The first SCOTUS conference of the session is today and both DOMA (multiple cases) and Prop 8 are on the docket, meaning the Court will (probably) decide whether to take one or the other up in the next term. The votes of four justices are required for a case to be heard by the Court. …
Category Archive: Posts Worth Going Back and Reading
Sep 09 2012
Stalkers: Welcome to life as a girl on the internet
I think people sometimes underestimate the weirdness that one faces by being a semi-public online woman. The following is a story about extreme creepiness and stalkerdom. I was asked by another stalkee to publish the stalker’s name — I felt justified in doing so on my own, but probably wouldn’t have, but since she has …
Aug 27 2012
Westinghouse > Tesla > Edison
Why, in all this Tesla > Edison stuff, does no one ever mention the late great Westinghouse?!??!? Don’t get me wrong, Tesla was a super cool dude and being played by David Bowie automatically gives you serious awesome points, but for all of his awesomeness, it wasn’t Tesla that got shit done. And it definitely …
Aug 19 2012
Todd Akin and how the Christian Right’s delusion of an all-powerful God hurts people
I am about as far from the Christian Right as you can get, religiously and politically, and it’s not always apparent how closely that religious fervor is related to what I think of as the most cruel and stupid of the beliefs that the right-wing clings to. Todd Akin, current representative and Senate nominee, said …
Jul 31 2012
Geek Evolution: Let go of your anger, be a Better Nerd
by Nicholas Thurkettle I have known Ashley for a few years now, and I think she would agree geekdom has been a foundational pillar of our friendship from the very start. And so when she started on this topic I felt like this was a conversation in which I could participate, and she has been …
Jul 30 2012
Video Dragon*Con 2011: Do Be a Dick
This is the talk I gave at Dragon*Con last year, which was itself an expansion on the talk I gave at TAM9. It’s about how to use emotions to your advantage when trying to promote a cause. I talk about Prop 8, the importance of social justice in getting people to like atheists, and how …
Jul 28 2012
Stop making geek culture be about how you were bullied
Update: More thoughts here. To my mind, being a geek is a lot like being gay or being atheist. These are things that can be completely invisible to an outsider. No one in high school knew I went home and wrote Hercules fanfiction. No one knew the fathomless depths of my geekery. Greta Christina has …
Jul 24 2012
The importance of sexual identification in AIDS rates
Gregory in Seattle left the following comment on my AIDS post yesterday and I thought it was worth reposting in its own right. You might find this of interest: an interactive map giving the HIV infection rates in the US by county, per 100,000 population. According to the CDC, about 25% of Americans, aged 13 …
Jul 23 2012
AIDS in the South: Religion is the enemy of social justice
The South is the new epicenter of HIV transmission — half of all new infection happen here, though we have less than a third of the American population. South Carolina is 8th in the nation for rates of HIV, but other southern states are doing poorly as well. Louisiana, Georgia, Mississippi, Texas… HIV is not …
Jul 09 2012
Help me save South Carolina, the arts, and my mom
Over the weekend, the governor, Nikki Haley, destroyed the South Carolina Commission for the Arts — the cut was such that the 20 people who work there cannot show up to work today, can’t even go into their building, because of liability issues. The arts in South Carolina brings in $9.2 billion and creates 78,000 jobs …
About the Author
Kate Donovan
Ashley's co-blogger is a third year student at Northwestern University who runs on coffee and snark. . At some point, she'd like to make people sit on couches and tell her about their feelings, but right now she writes in different places around the internet and makes silly faces when she doesn't know what to say. She's the president of her local Secular Student Alliance affiliate, and she is on the Secular Woman speakers bureau. Opinions do not necessarily reflect those of the Secular Student Alliance
Recent Comments