"Extreme Breastfeeding."

The name of a new reality show that will be on The Discovery Channel.

I learned about it from an article titled "Most Support This Mom�s Right to Breastfeed in Public. Then They Realize How Old the Kid Is�."

The child is 6. She's quoted saying: "Sometimes it tastes like candy canes... It tastes like lots of different things." And: "I might stop when I�m eight." And: "It�s my favourite thing to do when I�m not at school. More kids should, because it�s good for you."

It's good to protect and nurture your children. You can do that by breastfeeding them and you can do that by keeping them out of the media. I don't know how many months or years of breastfeeding are ideal, but I'm pretty sure that zero is the right answer to the question How many reality shows should a kid be on?

By the way, the 6-year-old child is named Aminah. I imagine that's pronounced "a mynah." A mynah bird is known as the most able mimic of all the talking birds. When a 6-year-old makes an assertion like "More kids should, because it�s good for you," I think it's a safe bet that she is mimicking an adult. In this case, there is a mother who seems to be seeking narcissistic satisfaction, which � who knows? � might taste like candy canes.

"Have We Learned Anything From the Columbia Rape Case?"

This is a longish NYT Magazine article by Emily Bazelon. Is there anything new here or is this more of a summary of a problem � a conflict � that those of us who've been following the story already know?

1. How Nungesser's parents felt at graduation: It was "devastating," they say, "especially... an exhibition at a university gallery...  that included Sulkowicz�s prints of a naked man with an obscenity and of a couple having sex, inked over a copy of a Times article about Nungesser." I'm a little confused by the word "prints." Prints like etchings or lithographs? Sulkowicz � in email (I think to Bazelon) � called the "prints" "cartoons."

2. Sulkowicz's email gives some insight into the kind of rhetoric she is purveying: "What are the functions of cartoons? Do they depict the people themselves (a feat which, if you�ve done enough reading on art theory, you will realize is impossible), or do they illustrate the stories that have circulated about a person?" Suddenly, I'm thinking about the Charlie Hebdo massacre and other incidents involving cartoons depicting Muhammad. Maybe those who get murderous over cartoons just haven't read enough art theory. And I'm put off by the assertion that if only people would read the right amount of a prescribed sort of material, we'd necessarily believe a particular sort of thing. It's saying: The only reason you don't already agree with me is that you're ignorant.

3.  And I don't even understand how those 2 sentences in Sulkowicz's email addressed the pain experienced by Nungesser's parents. Aside from the parenthetical, which is an assertion, the 2 sentences are 2 questions, but the first question sets up the second question, and the second question is an either/or question, within which the first option is negated by the assertion in the parenthetical. Therefore, Sulkowicz really is saying her cartoons "illustrate the stories that have circulated about a person." So her art work is an illustration added to a NYT story that gives graphic reality to the allegations that were made about Nungesser.

4. I wrote "gives graphic reality to" because I was straining to avoid the word that normally comes to mind: depict. Not having read enough art theory to realize that it is impossible to depict Nungesser himself, I thought the use of that word might make me look ignorant to those who have done the homework. But, for the record, "depict" means "To draw, figure, or represent in colours; to paint; also, in wider sense, to portray, delineate, figure anyhow." Anyhow! As in "The solar progress is depicted by the Hindoos, by a circle of intertwining serpents." R. J. Sulivan View of Nature II. xliv. 288  (1794). (Definition and quote via the unlinkable OED.)

5. Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger avoided shaking Sulkowicz's hand at graduation and the university has taken the position that it wasn't actual shunning but the mattress getting in the way. Bazelon doesn't come out and call bullshit, but she links to the video so we can decide for ourselves.

6. Because we don't have the transcript of Columbia's disciplinary proceedings, "even the procedural disputes between Sulkowicz and Nungesser are lost in the land of she-said-he-said." Sulkowicz says she was asked "ignorant and insensitive questions." (That's Bazelon's paraphrase.) But we're not seeing the actual context. And Sulkowicz and Nungesser are saying different things about whether their friendly Facebook conversations were admitted as evidence. It's frustrating to have this matter become so public � through Sulkowicz's performance art � and then be deprived of the transcript, but Columbia has to protect student privacy and to encourage other students to feel secure that their privacy will be protected if they need to file a complaint or if they are accused.

7. Columbia is trying to improve its procedure: "Students are now permitted to bring a lawyer to their hearings, and if they can�t afford an attorney, the university will provide one. The university also hired new investigators and other staff members and gave training on how to hear cases to the administrators who serve as panelists."

