Bishan Gay Judgment - "Public Prosecutor v Cheng Hoe Huat
[2015] SGDC 188...
The Accused, aged 52 years, claimed trial to the charge that on 13.11.2013, at about 3.20 p.m., in the male toilet on the first floor of Bishan Junction 8 Shopping Centre (“Junction 8”), used criminal force on the Victim, a 12 years old male, knowing this would outrage his modesty, by touching the tip of his penis and tickling it 3 times. This was an offence punishable under section 354(2) of the Penal Code, Cap 224... In 2013, the Victim and his friends were Primary 6 school students at a Madrasah. They would often go to Junction 8 after school lessons ended. At Junction 8, the Accused was always seated outside Coffee Bean. The Victim and his 4 friends testified that the Accused would always wave, greet and chat with them. Hence, they thought he was a kind and friendly “old uncle”. The Accused however claimed that he could not recognise them because he met and talked to many students...
At different stages of this case, he gave various reasons for his presence at the said shopping centre:
- he was doing a highly secretive project which involved conducting a survey on penises of different races for a secretive international organisation;
- to speak to students about sex education taught in their schools as he intended to submit his recommendations to the Ministry of Education to improve the teaching of sex education; and
- to read the Bible, newspapers and write journals...
I also considered the fear caused to the young Victim as he and the Accused were locked inside the toilet cubicle. The Accused’s actions must, inevitably, have eroded to some degree the trust and respect that the Victim normally held for elderly persons. His depraved, immoral acts will leave their marks on the young and vulnerable Victim forever. I also felt that the Accused was indeed very bold to perpetuate his criminal act in a public toilet in a shopping centre, a place which could be accessed by any male person."
Is it better to molest people in private? If it were in private wouldn't the space being restricted/private be used as an aggravating factor?
The disturbing difference between black and white Barbies - "Johnson found that the African-American version of the doll retailed for almost twice as much as its white counterpart... Target isn’t the only retailer to have a difference in the price between light- and dark-skinned dolls. At Toys-R-Us, the same African-American doll was on sale for four dollars less than its white counterpart. Wal-Mart’s website also listed an African-American Barbie for $11.87 while its Caucasian version cost $9.88, CNBC found"
Maybe an algorithm made Black Barbie more expensive because it was more in demand. Is it also insulting for Black Barbie to be cheaper than White ones? The market (and computer algorithms) are racist!
Genetic 'Adam & Eve' Chromosome Study Traces All Men To Man Who Lived 135,000 Years Ago - "These primeval people aren't parallel to the biblical Adam and Eve. They weren't the first modern humans on the planet, but instead just the two out of thousands of people alive at the time with unbroken male or female lineages that continue on today. The rest of the human genome contains tiny snippets of DNA from many other ancestors — they just don't show up in mitochondrial or Y-chromosome DNA, Hammer said. (For instance, if an ancient woman had only sons, then her mitochondrial DNA would disappear, even though the son would pass on a quarter of her DNA via the rest of his genome.)"
33 year old Singaporean, drawing $7k sgd a month cannot find gf anybody can help? - www.hardwarezone.com.sg - "33 year old
IT manager
$7k sgd a month
Stay with parents
Saves 50% of salary
Has gone on numerous dates but cannot find suitable life partner to settle down with
Gf criteria:
Can cook
Can do housework
Wants to have at least 3 children
Must exercise regularly to stay in shape
Must be able to hold intellectual conversations
Must save at least 30% of her salary
Must treat his parents well
Must not demand a car
Cannot take taxi too often
Must dress decently but be stylish and classy
Eyes cannot be smaller than his
Must be more talkative than him because he does not talk much
His friends must approve of her"
Extreme Metal Music and Anger Processing - "The claim that listening to extreme music causes anger, and expressions of anger such as aggression and delinquency have yet to be substantiated using controlled experimental methods... extreme music did not make angry participants angrier; rather, it appeared to match their physiological arousal and result in an increase in positive emotions. Listening to extreme music may represent a healthy way of processing anger for these listeners."
Why Russians Don't Get Depressed - "While American brooders showed extremely high levels of depressive symptomatology (as measured by the Beck Depression Inventory, or BDI), Russian brooders were actually less likely to be depressed than non-brooders. This suggests that brooding, or ruminative self-reflection, has extremely different psychiatric outcomes depending on the culture. While rumination makes Americans depressed, it actually seems to provide an emotional buffer for Russians."
Paper: "The Impact of Culture on Adaptive Versus Maladaptive Self-Reflection"
Do Women Prefer Men with Masculine Faces? Not Always. - "A new study by Isabel M. Scott and her colleagues (2014) looked at women’s (and men’s) face preferences across a dozen cultures and their findings have been promoted in several media outlets... with some claiming their new findings seriously challenge evolutionary explanations of women’s sexual desires. In particular, the new findings have been portrayed as refuting the idea that women within high pathogen cultures report more desire for masculine faces... The breadth of the samples in Scott et al. (2014) study is remarkable. However, the sizeof most samples was extremely small (understandably so, given the difficulty in securing access to these remote populations), with women’s effective sample sizes including 5 Fijian women, 11 Aka women, and 13 Cree women, for instance. For many of their samples, such samples sizes are probably too small (lack enough statistical power) to reveal true empirical associations, if any exist, across sex, temporal context, facial dimorphism, and culture... Here are 3 findings that have not received as much media attention as the presumably anti-evolutionary psychology findings:
2) Scott et al. (2014) found UK, Kadazan, and Canadian women also expressed more intense preferences for masculine faces when evaluating men as short-term mates, as predicted from dualistic mating strategy perspectives... Overall, the male findings generally supported evolutionary psychology predictions concerning femininity-related facial mate preferences of men... By the way, for critics of evolutionary psychology, it may be worth noting that studies of non-WEIRD samples are much more typical among evolutionary psychologists than other types of psychologists"
Is Evolutionary Psychology WEIRD or NORMAL? - "Joe Henrich and colleagues’ paper, The weirdest people in the world, argued that psychology draws too much on WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) samples... I surveyed the 2012 volume of the top journal in social psychology, TheJournal of Personality and Social Psychology (JPSP) and the official journal of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, Evolution and Human Behavior (E&HB). (And by “I surveyed” of course I mean that other people did all the work. Hat tip: Fatima Aboul-Seoud and Molly Elson.) For each empirical paper, we scored whether the samples used were exclusively WEIRD, both WEIRD and non-WEIRD, or exclusively non-WEIRD. The results are in the Figure below. Roughly 96% of the papers in JPSP, designed to “make sense of the bizarre and baffling diversity of human behavior,” came from WEIRD samples. This figure was 65% for E&HB. (A chi square on these values is hugely significant)... adding evolution to psychology makes the science less WEIRD, and more NORMAL (Non-Weird Organisms Resembling Mankind’s Ancestral Lifestyle"
SMRT's contingency plans need fixing - "Visitors do not always take the train during peak periods. And if you are a tourist, your perception of time is slightly different. You look at the country which you are visiting through somewhat rose-tinted glasses... When then Communications Minister Mah Bow Tan promised Singaporeans in 1995 that they would have a world-class land transport system, it set expectations fairly high... But trains are packed during peak hours everywhere in the world, right? Tokyo is infamous for having station staff shove commuters into already crowded carriages. I asked a Japanese government official whom I met recently whether people were happy with how crowded the trains were in Tokyo. He said no But the trains were extremely reliable and speedy. You could set your watch to train arrivals (for that matter, bus arrivals) in Tokyo. Disruptions caused by mechanical faults are almost unheard of (although there are delays caused by people who kill themselves by jumping onto the track). The high reliability helps Tokyo-ites bear with the crowdedness better... The MRT lines here are mostly less than 30 years old. The Tokyo subway is 88 years old, New York's is 111 and London's is around 150. And the network here is comparatively short, too. So, it is understandable that people are peeved about the rate of breakdowns here, when our system is an infant compared with those in cities like London, New York, Tokyo and Paris. At this point, it is interesting (and somewhat infuriating) to hear the popular official lines for breakdowns. When a line is new, we are told teething problems are to blame. When a line is barely 30 years old, we are told it is is ageing. These excuses don't exactly fly with Singaporeans, who are reasonably well educated and well travelled. Not when lacklustre maintenance has been found to be the cause of many breakdowns. And not especially when the alternative to public transport is so costly, and beyond the reach of most households... Going by how the July 7 incident was handled, it was a shoddy effort. For a breakdown of that scale, all bus rides should be free of charge - regardless of whether commuters were directly affected by the incident. Much of the evening's confusion and delays arose because commuters did not know which buses were free and which were not. Train fares on unaffected lines should also be waived. Likewise, fares on affected lines that are finally fixed and running again... People affected by the unprecedented breakdown formed long queues to get their refund. This also contributed to the congestion and to the overall confusion. Modern fare systems elsewhere in the world have a so-called "white list" feature, where a refund is automatically given the next time a stored value card is used. This is not only infinitely more efficient than queueing for something that is rightfully yours in the first place, but it also ensures that every affected commuter gets a refund. This is not rocket science."
Male circumcision leads to a bad sex life - "If a man is circumcised, he faces an increased risk of experiencing delayed orgasm, and his female partner has an increased risk of not feeling sexually fulfilled. This is the clear-cut conclusion of a new Danish research article, which has received international attention... “Circumcised men are three times as likely to experience a frequent inability to reach an orgasm”... “It appears that women with circumcised men are twice as likely to be sexually frustrated. They experience a three-fold risk of frequent difficulties in achieving orgasm, and an eight-fold risk of feeling pain during intercourse – also known as dyspareunia.” There appears to be a very simple reason why circumcised men and their partners are having problems with their sex lives. The circumcised man develops a thin layer of hard skin on his penis head, which decreases the sensitivity. This means that in order to reach an orgasm, he needs to work harder at it, and that can lead to a painful experience for the woman."
'Fitness' foods may cause consumers to eat more, exercise less - ""Unless a food was forbidden by their diet, branding the product as 'fit' increased consumption for those trying to watch their weight," write authors Joerg Koenigstorfer (Technische Universität München) and Hans Baumgartner (Pennsylvania State University). "To make matters worse, these eaters also reduced their physical activity, apparently seeing the 'fit' food as a substitute for exercise."
Go ahead quote me - "The more I thought I was special, the lonelier I grew.''
ACTRESS GIANNA JUN on why she has cast aside her image of mystery"
Trafficking laws used to prosecute other offences - study - "Ireland is using anti-trafficking laws to prosecute crimes unrelated to trafficking, a US state department report has found... it “continued to prosecute a high number of non-trafficking crimes as trafficking cases, including child molestation cases.” It said potential victims of forced labour in cannabis production were prosecuted and imprisoned for crimes they may have been forced to commit... the Irish law that banned trafficking conflated possession or creation of child pornography with human trafficking, which meant law enforcement statistics were “unreliable”.
L'origine de Bert
Friday, August 21, 2015
Thursday, August 20, 2015
On Hypocrisy
BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, Hypocrisy
Michael Buerk: Relationships, politics, business, religion, all depend on some level of hypocrisy don't they? More than that, hypocrisy allows us to have standards and at least pretend to meet them. Where would virtue be without it? Is hypocrisy itself a vice or a virtue? Who casts the first stone?...
Giles Fraser: Well, I don't what you mean by that, really. I mean I think hypocrisy is a dealist (sp?) moral crime. I'm a hypocrite, I think we're all hypocrites. Sometimes hypocrisy is just a consequence of aiming high, of trying to be a better person than you are. And that's got to be so much better than aiming low, espousing no moral position as a way of avoiding being exposed as a hypocrite...
Melanie Phillips: Our society's obsession with hypocrisy, with consistency, with transparency shows that it no longer has any moral virtues to betray
Matthew Taylor: Isn't that precisely the problem with hypocrisy? Which is it's a charge which by its very nature is more likely to be directed to those who assert morality, who try to do good. Because they are the ones who fail to meet their standard...
The best way to avoid hypocrisy is none of us to ever assert anything that we could ever fail to achieve...
David Runciman: It's a necessary evil... in politics, politicians kind of have to wear two faces. I mean they're appealing to different groups at different times, they have to be able to change their mind.
If we put the premium on consistency, I think we get a thinner politics as a result. So we need to tolerate it. We don't have to like it, we have to tolerate it...
If hypocrisy pervades everything, if it makes a mockery of everything, if nothing that anyone says in public can be trusted, you have a very very corrupted and corroded society and politics.
But the other side of that is if you try and drive hypocrisy out of politics, you also get something that you don't want. The drive for sincerity, I don't think gives you sincerity, it gives you paranoia, it gives you politicians who are frightened of saying things, who are frightened of appealing to our better instincts..
There're lots of kinds of hypocrisy and my problem with it is that we use it as this kind of dealbreaking argument. You spot the hypocrisy and the argument is over because the other person is a hypocrite. Lots of that hypocrisy has to be allowed...
Certainly it's a criticism that we need to have available to us. But it has become ubiquitous.
It's not just that there's a lot of hypocrisy about. There's a lot of anti-hypocrisy about as well.
There's a lot of looking for it, searching it out, partly because we know in politics it works. Negative advertising works in politics. Because most negative advertising is identifying the hypocrisy.
You once said this, now you say that. You once did this, now you did that. You're a liar.
If you look for it you'll find it. And if you find it you won't get less hypocrisy, what you'll get is more secretive politicians...
If you think of the full range of hypocrisy that covers, that kind of hypocrisy that people hate.
For instance Hilary Clinton gives a speech about climate change and then she gets on a private jet. QED, she's a hypocrite. You can't believe what she says about climate change.
It's probably hard to campaign to be President of the United States without getting on a private jet. So does that mean that none of the candidates are allowed to take climate change seriously? That's the danger the other way. And the line is somewhere between the two...
Reverend Colin Coward: Everybody at times in their lives behaves hypocritcally. It's endemic to the human condition. Because all of us are setting out to present an idealised self to the world...
Melanie Phillips: We live in a society where hypocrisy has become *the* vice. Hypocrisy is the vice that the virtues are transparency and consistency and this is a society which does not allow hypocrisy because it does not have any moral virtues to deviate from.
So it elevates the transparency into a moral virtue, thus revealing and concealing at the same time the fact that it has no moral virtues. If you don't have moral standards you can't have backsliding. The backsliding cannot ever be condoned, but paradoxically if you say you can never have any backsliding, you can never have anything to backslide from and therefore you have no morality. And that's te society we're living in.
Michael Buerk: Relationships, politics, business, religion, all depend on some level of hypocrisy don't they? More than that, hypocrisy allows us to have standards and at least pretend to meet them. Where would virtue be without it? Is hypocrisy itself a vice or a virtue? Who casts the first stone?...
Giles Fraser: Well, I don't what you mean by that, really. I mean I think hypocrisy is a dealist (sp?) moral crime. I'm a hypocrite, I think we're all hypocrites. Sometimes hypocrisy is just a consequence of aiming high, of trying to be a better person than you are. And that's got to be so much better than aiming low, espousing no moral position as a way of avoiding being exposed as a hypocrite...
Melanie Phillips: Our society's obsession with hypocrisy, with consistency, with transparency shows that it no longer has any moral virtues to betray
Matthew Taylor: Isn't that precisely the problem with hypocrisy? Which is it's a charge which by its very nature is more likely to be directed to those who assert morality, who try to do good. Because they are the ones who fail to meet their standard...
The best way to avoid hypocrisy is none of us to ever assert anything that we could ever fail to achieve...
David Runciman: It's a necessary evil... in politics, politicians kind of have to wear two faces. I mean they're appealing to different groups at different times, they have to be able to change their mind.
If we put the premium on consistency, I think we get a thinner politics as a result. So we need to tolerate it. We don't have to like it, we have to tolerate it...
If hypocrisy pervades everything, if it makes a mockery of everything, if nothing that anyone says in public can be trusted, you have a very very corrupted and corroded society and politics.
But the other side of that is if you try and drive hypocrisy out of politics, you also get something that you don't want. The drive for sincerity, I don't think gives you sincerity, it gives you paranoia, it gives you politicians who are frightened of saying things, who are frightened of appealing to our better instincts..
There're lots of kinds of hypocrisy and my problem with it is that we use it as this kind of dealbreaking argument. You spot the hypocrisy and the argument is over because the other person is a hypocrite. Lots of that hypocrisy has to be allowed...
