The Right doesn’t know how birth control works, yes, but it also doesn’t care.

I’ve seen a lot of good little liberals helpfully explaining to the crazy right how birth control isn’t an abortifacient. Save your fucking breath. They do not care. Just like they’re content to ignore all evidence of global warming, the evidence is meaningless to them.

Punishing “sluts” (as they see it) and tribal identification is what really matters to them.

The Left likes to focus on the data, the evidence, and all that. It’s why they consistently lose even if they have a majority opinion. You can’t fight irrational beliefs with rationality, especially in the short term. Attempting to do this only harms your cause, not helps it.

This is probably the stupidest trend I’ve ever heard of, and I grew up in a place chock full of people like this, so I’ve seen some pretty goddamn stupid things in my life.

Where I grew up, people were already burying guns in their back yards, long, long before the Tea Party (early to mid-80s). They were already talking about the Amero, and the imminent UN takeover of the US.

But at least then, people were thrifty (because they were poor) and just didn’t throw money out the window on something so heinously stupid as “rollin’ coal.”

Everyone always thinks their country/culture/way of life is in decline, but sometimes it really is.

This is one of those times.

Same, same.

I also enjoyed reading the classics because I was a vocabulary junkie and nobody could understand how I could sit through Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, Jane Eyre, and Crime and Punishment as a middle-schooler.

I started a little earlier – in elementary school – but I’d read most of the Western classics by the time I was 13. Though I have never read Jane Eyre, and probably never will.

For some reason, Moby Dick was my favorite when I was a kid, perhaps because I read it so early (8 or 9). I’ve since read it again and didn’t care for it nearly as much.

Lately, I jump back and forth between reading YA, short stories and textbooks. For instance, at the moment I am reading a book of dystopian short stories called Brave New Worlds, Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, Alice Munro’s Who Do You Think You Are?, Marcus Chown’s Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You and An Introduction to Middle English by Simon Horobin and Jeremy Smith. The latter is a textbook.

That doesn’t count any technical reading that I do (related to IT) which also happens/is happening at the same time, which is usually another 2-3 books but right now is only one, title not important.

I usually read more than one textbook at the same time, but the Middle English one is difficult enough that I just can’t.

And that’s about my typical sort of reading list, though strangely there is no YA book or series that I’m actually into at the moment.