Advice Goddess Radio -- Tonight, 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET: Dr. Roy Baumeister, The Science On Increasing Your Willpower
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.
NOTE: A word on the "Best of" replays, including tonight's. I'm in the final weeks of working absolutely insane hours to complete my next book. This is the only reason I haven't been doing live weekly shows, and I will soon be all-live every weekend, featuring some very exciting researchers and their books.
Tonight's guest, social psychologist Dr. Roy Baumeister, will bust all sorts of myths we believe -- to our detriment -- about willpower, which is key to success in numerous facets of life, from relationships to one's career.
An example of one of these myths is the notion that it makes sense to have New Year's resolutions, plural. In fact, willpower is easily depleted, and Baumeister, based on the research, explains that you should have ONE resolution and explains how to eliminate cognitive stress that decreases your chances of sticking to it.
One of the most practical and helpful self-help books I've read recently is the one featured on this show, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, by Baumeister and John Tierney -- on an issue we all have issues with: Improving our self-control.
Many of the studies in the book are from Baumeister's own lab, and he is fascinating guest. I've already improved my life with insights from the book, and I can't imagine that anyone who listens to this show will come away without tips for how they can improve their life -- and be a little more relaxed about the stuff they anguish over related to self-control.
Listen live (on tape) at this link at 7 p.m. Pacific, 10 p.m. Eastern, or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/07/01/dr-roy-baumeister-the-science-on-increasing-your-willpower
Don't miss last week's show to help you use the new field of adult attachment science to find love -- or to keep and even vastly improve the relationship you have.
My guest was neuroscientist Dr. Amir Levine, co-author with psychologist Rachel S.F. Heller, of Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find -- and Keep -- Love.
If you're seeking a partner, by recognizing which of the three attachment styles you fit into, you can help yourself avoid all the usual troubles you get into while dating.
If you're in a relationship, by recognizing which form of attachment you exhibit and which your partner does, you can stop battling each other, behave more lovingly to each other, and better meet each other's needs.
This is a not-to-be-missed show. Listen at this link or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/06/24/dr-amir-levine-find-keep-love-thru-attachment-science
Join me and my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, here at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.
Mass-Spying, Like The TSA, Actually Hurts Rather Than Helps Anti-Terror Efforts
Comprehensive piece at WashingtonsBlog laying out why mass spying by our government is not only an affront to our values, it's not effective at keeping us safe, and even makes us less safe by far.
Some main points:
So the problem of growing government spying is three-fold.-First, it is against the American system and reduces liberty.
-Second, it is a misapplication of resources, in other words money is being spent and liberty sacrificed for no real gain.
-Third, since government decisionmaking and policy about international terrorism is very bad the threat is increasing.
And just below that bit, former NSA exec William Binney -- previously head of NSA's entire digital spying program -- said the spying dragnet by the government is less than useless:
They're making themselves dysfunctional by collecting all of this data.
Much like I've said about the TSA. You don't catch terrorists by having repurposed hamburger clerks at the airport treat every single American who flies to see grandma as a plausible suspect behind a terrorist plot; you have trained intelligence experts using targeted intelligence and probable cause to zero in on actual plausible suspects.
Our current "security" effort at airports: Do you have large breasts? They're a sign of al Qaeda training camp visits.
An Intelligent Debate About Guns
(Which isn't to say I agree with everything being said, but there's an exchange, sans spittle, and that's refreshing.) Jeffrey Goldberg and Ta-Nahisi Coates talk in The Atlantic, in "More Guns, Less Crime: A Dialogue." An excerpt from the beginning:
Ta-Nehisi Coates: Do you own a gun? Are you a gun person, at all?Jeffrey Goldberg: It doesn't make much sense to tell people that you are unarmed. Many businesses and institutions around the country advertise themselves as "gun-free zones." This is a ridiculous policy -- not to be gun-free, but to tell people you are. It's akin to posting a sign on your front door stating, "No burglar alarm here." Our colleague Jonathan Rauch, who, as you know, inspired the "Pink Pistols" movement of gays and lesbians who arm themselves against bullying and assault, told me last week he thinks that universities should post signs on their campuses that state, "Be warned: Many of our students and faculty members are armed."
The theory, obviously, is that violent criminals, or the dangerously mentally ill, are not generally stopped by signage declaring their target to be a gun-free zone, and indeed they could be encouraged by such signs. All that said, I will remind you that I live in Washington, D.C., and Washington has very tough gun laws, and as you know, I'm a very law-abiding person.
To your second question, am I gun person? -- the answer is no. I respect guns and I know how to fire guns (and indeed, target practice is quite fun in the same way that darts are fun, though I haven't done it very much), but I'm not very interested in them and I don't quite understand the desire of some people to collect them. I'm certainly no hunter -- I know we're all supposed to pay fealty to hunters -- at least, presidential candidates are expected to extol them -- but I never understood the impulse to gun down defenseless herbivores, especially if you're not going to eat them afterward.
More from Goldberg:
I came to this issue in part because, as I wrote in the article, I had a revelation about armed self-defense after the LIRR massacre 20 years ago, and also because I'm always attracted to polarizing issues. I'm dispositionally centrist, in that I believe, as a pretty steadfast rule, that most issues are ambiguous and contradictory, and that no one ideology provides all the answers. Hence, my belief that people (qualified people) have the right to armed self-defense, and that the government has the right (and responsibility) to regulate the sale and carrying of guns. This issue divides red America from blue America like no other, and, since I'm a uniter, not a divider, I'm trying to figure out if there's common ground here. One more note, so we're clear: I have a blue-stater's belief that government should be engaged in public safety questions like this one, and I have a red-stater's belief that individuals should not rely on the government overly much to provide them with security, both because the government cannot, in fact, protect some people; and because it feels undignified to sub-contract out your personal defense, if you're at all capable of taking care of yourself.
Coates:
It is not enough to have a gun, anymore than it's enough to have a baby. It's a responsibility. I would have to orient myself to that fact. I'd have to be trained and I would have to, with some regularity, keep up my shooting skills. I would have to think about the weight I carried on my hip and think about how people might respond to me should they happen to notice. I would have to think about the cops and how I would interact with them, should we come into contact. I'd have to think about my own anger issues and remember that I can never be an position where I have a rage black-out. What I am saying is, if I were gun-owner, I would feel it to be really important that I be a responsible gun-owner, just like, when our kids were born, we both felt the need to be responsible parents. The difference is I like "living" as a parent. I accept the responsibility and rewards of parenting. I don't really want the responsibilities and rewards of gun-ownership. I guess I'd rather work on my swimming. And I think, given the concentration of guns in a smaller and smaller number of hands, there's some evidence that society agrees.
Goldberg:
You didn't answer the key question that Saint Augustine poses to all those who swear off violence. I really do think it's important to ask yourself this: At what point is it justifiable to meet violence with violence? At what point is it immoral not to respond to violence with violence?
Goldberg's previous piece.
Why Did Alec Baldwin Get A Pass When Paula Deen Does Not?
Paula Deen projected an image that didn't jibe with her racist remarks, and per a Salon piece by Roxane Gay:
In the deposition she even acknowledges that she, her children and her brother object to the N-word being used in "any cruel or mean behavior," as if there's a warm and friendly way for white people to use the word.
Alec Baldwin, on the other hand, is known by many, first and foremost, as an abrasive, explosive dickhead -- which is why his remarks were pretty unremarkable, Alec Baldwin-wise, and not unexpected.
So, Alec Baldwin hurling profanity at somebody? Using the term "toxic little queen"? Yawn. Is that what it is today?
Again, I don't think people think they've learned that Alec Baldwin hates gays or they've found out anything new. I think they just think they have a little more confirmation that he's a huge asshole.
Alice Walker's Daughter Rejects Her Mother's Fanatical Feminism
Rebecca Walker, now a mother and joyful to be one, writes in The Guardian that she's learned that, for her, a happy family is what matters:
You see, my mum taught me that children enslave women. I grew up believing that children are millstones around your neck, and the idea that motherhood can make you blissfully happy is a complete fairytale.In fact, having a child has been the most rewarding experience of my life. Far from 'enslaving' me, three-and-a-half-year-old Tenzin has opened my world. My only regret is that I discovered the joys of motherhood so late - I have been trying for a second child for two years, but so far with no luck.
I was raised to believe that women need men like a fish needs a bicycle. But I strongly feel children need two parents and the thought of raising Tenzin without my partner, Glen, 52, would be terrifying.
As the child of divorced parents, I know only too well the painful consequences of being brought up in those circumstances. Feminism has much to answer for denigrating men and encouraging women to seek independence whatever the cost to their families.
My mother's feminist principles coloured every aspect of my life. As a little girl, I wasn't even allowed to play with dolls or stuffed toys in case they brought out a maternal instinct. It was drummed into me that being a mother, raising children and running a home were a form of slavery. Having a career, travelling the world and being independent were what really mattered according to her.I love my mother very much, but I haven't seen her or spoken to her since I became pregnant. She has never seen my son - her only grandchild. My crime? Daring to question her ideology.
Well, so be it. My mother may be revered by women around the world - goodness knows, many even have shrines to her. But I honestly believe it's time to puncture the myth and to reveal what life was really like to grow up as a child of the feminist revolution.
I do believe that children enslave women, or, to put that a little less negatively, take over their lives to a great extent, and I've never wanted to be a parent. That said, if I were a parent, I wouldn't hammer my views into a child. People are different. Some women, like me, want to devote their lives to their work and their partner, if they have one. But A lot of women, including friends of mine I respect, chose to have children, accepting what it would take, and have been great parents.
As Walker points out in her piece, the women's movement, by disparaging women who want to be mothers, and motherhood in general, does harm to women who realize too late that mothers is what they very much wanted to be.
Jane Harman: Top-Secret Clearance System Like Something Out Of 19th Century
Garance Franke-Ruta writes in TheAtlantic.com
Harman, now the director, president, and CEO (of) the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., ... had some tough words for the security clearance process that signed off on giving Snowden the authority to extract some of the United States's most closely held surveillance secrets."The clearance system that we have for secret and top secret clearances is broken," she said during a panel discussion on Friday. "It's a 19th century model -- it's ridiculously labor intensive, a lot of it isn't even online and updated and for a person in the kind of position he had ... [for] a systems administrator, where he was the boss supervising himself in a position where he had enormous access, there needs to be the two-man, the two-person rule."
The two-person rule simply means that when accessing sensitive information, two individuals must sign off on the maneuver.
This would limited the ability of one person to gain "unfettered access," per a New York Times piece quoted in Franke-Ruta's piece.
Of course, the government should not be Big Brothering anyone sans probable cause, but Harman was a jerk of a congresswoman, who resigned, costing Los Angeles for the special election to replace her, so we can't expect much of her.
A commenter in The Atlantic writes:
anirprof / Patrick Watson I have worked in a DoD agency recently. We all had secret clearances, but with only unclassified computer systems in our offices. Even then, they really, really made a point over the last few years of locking down the network to only allow access with biometric smart cards, no user rights to anything on the machines (not even to change the Windows desktop color, or move a mouse from one USB port to another), and with very high levels of compartmentalization in terms of who could access what files. Made it tough to get stuff done across departments.Yet all the IT staff could do anything, to any account, file, or email store, any time they wanted to, with a single system password. Including the authority to connect USB devices (e.g., flash drives and dvd burners). And those staff were all contractors, not US Govt employees, with a very high turnover rate. Nope, no potential holes there...
Linkalicious
Like chocolate for chocolate. (Fuck water.)
Eek! Eek! Gays Are Getting Equal Rights!
It is very disturbing to some on the right that gays are looking a lot less like second-class citizens all of a sudden. Lawyers for the California gay marriage ban rush-rush filed documents on Saturday -- an emergency motion asking the U.S. Supreme Court to stop all those icky homos looking to commit their lives to the person they love.
From the AP on FoxNews:
Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Austin Nimocks says a three-judge 9th Circuit panel acted prematurely and unfairly when it lifted a hold on same-sex marriages it had put in place while a legal challenge to the voter-approved ban made its way through the courts.Nimocks says the Supreme Court's consideration of the case is not done yet because his clients still have 22 days to ask the justices to reconsider their decision holding that Proposition 8's backers did not have legal authority to defend the ban.
The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for gay marriage to return to the nation's most populous state by ruling 5-4 on Wednesday that the sponsors of California's voter-approved ban on same-sex unions lacked authority to defend the measure in court.
Also Wednesday, the Supreme Court overturned the federal law that prevented the government from awarding federal benefits to same sex couples.
Sure, their case is about the legal points, but it's ultimately about their Imaginary Friend-driven belief that gays don't make suitable spouses.
(Of course, if they really wanted to get biblical, they'd be busy fighting for polygamy. Because marriage, in the Bible, used to be between a man and six women.)
Keep It On, Keep It All On
It seems, oh joy, that there's a "World Naked Bike Ride." (I particularly like the top question at the Wiki entry, "Isn't riding naked uncomfortable?")
As I've noted here before (about some Venice "Take Off Your Top And Let Everyone See How Low Your Tits Hang" day): People who show up to "Let's All Get Naked!" events are typically the last people you'd ever want to see, not only unclothed but without the bodily protection of a burka and maybe a pup tent over it, just in case.
Idiot Hikers: Who Pays?
Rick Rojas writes in the LA Times:
Orange County fire officials said they are attempting to recoup the $55,000 it cost the department to recover two hikers who went missing for several days earlier this year in Orange County's back country.The Orange County Fire Authority said it was seeking restitution by filing a motion Wednesday in the criminal case of Nicolas Cendoya, one of the hikers, who now faces a felony count of possession of a controlled substance.
"We feel we qualify as a victim" of Cendoya's alleged crime, said Kris Concepcion, a division chief for the fire authority. "We are entitled to restitution as a result."
Cendoya, 19, and Kyndall Jack, 18, both of Costa Mesa, went missing in the rough Trabuco Canyon area of south Orange County on Easter Sunday, triggering a massive search that involved multiple agencies and dozens of volunteers who went out looking on their own.
Cendoya was charged after investigators said they found methamphetamine in his parked car as they searched for clues in the pair's disappearance.
His arrest prompted a discussion among county officials about whether to try to charge the two for the taxpayer cost of the search, which added up to $160,000 in all. County supervisors voted last month to support a legislative proposal that would allow cities and counties to recover costs from search-and-rescue operations in which a person demonstrated "wanton or reckless conduct."
I don't think it's just people with drugs who are lost in the woods who should be considered wantonly wandering.
Big Brother Is Watching Your Daughters In Your Driveway
The searches and surveillance of citizens who are not suspected to have done anything wrong are increasingly widespread in our society, thanks in part, to all the people who don't care about their civil liberties as long as they've got beer, Doritos, and a wide-screen TV. Or, not to leave out the well-heeled, a fancy car, posh vacations, and a boat.
Jay J. Hector sent me this link about license-plate readers allowing police to collect millions of records of drivers:
Ali Winston writes at Cironline.org, the Center for Investigative Reporting:
When the city of San Leandro, Calif., purchased a license-plate reader for its police department in 2008, computer security consultant Michael Katz-Lacabe asked the city for a record of every time the scanners had photographed his car.The results shocked him.
The paperback-size device, installed on the outside of police cars, can log thousands of license plates in an eight-hour patrol shift. Katz-Lacabe said it had photographed his two cars on 112 occasions, including one image from 2009 that shows him and his daughters stepping out of his Toyota Prius in their driveway.
That photograph, Katz-Lacabe said, made him "frightened and concerned about the magnitude of police surveillance and data collection." The single patrol car in San Leandro equipped with a plate reader had logged his car once a week on average, photographing his license plate and documenting the time and location.
At a rapid pace, and mostly hidden from the public, police agencies throughout California have been collecting millions of records on drivers and feeding them to intelligence fusion centers operated by local, state and federal law enforcement.
With heightened concern over secret intelligence operations at the National Security Agency, the localized effort to track drivers highlights the extent to which the government has committed to collecting large amounts of data on people who have done nothing wrong.
A year ago, the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center - one of dozens of law enforcement intelligence-sharing centers set up after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 - signed a $340,000 agreement with the Silicon Valley firm Palantir to construct a database of license-plate records flowing in from police using the devices across 14 counties, documents and interviews show.
The extent of the center's data collection has never been revealed. Neither has the involvement of Palantir, a Silicon Valley firm with extensive ties to the Pentagon and intelligence agencies. The CIA's venture capital fund, In-Q-Tel, has invested $2 million in the firm.
...While some law enforcement agencies, like the California Highway Patrol, have their own data retention guidelines for license-plate scanners, Simitian said there still is no larger policy that protects the privacy of Californians on the road.
"Public safety and privacy protection are not mutually exclusive," he said. "There's a balance to be struck, and most people understand that."
Heal, the retired sheriff's commander, said that absent clear legal limits on license-plate readers, law enforcement agencies will continue to expand their ability to gather such information.
"A lot of the guidance on this technology - the court doctrine - is nonexistent," Heal said. "Until that guidance comes, law enforcement is in an exploratory mode."
Cut The Crap With The Suggestions Of Polygamy Next, Etc.
No, nobody's going to try to marry their goat. Saying stuff like that is just asshatted. And people who write to me have trouble meeting or making it work with one partner, let alone six or sixteen.
Sensible stuff from Roger Simon at PJMedia:
For those who say we're on the slippery slope to polygamy, incest, or whatever, stop it! There's no concrete evidence for any of this. Gay people -- the ones who are getting married anyway -- want to be bourgeois like you. We've all met tons of gay people but very few (if any) polygamists and not a single person who is sleeping with their mother and/or sister. (Well, maybe in the movie Deliverance and I'm not even sure it really happened there.)
Linkerwood
Like peckerwood, only linkier.
Claim And Counterclaim: National Health Care Is National Death-By-Starvation For Some In UK
Scandalous-if-true story out of the UK, by Tara Brady, in the Daily Mail that over 1,000 patients have starved in NHS hospitals, supposedly because nurses are too busy to feed the patients:
As many as 1,165 people starved to death in NHS hospitals over the past four years fuelling claims nurses are too busy to feed their patients.The Department of Health branded the figures 'unacceptable' and said the number of unannounced inspections by the care watchdog will increase.
According to figures released by the Office for National Statistics following a Freedom of Information request, for every patient who dies from malnutrition, four more have dehydration mentioned on their death certificate.
Critics say nurses are too busy to feed patients and often food and drink are placed out of reach of vulnerable people.
Guardian story. Counterpoint here, from fullfact.org:
Does this mean the NHS is starving patients?No: we need to be very careful in how we interpret this data.
Firstly, of the 1,165 cases referred to in the Sunday Express's headline, only a fraction were those where malnutrition was the underlying cause of death. The remainder are those cases where the patient was recorded as being malnourished when they died, although malnutrition wasn't necessarily the main reason for them dying.
This is important: certain fatal conditions are often linked to malnutrition as it becomes harder for the patient to eat or retain food.
As the ONS's response to the Freedom of Information request makes clear, this means that the numbers don't provide any clue about who is to blame for the deaths:
"These data do not provide enough information to link the deaths to the quality of care in the hospital. It is not possible to determine from these figures how or where the condition originated. There are many explanations as to why someone becomes malnourished: for example they may have cancer of the digestive tract, which means they can't eat properly or can't absorb nutrients; they may have suffered from a stroke or have advanced dementia which can cause difficulties chewing and swallowing; or they may abuse alcohol and so not eat properly. The deceased may have been malnourished before they went into hospital (for any of the reasons mentioned above), and perhaps only have been in hospital a very short time and the malnutrition may have nothing to do with not being fed properly in hospital. While it is possible that poor care may have been a factor in some of the deaths, ONS data does not provide enough evidence to draw this conclusion."
Daily Mail link via @NickGillespie via @freddoso
TSA's 50 Most Dangerous Officers: The Criminals Keeping Us "Safe"
Check out the list of the worst criminals, uh, respected TSA workers, supposedly keeping us safe at the airport from a list by Rep. Marsha Blackburn's office. About the findings:
The findings in this report provides a small snap shot detailing 50 crimes TSA employees have been arrested for since 2005. This report does not highlight every arrest that has been made since 2005. Collectively, the crimes these individuals have been arrested for illustrates a deepening problem within TSA's training and hiring practices that makes the United States more susceptible to a domestic threat.
Gotta love the list, spelling out which of the crimes these 50 TSA scumbags were guilty of. A veritable smorgasbord of crime:
Theft....15
Sex Crimes (Rape, Molestation, Prostitution)....8
Child Pornography....6
Assault....5
Bribery....3
Drugs....3
Illegal Firearms....3
Airport Screening Failures.....2
Murder....1
Conspiracy....1
Impersonating a Federal Officer....1
Driving Under the Influence....1
Here's a lovely one -- a child molester:
CHARLES BENNETT
Airport: Orlando International
Position: Transportation Security Officer Crime: Child Molestation
Date: February 1, 2010"A TSA agent has been arrested and charged with lewd and lascivious molestation of a minor after police say he tried to keep a girl as a sex slave. Police arrested 57-year-old Charles Bennett of Winter Garden on Friday. A 15-year-old girl was the one who reported him to police.
According to reports from the Orange County Sheriff's Office and the Orange County Jail, the 15- year-old victim confided in her caregivers that Bennett had touched her inappropriately three years ago when she was 12. She says he also asked the young girl to be his "sex slave," an accusation investigators say Bennett admitted to in a written statement to police.
So, the TSA can't keep its work force devoid of creeps like these and we really believe they're doing anything other than giving our genitals a feel-up and, in too many cases, seeking an opportunity to lift our cash, iPods, and jewelry?
It's Government Meddling That Leads To Massive Student Debt
Blogger and law prof Glenn Harlan Reynolds writes in the WSJ:
The skyrocketing cost of a college education is a classic unintended consequence of government intervention. Colleges have responded to the availability of easy federal money by doing what subsidized industries generally do: Raising prices to capture the subsidy. Sold as a tool to help students cope with rising college costs, student loans have instead been a major contributor to the problem.In truth, America's student loan problem won't be solved by low interest rates--for many students, the debt would be crippling even if the interest rate were zero.
If we want to solve the very real problem of excessive student-loan debt, college costs need to be brought under control. A 2010 study by the Goldwater Institute identified "administrative bloat" as a leading reason for higher costs. The study found that many American universities now have more salaried administrators than teaching faculty.
Another way to approach costs is to remove the incentives for universities to accept government-subsidized student-loan money regardless of a student's prospects of graduation or gainful employment. Under the current setup, incentives run the other way: Schools get their money up front via student loans; if students are unable to pay the loans back, the burden falls on taxpayers (if the loan was "guaranteed" by the federal government), and the students themselves, while the schools get off scot-free.
A serious student-loan fix would change this incentive. First, federal aid could be capped, perhaps at a national average, or simply indexed to the consumer-price index, making it harder for schools to raise tuition willy-nilly. Second, schools that receive subsidized loan money could be left on the hook for a percentage of the loan balance if students default. I would favor allowing students who can't pay to discharge their loan balances in bankruptcy after a reasonable time--say, five to seven years, maybe even 10--with the institutions that got the money being liable to the guarantors (i.e., the taxpayers) for, say, 10% or 20% of the balance.