Certainly it's a criticism that we need to have available to us. But it has become ubiquitous.
It's not just that there's a lot of hypocrisy about. There's a lot of anti-hypocrisy about as well.
There's a lot of looking for it, searching it out, partly because we know in politics it works. Negative advertising works in politics. Because most negative advertising is identifying the hypocrisy.
You once said this, now you say that. You once did this, now you did that. You're a liar.
If you look for it you'll find it. And if you find it you won't get less hypocrisy, what you'll get is more secretive politicians...
If you think of the full range of hypocrisy that covers, that kind of hypocrisy that people hate.
For instance Hilary Clinton gives a speech about climate change and then she gets on a private jet. QED, she's a hypocrite. You can't believe what she says about climate change.
It's probably hard to campaign to be President of the United States without getting on a private jet. So does that mean that none of the candidates are allowed to take climate change seriously? That's the danger the other way. And the line is somewhere between the two...
Reverend Colin Coward: Everybody at times in their lives behaves hypocritcally. It's endemic to the human condition. Because all of us are setting out to present an idealised self to the world...
Melanie Phillips: We live in a society where hypocrisy has become *the* vice. Hypocrisy is the vice that the virtues are transparency and consistency and this is a society which does not allow hypocrisy because it does not have any moral virtues to deviate from.
So it elevates the transparency into a moral virtue, thus revealing and concealing at the same time the fact that it has no moral virtues. If you don't have moral standards you can't have backsliding. The backsliding cannot ever be condoned, but paradoxically if you say you can never have any backsliding, you can never have anything to backslide from and therefore you have no morality. And that's te society we're living in.
Post ID: 7966662867421217528
Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Life Advice: Sports Bras
From friend's Facebook:
"After too many incidents of having my life flash before my eyes while I flail and struggle to get out of a sweaty sports bra ONLY TO HAVE THE DAMN THING STUCK AROUND MY ARMPITS which of course only makes me perspire more out of terror -- I've finally found a way to make my life easier. So I'm posting this tip in case there are other women with the same stupid awkward problem.
First, tug at the left strap (or right, if your left hand is dominant) and then snake your left hand through. Now your rubbery boob-prison should be wrapped around you like a toga top, and you have one hand free to pull it off. It should then be *much* easier. And THEN YOU CAN BREATHE."
"After too many incidents of having my life flash before my eyes while I flail and struggle to get out of a sweaty sports bra ONLY TO HAVE THE DAMN THING STUCK AROUND MY ARMPITS which of course only makes me perspire more out of terror -- I've finally found a way to make my life easier. So I'm posting this tip in case there are other women with the same stupid awkward problem.
First, tug at the left strap (or right, if your left hand is dominant) and then snake your left hand through. Now your rubbery boob-prison should be wrapped around you like a toga top, and you have one hand free to pull it off. It should then be *much* easier. And THEN YOU CAN BREATHE."
Post ID: 7639266778494926140
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Links - 18th August 2015
Crusade logistics and the battle over the slave trade | Podcast | History Extra - "Ryan Cronin: It's very easy to paint it as a very sort of black and white issue, of how in these days very wealthy, influential figures campaigning to keep slavery for their own interest. But when you actually get under the surface there's a lot more complexity to it because someone like *name* employed estate managers and farmhands, and sailors and dockhands to work for him. He didn't manage the plantations himself. So all of these people, this kind of vast workforce, as well as the slaves to him were dependent on that trade. If you were a relatively poor sailor and you made your living shipping slaves, you were dependent on that. Likewise if you were a dock worker or you worked in a factory that required one of the products that was produced by slavery: cotton or sugar, you could be earning a pittance yourself, but without the slave trade you would also be out of a job. Which is why there was a lot of popular opposition to it. It isn't just as straightforward as thinking it's the rich versus the abolitionists.
Host: Because it's quite easy in hindsight to see this as a simplistic good versus evil, almost, story"
BBC World Service - The World This Week, Can America's Green Initiative Bring China and Others with it? - "I think some of the things that Trump said last night were, should not be taken seriously. Absolutely for show. And his comments about women were offensive but I mean I can't even be that offended, it's so silly. And so I think we need to look past all that and think, you know, when is Trump finally gonna be put on the spot about some of these serious policy issues. And that is when we will see him fail."
BBC World Service - Forum - Sixty Second Idea to Improve the World, Make Chinese pedestrians safer by turning brake pedals into car horns - "In China, rights of way are completely inverted. Rather than yield to pedestrians or cyclists, Chinese drivers simply make liberal use of their horns and expect people to give way. Honking is so incessant that people joke it's the Chinese brake pedal. All the noise and reckless driving threatens quality of life and public safety so I propose we actually connect the car horn to the brake pedal. Now drivers can't honk unless the brake pedal is engaged. And to solve the noise issue, I propose that all car horns play a recording that says 'I'm a selfish jerk who doesn't care about peace and quiet." This potential loss of face every time you press the horn will drastically reduce frivolous honking"
Cop to Call Girl: Why I Left the LAPD to Make an Honest Living As a Beverly Hills Prostitute: Norma Jean Almodovar - "I was willing to pay them for their services, which included screening those to whom they referred me, and they also knew where I was and when I was with a client. Under the law, they are pimps too, but if I wanted to hire them and pay them for their services, what business is it of yours or the government? Can't grown women who are sex workers have agents and managers just as people who are writers, artists, in show business, sports, music industry and others do? Would you think it appropriate for some young athlete to try to negotiate a contract with a sports franchise by him or her self? Do some of those young people get ripped off by a manager or agent? Yes, and when they do, they have legal recourse, which is something that sex workers would like to have as well."
Celebs Protest Amnesty International Call to Decriminalize Prostitution - "Despite the celebrity letter's assertion that "growing evidence shows the catastrophic effects of decriminalization of the sex trade," New Zealand—which decriminalized everything from street prostitution to escort services, living off the proceeds of prostitution, and brothels in 2003—has seen safer and better working conditions for sex workers on a number of levels; increased levels of condom use; and no increase in overall prostitution levels or instances of criminal sex trafficking. Kudos to Amnesty for embracing an evidence-based, harm-reduction-centered, rights-respecting approach to sex work instead of the empty rhetoric of saving women and children by using state violence against them."
Global Movement Votes to Adopt Policy to Protect Human Rights of Sex Workers | Amnesty International - "The resolution recommends that Amnesty International develop a policy that supports the full decriminalization of all aspects of consensual sex work. The policy will also call on states to ensure that sex workers enjoy full and equal legal protection from exploitation, trafficking and violence. “We recognize that this critical human rights issue is hugely complex and that is why we have addressed this issue from the perspective of international human rights standards. We also consulted with our global movement to take on board different views from around the world,” said Salil Shetty. The research and consultation carried out in the development of this policy in the past two years concluded that this was the best way to defend sex workers’ human rights and lessen the risk of abuse and violations they face... The policy has drawn from an extensive evidence base from sources including UN agencies, such as the World Health Organization, UNAIDS, UN Women and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health. We have also conducted research in four countries. The consultation included sex worker groups, groups representing survivors of prostitution, abolitionist organizations, feminist and other women's rights representatives, LGBTI activists, anti- trafficking agencies and HIV/AIDS organizations."
D.C. Police Prioritize Stopping Theoretical Sex Over Solving Actual Crimes - "Between May 1 and June 25, nearly 30 people were killed in what are believed to be homicides in the Distict of Columbia... So what have D.C. cops been busying themselves with this summer? Well, between July 14 and today, they've arrested 50 men for soliciting prostitution... e says both the bill and the police efforts are in response to a massive influx of street-based prostitution in his neighborhoods around Logan Circle. Yet Evans offers no evidence for this claim, and it seems especially unlikely considering the trend just about everywhere has been toward more web-advertised sex sales and fewer women walking the streets. But whatever: We don't have to fully believe Evans' claim to see that even were it true, D.C. cops are not actually addressing the problem. If they really wanted to stop street-based prostitution in Logan Circle, they would either go after street-based sex workers or go after people they witness purchasing sex from them. (Not suggesting cops should do more of either, but these actions would at least make sense in regard to their stated goal.) Instead, police have been posting online ads posing as sex workers, arranging to meet men at area hotels, and then arresting the men for solicitation when they show up."
Child sexual abuse and adolescent prostitution: a comparative analysis. - "In several studies, child sexual abuse has been identified as a characteristic of adolescent prostitution. The implication of these findings, especially for girls, is that the two phenomena are related in that childhood sexual abuse perhaps leads to prostitution. The present study explored the relationship between sexual abuse and adolescent prostitution by comparing 70 sexually abused children with 35 prostitution-involved children on 22 variables. Findings suggest that the relationship is not directed, but involves runaway behavior as an intervening variable. It is not so much that sexual abuse leads to prostitution as it is that running away leads to prostitution"
Sexual Abuse as a Precursor to Prostitution and Victimization Among Adolescent and Adult Homeless Women - "the findings indicate that early sexual abuse only indirectly affects the chances of victimization by increasing the likelihood of a life-style based on participation in risky activities and events"
In other words, the claim that prostitutes are only prostitutes because they were sexually abused as children is wrong
Children's TV pretends disability doesn't exist - "Connolly has a plea for writer and producers: go beyond wheelchairs. “Only one in seven disabled people are wheelchair users. So it’s important to present disability in all its diversity … [and] for the disabled person to be presented not as the vulnerable member of the band, but as the leader, the person who finds the solutions to challenges the group face. We need more stories like that.”"
Comments: "I think that at least childhood has the right to be as carefree as possible."
"And you reckon that's what children turn on the telly to watch?"
"One option is that Guardian journalists finance a children's programme with a disabled character, rather than hoping that a private TV company does so."
""What gets counted as a disability such that 1 in 20 children supposedly count as disabled?"
"Being a bit more sensitive than the other kids?""
"How about having some fat, black, disabled lesbian characters?"
"I'm sure that a child who has problems socialising with other children, has behavioral issues issues and has learning difficulties, who is in a wheelchair, or at least crutches, would be popular with children. But people who make children's TV programmes are just afraid to make the leap. Perhaps the character could also be dumb and deaf. Would that be going too far?"
"Also a lack of representations in toys of disability. I was looking for a miniature wheelchair recently (doll size) and found it really hard and the only ones found were very expensive. Barbie in a wheelchair was discontinued - loved a blog that said this was because she could not access a doll's house - and you just don't get blind Action Men. I did find a picture of a bear in a racing wheelchair that looks great but it seems not to be available any more either."
"Maybe Horrid Henry and Dennis the Mennace actually have ADHD. I'm dyslexic but no one would ever know unless I told them." (in other words, disability isn't always visible so activists can't have their cake and eat it)
Taking the Mickey? Disneyland Paris accused of overcharging foreign visitors - "“Too often, consumers seeking to buy services or goods in another member state are prevented from getting the best price,” she added. The Financial Times newspaper reported that Europe’s biggest amusement park was under investigation for overcharging British and German customers. It said that Disney was charging French consumers €1,346 euros (US$1,487/£955) for a premium package, while Britons were charged €1,870 euros and German visitors a whopping €2,447 euros. France now has the responsibility to ensure that Disneyland Paris is complying with EU fair trading laws, an EU source said, adding that Brussels was expected to contact Paris about the case."
This must be why I don't get swindled in Europe - only in Asia
Hackers take a page (literally) from Jane Austen - "Researchers from Cisco Security said in a report released Tuesday that literary passages are becoming a new way to hide malicious code that allow hackers unlawful entry into computers and networks... Cisco researchers said encountering references to Austen characters on a webpage "may be perplexing but not a cause for immediate concern." Jason Brvenik, a Cisco engineer, said it remains a mystery about who is behind the literary hacking or why that novel was chosen over others. "It is a seemingly random selection but it always from that book," he told AFP."
Poverty Can Trump a Winning Hand of Genes - WSJ - "When psychologists first started studying twins, they found identical twins much more likely to have similar IQs than fraternal ones. They concluded that IQ was highly "heritable"—that is, due to genetic differences. But those were all high SES twins. Erik Turkheimer of the University of Virginia and his colleagues discovered that the picture was very different for poor, low-SES twins. For these children, there was very little difference between identical and fraternal twins: IQ was hardly heritable at all. Differences in the environment, like whether you lucked out with a good teacher, seemed to be much more important. In the new study, the Bates team found this was even true when those children grew up. IQ was much less heritable for people who had grown up poor... Richer children have similarly good educational opportunities, so genetic differences among them become more apparent."
Genetic influence on family socioeconomic status and children's intelligence - "we show significant genetic influence on family SES, and on its association with children's IQ at ages 7 and 12... Our analysis provides the first DNA-based evidence that the well documented association between family SES and children's cognitive development, routinely interpreted as an environmental effect, is substantially mediated by genetic factors... it should be recognized that from a genetic perspective, equal opportunity will result in relatively greater genetic influence, as reflected in greater parent–offspring correlations: As environmental differences diminish, variation that remains between children in their outcomes will be due to a greater extent to their genetic differences. In other words, heritability can be viewed as an index of meritocratic social mobility."
Poor Little Rich Kids? The Determinants of the Intergenerational Transmission of Wealth - "Among own-birth children (Column 1), the rank-rank coefficient is approximately 0.35. Among adoptees (Column 2), we find that child's wealth is predominantly associated with that of adoptive parents and has a much weaker relationship with biological parents’ wealth. The rank coefficient for biological parent wealth is 0.11 but that for adoptive parent wealth is 0.27... it appears that, even in a relatively egalitarian society like Sweden, wealth begets wealth... the pathway through which parental wealth affects child wealth does not appear to be primarily parental schooling and income or child human capital accumulation and greater labor earnings. Taken together, our findings suggest potential roles for intergenerational transmission of preferences (children of wealthier parents may choose to save more or invest in assets that have higher returns) or for financial gifts from parents to children. Unfortunately, we do not have information on savings behavior or on financial gifts so this evidence is only suggestive"
The conclusion is not that simple and doesn't demolish the idea of meritocracy: if rich parents teach their kids how to be rich this is still something the children have "earned"
Host: Because it's quite easy in hindsight to see this as a simplistic good versus evil, almost, story"
BBC World Service - The World This Week, Can America's Green Initiative Bring China and Others with it? - "I think some of the things that Trump said last night were, should not be taken seriously. Absolutely for show. And his comments about women were offensive but I mean I can't even be that offended, it's so silly. And so I think we need to look past all that and think, you know, when is Trump finally gonna be put on the spot about some of these serious policy issues. And that is when we will see him fail."
BBC World Service - Forum - Sixty Second Idea to Improve the World, Make Chinese pedestrians safer by turning brake pedals into car horns - "In China, rights of way are completely inverted. Rather than yield to pedestrians or cyclists, Chinese drivers simply make liberal use of their horns and expect people to give way. Honking is so incessant that people joke it's the Chinese brake pedal. All the noise and reckless driving threatens quality of life and public safety so I propose we actually connect the car horn to the brake pedal. Now drivers can't honk unless the brake pedal is engaged. And to solve the noise issue, I propose that all car horns play a recording that says 'I'm a selfish jerk who doesn't care about peace and quiet." This potential loss of face every time you press the horn will drastically reduce frivolous honking"
Cop to Call Girl: Why I Left the LAPD to Make an Honest Living As a Beverly Hills Prostitute: Norma Jean Almodovar - "I was willing to pay them for their services, which included screening those to whom they referred me, and they also knew where I was and when I was with a client. Under the law, they are pimps too, but if I wanted to hire them and pay them for their services, what business is it of yours or the government? Can't grown women who are sex workers have agents and managers just as people who are writers, artists, in show business, sports, music industry and others do? Would you think it appropriate for some young athlete to try to negotiate a contract with a sports franchise by him or her self? Do some of those young people get ripped off by a manager or agent? Yes, and when they do, they have legal recourse, which is something that sex workers would like to have as well."
Celebs Protest Amnesty International Call to Decriminalize Prostitution - "Despite the celebrity letter's assertion that "growing evidence shows the catastrophic effects of decriminalization of the sex trade," New Zealand—which decriminalized everything from street prostitution to escort services, living off the proceeds of prostitution, and brothels in 2003—has seen safer and better working conditions for sex workers on a number of levels; increased levels of condom use; and no increase in overall prostitution levels or instances of criminal sex trafficking. Kudos to Amnesty for embracing an evidence-based, harm-reduction-centered, rights-respecting approach to sex work instead of the empty rhetoric of saving women and children by using state violence against them."
