While the entire world is obsessed with the murder of Little Miss Colorado, Miami's Angel is largely forgotten. Miami's most notorious murder mystery remains a cold case--without much fanfare. In two other comparable cases, 5-year-old Rilya Wilson was missing for more than a year before she was reported to authorities. 4-year-old Caylee Anthony was missing for one month before her mother filed a missing person report. While Caylee Anthony's case dominated countless international headlines, little Rilya Wilson received nothing similar. CNN's Nancy Grace covered Caylee Anthony's story daily, for more than two months with no new leads, no case updates or nothing new to report. Where was Nancy Grace when Rilya Wilson was discovered missing?


We all know who Jon-Benet Ramsey is, a pretty blond girl who was murdered in Colorado. You probably don't know the name of Cynteria Phillips, an attractive 13-year-old black girl who was abused as a child, neglected by the state and was raped and murdered in South Florida.The killing of Cynteria, though heinous and shocking, did not ignite the hyper-charged media frenzy of the cases of Jon-Benet Ramsey, Caylee Anthony, Jessica Lunsford, Samantha Runnion or Danielle Van Dam.

The race of a victim plays a huge role in how their case is covered by the national media. The gruesome murder of nine-year-old Mya Lyons is evidence of this. Mya went missing from her Chicago home and was found with multiple stab wounds in an alley near her backyard. The crime went unsolved for nearly three years before her father was charged with capital murder. You would imagine a case like this make the national headlines, but Mya Lyons' murder was never covered by any national news organization.

Dan Luthian, a reporter at CNN, stated that if a black celebrity's child went missing, it would mount heavy media coverage. But Caylee Anthony was not the daughter of any celebrity, and she was not notable herself, yet she received continuous national media coverage. So why must a black child be a celebrity's child to be noticed?

Most physicists think time is a subjective illusion, but what if time is real?

NEW YORK — Is time real, or the ultimate illusion?

Most physicists would say the latter, but Lee Smolin challenges this orthodoxy in his new book, "Time Reborn" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, April 2013), which he discussed here Wednesday (April 24) at the Rubin Museum of Art.

In a conversation with Duke University neuroscientist Warren Meck, theoretical physicist Smolin, who's based at Canada's Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, argued for the controversial idea that time is real. "Time is paramount," he said, "and the experience we all have of reality being in the present moment is not an illusion, but the deepest clue we have to the fundamental nature of reality."

Smolin said he hadn't come to this concept lightly. He started out thinking, as most physicists do, that time is subjective and illusory. According to Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, time is just another dimension in space, traversable in either direction, and our human perception of moments passing steadily and sequentially is all in our heads.

Over time, though, Smolin became convinced not only that time was real, but that this notion could be the key to understanding the laws of nature.

In a New York Times op-ed, writer Amanda Filipacchi shared her discovery that sexism on Wikipedia is intrusively shaping how women are represented, and in this case, how women are sometimes categorized as a special subset within a broader occupation. [Disclaimer: one of the services my agency offers is teaching webinars and workshops on the principles of Wikipedia editing.] While the veracity of this claim is being debated and questioned within the Wikipedia community (many are pointing out that the edits Filipacchi describes were rejected strongly, and that there are more structural problems with the entries discussed), there’s no doubt that gender and other biases, both conscious/intentional and unconscious, are common on Wikipedia. Over the years, any number of flare-ups around gender have occurred, ranging from harassment via vandalism of women’s pages, to using language and informational structures that marginalize or even erase entire genders, and more.

But saying that “Wikipedia is sexist” and hoping its users change their ways misses the mark on the bigger opportunity we have culturally to shift how we represent our information and stories on Wikipedia. Anyone can edit Wikipedia, but over 80% of Wikipedia’s editors are young, white, child-free men, which means that their perspective is what largely dominates how information is organized, framed and written. There’s nothing inherently wrong with a young, white, child-free man’s perspective, of course– it’s just that there are tons of other perspectives in the world that should influence how a story gets told. Think about how many Americans, for example, learned about white colonists’ relationships with the indigenous peoples that lived on the continent. The purely-Manifest-Destiny version of the events that’s often given to children in school definitely isn’t how people who’ve been nearly eradicated would tell that story.

Thus, it’s critical that we have as many perspectives as we can find creating the information that we share with one another, and this is a driving force behind one of Wikipedia’s main principles: neutral point of view. One person’s take can never be completely neutral, but Wikipedia’s guidelines hope that with many people participating, the most neutral version of a story will arise.

