well. this is interesting. awaiting my return from chicago was a form letter from the pentagon’s “comprehensive review working group” alerting me to my requested participation in the 2010 Department of Defense (DoD) Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Survey of military spouses.

aside from the amusement of a survey being called “don’t ask, don’t tell” (they didn’t prepare me for that contradiction in my MPH studies, that’s for sure), i am curious to see what sorts of questions they’re going to ask – as well as if there’s any sort of push polling going on. apparently the DoD is trying to “assess the impacts, if any, a change in the law … might have on military family readiness and military community life.”

from where i sit, getting rid of DADT, removing any mention of homosexuality from the UCMJ, allowing gay families (geez, there’s got to be a better term for family units where the central adults are the same sex… oh, wait… “families”?) the same benefits as straight families, and no longer treating a large portion of the military population as typhoid marys could only be a good thing. but maybe i’m queer that way.

first: i’ve discovered that the content of the internet can be described as an ever-decreasing fractal. it goes something like this:

• most of the content of the internet is porn.
• of the portion of the internet content that is not porn, a proportion equal to (porn)/(total content) is taken up by questionable online vendors.
• of the portion of the internet content that is neither porn nor questionable online vendors, a proportion equal to (porn)/(total content) is stupid emo shit.
• of the portion that is not porn, questionable online vendors, or stupid emo shit, a proportion equal to (porn)/(total content) is devoted to anthropomorphizing cute animals.
• of the portion that is not porn, questionable online vendors, stupid emo shit, or cute animals, a proportion equal to (porn)/(total content) is absorbed by religious and/or political zealotry.

and so on, and so forth.¹ if i could find my notes from my undergrad 4th dimensional math class (primary text: flatland), i could probably even graph it out in something other than an ever-narrowing pie chart.

2. nothing gets my goat like a badly-written survey instrument. if you’re going to ask about sexual behavior and accept the fact that non-monogamy exists, you might want to ensure that your followup questions aren’t written with a monogamy bias so strong that it’s impossible for a multi-partnered person to answer them in a way that won’t give you crap data. yes, i’m looking at you, university of indiana PhD candidate research.²

____________
¹ these categories are not exhaustive, nor are they necessarily in the right order. i’m open to suggestions.
² honestly, if that’s the type of instrument design that gets approved, i’m glad i never went further in public health academia than an MPH. it seems there’s more rigorous design and pre-testing in the commercial world, where millions of dollars of marketing and r&d money are assigned on the basis of research findings.

[this is a recovered post from the great data disappearance of 2009. links, comments, and other html may have been lost permanently.]

i have no words to describe how disturbing i find this – high-heeled crib shoes:

i think i am doubly disturbed because before coming across that site, i was perusing the latest in tendon-atrophying, back-swaying, toe-pinching torture devices from christian louboutin. taken in isolation, i find the louboutin shoes visually interesting – the colors and shapes are striking, and there’s an obvious attention to both design detail and craftsmanship. but they’re essentially fetish wear.

louboutin’s shoes are the most sexualized examples of high heels – a very sexualized item of clothing to begin with – that i’ve seen in a long while. and that’s fine: if adult women want to strap into these and conjure up thoughts of everything from sexual prey to sexual dominants in the eyes of their beholders, so be it. and it’s not just louboutin’s shoes – most high heeled shoes do this, to greater or lesser degrees. but why on earth would we want to transfer those connotations to infants? that’s not “heelarious,” that’s pathological.

recovered comments:
5 Responses a “stockholm syndrome”

1. alejna Says:
July 2nd, 2009 at 1:40 pm

Ugh. That makes me sad. Maybe there are baby fishnets available to go with them.

(My mother-in-law, always the bargain hunter, actually picked up some toddler fishnet stockings on sale for Phoebe. They have stayed in the packaging.)

2. Holly Says:
July 6th, 2009 at 12:19 am

You pretty much nailed that, all of it.

Eeeeeewwwwwww…

3. Cold Spaghetti » Blog Archive » July Just Posts for a Just World Says:
August 7th, 2009 at 2:41 am

[...] laloca of baggage carousel 4 with stockholm syndrome [...]

4. The July Just Posts « collecting tokens Says:
August 7th, 2009 at 2:42 am

[...] laloca of baggage carousel 4 with stockholm syndrome [...]

5. Eva Says:
August 8th, 2009 at 9:27 pm

People are stupid. That’s the only explanation I can think of.

the straight porn industry has managed to fool itself into believing that regular HIV testing by an industry-funded clinic – rather than mandatory condom use – is good enough to keep its performers protected from disease.

as they recently found out, it might be better than no testing at all, but it doesn’t hold a candle to condoms. the companies are blaming the condom-optional policy on the performers.

a much better rundown of the situation – and the stupidity that led to it – is over at sugarbank.

in related news, i see that lifestyles is now marketing a polyisoprene condom. there’s a review (6 months old) over at the condomunity.

on my way into work on this morning’s second-to-last 3Y metrobus. (i originally wrote “penultimate,” but that just sounded pretentious even though it’s correct.) on E street, a woman in a black coupe pulls into the bus stop as we’re approaching, and opens the driver’s side door… right into the front of our bus. my quick view of the scene suggested no major damage to either her car or the bus. IMO, however, she was at fault.

i was so engrossed in my current reading (straub’s if you could see me now) i barely noticed the lurch as the bus driver slammed on the brakes to avoid a collision, and when i did look up from my last-row seat, the bus was echoingly empty. we all transferred to a 16Y that was right behind us. i don’t envy what the 3Y driver’s day is going to be like.

and i’m still glad i don’t drive in the district.

hey, judy, wherever you are – the president signed the FDA tobacco bill. i think you’d be pleased with most of it.

miss you.

whether the weather be hot
or whether the weather be not
we must weather the weather
whatever the weather
whether we like it or not.

i’ve never spent any significant time in africa, other than a week in the canary islands, so it should come as no surprise that i am totally ignorant of the size and number of slums on that continent. which is why the map below was quite an eye-opener for me.

you’d think that someone who lived in lima for as long as i did would know there were not just one, but two large slums there. but i did not.

and now i do.

hat tip: justin

despite having a startling similarity in appellation, i’m pretty sure that janet napolitano is no relation to johnette napolitano. which kills any chance of hearing the DHS secretary sing joey anytime soon.

###

in reproductive health news, it’s looking likely that the FDA will be making it easier for 17-year-olds to buy plan B. the u.s. district court for the eastern district of NY has told them to, at least. (PDF of the memo & order in tummino v. von eschenbach)
i like the judge’s straightforward approach:

…the gravamen of plaintiffs’ claims is that the FDA’s decisions regarding Plan B – on the Citizen Petition and the SNDAs – were arbitrary and capricious because they were not the result of reasoned and good faith agency decision-making.

Plaintiffs are right.

…

Indeed, the record is clear that the FDA’s course of conduct regarding Plan B departed in significant ways from the agency’s normal procedures regarding similar applications to switch a drug product from prescription to non-prescription use, referred to as a “switch application” or an “over-the-counter switch.” For example, FDA upper management, including the Commissioner, wrested control over the decision-making on Plan B from staff that normally would issue the final decision on an over-the-counter switch application; the FDA’s denial of non-prescription access without age restriction went against the recommendation of a committee of experts it had empanelled to advise it on Plan B; and the Commissioner – at the behest of political actors – decided to deny non-prescription access to women 16 and younger before FDA scientific review staff had completed their reviews.

somehow i don’t think the rank & file up in rockville are too broken up about the district court’s decision.

it wouldn’t be this cold out if i hadn’t put my winter clothes away last weekend.