Via Huffington Post. 

 I can't decide what is most upsetting/confounding about this situation. 

The idea that MTV is using the Holocaust to startle teens? Or that the message of these ads is unclear?

The HuffPo writer ponders the complexity of media influence, corporations, and government regulation, but I would like to get more to the point of this particular reference. Ads are here and here. 

Why is MTV trying to scare teenagers? Maybe I missed something, but I was under the impression that we're in the middle of a very exciting presidential election with a race between very distinguished and talented candidates on both sides. In what way does that signal impending systematic imprisonment and murder for "people like us"?

My gender studies education has taught me, if nothing else, to do my best to approach things in a gender-blind way. Thinking in that way, is it possible for me and other feminists of my generation to reconcile casting votes for female politicians if part of our vote is based on their gender?

According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, two students have plead guilty to charges of aggravated robbery, saying that they did it for tuition money.

Are loans really so horrible these days that robbery is a better option?

Also, I think that this speaks tremendously to the state of college tuition and the burden of student debt. The students both attended school for under $10,000 a year, but increases in costs were still so overwhelming that they held up a bank.

Both of them face up to 20 years in prison. 

Not a surprise, as the New York Times points out, but it is disappointing.

Having the debate in New Orleans would provide a forum for residents to grill candidates. But the committee in charge of the decision, as the Times complains, "sounded as if they cared more about the stretch-limo and hospitality-suite amenities of politicking."

I agree, give the city a chance to help right its wrong, and to ask the difficult and important questions to the person who will be the next president.  

This New York Times article outlines several UN aid workers' concerns that the crisis in Somalia is being forgotten because it's not as popular as the crisis in Darfur.

"Unlike Darfur, where the suffering is being eased by a billion-dollar aid operation and more than 10,000 aid workers, Somalia is still considered mostly a no-go zone. Just last week, a Somali aid worker and a guard were shot to death at an aid distribution center in Afgooye. United Nations officials estimate that total emergency aid is under $200 million, partly because it is so difficult just getting food into the country." 

Or they won't be allowed back to public school. 

Via the New York Times:

"Judge Nichols had sent letters this week to the homes of more than 800 households with children in public schools, strongly recommending that the children be immunized Saturday at the courthouse, where health department workers had set up tables to process paperwork and give shots, or that parents prove that the children had already been immunized in accordance with state law."

Yes, I signed it, and not just because I want The Office to air new episodes as soon as possible.

Actually, rights of content producers with regard to new media are uncharted - and I think horribly mistreated by entertainment companies as a result. And, as the writers have complained, there are some compensation problems.

Julia Roberts, composting mother. CNN review’s Roberts’ decision to stop acting and start cooking:

"My dream is to be a highly fulfilled and productive stay-at-home mom and wife," the Oscar-winning actress tells Vanity Fair magazine. "The highest high would be growing our food that I then make, and then composting and growing more -- that kind of circle."

Roberts, 40, says that life would involve having "my own creative outlet, even if it's silly needlework and stuff like that."

Campus Progress's own Erica Williams (our Issue Campaigns Manager) gave her perspective on youth activism at the Clinton Global Initiative's new youth movement.

Bono, Shakira, Alicia Keys, and others got together to launch the campaign and to inspire youth acitivsts to get involved with a variety of causes. A lot of what was said ties in closely with what we do here at Campus Progress, especially the key message about youth mobilization.

And by prude, I mean that I view Halloween as the last straw in the stack of hay that is the infantilization of women and the fetishizing of youth. Go ahead, say I'm over generalizing, it’s probably just my estrogen getting out of hand. 

I'm sure each of you can come up with your own list, without my help, of the ways in which beauty norms (SDF - for a definition of "norms" and "culture" see mainstream media, don't keep denying that it exists) require a youth aesthetic. 

Easy examples to help you get started: Calvin Klien ads, obsession with the Olsen twins, anti-wrinkle cream, body hair removal. 

The official results are in, and not a lot of schools are living up to green/sustainable standards that the Sustainable Endowments Institute thinks they should.

The annual report card says, basically, that only Dartmouth, Carlton and Williams scored at least an A- across the three main categories.  But overall, the report card says that vast improvements are being made, with 68% of schools improving their overall grade. Green building policies are increasing in popularity, and the percentage of schools that has committed to reducing their carbon emissions has more than tripled.

Only 5 months in to his presidency, the French people have already declared that they're done with Nicolas Sarkozy.

After discovering that Sarkozy was going through a divorce, protestors took to the streets, yelling “Cécilia, we are like you! We are fed up with Nicolas!”

 Brutal. 

I don't! But activist Bill Baird certainly does, since he was jailed for distributing a condom to an unmarried woman. Years later, the Boston jail he was placed in is a hotel, that, ironically as ever, has free condoms provided in each of their rooms.

The Boston Globe has the full story.  

The House of Reps is about to pass a resolution declaring the World War 1 era killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire a genocide, the Washington Post has the full story. 

 The administration is lobbying against this, saying that passing the resolution would compromise national security by upsetting Turkey and causing them to kick us out of their air base outside of Iraq. 

This time, Southwest Airlines has asked a man to change his shirt for dress code violations. The Florida resident was wearing a t shirt that read "Master Baiter", which he promtly changed out of, despite protests that his freedom of speech was being infringed upon.

 Notice a pattern? Emloyees are obviously told to keep an eye out for things that are overtly sexual, and therefore obviously offending.

I'm not defending the gross t-shirt. Sex as a commodified good to be ironed-on and sold as a t-shirt is an issue on it's own. But still, Southwest needs to back off of a person's right to wear what they want to wear. Yesterday I saw someone on the DC public transit wearing a "I kissed Zach Morris this morning" t shirt, and I will defend to the death her right to continue to make that proclimation. 

As the conflict in Myanmar continues to develop, it's clear that the country's government is doing their best to close off their actions from the outside world.

From the Reuters’s coverage: