How NOT to be insane when accused of racism

I got pointed at this blog entry from my body_impolitic feed:

http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2005/12/02/how-not-to-be-insane-when-accused-of-racism/

Short version: Don't make it a whacking huge deal if you say something racist, or something others perceive as racist. Apologize, move on, and consider the criticism seriously so that you can improve your thinking, if need be.

Tips for avoiding rape and other violent crimes-- good advice or not?

There have been a couple memes going around: the first tells women how to avoid rape, the second is an angry response saying the burden shouldn't be on women not to get raped, but that men should stop doing the raping. I'm not even going to address either of those memes except to say that lefthand had a good point in saying that the advice not to teach women self-defense was sort of counter-intuitive and that windswept did a fine job of pointing out the riduculousness of the second meme as a whole (i.e. violent sociopaths aren't going to be swayed by an LJ post).

[edited to add: Now I'm thinking windswept wasn't addressing the "how to avoid rape" meme going around but rather was referring to another post; however, I think her criticism of that sort of idea/post applies to this meme as well.]

The main point of this post is that snopes.com recently broke down an email forward of "Tips for Avoiding Violent Crime," pointing out what is good advice, what is general common sense, what is urban legend, and what parts are complete nonsense. I thought the snopes analysis was pretty good. Read it here:

http://www.snopes.com/crime/prevent/ninetips.asp