Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
“Yes, I’m on the highway,” Aaron Arias first told a Kaufman County Sheriff’s Office dispatcher. “I’m witnessing a robbery; not a robbery — a kidnapping.”
Arias, a 19-year-old college student, and Jamal Harris, 17, a Seagoville high school student, noticed the woman in the back seat of a car at a stoplight in Seagoville.
“It’s me and another guy, so we’re checking out the girl in the backseat because, we’re like, ‘OK, she’s kind of attractive,'” Arias said. “And then, all of the sudden, you know, the guy is turned back, looking at us.”
The woman, 25, was kidnapped on Aug. 22 near Bryan Street after she left a downtown office building. About an hour later, from the backseat of her car, she drew the attention of Arias and Harris.
The woman looked panicked and was “saying, ‘Help me,’ or something, whispering it,” Arias told the 911 operator.
The teens followed the woman’s car down U.S. 175 until police caught up with them in Kaufman.
“Oh my God, I’m hoping the car behind me is a police officer,” Arias said. “Nope, it’s not. Oh my God.”
But within seconds, officers arrived and pulled over the car with the woman and the man accused of kidnapping her.
“Thank God. You guys are awesome,” Arias said. “Oh my God. Oh my God. Get him! Oh my God.”
The suspect, Charles Atkins Lewis Jr., remains in jail on $50,000 bond. He is charged with aggravated kidnapping.
The woman was checked by paramedics but was unhurt.
Arias, a freshman at Texas A&M in Texarkana, ironically got a tattoo of the comic book antihero Deadpool the day before, he said in a telephone interview.
Arias said he met the woman at the scene after the rescue.
“She hugs us,” he remembered. “I would describe it as the best hug I have ever gotten.”
Checking out the girl in the back seat. Well, what a couple of sexist pigs. Somebody better get them some mandatory sensitivity training…
Bet she’s glad they were there, though.
Update: I think it might be worth pointing out…couple weeks ago, some scientific research emerged that said men aren’t pigs. We as a society would do well to question, how exactly is it we started thinking of men as pigs in the first place. Truly bad men, like the guy who was kidnapping the woman in the story above, did not encumber men with that reputation. The lookers and the oglers, like the teenagers who ended up rescuing the damsel in distress, were more responsible for that. Now that the behavior has led to something good, it might be worth pointing out that the behavior never was the problem, the problem was the collision between that behavior and a modern feminist expectation that it should not be happening. Put more simply: The expectation that men who look, or merely notice, or merely want to notice, are a threat.
We’re far too hospitable to that feminist expectation. It seems, at first blush, right-on. I’m initially inclined to accept it myself. Leering, after all, is rude.
The expectation becomes a problem, though, when it hardens and crystallizes into something risible: Men are to act uninterested, and be uninterested. All of the time. Until such time as a woman is interested in them, at which point the expectation is that they should…I dunno. Definitely not act uninterested anymore. Do stuff the interested woman would find acceptable, I guess…reciprocate, on demand, and don’t pay attention to any other women. From celibacy to monogamy, like a light switch getting flipped. Nobody ever describes the expectation that way. But that’s what it is. It isn’t realistic. And because it isn’t realistic, it’s harmful. Not just to men.
No self-reproducing species of vertebrate or invertebrate is held to this kind of a standard. Cats, dogs, pigs, horses, ferrets are not held to this standard. Human women are not held to this standard. But we live in a strange time in which the male of the species, in order not to be deemed harmful, must behave like a gelding until he’s given some limited license to behave otherwise. You see how, what seems at first blush to be a common-sense taboo formed around just basic good manners, quickly morphs into something not quite so harmless, not quite so reasonable. That’s the way it is with ideas that target classes of people.
Anyway. Since I’ve linked to that, it gives me another excuse to post the bartender photo.
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