Academia's Rejection Of Diversity -- Intellectual And Political Diversity
American Enterprise Institute president Arthur C. Brooks writes at The New York Times:
New research also shows that academia has itself stopped short in both the understanding and practice of true diversity -- the diversity of ideas -- and that the problem is taking a toll on the quality and accuracy of scholarly work. This year, a team of scholars from six universities studying ideological diversity in the behavioral sciences published a paper in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences that details a shocking level of political groupthink in academia. The authors show that for every politically conservative social psychologist in academia there are about 14 liberal social psychologists.Why the imbalance? The researchers found evidence of discrimination and hostility within academia toward conservative researchers and their viewpoints. In one survey cited, 82 percent of social psychologists admitted they would be less likely to support hiring a conservative colleague than a liberal scholar with equivalent qualifications.
...One of the study's authors, Philip E. Tetlock of the University of Pennsylvania, put it to me more bluntly. Expecting trustworthy results on politically charged topics from an "ideologically incestuous community," he explained, is "downright delusional."
...In a recent exercise, [The World Bank] presented identical data sets to employees under two different pretexts. Some employees were told the data were measuring the effectiveness of a skin rash cream, while others were told the same data measured the effects of minimum wage laws on poverty. The politicized context of the second question led to more erroneous analyses, and the accuracy of left-leaning respondents plummeted when the data conflicted with their worldview.
Improving ideological diversity is not a fundamentally political undertaking. Rather, it is a question of humility. Proper scholarship is based on the simple virtues of tolerance, openness and modesty. Having people around who think differently thus improves not only science, but also character.
Many academics and intellectuals see their community as a major force for diversity and open-mindedness throughout American society, and take justifiable pride in this image. Now they can be consistent and apply those values to their own profession, by celebrating ideological diversity.
A NYT commenter:
Charles Day
Great article. Liberal bias is indeed real. The bias is not a question of who's right on a given issue, but rather an automatic rejection of a conservative viewpoint with out even listening to it. Yes, the same bias exists among conservatives as well. It's a shame too many intelligent people people in our society just don't want to hear another viewpoint. They don't want hear anything which might undermine their own intellectual construct and make believe world.
This is one of the things I love about this comments section -- that it's a free speech zone. There are times I change my point of view because people here persuade me, and I truly appreciate that. That also helps me remember to look at all the sides and check for my own bias, which makes me a better writer and thinker.
via @adamkissel
Sad Puppy Gender Studies Prof Cries Hard On Her Barack Obama Placemats
This op-ed in the Democrat and Chronicle by Barbara LeSavoy (pictured at the link) seems to be a parody. But then you Google the writer's name and see that she actually exists. Here's some of what she wrote in the paper, in her call for Obama to ban guns:
I urge President Obama to ban firearm possession in America. He is the president of the United States. He can change the country. He can do it today. I believe in him.I voted for Barack Obama. Twice. During his 2008 presidential campaign, my two daughters, partner, and I ate every meal in our house on Obama placemats. We bought these at our local supermarket, plastic-coated, plate-sized paper rectangles with an image of his face framed by colors of the flag. While politically minded, I am not overly patriotic, so this mealtime ritual of American allegiance was odd for me. Still, we looked at the image of his face each day and we believed that he really could be the change in America.
...As Obama's 2012 campaign approached, I was a little jaded. Some of his promises to our country did not come true, and I was anxious about rising social tensions he and his administration faced. Racial inequality plagued the news, gender-based violence grew in global proportion, and women's reproductive freedoms had become increasingly vulnerable.
Still, I did not waver. I dug into our old dining room cupboards, and found our worn but resilient Obama placements. I dusted them off, and once again, my family and I ate all of our meals looking at his image. In his presidency, we still imagined a country on the edge of change.
...This is his legacy. To establish gun control laws in America that will reduce high levels of male violence and usher in a culture of peace and civility.
Barack Obama is the president of the United States. He can change the country. He can do it today. I believe in him.
Guess it's too much to expect a gender studies professor with a girl crush on the President to have heard of the Second Amendment.
via @allahpundit
Linknutbutter
Like peanutbutter recently recalled, but without the metal shavings.
The Damaging Idiocy Of Treating Naughty Schoolkids Like Hardened Criminals
Kids lack judgment. This is why we don't let them drink or drive at 8. Or drink and drive.
Yet, in schools, kids are being treated as if they're adults, with adult judgment and the adult consequences that ensue from bad behavior.
This is ruinous for kids and just wrong.
From mimeislaw.com:
[A] student, Aliya Nigro, was suspended and faces criminal charges for throwing a baby carrot at her former teacher, Michele Crowley. The story presents the usual easy targets, like over-criminalization and the terror of zero-tolerance policies. That doesn't mean problematic conduct shouldn't be ignored, but it also doesn't mean they deserve the middle school death penalty.Pranks now land kids in court. Rigid disciplinary policies result in prosecution for kids so young they may not be sure what court is and still think cops are their friends. But there is a more complicated question running through stories like this - who is responsible for the mindless way we treat children these days? How did we reach this point?
The Virginia girl who hit a teacher with a carrot did something pretty stupid. Long before zero tolerance, most kids knew that throwing something at your teacher, whether a spitball or a vegetable, was not going to turn out very well. It was a bad decision. It shouldn't work out well. There should be consequences. But at that age, a child needs to be handled in a manner that makes some logical sense. And that is where the responsibility for these children becomes a concern.
...She is in a state where the Court of Appeals upheld a conviction for assault on a police officer for pointing a finger at a cop and saying "pow."
Richmond lawyer, Todd Stone, quoted in a few of the articles, makes some good puns about the carrot. But at the end of the day, nobody should be laughing this one off. The letter from the Department of Juvenile Justice, while generously noting the student is innocent until proven guilty, also claims there is substantial evidence she has committed a crime.
At what point should a grown up have stepped in and said, "Wait, this is a kid - maybe we should make sure the punishment fits the ... prank?" An apology, an explanation for her actions, or anything that would have set the lesson that she needs to stop and think before she acts, would have been not only appropriate, but highly valuable to a student preparing for her future.
Surely kids should be held accountable for reckless decisions and impulsive judgment calls. But we know harsh discipline does not work. A recent UCLA study found that frequent suspensions for minor offenses harms education. High suspension rates do not help school conditions. Arresting kids for common school offenses like fighting, vandalism, and other stupid pranks takes them out of the system that should be best equipped to deal with them and puts them in a system that is particularly bad at dealing with both minor offenders and young offenders.
Whaddya Think Of Ted Cruz's Flat Tax Plan?
From the WSJ:
• For a family of four, no taxes whatsoever (income or payroll) on the first $36,000 of income.• Above that level, a 10% flat tax on all individual income from wages and investment.
• No death tax, alternative minimum tax or ObamaCare taxes.
• Elimination of the payroll tax and the corporate income tax, to be replaced by a 16% Business Flat Tax. This would tax companies' gross receipts from sales of goods and services, less purchases from other businesses, including capital investment. Simple, efficient, fair.
• A Universal Savings Account, which would allow every American to save up to $25,000 annually on a tax-deferred basis for any purpose.
Today, the U.S. taxes American producers that export goods, but it imposes no burden on imports. My business tax is border-adjusted, so exports are free of tax and imports pay the same business-flat-tax rate as U.S.-produced goods. By shifting to a territorial tax system that doesn't tax income earned overseas twice, my plan will reverse the incentive for U.S. companies to relocate overseas. Instead, businesses will be relocating to America.
Giant corporations will lose their loopholes and instead pay the exact same Business Flat Tax as small businesses. And billionaire hedge-fund managers will no longer pay a lower rate than working men and women.
To keep the tax burden fair, my plan includes a $10,000 standard deduction and a $4,000 personal exemption, which means a family of four pays nothing on their first $36,000 of income. It ends the payroll tax altogether (while maintaining full funding for Social Security and Medicare). It maintains the current child tax credit and expands and modernizes the earned-income tax credit, with greater reforms to prevent fraud and encourage marriage.
The Simple Flat Tax also keeps the current deduction for all charitable giving, and includes a deduction for home-mortgage interest on the first $500,000 in principal.
The 10% income tax covers ordinary income and investment of all varieties. The virtue of a single tax rate is that the rate doesn't rise as people work more and invest more. This means better incentives to increase output, and fewer distortions. Compliance costs are minimized and capital flows to where it is most efficient--creating the most jobs--rather than where the tax burden is minimized.
To get companies investing in worker productivity again, the Simple Flat Tax allows full and immediate expensing of business equipment, which will especially benefit heavy industry, mining, energy, farming, ranching and manufacturing.
My plan also improves treatment of savings by creating Universal Savings Accounts. Any adult can save $25,000 a year with taxes deferred, like in an IRA, and savers can use those funds at any time, for any purpose. This will help create the next generation of capitalists by encouraging younger workers to save and invest.
According to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, my tax plan would boost the size of the economy above current projections by 13.9% over a decade, add 4.9 million jobs and increase average wages by 12.2%. Every income group would get a double-digit wage increase.
Along with other pro-growth policies--repealing ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank, rolling back burdensome regulations, restoring sound money and restraining spending--the Simple Flat Tax will help the economy soar again.
A commenter at the WSJ:
Bruce Barr
I agree with the principle entirely. But, it will never happen. Too many CPAs put out of work, and let's not even get into what the tax Attorneys will try and sabotage. Imagine, cutting the IRS employment bloat by 1/3, never happen. Wasn't it Marx who said that a bureaucracy will do anything to insure it's existence. Nope, I'd say we're stuck with mediocre economic gains and insolvency as a Nation.
Eiffel
Froggylinks.
If You Can't Deal With Ill-Raised Brats, You Shouldn't Be Teaching
LA Times editorial:
A police officer's job is to protect public safety, not to enforce school discipline. That's true even in states like South Carolina that, incredibly, elevate classroom disruptions into crimes for which students can be arrested, as was the case with the Columbia, S.C., girl shown in a video Monday being tackled in her chair by a sheriff's deputy and thrown to the floor. Her criminal offense? She wouldn't put away her phone when the teacher told her to.Teachers have tough jobs and sometimes must deal with teenagers who are defiant and disobedient. They deserve some backup -- from principals and school administrators. And it's an unfortunate fact of modern life that some campuses have to deal with crime and may need police to handle situations that place students, teachers or others in physical danger.
But crime and discipline are separate issues that call for different responses. Schools must discipline themselves as well as their students, and that means not encouraging or even allowing teachers who can't handle unruly but non-dangerous students to react by calling the police.
"Bible Believers" Group Wins Free Speech Case
Awful initial response from government -- blaming people using constitutionally protected speech because those hearing the speech reacted in a criminally violent way.
From a Detroit News story by Robert Snell:
In 2012, Bible Believers were pelted with rocks during the Arab International Festival and Wayne County authorities threatened to ticket the evangelists because they were concerned about safety.
This behavior didn't come out of nowhere. The backwardness that is Islam calls for Muslims to be violent and even kill those who "insult" the religion.
The rest of the story:
Christian evangelists who were kicked out of an Arab-American street festival in 2012 after carrying a pig's head and telling Dearborn Muslims they would "burn in hell" won their federal appeal Monday and will be awarded damages.The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Ohio, reaffirmed the boundaries of the First Amendment, saying the evangelist group Bible Believers should have been protected even though its speech was loathsome and intolerant. The opinion also highlighted the obligation of law enforcement and public officials when confronted with constitutionally protected speech that threatens to incite violence.
"Bearing in mind the interspersed surges of ethnic, racial, and religious conflict that from time to time mar our national history, the constitutional lessons to be learned from the circumstances of this case are both timeless and markedly seasonable," Judge Eric Clay wrote.
The opinion by the full appeals court Wednesday overturned a lower-court judgment and sent the case back to federal court in Detroit, where a judge will calculate damages and other relief.
The case against Wayne County, Sheriff Benny Napoleon and members of the department, originally was handled in Detroit by U.S. District Judge Patrick Duggan, who recently retired.
The court Wednesday concluded law enforcement personnel made "next to no attempt...to protect the Bible Believers or prevent the lawless actions of the audience."
I am an atheist and find god belief of any stripe gullible and silly. But this country was founded on very important freedoms, including freedom of speech. That must be protected, and those whose religion calls for violence against the free-speaking are the ones who need to be dealt with by the police when they bring their medieval practice of stoning to this country.
The Argument For Legalizing Meth
Marc J. Victor, like me, feels that the government has no business telling us what we can or cannot put in our bodies, writing at Strike The Root:
THE FREEDOM ARGUMENTI'm a good dad. I don't want my kids using meth. Indeed, I will force my opinion about not using meth upon my kids. I will prevent them from using meth by force if necessary. As a dad, I have other policies as well. For example, my kids are not allowed to ride their motorized quads without helmets or to ride in the car without seatbelts. They are not allowed to smoke cigarettes or skydive, either. However, at some point, my kids will be responsible to decide for themselves what activities are too dangerous for them. Both assessing the dangerousness of an activity and determining how much danger is acceptable will become the exclusive domain of each of my kids as it pertains to them. Resolving these questions for one's self is an important task and responsibility of any free person.
The question of who gets to make decisions about the disposition of certain property is central to understanding freedom. Who gets to decide what activities are too dangerous for you? Should I get to decide what activities are too dangerous for you? What about your neighbor? Or the majority? Or the president? Or Congress? Or some judge? In a free society, the owner of the property gets to decide how the property is used. Because you own your body, I assert that you should decide how your body is used or abused.
In terms of the freedom argument, the question of legalization of meth poses exactly the same question as many other issues currently confounding our fellow citizens. The following non-exhaustive list contains questions which are each different versions of the same question about how a particular body is used:
Should people be allowed to eat Big Macs?
Should people be allowed to consume any unhealthy foods at all?
Should people be allowed to play football despite the risk of serious injury?
Should people be allowed to skydive or rock climb?
Should people be allowed to ride in cars without seatbelts?
Should unprotected sex between consenting adult strangers be allowed?
Should consenting adults be allowed to have sex in exchange for money?
Should adults be permitted to ingest marijuana for health reasons?
Should adults be permitted to ingest marijuana for mere personal pleasure?
Should competent adults be allowed to voluntarily end their lives if they choose?
Each question begs the initial question about who gets to decide how a particular human body is used. Those of us who are pro-freedom would in each case conclude that the owner of the particular human body in question should decide how that body is used. The initial issue of who decides must be resolved first.
Although I would try my best to persuade others not to use meth, I concede it is not my decision. Among adults, persuasion is fine, but coercion is not. I will not force others to live by my assessments of dangers. I respect the property of other people such that I respect their right to use their property in ways I vigorously disagree with. I have no claim on how others use their property unless and until their activities trespass upon my property.
The freedom argument is much bigger than the question of whether meth should be legal. It certainly resolves the question, but it raises larger questions about the very nature of government. Any legitimate role of government is confined to protecting rights. Indeed, unless you disagree with the principles upon which this country was founded and believe government is the source of rights which may be distributed to us or taken away, you must agree that government can have no rights other than the ones we individually delegate to it. Because you have no right to be my daddy, you have no such right to delegate to government. Further, because no person individually has any such right, even the majority of people added together collectively have no such right. Therefore, when the government acts as my daddy, it acts wrongfully; even if it acts pursuant to an accurately counted democratic vote. Although it is perfectly fine for me to act as a daddy to my kids, the government has no right to act as a daddy for us.
Some people posit that legalized meth would send the wrong message to people about using meth. However, the government's role is not to send messages to us about what is right or wrong or good or bad. We don't need messages from government. Free people determine for themselves how to run their lives. I have a right to be a self destructive idiot if I choose. I own me.
Linkety
Uppity.
CBS Promotes Crapthink For The Grieving Gullible
From a media request list I'm on: 
Trigger Warnings Eventually Prevent Any Teaching At All
Alex Morey writes at theFIRE.org:
In a new post on her website, Rani Neutill, a former lecturer at Harvard University and Brandeis University who simultaneously worked as a sexual assault prevention educator, says the push to offer trigger warnings to students has spiraled out of control, leading her to leave teaching altogether.In "How Trigger Warnings Broke My Back," Neutill details the way she delicately attempted to navigate her dual roles as both an educator coaxing students out of their comfort zones in her class on sex in American cinema, and as someone who respected the experience of sexual assault survivors. (Neutill is a certified rape crisis counselor and was interim director of the Office of Sexual Assault Prevention Services at Brandeis.)
"I believed in trigger warnings and gave them," Neutill writes. "I gave them for almost every film I showed."
But the more trigger warnings Neutill gave, the fewer topics students were willing to discuss in class. Students came to her office hours crying, ran from the classroom in tears, and wrote negative course reviews saying they felt "unsafe" because the material was "traumatizing" them--even after another student requested (and Neutill agreed) to email the class detailed trigger warnings for the upcoming material the night before each and every session. As Neutill wrote, "Each night I sent a meticulous email with which scene I was showing, where in the film the scene was, and what the content of the scene included. Exhausting."
Ultimately, Neutill found herself unable to teach the very kinds of challenging material her course was designed to confront.
An excerpt from her piece. And by the way, Neutil described herself as a "woman of color" in the piece:
Next thing that happened was probably the worst. I had assigned a reading by Linda Williams, a chapter from her book, Screening Sex. It looked in intimate detail at the first blaxploitation film ever made- Melvin Van Peebles', Sweet Sweetback's Badasssss Song (SSBAS). The chapter outlined (with pictures), the plot of the movie and all the sexual acts that were in the film. Her argument is that blaxploitation came out a reclamation of masculinity by black men who were historically emasculated and castrated (think of the killing of Emmett Till for supposedly looking at a white woman, or the history of slavery where white slave owners raped their black female slaves rendering black men powerless).I thought everyone had done the reading. After all, I asked them to, it is their job as students. I showed one of the scenes that Williams' writes about in detail. Before I screened it, I gave a warning, indicating that it was one of the disturbing sex scenes that Williams writes about. The scene shows Melvin using his son, Mario Van Peebles, at 13, simulating sex with a 30 year old woman. She finds him irresistible and thus starts the hyper sexual evolution of Sweetback-every woman on earth wants to fuck him, including a whole bunch of white women. This, of course, is statutory rape. When the lights went on and the scene was over, two students left the room in tears. I was perplexed. I started to ask questions about Williams' reading, how it felt to read and then watch the scene in terms of race and masculinity. Crickets man, crickets. Clearly no one had done the reading. The joke was on me.
...Colleges are now helicopter parents and sites where there isn't any psychic healing, just regression.
I don't know about trigger warnings outside classes that deal with race, gender and sexuality, but if you promote trigger warnings in subjects that are supposed to make you feel uncomfortable, you're basically promoting a culture of extreme privilege cause i'm pretty sure that the trans women who are being murdered weekly, the black men who are brutalized by police brutality daily, and the neighborhoods in America that are plagued by everyday violence aren't given any trigger warnings.
The people in colleges are not dealing with extreme violence but they are going to have to deal with life, and it does not come with trigger warnings.
