the non-fiction that most educates also tends to leave one either A) suicidal or B) homicidal

Title via random00b


The truest word I have ever heard.

(no subject)

Via: troubleinchina



Jason Bourne: Wuxia Hero



Female leads exist to promote male leads for network profits

This is an old rule I learned in screenwriting around the time I was taught your lead character must be a white, straight man (like the target audience): if you have a woman right there in front of your leading man and she’s not stirred by him, the insecure young men film and TV target will wonder what’s “wrong” with him. Is he gay? Is she? The real reason, I was informed, to put women in a script was to reveal things about the men. Any other purpose I assigned to the women was secondary at best, but I could do what I wanted there as long as the women’s purposes never threatened to distract the audience from the purposes of the men. Once I realized that merely passing the Mo Movie Measure test was enough to “distract” the audience from the men, I quit screenwriting and have never regretted it.
The reasons for this are supposedly purely economic, but they’re also sexist. See, the studios and networks have tied their profits to their male stars. They say this is because the audience pays more to see men in lead roles, but of course they do: the industry has set women up to fail by giving them mostly crap shows and films to lead on those rare occasions they get lead roles, and then rationalizing successful examples of women leads into failures of epic proportions (and let’s not forget how the Golden Age of Hollywood demonstrated how profitable “leading ladies” could be). More

Why film schools teach screenwriters not to pass teh Bechdel test

When I started taking film classes at UCLA, I was quickly informed I had what it took to go all the way in film. I was a damn good writer, but more importantly (yeah, you didn’t think good writing was a main prerequisite in this industry, did you?) I understood the process of rewriting to cope with budget (and other) limitations. I didn’t hesitate to rip out my most beloved scenes when necessary. I also did a lot of research and taught myself how to write well-paced action/adventure films that would be remarkably cheap to film - that was pure gold.
There was just one little problem.
I had to understand that the audience only wanted white, straight, male leads. I was assured that as long as I made the white, straight men in my scripts prominent, I could still offer groundbreaking characters of other descriptions (fascinating, significant women, men of color, etc.) - as long as they didn’t distract the audience from the white men they really paid their money to see.


...

Only to learn there was still something wrong with my writing, something unanticipated by my professors. My scripts had multiple women with names. Talking to each other. About something other than men. That, they explained nervously, was not okay.

...

At first I got several tentative murmurings about how it distracted from the flow or point of the story. I went through this with more than one professor, more than one industry professional. Finally, I got one blessedly telling explanation: “The audience doesn’t want to listen to a bunch of women talking about whatever it is women talk about.”

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(no subject)

In which there will always be greedy little fucktards who wil try to make money of fandom in the most disgusting of ways

Via 
delux_vivens

A belated introduction to an article on Obam's faith-based initiative:

Maybe Obama actually means it: Faith Based

The case against the supposed political motivation of Obama's "tack to the right" in his speech outlining his plan to expand government funding to faith-based charities (PDF) is an even easier slam dunk. It annoys me what it says about how little the almost entirely white journalism establishment understands about black Americans that they think that the first credible black Presidential candidate would only shovel money to churches for political reasons. This is one area where black history and white history are diametrically opposed. First, the relevant white history: even the most religious white colonists who first came to America, the Puritans who made up over 80% of all the non-natives in America by 1640, came here fleeing from a church. From two of them, actually: the Catholic Church, and the Church of England. They had fought a war in England against the imposition of state-sponsored Catholicism. They took one look at what state-sponsorship was doing to their own Protestant faith and its ministers, and came here opposed, at least initially, to that, too. Stamped in the DNA of white America is a deep and abiding suspicion of organized religion. Even the most pious fundamentalist assures himself (delusionally, in many cases) that he, not some clergyman, let alone some government-supported clergyman, is his own highest moral authority after God and the Bible. For crying out loud, white American Catholics believe that, and that's 100% opposed to stated Catholic doctrine.


....


