by Jolie Kerr and Edith Zimmerman

36. Bedbugs
35. Lice
34. Cicadas
33. Locusts
32. Scorpions
31. Termites
30. Ticks
29. Mosquitoes
28. Roaches
27. Beetles
26. Water bugs
25. Scabies
24. Fleas
23. Wasps
22. Moths
21. Bees
20. Noseeums
19. Mites
18. Flies
17. Gnats
16. Fruit flies
15. Ants
14. Earwigs
13. Centipedes
12. Tarantulas
11. Mantises
10. Caterpillars
8. Silkworms
8. Butterflies
7. Crickets
6. Ladybugs
5. Harvestmen
4. Dragonflies
3. Damselflies
2. Fireflies
1. Spiders

Jolie Kerr and Edith Zimmerman compiled this list over a few glasses of chardonnay. There were no black flies involved, however.

Photo by Marlon Bunday

Ladies, do we have a problem? We kind of… do. Rebecca Traister weighs in on SlutWalk.

I wanted to love SlutWalks, the viral protest movement that began this spring after a Toronto police officer told a group of college women that if they hoped to escape sexual assault, they should avoid dressing like “sluts.” In angry response, young women (and men) have marched in more than 70 cities around the world, often dressed in bras, halter tops and garter belts.

But at a moment when questions of sex and power, blame and credibility, and gender and justice are so ubiquitous and so urgent, I have mostly felt irritation that stripping down to skivvies and calling ourselves sluts is passing for keen retort.

You’re allowed to feel/think however you like about these demonstrations! But the last thing I want from the New York Times magazine is this kind of criticism — the “I support this thing but it makes me uncomfortable and here’s why but well I guess it’s necessary except, eesh” thing. And also? Are there really marches composed of mainly women, often dressed in underwear?

And… so what if they were? Traister’s real concern is this:

To object to these ugly characterizations is right and righteous. But to do so while dressed in what look like sexy stewardess Halloween costumes seems less like victory than capitulation (linguistic and sartorial) to what society already expects of its young women. Scantily clad marching seems weirdly blind to the race, class and body-image issues that usually (rightly) obsess young feminists and seems inhospitable to scads of women who, for various reasons, might not feel it logical or comfortable to express their revulsion at victim-blaming by donning bustiers. So while the mission of SlutWalks is crucial, the package is confusing and leaves young feminists open to the very kinds of attacks they are battling.

Wait, but yes? Because the point is… people treat people who “look like sluts” badly! The point is to confront hostility at difference, not to use this occasion to enforce hostility at difference.

Anyway! This lady showed up in Seattle in tassels and a graduation cap! Some people wore some pretty crazy things!

And then…

Slutwalk Seattle

Slutwalk Manchester.

Slutwalk London

Slutwalk Ottawa

But I’d say this photo, by David Jackmanson, taken in Australia, is plenty rebuttal to those cringing.

Just a couple more things?

The web headline “Clumsy Young Feminists” is… really not working for me. And then?

[Lara] Logan was herself trashed as an attention monger and for dressing in a manner that invited assault. A young woman who pressed rape charges against two New York City police officers could not be believed, in part, because she was drunk. When an 11-year-old Texas girl was allegedly gang-raped by 19 men, The New York Times ran a story quoting neighbors saying that she habitually wore makeup and dressed in clothes more appropriate for a 20-year-old. The maid who accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn of rape has been discredited for being a liar, and The New York Post claimed she was a prostitute. The young French woman who is pressing charges of attempted rape against Strauss-Kahn — an event she has recounted in a novel — has been painted as an unreliable narrator, young, overdramatic and unstable.

None of us can know the veracity of any of these women’s claims.

I’m pretty sure we have videotape of the Lara Logan assault? And I’m pretty sure we don’t want to get into the “veracity” of the 11-year-old’s claim? But in case you really do, it’s recorded on a cell phone video.

“Albino Kangaroo” would be a good name for a band.

Gerrymandered, U.S.A.

In the last Fun With Maps, we talked about a Pennsylvania congressman drawn out of his own district by mere yards. Though that’s a particularly targeted example of gerrymandering, it’s certainly not the most egregious. Let’s look at some of the most rigged.

The Horseshoe: IL-04

To create a Hispanic-majority district in the Chicagoland suburbs, the state of Illinois combined a Puerto Rican neighborhood with a distant Mexican neighborhood via a nonresidential strip of Interstate 294. The problem? The highway is eight miles west of either enclave.

The Court Case: NC-12

Pro tip: If you’re looking at a long, narrow district, you’re probably looking at some gerrymandering. When North Carolina gained a seat in the House of Representatives following the 1990 census, the state set out to create a black-majority district in NC-12. The twelfth initially followed Interstate 65 from Gastonia to Durham. Durham is 160 miles south north of Gastonia, at its widest the district was less than 20 miles across. The current version is the result of a 1993 Supreme Court ruling that the shape of the district violated the Equal Protection Clause. What you’re looking at now is actually considered acceptable.

The Snake: MD-03

How do you create a Democratic-leaning district out of a smattering of Republican neighborhoods? You carve yourself Maryland’s 3rd. Drawn to its current extent after the 2000 reapportionment, MD-03 appears barely cohesive. [We formerly credited the elections of Barbara Mikulski and Ben Cardin to this redrawing; Mikulski was first elected to the House in ’77 and to the Senate in ‘87.]

The Claw: CA-11

Gerrymandering doesn’t always work out, especially if the candidate is particularly terrible. Take California’s 11th. When it was reapportioned in the early 2000s, GOP incumbent Richard Pombo was barely hanging on to his swing state seat. Even though it was drawn very precisely to excise the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and surrounding scientist-filled neighborhoods, Democrat Jerry McNerney emerged victorious in a 2006 less-close-than-you’d-think race despite never having held elected office. Flash fact, when ranking all 435 districts by area, CA-11 is the median in size. Flash fact II, Pombo is now running for office in CA-19. He is not a resident of CA-19.

