"Science News You Can Use" Radio: Tonite! 7-8pm PT, 10-11pm, Amy Alkon & Dr. Jennifer Verdolin On Understanding And Overcoming Jealousy
Tonight is the start of a very special every-other-week show -- "Science News You Can Use" Radio -- with science-based advice columnist and author Amy Alkon and animal behaviorist Dr. Jennifer Verdolin laying out science news you can use to solve your relationship problems or just improve your relationships and have a better life.
Join us tonight for our show on understanding jealousy and overcoming the damaging kind.
Every other week, we'll be laying out science news you can use to solve your relationship problems or just improve your relationships and have a better life. (And yes, Amy Alkon will still be doing shows on the best behavioral science books on weeks in between.)
And don't forget to buy our science-based, fun, funny, and illuminating books -- support our show while entertaining yourself and learning a thing or two to improve your life. Amy's new book is "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck" and Jennifer's is "Wild Connection: What Animal Courtship and Mating Tell Us about Human Relationships."
Listen to show live at the link, tonight, Sunday, August 31, 7-8 p.m. PT, 10-11 p.m. ET, or listen at the link afterward or subscribe free on iTunes or Stitcher:
Chasing The Boys
It's better if the boys are chasing you, but I never did make varsity.
Someone on Twitter just reminded me of a photo I dug up and sent to the Free Press that they didn't use in Patricia Montemurri's big features section story on me and on "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck." I was on boys cross country in junior high. Because...because...that's where the boys were! 
P.S. The wind was blowing. My hair was not *that* big! 
Well, *That* Should Do It!
Everybody drop your weapons! Angelina Jolie has condemned the civil war in Syria.
I'd like to take this moment to condemn genocide and the wearing of flip-flops in places that do not have shower heads.
Which reminds me -- I have a quote on that in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck":
More of my Pins here.
via @WalterMooreInLA
I Support Free Odiousness
A quote:
"If we don't believe in free expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."-Noam Chomsky
via TechCrunch
Blinkie
Links wearing tiny black eye patches.
Predictable Responses About Maternity Leave
A UK survey, reported in The Guardian, finds that businesses are wary about hiring women and mothers:
A third of managers would rather employ a man in his 20s or 30s over a woman of the same age for fear of maternity leave, according to a new study. A survey of 500 managers by law firm Slater & Gordon showed that more than 40% admitted they are generally wary of hiring a woman of childbearing age, while a similar number would be wary of hiring a woman who has already had a child or hiring a mother for a senior role.A quarter said they would rather hire a man to get around issues of maternity leave and child care when a woman does return to work, with 44% saying the financial costs to their business because of maternity leave are a significant concern.
The study also showed that a third of managers claim that women are not as good at their jobs when they come back from maternity leave.
What's your experience in the workplace? What do you think makes sense?
Who's In Charge? Oh, just Chester The Molester II
Via Reuters:
The former acting director of cyber security for the United States Department of Health and Human Services was convicted this week on child pornography charges upon completion of a four-day federal trial in Nebraska.On Tuesday, the US Department of Justice announced that Timothy DeFoggi, 56, was convicted by a federal jury in District of Nebraska of engaging in a child exploitation enterprise, conspiracy to advertise and distribute child pornography and accessing a computer with intent to view child pornography in connection with his membership in a child pornography, according to a press release published by the DOJ.
Feel all cuddly and safe because government is protecting you and your children?
via @kevinmitnick
The Way Of The Shahida
Shahid (in Arabic, "witness") means "martyr" in Islam (shahida is the feminine) and Islam tells its followers that they'll get a much better life in paradise if they martyr themselves for Allah.
From a Hadith (Jami' At-Tirmidhi, Vol. 3, No. 1663, p. 410):
Al-Miqdam bin Ma'diykarib narrated that the Messenger of Allah said: "There are six things with Allah for the martyr: He is forgiven with the first flow of blood (he suffers), he is shown his place in Paradise, he is protected from punishment in the grave, secured from the greatest terror, the crown of dignity is placed upon his head - and its gems are better than the world and what is in it - he is married to seventy-two wives among Al-Huril-'Ayn of Paradise, and he may intercede for seventy of his close relatives."
Perhaps this is what led two teen girls to plot a suicide bombing of a French synagogue in Lyon. Madeline Grant writes at Newsweek:
According to JSS News and Europe 1, a source from the French security agency the Central Directorate of Homeland Intelligence revealed that two Muslim girls, aged 15 and 17, were arrested in the Tarbes and Venissieux neighbourhoods a week ago, after authorities uncovered a plan to carry out a suicide bombing inside the Great Synagogue of Lyon. They were indicted on August 22nd for conspiracy to commit terrorism.An unnamed security source also revealed that the two teenagers had never met, but communicated only via social media. "These girls were part of a network of young Islamists who were being monitored by security services," said the unnamed security source. Security services are becoming increasingly concerned with online radicalisation, particularly following the proliferation of videos created by jihadist groups such as Islamic State.
Once again, Europe is becoming a dangerous place to be a Jew. Only now there are tiny Hitlers in headscarves and many more male tiny Hitlers doing their (sometimes bumbling) best to kill the Jews.
RELATED: 16 percent of French citizens found to support ISIS.
Linkulus
Incredulous, but with linkage.
How Real Life Is Not Like A Porno
A tweet:
@SteveStfler
My neighbor obviously doesn't watch porn. She asked me to come fix her sink, I been here for an hour and i'm still fixing the damn sink.
Remember When Women Used To Demand Equal Treatment?
Quaint.
Now the advice to men is this: "Leave the women alone, even if you think they merit criticism."
As I've said it before, women are now demanding to be treated like eggshells, not equals.
via @MarkTrueblood
Five Problems With CA's Idiotic And Dangerous "Affirmative Consent" Bill
Ashe Schow lays them out at the WashEx. Here's one problem with it -- that even the bill's co-author!! is clueless about how one could prove they'd received affirmative consent:
1. A vague definition of consentThe way this bill defines "affirmative consent" could open the door to a flood of sexual assault accusations, but provides no clear way for the accused to prove they obtained consent.
The bill requires both parties involved in sexual activity to provide an "affirmative, conscious, and voluntary agreement," and stipulates that a "lack of protest or resistance does not mean consent, nor does silence mean consent."
Further, the bill requires consent to be "ongoing throughout a sexual activity and can be revoked at any time." And just because a couple has a prior dating history or has engaged in sexual activity previously "should never by itself be assumed to be an indicator of consent."
So what specifically constitutes consent? The bill leaves the door open for non-verbal consent to be accepted, as George Mason University School Of Law professor David Bernstein noted in the Washington Post, but provides no tangible way to prove that consent -- verbal or non-verbal -- was obtained.
In fact, asked in June, the bill's principal co-author, Assemblywoman Bonnie Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, had no clue how one could prove they received affirmative consent.
"Your guess is as good as mine," Lowenthal told the San Gabriel Valley Tribune. "I think it's a legal issue. Like any legal issue, that goes to court."
Well that's so, so helpful when you're in a college dorm room in the heat of the moment wondering whether you need to get papers signed to get a blowjob.
If that's not ridiculous enough, it gets better:
K.C. Johnson, a history professor at Brooklyn College and City University of New York who co-wrote a book about the 2006 Duke lacrosse rape case, told the Washington Examiner that the only way college students could truly prove they obtained consent would be by "recording the entire sexual encounter."Of course, Johnson noted, "such a recording could in and of itself violate criminal law and college policies."
As for ensuring that consent is "ongoing," Johnson said "California students would be wise to interpret the measure as stringently as possible -- that is, there must be consent for every single stage of the activity."
And Johnson believes that consent would have to be verbal, since colleges and universities could claim the accused "misinterpreted a non-verbal cue."
Other issues Schow lays out include: "How intoxicated is too intoxicated?" and the awful "preponderance of evidence" standard instead of the criminal standard of "without a reasonable doubt."
Age Is Only An General Estimate Of A Person's Abilities
There's a WSJ piece by Sheila V. Kumar on the tragic shooting accident in Arizona in which a wee 9-year-old girl, pictured at the link, was handed an automatic weapon (set on automatic):
The death of a shooting instructor at an Arizona gun range when a 9-year-old girl lost control of a powerful automatic weapon has raised the issue of age limits at such operations....Adam Winkler, a professor of constitutional law at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of the book "Gunfight: The Right to Bear Arms in America," said shooting ranges can adopt their own policies on how old a person has to be to handle their weapons.
"Generally there are no age restrictions to use a shooting range. As long as the minor is supervised by an adult, there are no laws barring minors from shooting firearms," Mr. Winkler said.
"There's nothing wrong with having children at gun ranges," he continued. "Shootings at gun ranges are freak accidents. They don't happen very often. Usually there's no place where shooters are more supervised than on a gun range."
However, he added, that it is unusual for a 9-year-old to fire an Uzi, because they are sizable, and "young arms might not be well equipped to handle the power of the firearm."
Should it be up to the state to come up with some arbitrary age? I don't think so.
Any instructor at a gun range has to recognize that his job is probably a little more inherently dangerous than that of a can stacker at a supermarket. It should ultimately be up to the instructor to make decisions about his own safety vis a vis how far and on which weapons he'll let a child or a person who doesn't look all that Herculean go.
I would also put the blame here on the parents.
Lurky
Shadowy links.
Abstinence (Of A Sexual Kind) Works Best On Deserted Islands
Deserted of all life forms, that is, including increasingly cute-looking feral goats.
Anyway, the point of this post -- I just love when people (like a guy on Twitter today) suggest that the answer to not getting a girl pregnant is "abstinence!"
More of my fun here from "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck," which I hope you'll buy!
More On Sperm Stealing To Force Men Into Child Support
It happens. How often? Too often if you're the guy who's now "Daddy!"
I posted this on my linkies post in response to a comment sneer about my earlier post on this, "I Hope You Stop Giving Out Horribly Sexist Advice!", with a reader of my column screeching at me for daring to tell men this:
Of course, the single worst form of birth control is trusting that a woman -- especially a woman longing for a baby -- is actually taking or using hers. A mitigating factor is whether she's shown herself to be ethical. Consider whether that describes your girlfriend. If not, you might want to make that a requirement for any partner of yours -- before you find yourself reading "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" aloud for the 300th time in a week, as it's the only way to keep your toddler from screaming like a goat being slaughtered.
I also link to a paper I heard presented at an ev psych conference that found that more than a third of women surveyed had risked getting pregnant without the consent of or even the discussion with their partner.
Shawna Cohen tells one of these stories where a pregnancy occurred at Mommyish:
Here's how it happened, according to Houston Press. Joe Pressil began dating his girlfriend, Anetria, in 2005. They broke up in 2007 and, three months later, she told him she was pregnant with his child. Pressil was confused, since the couple had used birth control, but a paternity test proved that he was indeed the father. So Pressil let Anetria and the boys stay at his home and he agreed to pay child support.Fast forward to February of this year, when 36-year-old Pressil found a receipt - from a Houston sperm bank called Omni-Med Laboratories - for "cryopreservation of a sperm sample" (Pressil was listed as the patient although he had never been there). He called Omni-Med, which passed him along to its affiliated clinic Advanced Fertility. The clinic told Pressil that his "wife" had come into the clinic with his semen and they performed IVF with it, which is how Anetria got pregnant.
The big question, of course, is how exactly did Anetria obtain Pressil's sperm without him knowing about it? Simple. She apparently saved their used condoms. Gag. (Anetria denies these claims.) [tagbox tag="IVF"]
"I couldn't believe it could be done. I was very, very devastated. I couldn't believe that this fertility clinic could actually do this without my consent, or without my even being there," Pressil said, adding that artificial insemination is against his religious beliefs. "That's a violation of myself, to what I believe in, to my religion, and just to my manhood," Pressil said.
The answer: Make dating ethical women a priority.
A Marriage Of Government And Protectionism For Traditional Wedding Venues
Napa government refuses to let wineries hold any events -- like weddings -- that aren't about wine, writes Inez Feltscher at the IJ, pointing out how ridiculous this is, when wineries can bring in the same 200 people, as long as they're happy about pinot and not about two people's happy day:
When most people think of California's Napa County, they imagine the sight of beautiful hillside vineyards and the smell of grapes. For many engaged couples looking for wedding venues, those hillsides seem like just the sort of idyllic backdrop they want behind them as they say their "I do's." Maybe that's why in 2013 over 3,000 couples tied the knot in and brought over $101 million in business to...nearby Sonoma County? That's right--even though Napa is the more developed and famous of the two counties, it netted under half of that revenue last year, with only about 1,300 weddings. That's because of a little-known ordinance from the Napa County Board of Supervisors that forbids wineries in Napa from hosting non-wine-related events, including weddings.What does the Board of Supervisors have against wedding bells? Well, for one, when wineries can't hold weddings, hoteliers and other business that can host nuptials get to hoard that lucrative business for themselves. There are even a small number of "grandfathered" wineries that want to keep their mini-monopoly on winery weddings at the expense of their competitors. Talk about a marriage of convenience between government and business.
...Even if winery weddings in Napa Valley were to bring in more tourists, it's unclear why the events the wineries are already permitted to hold don't have the same effect. As it stands today, a Napa winery can host that exact same 200-person party, but as long as they bill it as a "wine education" event instead of a wedding, they're in the clear. It's not obvious why a person visiting the area for a big "wine education" party is a crucial part of the Napa Valley economy, but that same person visiting to watch his friends or family pledge to have and hold is somehow ruining the atmosphere.
Napa's winery wedding ban doesn't seem to be going anywhere soon. Local wineries have tried for years to change the ordinance, and have always failed. In fact, as recently as 2010, the Board made the restrictions even tighter.
via @adamkissel
Probable Cause Is So 1789
That's the date James Madison introduced the Fourth Amendment in Congress.
The Tacoma police are having none of that. Merely existing with your cellphone in use is enough to get swept up in their giant data suck.
Kate Martin writes in the Tacoma News-Tribune:
The Tacoma Police Department apparently has bought -- and quietly used for six years -- controversial surveillance equipment that can sweep up records of every cellphone call, text message and data transfer up to a half a mile away.You don't have to be a criminal to be caught in this law enforcement snare. You just have to be near one and use a cellphone.
Known as Stingray, the device -- small enough to be carried in a car -- tricks cellphones into thinking it's a cell tower and draws in their information.
News that the city was using the surveillance equipment surprised City Council members, who approved an update for a device last year, and prosecutors, defense attorneys and even judges, who in court deal with evidence gathered using the surveillance equipment.
...The devices are indiscriminate in the information they collect, and that bothers civil libertarians.
"They are essentially searching the homes of innocent Americans to find one phone used by one person," said Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist with the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington, D.C. "It's like they're kicking down the doors of 50 homes and searching 50 homes because they don't know where the bad guy is."
City Manager T.C. Broadnax said he does not know the specifics of what the police department bought. But he believes the department "adequately briefed the City Council on the particulars of what we were buying and how and when they would use it under certain circumstances."
"I'm not in law enforcement, but it's my impression that it assists them in doing their job more effectively, and that's to protect the public," Broadnax said.
Newsflash, Buttnax -- you don't protect the public by yanking away civil liberties.
That Awful "Moralistic Language Used To Describe Al Quaeda ... After The 9/11 Attacks"
Professor Michael J. Boyle writes in The New York Times -- incredibly -- to chastise us for our mean language about Al Qaeda and other Islam-driven fundamentalist death cults:
PHILADELPHIA -- The beheading of American journalist James Foley by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, has rightly provoked global condemnation of the insurgent group and its horrific tactics. Yet it has also led to a disturbing return of the moralistic language once used to describe Al Qaeda in the panicked days after the 9/11 attacks.In an eerie echo of President George W. Bush's description of the global war on terrorism as a campaign against "evildoers," President Obama described ISIS as a "cancer" spreading across the Middle East that had "no place in the 21st century." Secretary of State John Kerry condemned ISIS as the face of a "savage" and "valueless evil," while Britain's prime minister, David Cameron, called the group "barbaric."
They behead James Foley as easily as most of us step out for a latte. Yeah, that's "savage" and "barbaric" and, yes, "evil."
Boyle favors more of a Barbie's Dream House (with Burkas and beheadings) view of ISIS:
Unlike Al Qaeda, whose dreams of forming a caliphate were little more than mysticism and hyperbole, ISIS now occupies large swaths of Syria and Iraq, administering social services and running rudimentary Shariah courts in its claimed Islamic State. In other words, it operates less like a revolutionary terrorist movement that wants to overturn the entire political order in the Middle East than a successful insurgent group that wants a seat at that table.
Yes, poor dears...just a "successful insurgent group that wants a seat at that table."
And about those Shariah courts, Dave Urbanski at The Blaze writes:
"These militants will return us and our country hundreds of years backwards," Umm Mohammed, a 35-year-old teacher, told AFP, "and their laws are the opposite of the laws of human rights and international laws."
...They decreed in a 16-point document the prohibition of the selling and consumption of alcohol and drugs, smoking, carrying weapons, and gatherings. In addition, women are ordered to wear non-revealing clothes and keep to their homes -- and "shrines" are to be destroyed. In fact all depictions of people are considered idolatrous under their extreme interpretation of Islam, and gunmen have removed some statues from the city, including those of famous poets.
Schmoopie
Linkie with an even dumber name.
"Je Vous Écoute": Well, Not From A Phone Booth In Paris, You're Not
End of an era in Paris -- the last of the phone booths are carted off. Photo by E. Tarr.
"Je vous écoute" -- "I'm listening to you" -- was the answering machine message of a guy I dated for a while in Paris. Love the brief outgoing messages. I quote my painter friend Max Ferguson's in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck": "Machine, beep, etcetera."
I met Max back when I was living in New York. I called a wrong number -- Max's number -- thought he sounded interesting, and kept talking.
10 Acts Of Jihad In America That Americans Haven't Heard About
From Robert Spencer at JihadWatch. Here's one:
5. Florida: Muslim who threatened "2nd 911″ found guilty of terror chargesIn mid-June, a Tampa Muslim named Sami Osmakac was convicted of plotting to bomb a Tampa bar and then blow himself up in a jihad-martyrdom suicide attack in another crowded area of the city. Osmakac said of non-Muslims: "We will go after every one of them, their kindergartens, their shopping centers, their nightclubs, their police stations, their courthouses and everything until we have an Islamic state the whole world."
Sura 9:5 from the Quran:
And when the sacred months have passed, then kill the polytheists wherever you find them and capture them and besiege them and sit in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they should repent, establish prayer, and give zakah, let them [go] on their way. Indeed, Allah is Forgiving and Merciful.
The ridiculousness is our notion that we will stop the jihad commanded by Islam by repurposing Cinnabon workers, dressing them up in faux cop uniforms, and stationing them at airports to feel us up and violate our Fourth Amendment rights.
As I write here:
If the TSA's actual mission were its stated one - "protect(ing) the Nation's transportation systems" - checkpoints wouldn't be staffed by low-wage, unskilled workers, and they wouldn't be searching everyone. They certainly wouldn't be waiting until terrorists get to the airport to root them out. Meaningful measures to thwart terrorist acts require highly trained law enforcement officers using targeted intelligence to identify suspects long before they launch their plots.
No More Hugs
Randye Hoder writes in the LA Times about the new rules for camp counselors; they basically amount to "Don't go anywhere near the children!"
He quotes Karen Goldberg, director of youth and family programs at a local YMCA:
Times have changed. There are more lawsuits, more claims of sexual harassment and abuse. We have to be really careful.
From Hoder's piece:
"Don't hug the campers." That was among a handful of things that my 16-year-old son, Nathaniel, was told when he volunteered this summer at our local YMCA. Oh, and also, "Don't let any kids sit on your lap."He had signed up to help shepherd and supervise a gaggle of 7- and 8-year-olds from the swimming pool to the arts and crafts studio to the playground to the basketball court.
Since everyone knows that kids naturally like to give and get hugs, Nathaniel was presented the directive to refrain with a visual demonstration. The director of the camp showed him how, if a cute little tyke came running at him with arms wide open in expectation of a hug, he was to pivot so as to be standing sideways toward the camper, put up his hand up and say, "High five!" The "high five," the director explained, was the best way to avoid torso-to-torso contact without hurting the camper's feelings.
