Dustin Kidd

You don't see a lot of trans men and women in popular culture, except as rare one-off characters who are used as comic relief. But that is changing. When Mac, on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia , met a trans woman named Carmen, it initially felt like the same old shit. But things got more interesting as Mac started dating Carmen and struggled with the tension between his feelings and the pressures he felt from his friends. I really like the character Alexis on Ugly Betty , played by Rebecca Romijn. The show only occasionally focused on her identity as a trans woman, and didn't hesitate to make her beautiful and powerful. It did explore her dating life in one episode, as well as her friendships with other women, but it did this is a fairly nuanced and interesting way. The new trans woman on TV is Leiomy Maldonado, one of the dancers in Vogue Evolution , a group that is competing on MTV's America's Best Dance Crew . It will be interesting to watch how she pres...

Connecting the dots in today's New York Times , I count at least four stories about national borders and the people who move across them.  A federal judge has dismissed a suit against a new law requiring federal contractors to use a system called E-Verify to confirm immigration status of its workers.  The law goes into effect on Sept. 8. A sheriff in a Texas border-county has been sent to prison for assisting Mexican drug smugglers in exchange for bribes.  Advocates for immigrants rights have petitioned the administration to abandon a program of cooperation with state police on immigration enforcement.  Afghan boys, refugees from their homes , are spreading across European cities.  Palestinians continue a five-year protest against a barrier that has taken half of its land and given it to an Israeli settlement.  It would tempting to say that the problem of the twenty-first century is the problem of the borderline, but with environmental destruction already in play, I think tha...

I'm in a list-making mood. Here's my current fashion favorites. T-Shirts: Obey . I buy them at South Moon Under . I'm eying this one now. For white T-shirts, I like Calvin Klein and for plain color t-shirts, I like American Apparel . Jeans: I think Diesels are the best. I also like Joe's Jeans . Dress Shirts: My best ones are TailorByrd . They have contrasting collars and cuffs. Shoes: Just bought a pair of Via Spiga ($50 at Daffys). But I prefer Unlisted , by Kenneth Cole. Sneakers: Really like Timberlands . Socks: American Apparel makes great socks. The black 3-stripe calf length can function as dress sock or athletic socks, and they don't leave black fuzz on your feet like most dress socks. Watches: Love my Nixon . Hoodies: I like both Obey and American Apparel . Wallets: Gama-GO Short-sleeve button-downs: I have several of these, but the only one that keeps looking crisp is by Banana Republic . Underwear: Diesel and 2Xist . Rainjacket...

Need a plan for getting out of debt and onto the financial high ground? Follow this plan, in this order , and be patient. Participate in your company's matching 401K or 403B. Put $1000 in a savings account and don't touch it unless there is an emergency. Pay off your credit cards, personal loans and car loans, highest interest to lowest. Go back to the $1000 and start building it up to an emergency fund that you could live off of for 8 months. I'll blog more about this in the future. Keep this in a savings account where you can get to it easily. Contribute the maximum amount to a Roth IRA. For most of us, that means $5000/year. Save for and buy a house, preferably without a mortgage or with 20% down to get the best rate. Pay off your student loans. Increase your contributions to your 401K or 403B up to the maximum. Pay off your mortgage. Simply ignore the steps that don't apply to you. Obviously, if you have no job or your employer doesn't match funds, then s...

I recently joined the advisory committee for Temple's new major art prize, the Jack Wolgin International Competition . This prize awards $150,000 to an international artist, chosen from a pool of select nominees. Three finalists are invited to share their work in an exhibition that runs throughout October. Panels and other events dot the calendar across the month. Near the end of the exhibit, all 3 artists come in for a 3 day artists-in-residency. At the end of the residency, a winner is announced. The winner gives a public lecture the following day. My role on the committee is to direct an impact assessment, examining the prize's effects on Temple University, the Philadelphia art world, and the artists themselves. This is tricky work, and I'll share some of our research design here, in hopes of getting some feedback and fresh ideas. Measuring Impacts on the University: Our first and easiest measurement here is to track media hits that are generated because of the a...

I've added two new teaching tools to my regime this semester. 1. Skitch . Skitch is both a desktop application that lets you capture images easily, and a website that allows for easy image sharing . I'll use it this semester to capture images that we can discuss in class, and to take pictures of the blackboard at the end of class (to capture interesting brainstorming sessions). I can upload the pic via email, straight from my phone, and the students will have access right away. I can use the image capture software to circle parts of the reading, charts, graphs, etc. and bring those to the surface for discussion. 2. Slideshare . This program allows you to upload PowerPoint presentations to the Web. I uploaded all of my slides for the semester to one page where they can be accessed from any computer. It allows me to worry less about carrying the slides on a USB drive or having to upload them to the course Blackboard page, which sometimes doesn't open. It also makes fo...

The book project that I am working on now examines the relationship between popular culture and social inequality. When I think about social inequality, I think in terms laid out by Patricia Hill Collins, whose book Black Feminist Thought emphasizes the intersections between race, class and gender, as well as many other dimensions of identity. She calls this the 'matrix of domination and oppression' and in my work the key variables are race, class, gender, sexuality, age, and disability. When I think about popular culture, it seems the key sociological issue right now is the enormous amount of popular culture that we have (so many movies, books, CDs, websites, magazines, TV networks and shows), all produced by a tiny handful of massive corporations. We tend to assume that these corporations are competing, but a close analysis shows that they have far too many contractual relationships to truly be invested in competition (for instance, network studios frequently sell their s...

