How Economics Can Help You Prepare For The Zombie Apocalypse
I love this.
via @reasonpolicy
Statins: They Just Trade One Set Of Risk Factors For Another
Terrific post by Dr. Michael Eades on statins. You should go to his site and read the whole thing, but here's an essential excerpt:
Statins do not decrease all-cause mortality in the vast majority of people. Long-term studies have never been able to demonstrate that women of any age or with any degree of heart disease live longer by taking statins. The same long-term studies show that men over the age of 65 live no longer by taking statins. Men under 65 who have never had heart disease - and were talking actual heart disease here, not just an elevated cholesterol level - gain no longevity benefit from taking statins. The only small group of people who have been shown to benefit from statins are men under 65 who have had a heart attack. But unfortunately that benefit is small.Multiple studies have shown that taking statins does reduce both the incidence and severity of heart attacks. But these same studies don't show any increase in longevity for those taking statins (other than the small benefit for men under 65 who have had heart attacks). Why. Statins simply trade one risk for another. Take them and you reduce the risk of a heart attack but increase your risk for cancer, diabetes, kidney failure, and side effects related to the drugs themselves. Many people die each year from statin-induced side effects. Despite what anyone may tell you, statins are not benign drugs.
The Police Are Addicted To Drug Money
Law prof Jonathan Turley writes in USA Today about policing for profits:
Across the country, citizens are increasingly finding themselves stopped on routine traffic stops or sobriety checkpoints only to be subjected to extensive questioning and searches. At a time of decreasing budgets, police seem to be hitting the streets in search of their own sources of funding.Federal and state officers are tapping into an increasingly lucrative tactic called "churning" or "policing for profits." This is how it often works:
Officers stop cars on a pretext such as not using a turn signal and then ask a series of questions about drugs or contraband in the car. If the driver does not consent to a search, officers will sometime declare that the driver is acting suspiciously and call in a drug dog or search the passenger for their own personal safety. Any drugs found can then be used to seize the car and any money inside of it. The result is that police are mining our highways for jackpot stops.
Churning has become the self-help solution for some federal agencies. The most recent example of this trend was highlighted by an investigation into the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The Justice Department's inspector general found that the ATF conducted dozens of unauthorized undercover investigations into illicit cigarette sales and lost track of 420 million cigarettes worth $127 million. The investigation concluded that the ATF was engaging in churning operations designed to fund its operations and misused $162 million in profits.
...The Supreme Court allowed such deceptive use of stops in 1996 when it declared that it would no longer consider the motivations of police for such stops. Once allowed to engage in pretext stops, police have every motivation to use the tactic. To put it simply, police are developing an addiction to drug money.
Consider the case of George Reby, an insurance adjuster from New Jersey. Last year, he was stopped in Tennessee by officer Larry Bates for speeding and asked whether he had a large quantity of money. Reby said he had about $20,000 and explained that he planned to buy a car. Bates seized the money. He did not arrest Reby, mind you. Reby committed no crime. The officer stated that police would keep the money until Reby could prove to their satisfaction that it was legitimate.
Is this the country you thought you were living in?
Yet Another Obama Believer Finds Out How Naive She Was
Carol Marin writes in the Chicago Sun-Times about a woman who used to work for Rep. Bill Foster of Illinois, a Democrat who lost his seat mainly because of voters pissed off about Obamacare.
Marin quotes this email she recently sent to Foster and other Democratic colleagues:
"I spent two years defending Obamacare. I had constituents scream at me, spit at me and call me names that I can't put in print. The congressman was not re-elected in 2010 mainly because of the anti-Obamacare anger. When the congressman was not re-elected, I also (along with the rest of our staff) lost my job. I was upset that because of the health care issue, I didn't have a job anymore but still defended Obamacare because it would make health care available to everyone at, what I assumed, would be an affordable price. I have now learned that I was wrong. Very wrong."
Marin continues:
For Klinkhamer, 60, President Obama's oft-repeated words ring in her ears: "If you like your health plan, you will keep it."Well, possibly not.
When Klinkhamer lost her congressional job, she had to buy an individual policy on the open market.
Three years ago, it was $225 a month with a $2,500 deductible. Each year it went up a little to, as of Sept. 1, $291 with a $3,500 deductible. Then, a few weeks ago, she got a letter.
"Blue Cross," she said, "stated my current coverage would expire on Dec. 31, and here are my options: I can have a plan with similar benefits for $647.12 [or] I can have a plan with similar [but higher] pricing for $322.32 but with a $6,500 deductible."
She went on, "Blue Cross also tells me that if I don't pick one of the options, they will just assume I want the one for $647. ... Someone please tell me why my premium in January will be $356 more than in December?"
Um, because, for example, my 60-something friend, who, after having three children, went through menopause some years ago, is now forced to have maternity care and prenatal care. To name one example.
Not everybody wants the plan with everything. But now we're all being forced to have it.
The Tricky-Wicky Of Obamacare
It takes the choice out of healthcare -- even for those who liked theirs. And that's no accident, but part of the plan. From the WSJ:
Until this month, consumers who weren't insured through their jobs were allowed to buy insurance that provides the best value based on their own needs. One of every 10 private policies is sold through the individual market, covering about 7% of the U.S. population under age 65.Some states have ruined this market through regulation and price controls, and in others costs can be high. But the individual market works well for millions of people, who can choose from many plans--from Cadillac coverage to cheaper protection against catastrophic illness.
The political problem for the White House is that these choices are a threat to ObamaCare. If too many people keep these policies instead of joining the government exchanges, ObamaCare could fail. HHS has thus reviewed the decisions of people in the individual market and found them wanting. HHS believes as a matter of political philosophy that everyone should have the same kind of insurance, and in the name of equity it wrote rules dictating the benefits that all plans must cover and how they must be financed.
In most cases these mandates are more comprehensive and thus more expensive than the status quo, but the ObamaCare refugees aren't merely facing higher costs. The plans they want and are willing to pay for have been intentionally outlawed. Ponder that one.
Liberals claim the new insurance should cost more because it's better, at least as defined by liberal paternalism. But the real reason they want policies to cost more is to drive as many people as possible out of this market and into the subsidized ObamaCare exchanges.
The exchanges need these customers to finance ObamaCare's balance sheet and stabilize its risk pools. On the exchanges, individuals earning more than $46,000 or a family of four above $94,000 don't qualify for subsidies and must buy overpriced insurance. If these middle-class ObamaCare losers can be forced into the exchanges, they become financiers of the new pay-as-you-go entitlement.
Here's a comment from the WSJ:
David Sherrill
I am self-employed and have high income/net worth. I had a high-deductible policy that met my financial risk profile--but does not meet the HHS requirements. I have to drop my current policy and buy a new one that offers coverage I don't need at 3 times the cost.
Read at the WSJ link how the regulations got rewritten in order to funnel everyone into Obamacare.
Oh, and thank you so much, Republicans, for being the pretend party of small government and for being so fixated on social conservatism that split off libertarians who might've voted for Mitt -- not my candidate but better than Obama.
The Brilliant Mr. Hitchens
Some great moments here with a bright-burning intellect:
Minx
As in, "you little." A close relative of lynx and its close relatives.
The Dicktionary
Please do not use the word "mansplain." It makes me want to hurt you. I'm sure other people feel the same way.
The TSA Redecorates -- In Pink! (How To Have Your Rights And Your Genitals Violated In More Comfortable And Pleasing Surroundings)
It only seems like a post from The Onion. It's actually a post on Fodors.com, by Seth Miller, "TSA to Design Calm, Stress-Free Checkpoints."
Of course, the way you "design" these is by letting me go straight through from the door of the airport to my gate, without violating my right not to be searched without reasonable suspicion that I have committed a crime.
And frankly, the current prison-like setting of the TSA checkpoint and the prison-like manner in which I am force to "spread 'em" and be groped by a matron in a prison guard costume are completely fitting.
Of course, gullible and apathetic Americans will probably cheer the redecoration and not see that it's yet another push to make them increasingly docile when their rights are being taken from them.
Here's an excerpt from the post:
Plush couches, wall art, and soothing ambient music are not what travelers typically think of when approaching the TSA screening checkpoints. For passengers at two airports, however, that's exactly what they will find, thanks to a partnership between Marriott's SpringHill Suites and SecurityPoint Media. The two have partnered up to transform the pre-screening waiting area and the post-screening recomposure area into relaxing, comfortable environments, hoping to lower the stress levels of travelers. The new checkpoint layouts are available today at the E18 checkpoint of Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport and at the E checkpoint at Charlotte-Douglass International Airport....While waiting in line prior to screening passengers will no longer have TSA screeners barking information; the rules and reminders will be provided via recorded messages interspersed with ambient music. There will also be video displays showing TSA reminders, estimated wait times, and sponsor messages. Couches and tables comparable to a hotel lobby will greet those same customers as they exit the screening area; that should be much more comfortable than the metal benches (or nothing) commonly available.
Here's a picture.
Will getting groped (when there's no suspicion that you've done anything beyond buying a ticket to visit your mom) and having the Constitution ignored in pink light make you feel better?
Should You Take Ecstasy To Improve Your Marriage?
Interesting piece by Brian David Earp, a research fellow at Oxford's Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, co-authored by Julian Savulescu and Anders Sandberg. "Not so fast," they say, probably, in part because they are putting this out through a university. They advise that "ectasy has very complex effects on the brain, not all of which are fully understood, and many of which can be dangerous."
I took ecstasy in New York, when I was feeling lost and having a hard time, and I believe it helped me. But I have to concede that they are right, that you don't really know what you're getting outside of a research lab.
Here is what they write about what they call "the broader context" of the marriage part of the question:
We think that modern relationships are as fragile as they are in large part because there is a mismatch between our psycho-sexual natures (designed by evolution to handle the mating arrangements of our ancestors on the African savannah) and our modern relationship values (designed for very different reasons, under completely different conditions). In short, we weren't built for lifelong monogamy, and it's no huge surprise that we struggle to pull it off. So what should we do?There are many possible answers. One route we could take is to re-consider our values - maybe lifelong love and sexual exclusivity are not something we should be striving for in the first place. There are some arguments for this position, and some may find them convincing. But most will not. Recent surveys show that a large majority of unmarried people still wish to meet at the altar with someone they love, and a raft of evidence shows that successful, committed relationships are conducive to well-being, increasing physical and emotional health, and even longevity. Strong marriages are also in the best interests of children, as we take the time to show in our Philosophy & Technology piece. Accordingly, we suggest that it may be time to explore other possibilities: boosting our psycho-biologies to "rise" to the level of our values. We call this the neuroenhancement of human relationships, and it's where all the talk about "love drugs" comes into play.
Note that the goal here is not to kindle some arbitrary attraction out of thin air like love potions do in fairy tales, but to help existing love survive the test of time. Scientists do not yet understand the attraction system well enough to allow us to conjecture whether love potions of the fairy-tale variety are even possible. And even if they were, they would pose a number of moral problems since they could create inauthentic relationships with no real grounding in the actual compatibilities of the individuals involved. In contrast, our arguments examined the possibility of using love drugs to make authentic relationships last.
Why Ever Cut The Umbilical Cord?
As Lucy Steigerwald put it in her tweet:
@LucyStag
There is a lot of new, and creepy, technology parents can use to track their kids.
Judith Shulevitz writes in The New Republic about her son and all the possibilities to spy on him:
For the iPhone I will soon be buying him, I can get an iPhone Spy Stick, to be plugged into a USB port while he sleeps; it downloads Web histories, e-mails, and text messages, even the deleted ones. Or I can get Mobile Spy, software that would let me follow, in real time, his online activity and geographical location. Also available are an innocent-looking iPhone Dock Camera that would recharge his battery while surreptitiously recording video in his room, and a voice-activated audio monitor, presumably for the wild parties he's going to throw when his father and I go out of town.Had such science-fiction-worthy products somehow become acceptable while I wasn't watching? Apparently they had. When ZDNet conducted an online debate about parental espionage a few weeks ago, 82 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that parents "should be able to observe the full data feeds of what their children post and receive via Facebook, text, email, and any other application or service used on their devices. It is a parent's right to 'violate' their child's notion of 'privacy.'" When a media researcher interviewed 21 parents in three Canadian cities in 2011, only three said that they had faith in their children and that they found such hypervigilance "harmful."
I don't think of myself as lacking vigilance. I police homework and try to control junk-food intake. I have a password-protected laptop and parental controls activated on the house Mac. I've refused to set up the Xbox Live for multiplayer gaming with strangers and turned on the anti-pornograpic SafeSearch feature on Google. But I can only go so far. In a moment of laxness I'm not as ashamed of as I probably should be, I let my son open a Gmail account without demanding his password. I'm declining to investigate whether he may secretly have a Facebook page. His friends do their communicating online, just as mine do, and it makes me queasy to force him out to the edges of the conversation.
How far should parents go in monitoring and controlling their kids? How far do you go if you're a parent?
Another tweet.
Knish
Like a link but filled with potatoes. Likely to cause you to sink to the bottom if you're thrown in water.
For This Cheerleader, The Pom-poms Come With
The furry bits on a Chinese Crested's feet, head, and tail are called their "furnishings." I find that funny.
We're now working on training. No, not Aida. She comes when she's called, sits, stays, and learned to obey a new command (so she wouldn't mow through her food so fast) in about 30 seconds the other day.
Gregg, on the other hand, is still learning to pretend to be firm with her. Or at least to sound that way.
I am, as I would call it, "appropriately firm" or, as Gregg would call it, "Adolf Hitler."
What Did The President Know And When Did He Know It?
"Answer: Not much, and about a minute ago," as Dana Milbank puts it in the WaPo:
For a smart man, President Obama professes to know very little about a great number of things going on in his administration.On Sunday night, the Wall Street Journal reported that he didn't learn until this summer that the National Security Agency had been bugging the phones of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other world leaders for nearly five years.
That followed by a few days a claim by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that Obama didn't know about problems with the HealthCare.gov Web site before the rest of the world learned of them after the Oct. 1 launch.
It stretches credulity to think that the United States was spying on world leaders without the president's knowledge, or that he was blissfully unaware of huge technical problems that threatened to undermine his main legislative achievement. But on issues including the IRS targeting flap and the Justice Department's use of subpoenas against reporters, White House officials have frequently given a variation on this theme.
How bout that "transparency"? (Call it "don't know, don't tell.")
via @Mugger1955
Obama Lied. (On The Bright Side, At Least No One Dies From Sticker Shock)
Where are all the people who hated everything George Bush ever did, including the way he breathed? (Just on principle, ya know. No...not because they're Democrats and Bush is a Republican.)
Turns out the Obama administration knew all along that millions wouldn't be able to keep their health insurance -- one of his big, bold promises (that I, for one, didn't believe) when he was trying to sell the country on his plan.
Lisa Myers and Hannah Rappleye write at NBCNews.com (at a link no longer good -- see below -- and see below for the edited story and new link):
Four sources deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act tell NBC NEWS that 50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a "cancellation" letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don't meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. One expert predicts that number could reach as high as 80 percent. And all say that many of those forced to buy pricier new policies will experience "sticker shock."None of this should come as a shock to the Obama administration. The law states that policies in effect as of March 23, 2010 will be "grandfathered," meaning consumers can keep those policies even though they don't meet requirements of the new health care law. But the Department of Health and Human Services then wrote regulations that narrowed that provision, by saying that if any part of a policy was significantly changed since that date -- the deductible, co-pay, or benefits, for example -- the policy would not be grandfathered.
Buried in Obamacare regulations from July 2010 is an estimate that because of normal turnover in the individual insurance market, "40 to 67 percent" of customers will not be able to keep their policy. And because many policies will have been changed since the key date, "the percentage of individual market policies losing grandfather status in a given year exceeds the 40 to 67 percent range."
That means the administration knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them.
..."This says that when they made the promise, they knew half the people in this market outright couldn't keep what they had and then they wrote the rules so that others couldn't make it either," said Robert Laszewski, of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, a consultant who works for health industry firms. Laszewski estimates that 80 percent of those in the individual market will not be able to keep their current policies and will have to buy insurance that meets requirements of the new law, which generally requires a richer package of benefits than most policies today.
An example:
George Schwab, 62, of North Carolina, said he was "perfectly happy" with his plan from Blue Cross Blue Shield, which also insured his wife for a $228 monthly premium. But this past September, he was surprised to receive a letter saying his policy was no longer available. The "comparable" plan the insurance company offered him carried a $1,208 monthly premium and a $5,500 deductible.And the best option he's found on the exchange so far offered a 415 percent jump in premium, to $948 a month.
"The deductible is less," he said, "But the plan doesn't meet my needs. Its unaffordable."
"I'm sitting here looking at this, thinking we ought to just pay the fine and just get insurance when we're sick," Schwab added. "Everybody's worried about whether the website works or not, but that's fixable. That's just the tip of the iceberg. This stuff isn't fixable."
UPDATE: NBC drops, then edits, then reposts the edited story under a new URL. Weasel Zippers has the story.
It's Like Suing Somebody For Standing Next To You
Appropriately put by Mike Masnick on techdirt -- "from the wtf dept":
A class action lawsuit has been launched by a small group of Yelp reviewers, trying to make the (laughable and ridiculous) case that reviewers on the site are actually unpaid employees who are now demanding compensation. It appears that they're hoping the recent success of a few lawsuits involving "unpaid internships" will now carry over to user-generated content sites as well. To put it mildly, this is incredibly stupid.Nothing about the relationship of a Yelp reviewer to the company is anything like an employment situation (or even an intern situation). They aren't "hired." They don't have responsibilities or jobs that they have to do. They volunteer to share some reviews because they want to do so. Everyone has their own motivations for why, but the idea that it's some sort of unpaid employment situation is ludicrous. The entire argument seems to hinge on the idea that Yelp gets value out of their reviews. Well, duh. But that doesn't make it an employment situation at all.
via @overlawyered
Inky
The Missing L.
Absurd In Detroit
A piece by Jarrett Skorup on MichiganCapitalConfidential.com on the challenges faced by small business owners operating in Detroit:
"One year, I get an awning tax and I call the city, and say, 'I don't even know what that is.' When I finally could get a hold of someone who could explain it to me, they says, 'Well, your awning is over a city sidewalk and you will be taxed yearly.'"
This is just one absurd example, but it it has cousins throughout the U.S. People in elected office -- whether City Council or U.S. Senate -- think that they can solve every problem by sucking more and more money out of the taxpayers. It's why a street cleaning ticket (for forgetting to move your car on street cleaning day) was $25 a few years ago and is now $68.
We're paying for, for example, that "El Grito" festival the LA City Councilturds spent $100K of our money on. Simone Wilson writes at LAWeekly.com:
To add irony to insult, native Olvera Street shops say they don't benefit from El Grito (like Silver Lake businesses would have, from the Junction crowd), because "the promoters bring in vendors who compete directly with the stands and family owned businesses."
via @reasonpolicy
Haydn Killed By Cell Phone
From Norman Lebrecht at ArtsJournal.com:
At a concert in Gothenburg Concert Hall on October 23, 2013, Christian Zacharias stopped playing in the middle of Haydn's Piano Concerto, after a phone went off in the audience. The faces of the orchestral players are a study in horror, affront and incomprehension.
Kenneth Terrell and Sara Hammel wrote in US News in 1999: "During a performance last March of the Broadway play The Lion in Winter, an audience member's cell phone rang. After putting up with the annoyance for 20 seconds, actor Laurence Fishburne stopped the scene and boomed: 'Will you turn off that f - - - ing phone, please?' He got a rousing ovation."
My phone is on vibrate when it's in my purse and I'm out and about, and when I go to a movie or a concert, it's off. Off, off, off.
Why is this so difficult for people?
You'll Soon Look Back Fondly On The Days The TSA Only Groped Your Genitals
Catherine Crawford writes at Venice Patch:
Here are five new stealthy scans you might unwittingly undergo (well) before boarding your next flight:1) Your employment and any criminal information. The T.S.A. has within its grasp all of our tax identification numbers and law enforcement information.
2) Your debtors. According to The New York Times, "an update about the T.S.A.'s Transportation Security Enforcement Record System, which contains information about travelers accused of 'violations or potential violations' of security regulations, warns that the records may be shared with a debt collection agency for the purpose of debt collection." 'Potential'? Yikes.
3) Your car registration: Because you drive to the airport, now the T.S.A. gets to look at this? Sure, the "T" stands for Transportation, but the bulk of T.S.A.'s work has to do with airline security. Why is my car involved?
The "NYT picks" comments on the NYT article are worth reading.
Obamacare's Subsidy Dividing Line: Earn Less, Take Home More
In 2010, Ted Frank pointed out the idiocy:
According to the Kaiser Foundation's Health Reform Subsidy Calculator (via IBD), a 62-year-old in a high-cost area earning $46,000 a year without health insurance is entitled to a $7,836 government tax credit. Leaving aside how our strapped government can afford that, here's what's interesting: if the same person makes a mistake and earns an extra $22 in income, he loses the entire $7,836 credit. (The cutoff, according to Kaiser, is between $46,021 and $46,022.)
He notes that the person will have more in take-home pay if they earn $46K instead of $55K.
Yes, you are punished for earning more in the Obamaconomy!
The Fainting Woman Episode Seems Pretty Scammy
A regular commenter who wishes to remain anonymous sent me this link:
Hinky
Links with hink.
Advice Goddess Radio, LIVE SHOW! Tonight, 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET: Harvard Business School's Michael Wheeler On How Adaptation Is The Key To Successful Negotiation
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in therapy and research.
There have been two major schools on negotiating -- Ury, Fisher and Patton's "win-win"/"relationships are everything" approach and Roger Cohen's "nail 'em to the wall" hardball approach.
Harvard Business School professor Michael Wheeler finds that these rigid, one-size-fits-all strategies often clash with the real-world realities of negotiating. Drawing on his and his colleagues' research, he finds that the most successful negotiating techniques are born of an ability to adapt while negotiating, and use agility, creativity, and wise preparation.
He'll advise us all on how to adapt (and do all the rest) in order to win in negotiation, the subject of his book we'll be discussing on the show, "The Art of Negotiation: How to Improvise Agreement in a Chaotic World."
Listen at this link from 7-8 pm Pacific, 10-11 pm Eastern, or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/10/28/harvards-michael-wheeler-adaptation-is-key-to-negotiation
Don't miss last week's show, on which my guest argues for a less confident world and a more realistically confident one.
Confidence is not all it's cracked up to be, especially because what we laud as confidence is too often actually overconfidence, lack of self-knowledge, and unreasonable expectations about ourselves and the way the world works. This kind of "confidence" also doesn't play as well as we often think it does in impressing and persuading others.
My guest, Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, wants to help you achieve realistic confidence -- confidence based on competence. He is a professor of business psychology at University College of London, the author of seven books and numerous studies, and an authority in personality assessment, consumer analytics, and talent management. His book we'll be discussing on the show is "Conf!dence: Overcoming Low Self-Esteem, Insecurity, and Self-Doubt."
Listen at this link or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/10/21/dr-chamorro-premuzic-true-confidence-through-competence
Join me and my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.
The New Information Economy (In Which "Paying For Things" Is A Quaint Old Custom)
I wrote to a friend that all the bloggers science bloggers howling about Bora (who, by any real-world standard, as opposed to the victim-feminist standard, did not harass anyone) should actually be complaining about how they're expected to work for free.
Tim Kreider writes in The New York Times about being asked three times in a week to write an original piece for publication or give a prepared speech in exchange for ZERO dollars:
People who would consider it a bizarre breach of conduct to expect anyone to give them a haircut or a can of soda at no cost will ask you, with a straight face and a clear conscience, whether you wouldn't be willing to write an essay or draw an illustration for them for nothing. They often start by telling you how much they admire your work, although not enough, evidently, to pay one cent for it. "Unfortunately we don't have the budget to offer compensation to our contributors..." is how the pertinent line usually starts. But just as often, they simply omit any mention of payment.
I love when they tell me I'll get "exposure." I'm not 20 and just starting to write, first of all, and as Kreider points out:
"Artist Dies of Exposure" goes the rueful joke.
He continues:
In fairness, most of the people who ask me to write things for free, with the exception of Arianna Huffington, aren't the Man; they're editors of struggling magazines or sites, or school administrators who are probably telling me the truth about their budgets. The economy is still largely in ruins, thanks to the people who "drive the economy" by doing imaginary things on Wall Street, and there just isn't much money left to spare for people who do actual things anymore....I now contribute to some of the most prestigious online publications in the English-speaking world, for which I am paid the same amount as, if not less than, I was paid by my local alternative weekly when I sold my first piece of writing for print in 1989. More recently, I had the essay equivalent of a hit single -- endlessly linked to, forwarded and reposted. A friend of mine joked, wistfully, "If you had a dime for every time someone posted that ..." Calculating the theoretical sum of those dimes, it didn't seem all that funny.
