Just Assume Everything Is Deeply Offensive
"Simple, but Cute Halloween Costumes" that will have you drummed out of college as a hater.
We're Creating A Nation Of Pretend Adults
Hanna Rosin has a worthwhile 2014 piece in The Atlantic -- a long read on the decline of childhood freedom, independence, and experimentation in favor of constant parental supervision:
The common concern of parents these days is that children grow up too fast. But sometimes it seems as if children don't get the space to grow up at all; they just become adept at mimicking the habits of adulthood. As Hart's research shows, children used to gradually take on responsibilities, year by year. They crossed the road, went to the store; eventually some of them got small neighborhood jobs. Their pride was wrapped up in competence and independence, which grew as they tried and mastered activities they hadn't known how to do the previous year. But these days, middle-class children, at least, skip these milestones. They spend a lot of time in the company of adults, so they can talk and think like them, but they never build up the confidence to be truly independent and self-reliant.
Rosin looks at her own parenting as well -- vis a vis how children were raised just a few decades prior:
I used to puzzle over a particular statistic that routinely comes up in articles about time use: even though women work vastly more hours now than they did in the 1970s, mothers--and fathers--of all income levels spend much more time with their children than they used to. This seemed impossible to me until recently, when I began to think about my own life. My mother didn't work all that much when I was younger, but she didn't spend vast amounts of time with me, either. She didn't arrange my playdates or drive me to swimming lessons or introduce me to cool music she liked. On weekdays after school she just expected me to show up for dinner; on weekends I barely saw her at all. I, on the other hand, might easily spend every waking Saturday hour with one if not all three of my children, taking one to a soccer game, the second to a theater program, the third to a friend's house, or just hanging out with them at home. When my daughter was about 10, my husband suddenly realized that in her whole life, she had probably not spent more than 10 minutes unsupervised by an adult. Not 10 minutes in 10 years.It's hard to absorb how much childhood norms have shifted in just one generation. Actions that would have been considered paranoid in the '70s--walking third-graders to school, forbidding your kid to play ball in the street, going down the slide with your child in your lap--are now routine. In fact, they are the markers of good, responsible parenting. One very thorough study of "children's independent mobility," conducted in urban, suburban, and rural neighborhoods in the U.K., shows that in 1971, 80 percent of third-graders walked to school alone. By 1990, that measure had dropped to 9 percent, and now it's even lower. When you ask parents why they are more protective than their parents were, they might answer that the world is more dangerous than it was when they were growing up. But this isn't true, or at least not in the way that we think. For example, parents now routinely tell their children never to talk to strangers, even though all available evidence suggests that children have about the same (very slim) chance of being abducted by a stranger as they did a generation ago. Maybe the real question is, how did these fears come to have such a hold over us? And what have our children lost--and gained--as we've succumbed to them?
Related: My podcast on how kids learn and grow through play, with one of the sources she mentions, Boston College psychologist Peter Gray.
via @clairlemon
Limps
Links that need a foot massage and a Band-Aid.
Thought Police Manning The Police Force In SF
It's a CNN piece by Marc Randazza, the First Amendment lawyer who defended me when the TSA's Thedala Magee tried to squeeze $500K out of me for using my free speech rights to complain about how she violated me at LAX.
The story here: Racist texts, discovered as part of a federal corruption probe, were sent by a SF cop, Jason Lai -- in private conversations with his friends -- and the discovery of those texts led to his dismissal.
I think what this guy said is ugly and deplorable.
"I hate that beaner," one text reads, "but I think the nig is worse.""Indian ppl are disgusting," proclaims another.
"Burn down walgreens and kill the bums," a third message states.
However, the question should be simply this: Is there evidence that racism played a part in how he did his job?
And there should be an investigation into that, not just a knee-jerk assumption.
Randazza writes:
Let's take out the pitchforks and torches. Grab the rope so we can lynch former San Francisco police officer Jason Lai. What was his sin? Is he on the growing list of police officers who have taken the life of a fellow citizen? No. Did he falsify evidence? No. What did he do? He used naughty words when talking about other people. He used racial and homophobic slurs.Did he use them when he was speaking to suspects or victims? No.