8. Sulkowicz says "the system is broken because it is so much based on proof that a lot of rape survivors don�t have." And: "Even if you have physical evidence, you can prove that violence occurred but not that someone didn�t want the sex to be violent." Presumably, she wants to fix the system by avoiding the need to prove things that are too hard to prove. Here, that would be the mental element that accompanies the sexual act. But how can you possibly get rid of the need for that evidence?

9. Some people say, get rape cases out of university proceedings and into the criminal justice system. Bazelon's response to that is: "[I]n the eyes of the government, universities have this responsibility because of an important principle rooted in the federal law, Title IX: If a rape prevents a victim from taking full advantage of her education, then it is a civil rights violation as well as a crime." Quite aside from what statutory law requires, universities may properly see themselves as having a role in making the campus environment a safer and friendlier place. Bazelon refers to counseling, academic accommodations, assurances that alleged assailants won�t contact complainants, and education about prevention of sexual assaults.

10. Bazelon mentions early on that Nungesser is suing Columbia, but she doesn't connect that to other issues she discusses. She doesn't say that his lawsuit is based on Title IX (though, as you see in point #9, she says that Title IX causes universities to want to remain involved in providing remedies to victims). And she talks about Bollinger's avoidance of Sulkowicz at graduation (point #5, above) without saying that Bollinger is a named defendant in Nungesser's lawsuit.

Word definition of the day. (I give the definition. See if you know the word without looking it up.)

"Originally and properly, according to ancient writers, The setting down of the foot or lowering of the hand in beating time, and hence (as marked by this) the stress or ictus; the stressed syllable of a foot in a verse; a stressed note in music."

That's from the Oxford English Dictionary. That's the oldest meaning of a pretty common word. 

ADDED: The word is "thesis." Thar surprised me.

"Q: Is it good for science that there is a global language dominating scientific communication?"

"A: It depends on how you look at it. On the one hand, communication among scientists from different nationalities -- at conferences, at global universities -- is greatly facilitated by there being one agreed-upon language of communication. (There's no intrinsic linguistic reason why such a language has to be English; it happens to have turned out that way historically.) Collaboration has increasingly become a crucial feature of scientific development, and so the advent of a global language is positive. On the other hand, for those who have to learn English as a second (or third, or fifth) language � an essential requirement of participating in today's science � the burden can be very high. A student who displays no aptitude in learning this particular language, no matter how gifted in a scientific sense, is almost certainly locked out of educational opportunities, the relevant scientific literature and a career. There are other downsides, too, and how you tally up the total depends a good deal on your own linguistic background."

"Some dismissed Mr. Burden as a mountebank, while others praised his explorations of masculinity, martyrdom and the Romantic ideal of suffering for one�s art."

The New York Times has an obituary for the artist Chris Burden, whose death I acknowledged yesterday, here. I don't normally double up on obituaries, but it took the NYT a while to get its obituary up and it's very substantial and says things in an interesting way. (I don't remember ever seeing the would "mountebank" in the newspaper.)

... Mr. Burden was perhaps the single best-known practitioner of the subgenre of body art. In that field, artists documented themselves in still or moving images as they gained or lost weight, underwent surgery or, in his case, courted genuine danger.

Yes, wasn't there an artist who sliced off parts of his body and actually died? Let me detour for a moment into a 2011 Guardian article titled "The 10 most shocking performance artworks ever/Russian artist Pyotr Pavlensky's nailing of his scrotum to Red Square isn't as unique as you might think: artists have shot, burned, disfigured, and eaten themselves":

In attacking his own genitals, Pyotr Pavlensky may have been inspired by inaccurate stories about Austrian artist Rudolf Schwarzkogler. When he died in 1969, it was widely believed he had killed himself by cutting off his own penis. The works of this Vienna actionist do include images of castration, but they were mocked up. So Schwarzkogler's reputation as the ultimate performance artist is somewhat exaggerated. He actually died after falling from a window.

Not on purpose, I take it. Anyway, Burden gets a mention in that article (as does Yoko Ono, for her "Cut Piece," in which she invited people to use scissors to cut pieces of her clothing off and they did).

Back to the NYT obituary on Burden:

To some observers, it recalled the gleeful tradition of American hucksterism � la P. T. Barnum. To others, it celebrated the ability of Mr. Burden, whose very surname seemed to foreordain a life of professional dolor, to inscribe himself indelibly into his own work, as artists from J.S. Bach to (Stuart Davis to Alfred Hitchcock had done before him.

