when I sketch my mind,
Three men were removed from a festival in Riyadh after it was deemed they would be too irresistible to women
DO YOU GUYS REALIZE HOW AWESOME THIS IS?
Saudi Arabia is a land that bans women from driving, where women are the ones who pay the price for being attractive. Where they’re told they cannot walk too fast or speak too eloquently because men might find them attractive. The whole notion of placing the blame, the responsibility on women, to protect themselves from the gazes of men instead of emphasizing equality and equal protection and punishment (if applicable) for both sexes…that’s been the name of the game in this region for a long time.
But maybe not anymore This is the first instance I’ve heard of where Saudi Arabia has held men accountable for the potential temptation they could be to [straight] women. THIS IS PARADIGM SHIFTING. Those three men, whoever they were, had their activities infringed upon. They wanted to attend a festival; they couldn’t because they might tempt women. Those men might not mind missing out on one festival in exchange for lifelong bragging rights about being deported for being too attractive, but if any guys out there are reading this: Imagine not being able to attend ANYTHING you wanted to because you might tempt women? Imagine your entire lifestyle restricted, all your activities dependant on what others perceived of you? Imagine hiding from the gaze of women who aren’t your sisters/daughers/mothers for the rest of your life?
On a lighter note, my guy friends thought this was awesome, “Those guys now have the best pick-up line of all time,” they laughed.
Well if you put it that way, women have had the best pick-up line of all time for the past 3200+ years. “We’re so beautiful we have to cover ourselves up because [straight] guys just can’t handle it.” Sometimes it’d be nice to just be yourself and not have to worry about how mankind was perceiving you. Maybe this is the start of that change.
This isn’t a very well-written piece, but I hope it provokes some thought.
(Source: samraadeni)
For people you’re trying to impress: ”The Higgs boson is an elementary scalar particle first posited in 1962, as a potential byproduct of the mechanism by which a hypothetical, ubiquitous quantum field – the so-called Higgs field – gives mass to elementary particles. More specifically, in the standard model of particle physics, the existence of the Higgs boson explains how spontaneous breaking of electroweak symmetry takes place in nature.”
For harassed, sleep-deprived parents: “If the constituent parts of matter were sticky-faced toddlers, then the Higgs field would be like one of those ball pits they have in the children’s play area at IKEA. Each coloured plastic ball represents a Higgs boson: collectively they provide the essential drag that stops your toddler/electron falling to the bottom of the universe, where all the snakes and hypodermic needles are.”
For English undergraduates: ”The Higgs boson (pronounced “boatswain”) is a type of subatomic punctuation with a weight somewhere between a tiny semicolon and an invisible comma. Without it the universe would be a meaningless cloud of gibberish – a bit like The Da Vinci Code, if you read that.”
For teenagers studying A-level physics: ”No, I know it’s not an atom. I didn’t say it was. Well, I meant a particle. Yes, I do know what electromagnetism is, thank you very much – unified forces, Einstein, blah blah blah, mass unaccounted for, yadda yadda, quarks, Higgs boson, the end. It was a long time ago, and I’m tired. Change the channel – we’re missing Come Dine With Me.”
For a member of the Taxpayers’ Alliance: “Its discovery is a colossal, unprecedented, almost infinite waste of money.”
For a child in the back seat of a car: “It’s a particle that some scientists have been looking for. Because they knew that without it the universe would be impossible. Because without it, the other particles in the universe wouldn’t have mass. Because they would all continue to travel at the speed of light, just like photons do. Because I just said they would, and if you ask ‘Why?’ one more time we’re not stopping at Burger King.”
For religious fundamentalists: ”There is no Higgs boson.”
(Source: samraadeni)
Two people, including a police officer, were dead after a shooting on Thursday 12/8/2011 afternoon on the campus of Virginia Tech, (the scene of a 2007 massacre in which 33 people were killed, university officials said.)
my prayers for the entire community
How can the Muppets be anti-capitalism when they themselves are guided by invisible hands?
GUIDED BY INVISIBLE HANDS.
Omg I died from laughter
Adam Smith is rolling in his grave…with laughter
(Source: dogsareadorable)
uhhhhh.
Greek PM George Papandreou has said he is ready to drop a proposed referendum on the country’s eurozone bailout deal.
Mr Papandreou offered to hold talks with the opposition to seek consensus on the deal, adding that the referendum was never an end in itself.
Four…
(via socialuprooting)
Powerful stuff.
Official Statement from Occupy Wall Street - this statement was voted on and approved by the general assembly of protesters at Liberty Square: Declaration of the Occupation of New York City
As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.
As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.
They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.
They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.
They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them.
They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit.
They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.
They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.*
To the people of the world,
We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.
Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.
To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.
Join us and make your voices heard!