I've been trying to understand the mentality that leads people who wouldn't ask a stranger to give them a keychain or a Twizzler to ask me to write them a thousand words for nothing. I have to admit my empathetic imagination is failing me here. I suppose people who aren't artists assume that being one must be fun since, after all, we do choose to do it despite the fact that no one pays us. They figure we must be flattered to have someone ask us to do our little thing we already do.
I will freely admit that writing beats baling hay or going door-to-door for a living, but it's still shockingly unenjoyable work. I spent 20 years and wrote thousands of pages learning the trivial craft of putting sentences together. My parents blew tens of thousands of 1980s dollars on tuition at a prestigious institution to train me for this job. They also put my sister the pulmonologist through medical school, and as far as I know nobody ever asks her to perform a quick lobectomy -- doesn't have to be anything fancy, maybe just in her spare time, whatever she can do would be great -- because it'll help get her name out there.
I also don't have an "intern." Never have, never will. I could have an intern, but I don't -- because it's scummy to have someone work for free.
My assistant is paid and is mentored. The mentoring comes with her job. I spend countless hours editing her work, guiding her, trying to teach her things she needs to know about both writing and the business of writing. I have made connections for her before and will continue to do so.
Sexy Beast
Aida in repose.
She's a tiny Chinese Crested, in case you're wondering. Chases cat toys and her tail and poses like a supermodel. She recently met a robot vacuum cleaner on match.com.
Paglia On Choices For Women And Honesty About Their Options
From a speech she gave at American University on October 8:
By the time our most accomplished young women are ready to marry, they may be in their 30s, when pregnancy carries more risks and when their male peers suddenly have an abundant marital choice of fresher, more nubile girls in their 20s. The TV series, Sex and the City, which was a huge surprise hit internationally as well, dramatized the quandary of young career women as an unsettling mix of comedy and tragedy.I consider it completely irresponsible that public schools offer sex education but no systematic guidance to adolescent girls, who should be thinking about how they want to structure their future lives: do they want children, and if so, when that should be scheduled, with the advantages and disadvantages of each option laid out. Because of the stubborn biologic burden of pregnancy and childbirth, these are issues that will always affect women more profoundly than men.
Starting a family early has its price for an ambitious young woman, a career hiatus that may be difficult to overcome. On the other hand, the reward of being with one's children in their formative years, instead of farming out that fleeting and irreplaceable experience to daycare centers or nannies, has an inherent emotional and perhaps spiritual value that has been lamentably ignored by second-wave feminism.
Obamacare: Pay More, Get More, Subsidize Other People
A friend of mine who is in her 60s -- well passed the age at which she could have had children -- snorted to me that she will now have pregnancy covered under Obamacare.
Ross Douhat writes in The New York Times about how it's working out for others:
Take the exchange in my native state, Connecticut. There the "more expensive" part of the new regime is readily apparent. If you look at Connecticut insurance prices for 2013 -- that is, pre-Obamacare -- on the online clearinghouse eHealthInsurance, monthly premiums for a 30-year-old in good health can start below $100, and under $300 for a healthy 60-year-old.On the state's new Obamacare-compliant health care exchange, by contrast, nothing is that cheap. The lowest priced ("bronze") plan for a 30-year-old Connecticut resident has premiums starting at $224 a month; for a 60-year-old, the cheapest plan starts at $537.
These premium increases, however, don't tell the whole story, because there are subsidies, which the Connecticut exchange helpfully calculates as well. If our hypothetical 30-year-old makes $30,000 a year, for instance, he or she would be eligible for credits that lower the actual cost of the cheapest plan to $115 a month. A hypothetical 60-year-old making $30,000 would see the cost of the cheapest bronze plan fall to zero. Over all, the premium increases only really bite as subsidies phase out -- at incomes above $45,000, or about $62,000 for a family of four.
They bite, in part, because insurance companies now have to take customers with pre-existing conditions, which drives everyone's rates up. But they also bite because buyers are getting more insurance than the older system's cheapest plans offered.
Take those low-cost 2013 plans I mentioned above. A typical one -- teased at $269 a month for a nonsmoking 60-year-old Connecticut man -- comes with a $5,000 deductible, an annual out-of-pocket limit of $12,500, and all kinds of copays and coverage restrictions.
With some grandfathered exceptions, Obamacare makes those kinds of plans illegal. The out-of-pocket limit for individuals is capped at $6,500 a year, preventive services are fully covered, and various "essential benefits" as well.
If we ever get beyond the follies of HealthCare.gov, the politics of the rollout will probably be defined by how (and how vocally) middle-class Americans just above the subsidy threshold react to this "pay more, get more, subsidize other people" deal.
Some of them will be buying for the first time, spurred by the mandate's penalties; many others will be shopping for a new plan because their previous ones no longer meet Obamacare's requirements. Will they be grateful for more comprehensive coverage, even though it's being forced on them and has higher premiums attached? Or will they feel they were misled by the president's "if you like your insurance plan, you will keep it" rhetoric, and drive a further backlash against the law in 2014 and beyond?
How MAGI works for self-employed people also confuses me. And frankly, I really don't want other people to pay for my health care through a subsidy or to now have the price increased by 13.6 percent (after I already downgraded it last year to save money). I also don't want to buy health care on the exchange. I want to do as Obama promised we could -- keep the doctor and the health insurance we have. Unfortunately, now I will be paying for lots of other people's care along with services I don't want or need.
Here's MAGI from a supposed Obamacare facts site:
Why Does MAGI Matter? Modified Adjusted Gross Income is a measure used by the IRS to determine if a taxpayer is eligible to use certain deductions, credits, or retirement plans. "Modified Adjusted Gross Income" (not "Adjusted Gross Income") will be used in determining eligibility for your health insurance tax credits. The IRS phases out the tax credit as your income increases. By adding MAGI factors back to your AGI, the IRS determines how much you really earned. Beginning in 2014, your MAGI determines whether you will be eligible for premium tax credits on the new Health Insurance MarketplacesWhat is Adjusted Gross Income?
Generally, your Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) is your household's income less various adjustments. Adjusted Gross Income is calculated before the itemized or standard deductions, exemptions and credits are taken into account.What is Modified Adjusted Gross Income?
Generally, your Modified Adjusted Gross Income (MAGI) is the total of your house hold's Adjusted Gross Income and any tax-exempt interest income you may have (these are the amounts on lines 37 and 8b of IRS from 1040).
Can someone please direct me to the nearest time machine?
Linksie
And the banshees.
Women As Fragile China: Normal Mating And Dating Behavior By Men Now Considered Cause For Police Complaint
I was shocked by all the supposedly equal-to-men female science writers (and some of their indoctrinated male counterparts) who deemed sex talk over lunch by Bora to be "sexual harassment." Which it is not, though few people seem to notice that or question that contention in the slightest. My post on that is here.
They, likewise, found it shocking that I would suggest that women simply need to stand up for themselves. To speak up when they find something uncomfortable and ask that it stop. That to me is normal adult behavior. Or should be. And would be for men -- but now, apparently, we are supposed to hold women to a different, lesser standard, the victim-feminist standard, that says they cannot speak for themselves; they must run to an authority figure to have the person fired or otherwise punished.
Now, Oliver Darcy writes at The Blaze that a woman called the cops -- because she discovered a flirtatious note on her car!
Here's the story from the Cleveland Plain Dealer by Patrick Cooley, which explained that the note included the man's contact information. He lives in the same apartment complex:
The note's author wrote that he had lived in the complex for eight months and had just noticed the woman, according the report. The author wrote that the woman was cute, and he didn't want to wait another eight months to contact her, according to the report.The woman told police that she didn't want them to contact the note's author because she was afraid that he would become angry or violent, but she wanted the incident documented, the report said.
The woman said she would call police if he tried to contact her again.
Sick.
And this is the sort of behavior that grows naturally out of the attitudes of the victim-feminists.
Again, women used to demand equal treatment. Now they think nothing of demanding special treatment.
Count. Me. Out.
And any woman who shows any signs of being psychologically co-opted along these lines is to be avoided.
College Instructors Who Make Up For The Bad Behavior Of The Underparented
It isn't fair to those who are there paying attention and doing the work, and it only enables their behavior.
Scott Hippensteel criticizes an article published by The Chronicle of Higher Education by a teacher enabling (and thus encouraging) this behavior:
The column, written by Anthony Aycock, an adjunct instructor of English at Campbell University and a full-time legal librarian, questioned why faculty members don't allow late work and makeups on tests, refuse to answer repeat questions, and get annoyed by students texting in class. "Rigid rules, no second chances--those are less prevalent in the real world than we imply in our classroom codes," he wrote, "whose actual impact, I fear, is to make us hard to get along with."I was midway through the article when I made the disturbing discovery that I was not reading a parody but instead a message put forth by a professor who teaches in an academic world far different than my own.
I am hard to get along with, especially when student behavior in my classes affects the potential for learning by other students. Issues of classroom decorum are frustrating when they represent a lack of respect: No, I won't allow you to openly read The Hunger Games during my lecture. Behavioral issues become more problematic when they influence the learning of others or create an unfair advantage for the perpetrator of the egregious behavior. You missed an exam? And you want to take a make-up after I've reviewed the exam during the following class?
Aycock argues that we should be patient with students who ask questions that have already been answered. I was faced with that situation recently: A question was posed, and I answered. That was followed by a second and third asking of the identical question. The latter two inquiries were made by students who were distracted by their smartphones when I was responding the first time. That situation is far too common and represents a small but significant waste of class time, and, in that moment, I'm afraid I wasn't entirely easy to get along with.
Best of luck holding the attention of 180 nonmajors when you spend half the class repeating yourself. Yes, the final is cumulative.
The work world operates in real-world terms, and if you want to get and keep a job, start living by Hippensteel's standards, not Aycock's.
8 Things We Won't Miss When Pot Is Legal Everywhere
Nick Gillespie has a piece in TIME about this. My favorite:
1. Vapid anti-drug commercials like the famous "I learned it by watching you!" public-service announcement, in which a son tells an outraged father how he became familiar with pot. The dad seems to be successful and they're in a nice house so....what's the problem again?
Trivia question -- who's the voiceover guy on that commercial?
Linkiewood
Woodchucks in tophats and tails. (The tails came with.)
Want A Better Understanding Of The Quran?
This blog item will help. (It's not a nice book, and it is not up for interpretation -- it is considered the word of god and unchangeable.)
A few bits:
9:111 Paradise guaranteed to those who kill and are killed for Allah"Allah has bought from the believers their selves and their possessions against the gift of Paradise; they fight in the way of Allah; they kill, and are killed; that is a promise binding upon Allah in the Torah, and the Gospel, and the Koran; and who fulfils his covenant truer than Allah? So rejoice in the bargain you have made with Him; that is the mighty triumph."
9:123 Fight the unbelievers, be harsh with them
"O believers, fight the unbelievers who are near to you; and let them find in you a harshness; and know that Allah is with the godfearing."
47:4 Behead and slaughter the unbelievers; take others captive
"When you meet the unbelievers, smite their necks, then, when you have made wide slaughter among them, tie fast the bonds; then set them free, either by grace or ransom, till the war lays down its loads. So it shall be; and if Allah had willed, He would have avenged Himself upon them; but that He may try some of you by means of others. And those who are slain in the way of Allah, He will not send their works astray."
48:29 Be merciful to believers, not unbelievers
"Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, and those who are with him are hard against the unbelievers, merciful one to another."
62:6 Jews should long for death
"Say: 'You of Jewry, if you assert that you are the friends of Allah, apart from other men, then do you long for death, if you speak truly.'"
98:6 Unbelievers are the worst of creatures
"The unbelievers of the People of the Book and the idolaters shall be in the Fire of Gehenna, therein dwelling forever; those are the worst of creatures."
Wow, Thanks, Amazon Grocery Shopper
Thank you -- so much -- to all of you who buy at Amazon through my links. It helps support my blogging and helps me keep the lights on.
Somebody bought a whole bunch of groceries at Amazon yesterday through me. So nice to see this morning. You can get them at that link above.
Or, you can buy things that aren't linked to by me (and I'll get the credit) if you use this to the Amazon search window.
Foot Orthotics Will Correct The Problem Of Too Much Money In Your Checking Account
A "Dr. Nirenberg" writes at America's Podiatrist:
A middle-aged woman arrived at my office last week complaining of heel pain and carrying a bag of custom-made foot orthotics (orthotics are custom made arch supports that are fabricated from a mold of the patient's feet). Each orthotic this woman had with her was expertly fabricated by a different podiatrist and yet none of them had come close to alleviating her heel pain. At first I thought maybe these podiatrists didn't know what they were doing. But, when I learned their names, I knew this woman had seen competent, skilled and reputable physicians.I asked myself "how could this be?" More interestingly, no two sets of orthotics were even remotely alike. Further, given that nearly all podiatrists learn similar principles of biomechanics, shouldn't orthotics for a given patient be the same regardless which podiatrist makes them?
After reading Biomechanics of Sport Shoes, Dr. Benno Nigg's newest book, I have the answer. It is sobering, disturbing and I don't want to believe it. Unfortunately, Nigg is one of the top biomechanic researchers in the field sport shoes, foot inserts and foot orthotics in the world. In fact, I imagine that Nigg spends more time thinking about biomechanics than a 17 year old boy spends thinking about sex.
Foot Orthotics Debunked!
Nigg reveals that foot orthotics, which are devices designed to align misaligned feet, are actually not aligning the skeleton at all. In fact, Nigg's book reveals many disturbing facts about orthotics, shoes and inserts: including that there is weak evidence orthotics lessen injury. Furthermore, changes in skeletal alignment due to inserts or shoes are inconsistent and minor.
Most importantly, Nigg goes on to warn that one of the dangers of the consistent use of orthotics is that they reduce functional demand on muscles may be associated with the deterioration of the muscles' strength and function. So even though a foot orthotic often helps in the short term, over the long term Nigg warns their use may cause problems.
via @medskep
How Come "Everybody Gets To Have Health Care" Means Lots Of People Are Getting Theirs Cancelled?
A commenter here sent this link to a piece at the Daily Caller by Katie McHugh, "Health insurance cancellation notices soar above Obamacare enrollment rates"
Hundreds of thousands of Americans who purchase their own health insurance have received cancellation notices since August because the plans do not meet Obamacare's requirements.The number of cancellation notices greatly exceed the number of Obamacare enrollees.
Insurance carrier Florida Blue sent out 300,000 cancellation notices, or 80 percent of the entire state's individual coverage policies, Kaiser Health News reports. California's Kaiser Permanente canceled 160,000 plans -- half of its insurance plans in the state -- while Blue Shield of California sent 119,000 notices in mid-September alone.
Two major insurance carriers in Pennsylvania, Insurance Highmark in Pittsburgh and Independence Blue Cross in Philadelphia plan to cancel 20 percent and 45 percent of their total plans, respectively.
My Kaiser plan is too expensive now, which is probably why it didn't get cancelled. It's horrifying. I'm going to downgrade it as soon as I have the time, balancing my need for Adderall at a low rate with the price. I'm 49 and have never wanted a child and now I'll have "prenatal care" available to me. Oh, yay.
McHugh reminds of of Obama's (empty) promise:
During his campaign to pitch the law to voters back in 2009, President Barack Obama vowed that Obamacare would merely lower costs for Americans with health insurance while providing coverage to the uninsured."[N]o matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period," Obama said to an audience at the annual conference of the American Medical Association. "If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what."
"Again, [the Affordable Care Act] is for people who aren't happy with their current plan. If you like what you're getting, keep it. Nobody is forcing you to shift," he later added.
What adult believes promises like these -- from a bill the Democrats passed to find out what was in it?
Via @veroderugy, a brief video comparing the legacy of Kennedy, Reagan, and Obama:
Unrestrained Brat Knocks Down An Elderly Woman; Brat's Mom Grabs The Kid And Flees
So lovely, the lessons "parents" these days are teaching their kids -- how to flee an accident, for one.
Ann Brenoff writes at HuffPo:
Somewhere around the late morning of Oct. 3rd, 86-year-old Vera Shepper was checking out her groceries at the Trader Joe's in downtown Santa Cruz, California when out of nowhere, an out-of-control child bolted into her, knocking the elderly woman to the ground. As Shepper writhed in dizzying pain on the floor, she saw an adult's hand reach down -- not to help her, but to grab the wrist of the child and say "Let's get out of here."It's a shocking memory and one of the first things Shepper relates as she tells the story. "This little blonde girl -- she was maybe five -- just ran right into me at my knees and I fell to the ground. I didn't know my hip was broken at the time but it was pain like I never felt before. And then her mother's hand comes down and grabs her with a 'let's go, let's go'."
Shepper's daughter, Mary Rose [whose son Adam Rose is the Huffington Post Standards Editor], says the incident was upsetting for multiple reasons -- both that her active, independent mother broke her hip and needed a surgical replacement, but also that in a show of callousness, a parent who had not been supervising her child in a public place opted to ditch responsibility further and flee the scene.
...Rose says that Trader Joe's has been "very nice" and "responsive" to what occurred in its store. She said the manager told her that the incident was brought up at the next morning's staff meeting with a discussion about how to approach customers who let their children run unsupervised around the store. The Trader Joe's Santa Cruz store management declined to comment to The Huffington Post about the incident and referred all questions to its corporate public relations spokesman, who did not return our calls at the time of publication.
I'm guessing the responsibility Mommy was most intent on ducking was any financial one.
I don't have it in me to see an elderly person on the ground, let alone in pain, and just keep on keepin' on.
Unfortunately, sociopathy doesn't seem to stop people from having kids.
via RR
Linkin
With suicide doors.
Shoe Joy
Up to 30 percent off shoes and bags for men, women, children at Amazon. (If you're a man, carry a handbag cautiously.)
Imagine If The Drug War Were A War On Table Salt
It's, of course, the illegality of drugs that leads to the violence and so many other dangers.
Jacob Sullum writes in 2000 at reason:
When I buy salt or sugar, I never worry that the grocer will refuse to hand over the goods after I pay, or that he will try to substitute some other white substance, and he never worries that I might be an undercover cop.
California Is For Tumors
A tweet about ridiculous Prop 65 requirements:
@robdelaney
Fun Fact about California if you've never been: there's a sign by every building's entrance notifying you it's filled with cancer.
Details on Prop. 65. More. And my earlier post on this here.
And my question at the end of that blog item: "Do you think one person, even one, is going to look at that sign and go return their muffin or spill out their coffee? If not, the purpose of that sign would be...?"
High School Football Coach Accused Of Bullying After His His Team Wins 91-0
With that score, 91 to 0, it's like the other team was comprised entirely of me. But the coaching staff accused of bullying merely by having their players do their best? We truly are becoming a nation of weenies.
Richard Durrett writes at ESPN:
Aledo football coach Tim Buchanan was sitting in his Texas office Saturday morning watching game film from a 91-0 victory over Western Hills on Friday night when an email popped up on his computer.The subject line read "Bullying report."
Buchanan couldn't believe it and thought it was a joke until he read the email and realized a Western Hills parent had filled out the district's online form, accusing the coaching staff of bullying thanks to the lopsided score.
Buchanan spent an hour in the superintendent's office this week and the school is currently investigating, as mandated by the state. The Aledo principal told Buchanan that a written report is expected in the next day or so, something required by state law. Buchanan -- who is in his 21st season as head coach at Aledo and said he has never been accused of bullying -- said he has the support of the Aledo administration.
"[The report filed] compliments our players, saying they showed extremely good sportsmanship," Buchanan said Tuesday morning. "This was not directed at our team, but the coaching staff for not instructing our players to ease up and quit playing hard once the game was in hand."
Western Hills coach John Naylor, whose team dropped to 0-7, didn't have any issues with how Buchanan and his staff handled the game, telling the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that the athletes played hard and didn't "talk at all."
"They're No. 1 for a reason, and I know Coach Buchanan," Naylor told the newspaper. "We're fighting a real uphill battle right now."
This parent's complaint has to come, in part, out of the ridiculous and damagingly unrealistic "everybody should always win!" notion I write about in I See Rude People that's apparently become pretty pervasive in kids' activities.
If I was bad at something as a kid, my parents would talk to me about how I could improve; they didn't accuse whomever did better of deliberately being mean to me.
Is this really what we've come to?
Government Does Business Like It's Nobody's Money: $500/Gallon For A $5 Gallon Of Diesel Fuel
Jonathan Turley blogs about a report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR):
Among huge examples of waste and delay is this little ditty: USAid paid a $300,000 charge for 600 gallons of diesel fuel. That is $500/gallon to a contractor.International Organization for Migration paid the contractor the $500 per gallon at a time when the market price in Afghanistan for diesel fuel was less than $5.00 per gallon. The invoice should have demanded $3,000 instead of $300,000. No one was prosecuted for the payment. Likewise, the IOM paid $220,000 for an automatic temperature control device that should have cost between $2,000 and $10,000. Again, no prosecution and no record of any discipline against those signing off on the payment.
We put people in jail for snatching a purse, but a contractor can charge $500 per gallon of gas and neither the contractor nor the government official responsible face any reported sanctions. It appears all "self-serve" at the U.S. Treasury based on the honor system.
They only like to investigate the taxpayers.
Amy Alkon, "Gender Traitor"
I love when I get lectured by people who don't know what they're talking about, but who are sure they know it all.
Psychology Today re-featured the piece I wrote on the realities of female beauty and what men want.
A person who doesn't feel compelled to sign their name to their email -- but has the initials p e and the email address elprup1234 -- writes:
Hey Amy,When are you gonna quit bein a gender traitor, and quit dronin on and on about what men want? How come you never talk about what women want? You claim you studied psychology, then you should know about the research on what women are visually attracted to. Didn't you know using young, attractive, shirtless men is the new trend in advertising? It has nothing to do with gender politics, it's where the money is it, "capitalist".
I write back:
"Didn't you know using young, attractive, shirtless men is the new trend in advertising?"Says you.
And if so: Not in women's magazines or by people who know anything about female psychology. Perhaps somebody uses that in humor but women don't want to see naked men; they want to see pictures of women or expensive shoes. This is why women's magazines are filled with them and not pictures of naked men.
"Gender traitor"? Seriously?
Women want men who are tall. Looks, however, tend to be not much of a priority compared to money, power, and status. Women will not marry the hot barrista. Men will.
Anything else you'd like to lecture me on, hotstuff?
And nice how you sign your name to your email. I put my name on everything I put out that isn't a private conversation.
Apparently, someone has declared a trend of using shirtless men in ads. Guess what: They're mainly there for humor purposes or to outrage people.
"They Couldn't Bring A Couple Bulbs With Them?"
That's what a friend of Gregg's in Michigan said about the audit Detroit is performing on the street lights. They sent people around to count how many street lights were out, she told Gregg. But they're just checking, not doing anything about it now.
From the Freep, Eric D. Lawrence writes:
Crews began a pilot project today in two neighborhoods -- one on the east side in the area of Gratiot and East State Fair, and one on the west side in the area of McNichols and Southfield. The crews are auditing the approximately 3,300 streetlights in each neighborhood to prepare for lighting improvements in those areas and eventually citywide.Crews will be checking the condition, location and types of streetlights in the neighborhoods over the coming days and weeks. Workers will have to return to the areas at night to see whether the lights are working.
The pilot project neighborhoods were chosen because of population and -- at least in the case of the east-side neighborhood -- because of the high crime rate.
Odis Jones, the public lighting authority's executive director, said the plan is to have lighting improvements completed in the pilot neighborhoods by the first part of 2014. Although the initial phase is limited in scope, the effort will expand, he said.
"We needed to get going, given the problem is so vast," Jones said. "The way you eat an elephant is a bite at a time."
Link Soup
The Broth Of Khan.
New Crime In NYC: Buying While Black
Disgusting episode at Barneys where a 19-year-old was apparently reported by a sales clerk at Barney's and then handcuffed and detained by police -- after buying an expensive belt at the store. Neetzan Zimmerman posts at Gawker:
Trayon Christian, a "fashion-forward" 19-year-old from Queens, was excited to spend his paycheck on a $350 Ferragamo belt he had been admiring, so he headed down to Barneys' flagship department store, debit card in hand.But just moments after leaving the store with his bought-and-paid-for accessory, Trayon was stopped by two undercover NYPD cops.
"They said my card wasn't real, it was fake. They said someone at Barneys called to report it," he told the Daily News.
Trayon told the officers he had done everything by the book: Signed his name, showed the clerk his ID. But he was handcuffed and taken into custody just the same.
"I kept thinking, 'Why is this happening to me?'," he recalled. "The detectives were asking me, 'How could you afford a belt like this? Where did you get this money from?'"
In the lawsuit Trayon filed, the teen says he was in a holding cell for two hours before being released with an apology.