The NYT needs to indelibly inscribe another parenthesis in that last sentence. Or (more likely) get "(Stuart Davis to" out of there. I'm having a bit of professional dolor trying to read this damned thing. Talk about burden!

�When I use pain or fear in a work, it seems to energize the situation,� Mr. Burden said in a 1975 interview with the film critic Roger Ebert. �In works with violent or unpredictable elements, the fear is really the worst part, worse than the pain. Getting nailed to the Volkswagen, for example, I had no idea what to expect. But the nails didn�t hurt much at all. It was the effect that was fulfilling.�...

Mr. Burden�s first marriage, to Barbara Burden, onto whose nude body he flicked tiny incendiary devices as part of �Match Piece,� a 1972 installation, ended in divorce...

Body art with somebody else's body... your naked wife's body... I'm glancing back up at the post heading to "explorations of masculinity." Anyway... more at the link. The obituary ends with a vivid description of a piece called "Doomed," which could have involved Burden lying on the floor until he died, but didn't, because someone offered him a drink of water.

But what I want to do is check the NYT archive to for that wonderful word "mountebank." Ah! It was used � recently! � and it was in another obituary that I know I read because I know I blogged it, just last March, "Gary Dahl, Inventor of the Pet Rock, Dies at 78":

Gary Dahl, the man behind that scheme � described variously as a marketing genius and a genial mountebank � died on March 23 at 78. A down-at-the-heels advertising copywriter when he hit on the idea, he originally meant it as a joke. 

Does jibe/jive jibe/jive with your sense of spelling?

In the first post of today, there's a quote about a white supremacist troll who "listed examples that appeared to jive with the sample of angry responses."

In the comments, Tom B said, "JIBE not JIVE you f*%#ing @&*%! aaaaaaaaaaah," and The Godfather said "Thanks, Tom B: You screamed so I don't have to," and holdfast said: "That's ok, I speak Jive"... which is that flies above all controversy.

But for the last word...
Click for more �

Oh, brother.

"Men but not women get to preside at Mass. Men but never women wear the cassock of a cardinal, the vestments of a pope. Male clergy are typically called 'father,' which connotes authority. Women in religious orders are usually called 'sister,' which doesn�t."

Says Frank Bruni in the middle of a rant titled "Catholicism Undervalues Women."

Whatever else he may want to say about Catholics and women, there's no lack of parallelism in that father/sister terminology. Men in religious orders are called "brother," and female leaders of orders are called "mother."

I'm afraid Lindsey Graham hates me.

Dear Lindsey:

I am concerned about your statement "Everything that starts with 'Al' in the Middle East is bad news."

Your friend,

Althouse

Being true to your dadbod self.

"I know someone who divorced her dadbod."/"Was he always a dadbod, or did he become a dadbod over time?"/"Everyone else knew him to be a dadbod, and somehow she just did not see it."/ I think dadbod is more channeling a state of mind � that of letting one�s self go, and all of the self-indulgence associated with that. Right?"

One's self? Isn't it oneself?
Click for more �

"I am not a traveler. I hate it.... Also I cannot go on airlines because people stare at me, you have to be touched by people. I hate that...I hate bespoke because I hate to be touched by strangers."

From "A Comprehensive List Of Everything Karl Lagerfeld Hates."

"I hate intellectual conversation with intellectuals because I only care about my opinion, but I like to read very abstract constructions of the mind.... I hate rich people when they try to be communists or socialists. I think it�s obscene.... I hate sloppy footwear. What I hate most is flip-flops. I am physically allergic to flip-flops.... And I hate to wear suspenders. I have the feeling I'm wearing a bra...."

To me, the list makes the argument for allowing yourself to use that terrible word "hate." Did your mom teach you not to say "hate"? Do you have friends/relatives in your life who stand ready to meet your deployment of the word with some fussy chiding like "Oh, 'hate' is a very strong word" or "Hate?! Do you really mean hate?"? I hate that.

"New computer-driven research suggests that Supreme Court justices are getting grumpier, according to a new study by scholars at Dartmouth and the University of Virginia."

"This analysis was based on the percentage of positive words versus negative words. In addition, modern justices tend to produce more words and have a lower grade level than their predecessors."

Oh, jeez. Here we go again: If you use more periods and fewer semicolons, the computer will conclude that you are writing at a lower grade level. That's garbage. See how I just wrote a sentence on a dramatically lower grade level than the previous sentence? "Computer-driven" doesn't mean sophisticated. It just means that lots of data was crunched. Things that could be counted and that the researchers wanted to count were counted on a grand scale.