Global Movement Votes to Adopt Policy to Protect Human Rights of Sex Workers | Amnesty International - "The resolution recommends that Amnesty International develop a policy that supports the full decriminalization of all aspects of consensual sex work. The policy will also call on states to ensure that sex workers enjoy full and equal legal protection from exploitation, trafficking and violence. “We recognize that this critical human rights issue is hugely complex and that is why we have addressed this issue from the perspective of international human rights standards. We also consulted with our global movement to take on board different views from around the world,” said Salil Shetty. The research and consultation carried out in the development of this policy in the past two years concluded that this was the best way to defend sex workers’ human rights and lessen the risk of abuse and violations they face... The policy has drawn from an extensive evidence base from sources including UN agencies, such as the World Health Organization, UNAIDS, UN Women and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health. We have also conducted research in four countries. The consultation included sex worker groups, groups representing survivors of prostitution, abolitionist organizations, feminist and other women's rights representatives, LGBTI activists, anti- trafficking agencies and HIV/AIDS organizations."
D.C. Police Prioritize Stopping Theoretical Sex Over Solving Actual Crimes - "Between May 1 and June 25, nearly 30 people were killed in what are believed to be homicides in the Distict of Columbia... So what have D.C. cops been busying themselves with this summer? Well, between July 14 and today, they've arrested 50 men for soliciting prostitution... e says both the bill and the police efforts are in response to a massive influx of street-based prostitution in his neighborhoods around Logan Circle. Yet Evans offers no evidence for this claim, and it seems especially unlikely considering the trend just about everywhere has been toward more web-advertised sex sales and fewer women walking the streets. But whatever: We don't have to fully believe Evans' claim to see that even were it true, D.C. cops are not actually addressing the problem. If they really wanted to stop street-based prostitution in Logan Circle, they would either go after street-based sex workers or go after people they witness purchasing sex from them. (Not suggesting cops should do more of either, but these actions would at least make sense in regard to their stated goal.) Instead, police have been posting online ads posing as sex workers, arranging to meet men at area hotels, and then arresting the men for solicitation when they show up."
Child sexual abuse and adolescent prostitution: a comparative analysis. - "In several studies, child sexual abuse has been identified as a characteristic of adolescent prostitution. The implication of these findings, especially for girls, is that the two phenomena are related in that childhood sexual abuse perhaps leads to prostitution. The present study explored the relationship between sexual abuse and adolescent prostitution by comparing 70 sexually abused children with 35 prostitution-involved children on 22 variables. Findings suggest that the relationship is not directed, but involves runaway behavior as an intervening variable. It is not so much that sexual abuse leads to prostitution as it is that running away leads to prostitution"
Sexual Abuse as a Precursor to Prostitution and Victimization Among Adolescent and Adult Homeless Women - "the findings indicate that early sexual abuse only indirectly affects the chances of victimization by increasing the likelihood of a life-style based on participation in risky activities and events"
In other words, the claim that prostitutes are only prostitutes because they were sexually abused as children is wrong
Children's TV pretends disability doesn't exist - "Connolly has a plea for writer and producers: go beyond wheelchairs. “Only one in seven disabled people are wheelchair users. So it’s important to present disability in all its diversity … [and] for the disabled person to be presented not as the vulnerable member of the band, but as the leader, the person who finds the solutions to challenges the group face. We need more stories like that.”"
Comments: "I think that at least childhood has the right to be as carefree as possible."
"And you reckon that's what children turn on the telly to watch?"
"One option is that Guardian journalists finance a children's programme with a disabled character, rather than hoping that a private TV company does so."
""What gets counted as a disability such that 1 in 20 children supposedly count as disabled?"
"Being a bit more sensitive than the other kids?""
"How about having some fat, black, disabled lesbian characters?"
"I'm sure that a child who has problems socialising with other children, has behavioral issues issues and has learning difficulties, who is in a wheelchair, or at least crutches, would be popular with children. But people who make children's TV programmes are just afraid to make the leap. Perhaps the character could also be dumb and deaf. Would that be going too far?"
"Also a lack of representations in toys of disability. I was looking for a miniature wheelchair recently (doll size) and found it really hard and the only ones found were very expensive. Barbie in a wheelchair was discontinued - loved a blog that said this was because she could not access a doll's house - and you just don't get blind Action Men. I did find a picture of a bear in a racing wheelchair that looks great but it seems not to be available any more either."
"Maybe Horrid Henry and Dennis the Mennace actually have ADHD. I'm dyslexic but no one would ever know unless I told them." (in other words, disability isn't always visible so activists can't have their cake and eat it)
Taking the Mickey? Disneyland Paris accused of overcharging foreign visitors - "“Too often, consumers seeking to buy services or goods in another member state are prevented from getting the best price,” she added. The Financial Times newspaper reported that Europe’s biggest amusement park was under investigation for overcharging British and German customers. It said that Disney was charging French consumers €1,346 euros (US$1,487/£955) for a premium package, while Britons were charged €1,870 euros and German visitors a whopping €2,447 euros. France now has the responsibility to ensure that Disneyland Paris is complying with EU fair trading laws, an EU source said, adding that Brussels was expected to contact Paris about the case."
This must be why I don't get swindled in Europe - only in Asia
Hackers take a page (literally) from Jane Austen - "Researchers from Cisco Security said in a report released Tuesday that literary passages are becoming a new way to hide malicious code that allow hackers unlawful entry into computers and networks... Cisco researchers said encountering references to Austen characters on a webpage "may be perplexing but not a cause for immediate concern." Jason Brvenik, a Cisco engineer, said it remains a mystery about who is behind the literary hacking or why that novel was chosen over others. "It is a seemingly random selection but it always from that book," he told AFP."
Poverty Can Trump a Winning Hand of Genes - WSJ - "When psychologists first started studying twins, they found identical twins much more likely to have similar IQs than fraternal ones. They concluded that IQ was highly "heritable"—that is, due to genetic differences. But those were all high SES twins. Erik Turkheimer of the University of Virginia and his colleagues discovered that the picture was very different for poor, low-SES twins. For these children, there was very little difference between identical and fraternal twins: IQ was hardly heritable at all. Differences in the environment, like whether you lucked out with a good teacher, seemed to be much more important. In the new study, the Bates team found this was even true when those children grew up. IQ was much less heritable for people who had grown up poor... Richer children have similarly good educational opportunities, so genetic differences among them become more apparent."
Genetic influence on family socioeconomic status and children's intelligence - "we show significant genetic influence on family SES, and on its association with children's IQ at ages 7 and 12... Our analysis provides the first DNA-based evidence that the well documented association between family SES and children's cognitive development, routinely interpreted as an environmental effect, is substantially mediated by genetic factors... it should be recognized that from a genetic perspective, equal opportunity will result in relatively greater genetic influence, as reflected in greater parent–offspring correlations: As environmental differences diminish, variation that remains between children in their outcomes will be due to a greater extent to their genetic differences. In other words, heritability can be viewed as an index of meritocratic social mobility."
Poor Little Rich Kids? The Determinants of the Intergenerational Transmission of Wealth - "Among own-birth children (Column 1), the rank-rank coefficient is approximately 0.35. Among adoptees (Column 2), we find that child's wealth is predominantly associated with that of adoptive parents and has a much weaker relationship with biological parents’ wealth. The rank coefficient for biological parent wealth is 0.11 but that for adoptive parent wealth is 0.27... it appears that, even in a relatively egalitarian society like Sweden, wealth begets wealth... the pathway through which parental wealth affects child wealth does not appear to be primarily parental schooling and income or child human capital accumulation and greater labor earnings. Taken together, our findings suggest potential roles for intergenerational transmission of preferences (children of wealthier parents may choose to save more or invest in assets that have higher returns) or for financial gifts from parents to children. Unfortunately, we do not have information on savings behavior or on financial gifts so this evidence is only suggestive"
The conclusion is not that simple and doesn't demolish the idea of meritocracy: if rich parents teach their kids how to be rich this is still something the children have "earned"
Post ID: 7145471791349722697
UOB One vs OCBC 360 - Interest
So, probably to compete with the OCBC 360 Account, UOB has launched its UOB One Account which has very similar criteria for bonus interest, and provides up to 3.33% per annum interest.
Yet, this 3.33% does not apply to all of your deposit - you get 1.5% on the first $10,000, 2% on the next $20,000 and 3.33% on the next $20,000. And everything above $50,000 only gets you 0.05%.
On the other hand, OCBC 360 gives you a flat 2.25% on everything from $0 to $60,000. Even though this is down from the old 3.05% one can still intuit that for certain amounts OCBC will still give you more interest.
I have taken the liberty of doing some calculations to find the sweet range (as it is a range, and not a spot) where UOB One will give you more interest than OCBC 360.
Assumptions for UOB One:
- You credit your salary to the account or perform 3 GIRO transactions
- You spend $500 on your UOB One card
Assumptions for OCBC 360:
- You credit your salary to the account
- You pay 3 bills online or through GIRO
- You spend $500 on OCBC Credit Cards
For OCBC 360 there're additional bonus categories of 1% for insuring or investing with OCBC and 1% on incremental account balances. However I am excluding these: the first because you need to insure/invest a substantial sum and the bonus lasts for only a year, and the second because it requires an increase in your balance each month and only applies to your incremental account balance, and only for a month at that (i.e. the 1% per annum works out to a measly 0.083%).
After some Excel wizardry, the sweet range is calculated to be between $41,574 and $54,136 - below or above this OCBC's 360 gets you more interest than UOB's One.
Yet, this 3.33% does not apply to all of your deposit - you get 1.5% on the first $10,000, 2% on the next $20,000 and 3.33% on the next $20,000. And everything above $50,000 only gets you 0.05%.
On the other hand, OCBC 360 gives you a flat 2.25% on everything from $0 to $60,000. Even though this is down from the old 3.05% one can still intuit that for certain amounts OCBC will still give you more interest.
I have taken the liberty of doing some calculations to find the sweet range (as it is a range, and not a spot) where UOB One will give you more interest than OCBC 360.
Assumptions for UOB One:
- You credit your salary to the account or perform 3 GIRO transactions
- You spend $500 on your UOB One card
Assumptions for OCBC 360:
- You credit your salary to the account
- You pay 3 bills online or through GIRO
- You spend $500 on OCBC Credit Cards
For OCBC 360 there're additional bonus categories of 1% for insuring or investing with OCBC and 1% on incremental account balances. However I am excluding these: the first because you need to insure/invest a substantial sum and the bonus lasts for only a year, and the second because it requires an increase in your balance each month and only applies to your incremental account balance, and only for a month at that (i.e. the 1% per annum works out to a measly 0.083%).
After some Excel wizardry, the sweet range is calculated to be between $41,574 and $54,136 - below or above this OCBC's 360 gets you more interest than UOB's One.
Post ID: 4165341829130751243
Monday, August 17, 2015
On the Supreme Court on (Gay) Marriage Equality
Why These Four Justices Rejected Marriage Equality - "At the conclusion of his dissent, Chief Justice Roberts offers a backhanded word of congratulations:
"If you are among the many Americans — of whatever sexual orientation — who favor expanding same-sex marriage, by all means celebrate today's decision. Celebrate the achievement of a desired goal. Celebrate the opportunity for a new expression of commitment to a partner. Celebrate the availability of new benefits. But do not Celebrate the Constitution. It had nothing to do with it"...
"for those who believe in a government of laws, not of men, the majority’s approach is deeply disheartening... Neither petitioners nor the majority cites a single case or other legal source providing any basis for such a constitutional right. None exists, and that is enough to foreclose their claim. One immediate question invited by the majority’s position is whether States may retain the definition of marriage as a union of two people. Although the majority randomly inserts the adjective 'two' in various places, it offers no reason at all why the two-person element of the core definition of marriage may be preserved while the man-woman element may not. ... If the majority is willing to take the big leap, it is hard to see how it can say no to the shorter one. ... It is striking how much of the majority’s reasoning would apply with equal force to the claim of a fundamental right to plural marriage... By deciding this question under the Constitution, the Court removes it from the realm of democratic decision. There will be consequences to shutting down the political process on an issue of such profound public significance. Closing debate tends to close minds...
[The decision] will be used to vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy. In the course of its opinion, the majority compares traditional marriage laws to laws that denied equal treatment for African-Americans and women. The implications of this analogy will be exploited by those who are determined to stamp out every vestige of dissent... If a bare majority of Justices can invent a new right and impose that right on the rest of the country, the only real limit on what future majorities will be able to do is their own sense of what those with political power and cultural influence are willing to tolerate. Even enthusiastic supporters of same-sex marriage should worry about the scope of the power that today’s majority claims... Most Americans — understandably — will cheer or lament today’s decision because of their views on the issue of same-sex marriage. But all Americans, whatever their thinking on that issue, should worry about what the majority’s claim of power portends"
It’s Time to Legalize Polygamy - "the moral reasoning behind society’s rejection of polygamy remains just as uncomfortable and legally weak as same-sex marriage opposition was until recently. That’s one reason why progressives who reject the case for legal polygamy often don’t really appear to have their hearts in it... Why the opposition, from those who have no interest in preserving “traditional marriage” or forbidding polyamorous relationships? I think the answer has to do with political momentum, with a kind of ad hoc-rejection of polygamy as necessary political concession. And in time, I think it will change... Conventional arguments against polygamy fall apart with even a little examination. Appeals to traditional marriage, and the notion that child rearing is the only legitimate justification of legal marriage, have now, I hope, been exposed and discarded by all progressive people. What’s left is a series of jerry-rigged arguments that reflect no coherent moral vision of what marriage is for, and which frequently function as criticisms of traditional marriage as well... If we’re going to ban marriages because some are sites of sexism and abuse, then we’d have to start with the old fashioned one-husband-and-one-wife model. If polygamy tends to be found within religious traditions that seem alien or regressive to the rest of us, that is a function of the very illegality that should be done away with. Legalize group marriage and you will find its connection with abuse disappears. Another common argument, and another unsatisfying one, is logistical. In this telling, polygamous marriages would strain the infrastructure of our legal systems of marriage, as they are not designed to handle marriage between more than two people. In particular, the claim is frequently made that the division of property upon divorce or death would be too complicated for polygamous marriages. I find this argument eerily reminiscent of similar efforts to dismiss same-sex marriage on practical grounds. (The forms say husband and wife! What do you want us to do, print new forms?) Logistics, it should go without saying, are insufficient reason to deny human beings human rights... This bedrock principle of mutually-informed consent explains exactly why we must permit polygamy and must oppose bestiality and child marriage. Animals are incapable of voicing consent; children are incapable of understanding what it means to consent"
Do animals consent to be slaughtered for food? Didn't women use to be said to be incapable of consent? Can all adults meaningfully consent?
The Volokh Conspiracy - The Slippery Slope to Same-Sex Marriage: - "The California Supreme Court decision striking down California's opposite-sex-only-marriage rule helps illustrate, I think, what I call "legislative-judicial slippery slopes" — the tendency of some legislative decisions to affect future judicial decisions, even judicial decisions that cover territory considerably beyond the original statute. Now this tendency is often pooh-poohed when the initial legislative decision takes place — and of course that makes sense, because the decision's backers want to argue that the decision is quite narrow. Thus, for instance, consider:
1. Editorial, A Vote Against Hate, Louisville Courier-J., Feb. 3, 1994, at 6A, arguing that the claim that a hate crime law "would lead to acceptance of gay marriages" was "arrant nonsense."
2. Editorial, A Gay-Protection Forum, Boston Globe, Oct. 15, 1989, at A30: "Nor does passage of the bill [that bans sexual orientation discrimination in various commercial transactions] put Massachusetts on a 'slippery slope' toward [same-sex marriage or domestic benefit] rights."
3. Phil Pitchford, Council Members Wary of Partner Registry, Riverside Press-Enterprise (quoting Riverside Human Relations Commission member Kay Smith): "Those that truly have a problem with homosexuality will see [a domestic partnership proposal] as part of the 'slippery slope' [toward same-sex marriages] .... But, this legislation needs to be looked at on the face value of what it is, and it really does very little."