A comment on her piece:
Jeffrey Deutsch
Hear, hear!As one who went to college and graduate school in the 20th century, I'm really sorry about how academe has gone downhill in certain respects.
Just last summer ('14), I quit working with a college debate league I'd been helping out as an alumnus, because they adopted trigger warnings *and* "opt-outs" (not only do debaters need to give advance heads-ups about problematic topics, but also anyone who feels triggered can opt-out -- not by walking out the door oneself, but by forcing everyone else to debate a different topic).
via @AdamKissel
Red Meat Causes Studies. (More Bacon, Please. Extra-Crispy.)
There's been yet another "red scare."
From the WSJ: "Red Meats Linked to Cancer, Global Health Group Says"
Here's the comment I left on the article:
This is a cohort study -- a leap to conclusions after the fact. Questions that should be asked: These people who got cancer, what did they do besides eating red meat? Did they smoke? Eat a pile of fries with that meat?
There are those below who repeat the myth that nitrates are the problem. As Chris Kresser notes on his blog on a post debunking this notion, there are more nitrates in lettuce than there are in a hot dog.
On the bright side, while the credulous throw over bacon for tofurkey, there will be more bacon for me. (It's the only way I wake up at 5 a.m. every day to write -- through the joy of having those three greasy strips of bacon.)
P.S. Dietary researcher Dr. Jeff Volek advises eating a good deal of fat -- but very low-carb. If you eat this way, as I have since 2009, influenced by the work and thinking of Gary Taubes back then, you will likely be effortlessly thin, as I am. It's starchy carbs that make you unhealthy -- and cause the insulin secretion that puts on fat.
Also, in a very good and comprehensive blog post, Zoe Harcombe brings up two important points (among many):
5) Relative vs. absolute riskThe press release headlines with "each 50 gram portion of processed meat eaten daily increases the risk of colorectal cancer by 18%." Crikey. 18%! Put that bacon sarnie down now (see - don't blame the bacon for what the white bread & ketchup did!) This, however, is the game that all of these observational study research press releases play and it's disgraceful scare-mongering.
Shall we look at the absolute risk?
Cancer Research UK has terrific statistics on all types of cancer. I've just looked at the UK. They do have data for other countries if you want to do your own rummage. The incident rate for all people in the UK, age-standardised (you pretty much won't see bowel cancer before the age of 50 - look at the age data), in 2011 was 47 per 100,000 people.
47 per 100,000 people.
You would need to know 2,128 people, including enough older people, to know 1 person who developed bowel cancer in the UK in 2011.
Now - let's do that relative vs. absolute risk thing.
Assuming that everything the WHO did had been perfect and that there really was an 18% relative difference between those having 50g of processed meat a day and those not (and assuming that nothing else was impacting this), the absolute risk would be 51 people per 100,000 vs. 43 people per 100,000.
Now where's the bacon and egg before my CrossFit session?!
The likely harm of this report:
The Lancet article does at least have the decency to mention the nutritional value of red meat: "Red meat contains high biological value proteins and important micronutrients such as B vitamins, iron (both free iron and haem iron), and zinc." That's still a bit of an understatement. Try both essential fats; complete protein; and the vitamins and minerals needed for life and health.
What will be the consequences of this report scaring people away from real meat? It takes approximately 250g of sirloin steak to get the daily 10mg of zinc; over a kilo of the same steak to get the recommended daily iron requirement - and in the right form for the body. How about over 20 eggs to get the same iron intake? Still in a useful form to the body. Or 4.5 kilos of brown rice to get iron in the wrong form for the body?
What do I take from this report? There is a heck of a lot of bad science coming out the World Health Organisation, an organisation that should know better...
Muttley
Pawed-over links.
Melissa Harris-Perry, Renowned Racism Huntress
I am confident that Melissa Harris-Perry could find racism in tweezers, lightbulbs, and the letter P.
David Rutz writes at the Free Beacon, "Melissa Harris-Perry Scolds Guest to Be 'Super Careful' About Saying 'Hard Worker' Because Of Slavery":
MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry derailed a conversation about potential Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) Saturday to admonish a guest for calling him a "hard worker," arguing it demeaned slaves and working mothers "in the context of relative privilege."The exchange occurred when conservative Latino activist Alfonso Aguilar sang Ryan's praises during a panel discussion about his likely ascendance to replace John Boehner (R., Ohio).
"If there's somebody who is a hard worker when he goes to Washington, it's Paul Ryan," he said. "Not only works with the Republicans but Democrats. You know very well that I work on [the] immigration issue, trying to get Republicans to support immigration reform ... This is somebody who's trying to govern."
Harris-Perry cut in to tell Aguilar that the use of the term "hard worker" was problematic since she had a picture of slaves working in cotton fields on her office wall to remind her of when to really use that term. Her rambling response also included an attack on Republicans for demonizing working mothers.
A bit from their exchange:
ALFONSO AGUILAR: But let's be fair. If there's somebody who is a hard worker when he goes to Washington, it's Paul Ryan. Not only works with the Republicans but Democrats. You know very well that I work on [the] immigration issue, trying to get Republicans to support immigration reform. Paul Ryan is somebody who has supported immigration reform, has worked with somebody like Luis Gutierrez. Luis Gutierrez is very respectful, speaks highly of Paul Ryan. This is somebody who's trying to govern.MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY: Alfonso, I feel you. But I just want to pause on one thing. Because I don't disagree with you that I actually think Mr. Ryan is a great choice for this role. But I want us to be super careful when we use the language "hard worker," because I actually keep an image of folks working in cotton fields on my office wall, because it is a reminder about what hard work looks like. So, I feel you that he's a hard worker. I do. But in the context of relative privilege, and I just want to point out that when you talk about work-life balance and being a hard worker, the moms who don't have health care who are working-
The Truth About Islam Is Rising In The Minds Of Westerners With All The Migrants Flooding In
Muslim convert to Christianity, Raymond Ibrahim, writes at his site:
Most Western people have had very little personal interaction with Muslims. Moreover, because Muslims in the West are still a tiny minority--in the U.S., they are reportedly less than one percent of the population--those few Muslims that Westerners do interact with are often on their best behavior, being surrounded as they are by a sea of infidels (according to the doctrine of taqiyya).And although there are a few media outlets and websites that document the hard but ugly truths of Islam, these are drowned out by the overarching "Narrative" that emanates from the indoctrination centers of the West (schools, universities, news rooms, Hollywood, political talking heads, et al).
According to the Narrative, there is nothing to fear from Islam. If violence and mayhem seem to follow Muslims wherever they go--not to mention plague the entire Islamic world--that is because Muslims are angry, frustrated, and aggrieved, usually at things the West has done.
Although Islamic doctrine calls on Muslims to have enmity for and strive to subjugate non-Muslims whenever possible; although Muslims initiated hostilities against and were the scourge of Europe for a thousand years, until they were defanged in the modern era; although most of the so-called "Muslim world" rests on land that was violently seized from non-Muslims; although reportedly some 270 million non-Muslims have been killed by the jihad over the centuries; and although many modern day Muslims maintain the same worldview that animated their ancestors--most people in the West remain ignorant.
...In Germany and the United Kingdom, crime and rape have soared in direct proportion to the number of Muslim "refugees" accepted. Sweden alone--where rape has increased by 1,472% since that country embraced "multiculturalism"--is reportedly on the verge of collapse.
The price of the Islamic influx into Western lands is violence and chaos, in accordance with Islam's Rule of Numbers: women and children will be exploited and raped; the elderly will be mugged; churches and other institutions will be attacked; terror will set in. Look to the plight of non-Muslims living alongside Muslims to get an idea of what is coming.
But alas, at this late hour, such appears to be the price that must be paid for decades of willful ignorance. If the West cannot learn the truth about Islam from theory, from doctrine, from history, and now even from ongoing current events, then let it learn from up close and personal contact.
I am an atheist, not a Christian, and got abused by Christian kids when I was growing up. However, I can get behind the Jesus stuff -- feed the poor, heal the sick, and all of that.
See this bit above:
Islamic doctrine calls on Muslims to have enmity for and strive to subjugate non-Muslims whenever possible...
It's truly a problem.
Related: 10 Reasons Islam is NOT a Religion of Peace.
And here's some lovely interfaith'y thinking.
Arf
Dogged links.
Helicopter Parenting Has Ruined A Generation Of Kids
Emma Brown writes at the WaPo:
Julie Lythcott-Haims noticed a disturbing trend during her decade as a dean of freshmen at Stanford University. Incoming students were brilliant and accomplished and virtually flawless, on paper. But with each year, more of them seemed incapable of taking care of themselves.At the same time, parents were becoming more and more involved in their children's lives. They talked to their children multiple times a day and swooped in to personally intervene whenever something difficult happened.
From her former position at one of the world's most prestigious schools, Lythcott-Haims came to believe that mothers and fathers in affluent communities have been hobbling their children by trying so hard to make sure they succeed and by working so diligently to protect them from disappointment, failure and hardship.
Colleges pick right up where parents leave off. Jeffrey J. Selingo, former editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education, writes, also in the WaPo:
Colleges instead are practicing a new version of "in loco parentis" -- they are expected to be stand-in parents -- and it begins as soon as students step foot on campus.At many colleges, new students already have been introduced to their roommates on social media and live in luxurious apartment-like dorms. That ensures they basically never have to share a room or a bathroom, or even eat in the dining halls if they don't want to. Those were the places where previous generations learned to get along with different people and manage conflicts when they were chosen at random to live with strangers in close and communal quarters.
...The protective attitude of colleges also extends into the classroom. Professors are encouraged to provide "trigger warnings," advance notices to students that instructional material might elicit a troubling emotional response from them, and on some campuses report "microaggressions."
Indeed, the college classroom reinforces the message that failure is unacceptable. Students are never exposed, for instance, to the feedback process that is the hallmark of most jobs today. Think about it: employees don't work on a project in isolation for months and then turn it into their boss at the end for feedback. There is a back-and-forth with small wins, and many failures, along the way. Even great writers discard several drafts.
Yet in the college classroom, the sole focus of students is on the final product, whether an exam or a final paper, all done in an effort to earn an A. And that's exactly what many students end up getting. The A is the most common grade given out on college campuses nationwide, accounting for 43 percent of all grades. (In 1988, the A represented less than one-third of all grades.)
No wonder students are paralyzed by the prospect of failure. Most of them have never experienced it. Parents are surely to blame for a big part of that, but so too are colleges where young adults spend most of their waking hours.
Here's idiotic thinking from a commenter at the WaPo:
Snook
As we all know failure breeds success! What west coast crap. Teaching 20 years, never once did I see failure motivate a student. Give them all zeroes, that'll motivate them. If you are a parent of a student that attends a public school in America you better be beside your kid advocating for them every step of the way. If you allow public school to do it, they will destroy your kid. Get involved parents! Helicopter if you want because it shows the teacher you actually care about your kid. As for typical homework, it's a joke. One assignment fits all? For a third of students it's too difficult and frustrates them. For a third of them it's so easy it's boring and for the middle third, they don't give a crap because their parents don't either. As a 20 year high school teacher, please get involved in your children's education and lives and stay there, even if some dean thinks you "helicopter."
And here's more sensible thinking from another:
Shawn Marie
The only time my mom helped me with a project was when I was sick (one time) and I'm not sure to this day that my parents ever knew what I even majored in in college ... yet I managed to work full time, finish my undergrad degree, get into law school, graduate from law school and pass the bar the first time ... on my own.
The woman who is now my editorial assistant is in her 40s. I love the hell out of her, and she's the picture of integrity and responsibility and has been for the year she's worked for me. I'm not saying that millennials can't be -- but this last time around, in the wake of my experiences from the ad I put in for an assistant, I started joking that that "Generation Y" stands for "Y show up on time just 'cause I said I would?"
If your millennial kid reflects different values and traits -- like self-sufficiency and the integrity of a person who needs to stand on their own two feet -- they're going to do a lot better in the job market and in life.
"The Children Look Delicious"
When "parents" don't control their crotch droppings (the perfect moniker for children who are only barely parented), sometimes the neighbors can get a little whacked out.
For example, recently, there was an a Minneapolis woman who (allegedly) mailed a note, "The children look delicious. May I have a taste?"
From CBS/Minnie:
Police say the woman was upset because the children made noise and left items in her yard. Carrie Pernula was arrested Friday and faces possible charges of gross misdemeanor terroristic threats and stalking.Word of the threats spread quickly through social media and neighbors tell WCCO both they and the family were terrified.
Of course, the "parents" were the last to assume that this might have anything to do with their kids bratelaciousness.
Sure, it's possible that the woman was terribly over-sensitive -- but it's also possible that this is yet another case of underparented brats being allowed to run wild, and never mind who they bother.
Just yesterday, I was working on my book -- really good focus -- when a screaming baby cut in. Screaming baby? No neighbors have infants right now.
No, it was the Asshole Family, sitting out in their luxury SUV, windows open, back door open, eating their lunch -- four feet from my neighbor's open windows and about eight feet from mine.
Never mind whether people four feet away -- people whose homes are not mobile like their vehicle -- would be their captive audience. (Neighbor is an old dude with a heart condition and isn't exactly one to confront people, but I have no problem with it.)
After the crying persisted, and I figured out the people in the vehicle weren't going to drive away, I went out and got on my broom. They were gone shortly afterward.
But really, what compels people to think this is okay? I was raised to wonder whether I was being inconsiderate to people around me. How come that sort of upbringing seems rarer and rarer? And, unfortunately, rarer and rarer in people who have just reproduced?
via @DeanEsmay
Goober
Dribblylinks.
Where's My Maid, Please?
Kitchen floor mop-ercize -- my between-writing-jags exercise for today.
It's funny how a dog looks at you while you do this -- like "Humans are total fucking idiots."
"Wimp Nation"
Welcome to The Land of the Pussies.
Yes, that would be our land.
Fred Reed writes:
The United States has become a nation of weak, pampered, easily frightened, helpless milquetoasts who have never caught a fish, fired a gun, chopped a log, hitchhiked across the country, or been in a schoolyard fight. If their cat dies, they call a grief therapist. Everything frightens Americans.
via @instapundit
"Why Do We Pin All Our Problems On The West?"
At MEMRI, a Saudi-born singer speaks the truth. (I hope she lives long and prospers, but I'm not optimistic for her, vis a vis how the glorious and futuristic religion of Islam commands death for "insulting" the religion.)
The story:
Saudi-born singer Shams Bandar, also known as "Shams the Kuwaiti," recently declared that she was renouncing her Saudi and Kuwaiti nationalities for the sake of European citizenship. In a September 22 interview with the Egyptian Dream TV channel, she defended her decision, saying: "What can these wretched [refugees] do with their Arab citizenship?" "All the Arab countries have closed their borders to them." Shams further said: "Why do we pin all our problems on the West? For 1,400 years we have been slaughtering one another, just because one of us prays one way and another prays a different way."
An excerpt:
Host: People will accuse you of treason, of collaboration, and the selling out of the Arab cause.Shams Bandar: I have been accused of that for a long time now. It's nothing new. Foreign citizenship... It's not that I'm happy with the way things are, but let's not deceive ourselves. Why tell ourselves lies? The Syrians are scattered in the world's oceans, dying by the millions on a daily basis... Iraqis are dying by the millions... All the Arab countries have closed their borders to them.What can these wretched people do with their Arab citizenship? How does a suffering Syrian benefit from his Arab citizenship, when his children and family have been killed and his life has been destroyed? His own Arab brethren do not let him in. What if he were a British citizen? Wouldn't the British embassy send a ship to get their citizens out? Why are we lying? Why aren't we telling the truth? I'm not forcing people to get foreign citizenship.
Host: But it is these countries that caused the catastrophes of the [Arab] peoples. I wouldn't portray these countries as life savers.
Shams Bandar: They are not life savers. But in Britain or America... Note that I am against the policies of their governments. I always say so. But show me where it says in their constitutions that you can chop people's hands off, stone people, execute them in the streets, or do all the things done by ISIS and the Islamist movements, which are harmful to Islam.Do you see in the American constitution and law any of the things perpetrated by our Muslims? Can we say that they do these things in the West too? Why would they, when their constitutions are all about the respect for humanity? Let's not get into what they do in secret, because I have no proof of that.
Host: What about their barbaric, bloody, aggressive conduct...
Shams Bandar: I see no evidence of that. All I see is laws, legislation, and constitution. Can anyone convince me that in America or Europe, they do what ISIS is doing to the Syrians, to the Yazidis, or to the Iraqis?Why do we pin all our problems on the West? For 1,400 years we have been slaughtering one another, just because one of us prays one way and another prays a different way.America wasn't around 1,400 years ago. It wasn't around even 300 years ago. We have been fighting and shedding blood for 1,400 years, and now we are blaming America and Britain?!
Monkey
Naughty, poo-flinging links.
Hair Color For Idiots!
I just saw a dumb hair color ad proclaiming their brand to be "gluten-free."
Is anyone really getting their daily carbs from slurping Miss Clairol?
Mormons: Public Officials' Duty To Law On Same-Sex Marriage Trumps Faith
Jack Healy writes in The New York Times:
DENVER -- Despite its deep opposition to same-sex marriage, the Mormon Church is setting itself apart from religious conservatives who rallied behind a Kentucky county clerk, Kim Davis, who cited her religious beliefs as justification for refusing to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples.In a speech this week about the boundaries between church and state, Dallin Oaks, a high-ranking apostle in the church, said that public officials like Ms. Davis, the clerk in Rowan County, Ky., had a duty to follow the law, despite their religious convictions.
"Office holders remain free to draw upon their personal beliefs and motivations and advocate their positions in the public square," Elder Oaks said. "But when acting as public officials, they are not free to apply personal convictions, religious or other, in place of the defined responsibilities of their public offices. All government officers should exercise their civil authority according to the principles and within the limits of civil government."
I agree.
If you cannot, in good conscience, "exercise" your "civil authority" due to your religious beliefs, there's an answer: adhere to your religious principles by quitting your job.
I don't understand the idea that we should be able to have it all at all times, in all cases.
If you are Muslim and cannot bear to serve alcohol on a plane or drive a passenger carrying a bottle of wine in your taxi, well, these are jobs you should not be going for -- or keeping, if you are a convert.
Businesses are supposed to provide "reasonable accommodation" of people's religious beliefs. Well, what's "reasonable"? As Walter Olson puts it in the case of the Muslim flight attendant:
"No one should have to choose between their career and religion," proclaimed Stanley's lawyer. Really? No one? Ever?
As Olson puts it at PoliticoEU about Stanley's demand to hand out" only beverages that meet with her spiritual approval":
There's something surreal about letting Stanley dodge one of the core job duties of a flight attendant.