But Senator Obama's proposal is neither proof that he's a right-wing Democrat in disguise, nor a dishonest attempt to portray himself as more moderate than he is, nor a liberal plot to advance the homosexual agenda. How do I know this? Occam's Razor. It is far, far simpler to believe that he is just that much of a believer in the black church, like nearly every educated black man in America. Remember that different black-versus-white historical experience I mentioned earlier? Let me finish that thought. Because, you see, black Americans' ancestors didn't come here fleeing any kind of church; they were captured by enemy tribes back in Africa and sold to white plantation owners as slaves. Those plantation owners lived in constant fear of organized revolt by their slaves; the term "monomania" was originally coined by southern plantation owners, for whom this "obsession" that black slaves had with getting free, their unwillingness to accept their fate, was seen as a mental sickness. But the one organization that black slaves were allowed, the one time they were allowed to gather under their own authority without white overseers, was in church on Sunday morning. At the time of emancipation, all black leaders in America were ministers, except for a tiny handful up north. And under the Jim Crow laws that were enacted to keep "freed" slaves enslaved in practice, and in the face of substantial barriers of institutionalized racism in education and hiring, it stayed true for another hundred years. Virtually the only black college graduates were seminary graduates in the American Methodist Episcopal and American Baptist churches; until the 1964 Civil Rights Act, practically the only good-paying job for black Americans was pastor of an AME or a Baptist church. As a result, up through 1964, the pastorate was a highly coveted job, one that without almost any exceptions attracted the best of the best, the brightest of the brightest. There have even been some black intellectuals who've complained about one of the unwanted side effects of the 1964 Civil Rights Act being that the black church lost its monopoly on intellectual and moral authority, and a few of them blame that at least as much as they blame racist economics for the high rates of single parenthood in black America.


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EDIT: In which Fengi does some masterful filleting of this article here

So this commentary will be struck:
This kind of thing is the reason why facile and easy condemnations of religion when applied to minorities somply do not work. Because, for the most part, these condemnation are rooted in the white experience and history, and the fact is that MINORITIES HAVE HAD DIFFERENT EXPERIENCES WITH RELIGION. And this fact is something that so many people have SO MUCH TROUBLE understanding, for some strange reason. Now, I hate the faith-based initiative. I am from the school where I simply do not want churches in charge of gov't money. Yes, some of them do some exceptional work, but some of them have been right pains in the asses. But at the same time I would love for criticsm of this idea to be nuanced, taking into account the different circumstances and histories of the new players on the block. Cause no matter what many white liberals think, THERE ARE DIFFERENT EXPERIENCES AND HISTORIES OF AMERICA. Therefore, people's worldviews are gonna be different.

Exactly what the hell is this

So the best that the designers of the Ms. Universe Canada could come with in terms of National Dress is to plunk a feathered war bonnet that is considered sacred to the Cree Indians atop a sequinned Cree-inspired bikini?

Aboriginal designer calls Miss Universe Canada’s 2008 costume “offensive”

By Pieta Woolley

Wearing a Cree-inspired, fringed leather bikini encrusted with rhinestones and a feathered war bonnet, the woman representing Canada at the Miss Universe pageant 2008 in Vietnam appeared before more than one billion global TV viewers on July 13. Samantha Tajik, 26, who was born in Iran, grew up in Vancouver, and now lives in Richmond Hill, Ontario.
Yesterday, however, one of Canada’s foremost aboriginal designers called Tajik’s national costume “offensive”. Dorothy Grant told the Georgia Straight that sexualizing the war bonnet is tantamount to sexualizing another cultures’ spiritual symbol.
“A war bonnet to Cree people or the Prairie Indian people, it’s a sacred thing,” she said. “It’s used in ceremonies, in peace treaties, used in official addresses. It’s not used as a costume to walk on a stage with a deer-skin bikini.”
The Miss Universe Canada organization, Beauties of Canada, and Miss Universe didn’t respond to the Straight’s calls.

What, native religions don't matter, so anything at all can be done with them?