... At our Y, the counselor in charge can't go and help her because the camper is now naked. Actually, it is two female counselors who cannot help her because of the rule that says no camper is ever to be left alone with just one. They have to try to talk her back into the suit -- a feat that, as any parent of young children can attest, has roughly the same odds of success as having her try to program a supercomputer. If, ultimately, the counselors have no choice but to lend a hand, they will have to fill out a report and the Y will notify a parent so that no misunderstanding about an inadvertent touch of the tush ensues.
What is most confounding, perhaps, is that we have layered on all this caution even though our kids are no more in danger now than they ever were.
Oopsy
Linkie post put up by a tired person who should be all back to life by Wednesday at some point.
Empty Shelly
I accidentally posted this on my blog instead of in "Columns," but I'll leave it up here. (Deadline day! Tired!)
My girlfriend of a year is really pretty and sweet, and we love all the same outdoor activities. However, I feel there's a ceiling on our connection because she lacks a strong personality of her own. Whenever we discuss something to do, she defers to me. Also, I care deeply about politics and ideas, but she doesn't read newspapers or books or develop her own opinions. Two days ago, I asked about something we'd just heard on the news, and she basically parroted my opinion back to me. I pressed her, saying, "But what do YOU think?" She couldn't answer. This led to my suggesting that maybe she needs to see a therapist to learn to open up more. She was pretty offended, and we haven't talked much since.
--Politically Concerned
When you say to your girlfriend "So, what are your thoughts on the Middle East?" you'd rather she didn't respond, "Like, you mean, Philadelphia?"
It is nice that you both enjoy the same outdoor activities. Having shared interests can sometimes be essential. For example, a guy who lives to sail would find it a downer to date me. As I wrote in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck," I have motion sickness issues, "which is to say I get carsick on any street with more than five turns in it -- for example, the winding mountain roads of Washington, DC."
But barring an obsessive attachment by one partner to a sport that, say, makes the other hurl her insides into the ocean for days, people put too much emphasis on having a lot of interests in common. You just need to have enough in common. And in addition to physical chemistry, you need to have what I call a crush on your partner as a human being. This means having respect and admiration for them and a sense of excitement about who they are and how they go about life. Respect is the opposite of contempt -- the sneering disgust for a partner that marriage researcher John Gottman finds is the biggest predictor a couple will divorce. And unfortunately, respect is also the antithesis of what you, as a guy who cares about politics, have for a woman whose favorite Supreme Court justice is probably Judge Judy.
The reality is, your girlfriend isn't going to lean back on some therapist's couch and find her opinion between the pillows -- at least not any time soon. Chances are, she has little innate curiosity and has maybe spent much of her life under the mistaken impression that you can keep a man by keeping mum and nodding yes. In the future, when you meet a woman, instead of just taking stock of all the reasons you'd work as a couple, look for reasons you wouldn't -- like if her peers as political thinkers appear to be your hamster and the paperweight that fell behind your desk. A woman who's right for you will take your thoughts, political and otherwise, and run with them and sometimes bring back something better -- making you better for being with her instead of making you suspect her skull contains only a goldfish swimming around a little castle and a couple of plastic plants.
"I Hope You Stop Giving Out Horribly Sexist Advice!"
This question below from my column is just in papers now and won't appear on my site for a while, but check out what a horrified female reader finds "sexist" -- advice intended to (gasp!) protect men from deceptive women leading them into unwanted fatherhood.
That question from my column and my response:
Hot To TotIs there a way to make sure someone is on birth control? My girlfriend says she is, but I don't believe her. I know she really wants to have a baby. I'm not ready to be a father yet -- or maybe ever -- so I need to get to the bottom of this.
--Worried
You're perhaps more of an adoption man -- into adopting the sort of little rascal you can leave tied to a parking meter during brunch without anybody calling social services on you. Unfortunately, a man has limited control over whether a woman he's with gets a bun in the oven with his DNA baked into it -- that is, unless he gets snipped or padlocks his zipper and chucks the key in the ocean. Of course, the single worst form of birth control is trusting that a woman -- especially a woman longing for a baby -- is actually taking or using hers. A mitigating factor is whether she's shown herself to be ethical. Consider whether that describes your girlfriend. If not, you might want to make that a requirement for any partner of yours -- before you find yourself reading "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" aloud for the 300th time in a week, as it's the only way to keep your toddler from screaming like a goat being slaughtered.
Here are a few of the woman's sneers and impressive leaps to conclusions (BC is "birth control") :
•Really ... Trusting women to take their own BC is the WORST BC option?•A man has tons of options to protect himself from accidental pregnancies, putting the onus on the woman is abhorrent
•Many? MANY? Right, we're all baby-hungry immoral, unethical hopeful breeders
•"A man has limited control over whether a woman he's with gets a bun in the oven with his DNA baked into it" absolutely false.
She did offer the absolutely brilliant suggestion that men wear condoms.
The reality is, condoms shouldn't be sole form of birth control for man unprepared to be called "Daddy," as women have been known to defeat (save the condom, turkeybaste).
And if I had a son, I'd sure counsel him about the possibility this could be done to him -- same as I'd counsel him to watch his wallet when he gets on the Paris subway line I think of as "The Pickpocket Special."
Is this "sexist"? No, but now people accuse others of sexism whenever they don't rubberstamp the feminist party line that women can do no wrong and men (who haven't been coopted into feminist victimthink) are all giant warring turds with a penis.
An article on "sperm theft."
A paper and another that you need journal access to read in full.
UPDATE: I couldn't remember where I read the study on this -- but I'm off deadline and have found it. It was by Melinda Spohn -- "Risking pregnancy for "Mr. Right": unintended pregnancy and female mating preferences" -- and I heard her present at the Human Behavior and Evolution Society conference in 2006, and Robert Franklin writes about it here:
Melinda Spohn, a social worker and researcher at Spokane Falls Community College in Washington, decided to study why so many of her clients told her that their pregnancies were unplanned, despite the variety of easily available birth control.Some of the women admitted that they had not used birth control with guys who had appealing characteristics. To determine whether such behavior is widespread, Spohn surveyed nearly 400 women at two community colleges. More than a third of women said they had risked pregnancy in the past with men who had attractive qualities--such as commitment to the relationship, good financial prospects or the desire for a family--but hadn't discussed the possibility of pregnancy with their partner. It was unclear how many women actually became pregnant.
Franklin adds:
Now, it seems clear that this is far from a definitive study. The women chosen were enrolled at one of two community colleges, meaning that they don't represent the universe of all women in the United States, all sexually active women or even all female college enrollees. But what the study strongly suggests is the need for more research into exactly what Spohn inquired about - what percentage of sexually-active women sometimes lie about their use of birth control in order to become pregnant by a man they deem a good candidate?That's Question One. For me, Question Two would involve just how they go about convincing the man not to protect himself against fathering a child he doesn't want. Again, of what exactly do those communications consist? And what do the men think when they're told "I'm on the pill?" Do they believe her unequivocally? Do they have reservations?
Whatever the precise answers to those questions are, what Spohn's findings strongly suggest is that it's extremely common for women to either lie or mislead about using birth control for the purpose of conceiving a child.
Oh, The Raw, Unbridled Sexuality Of A Dancing Teletubby
A University of Missouri frat was accused of sexual harassment and reported to Title IX coordinator over a dancing Teletubby. Bacon posts at totalfratmove:
Thankfully, presumably due to the fact that Mizzou's Title IX coordinator has common sense and eyeballs, nothing in the video was determined to be harassment and Delt was let off scot-free.
Yeah, it's sooo hot:
Check out the coordinator's letter saying what will not be permitted at the university -- well, that would be pretty much any forms of free thought, free speech, and humor...well, anything that's more suggestive than a "Why did the chicken cross the road?" joke.
I would venture that a "healthy learning and working environment" involves a full set of constitutionally protected free speech rights.
(Oh, aren't I the old-fashioned one!)
via @cl_kitchens
"TV Producer In Beverly Hills For Pre-Emmys Event Arrested For Being Tall, Bald And Black"
Juliet Bennett Rylah posts at LAist:
In yet another case of "walking while black," a film and TV producer recently told his tale of being held for six hours by Beverly Hills police while attending a pre-Emmys event because he looked like a burglary suspect.Charles Belk, 51, writes in a Facebook post that he was on his way to check his parking meter last Friday in Beverly Hills when he was detained. Earlier he had been handling celebrity talent at a Emmy Awards Gifting Suite, and he was planning on heading to a VIP Emmy pre-party later that night. He was walking from a restaurant on Wilshire Boulevard to his car, parked on La Cienega Boulevard at about 5:20 p.m. when it happened. He is grateful that he didn't look even more "suspicious" at the time, "In fact, if it wasn't for a text message that I was responding to, I would have actually been running up LaCienega Blvd when the first Beverly Hills Police Officer approached me. Running!"
He said he was surrounded by six police cars, then made to sit on the curb. He was handcuffed and searched, then transported to the Beverly Hills station. He was booked, accused taking part in the armed robbery at a Citibank location and couldn't leave without $100,000 bail. He said his car was impounded, he was denied a phone call and wasn't given a very good explanation as to why he was being held.
Let's say the guy looked like the bank robber's cousin. There's no justification for holding him without checking to see whether he actually was the guy on the tape -- as soon as possible.
We need to take taking away someone freedom extremely seriously. Police officers often don't. The fact that this is easy for them to do -- just let an innocent man sit, handcuffed on the curb, like a trussed up chicken, and then ignore the man for hours while he sat in jail -- is not reason for it to be allowed.
More from Belk:
I get that the Beverly Hills Police Department didn't know that just hours earlier, I was at one of the finest hotels in their city, handling celebrity talent at a Emmy Awards Gifting Suite, as part of business as usual, and, invited to attend a VIP Emmy pre-party that very night in their city. The guy doing that, just DON"T fit the description.What I don't get.........WHAT I DON"T GET, is, why, during the 45 minutes that they had me on the curb, handcuffed in the sun, before they locked me up and took away my civil rights, that they could not simply review the ATM and bank's HD video footage to clearly see that the "tall, bald headed, black male"... did not fit MY description.
Why, at 11:59pm (approximately 6 hours later), was the video footage reviewed only after my request to the Lead Detective for the Beverly Hills Police Department and an FBI Agent to do so, and, after being directly accused by another FBI Special Agent of "...going in and out of the bank several times complaining about the ATM Machine to cause a distraction..." thereby aiding in the armed robbery attempt of a bank that I never heard of, or ever been to; and within 10 minutes......10 MINUTES, my lawyer was told that I was being release because it was clear that it was not me.
The sad thing is, prior to my freedom being taken from me for an easily proven crime I did not commit, I was walking back to my car, by myself, because I needed to check my parking meter, so that I wouldn't get a ticket and break the law.
...I want to thank GOD, Robin Lola Harrison of the NAACP Hollywood Bureau, Robert Dowdy and Attorney Jaaye Person-Lynn, without whom, I am certain that I would still be locked up in the custody of the Beverly Hills Police Department. Based on comments made by a Beverly Hills Police Officer during my booking, and an FBI Special Agent, it appeared that they had tried and convicted me.
And Jaaye Person-Lynn wrote on Facebook:
My Friday Night: After months of anticipation, Tiffany Townend and Jovan Blacknell's wedding was finally here.As they were reciting their vows, I get a call from William Syms which I responded to via text. He told me he needed my services ASAP for a friend.
During the recessional, I contacted the friend, Robin, who told me, Charles Belk, had just been falsely arrested for bank robbery. Understanding the seriousness of the accusations and after handling the business side, I tell my girl I have to leave, and she agrees to go with me.
We put our drinks from the open bar down,(I had Hennessey Privilege, you know Tiff only serves that good stuff.) and rushed to the Beverly Hills police station. I let the secretary know I was there to see Mr. Belk, and the lieutenant comes out to tell me it will be a second.
After about 10 minutes I ask for the lieutenant again and remind him my client has a right to see his attorney immediately since the lieutenant confirmed my client was in fact arrested for Bank Robbery and Conspiracy to commit a bank robbery, and had a $100k bail. He goes back in.
After another almost 30 minutes I demand the lieutenant let me see Mr. Belk immediately and remind him PC 825(b) makes it a misdemeanor for him to willfully keep me from my client. (Thanks Fred Dorton for hipping me to that).
At this point, my voice is raising and my patience is completely worn. Mind you, my girl is in the car by herself, and we planned on eating dinner at the wedding so we hadn't eaten anything and by this point it's about 10:30pm.
Finally, the jailer comes out, wonds me for any metal objects and takes me to an interview room. Then she gives a bogus reason why my client couldn't come immediately.
The detective walks in and let's me know they're going to review the video. My client walks in the attorney room, the phones aren't working so we're yelling through the glass. I'm in full attorney mode and getting his story from about 3 hours before the arrest on some stationary I borrowed from the secretary.
During the interview, the detectives come back and say they reviewed the tape and the guy they were looking for wasn't my client. Go figure. This is a bit after 11pm.
I assure his release and get back to the car to find my girl sleep and hungry. I apologize to her but she states she understands the life of a Super Hero. Lol.
It was upsetting leaving a Beautiful wedding of two good friends, but they're defense attorneys so they'll understand.
What made it all worth it is that Mr. Belk slept in his bed that night. (If he got any sleep).
Linklier
Wouldn't it be linkerly?
Dhimmi And Dhimmier: The Insensitive Mention Of Bacon In A Public Place
First, Wikipedia on "dhimmitude":
The concept of "dhimmitude" was introduced into Western discourse by the writer Bat Ye'or in a French-language article published in the Italian journal La Rassegna mensile di Israel in 1983. In Bat Ye'or's use, "dhimmitude" refers to allegations of non-Muslims appeasing and surrendering to Muslims, and discrimination against non-Muslims in Muslim majority regions.
The latest example of this is the removal of a restaurant's sign merely mentioning the word bacon after a Muslim woman complained. (Video, live at the link, is autoplay, so I only posted a screenshot.) 
The fact that you don't participate in some behavior or eating habit by others in a free society do isn't reason to shut down the mere mention of it as a great offense to your religious beliefs.
In fact, the possibility that free speech will offend you is one of the problems of living in a free society.
If this is a problem for you, there are plenty of repressive religious regimes across the globe where you'd surely be more comfortable.
Of course, as long as businesses and others capitulate to ridiculous "controversies" like this one, there will be more and more of them.
You Pee On My Fence?
YouTube! (I really, really want these signs at the link, especially the bottom one.)
If you are not a farm animal and there is a bathroom available (which there is for the bar patrons near me), use it. Otherwise, you make my neighborhood smell like a giant men's bathroom when it rains.
Oh, there is the occasional woman. My friend A, when spotting a woman pulling her panties down and watering her flowers, took the hose to her.
Photo I blogged and then put in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck": 
I also include a solution -- shown to work in UCLA and UK studies (though not exactly on this subject) that you can use to stop people from leaving unscooped dog poop on your lawn or front walk.
"One Nation's Flirting Is Another Nation's Motivation To Use Pepper Spray"
Advice for Russians traveling in the US, reported by Therese Oneill at Mental Floss:
2. ON TALKING TO AMERICAN WOMENThe short version: American women are a little uptight. They might call the cops if you look at them too long. And don't be gallant, that creeps them out.
"US etiquette prohibits flirting with a woman who is not your girlfriend or wife. If you are not acquainted with a woman, whether she be in a restaurant, on the street, or on the subway, do not look at her legs, etc. Americans could easily call the police on you, even for just ogling her." (Этикет США)"Welcome and introductions: men and women tend to shake hands. Mutual kissing and kissing ladies' hands is not accepted. Also, women play a greater role in business. Often they insist to be treated exactly as an equal and not as a lady. In this regard, it is not acceptable to be excessively gallant, and you should avoid personal questions (do not find out whether she is married). (Национальные особенности этикета в США)
College Men Getting The Message: Have As Little Contact With College Women As Possible
You've come a long way, baby -- and then gone all the way back and then some.
Ashe Schow writes in the Wash Ex about the fallout from the campus sexual assault hysteria:
Thanks to an increased focus on sexual assaults on college campuses - mostly due to an overblown statistic claiming 20 percent of college women have been sexually assaulted - young college men are starting to rethink how they talk to women.At first glance that might seem like a good thing - men learning to be more respectful of women and not be so rapey - but that's not what this is.
This is about men actually avoiding contact with women because they're afraid a simple kiss or date could lead to a sexual assault accusation.
Bloomberg reporters John Lauerman and Jennifer Surane interviewed multiple men from colleges like Harvard and Stanford who expressed concern over what was once known as a "hook-up culture" but is now labeled by feminists as "rape culture." The change in terminology ensures that all responsibility is placed on men, just because of their gender.
Take Malik Gill of Harvard University, who said he wouldn't even give a female classmate a beer.
"I don't want to look like a predator," Gill told Bloomberg. "It's a little bit of a blurred line."
This is the environment the lack of due process for men has led to:
William Pollack, a Harvard Medical School psychologist, told the Bloomberg reporters about a patient who was kissing a girl during a party and began thinking about what would happen if things went further."'I want to go to law school or medical school after this,'" the student said, according to Pollack. "'I said to her, it's been nice seeing you.'"
Pollack also noted that the media attention to campus sexual assault has led to a "witch-hunt" mentality.
"Most males would never do anything to harm a young woman," Pollack told the Bloomberg reporters. But the current focus is "starting to scare the heck out of the wrong people."
From the comments:
thewlyno / Isaac T
Remember, when men drink they are predators, when women drink they are unaccountable victims
Another:
James Dean
I also find it ironic that feminists who fought for female sexual choice, including the right to engage in drunken hookups, would now like to put the responsibility for the mutual drunken hookup entirely onto the male. He must now take into consideration not just what she wants now, but also what is really good for her in the long run, because in his drunken state he is better able to make decisions for her than she is in her drunken state. It is his job to recognize her vulnerability, to save her from her disinhibition, and to guide her with his greater wisdom into proper chastity. This used to be called patriarchy.
Another:
2Tim316
It's the same in the work environment. We're walking on eggshells and worry every day that a gesture or comment can be misconstrued as sexual harassment and boom we are on the street presumed guilty with no recourse for due process. It happens too often. I refuse to have any intimate relationship with any work associate, much less acknowledge any female that I cross paths with in the halls. It is too dangerous.
As I've written before, women used to demand to be treated as equals; now they demand to be treated like eggshells.
Count me out.
Linkerlicious
Dark 'n' lovely.
Advice Goddess Radio ("Best Of"), Tonight, 7-8 pm PT, 10-11 pm ET: Peg Streep On The Science On Mindful Quitting To Get Ahead In Love, Work, And Life
"Best Of" replay this week, but back with live shows next Sunday and beyond!
Catch the detail on this show at the link below -- on which you can also listen to it from 7-8 pm PT, 10-11pm ET. (Or you can listen afterward at the link or download the podcast.)
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2014/08/25/peg-streep-the-science-on-mindful-quitting-to-get-ahead-in-love-work-and-life
I Miss Porny Toweling
I miss the old Mr. Brawny, by way of Tom of Finland, who's been thrown over for the new suburban dad-ized version.
Ebola's Back Door To America
Bushmeat -- sold in stores in communities of expat Africans, like those in New York. Gerard Flynn and Susan Scutti write at Newsweek:
Three other agencies are responsible for enforcing import restrictions, according to the FWS: "Bushmeat as meat is also regulated on import by the Food and Drug Administration (from a human health perspective), Centers for Disease Control (from a human health and primate perspective) and USDA (from an agricultural perspective concerned with animal diseases)." Customs, which works under the Department of Homeland Security, is responsible for coordinating these four agencies. The inadequate enforcement could be a function of this diffusion of responsibility, or there might be "questions about what exactly is legal and what is not," says Blom. In other words, customs agents may simply not recognize what they are looking at when encountering bushmeat."I've seen bushmeat being brought into the U.S. in basically big suitcases of smoked meat or coolers brought on planes," says Blom.
Back in the Bronx, Appiah confirms that plenty of the stuff gets past the gatekeepers. "Immigration in America is trying to control it...but always they find a way of bringing [bushmeat] in here," he told Newsweek in his thick accent, adding, "It's all around."
In California, they confiscated the lone saucisson (dry Italian sausage) Gregg mistakenly packed in his luggage when we flew back from Paris. (I learned he had it there while we were coming home on the plane; I know you can't bring in meat or fruits and vegetables to California and told him to declare it -- there are signs at LAX warning of a $10K fine if you don't and get caught.)
