TWO FROM ALTERNET

Too busy to really post tonight. As always, here's some reading, courtesy of AlterNet, to tide you over.

Whites Just Don't Understand the Black Experience

Respondents generally requested less than $10,000 to become black. However, they said they'd have to be paid $1 million to give up television for the rest of their lives.

"The costs of being black in our society are very well documented," says study co-author Philip Mazzocco. "Blacks have significantly lower income and wealth, higher levels of poverty and even shorter life spans, among many other disparities, compared to whites.

"When whites say they would need $1 million to give up TV, but less than $10,000 to become Black, that suggests they don't really understand the extent to which African Americans, as a group, are disadvantaged," says Mazzocco.

In another scenario, the references "white" and "America" were omitted, and participants were asked to select between being born a minority or majority in a fictional country called, "Atria." They were warned of the disadvantages that the minority group faced -- the same disparities faced by black Americans -- and they said they should be paid an average of $1 million to be born a minority.

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One Woman's Journey to Conquer Her Fear of Porn

Ayn Carrillo-Gailey would like the world, and women in particular, to know a few things about porn. For instance, according to Talk of the Nation, National Public Radio, the fastest growing segment of the porn-buying audience is women. One in three visitors to all adult websites is a woman, as reported by the Internet Filter Review. These are just a few of the many facts that the author discovered on her journey to conquer "pornophobia," an affliction diagnosed by one of her former boyfriends when she categorized porn as anti-feminist and misogynistic. Not one to back down from a challenge, as evidenced by the tales of previous adventures she shares with readers, Carrillo-Gailey set out on a mission to explore the world of porn and report back to her friends, a group who call themselves the Naughty Knitters in reference to gatherings involving knitting for charity, drinking, and hashing out the issues of their varied lives. Along her journey, more and more people expressed a similar interest. Carrillo-Gailey decided to extend her audience and share the facts she had gathered. The result is Pornology.

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