(no subject)

via:Racialicious


Under the Abbaya: Female Producers in Saudi Arabia

But besides all that, I began to realize how the abbaya affects the way you communicate with women, how it shifts your focus. Without all the visual cues that wardrobe, hair, or even subtleties of gesture provide to help you “see” someone, you begin to read them in a different way. The art of conversation and eye contact gain more weight, because that’s all you’ve got. The face, where attention really belongs in the first place, is where it stays. It forces you to work harder to see someone, and to pay deeper attention to the words coming out of their mouth. Certainly the most important abbaya-related thought I had had during the trip. Ironic that I didn’t even notice all this was happening, till the first time I saw Danya take off her abbaya.

Although everyone wears an abbaya in public, it comes off at home. When you are hanging out with friends or family, no abbaya necessary. Underneath, many women dress just like they do in New York: skirts, heels, low cut tops, you name it. One particularly scorching day, after Danya, Nari and I had spent hours scouting locations in the desert sun, we had a meeting in my hotel room. The second the door shut behind us, we tossed our sweat-drenched abbayas and head-scarves to the floor. Danya was wearing a t-shirt and shorts. For the first time, I could see her hair, her arms, her legs. I noticed immediately how different this felt. In some ways, it was like I was seeing her for the first time. Like a layer that was new and more intimate had been revealed. I realized in that moment that that was likely the point of the abbaya, or at least part of it. It’s saving that kind of intimacy for those that are close to you, your friends and family, who have earned the privilege. For the first time, I saw that the abbaya may have a role in protecting women, and not as something simply designed to control them.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating for the abbaya. I don’t want to see them parading down the runways, in a window on 5th Avenue, or on the sale rack over at Old Navy. I don’t want to see rules about women’s or men’s clothing anywhere of any sort. I can’t even get behind the idea of Black Tie. And honestly, in terms of focusing communication, none of us should require an abbaya to make that happen. Still, having that simple “abbaya insight” felt like an incredibly important step toward understanding Danya’s culture. And isn’t that exactly what travel is all about?


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(no subject)

Via Racialicious

Cambodia Calling-Business competition in Cambodia

At that time, I had explained to Sipha that people who pay piece rate can sell the bags cheaper and make a profit, because they do not have fixed overhead costs, such as salaries, the rent for the workshop, sewing machines, electricity etc etc. Bloom is a social enterprise and I want to pay staff a living wage, regardless of whether the bags sell or not. This contrasts with the majority of businesses in Cambodia, which pay workers piece rate. If the bags sell, they hire workers to sew. If they don't, the business doesn't have to worry about fixed costs such as salaries etc. In this way, the business owner reduces his/her risk. Almost all the businesses here operate this way, including a big one near Phnom Penh's Russian Market which supplies to the US, and which claims to be a Fair Trade shop.

It is one of the most frustrating things working in Cambodia. Not the competition, but the lies. I have written about this previously, in the context of NGOs, about how stupid, lazy people just take things at face value, not doing due diligence, not bothering to find out the truth. Are the organisations that claim to be Fair Trade really Fair Trade? How can a company that pays piece rate say they are fair to workers? Piece rate work means no sick leave, no holidays--you don't work, you don't get paid. Which developed country would accept this as fair to its workers?


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Via: Cambodia Calling

On the Menu at the G8 World Hunger summit

Dinner

Corn-stuffed caviar
Smoked salmon and sea urching "pain surprise" style
Winter lily bulb and summer savoury
Kelp-flavoured cold kyoto beef shabu-shabu, asparagus dressed with sesame cream
Diced fatty fles of tuna fish, avocado and jellied soy sauce and Japanese herb "shiso"
Boiled clam, tomato, Japanese herb "shiso" in jellied clear soup of clam
Water shield and pickled conger dressed with vinegar soy sauce
Boiled prawn with jellied tosazu-vinegar
Grilled eel rolled around burdock strip
Sweet potato
Fried and seasoned Goby with soy sauce and sugar
Hairy Crab "Kegani" bisque soup
Salt-grilled bighand thornyhead with vinegary water pepper sauce
Milk fed lamb from "shiranuka" flavoured with aromatic herbs and mustard
Roasted lamb and cepes and black truffle with emulsion sauce of lamb's stock and pine seed oil
Special cheese selection, lavender honey and caramelised nuts
G8 fantasy dessert

... And it would be deeply wrong in any assessment to forget the selection of wines on offer ...