It's a hallmark of how ineffective government is at protecting us from anything that this meat gets into our country -- meat that is not from a pig slaughtered in France and turned into a sausage (quite safe!) but meat that could cause a horrible, deadly epidemic here in the USA.
Well, to be fair, government does a bang up job at protecting us from keeping all that hard-earned money they yank away from us with taxes.
The Date-Rape Drug Myth
This is a 2009 article I never saw -- just read it now thanks to a @CHSommers tweet.
A 2009 study by Dr. Adam Burgess in the British Journal of Criminology suggests that drink spiking with Rohypnol and GHB exists mainly as an urban legend, reports Stephen Adams at Telegraph/UK:
Among young people, drink spiking stories have attractive features that could "help explain" their disproportionate loss of control after drinking alcohol, the study found.Dr. Burgess said: "Our findings suggest guarding against drink spiking has also become a way for women to negotiate how to watch out for each other in an environment where they might well lose control from alcohol consumption."
Co-researcher Dr. Sarah Moore said: "We would be very interested in finding out whether the urban myth of spiking is also the result of parents feeling unable to discuss with their adult daughters how to manage drinking and sex and representing their anxieties about this through discussion of drink spiking risks."
Nick Ross, chair of the Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science, commented: "There is no evidence of widespread use of hypnotics in sexual assault, let alone Rohypnol, despite many attempts to prove the contrary.
"During thousands of blood and alcohol tests lots of judgement-impairing compounds were discovered, but they were mostly street drugs or prescription pharmaceuticals taken by the victims themselves, and above all alcohol was the common theme.
"As Dr. Burgess observes, it is not scientific evidence which keeps the drug rape myth alive but the fact that it serves so many useful functions."
Dr. Burgess and his team questioned more than 200 students at universities in London and south east England.
Earlier this year, Australian researchers found that not one of 97 young men and women admitted to hospital over 19 months to two Perth hospital claiming to have had their drinks spiked, had in fact been drugged.
Too bad nobody's invented myth-detecting nail polish.
Minx
Think minx. Link pink.
Henry Rollins On Parental Suicide, And Then Henry Rollins' Apology For What He Wrote
Rollins writes in the LA Weekly:
I simply cannot understand how any parent could kill themselves.How in the hell could you possibly do that to your children? I don't care how well adjusted your kid might be -- choosing to kill yourself, rather than to be there for that child, is every shade of awful, traumatic and confusing. I think as soon as you have children, you waive your right to take your own life. No matter what mistakes you make in life, it should be your utmost goal not to traumatize your kids. So, you don't kill yourself.
I know some people will disagree. And I get that you can't understand anyone else's torment. All that "I feel your pain" stuff is bullshit and disrespectful. You can appreciate it, listen and support someone as best you can, but you can't understand it. Depression is so personal and so unique to each of us that when you're in its teeth, you think you invented it. You can understand your own, but that's it. When you are severely depressed, it can be more isolating than anything else you have ever experienced. In trying to make someone understand, you can only speak in approximation. You are truly on your own.
...A few years ago, a guy I'd known for many years hanged himself in a basement. Weeks later, I went to the spot and picked up bits of plastic coating from the cord he used, which were on the floor after he was cut down. I liked the guy, but all I could think of then is all I can think of now -- the drawings his kids had made that were pasted up on the walls of his kitchen.
One of the comments at LA Weekly -- from Eric Hill:
Dear Doctor Rollins, it was indeed enlightening to read your piece on suicide. Clearly you have extensive experience in the field and are more than qualified to speak on such matters. Your compassion, understanding, and insights are an invaluable asset to both the psychiatric community and to those of us who suffer from clinical depression. As someone who has struggled with it for years, I especially appreciate your condemnation of those who choose to shirk their responsibilities for the easy way out. This echoes the extremely helpful canard that "suicide is a selfish act." Gosh, I wish people who were suicidal would just give you a call so you could share your "fuck suicide" therapy with them. Perhaps you could write a self-help book called, "Get Over It, Pussy!" or "Only Losers Kill Themselves."Also, since depression is a disease that most of us can't simply "snap out of," may I suggest you write another paper entitled: "Fuck Wheelchairs"? I think those who find them necessary are merely weak individuals who could benefit from your wise and encouraging advice...
Another -- from Clare Holzer:
Don't blame the victim of a disease for dying of one of its side affects. Would you be angry if a cancer patient died of cancer? Instead of saying "Fuck Suicide" maybe think about saying, "Find a Cure for Depression"
Rollins apologized for the LA Weekly piece on his site:
The article I wrote in the LA Weekly about suicide caused a lot of hurt. This is perhaps one of the bigger understatements of all time. I read all the letters. Some of them were very long and the disappointment, resentment and ringing clarity was jarring.That I hurt anyone by what I said, and I did hurt many, disgusts me. It was not at all my intent but it most certainly was the result.
I have had a life of depression. Some days are excruciating. Knowing what I know and having been through what I have, I should have known better but I obviously did not. I get so mad when I hear that someone has died this way. Not mad at them, mad at whatever got them there and that no one magically appeared to somehow save them.
I am not asking for a break from the caning, take me to the woodshed as much as you see fit. If what I said has caused you to be done with me, I get it.
I wrote something for the LA Weekly that they will post on Monday.
America, Land Of The Dumbasses
ISIS, the Boston-based, now-disbanded rock group is being mistaken for the terrorist group.
ABC's Sarah Figalora writes:
Though the band is no longer together, the ex-members are being flooded with threats from individuals who believe them to be associated with the Islamic terrorist group, which recently claimed responsibility for beheading American journalist James Foley. The group has also slaughtered Christians, Yazidis and other Muslims who aren't members of the Sunni Islamic sect."It certainly caught us off guard," Aaron Harris, the band's drummer, told ABC News.
"Just like our fans, we've been watching the news in disbelief," Harris added. "We haven't commented on it because we haven't been an active band since 2010, even though our music does live on. We maintain our Facebook page to keep people up-to-date on our current musical projects."
The name of the band's official Facebook page was changed from "ISIS" to "Isis the band," potentially as a way to distance themselves.
via @edmorrissey
Survivors Will Be Shot Twice
Armed 73-year-old woman goes badass on intruder -- one who Fox Carolina reports attacked another woman in the home with a baseball bat.
Jason Howerton writes at The Blaze:
The woman, who was home alone at the time, then retrieved her handgun and called 911."Sir, they are in my house now," the woman is heard telling a 911 dispatcher.
After a period of silence, apparent gunshots ring out and unintelligible screaming can be heard in the audio.
"Get out of my home!" the woman screams at the intruder. "Get out now -- while you're still alive!"
"OK, I'll get out," the intruder responds, seemingly terrified. "I'm getting out."
Linkumulus
Cloudy links.
Labor Day Savings
Fifty to 70 percent off all sorts of fashions -- shoes, clothes, jewelry -- until September 1, at Amazon
"But Where Would I Buy The Ribbons?"
My boyfriend, Gregg Sutter, who was crime novelist Elmore Leonard's researcher for 33 years, has a wonderful little post up at ElmoreLeonard.com about Elmore's bemusement over technology:
I miss Elmore all the time, but especially when the subject is technology.He didn't believe in computers. The Easter Bunny and Santa Clause, ok, but not computers.
He told his friend and author, Andre Dubus, one time that somebody told him that he could write faster with a word processor. Andre got a big kick out of that. Elmore said, "Why would I want to write faster?" From time to time, he'd ask me questions, like how did they get all that information into the computer (meaning the Internet?) Invariably, my technical answer about ones and zeros would not satisfy him, or be something he could not picture. Finally I said, there had a room full of monkeys typing everything in. (cont'd)...
Even-Funnier-Than-Usual Southwest Air Video
Loved this.
Don't miss the big section on airplane manners in Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck.
It Seems The Israelis Aren't Helpless Or Dead Enough To Be Sympathetic
There's an LA Times op-ed about Israel's missile defense system (intercepting and destroying incoming rockets and artillery shells), "Should Israel and the U.S. rethink Iron Dome's usefulness?" by Benny Morris:
Strategically speaking, the Iron Dome antimissile shield, precisely because of its effectiveness, has been disastrous for Israel: It has saved Hamas from destruction and it has helped to seriously undermine Israel's image as a civilized state in the eyes of many in the West.During the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict, Iron Dome has efficiently protected Israel from massive damage and casualties. Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the other terrorist organizations operating in the Gaza Strip had launched 2,648 rockets against Israel, and that was before a temporary cease-fire was broken Tuesday. Most fell in empty fields. The 600-odd rockets that had accurately targeted towns and villages were almost all successfully intercepted by Iron Dome's Tamir missiles -- a nearly 90% success rate, according to the Israel Defense Forces.
The civilian death toll in Israel consisted of only two citizens and a Thai guest worker. Had there been no Iron Dome, dozens, perhaps hundreds, of civilians would have been killed; buildings would have fallen. Civilian Israel would have ground to a halt.
No Israeli government could withstand the public pressure that this would have unleashed: The government would have been forced to quickly launch a massive ground invasion of Gaza ...
If there had been a massive IDF ground invasion, within two or three months Gaza's towns and villages would have been cleared, house by house, of Hamas fighters. Hamas, and its fellow organizations, would have been destroyed as a military and political force. Israel would have been relieved, for a decade or two, of the need to worry about a southern front; the Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas would have been free, or freer, to cut a deal with Israel; and the destruction of Hamas would have sent a clear message about Israeli resolve and capabilities to all its actual or potential enemies (I include Islamic State, fast-approaching Israel's eastern frontier, among the latter).
...If there were footage of shattered buildings in Tel Aviv, and the dead and dying lying in the streets of the coastal cities of Ashdod and Ashkelon, few around the world would condemn Israel for a massive air and ground assault against a palpably murderous Hamas, with the aim of destroying it. Over the months needed to pacify and demilitarize Gaza, no doubt protests would emerge. But the protests would have been less strident than they are today. Israel would weather the international indignation far better; Israel would be better understood.
Aw, how sweet. Just lie down and die and the world will think so much better of you.
Saudi Arabia Is Rivaling ISIS For Beheadings
From Human Rights Watch, "19 Beheaded in 17 Days; 8 for Nonviolent Offenses":
(Beirut) - Saudi Arabia has executed at least 19 people since August 4, 2014. Local news reports indicate that eight of those executed were convicted of nonviolent offenses, seven for drug smuggling and one for sorcery.Family members of another man, Hajras bin Saleh al-Qurey, told Human Rights Watch on August 17 that they fear his execution is imminent. The Public Court of Najran, in southern Saudi Arabia, sentenced al-Qurey to death by beheading on January 16, 2013 for allegedly smuggling drugs and attacking a police officer during his arrest.
"Any execution is appalling, but executions for crimes such as drug smuggling or sorcery that result in no loss of life are particularly egregious," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director. "There is simply no excuse for Saudi Arabia's continued use of the death penalty, especially for these types of crimes."
I wonder if our last president asked about that on one of their dates?
Ylinka
My pet ox with HTML.
The Shoes Made Me Do It
Post a link to this, that is. I want those.
May I Pick Your Brain?
Have any of you read books on becoming more confident, getting your life together? What were they and were they helpful or unhelpful (and/or hurl-producing) and why?
To jog your memory or perhaps just spark your comments on such books, here are a few popular ones out there.
(Any comments you have will probably be helpful!)
•Katty Kay and Claire Shipman's book,
•Jen Sincero's book,
•Phil Stutz and Barry Michels' book,
•Brene Brown's book,
•Nathaniel Branden's book, "The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem."
•Augusten Burroughs' book,
Cash Cops
How cops making money from going after petty offenses makes for antagonism between the Ferguson citizens and the police there, from a blog post by Walter Olson at Cato.
He quotes a Newsweek article:
"Despite Ferguson's relative poverty, fines and court fees comprise the second largest source of revenue for the city, a total of 2,635,400," according to the ArchCity Defenders report. And in 2013, the Ferguson Municipal Court issued 24,532 arrest warrants and 12,018 cases, "or about 3 warrants and 1.5 cases per household."
Yes, that's three arrest warrants and 1.5 cases per household. In a single year.
Olson comments:
The town gets nearly a quarter of its municipal revenue from court fees - the figure in some neighboring towns is even higher - and according to the ArchCity Defenders report quoted in Newsweek, Ferguson's municipal court is among the very worst in the way it adds its own hassle factor to the collection of petty fines...In recent years scholars and journalists have been developing a literature on how petty fines and low-level law enforcement can snowball into life-changing consequences for persons not by nature inclined toward criminality...
Olson ends with this:
It seems so random and meaningless that a legal offense as minor as walking on the roadway would set in motion what was to prove the fatal confrontation between officer Darren Wilson and Michael Brown. But in the wider scheme of how Ferguson came to have its problem with policing, it may be neither random nor meaningless.
The Dumbest People In Schools Continue To Be The Administrators
This high school student was suspended and even arrested for using his imagination on a class assignment. Ray Rivera and Sujata Jain write at WCSC:
SUMMERVILLE, SC (WCSC) - A 16-year-old Summerville High School student says he was arrested Tuesday morning and suspended after writing about killing a dinosaur using a gun.Alex Stone said he and his classmates were told in class to write a few sentences about themselves, and a "status" as if it was a Facebook page.
Stone said in his "status" he wrote a fictional story that involved the words "gun" and "take care of business."
"I killed my neighbor's pet dinosaur, and, then, in the next status I said I bought the gun to take care of the business," Stone said.
Stone says his statements were taken completely out of context.
"I could understand if they made him re-write it because he did have "gun" in it. But a pet dinosaur?" said Alex's mother Karen Gray."I mean first of all, we don't have dinosaurs anymore. Second of all, he's not even old enough to buy a gun."
Investigators say the teacher contacted school officials after seeing the message containing the words "gun" and "take care of business," and police were then notified on Tuesday.
Summerville police officials say Stone's bookbag and locker were searched on Tuesday, and a gun was not found.
I used to believe I could fly as a kid. How lucky for me that nobody checked my locker for a plane.
via @DeanEsmay
TSA Scanners: The Usual Government-Think Of "Just Throw Money At It And Hope And Pretend It Works"
The Rapiscan scanners the TSA was using were easily foiled by blogger Jonathan Corbett, and they've been refoiled by a bunch of researchers. Andy Greenberg blogs at WIRED that researches easily slipped weapons past them:
Two years ago, a blogger named Jonathan Corbett published a YouTube video that seemed to show a facepalm-worthy vulnerability in the TSA's Rapiscan full-body X-ray scanners: Because metal detected by the scanners appeared black in the images they created, he claimed that any passenger could hide a weapon on the side of his or her body to render it invisible against the scans' black background. The TSA dismissed Corbett's findings, and even called reporters to caution them not to cover his video.Now a team of security researchers from the University of California at San Diego, the University of Michigan, and Johns Hopkins plans to reveal their own results from months of testing that same model of scanner. And not only did they find that Corbett's weapon-hiding tactic worked; they also found that they could pull off a disturbing list of other possible tricks, such as using teflon tape to conceal weapons against someone's spine, installing malware on the scanner's console that spoofed scans, or simply molding plastic explosives around a person's body to make it nearly indistinguishable from flesh in the machine's images.
The Rapiscan Secure 1000 machines the researchers tested haven't actually been used in airports since last year, when they were replaced by millimeter wave scanners designed to better protect passengers' privacy. But the X-ray scanners are still installed in courthouses, jails, and other government security checkpoints around the country.
More importantly, the glaring vulnerabilities the researchers found in the security system demonstrate how poorly the machines were tested before they were deployed at a cost of more than $1 billion to more than 160 American airports, argues J. Alex Halderman, a University of Michigan computer science professor and one of the study's authors. The findings should raise questions regarding the TSA's claims about its current security measures, too.
"These machines were tested in secret, presumably without this kind of adversarial mindset, thinking about how an attacker would adapt to the techniques being used," says Halderman, who along with the other researchers will present the research at the Usenix Security Conference Thursday. "They might stop a naive attacker. But someone who applied just a bit of cleverness to the problem would be able to bypass them. And if they had access to a machine to test their attacks, they could render their ability to detect contraband virtually useless.
And let's be real about the rest of the "security" the TSA provides: Nobody who is of the caliber where they need a job feeling up people's genitals in airports is going to find anything other than their paycheck and some genital warts.
The Real Link Shady
Emininemineminem and other Detroit-raised homies.
Saying A Big Shaming "Fuck You" To The Economy Of Free And Big Companies Trying To Hop On
There's a story in Adweek by David Griner, "Meet the Hero Designer Who Publicly Shamed Showtime for Asking Him to Work for Free -- How Dan Cassaro's tweet became a rallying cry."
Well, I think people are still lining up to work for free, but I do like that he did this.
Griner:
When Showtime invited Dan Cassaro to join a design "contest" he felt amounted to milking professionals for free work, he let the network--and the world--know how he felt about it.The offer, made to a number of designers, involved promoting the Floyd Mayweather-Marcos Maidana boxing match on Sept. 13. Those who submitted designs for Showtime's use "could be eligible for a chance to win a trip to Las Vegas and have your artwork displayed in the MGM Grand during fight week!," the network told Cassaro in an email.
After sending an email response slathered in sarcasm ("I know that boxing matches in Las Vegas are extremely low-budget affairs"), Cassaro then posted the exchange to Twitter.
It starts, "It is with great sadness that I must decline your enticing offer to work for you for free. I know that boxing matches in Las Vegas are extremely low-budget affairs..."
More from Griner:
In the week since, Cassaro's tweet has become a viral rallying cry for creatives who feel besieged by expectations of free work. It has more than 5,000 retweets and 5,600 favorites, and has become one of the topic's most electrifying moments since Mike Monteiro's "Fuck You Pay Me" speech in 2011.
Griner interviews Cassaro at the Adweek link about what he wrote. One bit:
Has Showtime responded directly to you?
They wrote me a short and very polite email. Honestly, it's less about Showtime and more about these hack crowdsourcing campaigns that certain agencies are selling to them. There are lots of folks doing very cool things with user-generated content, but to ask professionals to compete against each other for potential "exposure" is completely different. It's demeaning, and it lowers the value of everyone's work.
Write If You Want Twerk
A post inspired by Diana Wagman's excellently annoyed LA Review of Books piece, "A Hotel Bel-Air Suite of One's Own."
Rand Paul vs. The Cop Lovers
People see Paul as a nut but his positions are consistent -- and Sullum makes that point in an op-ed.
Jacob Sullum writes in the New York Post:
Running for the US Senate in 2010, Rand Paul became known as that crazy right-winger who expressed reservations about the Civil Rights Act of 1964.But in the past two years, the Kentucky Republican has emerged as his party's most passionate voice on criminal justice reform, explicitly decrying the system's disproportionate impact on African Americans.
You might assume that Paul, widely seen as a contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, is trying to redeem himself with black voters who were alienated by his criticism of the Civil Rights Act.
Yet both positions spring from the same wariness of state power, as illustrated by the senator's recent comments on the over-the-top police response to the unrest that followed the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Mo.
...He is challenging members of his own party to rethink their reflexive support of law enforcement and tough-on-crime policies.
''There is a legitimate role for the police to keep the peace, but there should be a difference between a police response and a military response," Paul wrote in Time last week.
"There is a systemic problem with today's law enforcement," he added, and "big government has been at the heart of the problem," fostering the militarization of police equipment and tactics.
Yes, yes, and yes.
And essential points from Sullum's piece:
The point is not whether Officer Darren Wilson committed a crime when he shot Michael Brown, a question that has yet to be resolved amid conflicting accounts of the incident.The point is that black residents of Ferguson had ample reason to suspect the shooting was not justified and to worry that the official investigation would be rigged in Wilson's favor.
Remembering Elmore "Dutch" Leonard
Because my boyfriend was Elmore Leonard's researcher of 33 years, I was privileged to get to spend some time with him. He was fun as hell, and full of mirth and curiosity, and asked the best questions of people -- the stuff you'd really want to know if you'd thought to ask it.
He died last year on today's date, and I miss him a lot, and Gregg sure does. Here's a photo Gregg took of him standing by his desk: 
Gregg wrote about him:
Elmore "Dutch" Leonard October 11, 1925 - August 20, 2013His friends called him Dutch. Perfect strangers called him Dutch. Some folks called him Elmore. I've called him Dutch and Elmore in the same sentence. Whatever you called him, there he was, the coolest guy in the room, any room.