You can bet that under this kind of a rule, universities would be much more careful about encouraging students to take on significant debt unless they are fully committed first to graduating, and second to a realistic career path that would enable them to service that debt over time. At the very least, schools would be more likely to warn students of the risks.
I couldn't open the Excel document (don't have Excel) to compare University of Michigan tuition from when I graduated high school (1982) to now, but this lady, Marilisa Kinney Sachteleben, compared Muskegon Community College from about the same time to now. From 1982-84, when she went there, "Costs for tuition, books, gas and supplies was about $1400 to $1,600 per year."
About costs now:
MCC estimates that with books, tuition, transportation and fees a student who lives at home will pay $12,200 per year if they live in-county and $20,100 per semester for out-of-county students. Those were last year's estimates and do not reflect the significant gas price hike Michigan residents experienced.Gas prices went over $4 per gallon earlier this year and is still around $3.60 to $3.90 per gallon. It costs our sons around $10 to $12 per day in fuel costs alone to drive to school. There is no public transportation as we live out-of-county. Carpooling is difficult because student schedules vary so much. Higher fuel costs could raise college costs of out-of-county students to $25,000 per year. We would have to pay out-of-county rates for any community college because there is no college in our county.
$25K a year for community college? Even the "in-county" $12,200 a year is outrageous.
Institute For Justice's Free Speech Win For Caveman Blogger
From IJ's site:
Arlington, Va.--This morning, in a big win for free speech, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that diabetic blogger Steve Cooksey's First Amendment lawsuit against the North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition may go forward.Cooksey ran a Dear Abby-style advice column on his blog in which he gave one-on-one advice about how to follow the low carbohydrate "paleo" diet. The Board deemed Cooksey's advice the unlicensed practice of nutritional counseling, sent him a 19-page print-up of his website indicating in red pen what he was and was not allowed to say, and threatened him with legal action if he did not comply.
The decision reverses a previous ruling by a federal district judge that had dismissed Cooksey's case, reasoning that advice is not protected speech and hence Cooksey had suffered no injury to his First Amendment rights.
"This decision will help ensure that the courthouse doors remain open to speakers whose rights are threatened by overreaching government" said Institute for Justice Senior Attorney Jeff Rowes. "In America, citizens don't have to wait until they are fined or thrown in jail before they are allowed to challenge government action that chills their speech."
From prior to the decision:
Steve Cooksey said, "I give people simple advice on what food to buy at the grocery store. I have believed all along that my advice is protected by the First Amendment, and I am looking forward to proving that the censorship of my speech is unconstitutional."IJ Attorney Paul Sherman said, "Steve's case raises one of the most important unanswered questions in First Amendment law: Can occupational-licensing laws trump free speech? Today's ruling means that we are finally going to get an answer to that question."
The video:
And frankly, as somebody pointed out on YouTube, there are a number of private citizens who give far better, far more science-based advice than people with medical degrees.
Humbly...me, for example.
With Links Upon Thars
And Sneetches with none upon thars.
Bad Ear Day
Photo by a Paris-dwelling friend from their Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle:
We Could Call Our Mexican Border A "Sieve," Except The Holes Are Too Big
Brian Bennett writes for the Washington Bureau of the LA Times that a radar system developed to track the Taliban finds that more immigrants elude capture at the U.S.-Mexico border than previously estimated:
WASHINGTON -- A sophisticated airborne radar system developed to track Taliban fighters planting roadside bombs in Afghanistan has found a new use along the U.S. border with Mexico, where it has revealed gaps in security.Operated from a Predator surveillance drone, the radar system has collected evidence that Border Patrol agents apprehended fewer than half of the foreign migrants and smugglers who had illegally crossed into a 150-square-mile stretch of southern Arizona.
The number of "gotaways," as the Border Patrol calls those who escape apprehension, is both more precise and higher than official estimates.
According to internal reports, Border Patrol agents used the airborne radar to help find and detain 1,874 people in the Sonora Desert between Oct. 1 and Jan. 17. But the radar system spotted an additional 1,962 people in the same area who evaded arrest and disappeared into the United States.
In contrast, the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, estimated in January that the Border Patrol had caught 64% of those who illegally crossed into the Tucson sector in 2011.
...The Obama administration contends America's borders are more strictly policed than ever, with nearly 365,000 apprehensions last year. Republicans have demanded more guards, drones, fencing and other security measures before legal status is granted to the estimated 11 million people believed to have entered America illegally or overstayed their visas.
via @kausmickey
Dems Who Voted For Defense Of Marriage Act Sing New Tune
Via @Instapundit, David Nather writes at Politico:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called Wednesday's Supreme Court ruling striking down the Defense of Marriage Act "a great, historic day for equality in America."He went on: "The idea that allowing two loving, committed people to marry would have a negative impact on anyone else, or on our nation as a whole, has always struck me as absurd."
Pretty strong words from a guy who voted for the Defense of Marriage Act.
But Reid isn't the only one. There was a long line of prominent Democrats Wednesday who all queued up to applaud the Supreme Court for striking down DOMA -- even though they voted for it when it passed in 1996.
Even Bill Clinton -- who signed the bill into law -- heralded the court's decision.
"By overturning the Defense of Marriage Act, the Court recognized that discrimination towards any group holds us all back in our efforts to form a more perfect union," Clinton said in a statement also signed by Hillary Clinton.
Disgusting that he signed DOMA into law in the first place.
Not a Ted Kennedy -- guy letting a girl die -- but the guy was no friend to gays and lesbians or equal rights.
Here are those "evil" libertarians asking to have all citizens treated equally -- saying that, until government gets out of the marriage business, adults should be able to marry any person they choose. (Inspiring video from the Koch-funded Cato Institute.)
Are Jokes About Race Racist? They Are In The "Diversity" Environment
There, bizarrely, we're not supposed to notice racial differences or remark on them in an sort of humorous way. (I'm assuming "White man's guilt" expressions are okay, especially if they include chagrinned mentions of "white privilege.")
Josephine Fenster writes at Zocalo:
For seven years of my life, from sixth grade to 12th grade at primarily black and Latino schools in Las Vegas, I was the White Girl. In sixth grade, my classmates assumed I came from money and were shocked to learn that I, too, took the bus to school. In basketball, I was always forgiven for my terrible dribbling, and, when I sank a shot, I was seen as impressive. As the White Girl, I was taken under everyone's wing. My friends never laughed at me for being behind on the newest slang, and they often volunteered definitions for words I didn't yet know--"Not-White Girl Words," as we called them. I grew to love Tapatio and grits. I came to understand the mysterious combination of chicken and waffles. (It's not that they go great together; it's that they're both delicious and, if both are on your plate, you don't need to choose.)In my high school, everyone was aware of race, but no one was afraid of it. We joked about it constantly. When I didn't know a pop culture reference, my friends laughed and said it was because I was a white girl who never watched BET. When there was a dance circle, I wasn't expected to join it--white girls can't dance. We all told Hector, a Catholic Mexican, that we knew he had to have at least 10 siblings. If my half-black friend Carl rolled up in a shiny new car, we all joked that he must have jacked it. With our discussions and jokes, we played with stereotypes and made them non-scary. We joked around so much that school administrators even planned an assembly for my class to talk about our inappropriate jokes and discussions, but when they looked more closely and saw how comfortable we were with one another, they cancelled the event.
In 2010, I moved to Los Angeles and to college. My campus was (and is) diverse, but it included a lot of white girls--like me. So what had made me stand out now made me blend in. I was no longer the White Girl. Sometimes, frankly, I didn't even feel especially white. A lot of my fellow white girls were doing yoga and wearing designer jeans. I wasn't. I was used to people caring more about their shoes than the rest of their outfit. If you were wearing cool kicks, you looked good. That wasn't true in college. I'd brought my cherished pair of Nikes to L.A., but no one cared.
My college, Occidental, is progressive. It prides itself on ethnic and cultural diversity. I'm proud to be a student here. But gone is the relaxed spirit of high school, where race was a fact of life but not a scary one. When I joked to a black college friend that he was whiter than me--I made this observation because he wears boat shoes--the people nearby looked at me in shock and dismay. Some things are Not Said. Diversity now feels theoretical and academic. There is a class here about "whiteness."
Boyfriend On What Dogs Really Think About What We Say To Them
Gregg, on the phone, hearing me say something to Mingus, my friend Debbie's bichon I was dogsitting the other weekend:
"If he could talk, he'd say, 'Don't fuckin call me Mingy.'"
The truth is, Gregg is dog putty.
Four Questions To Ask During Upcoming Obamacare PR Blitz
Dr. Paul Hsieh writes at Forbes about four points Obamacare advocates will promote and four questions Americans should ask in response. Here are two of them:
1) "Free" benefitsOne of the supposed selling points of the new law will be "free" benefits, such as "free" birth control, well-woman visits, STD (sexually transmitted disease) prevention counseling, and a variety of preventive services.
Of course, nothing is "free." Others will have to pay for these services in the form of increased insurance premiums or higher taxes. If anyone touts "free" benefits, we should ask, "Who is really paying for them? And what else could they be doing with their own money if they weren't compelled to do so?"
2) "Coverage"One of the goals of ObamaCare is near-universal "coverage." But "coverage" is not the same as actual medical care. The American Medical Association predicts a "silent exodus" of physicians as ObamaCare is phased in, worsening the already existing physician shortage.
The New York Times notes the already growing disconnect between theoretical "coverage" and actual medical care in parts of California: "Patients still get care, but the process is often slow and difficult. In Riverside, it has left residents driving long distances to doctors, languishing on waiting lists, overusing emergency rooms and even forgoing care." These problems will worsen under ObamaCare.
He also notes that Congress is trying to exempt itself from Obamacare rules:
Under the new law, many lawmakers and aides are finding they will be required to purchase insurance that would be "exorbitantly expensive."Congressional leaders of both political parties fear a resultant exodus of young talent. Thus they are trying to repeal the provision requiring them to follow their own laws.
If a politician tells you that ObamaCare will be good for America, ask them why Congress wants to opt out. And if Congress gets to opt out, ask why we can't do the same.
Link Is The Answer
Not sure what the question is, but perhaps you can tell me.
Disgusting DOMA Ruled Unconstitutional
Ryan J. Reilly and Sabrina Siddiqui write on HuffPo:
WASHINGTON -- The Defense of Marriage Act, the law barring the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages legalized by the states, is unconstitutional, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday by a 5-4 vote."The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion. "By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others, the federal statute is in violation of the Fifth Amendment."
Justice Kennedy delivered the court's opinion, and was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito all filed dissenting opinions. Justice Clarence Thomas joined Scalia's dissent in whole and parts of Alito's opinion.
As Kennedy read the majority opinion from the bench, cries were heard in the courtroom when the justice delivered the verdict that DOMA violates the Fifth Amendment. A number of same-sex couples sitting in the audience looked up at the ceiling, while others wiped away tears.
DOMA, signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996, prevented same-sex couples whose marriages were recognized by their home state from receiving the hundreds of benefits available to other married couples under federal law. During the Obama administration, the Justice Department initially defended DOMA in court despite the administration's desire to repeal it. But the Justice Department changed course in early 2011, finding that the law was unconstitutional and declining to defend it any longer.
...Plaintiff Edie Windsor, 84, sued the federal government after the Internal Revenue Service denied her refund request for the $363,000 in federal estate taxes she paid after her spouse, Thea Spyer, died in 2009.
During the March oral arguments in United States v. Windsor, a majority of the court seemed to express doubts about the constitutionality of DOMA. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that supporters of the law seemed to want "two types of marriage," likening same-sex unions to the "skim milk" version of marriage.
...DOMA, the majority said, "humiliates tens of thousands of children now being raised by same-sex couples" and "makes it even more difficult for the children to understand the integrity and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in their daily lives."
Some remain determined that treating gays and lesbians and their children, as second-class citizens, with second class rights, is the way:
The Archdioceses of San Francisco, whose recently appointed leader, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, has made headlines for his vocal opposition to gay rights -- even going as far as serving as the chair of the U.S. bishop's Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage, released a statement slamming the rulings and lamenting what he feels is a change in the traditional definition of marriage.
Of course, what matters is that all people are equal and equally protected under the law, which is what this ruling is pointing in the direction of.
You Know You're Crazy-Busy When You Have No Time To "Brag"
I'm completing "Good Manners For Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck" for St. Martin's Press, due July 8, and working wild hours (5 a.m. to 9 p.m. yesterday on my book and my column deadline).
Because of that, I didn't get around to posting the results from Sunday night's LA Press Club Awards, which I'll post now.
My advice columns, which I hope you read in your local paper, garnered a first, a second, and a third place award in the 55th annual Southern California Journalism Awards.
The judges wrote about my first place-winning series of columns:
"This is informational, insightful, provocative and entertaining -- everything you want in great commentary. The work is polished, the style conversational. The laugh-out-loud logic is unique because writing with humor is extremely challenging. Doing it well is worthy of note."
Amy Alkon On "I See Rude People" On Canada's The Agenda With Steve Paikin
About the show, which is pretty much the "Charlie Rose" of Canada, and which I appeared on over Skype from California:
We've all had run-ins with the occasional rude person - someone refuses to give their seat to a pregnant woman on a subway car; a biker knocks over a pedestrian on the sidewalk. But is it etiquette that's changed, or are we just ruder than we've ever been?
I loved Dr. Vivian Rakoff, the elegant (male) Canadian psychiatrist with the white goatee. He is so well-read, if the Internet ever goes down, we can hire him to sit at a glass desk and answer all the questions about literature, philosophy, and history that people would previously have Googled.
And speaking of books, if you haven't bought a copy of my book, I See Rude People: One Woman's Battle To Beat Some Manners Into Impolite Society, I hope you'll consider it. It's only $11.32, brand new, with Amazon's discount at the link above. (New copies or Kindle books go against my advance, and help me keep writing...and eating, and help fund my answering questions that will never make my column.)
US Air Passenger Arrested After Refusing To Stop Talking On Cell Phone
From HuffPo story, the video:
Keystone Government, Security Version
Hinderaker at Powerline asks the right question, "How could a goofy techie expose our government's incompetence?"
How in the world could the NSA allow a random employee of a contractor, Booz Allen, who had been on the "job" for only a couple of months, such unfettered and apparently uncharted access to secret materials? The fact that the NSA did so is the best argument against that agency's being a trustworthy custodian of Americans' secrets.
via @Instapundit
Politicians: Self-Interested Scum Unless Proven Otherwise
Self-interestedly naive criticism of the oily Anthony Weiner in respect to a response to a nasty voter's gay-bashing remark. Chris Graham writes at Political Outcast that Weiner, now running for top wiener of New York City, had a "supposedly homophobic moment":
Weiner's opponent is a lesbian; this is important to know. When he was out gathering signatures to put him on the ballot, he approached an elderly woman and asked if she was a registered Democrat. The woman said, "I am," and added, "and I'm not voting for, uh, what's her name? The dyke."So Weiner said, "Okay, I just need you to sign the petition to get me on the ballot." Then he noticed the offended look on a reporter's face who was present, so Weiner decided to pretend to care that the woman used the word "dyke." "And you really shouldn't talk that way about people," he told her.
Now Weiner is being attacked by two Democratic supporters of his opponent because he showed a "lack of moral courage" for not immediately chastising the old woman in public rather than only doing so a few seconds later when he realized it would look bad if he didn't.
Politicians aren't about to scold a voter. Not even one in a pointy white hood and a bedsheet, providing they promise to vote for them.
Lunks
Links with oafs.
Balanced Account Of Zimmerman Trial
Via @WalterOlson tweet: Must-read coverage of Zimmerman trial from @jacobsullum at reason.com:
Prosecutor Says George Zimmerman Shot Trayvon Martin 'Because He Wanted To'George Zimmerman's Defense Opens With a Bad Joke, Then Portrays Trayvon Martin As the Aggressor
Police Dispatcher Testifies That George Zimmerman Did Not Seem Like a Man on the Verge of Violence
Earlier:
The New York Times Admits Its Reporting on the Trayvon Martin Case Has Been Fundamentally Wrong
Heather Mac Donald On The Two UC Berkeleys
Heather Mac Donald writes in the WSJ about the rise of Multiculti U -- how the budget-strapped University of California squanders millions on mindless diversity programs.
UC One, a serious university system centered on the sciences (though with representatives throughout the disciplines) and still characterized by rigorous meritocratic standards; and UC Two, a profoundly unserious institution dedicated to the all-consuming crusade against phantom racism and sexism that goes by the name of "diversity." Unlike Berkeley Two in Kerr's Day, UC Two reaches to the topmost echelon of the university, where it poses a real threat to the integrity of its high-achieving counterpart.It's impossible to overstate the extent to which the diversity ideology has encroached upon UC's collective psyche and mission. No administrator, no regent, no academic dean or chair can open his mouth for long without professing fealty to diversity. It is the one constant in every university endeavor; it impinges on hiring, distorts the curriculum, and sucks up vast amounts of faculty time and taxpayer resources. The university's budget problems have not touched it. In September 2012, for instance, as the university system faced the threat of another $250 million in state funding cuts on top of the $1 billion lost since 2007, UC San Diego hired its first vice chancellor for equity, diversity, and inclusion. This new diversocrat would pull in a starting salary of $250,000, plus a relocation allowance of $60,000, a temporary housing allowance of $13,500, and the reimbursement of all moving expenses. (A pricey but appropriately "diverse" female-owned executive search firm had found this latest diversity accretion.) In May 2011, UCLA named a professional bureaucrat with a master's degree in student-affairs administration as its first assistant dean for "campus climate," tasked with "maintaining the campus as a safe, welcoming, respectful place," in the words of UCLA's assistant vice chancellor and dean of students. In December 2010, UC San Francisco appointed its first vice chancellor of diversity and outreach--with a starting salary of $270,000--to create a "diverse and inclusive environment," announced UC San Francisco chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann. Each of these new posts is wildly redundant with the armies of diversity functionaries already larding UC's bloated bureaucracy.
UC Two's worldview rests on the belief that certain racial and ethnic groups face ongoing bias, both in America and throughout the university. In 2010, UCLA encapsulated this conviction in a "Principle of Community" (one of eight) approved by the Chancellor's Advisory Group on Diversity (since renamed the UCLA Council on Diversity and Inclusion, in the usual churn of rebranding to which such bodies are subject). Principle Eight reads: "We acknowledge that modern societies carry historical and divisive biases based on race, ethnicity, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation and religion, and we seek to promote awareness and understanding through education and research and to mediate and resolve conflicts that arise from these biases in our communities."
The idea that a salient--if not the most salient--feature of "modern societies" is their "divisive biases" is ludicrously unhistorical. No culture has been more blandly indifferent than modern Western society to the individual and group characteristics that can still lead to death and warfare elsewhere. There is also no place that more actively celebrates the characteristics that still handicap people outside the West than the modern American campus. Yet when UC Two's administrators and professors look around their domains, they see a landscape riven by the discrimination that it is their duty to extirpate.
Check out how they are forced to twist the hiring process:
Thus it was that UC San Diego's electrical and computer engineering department found itself facing a mandate from campus administrators to hire a fourth female professor in early 2012. The possibility of a new hire had opened up--a rare opportunity in the current budget climate--and after winnowing down hundreds of applicants, the department put forward its top candidates for on-campus interviews. Scandalously, all were male. Word came down from on high that a female applicant who hadn't even been close to making the initial cut must be interviewed. She was duly brought to campus for an interview, but she got mediocre reviews. The powers-that-be then spoke again: her candidacy must be brought to a departmental vote. In an unprecedented assertion of secrecy, the department chair refused to disclose the vote's outcome and insisted on a second ballot. After that second vote, the authorities finally gave up and dropped her candidacy. Both vote counts remain secret.An electrical and computer engineering professor explains what was at stake. "We pride ourselves on being the best," he says. "The faculty know that absolute ranking is critical. No one had ever considered this woman a star." You would think that UC's administrators would value this fierce desire for excellence, especially in a time of limited resources. Thanks to its commitment to hiring only "the best," San Diego's electrical and computer engineering department has made leading contributions to circuit design, digital coding, and information theory.
...For more than a decade, the federal government has used its grant-making power to demand color- and gender-driven hiring in the sciences. UC One's passion for discovery and learning will fuel it for a long time yet, but it will continue to be weakened severely by UC Two.
It Isn't That Millennials Hate Cars
They can't afford them.
Matthew de Paulo writes at AOL Autos:
Sociologists, pundits and industry analysts have painted these young people as anti-car treehuggers who not only shun vehicle ownership, but shirk driving altogether.Brad Potts, 27, has lived in Detroit for seven years, all of them carless. Mopeds, Brad says, are the ultimate solution for avoiding the expense of a car in a city that was not built for pedestrians and has an almost nonexistent public transportation service.
"I'm not anti-driving, I love driving," he said. "But it's also just, so much money. It's a luxury item."
Meier said she relishes driving the Dodge Neon ACR she inherited from her father, who used to race it in the Sports Car Club of America.
"Everyone thinks we're hipsters and not interested in anything other than saving the environment or riding bikes," she said.
The non-driving generation?
Still, it's understandable that young people today -- there are about 82 million Millenials ranging from ages 16 to 34 -- have been pigeon-holed as a nondriving generation.
Far fewer teens are getting driver's licenses now versus 20 years ago, said Sheryl Connelly, a Ford futurist. A study by the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute found that the percentage of 16-year-olds with a driver's license dropped from 46 percent in 1983 to 31 percent in 2008.
"Now the cell phone is the gateway purchase into adulthood," Connelly said. For the youngest Millenials, virtual mobility trumps physical mobility.
Anybody see any reason for optimism about the economy?
A friend in her 70s sees economic downturns as cyclical. Well, I'm looking and looking for the end of the cycle. You seeing it?
Sap Check, Tunes
Is it weird that I'm person with a dark and absurdist sensibility who loves Howard Ashman and Alan Mencken ("Beauty And The Beast," etc.) and just about anything Julie Andrews has ever sung (especially everything from "The Sound of Music")?
(Gregg, on the other hand, is most comforted by what I think of as "Music To Commit Suicide By," Penderecki's "Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima," all sorts of horribly dissonant classical music, and vintage punk.)
Your uncool musical penchant, if any?
The Ugly Side Of Racial Preferences
In the WSJ, Theodore H. Johnson writes about his experience -- being assumed that his achievements are due to the color of his skin:
"You probably got it because you're black."I heard those words two years ago when I had the honor of being selected as a White House Fellow. It wasn't the first time that at a moment of proud accomplishment I had heard skeptical comments. It happened when I was promoted a year ahead of my military peers. Earning a graduate degree from Harvard University prompted a dismissive remark about admission quotas. Most troubling of all was that, each time, I wondered: "What if it's true?"
This is the ugly side of racial preferences that gets little attention. No matter what one may think of the policy, the truth is that with it comes an undercurrent of implied inferiority. Even in instances when a black or Hispanic is the best qualified and well-matched for a particular career or academic opportunity, the perception of unfair favoritism follows the person, hovering in the ether. The same suspicion often follows women who succeed.
The "affirmative action" measures that were supposed to provide new opportunities for underrepresented groups also prematurely and unfairly burdened them with the presumption that they're undeserving.