Wine list

Le Reve grand cru champagne
Japanese saki
Corton Charlemagne 2005
Chateau Latour burgundy
Ridge California Monte Bello 1997
Tokaji Essencia 1999 from Hungary


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The hypocrisy. It burns.


Repeat after me: All Black Transwomen AREN'T hookers

I get so sick of hearing the 'Black transwomen are hookers' shade. Every time one of my transsisters gets killed, in just about every story I read, the assumption is made that they are either hookers or if they had a prior arrest for it, it's played up in the story.

When the Duanna Johnson story broke last month, I cautioned some people commenting on it on the Bilerico Project not to jump to conclusions and assume that's just because the Memphis po-po's who beat her charged her with prostitution, that's not necessarily what she did for a living.

Hollywood isn't helping either. The images it puts out only adds to our frustration at being mischaracterized.

White transwomen get Felicity Huffman playing a transwoman named Bree in the movie Transamerica and see her get nominated for a gazillion awards for doing so. I get Kerry Washington playing a guess what in the soon to be released movie Life Is Hot In Cracktown.

If you see transwomen being interviewed on shows like Larry King, you'll rarely see a Black one on those panels. Even Oprah when she finally did some shows on transgender people failed to include one of us on the panel. The melanin-free Congressional hearing was also devoid of African-Americans.

You see white transwomen getting news coverage for working in various professional occupations, running for public office and getting massive media face time to counteract the fact that some of their t-girls also partake in the world's oldest profession. You just don't hear about it as much because it's spun by the MSM as a 'Black' problem.

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Progressive News and Analysis

The Right's Goal to demonise Political Participation

But what (author of Liberal Fascism Jonah) Goldberg has done is provide intellectual cover for a growing meme: Obama is the leader of a new fascist revolution. Why, you may ask? Well, it’s all got to do with the defining downward of fascism towards a gooey puddle that virtually anyone not a movement conservative can step in.
The Goldbergian view of fascism (and I’m sure he’ll deny it, which will then be followed by a criticism of my argument, which will in turn be fascist, which will in turn be the exact point he was trying make) is that the marriage of any measurable popularity whatsoever to any state action whatsoever outside the boundaries of Reaganite conservatism is de facto fascist. The point was never to explore fascism or provide an analysis of the phenomenon that cast new light on it - a feat of which Goldberg was summarily incapable - but instead to provide the exact utility we see on display now, and provide a way to brand any popular Democrat or liberal as the handmaiden of evil.
In a way, Goldberg lucked out (but he’s used to that) - Obama’s popularity and McCain’s plodding campaign provide the perfect stand-in for his argument. A Republican candidate with any stature, any devotion from the base, anyone who’s invested in seeing him elected for reasons that extend beyond his party affiliation, and it’s entirely ruined. A boring Republican running a bad campaign (Bob Dole, Gerald Ford) inevitably creates a fascist Democrat, not by anything they’ve said or done but by the simple act of showing up and not being a dumbass.

Yep. And because McCain is running such an awful campaign, conservatives must then rationalize that there's something deeply wrong with the popular and competent campaign that Barack Obama is running. And so he becomes a leader of a fascist movement. His creation of fliers for his Berlin event in the language of the country where he's appearing becomes proof. So does the location of the event in front of a Nazi monument. And his head is tilted in profile in the picture - just like Hitler! Because electoral history has shown that imitating Hitler is a surefire vote-getter. Those supporters are being lured by music and food they have to pay for into worshipping this false idol who will lead us down a path to destruction.
But that's all subtext, of course. The idea is to create the connection between large crowds and enthralled supporters in the 1930s and in the Obama campaign today. And that is meant to induce feelings of revulsion and shame, not just in those voters who are more passive and see these images on television, but among the very participants themselves. Going to an Obama rally? You're a mindless pawn. Send him money? You are funding a cult. Work on his behalf? You have drank the Kool-Aid and are pathologically creepy.
This pervades the media conception of the Obama candidacy, too. Never in my life have I seen such a concern troll statement like this from a political reporter.