Which is why it’s not enough to sit back and hope for the best when finding sexist, racist, homophobic, trans*phobic, etc., language or information on Wikipedia. In order to fix it, we need lots of different kinds of people to jump in and start editing Wikipedia, too. That’s a scary prospect, but there are tons of resources available for beginners to get started.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/deannazandt/2013/04/26/yes-wikipedia-is-sexist-thats-why-it-needs-you/

MARCH Onward for our Military Women!

Enactment of last year's National Defense Authorization Act brought about a long overdue and welcome change on the military health care front by allowing military women and dependents to receive insurance coverage for abortion in cases of rape or incest. But the work to ensure that servicewomen's reproductive health needs are met is not nearly complete.

That's why we applaud the introduction in the Senate of the Military Access to Reproductive Care and Health (MARCH) for Military Women Act. Sponsored by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and 14 other stalwart supporters of our military women and families, the bill would allow servicewomen to use their own private funds to access abortion care on military treatment facilities. Earlier in the month, Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) introduced a House companion bill, cosponsored by 40 representatives.

The bill, if enacted, would change the current law that prohibits military facilities from providing abortion except in very limited circumstances (i.e. where the pregnancy results from rape or incest or where the woman's life is endangered).

Overturning the current ban would have a real impact on our servicewomen's lives. Because of the ban, a servicewoman who is stationed overseas and needs an abortion is forced either to attempt to obtain care in a local medical facility in the country in which she is stationed or travel to a medical facility in the United States or in another country. Even in countries where abortion is legal, local health facilities are sometimes inadequate, unsafe, or lack trained medical personnel. Servicewomen who must travel to obtain abortion care are required to clear the leave time with their superiors, forcing them to disclose information about private medical decisions. Their superior officers may delay or refuse to grant leave even though each week of delay increases the potential health risks.

A 28 year old female US sailor beat the bejeesus out of a bus driver in Dubai after he pulled a knife on her and announced he was going to rape her.

I’m not entirely comfortable giving a “you go girl!” to a rape story, but damn – it’s nice to see one of these guys finally get their comeuppance. I’m surprised she didn’t kill him.

Basically, she got on the bus after shopping, he drove to a bus terminal, pulled a knife on her, and told her he was going to rape her.

What the bus driver sadly didn’t realize is that the female sailor has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. She beat the cr*p out of him.

The driver is from Pakistan, presumably a guest worker (there are lots in Dubai). Which got me thinking of all the recent rape stories from India, which is right next door to Pakistan. Especially horrific is the recent story of the rape of a 5 year old girl.

Indian authorities are notoriously lax on prosecuting rapes against women, and typically belittle the women rather than go after the rapists. But with an international uproar of condemnation following some recent high profile rapes, that were blown off by the cops – and included some incredibly dismissive comments from top Indian officials – on the case of the 5 year old, at least, there’s been progress in arresting suspects.

A little "renascence" to close out National Poetry Month

Curator Eric Jentsch shares artifacts related to American Pulitzer Prize Winner (1923) and Frost Medal Recipient, Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950).





An 18-cent commemorative stamp honoring Millay was issued in 1981, in Austerlitz, New York, where Millay's farmstead, Steepletop, is located. The stamp is in the collection of the National Postal Museum. © U.S. Postal Service. All rights reserved.

Born in Rockland, Maine, Millay preferred to be called Vincent instead of Edna from an early age. As a young woman she established herself in New York's Greenwich Village, where she became one of the premier feminist icons of the jazz age and one of the most the most recognized American writers of the first half of the 20th century.

She was author of not only books of poetry, but also of plays, short stories, articles and librettos. Her poetry, marked with tender, sensitive language and creative imagery, extolled feminism, beauty, and social concern, while decrying fascism, injustice, and brutality.


In 1912, at the age of 19, Millay wrote her first major work "Renascence," and entered it into a competition held by a literary anthology. Although the poem came in fourth, many, including the contest's first and second place finishers, believed Millay's poem was easily superior. The ensuing notoriety compelled a patron of the arts to pay Millay's tuition at Vassar College, where the author enrolled in 1913 at the age of 21.

The poem, a description of spiritual rebirth or "renascence," concludes with this remarkable and insightful passage:

"The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky,
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That can not keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat—the sky
Will cave in on him by and by."

http://blog.americanhistory.si.edu/osaycanyousee/2013/04/a-little-renascence-to-close-out-national-poetry-month.html

ProgressNow New Mexico, a progressive advocacy organization, said on Wednesday that Kush should resign. “In a state run by one of the country’s most high-profile Republican women, the party’s leaders appear to see nothing wrong with misogynistic statements towards working women time and time again," said spokeswoman Marsha Garcia. "Mr. Kush should resign."

