’s totally unacceptable,” said the UC Davis freshman.

Student Activism: Noose Found Hanging at UCSD Library

Here’s my take: there’s no difference. There’s no difference between being a bigot and pretending to be a bigot to wind people up.

Julie Bolcer at the Advocate: UC Davis LGBT Center Vandalized

A letter from the center’s staff on the door vowed to leave the graffiti up as a reminder that intolerance still exists.

UC Regent Live(Blog): Coverage on KKK hood found at UCSD

UC San Diego police are investigating the discovery about 11 p.m. Monday of what appeared to be a white pillowcase that had been crudely fashioned into a KKK-style hood with a hand-drawn symbol.

I say again: What in forks, University of California?

One act of solidarity amidst the hatred:

March4ClassWar at IndyBay: Black Students Block Sather Gate

Black students decked in all black, masked up, linked their arms to block Sather Gate’s main entrance today in solidarity with UCSD and UCLA.

I’d like to note that tomorrow happens to be the national day of action to defend education; strikes and student walkouts will be occurring all over the United States.

Roxy MtJoy at the Change Women’s Rights Blog: Pregnant Iowa Woman Arrested for Falling Down

That’s right, a pregnant woman was jailed for admitting to thinking about an abortion at some point early in her pregnancy and then having the audacity to fall down some stairs a couple of months later.

Charmaine Ortega Getz at the Boulder Weekly: Black men still overrepresented in prison

Whether you’re a serial killer or as pure as a poster child for the Scouts, nothing counts as much as your race when it comes to encounters with police and the criminal justice system in the United States.

Chris Morran at Consumerist: Apple Admits To Having Underage Labor in Factories

In addition to the kid labor admission, Apple admitted that more than half of the 102 audited plants had violated the company’s regulations regarding the work week.

Mark Silva at the Los Angeles Times: Thousands of federal workers furloughed because of Senate filibuster

…the one-man filibuster of Sen. Jim Bunning, a Kentucky Republican, is putting a couple of thousand federal transportation workers out of work this week.

One person. One. Person. Is keeping thousands of people out of work. (And holding up extensions of benefits.)

Andrea (AJ) Plaid at Racialicious: Cultural Appropriation Can Win You Olympic Medals

So, the Russian skating pros aren’t going to apologize sincerely for the mush-mess that is their routine…

Cara at Feministe: Selling Food Stamps for Kid’s Shoes

Not discussed in the article is the conundrum of the legions in the U.S.’s bootstraps obsessed culture who will insist that women selling food stamps is not a sign that our system is broken, failing desperately, inherently cruel, and on the brink of collapse, but evidence that those receiving any assistance at all are “scamming” the system, and do not even deserve the scraps the middle-class is willing to throw their way.

Margaret Snook at the Guardian: Comment is Free America: Chile’s earthquake: the view from Santiago

This one seemed to last an eternity – they say it was a full minute, which by seismic terms is pretty much an eternity.

The Big Picture: Earthquake in Chile (this is a curated collection of images, hence no author attribution)

Please note that some of the images in this collection are graphic and while some are screened to allow readers to decide whether or not to look, others are not!

Mark Lacey and Alexei Barrionuevo at the New York Times: Chile Toll at 700 – 2 Million Are Displaced

In Concepción, Chile’s second-largest metropolitan area, which appeared to be especially hard hit, the mayor said Sunday morning that 100 people were trapped under the rubble of a building that had collapsed, according to Reuters.

Joseph Shapiro at NPR: College Justice Falls Short For Rape Victim

“It was just a shouting match,” she remembers. “He called me a slut. And his dad, who’s not supposed to speak, starts talking and saying, ‘These college girls have one-night stands all the time.’ ” [This quote describes the "hearing" held in lieu of police investigation/prosecution.]

pocochina at The Raging Prosecutrix: Queering the Dollhouse: Thoughts on Kilo

Taking a queer woman and brainwashing her hetero is a dehumanizing stripping of identity which is all too popular in our world, and as always in the world of Dollhouse, story and metaphor are a tangled web indeed.

Robert Gammon at the East Bay Express: John Yoo, Too Extremist To Be Guilty

Associate Deputy Attorney General David Margolis essentially argued that Yoo’s extreme views about unlimited presidential power in wartime had “clouded” his judgment, and thus did not make him guilty of “professional misconduct.”

Gregory B. Hladky at the Hartford Advocate: Just Eat It

Unfortunately, you might encounter some legal, political and social hurdles with a few of the menu items mentioned above.

Isiah Thompson at the Philadelphia City Paper: Drill, Baby, Drill

Rendell’s enthusiasm for drilling has a simple explanation: The state’s forests have suddenly become exponentially more valuable than at any time in recent history.

Peter Jamison at SF Weekly: Dead Sea

The report represents a milestone in scientists’ understanding of the lethality of bunker fuel, which is used to power cargo ships all over the world.

Travis R. Wright at Metro Weekly: Bombs, burns and coloring books

If Kobie “Rift” Solomon had his way, the most talented graffiti artists in the world would meet in Detroit and paint mega-murals down the whole yard.

Site Note: My power is off today because my service panel is being replaced, so if you email me or comment and it takes a while to get a response, that is why!

Holly McKay at Fox News: Miss Beverly Hills Lauren Ashley Opposes Same Sex Marriage

“I feel like God himself created mankind and he loves everyone, and he has the best for everyone. If he says that having sex with someone of your same gender is going to bring death upon you, that’s a pretty stern warning, and he knows more than we do about life.”

This is not just “opposing same sex marriage,” this is wanting people like me to die.

Christine Negroni at the New York Times: Leaving the Trash Behind

Even before they board, air travelers throw away trash of all sorts — including paper, plastic and food waste — and airports and airlines recycle only a small portion of it.

Randy Serraglio at the Tucson Weekly: These desert rains? These record-breaking snow storms? They’re all signs of severe climate change

Scientists who measure the weather tell us that, with increasing frequency, things are happening that have never happened in 125 years.

Latoya Peterson at Jezebel: Our Avatars, Our Projected Selves

Secondly, I wonder if the reactions had to do with the gender of the avatar – or the race and gender presentation.

Amanda Hess at The Sexist: Your Decrepit Ovaries May Be Sabotaging Your Career

But first: What’s with these ovaries anyway, and why are they so darned stubborn?

Lisa Wade at Sociological Images: Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and the Social Control of Mothers

This strategy replaces addressing all of the other problems that correlate with the appearance of FAS–poverty, stress, and other kinds of social deprivation–in favor of policing women.

Deborah Blum at Slate: The Chemist’s War

Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people.

Radley Balko at Reason: Is Texas About To Execute Another Innocent Man?

You’d think given recent headlines that Texas might be a bit more reluctant to execute a possibly innocent man.

invisiman52 at Racialicious: Why “African American” IS the Most Accurate Term

If we, African Americans, shutter our own imperialist gaze we might find more in common with Africans than we thought.

Amanda Hess at The Sexist: Rape Analogy: The “Walking In A Bad Neighborhood” Theory

When you say that women who wear too-short skirts, or too-high heels, or too much make up are not sufficiently protecting themselves against rape, what you are really saying is that women who act too much like women deserve to be raped.

Dick J. Reavis at Indyweek: The Secret World Of Day Labourers: The Hole

We had a job—and not a job anybody would want— maybe because of a machine’s limitations, or if not, because our em­ployer’s trailer had a flat tire.

Alan Prendergast at Denver Westword: Health-Care Hell

But as the hospital bills began to roll in, the company launched a review of her application and prior medical records, a process known as “post-claim underwriting.”