"The Patriarchy" Isn't Here In The West -- But It's Coming
With the waves of migrants from Muslim countries. Glenn Reynolds writes in USA Today on the "unprecedented mass-migration being experienced at present by Europe and, to a lesser degree, by the United States":
Hundreds of thousands of people -- soon, it seems likely to be millions -- are coming from countries where the patriarchy really is a thing. These are places where honor killings, female genital mutilation and the legal and social subordination of wives and daughters to husbands and fathers are considered the norm. (The Dutch are already getting upset about the Syrian refugees who are bringing child brides with them.)Some of these people, of course, will eagerly adopt the culture of their new lands, and try their hardest to assimilate. But many more will not. They will, as people tend to do, cling to their native culture and customs regardless, either ignorant of (or more likely) feeling superior to the traditions of their adoptive countries. (This is normal for all sorts of people: When Americans do that, they're called "ugly Americans.") And to the extent that their behavior is visible, some percentage of the native population will adopt it, at least to some degree, especially if it seems that it is successful.
The end result will be that patriarchy will be back in the West. Because personnel is policy, and immigration is all about who will be staffing your nation in the future. Keep that in mind as these things are debated.
Yay. Soon, feminists will have something real to complain about!
Modern Feminism's The Problem, With Its Ugly, Bullying Authoritarianism
Feminism has become ugly, bullying, authoritarianism, with feminists demanding special rights under the guise of equal rights.
Emily Hill writes at The Spectator:
It would be easy to believe from the papers these days that women have never been more oppressed. From the columnist Caitlin Moran to the comedian Bridget Christie, a new creed is preached: that we are the victims, not the victors, of the sex war. Feminists claim we are objectified by the builder's whistle, that a strange man attempting to flirt with us is tantamount to sexual assault. Suddenly, just as it seemed we women were about to have it all, a new wave of feminists has begun to portray us as feeble-minded -- unable to withstand a bad date, let alone negotiate a pay rise.Worse still, they are ditching what was best about the feminist tradition: solidarity with the sisterhood and the freedom of every woman to do as she pleased. Feminism 4.0 consists of freely attacking other women over, erm, crucial issues such as bikini waxing, wearing stilettos and page three of the Sun. Moran writes that it is childbirth that 'turns you from a girl into a woman' (causing every woman in my office to snort involuntarily) and that feminism will only triumph 'when a woman goes up to collect the Oscar for Best Actress in shoes that aren't killing her'. The revolution will be televised, with 'Nicole Kidman in flip-flops'.
Well, if this is feminism, then feminism is dead, and the triviality of the fights feminists pick is the surest proof of its demise. What started as a genuine crusade against genuine prejudice has become a form of pointless attention-seeking.
...So the next generation have everything to play for -- if only they aren't encouraged to view themselves as helpless victims at the mercy of an insuperable patriarchy. Only 19 per cent identify as feminist nowadays, which perhaps isn't surprising since it's become so dull. In the 1970s, feminists were ball-breaking, ass-kicking, devil-may-care thinkers -- the likes of Greer, Gloria Steinem and Susan Sontag. Now the 'voice of a generation' is Harry Potter star Emma Watson, who delivered a highly praised speech to the UN, lamenting that her girlfriends had given up competitive sport because they were worried it might make their arms look 'muscly'.
But while Watson frets about the tyranny of the male gaze, it's being eyeballed by a feminist which is truly terrifying. These middle-class aesthetes love to boss other -- particularly working-class -- women around, sneering at how they dress and behave. They disapprove of Beyoncé and Rihanna flaunting their beautiful -bodies in pop videos with a vehemence you might expect from the Taleban. In April, an advert featuring a busty model appeared on the Tube, with the tagline: 'Are you beach body ready?' Within hours it had been defaced; within days 44,000 signatures had been appended to a petition demanding it be removed. Making sure women are covered up in public, so their bare flesh doesn't offend anyone, is something you'd expect in Saudi Arabia, not here, where we should be free to dress as provocatively as we please.
Linkakeet
Like a lorakeet, but with a bunch of links.
"Palestinian Knife Attacked By Israeli Neck"
Daniel Greenfield blogs at FrontPage that this has to be the next headline at CNN -- after a recent one, "Palestinians shot boarding kids' bus."
Um, they weren't getting on to play show-and-tell.
As Greenfield puts it:
The CNN story isn't even particularly egregious. It's the headline that once again erases the Jewish victims and puts the emphasis on the Muslim attackers as the victims. The headline has since been changed to the more accurate, "Armed Palestinians shot after trying to board bus with children on board."
From the CNN piece:
Jerusalem (CNN)Two Palestinian men armed with knives tried to board a bus carrying children in Israel but were forced back by people inside the vehicle, police said.After being kept off the bus, the Palestinians stabbed an Israeli man at a bus stop in the city of Beit Shemesh, west of Jerusalem, said police spokeswoman Luba Samri.
Police officers shot the two attackers, wounding both of them, she said. They and the Israeli they stabbed were hospitalized, and one of the Palestinians later died of his wounds.
Feminism Today: Women Aren't Men's Equals; They Are Fragile Flowers Who Need Big Daddy's Protection
"Big Daddy" is the Authority Figure or Figures of note in proximity to a particular woman -- for example, on campus, these are college administrators.
Yes, never mind female autonomy -- we're going back to Victorian times. Oh wait -- only there's one difference: Women will still have autonomy; they just won't have to bear the responsibility for exercising it.
Welcome to the "drunk sex is rape" movement -- popping up on campuses across American.
But as Ashe Schow points out, "make no mistake, being too drunk to consent only applies to women in these situations":
So according to the editors of Boston University's student newspaper, drunk sex equals rape. This follows in the footsteps of Coastal Carolina University in South Carolina, which once posted flyers around its campus claiming the same.But make no mistake, being too drunk to consent only applies to women in these situations. That's because schools often include in their policy that accused students, who are overwhelmingly male, who are drunk during the sexual encounter are not absolved of their actions. So in cases where the male accused student was too drunk to consent, where essentially both students sexually assaulted each other, only the accused student is responsible.
I got drunk for the first time at 15 when I was at a wedding with my parents. Why? Because I thought it was smarter to possibly lose my shit (which I did, on the side of the road, as my dad laughed at me) when there was somebody there to see that nothing terrible happened to me.
I can't think of much that's stupider than getting blotto and then wandering back across campus to your dorm. You could be raped -- or robbed or just physically assaulted. Evildoers don't look for the toughest targets, like, "Hey, I'll take on the tight end from the football team!" They look for the weak one they can chip off the herd. And if you're wobbling home from a party, guess what: That's you.
Linkulation
A totally made up word conveying nothing or something, you pick which.
"While Free Speech Is Important..."
...It's not "important" enough to be allowed to people on campus or coming to campus who don't toe the left's party line.
The Williams College newspaper just came out -- yes, really -- against free speech.
Because that's really so absurd, I'll say it again: The students running a newspaper just came out against free speech.
Here's a message from their editorial board:
Uncomfortable Learning scheduled and later cancelled a talk by Suzanne Venker, founder of Women for Men, a news and opinion website that claims that the feminist movement results in female privilege and discrimination against men. While we at the Record believe Venker's views are wrong, offensive and unacceptable, it is difficult to determine whether or not there would have been enough educational value in her lecture to justify an appearance, given that her presence on campus would have hurt students who face sexist and homophobic stereotypes.Though Venker's speech is legally protected, the College, as a private institution, has its own set of rules about what discourse is acceptable. In general, the College should not allow speech that challenges fundamental human rights and devalues people based on identity markers, like being a woman. Much of what Venker has said online, in her books and in interviews falls into this category. While free speech is important and there are problems with deeming speech unacceptable, students must not be unduly exposed to harmful stereotypes in order to live and learn here without suffering emotional injury. It is possible that some speech is too harmful to invite to campus. The College should be a safe space for students, a place where people respect others' identities. Venker's appearance would have been an invasion of that space.
Greg Lukianoff writes in Freedom from Speech about the conflation of physical safety and emotional safety, and the "expectation of confirmation" -- the notion that a speaker is unacceptable unless they confirm the students' views.
Here's Lukianoff in the WSJ:
And while students should certainly feel "safe," it is important to recognize that these days the word has wandered far from its literal meaning. Feeling "safe" on college campuses means something closer to being completely comfortable, physically and intellectually. Boundary-pushing comedian Lenny Bruce, a hero to the Free Speech Movement, wouldn't have lasted a minute in front of today's college kids....As John Stuart Mill noted in "On Liberty" in 1859, calls for civility are often a tool to enforce conformity.
...After decades of campus censorship, students have been taught not to appreciate freedom of speech, but rather to expect freedom from speech. This unnerving development can be seen in the rash of episodes last spring when students and even faculty pushed to bar commencement speakers and other public figures with whom they disagree.
This is no way to advance thought; in fact, it does just the opposite.
A commenter at the Williams college paper:
Melissa
This is a weak justification for shutting out a speaker because she takes a contrarian position on Feminism.You write, "Arguing with a speaker with whom one shares no common ground could amount to nothing more than each side validating its own views." Without contrarian opinions, there is no opportunity for growth or challenges.
Does one argue with a novel taught in class? Hardly. You read the novel and then discuss what it had to say. By banning a book, you deprive yourself and others the opportunity to consider its words - which is really the goal of those who protested Venker's speech. It's no different from those who protested the teaching of Evolution, or books by Vonnegut, Twain, and Salinger in high school curricula (yes, this happens).
This editorial basically accepts that once people have developed a world view, they should not permit arguments and ideas counter to that view. What some Williams students could not accept is others in the community hearing a different opinion on Feminism than what they want them to think.
What's lost in this pursuit of conceptual monoculture is the exercise of testing and improving ideas. At a University, that approach should be abhorrent to students and faculty alike.
As I've said before, free speech is especially important for bigots, assholes, and people saying uncomfortable things. (Nobody needs free speech to say "Have a nice day!") To maintain free speech, it's necessary for all of us to support the open airing of the ugliest speech -- or simply speech we vigorously disagree with.
Oh, and hilariously, the speaker series is called "Uncomfortable Learning."
Wait -- I get it -- they invite people they totally agree with and then listen to them speak while sitting in overly-hard chairs.
via @AdamKissel
Fed Court Tells DEA Thuggos To Stop Going After State-Legalized Medical Marijuana
These government-enabled thugs have been going after legal dispensaries -- made legal by state law -- reports Christopher Ingraham in the WaPo, but now a federal court has told them "nuh-uh; no more":
In a scathing decision, a federal court in California has ruled that the Drug Enforcement Administration's interpretation of a recent medical marijuana bill "defies language and logic," "tortures the plain meaning of the statute" and is "at odds with fundamental notions of the rule of law." The ruling could have a broad impact on the DEA's ability to prosecute federal medical marijuana cases going forward.At issue is the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment to last year's government spending bill. The amendment lists the states that have medical marijuana laws and mandates that the Justice Department is barred from using federal funds to "prevent such States from implementing their own State laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana." Pretty straightforward, right?
When the legislation was passed, advocates and lawmakers on both sides of the issue agreed that the bill basically prevented the DEA from going after medical marijuana dispensaries, provided that such dispensaries were acting in compliance with state law. The DEA, however, didn't see it that way. In a leaked memo, the Justice Department contended that the amendment only prevents actions against actual states -- not against the individuals or businesses that actually carry out marijuana laws. In their interpretation, the bill still allowed them to pursue criminal and civil actions against medical marijuana businesses and the patients who patronized them.
The DoJ's reading of the amendment infuriated its sponsors. They called for an investigation into the Department of Justice's "tortuous twisting of the text" of the bill, saying it violated common sense. Yesterday, Judge Charles Breyer of the U.S. District Court in northern California agreed.
Breyer goes through the arguments against the DoJ's case, referring to the floor debate as well as the plain language of the bill. But, "having no substantive response or evidence, the Government simply asserts that it 'need not delve into legislative history here' because the meaning of the statute is clearly in its favor," Breyer writes. "The Court disagrees." He called the DoJ's interpretation of the amendment "counterintuitive and opportunistic."
..."It's great to see the judicial branch finally starting to hold the Justice Department accountable for its willful violation of Congress's intent to end federal interference with state medical marijuana laws," said Tom Angell of Marijuana Majority.
Dan Riffle of the Marijuana Policy Project agreed. "This is a big win for medical marijuana patients and their providers," he wrote in a statement, "and a significant victory in our efforts to end the federal government's war on marijuana. Federal raids of legitimate medical marijuana businesses aren't just stupid and wasteful, but also illegal."
Chunky
Lumpylinks.
Feeling Offended -- Today's Primary Weapon Of Those With Weak, PC Arguments
Dan Subotnik writes in a paper a law journal refused to publish -- "Plain Talk about Testing and Race: A Reply to Professor Harvey Gilmore and a Law Review Publishing Drama":
Claiming offense today has not only promotional but also apparently probative value. Professor Alan Dershowitz captured this phenomenon twenty years ago in a syllogism: "I am offended," therefore you must be wrong--and by extension, I, the speaker, must be right.The problem of concern here is not the critic who develops a sense of moral superiority that precludes evaluation of competing argument; it is, rather, the reader who takes the critic's words at face value, backs off, and thus cedes the point. In this setting, the greater the offense claimed, the greater the perceived righteousness of the underlying cause. Savvy students of rhetoric in our media-quickened culture cannot help but learn quickly that exaggerating and even feigning offense can pay off; it can help divert attention from any weakness in the case. It would be surprising then if rational writers failed to make use of a stratagem readily available to them. This in turn suggests that, more than ever, the academic's and the law review's responsibility today is to scrutinize the claims of those claiming greatest offense in a cool and measured manner.
Alas, it has not worked that way. Nowhere is dialogue more phony--no other word will do-- and pusillanimous than in the race area, the focus of this essay. Consider: "No Euro-American person," writes acclaimed black Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson, "except one insensitive to the charge of racism, dares say what he or she really means." Readers should try to let that statement sink in.
via @instapundit
Air Marshmallows -- Paid For By Taxpayers To Take Up First Class Seats On Domestic Flights
From a Richard A. Serrano piece in the LA Times about the air marshall program:
"...4,000 bored cops fly around the country First Class, committing more crimes than they stop."
Only cost us $9 billion last year.
College As Nursery School With Beer
Sue Shellenbarger writes in the WSJ about colleges' push to coddle all the poor booboos "suffering" from homesickeness. (Contrast these pussies with kids who go into the military.) Gotta love the title of the piece, "New Help for Homesick Students on Campus":
Homesickness is more than a childish failure to separate from Mom and Dad, researchers say. For many, it involves a more complicated, amorphous set of feelings tied to being home, including a longing for predictability, routine, familiarity and comfort, says a recent analysis of 34 in-depth interviews with homesick people led by Kristina Scharp, an assistant professor of communication studies at Utah State University, Logan. "It's not just a place, it's a feeling" of fitting in and being safe and loved, one participant said....Counselors at The Ohio State University ask homesick students, "What are you missing from home? Is there a way we can have some of that here?" says Micky Sharma, director of the university's Counseling and Consultation Service and president of the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors.
Universities are expanding programs to evoke homey feelings. Ohio State recently held a "recess" on campus to promote mental health, offering art projects, therapy dogs and an inflatable "bounce house" like those used at children's parties.
The University of Minnesota has held weekly pet-visiting sessions at several locations for the past 2½ years, drawing as many as 280 students to cuddle therapy dogs, rabbits and a chicken named Woodstock. Petting dogs during study breaks reduces anxiety and sadness in students, according to a 2015 study in the International Journal of Stress Management.
A bouncy house? For college students?
Hello?
Sound the news that America is over.
Mexico: A Tale Of Two Countries
A quote from an article on Mexico in The Economist:
It is wrong to think of the division between the modern Mexico and the rest of the country as purely one between north and south. As San José Chiapa shows, the distance between them is not just to be measured in kilometres; it is to be mapped in terms of formality and informality, the rule of law and its absence, of race and of culture.
Lunky
Oafylinks.
Kids Learn An Unfortunate Lesson: Democracy Isn't "Diverse" Enough
Kids in San Francisco got a lesson in dictatorship and the politics of racial identity over merit when their middle school administrator overturned the student council election results, deciding to add her own hand-picked choices to "diversify" the student council members.
From KTVU/SF [annoying as fuck auto-play video at link]:
The incident happened at Everett Middle School in San Francisco's Mission District. The voting was held Oct. 10, but the principal sent an email to parents on Oct. 14 saying the results would not be released because the candidates that were elected as a whole do not represents the diversity that exists at the school.According to Principal Lena Van Haren, Everett Middle School has a diverse student body. She said 80 percent of students are students of color and 20 percent are white, but the election results did not represent the entire study body.
"That is concerning to me because as principal I want to make sure all voices are heard from all backgrounds," Van Haren said.
They were heard -- and they voted for students without respect to their color.
Professor and legal scholar Eugene Volokh saw this similarly, writing in the WaPo:
Well, the children's voices were heard. They just seemed to be less obsessed with race than some administrators are. And exactly what "learning experience" would the children get this way, whether about racial tolerance or democracy?I'm inclined to say, by the way, that attempting to "add positions in an effort to be more equal" by (presumably) filling them with children of a particular race would likely violate the Equal Protection Clause and federal civil rights law. And even if one can somehow argue that such an action is "narrowly tailored to a compelling government interest" in supposed "diversity," it violates the California Constitution's categorical ban on "discriminat[ing] against, or grant[ing] preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race ... in the operation of ... public education."
Facebook Is The Borg
For days, I had mysterious annoying bell dings on my Mac. It turns out that Facebook turned on sound notifications -- entirely without my doing -- for when people comment on posts.
P.S. I just post links to my blog posts -- I'm not posting fascinating information about my bra size or what I had for lunch.
Does Your Tampon Sing To You?
Those Swedes!
via @PaulHsieh
Halloween Is FOR Mocking
Though not if you're on one of our prissy, PC, infantilizing college campuses. Like Wesleyan, which published an "Offensive Costume Checklist," reports Robby Soave at Reason:
[It's] intended to discourage students from "mocking cultural or religious symbols," "attempting to represent an entire culture or ethnicity," or "trivializing human suffering" with their choice of costume, according to The College Fix. Of course, it would be difficult to find a spooky costume that doesn't trivialize human suffering--vampires drink people's blood, zombies eat people, ghosts are literally dead people--but I guess that's probably the point.
And Soave is right on this:
Universities can, I suppose, inundate their students will silly pleas for hypersensitivity. But they have no right to punish students for wearing whatever the hell they want. Unfortunately, administrators frequently forget this lesson; consider the University of California-Los Angeles' recent decision to suspend a fraternity and sorority that hosted a Kanye West-themed party, clearly violating their First Amendment rights in the process.
Meanwhile, "Wesleyan Students Will 'Reduce Paper Waste' By Cutting Funding to Newspaper That Printed Conservative Op-Ed," reports Soave. "The cost of crossing #BlackLivesMatter":
Recently, an op-ed by a conservative white veteran that mildly criticized some tactics of the BLM movement provoked a backlash from the campus's far-left activists, who in turn pressured the student government to cut funding to the paper. The activists also vowed to destroy any physical copies of the paper they could get their hands on.These activities were an explicit threat to The Argus: run different material--material that doesn't offend the sensibilities of liberals--or else.
Free speech on campus? Sure -- but only if your speech matches that of the Social "Justice" thugs.