As I've said many times, we don't fight racism with a "nicer" form of racism, which isn't nice at all to accomplished black people who get dinged with the notion that they aren't deserving of their position.
If there should be any "consideration" given, it should be to poor people of any race.
Why It's Damaging To Label Kids
Cognitive psychologist Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, whom I recently had on my radio show to talk about his new book, Ungifted, made The Today Show website's front page. An excerpt from the Jacoba Urist interview with him, about how he was slotted into special ed and finally broke out in 9th grade, going on to Yale and getting a Ph.D., and becoming a young prof at NYU:
Kaufman warns parents and educators about the dangers of labeling kids early on as either "ungifted" or "gifted and talented"-- and creating a self-fulfilling prophecy for students that can follow them into adulthood. He says the latter group can feel enormous fear about losing the label, and avoid seeking new skills and react unhealthily to minor setbacks.Luckily for Kaufman, everything changed one day in the ninth grade. A young special education teacher, Joyce Jeuell, who was helping in his class, took him aside and asked why he was still in the "resource room".
"It was pretty amazing," recalls Kaufman, "and everything just accelerated rapidly from there. Because this one teacher saw beyond the label of a 'special ed kid,' she empowered me to question the experts' opinion of my intelligence."
Today, at 34, Kaufman is a psychology professor at New York University, with a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Yale and a blog "Beautiful Minds" on Scientific American. After that fateful encounter with Juell freshman year, he says, he went on to earn straight A's in regular high school classes, where he'd been getting C's and D's in his special education ones.
But why wouldn't Kaufman have performed better in his special education classes if, clearly, he was so capable of it?
The answer may lie in something called the "expectancy effect." According to Kaufman, educational research shows that pigeonholing students can actually create outcomes, so that children placed in special education or called "ungifted" can become much less motivated than their peers--because they internalize the label and eventually believe that they aren't intelligent. He illustrates in his book how studies have also shown that teachers treat students differently based on their "status," are more respectful of "regular" kids than the "ungifted," and have higher expectations for "talented" children, creating a kind of intelligence feedback loop.
My show with him is here:
Advice Goddess Radio: Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman on how your child can be more than his test scores.
Linkuania
Rushin' for some deviant links.
The Ethicist Lacks Ethics: (Thinks Stealing Plants From The Mall Is No Big Deal)
The question in The New York Times column "The Ethicist":
My wife and I love plants. While walking through our local shopping center, we noticed a particular plant that we both liked and decided to get it for our patio. We visited two local garden centers; neither had the plant. My wife thought she could grow it from cuttings, so we went back and took about three or four cuttings from one of the many plants that were scattered around the shopping center. The plant was not hurt or damaged in any manner or form, but my gut instinct told me that this was wrong. Was it? JULIAN SOLOMONS, HUNTINGTON BEACH, CALIF.
"Ethicist" (and the quotes around that are very much intentional) Chuck Klosterman's answer:
How do we assess an unethical act that has a positive impact? Does that positive result reverse the way we should perceive its inception?The plant you wanted to clone was not for sale and did not disappear from its place of origin. To accuse you of "stealing" seems a little overamplified; the nature of this act actually seems closer to mild vandalism (although if your wife is truly as skilled a gardener as you imply, there would have been no significant trauma to the plant). If this variety were rare and supervaluable, it could be argued that the cloning reduced its value, although I doubt this was the case if you found them scattered all over a mall. These plants come from the earth, so there is no infringement on creative powers. (I suppose it's possible your plant is some kind of unique man-made hybrid, but -- here again -- a shopping center is not exactly Biosphere 2.) Plants have a positive impact on the environment and social aesthetics, and your ultimate goal was to create more of them.
So here is my analysis: you technically stole, you technically committed vandalism and you should have asked the shopping center's permission before trying this unethical act. In a black-and-white universe, your gut instinct was correct. But if I were to place unethical acts on an ascending continuum of 1 to 100, I'd give you and your wife a 4. Maybe a 3.
The answer is, you ask to do this; you don't just take it. Or you go home without it. That's what's ethical. What's easier is easier; it is not ethical.
This excerpt from a comment at The New York Times from "Howard G" says it:
The only "positive impact" is the self-serving desires of Solomons' wife to indulge her immediate desire to own the plant.It seems odd that The Ethicist never mentions another option in this scenario -- which is, the couple could have simply said to each other, "Oh well...I guess we're not going find a way to acquire that plant today, and we'll just have to do without it, for now."
Not indulging and instead doing the right thing is so 1985.
Data Wants To Be Free
Via Overlawyered, Bob Sullivan writes at NBCnews.com that lawyers are starting to eye NSA surveillance of the citizenry for evidence in murder and divorce cases in the wake of a Florida lawyer demanding they hand it over for his client's murder trial:
On Wednesday, the federal government filed a motion saying it would refuse, citing national security. But experts say the novel legal argument could encourage other lawyers to fight for access to the newly disclosed NSA surveillance database."What's good for the goose is good for the gander, I guess," said George Washington University privacy law expert Dan Solove. "In a way, it's kind of ironic."
Defendant Terrance Brown is accused of participating in the 2010 murder of a Brinks security truck driver. Brown maintains his innocence, and claims cellphone location records would show he wasn't at the scene of the crime. Brown's cellphone provider -- MetroPCS -- couldn't produce those records during discovery because it had deleted the data already.
On seeing the story in the Guardian indicating that Verizon had been ordered to turn over millions of calling records to the NSA last month, Brown's lawyer had a novel idea: Make the NSA produce the records.
..."This is a little bit of an awakening to the government, that you can't hold massive amounts of personal data with impunity," (Solove) said. "Once you do, a lot of obligations and responsibilities kick in. One of the consequences of keeping data is that now you open yourself up to discovery."
Young, Healthy Employees? New Healthcare Law Sticks It To You
Sarah E. Needleman writes in the WSJ that the younger and healthier a small business's employees, the greater its chances of facing a big spike in its health-insurance premiums next year:
That is because the Affordable Care Act's impact on small employers will split largely on generational and industry lines, putting entrepreneurs like Eileen Hasson, owner of a technology-services firm with mostly male employees in their 20s and 30s, at a disadvantage.Starting in January, insurers will no longer be able to set premiums for small-group plans--which apply to employers with fewer than 50 or 100 employees, depending on the state--based on a firm's industry or the health or gender of its staff. Insurers will still be able to take into account the age of a firm's workers, though to a lesser extent, and whether or not those people use tobacco.
The result: the cost of health care will be more evenly spread among small businesses, as employers with mostly young and healthy workers pick up the costs of firms that comprise the opposite. The rebalancing will drive up premiums for some companies in industries with lots of young, healthy workers, such as technology, while moderating rate increases for firms with older and sicker workers, and in higher-risk industries such as industrial manufacturing.
Someone posted a harumph!-type comment about "inaccuracies" in the piece about the amount younger workers will be forced to pay, with subsidies from the Federal government reducing an individual's out-of-pocket costs:
WSJ commenter Charleen Larson bats cleanup:
"there will be significant subsidies from the Federal government to reduce the cost of purchasing health insurance."Oh.
Well, that's okay then.
Because as we all know, the Federal government gets its funds from the Cash Fairy.
Sausage Links
Wurst case scenario.
Advice Goddess Radio -- Tonight, 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET: Dr. Amir Levine, Find And Keep Love Through Attachment Science
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.
*"Best Of" replay due to the Sun night LA Press Club Awards, for which I'm a finalist (for my advice column) in four categories.
This show will help you use the new field of adult attachment science to find love -- or to keep and even vastly improve the relationship you have.
My guest is neuroscientist Dr. Amir Levine, co-author with psychologist Rachel S.F. Heller, of Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find -- and Keep -- Love.
If you're seeking a partner, by recognizing which of the three attachment styles you fit into, you can help yourself avoid all the usual troubles you get into while dating.
If you're in a relationship, by recognizing which form of attachment you exhibit and which your partner does, you can stop battling each other, behave more lovingly to each other, and better meet each other's needs.
The partner who longs for more closeness can recognize their need and stop always acting so demanding of a partner who needs a little more distance to feel comfortable. At the same time, they can come to understand that their partner loves them, and that it's largely their style of attachment that makes them harangue the other person for closeness, which can help them pull back a little.
In turn, the person who's more distant can recognize their style but come around in small and regular ways that reassure their more intimacy-seeking partner.
This is a not-to-be-missed show. Listen live (on tape) at this link at 7pm Pacific, 10pm Eastern, or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/06/24/dr-amir-levine-find-keep-love-thru-attachment-science
Don't miss last week's show with University of Chicago psychologist and researcher Dr. Sian Beilock, explaining why we choke under pressure and how we can avoid doing it.
Her book is Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To.
Join us tonight to find out how you can exhibit the sort of grace under pressure that makes for winning performances -- in life, business, sports, public speaking, and the arts.
Listen at this link or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/06/17/dr-sian-beilock-how-not-to-choke-under-pressure
Join me and my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, here at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.
Hilarious Things You Write When You Are Tired
This morning's version:
"...Awakened by a thumping beet."
(Vegetables are so noisy this time of year.)
A bit on homophonic heterographs here.
Balko On Snowden And Abuses Of Our Privacy And Freedom
@RadleyBalko posted:
As an American, I find it embarrassing that a guy who exposed abuses of my privacy and freedom has no choice but to seek protection from China, Cuba, Russia, and Venezuela.
NBC News: The US is seeking NSA surveillance leaker Edward Snowden's extradition from Hong Kong, write Becky Bratu and Catherine Chomiak:
Snowden, 30, has been charged with three violations according to the document: theft of government property and two offenses under the espionage statutes, specifically giving national defense information to someone without a security clearance and revealing classified information about "communications intelligence."Snowden, who is a former employee of defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, told reporters he leaked details about far-reaching Internet and phone surveillance programs to The Guardian and The Washington Post earlier this month. He revealed his identity while in Hong Kong, where it is believed he is still hiding.
The U.S. has filed a "provisional arrest warrant" formally asking the police in Hong Kong to arrest Snowden. Because the FBI has no jurisdiction outside U.S. borders, U.S. prosecutors must ask local police to make the arrest.
...The arrest would start the formal extradition process in court, which will be governed by Chinese law and could take several months to resolve.
Snowden now in Moscow:
A source from Aeroflot told Interfax that Snowden is on flight SU213 to Moscow, landing on Sunday afternoon.Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov said the Kremlin was unaware of Snowden's plans to fly to Moscow. The US has filed an extradition order against Snowden for espionage, theft and conversion of government property.
It is understood that Moscow will not be Snowden's final destination, he could potentially fly on to Ecuador or Iceland where he has allegedly applied for asylum. A diplomatic source told the Russian news agency Itar-Tass that no request for asylum in Russia had been received from the former CIA employee.
Citing a source close to Snowden, Russian news agency Interfax reported that the whistleblower's final destination will be Venezuela with a transfer in Havana, Cuba. He will reportedly be on flight SU150 to Havana, leaving Moscow on Monday and then on flight V-04101 to Caracas.
"He chose such a complicated route in the hope that he would not be arrested on the way to his final destination of Venezuela," the source told Interfax.
Another Balko point:
Snowden's critics this morning are both chastising him for fleeing to Russia, Cuba, etc., and demanding that those countries extradite him. So apparently it's unseemly for Americans to seek help from oppressive regimes . . . unless it's asking them to arrest a critic of the American govenrment.
Laughable statement from Obama, via LA Times editorial board:
Even as he condemned Edward Snowden's leaks about two government surveillance programs, President Obama said he welcomed the debate about whether post-9/11 efforts to detect terrorist plots have undermined Americans' privacy.
The Student-Loan Poor
Attorney Adam B. Wolf writes for the LA Times about the college grads defaulting on their loans in record numbers. As the subhead of the article says, "The $1.1 trillion in debt is consigning jobless borrowers to an underclass and rivals the housing bubble."
It turns out part of this comes from students who don't do the math on their loans or the research on the possibilities for employment and the money they'd make, as per Wolf's piece:
After a for-profit culinary college in California settled a lawsuit brought by former students, I was hired by a fund created through the settlement to provide assistance to those who took out loans to attend the school. The job has put me on the front lines of the student debt crisis.The students who enrolled at the culinary school were hoping to become the next Tom Colicchio, and they routinely took out $40,000 loans to finance their educations.
The federal government issued some of the loans to the students, but those covered only a portion of the school's tuition and costs. Sallie Mae, the now-private lender, made up the difference, dispensing loans to students like Halloween candy. But there was a catch: Whereas the federal government's loans had interest rates of about 6%, the interest rates on the private loans often hovered between 13% and 18%.
The financial consequences of financing a culinary education with credit card interest rates are devastating -- and predictable. The school's graduates who find work in their field typically earn about $9 per hour. And those are the lucky ones who are employed.
But repaying a $20,000 loan at 6% interest and an additional $20,000 loan at 15% interest is simply unsustainable for someone who earns an hourly wage of $9. The take-home pay does not come close to covering interest payments, and paring down the principal is not an option. Obviously, repayment is even less feasible for the unemployed.
Under the terms of the private loans, the missed interest payments are added back to the principal. Loan balances balloon. More payments are missed. The $40,000 loans quickly pass six figures.
One student I worked with illustrates the despair. Believing that education was the path to financial security, he financed his culinary education by taking out a $42,116 private loan -- at 17.375% interest. Upon graduation, he could not find a culinary job in California, so he moved to Oklahoma. Unable to find employment there, he moved to Florida. Still, no jobs. He finally found work in Missouri, where he earns $11 per hour, 20 hours per week. But with two children, he isn't making enough to live on, much less to begin paying back loan debt that, with interest, has increased to $110,000 (and continues to grow).
Government-Driven Segregation
In our national parks of all places.
As Rebecca Onion writes on Slate about these images from the 1930s and 1940s, including a bathroom or changing room appallingly marked "White Women":
Images of segregation in urban areas abound, but there's something especially disturbing about seeing the practice carried into the supposedly utopian outdoor playground of a national park.
Whatever you think about Barack Obama politically, it's pretty amazing that we have a black president relatively few decades after the disgusting Jim Crow laws.
A little something to remember, those of you who think government is good and there to protect you and your rights: Segregation was instituted and regulated by the government.
Hostess Linkies
There's something to be said for food-type stuff that lasts years or maybe a decade.
A World Without Religion
A question borrowed from the WSJ:
Do we need religion to have ethics? Is it possible that a world without religion can be, on the whole, a better place to live?
Your thoughts?
Sexism Is Sexism Even When Your Team Wins
The HuffPo headline:
Hillary Clinton: Female President Would Send Right Signal
An excerpt from the piece by Ken Thomas of the AP:
In a video of a private Clinton speech posted to YouTube on Friday, Clinton told a Canadian audience that she hoped the U.S. would elect a woman to the White House because it would send "exactly the right historical signal" to men, women and children. She said women in politics need to "dare to compete" and the nation needs to "take that leap of faith.""Let me say this, hypothetically speaking, I really do hope that we have a woman president in my lifetime," Clinton said at a women's conference in Toronto on Thursday night. "And whether it's next time or the next time after that, it really depends on women stepping up and subjecting themselves to the political process, which is very difficult."
I just want a president who doesn't trash our civil liberties, send kids off to war in foreign lands that have not attacked us, and who doesn't see the national debt as no big deal...pile on!
What this president has in his or her pants, and whether the president is a he or a she is utterly immaterial to me -- and should be to any person who actually is "progressive," as in, for progress beyond sexism.
Linksemite Sam
Suffering linkotash!
Yaron Brook: Children Do Not "Owe" Their Parents
An audience member asks about what your obligation is to your parents:
"A lot of people don't love their parents because their parents didn't earn it," Brook says.
"It's different with children. You brought them into the world," he says, and have an obligation to them.
Sam Harris Makes Mincemeat Of Theist's Argument
The theist admits that he has no evidence for god belief. Thank you! And then Sam Harris responds to the guy's (weak, verbiage-heavy) arguments for why he believes:
As Harris points out: Why is the god area the one area where, for many people, common sense doesn't take hold?
Which if these two claims causes you to snicker a little? There is a god and Elvis is working at a waffle house just outside of Reno.
Why require proof for one and not the other?
Sometimes, Traffic Is A Good Thing
Cognitive psychologist and evolutionary psychologist Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman wrote a wonderful book, Ungifted, and has an inspiring story of how he overcame obstacles at every turn to go from a kid who tested as learning disabled to end up getting a Ph.D. at Yale and becoming a really young prof at NYU.
I was thrilled to have him on my radio show, and I feel it's a particularly inspiring and interesting show -- one that helps parents understand that they shouldn't buy into the labels that get stuck on kids via intelligence tests and other ways schools and others assess kids' potential.
And for the exciting news, with no prompting from me, BlogTalkRadio featured the show, and we got some very nice traffic:
Yeah, that's right -- 47,000-plus people have listened to the show so far, and it hasn't even been posted on all the online sites of the papers that run me.
That show is here:
Advice Goddess Radio: Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman on how your child can be more than his test scores.
BlogTalkRadio has done this before -- featured my shows -- and my show tends to be the top in its category (psychology/science) every week. It's cool to just up and start something out of nowhere, to work hard to get better at it, and have it start to pay off.
Thanks, especially, to Jim P. and to Adam Bein who have been there with encouragement from the start, and to TV and radio pro Michael Linder, who was kind enough to take me out for a drink and tell me all the things I needed to do to be better. (It takes a good friend and a person with guts to give you constructive criticism.)
And finally, thanks to all of you who listen to these shows. I love putting out solid science so it's practical and interesting, and I hope the shows are compelling and helpful.
Because America's Not Fat Enough Or Broke Enough
Mike Hughlett writes in the Star-Tribune that the USDA will spend $38M to prop up sugar prices:
The federal government will intervene in the sugar market for the first time in more than a decade, spending up to $38 million in an effort to forestall a later bailout of sugar producers in Minnesota and elsewhere that could cost more than $300 million.Minnesota is home to the nation's largest beet sugar industry, which is protected by import tariffs and supported by loan guarantees.
Due to historically low sugar prices this year, a clause in the loan program would allow beet and cane sugar producers to walk away from their loans, forfeiting the collateral -- sugar -- instead.
The government would then sell the sugar, most likely at depressed prices. To avoid a wave of potentially expensive forfeiture sales this summer and fall, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Monday that it instead would buy sugar on the domestic market in what agency officials are calling a newly devised "least-cost method."
The USDA estimates the measure would cost $38 million. It is aimed at pushing up current sugar prices so that producers don't default on their loans and simply forfeit sugar. The USDA has estimated that if that happened, taxpayers' estimated cost would be $110 million to $320 million.
Humorless, Clueless Judge Goes Power-Mad, Slaps Former NFL Star Around
Gregg told me about this story and I forgot to blog it.
Curt Anderson writes for the AP about former NFL star Chad Johnson who had Broward County Circuit Judge Kathleen McHugh reject his deal with prosecutors calling for community service and counseling instead of jail after he playfully slapped the ass of his attorney:
It was all set until Johnson, when asked by McHugh if he was satisfied with his lawyer Adam Swickle, gave the attorney a light swat on the rear _ as football players routinely do to each other on the field. The courtroom erupted in laughter and at that McHugh said she wouldn't accept the deal."I don't know that you're taking this whole thing seriously. I just saw you slap your attorney on the backside. Is there something funny about this?" McHugh said, slapping the plea deal document down on her desk. "The whole courtroom was laughing. I'm not going to accept these plea negotiations. This isn't a joke."
Johnson, 35, tried to apologize and insisted he meant no disrespect.
...But McHugh, who could have given Johnson up to a year in jail, was not moved.
"It's not the first time he's behaved that way in my courtroom," she said.
Johnson then was handcuffed and hauled away to jail. Swickle declined comment on whether he would seek a reduced sentence.
Update here (with autoplay, so turn your sound down).
This sure seems like judicial misconduct to me.
via ifeminists
Linkie Loo
Flush thrice.
Love Letter To NSA Agent Monitoring Bob Powers' Online Activity
Great post at HappyPlace. A screenshotted excerpt:
This yellowcake Al Qaeda al-Zawahiri blog item brought to you via a @schneierblog tweet.
Unpaid Internships Aren't Unpaid -- And Don't Lead To Jobs Much More Than Never Having Interned
This is why they're largely the province of kids from well-to-do families.
Randye Hoder writes in The New York Times:
Like 30 percent of undergraduates in the United States, my daughter, Emma, has an unpaid internship this summer. She is one of the lucky ones. She is following her passion: her internship at a food Web site is in her field of study; the work she's doing there is providing her, at age 20, with valuable skills, experience and connections.But the idea of an unpaid internship is a misnomer -- mostly because someone is, in some sense, paying. In this case, it's my husband and me (with a helping hand from various friends and relatives).
Emma's internship is in New York City, across the country from our Los Angeles home. We can afford it, in large part, because she has a friend whose family generously offered her a place to stay this summer. Otherwise, she might have had to pass on this great opportunity. (Her friend, by the way, is a fellow undergrad with an unpaid internship at a Condé Nast magazine.)
There are, of course, other expenses: round-trip airfare, housing incidentals, food and a MetroCard, to name just a few. With no salary, Emma herself can't afford any of those things -- more expenses for the parents who are footing the bill. These are costs that only those with relatively high incomes can afford. Meanwhile, those who are from less well-to-do households are getting left behind.
The long-term impact can be significant. Although students with paid internships have the best postgraduate opportunities, research shows those with unpaid internships fare better than those without them.
Again, I think it's scummy of these companies to not pay them anything if they are doing more than letting them observe -- if they are getting anything out of their work.
There's value to the companies in seeing the sort of person a person is on the job.
Because you can exploit somebody -- have them do work for you for free -- doesn't mean you should. This is why, although I could have a line of people out the door if I put an ad for an intern on Craigslist, I do not. If you work for me, like my part-time assistant does, you get paid -- and mentored.
From Hoder's piece:
"Paying interns the minimum wage is the right and moral thing to do," says Robert Shindell, vice president and chief learning officer at Intern Bridge, a research firm. "It levels the playing field and allows us to focus on the more important question: Are we as a society effectively transitioning our students from college to the world of work?"Landing an internship is an important stepping stone for a young person. Those jobs should be going to those students who prove themselves the most capable -- regardless of whether their parents have fat wallets.
PS Those "evil" libertarians over at Reason magazine do the right thing and pay -- interns work for 10 weeks and receive a $5,000 stipend. This means it is potential and talent (judged through writing samples) that allows one to intern, not whether one's parents have bucks.
Also, these interns are actually apprenticing -- they are not doing scut work for countless hours a day.
Their website says: "The job includes reporting and writing for Reason and Reason Online, and helping with research, proofreading, and other tasks. Previous interns have gone on to work at such places as The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, ABC News, and Reason itself."
The Atlantic's Jordan Weissman on whether unpaid internships lead to jobs for college students. Short answer: not so much.
For three years, the National Association of Colleges and Employers has asked graduating seniors if they've received a job offer and if they've ever had either a paid or unpaid internship. And for three years, it's reached the same conclusion: Unpaid internships don't seem to give college kids much of a leg up when it comes time to look for employment.This year, NACE queried more than 9,200 seniors from February through the end of April. They found that 63.1 percent of students with a paid internship under their belt had received at least one job offer. But only 37 percent of former unpaid interns could say the same -- a negligible 1.8 percentage points more than students who had never interned.