“If the Republican Party wants to know why they have such a hard time connecting with young women, they should start by examining the very public way their leaders feel about young working women,” said executive director Pat Davis.

ProgressNow New Mexico confirmed that the woman who was the target of Kush's first remark is 19 years old, but Working America said that she wished to remain anonymous.

Kush did not respond to The Huffington Post's request for comment.

Bob Cornelius, the county Republican party’s former executive director, replied to Kush's "nice boots" remark Tuesday by insinuating that Evans is a prostitute. "Maybe she uses those shoes to walk Central," he wrote under Kush's post, referring to a street that is notorious for prostitution. "Even in this economy she can exchange bumper cables for boots."

Dear All... A Letter From Eve in Congo

Dear All,

First let me begin with the deepest thank you to all of you who believed in City of Joy and have stood by us with your confidence and support. I have spent the month here and all I can say, is you would be proud. Let me start by describing the current state of Bukavu. It is nothing short of catastrophic. In one of the richest resourced countries in the world, the poverty is inconceivable. In a place where it rains almost every day, there is no water.

It is a country with the most fertile green fields, people are starving. There is no electricity. Most of the month the children have been sent home from school as the teachers are on strike. (they have not been paid). Even the policemen are begging for food. The road is better but most of the time we have not driven on it as there are so many reasons for detours. This is the environment our director Christine and her astounding staff face and transcend every day. Then of course there is the issue of security. The month I have been here there have been no incidents, but it feels arbitrary as there is no real political basis for security and one feels anything can happen at any time.

I will not even begin to tackle here the many proposals that seem to be circulating for peace in Congo. They either feel rhetorical or implausible. I think it is safe to say that if Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi were to get out of Congo, if there were real leadership and a functioning government in Kinshasa, there would be change. But that is not the nature of what I am writing about. We made a decision four years ago to put our energy into the grassroots women of Congo, to support their visions, their plans, their desires, their futures. To believe in their strength. To find the support for them to heal from gender violence of all forms, to be trained and educated in skills and their rights, to become leaders in their communities so that they could build a grassroots movement that eventually would be strong enough to transform this country and turn pain to power.

10 Ridiculously Offensive Things People Tell Asian Women On OkCupid
The Tumblr Creepy White Guys collects messages from “creepy white guys with Asian fetishes.”

Every Asian girl who has ever tried online dating, whether on POF, OKCupid, or Match has experienced it: messages from Creepy White Guys with Asian fetishes. I just got back into the dating scene and am already being bombarded with some absolutely horrifying messages. I've collected some of the best ones here, and I welcome any additions to my collection.

In the early to mid-nineteen-seventies, the group took on such issues as sexual assault, molestation, marriage, and motherhood. Most notably, it held a formative conference on rape in the spring of 1971, spearheaded by Susan Brownmiller, who would publish her classic book on the subject, “Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape,” in 1975. Subsequent events were of mixed success: at a conference on prostitution in the winter of 1971, working prostitutes showed up to lambaste their rescuers.

To learn more about the vicissitudes of the New York Radical Feminists—and the rise and fall of radical feminism more generally—I highly recommend Alice Echols’s “Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America 1967-1975,” a detailed and vivid account of the movement’s history. Echols also wrote an elegant essay in the Village Voice Literary Supplement on the occasion of the reissue of Firestone’s “Dialectic of Sex,” in 1993. The essay, “Like A Hurricane: Shulamith Firestone’s Wild Ride,” was reprinted in Echols’s 2002 collection, “Shaky Ground: The Sixties and Its Aftershocks.”

A final note: The third group that Firestone co-founded, the Redstockings, which fell apart in 1970, would be resurrected a few years later by several of its former members, including Kathie Sarachild (who coined the phrase “Sisterhood is Powerful”) and Carol Hanisch (who introduced the expression “the personal is political”). Sarachild and others have continued the group as an activist think tank and maintain a historical collection, the Redstockings Women’s Liberation Movement Archives for Action, which Sarachild graciously allowed me to use while I was researching the story. National Women’s Liberation, a spinoff of Redstockings, played a key role in the campaign for an over-the-counter “morning after” emergency-contraception pill, and, as a lead plaintiff, recently won a federal-court ruling to grant women of all ages access to the pill without restrictions or a prescription.