This election season, the media has found itself wrapped up in a perpetual cycle of self-loathing and self-adulation. We are, by our own estimation, both acutely to blame for the rise of abandoned roadside ham hock Donald Trump, and unimpeachable public servants, guilty only of doing our job.
Al Jazeera America does not (did not) seem like a great place to work—not by any account.
In news that will come as a surprise to no one who has ever taken an econ class with a block of floppy-haired binge drinkers who were all, “Uh, it’s like my buddy Anderson said about the invisible hand?”, it appears that male students default to the belief that their fellow male students are the highest-achieving and…
It turns out that despite all the progress we have supposedly made, Americans are growing more politically closed-minded.
At a SXSW panel yesterday called How Innovation Happens, Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson, US Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith, and Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt discussed how an increased level of diversity and gender inclusivity is necessary to bring about breakthroughs in the tech sphere.
Even though everyone knows that black cats are the foot servants of Satan, this bit of common knowledge will probably not, by itself, prevent black cats from being adopted at animal shelters. That’s because the so-called “black pet bias” — a popular aversion to those more inky, shadow-dwelling black cats and dogs…
Sometimes when I feel like making myself uncomfortable over my own buried prejudice, I head over to Harvard's Project Implicit to take some of their bias tests. Turns out, I have a slight anti-fat bias, which is fucked, because I'm fat. But it's better to know, and to work on this shit, than to not — right? That's…
Chuck Mee is all about fairness. The legendary American playwright believes there's no such thing as an original play, and invites visitors to his website to "remix" his work. He also has some pretty visionary ideas about casting his shows. He writes:
Hey, did any notable women die this year? Eh, not that many, according to our major national newspapers, most of which release lists of significant deaths every year. Countless women (sorry, we can't tell you who, since we don't know who they are) are rolling in their graves thanks to Mother Jones' in-depth look at…
If you've ever spent time on any crowdfunding sites—from Kickstarter to Kiva—you know the amount of people seeking your money can be overwhelming. It can be hard to choose when often everyone on the site seems so deserving. (Well, it's probably less difficult to decide when you're on Kickstarter choosing between…
On Saturday, Republican Presidential hopefuls reconvened to debate foreign policy and tell America that they're the least-bad choice to lead the free world. America's Foremost Expert on Question Avoiding Michele Bachmann claims that she wasn't given enough questions during the debate, and that this was a planned…
Carol Ann and Laura Stutte are suing the neighbor they say burned down their house...because they were gay.
The Theatre Development Fund, which awards the annual Wasserstein Prize (named after late playwright Wendy Wasserstein) to a female playwright, has turned down all 19 nominees this year. The selection panel says the entries weren't "truly outstanding." People are pissed!
Jimmy Fallon's former stage manager is accusing him of discrimination, saying Fallon fired him because he wanted a woman for the job instead.
The Times's John Tierney is the latest of several to take the Larry Summers tack of questioning women's natural aptitude for science. Here's what's wrong with this argument, in three easy points that even the simplest ladybrain can understand.
Despite a preponderance of evidence to the contrary, Southern California dentist/lawyer Orly Taitz is busy clogging up the legal system to prove that Barack Obama is not a citizen of the United States. Why? Scientific American has a theory.
Today, in the electronic pages of The Daily Beast, former New York prosecutor and crime novelist Linda Fairstein pens an impassioned defense of Chris Brown's domestic abuse case sentence, inadvertently exposing her own biases in addition to the system's.
As we rather facetiously predicted on Monday, it's taken the right-wing press until today to come down hard on VP debate moderator Gwen Ifill. From Michelle Malkin hyperventilating over Ifill's book on racial politics and how it means she's "in the tank" for Obama (while ignoring other moderators' pro-Republican…
