Links and fiction

Wow. Your views on race affect what you think about this dog (Bo Obama, as it happens).

In the same vein, Anne Fausto-Sterling on Bodies with Histories:

Or consider spirometers, which measure lung function. The normal functioning of black people’s lungs is typically presumed to be 10–15 percent below that of white people’s. As Lundy Braun, who studies the intersection of race and medical science and technology, has shown, the presumption stems from a poorly supported idea that blacks inherently have lesser lung capacities than whites. Yet spirometers are calibrated to account for this difference. Some machines actually have a “race” switch built into them, which technicians flip depending on what race they believe the patient to be. Pegging the lung function of blacks at a lower level means, among other things, that they have to be sicker than whites in order to qualify for worker’s compensation or other insurance for lung-related illness.

Quis Copyright Ipsos Custodes: Another perspective on Watchmen prequels, including discussion of copyright and fan fiction, along with the difficulty of defending as feminist the argument that one particular guy should control these characters, instead of a corporation. Unlike the author, I like the original Watchmen, though.

( neat fantasy by P.C. Hodgell, Holly Black, Joe Haldeman, Alison Bechdel )