A spokeswoman for the NYPD said Trayon was "held in police custody for approximately 42 minutes" and was released "as soon as we determined that the card was authentic."
Life Is Beautiful
What, you were expecting a sunset? Greasy bacon, kale waiting to be cooked in bacon grease, puppy sleeping below while waiting for me to take her back to my desk.
And no, I do not bother to wear matching socks. (I learned this from my very stylish little 8-year-old neighbor, Lilly, who will wear one striped sock and one polka-dotted one, even if she's wearing a dress.) I just care about whether the kind of sock matches, because it feels weird if you're wearing two different thicknesses. These were a gift from my friend, E., in Paris, to keep my feet warm, from a Paris men's store where her boyfriend shops.
Puppy in motion:
I have to get Gregg to take some video of her on the move. She's incredibly graceful. Like a little drum majorette. And best of all, the little furry drum majorette boots came with the dog. (They're called her "furnishings." Even Gregg knows this word now. It's so cute to hear him use it.)
Don't Buy Any Pet Food Or Treats From China: Nearly 600 Dead Pets
Gregg, the other day, got Aida a chew stick from the grocery store, just to be nice (because he didn't have time to go to the pet store on his way over), but I read the labels assiduosly, and it was made in China so I threw it out.
I hate to waste food, but I know better than to let Aida eat anything made in China (and I sure won't consume food from there, either).
Well, it turns out jerky from China has been killing pets. JoNel Aleccia writes for NBC News:
Nearly 600 pets have died and more than 3,600 have been sickened in an ongoing, mysterious outbreak of illnesses tied to jerky treats made in China, federal animal health officials said Tuesday.Most of the cases have been in dogs of all breeds, ages and sizes -- although 10 cats have been sickened, too -- after eating chicken, duck and sweet potato jerky treats. The pace of the reported illnesses appears to have slowed, but federal Food and Drug Administration officials are now seeking extra help from veterinarians and pet owners in solving the ongoing puzzle.
"To date, testing for contaminants in jerky treats has not revealed a cause for the illnesses," Martine Hartogensis, a deputy director for the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine, said in the new report. "Despite these warnings, we have continued to receive reports of illnesses in both cats and dogs.
Some American firms also recalled jerky for contamination with unapproved antibiotics. From a January 2013 story, also by Aleccia:
Nestle Purina PetCare Co. officials announced Wednesday that they're withdrawing Waggin' Train and Canyon Creek Ranch brand dog treats until further notice. Officials at Milo's Kitchen, which is owned by the Del Monte Corp. of San Francisco, announced they are voluntarily recalling the firm's Chicken Jerky and Chicken Grillers home-style dog treats from shelves nationwide.The move came after the New York Department of Agriculture and Marketing told federal Food and Drug Administration veterinary officials this week that trace amounts of residual poultry antibiotics had been found in several lots of each of the brands of jerky treat products.
The agriculture agency found very low levels of four antibiotics that are not approved for use in poultry in the U.S. and one antibiotic that is approved for U.S. poultry use, but is limited to nearly undetectable levels in the finished product, said Joe Morrissey, a department spokesman. The antibiotics include sulfaclozine, tilmicosin, trimethoprim, enrofloxacin and sulfaquinoxaline, he said.
The antibiotics are approved in China, where most of the treats are made, and in other countries, according to company statements.
In fact, it turns out that I also bought made-in-China duck breast tenders -- not knowing they were made in China. It didn't say so on Amazon -- I checked the package. We'd ordered them to have them on hand when her current bag of treats runs out -- American-made treats. By PrimalPetFoods.com. Says "Made In The USA" at the top of the bag, and they're made from chicken raised sans antibiotics or added hormones and also do not include corn, wheat or soy.
Here's a link to the healthy, made-in-USA stuff: Primal Pet Foods Freeze Dried Canine Chicken Formula. Aida loves these. (Although, I should say, one goes a long, long, long, long way because I cut it up and feed her tiny bits because she's a tiny little doggie -- still under three pounds and should remain under five.)
Higher Education And Higher Monitoring
Nico Perrino of campus free speech defenders theFIRE.org has a piece in the Guardian describing the mini surveillance states campuses have become and are increasingly becoming:
It monitors email and social media accounts, uses thousands of surveillance cameras to track behavior and movement, is funded by billions of dollars from the federal government, and has been called "the most authoritarian institution in America".The National Security Agency? Nope. It's your average college or university.
Earlier this year, when Harvard University violated school policy by secretly searching deans' email accounts, the world glimpsed the intrusive measures one school took to monitor online activity of its staff. "We needed to act to protect our students," said then-dean of Harvard College Evelynn Hammonds, who authorized the search in response to leaked information about a high-profile cheating scandal at the Ivy League institution.
But at schools across the country, administrators use similarly invasive surveillance tools to monitor everything from students' off-campus behavior to their online speech. University lawyers and administrators claim such surveillance programs are necessary to "protect" their stakeholders. But in reality, these actions are often just heavy-handed strategies colleges use to control their public image - at students' expense.
As a former college athlete, I'm all too familiar with this phenomenon. Many athletic departments hire companies like UDiligence and Varsity Monitor to watch after the social media profiles of their student athletes. The services search for keywords in athletes' profiles and alert coaches or administrators when they are used. Words or phrases like "Benjamins", "Sam Adams", and, bizarrely, "Gazongas" are among those keywords flagged by the monitoring programs.
Although my particular school did not use one of these programs, my team's media relations official kept close tabs on the op-eds I wrote for the student newspaper and other outlets and pulled me aside when he didn't like the direction of one of the pieces. The practice is chilling, yes, but for some students, it can get much worse.
...a whole campus security industry has sprouted up that has caught the eye of civil libertarians. At a recent National Behavioral Intervention Team Association conference, the group organized sessions on "fostering a comprehensive reporting culture within the institution" (See something? Say something, one supposes) and "using mandated psychological assessments" ("using" for what, one might ask).
The controversy over government surveillance in the name of national security has naturally raised questions about how much monitoring is justified to protect the nation from the security challenges it faces. But as the discussion unfolds, we should not be led to believe that intrusions into our privacy are limited to just one government agency based in Maryland. On the contrary, on thousands of campuses across the country, college administrators engage in similar monitoring practices with similar justifications in mind. And often administrators' and universities' reputations, not anyone's safety, appear to be what's at stake.
There is a growing culture of surveillance in America. To roll it back, we must take into account its entire scope.
Eat Fat. Saturated Fat...
Cardiologist Aseem Malhotra, from London's Croydon University Hospital writes in the British Medical Journal:
Recent prospective cohort studies have not supported any significant association between saturated fat intake and cardiovascular risk. Instead, saturated fat has been found to be protective. The source of the saturated fat may be important. Dairy foods are exemplary providers of vitamins A and D. As well as a link between vitamin D deficiency and a significantly increased risk of cardiovascular mortality, calcium and phosphorus found commonly in dairy foods may have antihypertensive effects that may contribute to inverse associations with cardiovascular risk. One study showed that higher concentrations of plasma trans-palmitoleic acid, a fatty acid mainly found in dairy foods, was associated with higher concentrations of high density lipoprotein, lower concentrations of triglycerides and C reactive protein, reduced insulin resistance, and a lower incidence of diabetes in adults. Red meat is another major source of saturated fat. Consumption of processed meats, but not red meat, has been associated with coronary heart disease and diabetes mellitus, which may be explained by nitrates and sodium as preservatives.
He's wrong on that last bit. Also, prospective cohort studies are part of the shit data pool of science (they're observational studies that are considered slightly less shitty than retrospective cohort studies I call "leaps to conclusion after the fact"). Nevertheless, there's plenty of good science supporting how healthy it is to eat meat -- and to eat a low-carb, high meatfat and butterfat diet.
via @AnnChildersMD
Blinky
Will bat eyelashes for links.
Announcing "The New Feminism": The Last Thing Some Women Want Is For You To Treat Them As Men's Equals
I saw a suggested person to follow on Twitter. I hadn't heard of her before, but thought she looked pretty in a very "sunny" and friendly way, so I looked her up.
Her name is Priya Shetty, and she's written another hand-wringing piece about the supposed "sexual harassment" Bora engaged in.
Sexual harassment's new meaning: Whatever women decide makes them uncomfortable.
(My take on the injustice that's been done to Bora here -- "About The Bora Controversy: If There's Anything That Makes Women Unequal To Men, It's The Need To Be Treated Like Fragile Pieces Of China.")
What Shetty should really be hand-wringing about is the fact that the Huffington Post doesn't pay for her work.
Of course, I solved the HuffPo no-pay problem early on, when Arianna herself -- of the gazillion square foot mansion and gamillions of dollars -- asked me to join those who write for her for free. We were at a party in the early evening at the house of an LA-based political analyst.
Arianna: Why don't you write for me, dahlink?
Me: Thanks, but I only write for pay.
Wow, huh? Problem solved!
See how easy it is to communicate when you, you know, do the adult thing and use your words? Right there in the moment.
And by the way, Arianna is a fuckload more powerful than Bora Zivkovic. Somehow, I managed to not sell out right then and there despite her power and influence being dangled before me. Amazing, huh?
I also said no when she asked to wear my purple earrings!! -- the earrings that I was wearing at the time -- to the Grammy's later that night. Yes, she wanted to take them right off my body. Because they went so well with the purple flowers in her purple and white dress.
No, Arianna. No.
Practice it, ladies! Here: "No! No! No! No, I won't."
Anyway, back to my Twitter lookup, and the reason I posted this blog item...check this out -- a tweet from some chick named Vivienne Élisabeth. (That's her Twitter profile name; she tweets as @viviennebreton.)
@viviennebreton
Following @priya4876's article in #HuffPo, we're organising a discussion/support group for women in science publishing. Reply if interested
Now, here's how Vivienne Élisabeth describes herself on Twitter:
Human being trapped in a woman's body. 3 degrees, 5 languages, fuck all common sense. Drinking Man's Debbie Harry. Depressive Barbara Windsor. MEDICAL EDITOREast End of London, England
And she still needs a "support group"?
The day I join a "support group" for female writers is the day you can have somebody buckle my wrists to a bed, because it's a sign that something in me is terribly broken.
Announcing "The New Feminism": Women are not equal to men. They are less than men -- fragile little kittens who must be coddled and protected; who cannot speak for themselves; who need an authority figure to do speak for them and then punish those awful men; and who need "support groups" to continue in their work.
Count. Me. Out.
Oh, yeah, and on a related note, what's with going to conferences on science blogging? Can't you just, you know, blog?
How Government Does Business: If It Isn't Working, Smile Big And Launch It Anyway
Lena H. Sun and Scott Wilson write in the WaPo that the health insurance exchange was launched despite serious problems:
Days before the launch of President Obama's online health insurance marketplace, government officials and contractors tested a key part of the Web site to see whether it could handle tens of thousands of consumers at the same time. It crashed after a simulation in which just a few hundred people tried to log on simultaneously.Despite the failed test, federal health officials plowed ahead.
When the Web site went live Oct. 1, it locked up shortly after midnight as about 2,000 users attempted to complete the first step, according to two people familiar with the project.
...Obama said government officials are "doing everything we can possibly do" to repair the site, including 24-hour work from "some of the best IT talent in the country."
"No one is madder about the Web site than I am, which means it's going to get fixed," he added.
Says the man who never ran so much as a lemonade stand before becoming Senator and President.
Of course, if this were a business, we could just choose not to patronize it.
Hilarious bit in a WSJ piece about this:
In an era where Google is making self-driving cars and Amazon offers next-day delivery for just about anything, the White House plunged ahead with a system it knew to be defective and is relying on the technology of the 19th century as the fall-back. Five days before the exchanges launched, the Health and Human Services Department increased the Virginia information technology company Serco's $114 million contract by $87 million--to help process paper applications. Are contingency plans in place to sign up via telegraph?The consequences of this mismanagement go beyond the technical. Mr. Obama bragged that millions of people are using the website and many (he didn't say how many) are signing up for coverage. But this overlooks that no one knows what the risk profiles on the exchanges will look like.
The danger is that those who manage to enroll will mainly be the most expensive patients. Younger and healthier patients who don't need ObamaCare will have to cross-subsidize the sick and old or else the premiums won't cover the cost of claims. So the 36 malfunctioning exchanges could take an entire market down with them.
Insurance companies are also already sending out notices to millions of consumers cancelling individual policies because they are non-compliant with ObamaCare's new mandates. Kaiser Health News, usually a cheerleader for the law, reports that "Florida Blue, for example, is terminating about 300,000 policies, about 80 percent of its individual policies in the state." Kaiser Permanente in California has sent notices to 160,000 people, Highmark in Pittsburgh is dropping about 20% of its individual market customers, and Independence Blue Cross of Philadelphia is dropping about 45%.
Remember when Mr. Obama said you could keep your policy if you liked it?
Jon Stewart on the "spinning beachball of healthcare":
Why "Moderate Muslims" Are Not The Answer
George Whale has posted 10 reasons at LibertyGB, but here are a few excerpts:
1. Moderate Muslims have a worrying capacity to produce terrorist offspring
Hook-handed hate preacher Abu Hamza's father was an Egyptian army officer - middle class and thoroughly respectable.Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the notorious 'underpants bomber', comes from a wealthy Nigerian family. His father, Umaru Mutallab is (according to The Guardian) "one of the country's most respected businessmen."
Omar Hammami left his home in Alabama, USA, to become a leader of the Islamist terror organisation al Shabaab. His father, a retired civil engineer, said, "I tried my best, and so did my wife, to raise him the best we could."
Hasib Hussain's quiet, hard-working parents were "devastated" to learn that their son was the bus bomber who killed 13 people in London on 7th July 2005.
2. Muslim moderates are terrified of Muslim extremists
The implicit, ever-present threat of ostracism or violence keeps quiet Muslims in line - which means that the radicals usually get their way. As John Hawkins notes: "Imagine how ... terrifying it must be to condemn Jihadists when you may semi-regularly run into people who think that way in your neighborhood or mosque."
3. Moderates can turn into extremists
Even Muslims who appear at ease in western society can flip.In the 1980's Andy Choudary was a party animal who lived for sex and booze. He turned into Anjem Choudary, rabble-rousing hate preacher and co-founder of poppy-burning Islamist group al Muhajiroun.
As a teenager in Leeds, Mohammad Sidique Khan was to all appearances fully westernised, even to the extent of calling himself 'Sid'. In July 2005, 30-year-old Sid took a rucksack full of explosives to London and detonated it on a Tube train, killing 7 innocent people.
Sid's fellow 7/7 terrorist Shehzad Tanweer was described by neighbours as a "nice lad" who could "get on with anyone". He murdered 7 others.
More here.
Linkathon
A web song by Jacques Brel. No relation to Jacques Cousteau.
When A He-Man Goes Soft For A Tiny Dog
When you look stuff up on the Internet at a place you've bought things, as Gregg did the other day -- actually, of his own volition, looking up Halloween costumes for Aida, my tiny Chinese Crested -- the Internet remembers.
So...hilariously, my boyfriend, who has been referred to as "Detroit-ornery" (by a screenwriter pal) and "apocalyptic and threatening" (by a New York Times Magazine writer who wanted to change Elmore Leonard's prose), has been getting email containing promotions like these:
I have succeeded somewhat in training -- Gregg, that is -- to talk to Aida in a way that suggests he means "Come!" or "Sit!" or "Stay!" (as opposed to "Come walk all over me!").
Oh, and here's a recent picture of Aida, presiding over the couch and all of her empire.
How Prosecutors Rig Trials By Freezing Assets
If you don't find the government terribly scary and see us marching to a police state, you either only consume media about the Kardashians or the doctors and nurses see little brain activity from you at this time.
Harvey Silverglate writes at the WSJ of yet another abusive practice by government, designed to keep you from your right to a fair trial (with an able defense team), and it's freezing your assets so you can't afford a defense -- even before the prosecution has shown at any hearing that the assets were illegally obtained:
On Oct. 16, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on a claim brought by husband and wife Brian and Kerri Kaley. The Kaleys are asking the high court to answer a serious and hotly contested question in the federal criminal justice system: Does the Constitution allow federal prosecutors to seize or freeze a defendant's assets before the prosecution has shown at a pretrial hearing that those assets were illegally obtained?...Because asset forfeiture almost automatically follows conviction, a pretrial freeze ultimately enables the Justice Department to grab the frozen assets for use by executive-branch law enforcement agencies. It is a neat, vicious circle.
What crimes are the Kaleys charged with? Kerri Kaley was a sales representative for a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson. Beginning in 2005, the fedsin Florida investigated her, her husband Brian, and other sales reps for reselling medical devices given to them by hospitals. The hospitals had previously bought and stocked the devices but no longer needed or wanted the overstock since the company was offering new products. Knowing that the J&J subsidiary had already been paid for the now-obsolete products and was focused instead on selling new models, the sales reps resold the old devices and kept the proceeds.
The feds had various theories for why this "gray market" activity was a crime, even though prosecutors could not agree on who owned the overstocked devices and, by extension, who were the supposed victims of the Kaleys' alleged thefts. The J&J subsidiary never claimed to be a victim.
The Kaleys were confident that they would prevail at trial if they could retain their preferred lawyers. A third defendant did go to trial with her counsel of choice and was acquitted. But the Justice Department made it impossible for the Kaleys to pay their chosen lawyers for trial.
The government insisted that as long as the Kaleys' assets--including bank accounts and their home--could be traced to the sale of the medical devices, all of those assets could be frozen. The Kaleys were not allowed to go a step further and show that their activities were in no way criminal, since this would be determined by a trial. But the Kaleys insisted that if the government wanted to freeze their funds, the court had to hold a pretrial hearing on the question of the legality of how the funds were earned.
...The Supreme Court has now threatened to upset the game that is so lucrative for the government and disabling for defendants. On March 18, the court agreed to consider the Kaleys' claim that the asset freeze without a hearing on the merits of the underlying criminal charge violated their constitutional rights. At oral argument in mid-October, the broader question will be whether, after four decades of federal asset seizures, the high court will put a freeze on the Justice Department.
TSA Admits The Stupidity Of Their Existence
Adan Salazar at Infowars published a government document in which the TSA admits there's no actual "threat-addressing" basis for the nude body scanners or invasive pat down procedures at airports:
The evidence was found in sealed court documents, available through the PACER.gov website, regarding engineer and blogger Jon Corbett's ongoing litigation over the constitutionality of the agency's loathsome security practices.In a redacted version of the appellant's brief, filed by Corbett on October 7 with the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, several portions of the Summary of Facts section were blacked out, raising questions as to the nature of the censored information.
But in a sealed version of the same documents obtained through PACER.gov (and available here), the redacted sections appear with incriminating clarity.
Through Redactions, TSA Admits Terror Threats are Slim to Nonexistent
A section detailing how "The TSA Has Misled The Public As to the Likelihood of the Threat 'Addressed' By Nude Body Scanners and Pat Downs," includes a blacked out portion concerning the TSA's knowledge that "explosives on airplanes are extremely rare."
"For example, the TSA analyzed hijackings in 2007 and found 7 hijacking incidents across the globe, but none of them involved actual explosive devices," Corbett explains in the brief, adding that the last attempt to bring an explosive onboard an airplane through a U.S. airport occurred 35 years ago.
Another redacted section highlights the government's concession that, "due to hardened cockpit doors and the willingness of passengers to challenge hijackers," it would be difficult to have a repeat of 9/11.
And here's a key bit:
The TSA also had the following section completely censored:This begs the question, then, of what evidence the government possesses to rationalize that we should be so afraid of non-metallic explosives being brought aboard flights departing from the U.S. that we must sacrifice our civil liberties. The answer: there is none. "As of mid-2011, terrorist threat groups present in the Homeland are not known to be actively plotting against civil aviation targets or airports; instead, their focus is on fundraising, recruiting, and propagandizing."
And why is this posted at Infowars? Read Corbett's post, "Censored! Department of Justice Demands That I Stop Talking About Leaked TSA Document."
To play with that classic line: "We're from the government and we're here to show you what thugs we are."
Because...Because...The Jews
We need to stop trying to export democracy to the Middle East -- costing American soldiers' lives and bajillions of our dollars -- as if that is all a tribal, warring culture needs to discover the beauty of Thomas Jefferson and civilized debate.
Excerpt from an AP story in the LA Times:
BAGHDAD -- A suicide bomber slammed his explosive-laden car into a busy cafe in Iraq's capital late Sunday, a day in which violence across the country killed 45 people, authorities said.The bombing at the cafe in Baghdad's primarily Shiite Amil neighborhood happened as it was full of customers. The cafe and a nearby juice shop were favorite hangouts of young people, who filled the area at the time of the explosions.
The blast killed 35 people and wounded 45, Iraqi officials said.
Violence has been on the rise in Iraq following a deadly crackdown by security forces on a Sunni protest camp in the northern town of Hawija in April. At least 385 have died in attacks in Iraq so far this month, according to an Associated Press count.
P.S. That link on the word "tribal" is some really interesting and enlightening stuff.
Link-Wink
Like "wink-wink," only not really.
Advice Goddess Radio, LIVE SHOW! Tonight, 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET: Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic On True Confidence Through Competence
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in therapy and research.
My guest on this week's show argues for a less confident world and a more realistically confident one.
Confidence is not all it's cracked up to be, especially because what we laud as confidence is too often actually overconfidence, lack of self-knowledge, and unreasonable expectations about ourselves and the way the world works. This kind of "confidence" also doesn't play as well as we often think it does in impressing and persuading others.
My guest, Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, wants to help you achieve realistic confidence -- confidence based on competence. He is a professor of business psychology at University College of London, the author of seven books and numerous studies, and an authority in personality assessment, consumer analytics, and talent management. His book we'll be discussing on the show is "Conf!dence: Overcoming Low Self-Esteem, Insecurity, and Self-Doubt."
Listen at this link from 7-8 pm Pacific, 10-11 pm Eastern, or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/10/21/dr-chamorro-premuzic-true-confidence-through-competence
Don't miss last week's show on the simple little things you can do to be extraordinary.
Unlike the guests on almost all of my shows, this guest is actually not a scientist -- he's business consultant, public speaker, and best-selling author Mark Sanborn.
But, this is the second time I've made an exception and had him on the show, because his thinking is so extraordinary, inspiring, and helpful.
To bring up that word again -- "extraordinary" -- being extraordinary means being a stand-out person in your work, friendships, and relationships. We tend to think being that is either something you're born with or you're not. But Sanborn will show you tonight that this isn't the case.
He'll explain why "extraordinary" is something you can choose to be, and explain how to recalibrate your thinking so you can achieve and maintain that. As for why to do this, his books and this show should make very clear that living "extraordinary" is living and working fulfilled in a way that living ordinary just can't meet.
Last time Mark was on the show, he discussed his New York Times best-seller, "The Fred Factor: How Passion in Your Work and Life Can Turn the Ordinary into the Extraordinary." It was inspired by his postman, a guy named Fred, who used creativity and conscientiousness to become probably the best postman anybody has ever had or will have.
Mark Sanborn's very helpful new book is "Fred 2.0: New ideas on how to keep delivering extraordinary results."
Listen at this link or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/10/14/mark-sanborn-fred-20how-to-live-work-be-extraordinary
Join me and my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.
The "Sexual Harassment" That Wasn't That Ruined Colin McGinn's Career
Katie Roiphe has a chilling piece on Slate about a philosophy professor who's lost his "job, his reputation, his income, his stability." And why? Read the story. And then this from Roiphe:
The questions here enter foggy territory that would take true philosophers or maybe novelists to navigate: Should a man, even an arrogant man, lose tenure and a long, lustrous career over what was probably a blundering excess of attachment, a burst of infatuated blindness? His mistake was that he was romanticizing what was happening, was carried away by an idea, by a feeling, and did not take the sensible or professional steps.The sexual harassment script is so vivid in our minds that to a certain extent it doesn't matter if events technically unfolded according to it; one can feel the writers of the original Chronicle of Higher Education article, and the New York Times piece, rushing past the details of the story, which are murky at best, to the meaty and wonderful generalizations. Very often when I talk about the case to academics, especially philosophers, they are impatient to get past the troublesome facts to the gleaming and satisfying theme. ("A Star Philosopher Falls," reads the New York Times headline, "From Star to Ruin" reads the Chronicle of Higher Education's.)
One bright, ambitious young philosopher I met at a party says it doesn't matter if there was a warm consensual romantic relationship. He said the problem of sexual harassment is so rife in philosophy that it is good for someone to be strung up and an example to be made. He went on to explain that Colin is precisely the kind of abrasive, arrogant man who would do something like this, and used as an example the title of his memoir, The Making of a Philosopher, which he viewed as a sign that Colin is narcissistic and full of himself. (I have by this point in my reporting absorbed that many people think powerful, arrogant men should be punished, though I myself like a powerful, arrogant man.)