Candy Crowley on CNN: Barack Obama was, indeed, awesome in his Berlin speech tonight, but watch out! Americans might decide he was a little too awesome.

Obama has to be "careful." He mustn't be too presumptuous. He has to scale back with the soaring rhetoric and the inspiration and the winning, you see. It's decidedly unfair of him to run a decent campaign and soak up all the media attention at the expense of the guy who shows up at the German sausage restaurant on the same day as the Berlin speech.


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Republican Tax Scares

Yesterday The Entrepreneurial Agenda, a blog at Inc.com, looked at accusations that Obama would harm small business by raising taxes. McCain’s argument is that, “Small businesses are the job engine of America, and I will make it easier for them to grow and create more jobs….If you are one of the 23 million small business owners in America who files as an individual rate payer, Senator Obama is going to raise your tax rates.” The Agenda responds:

Well, McCain is certainly, unequivocally wrong that Obama will raise taxes on 23 million small businesses. Let’s begin by establishing the figures. According to Census Department (as reported by SBA), in 2005 there were some 26 million firms with 500 or fewer employees. (McCain’s figures apparently come from 2002.) Of these, 20 million have no employees at all. Many of these are glorified hobbies, others are lucrative consulting gigs, but as the nonpartisan Factcheck.org points out in a thorough debunking, “McCain is arguing that Obama’s tax increase would ‘destroy jobs,’ but he’s counting mostly firms that don’t produce any.”
Obama has promised to repeal the Bush tax cuts on couples making more than $250,000 and individuals earning over $200,000 — basically, all of the top tax bracket and reaching halfway down the second-highest tax bracket. And how many small businesses would that affect? The Tax Policy Center calculates the number of tax filers (”units,” it calls them) in each bracket who reported some small business income or loss, and in 2007 that amounted to just 481,000 units — just 1.4 percent of all those who reported small business income. (The Tax Policy Calculates that 32 million tax units had small business income, which includes straight business or farm income, or income passed from partnerships or S-Corps.) And that number is undoubtedly high, because many filers in the second highest (33 percent) tax bracket earned less than Obama’s proposed threshold. Others are professionals — lawyers or accountants, say — who’ve organized their practices into partnerships. In any case, the vast majority — around 99 percent — of small businesses, however you define them, would not see their taxes increased under Barack Obama’s scheme.
A more interesting question is whether small businesses would actually see a bigger tax cut under Obama or McCain. Again, if the number-crunchers at the Tax Policy Center is to be trusted, then the laurels go to Obama, who’s proposing a variety of additional tax cuts targeted toward low-income and working families. (Here is the analysis, which includes very detailed descriptions of the candidates’ proposals. More detailed, in fact, than the candidates’ own position papers. Because the candidates haven’t fully fleshed out their tax proposals publicly, the Center has talked informally with campaign advisers and made its own assumptions to fill in the blanks.) Anyone earning under $112,000 in 2009 — or 80 percent of the population — is more likely to see a higher after-tax income under Obama than under McCain.

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"Citizen of the World" used by Plethora of Past Presidents

Barack Obama began his speech saying he's an American citizen and a citizen of the world (his first applause line) The McCain camp highlighted that phrase in its dismissal of Obama. Too, the dismissal spreads through the Meme-o-sphere.
But John McCain himself has used the phrase "Citizen of the World" in a speech on May 27th of this year at the University of Denver. [source]

There is such a thing as good international citizenship, and America must be a good citizen of the world—leading the way to address the danger of global warming and preserve our environment, strengthening existing international institutions and helping to build new ones, and engaging the world in a broad dialogue on the threat of violent extremists, who would, if they could, use weapons of mass destruction to attack us and our allies.