Asshole-Quashing Flashlight
It's like turning on the lights in a NYC tenement and watching the cockroaches scurry.
My boyfriend got me this night watchman 770-lumen Seven-Z flashlight as a present. It runs on AAAA batteries, which is convenient, yet could still cast light from one end of an airplane hanger to another. Very, very bright light.
Well, it's 5:53 a.m., Sunday morning, and some asshole just started blasting music in his car right outside my windows and my neighbors'. I'm up to write. My neighbors are still sleeping. Before he could wake all of them (or wake all of them all the way), I ran out, stood on the bottom support of the fence, and shined this very, very, verrrrry bright light into his car.
He took off instead of sitting there blasting us with sound. And I got to feel all everyday superhero. ("Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck": Be kind but punish the rude -- and their eyeballs...with very, very bright light.)
Glue
Elmer's links.
A Few College Men Aren't Going Quietly Over Having Their Due Process Rights Taken From Them
At ProvidenceJournal, Katie Mulvaney reports:
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- The Brown University students met last October at a party where they flirted and kissed. Their intimacy escalated later in his dormitory room. But what he viewed as consensual groping and fondling, the woman claimed were unwanted sexual advances that spiraled into an assault.She filed a sexual-misconduct complaint with the Ivy League school, and that led to his suspension for 2-1/2 years. Now, as a plaintiff named John Doe, he is suing the school in U.S. District Court. He accuses Brown of violating his due process rights and discriminating against him based on his gender, in violation of Title IX.
...Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance. It has typically been used to safeguard female students' rights, as in the landmark 1992 sex-discrimination case at Brown in which several female athletes sued after funding for their gymnastics team was cut. As a result, the university was forced to restore financing to the women's gymnastics and volleyball teams and promote other women's sports to varsity.
In John Doe's case, Miltenberg is flipping that use of Title IX, arguing that the schools' investigative and disciplinary processes reveal "gender bias against males in cases involving allegations of sexual misconduct."
...According to the lawsuit against Brown, John Doe was enrolled in the Class of 2017 and earned straight A's his freshman year. He hoped to pursue a career in neuroscience.
On Oct., 11, 2014, Doe, then a sophomore, met Jane Doe at a party at Barbour Hall, a dormitory. They began kissing as the party came to an end. Jane Doe texted a friend shortly after that she might be about to "hook up," the suit says.They continued kissing and touching in his room at Marcy House, it says. Jane Doe told him that she didn't want to go any further, but they continued touching and lay down together after a pause. She guided his hand over her body before stating again that she didn't want to go any further. She left, kissing him and telling him she would see him at her birthday party the next night, the suit says.
A week later, the director of student life, Yolanda Castillo, informed John Doe that a no-contact order had been issued relating to Oct. 11; he was not to leave his room. The next day he learned Jane Doe had made a "serious allegation of sexual misconduct" against him. Then-Vice President of Student Affairs Margaret Klawunn ordered his immediate removal from campus. He faced conduct charges of sexual misconduct and illegal possession of alcohol, the suit says.
Now, we can't say for sure what happened here, but I have to say, so many of these cases sound nothing like the behavior by a person who is assaulted. Like, who kisses the person who assaults them and says they'll see them at a birthday party the next night?
What I want to see happen is for police and the judicial system to be dealing with these cases. This guy was not criminally charged -- meaning the police lacked evidence to charge him. Yet, under the government's extortionist Title IX letter, sent out to colleges, he had his future derailed and is going through what has to be a terrible time with the court case.
There's this from the piece:
He asserts that the woman's inconsistent accounts contained "stunning" departures from his recollection, including that he pushed and bruised her, didn't allow her to leave and continued touching her genitals after she told him to stop. She claimed to university officials that she was lying when she led him to believe that she was enjoying the intimacy, the suit says.He alleges that the Student Conduct Board, comprised of university staff and a student, found him responsible for misconduct and suspended him for 2-1/2 years after an unfair hearing in which board members failed to challenge or question her account and refused to let him present certain evidence and testimony. Brown erroneously put the burden on him to prove his innocence, it says. "The hearing was a mere formality to conclude John Doe's predetermined guilt." The provost upheld the suspension on appeal.
... He alleges that Jane became furious at him when he didn't speak to her at a party on Oct. 12, 2014, the day after they were intimate, and that she repeatedly made defamatory statements to fellow students that they then repeated during the flawed investigation and adjudication process before the Student Conduct Board. As a result, his reputation at the university was damaged, precluding him from being admitted at a school of equal caliber, thus derailing his education and future career in medicine. Despite his exceptional academic record, he said he has been rejected at seven schools. He is seeking unspecified damages and legal fees.
I hate that any criminal would go free, but we need to err on the side of not punishing the innocent. If there isn't enough evidence for a person to be convicted of a crime (or even charged!) there should be no suspensions or punishments of any kind on campus.
via @chsommers
I Was Groped As A Teen, But I Forgot To Be Traumatized
I was groped as a teenager. At 14 or 15. By a creepy older man, now dead. It didn't occur to me to be traumatized, nor was I.
He wrote for a local newspaper. I wrote him a fan letter and told him I wanted to write for newspapers, and he invited me to come over to his house sometime, which wasn't that far from mine. I rode my bike there, and we must have talked about journalism, but I can't remember that.
All I can remember is the moment his hand crept around me. Maybe on my knee; maybe on my shoulder. (My sister jokes that I have "forgetsenheimer's" about bad things. I just remember that he touched me in some way that was clearly inappropriate from some stranger who was a grown man probably 30 years older than I was at the time.)
It was an "OHSHIT!" moment, as in, "Oh, shit -- what the hell am I doing here?"
I do remember shooting up off the couch like a rocket, getting on my bike, and peddling home in the style of Margaret Hamilton on the bike in the "Wizard of Oz."
The thought that did go through my head? Something along the lines of, "Hey, idiot, don't go over to a man's house all by yourself because something could happen."
I know it can be and is traumatic for some people to be groped or, of course, to have more serious stuff happen to them. The thing is, sometimes, maybe that's because they're told they should be traumatized more than their actually being traumatized.
Lenore Skenazy posted a story about this on her blog, "I Was Groped As A Teen And I'm Trying To Be Upset," by Andrew Blake. His groper was the barber:
Not until I was in my early twenties did I fully form and accept two obvious facts -- that the man was gay and I had been groped.Yet I did nothing. In fact, it never occurred to me that I should do anything aside from avoiding that barbershop where he still worked (on a visit to my parents I glanced inside to be sure). I thought the man was a pervert and that what he did was pathetic. But somehow it also seemed kind of funny -- the lengths to which this man went to cop a feel.
...When, in my early twenties, I recognized what had really transpired I did not feel angry. I felt a dim sense of violation, though this gradually passed. Mostly I felt bemused by his antics and bewildered by the question of whether I was the only one. If not, I wondered, had anyone ever spoken up or made a scene? If so, what had they said, and to whom? How did the other barbers and customers react?
From then until now, I surmised the barber was creepy but harmless. And like so many odd characters I'd met from my teens, through college and into to young adulthood, he simply passed into memory.
...Try as I may, I cannot summon outrage at the pathetic man who assaulted me. Nor can I conclude that I am any worse for the wear. Try as I may, I cannot make myself wish that I'd grown up in today's more enlightened era -- that I'd known to report it the first time, and that this report would have been taken seriously and would have been sensational: the barber would be lead off in handcuffs, most likely past satellite trucks feeding breaking news reports while breathless reporters declare barbershops to be treacherous places infested with child predators, and where no child should be left alone.
That punishment exceeds the crime.
What happened, happened. He touched me there many times. Yet everything still works. I enjoy a normal life including a healthy-though-unremarkable sex life.
He probably got off, in both senses of the phrase. But, frankly, I don't care.
Don't get me wrong. Real sexual assault -- involving force against the will of the victim, or exposing a child to sexual organs or acts -- is a very big deal. And what my barber did was immoral and wrong.
It should not have happened. But it did.
To me, it was of no consequence.
Lenore writes this:
I print this for the same reason Blake wrote it: Not to minimize anyone's lingering trauma, but to normalize the folks who don't feel it. Lately, as this blog post at Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers points out, the more accepted narrative goes like this:In September, 2010, a federal judge in Minneapolis sentenced a man to 30 years in prison for taking sexual pictures of two teenage girls (he had also molested one of them and faced separate charges in state court). When asked if he would like to make a statement before sentencing, the offender expressed remorse, apologized, and said that he prayed for the girls; which prompted the judge to say:"These victims are never, ever, ever going to recover. No matter how much you want God to do that, no matter how much you pray, it is not going to happen."
How does the judge know that? And how dare he suggest it, labeling the young women crippled for life? This "never recover" outlook perhaps explains the 30 years -- a sentence comparable to what a person gets for murder.
Humans are resilient. That is not an excuse to hurt them. It is a plea for perspective.
She's exactly right.
Dunkin Links
Where the holes come together in one.
Tonight -- My New Live Science Podcast, Under A New Name
"Advice Goddess Radio" is now "HumanLab: The Science Between Us," and my first new live show, with Dr. Adam Galinsky, is tonight (Sunday, Oct. 18), 7 to 7:30 pm Pacific/10-10:30 pm Eastern, or catch us afterward in podcast.
Tonight's topic: When to cooperate, when to compete, and how to succeed at each.
There'll be some great science-based tips, and this should be a fascinating show, so do join us!
The "Don't Be An Asshole" Rule For Atheists
I'm a godless harlot, destined to burn in hell, according to various religious people, and blog from time to time about how it's irrational, gullible, and childish to believe in things (especially some Big Guy In The Sky) sans evidence.
But there's a time for that and there's a time for a different sort of statement to a religious person. For example, when somebody offers some god-infused wish when I sneeze -- "God bless you" -- I don't dress them down and give them a 10 minute lecture on rationality.
The same goes for the announcement that someone will be praying for me. Though I don't believe in this, I know they mean well and are trying to say something nice and kind and comforting, and I respond accordingly.
Apparently, this is difficult for some to figure out.
An atheist actually felt the need to put this up on Reddit:
I'm having surgery in a few days. Every time someone says they will be praying for me, I answer. . .
"Thank you!"
...or its variations, such as:
"Thank you -- that's very sweet of you."
If you're not secure enough in your views as an atheist to do that, you're either 12 and terribly annoying or the adult version of being 12 and terribly annoying.
More on how to be an atheist without being an asshole (along with a lot of other advice) in my book "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck."
Case in point -- after I tweeted the link Saturday night: 
via @DenyReligion
Beauty In A World Without Hair Product
Miss America, 1924.
Gelinas: "We Should Have Rebuilt The Twin Towers"
Nicole Gelinas, in an op-ed in the NY Post about the movie "The Walk" -- about Philippe Petit, who tightrope-walked between the World Trade Center towers -- writes that they should have been rebuilt:
For 28 years, the Twin Towers defined New York. After the World Trade Center attacks, newspapers ran stories about how immigrants came here based on nothing but a postcard they had seen -- a photo with that distinctive Manhattan skyline.Left unspoken in the movie is that the World Trade Center defined New York for the terrorists, too. They, too, eventually made the buildings their own -- by destroying them.
Al Qaeda set out to mutilate our skyline. They succeeded. New York could have rebuilt new, modern Twin Towers after 9/11. And we could have done it quickly.
But we did not. We spent more than a decade and $4 billion building a tower that could fit on any generic skyline.
To be clear: The city can live with this decision. We are, indeed, living with it.
But we should not pretend that it is not a psychic wound. People care, not just in the city, but around the country and the world.
The argument on the other side would be that rebuilding the towers would make them the biggest, tastiest terrorist target in the world. And the truth is, you really cannot stop all terrorism, no matter how many rights you remove from people as a form of "security."
Chocolatey
Dark 'n' Lovely links.
Men Abstinent Until Marriage And The Sexual And Emotional Problems They Have Once They're In It
Sociology doctoral candidate Sarah Diefendorf, who has been researching men who pledge sexual abstinence, writes in the WaPo that by urging abstinence "in place of healthy conversations about sex and sexuality, we may be undermining the relationships that are the driving goal of these commitments in the first place":
While men make this commitment with the good intentions for a fulfilling marriage and sex life, my research indicates that the beliefs about sexuality and gender that come hand in hand with these pledges of abstinence do not necessarily make for an easy transition to a married sexual life....in 2008, I began researching a support group of 15 men at an evangelical church in the Southwest. All members were white, in their early to mid-20s, single or casually dating -- and supporting each other in their decisions to remain abstinent until marriage.
...So what happened after the men of The River got married? In 2011, I followed up with them.
All but one had married. But while the transition to married life brought promises of enjoying their "sacred gift from God," this gift was fraught.
Respondents reported that they still struggled with the beastly elements of sexuality. They also had the added concern of extramarital affairs. Furthermore -- and perhaps most importantly -- the men no longer had the support to work through these temptations.
There were two reasons behind this development.
First, respondents had been told since they were young that women were nonsexual. At the same time, these men had also been taught that their wives would be available for their pleasure.
...It's a double standard that's in line with longstanding cultural ideals of the relationship between femininity and purity. But it's a contradiction that leaves men unwilling to open up to the very women they're having sex with.
These married men and women were not talking to each other about sex. Rather than freely discussing sex or temptation with their wives (as they had done with their accountability partners), the men simply tried to suppress temptation by imagining the devastation any sexual deviations might cause their wives.
Second, these men could no longer reach out to their support networks due to their own ideals of masculinity. They had been promised a sacred gift: a sexually active, happy marriage. Yet many weren't fully satisfied, as evidenced by the continued tension between the sacred and beastly. However, to open up about these continued struggles would be to admit failure as masculine, Christian man.
In the end, the research indicates that a pledge of sexual abstinence works to uphold an ideal of masculinity that disadvantages both men and women.
After 25 years of being told that sex is something dangerous that needs to be controlled, the transition to married (and sexual) life is difficult, at best, while leaving men without the support they need. Women, meanwhile, are often left out of the conversation entirely.
This commenter's thoughts are wise:
GSA101
The article and comments reveal a wide range of perspectives on the issue of sex. However, I think it is possible to reach some general conclusions.1. The Puta/Madonna model of sex is not conducive to a healthy relationship. The idea that sex is some beastly thing to be suppressed but that it is also a gift from God to be enjoyed once married is self-contradictory. It is highly unlikely to result in a happy married sex life.
As the article points out, if one's world view is that it is inappropriate to feel lust, that view will NOT be suddenly be converted into a swinging-from-the-chandeliers lustful married sex life. Sex should be FUN, serving to bond two people together with good times to make it easier to navigate the difficult times together. A wife who wanted to pursue such a course would be revealing herself to be a puta, rather than some idealized mythical Madonna figure.
2. The subjects of the author's study practice an extreme version of celibacy where not only is premarital sexual intercourse forbidden, but any form of interpersonal sex, solo sex, porn-induced fantasy sex is also taboo. This is pure anti-sex dogma; it really can't be justified on pragmatic grounds.
3. Sexuality is analogous to the unfolding of a ripening flower. It starts with sexual desire. One then gets in tune with one's sexual needs through a phased progression from fantasy, solo sex, viewing of pornography to further clarify one's sexual desires, interpersonal kissing, petting, and eventually intercourse. This all needs to occur over an extended period of time.
4. There IS a pragmatic case to be made for limiting one's number of premarital sexual partners, the circumstances in which such relationships occur, and/or the specific sex acts one performs with others. This recognizes the learning value of being with different people, but also seeks to guard against potential harms like STDs, unintended pregnancy, development of callous attitudes to others, etc.
via Lenona
Throw Momma From The Plane
A New York Times story about some lady tending to and comforting a stranger's baby on a plane went viral. Una Lamarche writes:
The infant's mother, Rebekka Garvison, was traveling to visit her husband, a serviceman stationed in Alabama. When her daughter Rylee wouldn't stop crying, her seatmate Nyfesha Miller, a mother of three, offered to hold the baby. The child was immediately calmed and slept in Ms. Miller's lap for the remainder of the flight.Ms. Miller "kept saying it wasn't a problem at all and it was actually a comforting feeling for her. She even carried her off the plane and held her so I could get the stroller and carseat put back together," Ms. Garvison wrote in a lengthy account she posted on Facebook along with two photos of the event.
"You could've just rolled your eyes and been irritated like everyone else, but you took her and held her the entire flight and let me get some rest and peace of mind. It brought tears to my eyes while I sat there and watched you and Rylee sleeping next to me. I just couldn't believe how that ended up working out and how caring you were to us," Ms. Garvison wrote before going on to thank her savior with multiple exclamation points and emoji.
As it spread, it picked up headlines proclaiming that the simple act of kindness would "restore your faith in humanity!" But it also raises the question: Are we really all such jerks at 36,000 feet that this qualifies as news?
I should admit two things: One, that before I had a child, I wrote an open letter to children on planes and referred to them as "minions of Satan" in a 2009 blog post, so I can relate to my ear-budded brethren across the aisle who may not be as naturally gracious as Ms. Miller.
And two, if I had been sitting next to Ms. Miller and she had asked if she could try to console my child, I probably would have said no. When you're already run ragged, a sincere offer to help can sound a lot like passive-aggressive judgment of your parenting skills. So it is also to Ms. Garvison's credit that she was able to put her pride aside and accept the support.
The New York Times published "Readers Debate Traveling With Babies On Planes." Predictably, somebody said it was worse to travel next to drunk adults.
Well, it's no fun to have a tractor-trailer run over your foot, even if you could have it run over by a bus wheel instead.
This guy -- Mark, from Davidson (somewhere -- doesn't say where) -- was right on:
REGARDLESS OF EMPATHY, people are not happy to pay upwards of $400 to sit in coach next to a human being who is screaming. All air travel companies would do well to integrate a seating system where those who are traveling with a baby have much cheaper seats around them. People would not be as angry if they knew they were saving money by taking a seat next to the ticking time bomb that is a small child.
Here's another comment on the original article:
Puzzled, Chicago
I honestly don't understand why parents are bringing "kindness" into this conversation. The fact is that a baby's crying by its nature produces a very visceral response in humans. It's a sound that we've evolved as a species to not be able to ignore. I can tune out a car alarm blaring more easily than I can a screaming infant. The chances of a car alarm going off when I'm 37,000 feet in the air are nil. However, when there's a baby on board, the chances of him crying for a couple of hours are pretty high - at least from my experiences. So please forgive me if I'm not doing cartwheels of joy when I see you and your baby or toddler boarding the plane or seated near me. As many of you noted, before you had kids, you felt the same way so surely you understand.
This guy echoes what I wrote about this issue in the Airplane travel section of "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck."
r.friedman, Atlanta
If I'm on a trans-Atlantic overnight flight, I'm expected to work the next morning and need what little sleep I can get. In general, if the kid is under 3, the family should fly to the kid and not the other way around. If the kid must fly, the parents should use Benedryl liberally, and the airline should put them all in a separate cabin in planes with multiple cabins, such as the 767 or 777. I'm not under any obligation to accept your kid or your parenting style. You chose to have the kid, you get to eat in family restaurants for 10 years and you have the obligation to conform the kid's behavior to the expectations of others with whom you're sharing space.