One of the reasons I think people revel so much in the downfall of someone "like" Colin is that we like to hear news that the world is humming along just as we suspected, that all the prejudices and slights and wrongdoings we have always imagined are yet again proved to be real. Our fears that the "powerful" or "arrogant" are corrupt and abusive of the less powerful and less arrogant are confirmed. Our instinctive distrust of those who are stars, who have succeeded spectacularly, is vindicated by news of ugliness or corruption. We like, in other words, a good cliché.
What happened in the halls of the philosophy department at the University of Miami is much messier and more ambiguous and dingy and depressingly human than the glamorous black and white of the political language--sexual harassment. There is no arrogant, successful man sending dirty missives, no innocent, wronged victim to rally around; instead there is a whole complex swamp of motives and hopes and judgments and desires and ambitions, many conspicuously, spectacularly ill-advised, and there is a little bit of human warmth.
Related: About The Bora Controversy: If There's Anything That Makes Women Unequal To Men, It's The Need To Be Treated Like Fragile Pieces Of China.
Update -- comment from "Science lady" that's worth reading that was left on the Bora link just above:
Another science insider here. I am an active participant in women in science type groups and often see this sort of overblown hand-wringing about the perils of being a female scientist. Any and all hardships of making a career in science (and it IS hard) are viewed through the lens of gender, and massive amounts of thoughtful deconstruction expended on analyzing and fixing the perceived gender bias. Not to be glib, but similar single-mindedness in the pursuit of their research questions would go a long way to vaporizing the perceived barriers. Tellingly, many senior/successful female scientists are wary of participating in these groups--too busy working, and quite possibly not wanting to get sucked in to the hand-wringing circle. (Of course, they are viewed as unsupportive traitors to their gender.)I know Bora quite well, and have interacted with him over 10+ years. He is indeed a bit socially awkward and not the best at reading cues--he is the sort that stands chatting for 15 minutes as you try to move on to the next person, is over-enthusiastic in his gestures, and laughs at the wrong moments sometimes. He is also extremely smart, a great synthesizer of ideas, and one of my favorite people to talk science with. He has always been all these things. In the realm of online science journalism, he seemed to have found the perfect way to use his undoubted skills, and he did so in a way that helped other people far more than it helped him. It's only recently that he's even had a salary for his blog-related stuff, and the spin from his accusers that his massive powerfulness was sooo scary that they dare not speak up is an utter joke. The entire debacle is sickening and makes me want to write nasty things about these harridans, and certainly I will do them professional harm should their "pitches" ever cross my desk.
Like others, I am too entangled in the science world to comfortably use my own name here.
Posted by: Science lady at October 20, 2013 11:37 AM
It's "Racism," Not The Fact That Everyone's Grandchildren Will Be Owned By The Chinese
Cheryl Chumley writes in the Wash Ex about Robert Redford's thoughts on the government shutdown:
Mr. Redford said, UPI reported: "There is a body of congressional people that wants to paralyze the system. I think what sits underneath it, unfortunately, is there's probably some racism involved, which is really awful. I think just the idea of giving credit to this president, giving him credit for anything, is abhorrent to them so they'll go against it. ... They're representing their own self-interests, which is very narrow and in some cases bigoted."
My friend who sent me the link said this:
Robert Redford is angry only because he looks like an old woman. Revolting, sanctimonious, hypocritical one-percenter.
Schlinky
Somewhat schlocky linky.
The Drug Warriors Are A Little Dim
And where did they grow up (that they found the item they actually busted the guy for to be so unrecognizable), on a mountain top in Tibet?
NYPD officers bust a man for possession of meth -- that turned out to be (this is amazing) Jolly Ranchers!
From The Smoking Gun:
OCTOBER 18--A New York City man arrested this summer for possession of methamphetamine was actually carrying Jolly Rancher candies that cops mistook for a controlled substance, according to a federal civil rights lawsuit.Love Olatunjiojo was busted in late-June after being searched by cops who approached the 25-year-old and a friend as they walked on a Coney Island street. According to a police report, officers seized six "crystalline rocks of solid material." Four of the rocks were blue, while two were red.
As detailed in Olatunjiojo's October 15 lawsuit (which does not specify monetary damages), he had stopped at the It'Sugar candy store before being approached by police. While there, Olatunjiojo and his friend "purchased various candies...including some 'Jolly Rancher' brand candies."
Kenneth Smith, Olatunjiojo's lawyer, told TSG that the Jolly Ranchers were in their "individual wrappers" when seized by police.
Olatunjiojo, who is of African descent, was charged with drug possession. He spent 24 hours in custody before being released on his own recognizance on the misdemeanor count.
A Criminal Court complaint alleged that officers seized a "quantity of methamphetamine" that field tested positive for a controlled substance. One of the arresting officers "has had professional testing as a police officer in the identification of methamphetamine."
But the crystalline rocks purportedly containing methamphetamine were not illegal. Two days after Olatunjiojo's arrest, the NYPD's Controlled Substance Analysis Section performed lab tests that revealed they contained no controlled substances.
Too bad these officers are allowed to run around uncontrollably busting men with candy.
Another PC Reason To Feel Guilty: You're Not As Fat As Some People
A comment from thisisthinprivilege at the blog of the same name:
Fat oppression, like many kinds of oppression, exists along a spectrum. Small fats have more privilege than superfats. Someone who wears size 18 clothes has more privilege than someone who wears size 26.
People didn't used to be size 26 -- back before the government told us to eat a high-carb, low-fat diet (precisely the diet that makes people fat and diabetic). Via @AnnChildersMD, terrific 13-point piece, "13 Nutrition Lies That Made The World Sick And Fat." A salient bit -- about the government's and the AMA's recommendation to eat a high-carb, low-fat diet:
Even though it may work for healthy and active individuals... for people with obesity, metabolic syndrome or diabetes, the low-fat diet can be downright harmful.
Thisisthinprivilege continues:
You know how much shit you have to put up with at a size 18. Imagine how much more shit you'd have to deal with if you absolutely could not shop in any brick and mortar store you could get to by car? If you had to order everything you wear online? If none of it was "suitable work attire"? I have friends -- ones who live in large West Coast cities -- for whom all of that is true.When the average women's size in the country is a 14, and a "plus size" line marketed under the name of one of the more famous "fat" (used advisedly; fat for an actress is not the same as fat for anybody else) actress starts at a size smaller than the average, and only goes up to two size larger than average, can you not see how bigger fats might be upset?
You're not too thin to be oppressed. But you have a lot more privilege than people much fatter than you.
Why Eat Low Carb?
This is the same link in the post about the woman snarling about the "fat privilege" of those who only wear a size 18 when others wear a size 26. This one is point 10 of 13:
Since the year 2002, over 20 randomized controlled trials have examined the effects of low-carb diets on various aspects of health.Almost every one of those studies agrees that:
•Low-carb diets lead to significant decreases in blood pressure (82, 83).
•Low-carb diets where people are allowed to eat as much as they want cause more weight loss than low-fat diets that are calorie restricted (84, 85).
•Low-carb diets increase HDL (the good) cholesterol and decrease triglycerides much more than low-fat diets (86, 87, 88).
•Low-carb diets change the pattern of LDL (the "bad") cholesterol from small, dense LDL (very bad) to Large LDL - which is benign (89, 90).
•Low-carb diets have powerful positive effects on type II diabetes, significantly lowering blood sugar and reducing the need for medication (91, 92, 93).
•If anything, low-carb diets appear to be easier to stick to than low-fat diets, probably because people don't have to restrict calories and be hungry all the time (94).
I used to monitor what I ate, count calories, run seven miles three times a week. Now I am what I call "effortlessly thin," meaning I can nothing to maintain my weight but eat bacon, kale in bacon grease, steak, hamburgers, and heavily buttered green vegetables, and for snacks, a little dry salami or Camembert, and some tea with coconut oil and foamed milk. (I do exercise a little because it's healthy for my brain and body.)
But what's great is, I'm never hungry in a big way, and when I do get hungry, at whatever time of day, I eat something and don't have to worry about it or chastise myself. My body is running, I believe, in its optimum form.
The last time I was seriously hungry was in early 2009, I believe, when I still used to eat things with flour and sugar. I accidentally got a lowfat muffin at Starbucks. Without the fat in it to balance out all the sugar, it made me ragingly hungry in about 20 minutes. Ragingly hungry, as in, I wanted to tear off somebody's arm and take a bite because the line to get more food and coffee was taking a while.
Via @AnnChildersMD
Blinky
Draw the one-eyed clown.
No Fan Of Obamacare, But About That Job Search, Ashley Dionne Got A Degree In Film
A 26-year-old woman's post on a website -- about how Obamacare "has raped my future" -- went viral. Ashley Dionne says her insurance premium under Obamacare will jump from $75 to $319 per month. From CampusReform.org:
"My name is Ashley Dionne and I'm a 26-year-old recent graduate from Michigan.The phony Obamacare signup poster boy made me want to send a message about how Obamacare is really affecting people.
I graduated from The University of Michigan in 2009. In my state, this used to mean something, but even with a bachelor's I was told I was too educated and wouldn't stay. I watched as kids with GEDs and high school diploma's took the low-paying jobs for which I applied.
I went back to school and got a second degree and finally found work at a gym. I work nights and only get 32 hours a week for eight dollars an hour. I'm unable to find a second job at this time.
I have asthma, ulcers, and mild cerebral palsy. Obamacare takes my monthly rate from $75 a month for full coverage on my "Young Adult Plan," to $319 a month. After $6,000 in deductibles, of course.
Liberals claimed this law would help the poor. I am the poor, the working poor, and I can't afford to support myself, let alone older generations and people not willing to work at all.
This law has raped my future.
It will keep me and kids my age from having a future at all.
This is the real face of Obamacare and it isn't pretty."
I wondered what she'd gotten her degree in: Turned out it was Film, 2009, from the University of Michigan. Here's her YouTube channel. 35 views of one of the videos as of a week ago; 32 of another. Oh, and wait -- they aren't videos she's made; the three I looked at are just songs with a still shot, and the rest look to be that as well.
She'd later gotten another degree from Baker College in 2012, it says on CampusReform.org below the letter. I wasn't able to find out what it was in.
I am sympathetic about her not being able to get a job in what she studied but also, come on. I studied film (graduating after one year at NYU after three years at the University of Michigan) but I was mindful that it would be hard to get a job with simply a film degree -- and that was back before the economy got tough. So, I had worked my ass off getting myself multiple professional internships and jobs starting in high school, working as an intern at Detroit's WDIV Channel 4, working for a PR agency, working as an assistant producer for a summer at W.B. Doner advertising.
I got good enough at advertising that, in my junior year, I won a $3,000 scholarship (a lot in those days), presented by Edsel Ford, for writing and producing the winning ad for Dodge Daytona Turbo Z in a college advertising competition.
I also had a reel of stuff I'd worked on -- professionally -- by the time I was 21, and ability as a producer beyond that of people who'd worked in the industry for a year.
That's why *I* got a job as an assistant producer at Ogilvy & Mather New York, the ad agency with the best production department in the industry. Oh, and before that, I'd gotten a job for a very short time at Geer Dubois Advertising, a smaller but good ad agency in New York, as a copywriter. Right out of college. Because I'd prepared and not just expected the sky to open up and rain jobs for me without any sort of qualification.
Larry Flynt On Why The Man Who Paralyzed Him Shouldn't Be Executed
Flynt writes in The Hollywood Reporter:
A white supremacist named Joseph Paul Franklin was arrested for shooting and killing an interracial couple. He soon began confessing to other crimes, and that's when he admitted to having shot me. He said he'd targeted me because of a photo spread I ran in Hustler magazine featuring a black man and a white woman. He had bombed several synagogues. He had shot Vernon Jordan Jr., the civil rights activist. He hated blacks, he hated Jews, he hated all minorities. He went around the country committing all these crimes. I think somebody had to have been financing him, but nothing ever turned up on who that somebody may have been.In all the years since the shooting, I have never come face-to-face with Franklin. I would love an hour in a room with him and a pair of wire-cutters and pliers, so I could inflict the same damage on him that he inflicted on me. But, I do not want to kill him, nor do I want to see him die.
Supporters of capital punishment argue that it is a deterrent which prevents potential murderers from committing future crimes, but research has failed to provide a shred of valid scientific proof to that effect whatsoever. In 18th century England, pickpocketing was a capital offense. Once a week, crowds would gather in a public square to observe public hangings of convicted pickpockets, unaware that their own pockets were being emptied by thieves moving among them. That's a true story, and, if you're ever trying to convince somebody of why the death penalty is not a deterrent, that's a good example.
As far as the severity of punishment is concerned, to me, a life spent in a 3-by-6-foot cell is far harsher than the quick release of a lethal injection. And costs to the taxpayer? Execution has been proven to be far more expensive for the state than a conviction of life without parole, due to the long and complex judicial process required for capital cases.
Franklin has been sentenced by the Missouri Supreme Court to death by legal injection on Nov. 20. I have every reason to be overjoyed with this decision, but I am not. I have had many years in this wheelchair to think about this very topic. As I see it, the sole motivating factor behind the death penalty is vengeance, not justice, and I firmly believe that a government that forbids killing among its citizens should not be in the business of killing people itself.
Should "Public Service" Be A Gravy Train For The Wealthy? Or Anyone?
The late Frank Lautenberg, worth $57 million on his death, has a taxpayer-paid death benefit of $174,000 being paid to his wife, posts Sean Reilly at the Federal Times:
To be clear, Bonnie Lautenberg is not getting special treatment; Congress has been providing this brand of survivor benefit since long before World War II, said Pete Sepp, spokesman for the National Taxpayers Union, a watchdog group.But it started in the days before members of Congress could get federally subsidized pensions or life insurance, he said. Now, a deceased lawmaker's surviving spouse can not only receive a payout from the Federal Employees' Group Life Insurance Program, he or she can receive a survivor's annuity under the Federal Employees Retirement System, he said.
"It's hard to kick a widow or widower when they've just lost their loved one," Sepp said when asked his view on whether the benefit should continue. "Still, it wouldn't be inappropriate to examine whether it's necessary in light of the other benefits that now exist."
Porky, pork, pork!
Love how the WSJ put it: "Congress still pays a colonial-era gratuity for passing away in office."
Oh, and rich or poor, none of these lawmakers should get this.
Money does not come from a giant bush in the nation's capital.
Linksplat
You catch more flies with a Dustbuster. (Why they couldn't figure that out on Breaking Bad...oh, wait, because then they would have had to shoot an actual story for that episode, and they'd probably blown their budget.)
About The Bora Controversy: If There's Anything That Makes Women Unequal To Men, It's The Need To Be Treated Like Fragile Pieces Of China
Laura Helmuth explains the controversy at Slate -- using what I consider loaded language, filled with assumption (that something was "harassment," simply because that's what the person who experienced it decided to deem it):
A writer named Monica Byrne wrote on her blog about being harassed by one of the most influential people in the science blogging world, Bora Zivkovic. He founded an extremely popular conference for science bloggers, established science blog networks at various publications, and now (at least as I write) runs the well-respected collection of blogs at Scientific American. His nickname is the Blogfather. One common route into a science writing career in the past several years has been through Zivkovic: He routinely publishes young writers and promotes their stories with his large social media audience. Zivkovic has always been extremely solicitous of young journalists, generous with his time, charming, enthusiastic, gregarious. A Twitter meme popped up at science blogging conferences: #IHuggedBora.Zivkovic has a lot of friends, and after Byrne's story went public, many of them expressed support for him, and others questioned Byrne's decision to name him.
Zivkovic admitted to the incident, apologized, and said it was not "behavior that I have engaged in before or since."
Only apparently it was. Another science writer, Hannah Waters, then described similar experiences:
I saw him at various events and he began flirting a little. It didn't ring any alarm bells; he is flirtatious by nature. But sometimes talk would veer into more uncomfortable territory, but only vaguely uncomfortable, which made it hard to call out. He would talk about how he gets to hang out with so many smart, beautiful women for his job (as if we should be flattered), make offhand comments about his own sex life, and occasionally tell me that he loved me. Once, while the two of us were outside Ninth Ward in New York City at a science tweetup, he bought a flower for his wife, who was inside. The seller gave him an extra for free, which he gave to me, joking that I was his "concubine." I didn't even know how to respond, awkwardly laughing it off, but fled the scene without goodbyes soon after. "I just want to call him out when he makes any kind of offhand comment," I wrote to my best friend later. "But what I could lose by doing so is too great, so it's really just degrading."Waters and Byrne were careful to be precise and not exaggerate what happened to them, which is that they felt very uncomfortable when their conversations with one of the most powerful people in their profession turned sexual. They weren't raped or groped, and they suffered no obvious career setbacks by failing to take Zivkovic up on what they perceived as the implicit request for sex. But they felt lousy and confused. Here's what I found most distressing in Waters' post: "At my most insecure moments, I still come back to this: Have I made it this far, not based on my work and worth, but on my value as a sexual object? When am I going to be found out?"
I told Waters directly and repeat here that she and Byrne are talented writers who are not faking it. But of course they wonder about how their career trajectories will be perceived, and I'm sure many other people who have gotten a break or a boost from Zivkovic have the same nagging worries.
Oh, please.
Lots of people get a leg up from somebody -- because they were in the right place at the right time, because they asked, because they went to the same school, because they're Jewish or because they're a WASP, because they're black, Chinese, or not a man.
I actually had been in the dark about this Bora furor because of a big deadline. A friend in science emailed me about it, wanting to know my thoughts, and here's what I emailed him back:
From what I just read, this is ridiculous bullshit.Kingsley Browne is so good on this stuff -- terrif book, "Biology at Work," about what sexual harassment really is. It is coercive behavior -- fuck me or you lose your job -- or it is repeated behavior that turns a workplace hostile.
This wasn't a workplace, even if she was looking to do some work. She isn't employed by him.
He didn't say, "Fuck me or you don't get the job. He didn't even imply it. He just had some stuff on his mind and unloaded. It happened to be sexual. It happened to make her uncomfortable.
If you are out to lunch and somebody gets into an uncomfortable topic, if you want to play in the real world and not in the kitchen, well, grow a fucking pair, girlfriend, and tell him the line of conversation makes you unfuckingcomfortable!
Apparently, she eventually said she was uncomfortable -- via email:
Since meeting, I've felt a lot of reluctance about pitching to you, and I wanted to let you know why. I felt very uncomfortable during our meeting last week. The talk veered towards sex because you led it there--first describing yourself as a "very sexual person," and then going on to describe your wife's sexual history (which I can't imagine she'd want me to know), the state of your present sex life, and the near-affair you had with a younger woman. I thought all of these topics were incredibly inappropriate to discuss with someone you'd just met, especially one who was interested in working together in a professional capacity and had initiated the meeting as such.Sometimes, in life, people will make you uncomfortable: By talking about religion, sex, their politics, or something else. If you can't stand the conversation, the adult thing to do is to say something about it. Not just sit there.
I met Barb Oakley because of this blog item, which goes into more about this -- this women are fragile pussies business.
If there's anything that makes women unequal to men, it's the need to be treated like pieces of china.
I'm nobody's wounded duck and I don't need laws or social opprobrium to protect me against conversation.
I HAVE A BIG MOUTH AND I AM MORE THAN READY TO USE IT. (That said, I don't mind people talking about sex, and if I'm not interested in sex with them and they are with me, I'll let them know. If they don't then hold a steak knife to my throat and try to fuck me, we're good.)
PS It is a violation of Bora's privacy that she blogged their private lunch conversation simply over being offended by a conversation that veered off into sex, and why? Because she was too fragile a lily to speak up and say "Let's change the subject."
My friend later sent me two more links about this. This. And this.
Science writer Seth Mnookin, whose writing and thinking I generally have great respect for, is wrong:
We can't say, on the one hand, that we want to be a community where women are treated equitably and fairly and then on the other hand say that those among us who do not treat women equitably and fairly get a one-time free pass.
Say a man was denigrating the religious to an academic he met with. This is done a lot in academia. Say that person was religious -- or just offended. Do they just sit there and suck it up or ask him to change the subject?
Treating women equally means expecting them to buck up and act like adults and speak their piece when they want something to stop.
And again, what went on does not rise to the legal definition of sexual harassment, but now, some women have elevated any talk of sex, jokes about sex, or compliments about a woman's new boots to sexual harassment.
Oh, and what Bora is is probably European -- not all squeamish about sex, and he probably expects (wrongly, obviously) that American women will act like female adults and not defenseless elementary school girls.
And finally, I'm guessing that there are many others who feel as I do but who can only, at best, privately email Bora their support, because of the witch-hunt that academia so easily becomes when somebody doesn't toe the PC line.
Welcome To Helicopter Parenting: "Weekly Walk To School Day"
We used to call this "every day in real life," because I walked to Bond elementary school, about a half mile away, every day, all by myself.
From an article in the Metrowest Daily News:
Before joining Farley School's Walk to School Wednesday group, fourth-grader Brianna Moran and second-grader Lila Chaves knew each other from their neighborhood and school, but they hadn't considered themselves friends.While taking the one-mile journey from the Gates Avenue neighborhood to Farley Elementary School each Wednesday for the past few weeks, Moran and Chaves began talking and eventually building a friendship.
Moran and Chaves' friendship is just one of a handful of new ones that sprouted up among the students who do the one-mile walk to Farley Elementary School each Wednesday, but also the parents who accompany their children.
"The parents in the neighborhood get to reconnect," said Liz Jackson, a mother of three Farley students.
After Farley School held a walk to school day last spring, Jackson rounded up parents and Farley students in her neighborhood to start a weekly walk to school day to provide children with exercise before the school day. At its peak, the group has had 28 walkers.
via @IAMMGraham who tweeted, "We used to call them 'normal school day(s).'"
Presidential "Logic"
First see the video:
My thought:
I don't have a mortgage, because I can't afford to buy a house. Imagine if the country's budget were run on this principle -- if you can't afford it, you don't get it.
More People Shocked That Paying Other People's Expenses Costs Money
Matt Vespa blogs at PJTattler that "Tirge Caps" at Daily Kos isn't happy that Obamacare will increase his family's health care premiums. Here's what he had to say:
My wife and I just got our updates from Kaiser telling us what our 2014 rates will be. Her monthly has been $168 this year, mine $150. We have a high deductible. We are generally healthy people who don't go to the doctor often. I barely ever go. The insurance is in case of a major catastrophe.Well, now, because of Obamacare, my wife's rate is gong to $302 per month and mine is jumping to $284.
I am canceling insurance for us and I am not paying any fucking penalty. What the hell kind of reform is this?
Oh, ok, if we qualify, we can get some government assistance. Great. So now I have to jump through another hoop to just chisel some of this off. And we don't qualify, anyway, so what's the point?
I never felt too good about how this was passed and what it entailed, but I figured if it saved Americans money, I could go along with it.
Yeah, they'd just pluck dollars off bushes in the national parks and nobody would have to pay a cent more to pay for all these people who, say, decided to gamble and go without and then got sick and were faced with huge premiums.
Sure, there were some people who couldn't get in from a ridiculously early age, but that could have been solved without overhauling our whole healthcare system.
And when they did that, the morons didn't bother to untie healthcare from the workplace -- in an age when few stay in a single job very long.
Linky Sects
Like kinky sex but cultishly webby.
"It Tolls For Thee"
That's Phil Miller's perfect caption for this photo he took of the action at Taco Bell.
(Used with permission, of course!)
The Jack Sprat Question
Ladies, would you date a man who weighs less than you do?
Why or why not?
There Are Already Laws Revenge Porn Victims Can Use To Fight Back
Cathy Reisenwitz writes at TPM that revenge porn is awful, but the First Amendment-violating law against it is worse:
The only California state senator to vote against SB 255, Leland Yee, voiced concerns about the law. "First Amendment protections are fundamental to our free society," he said in a statement to NBC News. "While I appreciate the intent of this legislation, I feel it was too broadly drawn and could potentially be used inappropriately to censor free speech."While many would argue that there exists speech so egregious that banning it warrants violating the First Amendment, most would also agree on the extreme importance of keeping that bar very high. Banning revenge porn undoubtedly lowers that bar, and comes with some consequences which are problematic for freedom of the press.
As the ACLU has discussed, such laws can be used to censor photos with political importance. As Jess Rem pointed out for Reason magazine, people such as Jeff Hermes, Director of the Digital Media Law Project at Harvard, share this concern about the law. Hermes has stated that revenge porn laws could have kept former New York Rep. Anthony Weiner's (D) nude selfies legally suppressed.
...In talking with Katie Couric, Rebecca Wells discusses trying to work with law enforcement to get the photos taken down. As she describes it, nothing could be done because, up until now, distributing an uncopyrighted photo wasn't illegal.
