While trying to find a webbed version of FAIR‘s excellent expose of the Boston Globe’s hypocrisy on the David Horowitz saga (they blasted student editors for censoring Horowitz–a feat that is, in fact, impossible, as I have remarked before … and then they themselves refused an ad from an environmental group which criticized Staples), I accidentally stumbled across a great essay of FAIR‘s Women’s Desk back from 1993, Erasing Rape: Media Hype an Attack on Sexual-Assault Research. It’s a skillful refutation of Katie Roiphe’s hatchet job on Mary Koss’s research on acquaintence rape… nothing much new for those of us who have kept track of the research on sexual violence for a while, but definitely a good summary of the criticisms Roiphe (and nearly everyone else who objects to the Koss research) uses, and the reasons why these criticisms are full of it.

Two brothers in Middleburg, PA will face trial for attempted murder in yet another savage anti-gay beating [Advocate.com]. The victim has been left permanently comatose. If you live in Alabama, please call or write your state Representative in support of HB 423, which has just been sent to the House floor for consideration. The bill will add sexual orientation to the provisions of Alabama’s hate crimes bill, and was introduced in response to the similarly brutal 1999 beating death of Billy Jack Gaither.

To find your state representative by your ZIP code, go to http://www.legislature.state.al.us/misc/zipsearch.html and enter your ZIP code. Once you have your Representative’s name, you can contact her/his office by telephone at (334) 242-7600 and asking for her/his telephone extension. You can also contact her/him by snail mail at:

Member’s Name<br/> House of Representatives<br/> 11 South Union Street<br/> Montgomery, AL 36130

Anne Serene’s Trans Reference Site has an amazing wealth of information about transgender / transsexual / intersex etc. issues. It’ll help you out more in understanding transgender experience than an episode of Jerry Springer, anyway.

Weather Underground: Welcome to The Weather Underground made me nearly fall out of my chair laughing: it’s a weather forecasting site! Best of all were the big corporate sponsors for the Weather Underground: revolutionary anti-capitalism is brought to you by… NextCard VISA!

As legendary capitalist-punk Johnny Disagreeable put it, Leftist gits! There’s no weather underground!

Speaking of open and democratic schools, TECHNOS features an interview with Daniel Greenberg about his experiment in democratic schooling, the Sudbury Valley School, which is still running successfully after 33 years. All school governance is democratic (on the New England Town Meeting model), there aren’t any fixed curricula or pre-set courses (though students arrange for courses of study with instructors and do their own self-initiated independent study), and the only requirement for graduation is to adequately–in the judgment of the school community–defend in writing the thesis that they have taken responsibility for preparing themselves to be effective adults in the larger community.

I would like to see a couple more things before I really judge (simply judging from an interview of a school founder is not always the best way to go). Specifically, I’d like to see some experiences (and not just advertising brochure testimonials, but real experiences) from students. I’d also like to see some more comments about how these voluntary courses do end up being set up. Is it all one-on-one study, or do students usually get together and form study groups around a common list of reading (which I think is really beneficial for a lot of subjects, particularly in the humanities), or what? But on the face of it, it really sounds like an amazing opportunity for kids to learn in exactly kind of the environment that I was talking about–one which is open, democratic, respectful, and conducive to imaginative, critical, self-directed learning.