Yet consider how the California Supreme Court used the legislative enactment of these sorts of laws as part of its basis for deciding that the right to marry should be seen as encompassing same-sex marriage"
"If you are among the many Americans — of whatever sexual orientation — who favor expanding same-sex marriage, by all means celebrate today's decision. Celebrate the achievement of a desired goal. Celebrate the opportunity for a new expression of commitment to a partner. Celebrate the availability of new benefits. But do not Celebrate the Constitution. It had nothing to do with it"...
"for those who believe in a government of laws, not of men, the majority’s approach is deeply disheartening... Neither petitioners nor the majority cites a single case or other legal source providing any basis for such a constitutional right. None exists, and that is enough to foreclose their claim. One immediate question invited by the majority’s position is whether States may retain the definition of marriage as a union of two people. Although the majority randomly inserts the adjective 'two' in various places, it offers no reason at all why the two-person element of the core definition of marriage may be preserved while the man-woman element may not. ... If the majority is willing to take the big leap, it is hard to see how it can say no to the shorter one. ... It is striking how much of the majority’s reasoning would apply with equal force to the claim of a fundamental right to plural marriage... By deciding this question under the Constitution, the Court removes it from the realm of democratic decision. There will be consequences to shutting down the political process on an issue of such profound public significance. Closing debate tends to close minds...
[The decision] will be used to vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy. In the course of its opinion, the majority compares traditional marriage laws to laws that denied equal treatment for African-Americans and women. The implications of this analogy will be exploited by those who are determined to stamp out every vestige of dissent... If a bare majority of Justices can invent a new right and impose that right on the rest of the country, the only real limit on what future majorities will be able to do is their own sense of what those with political power and cultural influence are willing to tolerate. Even enthusiastic supporters of same-sex marriage should worry about the scope of the power that today’s majority claims... Most Americans — understandably — will cheer or lament today’s decision because of their views on the issue of same-sex marriage. But all Americans, whatever their thinking on that issue, should worry about what the majority’s claim of power portends"
It’s Time to Legalize Polygamy - "the moral reasoning behind society’s rejection of polygamy remains just as uncomfortable and legally weak as same-sex marriage opposition was until recently. That’s one reason why progressives who reject the case for legal polygamy often don’t really appear to have their hearts in it... Why the opposition, from those who have no interest in preserving “traditional marriage” or forbidding polyamorous relationships? I think the answer has to do with political momentum, with a kind of ad hoc-rejection of polygamy as necessary political concession. And in time, I think it will change... Conventional arguments against polygamy fall apart with even a little examination. Appeals to traditional marriage, and the notion that child rearing is the only legitimate justification of legal marriage, have now, I hope, been exposed and discarded by all progressive people. What’s left is a series of jerry-rigged arguments that reflect no coherent moral vision of what marriage is for, and which frequently function as criticisms of traditional marriage as well... If we’re going to ban marriages because some are sites of sexism and abuse, then we’d have to start with the old fashioned one-husband-and-one-wife model. If polygamy tends to be found within religious traditions that seem alien or regressive to the rest of us, that is a function of the very illegality that should be done away with. Legalize group marriage and you will find its connection with abuse disappears. Another common argument, and another unsatisfying one, is logistical. In this telling, polygamous marriages would strain the infrastructure of our legal systems of marriage, as they are not designed to handle marriage between more than two people. In particular, the claim is frequently made that the division of property upon divorce or death would be too complicated for polygamous marriages. I find this argument eerily reminiscent of similar efforts to dismiss same-sex marriage on practical grounds. (The forms say husband and wife! What do you want us to do, print new forms?) Logistics, it should go without saying, are insufficient reason to deny human beings human rights... This bedrock principle of mutually-informed consent explains exactly why we must permit polygamy and must oppose bestiality and child marriage. Animals are incapable of voicing consent; children are incapable of understanding what it means to consent"
Do animals consent to be slaughtered for food? Didn't women use to be said to be incapable of consent? Can all adults meaningfully consent?
The Volokh Conspiracy - The Slippery Slope to Same-Sex Marriage: - "The California Supreme Court decision striking down California's opposite-sex-only-marriage rule helps illustrate, I think, what I call "legislative-judicial slippery slopes" — the tendency of some legislative decisions to affect future judicial decisions, even judicial decisions that cover territory considerably beyond the original statute. Now this tendency is often pooh-poohed when the initial legislative decision takes place — and of course that makes sense, because the decision's backers want to argue that the decision is quite narrow. Thus, for instance, consider:
1. Editorial, A Vote Against Hate, Louisville Courier-J., Feb. 3, 1994, at 6A, arguing that the claim that a hate crime law "would lead to acceptance of gay marriages" was "arrant nonsense."
2. Editorial, A Gay-Protection Forum, Boston Globe, Oct. 15, 1989, at A30: "Nor does passage of the bill [that bans sexual orientation discrimination in various commercial transactions] put Massachusetts on a 'slippery slope' toward [same-sex marriage or domestic benefit] rights."
3. Phil Pitchford, Council Members Wary of Partner Registry, Riverside Press-Enterprise (quoting Riverside Human Relations Commission member Kay Smith): "Those that truly have a problem with homosexuality will see [a domestic partnership proposal] as part of the 'slippery slope' [toward same-sex marriages] .... But, this legislation needs to be looked at on the face value of what it is, and it really does very little."
Yet consider how the California Supreme Court used the legislative enactment of these sorts of laws as part of its basis for deciding that the right to marry should be seen as encompassing same-sex marriage"
Post ID: 1849266603362589648
Saturday, August 15, 2015
Links - 15th August 2015
The obsession with sexual harassment is turning the 21st-century workplace into an emotional deadzone – Telegraph Blogs - "Apparently the best way to avoid being accused of inappropriate behaviour in the workplace is to turn yourself into an emotional cripple who never says anything nice or complimentary, far less cheeky, to your colleagues... Older people must be especially careful in the workplace, because apparently their preferred terms of endearment – love, darling, sweetheart – are criminally archaic. The Independent says it is problematic to behave in an “avuncular manner” in the workplace. An expert tells the paper that older workers should not use old-fashioned terms like “love” unless they would be comfortable with being called “grandpa” or “village elder”. But isn’t this just the petty policing of the kind of lingo used largely by working-class people of a certain age? In one of my old workplaces, the older men uniformly referred to every young woman as “sweetheart” and every young man, including me, as “son”. It was nice. It made a rather stressful workplace environment feel more familial and pleasant. Little did I know that I and everyone else were actually being talked down to by patronising letches. Also, you should never discuss celebrities’ sex lives at work, because others might find it offensive. You should distance yourself from flirtatious workmates, even if that makes you seem like an “officious, stuck-in-the-mud, Billy no-mates”. And you must never, ever try to get into a sexual relationship with a workmate... The problem with such stifling, emotion-squishing codes of conduct is that they turn the 21st-century workplace into an emotional deadzone, bereft of niceness and pleasantries and even compliments... One of the things that makes work more bearable for millions of people is the camaraderie they build up with their colleagues, which they often do through speaking to each other in a free and relaxed manner that is not overseen by their boring managers or HR busybodies. In turning the workplace into a moral minefield where no one can ever truly chill out, we aren’t really combatting rare instances of serious sexual harassment – we’re just alienating workers from each other and turning the workplace into a more soul-destroying arena than it needs to be."
Freakonomics » Aziz Ansari Needs Another Toothbrush: A New Freakonomics Radio Episode - "That study is from the thirties in Philadelphia and it was like, yeah one out of twelve people will marry someone in the same building. Eighty-something percent, it was the same city. One out of three it was like within a five-block radius. And it was really startling. And you just think about it now and it’s like, no one marries someone from the same city. You, like, meet people throughout your whole life that are from different parts of the world, and you go to college. And that change was something that was actually a bigger change than the technology or anything. Just overall change in what used to be called the “companionate” marriage to the “soul mate” marriage. The companionate marriage is pretty close to an arranged marriage... in 1967 there was this study they did where they found seventy-six percent of women said they would marry someone that they are not romantically in love with... if I could throw out the Internet as well, that’d be great. I never read anything. I’ve never read all these novels that are like these beautiful stories that have continued to have a resonance with people for so many generations, like beautiful works of art that I could read at any point. But instead, I choose not to read them. And I just read the Internet. Constantly. And hear about who said a racial slur or look at a photo of what Ludacris did last weekend. You know, just useless stuff. It’s like, I read the Internet so much I feel like I’m on page a million of the worst book ever. And I just won’t stop reading it. For some reason it’s so addictive."
Men don't get it: Japan's diversity perception gap - "Do men and women have equal career opportunities in Japanese workplaces? Sixty-seven percent of men said yes, while only 51% of women agreed, showing a large gap in Japanese perceptions of gender diversity... When asked whether equally capable male and female colleagues are paid the same, 72% of men said yes, while 62% of women agreed, again, a significant difference."
Actually I find it significant that a majority of women think there's gender equality
Global Attitudes on Materialism, Finances and Family - "Those most likely to agree they feel under a lot of pressure to be successful and make money are from China (68%), South Africa (66%), Russia (66%), India (60%), Turkey (53%) and South Korea (52%) – the emerging economies. On the flip side, those least likely to feel this pressure for financial success are from Italy (25%), Sweden (26%), Japan (29%), France (33%), Belgium (36%), Spain (36%) and Great Britain (39%) – the traditionally developed nations. Similarly, those from China (71%), India (58%), Turkey (57%), Brazil (48%) and South Korea (45%) are most likely to measure their success by what they own while those from Sweden (7%), Spain (15%), Great Britain (16%), Canada (20%), the United States (21%) and Italy (22%) are least likely to do so.
More evidence that Chinese are very materialistic
Maybe Fight Club should've been set in China
Young people less tolerant and more ignorant of other religions, poll suggests - Telegraph - "People in their late teens and early 20s were significantly less open to children born to parents from different religious backgrounds being brought up to understand both faiths than those in their 50s and 60s. They were also less likely to be aware of the common origins of the three Abrahamic faiths despite citing religious misunderstanding as the major cause of conflict in the world, ahead of economic hardship, natural disasters, food shortages and environmental crises."
In praise of cynicism - "The cynic would surely question the way in which the world is divided into optimists and pessimists. Optimism has various dimensions, and just because some people take a dim view of human nature and some future probabilities, that does not mean they are hardcore pessimists who believe things can only get worse. Cynics refuse to be typecast as Jeremiahs. They are realists who know that the world is not the sun-kissed fantasy peddled by positive-thinking gurus and shysters. Indeed, the greatest irony of all is that many of the people promoting optimism are unwittingly feeding a view of human nature that is cynical in the very worst sense"
[GPGT]: PAP IBs are having a civil war now! - www.hardwarezone.com.sg - "Basically, Bryan Ti supports PAP but condemns pack behaviour whereby IBs resort to smears and attacks on pro opposition sites. He also disapproves of ministers, MPs and PAP members behaving in such a way. A few years back, Bryan Ti had previously sexposed the facebook group "My Compass" with screenshots, making him the enemy of PAP IB leader Jason Chua Chin Seng."
Ex-Samsui woman touched by SG50 Slim Fit bust enhancement ad | New Nation - "“I am very proud that Slim Fit is using the nation-building legacy of me and my sisters to promote their bust enhancement services.” “I hope that Singaporean women everywhere will think of how far Singapore has come when they look at their breasts. As Singapore continues to develop, their bust lines will grow like our nation’s prosperity.” Ng added that she was going to call Slim Fit right after the interview was over. “This is what I spent my youth slaving away on construction sites day after day for”, said Ng, struggling to hold back tears. “I have earned this.”"
The Joy Of Hunting Without The Killing - tribunedigital-chicagotribune - ""many hunters don`t fit the stereotype at all. Many of them I have found to be caring people. They tell me that they like to hunt because they enjoy being outdoors having good times with their friends --and that if an animal comes along, they feel obligated to shoot it. But they tell me that they get no thrill out of doing the actual killing... no hunter I have ever talked with admitted the killing aspect to be a joy of hunting. The reasons most hunters cite are: saving animals from starving through the winter; hunting for food; getting back to nature; the skill needed in stalking the prey and in the aim required to kill it; an excuse for the`boys` to get together; and tradition"
Should Oscar Pistorius's Prosthetic Legs Disqualify Him from the Olympics? - "The question seems preposterous. How could someone without lower legs possibly have an advantage over athletes with natural legs? The debate took a scientific turn in 2007 when a German team reported that Pistorius used 25 percent less energy than natural runners. The conclusion was tied to the unusual prosthetic made by an Icelandic company called Össur... other researchers have other theories about a possible advantage. Because Pistorius's Cheetah's don't tire, his lower leg stays springy throughout the entire race. For most 400-meter runners the second half of the race is where the real battle happens. Jim Matin, a researcher at the University of Utah, says that the lower leg is what weakens and slows runners. Martin thinks that if Pistorius ran in a competitive 600-meter race, Pistorius could set the world record."
The sheer joy of hunting - "The sheer joy of hunting comes from far more than just dressing up in a smart coat and shiny boots and drinking port. It’s the simple pleasure of being out in the field, watching the hounds do what they do best, and enjoying the pure beauty of the sport"
How to expect hawkers to make a decent living? - "NTUC stated that they are judging 40% base on rental and 60% on other criteria. But everyone is not confident at tendering due to the minimum price set for every stall. For instance fishball noodles at $2.70. On the papers, they talk about attracting quality hawkers. Do you actually think that a quality hawker will come out with quality food when they use quality ingredients and if the cost of food is so high, how much do you think the profit margin will be? From what I see, many people in SG are paying for prices in shopping malls & paid $$$ for a coffee or a bowl of ramen, yet moan about prices of Hawker food.... What kind of living am I going to make myself if the profit margin is so low? The heritage is dying. If they want young gen to come in, give them a better profit. If their food is good, they make a lot of money, they deserve it."
Amnesty International says prostitution is a human right – but it's wrong | Guardian Sustainable Business | The Guardian
Hearteningly most comments slam this
Comments: "This is not science. Presumably men who use male prostitutes hate men? And women who use male prostitutes aren't aware of their humanity, or some such nonsense?"
"So presumably then, because people get trafficked to work as maids in central London, where they are locked up and kept prisoner without passports, all work as maids should be made illegal. Otherwise we would be condoning people trafficking."
"And perhaps clothing should be banned because of the terrible work conditions and sometimes enslavement of so many adults and children making clothes in poor countries."
"According to the logic of the writer here, we should make human employment in any form illegal, since so many of those employed are exploited and coerced. Why are a person's hands or a person's back less sacred than their genitals? No one gives a damn about exploiting the shit out of a person's hands or their back."
"I know every newspaper has it's own stance when discussing any issue. But this article is so biased it didn't even get a quote from Amnesty for them to justify their position... I would like less biased articles in future, otherwise the Guardian will be head down the road that Fox News has so blatantly pioneered."
"This is not an article, it's an entirely one-sided and malevolent screed. The first sentence says it all: "Has Amnesty International been hijacked by proponents of the global sex trade?" How can anybody take it seriously after that?"
"Honestly, I reckon if you wandered around Sydney or London and started offering people a month's salary to suck you off, a lot of them would say yes."
""Selling your body is a human right? Please! Just the sound of it makes me cringe. It should be abolished."
"I'm sure there's things you do that would make many others cringe. I'm against grammatical errors, myself.""
"Today people freely choose to work on sugar and cotton plantations that is their right even though it was once done by slaves. It isn't the job, but the employment rights that are important."
"I work for food, it's not really consentual, but I get around that by making snarky comments here"
"So when we discuss abortion, it's perfectly okay to say "My body, my choice", but it's not okay to say the same thing about prostitution?"
Freakonomics » Aziz Ansari Needs Another Toothbrush: A New Freakonomics Radio Episode - "That study is from the thirties in Philadelphia and it was like, yeah one out of twelve people will marry someone in the same building. Eighty-something percent, it was the same city. One out of three it was like within a five-block radius. And it was really startling. And you just think about it now and it’s like, no one marries someone from the same city. You, like, meet people throughout your whole life that are from different parts of the world, and you go to college. And that change was something that was actually a bigger change than the technology or anything. Just overall change in what used to be called the “companionate” marriage to the “soul mate” marriage. The companionate marriage is pretty close to an arranged marriage... in 1967 there was this study they did where they found seventy-six percent of women said they would marry someone that they are not romantically in love with... if I could throw out the Internet as well, that’d be great. I never read anything. I’ve never read all these novels that are like these beautiful stories that have continued to have a resonance with people for so many generations, like beautiful works of art that I could read at any point. But instead, I choose not to read them. And I just read the Internet. Constantly. And hear about who said a racial slur or look at a photo of what Ludacris did last weekend. You know, just useless stuff. It’s like, I read the Internet so much I feel like I’m on page a million of the worst book ever. And I just won’t stop reading it. For some reason it’s so addictive."
