August 7, 2013 - As stated above, many of the upcoming comics will deal with storylines regarding rape. I'm going to try my best to make note of any comics specifically in the archive (and I possibly should go back and amend some pages to include trigger warnings), but in the interest of finding a compromise that is both sensitive to survivors of rape and not spoiling future storylines, I've decided to put up a trigger warning at the top of the main page as well as place this paragraph at the top of the blog with considerable lead time before the comics depicting such situations are posted.
Have another column from Emily.
Also last night a ton of people in California were annoyed by an Amber Alert, a notification system to inform the public about missing children presumed to face imminent harm. I'm sure it seems insensitive to use the term "annoyed," but there are serious questions to be asked about the implementation of the system last night that I feel really need to be asked. It's undeniable the situation is horrible but what did the alert system do to help? As far as I know the kidnapper still hasn't been found and the alert was issued so late after the abduction that any imminent threat was unlikely to be prevented. Asking the public to be vigilant is a nice theory, but it's highly possible the way the alert was issued only caused agitation or paranoia rather than an outpouring of public support. This could possibly make the public less likely to respond to such alerts in the future as well as ignore warnings about things that pose direct threats to them such as fire or weather warnings. Furthermore the majority of people receiving text messages were likely doing one of two activities, resting at home where they're unlikely to see any cars or driving where they really shouldn't be reading text messages (and doing so is illegal in California without some sort of app (thankfully there are many options but I'm unsure they're that popular). The Amber Alert system has received some criticism in the past and this event in California is the second incident in less than a month that I'm aware of where an alert was questionably issued (at least in the New York event the child was recovered but I didn't get any indication the alert helped with the recovery). Like with attempts to close abortion clinics to reduce the abortion rate that don't look at data that it doesn't actually make a difference, maybe even more research needs to go into Amber Alerts to make sure the program actually does anything.
On a lighter note, despite what problems you may have with Barbie presenting an unrealistic body image to girls, she's decided to become an astronaut which is a pretty admirable career all told, though I do think the spacesuit should have included gloves.
-D
Have another column from Emily.
Also last night a ton of people in California were annoyed by an Amber Alert, a notification system to inform the public about missing children presumed to face imminent harm. I'm sure it seems insensitive to use the term "annoyed," but there are serious questions to be asked about the implementation of the system last night that I feel really need to be asked. It's undeniable the situation is horrible but what did the alert system do to help? As far as I know the kidnapper still hasn't been found and the alert was issued so late after the abduction that any imminent threat was unlikely to be prevented. Asking the public to be vigilant is a nice theory, but it's highly possible the way the alert was issued only caused agitation or paranoia rather than an outpouring of public support. This could possibly make the public less likely to respond to such alerts in the future as well as ignore warnings about things that pose direct threats to them such as fire or weather warnings. Furthermore the majority of people receiving text messages were likely doing one of two activities, resting at home where they're unlikely to see any cars or driving where they really shouldn't be reading text messages (and doing so is illegal in California without some sort of app (thankfully there are many options but I'm unsure they're that popular). The Amber Alert system has received some criticism in the past and this event in California is the second incident in less than a month that I'm aware of where an alert was questionably issued (at least in the New York event the child was recovered but I didn't get any indication the alert helped with the recovery). Like with attempts to close abortion clinics to reduce the abortion rate that don't look at data that it doesn't actually make a difference, maybe even more research needs to go into Amber Alerts to make sure the program actually does anything.
On a lighter note, despite what problems you may have with Barbie presenting an unrealistic body image to girls, she's decided to become an astronaut which is a pretty admirable career all told, though I do think the spacesuit should have included gloves.
-D
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