The Bechdel Test, sometimes called the Mo Movie Measure or Bechdel Rule, is a simple test to determine if a movie is free from gender bias. It names the following three criteria: (1) it has to have at least two women in it, (2) who talk to each other, about (3) something besides a man. While not the first web zine to take on the meme, Dog Park is the first to have me as the guide! It is almost unfair to Bechdel Test Les Miserables. The Bechdel test is about exposing the lack of… Read More »
Gun Control and Mental Illness
Following last week’s horrific massacre in Newtown, two enormous social problems have moved to the center of the public debate: lack of access to adequate mental health treatment, and the prevalence of guns in this country. The focus on each is appropriate, given the toxic combination of the two that gave rise to the atrocity, the same deadly mixture that was at work in Aurora, at Virginia Tech, in Oak Creek, Tucson, Columbine and far too many other places in recent years. Both are not equal, however, when it comes… Read More »
25 to See Before You Lose Your Liberal Sensibilities: Number 2
Better This World (2011), Directed by: Kelly Duane de la Vega and Katie Galloway I’ve always been the type of person that was socially conscious. I got it from my father, who got it from his parents, who most likely got it from their parents. But they weren’t activists. I was always disappointed that neither of my parents marched on Washington or took on the man by sitting at lunch counters or being Freedom Riders. I remember hearing Tom Hayden say once that there was this national misconception that people… Read More »
ELF Activist Daniel McGowan Released After 7 Years in “Little Guantanamo”
Daniel McGowan is not a household name. Even among people who have devoted years of their lives fighting to protect the natural world from the predations of capitalism, his role in the history of the environmental movement is marginal and obscure. It shouldn’t be. McGowan’s story tells us too much about the desperate situation we’re in — politically as well as ecologically — to be dismissed as a sideshow in the struggle to curb the excesses of human consumption before they destroy us. Outside of radical circles, McGowan’s story is… Read More »
Holiday Lists for the Misanthrope: Part Three
Do you have a radio station in your city that starts playing Christmas songs 24 hours a day for 30 days the day after Thanksgiving? Los Angeles does. When I first moved here in 2000 it was charming, but now it is nauseating. Imagine it’s 10am Wednesday and you’ve already listened to your podcasts of This American Life, Radiolab and Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me and for some reason The Moth hasn’t uploaded a new podcast in weeks. So you start flipping stations. You have the choice of Justin Beiber… Read More »
Undercover videos are fine, except when they’re about animal abuse. Then they’re terrorism.
Think Progress reports that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that police can secretly videotape the inside of your home without a warrant. The case involves an undercover officer who entered a suspect’s home under false pretenses (claiming to be an interested buyer of contraband bald eagle feathers and pelts), carrying a concealed video camera. The footage from that camera was used as evidence in the suspect’s prosecution. The suspect claimed that the method for gathering the footage constituted a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights and that the evidence should… Read More »
Holiday Hope for Incarcerated Survivors of Sexual Abuse
Ca’Linda was locked up in a Kentucky county jail on a drug charge when a captain on the corrections staff first demanded to see her naked. That was the first abuse. It got worse, quickly. The captain knew Ca’Linda had an infant daughter, so he didn’t have to use physical force. He just had to threaten to transfer her to a facility where she would never be able to see her daughter again. That was the leverage he used to force Ca’Linda to submit to his routine visits to her… Read More »
Bechdel Testing The Five Year Engagement
The Bechdel Test, sometimes called the Mo Movie Measure or Bechdel Rule, is a simple test to determine if a movie is free from gender bias. It names the following three criteria: (1) it has to have at least two women in it, (2) who talk to each other, about (3) something besides a man. While not the first web zine to take on the meme, Dog Park is the first to have me as the guide! So hold on ladies and gents, as we take our first film out… Read More »
Black Bean Soup yum
Meatless Monday! Here’s today’s rainy Fall season recipe. Black Bean Soup Ingredients: 2 15 oz. cans black beans 4 cups veggie stock (Better Than Bouillon No Chicken Base, eg.) 1 yellow onion 3 cloves garlic 1 piece of ginger root (about the size of a C battery) 3 carrots 3 stalks celery 1 leek 2 red bell peppers 1/2 bunch parsley Canned chipotle peppers in adobo sauce 1 cup red cooking wine (2 Buck Chuck will do) 2 tablespoons cumin 1 cinnamon stick Salt Pepper Instructions: Roast the peppers over… Read More »
Protests erupt into street battles during inauguration of Mexico’s President Peña Nieto (Video)
Mexico’s new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, took office last Saturday in a day of inaugural festivities punctuated by violent clashes between police and protesters in the streets beyond the steel wall erected to shield the Legislative Palace from anticipated unrest. Hundreds of protesters smashed windows of stores and banks in Mexico City and threw Molotov cocktails over the barricades, denouncing the election, which was tainted by allegations of massive fraud, as illegitimate. Police attacked protesters with tear gas, water cannons and rubber-coated bullets. At least 76 people were injured in the mêlée, 29 of… Read More »