*It might also be time to stop calling post-collegiate internships "internships." As Intern Bridge Vice President Robert Shindell said to me, whether or not they're paid, they really are just generally temp jobs with a fancy title.
Stupid Jihadist Tricks: Facebook Status Update About Mass-Murderous Plans
If you're going to blow up an embassy, best not to announce it on Facebook.
From the AP, that's what Sefa Riano did.
One status update in late April apologizes to his parents before telling them goodbye. Another declares ominously, "God willing, I will take action at the Myanmar Embassy, hope you will share responsibility for my struggle." It ends with a yellow smiley face.Days later, police arrested Riano, whose Facebook name is Mambo Wahab, just before midnight in central Jakarta. Police say he and another man were on a motorbike carrying a backpack filled with five low-explosive pipe bombs tied together. Riano, 29, is awaiting charges related to allegations that he plotted to bomb the embassy to protest the persecution of Muslims in Buddhist-majority Myanmar.
Serena Is Not Entirely Wrong
Tennis star Serena Williams rightfully caught heat for a comment that she made about the horror perpetrated on the Steubenville rape victim. Her notion that the rapists simply "did something stupid" and should have gotten off easier is just reprehensible.
But she has a point about personal responsibility.
But first, let's be clear: A person who does not take personal responsibility in how drunk they get, like this girl who got blotto and was raped, is not "asking for it," and does not deserve, by any stretch of the imagination, to be raped or otherwise assaulted.
From the NYPost, here are Serena's remarks:
In a Rolling Stone story which Deadspin posted on Tuesday, the world's No. 1 tennis player commented on the Steubenville rape case after seeing a news story about it."Do you think it was fair, what they got? They did something stupid, but I don't know. I'm not blaming the girl, but if you're a 16-year-old and you're drunk like that, your parents should teach you--don't take drinks from other people," she told the magazine.
"She's 16, why was she that drunk where she doesn't remember? It could have been much worse. She's lucky. Obviously I don't know, maybe she wasn't a virgin, but she shouldn't have put herself in that position, unless they slipped her something, then that's different."
Where she's right is that people need to be taught take responsibility for themselves and to be taught that getting seriously drunk can get you seriously imperiled. Especially girls, but boys, too.
From the way I was raised, and because of my parents' non-demonizing views about alcohol, when I wanted to find out what it was like to get drunk, I did it at a wedding with my parents so my dad would be there in case something happened.
As I've posted here before, all that did happen is that I threw up on the side of the road on the way home, but my dad was there to laugh at me and goad me, "I bet you won't overdo it again."
I didn't drink again until my late 20s.
To be fair, the teen years are not exactly the judgment years. Generally speaking, the brain doesn't even finish developing until around 25.
It's also possible that binge-drinking kids are not penetrable by reason. It's also very possible that I was just lucky.
But it's my belief that having "Personal responsibility!" so hammered into me by my parents, combined with their reasonable and non-Puritanical attitudes toward drinking, protected me from becoming raped or otherwise victimized in some horrible way.
Linklerious
A form of delirium.
Arianna Huffington, The Queen Of Getting People To Work For Free, Sings A New Tune: "Prioritize People And Planet Alongside Profit"
Yes, I know, many people use their postings on her site to promote themselves.
For those who are already famous and get their postings on the front page (John Cusack, for example) and just want to talk about their pet cause, this is a fine deal.
Before the HuffPo got big, she asked me to write for it. I politely turned her down, but thought, "Hey, fuck you. You live in a probably 10,000-foot Brentwood mansion, and you want me to work for free?"
(I don't work for free even if you don't live so sumptuously.)
Well, this post was inspired by an absolutely obscene posting by Arianna (obscene because it was posted by the person who engaged in the above -- until she sold her company to AOL for $300-plus million).
Now, profits are kinda icky? Right.
Arianna writes:
I've been inspired by the way that over the last few months -- in meetings and on email threads -- the co-founders of the team, Richard Branson and Jochen Zeitz, and the other inaugural leaders, have been determined to change the values that drive businesses, to "prioritize people and planet alongside profit" and to move beyond our obsession with quarterly earnings and short-term growth. Plan A -- the pursuit of short-term profit at the exclusion of everything else -- isn't working for anyone. It's not working for businesses' long-term sustainability, and it's not working for employees' well-being.
If she's concerned about people's well-being, why not take her profits from selling to AOL and spreading them around to all the writers who wrote for her without pay for all those years?
If their writing wasn't of value, it wouldn't have been published on her site.
Still, you've got to give the woman props. I don't know how you have the hubris to get rich the way she did and then write a piece like this.
Alternative Cancer Care Is An Alternative To Possibly Staying Alive
Do you get your medical advice from some gray-skinned girl at the health food store, taking pride that you aren't in the clutches of "Big Pharma" -- not noticing that the health food/supplement industry is not exactly made up of little old ladies growing herbs in their garage?
Via @Gorskon, a USA Today piece by Liz Szabo on Paul Offit's new book, Do You Believe in Magic?: The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine
Many consumers view alternative medicine industry as more altruistic and home-spun than Big Pharma. But in his book, Offit paints a picture of an aggressive, $34 billion a year industry whose key players are adept at using lawsuits, lobbyists and legislation to protect their market."It's a big business," says Offit, best known for developing a vaccine against rotavirus, a diarrheal illness that killed 2,000 people each day, mostly children in the developing world.
...Apple founder Steve Jobs' faith in alternative medicine likely cost him his life, says Barrie Cassileth, chief of integrative medicine at New York's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003. But Jobs, revered as one of the brightest minds on the planet, chose to delay surgery, the only treatment that had a chance to save his life, Cassileth says.
For nine months after his diagnosis, Offit writes, Jobs treated his cancer with acupuncture, herbs, bowel cleansings and a special diet of carrots and fruit juices.
Jobs eventually had surgery, and even a liver transplant. But it was too late.
He died in 2011, eight years after diagnosis.
"He had the only kind of pancreatic cancer that is treatable and curable," Cassileth says. "He essentially committed suicide."
Cancer patients have cashed in their life savings or children's college funds to pay charismatic charlatans, spending $20,000 or more for "absurd" treatments at fringe clinics in the USA, Mexico and Bahamas, Cassileth says.
"There are no viable alternatives to mainstream cancer care," Cassileth says. "We work very hard to dissuade patients who want to go that way, because they are going to die."
A quote I've posted before from Marcia Angell and Jerome Kassirer:
It is time for the scientific community to stop giving alternative medicine a free ride... There cannot be two kinds of medicine -- conventional and alternative. There is only medicine that has been adequately tested and medicine that has not, medicine that works and medicine that may or may not work. Once a treatment has been tested rigorously, it no longer matters whether it was considered alternative at the outset. If it is found to be reasonably safe and effective, it will be accepted.
Snowden's Dad Echoes What I Keep Saying About The Ridiculous And Abusive TSA "Security"
Nick Sorrentino blogs at Against Crony Capitalism:
I totally agree with Snowden's dad. If we have to give up our liberty to the state the terrorists have won. If we stop being the land of the free and home of the brave because we fear a bunch of guys might set off an attack at some future date, what makes us special anymore? We're just another country.We lived under the very real threat of total nuclear alienation during the Cold War, and though there were significant abuses, the Constitution remained more or less intact. But now we are supposed to cower and live like children because of the chance that a terrorist strike, which even at the most horrific level is likely to be limited, and certainly not worth abandoning living like human beings with dignity over, will disrupt the economy? America doesn't die with a terrorist act. It dies when it stops standing for liberty and the dignity of the average citizen.
The Real Problem: Asymmetric Relationship Between Citizens And State
Smart piece by A. Barton Hinkle at reason:
The revelations about the extent of domestic surveillance have been a big story since they broke earlier this month. And the story keeps getting bigger: MSN reports that the IRS is "acquiring a huge volume of personal information on taxpayers' digital activities, from eBay auctions to Facebook posts and, for the first time ever, credit card and e-payment transaction records." Soon it will have your health-insurance information, too.Yet the tight focus on electronic surveillance keeps the bigger story out of the frame.
The bigger story concerns the increasingly asymmetric relationship between citizens and the state. The formerly secret program of domestic spying neatly illuminates one aspect of that asymmetry: The government knows, or can know, an awful lot about you. But you are not supposed to know even that it knows, let alone what it knows.
More of what the government does is classified than ever before. If you do not know what the government is doing then, obviously, you have no say over its activities. This flies in the face of the Declaration of Independence, which states that governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed." How can you consent to something you know nothing of?
The principle animating democratic and republican government is accountability to the governed. Yet more and more government action lies beyond the citizens' reach. As law professor Jonthan Turley explained in a Washington Post piece that appeared before the surveillance leaks, "our carefully constructed system of checks and balances is being negated by the rise of a fourth branch of government, an administrative state of sprawling departments and agencies that govern with increasing autonomy and decreasing transparency." (Viz., the NSA.)
Our Incredible Shrinking Rights: Your Silence Can Be Used Against You
Alexander Abad-Santos writes at TheAtlanticWire about the Supreme Court ruling in Salinas v. Texas, which says that if you remain silent before police read your Miranda rights, that silence can and will be held against you:
Basically, if you're ever in any trouble with police (no, we don't condone breaking laws) and want to keep your mouth shut, you will need to announce that you're invoking your Fifth Amendment right instead of, you know, just keeping your mouth shut....It all seems ridiculously terrifying, this idea that in order to claim your Fifth Amendment, you now need to know how to call the on-the-fly legal equivalent of "safesies." Your right to remain silent just got more complicated, and it will require potential criminals to be more informed about their protections and the linguistic details on how to invoke them. "But does it really mean that the suspect must use the exact words 'Fifth Amendment'? How can an individual who is not a lawyer know that these particular words are legally magic?" Breyer wrote.
via Jay J. Hector
Linknoxious
Gather, me naughties...
Detroit Police Response
It's now 58 minutes -- for emergency calls.
I once thought something bad had happened to Gregg and asked them to go out and see that he wasn't lying on the floor, hurt.
The lady said they could maybe get somebody out around 3 p.m. the next day.
"At that point, just send the coroner!" I exclaimed.
Mom Asks For Proof Of Warrant For 11-Year-Old Son -- She's Arrested
This is what allegedly happened and if it is the case, it is horrific police abuse which has no place in a free society.
Jonathan Turley blogs about it:
The mother said that she was aware that there was a criminal complaint made against her 11-year-old son and simply told police "I will release my son to you upon viewing those orders.' She says that the officer responded:"He said, 'This is how you want to play?' He took two steps back, turned around to the officer and said, 'Take her.' They turned me around, handcuffed me, and took me in."She spent the night in jail and police left the boy at the house. He was never arrested. Her lawyer says that it turns out that there was no warrant since the encounter occurred on May 29 but the directive to apprehend was not signed until May 30.
Turley further explains:
What is most remarkable to this story is that the family's lawyer told the media that the Slaton Police Department was only willing to apologize if the family waived any right to sue it for the unlawful and abusive arrest. That demand alone, if true, should result in the immediate termination of the police chief as well as the disciplining of any prosecutor who conveyed the demand in my view. Citizens should not have to trade away legal rights to receive an apology for allegedly abusive police conduct.
What Marketers Don't Know: Why You Don't Put A Naked Dude In An Ad Targeted To Ladies
Ever notice how men's magazines are filled with pictures of naked or mostly naked ladies and how women's magazines are filled with pictures of women in impossible clothing and shoes that cost about the same as a condo?
This is not an accident.
There's a story up at Consumerist about how Kraft ran an ad of some guy at a picnic with only a bit of picnic blanket over his manlog, and the "One Million Moms" got their panties all wadded over it.
Now, it's possible the ad agency for Kraft thought they'd get some viral attention for it, but again, the problem is, you don't sell to women with pictures of naked men. They prefer a handsome man in their life to an ugly one, but, in general, we just don't sit there and drool over the parts like men do.
Best bit over at Consumerist:
The moms are urging fellow anti-picnic nappers to boycott Kraft: "Christians will not be able to buy Kraft dressings or any of their products until they clean up their advertising."
Um, do these moms never go to the movies, turn on a TV set?
Let's avoid getting all hysterical, shall we?
Kraft's greatest error is that they're wasting their money. Shall we leave it at that and move on to something actually horrible to be outraged at, ladies?
P.S. On a creepy note, the ad, at closer examination, says "Silverware Optional," calling to mind Loreena Bobbitt.
UPDATE -- some research to support this from one of my old columns:
A study by sex researcher Meredith Chivers (with electrodes in an area on a woman that only TSA agents, her lover and her gynecologist go) revealed that women are turned on by erotic video, but find footage of a naked guy exercising about as sexually arousing as long, slow pans of the snowcapped Himalayas.
Wrong Thing To Say
When you are on your car's speakerphone 10 feet from houses and it is so loud that I can hear your conversation inside my house with the doors and windows closed, and I am forced to come out and politely inform you of this fact, the correct answer isn't, "I'm talking to my mom."
Linkletter
Make it art.
Lucy Has Left The Building: 1998-2013
Sad news. My wonderful little doggie, Lucy, is no longer with me.
Lucy, who was 15, had been in kidney failure, but our vet had given us meds and instructions on how to take care of her, and she was doing well for about a month.
Thursday, in the wee hours, I could see that she was no longer comfortable. The details are too sad. I wanted to take her then to the 24-hour hospital to have them take her out, but I was very upset and was worried I would have an accident and hurt myself or other people on the road.
I waited until 8 when the vet opens, and our wonderful, compassionate vet squeezed me in and gave her an injection of barbiturates, which just took her out gently and peacefully, like she was going to sleep, while I held her and petted her.
I'm saying all this about the vet, giving these details, because a conversation I had with a friend helped me not hang on to Lucy to the point where I would be unfair to her. My friend told me that she had gone three times to put her elderly and ailing dog to sleep, and the first two times, ended up leaving in tears.
She helped me not feel guilty and in fact, feel I was doing the right thing, to see that I didn't let Lucy suffer. It was about five and a half hours (from the time, around 3 a.m., that I saw she was going downhill fast, and could no longer have an adequate quality of life), till I got to the vet.
She was a great little companion, and helped me be a more compassionate and patient person, and I miss her terribly.
Gregg, who was her favorite (because he couldn't bear to discipline her), also misses her and has been absolutely wonderful throughout this.
It made it a little easier this weekend that I'd said yes to dog-sit my friend's dog Mingus earlier in the week. At first, he was glum to not be with his owners, in his own home. But I kept coming over to him and petting him and rubbing his ears and massaging his neck and cooing to him, and he got up from under the chair where he'd been "hiding out," and came and curled up in my office next to my chair. Greedy little bugger, he's been pestering me constantly for petting. (Really, he's been taking care of me rather than the other way around.)
I'm taking solace now both in how I didn't let Lucy suffer just to keep her with me and in what a wonderful little life she had. She was loved, and brought Gregg and me and pretty much everyone who came in contact with her joy, and was an incredible little spirit. She's been around Los Angeles, and to New York, and even to Paris a number of times, where everyone who saw her loved her...and what American can really say that?
Environmental Realism
I am for not wasting the planet's resources, but I am also for the use of reason in how we deal with environmental issues. I am not going to get around on a bicycle or hitchhike or take a bus for days instead of taking a four- or five-hour plane ride.
Arnold Ahlert writes at FrontPage that a few radical environmentalists are having second thoughts. (McKibben is not one of them):
Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org, expressed the reflexive, pie-in- the-sky response of radical environmentalists to this politically inconvenient reality. "We need a dramatic shift off carbon-based fuel: coal, oil and also gas," he contended. To what, remains a mystery.Lynas is also seeing the light in the energy arena. "Nobody can look you in the eye and say you shouldn't be worried" about nuclear energy, he says in the new documentary "Pandora's Promise." Yet he, along with author Richard Rhodes, writer of the Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Making of the Atomic Bomb"; Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Catalog founder; and Michael Shellenberger, a man Time magazine labeled a "hero of the environment," have decided nuclear power is an integral part of our energy future-unless one embraces the Luddite attitude of enviro-radical Bill McKibben. "We might decide that the human enterprise has got big enough, that our appetites need not to grow, but to shrink a little, in order to provide us more margin," he writes in the Guardian. "What would that mean? Buses and bikes and trains, not SUVs. Local food, with more people on the farm so that muscles replace some of the oil."
The NY Post's Kyle Smith gives McKibben a well-deserved smackdown. "Sorry, but only a few hippie hipsters want to raise their own chickens and pedal to work, and even they aren't giving up their iToys," he contends. "Meanwhile, the peasants of India and China want meat and electricity and cars and hospitals, in the tens of millions. A planet that uses less energy is not an option."
... Sadly, Rachel Carson, who wrote "Silent Spring," a seriously flawed tome regarding the dangers of chemical pesticides, notably DDT, did manage to produce enough of a political following to get that insecticide banned in many countries.
The consequences were disastrous: tens of millions of lives were lost to malaria and other diseases. A Harvard study estimated that high levels of malaria reduce economic growth by 1.3 percent annually-meaning that four decades of DDT bans have made developing nations more than 40 percent poorer than they might have otherwise been with effective insect control.
Again, science took a back seat to radicalism. For Carson, et al., the dosage level of DDT was irrelevant, as was the reality that alternative pesticides were equally toxic to other wildlife. Dr. Henry Miller, the Robert Wesson Fellow of Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, puts Carson's effort in perspective. "The legacy of Rachel Carson is that tens of millions of human lives-mostly children in poor, tropical countries-have been traded for the possibility of slightly improved fertility in raptors," he writes. "This remains one of the monumental human tragedies of the last century."
The Secret Beaches Of Malibu: Making Public Beaches Public
Rich Malibu-dwelling swells who live along the ocean put up fake no parking signs, fake garage doors, and use other measures to keep the public from accessing public beaches. Jenny Price is trying to change that. A story in The Daily Mail and the video:
How Government Can Use Privacy Violations To Blackmail Citizens
An excerpt from Jacob Hornberger's piece at Tenth Amendment Center:
Let's say a married CEO of a major corporation has been having an affair with his assistant, one that they have been able to keep secret with secret email accounts. What are the chances that that CEO is going to publicly object to the government's "request" (read: demand) for his customers' records? What are the chances that he will join up with libertarians and publicly call for a dismantling of the entire warfare-state racket?Slim chance indeed, especially when he knows that the government has copies of all his emails and recordings of his telephone calls in its files and knows that the government will not hesitate to furnish such information to one of its toadies in the mainstream press.
That's the reason that the Cuban communist regime maintains surveillance over all its citizenry. It's the same for the communist regimes in Vietnam, China, and North Korea. Oh sure, they say that it's necessary to keep their people safe, just like U.S. national-security state officials do. But what it's really designed to do is to maintain their tax-and-control racket over the citizenry and to ensure that everyone continues behaving like a good little citizen, one who always defers to authority and never makes waves.
Our right to privacy -- our right to control who sees and hears personal facts about us -- is enormously valuable and one of our civil liberties we need to fight for, along with the rest that are being eroded.
These Days, The Heroes, Increasingly, Are In Jail
Greg Campbell writes at The Daily Caller that the jailed Qwest CEO claimed his imprisonment, supposedly over insider trading, actually stemmed from government retaliation over his refusal to participate in a secret NSA program that he thought would be illegal:
While National Security Agency's harvesting of telephone data is often defended as a necessary component of post-9/11 national security, old court documents claim the spy agency was putting such a program into place months before the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.In court papers filed during his 2007 insider trading trial, former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio claimed that Denver-based Qwest was denied lucrative NSA contracts he believed to be worth $50-$100 million, after Nacchio refused to involve Qwest in a secret NSA program that he thought would be illegal.
Subsequent reporting at the time revealed that it was a domestic wiretapping program in which the NSA wanted to snoop on Qwest's vast telephone network without court orders.
Linkiepoo
No relation to Witchiepoo.
Advice Goddess Radio -- Tonight, 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm ET: Dr. Sian Beilock, How Not To Choke Under Pressure
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.
This show is a "Best Of" replay -- an extremely helpful one. On it, University of Chicago psychologist and researcher Dr. Sian Beilock explains why we choke under pressure and how we can avoid doing it.
Her book is Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To.
Join us tonight to find out how you can exhibit the sort of grace under pressure that makes for winning performances -- in life, business, sports, public speaking, and the arts.
Listen live at this link at 7pm Pacific, 10pm Eastern, or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/06/17/dr-sian-beilock-how-not-to-choke-under-pressure
And don't miss last week's show with cognitive psychologist Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman laying out why intelligence tests currently used are far too limiting in determining a student's true potential.
Kaufman is a rigorous researcher whose work I know and respect, but his new book, UNGIFTED: Intelligence Redefined, offers much more than science. It offers inspiration in Kaufman's own story as a "late listener" (due to a spate of ear infections) who was put into learning disabled classes. And then, in 9th grade, through sheer determination, pushed his way into a gifted kids' class -- ultimately going on to Yale, getting a Ph.D., then going on to become a young professor at NYU.
On this show, we'll discuss the limitations of current testing and a host of other things that matter in whether a child succeeds and how Kaufman thinks we would better assess talent, creativity, and "the many paths to greatness."
Listen or download the podcast at this link:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/06/10/dr-sb-kaufman-your-child-can-be-more-than-his-test-scores-1
Join me and my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, here at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.
A NOTE: Sorry about the replay for this week. I had a fascinating guest booked (who's been very understanding about my rebooking him for another week). It's been a really tough week and I'll explain why next week -- just didn't have it in me to do it just yet. It's not my health or Gregg's, in case anybody is wondering.
Today Isn't Just For Fathers For Me
I'll call my dad in Michigan and wish him a happy Father's Day, but I'm reminded of a post KateC put up on Facebook on Mother's Day, thanking her friends for all they did to be there for her when her kids were growing up.
I'm thankful for the wonderful human being my boyfriend is and all the numerous wonderful things he does for to make me happy and make my life better, and I think today is a nice day to show gratitude to men in your life who haven't had kids but are amazing people.
Everybody likes to know they matter and to know the things they do for you and for others are meaningful. It's good to notice and tell them so every day, but if you don't normally do that, why not start today?
Hey, Felon, Here's The Cash Till!
The EEOC says screening job applicants for felonies is racist. From the WSJ:
Are criminal background checks racist? That's the startling new legal theory that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission unveiled this week in lawsuits against employers. It's another example of how President Obama's appointees are using regulation to achieve policy goals they can't get through Congress.On Tuesday the EEOC accused retailer Dollar General DG -0.04% and a U.S. unit of German car maker BMW BMW.XE +1.26% of violating the 1964 Civil Rights Act by using criminal checks as part of their employment decisions. The logic? Blacks have higher conviction rates than whites, and therefore criminal checks discriminate against blacks.
The EEOC alleges that BMW discriminated against blacks because it screened contractors in South Carolina for convictions for "Murder, Assault & Battery, Rape, Child Abuse, Spousal Abuse (Domestic Violence), Manufacturing of Drugs, Distribution of Drugs, [and] Weapons Violations," and more blacks than whites are convicted of those crimes.