*Turns out the header for this post was the headline on the original article that inspired the comments section, but I thought of it independently -- yes, this happens -- and like it, so I left it.
Runty
Stubby little links.
Beauty In A World Without Hair Product
Miss America, 1924.
Fascinating And Counterintutive: Angus Deaton On How Foreign Aid To Poor Countries May Hurt Growth
Nobel-winning economist Angus Deaton argues against giving aid to poor countries, reports Ana Swanson in the WaPo, and not because he hates the poor:
The countries that receive less aid, those on the left-hand side of the chart, tend to have higher growth -- while those that receive more aid, on the right-hand side, have lower growth.Why was this happening? The answer wasn't immediately clear, but Deaton and other economists argued that it had to do with how foreign money changed the relationship between a government and its people.
Think of it this way: In order to have the funding to run a country, a government needs to collect taxes from its people. Since the people ultimately hold the purse strings, they have a certain amount of control over their government. If leaders don't deliver the basic services they promise, the people have the power to cut them off.
Deaton argued that foreign aid can weaken this relationship, leaving a government less accountable to its people, the congress or parliament, and the courts.
"My critique of aid has been more to do with countries where they get an enormous amount of aid relative to everything else that goes on in that country," Deaton said in an interview with Wonkblog. "For instance, most governments depend on their people for taxes in order to run themselves and provide services to their people. Governments that get all their money from aid don't have that at all, and I think of that as very corrosive."
It might seem odd that having more money would not help a poor country. Yet economists have long observed that countries that have an abundance of wealth from natural resources, like oil or diamonds, tend to be more unequal, less developed and more impoverished...
Like revenue from oil or diamonds, wealth from foreign aid can be a corrupting influence on weak governments, "turning what should be beneficial political institutions into toxic ones," Deaton writes in his book "The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality." This wealth can make governments more despotic, and it can also increase the risk of civil war, since there is less power sharing, as well as a lucrative prize worth fighting for.
Deaton and his supporters offer dozens of examples of humanitarian aid being used to support despotic regimes and compounding misery, including in Zaire, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Somalia, Biafra, and the Khmer Rouge on the border of Cambodia and Thailand. Citing Africa researcher Alex de Waal, Deaton writes that "aid can only reach the victims of war by paying off the warlords, and sometimes extending the war."
via @veroderugy
Ridiculous "Solidarity" Moves
Does anyone really think any bullies will stop bullying gay kids because some weather dude on TV in LA wore a purple tie? 
This sort of thing allows people to believe they're doing something -- while they're actually doing no more than getting dressed in the morning, but gaining social media bragging rights for it.
It's like "pinksploitation," this "Pinktober" bullshit related to breast cancer. Want to help somebody with breast cancer? Don't buy Yoplait with a pink lid; go with the person to chemo and write a check for cancer research.
Stop, Or I'll...Uh...Throw This Piece Of Bubblicious At You
Somebody in a high school asked for "gum." Somebody heard gun.
Kyle Olson writes at EagNews:
No gun was found and Hays County, Texas school district spokesman Tim Savoy insists the school was never in "lock down," though school administrators did "hold students in their extended class periods to investigate the concern with little to no disruption to their schedule."Principal Michelle Chae sent a letter home to parents after the incident, according to the Hays Free Press, writing:
Dear Lobo Parents,This morning we received a report from a student that there was allegedly a weapon on campus. After investigating the concern, it was determined that a student thought he heard the word "gun," but in fact it was another student asking for some "gum."
The safety of our students is always foremost on our list of priorities, so we take these concerns seriously. We continue to encourage students to report anything they see or hear that causes them concern. Fortunately, in this case, it was a misunderstanding and there was no threat to our school or need to conduct a lockdown.
Because we are conducting the PSAT, we were able to hold students in their extended class periods to investigate the concern with little to no disruption to their schedule.
Sincerely,
Michelle Chae
Principal, LHSNo gun was ever found. No word on if the student ever got the requested gum.
Cross me, and I will bring you down with a Tic Tac.
Blink
One-eyed links.
Our Legislators: Knee-Jerk Know Nothings Who Banned Internet Gambling
It was just like Obamacare -- which they passed in order to figure out what was in it. And now it's impacting fantasy sports leagues.
In 2006, they passed a bill against Internet gambling -- which our then-pretend conservative President, George W. Bush, signed into law. Walt Bogdanich, James Glanz, and Agustin Armendariz write in The New York Times:
After nearly 10 years of maneuvering, compromises and, ultimately, anger, the House of Representatives in its last official act before adjourning on Sept. 30, 2006, passed a bill at 12:32 a.m. that proponents believed would deflate the expanding Internet gambling industry by prohibiting credit card payments or electronic fund transfers for any illegal Internet wager.Chris Grove, who writes an influential blog, Legal Sports Report, questioned whether the bill's authors even knew what they hoped to accomplish. "You're talking about a law that was passed with no input, that was passed with no consideration, no deliberation, no debate," Mr. Grove said.
To ensure passage, and with legislators eager to adjourn for the 2006 elections, the House leadership hastily attached the gambling bill to legislation aimed at making ports safer. Not everyone was pleased.
"What does banning Internet gaming have to do with port security?" Representative Shelley Berkley, a Nevada Democrat, asked on the House floor. Another Democrat, Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, complained that the Republican House leadership refused to accept any amendments to the ports measure, but did attach the gambling bill.
"I ask someone to explain to me how prohibiting Internet gambling is more important to our homeland security than making our trains, subways and buses safe," Mr. Thompson said.
Two weeks later - on Friday the 13th -- President George W. Bush signed the bill into law. While Internet gamblers might have seen that date as confirmation of their bad luck, other bettors had reason to rejoice. Embedded in the bill was the language exempting wagering on fantasy sports, except in the five states that consider it illegal -- Washington, Louisiana, Arizona, Montana and Iowa.
At Reason, Scott Shackford debunks the myths that these fantasy sports league sites have been "unregulated":
Fantasy sports leagues, like video games, are an example of a wildly popular activity that is treated like an odd, little, mistifying subculture, even though everybody knows somebody (or is somebody) who participates in it. Participants play pretend owners and build teams from actual playing athletes. The "owners" are competing against each other to build the best team, and the winner is determined based on how these actual athletes perform in real-world games....There are generally fees involved in participating in fantasy sports leagues in order to win the big bucks. The winnings have to come from somewhere, right? So fantasy sports has the whiff of gambling to it. Yes, there's skill involved in building teams, but of course, there's no small amount of luck. Julian Edelman could unexpectedly blow out his knee in the middle of a game, and there go millions of fantasy sports players' chances of winning.
Setting the luck aside, what also helps determine success is being able to evaluate huge amounts of information about players and make some rather technical team makeup decisions. That's where the supposed scandal comes in. An employee of DraftKings had access to information about which athletes players within his company were selecting. Though DraftKings says he didn't get the information until it was too late to use it, he subsequently participated in competing FanDuel's leagues and won $350,000.
The behavior has been compared to insider trading. Though the employee obviously had no idea how these athletes would perform on the field, he could have known the choices other players were making (and more importantly, not making) to maximize his odds of winning.
...It's ridiculous to say that fantasy sports companies are completely unregulated. What people really mean when they say this is that there are no specific regulations that oversee how fantasy sports leagues operate. There is no such thing as an unregulated business in America unless said business is actually operating in a black market, which is obviously not the case here. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) can investigate and prosecute fraudulent business practices aside from whether there are any specific federal regulations for fantasy sports leagues. If one of these sites collected players' fees and then never paid out promised winnings (for example), you better believe the FTC would be able to intervene. A representative from the FTC would not speak specifically about the Draft Kings/FanDuel controversy or the possibility of an investigation, but did affirm that, just as with virtually any other business in America, the FTC could get involved in cases of deceptive business practices.
Of course, recently, it's public betting that comes with the real thievery.
Welcome To Weenie World: The College Campus Nearest You
Psychology Today's Hara Estroff Marano interviews social scientist Jonathan Haidt about the wussification of young Americans on college campuses these days:
JH: Western society has transitioned from an honor culture to a dignity culture and now is shifting into a culture of victimhood. In the culture of honor, each person has to earn honor and, unable to tolerate a slight, takes action himself. The big advance in Western society was to let the law handle serious offenses and ignore the inevitable minor ones--what sociologists call the culture of dignity, which reigned in the 20th century. It allows diversity to flourish because different people can live near each other without killing each other. The past 20-30 years, however, has seen the rise of a victimhood culture, where you're hypersensitive to slights as in the honor culture, but you never take care of it yourself. You always appeal to a third party to punish for you. And here's the big concept--you become morally dependent. Young people are becoming morally dependent; they are also less able to solve problems on their own. An adult has always been there somewhere to protect them or punish for them. This attitude does not begin in college. Students have been raised to be morally dependent.HEM: The shocking part is that colleges are abetting the infantilization of students. For example, they sponsor "puppy days" so that students can pet dogs to relieve the--oh horrors!--stress of exams. It sounds so innocuous but providing such Pooh Bear crib comforts is flat-out capitulation to weakness.
JH: There are three reasons why colleges are doing this. One is the increasing consumer mindset that sweeps through many institutions in market-based societies. There used to be different goods and virtues in institutions outside the market, such as the academy. The academy is now a market-based institution; you have to give the customer what he wants.
HEM: Do you feel that acutely as a professor?
JH: I don't have the trust and respect of my students as much as I did 20 years ago. On first meeting me, students address me using my first name rather than Professor, a sign of familiarity. A more important change is that universities live in terror of lawsuits and losing federal aid. The Obama administration's justice department very much buys into the victimhood culture--the idea that people are fragile and discrimination is so rampant and damaging that we must have zero tolerance toward it. What counts as sexual harassment no longer reflects what a reasonable person would agree is harassment. If any speech is unwelcome, a student can file charges, and every university must investigate the charge. All of us now live in fear that a single word, a single tweet, can suck us into a vortex of investigations and social media shame. Third is the sincere belief of the academic community in the culture of victimhood. Most professors are horrified by trigger warnings and microaggressions. But these things flourish in the identity studies departments, gender studies, race studies, and among any group charged with promoting diversity. These three forces are converging so that everybody's walking on eggshells, afraid of being sued or accused.
What truly is amazing is how feminism now involves running to "Daddy" to solve things. "Women as equals" today looks a lot like women throughout history who needed a man to protect them.
Marano's book on this subject: A Nation of Wimps: The High Cost of Invasive Parenting
"Don't Hire Or Promote Women": The Unintended Consequences Of Spain's Maternity Leave Law
Claire Cain Miller writes in The New York Times
In Chile, a law requires employers to provide working mothers with child care. One result? Women are paid less.In Spain, a policy to give parents of young children the right to work part-time has led to a decline in full-time, stable jobs available to all women -- even those who are not mothers.
Elsewhere in Europe, generous maternity leaves have meant that women are much less likely than men to become managers or achieve other high-powered positions at work.
Family-friendly policies can help parents balance jobs and responsibilities at home, and go a long way toward making it possible for women with children to remain in the work force. But these policies often have unintended consequences.
About Spain's law:
Spain passed a law in 1999 giving workers with children younger than 7 the right to ask for reduced hours without fear of being laid off. Those who took advantage of it were nearly all women.Over the next decade, companies were 6 percent less likely to hire women of childbearing age compared with men, 37 percent less likely to promote them and 45 percent more likely to dismiss them, according to a study by Daniel Fernández-Kranz, an economist at IE Business School in Madrid, and Núria Rodríguez-Planas, an economist at City University of New York, Queens College. The probability of women of childbearing age not being employed climbed 20 percent. Another result: Women were more likely to be in less stable, short-term contract jobs, which are not required to provide such benefits.
Wonka
Chocolate links.
Simple Pleasures
I just love this. Love, love, love.
Favorite response to my tweet of it:
@tnajournal
@nickgillespie @amyalkon Quoth the raven: "Wheeee!"
We'll Worry If You Aren't Scoring On The FBI's School Shooter Checklist
If you aren't, there's a good chance you're a giant latex doll with a phone, job, apartment, and driver's license.
From a tweet by @Nero.
via @Lauren_Southern
Victim Of Oregon Gunman Believes Gun Control Made Her More Vulnerable
Ruth Styles writes in the Daily Mail:
Cheyeanne Fitzgerald, 16, remains critically ill in hospital following an operation to remove one of her kidneys but her brother Jesse, speaking exclusively to DailyMail.com outside the Mercy Medical Center in Roseburg, says she is beginning to improve.He also revealed that the family have discussed the issue of gun ownership and said that all - including Cheyeanne - remain opposed to controls.
...'We're pro second amendment, pro guns,' said Jesse. 'My sister, my mother, my whole family are all in favor. We were talking about it in the hospital and none of us have changed our minds.'
...Jesse's comments on gun control echo the statement released by the family of another victim, Quinn Cooper, 18, who was shot dead by depraved Harper-Mercer on Thursday.
In a statement released on Friday, his grieving family said their lives were 'shattered beyond repair' but said Quinn's death should not be used as a means of advancing arguments in favour of gun control.'We are hearing so many people talk about gun control and taking people's guns away,' they said.
'If the public couldn't have guns it wouldn't help since sick people like this will always be able to get their hands on a gun.
'We need to be able to protect ourselves as a community and as a nation. Please don't let this horrible act of insanity become about who should or shouldn't have a gun.
Lava
Runny hot red linkage.
Harry Reid Goes After Theraband: (When You've Been An Idiot, Why Admit It When You Can Find Somebody To Sue?)
Harry Reid, with his wife, is suing the makers of the Theraband elastic exercise band, contending it ruined his sex life.
The dummy was using the thing in his bathroom -- presumably a place with hard tiles all over the damn place.
Martin Barillas posts at SperoNews:
U.S. Senator Harry Reid, a 75-year-old Democrat who represents Nevada, filed a lawsuit on October 6 that contends a rubber band has ruined his sex life. Filed in a district court in Clark County, Nevada, the complaint detailed how a Theraband elastic changed his life. On January 1, 2015, ""The Theraband was mounted to a sturdy object in his bathroom. While in use, the Theraband broke or slipped out of Mr. Reid's hand, causing him to spin around and strike his face on a cabinet."
The document also alleges that the senior citizen "has suffered and continue to suffer from severe pain and injuries, including, but not limited to, loss of vision in his right eye, a concussion, broken orbital bones, severe disfigurement and bruising to his face, hand injuries, facial lacerations, scarring, and broken ribs." In addition, wife Landra Gould alleges she suffered a loss of marital union. The complaint detailed on page 15, "As a result of the negligent act(s) of the Defendants, Plaintiff, Landra Gould, was caused to suffer, and will continue to suffer a loss of consortium."
Due, there's a reason they put those rubber mats all over gyms -- as opposed to tiling them.
via ifeminists
Parking Enforcement Officer As Power-Mad Perp -- Ticketing Cars For Lack Of Inspection Sticker As They're Awaiting Inspection
This is yet another example of how government so often does not protect us; it victimizes us.
Tom Jackman writes in the WaPo about a Fairfax, VA parking enforcement officer, Jacquelyn D. Hogue, who comes into the lot where cars are parked awaiting inspection to slap tickets on them for not having their inspection stickers:
Bruce Redwine had seen enough. After years of watching a Fairfax County parking enforcement officer slap tickets on his customers' cars for expired tags or inspection stickers, usually as the cars were awaiting state inspection or repair at his Chantilly shop, he snatched the latest ticket out of Officer Jacquelyn D. Hogue's hand and added some profane commentary on top.Hogue responded by having Redwine arrested for felony assault on a police officer, though she is not a police officer. And when the case first went to court, a Fairfax judge sentenced Redwine to four days in jail.
Redwine appealed, got a jury trial last month and was acquitted within minutes. But the bitterness he feels at having to spend thousands of dollars in legal fees, plus being booked, fingerprinted and photographed at the county jail, with no prior record, is shared by numerous fellow auto repair operators at the Mariah Business Center on Sullyfield Circle off Route 28.
They don't understand why Fairfax police have zealously sought to enforce laws on expired tags or inspections, mainly on drivers who are making the effort to get their cars into compliance, while on private property. Hogue's appearance in the industrial park often set off a scramble to hide customers' cars inside the shops, the shop owners said.
"They're harassing the small businesses trying to make it in this tough economy," said Ray Barrera of A&H Equipment Repair. He estimated that his customers' vehicles had been hit with $60,000 worth of fines and fees over the past six years.
Fairfax police said they are only on the property because of a letter issued by Mariah's property management firm in 2009, specifically granting police permission to enforce county traffic, parking and towing ordinances.
I don't care whether Jesus and the Tooth Fairy granted them access. This has nothing to do with making cars safer and everything to do with making easy money for the state (and probably an easier job for the parking officer going after all these automotive sitting ducks).
Linka Binka
Bottle of ink...
Armed Jews vs. The Nazis
When I was in high school, I wrote an essay and won a scholarship for a trip to Israel. I went the summer after my senior year. Part of the trip included a week working on Kibbutz Yad Mordechai in Ashkelon (where 100-some scrawny Jews plus 20 Hagannah fighters held off the Egyptian army for five days).
The place was named for Mordechai Anielewicz, the leader of the Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa (Jewish Combat Organization) during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising from January to May of 1943.
David Kopel, author of the upcoming book, The Morality of Self-Defense and Military Action: The Judeo-Christian Tradition
One of the most successful battles of the Jewish resistance was the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Nearly every Jew who participated was eventually killed -- but they were going to be killed anyway. By choosing to stand and fight, the Warsaw Jews diverted a significant amount of Nazis resources from battlefields elsewhere, thus hastening the Nazi defeat....On Jan. 18, 1943, the Germans rounded up 7,000 Jews and sent them to the extermination camp at Treblinka; they killed 600 more right in Warsaw. But on that day, an uprising began. In the beginning, the Jewish Fighting Organization had about 600 volunteers; the Jewish Military Association had about 400, and there were thousands more in spontaneous small groups. The Jews had only 10 handguns, but the Germans did not realize how under-armed the Jewish fighters were.
After four days of fighting, the Germans on January 21 pulled back from the ghetto, to organize better. A diary written in the Warsaw ghetto exulted, "In the four days of fighting we had made up for the shame of Jewish passivity in the first extermination action of July, 1942." [Ber Mark, "The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising," in "They Fought Back" ed., Yuri Suhl (N.Y.: Paperback Library, 1968; 1st pub. 1967), pp. 104-06].
Not only the Germans were shocked by the unexpected resistance, but also the Jews were astonished. They could not imagine until then that the beaten, exhausted victims could rise against a mighty enemy who had conquered Europe. Many Jews who were in the streets of Warsaw during the fighting refused to believe that on Zamenhof and Mila streets Jewish boys and girls had attacked Germans. The large-scale fighting which followed convinced all that it was possible.
In February 1943, the Polish Home Army transferred 50 revolvers (many of them defective), 50 hand grenades, and four pounds of explosives to the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto. The Warsaw Jews also manufactured their own explosives, including Molotov cocktails. But, wrote Ringelblum, as in Biblical days, "their most potent weapon was their deep sense of national pride and responsibility."