Here we are hanging out and laughing in his kitchen: 
My favorite Elmore book is Swag
Excerpt from a terrific blog post on Elmore by Jim Shelley:
Leonard loves to put different types together (different races, different types of criminal: different types of talker) then sit back to see what happens."You know from the time they look at one another that one is gonna end up shooting the other. 'Killshot' is a good example of that. A French Canadian/Ojibway Indian (The Blackbird) comes from Toronto to Detroit to shoot somebody and runs into this guy named Richie Nix, a young bank-robber who wants to rob a bank in every state in America except Alaska - 'Fuck Alaska', he says haha."
Leonard's non-judgmental attitude to such low-lifes has lead some critics to assume to feels some sort of sympathy for them, which he denies, saying that he simply grew tired of stories full of "sneering" bad guys who anyone could tell were criminals. What he doesn't do is analyse why they turned bad ("that's boring").
These days, he has a researcher who sends him newspaper stories and then "does the legwork" once an idea is underway - digging round in libraries, scouting out locations, finding information about specific jails or casinos or courtrooms.
"He gets me an aerial photo, sends me something about the weather, stuff like that. He'll find the best bails-bondsmen or homicide detective for me to talk to in the area I wanna write about. Then I go down and get to know him."
He has people, policemen, in Florida or Detroit, he can call if he wants to check something - like "what guns are popular with hitmen right now."
The 'Hush Puppy', a gun developed for culling seals, is one current favourite.
"It has a suppresser on it," says Leonard calmly. "But also the slide on top doesn't rack back to eject when it's fired, so it's absolutely silent."He has talked to criminals in the past for research but "not much though".
"I hear from inmates, yeah. They wanna know if I've done time, if I'm black. Or both. They wanna know how I get into the way they think. I try to explain, 'well it's called imagination. I make it up."
The Government Is "The Onion"
Government so often seems like a parody, and then you realize that, no, it's real, and yes, it's costing eleventy gazillion tax dollars for their latest stupidity.
In this case, it's regulations for onion farmers that will cost $200 million -- but have ZERO benefit.
From NCPA, "FDA Onion Regulation Has No Safety Benefits":
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has proposed a regulation to limit the amount of E. coli in irrigation water for foods that a person might consume raw. That might sound good, writes Jared Meyer of Economics21, except that most onion farmers would be considered out of compliance with the rule, despite the fact that onions are at no risk of being contaminated by E. coli from irrigation.Clinton Shock, a professor at Oregon State University, conducted an assessment of onions and E. coli, determining that E. coli posed no risk to onions, no matter how much E. coli bacteria was found in irrigation water.
...The FDA has also proposed forcing onion farmers to use plastic, instead of wooden, crates, despite research also indicating that wooden crates do not pose an E. coli risk. Replacing 1 million wooden crates with plastic crates, writes Meyer, would cost $200 million. Despite being three times as expensive as a wooden crate, a plastic crate holds only half the weight of a wooden crate. On top of these costs, Meyer notes that transitioning to plastic crates would require remodeling of the buildings where onions are stored, because the crates need more air circulation.
Meyer suggests an "outcome-based" oversight approach, rather than imposing regulation on the front end, by holding farmers accountable for contaminated foods that sicken consumers. Companies understand that producing contaminated food is not a desirable business model. Instead, the FDA is proposing regulations that will only raise the costs of onion production, hurting farmers and consumers.
Original source: Wash Ex's Jared Meyer, "Manhattan Moment: A new layer of regulation would boost cost of onions but not safety."
via @AdamKissel
Linksylanti
Like Ypsilanti, but a little closer to Acid/Lude, aka Alice Lloyd, which happens to be a dorm.
Where Are Your Manners?
Animal behaviorist Jennifer Verdolin just reviewed "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck" on Psychology Today. (The book is only about $10 at Amazon and B&N.)
An excerpt from Verdolin's review:
Speaking of pictures, Alkon gives us a glimpse into just how we can expose (and thus deter) the egregiously rude among us with what she calls "webslapping": posting photos or "PooTube" videos in the neighborhood of those leaving dog droppings on others' lawns.Alkon explains that we need to see rudeness as a form of theft to be able to rise up and speak out to the rude. One example of this is what Alkon explains is the theft of our peace of mind and our attention by the "cellboors" of the world who cram their dull conversations into our brains whether we want to hear them or not.
Other issues Alkon brings up and solves are the theft of our time (and also our peace of mind) by drivers who jam up store parking lot thruways waiting for the closest possible parking spot, the theft of our sleep by apartment residents playing booming music in the wee hours, and the theft of our leg room by storage bin hogs on airplanes. In each situation, Alkon explains what our impulsive reactions to these situations are likely to be and then, turning to behavioral science research, explains what would actually be productive.
All in all, Alkon delivers a bitingly funny and easy-to-relate approach, complete with the occasional funny photo. The ultimate goal of Alkon's book is to make the world a better place for all of us. In her last chapter, titled "Trickle-Down Humanity," she notes, "All it takes to get in the habit of treating people as co-human is making it a habit--daily, or better yet, throughout the day." She explains why this has such a powerful effect on people--especially strangers--we do kind acts for: "We feel a deep need to matter."
Verdolin and I also just did a radio show together on her book and mine:
Dr. Jennifer Verdolin and Amy Alkon on manners and sexual politics in humans and animals.
About Jennifer, who -- I love this -- happens to be a "lemur personality expert":
Dr. Jennifer L. Verdolin is the woman who runs with the lemurs, and she has a few things to say about human relationships as seen through the lens of animal ones. (Sometimes, sadly, the animals seem more mature than we do.) Her new book: Wild Connection: What Animal Courtship and Mating Tell Us About Human Relationships.
The Latest In "Zero Tolerance": Sent Home From High School For "Disruptive" Hair Color
I'd say what's disruptive is the fact that this 15-year-old got sent home from school over her hair color.
From the Daily Mail, Ashley Collman writes:
A 15-year-old girl was sent home on the first day of high school last week because her red hair was too 'distracting' to other students.However, Muscle Shoals High School sophomore Hayleigh Black says she's been dying her head bright red for the past three years and no one at the school has complained before.
...Hayleigh's mother Pam Boyd said she got a call less than 30 minutes after dropping her daughter off on the first day of school - before Hayleigh even made it to homeroom.
Administrators allegedly sent multiple students home that day for distracting hair colors, which is violates a student handbook rule against 'distracting' or 'disruptive' hair styles.
Boyd says she knows about the rule, but didn't think her daughter was in violation since she's never been sent home for her red hair before.
'I told the principal, I said, '"You were her assistant principal last year. How come you never sent her home last year?" It's the same color as always,' Boyd told ABC.
"Disruptive" hair styles? Sure, maybe if you have live snakes wriggling around on your head.
Seems the latest in administrators proving they have power over the students.
via ifeminists
Why Should Teachers Be Coddled When Other Workers Are Not?
It sometimes makes sense to help a worker who is failing at their job improve their technique. It sometimes does not. Wise administrators -- in education or elsewhere -- are able to see potential and encourage it.
David L. Kirp writes in The New York Times on Sunday that "Teaching is not a business," arguing for different standards for judging teachers than we do in judging workers in business. I think this is a mistake and will continue to breed the kind of unfirable crappy teachers that are currently a problem in the system.
Kirp:
Firing teachers, rather than giving them the coaching they need, undermines morale. In some cases it may well discourage undergraduates from pursuing careers in teaching, and with a looming teacher shortage as baby boomers retire, that's a recipe for disaster. Merit pay invites rivalries among teachers, when what's needed is collaboration.
I had Ashley Merryman on my radio show on Sunday on the science of competition. What the science shows is that competition breeds excellence -- and collaboration.
Also, charter schools have been shown to be doing very well in educating kids, contrary to what he writes in the piece -- which is why parents fight tooth and nail to get their kids into them.
At HuffPo, Peter Cunningham, who we'll forgive for being a former government guy -- Former Assistant Secretary for Communications and Outreach, U.S. Department of Education -- fact-checks Kirp's ass, as the saying goes:
Like many of his anti-testing allies, Kirp makes the absurd claim that, "high-stakes tests are treated as the single metric of success." Wrong again. Not a single "reform" policy is based on test scores alone -- not evaluation of teachers or principals nor interventions in low-performing schools. These policies are all based on multiple measures and most reformers I know consider high school graduation and college-going rates a more important measure of success than test scores.In yet another exaggeration, he says, "Failing schools are closed and so-called turnaround model schools, with new teachers and administrators, take their place." Actually, under the Obama administration's "turnaround" initiative (School Improvement Grant Program), only a tiny handful of the 1300 schools in the program were closed and in about 75 percent of the schools, none of the teachers were forcibly replaced. Interestingly, in the 25 percent of schools where management and some staff were replaced, achievement gains were greatest, suggesting we should be more aggressive about changing staff in underperforming schools, not less.
Here we can take our cues from New York City Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina, who, according to a profile in the New York Times, replaced 80 percent of her staff when she took over P.S. 6 in New York, achieving significant gains in student achievement.
Next up, he dismisses charters with a misleading over-simplification: "Charter students do about the same overall as their public school counterparts." Well, not exactly. Some of them do a lot better with similarly disadvantaged populations and the purpose of charters, as union leader Albert Shanker pointed out, was to drive student-focused innovations from which traditional public schools could learn.
Professor Kirp's next line of attack is especially baffling. He writes: "While these reformers talk a lot about markets and competition, the essence of a good education -- bringing together talented teachers, engaged students and a challenging curriculum -- goes undiscussed." Huh? On reform websites all across the internet, the discussion never stops.
Linkber
Like Uber, but for links.
Should Parents Share Images Of Their Kids Online?
"Give Your Children a Chance at Privacy," writes Amy Webb in The New York Times. And for the record, Webb isn't some confirmed luddite. Her bio with the piece:
Amy Webb is the founder and chief executive of Webbmedia Group, a near-future strategy agency.
No, I'm not against posting photos of kids online because I think somebody will see your child's photo and kidnap him or her -- which is statistically wildly, wildly unlikely. It's about each person's right to privacy -- including those too young to consider that or make decisions about it.
Webb writes:
By recording and publishing our children's every dental visit, afternoon recital or poopie diaper, we are removing any possibility of their future privacy.The problem is what happens next, that moment you decide to upload those photos and videos from your cellphone to Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. Once you post and tag your child, she becomes subject to an array of databases over which you have little control.
I'm a parent, and I understand the desire to share happy memories, in real time, with family and friends. I'm also a digital media futurist, which means that I know that the social networks we use aren't closed circuits, and that our digital identities are increasingly - and inextricably - linked to our faces. Facial recognition technology is now engineered into more than you may think: our search engines, our photo editing apps, even our connected TV sets. In the next five years, our faces will start to replace passwords. They'll also be used by law enforcement, government officials and companies to quickly learn who we are both online and in the real world.
This generation, the Millennials, is the must surveilled generation in our history. By recording and publishing our children's every dental visit, afternoon recital or poopie diaper, we are removing any possibility of their future privacy.
...Children whose parents willingly contributed photos and videos online will increasingly be easier to search, parse and identify.
No, it won't kill you to withhold photos of your children from social media. Gregg and I have been together for nearly 12 years and I have posted only a few Gregg shots over the years on this site -- not one of them of his face. Even the very occasional ones I posted of him from Paris (from the back or as a shadow from the back in a hat) were not identified as Gregg.
Idiots Are Running Schools And They're Making Pussies Out Of The Kids
Darren Smith weekend guest-posts at law prof Jonathan Turley's blog that, starting this school year, Dubuque, Iowa public school students in middle and high school will be made to wear heart rate monitors to determine their activity levels (and their grades per those activities levels) in gym class:
One has to wonder if the idle ones are not the faculty of these schools in that they do not seem to believe that watching the students' participation as it is done everywhere else is effective. Or, is it simply easier to just port the heart rate monitors directly into the grading software.The value of these numbers is also questionable. All things being equal a comparison between a student with great athletic ability is going to have a lower heart rate than sedentary student during exercise or resting; that is in simple terms.
Michael Brown Autopsy Results
Frances Robles and Julie Bosman report for The New York Times that Michael Brown was shot at least six times, including twice in the head, according to a preliminary private autopsy performed on Sunday:
One of the bullets entered the top of Mr. Brown's skull, suggesting his head was bent forward when it struck him and caused a fatal injury, according to Dr. Michael M. Baden, the former chief medical examiner for the City of New York, who flew to Missouri on Sunday at the family's request to conduct the separate autopsy. It was likely the last of bullets to hit him, he said.Mr. Brown, 18, was also shot four times in the right arm, he said, adding that all the bullets were fired into his front.
The bullets did not appear to have been shot from very close range because no gunpowder was present on his body. However, that determination could change if it turns out that there is gunshot residue on Mr. Brown's clothing, to which Dr. Baden did not have access.
More:
"People have been asking: How many times was he shot? This information could have been released on Day 1," Dr. Baden said in an interview after performing the autopsy. "They don't do that, even as feelings built up among the citizenry that there was a cover-up. We are hoping to alleviate that."Dr. Baden said that while Mr. Brown was shot at least six times, only three bullets were recovered from his body. But he has not yet seen the X-rays showing where the bullets were found, which would clarify the autopsy results. Nor has he had access to witness and police statements.
Dr. Baden provided a diagram of the entry wounds, and noted that the six shots produced numerous wounds. Some of the bullets entered and exited several times, including one that left at least five different wounds.
"This one here looks like his head was bent downward," he said, indicating the wound at the very top of Mr. Brown's head. "It can be because he's giving up, or because he's charging forward at the officer."
He stressed that his information does not assign blame or justify the shooting.
"We need more information; for example, the police should be examining the automobile to see if there is gunshot residue in the police car," he said.
Dr. Baden, 80, is a well-known New York-based medical examiner, who is one of only about 400 board-certified forensic pathologists in the nation. He reviewed the autopsies of both President John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and has performed more than 20,000 autopsies himself.
He is best known for having hosted the HBO show "Autopsy," but he rankles when he is called a "celebrity medical examiner," saying that the vast majority of what he does has nothing to do with celebrities.
Dr. Baden said that because of the tremendous attention to the case, he waived his $10,000 fee.
This Daily Mail story has an eyewitness account recorded by a bystander that they say "casts doubt on claims the teen surrendered to Officer Darren Wilson."
The points at the top of the piece:
•Unnoticed audio recorded in video filmed at scene of Saturday's tragic shooting contradicts claims made by friends of the Missouri teen•The scratchy recording of the conversation between two men seems to suggest that Brown was inside Officer Wilson's car
•Despite being difficult to make out, the conversation suggests that Brown ran towards Wilson before he was shot
•Officer Darren Wilson, 28, was identified as the man who shot Brown on August 9
•Eight nights of rioting and looting have followed since
Police militarization roundup by Walter Olson at Overlawyered. A tweet from @JeffClement:
A few people have pointed it out, but our ROE [Rules of Engagement] regarding who we could point weapons at in Afghanistan was more restrictive than cops in MO.
Why are the cops armed like they're about to storm the beach at Normandy? The Pentagon is giving them weapons.
Linksy
Banksy for the Internet set.
Advice Goddess Radio, LIVE 7-8 pm PT, 10-11 pm ET: Science Writer Ashley Merryman On Using The Science Of Winning And Losing To Be Our Best
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.
Competition can be seen as ugly and divisive but it's actually an essential element in driving us to do and be our best.
My guest tonight, New York Times best-selling science writer Ashley Merryman, will lay out the science of winning and losing, including how we can figure out the kind of competitor we are (to help ourselves avoid choking), the differences between how men and women compete, and ways to rejigger our thinking so we use competition in ways that serve us instead of defeating us.
Her excellent book, co-authored with Po Bronson, that we'll be discussing tonight, is Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing
Listen to the show at this link or download the podcast afterward at the link:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2014/08/18/ashley-merryman-on-using-the-science-of-winning-and-losing-to-be-our-best
Don't miss last week's show with an animal behaviorist/lemur personality expert and a science-based modern manners and sexual politics expert. (What could make for a more fun and interesting hour of Advice Goddess Radio?)
Dr. Jennifer L. Verdolin is the woman who runs with the lemurs, and she has a few things to say about human relationships as seen through the lens of animal ones. (Sometimes, sadly, the animals seem more mature than we do.) Her new book: Wild Connection: What Animal Courtship and Mating Tell Us About Human Relationships.
And your usual host -- that's me, Amy Alkon -- happens to be the science-based modern manners and sexual politics expert. My new book is "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck."
On this show, as Jennifer and I interview each other about each of our books, we'll lay out the nitty gritty of human behavior in love, sex, dating, friendships, explaining how you can avoid letting the rude and sociopathic get one over on you. We'll also give you valuable advice on how you can be your most successful self in human interactions -- and any you happen to have with lemurs, spiders, and bears...oh my.
Listen at this link or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2014/08/11/dr-jennifer-verdolin-amy-alkon-manners-sexual-politics-in-humans-animals
Join me and my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.
My show's sponsor is now Audible.com. Get a free audiobook download and support this show financially at no cost to you by signing up for a free 30-day trial at audibletrial.com/amya (It's $14.95 after 30 days, but you can cancel before then and have it cost you nothing.)
Please consider ordering my new book, the science-based and funny "Good Manners For Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck," (only $9.48 at Amazon!). Orders of the book (new, not used!) help support my writing and this radio show!
"We're Here, We're Severe, Get Used To It"
Mark Steyn via AEI's Mark J. Perry. That passage from Steyn:
To camouflage oneself in the jungles of suburban America, one should be clothed in Dunkin' Donuts and Taco Bell packaging. A soldier wears green camouflage in Vietnam to blend in. A policeman wears green camouflage in Ferguson to stand out - to let you guys know: We're here, we're severe, get used to it.
No Child Left Unstarved
The government likes to ignore science and go with hearsay on diet, like what Michelle Obama thinks children should eat. Mrs. Obama is qualified to opine on this subject because, um, because she lives in a big house on Pennsylvania Avenue and gets to hang out with movie stars and heads of state.
Check out (on the menu link below) the low-fat milk they are serving growing kids. When I had dietary researcher Dr. Jeff Volek on my radio show, I asked him whether it's pretty much child neglect to feed kids skim or low-fat milk and he said it was.
He emphasizes that it's essential to not eat starchy carbs (which cause the insulin secretion that puts on fat -- and appear to cause myriad other health problems), and to eat not only protein but large quantities of non-carb fats to balance them out.
Kristin Martin posts at WBKO about what they're eating at school these days. Someone posted a picture of one of the lunches:
The story:
WARREN COUNTY, Ky. (WBKO) -- More than 700 students eat lunch at Warren East High School each day.Someone posted a picture of Tuesday's lunch, and it spread on social media, causing concern among parents over the food's quality.
"They said someone's mom posted it and said, 'This is what they're feeding my 6'3" boy,'" explained Khalil Brit, a junior at the high school.
Several parents even contacted WBKO -- saying students leave hungry.
"In today's social media age nothing ceases to amaze me," said Rob Clayton, the superintendent of Warren County Public Schools.
The next day (Wednesday) students said the picture on Facebook is not accurate.
..."They'll let you get as much vegetables as you want," Brit said.
Clayton said Warren County schools abide by federal regulations.
"So what our food service folks do is look at those guidelines and then look at the best way to provide a healthy and tasty meal as well," Clayton said.
He said students choose what goes on their plates, and picky eaters may turn down some menu items -- possibly explaining the photo posted online.
Oh, goody, boiled vegetables. No more, please!
Not surprisingly, in the video, the superintendent reported that nobody did anything but kiss his ass when he asked them about how they liked the food. (That's not exactly how he put it, of course.)
Lunch menus are here.
The video:
via @livinlowcarbman
Our Microbial Puppetmasters
Carl Zimmer writes in The New York Times about a fascinating new paper by Athena Aktipis and her colleagues on how our gastrointestinal microbes may be manipulating us:
We've come to appreciate how beneficial our microbes are -- breaking down our food, fighting off infections and nurturing our immune system. It's a lovely, invisible garden we should be tending for our own well-being.But in the journal Bioessays, a team of scientists has raised a creepier possibility. Perhaps our menagerie of germs is also influencing our behavior in order to advance its own evolutionary success -- giving us cravings for certain foods, for example.
Maybe the microbiome is our puppet master.
"One of the ways we started thinking about this was in a crime-novel perspective," said Carlo C. Maley, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, San Francisco, and a co-author of the new paper. "What are the means, motives and opportunity for the microbes to manipulate us? They have all three."