Men don't get it: Japan's diversity perception gap - "Do men and women have equal career opportunities in Japanese workplaces? Sixty-seven percent of men said yes, while only 51% of women agreed, showing a large gap in Japanese perceptions of gender diversity... When asked whether equally capable male and female colleagues are paid the same, 72% of men said yes, while 62% of women agreed, again, a significant difference."
Actually I find it significant that a majority of women think there's gender equality
Global Attitudes on Materialism, Finances and Family - "Those most likely to agree they feel under a lot of pressure to be successful and make money are from China (68%), South Africa (66%), Russia (66%), India (60%), Turkey (53%) and South Korea (52%) – the emerging economies. On the flip side, those least likely to feel this pressure for financial success are from Italy (25%), Sweden (26%), Japan (29%), France (33%), Belgium (36%), Spain (36%) and Great Britain (39%) – the traditionally developed nations. Similarly, those from China (71%), India (58%), Turkey (57%), Brazil (48%) and South Korea (45%) are most likely to measure their success by what they own while those from Sweden (7%), Spain (15%), Great Britain (16%), Canada (20%), the United States (21%) and Italy (22%) are least likely to do so.
More evidence that Chinese are very materialistic
Maybe Fight Club should've been set in China
Young people less tolerant and more ignorant of other religions, poll suggests - Telegraph - "People in their late teens and early 20s were significantly less open to children born to parents from different religious backgrounds being brought up to understand both faiths than those in their 50s and 60s. They were also less likely to be aware of the common origins of the three Abrahamic faiths despite citing religious misunderstanding as the major cause of conflict in the world, ahead of economic hardship, natural disasters, food shortages and environmental crises."
In praise of cynicism - "The cynic would surely question the way in which the world is divided into optimists and pessimists. Optimism has various dimensions, and just because some people take a dim view of human nature and some future probabilities, that does not mean they are hardcore pessimists who believe things can only get worse. Cynics refuse to be typecast as Jeremiahs. They are realists who know that the world is not the sun-kissed fantasy peddled by positive-thinking gurus and shysters. Indeed, the greatest irony of all is that many of the people promoting optimism are unwittingly feeding a view of human nature that is cynical in the very worst sense"
[GPGT]: PAP IBs are having a civil war now! - www.hardwarezone.com.sg - "Basically, Bryan Ti supports PAP but condemns pack behaviour whereby IBs resort to smears and attacks on pro opposition sites. He also disapproves of ministers, MPs and PAP members behaving in such a way. A few years back, Bryan Ti had previously sexposed the facebook group "My Compass" with screenshots, making him the enemy of PAP IB leader Jason Chua Chin Seng."
Ex-Samsui woman touched by SG50 Slim Fit bust enhancement ad | New Nation - "“I am very proud that Slim Fit is using the nation-building legacy of me and my sisters to promote their bust enhancement services.” “I hope that Singaporean women everywhere will think of how far Singapore has come when they look at their breasts. As Singapore continues to develop, their bust lines will grow like our nation’s prosperity.” Ng added that she was going to call Slim Fit right after the interview was over. “This is what I spent my youth slaving away on construction sites day after day for”, said Ng, struggling to hold back tears. “I have earned this.”"
The Joy Of Hunting Without The Killing - tribunedigital-chicagotribune - ""many hunters don`t fit the stereotype at all. Many of them I have found to be caring people. They tell me that they like to hunt because they enjoy being outdoors having good times with their friends --and that if an animal comes along, they feel obligated to shoot it. But they tell me that they get no thrill out of doing the actual killing... no hunter I have ever talked with admitted the killing aspect to be a joy of hunting. The reasons most hunters cite are: saving animals from starving through the winter; hunting for food; getting back to nature; the skill needed in stalking the prey and in the aim required to kill it; an excuse for the`boys` to get together; and tradition"
Should Oscar Pistorius's Prosthetic Legs Disqualify Him from the Olympics? - "The question seems preposterous. How could someone without lower legs possibly have an advantage over athletes with natural legs? The debate took a scientific turn in 2007 when a German team reported that Pistorius used 25 percent less energy than natural runners. The conclusion was tied to the unusual prosthetic made by an Icelandic company called Össur... other researchers have other theories about a possible advantage. Because Pistorius's Cheetah's don't tire, his lower leg stays springy throughout the entire race. For most 400-meter runners the second half of the race is where the real battle happens. Jim Matin, a researcher at the University of Utah, says that the lower leg is what weakens and slows runners. Martin thinks that if Pistorius ran in a competitive 600-meter race, Pistorius could set the world record."
The sheer joy of hunting - "The sheer joy of hunting comes from far more than just dressing up in a smart coat and shiny boots and drinking port. It’s the simple pleasure of being out in the field, watching the hounds do what they do best, and enjoying the pure beauty of the sport"
How to expect hawkers to make a decent living? - "NTUC stated that they are judging 40% base on rental and 60% on other criteria. But everyone is not confident at tendering due to the minimum price set for every stall. For instance fishball noodles at $2.70. On the papers, they talk about attracting quality hawkers. Do you actually think that a quality hawker will come out with quality food when they use quality ingredients and if the cost of food is so high, how much do you think the profit margin will be? From what I see, many people in SG are paying for prices in shopping malls & paid $$$ for a coffee or a bowl of ramen, yet moan about prices of Hawker food.... What kind of living am I going to make myself if the profit margin is so low? The heritage is dying. If they want young gen to come in, give them a better profit. If their food is good, they make a lot of money, they deserve it."
Amnesty International says prostitution is a human right – but it's wrong | Guardian Sustainable Business | The Guardian
Hearteningly most comments slam this
Comments: "This is not science. Presumably men who use male prostitutes hate men? And women who use male prostitutes aren't aware of their humanity, or some such nonsense?"
"So presumably then, because people get trafficked to work as maids in central London, where they are locked up and kept prisoner without passports, all work as maids should be made illegal. Otherwise we would be condoning people trafficking."
"And perhaps clothing should be banned because of the terrible work conditions and sometimes enslavement of so many adults and children making clothes in poor countries."
"According to the logic of the writer here, we should make human employment in any form illegal, since so many of those employed are exploited and coerced. Why are a person's hands or a person's back less sacred than their genitals? No one gives a damn about exploiting the shit out of a person's hands or their back."
"I know every newspaper has it's own stance when discussing any issue. But this article is so biased it didn't even get a quote from Amnesty for them to justify their position... I would like less biased articles in future, otherwise the Guardian will be head down the road that Fox News has so blatantly pioneered."
"This is not an article, it's an entirely one-sided and malevolent screed. The first sentence says it all: "Has Amnesty International been hijacked by proponents of the global sex trade?" How can anybody take it seriously after that?"
"Honestly, I reckon if you wandered around Sydney or London and started offering people a month's salary to suck you off, a lot of them would say yes."
""Selling your body is a human right? Please! Just the sound of it makes me cringe. It should be abolished."
"I'm sure there's things you do that would make many others cringe. I'm against grammatical errors, myself.""
"Today people freely choose to work on sugar and cotton plantations that is their right even though it was once done by slaves. It isn't the job, but the employment rights that are important."
"I work for food, it's not really consentual, but I get around that by making snarky comments here"
"So when we discuss abortion, it's perfectly okay to say "My body, my choice", but it's not okay to say the same thing about prostitution?"
Post ID: 2993485889588733561
On Colleges being more responsive to students' complaints (re: Commencement Disinvitations)
In a discussion on I'm a liberal professor, and my liberal students terrify me (Vox), I was asked for non-anecdotal evidence that college administrations are now more responsive to students' complaints (typically out of liberal/social justice concerns) than in the past.
We can see that Commencement Disinvitation Episodes documented by FIRE have been rising in recent years as students grow more sensitive to offence.
2000: 6 disinvitation attempts
2001: 4
2002: 10
2003: 10
2004: 7
2005: 13
2006: 10
2007: 9
2008: 13
2009: 23
2010: 16
2011: 19
2012: 17
2013: 29
2014: 16
2014 only has 5 months of data so do note that corrected for the full year figures one would assume there were 38 disinvitation attempts in 2014 - truly a record.
So we can conclude that there has indeed been an increase in Commencement Speaker Disinvitation Attempts since 2009.
Also,
"According to the Department of Education, the number of racial complaints reported on college campuses has increased from 555 in 2009 to 939 last year."
Of course this could be due to more racism, but why would we think there was an increase in racism?
We can see that Commencement Disinvitation Episodes documented by FIRE have been rising in recent years as students grow more sensitive to offence.
2000: 6 disinvitation attempts
2001: 4
2002: 10
2003: 10
2004: 7
2005: 13
2006: 10
2007: 9
2008: 13
2009: 23
2010: 16
2011: 19
2012: 17
2013: 29
2014: 16
2014 only has 5 months of data so do note that corrected for the full year figures one would assume there were 38 disinvitation attempts in 2014 - truly a record.
So we can conclude that there has indeed been an increase in Commencement Speaker Disinvitation Attempts since 2009.
Also,
"According to the Department of Education, the number of racial complaints reported on college campuses has increased from 555 in 2009 to 939 last year."
Of course this could be due to more racism, but why would we think there was an increase in racism?
Post ID: 2039044571393014482
Marital Advice
A woman goes to the Doctor, worried about her husband's temper.
The Doctor asks: "What's the problem?
The woman says: "Doctor, I don't know what to do. Every day my husband seems to lose his temper for no reason, and it scares me."
The Doctor says: "I have a cure for that. When it seems that your husband is getting angry, just take a glass of water and start swishing it in your mouth. Just swish and swish but don't swallow it until he either leaves the room or goes to bed and falls asleep."
Two weeks later the woman comes back to the doctor, looking fresh and reborn.
The woman says: "Doctor that was a brilliant idea! Every time my husband started losing it, I swished with water. I swished and swished, and he calmed right down! How does a glass of water do that?"
The Doctor says: "The water itself does nothing. It's keeping your mouth shut that does the trick...."
The Doctor asks: "What's the problem?
The woman says: "Doctor, I don't know what to do. Every day my husband seems to lose his temper for no reason, and it scares me."
The Doctor says: "I have a cure for that. When it seems that your husband is getting angry, just take a glass of water and start swishing it in your mouth. Just swish and swish but don't swallow it until he either leaves the room or goes to bed and falls asleep."
Two weeks later the woman comes back to the doctor, looking fresh and reborn.
The woman says: "Doctor that was a brilliant idea! Every time my husband started losing it, I swished with water. I swished and swished, and he calmed right down! How does a glass of water do that?"
The Doctor says: "The water itself does nothing. It's keeping your mouth shut that does the trick...."
Post ID: 6720838328641626989
Friday, August 14, 2015
Links - 14th August 2015
Empty on Orchard Road: Singapore's malls grapple with shifting consumer trends - "Many malls in the area feature fast-fashion tenants in prominent locations, but there is little -- if any -- coherence in how the shops are placed in relation to one another. In one shopping mall, for instance, a women's lingerie shop sits next to a golf store, clearly reflecting the lack of strategic thinking based on knowledge of customer habits and movements... "Developers' thinking has put consumers off," said a businessman previously engaged in operating commercial complexes in Japan. When selecting tenants, property developers tend to focus on immediate income from rent. Too often, this approach results in a nondescript mall that fails to excite shoppers' interest. A number of such facilities have cropped up along Orchard Road, and almost all of them have been struggling to bring in customers."
'Otaku' on alert: Why cosplay fans fear the TPP - "the pact, if implemented, would strengthen the protection of intellectual property to such a degree that merely dressing up as Sailor Moon could potentially land someone in jail."
Life in Japan: The odd allure of being kicked and berated - "Hitomi Nogata, a 24-year-old professional kickboxer, has a unique side job. She offers a service that involves literally giving people a hard kick in the caboose. One person seeking her services recently was Akira Muramoto, the 22-year-old representative of a Tokyo venture company. As he stood in front of her, Nogata lifted her muscular right leg and said, "Here I go!" before unleashing a monster kick to Muramoto's buttocks. "Ouch!" he shouted. "That hurt so much!"... On TV Tokyo, a program called "I Want To Be Scolded By Risa Yoshiki" has generated considerable buzz since its launch in August last year. In the show, Yoshiki, a female TV celebrity, yells at TV audiences through a camera lens, tossing out such admonishments as, "Who do you think you are?"... "You rarely get an earful from your boss after you enter your 30s," he said. "So you seldom have someone point out your shortcomings objectively." Yoshiki's schtick is to be angry about various things she sees as being wrong with society."
Japan tourism: Visitors say 'meh' to sushi ... so what? - "Freeplus asked Thai tourists visiting Japan what food they found most delicious. Sushi? Sashimi? It turns out that Thais like yakiniku, the Japanese take on Korean barbecued meat. But surely Japan's soba buckwheat noodles go down well with Thais? Nope. "Thai noodles taste a lot better," said one to-the-point tourist. Asked about sushi, the man was unenthusiastic: "I usually eat a lot of rice in Thailand."... A young Thai man said he had most enjoyed playing video games in a Tokyo arcade. Indian tourists hardly eat Japanese food; they tend to prefer their own cuisine. About 40% of Thai visitors dislike hot springs. Visitors from Vietnam shun tempura and dislike sleeping on tatami. "If caterpillars, which are popular in Africa, were always served to [Japanese visitors], they would not enjoy it," Suda said. "It's the same in Japan. Many here think foreigners want to eat Japanese food all the time, but that is not the case. There is no need to always serve sushi and tempura to foreign tourists in Japan.""
Trouble at the top of the food chain - "How badly do restaurants want to be featured by food bloggers? Enough to pay four-figure sums for a well-known “influencer” to mention them on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, it seems. No longer content to just accept invitations to hosted meals, bloggers with large followings now charge enough to make for a very profitable sideline or full-time career. Brad Lau – also known as Ladyironchef and perhaps the best known food blogger with 600,000 followers on Instagram alone – declined to be interviewed for this article, but is known to charge a fee for showing up at a media tasting and more for an actual article. One F&B operator told The Business Times that it paid him S$3,800 recently to promote its restaurant. It also paid Daniel Ang of DanielFoodDiary (166,000 Instagram followers) S$2,300; Seth Lui (9,965 Instagram followers), charges “between S$1,000 and S$10,000” for advertorials. Maureen Ow, a former journalist who blogs under the moniker Miss Tam Chiak, keeps her fees under S$2,000. These so-called A-list bloggers command page views of a million or more. Derrick Tan of SGFood on Foot, who gets 70,000 page views, has his fee starting at S$500... Aun Koh of food blog Chubby Hubby fame, claims that he does not accept any invitations for tastings, “because once you do, no matter what anyone says, you owe them something. There’s no such thing as a free lunch”... Most bloggers label sponsored posts and advertorials as such, but some don’t feel the need to make it unequivocal when they attend invited tastings... “It’s (the food media circus) gotten to the point where food is no longer first. It’s all about concepts now""
A New Study Tries To Determine What a 'Tolerant' City Looks Like - "The main factor associated with intolerance is the separation, or so-called “fractionalization,” of cities along religious, ethnic, and linguistic lines. (The researchers use measures of fractionalization originally developed by Harvard economist Alberto Alesina.) Places with high levels of linguistic fractionalization—that is, cities where residents speak many different languages—are less tolerant of difference: Every unit increase in linguistic fractionalization leads to a moderate decrease in tolerance. As the researchers note: “This means the lack of a dominant cultural language may create more dissension within a society.” Similarly, they find places with higher levels of religious fractionalization—where people have many different religious beliefs—also have lower levels of tolerance of threat. Even more interestingly, they found cities with larger populations tend to be less tolerant of difference."
