If you ever need transportation between Detroit Airport and some of the local small towns (Ann Arbor, Jackson, and ... Flint, maybe? I'm not sure), there's a company called Michigan Flyer that gets you there with internet access for $10 each way. Much pricier than a New York-Boston leg, of course, but for the area it's dead cheap.

@KMOSER: This is a total tangent, but I wonder why in the NPR transcript you link to, the Japanese "Moshi-moshi" wasn't romanized but instead written down as [Japanese expression]? It's hardly difficult. How odd...

And the moral of the story is - The Sun is not exactly a reputable source. While there is still a topic worthy of discussion, as Harshlanguage brings up, it's not exactly the drama being described in the main post.

Thanks for your comments, Majoram.

I read this the other night when it was linked on metafilter - I liked it, a lot. I have to say I've had some very, very bad experiences with Western writers co-opting Southeast Asian tragedies and was quite pleased and surprised to see how you all (Lauren and Jessica et al) handled it so thoughtfully.

Did think the ending was a bit off, though. Trying to be vague to avoid spoilers, the last couple of pages seemed ... abruptly optimistic (from an outsider's perspective) compared to how the real life Tat Marina was facing things, perhaps? I realize Shake Girl is not, strictly, Tat Marina, but on the other hand she's pretty blatantly inspired mostly by her, and considering how closely her life story was followed it was pretty noticeable that the ending got a bit of a Disney-ish gloss.

Overall, though, I will definitely recommend this to all and sundry (or at least anyone I know who can handle this, since it's tough material).

Not that I agree with racial profiling at all, but those men are pretty obviously Eastern Europeans, not Middle Easterners. Of course, I'm well familiar with this strange thought process whereby American security people fail to realize that not all Europeans are lily white, given that my brother and I are the children of a Slavic-SE Asian mixed marriage and he gets profiled constantly (I'm two shades lighter and female, which makes me a nice, safe, white woman, presumably), but this is one of the more blatant examples I've seen.

#10 - I think the idea is that when they need to go (morning and night), they're at home, not at school, so the toilets are being built at their homes. It also sounds like the toilets are shared with neighbors as well.

But, the comments section is getting fast follow-up, and I could be wrong - why don't you ask and report back?

Yeah, the video is terrible - more flash than substance and not very well presented substance (poor lighting, guys!) and the website is difficult-to-navigate flash (didn't work in Firefox, had to use IE). What do they want from the web community right now? It looks like just money. Well, before I give you money I sure as hell want to know more about your film than a nonsensical, stereotypical name and some waffle about "defying societies' expectations."

Also, what is all this about "Wingmen" and the exhortation to "man up now" and "a hero is a sign of things becoming"? Whatever that last part even means, I will bet five dollars that the hero of this film is a man and the plot involves flight and blah blah blah MANLY RESPONSIBILITY blah blah fuckity blah blah groundbreaking my ass.

Victim-blaming is so cute.

Anyway, the various fertility awareness methods are fairly effective, but only if you've been taught how to use them properly. Which requires:

1) that there are doctors to teach them
2) that the people who need/want to use them have access to these doctors (geographically, monetarily, etc)
3) that they have the supplies to use them (uh, thermometers - I have no idea how easy these are to find or how much they cost in poor areas of Haiti, but hopefully it's the smallest issue).

Failure rates of FA methods vary between 3-25% depending on how well the user gets it. This isn't the easy-peasy "everyone knows how!" solution that Antinous is making it out to be.

Heck, I had to do some research before I realized that there were non-obsolute natural contraceptive methods, and I'm a young, Western-educated woman who sees a gynecologist from an excellent American university hospital Through the luck of birth and circumstance, the chips are in my favor for access to this knowledge.

Calling other people racist and patronizing for recognizing that there are people on this planet who haven't been as lucky education and health-wise as the folks in this discussion, and that this doesn't make them stupid or deserving of their problems, even if we think they would make different life choices with more access to information - well, jeez. I'm not sure what to say to that.