Many past Presidents (and the current one, too!) used "citizen of the world" in their remarks. Here's a collection of them....

Thomas Paine [source]
(Okay, so he's not a past President, but he is a prominent figure in the founding of our nation)
Speech of Thomas Paine, as Deputy in the National Convention of France, in Opposition to the Execution of the King.

"I was present at the time of the flight or abdication of Louis XVI., when he was taken and brought back. The proposal of restoring to him the supreme power struck me with amazement ; and although at that time I was not a citizen, yet as a citizen of the world, I employed all the efforts that depended on me to prevent it."

Calvin Coolidge [source]
Address at the Celebration of the 150th Anniversary of George Washington Taking Command of the Continental Army, Cambridge, Mass., July 3rd, 1925

Those men who have taken great parts in the world are commonly ranked by posterity according to their accomplishment while living, and the permanent worth of the monuments representing their achievements which remain after they are gone. By this standard I think we may regard George Washington as the first lay citizen of the world of all time.

Franklin D. Roosevelt [source]
Fireside Chat, December 24, 1943

Of course, as you all know, Mr. Churchill and I have happily met many times before, and we know and understand each other very well. Indeed, Mr. Churchill has become known and beloved by many millions of Americans, and the heartfelt prayers of all of us have been with this great citizen of the world in his recent serious illness.


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In which Paul Rosenberg is my favourite blogger

The Minimum Wage Increased Thursday--Why It Matters And Why It's Not Enough

Raising the Minumum Wage Works
Of course, market fundamentalists argue that the minimum wage is one of those defective socialist mandates that Cass Sunstein just loves to hate. Higher minimum wages mean less jobs, they argue, using their one-size-fits-all Economics 101 models. Well, in his 1996 book, Everything for Sale: The Virtues and Limits of Markets, Robert Kuttner used behavioral economics as one of his tools to help understand why this is a load of crap. Labor markets aren't like other markets, he concluded, and a wealth of research since then backs up the arguments he made then. Low wage workers tend to spend everything they make, so they pump more money into the local economy. Increased wage rates make it more costly to lose experienced workers and spend time training new ones, so turnover rates tend to decline. And higher wage rates make it more important to look for ways to raise productivity--either through buying new equipment, investing in more training, or finding ways to work smarter. These are all factors that simplistic models routinely fail to account for, but that end up having major impacts in the real world.
As "A Just Minimum Wage" reports:

More Jobs, Less Poverty After Last Minimum Wage Hikes The minimum wage was last raised in two steps: increasing from $4.25 to $4.75 an hour in October 1996 and then to $5.15 in September 1997. In the words of a 2000 report by the Clinton administration's National Economic Council, "Since the 1996-97 increase in the minimum wage, the American economy-and labor markets in particular-have continued to perform very strongly. Between September 1996 and February 2000, 10.2 million jobs were created... even stronger growth than in the previous 2 years. In retail trade, which has a large concentration of minimum wage workers, there were 1.4 million new jobs."49
Contrary to what minimum wage critics predicted, unemployment went down across the board across the country-including among people of color, teenagers, high school graduates with no college, and those with less than a high school education. As the Department of Labor Monthly Labor Review summed it up, 2000 ended with the overall unemployment rate at 4 percent, the lowest rate since 1969. "Every census region and geographic division attained its lowest quarterly unemployment rate on record in 2000." Looking more closely at fourth quarter 2000, the teenage unemployment rate of 12.9 percent was the lowest since 1969. "The unemployment rates for Hispanics (5.6 percent) and blacks (7.5 percent) declined to record lows in 2000, whereas the rate for whites (3.5 percent) was unchanged from the prior year's 3-decade low."50
The higher minimum wage reduced poverty, including among teenagers and high school dropouts-two demographic groups that opponents asserted would be disproportionately harmed by such an increase.51
In short, between 1996 and 2000, the economy had unusually high growth, low inflation, low unemployment and declining poverty rates-until the Federal Reserve purposefully slowed economic growth by repeatedly raising interest rates during 1999 and 2000. The economy broke the record for the longest expansion in U.S. history in February 2000. (The economic expansion officially lasted ten years from March 1991 until March 2001, although the stock market bubble burst in March 2000.)

