Mexico considers two year marriages

Mexico City lawmakers want to help newlyweds avoid the hassle of divorce by giving them an easy exit strategy: temporary marriage licenses.

Leftists in the city’s assembly — who have already riled conservatives by legalizing gay marriage — proposed a reform to the civil code this week that would allow couples to decide on the length of their commitment, opting out of a lifetime.

The minimum marriage contract would be for two years and could be renewed if the couple stays happy. The contracts would include provisions on how children and property would be handled if the couple splits.

For more, go here.

What do you think?

“Maybe stick to novels, Dear”

So there’s a tiny tempest at Zeldman.com. Jeffrey Zeldman rightfully condemns the “Pottermore” website for providing a retrograde experience. What’s the problem?

It’s certainly not the sentiment: the site is pretty crap. And it certainly isn’t because J.K. Rowling is under attack: a billionaire can defend herself many times over. Plus, I don’t like the Potter books. For me, it’s simply the title of the article: “Maybe stick to novels, dear”. That chummy “dear” is a standard form of condescension. It’s frequently used to belittle women & their contributions. I mean, come on: Rowling didn’t code the site herself, so why imply that she’s some rank amateur who decided to conquer the world of web development?

Read the rest here.

Syllabi for feminist philosophy of science/epistemology?

A reader writes:

I was wondering if you might perhaps be willing to help me out with a problem. I am on the job market (ugh), and I’m putting together syllabi for various classes I can teach, one of which is feminist philosophy of science. I was looking around the web to see if I could find any such syllabi to make sure I wasn’t forgetting anything important on mine, and just to compare other approaches and the range of topics.

However, I found very very few syllabi, and none, really, from after 2005 or so. Would there be any chance that you could put out a call for such syllabi (and maybe even feminist epistemology more generally)? It might be helpful for other people, and I would be willing to collect the syllabi and set up on my website a depository.