The suit says 70 black BMW contractors and 18 non-black contractors had criminal convictions, and the company declined to hire them. The suit seeks redress, such as hiring the plaintiffs, back pay, legal costs and more, but only for the black contractors.
As the WSJ points out, employers are looking to see whether people are criminals, not trying to weed out criminals of a particular color. The fact that more of a particular color show up in a particular potential employee group is not evidence of discrimination but evidence that those people committed crimes.
Free Haircuts For The Homeless? Not Allowed
In Hartford, Connecticut, a man who's spent 25 years giving free haircuts to the homeless in exchange for hugs was booted from the city park where he's been cutting hair by city health officials. Dave Collins writes for the AP:
Anthony "Joe the Barber" Cymerys has been a fixture every Wednesday for years at Bushnell Park in Hartford, Conn., where he cuts hair and his friends hand out food to the needy.But shortly after the 82-year-old Cymerys set up shop this week, he said, health officials and police confronted him and his friends and told them they had to leave because they didn't have permits.
He said he hopes to continue cutting hair at a local shelter, but says the park is a more central location and people know he's there.
More from another AP story -- about the mayor giving Cymerys a reprieve. But there's also this:
City officials say residents had expressed concerns about sanitation.
Couldn't someone do the humane and intelligent thing and explain to the guy what he needs to do to clean up? It's so much easier to bring The Law down on him, and never mind what that means to all these homeless men whose hair he cuts.
And I'm just guessing here, but this is more than a haircut to at least some of them. It's maybe what allows them to fit in or find part-time work or not have head lice.
via JF
Linkle, Linkle, Little Star
How I wonder what wonders you'll post.
Napolitano: Trust Us! Government Not Gone Orwellian
We have the Constitution because our Founding Fathers realized that we cannot trust politicians or government, and we must defend ourselves from their abuses of power.
Napolitano bleats that we shouldn't be so worried. Right.
At Politicker, Jill Colvin writes:
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano weighed in on the NSA intelligence leaks on Friday, telling NY1 that fears over government surveillance were overblown."I think people have gotten the idea that there's an Orwellian state out there that somehow we're operating in. That's far from the case," she told Errol Louis during an appearance on Road to City Hall.
Despite civil liberties advocates' fears that monitoring efforts have gone too far, "there are lots of protections built into the system," Ms. Napolitano said, pointing to a privacy office embedded in her own department that is "constantly reviewing our policies and procedures." She further stressed the court review system.
"No one should believe that we are simply going willy-nilly and using any kind of data that we can gather," she said.
Oh, that's so comforting. We can all go back to farting in front of the TV now, or whatever it is people do when not worried in the slightest about all the constant break-downs in our civil liberties.
via @slone
Pathological Altruism: There Can Be Negative Outcomes From Empathy
James Taranto writes in the WSJ about what he calls a "fascinating paper," "Concepts and Implications of Altruism Bias and Pathological Altruism," published by Dr. Barbara Oakley in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:
The paper is a concise summary of an innovative idea that informed Oakley's two recent books: Cold-Blooded Kindness: Neuroquirks of a Codependent Killer, or Just Give Me a Shot at Loving You, Dear, and Other Reflections on Helping That Hurts(Prometheus, 2011) and Pathological Altruism
(Oxford University Press, 2012). The former has been described as a true-crime thriller; the latter is a dense, 496-page collection of 31 academic papers, edited by Oakley and three other scholars.
The PNAS paper has the virtue of brevity, running only eight pages despite including 110 footnotes. Yet it's remarkable for its breadth and depth. It introduces a simple yet versatile idea that could revolutionize scientific and social thought.
Oakley defines pathological altruism as "altruism in which attempts to promote the welfare of others instead result in unanticipated harm." A crucial qualification is that while the altruistic actor fails to anticipate the harm, "an external observer would conclude [that it] was reasonably foreseeable." Thus, she explains, if you offer to help a friend move, then accidentally break an expensive item, your altruism probably isn't pathological; whereas if your brother is addicted to painkillers and you help him obtain them, it is.
As the latter example suggests, the idea of "codependency" is a subset of pathological altruism. "Feelings of empathic caring . . . appear to lie at the core of . . . codependent behavior," Oakley notes. People in codependent relationships genuinely care for each other, but that empathy leads them to do destructive things.
Yet according to Oakley, "the vital topic of codependency has received almost no hard-science research focus, leaving 'research' to those with limited or no scientific research qualifications." That is to say, it is largely the domain of pop psychology. "It is reasonable to wonder if the lack of scientific research involving codependency may relate to the fact that there is a strong academic bias against studying possible negative outcomes of empathy."
There's much more at the link to Taranto's piece, and you can, of course, read the whole paper at the link above.
Hipsterlarity In The Classics
Via @sciencegoddess Joanne Manaster, classical sculptures dressed as hipsters.
Belgium Allows People Control Of Their Own Death
It's so amazing that we have laws against this. Sure, there are going to be abuses -- so there need to be safeguards.
Naftali Bendavid writes in the WSJ about how it works in Belgium:
PUTTE, Belgium--In this small village amid an array of Flemish farms, they were an unusual but seemingly happy pair, two 43-year-olds who were identical, deaf twins. Townspeople recalled seeing Marc and Eddy Verbessem around town frequently, talking animatedly in sign language together, tooling around in a small blue car, and regularly buying two copies of a popular gossip magazine.No one expected them to decide to die on purpose.
According to their doctor, the twins had developed a genetic disorder that was making them blind, and several years ago they began pressuring him to put them to death. Even in Belgium, with its decade-old euthanasia law, the request was striking, since the twins were relatively young and not terminally ill. But their doctor says that as their condition worsened and threatened their independence, they would hand him envelopes containing a blunt request for euthanasia--and, for good measure, a list of symptoms they said were making their lives unbearable.
The twins' ordeal wasn't publicly known at the time, but their request--and its fulfillment last December--highlights an emotional battle over expanding Belgium's euthanasia law, and is reverberating in the end-of-life debate in the U.S.On Dec. 14, Marc and Eddy, after a long legal and medical journey, met their doctors and family in a Brussels hospital, according to their doctor. They enjoyed a final cup of coffee and lay down in adjoining beds, where a chaplain said a prayer. Then they waved to their family, pointed up as if to say "see you on the other side," received their injections, and were gone.
Belgium adopted euthanasia in 2002, a year after neighboring Holland, with the goal of helping incurably ill patients escape "unbearable physical or mental suffering." It has become widely accepted; in 2011, the last year for which numbers are available, 1,133 Belgians had euthanasia requests approved, up about five fold from the first full year after the law was passed. Euthanasia accounts for about 1% of all deaths in Belgium.
The Belgian parliament is now considering expanding euthanasia in ways that many Americans might find startling. Under one proposal, gravely ill teenagers could seek euthanasia, if their parents agreed.
Another bill would let patients with early Alzheimer's sign a declaration asking to have their life ended when a doctor concludes they're no longer interacting with the outside world, even if they seem vigorous and happy at the time. Now, patients must be lucid to request euthanasia, which is generally carried out soon after.
The twins' case, along with those proposals, is playing into the end-of-life debate in the U.S., as American opponents of assisted suicide warn that America could end up like Belgium. Critics say Marc and Eddy's case shows how aid-in-dying laws invariably expand their reach.
"It's a deep worldview if you accept that life isn't necessarily a good and death isn't necessarily a bad," said John Brehany, executive director of the U.S. Catholic Medical Association, which advocates against assisted suicide. "A lot of people in the world aren't happy, and if death is one more option we lay out for them the world will look like a very different place."
Regarding U.S. Catholic Medical Association director advocating against assisted suicide, it's really none of his damn business or his organization's whether and when people choose to end their lives.
It is his right to campaign to try to stop individuals from doing this -- but it is not his right to prevent them, nor is it the state's.
We are humane to pets in a way we are not to humans.
Linkbots
Little Stepford links, all in a row...
Atty For Robbery Suspect Demands Recordings Of Calls Missing From Car Robbery Case -- From NSA
Hey, as long as they have them, he thought, they can provide them, figured the attorney. Jonathan Turley blogs:
I was interviewed yesterday in an extraordinary case out of South Florida where Attorney Marshall Dore Louis faced a problem that phone records material to his defense of a car robbery suspect have disappeared. Accordingly, he is seeking the records from one resource that has stored every call from every citizen: the National Security Agency (NSA). After all, the Administration has admitted the existence of the storage and program. After that, Dore is arguing that it is just another government agency with material evidence. Indeed, the NSA wanted a complete record of all calls to store and it is now being called upon to hand over material evidence in its possession.Clearly, NSA views this program as a one way street and will not yield willingly to being a resource of litigators. The interesting question will be how it now objects. In the past, the government has refused to confirm such programs but it has now done so. In February, the Administration succeeded in blocking a challenge to its surveillance policies by arguing that any confirmation of such programs would put American lives at risk. Now that the case is dismissed, they have simply acknowledged the program. The decision is Clapper v. Amnesty International, No. 11-1025, and it is a true nightmare for civil liberties. The Supreme Court rejected the standing of civil liberties groups and citizens to challenge the Obama Administration's surveillance programs.
...Dore says that the prosecutors have informed him that a month of the records of defendant Terrance Brown are missing for two phones. His provider, MetroPCS, says it has no longer has them. Then Dore was reading the newspapers and found an agency who helpfully collected all calls for all citizens. If the program is no longer secret and the calls were obtained directly from the carriers (without some secret method or device), what is the objection from the government beyond that it finds such requests a hassle? Are they ready to come to court and say that they are the government and they are not here to actually help citizens . . . just spy on them?
From the Politico/AP story behind Turley's piece:
U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenbaum initially told the Justice Department to respond by the end of Wednesday but granted a request from prosecutors for an extra week. They must respond to whether disclosure of the data, if they exist, would harm national security. The judge also said she would review whether the NSA surveillance, authorized by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, was legally conducted.
Floyd Abrams: The Government Cannot Compel Speech -- Not Even On A Cigarette Pack
Patt Morrison interviews First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams on why he's defending Big Tobacco:
Where liberals part company with him is over his vigorous endorsement for the Citizens United decision -- not as a campaign issue but as a free speech issue -- and also over the fact that he is sticking up for tobacco companies that don't want to have to put on their packs the warning labels the government says they must.Arguing on behalf of the tobacco companies here, he says, is consistent with his 1st Amendment loyalty. "In America, we also protect commercial speech, and having decided to protect commercial speech, it's entirely appropriate for the [federal court of appeals] to say that you can't make a cigarette manufacturer basically scream out on its packages, "Don't buy this product!"
...The government cannot compel speech except in very narrow circumstances," (Abrams said).
And this, Abrams is convinced, isn't one of them.
The Crime (Against Islam) Of Eating A Ham Sandwich
Reagan Coalition blogs this story from Le Parisien:
It sounds incredible but it is being treated with great seriousness by the police in Reims police station (Marne). A 23-year-old man filed a complaint on the 8th of June after having been attacked the previous evening at 9.30 pm in a city tramway by two strangers. They struck him several times on the face because he was eating a ham sandwich. The two attackers, who claimed to be Muslims, said they were offended by this consumption of pork in front of their eyes before attacking the young man. A witness, a friend of the young man who was present when the incident occurred, has been interviewed by the investigators and has confirmed the reality of the attack. The two attackers, who fled, have not yet been found. The CCTV tapes in the tramway are currently being examined.
Related: In Syria, 14-year-old boy executed for insulting Islam.
via Joe Wahler
Linksatiable
Fill 'er up...
Cop Allegedly Sexually Assaults Woman; Arrests Her For Protesting It While Family Court Judge Does Nothing
The judge, Clark County Hearings Master Patricia Doninger, sits by doing nothing -- playing with the woman's child and turning a deaf ear to the woman's claims of sexual assault by the cop, and his subsequent arrest of the woman for making those allegations in court.
At Above The Law, Elie Mystal blogs:
There is a disturbing video making its way around social media today. It's a six-minute Family Court video from August 2011 of a woman who complains that a marshal sexually assaulted her in a back room. The woman becomes increasingly agitated as the marshal, who is in the courtroom, then arrests her for "making false allegations about a police officer," all while the family court magistrate plays with the woman's child, at least until the child begs the arresting officer to not take her momma away.It's really tough to watch. Even I became emotional while watching the clip. And the marshal has since been dismissed. Most of the internet outrage is focused on the cop. Me, I can honestly say that after watching this I wish nothing but the absolute worst for Clark County Hearings Master Patricia Doninger. I think I'd rather see Edith Jones on the Supreme freaking Court than have this person "preside" over a game of Family Feud, much less be within shouting distance of a family court...
The video is safe for work, but again feels more like a snuff film than a courtroom video.
Disgustingly, Doninger still has a job.
via @Instapundit
NSA And The History Of The Fourth Amendment
Former New Jersey Superior Court judge and Constitution expert Andrew Napolitano writes at reason that we're tumbling down a slippery slope:
When British soldiers were roaming the American countryside in the 1760s with lawful search warrants with which they had authorized themselves to enter the private homes of colonists in order to search for government-issued stamps, Thomas Paine wrote, "These are the times that try men's souls." The soul-searching became a revolution in thinking about the relationship of government to individuals. That thinking led to casting off a king and writing a Constitution.What offended the colonists when the soldiers came legally knocking was the violation of their natural right to privacy, their right to be left alone. We all have the need and right to be left alone. We all know that we function more fully as human beings when no authority figure monitors us or compels us to ask for a permission slip. This right comes from within us, not from the government.
...In 30 years, from 1979 to 2009, the legal standard for searching and seizing private communications -- the bar that the Constitution requires the government to meet -- was lowered by Congress from probable cause of crime to probable cause of being an agent of a foreign power to probable cause of being a foreign person to probable cause of communicating with a foreign person. Congress made all these changes, notwithstanding the oath that each member of Congress took to uphold the Constitution. It is obvious that the present standard, probable cause of communicating with a foreign person, bears no rational or lawful resemblance to the constitutionally mandated standard: probable cause of crime.
Now we know that the feds have seized the telephone records of more than 100 million Americans and the email and texting records of nearly everyone in the U.S. for a few years. They have obtained this under the laws that permit them to do so. These laws -- just like the ones that let British soldiers write their own search warrants -- were validly enacted, but they are profoundly unconstitutional. They are unconstitutional because they purport to change the clear and direct language in the Constitution, and Congress is not authorized to make those changes.
These laws undermine the reasons the Constitution was written, one of which was to guarantee the freedom to exercise one's natural rights. These laws directly contradict the core American value that our rights come from our humanity and may not be legislated away -- not by a vote of Congress, not by the consensus of our neighbors, not even by agreement of all Americans but one.
Don't Confuse Having Good Manners With Being A Victim
My response to Kickstarter moochmail from some total stranger yesterday: "I'd like a new pair of boots. Here's my Paypal. Please send $200 pronto. My feet are sad."
Some guy tweets:
@OneThirdHuman @amyalkon Sounds like you need a lesson in manners.
I tweet back:
@amyalkon @OneThirdHuman Sounds like you don't understand the difference between having manners & being a footwipe.@amyalkon
.@OneThirdHuman Graciousness to those who seek to use you isn't manners, it's "pathological altruism" @BarbaraOakley
California On The Brink: Pension Obscenity
Elizabeth McDonald writes at FoxBusiness that a growing number of California cities are way worse off than previously thought, thanks to changes in how they must account for their pension costs:
The new rules could nearly double California's unfunded liabilities to $328.6 billion. Moreover, California cities that have already filed for bankruptcy protection, like Stockton and Vallejo, will fall deeper into the red.Officials in these California cities did not return calls for comment.
Government retiree costs to date have been improperly underreported nationwide to taxpayers, says Moody's. New government rules in effect at the end of this month from the Governmental Accounting Standards Board seek to fix this problem, which could show California is worse off than expected. A growing number of Senators also now warn these pension costs could result in a taxpayer bailout of the states.
...Moody's new credit standards for public pensions would nearly double the unfunded liabilities for state and local pension plans in California to $328.6 billion from $128.3 billion, says the California Public Policy Center, based on state data. That cost potentially amounts to $8,600 per state resident, it says.
I'm guessing that's $8,600 per year.
A taste of the obscenity:
One retiree in the County of Solano pulls in nearly $371,000 a year in retiree pay. Nearly 12,200 government retirees get $100,000 a year, including 94 city retirees in Stockton.A retired librarian in San Diego somehow gets a $234,000 annual pension. A Newport Beach lifeguard got to retire at age 51 with a $108,000 annual pension plus health-care benefits.
via @reasonpolicy
Disturbing Similarities In Confessions Taken By NYPD Detective
Frances Robles writes in The New York Times that in at least five murder cases, now-retired Brooklyn homicide detective Louis Scarcella reported that the suspects began their confessions with either "you got it right" or "I was there":
Mr. Scarcella, 61, was a member of the Brooklyn North Homicide squad who developed a reputation for eliciting confessions when no other detective could. But questions about his credibility have led the Brooklyn district attorney's office to reopen all of his trial convictions.The similarity of the confessions, which was discovered in a review of cases by The New York Times, raises new doubts about the statements that Mr. Scarcella presented and that the prosecutors used to win convictions in dozens of murder cases. One of the men, David Ranta, who had spent more than two decades arguing that he never made the confession attributed to him that began "I was there," has already been released from prison.
Defense lawyers fighting the convictions say the resemblance of statements attributed to inmates who shared nothing in common makes it more likely that Mr. Scarcella fabricated evidence, laying the groundwork for cases to be dismissed and millions to be paid in wrongful conviction lawsuits.
Sounds to me like a horrible abuse of his position in order to make his bones on the lives of others.
Imagine losing your freedom for 20 years because a judge and jury are predisposed to believe a police detective over just some guy, say, from a bad neighborhood.
One Man, One Link
Linkocracy in progress!
Grandma's Got A Gun
Burglar tries to break into the home a 72-year-old grandmother shares with her 85-year-old husband, and she pulls out her .357 magnum and tries to blow his ass off their property.
She missed, but I loved what she said: "You have no idea how lucky you were to be able to walk away from my house and not have to be carried out."
Loved the comment about granny's gun-pull from my friend, KABC's John Phillips (@johnnydontlike):
Who needs the diaper now?
Video at the link, but it's asshole-ized, meaning it auto-plays, so I'm not posting it here.
NSA Scandal Not About Dem vs. Republican
It's about liberty vs. the state, writes Jason Pye at UnitedLiberty.org:
Partisans are, of course, using the revelation of the program to say, "Look, we can't trust Obama." The authority given under the PATRIOT Act is, unquestionably, too much for any president. That's why the Founding Fathers had the foresight to put the Fourth Amendment in the Constitution, and for good reason. They had experienced the dangers of general warrants, which allowed British authorities to search their homes and effects whenever they so desired. James Otis, who presented merchants during a legal challenge to general warrants in 1760, called them the "worst instance of arbitrary power."The good news is that most Americans are expressing skepticism to what the NSA is doing. According to a new CBS News poll, 58% disapprove of the federal government collecting phone records of ordinary Americans.
Ultimately, this isn't about leakers and whistleblowers. It's not about Barack Obama or George W. Bush. It's not about Democrat versus Republican or progressive versus conservative. What we have to decide is whether or not we're going to live in a country where the Constitution and the liberties protected therein actually matter.
If the Constitution doesn't matter, then there is literally no restraint or check on government power. That has long-been what has separated our government from monarchs and dictators. Our Constitution has worked and it will continue to work, but only if we restore the liberties that it protects and the check-and-balances that have been so severely ignored.
via @dmataconis
NSA: We Need To Rethink The Constitution
All those annoying phrases protecting American's rights, that is.
At Politico, Philip Ewing blogs:
The National Security Agency pushed for the government to "rethink" the Fourth Amendment when it argued in a classified memo that it needed new authorities and capabilities for the information age.The 2001 memo, later declassified and posted online by George Washington University's National Security Archive, makes a case to the incoming George W. Bush administration that the NSA needs new authorities and technology to adapt to the Internet era.
In one key paragraph, NSA wrote that its new phase meant the U.S. must reevaluate its approach toward signals intelligence, or "SIGINT," and the Constitution's Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.
"The Fourth Amendment is as applicable to eSIGINT as it is to the SIGINT of yesterday and today," it wrote. "The Information Age will however cause us to rethink and reapply the procedures, policies and authorities born in an earlier electronic surveillance environment."
...NSA's memo continued: "Make no mistake, NSA can and will perform its missions consistent with the Fourth Amendment and all applicable laws. But senior leadership must understand that today's and tomorrow's mission will demand a powerful, permanent presence on a global telecommunications network that will host the 'protected' communications of Americans as well as the targeted communications of adversaries."
"Protected." In quotes. Lovely.
Toy Gun Buyback Program At A California School
More and more these days, I get the idea that California was named California because nobody thought to name it Giant Land Of Stupid.
Jonathan Turley blogs:
Strobridge Elementary Principal Charles Hill has implemented what he considers a key public safety effort: a toy gun buy back program. Child who turn in "their guns" will be given a book and a raffle ticket to win one of four bicycles. I fail to see why such programs are worthy of such effort. Not only will it have no likely impact on the natural tendency of children to play such games, I fail to see the the value of such programs....I fail to see the alarm over such play and, as noted in the prior columns, the obsession of some parents is often based on inaccurate accounts of academic research.
We have made an effort to force manufacturers to clearly mark toy guns to distinguish them from real guns. Tragedies certainly occur where police mistake a toy gun. However, they remain relatively rare given the number of toys and children in this country. We also have mistaken shootings with other objects.
His source -- Rebecca Parr story at MercuryNews.com.
I had squirt guns as a child -- and I still have two of them. Their presence in my life has yet to cause me to blow anyone away, although I think I have given a few people in my time a face full of water spray.
This sort of moronism from Hill seems to be the rule from school administrators lately. And we wonder why kids aren't learning.
And once again, being a boy -- because boys, almost as a rule, play with both toy guns and transportation toys -- is being painted as being a little proto-criminal.
Get Your FBI File!
This website helps you generate the letters you need to send to the FBI to get a copy of your own file. Free!
P.S. You don't have to fill in the information on the site -- just click through and there will be a blank letter that you can print out and fill in.
RELATED: Via @palafo, how to file FOIA request with the NSA.
Democrats: We Don't Need No Stinkin' Civil Liberties (Now That A Dem's In The White House)
At reason, Mike Riggs lays out the disgusting shift in priorities for Democrats. It seems that all it takes is having one from their team in The White House. Of course, that's exactly how it worked for the Republicans:
When the pollsters at Pew asked Democrats in January 2006 how they felt about the NSA's surveillance programs, 37 percent labeled the programs "acceptable," while 61 percent said they were unacceptable. Today, those numbers are exactly the opposite: 64 percent of Democrats now think the NSA's surveillance programs are acceptable, while only 34 percent say they're not.Republicans polled much the same way (in reverse, obviously). Back in 2006, 75 percent of Republicans supported the NSA "scrutiniz[ing] phone calls and emails of suspected terrorists." Today, only 52 percent of Republicans say such actions are acceptable.
Scummy, scummy, scummy. Typical intellectually dishonest (and very damaging) behavior of people who identify with one party of another.
As an independent, I've spent years attacking both George Bush and Obama.
