Weekly Reader

Saving Pluto? This is the best explanation I've seen regarding the demotion of Pluto. Power to the Plutonians!

Macho, Macho Man. I met Robert Jensen a few years back while he was on a book tour promoting Citizens of the Empire. A fantastic book, by the way. Besides being an ardent critic of the current administration, Jensen also writes a great deal about issues of gender and race. This recent pieces offers a terrific summary of the dominant discourse regarding U.S. American masculinity:

That dominant conception of masculinity in U.S. culture is easily summarized: Men are assumed to be naturally competitive and aggressive, and being a real man is therefore marked by the struggle for control, conquest and domination. A man looks at the world, sees what he wants and takes it. Men who don't measure up are wimps, sissies, fags, girls. The worst insult one man can hurl at another -- whether it's boys on the playground or CEOs in the boardroom -- is the accusation that a man is like a woman. Although the culture acknowledges that men can in some situations have traits traditionally associated with women (caring, compassion, tenderness), in the end it is men's strength-expressed-as-toughness that defines us and must trump any female-like softness. Those aspects of masculinity must prevail for a man to be a "real man."

Struggle for Civilization? Poppycock. Isn't anyone else getting tired of this administration's propensity for the melodramatic? Seriously, now the Bush folks are trying to put Osama Bin Laden, Inc. in the same company as Nazis and Communists. Rhetorically, this is a pretty darn good move. Conjure those past demons in the minds of U.S. citizens and you'll see support for the "War on Terror" rise. Honestly, though, aren't most Americans too smart to fall for the faulty analogies? Please, let them be smart enough. And don't get me started on whether or not it's possible to declare war on an ideology, which is exactly what a war on terror is really all about. I'll see if I can't conjure enough fortitude to address this whole thing at length in the near future. No promises, though. Reading any speech by this President and his cohort gives me a stomach ache.

Faeries! Would you believe I discovered a small faery ring in our front lawn? It wasn't nearly as large as the one pictured in this article--I'd guess it was about a foot in diameter--but it was a very odd sight indeed. Why would mushrooms grow in a circle, eh?

Mmmm. Delicious Virgin Mary. Great discussion in class today regarding these supposed appearances of the Virgin Mary, Christ, etc. in everything from a grilled cheese sandwich to chocolate drippings. The question I posed: "Is it possible these kinds of occurances are, in fact, examples of God speaking? If so, how do we approach such phenomena as communication scholars and still be taken seriously?" I think the Virgin Mary on a piece of french toast fits somewhere into my musings on the unexplainable. Even if these forms are nothing more than melted chocolate being interpreted by overactive imaginations, they still mean something. The fact that so many people want to see evidence of something miraculous has to mean something, right?