“The Economist” just published a fantastic analysis of the American justice system in a piece called — “Rough Justice in America: Too Many Laws, Too Many Prisoners” — and when one in 99 citizens is doing time, we need to re-examine the social fabric of our nation and start asking what went wrong with crime deterrence and inmate rehabilitation. We write this Carceral Nation blog to help unskew injustice in a dangerous world.
When I taught Public Health at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, I remember one day when the school was having a “Bone Marrow Drive” to help an employee stricken with cancer. You could sign up for a free bone marrow screening to see if you were a match and, if you were not, your bone marrow would be placed in a database for future reference. Bone marrow transplants are expensive, and painful, for both donor and recipient, but in many ways, that marrow is the manna of life.
Continue reading → The Manna of Life: Bone Marrow and Supermodels
I love shopping online. I can take my time. I can easily compare styles and prices. I don’t have to stand in line or fight any crowds. The other day, I visited a prominent and stylishly fashionable mall I hadn’t been in for over five years, and the changes were astonishing.
Is there anything more masturbatory in the world than primping your self-esteem? Self-esteem is an ugly, condescending, cudgel forged to create a larger persona against a condensing world. Self-esteem paralyzes the player as self-interested, selfish and awkwardly inward — where only they matter and no one else exists — in their nihilistic world of a loathing, but barren, self-love.
Continue reading → Self-Esteem Masturbation Instead of Shared Sex
We all know abstinence, as a birth control method, is not a good way to avoid pregnancy because the failure rate for abstinence is 100% if a tiny drop of a mistake is made — and many young people today have variable definitions of sex that goes far beyond simple penile penetration of the vagina. You have your sloppy oral sex. You have your crude anal sex. You have your various raw rubbings and rubbery gruntings in the back seats of cars and on den sofas. You don’t know when a drip or a dribble might take a turn for the worse and a baby is the made as the result of a quick-release lust. MTV has a terrific show called — 16 and Pregnant — and it is a magnificent piece of reality television that puts the truth to the lie that unplanned teen pregnancies, and unwed teen moms, are something to be celebrated in the media.
Continue reading → MTV’s 16 and Pregnant Reveals Punishing Sorrows
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