He used them in private conversations via text message with his friends. Private conversations.
For his private thoughts, and with no evidence that he ever behaved in a racist manner, he is the latest victim of the Internet hate machine and he is being hung out to dry by his former superiors. Let's remember that when a cop kills someone, we usually hear "well, we don't know what really happened."
But this time, San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr told reporters Tuesday, "Reading the text messages literally makes me sick to my stomach." He apologized to the public, adding that there is "no tolerance for officers who hold such reprehensible views."
No tolerance. Suhr is putting his foot down. Suhr isn't waiting for context. Suhr isn't interested in the whole story.
Meanwhile, in the separate instances when San Francisco police shot and killed Alex Nieto, Mario Woods, or when the police fired six rounds into Amilcar Perez Lopez, Suhr defended them and tried to tell us we didn't know the whole story and we didn't know the context.
Randazza rightfully puts this into perspective:
We have less and less regard for personal privacy, and thus I would like to make sure that every one of you out there who might be cheering this "exposure" of Lai for having bad thoughts had better be prepared to have your search history, your text messages, your emails, your most intimate private thoughts broadcast to the public so it can decide how it would like to judge you.If you are not ready for that, then I would ask if you are really so pure of heart and mind. Are you so good at hiding your embarrassing or unorthodox thoughts? Are you so clean that your private thoughts can be put on the Internet for everyone to see?
...If a cop can put six bullets into an unarmed kid and find himself protected behind the "thin blue line," but he can't make a private comment to his personal friends, then we really have entered a bizarre world of political correctness and form triumphing over substance.
I write about privacy in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck" (and also quote Randazza a number of times -- but about traffic stops and airplane seats). Here's some of what I write:
Technology's impact on privacy isn't a new issue. "Numerous mechanical devices threaten to make good the prediction that 'what is whispered in the closet shall be proclaimed from the housetops,' " wrote Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis in the Harvard Law Review in the 90s--the 1890s. They were worried about the advent of affordable portable cameras and dismayed at the way newspapers had begun covering people's private lives.Brandeis and Warren explained that a person has a right--a natural human right--to determine to what extent their thoughts, opinions, and emotions and the details of their "private life, habits, acts, and relations" will be communicated to others. They noted that this right to privacy comes out of our right to be left alone and that it applies whether an individual's personal information is "expressed in writing, or in conduct, in conversation, in attitudes, or in facial expression."
This has not changed because of what's now technically possible: how it takes just a few clicks to Facebook or Instagram an embar- rassing photo of a person or blog their medical history, sexual orientation, sex practices, financial failings, lunch conversation, or daily doings. No matter how fun and easy the technology makes immediately publishing everything about everyone and no matter how common it's become to violate everyone's right to privacy, each person's private life remains their own and not a free commodity to be turned into content by the rest of us.
Boobstarter: Crowdfunding For Breast Implants
"Markets in Everything," as economist @Mark_J_Perry tweeted.
Stacey Leigh Gonzalez writes at LatinosHealth that there's now a crowdfunding site for women, My Free Implants:
By encouraging random people to "Invest in Breasts,"' the crowdfunding site is drawing flak from a number of media sources and groups.Since 2005, My Free Implants offers women a place to get funding for breast surgeries. In exchange for donations, contributors (often men) can receive tokens such as messages, photos or videos from the female beneficiaries.
Australian news site News.com.au says the website now has 5000 active donors with over 3500 listed projects. With 1,200 success stories, the founders maintain that the website has helped raise $13 million dollars for breast enlargement surgeries.
However, not everyone is pleased with the company's success. She Knows labels My Free Implants as sexist and degrading towards women.
Independent sees the website as exploitative towards the female gender, encouraging men to browse through the blogs and women's profiles like shopping in a mall.
Medical institutions from the U.S., U.K. and Australia have expressed their concern. President Hugh Bartholomeusz of the Australian Society Plastic Surgeons says the website propagates a "dangerous misconception" of cosmetic surgery.
What, that it's only affordable for rich women?