The Pie: Columbus, Ohio

A gerrymander isn’t always used to favor a specific candidate or voting bloc. Sometimes you just want to disenfranchise some folks. Spreading a voter group through several districts, also known as ‘cracking,’ can deny fair representation to a large constituency. The liberal center of Columbus, Ohio, is divided into three individual districts, each including a small slice of the urban area and a wide swath of the generally more conservative suburbs.

The Nonpolitical Gerrymander: AZ-02

Similar to the Hopi/Navajo time zone pickle mentioned last time, the Hopi and the Navajo have had such major conflicts that Arizona lawmakers thought it best to separate their tribal lands into different districts. The blob of Hopi land to the northeast, which is completely surrounded by Navajo land, is connected to the rest of AZ-02 via a narrow strip of labyrinthine riverbeds. Navajo voters cast their ballots for candidates running in AZ-01.

The Meatwad: CA-18

Not particularly gerrymandered, but it looks like meatwad.

Districts are reapportioned in the years following the decennial census. This time around, Texas is gaining four seats and Florida is gaining two. Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina, Utah and Washington will each gain one. Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey and Pennsylvania are losing one seat. New York and Ohio are each losing two seats. North Carolina, with no change in seat allocation, is shaping up to be a doozy. Definitely a state to watch as the lines are redrawn. If watching isn’t enough, may I recommend the Redistricting Game?

Victoria Johnson’s hometown district, NY-27, looks like a bow tie.

Maps of Ohio and post-census reapportionment from the Census Bureau; all others from nationalatlas.gov.

“A police dog that is scared of children and too timid to bite has been retired from Northumbria Police’s dog training section.”

Today, the whole world, pretty much, is making fun of the New York Observer’s editorial defending Rupert Murdoch. (It is pretty funny and ridiculous. But you know, it’s tricky! The majority owner of the Observer has spent a good deal of time on Rupert Murdoch’s boat, at least since his wedding, when he became more attractive socially, and honestly, instead of being a conflict of interest, I look at this as an informed viewpoint. That’s what publishers are for!) But, for those just getting their first exposure, the Observer’s editorial page has always been wildly wonky and fun. I mean, the other week we got an editorial headlined “PEDESTRIANS BEWARE,” about allowing bikes in Central Park. “Cycling enthusiasts on the Upper West Side are delighted. The older, more-traditional residents of the Upper East Side are angry and frightened.” Ha ha! Yes, those more-traditional bikeless residents of the Upper East Side. Oh, ARTHUR CARTER, MINORITY OBSERVER OWNER, YOU OLD SCOUNDREL. (Or… Joe Conason? Is that you?) But the page gets so much better. It’s way funner than that new house of bloated horrors, Bloomberg View!

Here’s from one of my other recent favorites:

If Memorial Day marks the unofficial start of summer, Independence Day is the unofficial start of the summer vacation season. With the school year over at last, families are getting ready for their long-planned holidays. Other New Yorkers are fleeing to the Hamptons, Cape Cod or the Jersey Shore for weekend respites from the city’s stale air and oppressive humidity.

The city will not, of course, be vacant come August.

IT WON’T? ARE YOU SURE? How would we ever know?

Then it goes on about how we should be nice to tourists!

Still, the page is way more sane than it used to be, at least when it’s not cheerleading grossly for charter schools. A few years back, there was a long outraged editorial about the Puerto Rican parade and how the City needed to be saved from this menace. No joke: “For the past several years, the parade has been an embarrassment to New York, transforming Fifth Avenue and Central Park into a slovenly garbage heap.” My goodness.

This ran at the bottom of the page, under an editorial describing the firing of Howell Raines as “one of the larger mistakes in The Times’ history.” GOOD STUFF. There’s so much more! But really: we must celebrate this beloved institution and its unique viewpoint!

(OH PS: Here’s a great one I forgot! “It is clear now that we have made a terrible mistake, for Hillary Rodham Clinton is unfit for elective office. Had she any shame, she would resign. If federal officeholders were subject to popular recall, she’d be thrown out of office by springtime, the season of renewal.” Love it!)

Great: “The Asian tiger mosquito, named for its distinctive black-and-white striped body, is a relatively new species to the U.S. that is more vicious, harder to kill and, unlike most native mosquitoes, bites during the daytime. It also prefers large cities over rural or marshy areas — thus earning the nickname among entomologists as ‘the urban mosquito.’… Since urban areas tend to be warmer — often by 5 to 10 degrees — than rural areas, cities are seeing tiger mosquitoes earlier and sticking around longer, often into October.” But then, you already knew this.

You know how you know you’ve written a good song? I mean, besides the fact that it spends seven weeks at the number one spot on the pop charts, and the 2.6 million albums you’ve sold because of it? And besides Billboard declaring it, “the biggest crossover song of the past 25 years?” When Patti Smith covers it in concert. And when she says she wishes she could remember the words better, but that, “I love this fuckin’ song, even though I can’t/And I’m here to testify: Adele, she’s great!” Adele must be psyched.

Does alcohol help you cope with stress, or does stress make you need to consume more alcohol? Yes.

Did you know that Wayne Koestenbaum, poet and cultural critic, has basically launched a video advice column? Obviously he is doing this to promote his forthcoming book, Humiliation. The best part is his advice is not really that good! By a prevailing standard, at least. He seems to seek an embrace of humiliation, while most of us would rather flee. And he does bravely address the most heinous topics on earth….