Monuments and nonmonuments.

I feel like there's a theme today on the blog:

Monuments:

The Ukrainian Darth Vader Lenin

The big bronze head of Karl Marx 

"The monumental task of building California's bullet train will require punching 36 miles of tunnels..." (This quote looks so phallic — so rape-y —in the retrospect of late morning. And now the Karl Marx head on a plinth seems especially penile. And I guess everyone has already noticed that Darth Vader's helmet resembles the head of a penis.)

Nonmonuments:

As president: a comedian

The fruitless "bare branches" of China — millions of men who, without women, can produce no offspring

Gloria Steinem expresses her love for the nonhierarchical "talking circles" (outside of mud huts in India and amongst the Native Americans) and her distaste for "our monotheistic patriarchies and their ‘pyramid’ structures of authority from the top."