And yes, I'm proud to be "a hater" -- I believe it suggests my brain hasn't been snatched by one of the parties and turned into butterscotch pudding.
Has yours?
He Said, Shia Said: Speaking Of Government Wiretapping, 2008
From CBC.ca, Shia LaBoeuf on government wiretapping from five years ago:
Shia warned us. In 2008, he was promoting his film Eagle Eye, a movie about a mysterious stranger who listens in on phone calls. In the interview above, he tells Tonight Show host Jay Leno that the movie's FBI consultant warned him the government was doing the very same thing."He told me that one in five phone calls that you make are recorded and logged, and I laughed at him and then he played back a phone conversation I'd had two years prior," LaBeouf told Leno.
The host's response? "Extremely creepy," and then the subject is dropped.
via @declanm
Supreme Court To Hear Challenge On Legalized, Government-Imposed Theft
Walter Olson blogs at Cato about the substance of the case:
The Hornes say that under the USDA's California Raisin Marketing Order, the Raisin Administrative Committee demanded that they hand over 47 percent of their raisins to be disposed of in ways that do not compete with sales in the domestic retail raisin market, such as export programs and school lunches.47 percent!
...If only Washington were content with the czar's less-than-12 percent.
Linker Toys
The shin bone's connected to...
How Al Franken Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Big Brother
Nick Gillespie at reason with the Before and After.
Obama Is Starting To Make George Bush Look Like A Clipboard-Toting ACLU Volunteer
Glenn Reynolds writes at USA Today about Obama's power grab:
"How ironic is that? We wanted a president that listens to all Americans -- now we have one." That was Jay Leno's take on the Obama administration's expanding NSA spying scandal, which has gone beyond Verizon phone records to include Google, Facebook, Yahoo and just about all the other major tech companies except, apparently, for Twitter.The NSA spying scandal goes deep, and the Obama administration's only upside is that the furor over its poking into Americans' private business on a wholesale basis will distract people from the furor over the use of the IRS and other federal agencies to target political enemies -- and even donors to Republican causes -- and the furor over the Benghazi screwup and subsequent lies (scapegoated filmmaker Nakoula is still in jail), the furor over the "Fast And Furious" gunrunning scandal that left literally scores of Mexicans dead, the scandal over the DOJ's poking into phone records of journalists (and their parents), HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius' shakedown of companies she regulates for "donations" to pay for ObamaCare implementation that Congress has refused to fund, the Pigford scandal where the Treasury Department's "Judgment Fund" appears to have been raided for political purposes -- well, it's getting to where you need a scorecard to keep up.
But, in fact, there's a common theme in all of these scandals: Abuse of power. And, what's more, that abuse-of-power theme is what makes the NSA snooping story bigger than it otherwise would be. It all comes down to trust.
...What we've seen here is a pattern of abuse. There's little reason to think that pattern will change, absent a change of administration -- and, quite possibly, not even then. Sooner or later, power granted tends to become power abused. Then there's the risk that information gathered might leak, of course, as recent events demonstrate.
Most Americans generally think that politicians are untrustworthy. So why trust them with so much power? The evidence to date strongly suggests that they aren't worthy of it.
Isn't Christmas Mostly About Rampant Commercialism?
As most people seem to celebrate it, anyway.
Kid tells mom he's an atheist; mom goes apeshit:
Grandma's Experiences Leave An Epigenetic Mark On Your Genes
Dan Hurley writes at DiscoverMagazine:
Geneticists were especially surprised to find that epigenetic change could be passed down from parent to child, one generation after the next. A study from Randy Jirtle of Duke University showed that when female mice are fed a diet rich in methyl groups, the fur pigment of subsequent offspring is permanently altered. Without any change to DNA at all, methyl groups could be added or subtracted, and the changes were inherited much like a mutation in a gene.Now, at the bar in Madrid, Szyf and Meaney considered a hypothesis as improbable as it was profound: If diet and chemicals can cause epigenetic changes, could certain experiences -- child neglect, drug abuse or other severe stresses -- also set off epigenetic changes to the DNA inside the neurons of a person's brain? That question turned out to be the basis of a new field, behavioral epigenetics, now so vibrant it has spawned dozens of studies and suggested profound new treatments to heal the brain.
According to the new insights of behavioral epigenetics, traumatic experiences in our past, or in our recent ancestors' past, leave molecular scars adhering to our DNA. Jews whose great-grandparents were chased from their Russian shtetls; Chinese whose grandparents lived through the ravages of the Cultural Revolution; young immigrants from Africa whose parents survived massacres; adults of every ethnicity who grew up with alcoholic or abusive parents -- all carry with them more than just memories.
Like silt deposited on the cogs of a finely tuned machine after the seawater of a tsunami recedes, our experiences, and those of our forebears, are never gone, even if they have been forgotten. They become a part of us, a molecular residue holding fast to our genetic scaffolding. The DNA remains the same, but psychological and behavioral tendencies are inherited. You might have inherited not just your grandmother's knobby knees, but also her predisposition toward depression caused by the neglect she suffered as a newborn.
Or not. If your grandmother was adopted by nurturing parents, you might be enjoying the boost she received thanks to their love and support. The mechanisms of behavioral epigenetics underlie not only deficits and weaknesses but strengths and resiliencies, too. And for those unlucky enough to descend from miserable or withholding grandparents, emerging drug treatments could reset not just mood, but the epigenetic changes themselves. Like grandmother's vintage dress, you could wear it or have it altered. The genome has long been known as the blueprint of life, but the epigenome is life's Etch A Sketch: Shake it hard enough, and you can wipe clean the family curse.
More on epigenetics.
via @AndreaKuszewski
Linknation
From html to shining html...
It's Irrational To Give Up This Much Liberty To Fight Terror
Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic is exactly right:
The CDC estimates that food poisoning kills roughly 3,000 Americans every year. Every year, food-born illness takes as many lives in the U.S. as were lost during the high outlier of terrorism deaths. It's a killer more deadly than terrorism. Should we cede a significant amount of liberty to fight it?...The U.S. should certainly try to prevent terrorist attacks, and there is a lot that government can and has done since 9/11 to improve security in ways that are totally unobjectionable. But it is not rational to give up massive amounts of privacy and liberty to stay marginally safer from a threat that, however scary, endangers the average American far less than his or her daily commute. In 2011*, 32,367 Americans died in traffic fatalities. Terrorism killed 17 U.S. civilians that year. How many Americans feared dying in their vehicles more than dying in a terrorist attack?
Certainly not me! I irrationally find terrorism far scarier than the sober incompetents and irresponsible drunks who surround my vehicle every time I take a carefree trip down a Los Angeles freeway. The idea that the government could keep me safe from terrorism is very emotionally appealing.
But intellectually, I know two things.
1) America has preserved liberty and privacy in the face of threats far greater than terrorism has so far posed (based on the number of people actually killed in terrorist attacks), and we've been better off for it.
2) Ceding liberty and privacy to keep myself safe from terrorism doesn't even guarantee that I'll be safer! It's possible that the surveillance state will prove invasive and ineffective. Or that giving the state so much latitude to exercise extreme power in secret will itself threaten my safety.
I understand, as well as anyone, that terrorism is scary. But it's time to stop reacting to it with our guts, and to start reacting with our brains, not just when we're deciding to vacation in Washington, D.C. or New York City, but also when we're making policy together as free citizens. Civil libertarians are not demanding foolish or unreasonable courage when they suggest that the threat of terrorism isn't so great as to warrant massive spying on innocent Americans, and the creation of a permanent database that practically guarantees eventual abuse.
Two notes at the bottom of his piece:
* Said Ronald Bailey in a piece published in September of 2011, "a rough calculation suggests that in the last five years, your chances of being killed by a terrorist are about one in 20 million. This compares annual risk of dying in a car accident of 1 in 19,000; drowning in a bathtub at 1 in 800,000; dying in a building fire at 1 in 99,000; or being struck by lightning at 1 in 5,500,000. In other words, in the last five years you were four times more likely to be struck by lightning than killed by a terrorist."**Everything in this article would be just as true if I published it and you read it the day after the Boston bombing -- but it sure would feel less true, wouldn't it? That's why, if there's a terrorist attack today or tomorrow, it would be foolish for us to react based on our feeling at that moment.
NSA Spying Probably Didn't Break The Law -- And That's The Real Scandal
Mike Masnick at TechDirt writes:
Thanks to a combination of questionable legal rulings and then Congress passing bad and dangerous laws over the past few decades, many of these practices likely are "legal." And thus, the real scandal here may not be that this data collection was happening in the first place, but that it was legal too....This is why many of us have been trying to call attention to things like warrantless wiretapping and the FISA Amendments Act and the privacy-destroying immunities of CISPA for years. Because those in power keeping screaming "terrorists!" to get Congress to pass these laws, and then everyone's shocked (shocked!) when the government goes and does what Congress and the courts have specifically allowed.
...The article above points to the infamous Smith v. Maryland case, which among other things established the ridiculous third party doctrine, which we've decried for years. This ruling said that by "giving" data (such as phone numbers) to a "third party" (such as a phone company) you had given up any expectation of privacy in that data.
Masnick sees a bright side in this (if there can be said to be one), and that's if it didn't actually violate the law, then "we just need to fix the laws, and that may actually be an easier problem to solve (though, by no means easy) than dealing with what to do if laws were broken."
New-Age Separating Fools And Their Money
Penelope Green writes in The New York Times about new-age "housecleaners" who wish your house's supposedly bad vibes away:
Consider it internal redecorating, said Miriam Novalle, a perfumer turned tea purveyor who has her Harlem brownstone cleared by Barbara Biziou, a wildly well-publicized Huffington Post blogger and executive consultant (or "global wisdom keeper and agent of change," as she calls herself), every year for her birthday. "And I just had a big one," Ms. Novalle said, slyly ducking a question about her age."Think of how you get stuck at home and you can't move a pillow," she continued. Space clearing gets rid of that stuck energy, she said, adding that after one session with Ms. Biziou, she stayed up all night repainting her house.
Like Ms. Shaye's Web site, Ms. Biziou's erupts with testimonials, including those from marketers at Coca-Cola and Coty, as well as a founder of the spin studio SoulCycle and a former ambassador. What has changed in her 20-year practice, Ms. Biziou said the other day, is her client base, which in recent years has widened from those mostly in the entertainment industry to those in "the straighter professions," as she puts it, "doctors, lawyers, Wall Streeters." Another growth category, she said, is divorcing couples and the post-divorce house clearing.
In her early days, in the 1990s, Ms. Biziou recalled clearing the sets of the more obstreperous talk shows. "The skinheads would leave and everyone would say, 'I need a drink,' " Ms. Biziou said. "I'd say, 'Let's just clear the energy.' "
Anyplace that sees a lot of traffic, she said, "you really have to do it, just like you're going to clean your carpets. You have a party, and you feel drained. Now we can explain it; we understand quantum physics."
In short, what a bunch of shit.
Random Question About Your Upbringing
Trial attorney Walter Moore ("licensed to sue"), the guy who I voted for for Los Angeles mayor two elections ago (instead of the worthless, junketing Antonio Teetharaigosa), posted this:
When you were in high school, how did your parents spend their weekends?
My response:
Instructing us on what would be our weekend's featured form of indentured servitude. My dad particularly liked reminding us that mowing the lawn "builds character."My question, which I never asked aloud: "Well, couldn't it build the character of people who work for a lawn service you hire?"
Woman Shot Four Times In Santa Monica Tells The Story
It sounds like she saved the life of the carjack victim:
Dim Alice Walker Deems Israel An "Apartheid State"
Richard Friedman writes in the WSJ:
Alice Walker, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, has lately garnered more attention for her unhinged political views than for her writing. She has compared Fidel Castro to the Dalai Lama. She refused to allow her book "The Color Purple" to be translated into Hebrew. But perhaps nothing was more off-base--at least morally speaking--than the open letter Ms. Walker wrote in late May to singer-songwriter Alicia Keys. Ms. Walker, writing at the website of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, urged Ms. Keys to cancel a July 4 performance in Israel.Ms. Walker wrote: "you are putting yourself in danger (soul danger) by performing in an apartheid country." The writer then compared the plight of the Palestinians to that of blacks in the American South prior to the civil-rights movement. "You were not born when we, your elders who love you, boycotted institutions in the U.S. South to end an American apartheid less lethal than Israel's against the Palestinian people."
The analogy is false: "Apartheid" is a more apt description for the systemic discrimination against women across the Arab world than the only democracy in the Middle East. But this comparison is also an insult to the courageous civil-rights activists who risked their lives in Birmingham, Montgomery and elsewhere in the South to attain full rights for black Americans.
What characterized the civil-rights movement was its strict adherence to the philosophy of nonviolence. Even when attacked with fire hoses and police dogs, civil-rights demonstrators courageously refused to retaliate.
The Palestinian leadership, by contrast, for decades has used violence whenever missile attacks or suicide bombers suit its aims. It is Israel that has shown an inclination to absorb punishment, though the country's tolerance stretches only so far before it responds militarily to attacks.
The comparison that Ms. Walker and her comrades in the boycott-Israel movement make to the civil-rights movement is false in other ways. Unlike the American South decades ago, when local governments enacted laws and policies to prevent U.S. citizens from attaining full rights, Israel has tried repeatedly to reach an agreement with the Palestinians in the West Bank that would grant them sovereignty. In 2005, Israel even withdrew unilaterally from the Gaza Strip. We all know how that turned out.
Those civil-rights activists who participated in the movement of the 1950s and 1960s--as well as others who remember the era--owe it to that noble cause to speak out when Ms. Walker and others distort and misuse this period in American history to advance an anti-Israel agenda.
Here's how the so-called "apartheid" works in Israel, per Dan Calic at Ynetnews.com:
Israel is located in the center of the Middle East. This region is comprised of 22 Arab countries, which cover over five million square miles, with a combined population of more than 350 million people, over 90% of whom are Muslim. The 6+ million Jews who live in Israel make up roughly 1.7% of the region's population, so the Arabs enjoy an overwhelming majority of the regional ethnicity.
The Jews and Israel have been under constant threat of annihilation since the day independence was declared in May 1948. Have the 350 million Arabs lived under such a threat from Israel for the past 65 years?
Within Israel itself, slightly over 20% of the population is Arab. They enjoy all the benefits of citizenship. They vote, own homes, businesses, property, serve in the Knesset and Supreme Court. Plus, they are excused from serving in the army. Is there a single Arab country where Jews enjoy these same rights? Not one.
The majority of Arab-Israeli citizens will tell you they have it pretty good, and would prefer living in Israel than in an Arab country. Moreover, a couple of years ago, when the PA threatened to annex eastern Jerusalem, the Israeli Office of Immigration was flooded with Arabs wanting to apply for Israeli citizenship. What does that tell you?
So why all the talk of racism? Some may say Israel needs to be more "democratic." Well, in fact, everyone in Israel gets to vote. So why the complaints?
It seems the problem is pretty easy to identify. The basis for the complaints can be based on only one thing: Jews are the majority and want to remain the majority. Danes are the majority in Denmark, Swiss are the majority in Switzerland, Muslims are the majority in 22 countries, but no one is accusing any of these countries of racism. Yet if six million Jews are the majority in a country which is the size of New Jersey this is deemed "racist," one cannot help but wonder what truly motivates those who make such accusations.
Israel is a democracy which among other things allows freedom of speech. Thus, those who voice such complaints are allowed to and are protected under the law. Would Jews be allowed similar privilege as citizens of Arab countries? Hardly.
Linkamundo
Bad tastelets here, please. And various unrelated links.
Advice Goddess Radio: Tonight, 7-8pm PT -- Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman: Your Child Can Be More Than His Test Scores
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in therapy and research.
On tonight's show, cognitive psychologist Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman lays out why intelligence tests currently used are far too limiting in determining a student's true potential.
Kaufman is a rigorous researcher whose work I know and respect, but his new book, UNGIFTED: Intelligence Redefined, offers much more than science. It offers inspiration in Kaufman's own story as a "late listener" (due to a spate of ear infections) who was put into learning disabled classes. And then, in 9th grade, through sheer determination, pushed his way into a gifted kids' class -- ultimately going on to Yale, getting a Ph.D., then going on to become a young professor at NYU.
On this show, we'll discuss the limitations of current testing and a host of other things that matter in whether a child succeeds and how Kaufman thinks we would better assess talent, creativity, and "the many paths to greatness."
Listen live at this link at 7pm Pacific, 10pm Eastern, or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/06/10/dr-sb-kaufman-your-child-can-be-more-than-his-test-scores-1
And don't miss last week's show with psychologist and blogger Dr. Helen Smith talking about how, in America, it's become permissible -- and even fashionable -- to be anti-male and what men can (and must) do to start changing this.
What men have been doing is going on strike -- dropping out of college, leaving the workforce, and avoiding marriage and fatherhood in droves.
There are countless articles sneering at the man who is more man-child than grownup, but Smith, in her book, Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream - and Why It Matters
On this show, Smith lays out the problems -- including shocking discrimination against men such as rampant paternity fraud, condoned and even encouraged by the government -- and what she sees as steps toward solutions, for men in general and for the individual man.
This is not just a show for and about men but a show for anyone who cares about equal rights and fairness for all.
Listen or download the podcast at this link:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/06/03/dr-helen-smith-on-how-american-society-has-become-anti-male-1
Join me and my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, here at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.
Santa Monica Shooting Premeditated, Say Cops
Laura J. Nelson, Richard A. Serrano and Andrew Blankstein write at the LA Times:
The shootings, which left four victims and the shooter dead, took place on a number of typically quiet streets in Santa Monica around noon and ended on the campus of Santa Monica College."Any time someone puts on a vest of some sort, comes out with a bag full of loaded magazines, has an extra receiver, has a handgun and has a semiautomatic rifle, carjacks folks, goes to a college, kills more people and has to be killed at the hands of police," Santa Monica Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks said, "I believe that's premeditated."
...At a parking lot at 20th and Pearl streets, the suspect fired at a red Ford Explorer, hitting driver Carlos Franco, who died at the scene. Franco was a Santa Monica College employee.
The passenger of the Ford Explorer has "a very grim prognosis," Seabrooks said.
Campus police intercepted the gunman on the edge of campus and exchanged gunfire with him, authorities said. They continued to trade shots as the man ran toward the school's library and shot a woman outside the building's entrance before disappearing inside.
The woman outside the library later died at a hospital.
Inside the library, a group of people hid inside a "safe room" when they heard or saw the shooter coming, Seabrooks said. The group barricaded the door with materials found inside the room and dodged bullets the gunman fired through the drywall.
"It's miraculous that those patrons were not physically injured," she said.
What happened illustrates how gun control laws do not work. As commenter GFRGFR writes:
1) The AR15 is BANNED in California since it is specifically named on the "Roberti-Roos" list. How could this guy have gotten a BANNED firearm?2) California limits the number of rounds in a magazine to ten (10), and yet the Santa Monica shooter had at least twenty high capacity (30 round), magazines which are also BANNED in California - how is such a thing possible?
3) California requires that semi-automatic rifles be fitted with "bullet buttons" so that the rate of fire is reduced. How is it possible that the shooter could have killed so many people using a "bullet button" equipped rifle?
Santa Monica College is a gun-free zone:
Weapons Prohibition on CampusPossessions of firearms or replicas, ammunition, explosives, knives/blades longer than 21/2 inches, other weapons, or fireworks are against the law in the College community or at College -sponsored activities. California Penal Codes 626.9 and 626.10 also prohibit the possession of firearms (including pellet and BB guns) on College property without specific written permission of the Chief of Police.
If you are a witness to a crime involving a weapon, please call 9-1-1 immediately. If you see a weapon of any kind on campus, alert SMCPD by calling (310) 434-4300
or 9-1-1.
If I were on a college campus or going regularly to some populated public place that would possibly be a target, I'd want to be armed with more than my iPhone.
How'd that work for all those dead people?
Sweden: Male Train Drivers Don Skirts
Via @TedFrank -- love this -- story about a dozen male train drivers in Sweden circumventing a ban on shorts by wearing skirts to work in hot weather. From the BBC:
The workers, who operate the Roslagsbanan line north of the capital Stockholm, have been wearing skirts to work for the past two weeks.Employer Arriva banned the drivers from wearing shorts after taking over the running of the line in January.
But the company has given the men its blessing to wear skirts, according to local newspaper Mitti.
"Our thinking is that one should look decent and proper when representing Arriva and the present uniforms do that. If the man only wants [to wear] a skirt then that is OK," Arriva communications manager Tomas Hedenius told the paper.
"To tell them to do something else would be discrimination."
I do have a thing for a man who wears a skirt well:
You Catch More Flies...
With a Bug-a-salt
Oh, and I discovered this because one of my nerdiest professor friends told me she bought it for her husband, who now entertains himself by going around their house and taking out flies.
Linking For Trouble
Bring it my way.
From The Annals Of Lost Dog Photos
I always find these so poignant. This one, particularly:
This is one of the photos that seems to tell a bit of the story. They are always sadder.
John Stewart Tears Apart Obama: You Can't Keep Saying You Found Out About News At the Same Time As We Did!
Absurd. Via Fox:
Hot Times For Old Bags: Paid Sex Assistants For The Elderly
The Honest Courtesan, Maggie McNeill writes:
In civilized countries nursing homes have begun to embrace prostitution as a means of satisfying the needs of their patients for sex and companionship, and many of those countries have licensing criteria for prostitutes as well.
Her post on this is here -- scroll down to "No Other Option." She excerpts (and paraphrases in English) some of an article in Svenska Dagbladet about German "sex assistants" who minister specifically to the elderly and disabled:
In Sweden, Catharina König would be guilty of prostitution, but in Germany she receives calls from health professionals and desperate parents. "When people ask what I do, I usually say that I work with people with disabilities, and add that it's sensual and erotic work. And then they look at me with big eyes," she laughs. Five years ago (at the age of 47) she became unemployed, then stumbled across an article on "sex assistants", people who help the disabled or elderly people to experience sex. "I felt that it could be something for me, but I didn't know if I could pull it off. In my head, I had images of drooling and disfigured people," she says.Catharina König went to the Institute for Autonomy for the Disabled, a college which trains sex assistants. Her clients are mostly elderly men in retirement homes or younger disabled men. Sometimes, she says, they just want to see a female body, or caress it; sometimes they need help getting an orgasm. And often they just want to lie in bed holding someone. Many of her calls come from nursing home staff; they see that the elderly or disabled are suffering, depressed or aggressive but cannot help them. In the case of younger people who live at home, it's usually the mother who calls. "Recently I was at home with a 40-year-old man who had never been with a woman, Catharina said; "At first he was terrified. But then it became so soft and nice."
One of Catharina König's regulars is 58-year-old Peter, who has a spastic paralysis of the limbs. "I am not an Adonis whom women turn to look at, but like most other men I yearn for a woman and her body," says Peter, who wished to remain anonymous. "In principle, I think that one should not pay for sex, but the disabled have so many disadvantages in society I claim my right to do so." When asked what he thought about the fact that in Sweden he would be labeled a criminal, Peter said he considers that an insulting idea.
