School, meet Life.

Thank God I’ve stumbled on this blog - The Progressive Catholic Voice (I’ve also found Vox Nova). I’ve been having a difficult time with my faith b/c of how the Church has been represented on the national stage. I’ve been so disappointed by how Catholic “leaders” seem to care more about women’s reproductive health choices than matters of poverty and injustice. But thank goodness there are some voices of reason out there. It just takes some digging. I hope that we could hear more of this, and less of the Bishops and Santorum (::fist of rage::).

The bishops’ opposition to contraception is not an argument for a “conscience exemption.” It is a way of imposing Catholic requirements on non-Catholics. This is religious dictatorship, not religious freedom.

Contraception is not even a religious matter. Nowhere in Scripture or the Creed is it forbidden. 

Read on about the good news and the bad.

Only a minority of veterans receive health care at the VA, and most VA patients also receive care in other settings, financed by other systems.

I dream to have all this knowledge inside my head. In other words, I dream to be as smart as Kat Downs. Also, don’t forget to check out Chrys Wu’s links, which is linked on KD’s page.

I still stand by my anti-TOMS stance. But seriously, rapper 50 cent and international aid are two things I never want to hear together in a sentence ever again.

But here’s the TOMS explanation:

Further, though, the TOMS campaign — like the million shirts — misses the fundamental point that not having a pair of shoes (or a shirt, christmas toy, etc.) is not a problem about not having shoes. It’s a problem of poverty. Shoelessness, such as it is, is a symptom of a much bigger and more complex problem. And while donating a pair of shoes helps shoelessness, it does not help poverty.

Things like jobs help poverty. Jobs making things like shoes, for example. But TOMS doesn’t make its shoes in Africa, it makes them in China where it’s presumably cheaper to make two pairs of shoes and give one away than it is to get people in a needier community to make one pair of shoes.

CBO [Congressional Budget Office] finds that:

• One in four recent combat veterans treated at VHA from 2004 to 2009 had a diagnosis of PTSD. About 7 percent had a diagnosis of TBI. (Those figures include veterans who had both diagnoses.) Nearly three-quarters of recent combat veterans treated at VHA had neither diagnosis.
• The average cost for OCO patients in the first year of their treatment was about four to six times greater for patients with a diagnosis of PTSD, TBI, or both than for patients without those conditions.

In [Lareau’s] 2003 book, Unequal Childhoods, she explains that middle-class families raised their children in a different way than working-class and poor families, and that these differences cut across racial lines.

Also,

Lareau refuses to weigh in on what is the best form of parenting. However, she does point out that the middle-class kids and parents in her study were exhausted from their schedule-driven days. Unlike the middle-class kids, the working-class kids knew how to entertain themselves, had boundless energy, and enjoyed close ties with extended family.

I read this perspective for the first time when reading about Geoffrey Canada and the Harlem Children’s Zone inWhatever It Takes by Paul Tough for one of my social work classes. Canada takes it a step further and says that the low-/middle-class characteristics, although may be adaptive, are not necessarily respected in mainstream society.

The Asian American Journalists Association released guidelines for how to write about J.Lin.

Ridiculous that they even have to say these things.

3. Journalists don’t assume that African American players identify with NBA players who emigrated from Africa. The same principle applies with Asian Americans. It’s fair to ask Lin whether he looked up to or took pride in the accomplishments of Asian players. He may have. It’s unfair and poor journalism to assume he did.

And danger zones:

“CHINK”: Pejorative; do not use in a context involving an Asian person on someone who is Asian American. Extreme care is needed if using the well-trod phrase “chink in the armor”; be mindful that the context does not involve Asia, Asians or Asian Americans.

And:

“ME LOVE YOU LIN TIME”: Avoid. This is a lazy pun on the athlete’s name and alludes to the broken English of a Hollywood caricature from the 1980s.

Her byline: Candy Chang is an artist who explores making cities more comfortable and contemplative places.

Some of her projects:

When I was little I wanted to be / Today I want to be

Before I die…

Food Insecurity: