Love and Cartagena. A profile of one of my favorite cities. Stereotypically, I re-read Love in a Time of Cholera while I was there, and of course paid a visit to Gabo’s house. But if you’re planning a vacation anytime soon, I would highly recommend Colombia.
Obama is likely to pick a woman for the Supreme Court. I’d be pretty thrilled if it were Kathleen Sullivan, but I won’t complain if it’s Diane Wood, either.
Obama also makes a very creepy joke about using predator drones to kill the Jonas Brothers. I’m all in favor of joking about assassinating the Jonases, but (a) the “stay away from my daughers!” thing is gross, and (b) as Alex Pareene puts it, “It seems like a no-brainer that the people directly responsible for tragedies should not deliver jokes about those tragedies. That’s why Mel Brooks can tell Hitler jokes and Germans can’t.”
In Arizona, Cinco de Mayo is now Report an Illegal Day.
Abortion rights are being slowly chipped away — and younger women are less supportive of abortion rights than they have been in past decades.
Red State Family Values vs. Blue State Family Values: Two family law professors define the cultural divide with the line, “In red America, families form adults; in blue America, adults form families.”
A new online game: Shoot the Illegal Immigrants (thanks, Nicholas, for the link). The super-dangerous people we’re keeping out of our country? The Mexican Nationalist, the Drug Smuggler, and the Breeder.
Male mannequins are being slimmed down to fit into trendy super-skinny jeans. The content of the article is interesting; terms like “manorexic” and the contention that male mannequins are being “feminized” are grating.
Roman Polanski breaks his silence. POOR ROMAN POLANSKI. He just wants to be treated fairly!
Tween girls are using a lot of make-up, apparently.
Treating illegal immigrants like we did runaway slaves: Nicholas Blendy has a great piece in the Baltimore Sun about how, if we want, “we can quickly resolve the issue of identifying and adjudicating millions of controversial people in our midst.” The question is whether, 160 years after the Fugitive Slave Act, we still want to “treat human beings — even those who have broken our laws — as less than human.”
Organ donation and presumed consent: Should New York pass a law that presumes people consent to donate their organs upon death, unless they sign a registry to opt out? I usually err on the side of bodily autonomy and not presuming consent for much of anything, but when you’re dead you’re dead.