But this isn't entirely true. Civil lawsuits have always been available to victims. Late last year a Texas judge ordered an 'indefinite' lock on revenge porn site PinkMeth.com as Shelby Conklin sought "punitive damages of more than $1 million for intrusion on seclusion, public disclosure of private facts, appropriation of her name and likeness and intentional infliction of emotional distress."
The case was eventually settled, and the offenders paid restitution instead of serving time in jail. This is just one example of the many successful lawsuits by victims of revenge porn.
Before the law, there were already at least seven different kinds of laws revenge porn could have violated, depending on the circumstances. They include but are not limited to laws dealing with extortion and blackmail, child pornography, invasion of privacy, copyright infringement, voyeurism, intent and violation of the Consumer Protection Act.
Lawsuits benefit the victims through compensation, cost the state less than imprisonment, and only go to trial in a case of serious harm. In addition, allowing the courts to deal with these individual cases poses far less threat to the First Amendment than more legislation.
Science Reporter Ron Bailey With The Truth About Fracking
I've just seen a lot of freakouts about fracking, but I've been consumed by my book revisions, so I'm just getting around to reading about what it is. Ron Bailey, reason's science reporter has a good piece on it, debunking the myths.
I was finally inspired to read about it this morning after getting a neighborhood e-newsletter saying my new LA City Councilman (in addition to -- asininely -- wanting to rename the 90 Freeway) was busy with this:
3. Proposed moratorium on fracking.
Hmmm...
Bailey writes:
Fracking involves injecting pressurized water combined with sand and small amounts of chemicals to crack open shale rocks so that they will release trapped natural gas. Generally, the shale rocks are thousands of feet below the aquifers from which people draw drinking water. No doubt to the dismay of activists, President Barack Obama appears to endorse the process. "Sometimes there are disputes about natural gas," he said at his climate change speech last week at Georgetown, "but let me say this: We should strengthen our position as the top natural gas producer because, in the medium term at least, it not only can provide safe, cheap power, but it can also help reduce our carbon emissions."The president gets it, but a lot of activists don't. To help bring them around, I thought I'd take a look at some of the misleading claims made by opponents of fracking. Fortunately I just got a fundraising letter from fine folks at foodandwaterwatch (FWW) urging me to sign and send in a petition to the president to ban fracking. The letter is a nice compendium of anti-fracking scaremongering.
Falsehood 1: You can light your tap water on fire. Fox made this claim famous in the first Gasland movie when he showed a resident of Colorado striking a match as water came out of his tap; the natural gas dissolved in the water burst into flame. Yet the water was tested by the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, which reported to the resident: "There are no indications of any oil & gas related impacts to your well water." The agency concluded that the natural gas in his water supply was derived from natural sources--the water well penetrated several coal beds that had released the methane into the well.
The FWW letter warns, "When fracking loosens gas, it can cause methane to migrate into nearby household wells and drinking water." It adds, "Your home could explode, like the house that blew up in Pennsylvania and killed three people." This appears to be a reference to the 2004 case of Charles and Dorothy Harper and their grandson Baelee, in which natural gas migrated into their basement from some new nearby wells being drilled by the Snyder Brothers production company.
This artfully constructed section of the letter wants readers to conclude that fracking caused the deaths of the Harpers. Yet the wells in question were conventional gas wells; no fracking was taking place. The Harpers were killed by negligence: The company had not made sure that the casings on the wells were properly sealed with cement. (Cement is poured down around the well's steel piping to prevent gas or fluids from traveling upward and coming in contact with exposed rock along the borehole, where it can leach into drinking water aquifers.) Fracking technology had nothing to do with the tragedy, for which the Snyder Brothers made court-ordered restitution to the Harper family.
Another house exploded--fortunately without significant injury--when natural gas seeped in from a well in Ohio in 2007. In this case, the Ohio Valley Energy Systems Corporation was fracking an old conventional well whose cement casing was inadequate to block new supplies of highly pressurized natural gas from migrating into nearby water wells. Once the company fixed the casing, the problem was solved.
As A. Scott Anderson, a senior policy adviser with the Environmental Defense Fund, told The Wall Street Journal last year, "The groundwater pollution incidents that have come to light to date have all been caused by well construction problems." As the number of wells increase, so too will the chances that some will not be properly cemented, but that's not a problem inherent to fracking. Meanwhile, it is worth noting that the vast majority of natural gas explosions do not involve wells at all.
Read his whole piece but, I will say, I especially liked the hysteria-tempering rational thought he applied at the end:
Make no mistake: Any industrial process can go awry, usually through human error. And not everybody is a saint: Venal people will try short cuts that end up harming the innocent. When mistakes are made or short cuts taken, the culprits should be punished and the victims fully compensated for their losses.But don't assume those villains are the norm. Over 500,000 gas wells are currently operating in the United States. Most of them manage to avoid blowing up houses, poisoning drinking water, making it hard to breathe, causing cancer, or being worse than coal.
Probably The Most Idiotic Case Of "Zero Tolerance" Ever
An honor student comes to the rescue of a friend at a party who's drunk, ends up in violation of the schools asinine "zero tolerance" policy (the article doesn't spell out why -- but the video says it's because there was alcohol being served at the party). The student ends up getting demoted as captain of the volleyball team and suspended from playing for five games.
Bree Sison writes for WBZ-TV:
"If a kid asks for help from a friend, you don't want that kid to say 'I'm sorry I can't help you. I might end up in trouble at school,'" said attorney Wendy Murphy, who is trying to help the Cox family get the school's decision reversed.The Cox family filed a lawsuit in District Court on Friday but a lawyer for the school district argued against any kind of injunction. The judge ruled the court did not have jurisdiction.
Meanwhile, the parents of Erin's teammates have started a petition to support her.
Neither the school district nor its attorney could be reached for comment Sunday, but the Cox family is hoping they'll listen to the host of supporters who've stood behind Erin.
"She didn't do anything wrong. She did what she thought was right, and I'm very proud of her," Erin's mother said.
Love this mom. And this girl absolutely did the right thing.
More parents should raise kids like this.
TSA Wants You To Know That They'll Probably Ignore The First Amendment
Here's the audio -- on video:
Paul Joseph Watson writes at InfoWars:
While traveling through George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Matt Miller heard a security announcement repeatedly aired on the airport intercom that left him disturbed."You are also reminded that any inappropriate remarks or jokes concerning security may result in your arrest," the loudspeaker message states.
These new loudspeaker warnings remind us that the TSA continues to excel at indoctrinating Americans to be well-behaved prisoners via obedience training - reminding them that they can be disappeared if they dare speak out of turn, even in a humorous way.
This is a totally unlawful and illegitimate violation of the First Amendment and is obviously designed to intimidate travelers and stop them from complaining about aggressive grope downs which in some cases involve TSA workers touching travelers' genitals.
The message is clear - grovel and enjoy your genitals being groped or face arrest.
The prospect of travelers cracking jokes about airport security procedures is by no means unlikely given the increasing absurdity of the policies being enforced by the TSA.
As we reported last year, perhaps the mose ludicrous example is the TSA's "freeze" policy, where travelers are ordered to stand in place like statues while TSA agents resolve some unexplained security threat.
via LL
Linkle, Linkle, Little Star
How I wonder what you'll post.
Obamacare Website Miseries Due To Cost-Hiding, Claims Avik Roy
Avik Roy blogs at Forbes that the traffic bottleneck is caused by making people register first so the government can verify your information and decide whether you're eligible for subsidies:
But they were more afraid that letting people see the underlying cost of Obamacare's insurance plans would scare people away.HHS didn't want users to see Obamacare's true costs
As you know if you've been following this space, Obamacare's bevy of mandates, regulations, taxes, and fees drives up the cost of the insurance plans that are offered under the law's public exchanges. A Manhattan Institute analysis I helped conduct found that, on average, the cheapest plan offered in a given state, under Obamacare, will be 99 percent more expensive for men, and 62 percent more expensive for women, than the cheapest plan offered under the old system. And those disparities are even wider for healthy people.
That raises an obvious question. If 50 million people are uninsured today, mainly because insurance is too expensive, why is it better to make coverage even costlier?
Roy explains:
Political objectives trumped operational objectivesThe answer is that Obamacare wasn't designed to help healthy people with average incomes get health insurance. It was designed to force those people to pay more for coverage, in order to subsidize insurance for people with incomes near the poverty line, and those with chronic or costly medical conditions.
But the laws' supporters and enforcers don't want you to know that, because it would violate the President's incessantly repeated promise that nothing would change for the people that Obamacare doesn't directly help. If you shop for Obamacare-based coverage without knowing if you qualify for subsidies, you might be discouraged by the law's steep costs.
Absence Of Evidence Is, Indeed, Evidence For God's Absence
Jerry Coyne posts at Why Evolution Is True on the notion that you "can't prove a negative":
The "you can't prove a negative" argument is wrong. You can prove a negative, which means disproving a positive (i.e., God exists)--if you construe the word "disprove" as meaning "showing that the existence of a phenomenon is so unlikely that one would have to be blinkered or perverse to still believe it." And that is the case for God.Scientists, of course, don't use the word "prove". We have greater or lesser degrees of confidence in phenomena. And when a phenomenon is supported by so much evidence that you'd have to be perverse to deny it (as Steve Gould put it), then we regard it as a fact, or "proven" in everyday jargon. I am immensely confident that the earth rotates on its axis, that a water molecule has two hydrogen carbon atoms, and that we evolved from other creatures very different from modern humans. I regard those claims as "proven" in any meaningful sense, but to preserve the provisional nature of scientific truth, I avoid the word "proof" in both technical and popular presentations.
...In the case of God, then, the absence of evidence is indeed evidence for His absence. We can provisionally but confidently say that there's no evidence for a God. and therefore reject the notion that He exists. (This could be revised, of course, and in earlier posts I've given some possible evidence that would convince me of divine beings.)
How the disproving thing works:
Can you disprove that I don't have a heart? Of course you can: just do a CAT scan! Can you disprove that I am not married? For all practical purposes, yes: just try to find the records, ask people, or observe me. You won't find any evidence. Can you disprove the notion that fairies live in my garden? Well, not absolutely, but if you never see one, and they have no effects, then you can provisionally conclude that they don't exist.God is like those fairies.
He posts a few examples of the lack of evidence for god:
There is no evidence of divinity or miracles in the present world, and no palpable evidence of God-inspired miracles (prayers don't heal amputees).God, despite being omnipotent and desirous of our knowing him, has never appeared despite his manifest ability to do so. He could, for example, write "I am Yahweh; obey me" in the stars. This is the "hidden God", the Deus absconditus. As philosopher Herman Philipse has noted, God should want each individual to know of his existence to create a reciprocal relationship.
Tests of intercessory prayer show no effect.
There is no good justification, assuming a benevolent and all-powerful God, for "natural evil," the suffering of animals and innocent children due to diseases and natural disasters. Theologians' attempts to explain why, for example, children get leukemia, why ten million civilians met their deaths at the hands of the Nazis, and why thousands are killed by tsunamis, are laughable, and not remotely convincing to anyone who hasn't already bought into religious delusion.
Earlier "evidence" for divinity has been dispelled (creation, Adam and Eve, Great Flood, etc.)
A benevolent God would not kill off humanity in 5 billion years. Nor would a benevolent and powerful God use evolution or natural selection to create modern life and humans. That just doesn't make sense, though theologians concoct amusing arguments not only why evolution makes sense, but why it should be God's preferred way to bring species into being.
There is no explanation for why a benevolent God would allow more than 99% of the species he wanted to exist to subsequently go extinct without issue.
Most of the universe inhospitable to life, and nothing lives there. Why this largesse of uninhabitable space if God created Earth for humans? Even if life exists elsewhere, it can't be common, and the trillions of uninhabited stars serve no purpose.
Ghetto Glamour Shots
Via Reddit, yo.
Sent to me by one of my obviously very snooty friends.
Motley Link
Sixx of one...
Justices Are Sometimes Just
In Lansing, Michigan, Judge Hugh B. Clarke, Jr. fined himself $50 when his cellphone went off. Jacob Greenman blogs at the WSJ:
Judge Clarke told Law Blog that he had made a call during a recess, and in hustling back to his courtroom, he forgot to set his phone to vibrate. "I don't know why I even had it," he said.But, as Saint Augustine once said, it is humility that makes men angels. "I'm not above the law," Judge Clarke said. "We operate by laws and rules, and people have to follow them."
By Monday, things returned to normal. The judge held in contempt a prosecutor whose cellphone went off during a hearing.
My cell phone has been off vibrate maybe three times since I've had it. I don't like to disturb people. If I'm at a movie, I shut it off entirely.
Commenters at the WSJ said this blog item was "silly," but I disagree -- for the reasons this commenter points out.
kitty@plannedinfinity.com wrote:
This Lansing Judge is my new hero. All week, I have been collecting articles on officials breaking the law while enforcing the law, such as cops in Florida selling cocaine to arrest buyers of cocaine.This judge fined himself for breaking the established rules; this makes the statement that he is not above the law he is enforcing. This article may be silly, but it made my year!
Just when I was about to throw in my towel on the system, this judge reminded me why our system is so special. More silly articles like this! Thank you!
Sunday Night's Dry Ice "Scare" At LAX Proves My Points (And Others') About TSA
It shows that anyone with two brain cells to rub together can get things past TSA "security" puppet show with ease.
As I tweeted Sunday night:
@amyalkon
Dry ice explosion inside LAX Terminal 2, by gate 27 (amazing they got it past the repurposed mall clerks, huh?) http://www.insidesocal.com/aviation/2013/10/13/small-explosion-goes-off-sunday-inside-lax-terminal-2/ #TSA
Here's a question for you. You're in charge of a meeting of dignitaries at the State Department. Do you round up some ladies who would otherwise be working at Cinnabon or the DMV so they can keep everybody "safe"?
And no, putting them in costume -- having them dress in uniforms that look kind of like police uniforms -- doesn't make them any less unqualified to do anything but give us the illusion that the government is doing something for us.
Your Stomach Acid Is There For A Reason: Terrific Post By Dr. Michael Eades On Treating GERD (And How Many Doctors Do Harm)
Dr. Michael Eades writes at ProteinPower.com about doctors who go straight to "Take a drug!" as their solution to a medical problem:
If a patient were to present to me with a medical problem, the first thing I would think of is how (or if) the problem could be treated nutritionally. If a nutritional treatment is appropriate, then pursuing that therapeutic option is the epitome of the first pillar of the practice of good medicine: Primum non nocere. First, do no harm.It should be obvious, but just in case it isn't, that nutritional therapy wouldn't be the first thing flitting to my mind, if presented with victims of a car wreck, someone experiencing an acute heart attack, my kid showing up with a bleeding gash in his head, or a person in severe respiratory distress. But it is surprising how many chronic problems can be treated - or at the very least made better - by nutritional means. So in those disorders that can be improved by a change in nutrition, that is my default position.
Not so for the vast majority of physicians out there practicing mainstream medicine. For that lot, the default position is pharmaceuticals. Presented with a problem, they think drugs. Our professor in the Medscape video is a case in point.
In the last post, I discussed my experiences treating GERD using a low-carbohydrate diet, and I also described Dr. Norm Robillard's research into SIBO as a driving force for GERD and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) along with his methods of treatment using both high- and low-carb diets. Both his method and my method have proven successful in the vast majority of cases of GERD. Simple nutritional strategies.
Now let's take a look at how the mainstream folks treat GERD.
Most of them immediately prescribe a proton pump inhibitor (PPI), a type of drug that produces a profound reduction in the stomach's production of gastric acid (stomach acid). These PPI's (Nexium, Prilosec, Prevacid, etc.) are potent inhibitors of stomach acid secretion, in fact, they're the most potent drugs for this purpose so far developed.
...Seems like the perfect treatment. You have symptoms caused by acid getting into your esophagus, so let's take a PPI, reduce stomach acid production, and Voila! your symptoms vanish. All fine and dandy except for one little thing. Your stomach is full of acid for a reason. And if nature put stomach acid there for a reason, you can bet getting rid of it can cause problems. Let's take a look at what stomach acid does.
•It starts the digestive process of breaking down food into smaller particles
•It activates the enzymes needed for protein digestion
•It sends a message to the pancreas to begin producing and releasing digestive juices into the small bowel
•It initiates the process of peristalsis, the rhythmic contractions of the small bowel that moves food through the digestive process
•It is essential for the absorption of vitamin B12
•It is the first line of defense against bacteria and parasites found in food, water and the air we breathe....That last bit may make you suppose that people who are on PPIs and other acid-suppressing drugs might have increased rates of respiratory infections. As it turns out, they do.
I put in as much as I had to here to make this make sense, but read the whole thing at the link.
And a term I learned from an epidemiologist friend -- iatrogenesis -- when medical care harms.
Asset Forfeiture Case Dropped By Government Thugs Thanks To OC Weekly, Institute For Justice
When people sneer that journalism isn't worth much, it's stories like this that they need to look at. The OC Weekly's Nick Schou exposed a disgusting asset forfeiture case against an Anaheim landlord. The great people at the Institute for Justice took on the case, and the Feds dropped this and similar asset theft, uh, forfeiture cases against other landlords.
Schou writes in the OC Weekly:
The U.S. Attorney's office has formally dropped its case against the Anaheim landlord who stood to lose his $1.5 million retirement property over a $37 pot sale in a dispensary he'd already evicted, a case first exposed by the Weekly in February of this year. The feds had been seeking to drop the case for months, but had insisted that the landlord, Tony Jalali, a software engineer, agree to surprise inspections and to never rent to another marijuana dispensary.Jalali, who is represented by both Matthew Pappas and the Washington D.C.-based lnstitute for Justice, had refused to agree to those terms. In the deal reached today, the feds have dropped all conditions except one: that Jalali not demand that the U.S. government pay his attorneys fees. Even more importantly, the feds have dropped the case with prejudice, meaning that they cannot threaten to seize his property again.
Today, the feds also dropped similar cases against three other landlords, Dr. Mark Burcaw, who owns two properties in Santa Ana, including one that currently houses a dispensary, as well as Tom Woo and finally, Walter and Diane Botsch, who stood to lose a property that had been renting to a dispensary in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles.
Link Mink
Fur a good time...
Advice Goddess Radio, LIVE SHOW! Tonight, 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET: Mark Sanborn On How To Live, Work, And Be Extraordinary
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in therapy and research.
Unlike the guests on almost all of my shows, my guest tonight is actually not a scientist -- he's business consultant, public speaker, and best-selling author Mark Sanborn.
But, this is the second time I've made an exception and had him on the show, because his thinking is so extraordinary, inspiring, and helpful.
To bring up that word again -- "extraordinary" -- being extraordinary means being a stand-out person in your work, friendships, and relationships. We tend to think being that is either something you're born with or you're not. But Sanborn will show you tonight that this isn't the case.
He'll explain why "extraordinary" is something you can choose to be, and explain how to recalibrate your thinking so you can achieve and maintain that. As for why to do this, his books and this show should make very clear that living "extraordinary" is living and working fulfilled in a way that living ordinary just can't meet.
Last time Mark was on the show, he discussed his New York Times best-seller, "The Fred Factor: How Passion in Your Work and Life Can Turn the Ordinary into the Extraordinary." It was inspired by his postman, a guy named Fred, who used creativity and conscientiousness to become probably the best postman anybody has ever had or will have.
Mark Sanborn's very helpful new book that we'll be discussing on tonight's show is "Fred 2.0: New ideas on how to keep delivering extraordinary results."
Listen at this link from 7-8 pm Pacific, 10-11 pm Eastern, or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/10/14/mark-sanborn-fred-20how-to-live-work-be-extraordinary
Don't miss last week's show with Dr. Randy Paterson, "How And Why To Be Assertive."
Assertiveness isn't about "building a good disguise," Dr. Randy Paterson explains. "It's about the courage to take the disguise off." It's "about being THERE."
Paterson, a clinical psychologist, is the author of the excellent book I've recommended in my column, "The Assertiveness Workbook: How To Express Your Ideas and Stand Up for Yourself at Work and in Relationships," and that's exactly what he and I will be laying out on tonight's show.
Paterson takes a very rational, behavioral approach and gives extremely practical tips for how to change, and this show should help even already-assertive people notice and shore up areas where they could do better.
Listen at this link or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/10/07/dr-randy-paterson-how-and-why-to-be-assertive
Join me and my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.
Reading Is Fundamental -- Unless You're In Congress, Passing Laws That Deeply Affect Citizens' Lives
James Beattie writes at CNSNews that Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) said that reading the 10,535 pages of regulations that implement Obamacare was not her responsibility:
I haven't had the time to do it. I don't think that that's my responsibility to do it.
Who Believes This Is Real? (Supposed Terrorist Dry Run On Planes)
I've seen so much skeeviness by the government, including, on a personal level, a scumbag commenter here -- "Knowing" -- who pretended to be just one of us citizens, but who several times forgot to cloak his DHS email address.
(No, I haven't found out his identity -- not surprisingly, it will take a Freedom of Information Act filing to get it...not that they'll necessarily come through on that, because laws and rights no longer matter in this country, as we see time and time again these days.)
The latest is this Fox News plant, uh, sorry, piece:
Security experts for a major airline's pilot's union have warned members that potential terrorists conducted apparent "dry runs" aboard domestic flights in recent weeks, and urged flight crews not to be pressured into taking to the skies if they are fearful.A memo from the U.S. Airline Pilots Association, which represents more than 5,000 pilots who fly for US Airways, cites "several cases recently throughout the (airline) industry of what appear to be probes, or dry runs, to test our procedures and reaction to an in-flight threat."
"Bringing down an airliner continues to be the Gold Standard of terrorism," states the undated memo, first reported by WTSP-TVin Tampa-St. Petersburg. "If anyone thinks that our enemies have "been there, done that" and are not targeting U.S. commercial aviation -- think again."
On a Sept. 2 flight from Reagan National Airport in Washington to Orlando, a "Middle Eastern" man rose from his seat and sprinted toward the cockpit, before veering sharply to go into the forward restroom, according to the memo. While he was in there, sever other men moved about the cabin, changing seats and going into overhead bins, it says.
US Airways and the Transportation Security Administration confirmed the incident. Four passengers aboard the flight were detained by local law enforcement authorities upon arrival in Orlando due to suspicious behavior during the flight, according to a statement by Michelle Mohr, a spokeswoman for US Airways.
The cockpit doors are reinforced. There are scanners in the airports that -- whoops, anyone with three brain cells can get weapons or other contraband past, as Jonathan Corbett showed.
And then, it's impossible to get a bomb on the plane through the TSA -- except when they're so interested in what's in some old lady's diaper or in stealing travelers' money and valuables that they're ignoring the guy going through who spent his summer in Yemen.
I mean, come on. You'd surely have to bribe some airport worker to get your contraband on if you can't luck out by getting an old lady to go in front of you.
That is...unless you've been to the al Qaeda school of plastic surgery and had your body implanted with explosives. Whoopsie...gotta start doing exploratory surgery before people board planes.
Of course, there are two answers to all of this:
1. We cannot be perfectly safe.
2. The best way to ensure our safety is not to have repurposed mall workers stop every girl with a cupcake in a jar.
Real security involves having highly trained intelligence agents using probable cause to meaningfully investigate the, oh, 25, 100, 250 people in this country or elsewhere who are plausible suspects for blowing up an airliner. But if this is at all connected to actual terrorists, I would guess that they're sending out decoys to make it seem like their target is a plane before they go blow up a mall or, yes, all the people waiting in the airport to have some unskilled worker grope their sex parts as a pretend security measure.
Why You Can Throw Your Shirt On The Floor And Still Wear It To A Job Interview
LA Times obit: "Ruth Benerito dies at 97; chemist helped develop wrinkle-resistant cotton."
Linksomatic
It's a new form of Etch-a-Sketch, but for the web.
California: Even The Leaves Fall Pretty
There's a lot of stupid stuff that goes on in this state but it sure looks good.
photo by Gregg Sutter
Why Deadlines Were Created
If there were no deadlines, some authors would never stop writing and rewriting their books.
I was supposed to turn in my revisions on my next book, "Good Manners For Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck," on Friday. I was prepared to do that -- in concept. But it turns out that there's a holiday on Monday (for people who work normal jobs), and I never heard back from my editor on Friday. My agent decided that I have until Tuesday to turn in the book.
I decided that my editor, realizing that writers are terrible at predicting when they can get stuff in, told me Friday, thinking that if he told me Tuesday, I'd get it in the next Friday.
So, I woke up at 5 a.m. today and kept going through the book. The cool thing is, and I say this as somebody who's constantly worrying that things aren't good enough, with a little distance from the chapters, I'm reading them and thinking, "Hmm, this is pretty good." Which is seriously cool.