But there's even more:

"New research on the minimum wage has swayed a substantial part of the economics profession over the past decade towards support for a higher minimum wage," the Keystone Research Center observes.53 In 2004, 562 economists, including four Nobel Prize winners in economics, endorsed a statement in support of raising the minimum wage. "The minimum wage has been an important part of our nation's economy for 65 years," the economists said. "It is based on the principle of valuing work by establishing an hourly wage floor beneath which employers cannot pay their workers... The minimum wage is also an important tool in fighting poverty."54

...

The Limits of Individual Effort
Finally, one of the most powerful narratives we are working against is the individualist narrative that says people are to blame for their own poverty. This is an argument that can seem to make sense on the individual level. All things being equal, it makes sense that someone who works harder will do better economically. But, of course, all things are rarely, if ever equal. And one thing that no worker has control over is the state of the overall economy, including the sorts of jobs that are available.
In contrast to the myth, there is a two-fold reality: first, that even those with more education are falling behind, and second, that most job growth is coming in fields that don't require much education. Both these factors significantly limit how much an individual can do to improve their economic status through education--and that's not even considering the fact that education is more costly then ever before:

We often hear that increased pay inequality is due to the economy's demand for a more educated, more skilled workforce. The reality is that workers are more educated than past generations, but pay is falling behind. The reality is that high-tech workers are losing ground as well.42 The reality is that most of the 20 occupations expected to produce the most jobs in the future don't require higher education and don't pay high wages. (See Table 2.1.)

The largest number of workers paid at or below minimum wage come from retail trade, leisure and hospitality, and education and health services. The occupations with the largest percentage of workers paid at or below minimum wage are:
• Food preparation and serving related occupations-19 percent at or below $5.15 and 66 percent under $8.50 in 2004.
• Personal care and service occupations-6.7 percent at or under $5.15 and 48 percent under $8.50.
• Farming, fishery and forestry occupations-3.5 percent at or under $5.15 and 56 percent under $8.50.43

Most of those occupations are among the occupations projected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to produce the largest job growth between 2002 and 2012. Only 5 out of the 20 top job producers (see table below) have median hourly pay that is higher than the overall median hourly wage of $13.84 for 2004. The rest are lower. Seven of the 20 occupations pay at or below $9.04, about the value of the minimum wage of 1968, adjusting for inflation.

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In which this poem recalls practically recalls all those fucked up Native American romance novels...

Via: bellvampress 


How to Write the Great American Indian Novel, Sherman Alexie


All of the
Indians must
have tragic
features:
tragic noses,
eyes, and
arms.
Their hands
and fingers
must be tragic
when they
reach for
tragic food.

The hero must
be a
half-breed,
half white and
half Indian,
preferably
from a horse
culture. He
should often
weep alone.
That is
mandatory.

If the hero
is an Indian
woman, she is
beautiful. She
must be
slender
and in love
with a white
man. But if
she loves
an Indian man

then he must
be a
half-breed,
preferably
from a horse
culture.
If the Indian
woman loves
a white man,
then he has to
be so white

that we can
see the blue
veins running
through his
skin like
rivers.
When the
Indian woman
steps out of
her dress,
the white man gasps

at the endless
beauty of her
brown skin.
She should be
compared to
nature:
brown hills,
mountains,
fertile valleys,
dewy grass,
wind, and
clear water.

If she is
compared to
murky water,
however, then
she must have
a secret.
Indians always
have secrets,
which are
carefully and
slowly
revealed.

( Yet Indan secrets... )