The authors included 107 justices through 2008 and ranked them based on negative words (�two-faced,� �problematic�) and positive words (�adventurous,� �pre-eminent�). The high court�s first chief justice, John Jay, ranked number one with a score of 1.55 percent friendliness rating. Numbers 103 through 106 are current members of the court, including Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Stephen Breyer, and Samuel Alito. Antonin Scalia earned the number 98 spot with a score of -0.69 percent friendliness.

Quite aside from whether we should assess a judge's friendliness/grumpiness based on which words he puts in the formal justification of his legal decision that we call an opinion, who determined which words should count as positive and which as negative? Why is "adventurous" considered positive � especially as you look at material that was written over a period of 200+ years? Some of the older meanings of the word are negative: "Full of risk or peril; hazardous, perilous, dangerous... Prone to incur risk; excessively venturesome; rashly daring" (OED). If a justice in 1800 called an argument "adventurous," was he saying something nice?

I suspect that negative words proliferate when justices indulge in writing long dissenting opinions. That doesn't necessarily mean they are grumpy or unfriendly. It might have more to do with feeling free to express oneself in somewhat emotive language, and that may have become more the style as the years wore on. If we feel free to express emotion, we give the language analysts more emotive words to count, and then they can calculate a ratio of positive to negative. But how can we compare that to what was written long ago, when judges may have favored concealed or processed emotion? There will not only be less to count but also a kind of caginess and subtle sarcasm and irony that the computer can't recognize. To take an example from a famous old case, what would a computer do with "the judges of the State courts are, and always will be, of as much learning, integrity, and wisdom as those of the courts of the United States (which we very cheerfully admit)"?  "Cheerfully" is such a positive word, but, in context, it's no, and there's certainly no reason to think that the Justice who wrote it was exuding any sort of friendliness.

But this is the kind of study that gets reported, the kind of is-Scalia-mean stuff the public loves.

A kockeputzi.

"I remember liking the present Museum of Modern Art before it opened in 2004. For the life of me, I can�t now imagine what I was thinking. An aged New Yorker, visiting from Florida, not long ago happened upon the new Whitney. A 'kockeputzi,' she called it. Yes, it is a mishmash. But buildings take time to reveal their true selves."

From Michael Kimmelman's NYT article about the new Whitney Museum.

I don't know about the museum, but I'm enjoying the word kockeputzi.

Finally, some cake other than same-sex wedding cake is in the news...

... in this NYT interview with Senator Tom Cotton:

Do you have any guilty pleasures? I run a lot every morning.

That sounds neither guilty nor pleasurable. But I do it so I can indulge in the guilty pleasure of eating birthday cake.

Every day? Most days, with ice cream. Early on, when my wife and I were dating, we went to the grocery store, and I told her that sometimes I just buy birthday cakes, and I eat them. And she said: �Really? I do, too.�

IN THE COMMENTS: Ignorance is Bliss asks: "Is a cake a birthday cake if it wasn't bought for someone's birthday?"

I think the best answer to that is that Tom Cotton and his wife like to eat a kind of cake that they think of as "birthday cake." Either they like the idea of calling it "birthday cake" or they go stores where it is labeled birthday cake or has "Happy Birthday" written in the icing. What kind of people are they that they enjoy that kind of cake � light, spongy cake with thick, sugary white icing� or they get a kick out of a birthday feeling when it's not anyone's birthday?

I think of 2 things:

1. The Beatles "You say it's your birthday/It's my birthday too." When that song came out, it was generally understood � as I remember it � to refer to something other than one's actual birthday. Both Paul McCartney and John Lennon said later that they just set out to write a birthday song. Paul said it wasn't anyone's birthday, but birthday songs get played. And John said "It was a piece of garbage." If I remember correctly, we hippies of the time thought The Beatles were offering the theory that every day is your birthday or every day that you achieve heightened awareness of your existence is a birthday.

2. The idea of an "un-birthday" in the Humpty Dumpty chapter of Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking-Glass," which is combined with Carroll's Mad Hatter's Tea Party (from "Alice In Wonderland") in the Disney movie "Alice in Wonderland." In the movie, Alice arrives at the party as the Hatter and others are singing "A Very Merry Unbirthday to You." In the book, Humpty Dumpty explains that "there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents... And only one for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!" Alice doesn't understand his use of the word "glory," which leads Humpty Dumpty to utter his most famous line (beloved of lawyers): "When I use a word... it means just what I choose it to mean � neither more nor less." (In this view, "glory" means "a nice knock-down argument.") I'm thinking that when Tom Cotton eats cake, it's birthday cake if he chooses to think of it as birthday cake.