I can't wait for all of you to read this. My publisher, St. Martin's, has been amazing, and they've done a truly clever cover and I can't wait to show it to you -- which I will do as soon as I can. As soon as it's in their catalog. (It's coming out in Spring 2014, as far as I know.)
"The Affordable Care Act And The Support Center = The AMC Pacer Of Health Care Programs"
A guy blogs his experience attempting to sign up, talking to some twit, and then deciding to pay the fine and get health care in Thailand. An excerpt:
My call to the customer service center was about as much fun as applying for unemployment benefits or getting a full body groping by the TSA at the airport. I talked to an agent named Kevin who couldn't listen. He talked over everything I said. When I spoke it was as if I'd said nothing at all. He fished around on the computer and with his southern accent that sounded very Ozark Hills he declared that his computer was down and had been for 2 days and that IT hadn't fixed it. He could do nothing for me. "I'm sorry Mr. Gilmore. Please call back and talk to another agent and maybe their computer will be working. Thank for calling and have a nice day." Then he hung up. Alright I'll have a nice day because Kevin told me to and I can look at that white screen to calm my nerves. That white screen might just be my key to good health. I'll let go all attachments and expectations staring into the emptiness.
Washington Post writers Amy Goldstein and Ariana Eunjung Cha on how federal signup site is "bedeviled by problems that go beyond what the Obama administration has acknowledged":
Even when consumers have been able to sign up, insurers sometimes can't tell who their new customers are because of a separate set of computer defects.The problems stem from a feature of the online marketplace's computer system that is designed to send each insurer a daily report listing people who have just enrolled. According to several insurance industry officials, the reports are sometimes confusing and duplicative. In some cases, they show -- correctly or not -- that the same person enrolled and canceled several times on a single day.
The ability of consumers to sign up for a health plan, and the ability of the insurers to know who they are covering, is key to the success of the federal law that will for the first time require most Americans to have health insurance starting Jan. 1. The Web site www.healthcare.gov is the main path for millions of Americans in 36 states to purchase new coverage.
...One insurance industry official familiar with the daily reports, known as "834s," said that they rely on relatively old technology.
Rather than transmitting a file whenever a consumer enrolls, the reports are sent to each insurance carrier in a daily batch at 6 p.m.
Also, the reports contain a "stack" for each consumer, so that if a person picks a health plan, then retypes his or her phone number, two reports are generated.
Beginning in December, health officials intend to run a monthly comparison of the federal list of enrollees against the insurers' lists. However, one insurance industry official said that the computer system needed to perform that comparison has not been tested.
The flawed enrollment reports result from one of several design and programming issues that have been emerging in recent days, according to technology consultants, health-care advocates and academics who have been monitoring the rollout of the exchange.
For some consumers, the confusion begins with the screen that lets them create a user name.
It asks users to "Choose a user name that is 6-74 characters long and must contain a lowercase or capital letter, a number, or one of these symbols _.@/-". It has been unclear to some whether they need a letter plus a number or symbol, or whether letters or numbers or symbols are sufficient.
Some consumers are discovering they cannot erase profiles they created by mistake, while others are encountering error messages telling them that profiles they created do not exist. Still others find that when they click on a button to move to another screen, they cannot tell whether the system is stuck or simply slow, because the site does not show them an hourglass or any other sign that a step is underway.
blog link via Lisa Simeone
"The Tyranny Of Niceness"
That's what Christina Hoff Sommers calls the "misguided tolerance" that is in vogue, acting like every person is fragile. Here's part of the transcript from her interview with TheFire.org:
People think well, I'll be nice. But being too nice, being nice in the face of depravity is the opposite of nice. It's being tolerant of callousness and cruelty. As a philosopher professor of many years, I saw that over the years students became more and more relativistic and more and more diffident about taking a moral stand. Ethics professors will talk about this. They'll sort of exchange horror stories about something you'll propose to a class to try to get them confidently to speak against it.[00:03:02] In some classes, I found it to be impossible. They would not confidently take a moral stand against anything. What they are supposed to be doing is developing ideas and challenging them, learning how to debate. We have a generation of kids who can't argue. They think that will create tension or there's something wrong with it. Well, if you can't argue; you can't think.
[00:03:27] The ideal of liberty and freely speaking your mind is so quintessentially American. So much of our tradition and how we raised a generation of students who don't know that, don't appreciate that. My basic belief is that kids are strong and resilient and smart. They will discover what is going on. I think we'll see rebellion. I already see signs of it.
The video:
Hilarious: Things Girls Do That'd Be Creepy If A Guy Did 'Em
Linksy
Like Banksy but without the pictures.
Tempting Response To Judge
That would be, "Well, clearly you're brain dead, but they still let you come to work and don the robes."
And that would be in the wake of the judge telling the man -- standing right in front of him -- that he was still legally dead.
And yes, I understand that the law is sometimes an ass, but from what I've seen time and again, there are workarounds.
Imposter Service Dogs And The Self-Interested People Calling For State Licensing
I trained my beloved late dog, Lucy, so she'd be able to go anywhere -- and she did. They loved her at Cafe de Flore in Paris, where she'd sleep in my lap while I was writing (after being fawned over by the waiters and other patrons).
Here she is perched on my shoulder, as she loved to be, at Samaritaine, the French department store, where I bought her ski jacket, the ferret collar she wore, and the ferret cases she was happiest being carried in. (She was three pounds and liked small spaces.)
Aida, also, though still a puppy, born May 11, has been rigorously trained in the same mode. She's learned that she isn't allowed to beg for food and basically has to sit down in my lap and stay put when I'm writing at the computer or eating. She also listens to commands and obeys them.
This sort of training takes a lot of discipline. You have to be immediate and consistent with both punishment and rewards, scoldings and praise, and you sometimes have to stop what you're doing for a doggie lesson. (When she doesn't come when she's called -- rare these days -- I go get the training leash. Just showing it to her gets her to mend her ways.)
Regarding the story linked below, people who don't train their dogs very well sometimes bring them around with them and use the bogus service dog vests you can get to get them in places they aren't allowed.
I won't do that. I've committed to being ethical and that doesn't mean "ethical when it suits me."
That said, I think that, for example, the "health" rule that you can't bring your dog into a restaurant is ridiculous. If a restaurant wants that to be their policy, fine. But again, my dog has been to numerous Paris cafés and restaurants, and was perfectly behaved and welcomed, and I've seen many other dogs there as well, including a Great Dane at Hotel Lutetia in the lobby bar.
Lucy was also cleaner and more well-groomed than probably most people's children.
Well, not surprisingly guess who's one of the people behind a call to have service dog training standards set -- a guy who owns a training school. Institute for Justice has been a big critic of licensing standards that are usually designed, in part or in large part, to financially benefit those who provide the training. (They've fought and won many of these cases.)
If I have a dog and can train her to be a service dog -- which if you see how utterly well-behaved this tiny puppy Aida is, I think you'd say I could -- why should I have to pay for her to go through training?
There's an article about how imposter dogs supposedly hurt people with disabilities. Sorry, but I think that's a little overblown. An excerpt from the piece:
Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, it's a federal crime to use a fake dog. And about a fourth of all states have laws against service animal misrepresentation. But privacy protections built into the laws make it nearly impossible to prosecute offenders. It's even more difficult because no papers are legally required for real service dogs. Often, people who want to take their pets into restaurants or retail stores just go online to buy vests, backpacks or ID cards with a "service animal" insignia.The law says those entering businesses with animals can be asked just two questions: Is this a service dog? What is it trained to do for you?
Efforts to make the law more prosecutable have begun, but few agree on what will work best. Ideas range from ditching privacy to doing nothing.
Corey Hudson, chief executive officer of Canine Companions for Independence in San Rafael and president of Assistance Dogs International, a coalition of training schools, is leading the effort to get the U.S. Department of Justice involved. He started writing to the agency 18 months ago but has not received a response.
Hudson wants to open talks and explore ways to identify the real from the phony.
But the International Association of Assistance Dog Partners in Michigan worries that bringing in the Justice Department could set back access rights won by those with disabilities in the past 20 years.
"While we deplore those who might be so unethical as to impersonate a disabled person by dressing their dog up as a service animal, we equally deplore the frenzy of alarm being stirred up about the risk of such abuse," said Joan Froling, chairwoman of the IAADP.
There needs to be a standard, said Jennifer Arnold, founder of Canine Assistants in Atlanta. "The sticky part is who will do the testing and what will be the criteria for allowing dogs to be considered assistance dogs."
An ID card might be the simplest answer, she said, adding that she doesn't think the loss of privacy will be the big issue that some think it will be.
A loss of privacy always seems like no big deal to the people trying to take it away from us. It is one of our most important rights, the right to not be info-jacked, to reveal only the details about ourselves we choose to reveal.
Sick Police Brutality On A Woman In Custody
From the Chicago Trib's YouTube description:
A Chicago woman has sued the Village of Skokie and one of its police officers, alleging she was seriously injured after being shoved headfirst into a concrete jail cell bench last spring. Part of the incident was recorded on a jailhouse video camera.
Juan Perez, Jr., writes in the Chicago Tribune:
A Chicago woman has sued the village of Skokie and one of its police officers, alleging she was seriously injured after being shoved headfirst into a jail cell bench after a drunken driving arrest last winter.Cassandra Feuerstein, 47, said in a federal lawsuit that the incident required facial reconstructive surgery and the insertion of a titanium plate to "replace the bones that had been shattered."
Part of the alleged incident was recorded on jail video cameras, which Feuerstein's attorney, Torreya Hamilton, released Wednesday.
"The video speaks for itself," Hamilton said. "She does nothing to justify what this male police officer does."
Feuerstein was arrested for drunken driving March 10, according to Hamilton and court documents. The video shows officers searching Feuerstein inside the jail cell, where she appears to be asked to remove her boots and bra before being removed from the cell for additional processing.
An officer then takes Feuerstein by the arm and appears to push her back into the cell. Video shows Feuerstein falling forward and striking her head and face on a bench, before officers and paramedics tend to her as a pool of blood spreads on the floor.
Just think of all the events not caught on camera.
UPDATE -- The woman speaks here:
via @TedFrank
Gun Laws Are For Little People, Not Queen Diane Feinstein
Emily Miller writes in the Wash Times:
Washington Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier seems to think that gun-control laws don't apply to the liberal elite. The police chief helped Sen. Dianne Feinstein acquire "assault weapons," which are illegal to possess in the District, for a news conference early this year to promote a ban on these firearms, then tried to cover up the police involvement.Now, a response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request reveals Chief Lanier's shocking willingness to bend the rules for partisan and ideological purposes.
Lanier's coverup
Chief Lanier wanted to help Mrs. Feinstein, but didn't want the media to know.
Cmdr. Williams emailed Mr. Mentzer to put a "bug" in his ear that the police would "prefer that no mention of the fact that the weapons came from D.C. or were recovered by MPDC in the official language or speeches." Mr. Mentzer replied, "By not mentioning where the weapons came from, we open ourselves up to the same charge against David Gregory."He was referring to the anchor of NBC's "Meet the Press," who knowingly procured an illegal 30-round magazine in the District as a stunt for his TV show, but was not charged.
The office of Senate Sergeant at Arms Terrance W. Gainer coordinated bringing the illegal weapons onto Capitol Hill for Mrs. Feinstein's dramatic Jan. 24 news conference introducing her new "assault weapons" ban.Kathryn Stillman, the campus-access coordinator for Mr. Gainer, emailed Cmdr. Williams and Mrs. Feinstein's staff to recommend the firearms be mounted on a board with zip ties so that Mrs. Feinstein could "point or even touch, but no need for any particular handling." This was to ensure that it could be argued later that the senator never had "possession" of the illegal guns.
via Jay J. Hector
Linkspacious
The amber waves of grin.
Welcome To The United States Of "We're Big Litigious Pussies"
USPS to destroy "Just Move" stamps over "safety concerns."
via @WalterOlson
Of Course She's Failing Her AP History Class
A straw-draw put her in there, not her ability.
In the latest LA schools idiocy, they're putting kids in AP classes by lottery, not by ability. It's called the "open access" movement.
Here's how that's working out for one girl, as Teresa Watanabe writes in the LA Times:
Miracle Vitangcol, a Downtown Magnets junior with average grades and test scores, is failing her AP U.S. history class; she said she is overwhelmed by the rapid pace and volume of material she needs to memorize. But she said she intends to stick it out because the class is teaching her to manage her time, take good notes and develop perseverance."I'm struggling to adjust," she said. "But I keep telling myself, 'It's OK. You can do it. Just push yourself.'"
More:
At Jordan High School in Watts, Evan Dvorak confronted that question head-on last year when he allowed any student to take his AP physics class. But he found that those who had not acquired the necessary calculus skills could not handle the work; all 20 students failed the exam."As a teacher, you want to think you can reach every student and perform miracles to get them where they need to be," he said. "But it proved to be too much for everyone."
"Fucking Conjugate"
Samuel L. Jackson thinks President Obama needs to work on his grammar, writes Tanya Ghahremani at Bustle.com:
On President Obama's habit of dropping the 'g' off the end of some words in an effort to sound more relatable to the American people:First of all, we know it ain't because of his blackness, so I say stop trying to 'relate.' Be a leader. Be f***ing presidential. Look, I grew up in a society where I could say 'It ain't' or 'What it be' to my friends. But when I'm out presenting myself to the world as me, who graduated from college, who had family what cared about me, who has a well-read background, I f***ing conjugate.On Django Unchained and the n-word:
These 20-somethings can't turn around and tell me the word (n-word) is f***ed-up in Django yet still listen to Jay Z or whoever else say '(n-word, n-word, n-word)' throughout the music they listen to. You can't have it one way and not the other ... I now want the phrase "I f***ing conjugate" (without the stars) on my gravestone, because that is the best thing I have ever heard.
When An Autistic Kid Would Do Anything To Have A Friend He Become Prey For A Narco Cop
An autistic kid with bipolar disorder, Tourettes, and several anxiety disorders started his senior year of high school in a new school. Amanda Winkler writes at reason that a Riverside cop badgered him and badgered him into buying drugs -- and then had him arrested for it:
The ordeal began on the first day of school last fall. The family had just moved to a new neighborhood and their son began his senior year at a new school, Chaparral High, in the Temecula Valley Unified School District. Their son rarely socialized, so his mom was thrilled when he announced that he had made a new friend in art class on the first day of school."We were so excited. I told him he should ask his friend to come over for pizza and play video games," says Catherine Snodgrass, "but his new friend always had an excuse."
His new friend, who went under the name of Daniel Briggs, was known as "Deputy Dan" to many students because it was so apparent to them that he was an undercover officer. However, to their son, whose disabilities make it hard for him to gauge social cues, Dan was his only real friend.
Dan reportedly sent 60 text messages to their son begging for drugs. According to his parents, the pressure to buy drugs was too much for the autistic teen who began physically harming himself.
The Snodgrass' son finally agreed to buy Dan the pot. Dan give him twenty dollars and it took him three weeks to buy a half joint of pot off a homeless man downtown. This happened twice. When Dan asked a third time, their son refused and Dan cut off all communication.
"Our son was pretty broken up about that and he was back to having zero friends," says Doug Snodgrass.
On December 11, 2012 armed police officers walked into their son's classroom and arrested him in front of his peers. He was taken to the juvenile detention center, along with the 21 other arrestees, where he was kept for 48 hours. First hand reports claim that the juvenile center was caught off guard by the large number of arrests and that some youths had to sleep on the floor, using toilet paper as pillows.
Their son was also expelled from high school.
The Snograss' hired a private attorney and took their case to court. In January, he was found not guilty due to extenuating circumstances. The judge had him undergo informal probation and perform 20 hours of community service.
The video:
What kind of horrible cop preys on a disabled kid just to get a drug arrest? It turns out most of the kids arrested were "special needs" students, according to the video.
I grew up without friends and I would have done a whole lot to have one -- probably buy pot even though I don't smoke pot and really have no interest in doing it ever. I'm probably especially enraged by this because of it.
Obama Supporters And Obamacare Supporters Shocked To Find That Somebody Must Pay The Bill
And oops, seems they're some of those somebodies.
Tracy Seipel writes in the SJMercuryNews:
Cindy Vinson and Tom Waschura are big believers in the Affordable Care Act. They vote independent and are proud to say they helped elect and re-elect President Barack Obama.Yet, like many other Bay Area residents who pay for their own medical insurance, they were floored last week when they opened their bills: Their policies were being replaced with pricier plans that conform to all the requirements of the new health care law.
Vinson, of San Jose, will pay $1,800 more a year for an individual policy, while Waschura, of Portola Valley, will cough up almost $10,000 more for insurance for his family of four.
...Both Vinson and Waschura have adjusted gross incomes greater than four times the federal poverty level -- the cutoff for a tax credit. And while both said they anticipated their rates would go up, they didn't realize they would rise so much.
"Of course, I want people to have health care," Vinson said. "I just didn't realize I would be the one who was going to pay for it personally."
How can grown adults think 1. Money grows on a bush outside their house, and 2. Government is about caring for the people and now about a bunch of people trying to grab power for them and theirs?
Slinky
Stairway to Kevin.
More Men Are Raped In The U.S. Than Women
Where we need all that rape prevention is in prison.
And no, because a person is in prison, doesn't mean they're worth less, their rights are any less, or they should be any less protected from rape than a person who is raped on the outside.
From The Daily Mail, via MC:
More men are raped in the U.S. than woman, according to figures that include sexual abuse in prisons.In 2008, it was estimated 216,000 inmates were sexually assaulted while serving time, according to the Department of Justice figures.
That is compared to 90,479 rape cases outside of prison.
To truly be for equality, as many women's rights advocates claim to be, is to care deeply whether a person is raped, and not differentiate as to whether the person has girlparts or is free to walk about in society.
When Government Does It Badly, Don't Just Go Helpless
Gregg just told me a story of how some guy in Detroit called 911, and the operator asked him to call back, as in, later.
Well, Veronique de Rugy, an economist I find wise, blogged a piece about citizens in Oakland who've got "bring your own" security in the face of an understaffed police department:
The one thing almost everyone agrees that the government should provide is police. However, when private citizens in parts of Oakland got tired of the lack of security in their neighborhood, the increase in the crime rates, and the inability of their own police force to protect them, they launched a series of campaigns to hire security forces to patrol their area (see here, here, and here). What are they looking for? Private security officers certified to carry firearms.
De Rugy quotes an SFGate report by Will Kane, noting that even middle-class neighborhoods are getting into the act:
In middle-class Maxwell Park, just northwest of Mills College, 180 residents have banded together to hire a security guard to patrol their neighborhood for four hours a day, five days a week. He started Wednesday."It costs each of us about 50 cents a day," said Jose Durado, chairman of the neighborhood council. "As we get 45 new households to join, we get an additional hour of security."
...The security companies are quick to say they aren't replacement cops -- they're mostly there to scare thugs out of the neighborhood or to report suspicious activity.
More at PJM from Ed Driscoll.
The Nuances Of The Navy Yard Shooter's Mental Problems
Walter Olson blogs at Overlawyered as I have here about how HP/The Experts, Alexis' employer, knew about his "increasingly florid symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia."
Olson quotes the piece by The New York Times' Serge F. Kovaleski, who relates how Alexis' mother told The Experts of his previous paranoid behavior, advising that he "likely needed to see a therapist." After a meeting of "senior-level employees," it was concluded that he could be sent back to work:
In an e-mail message, the Experts said that a Hewlett-Packard manager in Newport said she was "comfortable" having Mr. Alexis come back to work after he reported hearing voices.Hewlett-Packard said its manager in Newport was a low-level employee who was not given full details by the Experts about Mr. Alexis' problems. The company said it has placed that manager on administrative leave.
Olson makes a point not seen other places:
The missing angle is: what if any role was played by the legal constraints on the various entities that directly or indirectly employed Mr. Alexis? Severe mental illness is a protected condition under the ADA, and employers may not be free to take workers off their duties unless and until they can assemble evidence that would stand up in court documenting a "direct threat," "undue hardship" or other adequate reason for removal; the law places limits on the employer's right to demand medical exams to evaluate the exact contours of disability; and privacy rules limit sharing of medically relevant information between different entities, as we saw in the Seung-Hui Cho/Virginia Tech case. All these rules apply to ordinary larger private businesses, but some come in especially stringent form when applied to federal contractors.
Christopher Hitchens Explains The Problem With Islam: Why It Cannot Change
Boris Katchka interviewed him in 2007 for New York Magazine:
You're an even bigger critic of Islam.
If you ask specifically what is wrong with Islam, it makes the same mistakes as the preceding religions, but it makes another mistake, which is that it's unalterable. You notice how liberals keep saying, If only Islam would have a Reformation; it can't have one. It says it can't. It's extremely dangerous in that way.
As I've written before here, per my studies of Islam Quran is said to be the word of god and cannot be changed.
Unfortunately, Mohammed wasn't exactly all "Turn the other cheek" like Jesus. Geert Wilders writes:
Whenever confronted with horrible atrocities, Western leaders downplay the role of Islam. They claim, as British Prime Minister Cameron did after last May's London killing, that "there is nothing in Islam that justifies these dreadful acts." However, the justification of the dreadful acts is in the Koran. Verse 8:12 leaves no the followers of Islam in no doubt about what to do with infidels: "Strike off their heads, maim them in every limb!" it says. Muhammad's book is full of similar verses that incite its Islamic readers to commit hostile and violent acts against non-Muslims.
More from Wilders:
Islamic law is barbaric and cruel. Flogging, mutilation and other corporal punishments, stoning and even crucifixion are permitted penalties under sharia law. It discriminates (against) women, apostates and non-Muslims, who have fewer rights or no rights at all.
And don't forget how they hang or stone gays.
La-la-la-linkie
Picture Julie Andrews and a bunch of kids in clothes made out of curtains.
California Upside-Down Think: I Use Less Electricity But I Should Pay More
It's expensive to live near the coast, but it's a tradeoff I make. One thing that living here comes with is a lessened need for electricity. It gets really hot here about 10 days a year, but I make do with fans rather than buying an air conditioner and paying the electricity bill for having one.
Well, now I'll pay for that anyway -- still without having the airconditioner. Our wonderful governor, Jerry Brown, has just okayed an overhaul of California energy rates to make people who use less pay more. From the LA Times, Marc Lifsher writes:
SACRAMENTO -- Gov. Jerry Brown has given the go-ahead for state regulators to make a sweeping overhaul of the way California residential ratepayers pay for electricity and how much.The governor Monday signed AB 327 by Assemblyman Henry T. Perea (D-Fresno), authorizing the state Public Utilities Commission to come up with a new formula aimed at lowering electric bills for people living in hot hinterlands, such as the Inland Empire, Central Valley and high desert, while raising them for those in the more moderate coastal climes.
The bill gives the PUC "the authority to address current electricity rate inequities, protect low-income energy users and maintain robust incentives for renewable energy investments," Brown wrote in a signing statement.
Does Jerry Brown not understand what happens to the tax base when he chases all the people who pay taxes out of the state?
From the LAT comments, where there's far more sense in a few jotted down remarks than in Jerry Brown's entire administration:
Smokey56 at 7:54 AM October 08, 2013
"The trouble with Socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money." -Margaret Thatcherbetsrc at 7:46 AM October 08, 2013
Why is it fair for those of us on the coast to subsidize same-incomed people who choose the larger and cheaper AC houses in the ecologically fragile desert! It's not. By that theory those living in Ojai should pay less for their electricity than those living in Ventura.Tython... at 7:01 AM October 08, 2013
But there are poor people in or close to cool coastal areas.
Do their rates go up?
Do the rich people in the inland areas pay less?
Government Pettiness In What Gets Shut Down
Disgustingly, they've yanked two elderly people out of their home, which they've owned since the 70s. Jacqui Heinrich writes at KTNV that their private home on Lake Mead sits on Federal land:
Joyce Spencer is 77-years-old and her husband Ralph is 80. They've been spending most of their time in the family ice cream store since going home isn't an option.The Spencers never expected to be forced out of their Lake Mead home, which they've owned since the 70s, but on Thursday, a park ranger said they had 24 hours to get out.
"I had to go to town today and buy Ralph undershirts and jeans because I forgot his pants," Joyce Spencer told Action News.
The Stewart's Point home sits on federal land, so even though the Spencers own their cabin outright, they're not allowed in until the government reopens.
The Lake Mead properties are considered vacation homes; one of the lease requirements to own a plot is people must have an alternative residence.
Regardless, the Spencers said it's their property and they should be allowed in, shutdown or not.
More here, by Mollie Hemingway at thefederalist, on the punitive and petty government shutdowns:
There were nearly 6 million living World War II veterans counted in the 2000 U.S. Census. By 2010, there were fewer than 2 million. An estimated 640 World War II Veterans die each day.Last week the Obama Administration chose to barricade the World War II Memorial to keep aging veterans and other citizens out during the so-called government "shutdown."
