It's so over

Utterly brilliant is my friend's take on the Palin nomination:

It's uncanny, isn't it, how the guyz only seem to adopt a form after it has been drained of every last whiff of inspiration, meaning, or purpose and has limped off to die? Thus, one cannot be surprised to find that it is within the sublimely ironic Sarah Palin Republican candidacy that the once-vital corpse of Second-Wave Feminism seems to have reached its final resting place, caught like a consolation prize in the triumphal, rigid, and perfectly unmusical embrace of the official Party of the Straight White Men, where it will moulder for decades as an anachronism so empty it is devoid of even a clue.

Dandy is so awesome.

technorati: Palin, feminism

Students protest Schlafly's presence at graduation

Washington University in St. Louis gave an honorary degree yesterday to Phyllis Schlafly, one of the dinosaurs of the Christian Right. The 83-year-old founder of the Concerned Women of America pressure group lives in nearby Alton, Ill. As she was awarded her honor, dozens of students and some faculty members turned their backs in protest.

Schlafly is famous for her anti-feminist views, which she expresses in deadening language that is hardly quotable. She is also well known for being strangely obsessed with the teaching of reading using phonics, blaming other systems for everything from illiteracy to liberalism.

technorati: Phyllis Schafly, Washington University

It's all material

Casting around for a subject for your next novel set in the near future? Look no farther than this BBC News article: Wifeless future for China's men:

"There are more than a hundred men aged between 18 to 40 who are unmarried in our village," he says. "Nearby villages are all like us. How can we get married? I don't know what to do or where to start finding a wife. I'm stuck -- unless God can help me."

The brothers eat lunch by themselves.

Outside the village shop, men and teenagers hang about.

They keep an eye on the main road -- in case any eligible women wander by. But the road is empty.

In years to come, for the single men of China, things will only get worse.

technorati: China, results of gender selection, writers ideas