Quickies: Evangelical Warrior Wives, Robotic Penguins, and Tig Notaro’s Legendary Topless Comedy Act

• The Warrior Wives of Evangelical Christianity – “In her book, DeRogatis notes an interesting twist in the relationship between feminism and evangelicalism. ‘Many people, over time, started to notice that some of the buzzwords within feminism could be reworked—particularly “empowerment,” ‘ she said in an interview. Evangelical leaders ‘pretty consciously started using the language of empowerment to redefine it in different ways.’ “
• The Robotic Baby Penguin That Spies For Scientists – “Many penguins tracked in Antarctica have data-collecting devices underneath their skin. Usually, researchers have to get close to them and use hand readers to pick up a signal from the devices — which freaks the penguins out. Yvon Le Maho, who has been studying penguins for more than 40 years, decided to tackle that problem.”
• The Hunter, The Hoaxer, And The Battle Over Bigfoot – “Jeffrey Meldrum is a respected anthropologist risking his reputation to prove Sasquatch is real; Rick Dyer is a self-described “entertainer” unapologetically capitalizing off it. Their rivalry represents two sides of the fractious but booming subculture.”
• Tig Notaro Performs Last Half Of Set Topless In Legendary Performance – “By taking off her shirt, Notaro addressed the multi-faceted relationship women have with their bodies. While she challenged the nature of the catcall (in this case, in the form of a joking “woo”), she seemed to be simultaneously speaking to the women who feel shame about losing their breasts after cancer. Her performance was poignant and subtle in all the right ways — subtle being a serious feat considering she was topless.” From Amy.
• How Boy Bits First Came To Be – “Evolution has shaped every part of the body, and that includes our private parts. New research published this week sheds light on how the penis evolved and how it forms in different animals. The research might also one day help illuminate a medical mystery: Birth defects of the penis have risen sharply in recent decades, and nobody is sure why.”
• Meet the Mysterious Creator of Rumor-Debunking Site Snopes.com – “Mikkelson named the site after an early Internet alias, itself a nod to the Snopes family of criminals and tenant farmers in several William Faulkner novels. With a long-planned redesign and expansion of the site finally in the works, he’ll soon have an even better platform for disproving all those wild stories in your Facebook feed.” (I’m still a fan of the Internet 1.0 layout of Snopes.)
• The Price of American Eugenics – “From the early decades of the 20th century until 1974, 32 states in the union mandated the sterilization of more than 65,000 citizens. At the behest of government eugenics boards, girls and women had their tubes tied or uteri removed, and boys and men their vasa deferentia snipped because they had been deemed unfit to reproduce. Still others came under the scalpel of private doctors, and this second group makes the calculations difficult—65,000 represents only the number of sterilizations where there was municipal paperwork.”

BONUS: Surly Amy and Heina are both in this video: Moving Social Justice Atheists of Color Conference Trailer

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