My Facebook page is a place of rigorous debate. I post something and a few white male Republicans tell me why I'm wrong about basically everything. I find this enjoyable and somewhat informative, but I should have skipped the unfortunate discussion about racial profiling that I find myself in. I'm in too deep now. It started with a clip from the Ed Schultz Show:
While I'm not sure I would phrase my objections the same way that Jack Rice does his, I still agree with him on this topic. Labeling a quarter of the world's population as suspicious hardly seems like a way to endear ourselves to pro-Western Muslims in the Middle East. Moreover, as a human being with a conscience, I have some real problems with the idea of sending all Muslims to the Muslims-only line at the airport so they can get a cavity search or whatever. It's wrong. And I'm bothered by people who insist that it isn't.
Ultimately I suspect that the reasoning behind it is convenience for everyone except those who had the gall to be Muslims. It's easy for a white Protestant man to insist that anyone in a turban be searched, but I doubt he would react favorably if the criteria were instead white men with subscriptions to The Economist.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Things your teachers lied about
Nonoxynol-9 can literally kill you. Or at least make it much easier for you to become infected with something that can kill you. Even more easily than scientists already thought, actually.
Let me backtrack.
When I attended Indiana public schools, nobody ever talked about sex until fifth grade, when they separated the boys and girls and sent the boys off to watch a video called Boy to Man and the girls off to watch Girl to Woman. Girl to Woman was about a group of three-ish friends who were presumably all on the cusp of womanhood. A number of the details escape me now, but I recall that it never actually explained how babies were made, just that pretty soon we were all going to go through something very special and we would also get zits. Seriously, the video advised us to wash our faces three times a day. When I think about it now, I guess I'm a little disturbed by the fact that my school system thought my complexion was more important than actually explaining the basics of human reproduction. The only other thing I can remember about the movie is when the girls went to the mall and one girl put on an outfit that was reminiscent of late eighties Madonna and exclaimed that she looked just like she belonged on MTV. Clearly, this transformed the video from a painfully awkward and ineffective sex ed film into a hip and progressive teaching tool.
I should add that even when I went through my something very special, I never washed my face three times a day and I never had an acne problem.
In sixth grade, girls watched the boy video and boys watched the girl video. In the boy video, I again learned that you should wash your face three times a day and that erections were embarrassing. This knowledge was rendered pointless by the fact that it did not explain precisely what an erection was. I already knew that the thrice-daily scrubbing was horseshit at this point.
Fortunately, my sister was in junior high and had scored some pamphlets, which she kept on a shelf in her closet along with some sample tampons. She kept these items largely secret from me as though they were initiation paraphernalia for a secret society (looking back, small wonder we both joined sororities). I read the pamphlets on the sly and figured out the basic mechanics of baby-making on my own.*
*I admitted the secret pamphlet-reading to my sister about a month ago. She forgave me.
Let me backtrack.
When I attended Indiana public schools, nobody ever talked about sex until fifth grade, when they separated the boys and girls and sent the boys off to watch a video called Boy to Man and the girls off to watch Girl to Woman. Girl to Woman was about a group of three-ish friends who were presumably all on the cusp of womanhood. A number of the details escape me now, but I recall that it never actually explained how babies were made, just that pretty soon we were all going to go through something very special and we would also get zits. Seriously, the video advised us to wash our faces three times a day. When I think about it now, I guess I'm a little disturbed by the fact that my school system thought my complexion was more important than actually explaining the basics of human reproduction. The only other thing I can remember about the movie is when the girls went to the mall and one girl put on an outfit that was reminiscent of late eighties Madonna and exclaimed that she looked just like she belonged on MTV. Clearly, this transformed the video from a painfully awkward and ineffective sex ed film into a hip and progressive teaching tool.
I should add that even when I went through my something very special, I never washed my face three times a day and I never had an acne problem.
In sixth grade, girls watched the boy video and boys watched the girl video. In the boy video, I again learned that you should wash your face three times a day and that erections were embarrassing. This knowledge was rendered pointless by the fact that it did not explain precisely what an erection was. I already knew that the thrice-daily scrubbing was horseshit at this point.
Fortunately, my sister was in junior high and had scored some pamphlets, which she kept on a shelf in her closet along with some sample tampons. She kept these items largely secret from me as though they were initiation paraphernalia for a secret society (looking back, small wonder we both joined sororities). I read the pamphlets on the sly and figured out the basic mechanics of baby-making on my own.*
*I admitted the secret pamphlet-reading to my sister about a month ago. She forgave me.
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