...How parasites control their hosts remains mysterious. But it looks as if they release molecules that directly or indirectly can influence their brains.
...Different species of microbes thrive on different kinds of food. If they can prompt us to eat more of the food they depend on, they can multiply.
Microbial manipulations might fill in some of the puzzling holes in our understandings about food cravings, Dr. Maley said.
...Take chocolate: Many people crave it fiercely, but it isn't an essential nutrient. And chocolate doesn't drive people to increase their dose to get the same high. "You don't need more chocolate at every sitting to enjoy it," Dr. Maley said.
Perhaps, he suggests, the certain kinds of bacteria that thrive on chocolate are coaxing us to feed them.
The abstract of the paper, published in BioEssays:
Is eating behavior manipulated by the gastrointestinal microbiota? Evolutionary pressures and potential mechanismsMicrobes in the gastrointestinal tract are under selective pressure to manipulate host eating behavior to increase their fitness, sometimes at the expense of host fitness. Microbes may do this through two potential strategies: (i) generating cravings for foods that they specialize on or foods that suppress their competitors, or (ii) inducing dysphoria until we eat foods that enhance their fitness. We review several potential mechanisms for microbial control over eating behavior including microbial influence on reward and satiety pathways, production of toxins that alter mood, changes to receptors including taste receptors, and hijacking of the vagus nerve, the neural axis between the gut and the brain. We also review the evidence for alternative explanations for cravings and unhealthy eating behavior. Because microbiota are easily manipulatable by prebiotics, probiotics, antibiotics, fecal transplants, and dietary changes, altering our microbiota offers a tractable approach to otherwise intractable problems of obesity and unhealthy eating.
Authors: Joe Alcock, Carlo C. Maley, and C. Athena Aktipis.
Linkmill
A treadmill for links.
Militarize Police And They'll Act Like There's A War On -- In Your Living Room
Absolutely disgusting use of force by cops in Evansville, Indiana, blogged by Radley Balko at the WaPo:
The video ... is footage from a June 2012 SWAT raid in Evansville, Ind., on 68-year-old Louise Milan and her daughter. The raid came after someone had threatened local police officials on an Internet message board. I'd submit that people post threats on the Internet all the time. Certainly they should be investigated. But it's far from clear to me that it merits a SWAT response.But it's actually worse than that. As it turns out, neither Milan nor her daughter made the threats. They were made by a neighbor who had accessed their open wireless connection. This isn't the first time police have rushed to raid the wrong home under such circumstances. It seems like the sort of thing that, again, might be prevented with a little investigation before you go shattering glass doors and scaring the hell out of 68-year-old women.
Listen to the cops' joking at the end after destroying a woman's home -- because some dimwit didn't have the imagination to guess that anybody can use anybody's unprotected Wifi signal.
I would have been utterly terrified if, all of a sudden, my door was shattered and armed men burst in yelling.
They're lucky the older woman didn't have a heart attack and that something terrible didn't happen to either one of them.
Stop Dressing Police Like Storm Troopers And TSA Workers Like Cops
Charlie Leocha writes about this at Consumer Traveler:
I had an opportunity to testify before the Aviation Subcommittee of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure in November 2012 about TSA and its effect on the traveling public. Back then, I suggested, to chuckles from committee members and the hearing audience, that TSA security inspectors be dressed in pastel colored polo shirts, rather than in the storm trooper outfits in which they parade through airports today.TU_Ad_350-350After all, TSA inspectors are not law enforcement agents. They are simply baggage inspectors. TSA does not have the ability to arrest anyone. They cannot take anyone into custody. They don't carry weapons.
Real police are stationed nearby to take care of law enforcement issues when they arise.
He quotes "Stop Arming the Police Like a Military," by Dr. Tom Nolan, an associate professor and the chair of the Department of Criminal Justice at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh:
Have no doubt, police in the United States are militarizing, and in many communities, particularly those of color, the message is being received loud and clear: "You are the enemy." Police officers are increasingly arming themselves with military-grade equipment such as assault rifles, flashbang grenades, and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected, or MRAP, vehicles and dressing up in commando gear before using battering rams to burst into the homes of people who have not been charged with a crime. Perhaps more alarming is the fact that the Pentagon has played a huge role in this militarization by transferring its weapons of war to civilian police departments through its so-called 1033 program.Many communities now look upon police as an occupying army, their streets more reminiscent of Baghdad or Kabul than a city in America. This besieged mentality created by the militarization of police has driven a pernicious wedge into the significant gains made under community- and problem-oriented policing initiatives dating from the late 1980s.
Leocha winds up with this:
Whether it is the police force dressed like storm troopers in Ferguson or your community; or, TSA security assistants masquerading as law enforcement officers in military uniforms; this militarization is not healthy for a democratic society.
Blinky
One-eyed links.
Idiot Bureaucrats Seek Idiot Voters
KABC producer Luis Segura is exactly, precisely right:
@KABCLuis
If you need a cash #prize to #vote then you shouldn't be at the #polls. Stay home, no one cares what you think. #wtf
He was tweeting about this moronic and destructive idea posted in a story at CBS Los Angeles:
"LA Panel Recommends Chance At Cash Prize To Boost Voter Turnout"CHEVIOT HILLS (CBSLA.com) -- Los Angeles city officials Thursday are considering the idea of a big cash lottery prize as a way to boost voter turnout.
In an effort to get more people to vote, the city ethics commission is recommending that the City Council consider offering a cash lottery prize to voters.
KCAL9's Dave Bryan spoke with a member of the city ethics commission about the panel's recommendation.
"Anyone who votes is eligible to win a certain percentage of money," said Jessica Levinson, ethics commissioner. "I mean, maybe its $25,000; its up to $100,000."
Aaaaand after noticing, later in the story, mention that CIty Council President Herb Wesson is waiting to see which way the wind is blowing on this, I'm back to my recommendation that we ditch the current City Council and elect the roving bear in the San Fernando Valley that scared the texter.
The late Cathy Seipp writes at Volokh in 2004:
Should the lazy idiot constituency be encouraged to influence society even more than it already does?...In the eternal words of Marge on "The Simpsons," "One person can make a difference, but most of the time they probably shouldn't."
Flying With Children...
...And without multiple passengers wishing for an alien craft to pass by the plane and obliterate your family with a ray gun: 
Another fine quote from my new science-based and funny modern manners book, "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck," which I hope you'll buy. Here are links to discounted (under $10) copies Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
There are whole chapters of answers to problems like these, who gets the arm rest, etc., in the book.
Things Are Scary In The Courts, Too
A Baltimore man was charged with a robbery (after his photo was picked out of an array of photos by the victim).
(Researchers Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons point out in The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us
The wee snag in this charge against the man is that he was in jail on another robbery charge when the crime took place.
Could there be a better alibi?
Well, no. Not to the salivating prosecutor and lax judge. (As for the judge...apathy? Comatose?)
The prosecutor refused to drop the charge and insisted on trying the man and the judge, disgustingly, went along with this -- agreeing that a trial was needed.
Law prof Jonathan Turley notes:
The real story is the initial position of the prosecutors and the ruling of the court. Exactly what is the trial supposed to show. Could a jury decide that Threatt could have been both in custody and miles away at the same time?
He continues:
There is no mention of any investigation, let alone discipline, for the detective or the prosecutor for such negligence. There is also no mention of the name of the judge who agreed that a trial is warranted when the accused was locked away at the time of the crime.
Those of you who believe that the police are there to solve crimes and judges are there to find justly (or even plausibly), well, please check your naivete at the courthouse door. You'll get it back upon leaving.
More from the Baltimore Sun article by Ian Duncan.
Post-Ferguson Police Response To Protests?
Radley Balko asks, "After Ferguson, how should police respond to protests?" in the WaPo, first nutshelling what went on there:
An unarmed black man was killed by a (reportedly) white police officer who had stopped him as he was walking home. The police have since refused to release the officer's name. They've said they have no intention of releasing the autopsy performed on Michael Brown. Police Chief Thomas Jackson refused to even say how many shots were fired at Brown. (He claimed he didn't know, though that would be pretty easy to figure out.) Though the police department has body cameras, it hasn't required its officers to actually wear them. All of this only adds to perception of a Ferguson Police Department that is detached, unaccountable, opaque, and unconcerned with how it is perceived by the community it serves. (Gassing, arresting, and threatening journalists doesn't help with the perception that they feel they're above transparency.) The police then showed up at a peaceful protest with military vehicles and weapons. If a town's citizens are reminded over and over again that the law has no respect for them, we shouldn't be surprised if they begin to lose respect for the law. This isn't an excuse for the looting and rioting. But it does contextualize what we've seen.This raises a question I've seen on Twitter and Facebook from a number of people -- how should police respond to protest? And how should they respond when protests turn violent?
One of the pioneers of community policing -- a form of policing that stresses interaction over reaction, deescalation over brute force, and that police should have a stake in the communities they serve --is Jerry Wilson, who was appointed police chief for Washington, D.C. in 1969. Wilson was of course appointed during a very turbulent time in America, and he took office just after the riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. had ripped the city apart. But Wilson went to great pains to recruit police officers from the city's residents, and to try to make the police force more reflective of the city. He also took a much different approach to protest. I interviewed Wilson for my recent book on police militarization. Here's a passage from the section about Wilson's approach to protest:
Wilson believed that an intimidating police presence didn't prevent confrontation, it invited it. That didn't mean he didn't prepare, but he put his riot control teams in buses, then parked the buses close by, but out of sight of protesters. Appearances were important. In general, instead of the usual brute force and reactionary policing that tended to pit cops against citizens--both criminal and otherwise--Wilson believed that cops were more effective when they were welcomed and respected in the neighborhoods they patrolled. "The use of violence," he told Time in 1970, "is not the job of police officers."It's worth noting that during Wilson's tenure, not only did Washington, D.C. not see the level of rioting and protest violence we saw in other parts of the country, crime actually fell in the city, even as it soared across the rest of the country.
Balko notes something important at the end, about Wilson and other of his ilk that he uses as examples in his piece:
Note the contrast between that and the approaches recommended by Geron, Burbank, Couper, Stamper, and Wilson. They all pit police officers not as enforcers, but as servants. Their primary function isn't to impose order, but to preserve and protect the rights of citizens. In a strictly academic sense, preserving order and protecting rights are the same thing. Operationally, they're radically different approaches to policing.
Oh, and about the "militarization" of police, via BoingBoing, via Storify, the military consensus via some tweets: "if this is militarization, it's the shittiest, least-trained, least professional military in the world, using weapons far beyond what they need, or what the military would use when doing crowd control."
More on that from Walter Olson at Cato who says the response in Ferguson "will be cited for years to come as a what-not-to-do manual for police forces":
Why armored vehicles in a Midwestern inner suburb? Why would cops wear camouflage gear against a terrain patterned by convenience stores and beauty parlors? Why are the authorities in Ferguson, Mo. so given to quasi-martial crowd control methods (such as bans on walking on the street) and, per the reporting of Riverfront Times, the firing of tear gas at people in their own yards? (" 'This my property!' he shouted, prompting police to fire a tear gas canister directly at his face.") Why would someone identifying himself as an 82nd Airborne Army veteran, observing the Ferguson police scene, comment that "We rolled lighter than that in an actual warzone"?...The dominant visual aspect of the story, however, has been the sight of overpowering police forces confronting unarmed protesters who are seen waving signs or just their hands.
One answer? Follow the money. Olson writes: "Federal grants drive police militarization."
If you have equipment, you're likely to use it -- whether or not that actually makes sense.
Linkshake
Make mine dark chocolate.
Don't Blame The Bells And Whistles
Another fine quote from "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck." (Have you bought yours? It's only $9.48 at Amazon at the link above, and a few pennies more at Barnes & Noble.)
If you've bought the book and you liked it, please consider posting even a quickie review at Amazon or B&N.
Feminists And Funny Go Together Like Peanut Butter And An Oar
Charlotte Allen has a post in the LA Times about the feminists with their big white granny panties in a twist over quietly cheeky Nine West ads for its new fall line of shoes:
Leopard-print stilettos for "starter husband hunting"? Black peep-toe booties for seeing your kid off for the first day of kindergarten: "The bus arrives and so do the waterworks. Then it hits you: Mommy now has the weeks off. Wipe those happy-sad tears"?That's not funny!
...The main feminist beef seems to be that the ads suggest that women are primarily interested in getting married and becoming mothers. Never mind that that's exactly what most women are most interested in -- in the feminist world of "a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle," that's heresy. Women's most important interest is supposed to be their careers.
Allen notes:
Now, if I myself were as humorless and relentlessly doctrinaire as a feminist, I would point out that the Nine West critics display their own "insulting" and "reductive" prejudices. Namely, contempt for stay-at-home mothers and for heterosexual women's desire to look sexually attractive to men (via high heels and other accouterments) because they actually are "husband hunting" -- that is, looking for lifelong mates and fathers for their children. Ask most women what's the most important thing they've done with their lives, and they'll answer: raising their families.Or I could point out that the Nine West ads are exactly about women who have enough self-esteem to take charge of their quest for mates and enough wit to realize that even the most devoted mothers need a break every now and then.
If you wonder why I don't identify as a feminist, well, first of all, I'm for fair treatment for all people, not for what feminism increasingly is: Calls for special treatment under the guise of equal treatment. (Or, more recently, throwing all that equal stuff aside, and calling for being treated like eggshells instead of equals.)
But what I really don't want to be seen as is grim and humorless. Luckily, I'm neither of those things, and, accordingly, nor am I a feminist.
The "Come Out Of The Dark" Campaign To Destigmatize Depression
Been there. In a dark hole back when I lived in New York. I teared up just typing this, because it was pretty terrible.
What makes depression even worse for some is how it's looked at by a lot of other people.
So, when depression researcher Dr. Jonathan Rottenberg was on my radio show to discuss his excellent book on the subject -- The Depths
-- which I recommend, and he asked me to pose in one of these "Come Out Of The Dark" bracelets.
I said I would, he mailed it to me, and I sent the shot to him for his posting page of these a few months ago.
Rottenberg, who himself suffered a major depression (which he writes about in his book, explains at Psychology Today:
Depression remains in the dark, a taboo subject that's difficult to talk about openly. The stigma of depression is hugely isolating for the sufferer and the caregiver....One of our tools to fight depression stigma are glow-in-the-dark wristbands that are printed with the phrase COME OUT OF THE DARK. Whether you've suffered from depression or support else someone who has, wearing a COME OUT OF THE DARK wristband sends an important message of love and acceptance.
If you visit our gallery of COTD supporters, I think you can more easily understand why our campaign has taken off, and how it has the potential to shift the conversation about depression on more favorable terms.
Part of why the COTD campaign appeals is the slogan, which has several meanings
• Let's end society's ignorance about depression.
• Let's support depressed people so they get well and stay well.
• Let's create an environment where people can speak freely about depression and no one feels compelled to conceal their pain.
I see people on Twitter and Facebook and in media slamming Robin Williams, calling him a "coward" -- not considering the level of suffering that leads people to take their own lives.
Personally, I think it's terribly sad that someone who lit up so many people's lives was in so much pain.
Multitasking Can Be Dizzying; Try Partitioning
Researcher Daniel J. Levitin writes in The New York Times that hopping back and forth all day between work and Facebook and multiple emails may not be so great for our productivity or creativity:
A third component of the attentional system, the attentional filter, helps to orient our attention, to tell us what to pay attention to and what we can safely ignore. This undoubtedly evolved to alert us to predators and other dangerous situations. The constant flow of information from Twitter, Facebook, Vine, Instagram, text messages and the like engages that system, and we find ourselves not sustaining attention on any one thing for very long -- the curse of the information age.My collaborator Vinod Menon, a professor of neuroscience at Stanford, and I showed that the switch between daydreaming and attention is controlled in a part of the brain called the insula, an important structure about an inch or so beneath the surface of the top of your skull. Switching between two external objects involves the temporal-parietal junction. If the relationship between the central executive system and the mind-wandering system is like a seesaw, then the insula -- the attentional switch -- is like an adult holding one side down so that the other stays up in the air. The efficacy of this switch varies from person to person, in some functioning smoothly, in others rather rusty. But switch it does, and if it is called upon to switch too often, we feel tired and a bit dizzy, as though we were seesawing too rapidly.
Every status update you read on Facebook, every tweet or text message you get from a friend, is competing for resources in your brain with important things like whether to put your savings in stocks or bonds, where you left your passport or how best to reconcile with a close friend you just had an argument with.
If you want to be more productive and creative, and to have more energy, the science dictates that you should partition your day into project periods. Your social networking should be done during a designated time, not as constant interruptions to your day.
Email, too, should be done at designated times. An email that you know is sitting there, unread, may sap attentional resources as your brain keeps thinking about it, distracting you from what you're doing. What might be in it? Who's it from? Is it good news or bad news? It's better to leave your email program off than to hear that constant ping and know that you're ignoring messages.
Linkspill
Use a dish towel to clean it up.
Maternal Leave Policies Hurting Women In The Workplace? NYT Answer: Let Men Stick It To Employers, Too
Here's the article.
Your employer (and other workers forced to cover for you) should pay for your life choices why?
If you can take time off to have a baby, why can't the employee in the next cubicle have paid time off to go skiing?
Someone at the NYT comments section takes the socialist argument:
Cam, Midwest
To those who argue that it is "unfair" that mothers get paid leave for choosing to have a child when other workers don't get a similar paid leave to sail around the world, volunteer, etc, you should reconceptualize your understanding of leave. The leave isn't to benefit the mother. It's to benefit the child - so that the child has time with his/her mother, can form close bonds with his/her mom, can be cared for and fed from his/her mother. Since we were all children once, think of leave as repaying something that we all should have received when we were newborns. The leave is to benefit the child, so that s/he will have a good start in life.
Your choice. You pay. Save up enough money to be able to care adequately for your child or -- gasp -- don't have one.
No, you don't get to have a kid if you can't afford to support it, emotionally and in every other way.
Roxy, in Atlanta, another commenter, makes a point similar to one I've made before:
Not only do the childfree pick up the extra work of a coworker on maternity leave (doing that now in my 9-person office), but we're affected by perception as well. If I go into an interview and they've just had a few women "suddenly decide" not to return after paid maternity leave, how excited do you think they are about hiring a woman of child-bearing age? And who can blame them?
I like this guy:
Jim Verdonik, Raleigh, NC
Can taking a sabbatical to travel the world hurt your career? Of course.
Can being sick for a long time hurt your career? Of course.
Can working from home hurt your career? Of course.
Can being posted to a remote location away from corporate headquarters hurt your career? Of course.
Anything that takes you out of the workplace can hurt your career.
There are tradeoffs in life.
Getting Sex From Snookums
A random thought from the other day that I posted on my funny quotes page on Pinterest for "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck" (which I do hope you'll buy if you haven't already): 
When Cops Wear Cameras
A tweet by Jason Calcanis:
@Jason
Nytimes: Police in California wore cameras & Complaints dropped 88% / use of force dropped 60%.
A quote from The NYT story by Ian Lovett:
"When you put a camera on a police officer, they tend to behave a little better, follow the rules a little better," Chief Farrar said. "And if a citizen knows the officer is wearing a camera, chances are the citizen will behave a little better."
Dirty Diaper Pizza, Anyone?
It's a table, not a changing table, that flat surface in front of you in a restaurant where the waiter sets your food.
At Consumerist, via Eaters, Chris Morran writes that a restaurant kicked a woman out when she -- eeuw! -- used the table to change her baby:
A mom in Texas claims that a local pizza restaurant overreacted when it asked her and her kids to leave because she had changed her baby's diaper on a table, but the eatery's owners are sticking by their decision.The mom tells KHOU-TV that she'd gone into the bathroom at the restaurant to change the baby but found no changing table. So rather than take the baby and her two other children, ages 4 and 8, back to the minivan to do the changing, she used their table as a last resort.
"I've got my own changing pad, she's tiny, she fits right here on the chair," she explains to KHOU. "So I laid her down quickly and quietly changed her diaper."
Sometimes, when you go to a pizzeria, there's a little leftover parmesan on the table. There shouldn't be a little extra feces.
Having children is all about being inconvenienced. If you aren't up to the task, please, get your tubes tied.
Oh, and this doesn't just happen at some chain pizza joint in the U.S. As seen in my last book, I SEE RUDE PEOPLE, there's a photo of a baby being changed at chi-chi Paris pâtisserie Ladurée. (Various other indignities -- which I classify as "rudenfreude" -- are chronicled in my new book, "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck.")