...The Nazi minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, wrote in his diary, "the joke cannot last much longer, but it shows what the Jews are capable of when they have arms in their hands." [Yuri Suhl, introduction to "They Fought Back," p. 15.]
The Nazis brought in tanks. The Jews were ready with explosives. First one tank and then a second were immobilized in the middle of the street, in flames, their crews burned alive.
...Another eyewitness described the confusion in the German ranks: "There runs a German soldier shrieking like an insane one, the helmet on his head on fire. Another one shouts madly 'Juden...Waffen...Juden... Waffen!'" ["Jews...weapons!"]
Eventually, the Jewish forces began to run out of ammunition. The Warsaw Jews, like the Jews throughout Europe, were unable to produce their own ammunition. There was little "gun culture" among European Jews of the 1930s, so few Jews had the equipment for "reloading" -- the home manufacture of ammunition. In contrast, hundreds of thousands of American families own the machine tools used for reloading; home manufacture of ammunition is legal everywhere in the United States.
Stymied in house-to-house fighting, the Germans began to burn the ghetto to the ground on April 22. The Warsaw Ghetto fire was probably the largest urban fire in Europe since Nero's fire in Rome. On April 23, Himmler ordered SS Major General Jürgen Stroop to finish things quickly, and Stroop promised to complete his job that same day. But he could not.
...The Germans suffered over a thousand casualties in the first week of fighting alone. The Germans had to spend more time subduing the Warsaw Ghetto than they did conquering the entire nations of Poland or France.
...In Warsaw, as elsewhere, the key impediment to resistance was shortage of arms. According to Holocaust historian Abram L. Sachar: "The indispensable need, of course, was arms. As soon as some Jews, even in the camps themselves, obtained possession of a weapon, however pathetically inadequate--a rifle, an ax, a sewer cover, a homemade bomb--they used it and often took Nazis with them to death." Thus, "the difference between resistance and submission depended very largely upon who was in possession of the arms that back up the will to do or die." [Sacher, pp. 47-48, 60.]
Anielevich,the Warsaw ghetto commander, believed that: "We should have trained the youth in use of live and cold ammunition. We should have raised them in a spirit of revenge against the greatest enemy of the Jews, of all mankind, and of all times...."
...In 1967, the International Society for the Prevention of Crime held a Congress in Paris on the prevention of genocide. The Congress concluded that "defensive measures are the most effective means for the prevention of genocide. Not all aggression is criminal. A defense reaction is for the human race what the wind is for navigation -- the result depends on the direction. The most moral violence is that used in legitimate self-defense, the most sacred judicial institution."
How Divorce Feels For A Kid
Cole Kazdin writes in Modern Love in The New York Times:
I loved my parents, but I hated coming home and going back and forth to see them. Doing math to make sure everyone was getting equal time. Church with my mom, then lunch with my dad. Two Thanksgivings on successive days. I was always in tears during the 20-minute car rides between houses.
Linker
Uber with http.
Closet Plate Lickers
Be honest: Do you ever lick your plate when you're home alone?
Remedial table manners help from "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck" for people raised in the wilderness by a family of coyotes:
Perhaps Why A Humanities Degree Does Not Pay What A STEM One Does
A tweet.
In related (only in California!) news from September 30:
@DJGrothe
We literally just saw a dildo rolling across the 101, in heavy traffic. More impressive than the typical tumbleweaves seen in these parts.
New York Times Soon To Report Unicorn Sightings
Along with the supposedly peaceful intent of the Palestinians, who don't actually hate Jews and want to drive them all into the sea; they love them and want to give all Israelis a group hug.
Jodi Rudoren "reports" (novelizes) in The New York Times about President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority:
For Mr. Abbas, who has preached nonviolence for his entire tenure...
Abbas: "We welcome every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem." (Palestinian TV, September 16, 2015)
The video:
Full text of Abbas' statement:
"We bless you; we bless the Mourabitoun and the Mourabitat. We welcome every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem. This is pure blood, clean blood, blood on its way to Allah. With the help of Allah, every shaheed (martyr) will be in heaven, and every wounded will get his reward.All of their steps, we will not allow them. All these divisions, Al-Aqsa is ours, and the (Church of the) Holy Sepulcher is ours, everything is ours, all ours. They (the Jews) have no right to desecrate them with their filthy feet and we won't allow them to."
Aww...how cuddly and sweet!
via @Jeff_Jacoby
Well, I'm Sure All The Mass Murderers Will Just Go Right Home And Crawl In Bed
California Governor Jerry Brown, following California legislators, in a fit of "do something," banned concealed guns on California campuses.
Save for the fact that this ban is related to tragedy (and a dim and deluded notion of how to prevent it), it is absolutely hilarious in its rock-shattering stupidity.
Patrick McGreevey writes in the LA Times:
A week after a gunman killed nine people at an Oregon college, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation Saturday that will ban the carrying of concealed guns on school and university campuses in this state.Sen. Lois Wolk (D-Davis) said the bill she introduced several months ago is needed to close a loophole that allows people with concealed-weapons permits to carry firearms onto school grounds. The bill prohibits that practice, unless school officials grant permission or the carrier is retired from law enforcement.
So, is there anyone here with an IQ over the highway speed limit who thinks that a ban on concealed guns on campus will stop even one person intending to mass-murder others?
Loved this comment at the LAT site:
Alfred E. Neuman Why pick around at the edges of the problem. Jerry Brown should push a bill to make it illegal to kill people on school and university campuses.
Exploding Links
Blow it all up right here. No squirrels, please.
Colleges Handling Sexual Assault Cases Is Like Colleges Taking On Murder Cases
Sexual assault is a crime, not something to be handled by a campus kangaroo court.
Ashe Schow linked to yet another op-ed -- this one in Kentucky's Courier-Journal -- by attorney Bridget Bush:
My friends' daughter was hauled in front of one of these campus kangaroo courts. She was fortunate: her parents understood that she needed a lawyer. And they could afford to hire one to represent her in this burgeoning area of law -- defending students accused of sexual assault not in court, but in Title IX proceedings. However, because the rules of the campus hearing did not permit her to have a lawyer present, her lawyer could only accompany her as an "adviser." That is, he had no right to make objections or cross-examine witnesses.As a group of 28 Harvard Law professors noted, Harvard's proposed procedures for conducting Title IX investigations and hearings lack the most basic elements of fundamental fairness and due process. The procedures stack the deck against the accused.
That's exactly what OCR wants. For example, OCR requires the standard of proof to be the much easier to prove "preponderance of evidence" (50.01 percent) rather than "beyond a reasonable doubt" (99.9 percent). Typically there are no sworn statements or subpoenas, no rules of evidence. No right to an attorney or right against self-incrimination.
Fortunately, witnesses -- other than the accuser -- were truthful and my friends' daughter was exonerated. She was not expelled or labeled a sex offender. She graduated on time notwithstanding the distraction and stress of the false accusation. Her parents will be paying off that legal bill for years but consider it money well spent. The college, meanwhile, with a hubris only the Academy could muster, continues to ask this family to donate to it.
Sexual assault, when it really occurs, is a crime. It should be investigated by professional law enforcement, not campus police. It should be prosecuted by actual prosecutors --not college administrators. Expulsion from college is not a sufficient punishment for rape: jail is. To the contrary, merely expelling a true perpetrator just sets him free to rape non-students.
Feminist Sergeants Of "Correct" Thinking On Patrol
A tweet: 
My response:
@amyalkon
@joshgreenman By today's ever-present feminist sergeants of correct thinking, yes. (Somebody compliments my ass, I thank them.)
Matt Bomer's Emmy-nominated (by Buzzfeed) ass here.
Limpy
Gimpylinks.
What If Some Yoga-Doer Wanted To Create A "Safe Space" For White People?
From MyNorthwest.com and the Dori Monson show, Eric Mandel posts:
Rainier Beach Yoga in Seattle has a class called "yoga for people of color." It started last week and runs once a month.Teresa Wang, co-founder of the specialized class, said it was started by five queer people of color who came together to create a safe space for people of color who might otherwise be uncomfortable.
...So what would happen if a white man decided to attend?
"Well, it's a class for people of color, so he would be coming to that class knowing that we're really clear about who we are asking to come to class, so...I'm not really sure because it hasn't happened to us," Wang said. "So I don't really know."
Dori said he has no problem with the exclusionary practice of the class. His beef is with the presumed reaction that people will applaud this class for being progressive, while the opposite -- a group of white people saying they didn't want people of color in their class -- would be "vilified."
"It would be a lead story on national news," he said. "It would be blared across all the websites about the racist yoga class in Seattle. And the fact is, this yoga class is every bit as racist as a bunch of white people who say they don't want to be around somebody of color. That's why I wouldn't want to attend either one of those classes ... The fact is, they are both racist."
Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson previously told Dori that his office would go after any business that discriminates against a specific group of people. Dori wants to know if Ferguson will stick to his word.
Personally, I'm for freedom of association, but if they'd go after white people for this, the "people of color" shouldn't be any different.
Also, when you're uncomfortable around other people, the answer isn't to avoid them (can you avoid straight, white people in life?). It's to learn to deal. This is called being functional in life. If you're not able to take yoga around white people, well, you have some truly deep and rather disgusting racial issues and should be in a special home until the therapists help you deal with them.
Previously: "The State of Washington is suing a small flower shop after the owner declined to provide flowers for a homosexual wedding - based on her religious beliefs."
Social Media's Impact On Empathy: No, The Sky Is Not Falling
I explain in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck" that there's an annoying tendency to demonize technology, and to sneeringly judge people who are on their phones or devices when they're together instead of talking to each other.
There's an equally annoying tendency to judge people on social media -- as if this is surely some pernicious thing, destroying human interaction. I looked at that for a column -- the research on it -- and didn't find it to be the case.
And now, about social media's supposed pernicious impact on empathy, Teddy Wayne writes in The New York Times:
A 2010 study from the University of Michigan found that the empathy of college students between 1979 and 2009 dropped off considerably after 2000, with the researchers speculating that the rising prominence of personal technology was one of several factors.Yet there is a different interpretation of young people's levels of empathy, one that takes into account their far greater tolerance today for lifestyles and values not their own. Larry D. Rosen, a psychology professor at California State University, Dominguez Hills, who specializes in the effects of technology, worked on a recent study in the journal Computers in Human Behavior that measured the impact of spending time online on real-world empathy.
Dr. Rosen's team found that being on the Internet "does not displace face-to-face time nor reduce real-world empathy" and that "virtual empathy was positively correlated with real-world empathy."
Empathy, their study suggests, can be dispensed and felt virtually, though in-person empathy -- a hug, for instance, as opposed to a Facebook "like" -- has six times the impact on feelings of social support. (The study also found that the specific type of online activity can be crucial; playing video games, for example, had "negative effects" on empathy.)
"I don't think it's a problem with a lack of empathy, but a different style," Dr. Rosen said in an interview. "We have to think of empathy as a continuum. The experience that we hear from kids and young adults is they do feel like they're being empathetic."
This new style of empathy may play out most saliently in acceptance of people that previous generations have judged more harshly. According to the General Social Survey, administered by the research organization NORC at the University of Chicago, the percentage of American adults who viewed homosexuality as "always wrong" rose through the 1970s and '80s, peaking in AIDS-phobic 1987 at three-quarters of the population.
As of 2014, the most recent year for which data are available, it stands at 40 percent, overshadowed by the 49 percent who think there is nothing wrong with homosexuality, while support for same-sex marriage, especially among 18-to-34-year-olds, has risen sharply.
Dr. Rosen credits at least some of this considerable change to social media.
The New York Times "Helped" Nail Salon Workers Right Out Of Jobs
Elizabeth Nolan Brown writes at Reason that the NYT exposé on nail salons has not been a good thing for those who work in them:
Reporter Sarah Maslin Nir said she wanted to highlight the pervasive worker exploitation she believed took place in the city's Asian nail salons.Response to Nir's "expose" was swift and emotional, with fashion-bloggers crowing about how they would rethink their weekly mani-pedis and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo ushering through a package of "emergency protections" for salon staff. The state also launched a Nail Salon Enforcement Task Force which, by mid-July, had issued 1,799 new citations to nail salons. Officials heralded this as a step toward stamping out salon-worker exploitation, while activists and Twitter bleeding-hearts took it as proof that Nir's prognoses was right: these salon owners were out of control, and needed the government to put them in their place.
New York authorities had been on a crusade since at least year to regulate nail salons more tightly. It seems Nir's article provided the impetus and public support enabling the city to do just that.
But you know who hasn't been so psyched about the new worker "protections?" The people who actually work at nail salons. Because of citations and new regulations, some salons have been forced to close, costing the women who worked there their jobs. Because of rules mandating extra pay for overtime work, manicurists saw hours cut back. "I know the article tried to help us," an Upper East Side salon employee told the Times in July. "But for some employees it created a worse situation."
...If there's a silver lining... well, I'd like to think that the massive outcry from salon staff against their self-appointed saviors may actually change minds a little on the liberal side--make them rethink whether excessive regulation is always the best way to end alleged exploitation, and whether lurid advocacy journalism is the best basis for public policy. Perhaps even consider that maybe, just maybe, libertarians oppose this shit not out of some childishly rebellious attitude or yearning for the robber-baron days but precisely because it hurts those in precarious positions the most. But I won't hold my breath. For a lot of people, it's much easier to see the world as a black-and-white struggle between vulnerable workers and exploitative bosses, between honorable pro-regulatory types who care for the poor and their greedy, small-government foes. It's much easier not to think too hard about these things.
Limber
Elasto-links.
"Male Privilege"
Spencer Stone, hero of attempted terror attack on French train, stabbed in Sacramento while defending a friend.
Evolutionary psychologists Andreas Wilke, John M. C. Hutchinson, Peter M. Todd, and Daniel J. Kruger on male risk-taking and how men, disproportionately, are the risk-takers of our species:
Human risk taking shows some striking sex differences, which, when viewed in the framework of evolutionary theory, raises the possibility that it is a sexually selected trait. Males in their teens and twenties not only are more prone than females of the same age to take risks of many different kinds (e.g. extreme sports, driving cars or motorcycles too fast, binge drinking, having unprotected sex, etc.), but also suffer from much higher associated mortality rates (Byrnes, Miller, and Schafer, 1999; Kruger and Nesse, 2004). Many of these risks not only involve an increased variance in payoff (a standard definition of risk), but also often lead to a lower mean payoff than not taking the risk.Sexual selection can provide a twofold rationale for why males show these risky behaviors, especially at ages of high fertility. First, the variance and skew in male mating success may favor risk taking: High potential gains (e.g. in resources promoting partner acquisition) outweigh the high risks (e.g. Daly and Wilson, 1988, chapter 8). Second, and the argument that this paper tests, males may take risks as a form of advertisement of their quality to both females and rival males. The argument for why risk taking might be an honest indicator of quality follows the logic of the handicap principle (Zahavi, 1975; Grafen, 1990): If risky behaviors are less of a danger to a high-quality male than to a low-quality male, high-quality males can afford to take such risks more often, and thus rivals and potential mates should use risk taking as a cue to quality.
Banning Free Speech From Panel On Feminist Free Speech Problem
Entirely without any sense of the irony, the precious kitten students of the Manchester Students' Union (University of Manchester/UK) have banned a feminist activist from speaking on the grounds that she might hurt students delicate widdle feelz.
Elizabeth Nolan Brown posts at Reason:
LOL LOL LOL is about all there is to say on this story: The University of Manchester has banned feminist activist Julie Bindel from speaking at a panel on feminism's free-speech problem.The Manchester Students' Union (SU) flagged Bindel's appearance at the event--titled "From Liberation to Censorship: Does Modern Feminism Have a Problem with Free Speech?"--as a potential breach of the school's "safe space" policy. "After reviewing the request in more detail, the Students' Union has decided to deny this request based on Bindel's views and comments towards trans people, which we believe could incite hatred towards and exclusion of our trans students," SU said in a statement.
I'm not as familiar with Bindel's repertoire on trans issues as I am with her views of sex work, which are of the second-wave, prostitution-is-inherently-abusive variety. Bindel regularly campaigns against sex-worker rights and prostitution decriminalization. And both in articles for The Guardian and on social media, Bindel comes across to me like an awfully unpleasant and misguided human being.
That being said: Bindel's views on prostitution and trans issues are certainly active schools of thought in some modern feminist circles (generally referred to as "rad-fems"). They might not be en vogue with the kids today, but it's not as if Bindel is advocating violence or harassment against trans people and sex workers. So call me a free speech nut, but I'd prefer those who disagree with her shtick debate her on the merits of her ideas rather than seek to silence her--this is not the first time U.K. student groups have "no platformed" Julie Bindel.
They've also banned Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking there as well (to debate Bindel), calling him a "rape apologist."
From Breitbart:
The student union accused Yiannopoulos of being a "rape apologist" and claimed that his presence could "incite hatred" against people who have "experienced sexual violence." They provided no evidence to support either claim. This appears to be a typical misrepresentation by campus radicals, who often accuse critics of dodgy rape statistics (such as the notorious "1 in 4 women on U.S. campuses will be sexually assaulted" claim) of "apologising" for rape.Yiannopoulos is a leading hate figure for feminists. This weekend, organisers of the Los Angeles Slut Walk called the LAPD after they discovered he and Rebel Media broadcaster Lauren Southern were interviewing attendees. He regularly receives death threats from feminist activists, although he insists that such threats are not to be taken seriously.
Hear, hear on that.
"Generation Wuss": Brett Easton Ellis On Millennials' Oversensitivity
Brett Easton Ellis gets it about the perma-baby generation, writing in Vanity Fair:
I have been living with someone from the Millennial generation for the last four years (he's now 27) and sometimes I'm charmed and sometimes I'm exasperated by how him and his friends--as well as the Millennials I've met and interacted with both in person and in social media--deal with the world, and I've tweeted about my amusement and frustration under the banner "Generation Wuss" for a few years now. My huge generalities touch on their over-sensitivity, their insistence that they are right despite the overwhelming proof that suggests they are not, their lack of placing things within context, the overreacting, the passive-aggressive positivity, and, of course, all of this exacerbated by the meds they've been fed since childhood by over-protective "helicopter" parents mapping their every move. These are late-end Baby Boomers and Generation X parents who were now rebelling against their own rebelliousness because of the love they felt that they never got from their selfish narcissistic Boomer parents and who end up smothering their kids, inducing a kind of inadequate preparation in how to deal with the hardships of life and the real way the world works: people won't like you, that person may not love you back, kids are really cruel, work sucks, it's hard to be good at something, life is made up of failure and disappointment, you're not talented, people suffer, people grow old, people die. And Generation Wuss responds by collapsing into sentimentality and creating victim narratives rather than acknowledging the realities of the world and grappling with them and processing them and then moving on, better prepared to navigate an often hostile or indifferent world that doesn't care if you exist....When Generation Wuss creates something they have so many outlets to display it that it often goes out into the world unfettered, unedited, posted everywhere, and because of this freedom a lot of the content displayed is rushed and kind of shitty and that's OK--it's just the nature of the world now--but when Millennials are criticized for this content they seem to collapse into a shame spiral and the person criticizing them is automatically labeled a hater, a contrarian, a troll. And then you have to look at the generation that raised them, that coddled them in praise--gold medals for everyone, four stars for just showing up--and tried to shield them from the dark side of life, and in turn created a generation that appears to be super confident and positive about things but when the least bit of darkness enters into their realm they become paralyzed and unable to process it.
