• Kory McFarren, the Kansas boyfriend of the woman who made headlines in February when she got stuck on a toilet seat for two years, won the Kansas state Lottery on Monday for the second time this year. • Police are investigating allegations that a female teacher at Trinity Lutheran School in Detroit ordered three seventh-grade girls to strip down to their underwear on October 1 as part of a search for the alleged theft of $42. • A recent survey found that stressed out men are eating more chocolate in tough economic times. • A survey conducted during the summer found that 80% of Americans say the economy is making them stressed and 83% of those stressed by the economy are women. • A new study has found that women who have had a miscarriage have an increased risk of future complications during their next pregnancy including an increased risk of getting pre-eclampsia and/or needing intervention during labor. • A new study has found that boys tend to be savers and girls tend to be spenders, mostly because women are told money (and the things you buy with money) will help them create a reliable lifestyle.• Compare and contrast the illustrations from an English-language version of Alice in Wonderland and the Swahili-language version. • An Australian man was found guilty today of possessing an illegal firearm and threatening a person with a firearm after he shot a woman in the inner thigh (he claims it was accidental) after she refused to perform oral sex on him. • A woman from Rhode Island was charged with two counts of animal cruelty on Tuesday when she taped two of her pit bulls' mouths shut and left them alone for two days without food and water while she gave birth to her son in a hospital. • A new study suggests that St. John's wort extracts are as effective as standard antidepressants for treating major depression, although the results were more favorable in trials conducted in German-speaking countries. • Are Sarah Palin's glasses fake? Does anyone care? • Lifetime Networks announced that it is making a movie based on the disappearance of teenager Natalee Holloway in Aruba in 2005. • On Monday, a Connecticut judge dismissed a lawsuit brought against L'Oreal Inc. by a woman who claimed she accidentally dyed her hair from blonde to brunette and was so traumatized that she had to go on anti-depressants. •

Country music star Wynonna Judd earned tons of money from her career but squandered much of it; she ended up in a kind of money rehab. According to the Times, "The fields of psychology and financial planning have been slow to link money and emotion." Which makes absolutely no sense! Is there anything else that gets people so worked up? Money arguments are one of the leading causes of divorce. And psychologist Jonathan Rich tells the Times: "Right now with the economy, there is so much money stress, more arguing and more tension over money." The Times says an online survey by the American Psychological Association in June found that 75% of the more than 2,500 adults said money was the No. 1 source of stress in their lives. (Also interesting: The three people in need of financial therapy in this article are all women.)

It seems to me like one of the biggest problems with money is that it's so uncomfortable to talk about. People don't tell their friends how much they make, how much their parents have, what they spend and what they save. Sarah Kershaw writes in Times: "Money is still a great cultural taboo that is rarely discussed openly in this country." Why are we so afraid to discuss something we literally cannot live without? And are women more likely to have issues with money?

How to Treat a ‘Money Disorder’ [NY Times]

This guy was from the hard sales side of the aisle. He kept telling me how he, and he alone, was looking out for my financial interests. Why would I want my mortgage rate to go up in 2008? Didn't I know rates were rising? How was I going to be able to keep my home if my ARM adjusted upwards by 3 points or more? Didn't I understand that he did this for a living and he was just trying to help me?

I share this story because it wasn't the first time I've had a dude try to muscle me into a bad financial arrangement. See, I'd reviewed my original loan paperwork, and I knew that under the terms of my loan, they couldn't adjust it up 3 points, not for at least 2 years after the initial rate ended. I knew that because I'd argued in circles with my original mortgage broker about the terms that I wanted and the rate that I wanted to pay and the points I was or was not willing to bother with — to the point that he called my real estate agent to whine that he found it difficult to deal with me. In years of serving clients, he'd been simply able to walk into a situation, tell them what he was going to do for them and get what was, for him, the best deal. Lending Tree and the other banks and brokers who couldn't be bothered listening to what I wanted to find me a good loan (which is how they supposedly make money) were obviously the same way — they didn't have to listen to what I wanted because most people they dealt with would just take what they were offered and sign the paperwork (hello, housing and financial crises!).

If these tactics didn't work — and, if they didn't work on women, who make a lot of financial decisions for themselves and their families these days — then companies wouldn't do it. Most people don't go into a financial negotiation armed with what they know they can accept, what they actually want and what is available. And, worse, they don't push back nearly hard enough when offered something that fits none of those criteria, because they assume that they're working with a broker to get out of that level of preparation. You're not — the only person that has to live with your financial decisions is you (and your family), not the guy who's looking at how much money he can make off of it.

In my case, the Lending Tree closer failed to convince me to accept a refinancing that would have increased my interest rate by more than .5% and cost me more money than I would have "saved" in the full lifetime of the loan, but not before I got some choice words of my own back once his paternalistic, yelling rant was over with. That mostly involved telling him he was full of shit and the next time some asshole saw fit to harass me at my home using confidential financial information, I would be reporting them to the Federal Trade Commission and the SEC (which I did anyway). And yesterday, a full year later, I received notice from my actual mortgage company that my interest rate would be adjusting next month — it's going down by nearly .5%. Lending Tree and their business model can suck it.

The thing is, this isn't the first time the mag has had its hand out for "donations." For a publication that is so concerned about the way women act and are portrayed in the media, I'm afraid its publishers are reinforcing the negative stereotype that women are shit when it comes to business.

Granted, I doubt that Bitch's "noncommercial publishing policy" deters larger companies from advertising, anyway. With a circ of only 47,000, Banana Republic and Absolut probably aren't banging down its ad sales team's door for placement. But its ad policy (its website is an "ad-free blog") is perhaps an indication of why such stringent idealism isn't exactly realistic.

But here's the question, if Bitch is only asking for enough money to print one issue, what happens after that? What's the long-term goal here? In the FAQ on the magazine's website, editors state that "we’re in the process of evolving into a multimedia organization. Right now our sights are set on building a strong online presence, but in the not-so-distant future, we’re hoping to get into book publishing, audio and video production, and more." I don't see how this is possible.

Like I said, I worked at the same kind of publication — granted with a much higher circulation — with an incredibly small staff (4-6 women at a time), in a city (New York) with tons more overhead, and managed subscriptions for a time, so I'm fairly familiar with these kinds of budgets. And I know this sounds kind of assy, but maybe it isn't about doing business poorly at all. Maybe the reason why Bitch isn't succeeding is because, although it's trudged along for 12 years, it just isn't successful. Has anyone stopped to think that it's the content, and not the mean, evil corporate world that's costing them money? A lot of women don't really subscribe to the stilted rhetoric of first-year women's studies. And it would seem that a lot of women don't really subscribe to Bitch either.

Bitch Magazine Needs Your Help! [Feministing]

Another reason Gulf women are raking in the cash is because of Muslim inheritance laws. Time notes, " Shari'a dictates that a married woman's wealth is her own; spending on her household is her husband's responsibility." However, Graham Bell, a Dubai-based wealth manager tells Time, "This is not about women's liberation. It's about money."

Everything, of course, is not all coming up roses, as Arab women are often denied capital from banks and must get investment cash from family or relatives. But, as feminist theorists like Linda Hirshman love to point out, wealth and power go hand in hand. Monetary gain is the "the marker of success in a market economy," Hirshman has said, and as Arab women become financially solvent on their own, they will likely increase their political power.

Middle East: Women's Money Talks [Time]