From my response to decembriel:

Do you ever stop in the middle of the day to question your assumptions?

A convenience store owner who showed mercy to a would-be robber says he's received an apology note and $50 in the mail.

The bat-wielding man tearfully told Mohammad Sohail in May that he was trying to feed his family. The rifle-toting businessman gave him $40 and bread, and made him promise never to rob again.  The note said the would-be robber has a new job, a new child, and is staying out of trouble.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/odd/news/20091205p2g00m0in018000c.html

"In marriage, you volunteer to stand on the tracks when you see the freight train of suck bearing down on you" - MrWright

I was reading someone's tale of woe about their depressed mother, and how their mother's self-absorption destroyed their life, and an ironic thought struck me: their writing is pretty self-absorbed.

This image pretty much makes the case for FB being used to violate privacy more convincingly than any drawn-out debate:

While the brother clearly escalated this, and one might say he should have accepted he was "wrong" in having beer, it's not like the girl is any more eager to accept that she was "wrong" for cultivating an image at odds with her true self.  Everybody loses; nobody wins - except maybe certain spectators, who presumably really needed a haircut.

I've read two articles:

White privilege - plays fast and loose with logic, but it does have a piece of the truth.

Invisible knapsack - just because I think it's an interesting read doesn't mean I buy into it 100%.  How much of what she's talking about is a simple function of money?

What I've noticed, overall, is that even as writers like Peggy McIntosh talk about the abhorrence of their fundamental assumptions of equality and fairness, they still can't help but put them into play.  They have recognized their issues without managing to escape said issues.  To wit, Peggy McIntosh writes,

Is our capacity for understanding really so limited?  What would possess a person to look at a situation, see the inequities of power as evil, and conclude, "Oh hey, let's draw an arbitrary line: these inequities over here are okay, but those inequities over there are bad."

Don't get what I'm saying?  Let me put it to you this way:  the argument against bias based on race is that you don't choose what race you get to be.  Yeah?  Well neither do you choose your genetic package for strength, height, or intelligence.  What makes them okay to judge by, if you recognize that race is not okay?  You might suggest, as McIntosh does, that accomplishments are earned whereas race is not, but I don't know of anyone who earned their height. 

Please.  You're chasing an illusion of fairness that never had substance.

I heard something outrageous the other day at a store.  Two customers got in a dispute, and a woman watching said in a shocked tone, "I can't believe that man is arguing with a woman!"

It seemed pretty clear that the implication was that the man should defer or "know he would lose."

Is it me, or does this do feminism the most damage?  More than entrenched misogyny, which increasingly seems ludicrous as people realize jobs are done just as well by women as men, this expectation of female privilege makes a mockery of the idea of empowering women for equality.  It tells people, "We don't want justice or equality; we just want to have the power to get away with things ourselves."

I self-identify as a radical feminist, but this kind of crap has nothing to do with what I believe in.

From the Chicago Tribune:

Is this a case of "If you want something done right, do it yourself?"

Manstration wrote of drama bloggers,

I'm not.

Would you smuggle yourself into Auschwitz just to witness the horror and give someone else a reprieve?