Smoke The Poor
Jerk billionaire Tom Steyer is campaigning for a $2-a-pack tax on cigarettes.
I hate cigarette smoking and hate the idea that I have to pay for medical care for smokers, but there are a lot of people with not a lot of money who are addicted to cigarettes and having a hard time quitting.
Those are the people whom this will hit the hardest.
Why doesn't Mr. Billionaire simply fork over a bunch of money to fund what needs to be funded?
Because this is about forwarding his particular politico-religious ideology, that's why.
Phil Willon reports in the LA Times:
Steyer, who has spent tens of millions of dollars backing Democrats vowing to fight global warming, adds substantial financial heft to a campaign expected to be bitterly opposed by the billion-dollar tobacco industry.California currently charges 87 cents a pack in taxes. By contrast, New York taxes cigarettes $4.35 a pack.
Which is how Eric Garner ended up dying after cops tackled him for selling "loosies" that hadn't been stuck with the big tax by the state.
Monkey
Linky swinging from tree to tree.
She's A Despicable, Man-Bashing Asshole -- Whose Speech Should Be Free
To maintain a healthy society -- a healthy democracy -- ugly speech needs to remain free. It's only when the ugliness is voiced is there a chance to challenge and debate it.
A London woman, Bahar Mustafa, a student diversity officer at Goldsmiths, University of London, has been charged by police for sending threatening communication for her disgusting tweet, #killallwhitemen.
But I think it's pretty obvious that this was anything but a meaningful threat. I think it's valuable to know what this woman thinks -- especially because a lot of people probably don't know and have a hard time believing this sort of hatred toward men exists (of course, in the name of "equal rights").
Jessica Elgot writes in The Guardian:
Mustafa was initially accused of racism for asking white men not to attend a students' union meeting intended for ethnic minority women and non-binary attendees.She then became embroiled in a separate row, accused of using the hashtag #killallwhitemen on her Twitter account, which has since been deleted.
A Met police spokesman said in a statement: "A woman interviewed under caution regarding a complaint of racially motivated malicious communication made on a social media network has been summonsed to court."
Mustafa is neither an employee of Goldsmiths nor a student, but an employee of the independent students' union, elected by union members.
Mustafa remained in her position as welfare and diversity officer after a petition for a motion of no confidence fell short of the 3% of union members required to trigger a poll.
After the furore, Mustafa denied that her initial request for white men to stay away from a union meeting was racist or sexist, and said she had received rape and death threats.
via @DJGrothe
"Willow Is Taking Ballet Lessons"
There are those who think I am a terrible person for dressing my dog in tiny clothes. Well, welcome to goatsploitation. (I love it!)
Breast Cancer Pinskploitation: Think Before You "Think Pink"
I write about this in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck," in the chapter, FRIENDS WITH SERIOUS ILLNESSES: What to do when a friend is really, really sick and could maybe even die:
A lot of people take for granted that they're supporting a friend with breast cancer by wearing a pink ribbon or buying Yoplait with a pink lid.Sure, companies that "go pink" give some portion of the sale of each pinked-up product to help stop breast cancer.
But a number of breast cancer patients see this as "pinksploitation": using cancer to sell products. They would rather you give a more sizable donation (or even $10 or $25) to a cancer research center instead of thinking you're buying a yogurt and making a difference.
Or as Boing Boing blogger Xeni Jardin, who's tweeted her breast cancer diagnosis and treatments, tweeted during the breast cancer marketing month of "Pinktober":
Reality Check: The "No, WE'RE More Exploited!" Olympics
I just started following Aeon on Twitter -- the Joan Crawford of slapping around the illogical. Here's a sample:
Sloppy
Linksplatty.
DEA Drug Warriors Fail Drug Tests. Consequences? Not So Much
At HuffPo, Nick Wing posts that a number of DEA employees have failed drug tests over the past five years and gotten only short suspensions and reprimands over it:
According to a Huffington Post review of internal DEA discipline logs, first uncovered by USA Today over the weekend, there have been at least 16 reported instances of employees failing random drug tests since 2010. While a number of these incidents were handled administratively, with a few people choosing to resign or retire amid the proceedings, none of the cases ended in an employee's outright firing. The agency punished most employees with short suspensions, sometimes as little as one or two days.The DEA's drug policy states that applicants who "experimented with or used narcotics or dangerous drugs, except those medically prescribed for you, will not be considered for employment," though it makes exceptions for "limited youthful and experimental use of marijuana." The agency conducts random drug testing throughout an employee's career.
The discovery comes amid broader findings of routine misconduct and paltry disciplinary action at the DEA.
...Carl Pike, a former DEA internal affairs investigator who went on to lead the agency's Special Operations Division for the Americas before retiring in December, explained to USA Today that it was incredibly rare for someone to get fired for misconduct.
"If we conducted an investigation, and an employee actually got terminated, I was surprised," he said. "I was truly, truly surprised. Like, wow, the system actually got this guy."
Indeed, a closer look at the internal log turns up numerous examples of disturbing behavior being punished with suspensions of a few days, at most. From 2010 through 2015, HuffPost found 62 instances of an employee losing or stealing a firearm; more than 30 violations for driving while intoxicated, including four while driving a government-owned vehicle and one that involved a hit-and-run; two occasions in which employees deprived individuals of their civil rights; nine instances of employees losing or stealing drug evidence; 10 cases in which agents lost or stole a defendant's property; four violations for committing fraud against the government, two of which were punished by a letter of caution; and two more general violations of DEA policy on drug use. The DEA didn't fire anyone as a direct result of these actions.
If you use drugs, they'll do all they can to take your money and throw you in a cage. When their employees do...huh?...oh, look...a rabbit!
via @againstcronycap
Now In California, The Right To Choose How You Die
Governor Jerry Brown just did the right thing and signed the right-to-die bill -- a bill for assisted suicide for terminal patients. From the LA Times editorial board:
[It] allows doctors, under tightly defined circumstances, to write lethal prescriptions for patients who have been diagnosed with less than six months to live. Brown, a former seminarian, wrote about the many people he had consulted, including a Catholic bishop, and the many pleas he had read on both sides."In the end," he wrote, "I was left to reflect on what I would want in the face of my own death.
"I do not know what I would do if I were dying in prolonged and excruciating pain. I am certain, however, that it would be a comfort to be able to consider the options afforded by this bill. And I wouldn't deny that right to others."
Brown's personal message about signing the bill.
I previously posted on the late Brittany Maynard, who, terminally ill with brain cancer, had to move with her family to Oregon, where assisted suicide was then legal:
It is your life -- it should be yours to live (and end) as you wish, and if you need assistance dying, the person who you choose to assist you should not be prosecuted.And yes, of course there should be safeguards, but people often use the argument that there can be abuses to argue against people having the most important sort of autonomy over their lives.
From Steve Chapman at Reason, Oregon has not seen the predicted abuses.
"Tiny Houses" Are Homes For People Without Books
Because I love printed books and have bazillions of them, I sometimes describe my house as "a fire hazard with a bed and an oven." (It would be spacious if I didn't read.)
I try to make the book piles decorative -- like this one of two stacks piled up in a window, with a plant on top. 
However, the books and printed PDFs of studies are pretty much everywhere -- including in my bed and in the "breakfast nook," which has become a cavern of books with floor-to-ceiling shelves on either side and a narrow gully between them.
Tiny houses here. Here are more on wheels. About the Tiny House Movement.
And there are tiny apartments, too -- here's a 270 square foot place in Paris with about 10 books in it.
Gloppy
Stickylinks.
"Gun-Free Zones ... Are Invitations To Mass Murder"
Reason's Jacob Sullum notes that neither psychiatry nor background checks can stop mass shooters. Sheldon Richman, whose words in his piece below became the title of this blog post, writes at Reason that "The only defender guaranteed to be present at any attack against you is you":
In contrast to the incantations offered by practitioners of public-policy magic, gun-rights advocates propose measures that reasonably can be expected to prevent or reduce the extent of mass murder: for example, eliminating government-mandated gun-free zones. (Property owners of course should be free to exclude guns, however foolish that is.) Those with ill-intent are unlikely to respect gun-free zones, but most peaceful individuals will. Thus they will be defenseless against aggressors. Gun-free zones, then, are invitations to mass murder. Refusal to acknowledge that fact is also a sign of a magical disposition.When this objection to gun-free zones is raised, gun-controllers typically respond that the answer to gun violence cannot be "more guns." But when aggressors are the only ones with guns, what would be wrong with more guns if they were in the right hands? Eliminating gun-free zones would in effect put guns in the hands of the innocent at the scene of the attack. As it now stands, the only people with guns are the killers and police, who may be miles away. (Too often the killers are the police.) The connection between means and end is clear. If would-be mass killers suspected they would meet resistance early on, they might be deterred from launching their attack. But even if not, the chances of minimizing an attack would obviously be greater if some of the gunman's intended victims were armed.
Another reasonable measure would be to remove all restrictions, such as permit requirements, on concealed or open carry of handguns. Again, the link between means and ends is clear. Concealed carry has the bonus of a free-rider benefit: when people are free to carry concealed handguns, assailants, who clearly prefer their victims unarmed, won't know who's carrying and who's not. That extra measure of deterrence--that positive externality--could be expected to save innocent lives.
Believers in gun-control magic refuse to acknowledge that one cannot effectively delegate one's right to or responsibility for self-defense. With enough money, one might arrange for assistance in self-defense, but few will be able to afford protection 24/7. It's a myth that government assumes responsibility for our security, since it does not promise round-the-clock personal protection and its officers are not legally obligated to protect you even if an assault occurs before their eyes. The only defender guaranteed to be present at any attack against you is: you.
An excerpt from that link above about our fantasies about how the police will protect us -- a piece by Richard Stevens at the Foundation for Economic Freedom:
Practically speaking, it makes little sense to disarm the innocent victims while the criminals are armed. It is especially silly to disarm the victims when too often the police are simply unable to protect them. As Richard Mack, former sheriff of Graham County, Arizona, has observed: "Police do very little to prevent violent crime. We investigate crime after the fact."Americans increasingly believe, however, that all they need for protection is a telephone. Dial 911 and the police, fire, and ambulance will come straight to the rescue. It's faster than the pizza man. Faith in a telephone number and the local cops is so strong that Americans dial 911 over 250,000 times per day.
Yet does dialing 911 actually protect crime victims? Researchers found that less than 5 percent of all calls dispatched to police are made quickly enough for officers to stop a crime or arrest a suspect.3 The 911 bottom line: "cases in which 911 technology makes a substantial difference in the outcome of criminal events are extraordinarily rare."
The Crime Of Being Male On Campus
That's what the government's abuse of Title IX in order to railroad men amounts to.
For example, from Ashe Schow's WashEx column on the government's dictates for colleges to adopt an overly broad definition of sexual assault:
A male student [was] suspended for a year because he sent multiple Instagram follow requests to a female student and once looked at her on campus.
No, this is not a joke. Yes, this really happened.
Schow explains:
Colleges are treating accusations as if the accused were a potential rapist, even when the accusation involves nothing more than requesting social media connections one too many times.
Schow asks the question about the Instagram example and another example she gives:
Even if these behaviors were inappropriate, is a one-year suspension justified instead of, say, someone simply telling the kid to stop?Most college kids who get that kind of warning from an authority figure would be thoroughly frightened enough to stop. But disrupting their life for a year over social media requests and what could have been an errant look?
On today's college campuses, anything deemed offensive can be used as a weapon against college men in accusations of sexual assault and harassment. And colleges, under pressure from the federal government to find students responsible, have created pseudo-court systems that eviscerate due process in order to get those findings.
"Herein lies the problem with campus tribunals determining if a crime of sexual misconduct was committed," Lau said. "[S]tudents can be wrongly accused because the accusation becomes the proof or, simply, because the definitions are too broad and too ambiguous; students can be accused months or even years after the incident; and those wrongly accused are denied due process."
This is not the country we're supposed to be.
Sadly, I predict that it will take some sort of tragedy for this to be overturned. Beyond an individual male's future being ruined. I hope that's not the case, but I suspect it might be.
Kooky
Wackylinks.
The Religion Of Recycling's Benefits Don't Offset The Costs
I try to be ecologically prudent. For example, because there's a drought in California, I sustain my few potted plants that have yet to commit suicide on me with water I take out of the Sous Vide. I rent, but if this were my house, I'd pull up the lawn and plant native plants.
I also try to not waste paper and plastic products. I reuse everything I can, like the bag I store my bacon in. I'll use a store bag -- and reuse it and reuse it until it seems like sanitary reasons might call for it to go into the trash.
Well, years ago, I blogged about John Tierney's initial New York Times piece on recycling, which he wrote back in 1996. An excerpt:
Believing that there was no more room in landfills, Americans concluded that recycling was their only option. Their intentions were good and their conclusions seemed plausible. Recycling does sometimes makes sense -- for some materials in some places at some times. But the simplest and cheapest option is usually to bury garbage in an environmentally safe landfill. And since there's no shortage of landfill space (the crisis of 1987 was a false alarm), there's no reason to make recycling a legal or moral imperative. Mandatory recycling programs aren't good for posterity. They offer mainly short-term benefits to a few groups -- politicians, public relations consultants, environmental organizations, waste-handling corporations -- while diverting money from genuine social and environmental problems. Recycling may be the most wasteful activity in modern America: a waste of time and money, a waste of human and natural resources.
He writes in a current piece, "The Reign of Recycling," that not much has changed:
So, what's happened since then? While it's true that the recycling message has reached more people than ever, when it comes to the bottom line, both economically and environmentally, not much has changed at all.Despite decades of exhortations and mandates, it's still typically more expensive for municipalities to recycle household waste than to send it to a landfill. Prices for recyclable materials have plummeted because of lower oil prices and reduced demand for them overseas. The slump has forced some recycling companies to shut plants and cancel plans for new technologies. The mood is so gloomy that one industry veteran tried to cheer up her colleagues this summer with an article in a trade journal titled, "Recycling Is Not Dead!"
While politicians set higher and higher goals, the national rate of recycling has stagnated in recent years. Yes, it's popular in affluent neighborhoods like Park Slope in Brooklyn and in cities like San Francisco, but residents of the Bronx and Houston don't have the same fervor for sorting garbage in their spare time.
The future for recycling looks even worse. As cities move beyond recycling paper and metals, and into glass, food scraps and assorted plastics, the costs rise sharply while the environmental benefits decline and sometimes vanish. "If you believe recycling is good for the planet and that we need to do more of it, then there's a crisis to confront," says David P. Steiner, the chief executive officer of Waste Management, the largest recycler of household trash in the United States. "Trying to turn garbage into gold costs a lot more than expected. We need to ask ourselves: What is the goal here?"
Cost/benefit analysis examples:
To offset the greenhouse impact of one passenger's round-trip flight between New York and London, you'd have to recycle roughly 40,000 plastic bottles, assuming you fly coach. If you sit in business- or first-class, where each passenger takes up more space, it could be more like 100,000.Even those statistics might be misleading. New York and other cities instruct people to rinse the bottles before putting them in the recycling bin, but the E.P.A.'s life-cycle calculation doesn't take that water into account. That single omission can make a big difference, according to Chris Goodall, the author of "How to Live a Low-Carbon Life." Mr. Goodall calculates that if you wash plastic in water that was heated by coal-derived electricity, then the net effect of your recycling could be more carbon in the atmosphere.
To many public officials, recycling is a question of morality, not cost-benefit analysis.
Which is just stupid. And wasteful.
In New York City, the net cost of recycling a ton of trash is now $300 more than it would cost to bury the trash instead. That adds up to millions of extra dollars per year -- about half the budget of the parks department -- that New Yorkers are spending for the privilege of recycling. That money could buy far more valuable benefits, including more significant reductions in greenhouse emissions.So what is a socially conscious, sensible person to do?
It would be much simpler and more effective to impose the equivalent of a carbon tax on garbage, as Thomas C. Kinnaman has proposed after conducting what is probably the most thorough comparison of the social costs of recycling, landfilling and incineration. Dr. Kinnaman, an economist at Bucknell University, considered everything from environmental damage to the pleasure that some people take in recycling (the "warm glow" that makes them willing to pay extra to do it).
...When Mayor de Blasio promised to eliminate garbage in New York, he said it was "ludicrous" and "outdated" to keep sending garbage to landfills. Recycling, he declared, was the only way for New York to become "a truly sustainable city."
But cities have been burying garbage for thousands of years, and it's still the easiest and cheapest solution for trash. The recycling movement is floundering, and its survival depends on continual subsidies, sermons and policing. How can you build a sustainable city with a strategy that can't even sustain itself?
Europe Seems Doomed To Become Saudi Arabia II
As the population of Muslims who refuse to assimilate grows, Enlightenment values and practices will disappear and people will be made to conform to Islam.
From the link above, this statement about this documentary below -- which is really worth watching: "This video ... clearly highlights the real danger that Islamic immigration will have, and is having, on the safety and freedom of women and Jews in Germany."
A few notes from a European who is a regular here, explaining this link (which is in German):
Basically a german real estate agent got a call from a refugee family and immediately scheduled a showing because she felt it urgent. She showed up, and shook their hands, and they refused to look at the apartment because she, a blond woman, had looked them in the eye. They demanded a male agent. She recounted the incident on FB and got bombarded with hate messages from her fellow Germans calling her a Nazi an accusing her of making it up to rig the elections. She even got death threats.There was also a german politician who was helping refugees and an imam refused to shake her hand. She is now calling for integration classes.
Another note from the same person:
The German newspaper Die Welt has two stories I find particularly worrisome...1) In the refugee camps, Muslims are attacking Christians and Yahzidi
2) Hamburg is considering seizing private property if it is vacant, from Germans, to house refugees. I assume they will be compensated, but it is still a huge intrusion.
In addition, there are stories of poor Germans being kicked out of social housing to make room for refugees, though they are being given many months' notice.
Die Welt is a mainstream newspaper, not some crazy right-wing blog.
In addition, you may have figured out over the years that I am not a rabid, foaming at the mouth Muslim hater. I am all for taking in some refugees, and allocating the funds to see them properly settled and integrated.
I am not for open borders and letting in everyone who wants to come. This is too far. I also think cultural implications of who you let in do need to be considered, and you shouldn't take in more than can be integrated.
You may ask, what do I care, I don't live in Germany. True, but I live next door, in the Schengen zone, and can expect spillover. Germany is also trying to force everyone else to take in more refugees than they want to. Also, I'm afraid the backlash will be huge and if enough problems arise there will be a hard swing to the right.