(22) Social Capital and Ethnic Tolerance: The Opposing Effects of Diversity and Competition. - "First, strong interethnic ties have differential effects on tolerance depending on one’s own ethnicity. Second, occupational network diversity is linked with both increased and decreased interethnic tolerance, depending on the status of the positions the people in one’s network hold. Finally, we show that participation in voluntary associations has variable effects depending on the type of association. Our evidence suggests that top-down associations have little impact on tolerance, while bottom-up associations have important effects. Taken together, our results suggest that tolerance is most likely cultivated through modes of interaction characterized by cooperation and diversity of participants"
America's tolerance dilemma - LA Times - "census data and election results reveal that Americans have moved into communities that are more homogeneously partisan, with both conservatives and progressives preferring to avoid living near people who hold opposing views. As Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow has documented, even in the religious realm, the faithful today are willing to travel out of their way in search of a congregation that embraces their preferred liturgy. In many cases, we've been fooled into presuming that modernity serves only to broaden our horizons because people with different perspectives are now only a few mouse clicks away. But that assumption conflates the ability to connect with the same predilection... the magic of the melting pot wasn't simply the fact of its jumble; it was that various groups were compelled to interact, share ideas, discuss their differences and learn from their disagreements."
Change name of Jalan Sehala - Letters | The Star Online - "I MET a tourist recently who asked if Jalan Sehala is the longest road in the city. He was taken aback when I explained that it meant one-way street and not one-way road."
The Real Reason U.S. Gas Is So Cheap Is Americans Don't Pay the True Cost of Driving - "America's gas taxes are too low to offset what economists call the "externalities" of driving. Don't let the word spook you; all it means is that driving creates all sorts of negative social impacts that aren't being compensated for: personal time and work productivity lost to traffic congestion, lives lost to car crashes, and health risks created by air pollution, to name just a few. When Delucchi tallied up these costs, at least as they existed for 1991 driving patterns, he estimated them at upwards of $3.3 trillion a year... any gas tax that fully corrected for the social costs of car reliance would upend life as Americans know it... Michael Specter of the New Yorker may have put it best when he likened cheap gas to "an industrial form of crack": impossible to quit, no matter the damage it causes."
LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman on the biggest lie employers tell employees - ""The biggest lie is that the employment relationship is like family"... "You don't fire your kid because of bad grades"... But it's not just employers who lie. Prospective employees do, too. "They know that employers want loyalty," Hoffman says. "They know they want to hear, 'Oh, I plan on working here for the rest of my career.' But most employees recognize that career progression probably requires eventually moving to another company. But that never comes up"... "I think you can learn some useful things from an interview," Hoffman says. "You just have to be clear about what it is you're actually trying to learn. I think you can learn about chemistry and fit. I think you can learn about a person's immediate response to a challenge. But if you told me, 'Pick one — you could either get references or an interview,' I would pick references every day of the week"... Hoffman's background isn't typical. He didn't study computer science or get an MBA. He studied philosophy. And he thinks he's better off for it... "We live in a probabilistic universe, and we tend to think in determinist ways. If A is data-driven and I think I have that data, how certain am I that I have that data? What could I discover that might actually tell me that that data is formulated wrongly? When you dig into it, most of your arguments are actually probabilistic. They're not certain, even when you have data. You're really trying to get a sense of whether you have a reasonable bet on the probability.""
3M $3 Million Behind Bulletproof Glass Challenge Real? - "Recently there has been a picture being shared on social media which shows a bus stop advertizement with a glass case containing what purports to be $3 million dollars. The story goes that 3M is so confident about the strength of its bulletproof glass that it has put out a challenge that if anyone can break the case open the money is theirs for the taking"
#96krock - 3 Farmers Arrested in Wales for Running “Sheep Brothel”
World Peace Begins in the Bedroom - “You gotta remember, Humphrey, marriage is a crapshoot,” he said. “We all find it difficult. But one thing’s for sure – and if you get this right everything starts falling into place – world peace begins in the bedroom.”
Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS133 - Sean Carroll on "The Many Worlds Interpretation is probably correct" - "at the end of the day, I think that we get trained as scientists to be extremely instrumental. We want to solve the problem. We want to predict a number. We want to say what's going to happen if you poke the system in a certain way -- which is fine, but I don't think we should then mistake that instrumental task for our original motivation. No 12-year-old girl becomes fascinated by physics because she says, "Someday I want to be able to predict the outcome of where photons are going to make marks on a photographic plate"... "I want to understand how the world works." You don't want to say, "I want to make observational predictions." They want to figure out how reality operates. That's the difference. I think that everyone gets excited about science because it's supposed to be satisfying our curiosity about how things work, not just a task we have been given to make a prediction about a certain experimental outcome."
'Otaku' on alert: Why cosplay fans fear the TPP - "the pact, if implemented, would strengthen the protection of intellectual property to such a degree that merely dressing up as Sailor Moon could potentially land someone in jail."
Life in Japan: The odd allure of being kicked and berated - "Hitomi Nogata, a 24-year-old professional kickboxer, has a unique side job. She offers a service that involves literally giving people a hard kick in the caboose. One person seeking her services recently was Akira Muramoto, the 22-year-old representative of a Tokyo venture company. As he stood in front of her, Nogata lifted her muscular right leg and said, "Here I go!" before unleashing a monster kick to Muramoto's buttocks. "Ouch!" he shouted. "That hurt so much!"... On TV Tokyo, a program called "I Want To Be Scolded By Risa Yoshiki" has generated considerable buzz since its launch in August last year. In the show, Yoshiki, a female TV celebrity, yells at TV audiences through a camera lens, tossing out such admonishments as, "Who do you think you are?"... "You rarely get an earful from your boss after you enter your 30s," he said. "So you seldom have someone point out your shortcomings objectively." Yoshiki's schtick is to be angry about various things she sees as being wrong with society."
Japan tourism: Visitors say 'meh' to sushi ... so what? - "Freeplus asked Thai tourists visiting Japan what food they found most delicious. Sushi? Sashimi? It turns out that Thais like yakiniku, the Japanese take on Korean barbecued meat. But surely Japan's soba buckwheat noodles go down well with Thais? Nope. "Thai noodles taste a lot better," said one to-the-point tourist. Asked about sushi, the man was unenthusiastic: "I usually eat a lot of rice in Thailand."... A young Thai man said he had most enjoyed playing video games in a Tokyo arcade. Indian tourists hardly eat Japanese food; they tend to prefer their own cuisine. About 40% of Thai visitors dislike hot springs. Visitors from Vietnam shun tempura and dislike sleeping on tatami. "If caterpillars, which are popular in Africa, were always served to [Japanese visitors], they would not enjoy it," Suda said. "It's the same in Japan. Many here think foreigners want to eat Japanese food all the time, but that is not the case. There is no need to always serve sushi and tempura to foreign tourists in Japan.""
Trouble at the top of the food chain - "How badly do restaurants want to be featured by food bloggers? Enough to pay four-figure sums for a well-known “influencer” to mention them on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, it seems. No longer content to just accept invitations to hosted meals, bloggers with large followings now charge enough to make for a very profitable sideline or full-time career. Brad Lau – also known as Ladyironchef and perhaps the best known food blogger with 600,000 followers on Instagram alone – declined to be interviewed for this article, but is known to charge a fee for showing up at a media tasting and more for an actual article. One F&B operator told The Business Times that it paid him S$3,800 recently to promote its restaurant. It also paid Daniel Ang of DanielFoodDiary (166,000 Instagram followers) S$2,300; Seth Lui (9,965 Instagram followers), charges “between S$1,000 and S$10,000” for advertorials. Maureen Ow, a former journalist who blogs under the moniker Miss Tam Chiak, keeps her fees under S$2,000. These so-called A-list bloggers command page views of a million or more. Derrick Tan of SGFood on Foot, who gets 70,000 page views, has his fee starting at S$500... Aun Koh of food blog Chubby Hubby fame, claims that he does not accept any invitations for tastings, “because once you do, no matter what anyone says, you owe them something. There’s no such thing as a free lunch”... Most bloggers label sponsored posts and advertorials as such, but some don’t feel the need to make it unequivocal when they attend invited tastings... “It’s (the food media circus) gotten to the point where food is no longer first. It’s all about concepts now""
A New Study Tries To Determine What a 'Tolerant' City Looks Like - "The main factor associated with intolerance is the separation, or so-called “fractionalization,” of cities along religious, ethnic, and linguistic lines. (The researchers use measures of fractionalization originally developed by Harvard economist Alberto Alesina.) Places with high levels of linguistic fractionalization—that is, cities where residents speak many different languages—are less tolerant of difference: Every unit increase in linguistic fractionalization leads to a moderate decrease in tolerance. As the researchers note: “This means the lack of a dominant cultural language may create more dissension within a society.” Similarly, they find places with higher levels of religious fractionalization—where people have many different religious beliefs—also have lower levels of tolerance of threat. Even more interestingly, they found cities with larger populations tend to be less tolerant of difference."
(22) Social Capital and Ethnic Tolerance: The Opposing Effects of Diversity and Competition. - "First, strong interethnic ties have differential effects on tolerance depending on one’s own ethnicity. Second, occupational network diversity is linked with both increased and decreased interethnic tolerance, depending on the status of the positions the people in one’s network hold. Finally, we show that participation in voluntary associations has variable effects depending on the type of association. Our evidence suggests that top-down associations have little impact on tolerance, while bottom-up associations have important effects. Taken together, our results suggest that tolerance is most likely cultivated through modes of interaction characterized by cooperation and diversity of participants"
America's tolerance dilemma - LA Times - "census data and election results reveal that Americans have moved into communities that are more homogeneously partisan, with both conservatives and progressives preferring to avoid living near people who hold opposing views. As Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow has documented, even in the religious realm, the faithful today are willing to travel out of their way in search of a congregation that embraces their preferred liturgy. In many cases, we've been fooled into presuming that modernity serves only to broaden our horizons because people with different perspectives are now only a few mouse clicks away. But that assumption conflates the ability to connect with the same predilection... the magic of the melting pot wasn't simply the fact of its jumble; it was that various groups were compelled to interact, share ideas, discuss their differences and learn from their disagreements."
Change name of Jalan Sehala - Letters | The Star Online - "I MET a tourist recently who asked if Jalan Sehala is the longest road in the city. He was taken aback when I explained that it meant one-way street and not one-way road."
The Real Reason U.S. Gas Is So Cheap Is Americans Don't Pay the True Cost of Driving - "America's gas taxes are too low to offset what economists call the "externalities" of driving. Don't let the word spook you; all it means is that driving creates all sorts of negative social impacts that aren't being compensated for: personal time and work productivity lost to traffic congestion, lives lost to car crashes, and health risks created by air pollution, to name just a few. When Delucchi tallied up these costs, at least as they existed for 1991 driving patterns, he estimated them at upwards of $3.3 trillion a year... any gas tax that fully corrected for the social costs of car reliance would upend life as Americans know it... Michael Specter of the New Yorker may have put it best when he likened cheap gas to "an industrial form of crack": impossible to quit, no matter the damage it causes."
LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman on the biggest lie employers tell employees - ""The biggest lie is that the employment relationship is like family"... "You don't fire your kid because of bad grades"... But it's not just employers who lie. Prospective employees do, too. "They know that employers want loyalty," Hoffman says. "They know they want to hear, 'Oh, I plan on working here for the rest of my career.' But most employees recognize that career progression probably requires eventually moving to another company. But that never comes up"... "I think you can learn some useful things from an interview," Hoffman says. "You just have to be clear about what it is you're actually trying to learn. I think you can learn about chemistry and fit. I think you can learn about a person's immediate response to a challenge. But if you told me, 'Pick one — you could either get references or an interview,' I would pick references every day of the week"... Hoffman's background isn't typical. He didn't study computer science or get an MBA. He studied philosophy. And he thinks he's better off for it... "We live in a probabilistic universe, and we tend to think in determinist ways. If A is data-driven and I think I have that data, how certain am I that I have that data? What could I discover that might actually tell me that that data is formulated wrongly? When you dig into it, most of your arguments are actually probabilistic. They're not certain, even when you have data. You're really trying to get a sense of whether you have a reasonable bet on the probability.""
3M $3 Million Behind Bulletproof Glass Challenge Real? - "Recently there has been a picture being shared on social media which shows a bus stop advertizement with a glass case containing what purports to be $3 million dollars. The story goes that 3M is so confident about the strength of its bulletproof glass that it has put out a challenge that if anyone can break the case open the money is theirs for the taking"
#96krock - 3 Farmers Arrested in Wales for Running “Sheep Brothel”
World Peace Begins in the Bedroom - “You gotta remember, Humphrey, marriage is a crapshoot,” he said. “We all find it difficult. But one thing’s for sure – and if you get this right everything starts falling into place – world peace begins in the bedroom.”
Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS133 - Sean Carroll on "The Many Worlds Interpretation is probably correct" - "at the end of the day, I think that we get trained as scientists to be extremely instrumental. We want to solve the problem. We want to predict a number. We want to say what's going to happen if you poke the system in a certain way -- which is fine, but I don't think we should then mistake that instrumental task for our original motivation. No 12-year-old girl becomes fascinated by physics because she says, "Someday I want to be able to predict the outcome of where photons are going to make marks on a photographic plate"... "I want to understand how the world works." You don't want to say, "I want to make observational predictions." They want to figure out how reality operates. That's the difference. I think that everyone gets excited about science because it's supposed to be satisfying our curiosity about how things work, not just a task we have been given to make a prediction about a certain experimental outcome."
Post ID: 1215168191022974903
The Coddling of the American Mind (How Trigger Warnings Are Hurting Mental Health on Campus)
How Trigger Warnings Are Hurting Mental Health on Campus
"A number of popular comedians, including Chris Rock, have stopped performing on college campuses (see Caitlin Flanagan’s article in this month’s issue). Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Maher have publicly condemned the oversensitivity of college students, saying too many of them can’t take a joke...
Some recent campus actions border on the surreal. In April, at Brandeis University, the Asian American student association sought to raise awareness of microaggressions against Asians through an installation on the steps of an academic hall. The installation gave examples of microaggressions such as “Aren’t you supposed to be good at math?” and “I’m colorblind! I don’t see race.” But a backlash arose among other Asian American students, who felt that the display itself was a microaggression. The association removed the installation, and its president wrote an e-mail to the entire student body apologizing to anyone who was “triggered or hurt by the content of the microaggressions.”
This new climate is slowly being institutionalized, and is affecting what can be said in the classroom, even as a basis for discussion. During the 2014–15 school year, for instance, the deans and department chairs at the 10 University of California system schools were presented by administrators at faculty leader-training sessions with examples of microaggressions. The list of offensive statements included: “America is the land of opportunity” and “I believe the most qualified person should get the job”...
The ultimate aim, it seems, is to turn campuses into “safe spaces” where young adults are shielded from words and ideas that make some uncomfortable. And more than the last, this movement seeks to punish anyone who interferes with that aim, even accidentally. You might call this impulse vindictive protectiveness. It is creating a culture in which everyone must think twice before speaking up, lest they face charges of insensitivity, aggression, or worse...
What are the effects of this new protectiveness on the students themselves? Does it benefit the people it is supposed to help? What exactly are students learning when they spend four years or more in a community that polices unintentional slights, places warning labels on works of classic literature, and in many other ways conveys the sense that words can be forms of violence that require strict control by campus authorities, who are expected to act as both protectors and prosecutors?
There’s a saying common in education circles: Don’t teach students what to think; teach them how to think... But vindictive protectiveness teaches students to think in a very different way. It prepares them poorly for professional life, which often demands intellectual engagement with people and ideas one might find uncongenial or wrong. The harm may be more immediate, too. A campus culture devoted to policing speech and punishing speakers is likely to engender patterns of thought that are surprisingly similar to those long identified by cognitive behavioral therapists as causes of depression and anxiety. The new protectiveness may be teaching students to think pathologically...
In a variety of ways, children born after 1980—the Millennials—got a consistent message from adults: life is dangerous, but adults will do everything in their power to protect you from harm, not just from strangers but from one another as well.
These same children grew up in a culture that was (and still is) becoming more politically polarized. Republicans and Democrats have never particularly liked each other, but survey data going back to the 1970s show that on average, their mutual dislike used to be surprisingly mild. Negative feelings have grown steadily stronger, however, particularly since the early 2000s. Political scientists call this process “affective partisan polarization,” and it is a very serious problem for any democracy. As each side increasingly demonizes the other, compromise becomes more difficult. A recent study shows that implicit or unconscious biases are now at least as strong across political parties as they are across races.