After winning the world title for the 800 meters, South African Caster Semenya will have to submit to gender testing before she can safely keep her gold medal. Her detractors think she is either a man or an intersexed person. If she can't prove she is a biological woman, she loses her medal. The case assumes rigid gender boundaries that nature doesn't actually provide, and it highlights for me why we shouldn't have gender-based sports at all. I'll be brief. You probably think that we know that the average is woman is slower than the average man, which in turn would justify the fairness of separating men and women for at least some sports competitions. We don't actually know that. Any claim about average men and women would have to be based on a random sampling of men and women from all over the world . Most of our tests of these sorts of things come from studies that examine only men and women from the US or from European countries. To be sure, researchers ...

I hate clutter. Let's get rid of it. Pick a spot in your house or office or even computer that you want to de-clutter. Let's say we're de-cluttering a drawer in a home-office. Take out everything and put it all in one pile. Pick up each thing one at time and ask yourself why you have this thing. If you're going to keep it, you have to know why you have it . You should be able to name the purpose the object has and know when it will meet that purpose. The purpose of a yellow highlighter is obvious, but if you never highlight things, then it will never meet that purpose. It's clutter. This stapler and its little box of staples work like new. I've had them for years, I never use them. They have to go. Do you want them? Start a new pile of the things that have no clear purpose. If you are rigorous in surveying your stuff, this pile should get big quickly. Everything in this pile is going to go; we just have to figure out where it goes. Now, you're ...

We didn't really talk about money in my family when I was growing up and the lesson I learned is that money is a private thing that should not be discussed. It seemed a great social faux pas to discuss things like salary, savings, etc. Being silent on money is completely wrong. We need to learn from Lilly Ledbetter , who spent years unwittingly getting paid less than her male counterparts at Goodyear Tire & Rubber, and then lost her discrimination suit because she didn't sue within 180 days of the pay decision. Of course, she didn't know about the discrimination during those 180 days. She assumed she made the same as everyone else. It was years later before she discovered the discrepancy. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act helps to fix the problem by resetting the 180 day statute of limitations with every unfair paycheck. But even that won't matter if we don't talk about pay. How can you know that you're making less than your colleagues if no one will ...

Tom over at I Hate Paper turned me on to this ABC show Wipeout . I don't wanna like it, but it's really fun to watch. I'm watching it on Hulu, which ABC wasn't really partnering with very much, but they seem to have stepped it up. Since I'm interested in both the business and content sides of popular culture, I thought I'd use my new love of Wipeout to do some exploring. Wipeout is a collaboration of Endemol Entertainment and Pulse Creative . Endemol was founded in Amsterdam in 1994 but its website says it is now owned by a "consortium consisting of Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, Mediaset Group and Cyrte Group." Its credits include Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Deal or No Deal, Big Brother After Dark (?), and Gay, Straight or Taken. Pulse calls itself a boutique agency and it has only 4 other shows to its credit. It is really a branding agency and it merged with Insite Media Group in 2007. Wipeout is distributed primarily by ABC , which is o...

Memorization was once a key tool for the learning process. In college, I was involved in a host of Christian organizations and was constantly encouraged to memorize Bible verses. Anyone who passed through that scene would recognize the letters 'TMS' as a reference to the Topical Memory System, a product that helps Bible verse memorization with flash cards and path from the easiest and most used verses to the more difficult or obscure. I'm sure John 3:16 was high on the list. I also remember Isaiah 53:6--"We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all." You know why I remember that verse? Because I like sheep. They're my favorite animal. I met camp counselor once who told me that everyone should have a power animal . I decided my power animal is sheep. You probably like sheep, too. You like sheep; I like sheep. We all like sheep have gone astray... Memorization is also ve...

I love buying fresh, local food, but I've always been a bit lazy about hitting the farmer's market. Reading through Grid , I saw an ad for a grocery delivery service called Farm Fresh Express. They have a store in Lansdowne that buys from local farmers and merchants. They post their inventory online. I get an email every Saturday telling me the inventory has been updated. I read through their offerings online and choose what I want. On Wednesday, it gets delivered to my house (you actually have from Saturday to Tuesday to place your order). They deliver in a cooler and I've even given the delivery person a key to my apartment. I come to a cooler of fresh food! Of course, they have tons of produce. But they also sell local meats and fish, fruit butters, honey, dairy products, breads, cheeses.... You can almost get everything from them and have it delivered to your house. It's not cheap, but local fresh food is worth the investment. You also pay a $20 cooler de...

I'm in the process of tidying up my finances. Suze Orman's The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous and Broke has been a fantastic resource because it gives clear, straightforward advice in language I can understand. Orman's first rule, and she is very insistent on this, is that you have to know your FICO score, also known as your credit rating. You probably know that this score is used to determine your eligibility for mortgages and car loans. According to the New York Times it is also often used by employers to decide if you are a good job candidate. So even if you're not shopping for a loan, it is a good idea to know your score. BUT, before you check your score, you should check the information your score is based on--your credit reports. You actually need to look at 3 credit reports, one from each of the major agencies (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion). But you only need to go to one website to get started. AnnualCreditReport.com allows you to obtain one fr...