On another topic, sometimes, you’ve just got to face the music:
As any biologist will tell you, beards are indeed sexy. The question is, does the sexiness of beards depend on the hairiness of the rest of the males in the population? Or is the allure of a beard the same no matter what? To find out, the researchers recruited 36 men who were willing to grow beards. … When facial hair was rare among faces, beards and heavy stubble were rated about 20% more attractive. And when beards were common, clean-shaven faces enjoyed a similar bump, the team reports online today in Biology Letters. The effect on judgment was the same for men and women.
Yes, it was cooler/hotter to have a beard a few years ago. But I think I’ll stick with mine until I hit the Santa look. And Aaron’s is non-negotiable.
Today, I tackled the growing support for the ACA, including my own personal experience. We’ve already received a bunch of emails detailing your experiences – and we’re going to start a new reader thread, “The View From Your Obamacare.” Stay tuned – and email us your stories. I also took on the appalling new book by Jo Becker which purports to describe the marriage equality movement, which began, according to Becker, in 2008 with one Chad Griffin as our Rosa Parks (yes, she actually wrote that and someone actually published it!). Many readers are also piling on. One writes:
I just put the book down. What a useless history and distortion.
I’ve been involved in that battle as a foot soldier for 20 years, but my first memory of marriage equality battle was as a teenager in 1977 when a clerk in Colorado issued a license to a gay couple. What about the intellectual history as you mentioned, and a huge part of? Hawaii was nothing? What, Massachusetts wasn’t a watershed moment? All the anti-gay marriage amendments I fought hard against in 2004 , and galvanized so many, meant nothing? I remember all these very clearly.
We got ‘married’ on February 15th, 2004 during Gavin Newsom’s San Francisco marriages. The same marriages that led to the California supreme court decision, which led to Prop 8, which led to the US Supreme Court decision. How can that be minimized?
It can only be minimized by an author who knows nothing of the history of the movement except the self-serving account of those who jumped on the bandwagon at the last minute and to whom she was given complete access. And an excerpt from this travesty will appear in next Sunday’s New York Times Magazine! I know it can seem self-serving to point out the book’s contempt for those who actually built this movement. But to read Evan Wolfson dismissed as less integral to the struggle than Tom Daley’s boyfriend is simply a disgrace. The book should be withdrawn. [See update]
The most popular post of the day was indeed “Jo Becker’s Troubling Travesty Of Gay History,” followed by “The Neocons Lose Their Shit Over Rand Paul.”
See you in the morning.
The Dish 