It's tremendously wasteful to spend taxpayer funds and personnel shutting down an open-air memorial that could be visited at any time of the day prior to the shutdown, whether staff were nearby or not. But more than that, it's just cruel: World War II veterans are on a race against time to see their memorial.
...Bloomberg News reported on the "seeming randomness" of the closures:
Grocery stores on Army bases in the U.S. are closed. The golf course at Andrews Air Force base is open.CNN asked the Executive Branch why in the world they'd barricaded the World War II Memorial and received an incoherent reply. Which they published:
"I know that this is an open-air memorial, but we have people on staff who are CPR trained, (and) we want to make sure that we have maintenance crew to take care of any problems. What we're trying to do is protect this resource for future generations," said [National Mall and Memorial parks spokeswoman Carol] Johnson.Again, people were free prior to the shutdown to walk on the sidewalks near the memorial whether or not CPR-trained government workers were nearby or not. The explanation boggled the mind.
...This pettiness extended to attempts to shutdown privately-run rival visitor sites such as Mt. Vernon, George Washington's home. And the National Park Service also forcibly closed (and if they have a rationale for this they've yet to explain it) the Claude Moore Colonial Farm in McLean, Virginia. It's a living history museum that shows school kids what life on a farm was like before the Revolutionary War. Unlike other sites that are dependent on the Park Service, the Claude Moore Colonial Farm is fighting back against the NPS and they say they are fighting for their very survival:
The Farm is a completely independent entity, leasing land from the National Park Service but drawing no resources, personnel, and most importantly, currently drawing no money from the NPS or the American people. It funds itself completely through its school, community, and public programs. However, this government shutdown has caused the NPS to shut down this Farm, despite its independence, proximity to extreme security, and privately paid full staff. Without income from school groups, public programs, and public entry, the Farm will not meet its bills and will have to shut down forever.Again: Both cruel and unnecessary.
More here.
Federal Weapons Charge For A Student Who Brought Fishing Supplies To School
Think back. Pretend it's 1990. Think about how unbelievable this charge would have seemed then.
What's scary is that it's just one of many stories like this.
In this case, as Robby Soave writes at The Daily Caller:
A Cobb County high school senior was charged with the felony of bringing weapons into a school zone after police found fishing knives in a tackle box in his car. Cody Chitwood, a 17-year-old student at Lassiter High School and avid fisherman, turned himself in and was released on $1,000 bond.Police were performing a random sweep, and drug-sniffing dogs detected black powder in Chitwood's car. The powder was residue from a firecracker that had been in the car since Fourth of July, but it was enough to a warrant a full search that turned up the fishing-related weaponry.
"Fishing-related weaponry"? "Fishing-related weaponry"?
Is this the America you want to be living in?
Every time somebody fails to speak up about something like this, fails to push back, we edge a little further down this road.
Oh, and P.S. You can kill somebody with a Number 2 pencil.
Want Something Done Well? Don't Have It Done By Government
Stunningly (but not surprisingly), 99 percent of Obamacare applications don't contain enough information to enroll the applicant in the plan. This isn't because the applicants are stupid, but because government is.
Dan Mangan writes at CNBC:
As few as 1 in 100 applications on the federal exchange contains enough information to enroll the applicant in a plan, several insurance industry sources told CNBC on Friday. Some of the problems involve how the exchange's software collects and verifies an applicant's data."It is extraordinary that these systems weren't ready," said Sumit Nijhawan, CEO of Infogix, which handles data integrity issues for major insurers including WellPoint and Cigna, as well as multiple Blue Cross Blue Shield affiliates.
Experts said that if Healthcare.gov's success rate doesn't improve within the next month or so, federal officials could face a situation in January in which relatively large numbers of people believe they have coverage starting that month, but whose enrollment applications are have not been processed.
"It could be public relations nightmare," said Nijhawan. Insurers have told his company that just "1 in 100" enrollment applicants being sent from the federal marketplace have provided sufficient, verified information.
...Experts said that if the lag in processing enrollments continues on a large scale, insurers expect the federal government to tell them that they must provide benefits to people even as applications are still being processed.
"In talking to some of the insurers, they pretty much assume that even if there are issues, the feds will say, 'You know what, it's your problem, they've signed up,' " said Koritala.
Linkietoo
A bird...a plane...a drone doing upskirt spying...
Maybe It's Just My Immature Sense Of Humor
This made me laugh.
I'm on the phone with my boyfriend. I say, "I can't find that book on bereavement."
Boyfriend: "I'm sorry for your loss."
Sweetheart Deals For Feinstein's Hubby's Clients, Biz Partners In Sales Of Post Office Buildings
Diane Feinstein is somewhat unique in that almost every time I read any piece of information about her or related to her, I loathe her more.
The latest is Ralph Nader calling for her to "introduce and champion a bill to immediately suspend all sales of postal properties throughout the country."
Why Feinstein?
From CorporateCrimeReporter.com:
As it turns out, Feinstein's husband, Richard Blum, is chairman of the C.B. Richard Ellis Group (CBRE), which has an exclusive contract to negotiate the sale of USPS real estate.Investigative journalist Richard Byrne has dug into CBRE's and Blum's activities and written an expose, most recenty in e-book form, titled: Going Postal: U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein's Husband Sells Post Offices to His Friends, Cheap.
In his letter, Nader highlights a number of troubling issues raised by Byrne, including that in the first two years of CBRE's contract with USPS, it sold 52 postal properties at $66 million less than their assessed value.
"Perhaps of greater concern," Nader writes, "is that, according to Mr. Byrne, CBRE has sold 20 percent of the postal service's real estate portfolio that has been sold to date to its own clients or business partners."
Byrne says that the CBRE contract with USPS was renegotiated in 2012 so as to allow CBRE to negotiate on behalf of both the USPS and prospective buyers.
"How can the U.S. Postal Service reasonably expect that CBRE would obtain the highest possible value for postal properties if CBRE represents both sides of the transaction?" Nader asks.
Duh.
via Lisa Simeone
Obama Admin-Style Transparency
Dylan Byers writes at Politico:
David Sanger, the New York Times reporter who has spent two decades reporting in Washington, says that the Obama administration is the "most closed, control-freak administration" he's ever covered.That criticism comes from a forthcoming report on U.S. press freedom written by former Washington Post editor Leonard Downie, Jr., in which he claims that national security reporters face "vast and unprecedented challenges" as a result of government surveillance, secrecy and "sophisticated control" of the news media's access to government.
In that report, which Downie previewed in a Post article on Friday, Sanger says that White House employees and intelligence agency staff were specifically told in 2012 to freeze and retain any correspondence they'd had with him. That directive came after Sanger published a 2012 story about U.S. and Israeli cyberattacks against Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities."
"A memo went out from the chief of staff a year ago to White House employees and the intelligence agencies that told people to freeze and retain any e-mail, and presumably phone logs, of communications with me," Sanger told Downie. Now his sources tell him, "'David, I love you, but don't e-mail me. Let's don't chat until this blows over.' "
TSA's Pre-Check: The Dog Biscuit Being Offered You To Give Up Your Privacy
I'm dumbfounded by the naivete of those crowing about how great the TSA's Pre-Check is. Yes, they're glad as anything to pay $85 to not have their constitutional rights violated (and their genitals violated in the process) simply because they're guilty of wanting to fly to see grandma.
Christopher Elliott makes some excellent points:
You might think twice before plunking down the $85 that a five-year Pre-Check membership is expected to cost. Privacy advocates and some consumers are uneasy about government trusted-traveler programs like this one. There's no guarantee that you'll be approved, and if you aren't, you may never know why. And Pre-Check status is no guarantee that you can avoid a standard TSA screening, which includes a full-body scan or a so-called "enhanced" pat-down."If you sign up, you'll want to keep your nose clean for the rest of your life," says Gregory Nojeim, a director at the Center for Democracy & Technology. "Because that's how long the FBI will keep your fingerprints."
True, as part of the application process, TSA collects a cache of personal information about you, including your prints. They're held in a database for 75 years, and the database is queried by the FBI and state and local law enforcement as needed to solve crimes at which fingerprints are lifted from crime scenes, according to Nojeim. The prints may also be used for background checks.
"What started as a criminal database to link arrestees to other crimes is being turned into an all-purpose database of fingerprint identifiers," Nojeim says.
It isn't what Pre-Check is now -- we don't really know that yet -- but what it could someday become that worries privacy-watchers. In the future, it isn't too difficult to imagine a faster line for pre-screened train passengers waiting to board. TSA's roaming Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR) teams already selectively screen Amtrak passengers and attendees at special events such as NFL games and political conventions. It also wouldn't be much of a stretch to see the program requiring passengers to be pre-approved before they can fly.
"I would not apply for one of these trusted-traveler programs, which in the past have involved giving the government more information or authorizing it to get more information about me," says Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit organization that advocates on privacy issues.
The concept of a line for elite travelers who can afford to pay a fee also strikes many observers as unfair, if not un-American. Critics say that, in the interests of safety, all travelers should be given the same careful screening whenever they fly.
Let's be real. With unskilled workers who otherwise would have been working at Cinnabon doing the screening, this isn't in the "interests of safety."
As I've said, the TSA is not about security; it's about making us docile in the fact of having our rights taken from us. Making that normal.
We should all have big, big problems with that.
Can You Breathe Your Way Out Of Depression?
More and more, I see links between our psychology and body and realize that we are often missing something in not looking to use them in complement to make ourselves feel better.
Psychiatrist Emily Deans has an excellent post that relates, "Depression and a Broken Heart," at Psychology Today. She explains that there's often an altered heart rate in depressed people -- a somewhat chaotic heartbeat.
She explains why this is an issue in her piece, and gives this helpful advice:
Over the years I've tried a number of different breathing exercises with my patients. Many people can't tolerate some of the traditional methods I learned (diaphragmatic breathing or body scans) because the focus on breathing can cause anxiety and light-headedness with hyperventilation. There is one method from yoga I like to call "Darth Vader breathing" that seems to avoid the hyperventilation risk and works fairly quickly. And while I wouldn't practice it standing just behind someone in an elevator, it can be done with a minute or two at your desk or while driving or just before bedtime to help bring your body into a more rest and recovery state to balance out the stressors of daily life.To do Darth Vader breathing, close your mouth and simply breathe in through your nose and out through your nose at a slow-ish rate. No need to breathe particularly deeply or fill your lungs, just breathe a normal amount. When you exhale, force the air against the back of your palate to make a noise that is like a sigh. Inhales should take 3-4 seconds and exhales about 5-7 seconds. If you close your eyes (if you are driving, please don't) and do this breathing pattern between 6-10 times, you might find decreased tension in your neck shoulders and a more serene state of mind.
So depression may well break the heart, but with proper recovery and self-care, we can undo some of the ravages of chronic stress and keep ourselves functional and resilient.
I use this sort of breathing to be able to fall asleep at will. I took one yoga class once, hated it. But it taught me how to slow down my breathing, which is an absolutely invaluable technique.
It Is Possible To Get A Human To Levitate
Gregg can accomplish it with about 10 minutes of Photoshop. (Update on my post from the other day.)
Linkies
The best of the web-footed.
Advice Goddess Radio, LIVE SHOW! Tonight, 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET: Dr. Randy Paterson On How And Why To Be Assertive
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in therapy and research.
Assertiveness isn't about "building a good disguise," Dr. Randy Paterson explains. "It's about the courage to take the disguise off." It's "about being THERE."
Paterson, a clinical psychologist, is the author of the excellent book I've recommended in my column, "The Assertiveness Workbook: How To Express Your Ideas and Stand Up for Yourself at Work and in Relationships," and that's exactly what he and I will be laying out on tonight's show.
Paterson takes a very rational, behavioral approach and gives extremely practical tips for how to change, and this show should help even already-assertive people notice and shore up areas where they could do better.
Listen at this link from 7-8 pm Pacific, 10-11 pm Eastern, or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/10/07/dr-randy-paterson-how-and-why-to-be-assertive
Don't miss last week's show on using reason to keep from being anxious or letting anxiety take over your life.
My guest is psychologist Tamar Chansky, Ph.D, a leading expert on anxiety disorders, and she offers you numerous substantive, practical tips for keeping anxiety from taking over your thoughts and your life, emphasizing the use of reason.
She has also written a very helpful and down-to-earth book on understanding and conquering anxiety, Freeing Yourself from Anxiety: 4 Simple Steps to Overcome Worry and Create the Life You Want.
Listen at this link or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/09/30/dr-tamar-e-chansky-freeing-yourself-from-anxiety
Join me and my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.
What Makes Paris Fashion Week So Special
The New York Times' Bill Cunningham doesn't really answer that question, but he shows a very interesting difference between New York and Paris buildings under construction or to be demolished and how art and artists are received in each city. This is just one example, sure, but it illustrates a difference I see between New York and Paris.
I also agree with him that women in Paris are generally more interested in looking unique than wearing what is "in style."
Here's his video:
Another beautifully decaying building, just outside Paris, on the Canal d'Ourq, from a blog item I posted previously.
Only The Other Guys Are Biased Idiots
I thought Chuck Klosterman, "The Ethicist," in The New York Times, was right on with his answer to a question for him this week.
The question:
A family member died last winter and named me and my sister the heirs to his estate. In a letter accompanying the will (but not part of it), he asked us to donate several thousand dollars to certain organizations. Some of these are extremely right-wing groups, which we feel border on the fringe: paranoiac with no objectivity, with ties to militant political organizations. We feel conflicted about this -- we want to honor our relative's wishes but really take offense to some of these groups. L.B., CALIFORNIA
The relevant excerpt from his answer:
First of all, you need to disconnect yourself from the idea that these organizations have "no objectivity" while you somehow remain wholly neutral and devoid of bias.
And an excerpt from his advice, which is right on:
He requested that you perform a specific act on his behalf. Within this tightly defined circumstance, you're not acting on your own volition -- you're merely a surrogate for an individual who can no longer act on his own. You were trusted to do something that has no bearing on who you are or what you believe. This leaves you with two options, both of which are ethically viable. The first is to follow the request, viewing oneself as nothing more than a physical mechanism that allows a nonexistent person to realize the goals he would have pursued himself. But if you can't do this -- if the organizations strike you as so egregious that even being a middleman is too much of a contradiction to your own worldview -- remove yourself entirely from the equation. Do not accept any portion of the estate for yourself. Transfer all the money directly to a charity that has no political underpinnings or simply forego your claims entirely and move on.
Just a guess, but my prediction is that they'll figure out a way to write that check to the "fringe"-ies. When money runs up against principle, money generally wins.
Internet Sites Monetizing Humiliation
Mugshot websites have been popping up to turn the "most embarrassing photograph of anyone's life into cash," as a New York Times article by David Segal puts it:
IN March last year, a college freshman named Maxwell Birnbaum was riding in a van filled with friends from Austin, Tex., to a spring-break rental house in Gulf Shores, Ala. As they neared their destination, the police pulled the van over, citing a faulty taillight. When an officer asked if he could search the vehicle, the driver -- a fraternity brother of Mr. Birnbaum's who quickly regretted his decision -- said yes.Six Ecstasy pills were found in Mr. Birnbaum's knapsack, and he was handcuffed and placed under arrest. Mr. Birnbaum later agreed to enter a multiyear, pretrial diversion program that has involved counseling and drug tests, as well as visits to Alabama every six months to update a judge on his progress.
But once he is done, Mr. Birnbaum's record will be clean. Which means that by the time he graduates from the University of Texas at Austin, he can start his working life without taint.
At least in the eyes of the law. In the eyes of anyone who searches for Mr. Birnbaum online, the taint could last a very long time. That's because the mug shot from his arrest is posted on a handful of for-profit Web sites, with names like Mugshots, BustedMugshots and JustMugshots. These companies routinely show up high in Google searches; a week ago, the top four results for "Maxwell Birnbaum" were mug-shot sites.
The ostensible point of these sites is to give the public a quick way to glean the unsavory history of a neighbor, a potential date or anyone else. That sounds civic-minded, until you consider one way most of these sites make money: by charging a fee to remove the image. That fee can be anywhere from $30 to $400, or even higher. Pay up, in other words, and the picture is deleted, at least from the site that was paid.
It's legal extortion: Pay up or your life is ruined.
And a question: Would you hire somebody whose mugshot showed up on one of these sites? And what would the nuances of that decision be?
Lavabit: An Email Service That Didn't Cave To Government And Sell Out Its Users' Privacy
Nicole Perlroth and Scott Shane write in The New York Times about Ladar Levison, the man who closed the business he spent decades building when the government, in pursuit of Edward Snowden, wanted access to the protected messages of all his customers:
Mr. Levison was willing to allow investigators with a court order to tap Mr. Snowden's e-mail account; he had complied with similar narrowly targeted requests involving other customers about two dozen times.But they wanted more, he said: the passwords, encryption keys and computer code that would essentially allow the government untrammeled access to the protected messages of all his customers. That, he said, was too much.
"You don't need to bug an entire city to bug one guy's phone calls," Mr. Levison, 32, said in a recent interview. "In my case, they wanted to break open the entire box just to get to one connection."
On Aug. 8, Mr. Levison closed Lavabit rather than, in his view, betray his promise of secure e-mail to his customers. The move, which he explained in a letter on his Web site, drew fervent support from civil libertarians but was seen by prosecutors as an act of defiance that fell just short of a crime.
The full story of what happened to Mr. Levison since May has not previously been told, in part because he was subject to a court's gag order. But on Wednesday, a federal judge unsealed documents in the case, allowing the tech entrepreneur to speak candidly for the first time about his experiences. He had been summoned to testify to a grand jury in Virginia; forbidden to discuss his case; held in contempt of court and fined $10,000 for handing over his private encryption keys on paper and not in digital form; and, finally, threatened with arrest for saying too much when he shuttered his business.
Spokesmen for the Justice Department and the F.B.I. said they had no comment beyond what was in the documents.
I particularly love the notion that we should trust the government -- simply because they say we should. Scout's honor!
Prosecutors said they had no intention of collecting any information on Lavabit's 400,000 other customers. "There's no agents looking through the 400,000 other bits of information, customers, whatever," Jim Trump, one of the prosecutors, said at a closed Aug. 1 hearing.
None until they come up with a reason.
Lynx
The spot calling the...oh, never mind.
Friday Night Levitation Exercises
Not leaving the house much because I have just a little more time to finish the revisions on my book manuscript. On the rare occasion I do get out, I try to make it good.
Pictured with my friend Emily Barsh. Photo by our very mirthful friend Elizabeth Imus-Zero.
Hey, Adult Lady, New York Knows Better Than You How You Should Live Your Life
Cathy Reisenwitz writes at reason that New York's "trafficking" court (and we're not talking about backed-up cars) turns sex workers into victims. It's good that they're looking to help sex slaves, but they are roping in sex workers along with them and forcing them into "treatment":
On Wednesday, Sept. 25, New York state's highest-ranking judge announced a first-of-its-kind initiative. In an effort to combat human trafficking and stop criminal courts from punishing victims of trafficking, New York will no longer treat sex workers as criminals. Instead of prison time, a special court will provide victims with social services, such as medical treatment and job training. However, the policy fails to distinguish between sex workers and sex slaves. This is a paternalistic perception that strips women of agency in an attempt to protect them from their own choices. "Saving" sex workers, after arresting and arraigning them, will not accomplish the court's goals.Federal law regarding human trafficking specifies that the difference between a worker and a slave is force or fraud, except in the case of sex. The law disregards the possibility that someone would choose to engage in prostitution. In doing so, it not only ignores sex workers, who must risk arrest and prison to earn a living, but fails the victims of force and fraud.
The message from our court system on respect for women's agency is clear. In 2006, a press release announcing an FBI, Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and New York City Police Department prostitution sting called the story of the 31 arrests "Halting Human Trafficking," although there was no evidence presented that the sting uncovered any force, fraud or coercion, only prostitution.
Following the sting, FBI Special Agent Andrew Arena spoke at a press conference and the real target was obvious from his words: "The FBI is part of the apparatus in place to protect people, sometimes even from their own poor choices."
The first task of New York's new trafficking court is determining whether the arraigned persons are sex slaves or sex workers. This is a curious task, since trafficking law does not acknowledge the possibility of voluntary sex work, while prostitution law does not acknowledge the possibility of sex slavery. If every sex worker is considered a human trafficking victim, how could anyone be arrested for or charged with prostitution?
...There are genuine human trafficking victims in the U.S. Some arrive in the country through threats or fraud, and are then forced into sex slavery. But these are not the same people who have chosen sex work.Additionally, sex workers are potentially human trafficking's most effective foes, as they are ideally situated to identify sex slavery and alert the authorities. Or they would be if they did not risk arrest and prosecution for doing so.
Special courts allow the state to pretend it's doing something while not implementing the best solution: ending prohibition. Forcing people into treatment for "problems" like deciding to use drugs or engage in sex work creates new problems for them. A woman in state-mandated courses isn't earning money or taking care of her family. A man in a state-mandated drug-treatment program is likely to lose his job.
Retired call girl Maggie MacNeill writes about an experience she had at a dinner party:
Since there was a lady there I had never met and did not wish to risk offending, I merely joined in the discussion without bringing up my own profession. At least, that was my plan until the hostess suddenly spoke up."Maggie has a very interesting job," she said sweetly, "don't you, Maggie?" Since everyone else there already knew what I did, her intent was obviously to embarrass me in front of the lady I had just met, who was middle-aged and fairly proper.
"Oh, really, what do you do?" she asked me, expecting nothing shocking, I'm sure.
"I'm a whore," I replied matter-of-factly.
"Excuse me?" the lady asked, clearly believing she had misunderstood.
"A whore," I repeated. "A prostitute. A call girl. A harlot, a lady of the evening, a hooker, a strumpet, a doxy, a fille de joie. A demimondaine, a woman of questionable virtue." This was delivered with a straight face and no hint that I had said anything more unusual than "bank teller."
"Oh, how interesting," the poor dear said faintly. Our hostess turned scarlet and someone quickly introduced a new topic of conversation. I put up no fuss and simply continued on with the evening as though nothing had happened until the earliest polite opportunity to excuse ourselves and leave.
I introduce myself with this anecdote because it illustrates several points I would like to make right away, the most important of which is that this blog is in no way a confession. That would imply feelings of guilt, of which I have none. Somehow, neither my mother nor the nuns who taught me ever managed to instill in this little Catholic girl any sense that sex is dirty, bad, wrong or otherwise distasteful, and without that unhealthy concept imbedded in one's psyche prostitution is no different from any other service one might perform for hire.
I can almost hear some of my readers' protests: "Oh, I don't think sex is dirty, but it's so intimate. How could you do it with someone you don't know?" Therapists listen to intimate details of their patients' lives all the time and give them intimate advice on subjects they wouldn't discuss with their best friends. My gynecologist sticks her fingers into my vagina without a qualm, and nurses give very intimate care to bedridden patients. None of this seems to bother anyone.
Or this one: "Oh, but sex is special; it's for showing affection to someone you love." Well, there are many ways of showing affection. If a professional chef prepares a special meal for her husband, is that gesture lessened by the fact that she prepares meals for strangers every day? If a masseuse gives her man a massage, is he concerned that she has been rubbing other men's backs? If I dated an artist, would the picture he painted for me be any less a gift for his having painted many other women? Of course not.
Obese America: Hard To Move
Via Reddit, a postal worker finds a way around how hard it is to get around if you're morbidly obese -- caught on the homeowner's home video.
Navy Yard Gunman's Supervisors Were Told Of His Mental Health Issues
Serge F. Kovaleski writes in The New York Times:
The mother of Aaron Alexis, the military contractor who killed 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard last month, told his bosses one month before the shootings that he had a history of paranoid episodes and most likely needed therapy. But Mr. Alexis' managers at the Experts Inc., an information technology firm, decided to keep him on the job and did not require him to seek treatment, an internal company investigation has found.The investigation by Hewlett-Packard, which oversaw the Experts' subcontract at the navy yard and other military bases, concluded that the Experts mishandled Mr. Alexis and knew more about his mental problems than the company has disclosed, a person with knowledge of the inquiry said. As a result, Hewlett-Packard last week canceled its business relationship with the firm, saying it had lost confidence in its work.
"It is HP's understanding that the Experts made their decision to return Mr. Alexis to duty without consulting a medical professional about his behavior, without determining whether he had seen a therapist as his mother suggested he might need to do, and without taking any other action to ensure that any mental health issues had been treated and resolved," the person said. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case publicly.