So it’s not hard to imagine why students arriving on campus today might be more desirous of protection and more hostile toward ideological opponents than in generations past. This hostility, and the self-righteousness fueled by strong partisan emotions, can be expected to add force to any moral crusade. A principle of moral psychology is that “morality binds and blinds.” Part of what we do when we make moral judgments is express allegiance to a team. But that can interfere with our ability to think critically. Acknowledging that the other side’s viewpoint has any merit is risky—your teammates may see you as a traitor...
Rates of mental illness in young adults have been rising, both on campus and off, in recent decades. Some portion of the increase is surely due to better diagnosis and greater willingness to seek help, but most experts seem to agree that some portion of the trend is real. Nearly all of the campus mental-health directors surveyed in 2013 by the American College Counseling Association reported that the number of students with severe psychological problems was rising at their schools. The rate of emotional distress reported by students themselves is also high, and rising. In a 2014 survey by the American College Health Association, 54 percent of college students surveyed said that they had “felt overwhelming anxiety” in the past 12 months, up from 49 percent in the same survey just five years earlier. Students seem to be reporting more emotional crises; many seem fragile, and this has surely changed the way university faculty and administrators interact with them. The question is whether some of those changes might be doing more harm than good...
Cognitive behavioral therapy teaches good critical-thinking skills, the sort that educators have striven for so long to impart. By almost any definition, critical thinking requires grounding one’s beliefs in evidence rather than in emotion or desire, and learning how to search for and evaluate evidence that might contradict one’s initial hypothesis. But does campus life today foster critical thinking? Or does it coax students to think in more-distorted ways?
Let’s look at recent trends in higher education in light of the distortions that cognitive behavioral therapy identifies. We will draw the names and descriptions of these distortions from David D. Burns’s popular book Feeling Good, as well as from the second edition of Treatment Plans and Interventions for Depression and Anxiety Disorders, by Robert L. Leahy, Stephen J. F. Holland, and Lata K. McGinn.
Higher Education’s Embrace of “Emotional Reasoning”
Emotional reasoning dominates many campus debates and discussions. A claim that someone’s words are “offensive” is not just an expression of one’s own subjective feeling of offendedness. It is, rather, a public charge that the speaker has done something objectively wrong. It is a demand that the speaker apologize or be punished by some authority for committing an offense.
There have always been some people who believe they have a right not to be offended. Yet throughout American history—from the Victorian era to the free-speech activism of the 1960s and ’70s—radicals have pushed boundaries and mocked prevailing sensibilities...
Among the most famous early examples was the so-called water-buffalo incident at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1993, the university charged an Israeli-born student with racial harassment after he yelled “Shut up, you water buffalo!” to a crowd of black sorority women that was making noise at night outside his dorm-room window. Many scholars and pundits at the time could not see how the term water buffalo (a rough translation of a Hebrew insult for a thoughtless or rowdy person) was a racial slur against African Americans, and as a result, the case became international news.
Claims of a right not to be offended have continued to arise since then, and universities have continued to privilege them. In a particularly egregious 2008 case, for instance, Indiana University–Purdue University at Indianapolis found a white student guilty of racial harassment for reading a book titled Notre Dame vs. the Klan. The book honored student opposition to the Ku Klux Klan when it marched on Notre Dame in 1924. Nonetheless, the picture of a Klan rally on the book’s cover offended at least one of the student’s co-workers (he was a janitor as well as a student), and that was enough for a guilty finding by the university’s Affirmative Action Office.
These examples may seem extreme, but the reasoning behind them has become more commonplace on campus in recent years. Last year, at the University of St. Thomas, in Minnesota, an event called Hump Day, which would have allowed people to pet a camel, was abruptly canceled. Students had created a Facebook group where they protested the event for animal cruelty, for being a waste of money, and for being insensitive to people from the Middle East. The inspiration for the camel had almost certainly come from a popular TV commercial in which a camel saunters around an office on a Wednesday, celebrating “hump day”; it was devoid of any reference to Middle Eastern peoples. Nevertheless, the group organizing the event announced on its Facebook page that the event would be canceled because the “program [was] dividing people and would make for an uncomfortable and possibly unsafe environment.”
Because there is a broad ban in academic circles on “blaming the victim,” it is generally considered unacceptable to question the reasonableness (let alone the sincerity) of someone’s emotional state, particularly if those emotions are linked to one’s group identity. The thin argument “I’m offended” becomes an unbeatable trump card. This leads to what Jonathan Rauch, a contributing editor at this magazine, calls the “offendedness sweepstakes,” in which opposing parties use claims of offense as cudgels. In the process, the bar for what we consider unacceptable speech is lowered further and further...
Everyone is supposed to rely upon his or her own subjective feelings to decide whether a comment by a professor or a fellow student is unwelcome, and therefore grounds for a harassment claim. Emotional reasoning is now accepted as evidence.
If our universities are teaching students that their emotions can be used effectively as weapons—or at least as evidence in administrative proceedings—then they are teaching students to nurture a kind of hypersensitivity that will lead them into countless drawn-out conflicts in college and beyond. Schools may be training students in thinking styles that will damage their careers and friendships, along with their mental health.
Fortune-Telling and Trigger Warnings
It’s hard to imagine how novels illustrating classism and privilege could provoke or reactivate the kind of terror that is typically implicated in PTSD. Rather, trigger warnings are sometimes demanded for a long list of ideas and attitudes that some students find politically offensive, in the name of preventing other students from being harmed. This is an example of what psychologists call “motivated reasoning”—we spontaneously generate arguments for conclusions we want to support. Once you find something hateful, it is easy to argue that exposure to the hateful thing could traumatize some other people. You believe that you know how others will react, and that their reaction could be devastating. Preventing that devastation becomes a moral obligation for the whole community. Books for which students have called publicly for trigger warnings within the past couple of years include Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (at Rutgers, for “suicidal inclinations”) and Ovid’s Metamorphoses (at Columbia, for sexual assault)...
There is a deeper problem with trigger warnings. According to the most-basic tenets of psychology, the very idea of helping people with anxiety disorders avoid the things they fear is misguided. A person who is trapped in an elevator during a power outage may panic and think she is going to die. That frightening experience can change neural connections in her amygdala, leading to an elevator phobia. If you want this woman to retain her fear for life, you should help her avoid elevators.
But if you want to help her return to normalcy, you should take your cues from Ivan Pavlov and guide her through a process known as exposure therapy. You might start by asking the woman to merely look at an elevator from a distance—standing in a building lobby, perhaps—until her apprehension begins to subside. If nothing bad happens while she’s standing in the lobby—if the fear is not “reinforced”—then she will begin to learn a new association: elevators are not dangerous. (This reduction in fear during exposure is called habituation.) Then, on subsequent days, you might ask her to get closer, and on later days to push the call button, and eventually to step in and go up one floor. This is how the amygdala can get rewired again to associate a previously feared situation with safety or normalcy.
Students who call for trigger warnings may be correct that some of their peers are harboring memories of trauma that could be reactivated by course readings. But they are wrong to try to prevent such reactivations. Students with PTSD should of course get treatment, but they should not try to avoid normal life, with its many opportunities for habituation. Classroom discussions are safe places to be exposed to incidental reminders of trauma (such as the word violate). A discussion of violence is unlikely to be followed by actual violence, so it is a good way to help students change the associations that are causing them discomfort. And they’d better get their habituation done in college, because the world beyond college will be far less willing to accommodate requests for trigger warnings and opt-outs.
The expansive use of trigger warnings may also foster unhealthy mental habits in the vastly larger group of students who do not suffer from PTSD or other anxiety disorders. People acquire their fears not just from their own past experiences, but from social learning as well. If everyone around you acts as though something is dangerous—elevators, certain neighborhoods, novels depicting racism—then you are at risk of acquiring that fear too. The psychiatrist Sarah Roff pointed this out last year in an online article for The Chronicle of Higher Education. “One of my biggest concerns about trigger warnings,” Roff wrote, “is that they will apply not just to those who have experienced trauma, but to all students, creating an atmosphere in which they are encouraged to believe that there is something dangerous or damaging about discussing difficult aspects of our history.”
In an article published last year by Inside Higher Ed, seven humanities professors wrote that the trigger-warning movement was “already having a chilling effect on [their] teaching and pedagogy.” They reported their colleagues’ receiving “phone calls from deans and other administrators investigating student complaints that they have included ‘triggering’ material in their courses, with or without warnings.” A trigger warning, they wrote, “serves as a guarantee that students will not experience unexpected discomfort and implies that if they do, a contract has been broken.” When students come to expect trigger warnings for any material that makes them uncomfortable, the easiest way for faculty to stay out of trouble is to avoid material that might upset the most sensitive student in the class.
Magnification, Labeling, and Microaggressions
In 2013, a student group at UCLA staged a sit-in during a class taught by Val Rust, an education professor. The group read a letter aloud expressing their concerns about the campus’s hostility toward students of color. Although Rust was not explicitly named, the group quite clearly criticized his teaching as microaggressive. In the course of correcting his students’ grammar and spelling, Rust had noted that a student had wrongly capitalized the first letter of the word indigenous. Lowercasing the capital I was an insult to the student and her ideology, the group claimed.
[Ed: Keywords - correct grammar, racist]
Even joking about microaggressions can be seen as an aggression, warranting punishment... A group of women later vandalized Mahmood’s doorway with eggs, hot dogs, gum, and notes with messages such as “Everyone hates you, you violent prick.” When speech comes to be seen as a form of violence, vindictive protectiveness can justify a hostile, and perhaps even violent, response.
In March, the student government at Ithaca College, in upstate New York, went so far as to propose the creation of an anonymous microaggression-reporting system. Student sponsors envisioned some form of disciplinary action against “oppressors” engaged in belittling speech. One of the sponsors of the program said that while “not … every instance will require trial or some kind of harsh punishment,” she wanted the program to be “record-keeping but with impact.”...
What are we doing to our students if we encourage them to develop extra-thin skin in the years just before they leave the cocoon of adult protection and enter the workforce? Would they not be better prepared to flourish if we taught them to question their own emotional reactions, and to give people the benefit of the doubt?
Teaching Students to Catastrophize and Have Zero Tolerance
Administrators at Bergen Community College, in New Jersey, suspended Francis Schmidt, a professor, after he posted a picture of his daughter on his Google+ account. The photo showed her in a yoga pose, wearing a T-shirt that read I will take what is mine with fire & blood, a quote from the HBO show Game of Thrones. Schmidt had filed a grievance against the school about two months earlier after being passed over for a sabbatical. The quote was interpreted as a threat by a campus administrator, who received a notification after Schmidt posted the picture; it had been sent, automatically, to a whole group of contacts. According to Schmidt, a Bergen security official present at a subsequent meeting between administrators and Schmidt thought the word fire could refer to AK-47s.
Then there is the eight-year legal saga at Valdosta State University, in Georgia, where a student was expelled for protesting the construction of a parking garage by posting an allegedly “threatening” collage on Facebook. The collage described the proposed structure as a “memorial” parking garage—a joke referring to a claim by the university president that the garage would be part of his legacy. The president interpreted the collage as a threat against his life...
Smart people do, in fact, overreact to innocuous speech, make mountains out of molehills, and seek punishment for anyone whose words make anyone else feel uncomfortable.
Mental Filtering and Disinvitation Season
According to data compiled by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, since 2000, at least 240 campaigns have been launched at U.S. universities to prevent public figures from appearing at campus events; most of them have occurred since 2009...
Should dislike of part of a person’s record disqualify her altogether from sharing her perspectives?
If campus culture conveys the idea that visitors must be pure, with résumés that never offend generally left-leaning campus sensibilities, then higher education will have taken a further step toward intellectual homogeneity and the creation of an environment in which students rarely encounter diverse viewpoints. And universities will have reinforced the belief that it’s okay to filter out the positive. If students graduate believing that they can learn nothing from people they dislike or from those with whom they disagree, we will have done them a great intellectual disservice.
What Can We Do Now?
Attempts to shield students from words, ideas, and people that might cause them emotional discomfort are bad for the students. They are bad for the workplace, which will be mired in unending litigation if student expectations of safety are carried forward. And they are bad for American democracy, which is already paralyzed by worsening partisanship. When the ideas, values, and speech of the other side are seen not just as wrong but as willfully aggressive toward innocent victims, it is hard to imagine the kind of mutual respect, negotiation, and compromise that are needed to make politics a positive-sum game...
Universities should also officially and strongly discourage trigger warnings. They should endorse the American Association of University Professors’ report on these warnings, which notes, “The presumption that students need to be protected rather than challenged in a classroom is at once infantilizing and anti-intellectual.” Professors should be free to use trigger warnings if they choose to do so, but by explicitly discouraging the practice, universities would help fortify the faculty against student requests for such warnings.
Finally, universities should rethink the skills and values they most want to impart to their incoming students. At present, many freshman-orientation programs try to raise student sensitivity to a nearly impossible level... students should also be taught how to live in a world full of potential offenses. Why not teach incoming students how to practice cognitive behavioral therapy? Given high and rising rates of mental illness, this simple step would be among the most humane and supportive things a university could do... a shared vocabulary about reasoning, common distortions, and the appropriate use of evidence to draw conclusions would facilitate critical thinking and real debate. It would also tone down the perpetual state of outrage that seems to engulf some colleges these days, allowing students’ minds to open more widely to new ideas and new people. A greater commitment to formal, public debate on campus—and to the assembly of a more politically diverse faculty—would further serve that goal."
"A number of popular comedians, including Chris Rock, have stopped performing on college campuses (see Caitlin Flanagan’s article in this month’s issue). Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Maher have publicly condemned the oversensitivity of college students, saying too many of them can’t take a joke...
Some recent campus actions border on the surreal. In April, at Brandeis University, the Asian American student association sought to raise awareness of microaggressions against Asians through an installation on the steps of an academic hall. The installation gave examples of microaggressions such as “Aren’t you supposed to be good at math?” and “I’m colorblind! I don’t see race.” But a backlash arose among other Asian American students, who felt that the display itself was a microaggression. The association removed the installation, and its president wrote an e-mail to the entire student body apologizing to anyone who was “triggered or hurt by the content of the microaggressions.”
This new climate is slowly being institutionalized, and is affecting what can be said in the classroom, even as a basis for discussion. During the 2014–15 school year, for instance, the deans and department chairs at the 10 University of California system schools were presented by administrators at faculty leader-training sessions with examples of microaggressions. The list of offensive statements included: “America is the land of opportunity” and “I believe the most qualified person should get the job”...
The ultimate aim, it seems, is to turn campuses into “safe spaces” where young adults are shielded from words and ideas that make some uncomfortable. And more than the last, this movement seeks to punish anyone who interferes with that aim, even accidentally. You might call this impulse vindictive protectiveness. It is creating a culture in which everyone must think twice before speaking up, lest they face charges of insensitivity, aggression, or worse...
What are the effects of this new protectiveness on the students themselves? Does it benefit the people it is supposed to help? What exactly are students learning when they spend four years or more in a community that polices unintentional slights, places warning labels on works of classic literature, and in many other ways conveys the sense that words can be forms of violence that require strict control by campus authorities, who are expected to act as both protectors and prosecutors?
There’s a saying common in education circles: Don’t teach students what to think; teach them how to think... But vindictive protectiveness teaches students to think in a very different way. It prepares them poorly for professional life, which often demands intellectual engagement with people and ideas one might find uncongenial or wrong. The harm may be more immediate, too. A campus culture devoted to policing speech and punishing speakers is likely to engender patterns of thought that are surprisingly similar to those long identified by cognitive behavioral therapists as causes of depression and anxiety. The new protectiveness may be teaching students to think pathologically...
In a variety of ways, children born after 1980—the Millennials—got a consistent message from adults: life is dangerous, but adults will do everything in their power to protect you from harm, not just from strangers but from one another as well.
These same children grew up in a culture that was (and still is) becoming more politically polarized. Republicans and Democrats have never particularly liked each other, but survey data going back to the 1970s show that on average, their mutual dislike used to be surprisingly mild. Negative feelings have grown steadily stronger, however, particularly since the early 2000s. Political scientists call this process “affective partisan polarization,” and it is a very serious problem for any democracy. As each side increasingly demonizes the other, compromise becomes more difficult. A recent study shows that implicit or unconscious biases are now at least as strong across political parties as they are across races.