"If you weren't imagining a MALE (NUDE) engaged in PHONE SEX while wearing a SANTA HAT, well... you are now, and you're welcome."

For the fantastic/alarming visual alone, I'm going to give that SW corner the 'Best SW Corner Of All Time' award. � The only thing I'd change about that corner is the "G" in GIMPS. I get that it's supposed to add (I think) to the overall mildly perverted feel of that corner (insofar as 'GIMPS' reminds me of 'The Gimp' from 'Pulp Fiction'), but it's a borderline offensive word (making it a verb doesn't really change that). I'd actually prefer PIMPS there, though I somehow doubt that would fly in the NYT. LIMPS or SIMPS works too. But this is hardly that important. What's important is MALE NUDE PHONE SEX SANTA HAT. *That* is a jolly good time. It's like the rest of the puzzle barely exists..."

From Rex Parker's discussion of yesterday's NYT crossword.

"You are on notice that we will be watching, reading, listening and protesting coded sexism."

Said email received by NYT reporter Amy Chozick from a group called "Hillary Clinton Super Volunteers," reported at Reason, which says that the problem is that "many if not most" of the words the group says it's looking out for "have been used to describe non-Clinton candidates � some of them men � as well."

Well, of course! How else could it be code? You've got to have your deniability. You can't get off the hook that easily.

You know, I too am watching, reading, listening for the sexism in seemingly sex-neutral language, and I have been doing that for a lot longer than the 11 years of this blog. For example, women are called "strident." It's like calling black people "shiftless" or "uppity." Well, white people can be "shiftless" and "uppity" too. Yeah, but we at least know that saying "shiftless" or "uppity" about a black person is coded racism. It might get more sophisticated and questionable beyond that. Is it coded racism to call a black person "articulate" or "eloquent"? You might want to argue about that, but straight out denial is lame and shallow.

Similarly, in talking about women, there is language that those who care about the equality of women should notice. And the Hillary Clinton Super Volunteers have listed some words:

2/2 Sexist words, they say, include "polarizing, calculating, disingenuous, insincere, ambitious, inevitable, entitled, over confident..."
� Amy Chozick (@amychozick) March 25, 2015

Now, obviously, these are people pushing Hillary's candidacy, and they're trying to intimidate and manipulate the media. The media can't let this cow them. Mustn't criticize Hillary. We might get called sexist for any criticism we make. That would be incredibly lame, and in fact, I think that if a female President can command that kind of privilege over speech, we'd better not have a female President. I don't want a politician that we're not free to kick around. That's dangerous!

But that's no reason to abandon the project watching for coded sexism in language. That's the reason to look not only for sexism � and racism � but for political interest. We shouldn't take statements at face value. That would be naive. There's a lot going on in language, and we ought to take a closer look at everything... including what Hillary and her people say about other women... words like "narcissistic" and "loony toon."

"The frustrating/strange/down right annoying thing is, I frequently hear things like 'that's not a real job'...:

"... 'you can't possibly make enough money doing that!,' 'that's only a temporary thing, right?' and '"what are you going to do after this?' But what is a 'real job'?.... Is blogging not a real job because you can't go to school for it or because you don't need a resume to do it? Is it not a real job because you don't need an interview to fill the position or because you don't personally know anyone who does it?... Whatever your answer I assure you, blogging is a real job.... I pay all my own bills with the money I make blogging.... It needs to be acknowledged that any way of supporting yourself even if it isn't traditional, so long as you aren't stealing or hurting anyone, is a real job. It seems awfully silly to criticize someone for making a living doing something they love and enjoy, doesn't it?..."

 Writes The Dainty Squid (on a blog I quite like).

I'm all for giving respect to those who can make their living doing free-lance writing (such as blogging), but part of the respect I'd like to give is that you are free lance, you are independent, you have avoided getting a job.

You ask the question "What is a job?" You made that the centerpiece of your thinking, apparently because you're letting people get into your head, demeaning you with the statement that you don't have a job, and that tracks you into arguing for a broader meaning for the word "job" so that what you do gets to be "a job."

But why do you want that? Because it's the word other people use to make you feel bad about your freedom and success?