Linkgres
A little-known, failed painter related to Ingrès, who, frankly, isn't a favorite of mine, either.
Punk Tuation
My favorite angrymail goes skinny on punctuation. One from today, from a woman: "Your nuts." Maybe, but I have a full supply of apostrophes.
Dumb: Southwest Airlines Stowaway Ordered To Stay Away From LAX
This is completely stupid. This woman is doing us all a favor -- showing us how utterly porous and pretend the TSA's "security" is by sneaking through again and again.
They should hire her to crash TSA "security" lines across the country. Rather like a secret shopper, but showing how ineffective and useless the TSA is instead of catching that, oh, Macy's clerk who's had an off day.
A Legal Alien's Lament
Dr. Manmeet Singh, from India, observes that if he'd come to the US illegally and married his US-citizen wife, he'd have a green card now:
People in my situation also probably represent the most law-abiding segment of the population. Any skirmish with the law--even one not involving violence--can result in loss of working privileges and possible deportation. A recent New York Times NYT -0.16% article about how legal immigrants' applications are being stalled because the officials who process files are overwhelmed with applications for deportation deferrals was a stinging slap in the face to all of those who chose to do the right thing and get here by following the rules.What is really surprising is that, in a nation that prides itself on being a nation of laws, the enforcers of the law are told to deliberately look away when it comes to illegal immigration. Also the politically correct term now is undocumented rather than illegal. I for one--after being fingerprinted, photographed, inquired about in detail every time I re-enter the U.S.--know for sure that being undocumented is illegal.
As an "alien," I have always been and always will be extremely grateful for the education that I have received and the opportunity to work and live in the U.S. In return I have been a good citizen (well, not exactly a citizen), paid my taxes, paid immigration attorneys and stayed on top of the paperwork. I have done so because I realize how important the legal process is and I have nothing but respect and reverence for the law of the land.
As the debate in Washington and the media centers on the plight of willful wrongdoers, America's reputation as a nation of laws and as a nation of immigrants is at stake here. Making the law-abiders feel discounted would not have rested well with the Founding Fathers either.
Some College Men Challenging Obama Admin's "Guilty Until Proven Innocent" Standard
Accusations of sex crimes -- and this seems obvious -- should be made to law enforcement and dealt with in our courts, and not the kangaroo courts popping up on campuses across the country.
Ashe Schow writes in the Wash Ex that men are striking back against campus rules that deny them due process by assuming they are guilty.
This comes out of a reinterpretation of Title IX by the Obama administration, and their forcing on college campuses new guidelines that require a low preponderance of evidence for sexual assault claims.
Schow reports that Kevin Parisi is one of those fighting back:
Kevin Parisi is 5 feet, 5 inches tall and barely weighs 120 pounds.He's hunched over and walking with a cane after back surgery earlier this year. He suffers from severe anxiety and digestive disorders, along with extreme allergies and panic attacks.
But in his junior year at Drew University in Madison, N.J., Parisi was accused of forcing a fellow student -- one who is now a professional athlete -- to have sex with him.
He was kicked off campus and placed under investigation. Three months went by before he was found "not responsible" in a campus disciplinary proceeding. Local police never filed charges against him.
Being accused, however, was enough to cause his world to collapse. Now he is suing Drew for assuming he was guilty from the outset and treating him as such until it was determined he was innocent.
He is also suing his accuser and her boyfriend at the time, claiming they concocted the false allegation to preserve their relationship. The Washington Examiner has chosen not to publish their names.
"The whole world seems hopeless and like, your heart pounds and the world -- the walls -- kind of close in on you," Parisi, 21, told the Examiner of his frequent panic attacks, which he says were made worse by the allegations.
"It's just, it's ... If you haven't experienced one, I don't know how you could understand. It's just really -- dread. A sense of dread. Nothing's ever going to be better," he said.
Think of what this takes out of a person's life -- in time and money and emotionally.
Nobody has a right to do this -- to subject a person to this degraded form of "justice." At least in off-campus courts, there's a chance of due process.
A Bad Haircut Will Not Kill You
Big government, however, might choke you out of earning a living if you don't meet with extortionist demands for licensing -- often put in place mainly to protect those already in business from competition.
There's a smart proposal by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, now running for governor, to eliminate occupational licensing requirements for jobs that don't affect the health and safety of consumers. National Center For Policy Analysis has a blog item on this by Pam Villarreal:
Critics contend that Mr. Abbott's plan would gut needed protections for consumers and reduce the credibility of quality professionals. But simply having a license does not mean a person performs quality work. In fact, by relaxing some licensing requirements and allowing more individuals to enter the market, competition will flourish and sub-par professionals will be forced out. Competition is simply the best way to assure quality.Among the occupational licenses that would be reformed or repealed:
•Dog trainer
•Barber
•Cosmetologist (including hair braiders)
•Auctioneer
•Towing operatorAnd no, these proposed repeals will not extend to doctors, lawyers, peace officers, and building engineers. So Texans who are worried about the emergence of quack doctors running around with snake oil and medieval surgical tools can be rest assured.
But lifting the regulatory burden for entrepreneurs is long overdue.
My favorite example of licensing requirements (and I mean that sarcastically) is requiring women who do black women's hair to get trained by cosmetology programs that don't even touch on the braiding and other arts used.
In other words, they're being trained and certified -- as required by the state -- in useless skills.
Unfortunately, that sort of thing is rather typical of government across the board.
via @reasonpolicy
Linkylinky
Double the fun but just a single linky post today.
I Just Love Free Speech
A central Ohio strip club sent topless strippers over to protest the church that keeps protesting them, reports the Associated Press.
From Jezebel, owner Thomas George speaks to a local TV station:
He elaborated to WBNS, alleging they're "Calling the girls (expletive) and (expletive). They're abusive to the customers. They sit out with video cameras, they take pictures of license plates, tell them they're posting them to the web." He asked the AP "at what point does it become harassment" and insisted, "They backed us in a corner, and we have no recourse at law." Injunctions to push them further away have been denied.
More from WBNS:
Church members confronted the protestors outside of the tarps hung to protect their eyes."Love is the answer, and you don't have it baby. God is love!" shouted one of the protestors.
"Ma'am, you know nothing about love. You know plenty about lust. You know plenty about sex, but you know nothing about love," replied a church member.
Also from Jezebel:
George said the Foxhole crowd will gather outside New Beginnings Ministries "for the foreseeable future," while Pastor Bill Dunfee told the Tribune they'll keep protesting the club until it goes out of business. Another day, another pair of grown men fighting over women's bodies.
Video (no naked boobies) at The Raw Story.
The Mooching Vagina
It it really outrageous to find the idea outrageous that there would be public subsidies to provide women with free tampons?
Ishan Aran posts at Jezebel, "Female Writer Faces Twitter Backlash After Asking About Tampons."
Ah, it's a tale as old as Twitter. Woman does something, assholes on the internet assail her with unwarranted, brutish tweets. Great.Jessica Valenti, author, founder of Feministing, and Guardian columnist recently took to Twitter to ask her followers if they knew of any countries in which tampons are subsidized. For a normal human being that has even the most basic grasp of female anatomy and understands that it's biology that women menstruate every month or so, it's not a crazy concept to ponder. But alas, the sheer mention of affordable or free feminine hygiene products was simply too much for some to handle and they took to their keyboards to vilify her.
Here's her tweet: 
I like this guy: 
It Never Ceases To Amaze Me, All The Ways People Find To Excuse Their Behavior
I write in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck" that, rather than apologizing, "many people seem to favor Chickenshit for the Soul--refusing to apologize be- cause they see an admission of wrongdoing on their part as a sign of weakness.
More about this from the book:
It actually takes a big person to admit to having been small and piggy. Humans are prone to self-justification--the ego-protecting tendency to insist we're right and to shove away any evidence to the contrary. You need self-respect and strength of character to cough up the admission "I was wrong."
And frankly, it feels so much better whenever you let that thing you've been not saying out.
Unfortunately, big, blustery self-justification was on the menu last night by me, when a guy who's been asked before -- several times, nicely, politely -- not to come to our neighborhood and boom his car radio, came up with this. 
So, wait -- the rule is, you get to be really rude...play megabass thumpy-booming music from your car whenever you feel like it, for as long as you feel like it, right across from our houses and apartments, because you've lived here a long time?
Just wondering...are there other princely perks that come with your tenure? Please let us all know so we can be prepared to run out of our homes and bow or curtsy to your highness the next time you're here.
What lack of accountability have you encountered lately that's tanned your hide?
Inkly One
Linkly, bottle of ink...
Inkly Two
Linkly, bottle of ink...
Choo Choo
The latest markdowns on women's shoes (and more) at Amazon
Search for any item at Amazon and give me the credit for what you buy at Search Amy's Amazon
And please, while you're there, pick up a copy of "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck" -- and if you like it a lot, please consider reviewing it. Reviews really help, as long as you aren't giving me low-star ones and saying what an idiot I am. If you do think that, I hope you'll keep it to yourself.
Advice Goddess Radio, LIVE 7-8 pm PT, 10-11 pm ET: Dr. Jennifer Verdolin And Amy Alkon: Manners And Sexual Politics In Humans And Animals
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.
An animal behaviorist/lemur personality expert and a science-based modern manners and sexual politics expert -- what could make for a more fun and interesting hour of Advice Goddess Radio?
Dr. Jennifer L. Verdolin is the woman who runs with the lemurs, and she has a few things to say about human relationships as seen through the lens of animal ones. (Sometimes, sadly, the animals seem more mature than we do.) Her new book: Wild Connection: What Animal Courtship and Mating Tell Us About Human Relationships.
And your usual host -- that's me, Amy Alkon -- happens to be the science-based modern manners and sexual politics expert. My new book is "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck."
On this show, as Jennifer and I interview each other about each of our books, we'll lay out the nitty gritty of human behavior in love, sex, dating, friendships, explaining how you can avoid letting the rude and sociopathic get one over on you. We'll also give you valuable advice on how you can be your most successful self in human interactions -- and any you happen to have with lemurs, spiders, and bears...oh my.
Listen to the show at this link or download the podcast afterward at the link:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2014/08/11/dr-jennifer-verdolin-amy-alkon-manners-sexual-politics-in-humans-animals
Don't miss last week's show with Dr. Barbara Oakley, who has written an incredibly helpful book on learning how to learn math and science. But, yoohoo, math-loathers, this book -- and this show -- are about much more than that.
Both her book and this show are about techniques you can start employing immediately that will show you how to do your work and your creative work more efficiently and ultimately more successfully and satisfyingly.
The proof that these techniques work? Dr. Oakley herself used these techniques to transform from a girl who flunked every math and science course in high school into a tenured professor of engineering. And she currently uses them to curb procrastination, to learn and retain difficult material better and faster, and to increase her creativity in problem-solving and writing.
Dr. Oakley's excellent book: A Mind For Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra)
Listen at this link or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2014/08/04/dr-barbara-oakley-on-how-to-retrain-your-brain-and-learn-how-to-learn
Join me and my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.
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Please consider ordering my new book, the science-based and funny "Good Manners For Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck," (only $9.48 at Amazon!). Orders of the book (new, not used!) help support my writing and this radio show!
Is *Every* Site We're On Peering Into Our Techno Underwear?
Saturday morning, I read a Matthew Rabin/Joel Schrag paper that references Bayesian rationality, noting how confirmation bias departs from it, and by Saturday night, look what was in my Twitter feed:
I knew Facebook and shopping sites were harvesting from us as we sweep through them; I, for some ridiculous reason, thought Twitter as more benign.
Seems I was wrong.
"Pathological Altruism" And "White Messiah Complex"
Dr. Barbara Oakley studies "pathological altruism," altruism gone wrong: attempts intended to help that instead result in unanticipated harm--for the recipient, for the helper, or some- times for both.
Via @AClassicLiberal, in The American Conservative, John Allen Gay writes about an example of this -- the damaging temporary migrations to the Third World of young Great White Hopes:
It's a rite of passage in upper-middle-class America: the volunteer trip to some impoverished Third World country followed by the new Facebook profile picture with a couple of doe-eyed orphans. The ritual springs from a well-intentioned desire to help those in need and form connections across boundaries of nationality, race, and class. But do these trips actually do much good? Writing for Al Jazeera America, columnist Rafia Zakaria makes the case that they don't. "The problem with voluntourism," she writes, "is its singular focus on the volunteer's quest for experience, as opposed to the recipient community's actual needs.""Voluntourist" laborers can "crowd out local workers" because these volunteers work for free. What's more, as Britain's Daily Telegraph noted last year, some "ethical tourism" companies are backing away from orphanage-volunteering trips after learning that many of the orphans they were helping were not actually orphans--three out of four kids in Cambodian orphanages and nine of 10 in Ghanaian orphanages actually had parents.
Zakaria notes that in Bali, Indonesia,
Children leave home and move to an orphanage because tourists, who visit the island a couple of times a year, are willing to pay for their education. These children essentially work as orphans because their parents cannot afford to send them to school. Instead of helping parents cater to the needs of their children, the tourist demand for orphans to sponsor creates an industry that works to make children available for foreigners who wish to help....The emphasis on good intentions over good outcomes that fuels the White Savior Industrial Complex isn't confined to private "voluntouring," however. It also manifests as a foreign-policy doctrine, one that allows Westerners who have lots of political power--not merely, like tourists, lots of money--to experience the joy of benevolence. Why not make pushing democracy, human rights, and the American way the central goal of America's influence and power? Liberal or humanitarian interventionism sounds good in theory: strong countries have a responsibility to protect the vulnerable from atrocities when their own governments fail to do so. And as with so many of the voluntourists, the liberal interventionist's heart pines for Africa.
There's a problem, though. Far from being an entire continent full of violence and poverty that yearns for the white man's aid, Africa is actually an incredibly diverse place. Its people, just like us, are complicated and tend to defy simplistic characterization. And like ours, their social and political systems are also complicated. Resolving their conflicts, then, is likely to require the same practical, patient, subtle diplomacy that resolves our conflicts.
Linkpala
Impala with some junk in the trunk.
Even Miserable Is Prettier In Southern California
Even when you have a really sucky day, even when you think about what utter idiots so many people running this state and local government are, you look out your window and there's just so much pretty.
I took this shot from my front porch for somebody on Twitter who was worried that I was negatively affected by the recent thunderstorm in which lightning took a guy out. 
PS That's my recently planted morning glory coming through the knot hole. This is noteworthy because plants tend to commit suicide on me. (The pink-red bougainvillea is a hearty, tree-like plant that far predates my arrival in this house.)
Wrong Question About Use Of English (Not Spanish) In American Schools
Katherine Leal Unmuth asks this question at the end of an ewa.org piece about a a Texas middle school principal who was fired after going on the intercom in her school to urge students to speak English rather than Spanish:
Is there a proper, tactful way to encourage students to use English without offending? This is a thorny issue for teachers in settings with large numbers of students who speak languages other than English.
Amy Lacey, the principle defended her actions in a letter to the Houston Chronicle. Unmuth writes:
Hempstead is a part of the Houston metropolitan area. The school district has 1,525 students, of which about 54 percent were Latino in the 2012-13 school year. About 21 percent of students were classified English language learners.Lacey stated that she went on the intercom system at the majority Latino school to emphasize that the state academic language is English per the Texas Education Code, and so are the state exams. She also stated that Hempstead offered ESL classes on campus.
"I informed students it would be best to speak English in the classrooms to the extent possible in order to help prepare them for these tests," she wrote.
Lacey stated that she never banned the use of Spanish. She defended her actions by saying that teachers who told students to stop talking during class often responded by saying they had the right to speak Spanish, when they should not speak in class at all.
"The perception of the teachers was that students were being disrespectful and disrupting learning, and they believed they could get away with it by claiming racism," Lacey wrote.
Read her entire letter at the link above.
Also, what a nation of weenies we've become.
The fact that somebody is offended that a principal makes an entirely reasonable statement -- and then they light the offense on fire by deeming it racism -- doesn't mean she's wrong.
In this case, parents and students should be glad that she cares that they can function in society (in the language most people speak), and students should understand that it's rude to speak a language that can't be understood by everyone who hears it (in a collective situation like a class).
No, Cellphones, Airplanes, And Government Shouldn't Mix
Having passengers be able to use cellphones in flight would be just one more reason I don't want to fly anywhere -- besides not wanting to have some gropenfrau getting all up in my labia at the airport.
But The New York Times editorial board has it wrong on cellphone usage on planes, because they're calling for the government to choose whether airplanes allow cell calls in flight or not:
Officials at the International Air Transport Association, which represents airlines, has argued that the carriers should decide; some European and Asian airlines, including Virgin Atlantic and Emirates, already allow passengers to make calls from their planes at international roaming rates, usually $1 a minute or more. Many frequent travelers and the unions representing flight attendants, however, want a ban on all flights.We agree. There is no compelling reason to allow cellphone calls on planes other than to provide airlines with another source of revenue. Passengers who really need to communicate with people on the ground can already do so through wireless Internet service provided by many airlines for a fee.
Meanwhile, there are good reasons for restricting calls, not least of which is preserving peace and quiet on planes, which are increasingly flying at or near capacity thanks to multiple airline mergers in recent years.
So far as we can tell, the majority of the flying public is not clamoring for the right to make phone calls at 30,000 feet. The Transportation Department should listen to their quiet voices.
I will go out of my way to not fly any airline that allows this. But, it should be an airline's decision, not the government's, on whether they do?
More regulation, anyone?
via @timcushing
Link Tea
BYO ice.
Justice For Famous Criminals And "Justice" For A Mom Who Made A Mistake
The same prosecutor who gave NFL star Ray Rice a pass when he beat his then-fiancée into unconsciousness in an elevator is throwing the book at Shaheen Allen. There's a letter to the editor from Pete Sesnick at mycentraljersey.com:
When confronted with virtually irrefutable evidence that NFL star Ray Rice beat his then fiancée into unconsciousness in the elevator of an Atlantic City casino, Atlantic County Prosecutor James McClain, through his magnanimous tolerance and generosity, allowed Rice to enter a pretrial intervention program, thus avoiding jail time. And if Rice stays out of trouble for a period of time, he'll have his record expunged. Darn kind and understanding of the prosecutor, but there's a larger tragedy associated with the Ray Rice domestic abuse incident.Consider the case of Shaneen Allen. Allen is a single, working mother of two young children and Philadelphia resident who, in 2012, obtained a permit to carry a concealed firearm for her and her children's protection. She even attended and passed an NRA firearms safety course.
But last October, Shaneen Allen made a mistake. She traveled from Pennsylvania to New Jersey with her loaded firearm concealed in her purse, assuming that her Pennsylvania permit was valid in New Jersey -- just like her Pennsylvania driver's license is. Unfortunately, when Ms. Allen crossed the Delaware River into New Jersey, she became a felon under New Jersey law. New Jersey does not recognize the validity of any other state's concealed carry permit. There is no reciprocity.
She's now facing a mandatory minimum sentence of three years -- no possibility of parole -- in state prison.
She committed no violent act. She did not intend to commit any violent act. She simply made a mistake and honestly admitted to it.
But Atlantic County Prosecutor James McClain is not so tolerant of crimes by non-celebrities:
He will not allow Shaneen to enter PTI. McClain is apparently determined to send her to prison.Granted, ignorance of the law is no excuse, and Allen made an unwarranted assumption then failed to confirm her belief by examining the applicable New Jersey statutes. But what is to be gained by sending her to prison for three years? Given what Shaneen's been through during the last several months, she will surely never make the same mistake again. I wouldn't blame her if she never set foot in New Jersey again. So tell us, Prosecutor McClain, what possible motive can you have for taking Shaneen Allen "to the wall," while allowing Ray Rice to walk?
What purpose does putting this woman in a cage for three years serve? Will she be a better citizen for it? Will her child be better off? Shouldn't punishment serve some purpose?
via @radleybalko
Love This: How To Screw Up Telemarketing
An IT administrator -- Chris Blasko -- gets a telemarketer call and manages to see that it takes longer before more people can be bothered. Love it.
Via @Bruce_Schneier
The Jews Have J-Date; ISIS Martyrs-To-Be Have JihadDate
Jonathan Turley blogs about ISIS blogs and other sites recruiting Western and European women to connect with jihadi -- the Mujahideen match up, as Turley puts it.
