Quickies: Darwin Misquoted, Petting Puppies Banned, and Figuring Out the Cold Virus

• ‘Manslamming’: A Verb, a Gerund – “Terms that put the “man” in “portmanteau” tend to catch on because they describe a behavior that men (usually) adopt unconsciously and that women (usually) find annoying or (sometimes) offensive. They cheekily point out microaggressions—a term coined by the Harvard professor Chester Pierce in the ‘70s to describe insults inflicted on African-Americans, but extended since then to indict all forms of privilege being wantonly wielded—and ask the subjects of their verbs to check, or at least acknowledge, that privilege. As language, they’re prescriptive as well as descriptive: They both describe a behavior and strongly advise against it. They hint at that the troubling fact that privilege tends to be highly apparent to everyone except the people who enjoy it.”
• Yoga, Petting Puppies, Halloween: Banned By Malaysia’s Muslim Clerics – “All Muslims know pork, booze and premarital canoodling violate Islamic teachings. But in Malaysia, home to a rising tide of fundamentalist Islam, senior clerics are warning against more insidious dangers to the faith. Such as death metal. And puppies. And Valentine’s Day.” From Daniela.
• Unraveling the Key to a Cold Virus’s Effectiveness – “Scientists have never been sure why they are so effective, but now a team at Yale University may have found a clue. The scientists argue that rhinoviruses have found a blind spot in the human immune system: They take advantage of the cold air in our noses.”
• 1 in 3 College Men Admit They Would Rape, If We Don’t Call It ‘Rape’ – “A small survey of college men points at something equal parts interesting and disturbing: one in three of them say they would be willing to ‘use force to obtain intercourse’ as long as nobody would find out and there would be no consequences. But very few were willing to say they would commit rape, suggesting that they don’t quite see that forced sex and rape are the same thing.”
• I’m Tired Of Seeing This Charles Darwin Quote Taken Out Of Context – “In the sixth chapter of On The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin addresses ‘Organs of Extreme Perfection’ – organs like the eye, the formation of which due to natural selection, Darwin ‘freely confessed,’ seems ‘absurd in the highest possible degree.’ But this is only part of a much longer quote.”

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