"Cultural appropriation" is a controversial topic[Citation needed]. It's one of those topics that cause many people to roll their eyes, and many others (on both sides) to lose their goddamned minds. But, there are (at least) two kinds of cultural appropriation: a silly one and a useful one.
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I have a little story. Once upon a time, I quit my job so my wife could go to pharmacy school and I could be at home with my daughter. We'd live off our ample savings, but quitting my job meant losing our insurance, and we went without for several years. Then I began to get nervous, and found a cheap "disaster plan": it had a highish deductible, but everything after that was covered at 100%, so if I had a heart attack, go cancer, or got hit by a car, we wouldn't have to fork over every penny we had. The plan was about $130 a month for me and my daughter. (My wife was covered through school at about $100 a month.) We rarely went to the doctor/hospital, so it didn't matter too much.
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At least it's over? At least now when our president does something stupid/horrible (like ordering drone strikes on unnamed "combatants" or passing an insurance-company gift disguised as a healthcare bill), Democrats will finally say that it's bad? Oh well, on to the lessons:
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Don't you hate it when someone who disagrees with you uses stupid arguments to support their position? Like "Yeah, well, if global warming is true, how come it's snowing outside?!" Or "If evolution is true and we evolved from monkeys, then why are there still monkeys?!"
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Several years ago, a friend updated his Facebook status with a link to a news article about how some group of Muslims was offended by being portrayed badly in media or something similar. My friend's comment on the story was very close to: "When they start worrying about offending us by crashing planes into buildings, then we can start worrying about offending them."
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I am a huge supporter of Factcheck.org. They provide a great service which roughly corresponds to the efforts of Snopes.com, but instead of random urban legends, they look into the words and writings of the political world.
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