Christina König agrees. "Sure I'm a sex worker; I sell sexual services. But it's so much more than that; I'm trying to give people the feeling that they are beautiful. It's wrong to try to punish that. Besides, in Germany prostitution is permitted since January 2002; the law considers the buying and selling of sexual services to be a commercial transaction, provided they are done voluntarily. Brothels are permissible, and prostitutes pay taxes and the same charges as other self-employed people."
Pretending That The New Police State Rules Are Working
Contrary to the claim that PRISM stopped a terrorist plot on the NYC subways, it actually seems to have been "old-fashioned police work," as Ben Smith notes at Buzzfeed:
Defenders of the American government's online spying program known as "PRISM" claimed Friday that the suddenly controversial secret effort had saved New York City's subways from a 2009 terrorist plot led by a young Afghan-American, Najibullah Zazi.But British and American legal documents from 2010 and 2011 contradict that claim, which appears to be the latest in a long line of attempts to defend secret programs by making, at best, misleading claims that they were central to stopping terror plots. While the court documents don't exclude the possibility that PRISM was somehow employed in the Zazi case, the documents show that old-fashioned police work, not data mining, was the tool that led counterterrorism agents to arrest Zazi.
Linkin Continental
With suicide doors, of course.
Detroit Cops Get All Cute For TV And, Luckily, Nobody Was Hurt Or Killed
Charlie LeDuff reports for WJBK Detroit about the Detroit police's genius simulated purse snatching.
Apparently, as is mentioned in the piece, nobody rubbed two brain cells together to figure out that a citizen, who might or might not be a super-great shot, might be packing and might try to come to the aid of the victim by taking out the "robber." (Oops, did she accidentally shoot a mom of three?)
An excerpt from LeDuff's piece:
DETROIT (WJBK) - An FBI agent almost shot a Detroit cop on Wednesday at a gas station while filling up. It wasn't the agent or the cop's fault. It was the cop's bosses, who came up with the lame brain idea to simulate a purse snatching and then invite a TV crew to film your reaction, Detroit. The immediate supervisor of these cops had no idea this was happening until they called him."The event takes place. The officer takes the purse, runs around the gas station. As he's running, an off-duty FBI agent is pumping gas. He witnesses the whole thing. He gives chase. He pulls his weapon, and as he turns the corner around the gas station, he's stopped by another officer, who identifies herself as a police officer and don't shoot, don't shoot, this is a scenario," said Inspector Shawn Gargalino with the Detroit Police Department.
That is the same description of events we got from four other ranking law enforcement officials, including Lieutenant Chuck Flannagan, a 28-year veteran of DPD.
"It's a tragedy waiting to happen. In fact, I understand an FBI agent did pull a weapon because he didn't believe it was a staged, and some officers had to run forward to prevent him from possibly shooting an officer. We have enough robberies at gas stations that most people aren't going to assume it's a mock robbery," he said.
"You had citizens who could've been hurt. A lot of people out here have CPLs now and carry weapons. They're tired of the crime that's going on in Detroit, and they might want to stand up and help somebody that's in this type of situation. It just so happened it's a gas station where the FBI fills up all their vehicles," Gargalino said.
Doggie Acts Of Consideration
Lucy threw up three times yesterday, in succession, and was careful to do it only on the nice living room Persian-ish wool rug and the nice wool kitchen rug instead of on the easily cleanable hardwood floors.
Lucy, intrepid little throw-upper, apparently couldn't get to the wonderful antique Persian rug I'd UPS-ed to myself from New York City. (This is how I moved across the country, furniture and all -- mailing everything to myself, which was cheap at the time and a rather groovy way to do it, sans shifty movers.)
Oh, and she's okay -- for an elderly and slightly ailing little doggie. I just was a little over-eager in trying to feed her coconut oil and went overboard yesterday. She's 15 years old, has some medical issues, and needs some dietary help and I was thrilled to find she LOVES coconut oil.
Welcome To The Beverly Hills Portion Of Our Government
That would be the IRS, where no taxpayer dollar is unsquanderable, where they spent $50K making a Star Trek video and other videos for a conference and $64K on plastic "squirting fish." Alex Pappas writes for The Daily Caller:
Florida Republican Rep. John Mica asked about the report that the IRS spent $64,000 on plastic squirting fish.Fink said he didn't see the swag at the conference.
"Maybe I could offer a reward," Mica said. "I'd love to see one of the squirting fish. I'm sure that some of the taxpayers, the people that went to work on that early bus this morning out of Baltimore or out of my district in central Florida, love to know that the federal government spent $64,000 on squirting fish for federal employees at a conference."
Asked if that was an appropriate, Fink replied, "There were expenses that were incurred at that conference, for that conference, that were absolutely inappropriate. That would be one of those expenses."
Fink was also asked during the early part of the hearing why the IRS paid more than $30,000 on hotel rooms for 45 local employees who could have stayed at home. He was also asked why the agency paid a per-diem charge for breakfasts despite the employees being provided a free breakfast in the mornings.
Public service jobs? Hah. Make that "Public, serve me!"
Here's what you bought for the IRS - the "squirting fish" -- given out with other swag, with a cost of $27K of your money:
Rep. Trey Gowdy bitchslaps the IRS at hearing for $3,500-a-night hotel rooms, a $4 million IRS conference, and more, as Americans galore are losing their jobs and struggling to make ends meet:
Stand With Rand! Rand Paul Introduces Anti-Snooping Bill
Snooping of the government kind, that is.
Here's the bill -- it's short -- and this bit's at the top: "To stop the National Security Agency from spying on American citizens."
Free Beacon reports:
Paul rolled out the "Fourth Amendment Restoration Act," saying the NSA's actions represent "an outrageous abuse of power and a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.""I have long argued that Congress must do more to restrict the Executive's expansive law enforcement powers to seize private records of law-abiding Americans that are held by a third-party," Paul said. "The bill restores our Constitutional rights and declares that the Fourth Amendment shall not be construed to allow any agency of the United States government to search the phone records of Americans without a warrant based on probable cause."
..."I know that people are trying to get to us," Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) told reporters. "This is the reason why the FBI now has 10,000 people doing intelligence on counterterrorism. This is the reason for the national counterterrorism center that's been set up in the time we've been active. its to ferret this out before it happens. "It's called protecting America."
It's called "obliterating our freedoms in the name of security."
We can never be completely safe. But, the best way for us to be safe is to follow the Constitution -- to have trained intelligence officers using probable cause to root out terrorism.
Hey -- all you people who didn't complain about the TSA searching every single American who wants to take a plane, with zero evidence they are criminals: You helped the government snooping along. Maybe grow a set and stand up for the civil liberties we have but that are being eroded DAILY.
"PRISM Surveillance Makes Verizon Surveillance Look Like Kid's Stuff"
That's the headline on the Ryan Gallagher piece on Slate I saw just before I had to get pillow-bound. An excerpt:
It appears the National Security Agency's sweeping surveillance is not something only Verizon customers should be concerned about. The agency has also reportedly obtained access to the central servers of major U.S. Internet companies as part of a secret program that involves the monitoring of emails, file transfers, photos, videos, chats, and even live surveillance of search terms.The Washington Post disclosed Thursday that it had obtained classified PowerPoint slides detailing the program, codenamed PRISM, from a career intelligence officer who felt "horror" over its privacy-invading capabilities. "They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type," the source told the newspaper.
Participating in the PRISM program, according to a selection of the leaked slides, are Internet titans including Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple. It was established in 2007 and is used by NSA analysts to spy on Internet communications as part of the agency's foreign intelligence-gathering work.
...The PRISM program is far more extensive and intrusive than the Verizon phone records grab because it reportedly includes communications content and seemingly unfettered access to the internal servers of the world's largest Internet companies.
Under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the NSA can obtain a secret court order to lawfully intercept communications from foreign targets, and in some cases the agency admits that it can sweep up Americans' communications incidentally. But spy agencies having direct access to the servers of companies like Microsoft and Google, which privacy advocates have previously warned about, raises major questions about the extent of companies' undisclosed complicity in government surveillance. In a recent transparency report, for instance, Microsoft claimed that it had received "no requests" requiring it to hand over communications content for Skype users--which is cast into serious doubt if it has allowed the NSA direct access to its servers to mine chats apparently at will.
Yoohoo...anybody out there worried about our civil liberties yet?
Linksssssssssss
Help...I'm leaking....!
Share Your "I Let My Kid Wait In The Car" Stories
Lenore Skenazy tweeted this statement along with the photo below:
@FreeRangeKids
Share your "I LET MY KID WAIT IN THE CAR" stories! Help a mom on trial for just that!
My tweets in response:
@amyalkon
@FreeRangeKids My mom (whom we found overprotective), frequently left us in the car. What'd happen, a UFO would suck up car on huge magnet?@amyalkon
@FreeRangeKids Mom left us in car in such hotbeds of gang activity as the parking lot of the Farmington Hills, Mich ACE hardware store.@amyalkon
@FreeRangeKids Unfortunately, the greatest danger was that we'd die of boredom while she was in there getting all chatty with some clerk.
Is It Wrong That Whole Foods Mandates English-Only On The Job?
I saw a tweet from @pochodotcom:
Flash: English-Only Whole Foods now known as AssWhole Foods http://pocho.com/english-only-whole-foods-changing-its-name-to-asswhole-foods/
It linked to this parody press release piece from Lalo Alcatraz:
After suspending two Latina employees in an Albuquerque, NM store for daring to speak Spanish, specialty grocer Whole Foods has announced that it will be changing its name to "AssWhole Foods."Whole Foods PR executive Kaley Quinoa, at the company's corporate offices in Austin, released this statement:
We feel we need to reflect the public's view of our changing brand, and nothing would represent this view better than changing our name to AssWhole Foods.Quinoa explained her company's "English Only" policies this way:
It is quite harmful to speak Spanish near the organic produce section, as it makes the high quality vegetables that we bring from area organic growers nervous. They start reliving the trauma of being picked by Mexican farmworkers, and this affects their inner cell structure, and ultimately their natural, wholesome flavor.It is also a safety issue, she said, as it makes monolingual employees feel uncomfortable, "because as you know, when people are speaking in a foreign language, they are always talking about you."
Brian Gaar writes at the Austin American-Statesman:
Ben Friedland, Whole Foods Market Rocky Mountain Region Executive Marketing Coordinator, said the company believes in "having a uniform form of communication" for a safe working environment."Therefore, our policy states that all English speaking Team Members must speak English to customers and other Team Members while on the clock," Friedland said in a statement. "Team Members are free to speak any language they would like during their breaks, meal periods and before and after work."
Friedland said the policy doesn't prevent employees from speaking Spanish to customers who don't speaking English nor does it prevent them from speaking Spanish if all "parties present agree that a different language is their preferred form of communication."
Whole Foods Market spokeswoman Libba Letton said company policy requires employees to speak English on the job unless they are talking to a customer who wants to speak a different language.
"Our main things is, we don't want people to feel like they are excluded from a conversation -- and there are safety and work quality reasons for that," she said. "One of the big things is for safety reasons, we want everyone to be in the habit of speaking English on the floor, so that if something happens, if there's an emergency or something like that, then everyone's on the same page."
Employees on their break, however, are free to speak whatever language they choose, she said.
"We're proud of the diversity," she said. "We think it's awesome that we have lots of languages spoken."
Such rules have been challenged in the past, claiming that they violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employers from discriminating against an individual on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
...For English-only rules that are applied only at certain times, the EEOC has stated that "[a]n employer may have a rule requiring that employees speak only in English at certain times where the employer can show that the rule is justified by business necessity." Courts have in the past upheld English-only rules citing the "business necessity" reason.
My questions, I guess, would be: Is it wrong that they do this, and is it stupid?
Stupid, Wasteful, Unfair Prostitution Sting
Jacob Sullum is right on in his piece in the NY Daily News about a prostitution sting in New York:
It is hard to imagine a bigger waste of law enforcement resources than "Operation Flush the Johns," the month-long sting that resulted in 104 arrests announced by Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice on Monday.These men, whose names and photos Rice eagerly disseminated, were arrested because of what they allegedly said to undercover cops they arranged to meet after seeing their "escort" services advertised on Backpage.com.
What's at issue, in other words, is a trumped-up version of a phony crime. If anyone committed a real crime here, it was the cops, who lured these poor horny bastards to a hotel room under false pretenses, only to lead them away in handcuffs.
The offense with which the Nassau 104 were charged -- which carries a penalty of up to a year in jail, along with the ritual humiliation Rice already has meted out -- is patronizing a prostitute in the third degree.
Think about that for a minute. There is no such thing as patronizing a pornographer in the third degree, patronizing a liquor dealer in the third degree or patronizing a race track in the third degree. That is because New York's legislators have decided to allow these consensual transactions, even though moralists take a dim view of them, while prohibiting the voluntary exchange of sex for money.
That dictate entails some pretty arbitrary distinctions. If two people meet through an online ad, one buys the other a nice dinner and they have sex afterward, they have committed no crime. But if two people meet through an online ad and have sex, after which one of them hands the other $100 so she can buy herself a nice dinner, they may both be subject to arrest, depending on the exact content of their precoitus conversation.
Whose rights are being violated by two people having consensual sex for money?
And Sullum correctly notes that it's the prosecutor's actions that make sex workers vulnerable to abuse -- by driving their trade underground, where the assistance of the legal system is hard to come by.
The Kind Of Country We've Become
Welcome to the police state. Bend over and spread your cheeks.
Alex Tabarrok writes at Marginal Revolution:
I recently asked my young son whether he thought he could travel by himself to visit his grandmother in Victoria, Canada. He said that he could navigate the airports fine and getting into Canada was no problem but he was afraid of the security people coming back into the United States. Bear in mind that my son is American.
Gary Johnson Asks The Right Question
Don't blame me for the constant rollbacks on our civil liberties. I voted for Gary Johnson -- not the supposed "progressive" currently in office who makes George Bush look like an ACLU activist.
@GovGaryJohnson
Question: If #NSA wants EVERYONE's phone records, why does it need to be a secret? http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/05/nsa-asked-verizon-for-records-of-all-calls-in-the-u-s/ ... #tlot #tcot #ACLU #patriotact @EFF
Timothy B. Lee writes in the WapPo:
A major scoop from Glenn Greenwald at the Guardian appears to prove that the National Security Agency has been demanding that Verizon produce calling records of all phone calls made in the United States.The leaked legal order requires Verizon to produce, "on an ongoing daily basis," records of calls "between the United States and abroad" as well as "wholly within the United States, including local calls." The data sought by the NSA includes "originating and terminating telephone numbers," and the time and duration of each call. The order does not request the contents of the calls.
The four-page order is dated April 25 and signed by Judge Roger Vinson, a judge of the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. It is marked "top secret" and is due to expire on July 19 unless it is renewed. It bans Verizon from disclosing the order to anyone other than those employees needed to comply with the order and an attorney.
(Electronic Frontier Foundation's Cindy) Cohn argues that the kind of dragnet surveillance suggested by the Verizon order exceeds even the authority granted by the Patriot Act. "Section 215 is written as if they're going after individual people based on individual investigations," she says. In contrast, the order leaked to the Guardian affects "millions and millions of innocent people. There's no way all of our calling records are relevant to a terrorism investigation."
"I don't think Congress thought it was authorizing dragnet surveillance" when it passed the Patriot Act, Cohn says. "I don't think Americans think that's OK. I would be shocked if the majority of congressmen thought it's okay."
I think Americans are mostly asleep in front of the TV, waking slightly to fart a little.
The ACLU's statement is here.
Link-M-Aid
Remember Lik-M-Aid? (They were against my mother's religion of health food-ism, but I did see them in passing.)
Tracking Obama's Health Care Cost Lies
Peter Suderman at reason is on it:
Let's go back in time to when President Obama first began to make the case for his health care overhaul. Here's how he touted his health plan in May 2007, early in his run for office. "If you already have health insurance, the only thing that will change for you under this plan is the amount of money you will spend on premiums. That will be less." On the campaign trail in 2008, Obama continued to sell the law as a way to lower health premiums, promising at least 15 times to reduce health premiums for families by $2500 on average. And as Buzzfeed notes, Obama didn't stop pointing to lower premiums when he made it into the White House in 2009. In May of that year, he told C-SPAN that if health industry groups commit to savings--"we end up saving $2 trillion...a lot of those savings can go back into the pockets of American consumers in the form of lower premiums. That's what we are driving for."From the very beginning, in other words, Obama's message was not that the law would result in higher premiums, but better coverage. It was that the law would lower premiums, end of story.
Now maybe you think that's not fair. After all, these statements were made before the specifics of the law had been drafted, and before experts at the Congressional Budget Office and elsewhere would weigh in.
So let's flash forward a few months, to the end of 2009, in the weeks leading up to the Senate's vote to pass the health care law. What was the White House saying then?
A headline from the White House blog on November 4, 2009 makes it clear that the essential message about premiums hadn't changed: "Word from the White House: Objective Analysis Shows Reform will Help Small Business, Lower Premiums for American Families." [emphasis added] The "objective analysis" in question was a report from Jonathan Gruber, a health economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a key architect of both Obamacare and the Massachusetts health care overhaul.
The White House blog post touted Gruber's conclusion that the health care legislation would save individuals anywhere from $500 to $3000 a year, and families even more. And those savings, the post emphasized, would "come in addition to the more generous benefits consumers would receive by purchasing insurance through the newly created exchange"--as well as "in addition to increased protections" for individuals with preexisting conditions. Gruber even claimed that the savings would come for those who did not qualify for subsidies. Low-income individuals eligible for assistance, he said, the savings would be much larger.
Truth? Health care costs will DOUBLE for many of us.
And young, healthy people who need less care (and maybe/probably have low-paying jobs) will be subsidizing older people. Somebody has to pay. Why not them?! (Think of it as a fine for thinking Obama's bullshit was less stinky than some stuffy-looking Republican's.)
Brats On A Plane
Harriet Alexander writes for the Telegraph/UK that a Southwest pilot ordered 100 unruly teenage brats off a plane:
The 100 students, all aged 17 or 18, were reportedly refusing to sit down, and continuously playing with their mobile phones.Asked by the air stewards to take their seats, the students - from the Yeshivah of Flatbush school in Brooklyn, New York - continued regardless.
"The point at which the captain comes on the PA system and says 'You all need to sit down' is unusual," said Brad Hawkins, a spokesman for Southwest Airlines, adding that the cabin crew made "repeated requests" for an unknown number of the students to behave.
"I have no indication that the flight attendants overreacted," he said.
The rabbi who runs the Yeshiva is saying "preliminarily, it does not appear that the action taken by the flight crew was justified."
Yeah, right. They don't boot people from planes for nothing, especially in this quantity. It causes big problems for airlines.
Imagine this happening even 30 years ago. You can't, right?
What are your experiences in which malignant narcissism has seemed to rule in kids?
Obama: Who Ya Gonna Call? (Economy Busters!)
The president, Charles C. Johnson writes at the Daily Caller that the president has nominated Mel Watt, a man who helped create the subprime crisis, for director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency:
(Watt) pushed government programs to help welfare recipients buy homes during the creation of the subprime mortgage bubble.Watt, a 20-year Member of Congress from North Carolina's 12th district, also had a hand in programs allowing borrowers with poor credit to buy homes with no down payment. The American financial system was subsequently destroyed when millions of bad borrowers defaulted on their loans, setting off a market crash that wiped out nearly 40 percent of the net worth of Americans.
In 2002, Watt teamed up with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, Bank of America, BB&T, and UJAMMA Inc., to announce Pathways to Homeownership, a pilot initiative designed to give home loans to welfare recipients.
...A press release from Watt's campaign office in October 2002 said that the loans to the welfare recipients would require "as little as $1,000 of the down payment to come from their own funds" and that the city of Charlotte would help borrowers obtain a "down payment subsidy" to cover the rest of the 3% down payment.
I cannot afford a home. There's a simple answer -- I rent.
Drug Hysteria Leads To Murder Charge For Man Whose Wife Died
Jacob Sullum writes at reason:
It has been nearly three months since Todd Honaker was charged with first-degree murder for dropping acid with his wife, and West Virginia's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner still has not determined what killed her. That's right: Roane County prosecutor Josh Downey accused Honaker, 34, of killing his 30-year-old wife, Renee, without any firm evidence that the drug he gave her was responsible for her death, based exclusively on post hoc, ergo propter hoc reasoning: The Charleston Mail reports that she "fell to the floor, began convulsing and died" after taking two hits.The head of the West Virginia Poison Center tells the Mail "it's not surprising at all that these drugs can cause death." Really? Not surprising at all? If Renee Honaker did in fact die of an LSD overdose, it would be the first such death ever documented. Yet the Mail continues to say it "could be the first reported acid-related fatality in the state and one of the few documented worldwide," without citing a single other example. As I noted in March, scientists have not been able to find any either.
West Virginia Regional JailsIt is somewhat more plausible that Renee Honaker had a bad reaction to contaminants in the LSD she took, which allegedly was synthesized by Chad Renzelman, a 32-year-old chemist from Kennewick, Washington. Renzelman, who police say mailed the acid to Todd Honaker on strips of paper inside an anniversary card, also has been charged with first-degree murder, which is how West Virginia classifies delivery of a controlled substance resulting in death. The offense carries a mandatory life sentence.
Linksplosion
No timer.
How Do You Give Your Life Meaning?
You can strive for personal happiness in direct routes -- going after money, power, sensation -- but there seems to be greater satisfaction in striving to create meaning.
A quote from concentration camp survivor, neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, author of Man's Search for Meaning
What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.
I think one way to give your life meaning is to try to make a difference in the world -- to "leave the campground better than you found it," daily, in even the smallest ways, like by extending yourself for strangers.
A guy parked at a meter rolled down his window and called out to Gregg the other day, "Hey, I'm leaving -- take my space. 20 minutes left on the meter."
Yesterday, I had to go out and mail a letter and saw the firemen going by at 5:15 a.m., and I dashed them off a thank you note for what they do and tossed it in the mailbox, too. And on my way back, I told a woman I passed that she looked pretty. She beamed.
What's behind acting this way is choosing, as Frankl also talks about, what sort of person I want to be. The bottom line question to ask, I think, in trying to live a meaningful life: Will life on this planet be better because you were on it?
And a note: This doesn't mean that you're totally self-sacrificing -- pathologically altruistic -- but that you don't live life as you're the only one who matters. Paradoxically, it seems very much in your self-interest to be other-interested. As I pointed out in I See Rude People, based on the research of Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky
Burbank Cops Eating People's Time -- For What?
If you're weaving down the road in your car, a cop should stop you. If you're simply driving down the road, you should be allowed to go on your way -- that is, in a world that doesn't deem you guilty until you're forced to prove yourself innocent...the world we increasingly live in.
Via @SarahFenske, from an LA Times story by Alene Tchekmedyian, the headline:
1,021 drivers stopped at Burbank DUI checkpoint; 0 were drunk
From the piece:
The Burbank Police Department last year received a $31,500 grant through the California Office of Traffic Safety to conduct sobriety checkpoints through September.
Yes, taxpayer dollars being put to the task of stopping citizens without probable cause, keeping them from their jobs, families, and simply driving freely down the street.
The "Quasi-Religious Fanaticism" Of The Administrative Class
Smart Glenn Reynolds piece in USA today about a number of recent gun "crimes" I've blogged about -- those committed by little kids who brought their benign toy guns to school (in one case, a plastic GI-Joe gun the size of a quarter).