"Cosmetic surgery is serious, invasive surgery," Bartholomeusz said on the Australian publication. "This is not something that should be treated in the same way as the purchase of a new outfit or hairstyle."
That is, unless you have lots of money, in which case, step right up, washboards!
More from Slate's Mark Joseph Stern:
The women of MFI never get direct access to any money that is raised; rather, it goes to an escrow known, inevitably, as the Boob Bank. When a woman reaches her goal, usually around $5,500, the money is paid directly to an MFI-affiliated plastic surgeon who performs her surgery. If all goes well, her before-and-after pictures, along with a Q&A, enter the hallowed MFI Hall of Fame.MFI's founders claim that about 1,100 women have received implants through the website, and a quick glance through its hall of fame seems to confirm that. But $5,500 is a lot of money, and each private message from a donor brings an "MFI girl" only $1.
"Some women go on and are like, I'll show you a video of me masturbating for $200," said the college student. "And that's actually really annoying. But I'm a dude. If girls want to send me a naked picture, I'm not going to say no."
Women are free to request any amount of money for any kind of image or video, and donors are often happy to oblige. The most ambitious women participate in the aforementioned donor-generated contents. When my friend signed up, one open contest promised $100 to the woman who could prove she had "the best ass on MFI." One offered $50 for the most delicious-looking picture of a hamburger (that's not some arcane slang term--really, just a hamburger). And one offered $2 for a photograph of a vagina.
Okay, not a very good deal. But...consenting adults.
And I've written about the risks -- and here's more from the Slate piece:
These disclaimers aside, the website's breezy tone masks a disturbing truth: Breast augmentation is one of the riskiest things a woman can do to her body. A sizable portion of breast augmentation patients experience chronic breast pain, nerve damage, and infection. Almost all implants leak at some point, many within about a decade of surgery. A broken saline implant can leak bacteria or mold into the body; a broken silicone implant can leak liquid silicone that is taken up by the patient's liver and lymph nodes. Compounding the danger, many women don't notice a break for months or even years.Even though donors pay for the initial surgery, breast implants can raise a woman's health care costs for the rest of her life. According to FDA guidelines, women with silicone implants should receive a breast MRI three years after the initial surgery and every two years thereafter, to ensure they're free of leaks or other complications. These MRIs, which are rarely covered by insurance, can cost between $2,000 and $5,000, surely an impossible sum for a woman unable to afford the implants herself. Mammograms are a basic preventive health measure once women reach middle age, but implants render them less accurate at detecting tumors. Mammograms can rupture implants, dissuading many women with breast augmentation from seeking the tests.
My Free Implants pitches its services as a kind of charity to help women gain confidence and allow good-hearted men to have a little fun. But it has a darker side. Breast implants are high-cost, high-maintenance, and high-risk.
This is only a problem when government forces us to pay for everyone's healthcare.
Also, you can get an MRI for less if you negotiate and do it out of the insurance system -- then again, who's reading the thing.
But about those MRIS for asymptomatic women, Andrew Kaunitz, MD, writes at Medscape:
According to plastic surgeons at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, NY, the evidence to support such screening is lacking. These authors of a 2008 report go on to state that the evidence is not conclusive that MRI surveillance leads to a reduction in patient morbidity, or that the benefits of screening outweigh risks, which include unnecessary patient anxiety, false-positive results, and even unneeded surgery.[2]As the FDA report points out, silicone implants do not cause connective tissue disease, reproductive problems, or breast cancer.[1] Accordingly, many plastic surgeons recommend MRI only when women with silicone implants present with a specific problem or concern.
The FDA's June 2011 report appropriately points out that 20%-40% of patients have reoperations to modify, remove, or replace their implants within 8-10 years of their initial surgery. Often, insurance does not cover these subsequent surgeries. Clearly, this is information that women need to understand prior to making decisions to proceed with implants.
I do think getting implants (or any unnecessary surgery) is a really bad idea, per the risks. I also think that many people don't understand or aren't helped to understand the risks.
But, still, I have to wonder -- how much of the protesting here is about the notion that women shouldn't be able to change themselves physically or, especially, to get themselves bigger boobs?
