Author Archive for Nicola Karras
I check out the blog stats every once in a while, and sometimes people find us via Google searches I can only describe as…strange.
The Peculiar:
different ways to care for chickens
unfortunate sex images
want to make molds for banisters
what is the spiritual significance of the navel
The “Good Question”:
does sarah palin smoke cigarette
why do pornstars keep their shoes on?
what do social theorist do for us
The Sublime:
men in suits throwing pies
everything is performative
uses of cigarettes and alcohols equals modernity
The GOP is more pro-choice than it thinks.
If you don’t think that abortion is murder — and, let’s face it, if you favor exemptions for rape and incest you really don’t — the morality of any given abortion comes down to what it says about the woman involved, not some deontological prohibition on abortion per se.
If the value of an embryo is as a potential person — the sort of thing that can one day have a mind and/or soul — then abortion isn’t a morally neutral thing. The trouble comes when this sort-of-bad-but-not-super-bad thing (destroying a thing that may one day become a person) comes into conflict with a woman’s decisions about her body.
If gestation happened in a box rather than a person, there would be no good reason to pull the plug. Since it does happen in a person — and since that person risks anything from discomfort and inconvenience to death — it’s not so black and white. Every circumstance is different: the ultimate question for woman with an unwanted pregnancy is how much pain, distress, and change to the rest of her life she’s willing to endure for the sake of a potential person.
It’s entirely coherent to say that abortion is bad, but that women should be able to have them. In that framework, the decision becomes a measure of circumstance and values: it tells us something about the character of the woman involved. (Of course, it might just tell us that she’s a fourteen-year-old who is psychologically unprepared to spend nine months carrying the memory of her rape — it can’t a blanket judgment of all women who have abortions or all women who don’t.)
For all the platform’s talk about banning abortion entirely, this is the framework that the McCain campaign has embraced. They want us to know that it was a choice:
Bristol Palin made the decision on her own to keep the baby, McCain aides said. (Reuters)
The emphasis here is not so much in the right outcome, but the right choice. And the emphasis on agency, on people rather than incubators, can only be good for women.
I’ve been busy moving and protesting Yale’s extracurricular bazaar —
Alternate banners include: "Go back to class"; "Yale is not for fun"; "No, I don't sing."
…and, yes, blogging elsewhere. Today, I bring you Sarah Palin as Anti-Woman:
As the Democrats’ talking points remind us ad nauseam, Hillary Clinton put eighteen million cracks in the glass ceiling. They’d love to see a woman in the White House. They care about women’s issues. They would never hold a candidate’s gender against her.
No sir, no sexism here.
As they say, read the whole thing. I disagree with Palin about a lot (creationism, abortion, sex education), but freedom from sexist attacks shouldn’t be a reward for having the right stances on the issues.
More on Palin, women, and the politics of abortion after I’ve checked this out.
I’m sitting in my brand-new common room, watching the DNC live on CNN with the all-too-many.
I am shocked, shocked, by their blurb…
The liveblogging dropped off halfway through because I broke Wordpress. Note to self: don’t try to mess with FTP while watching political conventions. It never works.
I think I’ve got everything back in working order, except for the header. If you widen the screen, it appears to double. I’m running the newest versions of Wordpress and K2, and if anyone has any ideas I’ll…I don’t know. Bake you cookies or something.
In the meantime, I intend to pack up all my earthly belongings and make the trek up north. Roommate Dara awaits. Also, classes.
EDIT: I fixed it! My PHP skillz are l33t. And limited to commenting out the code I don’t want, but still.
Will is liveblogging over there.
(Roll call starts here.)
This post is done; I’m making dinner, and when I come back I’ll have a new one. Ta!
Will and I have only one laptop between us, so we’re co-live-blogging the DNC at his place.
As I think I’ve mentioned before, I used to work in a bakery, so I really enjoy this blog.
The worst part is, I think this is still better than my cake writing.
The most important lessons from my high school job?
- Never trust the customer to write down what he wants on the cake. A Penn professor whose son was graduating from MIT wanted a cake that read “Congrats on your Collage Graduation.” I can only hope he taught math.
- Never assume you know how to spell someone’s name. Don’t even suggest. The mother of a two-year-old once gave me the evil eye for asking if her daughter’s name was spelled Anita. No, it was Eneedah. Duh.
- The larger the difference between cake size and child’s age, the crazier the parent is. A 13-year-old with a 7″ cake? Probably a lovely person. A one-year-old with a full sheet cake? HIDE.
- People are weird. Someone once sent me to put extra sprinkles on a cake because otherwise it might not be appealing to children.
- No one listens to instructions. If you tell them to refrigerate the cake lest buttercream icing melt all over the kitchen counter, you’d better do it twice. Or three times. And even then, you can reliably expect a furious phone call from at least half the customers.
- Never, ever argue with a bride. I still have scars.
ETA: For what it’s worth, I’m still holding out for one of these.
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