Everything is Interesting
Stetson Kennedy (1916 – 2011) was an American author and human rights activist. One of the pioneer folklore collectors during the first half of the 20th century, he is remembered for having infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s, exposing its secrets to authorities and the outside world.
His actions led to the 1947 revocation by the state of Georgia of the Klan’s national corporate charter. Kennedy wrote or co-wrote ten books.
read more »
In 1946, human rights activist Stetson Kennedy infiltrated the KKK. Concerned that the organization had links to police forces, Kennedy decided to use his findings to strike at the Klan in a different way. He contacted the producers of the ‘Superman’ radio show and proposed a story where the superhero battles the Klan. Looking for new villains, the producers eagerly agreed.
To that end, he provided information—including secret codewords and details of Klan rituals—to the writers. The result was a series of episodes, ‘Clan of the Fiery Cross,’ in which Superman took on the Klan. Kennedy intended to strip away the Klan’s mystique. The trivialization of the Klan’s rituals and codewords was perceived to have had a negative impact on Klan recruiting and membership. Reportedly, Klan leaders denounced the show and called for a boycott of Kellogg’s products. However, the story arc earned spectacular ratings, and the food company stood by its support of the show.
In the UFO conspiracy theory, disclosure is the revelation of suppressed evidence of extraterrestrial life by the United States government or other world governments. In 1993, ufologist Steven M. Greer founded the ‘Disclosure Project’ to promote the concept of disclosure.
In 2001, Greer held a press conference at the National Press Club in D.C that featured ’20 retired Air Force, Federal Aviation Administration and intelligence officers’ who demanded that Congress begin hearings on ‘secret U.S. involvement with UFOs and extraterrestrials’ and was described by an attending BBC reporter as ‘the strangest ever news conference hosted by Washington’s August National Press Club.’ Such arguments were met with by derision by skeptics and spokespeople for the U. S. Air Force who maintain that there is no convincing evidence for the speculation that UFOs are alien spacecraft.
read more »
A facial is a term for the sexual activity in which a man ejaculates semen onto the face of one or more sexual partners. A facial is a form of non-penetrative sex, though it is generally performed after some other means of sexual stimulation. Facial cum shots are currently regularly portrayed in pornographic films and videos, often as a way to close a scene.
Many sex experts consider the act demeaning and do not promote it. In response to an inquiry from a reader, sex columnist Dan Savage wrote: ‘Facials are degrading—and that’s why they’re so hot.’
read more »
Post-feminism is a reaction against some perceived contradictions and absences of second-wave feminism (a period of feminist activity that first began in the early 1960s in the United States, and eventually spread throughout the Western world). The term post-feminism is ill-defined and is used in inconsistent ways.
However, it generally connotes the belief that feminism has succeeded in its goal of ameliorating sexism, making it fundamentally opposed to the third-wave intention of broadening feminist struggle by focusing on diversity and change.
read more »
The Labia pride movement is a feminist activist movement that attempts to raise awareness for the normal anatomical appearance of the female vulva and defy a perceived growing trend towards cosmetic genital surgery (labiaplasty, also known as ‘designer vagina’). It is supported by several independent feminist groups and based on diverse channels of communication such as cyberfeminism, protest marches and advocating boycotts against physicians and clinics that make use of deceptive advertising.
The London-based feminist group UK feminista organized a protest march through London’s Harley Street, that is known for its high density of upscale medical providers, in late 2011. More than 320 women paraded the street, with slogans like: ‘Keep your mits off our bits!’, ‘There’s nothing finer than my vagina!’, and ‘Harley Street puts my chuff in a huff.’
read more »
Wank Week was a controversial season of television programming that was due to be broadcast in the United Kingdom by Channel 4, expected to consist of a series of three documentary programs about masturbation. However, plans to broadcast it in 2007 came under public attack from senior television figures, and the planned broadcasts were pulled amid claims of declining editorial standards and controversy over the channel’s public service broadcasting credentials.
While ‘Wank Week’ itself has been cancelled, the films it was meant to showcase may yet be broadcast by the channel at a later date.
read more »
In law, unring the bell is an analogy used to suggest the difficulty of forgetting information once it is known. When discussing jury trials, the phrase is sometimes used to describe the judge’s instructions to the jury to ignore inadmissible evidence or statements they have heard. It may also be used if inadmissible evidence has been brought before a jury and the judge subsequently declares a mistrial.
Commenting on Court TV about the pre-trial release of nearly 200 pages of documents from a hearing on the sexual activities of the accuser in the Kobe Bryant sexual assault case, jury consultant Idgi D’Andrea said, ‘It’s really hard to unring the bell, once that bell has been rung, and ask people to forget what they’ve heard.’ In a more recent case, judge Reggie Walton said that he could not ‘unring the bell’ when he declared a mistrial in the Roger Clemens perjury trial.
read more »
Reaganomics or ‘voodoo economics’ is a negative term which critics use to criticize supply-side economics. The term originated from George H.W. Bush, who criticized Ronald Reagan’s plan for the economy during the Republican presidential primaries in 1980. Reagan’s attitude towards the Federal Government Budget was to drastically reduce taxes – primarily for the wealthy – while greatly increasing spending – primarily for the military. Bush Sr. and others recognized that this could not possibly produce a balanced budget, and would result in great national debt.
The four pillars of Reagan’s economic policy were to reduce the growth of government spending, reduce the federal income tax and capital gains tax, reduce government regulation, and control the money supply in order to reduce inflation.
read more »
Abenomics [ah-bey-nom-iks] refers to the economic policies advocated by Shinzō Abe, the current Prime Minister of Japan. It consists of monetary policy, fiscal policy, and economic growth strategies to encourage private investment.
The detailed policies includes inflation targeting at a 2% annual rate, correction of the excessive yen appreciation, setting negative interest rates, radical quantitative easing (printing money), expansion of public investment, buying operations of construction bonds by Bank of Japan (BOJ), and revision of the Bank of Japan Act.
read more »
Morphological freedom refers to a proposed civil right of a person to either maintain or modify his or her own body, on his or her own terms, through informed, consensual recourse to, or refusal of, available therapeutic or enabling medical technology.
The term may have been coined by strategic philosopher Max More in his 1993 article, ‘Technological Self-Transformation: Expanding Personal Extropy,’ where he defined it as ‘the ability to alter bodily form at will through technologies such as surgery, genetic engineering, nanotechnology, uploading.’ The term was later used by science debater Anders Sandberg as ‘an extension of one’s right to one’s body, not just self-ownership but also the right to modify oneself according to one’s desires.’
read more »
The concept of irreconcilable differences (sometimes called irremediable breakdown, irretrievable breakdown, or incompatibility) provides possible grounds for divorce in a number of jurisdictions. Australian family law uses a no-fault divorce approach, and irreconcilable differences is the sole grounds for divorce, with adequate proof being that the estranged couple have been separated for more than 12 months. In the United States, this is one of several possible grounds.
Often, it is used as justification for a no-fault divorce. In many cases, irreconcilable differences were the original and only grounds for no-fault divorce, such as in California, which enacted America’s first purely no-fault divorce law in 1969. California now lists one other possible basis, ‘incurable insanity,’ on its divorce petition form.
The Daily Omnivore 