Blogaround

Four big dogs laying on top of each other. Image source.

1. Why Jesus’ Skin Color Matters (posted March 18) "As an ethnic minority, Jesus didn’t simply care about people who were victims of Rome-sanctioned violence, he was a victim of Rome-sanctioned violence. Jesus didn’t simply care about refugees, Jesus was a refugee. Jesus didn’t simply care about the poor, he was poor."

2. Writing a love letter instead of a police report: why victims contact sex attackers (posted February 13) [content note: rape] I don't see anything contradictory about this at all. It seems very normal to me to initially give someone the benefit of the doubt when they attack or abuse you- because you like them and you want the relationship to work out. Only later would you realize, you know what, this isn't right, this is abuse and I'm done.

3. Nearly 4 Million Syrian Children Born Into War Risk Becoming ‘Lost Generation’: UNICEF (posted March 14)

4. Stephen Explains "Star Wars" To China (posted December 19) "Star Wars is a story of a simple farm boy who buys two robots. One looks like a garbage can. The other is programmed to be scared all the time for some reason."

5. Autism—It's Different in Girls (posted March 1) Yep. All of this. Pretty much everything in this article feels SO TRUE to me, but if I had to pick one quote, it would be: "Even many highly intelligent girls on the spectrum have difficulties with washing their hair, wearing deodorant and dressing appropriately, Jamison says. Some of this behavior is linked to sensory issues; other aspects of the problem are related to difficulty following the appropriate sequence of behavior when doing something you think is unimportant."

6. Legalize It All: How to win the war on drugs (April 2016 issue) "The government’s own data, from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, shatters the myth of “instantly addictive” drugs. ... Only tiny percentages of people who have sampled one of the Big Four — heroin, cocaine, crack, and methamphetamine — have used that drug in the past month. (For heroin, the number is 8 percent; for cocaine, 4 percent; for crack, 3 percent; for meth, 4 percent.) It isn’t even clear that using a drug once a month amounts to having a drug problem."

7. Heels (posted March 24) "Or, to use the rhetorical flourish favored by “bathroom-bill” advocates, Gov. McCrory wants to look in your young daughter’s pants and in the pants of every one of her elementary school classmates." And also: "How Is The Government Supposed To Figure Out A Person's Biological Sex?"

8. Jimmy Kimmel “mansplaining” to Hillary Clinton was a perfect sendup of campaign trail sexism (posted March 25) Lol.

9. NRA: A Lesson on evangelism (posted March 28) "This iteration of the guilt-driven pep-talk may eventually succeed in motivating them to get back out there and make their hard-sell even harder than before. That will, in turn, leave them feeling even guiltier about their pushier, but even more counter-productive attempts at evangelism, after which they can be lectured yet again about why they should feel even guiltier about feeling even guiltier." OH MY GOODNESS he describes evangelism perfectly.

10. Secret Service: We’re not allowing firearms at the Republican National Convention (posted March 28)