So it’s not hard to imagine why students arriving on campus today might be more desirous of protection and more hostile toward ideological opponents than in generations past. This hostility, and the self-righteousness fueled by strong partisan emotions, can be expected to add force to any moral crusade. A principle of moral psychology is that “morality binds and blinds.” Part of what we do when we make moral judgments is express allegiance to a team. But that can interfere with our ability to think critically. Acknowledging that the other side’s viewpoint has any merit is risky—your teammates may see you as a traitor...
Rates of mental illness in young adults have been rising, both on campus and off, in recent decades. Some portion of the increase is surely due to better diagnosis and greater willingness to seek help, but most experts seem to agree that some portion of the trend is real. Nearly all of the campus mental-health directors surveyed in 2013 by the American College Counseling Association reported that the number of students with severe psychological problems was rising at their schools. The rate of emotional distress reported by students themselves is also high, and rising. In a 2014 survey by the American College Health Association, 54 percent of college students surveyed said that they had “felt overwhelming anxiety” in the past 12 months, up from 49 percent in the same survey just five years earlier. Students seem to be reporting more emotional crises; many seem fragile, and this has surely changed the way university faculty and administrators interact with them. The question is whether some of those changes might be doing more harm than good...
Cognitive behavioral therapy teaches good critical-thinking skills, the sort that educators have striven for so long to impart. By almost any definition, critical thinking requires grounding one’s beliefs in evidence rather than in emotion or desire, and learning how to search for and evaluate evidence that might contradict one’s initial hypothesis. But does campus life today foster critical thinking? Or does it coax students to think in more-distorted ways?
Let’s look at recent trends in higher education in light of the distortions that cognitive behavioral therapy identifies. We will draw the names and descriptions of these distortions from David D. Burns’s popular book Feeling Good, as well as from the second edition of Treatment Plans and Interventions for Depression and Anxiety Disorders, by Robert L. Leahy, Stephen J. F. Holland, and Lata K. McGinn.
Higher Education’s Embrace of “Emotional Reasoning”
Emotional reasoning dominates many campus debates and discussions. A claim that someone’s words are “offensive” is not just an expression of one’s own subjective feeling of offendedness. It is, rather, a public charge that the speaker has done something objectively wrong. It is a demand that the speaker apologize or be punished by some authority for committing an offense.
There have always been some people who believe they have a right not to be offended. Yet throughout American history—from the Victorian era to the free-speech activism of the 1960s and ’70s—radicals have pushed boundaries and mocked prevailing sensibilities...
Among the most famous early examples was the so-called water-buffalo incident at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1993, the university charged an Israeli-born student with racial harassment after he yelled “Shut up, you water buffalo!” to a crowd of black sorority women that was making noise at night outside his dorm-room window. Many scholars and pundits at the time could not see how the term water buffalo (a rough translation of a Hebrew insult for a thoughtless or rowdy person) was a racial slur against African Americans, and as a result, the case became international news.
Claims of a right not to be offended have continued to arise since then, and universities have continued to privilege them. In a particularly egregious 2008 case, for instance, Indiana University–Purdue University at Indianapolis found a white student guilty of racial harassment for reading a book titled Notre Dame vs. the Klan. The book honored student opposition to the Ku Klux Klan when it marched on Notre Dame in 1924. Nonetheless, the picture of a Klan rally on the book’s cover offended at least one of the student’s co-workers (he was a janitor as well as a student), and that was enough for a guilty finding by the university’s Affirmative Action Office.
These examples may seem extreme, but the reasoning behind them has become more commonplace on campus in recent years. Last year, at the University of St. Thomas, in Minnesota, an event called Hump Day, which would have allowed people to pet a camel, was abruptly canceled. Students had created a Facebook group where they protested the event for animal cruelty, for being a waste of money, and for being insensitive to people from the Middle East. The inspiration for the camel had almost certainly come from a popular TV commercial in which a camel saunters around an office on a Wednesday, celebrating “hump day”; it was devoid of any reference to Middle Eastern peoples. Nevertheless, the group organizing the event announced on its Facebook page that the event would be canceled because the “program [was] dividing people and would make for an uncomfortable and possibly unsafe environment.”
Because there is a broad ban in academic circles on “blaming the victim,” it is generally considered unacceptable to question the reasonableness (let alone the sincerity) of someone’s emotional state, particularly if those emotions are linked to one’s group identity. The thin argument “I’m offended” becomes an unbeatable trump card. This leads to what Jonathan Rauch, a contributing editor at this magazine, calls the “offendedness sweepstakes,” in which opposing parties use claims of offense as cudgels. In the process, the bar for what we consider unacceptable speech is lowered further and further...
Everyone is supposed to rely upon his or her own subjective feelings to decide whether a comment by a professor or a fellow student is unwelcome, and therefore grounds for a harassment claim. Emotional reasoning is now accepted as evidence.
If our universities are teaching students that their emotions can be used effectively as weapons—or at least as evidence in administrative proceedings—then they are teaching students to nurture a kind of hypersensitivity that will lead them into countless drawn-out conflicts in college and beyond. Schools may be training students in thinking styles that will damage their careers and friendships, along with their mental health.
Fortune-Telling and Trigger Warnings
It’s hard to imagine how novels illustrating classism and privilege could provoke or reactivate the kind of terror that is typically implicated in PTSD. Rather, trigger warnings are sometimes demanded for a long list of ideas and attitudes that some students find politically offensive, in the name of preventing other students from being harmed. This is an example of what psychologists call “motivated reasoning”—we spontaneously generate arguments for conclusions we want to support. Once you find something hateful, it is easy to argue that exposure to the hateful thing could traumatize some other people. You believe that you know how others will react, and that their reaction could be devastating. Preventing that devastation becomes a moral obligation for the whole community. Books for which students have called publicly for trigger warnings within the past couple of years include Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (at Rutgers, for “suicidal inclinations”) and Ovid’s Metamorphoses (at Columbia, for sexual assault)...
There is a deeper problem with trigger warnings. According to the most-basic tenets of psychology, the very idea of helping people with anxiety disorders avoid the things they fear is misguided. A person who is trapped in an elevator during a power outage may panic and think she is going to die. That frightening experience can change neural connections in her amygdala, leading to an elevator phobia. If you want this woman to retain her fear for life, you should help her avoid elevators.
But if you want to help her return to normalcy, you should take your cues from Ivan Pavlov and guide her through a process known as exposure therapy. You might start by asking the woman to merely look at an elevator from a distance—standing in a building lobby, perhaps—until her apprehension begins to subside. If nothing bad happens while she’s standing in the lobby—if the fear is not “reinforced”—then she will begin to learn a new association: elevators are not dangerous. (This reduction in fear during exposure is called habituation.) Then, on subsequent days, you might ask her to get closer, and on later days to push the call button, and eventually to step in and go up one floor. This is how the amygdala can get rewired again to associate a previously feared situation with safety or normalcy.
Students who call for trigger warnings may be correct that some of their peers are harboring memories of trauma that could be reactivated by course readings. But they are wrong to try to prevent such reactivations. Students with PTSD should of course get treatment, but they should not try to avoid normal life, with its many opportunities for habituation. Classroom discussions are safe places to be exposed to incidental reminders of trauma (such as the word violate). A discussion of violence is unlikely to be followed by actual violence, so it is a good way to help students change the associations that are causing them discomfort. And they’d better get their habituation done in college, because the world beyond college will be far less willing to accommodate requests for trigger warnings and opt-outs.
The expansive use of trigger warnings may also foster unhealthy mental habits in the vastly larger group of students who do not suffer from PTSD or other anxiety disorders. People acquire their fears not just from their own past experiences, but from social learning as well. If everyone around you acts as though something is dangerous—elevators, certain neighborhoods, novels depicting racism—then you are at risk of acquiring that fear too. The psychiatrist Sarah Roff pointed this out last year in an online article for The Chronicle of Higher Education. “One of my biggest concerns about trigger warnings,” Roff wrote, “is that they will apply not just to those who have experienced trauma, but to all students, creating an atmosphere in which they are encouraged to believe that there is something dangerous or damaging about discussing difficult aspects of our history.”
In an article published last year by Inside Higher Ed, seven humanities professors wrote that the trigger-warning movement was “already having a chilling effect on [their] teaching and pedagogy.” They reported their colleagues’ receiving “phone calls from deans and other administrators investigating student complaints that they have included ‘triggering’ material in their courses, with or without warnings.” A trigger warning, they wrote, “serves as a guarantee that students will not experience unexpected discomfort and implies that if they do, a contract has been broken.” When students come to expect trigger warnings for any material that makes them uncomfortable, the easiest way for faculty to stay out of trouble is to avoid material that might upset the most sensitive student in the class.
Magnification, Labeling, and Microaggressions
In 2013, a student group at UCLA staged a sit-in during a class taught by Val Rust, an education professor. The group read a letter aloud expressing their concerns about the campus’s hostility toward students of color. Although Rust was not explicitly named, the group quite clearly criticized his teaching as microaggressive. In the course of correcting his students’ grammar and spelling, Rust had noted that a student had wrongly capitalized the first letter of the word indigenous. Lowercasing the capital I was an insult to the student and her ideology, the group claimed.
[Ed: Keywords - correct grammar, racist]
Even joking about microaggressions can be seen as an aggression, warranting punishment... A group of women later vandalized Mahmood’s doorway with eggs, hot dogs, gum, and notes with messages such as “Everyone hates you, you violent prick.” When speech comes to be seen as a form of violence, vindictive protectiveness can justify a hostile, and perhaps even violent, response.
In March, the student government at Ithaca College, in upstate New York, went so far as to propose the creation of an anonymous microaggression-reporting system. Student sponsors envisioned some form of disciplinary action against “oppressors” engaged in belittling speech. One of the sponsors of the program said that while “not … every instance will require trial or some kind of harsh punishment,” she wanted the program to be “record-keeping but with impact.”...
What are we doing to our students if we encourage them to develop extra-thin skin in the years just before they leave the cocoon of adult protection and enter the workforce? Would they not be better prepared to flourish if we taught them to question their own emotional reactions, and to give people the benefit of the doubt?
Teaching Students to Catastrophize and Have Zero Tolerance
Administrators at Bergen Community College, in New Jersey, suspended Francis Schmidt, a professor, after he posted a picture of his daughter on his Google+ account. The photo showed her in a yoga pose, wearing a T-shirt that read I will take what is mine with fire & blood, a quote from the HBO show Game of Thrones. Schmidt had filed a grievance against the school about two months earlier after being passed over for a sabbatical. The quote was interpreted as a threat by a campus administrator, who received a notification after Schmidt posted the picture; it had been sent, automatically, to a whole group of contacts. According to Schmidt, a Bergen security official present at a subsequent meeting between administrators and Schmidt thought the word fire could refer to AK-47s.
Then there is the eight-year legal saga at Valdosta State University, in Georgia, where a student was expelled for protesting the construction of a parking garage by posting an allegedly “threatening” collage on Facebook. The collage described the proposed structure as a “memorial” parking garage—a joke referring to a claim by the university president that the garage would be part of his legacy. The president interpreted the collage as a threat against his life...
Smart people do, in fact, overreact to innocuous speech, make mountains out of molehills, and seek punishment for anyone whose words make anyone else feel uncomfortable.
Mental Filtering and Disinvitation Season
According to data compiled by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, since 2000, at least 240 campaigns have been launched at U.S. universities to prevent public figures from appearing at campus events; most of them have occurred since 2009...
Should dislike of part of a person’s record disqualify her altogether from sharing her perspectives?
If campus culture conveys the idea that visitors must be pure, with résumés that never offend generally left-leaning campus sensibilities, then higher education will have taken a further step toward intellectual homogeneity and the creation of an environment in which students rarely encounter diverse viewpoints. And universities will have reinforced the belief that it’s okay to filter out the positive. If students graduate believing that they can learn nothing from people they dislike or from those with whom they disagree, we will have done them a great intellectual disservice.
What Can We Do Now?
Attempts to shield students from words, ideas, and people that might cause them emotional discomfort are bad for the students. They are bad for the workplace, which will be mired in unending litigation if student expectations of safety are carried forward. And they are bad for American democracy, which is already paralyzed by worsening partisanship. When the ideas, values, and speech of the other side are seen not just as wrong but as willfully aggressive toward innocent victims, it is hard to imagine the kind of mutual respect, negotiation, and compromise that are needed to make politics a positive-sum game...
Universities should also officially and strongly discourage trigger warnings. They should endorse the American Association of University Professors’ report on these warnings, which notes, “The presumption that students need to be protected rather than challenged in a classroom is at once infantilizing and anti-intellectual.” Professors should be free to use trigger warnings if they choose to do so, but by explicitly discouraging the practice, universities would help fortify the faculty against student requests for such warnings.
Finally, universities should rethink the skills and values they most want to impart to their incoming students. At present, many freshman-orientation programs try to raise student sensitivity to a nearly impossible level... students should also be taught how to live in a world full of potential offenses. Why not teach incoming students how to practice cognitive behavioral therapy? Given high and rising rates of mental illness, this simple step would be among the most humane and supportive things a university could do... a shared vocabulary about reasoning, common distortions, and the appropriate use of evidence to draw conclusions would facilitate critical thinking and real debate. It would also tone down the perpetual state of outrage that seems to engulf some colleges these days, allowing students’ minds to open more widely to new ideas and new people. A greater commitment to formal, public debate on campus—and to the assembly of a more politically diverse faculty—would further serve that goal."
Post ID: 1506939727071173767
Wednesday, August 12, 2015
Wtf.
Alvin Tan 陈杰毅 - Not many of you know this, but, in 2003, my...
"Not many of you know this, but, in 2003, my grandfather passed away due to respiratory failure. The day he passed, I was with him the entire day. He refused to go to the hospital and instead wanted to die at home.
As I sent by his bed, he awoke at one point wishing to speak with me. He asked me if I would promise to do one last thing for him before he passed. I tried to stray his thoughts away from such inauspicious things, refusing to accept that his death was near, but he insisted. I gave my word.
He then told me he wanted to orgasm one last time, but, seeing as my grandmother had passed, he knew no one else who could assist him. I was a little taken aback but not nearly as much as I thought I would be. He said all he wanted was a simple handjob to get the job done.
After some deep deliberation, I obliged and began to go to work. As I was stroking his cock, I unwittingly became slightly aroused myself. After about 10 minutes in, he still hadn't climaxed, yet I was at full erect length by now.
I began to undress almost as if in a trance controlled purely by complete arousal. As he was all but immobile, I mounted him sticking his cock deep into my ass. At one point, during intercourse, he let out what seemed to be a gasp/moan.
I assumed he had orgasmed but wasn't entirely sure. I looked up to see his face only to see a still body before me. He had died while I was riding him. The official autopsy report was that he died due to respiratory failure due to some sort of heavy pressure on his chest (I didn't inform them what had happened between me and him).
When I think back on that day, one might think I might feel guilt as to his death, but I don't. I know, even though I may have caused his death, he died in what I assume would not be the worst death. And he'll remain in my prayers, for now and ever..."
"Not many of you know this, but, in 2003, my grandfather passed away due to respiratory failure. The day he passed, I was with him the entire day. He refused to go to the hospital and instead wanted to die at home.
As I sent by his bed, he awoke at one point wishing to speak with me. He asked me if I would promise to do one last thing for him before he passed. I tried to stray his thoughts away from such inauspicious things, refusing to accept that his death was near, but he insisted. I gave my word.
He then told me he wanted to orgasm one last time, but, seeing as my grandmother had passed, he knew no one else who could assist him. I was a little taken aback but not nearly as much as I thought I would be. He said all he wanted was a simple handjob to get the job done.
After some deep deliberation, I obliged and began to go to work. As I was stroking his cock, I unwittingly became slightly aroused myself. After about 10 minutes in, he still hadn't climaxed, yet I was at full erect length by now.
I began to undress almost as if in a trance controlled purely by complete arousal. As he was all but immobile, I mounted him sticking his cock deep into my ass. At one point, during intercourse, he let out what seemed to be a gasp/moan.
I assumed he had orgasmed but wasn't entirely sure. I looked up to see his face only to see a still body before me. He had died while I was riding him. The official autopsy report was that he died due to respiratory failure due to some sort of heavy pressure on his chest (I didn't inform them what had happened between me and him).
When I think back on that day, one might think I might feel guilt as to his death, but I don't. I know, even though I may have caused his death, he died in what I assume would not be the worst death. And he'll remain in my prayers, for now and ever..."
Post ID: 4222002090924196605
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