Saturday Stew: Nipples, Laundering Money, Videos, and Bigfoot

[cahwyguy]

It’s Saturday, and that means it is time for a tasty stew of the articles that caught my eye but didn’t form into a coherent theme of three or more articles:

• Women and their Bodies. This started out as a collection of two articles, but a third showed up this morning. The first article was an opinion piece from the Daily Beast on the uproar about Lena Dunham’s nudity on HBO’s Girls. The article (rightfully) called it: the male reporters didn’t want to see Dunham’s body all the time because it didn’t fit their ideal of beauty, whereas they had no problem with seeing the artificial bodies of the models and actresses in the other HBO shows. Dunham is right — we must learn to appreciate bodies (both male and female) for what they are, perfect or imperfect. We shouldn’t be shaming people because they aren’t perfect, and we shouldn’t be sexualizing everything. Related to that former point (shaming) is a report that if you shame people over their weight, guess what… they gain weight. Related to the latter point (sexualization) is this article about the war on Facebook against the nipple, whereas they have no problem showing graphic gore or violence.
• Bad News for Commuters. Although we’re not having a government shutdown, it’s not all good news. The commuter subsidy is dropping again, back to $130. Given that the subsidy provided for parking isn’t dropping, we’re seeing an effective discouragement of transit and ridesharing. Write your congresscritters.
• But Is It True? Stranger than life: Fox News is reporting that a man has killed Bigfoot and has proof. Stranger than life: Despite the fault since and a significant FTC refund order, Sensa still insists their product is a miracle weight loss tool. You know, I’ll believe the Bigfoot story before I believe in a miracle weight loss powder.
• Taking You To The Cleaners. Scientists have found a new … and legal … way to launder money. Yes, they specifically want to apply it to drug money, and other yucky filthy currency. The goal, it seems, is to remove the dirt, grime and other contaminants that make money degrade fast. You were thinking something else?
• It Won’t Ever Die. Blockbuster the video rental company may be dead, but that doesn’t mean the video store is dead. Some people don’t like to use the online approach; others just want to physically browse. For whatever reason, in a number of markets, the video store is alive and well. It’s now just gone back to being a mom and pop concern. I predict this is what will end up happening to the bookstore as well. Local is better — both for the video and the bookstore.

 

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