Will you think me crazy if I say if this continues, I expect to see another Hitler in my lifetime? (I don't think that Hitler will be Muslim but will be European and get elected because of problems with Muslims.)
And here in America, Muslim leaders make clear what few Americans understand -- that the goal of Islam is takeover. There is no "tolerance" once there's enough of an Islamic majority. Paul Sperry posts at IBD:
• Muzammil Siddiqi, chairman of both the Fiqh Council of North America, which dispenses Islamic rulings, and the North American Islamic Trust, which owns most of the mosques in the U.S.: "As Muslims, we should participate in the system to safeguard our interests and try to bring gradual change, (but) we must not forget that Allah's rules have to be established in all lands, and all our efforts should lead to that direction."• Omar Ahmad, co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the top Muslim lobby group in Washington: "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Quran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth."
• CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper: "I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future."
• Imam Siraj Wahhaj, director of the Muslim Alliance in North America: "In time, this so-called democracy will crumble, and there will be nothing. And the only thing that will remain will be Islam."
• Imam Zaid Shakir, co-founder of Zaytuna College in Berkeley, Calif.: "If we put a nationwide infrastructure in place and marshaled our resources, we'd take over this country in a very short time. . . . What a great victory it will be for Islam to have this country in the fold and ranks of the Muslims."
These Islamic luminaries ... say the American Muslim community would rather live under a theocracy.
She Was Angry About Her Emergency Room Bill. But Should She Be?
"White Coat" blogged at KevinMD about the story of a woman whose toddler hit her head on a metal patio table. Blood...panicked daddy...mommy a "trembling mess" on the inside.
Not wanting to wait two and a half hours at urgent care, mommy and daddy headed off to the emergency department at the hospital. As White Coat puts it:
They were evaluated immediately by an emergency nurse and then 10 minutes later by an emergency physician. The emergency physician evaluated the child, determined that putting stitches into the laceration on the child's lip would be more traumatizing than letting the laceration close on its own, and then gave the child a popsicle.Wait? That's it?
The bill? $514. Cue irate mom: Here's her article in the Bangor Daily News, complaining that this amounted to "one pricey popsicle."
Um, not quite.
But "White Coat" puts it well:
I absolutely agree that $500 is a lot of money. And based on Ms. Fuelner's perceptions, some people may think that she got "ripped off" for the services she received. Unfortunately, in the world of $20 copays and government-mandated free birth control pills, there seems to be a pervasive belief that medical care should cost less than an appointment at a hairstylist and should definitely cost less than the newest iPhone.Let's look at what Ms. Fuelner got for her $500.
She got the convenience of immediate access to a large business providing services to the public that is open every minute of every day. That business has millions of dollars of overhead costs every year that it must pay just so that it can keep its doors open. She got immediate access to expertise from a nurse who spent tens of thousands of dollars to go through years of post-graduate training and who gave up her weekend so that she could be there to care for sick and injured patients.
She also got immediate access to a physician who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and went through even more post-graduate training, and who also gave up his weekend so that he could be there to help sick and injured patients. Those are just the two medical professionals who cared for her child. I'm sure there were many more available in the department. I could go on and on about all of the hard-working personnel in the hospital whose services are available and who contribute behind the scenes to many patient visits -- radiology, lab, surgical personnel, registration clerks, billing department, housekeeping, maintenance, cafeteria, security, IT, and many others -- even administration, but hopefully you get the point.
The hospital also has advanced diagnostic equipment costing millions of dollars -- available and waiting if Ms. Fuelner's child happened to have hit her head and had brain bleeding, knocked a tooth out and inhaled it into her lung, suffered a neck injury, had eye trauma, or suffered some other injury from her fall. Fortunately, that wasn't the case.
Federal law also requires that the hospital provide a screening exam and stabilizing treatment to any patient who is seeking medical care -- regardless of the ability to pay. I'm sure that some of Ms. Fuelner's $500 went to defray the costs of many others who receive care but who either cannot afford to pay or whose insurance pays for less than the cost of care.
Most of all, Ms. Fuelner and her husband received peace of mind for her $500. Her daughter was evaluated by a medical professional who considered all of the possible injuries and determined that she had not suffered any serious injuries. When patients tell me that they feel embarrassed for coming to the hospital, I stop them mid-sentence. Don't. It is always better to be safe than sorry. Consider what would have happened if you had not sought out medical care. You would have been up all night worrying and searching the internet on Dr. Google trying to figure out about what to do for a laceration on a child's lip, then you probably still would have sought out medical care the next day.
So, no Ms. Fuelner, you didn't pay $500 for an emergency popsicle. The $500 you paid went to help cover some of the immense costs involved in being able to provide quality medical care to you and your family at any hour of any day and it went to the peace of mind that you and your husband experienced when the doctor examined your child and told you that everything would be OK.
The popsicle: That was free.
And just an aside: Sorry, because KevinMD has some good articles, but that name -- well, it sounds like a gay escort who comes to your door with a butt plug hanging from his stethoscope.
Clunky
Awkward links.
Woman Vs. Bear. (The Internet Wins.)
Hysterical woman attempts to have a rational conversation with bear gnawing her kayak.
Autotune version.
The Inhumanity Of Political Correctness: Cheering The Charlie Hebdo Massacre, Booing Free Speech
Brendan O'Neill writes at The Spectator of Trinity College, Dublin, students who cheered a speaker who implied that the Charlie Hebdo staff, slaughtered for Allah, got what they deserved:
But the audience at last night's debate was not part of any cynical, self-styled community group. They were young. They were mainly liberals. They were pretty cool. Some were painfully PC. And yet some of them -- a significant chunk of them -- cheered Bukhari's explanation for the Charlie killers' actions, and applauded his suggestion that my question must have been motivated by racism.During my speech, students had hollered 'Shame! Shame!' when I suggested that Robin Thicke's 'Blurred Lines' should not be banned on campuses. And yet they listened intently, with soft, understanding, patronising liberal smiles on their faces, as Bukhari implied that Charlie Hebdo brought its massacre on itself. This is how screwed-up the culture on Western campuses has become: I was jeered for suggesting we shouldn't ban pop songs; Bukhari was cheered for suggesting journalists who mock Muhammad cannot be surprised if someone later blows their heads off.
It provided a glimpse into the inhumanity of political correctness. The PC gang always claim they're just being nice; it's just 'institutionalised politeness', they say. Yet at Trinity last night I saw where today's intolerance of offence and obsession with Safe Spacing minorities from difficult ideas can lead: to an agreeable nod of the head when it is suggested that it's understandable when poor, victimised Muslims murder those who offended them.
No, a PC student at such a prestigious college as Trinity is very unlikely to kill you for being offensive. But if someone else does, they won't be outraged or upset. They'll think you had it coming. Nice? Polite? Please. Political correctness is murderous.
Here's an excerpt from O'Neill's October 1 speech at Trinity College on the right to be offended -- "Let yourself be offended; it's good for you." It lays out how infantilizing (and in that, dehumanizing) "the anti-offense lobby" is:
The new student intolerance of offence gives offence to women, whom it views as wilting wallflowers, so pathetic that they can't even hear 'Blurred Lines' without crumbling into a distraught state.It's offensive to Muslims, whom it treats as so fragile, so child-like, that they must be protected from criticisms of their religion.
It gives offence to young men, whom it views as so rapacious, so robotic, that they can't be trusted to read the Sun or Zoo or Nuts without turning into beasts who will despoil and hurt women.
No one escapes the ironically offensive slurs of the anti-offence lobby. Every single constituency on campus finds itself either patronised or demonised by these caring censors.
It's the great paradox of PC: it presents itself as fair and nice and cute and concerned about other people's welfare, yet it defames everyone. It treats everyone as fragile and gullible, or as weak and wicked.
It depicts all "white men" -- yes, they use that sweeping generalisation -- as self-entitled rapists-in-waiting. It treats all "black women" -- yes, they think all black women are exactly the same -- as feeling beleaguered by sexist/racist words. It treats all Muslims -- a group as socially and economically mixed as any other -- as less capable of having their beliefs criticised or their idols mocked than, say, white Christians.
The PC paradox: in the very act of seeking to save minority groups from offence, it dehumanises those groups, lumping them all together as an indistinguishable mass; and it infantilises them, treating them as sorry creatures in need of protection from harm by the more enlightened, the more switched-on.
via @damianpenny
How About A New Deal, Europe? We Continue Protecting Your Ass; You Start Paying
How do Europeans get all this low-cost health-care? Well, health care can be loads cheaper when you don't have to pay much or as much for your country's defense because you're freeloading off the U.S. military.
Doug Bandow, at Cato, suggests a change -- that Washington stops using the Pentagon as a global welfare agency, and countries we defend start kicking in for the cost:
How much should Washington charge? Consider some rough numbers. For instance, Washington might charge one percent of GDP for providing a standard defense....European states would owe a base one percent, or $185 billion. For devoting so little to the military the EU, minus the four countries spending more than two percent of GDP on the military, would have to kick in another $147 billion.
The Baltic States and Poland would owe an extra $13 billion for being involved in a potential conflicts and receiving a nuclear guarantee. France, United Kingdom, and Germany would need to kick in an extra $96 billion for extras (global interests or nuclear umbrella).
Canada would owe $18 billion. Saudi Arabia should pay three percent, or $22.4 billion: basic fee plus add-ons for potential conflict and a combination of (reduced) charges for commercial global involvement and possible nuclear guarantee. The other Gulf States should pay $8.9 billion.
Japan would owe four percent--for standard defense, nuclear umbrella, minimal military outlays, and a combination of economic international involvement and limited potential conflict--or $184 billion. South Korea would owe the standard fee plus surcharges for potential conflict and nuclear guarantee, or $42 billion. Australia should pay one percent, or $15 billion. The Philippines would owe two percent, given the potential for conflict, yielding $5.7 billion.
The grand total comes to $737 billion, which would cover the roughly $570 billion likely to be spent on the military next year. The extra would go for defense-related expenses, such as veterans' benefits and the interest on money borrowed to pay to defend other states.
Of course, some countries might refuse to pay. But Washington should indicate that if they don't, they will be on their own. The easiest way for states to avoid paying America for its efforts would be to defend themselves.
Dippy
Low-lying links.
How The Drug War Causes Drug Deaths
Jacob Sullum writes at Forbes of government-created drug hazards:
Remember the guy who bought 80-proof vodka that turned out to be 190-proof Everclear and died from alcohol poisoning? Probably not, because that sort of thing almost never happens in a legal drug market, where merchants or manufacturers who made such a substitution, whether deliberately or accidentally, would face potentially ruinous economic and legal consequences. In a black market, by contrast, customers frequently get something different from what they thought they were buying: something weaker, something stronger, or some other substance entirely. As The Washington Post notes in a recent story about fentanyl-laced heroin, the results can be fatal....Although such fatalities are commonly called "drug-related deaths," they are more appropriately viewed as prohibition-related deaths. The artificially high prices and profits created by prohibition give dealers a strong incentive to dilute their products, and the black market's lack of legal accountability allows them to do so.
"People Don't Stop Killers. People With Guns Do"
As news of yet another tragic school shooting hit Twitter, I thought about how many (and maybe all) campuses ban firearms on their premises, and how the best way to stop a shooter is with another gun.
I have a number of college prof friends I'm close with who are accomplished with guns. One practices regularly on a range and one was one of the first women given the M-16 rifle in the army. I wish they could be armed on campus, but it's apparently a firing offense. And I don't mean the shooting kind.
So they are made to be sitting ducks on campus, as are the soldiers gunned down on military bases, denuded of their firearms.
Well, I went looking for any pieces written about this and came upon this NY Daily News op-ed from 2007 by law prof Glenn Reynolds -- with the headline I quoted as the title of this blog item:
On Monday, as the news of the Virginia Tech shootings was unfolding, I went into my advanced constitutional law seminar to find one of my students upset. My student, Tara Wyllie, has a permit to carry a gun in Tennessee, but she isn't allowed to have a weapon on campus. That left her feeling unsafe. "Why couldn't we meet off campus today?" she asked.Virginia Tech graduate student Bradford Wiles also has a permit to carry a gun, in Virginia. But on the day of the shootings, he would have been unarmed for the same reason: Like the University of Tennessee, where I teach, Virginia Tech bans guns on campus.
...[Colleges] think that by making their campuses "gun-free," they'll make people safer, when in fact they're only disarming the people who follow rules, law-abiding people who are no danger at all.
This merely ensures that the murderers have a free hand. If there were more responsible, armed people on campuses, mass murder would be harder.
In fact, some mass shootings have been stopped by armed citizens. Though press accounts downplayed it, the 2002 shooting at Appalachian Law School was stopped when a student retrieved a gun from his car and confronted the shooter. Likewise, Pearl, Miss., school shooter Luke Woodham was stopped when the school's vice principal took a .45 fromhis truck and ran to the scene. In February's Utah mall shooting, it was an off-duty police officer who happened to be on the scene and carrying a gun.
Police can't be everywhere, and as incidents from Columbine to Virginia Tech demonstrate, by the time they show up at a mass shooting, it's usually too late. On the other hand, one group of people is, by definition, always on the scene: the victims. Only if they're armed, they may wind up not being victims at all.
When there's a tragedy, there's an impulse to do something in response. But that impulse often isn't the wisest one.
Cathy Young explains at OnlineAthens.com that gun control wouldn't make us safer:
Writing on CNN.com, Fareed Zakaria cites Switzerland as an exemplary country with low gun homicide rates. Indeed, the total homicide rate in Switzerland in 2010 was 0.7 per 100,000 inhabitants, compared with 4.2 in the United States. But Switzerland, unlike most of Europe, actually has widespread gun ownership (with an estimated 2 million to 3 million guns in a population of fewer than 8 million) and a thriving gun culture rooted in a tradition of a citizen militia. Shooting clubs are common, and target practice is a popular sport, even for children.Meanwhile, in the Philippines, gun laws are considerably more restrictive than in the United States and civilian gun ownership is a paltry 5 per 100 people -- yet the homicide rate is more than double the U.S. rate.
...Even if a total ban on the sale and possession of firearms were enacted, it's doubtful it could be enforced with an estimated 270 million guns already in circulation. The War on Drugs shows that we don't have a stellar track record of keeping illegal products out of people's hands. Why would guns and ammunition be different? Indeed, a recent Reuters report on the gun culture in the Philippines notes that attempts to outlaw the sale and carrying of guns during election campaigns has merely driven up business for illegal gunsmiths.
...Some gun control measures are reasonable. But in trying to understand the causes of shooting sprees, we should be looking at other factors, from social isolation to inadequate attention to mental illness. The push for gun laws offers an illusion of safety in the face of horror.
Loco
Wackylinks.
Hey, War Veteran, You Maybe Gave Up Your Leg For Your Country; Now The VA Will Remove Your Dignity Before You Enter Their Building
Disgustingly, VA medical facilities posted signs prohibiting various items -- including, guns, knives, backpacks, and phones. At the Free Beacon, Adam Kredo posts:
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) apologized on Wednesday for temporarily implementing what it called an "ill-advised" policy at some medical centers that banned veterans from bringing cellphones to appointments, according to a statement provided by the VA to the Washington Free Beacon.Photographs emerged earlier this week showing official signs at VA medical facilities stating that a veteran would have his or her appointment cancelled if they bring with them a cellphone.
The photos, first published on the blog Disabled Veterans, depict of a list of "prohibited items." Included within that list, along with guns, knives, and backpacks, is a photo of an iPhone.
"If brought to your appointment [these items] will result in the cancelation of your exam(s)," reads the flyer, which bears the VA's official logo and slogan, "Defining Excellence in the 21st Century."
This is the sort of "excellence" they "define" -- a total betrayal to those who fought for our country, and sometimes have lifelong physical and/or psychic injuries from it, and deserve medical care and being treated with dignity.
The flyers are being discontinued, and exams now won't be cancelled if somebody who fought for our country brings a damn phone to their appointment. What were they supposed to do, leave it outside in the bushes? And picture a vet who can't walk and has to use crutches. How is he supposed to carry his stuff if not in a backpack?
And finally, what sort of sick fuck makes policies like this and why hasn't that person been named and fired?
Disabled Veterans' Benjamin Krause criticized the VA (Free Beacon link above):
"The decision is a violation of due process and numerous laws protecting the rights of disabled Americans," Krause wrote."The key here seems to be that VA forgets that veterans are also Americans who are protected by the Constitution and who also possess unalienable rights," he adds. "Did we sign our rights away forever by fighting our country's battles?"
Moreover, Krause wrote, "the leaflet does not explain what to do if the veteran is prescribed use of an iPhone or backpack as an accommodative device that helps the disabled veteran with a disability."
What Feminism's Become
A tweet:
@VeryBritishDude
Is 3rd wave feminism any more than a gigantic whinge by privileged girls, that boys play a bit rough & the ones they want won't look a them?
My contention is that women now demand to be treated as eggshells, not equals, and that feminist grievance hunting has become a way to have unearned power over men (and nonbelievers).
There's also a denial of sex differences and biology and a religion centering around what can and cannot be said. Say the "wrong" thing and you will be excommunicated or at least Twitter-mobbed, if you aren't part of the feminist fold. Or you may lose your job and lose everything -- despite not having been guilty of what you've been accused of.
Laws Are To Be Obeyed By The Little People, Not Supreme Court Justices
Queen Sotomayor, also known as Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor, who ruled against the use of unpaid interns (in Archie v. Grand Cent. Partnership, Inc., 1998), has had unpaid interns working for her since 2010.
Ronald D. Rotunda writes in the Wash Times:
How would you like a free butler, maid, chef and chauffeur? Try that and the Department of Labor will sue you for violating the minimum wage, overtime and record-keeping requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act -- unless you are Justice Sonia Sotomayor. That's right. Since 2010, she has hired unpaid interns as her servants. No other justice does this.Justice Sotomayor's job description, posted on a Latino Facebook page and other places, tells us that applicants do not need a law degree, but "a driver's license is a must" because the intern's duties will include running "errands outside of the Courthouse." The intern will prepare "lunch and snacks for the Justice," photocopy, and answer the phone. The intern is responsible for his own living arrangements and transportation. She pays them nothing.
Cheap rat.
Whether Sonia Sotomayor is abusing her position as a justice by leveraging that appointment to secure free butlers is an important question of judicial ethics. A more prosaic question is whether she is violating U.S. labor laws, including the requirements of a minimum wage. It turns out that the answer is yes.First, her maid, butler and chauffeur are not employees of the Supreme Court; they are her personal employees. No federal statute authorizes Justice Sotomayor to hires personal aides. Yet, even if one would consider her maid or butler to be an employee of the Supreme Court, the Fair Labor Standards Act still applies. One section expressly includes all U.S. government employees while another section excludes "volunteers" of state agencies. There is no exemption for federal agencies.
At the link, Rotunda explains why this "serve Sotomayor!" internship doesn't fit the bill legally.
More here. Oh, and Sotomayor is the only justice with interns.
Slippy
Wet floor links.