I'd say: Get the upper hand in these conversations with jerks. You're lucky not to have to work for somebody else in the structured position known as "a job" (to use the narrow definition of the word you'd prefer to stretch). You're an entrepreneur.

When did the job become the standard of a worthy, successful life?

ADDED: I'd say more about the word "job," but it was only a couple months ago that I wrote "5 things about the word 'job.'"

Outr� basketball commentary of the day.

I'm not much of a sports person, though I have gone to a few baseball games in my life � including seeing Mark Fidrych at Tiger Stadium in 1976. And � even though, as a teenager, I wished for football to just end � I've come to enjoy sitting around with Meade watching Packers games on television. But I do not like basketball. I want the Badgers to win everything, of course, but I'm a complete outsider to basketball.

So I have my outr� commentary. 5 days ago, I called it "the indoor game with unusually large people � men in silky skorts � in a cramped, squeaky place." 2 days ago, I commented on the chairs:

[T]hey bring chairs out onto the field of play during time outs so they can sit and talk. They never bring chairs out in baseball or football. Chairs! Ridiculous!

See what I mean? Outr� commentary. You know what outr� means, don't you?

bizarre, bizarro, cranky, crazy, curious, eccentric, erratic, far-out, funky, funny, kinky, kooky... offbeat, off-kilter, off-the-wall, outlandish, out-of-the-way, odd, peculiar, quaint, queer, queerish, quirky, remarkable, rum [chiefly British], screwy, spaced-out, strange, wacky... way-out, weird, weirdo, wild

So I'm reading about last night's big upset, fragments of which I saw out of the corner of my eye as I edited home movies from the 1950s, did the Sunday crossword on the iPad, and chatted on the telephone about the TV show "Shameless." "Did a big upset just happen?" I asked upon getting off the phone. Yeah, it kind of did. Good, I like upsets. Upsets seem exciting. So, this morning, I was reading "North Carolina State Adds to Its Lore by Shocking Top-Seeded Villanova" in the NYT:

North Carolina State pummeled the Wildcats in the paint, outrebounding them by 45-32. And the Wolfpack complemented that strong play down low � forwards Abdul-Malik Abu and Lennard Freeman each had a double-double � with dynamic guard play. 

Outrebounding. What is that, some sort of bizarro, eccentric, erratic, funky, kinky, kooky, outlandish, spaced-out, weirdo, wacky bounding? Now, that I would like to see. I'm just about to express my fascination with this new basketball word I've discovered in the New York Times when I see that it's out-rebounding, not outr�-bounding and that my hope for something screwy and oh-but-they're-so-spaced-out about basketball is shattered.

A delightful payoff for research prompted by random curiosity about language.

Sasha Volokh is bemused by the phrase "still and all" in Supreme Court cases.

It sounds slang-y because "and all" occurs in casual speech (like "and stuff"), but it's actually old-timey (like "It cannot be gainsaid").

Sasha consults the OED and finds the the phrase goes back to 1829. And he searches the entire Supreme Court archive to find that there is � after 2 recent iterations of the phrase "still and all" � only one other appearance of those 3 words in sequence, a 1961 case about the search of a distillery:

Indeed, the officers here could have abated the nuisance without judicial help by destroying the still and all of its paraphernalia....

"Woman Slaps Period Pads All Over Her Town For A Very Important Reason."

A HuffPostWomen headline.

1. I'm telling you � and I've told you before � the job of cranking out one "feminist" post after another is not easy. And isn't it just what you'd expect in a phallocracy? � that they'd relegate this job to women. How I pity the slaving female scribes of HuffPostWomen.

2. Great name, by the way: Elon� Kastratia.

3. Is "period pads" really an expression? Never heard it, perhaps because I've sojourned scantily in Europe.

4. Here's a better story about sanitary napkins: "How do you cut the school dropout rate for girls in a remote pocket of Uganda? And how do you create jobs for village women? The answer to both questions: sanitary pads. The story begins in 2009, when 26-year-old Sophia Klumpp and her husband-to-be Paul Grinvalds � she's from the U.S., he's from Canada � began working for a nonprofit group in a rural village in Uganda. Klumpp saw that many of the teenagers in school used threadbare rags or tufts of mattress stuffing as sanitary pads. The embarrassment and the fear of an accident kept many of them away from school for the four or five days of their period each month...."

5. Great name, Klumpp. Good work. Much better than protest-littering in Europe.

"'Crop' was the wrong word, implying that the original framing was not used."

"They selected a shot that was framed the way they liked it. The NYT defense is entirely semantic, no?"