These are great self-portraits. Style mimicry or not, you definitely get a sense of the artists' own voice and sense of self.

And, to be frank, while I know a lot of Western art students and artists, and admire many of them, there are bunches of them that don't have anywhere near this level of technical proficiency and probably never will, even though they don't work in this medium. Sigh.

Ha, I like the one of the grey kitty.

#25: Because women into comics who would like men into comics don't exist - they are merely a distant, distant fantasy.

... Well. I guess I'll be up all night wondering who broke into my apartment and snuck in all this sequential art, then. And this Spider-Man tank top, what's up with that?!

I'm not sure it is translated, actually - IIRC, Isaya does speak English, and this reads fairly convincingly as a written account by an ESL speaker (thus "horses that go around" instead of "carousel horses," etc). I sure hope it's his words instead of a translation, anyway, otherwise it's very condescending!

#12: Teepees? Seriously? You have got to be kidding me.

#22: I don't work in a school, but I've totally been dinged for small omissions before, and you have my sympathies. I hope it all gets worked out soon with the extra media coverage (yeah, right).

Hippocritical, the National Geographic article clearly states that Betsy has not seen any of the toys before.

Fishchix, I would love to hear more about your research sometime; that sounds fascinating.

As for this article, I agree with the commenters so far that the vocabulary as expressed is vague at best, but surely it hasn't escaped everyone that this is a popular press article, right? Trying to find the "research published on BBC's loveearth" (blech), but I can't find the damn search function on the flashhappy website.

Okay, I googled the head scientist's name from the article and found the SpringerLink. I really should be doing my own damn homework, but from a quick skim of the article, the reason the scientists who did the research are asserting that the mosquitofish can numerically discriminate/count (up to four) as opposed to just visually discerning which group is the larger is because they can tell the difference between shoals of 2/3 and 3/4, but NOT 4/5 and 5/6. Presumably, the argument goes, if they were working by stimulus of visual field, they would be able to pick in the latter two cases as well. It's like Watership Down and hrair. (I'm not trying to say mosquitofish have a counting system and a culture, just drawing a loose analogy.)

There are other experiments with larger shoals as well. Take a read - it's a short paper, and quite interesting!

"They're nice, I don't want to hate on the maker, but Hobbits and socks mesh together as well as Jeffrey Dahmer and vegetarian cookbooks."

I would think that adds to the amusement/charm factor.

What a terrible shame for both ray and human. I had the pleasure of seeing a few of these guys while diving just a few weeks ago, and they're gorgeous, goreous animals - and also, incredibly skittish. This was not in any way an act of aggression.

What about the little green tubes of wasabi you can get in Asian food stores? Is that real wasabi?

Okay, I just wasted my afternoon. As though I didn't have enough homework already ... thanks, guys!

Oops, sorry, that would be Michigan State University, just to clarify.

MSU is another school with a truly excellent comics collection. I was hoping to see Wonder Woman #1 while I was there on a tour, but alas, it was on loan.

Constructionwise I am most in awe of Superman, but Power Girl tickles me pink - the bloomers, hee!

Not quite on the same level as some of the other stories here, but a few years back I was moving back home (overseas) for a few months between college and grad school, my pet gerbils in tow, and I got a TSA agent who was apparently scared of rodents. At least, she didn't want to put her hands into their clear carrying container and riffle through the litter, I guess to see if I was using them as drug mules or whatnot. She proposed I carry one in each hand and step through the gateway while I sent their carrier through the x-ray machine.

Yes, that's right. Carry one squirming, terrified, confused, capable-of-outrunning-cats rodent in each hand in a wide open space full of hundreds of safety hazards for tiny hopping mammals ... while simultaneously trying to navigate all the rest of my possessions through the security checkpoint. Without hands. Because, lest anyone forget, I'm carrying two squirming gerbils.

Luckily, I convinced her that this really wasn't going to work, and she sucked it up, but jeez, lady, you're wearing gloves.