I stand with Occupy Wall Street

I am one of the lucky ones...I have a job that allows me to stay within the repayment terms of my student loans. I pay my bills on time, every month, and haven't missed a payment to Citibank, Sallie Mae and other responsibilities like credit cards, rent and utilities. However, the thought of my graduated repayment plan kicking in scares me because I'm already living on a shoestring. I take responsibility for signing the dotted line on my loans and taking part in the Federal Student Aid program through the US Department of Education, and will continue to make sacrifices to pay back my loans.

Three years ago, Citibank and other institutions like them were able to receive a government hand out in the billions when a profit-seeking business turned into greed, packaging known toxic assets and selling them back to us, their customers. When toxic assets went bust and trillions of dollars evaporated from the economy, millions of people saw their savings, homes and livelihoods decimated, or worse.

They bought that hand out with lobbyists and lawyers in Washington that we, their customers, paid for - and they're doing it again, with student loans.

What happens when student loan backed securities go bust because a second recession wipes out the lucky ones, the ones that are still employed? What happens when, because we lost the jobs we studied so long to be qualified for, we can no longer pay the interest, let alone the principal, on the loans?

Who gets the hand out then?

Even though I have to stay in my office and work to keep my job to continue to meet my responsibilities, I stand with Occupy Wall Street. There are fringe elements out there, yes, but don't let the media, all media, fool you. The bulk of the people there are just like you and me. And unfortunately, we can't afford the well connected lobbyists in Washington. But we can be heard.

Pambassadors?

I had previously posted that a research/tourist facility in China was seeking several international panda care-takers. Looks like they found the ideal candidates for the panda keepers...and didn't take my recommendation of using the news team from Anchorman. Sad.

They chose 6 candidates from 61,615 applicants, spanning 52 countries and regions in the world. Talk about competition!

See the story here, for more Pambassador goodness.

One thing in the article struck me, however. China Daily referred to one of the winners, Wang Yu-wen, as being from Taiwan. I don't ALWAYS read the China Daily (I probably should) but I was almost certain that most mainland Chinese, and especially state sponsored media, feel that Taiwan is still part of China. Maybe I'm wrong.

Jean Logic

Brilliant.

As seen on Groupon.

Antisocial networks?

The commodification of sex in Manhattan is a truth of the place. Put so many people on a tiny island and some aspects of life just become...expected.

Nowhere is this as true as with gay men.

But when online hook-up websites (Manhunt, Grindr, craigslist, findfred...the list goes on) make finding sex as easy as ordering take out and become normalized, it stunts the development of healthy sexuality as a whole.

Maybe it is the anthropologist in me talking, but with the availability of sex 24/7, the proclivity of gay men toward multiple partners, rising drug use and the arrival of a new generation of millennials that grew up during the Bush years where abstinence only sex education programs deprived them of the importance of safe sex, there is a scary convergence of dangerous components out there that all point to the rise of sexually transmitted diseases.

Add to the fact that most of the men that are out there are emotionally undeveloped? Prospects are not so good.

Ugh. Talk about depressing... how is a single gay man supposed to navigate this minefield?

Very carefully.

That's a pizzly!

I don't get how a picture of a grizzly bear fits with the headline Why "feminist" is a dirty word.

Sometimes, the NY Times is just baffling.

And is it just me, or does this particular bear look like the infamous pizzly/grolar bear? I apologize in advance for the photo in the link... I know, hunting bears just seems obscene, but the content of the story is quite fascinating.

Quote of the day

"We can see some nice cracked edges that do look very much like a bullet hole."

Nice is not an adjective one thinks of when describing a bullet hole, generally. Anthropologists are just so damn quirky, gotta love 'em!