It promises that, if lucky, you can watch your loved one martyr himself -- I kid you not....Notably, these social websites targeting women do not show the signature gore of the Islamic State of hacked off body parts and corpses. That apparently is a turn-off for JihadDate. Instead it describes the paradise for women to be married to Jihadi and to be part of the community of "sisters" within Islamic State. They are told that they are not excepted to be martyrs but mothers. The "Bird of Jannah" explains: "Women are not equal to men. It can never be. Men are the leaders & women are [so] special that Allah has given them entire chapter in the Qur'an."
One supposed English woman named Umm Layth gushes with delight about how "I will never be able to do justice with words as to how this place makes me feel." She adds "Allahu Akbar, there's no way to describe the feeling of sitting with the Akhawat [sisters] waiting on news of whose Husband has attained Shahadah [martyrdom]." The pitches have succeeded. Two teenage girls, 15 and 16, from Austria have gone to Syria for Jihadi marriages as did two 16-year-old British twins.
Just as a tip, girls, homicidal hunks like Yaken appear to prefer decapitating swords as gifts and their favorite subject is the Caliphate followed closely by the slaughtering of non-believers. As for the standard "likes": beheadings, Shrine desecrations, and martyrdom. As for standard "dislikes": Shia, human rights, and most art and music. Under the Islamic State's view of Islam, you[r] very incompatibility with with modern world makes you compatible -- if not ideal -- for a Mujahideen match up.
And no, JihadDate doesn't actually seem to exist.
From the Daily Beast piece by Jamie Dettmer, linked above:
According to analysts at SITE Intelligence Group, a U.S.-based organization that tracks online activity by terrorists, the recruiting efforts may have had some success. "By creating content specifically targeting female jihadi supporters, the Islamic State is able to establish a pipeline to assist Western women in traveling to Syria to marry jihadi fighters and contribute to the formation of their new society," the analysts argue.They add: "Significantly, these online networks have expanded in prominence and sophistication during the summer of 2014, suggesting that the Islamic State has already been successful in recruiting foreign women to leave their lives in the West, and is looking to build upon this strength."
...In April, Umm Layth, who has more than 2,000 Twitter followers, distributed online an English-language "Diary of a Muhajirah [migrant]" providing point-by-point guidance on what these brides-to-be can should expect. There are no mentions of the public stoning that IS advocates for adultery, nor of the punishments for transgressing strict dress codes, but the constrained lifestyle and the material hardships Western women will face aren't entirely glossed over.
Colleges As Due-Process-Free Cash Cows For Government
Former Education Department lawyer Hans Bader, now a Senior Attorney at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, weighs in on a provision in a Senate bill apparently imposing large fines on colleges -- payable to the agency imposing them -- over sexual violence on campus.
This potentially violating colleges' due process rights (by incentivizing the agency in finding them guilty even if they are innocent) and indirectly encouraging them to colleges to violate students' due process rights.
An excerpt:
It is a conflict of interest -- and sometimes a violation of the Constitution -- for a fine to go to the very unit of government that employs the judge or official who imposed the fine. That gives the official an incentive to find the accused guilty in order to enrich the official's agency. But such fines are apparently authorized by a provision of the Campus Accountability and Safety Act (CASA) (also known as H.R. 5354 and S. 2692).CASA imposes penalties on colleges for violating regulations related to sexual violence. But a provision in the bill lets the money be kept by the agency imposing the fine, the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights (OCR). That provision needs to be removed from the bill, because it will give OCR an incentive to find innocent colleges guilty of violations in order to keep the resulting fines, violating colleges' due process rights. It will also strengthen OCR's ability to pressure colleges and schools to adopt politically-correct policies unrelated to sexual violence.
This kind of conflict of interest can violate the Constitution's due process clause when the resulting fines comprise a large fraction of the agency's budget. In Ward v. Monroeville (1972) the Supreme Court ruled that because a "major part" of the Village of Monroeville's finances came from fines imposed by mayor's court, the defendant was denied due process, the right to a disinterested and impartial judge. Here, OCR can levy fines that equal one percent of a a college's budget for "each violation or failure" -- that would be a whopping $42 million for Harvard alone, since its budget is $4.2 billion.
...There is something very unseemly about an agency getting rich off fines that it keeps, giving it an incentive to multiply its budget by finding colleges guilty, even if they are innocent.
...Giving the Office for Civil Rights the ability to fine colleges millions of dollars will encourage them to curry favor with the OCR by doing things like restricting politically incorrect speech on campus. It will also give OCR expanded leverage to pressure colleges to curtail due process for students accused of various offenses, the way it recently required Tufts University to reduce due process protections for its students in exchange for an end to a federal investigation (Tufts was required to authorize "interim measures" against students even before deciding their guilt or innocence.).
Milky
Linkies the color of fresh Wite-Out.
Johnny Dronehunter: Defender of Privacy
This is a promo, but it makes a good point about privacy in the writeup on YouTube:
In the not-too-distant future, privacy is a thing of the past. Undeniable rights degrade like the paper they were written upon, and Big Brother has a constant eye on you and your family.It will take a determined man and an unequaled weapon to make a stand. And explosions. Yeah, lots of explosions.
If trouble was what they were after, they found it.
How do you feel about the video cameras starting to show up on buses, as traffic cameras, all over some cities (like London and Boston)?
Should you give up your right to privacy simply because you are out in public?
Alan Westin, author of a paper on privacy, describes anonymity as an important right to privacy that "occurs when the individual is in public places or performing public acts but still seeks, and finds, freedom from identification and surveillance."
Notice What's Missing From The Sidewalks?
Alex Marshall writes at governing.com of the disappearance of the "lively sidewalk ballet" that Jane Jacobs described in her 1961 book, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities":
When I first lived in New York City in the late 1980s, I was struck by how the proprietors of the tiny grocery store below my apartment on upper Broadway would hold keys for the children/guests/friends of nearby residents, as well as packages, notes and so on.The late Jane Jacobs put a lot of importance on the practice. In her masterful and influential 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jacobs wrote it was an example of the "casual, public trust" that underlies the "casual, public contact" that constitutes a rich street realm. This is great -- except shopkeepers don't do this much anymore in New York City, nor do people ask them to.
Back in the late 80s, when I lived in New York's Noho, at Lafayette and Houston, Ramon the tailor used to hold our packages for my roommate, her boyfriend, and me. It felt so nice and neighborly.
He writes about what he sees as the saddest change for him, as a parent -- all the kids being locked away:
Fewer children are playing on sidewalks with non-parent adults watching over them.Jacobs devoted a whole chapter to this. She wrote of how the watchful eyes of unrelated adults -- shopkeepers, housewives and the like -- not only helped keep children safe but also helped socialize the many children playing there.
These children were central players in the "intricate sidewalk ballet" that Jacobs so famously described near her home in Greenwich Village. "When I get home after work, the ballet is reaching its crescendo," she wrote. "This is the time of roller skates and stilts and tricycles, and games in the lee of the stoop." She continued later: "They slop in puddles, write with chalk, jump rope, roller skate, shoot marbles, trot out their possessions, converse, trade cards, play stoop ball, walk stilts, decorate soap-box scooters, dismember old baby carriages, climb on railings, run up and down."
From this play, though, comes responsibility, as random adults hush overly noisy children or quash dangerous, rude or aggressive behavior. "In real life, only from the ordinary adults of the city sidewalks do children learn -- if they learn it at all -- the first fundamental of successful city life: People must take a modicum of public responsibility for each other even if they have no ties to each other."
Alas, kids don't play much on the sidewalks anymore, certainly not in Greenwich Village, where Jacobs lived, or in Park Slope in Brooklyn, where I live, which is stuffed with kids. I sometimes let my 9-year-old son play on the sidewalk in front of our building. He's by himself. His chums, potential or actual, are at piano lessons, soccer practice, with tutors, or on supervised "playdates."
Kids and adults are holed up inside air-conditioned apartments, their faces lit by various electronic screens. There are fewer of Jacobs' famous eyes on the street.
I think he's right -- that part of the problem is what I call "the mallification of New York." It's not like they're going to hold your spare keys or take your packages from the UPS guy at Ann Taylor.
via FreeRangeKids
Inky
Squid links.
Your Mommy Was A Criminal
If your mommy, like my mommy, sometimes let you be in a toy store by yourself, well, she should consider herself lucky that she was engaging in such criminal negligence before they started arresting people for it.
Lenore Skenazy writes at reason:
Yesterday afternoon, a mom in Long Island, New York, was arrested for leaving her 7-year-old at the Roosevelt Field Mall LEGO Store for an hour and 20 minutes while she shopped elsewhere in the mall. According to Patch.com:A store manger at the Lego Store became concerned for the well being of the unsupervised child and contacted mall security, who then called 911, police said.
She was arrested upon returning to the store.
Skenazy puts it in perspective:
I would really love the police to explain how endangered this child actually was, in a public place, surrounded by employees, shoppers, and security (and LEGO superheroes!).Nonetheless, in a country that arrests parents for taking their eyes off their kids anytime before they're legally old enough to join the Army, Juarez is now considered a criminal.
Minneapolis Cafe Adds "Minimum Wage Fee" To Customer Tabs
From the "Wow, who coulda seen that coming?" files, City Pages' Aaron Rupar reports that the Oasis Cafe has added a "minimum wage fee" to their customers' checks -- with this message (a response to a customer complaint on Facebook):
WIth regards to why we're charging a $.35 fee to cover the recent $.75 increase in in minimum wage...we estimate the increase in labor cost will will cost our company more than $10,000 per year...which has to be offset by an increase in revenue in order to operate profitably. Rather than increase the prices of our menu items, we chose to charge a flat fee. If the state of Minnesota would pass tip credit, like 43 other states have done, none of this would be necessary. For what it's worth, we pay our people very well. Our dishwashers start at $10/hour, our cooks start at $12/hour and our servers average more than $20 when you consider what they earn in tips...
The customer complaint -- by Amanda Gutierrez -- contends that the cafe is putting the servers in a bad position:
By doing it this way, they are putting the servers in a bad position. Servers are the ones right at the table delivering the receipt. And they are the "minimum wage tipped employee." I think that the owners intended to make a point, and they did. But I think that they failed to consider the way that it would make the staff look at the actual point of transaction.
I'm not sure why a business telling you what you're paying for would reflect badly on the employees. I think this is a case of a person wanting to make a point but not having the debating chops to do so.
Via PJM
Life Is A "Hostile Work Environment"!
If you cannot handle parody and teasing speech or even derogatory speech, you should be considered too fragile or not adult enough to be in a university environment -- which used to be considered a sort of proto-adult environment and is now more like nursery school with beer.
Dismayingly, but not all that shockingly (considering how hard so many colleges work to shut down free speech on campus as of late), U.S. Civil Rights Commision's Commissioner Michael Yaki, a Dem appointee and former senior adviser to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, spoke out recently against free speech on campus.
The subject was sexual harassment, but, as law prof Jonathan Turley writes:
Yaki's comments however seem to threaten core free speech principles as he laid out his view of the need to curtail harmful speech. Yaki spoke of the need to outlaw unpopular or what he considers degrading speech because college students are too impressionable.He highlighted the types of speech that he want banned as including certain types of fraternity or parody displays considered offensive. He also included pageants as possible speech crimes due to the dangers inherent in "a situation involving women" in which they "parade around in skimpy clothing and turn in some show or something."
He then added: "I mean where do you think you can, that the university can't deal with ensuring the route it has environment that is not oppressive or hostile because obviously a campus, especially certain types of campuses where there's a lot of -- where -- that are geographically compact, that have a lot of working and living situations in a close area to create a campus atmosphere . . . Doesn't that gravitate toward having greater ability to proscribe certain types of conduct that have the ability to escalate beyond what anyone would consider to be reasonable or acceptable?"
Whatever that may mean, Yaki then made the most dangerous turn of his comments in suggesting that speech limitations are appropriate on college campuses under the same theory as applied to elementary students: "It has to do with science. More and more, the vast majority, in fact -- I think -- overall in bodies of science is that young people, not just K through 12 but also between the ages of 16 to 20, 21 is where the brain is still in a stage of development."
Shockingly, this guy Yaki is calling for policy based on an understanding of brain science that falls just behind that of my dog.
Yes, it has been contended that the brain is still in "a stage of development" until around age 25, perhaps, but that doesn't mean students can't deal with free speech. The part of the brain that may remain undeveloped relates to impulse control, not ability to deal with written or spoken information.
In fact, college seems an essential place to learn how to deal with opposing views, as campus free speech defender Greg Lukianoff, of theFIRE.org, points out in his excellent book, Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate
The answer to speech that troubles you is more speech, not having the government come down and cover the entire campus with a big muzzle.
By the way, about FIRE, they defend, pro bono, those who've had their speech squashed on campus -- people like students who'd otherwise never be able to afford legal representation. If you have extra money at the end of the year or whenever, and you are passionate about defending our civil liberties, they are a great place to put your dollars.
More from Eugene Volokh.
Got Two Brain Cells To Rub Together? You Can Sneak Past The TSA
A 62-year-old San Francisco woman has shown that all it takes is a little motivation to get past the repurposed mall workers we call "security" at airports.
Chris Filippi reports at CBS/SF that this woman -- with a history of trying to sneak onto planes at SFO -- made a second successful attempt:
According to officials at Mineta San Jose International Airport, 62-year-old Marilyn Hartman made it past security and wasn't caught until her Southwest flight landed at Los Angeles International Airport Monday night, where she was arrested.Southwest Airlines said in a statement that they were "actively investigating" the situation and is cooperating with authorities.
Hartman initially came to the attention of authorities after trying to sneak onto flights at SFO six times. Once, she actually made it onto a flight that was destined for Hawaii. She was spotted when the actual seat-holder boarded. In that case, Hartman was then arrested and ordered to stay away from the airport.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) issued a statement that said they are planning to make some changes at the document checking area at San Jose International following the incident.
D'oh...closing barn door, meet the horse just you let out.
Lumpy
One of the seven linkin dwarfs.
Bird Dog
Aida, my wee Chinese Crested, in flight. 
She's an athletic and agile little thing, but being little, there are sometimes, well, misfires, like yesterday, when she thought she could fly her five-pound self up onto the bed, but only hit the middle of the side of the mattress. She just got right back up again, no muss, no fuss, and tried again. Intrepid little thing.
Talk Lo-Carby To Me: A Vacuum-Sealed Love Story
Boyfriend: "You are like the Joe McCarthy of eating." (Just trying to keep the man alive -- telling him he can have all the bacon, hamburgers, and buttery green vegetables he can eat; no corn!)
Gregg told me he'd made this amazing corn on the cob in his Sous Vide. I reacted like he'd just told me he'd had a threesome with the girls down the hall.
A digression:
The Eades, who are dear friends of ours, gave Gregg and me refurbished Sous Vides. (I have the Demi
Basically, though the Sous Vide is expensive on the face of it, it could make an old shoe tasty. To explain, here's Wikipedia:
Sous-vide (/suːˈviːd/; French for "under vacuum")[1] is a method of cooking food sealed in airtight plastic bags in a water bath or in a temperature-controlled steam environment for longer than normal cooking times--72 hours in some cases--at an accurately regulated temperature much lower than normally used for cooking, typically around 55 °C (131 °F) to 60 °C (140 °F) for meats and higher for vegetables. The intention is to cook the item evenly, ensuring that the inside is properly cooked without overcooking the outside, and retain moisture.
With relatively nice cuts of steak, because I eat mine "still mooing," I will sometimes cook the meat for only an hour or hour and a half. Crappier cuts of meat take longer, but then become tender.
After the Sous Vide, you just cut the bag out of the pouch and then sear it in olive oil for 30 seconds in a really hot pan.
I now am ruined for un-Sous-Vided meat. I cook a bunch in there, fast-chill and refrigerate it, and then sear it when I'm ready to eat it. Yum!
And back to the corn. Carbs -- including those in sweet and starchy vegetables -- cause the insulin secretion that puts on fat. I am genetically lucky as far as my body's reaction to carbs. Gregg is...less lucky in that department. I wouldn't try to stop him from all those things women stop men from -- like going to a strip club. But if he even looks at a cracker...! (Got to keep the man alive.)
Can Would-Be Parents Walk Away From A Surrogate Contract?
You don't want people who don't want to be mothers raising children, and children seem to have the best shot in life when raised in stable, together, intact families.
But a baby contracted with a surrogate mother is a baby that never would have been born. The baby-making technology and practices seem to be a little ahead of our means of dealing with issues that arise.
TV gabber Sherri Shepherd, according to reports by TMZ, no longer wants the child she is expecting via surrogate this month. And I do have to say, right now, there are only reports from entertainment sites, and Shepherd doesn't seem to have told her side anywhere, so there may to be more or less to this than what's appearing in the press.
But it's the issue here that interests me.
Holly McKay writes at FoxNews:
According to TMZ, her estranged husband Lamar Sally is preparing to file legal documents to stop her withdrawing from a surrogate contract she signed while they were still together. The couple each filed separate divorce documents in early May. Sally is said to be the biological father of the child, while an egg donor was reportedly used through in-vitro fertilization."Sherri doesn't want anything to do with the child and refuses to pay any child support," a source connected to the situation told FOX411. "She is not budging and is completely detached. She feels very just in her actions and claims the child is not hers."
The former host of ABC's "The View" reportedly wants no part in parenting the unborn child to avoid having to pay out massive child support payments. Shepherd has an estimated net value of $10 million, while her soon-to-be ex-husband reportedly earned just $30,000 in 2010 - 90 percent of which came from unemployment benefits, while Shepherd made around $1 million that year.
The couple wed in August of 2011.
Shepherd claims that Sally defrauded her from entering into the surrogate agreement, alleging that he planned to file for divorce but wanted her commitment to paying child support.
They turned to Leo Terrell for a legal opinion:
Leo Terrell of CleartheCourt.com said a divorce court will rule that both husband and wife will have responsibility in taking care of the surrogate child, and given that Sherri is the biggest earner, she will most likely have to foot the child support bills.
From the NYPost's Andrea Peyser:
"She might be able to absolve herself of legal responsibility," said Sanford Benardo, a lawyer who specializes in hooking up surrogates and egg donors with prospective parents through the Northeast Assisted Fertility Group, of which he's founder and president. He plays no role in the Shepherd/Sally case."What may happen is social services may get involved," he told me. Yes, the child could wind up in foster care.
"Why spend $150,000 to create a baby who would otherwise never have been born, then mess it up like this?" asked Benardo. "It's disaster."
He said a surrogate typically gets paid up to $40,000 for carrying a baby, and a lawyer's fees add up to $10,000 to the tab. Plus, an in-vitro clinic gets up to $40,000, an egg donor is paid about $10,000. There are costs for a surrogate's travel, medical care, assorted living expenses and catastrophic health insurance. Babies don't come cheap.
TMZ:
Another twist ... Sherri has filed for divorce in New Jersey and Lamar has filed in California. This is not a coincidence. We did some digging, and found New Jersey courts generally do NOT recognize surrogacy agreements, which means Lamar would probably be shut down. Not so in Cali.
What do you think should be done in a situation like the one being described?
FTTUSA On TSA: "No More Criminal Touching Of Private Parts"
Freedom To Travel USA, in an email, calls for "a return to reasonable security," and says, "we recommend 2002 security screening which no one complained about." This includes:
Metal detectors only (no unconstitutional inch-by-inch nude body scanners)No Criminal touching of private parts
Shoes on
Reasonable liquids allowed
No plastic baggies
We are against unconstitutional inch-by-inch nude body scanners; at the end of every alarm, the scanners CAN'T IDENTIFY what they think they found, and a secondary search is always done. From the millions of alarms, there has never been found even one non-metallic bomb or non-metallic bomb part. Scanners waste an incredible amount of time in addition to being unconstitutional under the 4th amendment, yet the most intrusive government search ever under the largest "Stop and Frisk" program in the United States continues unchallenged by leaders (both parties) in Congress and the President who approved this travesty.
We are against CRIMINAL touching pat downs. Quite simply, the "secret" TSA procedures for so-called "pat downs" include required touching (through clothing) of genitals, female breasts, and buttocks. People in WHEELCHAIRS or those with other medical challenges are often profiled.
And no more special lines for affluent travelers. This isn't private business. Travel writer Christopher Elliott asks, "Should the TSA adopt a 'one line' policy?"
Gordon Moore is confused -- and angry.Just before he boarded a recent flight in Portland, Ore., he was met with a crowd of passengers queued up at the TSA screening area.
