Salon.com > The Guardian

Bulletproof backpacks are now a thing

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 15:14:00 +0000

Welcome to post-Newtown America: where gun control legislation can’t be passed but companies are profiting by selling bulletproof backpacks for children in schools. The backpacks, along with ballistic safety vests and ballistic shields disguised as whiteboards in classrooms, are among the products companies are pushing in the aftermath of the Newtown massacre.

The Guardian reports that a Denver-based company, Elite Sterling Security, has sold 300 bulletproof backpacks over the last two months. The company has also received inquiries about their backpacks from 2,000 families across the U.S. And the company is in talks with schools in Colorado about “equipping them with ballistic safety vests, a scaled-down version of military uniforms designed to hang in classroom cupboards for children to wear in an emergency,”The Guardian reports.

Neil Gaiman publishes “Down to a Sunless Sea” in the Guardian

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:32:00 +0000

Fantasy writer Neil Gaiman continues to maintain a ubiquitous media presence with the release of a new short story in the Guardian.

The story, "Down to a Sunless Sea," is part of the Guardian's "Water stories" series:

"The Guardian's short fiction project Water stories asks writers from around the world to distil the essence of modern life, charting the ebb and flow of our cultural existence to explore the element from which we are born and which has inspired writers since Gilgamesh crossed the Waters of Death"

The series launched on March 15 and includes a graphic story by Isabel Greenberg, a story by Argentine novelist Martín Kohan and others.

Gaiman's story is set on the banks of the Thames River in London, where "the bodies of cats and dogs and the bones of sheep and pigs down into the brown water," he writes. But read it at your own risk -- "it's a bit creepy," tweeted Gaiman.

Do feminists care if you take your husband’s name?

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 16:39:00 +0000

Of all the battleground issues for feminism – reproductive freedom, pay equity, institutionalized violence and rape culture – how significant is that most intimate and unique one: our last names? Or, as Jill Filipovic, wearing her admitted "cranky feminist" hat, asked in the Guardian Thursday, "Why, in 2013, does getting married mean giving up the most basic marker of your identity?"

The statistics tell the story. Even after generations of women have had the opportunity to keep their birth names after tying the knot, the vast majority -- roughly 90 percent -- still prefers to adopt their husbands'. Fewer women retain their names now than did in the 1990s. A 2009 Indiana University study found that over 70 percent of Americans believe a woman should change her name when she gets married, and roughly half think it should be legally required. When the study came out, IU professor Brian Powell noted, "If names are a core aspect of our identity, this is important." And a Pennsylvania State study last year found that the rate of respondents who agreed that "a woman keeping her name was less committed to her marriage" had leapt from 2.7 percent to over 10 percent in a 15-year span.

Martin Luther King Jr., champion of military defense?

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 15:00:00 +0000

Every year, right around the time between Martin Luther King Day and the beginning of Black History Month, the effort to distort Dr. King's life and legacy seems to intensify. Some years, we see conservatives preposterously assert that if Dr. King were alive today, he would join today's neo-confederate Republican Party. Other years, it is deception via omission - we see replays of Dr. King's 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech, but do not see any of his speeches about war and poverty.

Princeton professor Cornel West accurately labels all this the "Santa Clausification" of Dr. King, and if you have ever heard or read a snippet of King's 1967 Riverside Church speech, you will understand how apt the label is. You will also understand why this year's most grotesque attempt to Santa Claus-ify Dr. King's life is at once abhorrent and yet somewhat encouraging.

As The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald first reported, the United States Air Force's Global Strike Command last week posted an online essay saying that Dr. King would cheer on soldiers "ensuring the most powerful weapons in the U.S. arsenal remain the credible bedrock of our national defense." Further, claimed the Air Force, "maintaining our commitment to our Global Strike team ... is a fitting tribute to Dr. King."

Adrian Lamo opens up about life after turning in Bradley Manning

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 21:20:00 +0000

The Guardian Thursday published a fascinating IM interview with Adrian Lamo, the hacker-turned-journalist and minister who famously turned Bradley Manning in to the Department of Defense after the young soldier confided in Lamo through online chats.

Lamo's elegant responses show a man attempting to detach himself from the realities of Manning's harsh detention and worrying legal prospects. They also show a man with enough philosophical soundness to reject questions about acting with hindsight.

Lamo told the Guardian's Ed Pilkington that he has not closely followed Manning's recent pretrial hearings:

It's not because I take it lightly, but because I take it as seriously as I do. Making the choice to interdict a man's freedom knowing it could mean his life, is something that's easy to judge but can only really be understood by living it. You either fold it into your character, come to terms and go on with your life, or you get stuck in that moment forever. For a while I thought I would be. I took it badly. But I came to terms and continued my life some time ago. It has, after all, been two years.

... I knew my actions might cost him his life. In that respect, any other outcome is preferable.

5 reasons global warming is more terrifying than you think

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 14:38:00 +0000

This week the sane among us will scoff at those hoarding candles and food for another apocalypse that fails to materialize. We’ll laugh at the accounts of people readying their bunkers and at store shelves being wiped clean. We know that the world will not come to a cataclysmic end on December 21.

Here’s what we’re not so good at understanding: We are part of a slowly enfolding tragedy in which the end of the world as we know it may be getting closer and closer. It won’t happen on any particular day that we can pinpoint and there won’t be a giant explosion or a big flood that will wipe everything away. There will be many floods and fires over many years. One species, one crop dying off after another.

Picasso scandalizes Scotland

Fri, 10 Aug 2012 23:30:00 +0000

A Scottish airport has backtracked on its decision to cover up a poster promoting an exhibition at the Scottish Museum of Modern Art that featured Picasso’s “Nude Woman In a Red Armchair” (1932).

Apparently, the abstracted nude’s bare breasts and vagina were too much for some passengers, and the airport made the temporary decision to place a white vinyl cover over the offending parts before it permanently removed the advertisement.

In an interview with AFP, director-general of the National Galleries of Scotland, John Leighton, highlighted the lunacy of contemporary decency standards:

All kinds of images of women in various states of dress and undress can be used in contemporary advertising without comment … But somehow a painted nude by one of the world’s most famous artists is found to be disturbing and has to be removed.