Objectify This

As The Austrailian reports, “In his remarks, UN chief Ban Ki-moon stressed the world body was “profoundly committed to its zero-tolerance policy against sexual exploitation or abuse by our own personnel”.” “”Violence against women has reached unspeakable and pandemic proportions in some societies attempting to recover from conflict,” he said.” The BBC notes that China, [...]

Hat tip to Sabotabby of Punkassblog for the scoop on this one: the Russian Government has released a statement officially limiting children’s toys that are “psychologically incongruous” (thus, threatening irony in the next generation of Russian childhoods) and stating that, as Sabotabby has it, “Apparently, the Russian government feels it necessary to fight the growing [...]

Yep. Check Amherstdam for the details from the Daily Mail while I groan at my thesis.

So Lena Chen. Here’s a refresher course. She’s a sexblogger from Harvard who tells stories about her sexploits, with strategically placed psuedonyms and (presumably) enough privacy to retain her sanity and, oh yeah, sell some advertising. Recently, some trouble was roused when her vindictive ex published naked pictures of her on the internet, thus ruining [...]

Having spent several weeks in Bolivia this summer, and visited El Alto (lit. the heights), the neighborhood on the lip of the canyon where the capital of Bolvia, La Paz, this news is especially disturbing. (Curtsy to $3.60 for the update.) Reuters, via Yahoo News, reports that “Prostitutes in the Bolivian city of El Alto [...]

I just got back from NYC’s incarnation of the Rock the Bells Hip Hop Festival on Randall’s Island this weekend, where I was struck by the ways that the mainstream, commercial hip hop scene differs from the “underground” or “conscious” hip hop scene that I stood for hours in mud and pouring rain to dance [...]

Spending all of that time (22 hours now) lying on floors and sitting in chairs and lying across chairs trying not to fall asleep because I needed to listen to the loudspeaker announcements in the Viru Viru airport would have been a lot less fun if I hadn´t had people to talk to. Nicole, a [...]