The Experts did not dispute most of the findings of the investigation, including that Mr. Alexis' mother had made them aware of his history of paranoia. But in a statement, the Experts said that Hewlett-Packard was "fully aware" of problems Mr. Alexis was having in early August in Rhode Island, "and any claim to the contrary is baseless." Over all, according to the statement, Hewlett-Packard supervisors consistently gave Mr. Alexis satisfactory or better ratings in the weeks before the shootings.
Government-Run Twitter Accounts Have Been Shut Down
How about we keep it that way?
Klink
Kernel.
Another Smart Safety Item Somebody Bought At Amazon
Thanks to all of you who shop through me at Amazon. Here's another purchase that seemed really smart: Ambient Weather WR-333 Emergency Solar Hand Crank Weather Alert Radio, Flashlight, Smart Phone Charger.
To buy something I haven't linked to, use this: Amy's Amazon search link.
The Country We've Become: U.S Reportedly Bars Entry To Critic Of NSA Surveillance Programs
Jonathan Turley blogs that the European press is reporting that German-Bulgarian author Ilija Trojanow was barred from entering the United States this week:
A critic of NSA spying programs and professor at The European Graduate School, Trojanow was invited to speak at a literary conference and is well-known for his criticism of the surveillance state. He said that he was given no explanation for being barred from entry....Germans are outraged and I do not understand why this is not a bigger story in the United States. This is a leading civil libertarian critic of our spy agencies. His being barred entry raises a serious question of retaliation against the critics of our government. He has invited the government to explain his being barred entry. I, for one, would like to hear it. If he is a secret spy, drug dealer or terrorist, it will come as a great surprise. Indeed, we generally arrest such people, not send them on their way. The burden is on the Administration to explain such an action taken against one of its most prominent critics.
From the second link, to dw.de:
A spokeswoman for Trojanow's publisher said he was on the on way back to Germany on Tuesday, the news agency DPA reported.Zeh and Trojanow co-authored a 2009 book in German: "Attack on Freedom: Security Paranoia, the Surveillance State and the Dismantling of Civil Rights."
"Subsidized" Means Other People Pay Your Way
There's an article in the WSJ, "Meet One of the First Obamacare Enrollees," by Christopher Weaver.
The guy is Leslie Foster, a 28-year-old "freelance filmmaker" in Hollywood, California. He makes $20K a year and signed up on the insurance exchange Tuesday night:
At $62 a month in direct costs to him, the plan, offered by managed-care firm Health Net Inc., HNT -0.21% is "a great deal," Mr. Foster said.Because he earns only about $20,000 a year doing freelance videography and odd jobs, Mr. Foster qualifies for federal subsidies that cut deep into the premiums for health plans available in the new marketplaces, which opened Tuesday morning.
The total monthly premium is $213.68 according to an online confirmation page Mr. Foster retained for his records. But the subsidies will cover more than $150 of those costs.
Nobody subsidized my health care when I was in my 20s. I valued health care, so, as I've mentioned before, I went without a bed for about six months so I could pay my rent and my health care -- which I paid myself, out of pocket, every month.
Now, all the people who gambled, waiting till they were in their 40s or so, and developed health problems, will get to get in and be paid for, in part, by all the responsible people.
Love the message that sends.
Same as the President just tossing more debt on top of the massive debt we already have.
At what point are we expecting people to start acting like adults? Are we ever?
The "Money Grows On Trees!" Approach To Health Care
Loved the reality checks made on the comment by "paralegalgs1's" on an LA Times piece on health care -- or rather, socialized medicine -- in other countries. First, paralegalgs1's remark:
paralegalgs1 at 6:42 PM October 3, 2013
I had a similar experience in 2002, when I was in Spain. I was in Sevilla and started feeling wheezy, so was directed to the local hospital where I was diagnosed with bronchitis. The hospital visit was free and I paid approximately $27 for antibiotics, an inhaler and prescription cough syrup. Having recently been unemployed for more than a year, I got cellulitis in my left hand right before Thanksgiving and had to go to an urgent care facility. While the cost of the visit was reasonable, I was out-of-pocket $250+ for two visits and medication, and had to use a credti card to pay for it, which isn't a good idea when you're unemployed and have a limited income. I'll take the free care in Spain over the high cost of medical care here any day. It's about time we had universal healthcare and a shonda that we don't.
And then the right-on retort:
John Oliver at 7:00 PM October 3, 2013
Lucky you, you never had to pay the 50% income tax and 20%+ sales tax that pays for all that wonderful "free" health care.
And this guy seconds it:
Beast_SPQR at 7:07 PM October 3, 2013
Your hospital visit wasn't "free", the Spanish citizens paid for it. Jesus Christ people, do you REALLY think just because you don't pay for it, that someone else doesn't ?
Here's another lady crowing about the wonder of free.
Linda08 at 6:13 PM October 3, 2013
We had a similar experience in Germany when my husband was hospitalized for kidney stones. The hospital also provided a room for me and our two sons as one had an ear infection. My husband's emergency admission at night could have meant my children and I would have a place to spend the night. We were given antibiotics and care for my son and my husband spent three days in the hospital with tests until the kidney stone resolved. His care was superb. It is about time the USA had health care to compare with that available in the rest of the world. It's time to step up and do it right.
Me? I have medical care that works overseas if something happens to me. Because Europeans shouldn't have to cover my health care any more than they should have to cover my lunch.
Linksalot
And Guinevere -- that slut!
TSA: Working Without Pay During Govt. Shutdown
Now, at airport "security," when the unskilled worker in the Halloween costume cop suit gropes your balls, you at least have the satisfaction of knowing he isn't getting paid for it.
Their union says this is unacceptable. That they aren't being paid, that is, not that they're violating your sex parts and constitutional rights.
There's a fawning article at MyFoxAtlanta, written by some credulous person named Trey Thomas. I'm leaving out the bits entirely lacking in critical thinking but here's the rest:
The American Federation of Government Employees, the union that represents the workers, said it's unacceptable that they aren't being paid."A lot of them are disgusted with what's going on with Congress right now and they're worried about how they're going to pay their mortgage, how they're going to feed their children," said Valyria Lewis, an AFGE national representative and a former TSA worker.
They should worry that they're feeding their children by taking part in the crumpling up of the Constitution at the airport door.
They should consider prostitution, since it's a far more noble profession. (The participants are engaging in the sex-part-groping, etc., on a voluntary basis.)
via Lisa Simeone
A Brief History Of The U.S. Income Tax And Where It's Taken Us
Daniel J. Mitchell writes on his blog that on this day in 1913, Woodrow Wilson signed into law the Revenue Act of 1913, which imposed the income tax:
The law signed that day by President Wilson, to be fair, wasn't that awful. The top tax rate was only 7 percent, the tax form was only 2 pages, and the entire tax code was only 400 pages. And a big chunk of the revenue actually was used to lower the tax burden on international trade (the basic tariff rate dropped form 40 percent to 25 percent).But just as tiny acorns become large oak trees, small taxes become big taxes and simple tax codes become complex monstrosities. And that's exactly what happened in the United States.
We now have a top tax rate of 39.6 percent, and it's actually much higher than that when you include the impact of other taxes, as well as the pervasive double taxation of saving and investment.
And the relatively simply tax law of 1913 has metastasized into 74,000 pages of Byzantine complexity.
Not to mention that the tax code has become one of the main sources of political corruption in Washington, impoverishing us while enriching the politicians, lobbyists, bureaucrats, and interest groups. Or the oppressive and dishonest IRS.
However, even though I take second place to nobody in my disdain for the income tax, the worst thing about that law is not the tax rates, the double taxation, or the complexity. The worst thing is that the income tax enabled the modern welfare state.
Before the income tax, politicians had no way to finance big government. Their only significant pre-1913 sources of revenue were tariffs and excise taxes, and they couldn't raise those tax rates too high because of Laffer Curve effects (something that modern-day politicians sometimes still discover).
...Once the income tax was adopted, though, it became a lot easier to finance subsidies, handouts, and redistribution.
...But as the decades have passed, the Leviathan state in Washington has grown. And in the absence of genuine entitlement reform, it's just a matter of time before the United States morphs into a bankrupt European-style welfare state.
He thinks today might just be the anniversary of the worst day in American history.
A Different Idea About Makers And Takers And What Makes A Taker
"I am the 47 percent," blogs Mickey Kaus, who unfortunately is basically in the same profession I am -- one that used to pay that no longer does:
I just did my taxes and peeked at the bottom line, which was ... zero. It turns out that if you are lazy enough and the market rate in your profession falls quickly enough you can end up with no taxed income at all! Plus when your AGI starts falling suddenly all sorts of deductions and breaks seem to open up to virtually guarantee that you pay no tax. (Suddenly it may be worth it to itemize your deductions, for example, since medical expenses are deductible above a fixed percentage of income-a threshold that quickly approaches zero.)Will being in the "47%" of non-taxpayers make me more pro-government, as Ari Fleischer and the popular"makers vs. takers" theory suggest? Or is it perfectly compatible with remaining a small-government Republican, as Tim Carney argues?
...The insta-takeaway is this: If people pay no taxes, maybe they don't become welfare state libs or complacent subsidy-suckers. But if people contribute even a little it's very easy to expect a lot in return. Our Darwinian minds aren't good at rationalizing getting something for nothing, but are very good at convincing ourselves that we're getting the short end of a bargain. It's analogous to the labor-mixing theory of property (Locke's, I think)-if you mix just a bit of your money into the government pot, you think you own the whole thing. Maybe you are even happy to be generous with what you think is your money.
If this is true the Romneyesque "47%" argument has it backwards. It's not the 47% (now actually 43%) who pay no income taxes that conservatives should worry about. It's the vast mass of voters who pay something in taxes and then happily go to town on Social Security and Medicare. Which may be one reason why the biggest budget-busters are middle class entitlements.
Now You're A Calvin Klein Underwear Model
How ordinary men would look in underwear ads. Hilarious.
Coconuts For Your Head -- Inside And Out
Beyond coconut oil's benefit for your body and brain (as a MCT -- Medium Chain Triglyceride, for one), it's good for the other side of your head -- the side with the hair on it.
Here's a blog post about how much coconut oil to use to condition your hair. And here's a paper by Aarti S. Rele and R.B. Mohile that explains why. (They used the hair of women from India in their tests.)
Linkytime
Your best and blightiest here.
How "Affordable" Care Is Working Out For People
A Facebook post of a "friend's" friend:
"I actually made it through this morning at 8:00 A.M. I have a preexisting condition (Type 1 Diabetes) and my income base was 45K-55K annually I chose tier 2 "Silver Plan" and my monthly premiums came out to $597.00 with $13,988 yearly deductible!!! There is NO POSSIBLE way that I can afford this so I "opt-out" and chose to continue along with no insurance. I received an email tonight at 5:00 P.M. informing me that my fine would be $4,037 and could be attached to my yearly income tax return. Then you make it to the "REPERCUSSIONS PORTION" for "non-payment" of yearly fine. First, your drivers license will be suspended until paid, and if you go 24 consecutive months with "Non-Payment" and you happen to be a home owner, you will have a federal tax lien placed on your home. You can agree to give your bank information so that they can easy "Automatically withdraw" your "penalties" weekly, bi-weekly or monthly! This by no means is "Free" or even "Affordable."
Update -- smells like BS:
Either Sheehan's claim that he received this notice is a lie, or the feds have been dishonest with the American people all along, and the revolt against Obamacare is about to take "don't tread on me" to a whole new level.
Update II -- Avik Roy writes at Forbes
Based on a Manhattan Institute analysis of the HHS numbers, Obamacare will increase underlying insurance rates for younger men by an average of 97 to 99 percent, and for younger women by an average of 55 to 62 percent. Worst off is North Carolina, which will see individual-market rates triple for women, and quadruple for men....27-year-olds will face rate increases as high as 279 percent.
...Worst off was Nebraska, where the difference between the cheapest plan under the old system and under Obamacare was 279 percent for men, and 227 percent for women: more than triple the old rate. Faring best was Colorado, where rates will decline for both 27-year-old men and women by 36 percent. The only other state to see a rate decline in this analysis was New Hampshire: 8 percent for both men and women.
...For months, we've heard about how Obamacare's trillions in health care subsidies were going to save America from rate shock. It's not true. If you shop for coverage on your own, you're likely to see your rates go up, even after accounting for the impact of pre-existing conditions, even after accounting for the impact of subsidies.
The Obama administration knows this, which is why its 15-page report makes no mention of premiums for insurance available on today's market. Silence, they say, speaks louder than words. HHS' silence on the difference between Obamacare's insurance premiums and those available today tell you everything you need to know. Rates are going higher. And if you're healthy, or you're young, the Obama administration expects you to do your duty and pay up.
Designer Rick Owens Kicks The Fashion Show's Ass
He eschews the papercut-thin models and blank faces in favor of fierce college step teams for his Paris runway show. Allie Jones writes in The Atlantic:
The steppers, who hail from New York, D.C., and Maryland, started practicing five months before the show, and their routine was choreographed by the mother-daughter team Lauretta and Leeanet Noble. Each woman had to be individually fitted for the clothes, which Owens said was "good exercise" for him. Some designers argue that having standardized, tall, thin models is just the easiest way to show (and sell) the clothes.Owens' show perhaps meant the most to the women in it. Stepper Adrianna Cornish, a student at the University of Maryland, told Givhan with tears in her eyes, "We're here and I still can't believe . . . It's something I never would have dreamed of, and I really don't have the words to describe it." According to fellow stepper Shantell Richardson, everyone was crying by the end of the show.
The video:
Here's a piece about Owens and his wife, Michelle Lamy, both of whom I met through a business friend and hung out with for an hour one afternoon at her then-LA club/restaurant, Les Deux Cafés. We later made a trip over to his nearby workshop to see his work. Amazing designer, amazing designs, sweet guy, formidable wife.
Are You In Love With Your Vacuum Cleaner? Could You Be?
Our brains and the ways they're biased to respond to certain situations can really screw us up in other situations.
This line from the article says it all:
Provided with the right behavioral cues, humans will form relationships with just about anything...
It's a Maggie Koerth-Baker article from New York Times Magazine, "How Robots Can Trick You Into Loving Them":
Provided with the right behavioral cues, humans will form relationships with just about anything -- regardless of what it looks like. Even a stick can trigger our social promiscuity. In 2011, Ehud Sharlin, a computer scientist at the University of Calgary, ran an observational experiment to test this impulse to connect. His subjects sat alone in a room with a very simple "robot": a long, balsa-wood rectangle attached to some gears, controlled by a joystick-wielding human who, hidden from view, ran it through a series of predetermined movements. Sharlin wanted to find out how much agency humans would attribute to a stick.Some subjects tried to fight the stick, or talk it out of wanting to fight them. One woman panicked, complaining that the stick wouldn't stop pointing at her. Some tried to dance with it. The study found that a vast majority assumed the stick had its own goals and internal thought processes. They described the stick as bowing in greeting, searching for hidden items, even purring like a contented cat.
When a robot moves on its own, it exploits a fundamental social instinct that all humans have: the ability to separate things into objects (like rocks and trees) and agents (like a bug or another person). Its evolutionary importance seems self-evident; typically, kids can do this by the time they're a year old.
The distinction runs deeper than knowing something is capable of movement. "Nobody questions the motivations of a rock rolling down a hill," says Brian Scassellati, director of Yale's social robotics lab. Agents, on the other hand, have internal states that we speculate about. The ability to distinguish between agents and objects is the basis for another important human skill that scientists call "cognitive empathy" (or "theory of mind," depending on whom you ask): the ability to predict what other beings are thinking, and what they want, by watching how they move.
"We make these assumptions very quickly and naturally," Scassellati says. "And it's not new, or even limited to the world of robotics. Look at animation. They know the rules, too. A sack of flour can look sad or angry. It's all about how it moves."
Who's Renounced Their U.S. Citizenship And Why?
From the BBC. A couple of the 20 examples:
1. David Green, Ontario, Canada: I was born and raised in the US. At the age of 30, I fell in love with a beautiful French girl whose profession was working in the French language. We moved to Canada (bilingual) where we have enjoyed life and we both could earn a living and contribute to life. I always paid my taxes to both the USA and Canada and seldom paid US taxes due to the higher taxes in Canada. But when you retire, hold on to your hats because the common deductions you enjoyed while working no longer apply. I ended up paying over $3,000 (£1,850) in taxes to the US when I retired. That is a significant amount of my retirement income. Since all my benefits come from Canada and the USA provides nothing but increased complications in tax laws and the ability to snoop into our personal lives (including my wife who is not a USA citizen), I renounced my USA citizenship in April of this year - for a fee ($450). I feel sad at the action I have taken but angry at the bureaucracy that caused this problem for so many to possibly catch so few.2. Pamela Schmidt, Germany:
I was an American citizen, and I have spent most of my time in Europe for the last 12 years. In 2006, I married a German citizen and applied for German citizenship in 2010. The German authorities do not allow dual citizenship; therefore, I had to take a decision of becoming German or remaining American. I thought about it for a while and chose to become German. As I have spent most of my adult life in Europe, I feel more European than American, and I would like to be able to play a more active role in politics in the country where I live, which are the main reasons for my decision. However, the bizarre financial rules in the US did make the decision easier. The American government with laws like Fatca [Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act] treats non-criminal citizens abroad like tax-dodgers and limits Americans' financial situation when living abroad, as many local banks don't want to deal with these regulations.8. Michael Hayes, Freigericht, Germany:
With its draconian penalties and inscrutable or non-existent filing guidelines, reporting into the US tax system has become a major financial risk for Americans living abroad. I decided to eliminate this risk to my family and well-being and simplify my life. Thus I became a German citizen and renounced my US citizenship.17. Alec, London:
I left the US at the beginning of 1993. Next April I will have lived in the UK for 20 years. I left America both because I've loved Europe since living in Germany for a year when I was a teenager, and because the increasingly reactionary drift of American politics and political thought since the '70s made me feel more and more out of step with American values. The developments I've seen since I've left have only confirmed me in the wisdom of my decision. I held both British and American citizenship for several years, but when the IRS contacted me and told me that due to the Alternative Minimum Tax, I had incorrectly filed my taxes after a monetary windfall one year, and owed them over $2,000, I decided the time had come to give up my American passport. My only regret is not having done it much sooner - though visiting it for holidays and family is often pleasant (the shopping is great!), I'm always happy when I get on the plane to come home.
Hans Bader writes at OpenMarket:
The U.S., unlike many European countries, taxes its citizens on their worldwide income, regardless of where they make it. As the I.R.S. explains, "Your worldwide income is subject to U.S. income tax." Romney, Obama, and others in fact pay such taxes on overseas income, which is listed as taxable income on their tax returns.The empty-headed populist rage at Americans with overseas income has contributed to the passage of a law backed by the Obama administration called FATCA that makes life needlessly difficult for Americans overseas. At Reason, journalist Matt Welch, who once lived in Europe, describes how his family will be harmed by FATCA, which will result in the closure of a Swiss bank account that his wife needs because she earns Swiss francs doing "work freelance for various Swiss media outlets." Similarly, he describes how thousands of "U.S. military veterans, dual-national citizens who haven't lived or worked in America for decades, and panicked retirees . . . are getting bounced out of their existing Swiss accounts and denied new ones, even if they live and work in Geneva for one of the city's many international non-governmental organizations." As one American who works for the International Labor Organization in Switzerland noted, "Just since the beginning of the year, I have been informed by one of Switzerland's two largest banking institutions that due to the fact that I am an American, I had to divest myself of all my investment holdings in their financial institution. Another bank agreed to accept my investments; then, just this month, on the day that I went to sign the papers, I was informed that the authority to do this had been withdrawn."
Obama's IRS Snoops Abroad," by William McGurn in the WSJ in 2012:
Within the United States, almost no American has heard of it. Save for the occasional article, it's gone largely uncovered. And just like ObamaCare, the nastiest, job-killing aspects will not hit until after this November's election.It's called the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, and it's a doozy. With little debate, Fatca was tucked into the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act of 2010--a jobs bill dominated by tax breaks designed to get businesses to hire unemployed Americans.
Fatca was the revenue side of that bill. The theory was that we would pay for the tax breaks by making fat cats hiding money in their overseas accounts pay their "fair share." The reality is that the tax breaks did little to dent unemployment, and the legislation's penalties may end up killing more U.S. jobs than all the call centers in India combined. Delayed once already, Fatca is set to take effect in January 2013.
Strictly speaking, Fatca isn't a new tax--it's a new requirement for reporting overseas financial accounts, backed up by heavy fines. It requires foreign financial banks, investment houses, insurance companies, etc. to identify any Americans among their customers and turn over information about their accounts to the IRS (or to the local government, if that country has a sharing agreement with Uncle Sam).
At the individual level, Americans are now required to report foreign accounts at thresholds beginning at $50,000. Failure to file, or filing incorrectly, means a heavy fine. Among the most wicked aspects of this legislation is that a taxpayer can rack up tens of thousands of dollars in fines even if he or she doesn't owe the IRS a dime in actual taxes.
Carrying Someone Else's Child For Money
Commercial surrogacy is something women in India are doing. From the BBC's Lucy Wallis:
Commercial surrogacy is estimated to be worth more than $1bn a year in India. While pregnant, some surrogate mothers live in dormitories - which critics call baby factories. They give childless couples the family they have longed for, but what is it like for the women who carry someone else's child for money?"In India families are close. You are ready to do anything for your children," says 28-year-old Vasanti.
"To see my children get everything I ever dreamt of, that's why I have become a surrogate."
Vasanti is pregnant, but not with her own child - she is carrying a Japanese couple's baby. For this she will be paid $8,000 (£4,967), enough to build a new house and send her own two children, aged five and seven, to an English-speaking school - something she never thought was possible.
"I'm happy from the bottom of my heart," says Vasanti.
She was implanted with their embryo in the small city of Anand in Gujarat and will spend the next nine months living in a nearby dormitory with about 100 other surrogate mothers, all patients of Dr Nayna Patel.
Are you for or against this? Would you do this? Would you use a surrogate?
Linksssssssssss
Ssssss...they're leaking...
The Government Shutdown
Via @danieljmitchell
"If there's a government shutdown, who will spy on me, waste my money, and have contempt for me?"
UPDATE: From Andrew Malcolm at Investors.com, another question:
If 900,000 federal workers can be furloughed as "non-essential," why employ them?
Is There Value In Bringing Back Home Ec And Woodshop?
Christine Gross-Loh writes in the WSJ about her 12-year-old son, attending his first week of Japanese public middle-school, and coming home "with a small bag full of unexpected school supplies from his teacher: several needles and many lengths of colorful thread. The seventh-graders would be using these kits to embroider dishtowels at school":
Every student in Japanese schools studies home economics from fifth grade through high school. In addition to embroidery, all Japanese school children learn woodworking, meal planning, cooking and even grocery shopping. They make wooden pencil holders, bookshelves, lamps and stools. They mend clothes, fasten buttons and sew wallets and aprons.In America, it is a rare school that could carve out the time for a weekly class to teach middle-schoolers to budget, cook an omelet or make lamps. Alarmed by our consistently mediocre showing on domestic and international assessments and with schools buckling under test pressure and tight budgets, our national approach to education has been to pare away "nonessential" learning so we can concentrate on "core" subjects.
Despite this laser-like focus on improving math and reading scores, however, American students continue to flounder when held up to global comparisons. What are other nations doing right that we are not?
International examples suggest that highly trained, well-paid teachers, rigorous curriculum, and family or cultural support for learning matter, and they do. But our American family's experience in the Japanese school system has shown us that we would also benefit from broadening the conversation about education to include less obvious factors. The Japanese--along with other countries such as Finland and South Korea where children are excelling in math, science and language arts--understand that in addition to teaching children math, reading and science, they also need to teach home economics and other practical life skills.
...Classes like home economics, woodworking, art or music are about more than learning to play a recorder, plan a menu or thread a needle. They foster concrete know-how, as well as the confidence to improvise. They teach children to make good choices, take the initiative and make connections. When a student measures the dimensions of a bookcase, he is learning math and geometry in a hands-on, applicable way. When Benjamin embroidered his dishtowel he was tapping into an engrossing creative process.
...There is a lesson to be learned from a nation like Japan that so unabashedly believes a variety of classes is one key to success. Like Japan, we needn't fear that time allocated to home economics will get in the way of a sound education. We need to embrace the idea that it is essential to one.
Migraineville: Jimmy Buffet Will Never Write A Song About It
Spent some time there Monday night, but discovered that 16-year-old Naproxen seems to alleviate it.
Yes, it said "1997" on it, but I figured it's a drug that probably doesn't degrade too much, or too dangerously, and whaddya know, it worked.
I'll post more blog items on Tuesday, but for now, please post links here and discuss. One per comment or your comment may go to my spam folder. Post as many links as you want -- just use a separate comment for each and wait about 30 seconds between each posting. Again, don't want the Creature from the Spam Lagoon eating your comments.