Linker
Johnnie Walker Redhead.
Crimes Against Sense And Being A Grownup About Things That Disturb Us
It is not a "hate crime" to burn 1. An American flag, 2. A rainbow flag, 3. A flag with my face on it.
It is speech.
This is a story from Canada, but the fact that they do not have the First Amendment, and the fact that they consider this a "hate crime" doesn't make it one.
Brett T. posts on Twitchy:
This February, students at the University of British Columbia raised the familiar rainbow-colored pride flag over campus as part of the school's week-long "celebration of gender and sexual diversity." Just days later, the flag was burned in what many called a hate crime.Police soon announced they had identified a suspect, and on Tuesday, UBC student Brooklyn Marie Fink, 31, appeared in court for the first time. CBC News offered this update on the suspect:
Brooklyn Marie Fink, 31, who describes herself as transsexual, talked about the flag burning after her first court appearance in Richmond on Tuesday.
"As a media artist, I intended in burning the flag only to illustrate my displeasure at the university's failure to come to an agreement on the fact of the flag's offensiveness."
...Fink told CBC she does not feel included in the LGBT label -- an abbreviation used to cover a range of non-gender-conforming identities, which often stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender.
Fink draws a distinction between identities based on what gender someone is attracted to -- versus what gender someone identifies as.
Okay, at 5 a.m.-ish, as I'm posting this, it's a little early for me to parse what the issue is, but perhaps at 6 a.m., after I've had some coffee, I'll understand it better.
Okay, there's more:
"The university's flag ... is the flag of inclusion of the whole university. And when you take it down and you put up an exclusive flag that only represents [a small proportion] of the population, then you are sharing your hegemony over the university," she said.Fink said the rising awareness about transgender people has made life more difficult for her, something she finds "really emotional, really stressful" to talk about.
"Ten, 12 years ago I was just a tall woman and nobody thought anything of it," she said.
"But because these gender nonconformers are being so loud and proud ... now everybody looks and they can see oh, that tall woman with a deep voice, maybe she's a dude."
The thing is, though I still don't quite get the reason for flag burning, I defend Fink's right to do it. We all should.
Definition of a hate crime from the US:
A hate crime is a traditional offense like murder, arson, or vandalism with an added element of bias. For the purposes of collecting statistics, the FBI has defined a hate crime as a "criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender's bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity." Hate itself is not a crime--and the FBI is mindful of protecting freedom of speech and other civil liberties.
About that last part, that's the law here, yes, but hurt feelz are increasingly reported on campuses as "hate crimes" and may be seen as harassment. For example, about the pro-Trump chalkings:
The Student Centers Policy and Procedure Manual, last updated in February, gives DePaul wide latitude in how to interpret chalked messages.Page 33 says chalking is allowed outside of the Student Center, but messages "may not contain profanity or may not abuse, assail, intimidate, demean, victimize, or have the effect of creating a hostile environment for any person based or group of people [sic] on any of the protected characteristics in the University's Anti-Discriminatory Harassment Policy."
I'm "biased" against KKK members and neo-nazis. If I burn their flag, am I guilty of something other than speech about what I -- yes -- hate, which is hate of other people based on their race or religion?
Hillary Clinton Pledges To Form Her Presidential Cabinet Around The Raggedy Ann And Andy Model
Dollwise, being a redhead is a bit like being a black girl -- or how it used to be -- which is to say that, when I was growing up, there were only two options for the wee ginger, Raggedy Ann and Raggedly Andy.
And yes, it's nice on some level to have a doll that has something in common with you -- like how Raggedy Ann had red twisted yarn for hair, just like mine.
However, we grow up -- or we should -- and then we change our standards. Like if we're running for the highest office in the land.
No, though, that does not include our Hillary.
Ashe Schow writes in the WashEx that she would try to make her hypothetical administration "look like America."
Clinton was asked by MSNBC host Rachel Maddow whether the former secretary of state would follow in Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's footsteps and pledge to make her Cabinet 50 percent women....But anyway, Clinton responded by saying: "Well, I am going to have a Cabinet that looks like America, and 50 percent of America is women, right?"