"I saw a separate security line for first and business class travelers, staffed by at least two TSA employees," he says. "They seemed to be doing nothing."
He adds, "The airlines can do whatever they want, but all of us pay for the TSA through our taxes. By what right do they provide priority service for affluent travelers?"
...One line would eliminate the Pre-Check boondoggle. The TSA should be running its background checks on all passengers before the flight and singling out the dangerous ones for an extra once-over -- not the other way around. And with the influx of cash the TSA is now collecting, we shouldn't have to pay an extra $85 for the agency to do its job.
Also, a one-line policy would eradicate a "special" class of passengers that don't really deserve special treatment. Elites, employees and flight crew members should stand in the same line and be subject to the same screening requirements as everyone else. Nothing would lead to common-sense reform faster than an unhappy pilot's union complaining that its members have to pass through the silly and unproven full-body scanner.
Alexandra Petri in the WaPo has some tips to help the TSA's repurposed mall food court workers, earning money for violating our bodies and rights, do their jobs a little better. A couple of those:
•All babies going through security must be stopped and muted.•Tell the TSA that D.C. licenses are real licenses from the United States of America. Otherwise they will both hold up the line and embarrass everyone.
The Blaze's Chris Peterson was surprised that the TSA let him fly with only his Costco card as ID. Silly Chris, the TSA isn't a security agency; it's a pretend security agency designed to teach Americans to be docile as their rights are yanked from them.
And whaddya know, Americans are complying, right, left, and center.
Limpy
Linky with a sprained ankle. (Do links have ankles?)
Two to get you started:
Nebraska woman denied a driver's license because of her same-sex marriage.
And from Mark J. Perry at AEI: "But..but..who will build the roads without government? UK guy built one in 10 days so drivers can bypass 14-mile detour."
Public Servants As Public Masters
Glenn Reynolds has a USA Today column on CIA Director Brennan's lie to Senator Dianne Feinstein that the CIA hadn't broken into Senate computers that were looking into CIA misconduct.
Brennan's words to Feinstein:
"Nothing could be further from the truth. I mean, we wouldn't do that."
The truth:
It turns out that the CIA would do that -- and, in fact, had done so. Brennan's reassurances were false, and CIA spooks had been hacking into the committee investigators' computers looking for documents they thought the investigators shouldn't have, violating a promise not to. So, first Brennan broke a promise. Then, he either lied, or showed that he doesn't control his own agency, which in many ways would be worse.Brennan has apologized, but his apology won't be the end of things. We're already seeing bipartisan calls for his removal, from Sens. Mark Udall, D-Colo., Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. The White House is hanging tough so far, but we're now hearing comparisons made to the speed with which Brennan's predecessor, Gen. David Petraeus, was cut loose over an extramarital affair. Does this mean that the White House views spying on, and lying to, members of Congress as less serious than an affair?
The answer to that, alas, is probably "yes." Contempt for Congress, and for separation of powers and historical understandings about the roles of the executive and legislative branches, has been a hallmark of the Obama administration. It's not surprising that in such an atmosphere, CIA operatives would feel comfortable snooping on the Senate, and that a CIA director would feel confident issuing blanket denials when questioned.
And what's the worst that's likely to happen to Brennan? Even if he does lose his job, he will -- like former NSA director Keith Alexander -- just step through the revolving door into a high-paid private-sector consultancy. But without consequences, why should we expect better behavior in the future?
Unfortunately, Reynolds sees prosecution -- for contempt of Congress or under the False Statements Act -- as unlikely, since Attorney General (and Obama Admin bag man) Eric Holder would be making the decision on whether to prosecute.
Reynolds winds up with this:
The sad truth is that when you elect irresponsible people into positions of power, you get irresponsible government. President Obama oozes contempt for Congress, and for longstanding unwritten political accommodations among the branches, at every opportunity. It's unsurprising that his underlings feel -- and act -- consistently with that view.
No, it's not enough to hope your guy will be different because he's young, cool, charismatic, and "not Bush."
Midwestern Parents Become Late-Life Pot Moguls
Pot is so much more valuable to this country as a legal item than an item to cage people for in the Drug War -- the war that jails this country's adult citizens for growing and selling to other consenting adult citizens and for voluntarily using plant or pharmaceutical matter in some form.
From New York Magazine, "Anonymous" tells the story of his or her midwestern parents' move to Oregon and their getting medical marijuana use cards -- and becoming boutique, high-end pot sellers in the process:
In order to become part of the OMMP system, a doctor must approve an application that states what one's ailments are and that medical marijuana actually can help. The card costs $200 and has to be renewed each year. Patients can have other people grow for them, and that's what the family is doing at the farm. Everyone has a legal card, and my sister and her boyfriend are registered growers. At any one time, a patient can possess up to 24 ounces of usable marijuana. But -- here's the key part -- a patient can also sell their excess to a dispensary. That's the loophole my parents use to sell their product.It's not difficult for them to find buyers. My family's pot has tested off the charts with OMMP dispensaries. Part of the medical-marijuana testing process involves a detailed culture test that identifies mold colonies on the actual marijuana -- the lower the number, the purer the pot. Growers are allowed 10,000 colonies per gram. My parents' stuff clocks in at around 2,300. One batch came in at a mere 300. Through chromatography testing, the levels of THC (the compound that actually makes marijuana potent) are about as high as you can get for weed that's grown outside of a lab.
The quality means that, in three short years, my family's product has become a boutique item, highly sought after by discerning customers. It is also, unfortunately, sought after by less savory characters. Especially when starting out, the realities of Oregon marijuana culture practically compel some association with the black market. But that doesn't make it any less strange to hear my mom talk about a guy named Lil Jake running off to Vegas with a stash he was supposed to sell, or to listen to my dad tell me about the afternoon a bald man arrived for a pickup, refused to say a single word throughout the entire transaction, and instead just stared around menacingly before leaving. (An ex-Marine friend will now guard the property during the busy season -- another disconcerting detail I never thought I'd hear at the dinner table.)
But even with a guard, and people like Lil Jake, my parents' life bears a limited resemblance to Walter White's. My mom still goes to the grocery store each day, they're more or less on the right side of the law, and in a weird way it's nice to see my whole family working together. Trips to see them are also a lot more interesting than they would be if my parents had retired in Florida.
Oopsy, Did We Execute You By Accident?
There are fresh doubts about the execution of a Texas man in 2004.
Maurice Possley writes for the Marshall Project, as printed in the WaPo:
CORSICANA, Tex. -- For more than 20 years, the prosecutor who convicted Cameron Todd Willingham of murdering his three young daughters has insisted that the authorities made no deals to secure the testimony of the jailhouse informer who told jurors that Willingham confessed the crime to him.About this project: The investigation was reported and written by Maurice Possley for The Marshall Project, a new nonprofit news organization focused on the criminal justice system. Sign up for updates on their launch.
Since Willingham was executed in 2004, officials have continued to defend the account of the informer, Johnny E. Webb, even as a series of scientific experts have discredited the forensic evidence that Willingham might have deliberately set the house fire in which his toddlers were killed.But now new evidence has revived questions about Willingham's guilt: In taped interviews, Webb, who has previously both recanted and affirmed his testimony, gives his first detailed account of how he lied on the witness stand in return for efforts by the former prosecutor, John H. Jackson, to reduce Webb's prison sentence for robbery and to arrange thousands of dollars in support from a wealthy Corsicana rancher. Newly uncovered letters and court files show that Jackson worked diligently to intercede for Webb after his testimony and to coordinate with the rancher, Charles S. Pearce Jr., to keep the mercurial informer in line.
...Along with Webb's account, the letters and documents expose a determined, years-long effort by the prosecutor to alter Webb's conviction, speed his parole, get him clemency and move him from a tough state prison back to his hometown jail. Had such favorable treatment been revealed prior to his execution, Willingham might have had grounds to seek a new trial.
Trust the system? Think it's just and fair and about enacting justice? If so, you are too naive to be conducting adult business. Just hope you don't get tripped up and used as somebody's pawn. It really could happen to any of us -- and does.
Rushin' Revolution
Garry Kasparov tweet on the supposed joys of life in a "sharing" economy:
@Kasparov63 Sorry, but I'm from a place where everything was "shared equally" and it wasn't as nice as some of you seem to think it would be.
Link-A-Mole
Whack-a-mole gone vegan.
Advice Goddess Radio, LIVE (*different time!), 6-7 pm PT: Dr. Barbara Oakley On How To Retrain Your Brain And Learn How To Learn
Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess Radio: "Nerd Your Way To A Better Life!" with the best brains in science.
Dr. Barbara Oakley has written an incredibly helpful book on learning how to learn math and science. But, yoohoo, math-loathers, this book -- and this show -- are about much more than that.
Both the book and tonight's show are about techniques you can start employing immediately that will show you how to do your work and your creative work more efficiently and ultimately more successfully and satisfyingly.
The proof that these techniques work? Dr. Oakley herself used these techniques to transform from a girl who flunked every math and science course in high school into a tenured professor of engineering. And she currently uses them to curb procrastination, to learn and retain difficult material better and faster, and to increase her creativity in problem-solving and writing.
Dr. Oakley's excellent book we'll be discussing is A Mind For Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra)
Listen to the show at this link **at a different time, this week only -- 6-7 p.m. Pacific, 9-10 p.m. Eastern -- or download the podcast afterward at the same link:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2014/08/04/dr-barbara-oakley-on-how-to-retrain-your-brain-and-learn-how-to-learn
Don't miss last week's show with Wharton marketing professor Dr. Jonah Berger, on the science of what makes ideas and products go viral.
Berger's book: Contagious: Why Things Catch On.
Listen at this link or download the podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/2014/07/27/dr-jonah-berger-on-the-science-of-what-makes-ideas-and-products-go-viral
Join me and my fascinating guests every Sunday, 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time, 10-11 p.m. Eastern Time, at blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.
My show's sponsor is now Audible.com. Get a free audiobook download and support this show financially at no cost to you by signing up for a free 30-day trial at audibletrial.com/amya (It's $14.95 after 30 days, but you can cancel before then and have it cost you nothing.)
Please consider ordering my new book, the science-based and funny "Good Manners For Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck," (only $9.48 at Amazon!). Orders of the book help support my writing and this radio show!
Serial Plaintiff Drop-Kicked Back To Mexico
Lisa Bartley reports that illegal immigrant Alfredo Garcia was finally shipped back after using the ADA to prey on California businesses to the tune of $1.2 million and court rules to get California taxpayers to pick up his court fees:
LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Alfredo Garcia, a notorious serial plaintiff, convicted felon and undocumented immigrant, has been deported to Mexico. Garcia made it his business to sue small businesses, filing more than 800 lawsuits against businesses in the Los Angeles area for alleged violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act.Garcia hasn't held a job since he fell out of an avocado tree while he was drinking and high on cocaine about 18 years ago. Garcia's back was broken, his spinal cord severed. Since then, he's made a living off these lawsuits. It's incredibly profitable, for Garcia and his longtime attorney Morse Mehrban.
Based on previously disclosed settlements, Eyewitness News can estimate that Garcia has collected approximately $1.2 million from business owners since he began filing lawsuits in 2007.
At the same time, Garcia applies for and receives fee waivers from the courts by claiming he is too poor to pay the court fees associated with the lawsuits. That means taxpayers pick up the tab.
...Garcia and other serial plaintiffs look for A.D.A. violations like a bathroom mirror that's mounted too high on a wall or a disabled parking space that doesn't have the required access aisle. His lawsuits rarely go to trial, and Garcia has testified that he typically collects about $2,000 in settlement money per lawsuit.
"These cases amount to legalized extortion," says attorney Jim Link who has defended dozens of local businesses against Garcia lawsuits.
The guy was also guilty of multiple felonies. All that, and it only took 18 years to deport him.
We're awfully, awfully cuddly on illegal immigration.
Air Marshals In The Classroom
Vincente Arenas and Jonathan Blakely report at CBSNews.com (with annoying autoplay video) that schoolteachers in nine states are being trained in shooting and armed in case of future school shootings:
They carry their weapons anonymously.When the semester begins, only the local police and school board will know they're armed.
An administrator says she chose to go through with the training because she's "from a rural school. And the response time is so slow to get any law enforcement help ... I felt it was important, if I was able to help and do something to protect our kids."
In Missouri, local school boards decide whether faculty can be armed.
A teacher who's opposed to armed faculty members spoke up:
But Steinhoff believes "...there's more than one way to stop a bad guy with a gun. But if it does take a good guy, then I want that good guy to be a police officer. "
And that would have worked out how in these school shootings? There would have been, oh, five or 10 cops per school? Paid for by...?
No, Your Fruit Really Doesn't Need Underwear
The Chinese have taken to dressing their peaches in tiny thongs for the Qixi festival, the Chinese version of Valentine's Day, reports the Guardian.
Linkster
Links with baby hamsters.
Victory On Pico
Friday night photos by car. Closed and empty furniture store in mid-city Los Angeles.
Barney Frank On Obamacare: "They Just Lied To People"
Kellan Howell writes in the WashTimes that former Massachusetts rep Frank was appalled at the way the administration rolled out Obamacare, with the President lying to the public. In Frank's words, in a HuffPo interview:
"The rollout was so bad, and I was appalled--I don't understand how the president could have sat there and not been checking on that on a weekly basis," the former Democratic congressman told the website."But frankly, he should never have said as much as he did, that if you like your current health care plan, you can keep it. That wasn't true. And you shouldn't lie to people. And they just lied to people," he added.
The War On Drugs Vs. The War On Poverty
...Each ineffective in its own special ways.
Randall G. Holcombe writes at Mises.org:
The War on Drugs is a real war in which the government has singled out a minority population -- drug buyers and sellers -- for attack. It comes after them with military-style weapons and tactics so it can confiscate their property and incarcerate them.The War on Poverty is not a war. It is a peace-keeping operation that provides goods, services, and money to the poor, much like the Marshall Plan did in Europe after World War II.
In neither case are these programs accomplishing their stated goals. The poverty rate is not declining, and people continue to buy and sell drugs. But then, you knew that before you started reading this.
Lackey
Servile links.
Israel, Hamas, And The Palestinians: Answer The Amos Oz Questions
Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic quotes an interview Israeli novelist Amos Oz did with Deutsche Welle:
Amoz Oz: I would like to begin the interview in a very unusual way: by presenting one or two questions to your readers and listeners. May I do that?Deutsche Welle: Go ahead!
Question 1: What would you do if your neighbor across the street sits down on the balcony, puts his little boy on his lap and starts shooting machine gun fire into your nursery?
Question 2: What would you do if your neighbor across the street digs a tunnel from his nursery to your nursery in order to blow up your home or in order to kidnap your family?
With these two questions I pass the interview to you.
Oh, and do note, as Goldberg points out, that Oz is "the father of his country's peace-and-compromise movement."
Moochstarter And Other Sources Of Crowdfunding
"Moochstarter" is how I refer to it in the section on crowdfunding requests in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck."
I should explain that I don't mind when friends send me requests. I just gave money for my young and very talented friend Ollie's musical -- with pleasure, and while wishing I had big bucks to invest -- and I recently donated to Adam Carolla's fight against the patent troll, also wishing I could afford donate more than I did.
What galls me is when TOTAL STRANGERS write to me to see if they can mooch off me and maybe get me to promote their film or whatever.
I just got one of those emails Tuesday night.
Subject line: A Documentary to Inspire Womankind!
The email:
Dear Amy, We are female filmmakers writing to share with you the new trailer for our documentary......We have 21 days to reach our goal to finish this film, and would we would be so grateful if you could help us spread the word.
[Moochstarter link here]
We are just a team of two, so having your support would make a huge difference!
...Our goal with this film is to educate, uplift, and inspire women everywhere to create positive change in their own lives and communities.
Thank you for taking the time to view this and for the incredible work that you do!
(Clearly written by people who know fuck all about "the incredible work" I do.)
My reply:
I would like to buy a house, which I would use to give even more people free advice than I already do -- people who often have nowhere else to turn. Please contribute money via my PayPal button on my site. Also, LA real estate is outrageously expensive, so if you can throw in a couple thou, that would be super. I am just a team of one, so having your support would make a huge difference!Thank you for taking the time to consider this and for the incredible work that you do!
As I write in the book:
Sure, some of these crowdfunding requests are for noble causes or--occasionally--ventures that might someday turn a profit for those who invest. And I don't get all miffy when close friends e-mail me about causes or projects they're trying to fund. But for vanity projects--those unlikely to pay off in any meaningful way for anyone but the creator--I think it's in bad taste to ask for what amounts to friend- and acquaintance-supplied welfare. This is too often requested by people who would simply rather spend other people's money-- and try to get the opportunity to do that by (consciously or unconsciously) preying on people's fears of seeming stingy or having their refusal to donate held against them. If you have a vanity project, perhaps consider funding it the old-fashioned way: by working long hours at some dull job until you can pay for it yourself.
Durn Israelis, They Refuse To Just Lay Down Their Arms So The Palestinians Can Slaughter Them All
Ahdaf Soueif has an op-ed in the LA Times, "Dead Palestinian children in Gaza tell story of impunity."
No, they tell a story of a people, living right by another set of people, who want that set of people dead.
An excerpt from the piece:
Israel requires the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a "Jewish state." That is, to accept that the Palestinians living in Haifa, Jaffa, Nazareth, Acre, etc., will always be second-class citizens in their country. Israel ruptures logic; it wants to be a democracy practiced on the basis that some people are "chosen" and others are not. And if that won't work, then it wants the "not chosen" to disappear.
Bullshit.
The Israelis live in peace with the Druze and Christian Arabs who, no, are not treated as "second-class citizens." Of course, they don't have the likes of the Hamas Charter, calling for the death of all the Jews, and they aren't bombing anyone. Imagine if Sherman Oaks were bombing Brentwood and you were a Brentwood resident. Would you, like, fight back and all?
Keep in mind that line, "If Palestinians were to lay down their guns tomorrow, there would be no war. If Israel were to lay down its arms, there would be no Israel."
A list of the numerous Palestinian terror attacks since August of 2011.
Hamas: We Love Death Like You Israelis Love Life
Hamas leader Muhammad Deif: "Today you [Israelis] are fighting divine soldiers, who love death for Allah like you love life, and who compete among themselves for Martyrdom like you flee from death." (Sound starts a bit late in the video.)
Thane Rosenbaum writes in the WSJ of Hamas's civilian death strategy:
Let's state the obvious: No one likes to see dead children. Well, that's not completely true: Hamas does. They would prefer those children to be Jewish, but there is greater value to them if they are Palestinian. Outmatched by Israel's military, handicapped by rocket launchers with the steady hands of Barney Fife, Hamas is playing the long game of moral revulsion.With this conflict about to enter its third week, winning the PR war is the best Hamas can hope to achieve. Their weapon of choice, however, seems to be the cannon fodder of their own people, performing double duty in also sounding the drumbeat of Israeli condemnation. If you can't beat Iron Dome, then deploy sacrificial children as human shields.
...The people of Gaza overwhelmingly elected Hamas, a terrorist outfit dedicated to the destruction of Israel, as their designated representatives. Almost instantly Hamas began stockpiling weapons and using them against a more powerful foe with a solid track record of retaliation.
What did Gazans think was going to happen? Surely they must have understood on election night that their lives would now be suspended in a state of utter chaos. Life expectancy would be miserably low; children would be without a future. Staying alive would be a challenge, if staying alive even mattered anymore.
To make matters worse, Gazans sheltered terrorists and their weapons in their homes, right beside ottoman sofas and dirty diapers. When Israel warned them of impending attacks, the inhabitants defiantly refused to leave.
On some basic level, you forfeit your right to be called civilians when you freely elect members of a terrorist organization as statesmen, invite them to dinner with blood on their hands and allow them to set up shop in your living room as their base of operations. At that point you begin to look a lot more like conscripted soldiers than innocent civilians. And you have wittingly made yourself targets.
It also calls your parenting skills into serious question. In the U.S. if a parent is found to have locked his or her child in a parked car on a summer day with the windows closed, a social worker takes the children away from the demonstrably unfit parent. In Gaza, parents who place their children in the direct line of fire are rewarded with an interview on MSNBC where they can call Israel a genocidal murderer.
Linkerama Dome
Bring your own cinema.
Fossils, 50 Percent Off
The handbags, wallets, and more by Fossil, that is, in "Today's Deal," at Amazon