All of these children were promptly chewed up by the nonthink that is "zero tolerance" policies, and punished with suspensions and the like.
One little boy, 5 years old, wet his pants during the two-hour interrogation after he brought an orange-tipped cowboy-style cap gun on the school bus.
Reynolds writes:
What's up with this? It's not based on any concern with safety. Lego guns, cap guns, bubble guns, nibbled Pop Tarts, and fingers are no threat to safety. And the wild overreaction in these cases says there's more going on here than simple school discipline. As I said, who treats a 5-year-old this way? It smacks of fanaticism.In fact, it seems like a kind of quasi-religious fanaticism. I think it's about the administrative class -- which runs the schools with as little input from parents as possible -- doing its best to exterminate the very idea of guns. It's some sort of wacky moral-purity crusade. If a few toddlers have to suffer along the way, that's tough. You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.
But that raises two questions. First, what business do public schools have in trying to extirpate "impure" thoughts? Aren't we supposed to celebrate diversity? And, second, why should public schools decide that a longtime staple of American childhood, the toy gun, is suddenly evil?
...The people running these schools are providing considerable evidence that they are not especially bright.
...Which raises the question: Why are we giving them so much money? If public schools are places where kids can be persecuted for being kids -- especially if, gasp, they're boys acting like boys -- what's their claim on our support?
Increasingly, parents are exiting public schools for private schools, charter schools, online schools or homeschooling. (Hey, the guy who sold Tumblr to Yahoo for a billion dollars was homeschooled.) This steady stream of stories involving what can only be called institutional child abuse can only speed that trend along. And once large numbers of parents are no longer sending their kids to public schools, how long will the tax money keep coming?
That's the question I'd be asking myself, if I were running public schools. The people who actually are running them, however, seem to be oblivious. Fanatics usually are.
Wave Bye-Bye To More Of Our Civil Liberties
(I know, there's too much good stuff on TV to care -- which is why our civil liberties are eroded daily at airports, on college campuses, and in countless other venues.)
Regarding the subject of this post, being arrested is not evidence you've committed a crime. It may indicate suspicion you've committed a crime, or it could indicate that police officers were pissed off at you for, say, videotaping them and arrested you on some bullshit charge.
Disgustingly, the Supreme Court has now ruled the police can take DNA samples from people who are arrested. From the WSJ, Jess Bravin writes:
WASHINGTON--A divided Supreme Court held Monday that police can take DNA samples from people under arrest in the hope of tying them to unrelated crimes, in a ruling that touched both on fast-changing technology and age-old issues of citizens' rights against state searches.Authorities previously have been able to take such samples from convicted felons, whom courts consider to possess minimal privacy rights. At issue Monday was whether people who merely have been arrested--and may ultimately be released or acquitted of the charges that led to their arrest--also must submit to a cheek swab that would be matched against a nationwide DNA database of evidence from unsolved crimes.
...Justice Scalia contended that because authorities already possessed the power to take DNA samples from those ultimately convicted of crimes, only people who are wrongly arrested or later acquitted will have their privacy violated. He suggested the court had opened the door to wider use of mandatory DNA sampling by government, much as fingerprinting has spread far beyond the precinct house.
"Make no mistake about it: As an entirely predictable consequence of today's decision, your DNA can be taken and entered into a national DNA database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason," he wrote.
Your body is your property, and nobody has a right to take a part of it from you, even the smallest cell scraping, violating your privacy, if you have not been proven to have committed a crime.
For anyone who equates taking DNA with fingerprinting someone; as Mike Masnick points out at TechDirt, fingerprinting is used to identify a person -- to identify you as you, "but that's wholly different from taking a DNA sample from them to then run through a giant database of unsolved crimes to see if you (or, in some cases, a relative) might possibly be implicated."
Delinkcious
Html me about it.
Wheeeee! Power Tools!
Today only, at Amazon, only while supplies last, 53 percent off a Bosch power drill -- specifically, the Bosch PS31-2AL1A 12-Volt Lithium-Ion 3/8-Inch Drill/Driver with 2 L-BOXX Cases, 2 Batteries and Charger
IRS Thuggery In The Past
Something to remember -- government is not your protector. Government is a bully and constantly needs to be curtailed.
David Kay Johnston writes in The New York Times in 1997:
A Federal judge in Denver has awarded $250,000 in punitive damages to a woman whose family business was raided by armed Internal Revenue Service agents four weeks after the woman insulted an I.R.S. agent.The revenue agents padlocked all three Kids Avenue clothing stores in Colorado Springs, and posted notices that some customers interpreted as evidence that the woman, Carole Ward, 49, was a drug smuggler.
In a harshly worded 17-page opinion, Judge William P. Downes of the Federal District Court in Denver found that one of the I.R.S. agents, James Dolan, was ''grossly negligent'' and acted with ''reckless disregard'' for the law, and that he made three false statements in a sworn declaration. The judge, who said the actions by the I.R.S. agents violated Ms. Ward's privacy rights, wrote that the punitive damages award ''gives notice to the I.R.S. that reprehensible abuse of authority by one of its employees cannot and will not be tolerated.''
The judge also awarded Ms. Ward $75,000 in actual damages plus lawyers' fees.
As for what got the government-employed panties in a wad:
Mrs. Ward said she accompanied her son to one audit, a rancorous meeting that ended, according to testimony, with Mrs. Ward telling Ms. Dzierzanowski: ''Honey, from what I can see of your accounting skills the country would be better served if you were dishing up chicken fried steak on some Interstate in West Texas, with all the clunky jewelry and big hair.''
Teehee.
via Inga B.
The High Cost Of Easy Money For College On The Middle And Lower Classes
A tweet:
@Demos_Org
Until mid-1990s, state colleges were affordable for middle income households. Debt was the exception, not the rule. http://demos.io/14lQzKp
If students couldn't get these outrageous loans that government has enabled, colleges couldn't charge gazillions.
Inciting...Law And Order?
Charles Oliver writes at reason:
Police in Newport, Wales, ordered Matthew Taylor to remove T-shirts with the slogan "Obey our laws, respect our beliefs or get out of our country" from his clothing shop. A police spokesman said the shirts could be seen as inciting racial hatred.
Link to the news story about this at the reason link.
Who Have You Thanked?
It means a lot to people to hear they're appreciated. I had to take a letter out to the mailbox today, and when I woke up at 5 a.m. (I'm on book deadline time), I saw a fire truck go by on my street with lights flashing, so I dashed off a letter to the fire dept. near me thanking them.
It takes very little time to do that and really does mean a lot to people.
My thinking: If you are quick to complain when things are wrong, be quick to offer appreciation when things are right.
Pssst! TSA Geniuses! Bullets Don't Kill People While Rolling Around Loose On The Carpet
Unless you are a star professional baseball league pitcher and you hurl one with such velocity that it takes somebody's eye out, it's kind of hard to do damage with a bullet unless it's loaded into a gun and some person with intent to put a hole in someone or something pulls the trigger.
Apparently, this is news to the dipshits in the TSA and perhaps some other cooperating "security" people, who seem to have confused a bullet with a bomb with the fuse set to blow any minute.
From KATU.com:
PORTLAND, Ore. - Passengers were pulled off a Southwest Airlines flight leaving Portland and re-screened by security after a flight attendant found a bullet on the plane Friday morning.The Southwest Airlines flight bound for Chicago was about to depart from PDX around 6:30 a.m. when a flight attendant saw the .22 caliber bullet on the floor, according to airport spokesman Steve Johnson.
The flight crew didn't know where the bullet came from so the passengers were pulled off the plane, Johnson said.
The passengers all had to be re-screened by the TSA and security officials searched the plane.
"It was all TSA police. I'd say at least five or six around the plane, the concourse and such." said passenger Mike Niehaus. "Then they escorted us back with armed TSA agents all the way back through the metal detectors."
And let's rub our brain cells together. Say someone did have a gun on the plane. Cockpit doors are reinforced. Sure, they could murder another passenger -- maybe -- unless they're tackled before they can do the deed...same as they could in the drugstore, on the street corner, or in that person's living room.
In other words, TSA is providing security in what way?
Answer, in case you didn't come up with it: In our imagination, mainly.
I like this guy, commenter "Between" on KATU:
Between
@Vince009 Actually, it IS a stretch that finding a .22 cartridge on the floor of a commercial airliner would lead one to assume there's a gun on the person of someone who has gone through screening. Being careful is no crime, but there's a line there that goes beyond true reason. Besides, I know kids who wear .22 rounds as earring ornaments. I once traveled cross country and found a .22 round in my carry-on because it had gotten lost in a fold the last time I went to a range. Any time fear is employed as the official response, the terrorists HAVE won. So I figure it's important to have some priorities. Like maybe just tell people a .22 cartridge was found on the floor of the plane. And let people leave who want to...and leave a few empty seats to spread out on for the rest of us.
Government Meddling Is The Death Of Entrepreneurism
That's certainly my belief. It's at least lessened the number of Americans going into entrepreneurial ventures.
Ben Casselman writes in the WSJ:
Maxim Schillebeeckx is the kind of ambitious young American who has long propelled the U.S. economy. A 28-year-old doctoral student in genetics at Washington University in St. Louis, Mr. Schillebeeckx also has a graduate degree in economics. He helped create a student-led consulting firm to provide scientific advice to local startups.But despite his enthusiasm for entrepreneurship and his experience in startups, Mr. Schillebeeckx said he planned to look for the safety of work in consulting or private equity, rather than launch his own company or work for a new venture.
"I'm pretty risk averse, personally," Mr. Schillebeeckx said. "On the entrepreneurial side, you have to be willing to jump off the deep end."
Mr. Haltiwanger and other economists said this decline in risk-taking--both by companies and individuals--has coincided with a broader slowing of the U.S. economy, particularly for new jobs.
But also taxes, regulation, and Obamacare raise the ante to a point where taking a risk opening one's own business may not seem worth the tradeoff -- or a safe bet at all.
More from the article:
Companies, too, are taking fewer risks. Rather than expanding payrolls, for example, they are keeping more cash on hand--5.7% of their assets at the end of 2012, up from under 3% three decades earlier, said the Federal Reserve, a rise that accelerated after the recession. Workers are hired more slowly, particularly at newer companies, Labor Department data show....Economists aren't sure what is behind the decline in risk-taking. Among the possible explanations are the rising cost of health care, which makes it riskier to quit a job and more expensive to hire more employees; increased state and local licensing requirements that serve as barriers to newcomers--one recent study found that roughly 29% of U.S. employees required a government license or certificate in 2008, up from less than 5% in the 1950s; and immigration rules that deter would-be entrepreneurs from other countries.
Linkavore
Link local! And if global's better, link global!
Advice Goddess Radio: Tonight, 7-8pm PT -- Dr. Helen Smith On How American Society Has Become Anti-Male
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in therapy and research.
This is not just a show for and about men but a show for anyone who cares about equal rights and fairness for all.
Tonight's guest is psychologist and blogger Dr. Helen Smith talking about how, in America, it's become permissible -- and even fashionable -- to be anti-male and what men can (and must) do to start changing this.
What men have been doing is going on strike -- dropping out of college, leaving the workforce, and avoiding marriage and fatherhood in droves.
There are countless articles sneering at the man who is more man-child than grownup, but Smith, in her book, Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream - and Why It Matters
On this show, Smith will lay out the problems -- including shocking discrimination against men such as rampant paternity fraud, condoned and even encouraged by the government -- and what she sees as steps toward solutions, for men in general and for the individual man.
Listen at this link at 7pm Pacific, 10pm Eastern, or download the podcast afterward:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/06/03/dr-helen-smith-on-how-american-society-has-become-anti-male-1
*NOTE: Helen and I taped this show on Friday afternoon (due to a travel conflict she had), so it isn't live, but it is brand-new, and I found her inspiring, and I hope you'll listen and buy her book.
And don't miss last week's show with sex therapist Dr. Marty Klein who rips away widely held myths about sex to help everybody listening improve their sex lives.
It turns out that our assumptions about the mindblowing sex we think we are "supposed" to be having is the thing that stops us from the pretty great sex we could be having. Or from having sex at all.
Klein's very helpful book: Sexual Intelligence: What We Really Want from Sex--and How to Get It.
Listen or download the podcast at this link:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2013/05/27/dr-marty-klein-on-how-to-rethink-your-way-to-better-sex
Join me and my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, here at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.
A Sociopath's Tale
Fascinating and chilling detailing of how a sociopath thinks and lives, in Psychology Today -- "Confessions of a Sociopath: She's a successful law professor and a Sunday school teacher, with a host of family and friends. But her interpersonal calculus centers on how to manipulate and outmaneuver the many people in her life. Welcome to a world of ruthless cost-benefit analysis, charm, and grandiosity."
An excerpt from the beginning:
I have never killed anyone, but I have certainly wanted to. I may have a disorder, but I am not crazy. In a world filled with gloomy, mediocre nothings populating a go-nowhere rat race, people are attracted to my exceptionalism like moths to a flame. This is my story.Once while visiting Washington, D.C., I used an escalator that was closed, and a Metro worker tried to shame me about it.
Him: "Didn't you see the yellow gate?"
Me: "Yellow gate?"
Him: "I just put the gate up, and you were supposed to walk around it!"
Me: [Silence. My face was blank.]
Him: "That's trespassing! It's wrong to trespass! The escalator is closed, you broke the law!"
Me: [I stare at him silently.]
Him: [Visibly rattled by my lack of reaction] "Well, next time, you don't trespass, okay?"
It was not okay. In explaining their horrible actions, people often say that they "just snapped." I know that feeling. I stood there for a moment, letting my rage reach that decision-making part of my brain, and I suddenly became filled with a sense of calm purpose. I blinked my eyes and set my jaw. I started following him. Adrenaline started flowing; my mouth tasted metallic. I fought to keep my peripheral vision in focus, hyperaware of everything around me, trying to predict the movement of the crowd. I was hoping that he would walk into a deserted hallway where I would find him alone. I felt so sure of myself, so focused on this one thing I had to do. An image sprang to mind: my hands wrapped around his neck, my thumbs digging deep into his throat, his life slipping away under my unrelenting grasp. How right that would feel. But I know I had been caught in a megalomaniacal fantasy. And in the end it didn't matter; I lost sight of him.
Buying The President's Ear
The price -- $32,400 -- and a Los Angeles car salesman is paying it to make a pitch about electric cars to Obama at a private Democratic fundraiser next week. Chris Woodyard writes in USA Today:
Paul Scott, 60, says he isn't a rich guy. He's a $50,000-a-year Nissan salesman who plans to rub elbows with 24 bigwigs in a private luncheon that he says will put a crimp in his retirement plans.But he says the goal is worthwhile. He wants to make a few points to Obama about on how to better support electric cars -- a cause that Obama already embraces -- and thought the private audience would be a fine way to do it.
...The fundraiser who sent the email could not be immediately be reached for comment. A copy was provided to USA TODAY, and it includes a menu of choices with prices when it comes to seeing the Obama in person at the June 7 fundraiser in Santa Monica, Calif.
For $10,000, you can be a luncheon guest. For $16,200, you can be a VIP luncheon guest and have your picture taken with Obama. For $32,400, the package "includes an official photograph with President Obama, as well as a very special one-hour roundtable discussion with the President after the luncheon. President Obama will take your questions in a private, off-the-record conversation where you can discuss with him what you'd like. Please note this is limited to 25 people to keep it an intimate discussion, and so will sell out very fast."
Woman With Drapes Over Her Face Finds A Man
They met and he became her master in a week -- uh, that is, they got married. (According to Islam, a woman is a man's property.)
Link-Link
Nod-nod.
Perhaps The Kid Has Never In His Life Gotten A Gift
A parent -- or rather, "parent" -- complains in a blog post that his teenage son doesn't know how to mail a letter. Brian S. Hall writes at ReadWrite:
I'm not sure who to blame. His mother, perhaps, or the public school system. But it turns out that my son--days away from graduating from high school--does not know how to send mail through the U.S. Postal Service.I am not making this up.
The boy has a smartphone, a tablet and a laptop, does some basic coding, is pretty good at computer-assisted design and gets excellent grades. He can bang out what appears to be 60 words per minute using only his thumbs. But a letter? Forget about it--he doesn't even know how to properly address an envelope.
..."A stamp is required," I continued.
He placed it, carefully, in the top left corner of the envelope.
"That's not where it goes! Don't you know how to mail a letter?" I was beginning to lose patience.
We started again--though I told him he owed me $.50 for the ruined stamp. This time, he printed--his penmanship is atrocious--the name and address, correctly, in the center of the envelope. Next, he carefully placed the stamp, level straight, on the top right, as I instructed.
So far so good: "Now put the return address on the top left." I said. "Print clearly, please."
He stared back at me. "What's a return address?"
He's almost ready to register with the Selective Service and he doesn't know what a return address is!
I breathed in, deeply. "A return address is your address. Our address."
"They're not sending this envelope back to me, are they?" he asked.
"It's required by the Post Office!" I barked.
He rolled his eyes with an obscene level of teenage skepticism, though was wise enough to comply.
I took the completed letter from him, deciding it best that I personally take it to the post office.
Daddy doing things for you -- it's the best way to never learn to do things for yourself.
Just a guess on my part, but could it be that this sort of thing is a regular occurrence in this household?
And my comment I left on the site:
The kid never had to write a thank you note?Perhaps he's never gotten a gift or perhaps his parents -- both of them -- failed to teach him manners.
Love This: Samuel L. Jackson Tells Reddit He's Taking Up Life Of Vigilanteeism
The video:
Man after my own heart. (I SEE RUDE PEOPLE: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society.)
Um, Just Turn Off Your Phone
The thing can does come with an "off" switch, doesn't it?
Silly people are downgrading to phones with no features so they won't be bothered. Nick Bilton writes in The New York Times about the "tech elites" leaving their phones behind:
If you were to meet 32-year-old Robin Sloan of San Francisco, you might think him a Luddite unable to get his head around new technologies. He owns an old Nokia phone with one main application: making phone calls. He takes notes using a pen and paper notepad. And he reads books printed on paper.But Mr. Sloan is far from a Luddite. He used to work at Twitter as a media manager, teaching news outlets to use the hottest social media tools. Before that he was with Current TV as an online strategist, inventing the future of digital journalism.
Yet last year, as he set out to write his first book, "Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore," he found his iPhone and other technologies were getting in the way of his productivity, so he simply got rid of them. "I found it was more important and more productive for me to be daydreaming and jotting down notes," he said. "I needed my idle minutes to contribute to the story I was doing, not checking my e-mail, or checking tweets."
My friends also know not to call me during the day when I'm writing and I don't give out my phone number, just my email address, to people I meet.
Our Government Lies For Dollars
Steven Greenhut writes at reason about that mammoth crack baby epidemic we heard about in the 90s:
"As many as 100,000 crack babies are born every year," reported the Los Angeles Times in an overheated 1990 article echoing the results of a Department of Health and Human Services study. The feds were calling for a massive influx of tax dollars to fund social programs to help a new generation of Americans born to mothers who used so-called crack cocaine.The article included a "must have" list for government agencies: more postnatal care and foster care, extra dollars for schools to deal with the disabilities these children reportedly would have, government-provided residential care, drug programs and more. "But absent those billions of additional dollars, what can state and local government do now to help those innocents?" the article asked, almost hopelessly. This was typical of news coverage of the time.
More than two decades later, we learn the truth. The hysteria - which led to new drug laws that imposed unreasonably harsh sentences on the mostly African-American people who used that particular kind of cocaine - was unwarranted. The numbers of crack babies were wildly exaggerated. As The New York Times now reports, "This supposed epidemic ... was kicked off by a study of just 23 infants that the lead researcher now says was blown out of proportion."
...No one is suggesting that it's good to use cocaine while pregnant, but years of study show that the "shocking symptoms" that crack babies revealed are actually symptoms found in many newborns. "A much more serious problem, it turns out, is infants who are born with fetal alcohol syndrome," according to the Times.
The latest scare from the government is the notion that Colorado pot legalization is leading to kids scarfing mommy's pot brownies.
As Greenhut writes:
There's no evidence that legalization caused such things. People have been eating pot brownies since I can recall, and they have been doing so even though laws haven't allowed it. But the goal isn't a reasoned debate. The goal is to prompt upset legislators to pass laws designed to slow down the burgeoning legalization movement.
More On The Stupidity That Is Obamacare
Donald Susswein, former tax counsel to the Senate Finance Committee, writes at Forbes:
The laudable goal of the Affordable Care Act is to make health insurance more available by establishing insurance exchanges and eliminating bias based on preexisting conditions. But insurance may still be unaffordable to many lower and middle income workers - even in states that agree to expand Medicaid. The problem has nothing to do with implementation. It is the way the law was designed, to keep budgetary costs under control. Here are some examples that illustrate the problems.For a firm whose workers all make over $40,000 the typical cost of the least expensive "affordable" policy for each worker might be approximately $5,000. Of that amount, the workers themselves could be required to pay up to $3,800 which is 9.5 percent of their wages. This 9.5% of wages is the amount the law allows the employer to pass on to the employee and still be considered to have offered that employee "affordable" care. That leaves the employer paying only $1,200, a fully deductible expense. That is why most employers who consult their tax advisors will prefer to provide the minimum required insurance subsidies rather than paying a nondeductible $2,000 tax penalty for failure to provide affordable healthcare coverage.
The workers may be surprised to learn that no employer subsidies are required for the worker's children or spouse. As a result, even if the spouse is also making $40,000 and receives a similar $1,200 subsidy from her employer, the total family cost for premiums could be over $10,000. That is $3,800 for each spouse, plus around $4,000 to cover their children. As a result, many families may decide not to purchase insurance, or delay the purchase until someone becomes ill. This is the free-rider problem the law was supposed to fix.
Here in California, per an Avik Roy article in Forbes, "Rate Shock: In California, Obamacare To Increase Individual Health Insurance Premiums By 64-146%":
Obamacare to double individual-market premiumsIf you're a 25 year old male non-smoker, buying insurance for yourself, the cheapest plan on Obamacare's exchanges is the catastrophic plan, which costs an average of $184 a month. (By "average," I mean the median monthly premium across California's 19 insurance rating regions.)
The next cheapest plan, the "bronze" comprehensive plan, costs $205 a month. But in 2013, on eHealthInsurance.com (NASDAQ:EHTH), the median cost of the five cheapest plans was only $92.
In other words, for the typical 25-year-old male non-smoking Californian, Obamacare will drive premiums up by between 100 and 123 percent.
Under Obamacare, only people under the age of 30 can participate in the slightly cheaper catastrophic plan. So if you're 40, your cheapest option is the bronze plan. In California, the median price of a bronze plan for a 40-year-old male non-smoker will be $261.
But on eHealthInsurance, the median cost of the five cheapest plans was $121. That is, Obamacare will increase individual-market premiums by an average of 116 percent.
For both 25-year-olds and 40-year-olds, then, Californians under Obamacare who buy insurance for themselves will see their insurance premiums double.
I Link A Parade
The more, the linkier.
Audio-Erotic
Big sale for your ears: June Audio Month at Amazon -- Up to 50 Off Select Audio Electronics