What she's announcing is, basically, no, I don't want the best person for the job; I want to play matchy-matchy!
Well...not entirely matchy-matchy.
I highly doubt that she plans equal representation for the 41 percent of Americans identify as Republican or Republican-leaning. Thirteen percent of Americans are black. Will Clinton make sure 13 percent of her Cabinet is black?One percent of Americans are American Indian or Alaska Native. Will Clinton make sure one percent of her Cabinet is American Indian or Native Alaskan? Is that even possible?
...Eight percent of Americans under 65 have a disability. Will Clinton make sure 8 percent of her Cabinet is disabled?
Twenty percent of Americans are Catholic. Will Clinton make sure 20 percent of her Cabinet is Catholic?
...I'm not sure where she's going to find a disabled transgender Native-American Buddhist, though.
Women are not acting like men's equals until they stop with the choices made from the woundy place and simply look for the best person for the job.
Linkey Kong
You were expecting a donkey?
The Government Has No Business Policing Taste Via The Patent/Trademark Office
Ana Sofia Walsh posts at MimesisLaw about two cases. One of these is the DOJ's request for the Supremes to review a federal appeals court's judgment that the US Patent and Trademark Office violated the free speech rights of the Oregon-based band, "The Slants."
The law in question is Section 2(a) of the Lanham Act which states that a trademark shall not be granted if it:"Consists of or comprises immoral, deceptive, or scandalous matter; or matter which may disparage or falsely suggest a connection with persons, living or dead, institutions, beliefs, or national symbols, or bring them into contempt, or disrepute [...]"
What fucking business is it of some bureaucrat to decide what is and isn't "immoral" or "scandalous," just for example -- and to tell people they can't have a certain name?
Taste is a subjective thing. I think it's in bad taste to show your hairy toe knuckles in flip-flops while I'm dining. You may think it's in bad taste for me to have "fuck" on a manners book cover. (Well, fuck you, and I mean that in the politest of ways.)
Also, as The Slants contend, and as the Supremes (not the ones with Gladys Knight) noted as the Supremes noted in Cohen v. California, 1971 -- the "Fuck the Draft" case -- sometimes offensive speech is just the right speech to get the message across.
As Walsh writes:
The Slants - an all Asian-American male band - maintain that they chose the name to challenge stereotypes and reclaim the derogatory term. The issue in the case is whether the denial of a trademark based on the subjective considerations of a Trademark Examiner that a mark is immoral/deceptive/disparaging etc is contrary to the free speech provisions in the First Amendment. Basically, should TM Examiners be able to make arbitrary decisions as to whether a trademark is offensive or not.Here's where the Redskins come in - their trademark was revoked in 2015 after over 50 years of registration when a federal court ruled that their name was disparaging to Native Americans. Pro-Football Inc noted in its petition to the SCOTUS that their decades-long registration has only recently become disparaging, claiming that in at the time of registration in the 60s, "Redskins" was not necessarily considered offensive; thereby showcasing the arbitrary and potentially free speech-encumbering decisions that the USPTO undertakes. Moreover, they state that the denial of trademark after over 50 years violates their due process.
The USPTO's lawyers assert that denials of trademarks on this basis do not curb free speech as the term can still be used to promote and advertize products/services. The crucial difference is that without trademark protection, it is not possible to prevent others from using the term for commercial or other purposes.
See how government power is abused? Now it's to stop commerce -- but just that of people who use names the bureaucrats and others do not approve of.
So, These "Triggered" Students Never Watch TV? The Ruin Of A Piece Of Art At Pitzer College
One way to get attention is to earn it -- do something worthy of attention.
But that takes work.
The other way to get attention is to mewl about being "triggered" -- psychologically debilitated by some word or picture.
In previous decades, somebody would have said, "Oh, grow the fuck up," or something like that to somebody who said something like this.
Now, people all bend over backwards to accommodate these "victims" -- and really, those doing the mewling are anything but victims. In fact, through claiming to be victimized, they have power they would otherwise have to work to earn.
Take a recent situation at Claremont's Pitzer college.
Selena Spier (PZ '19), painted a mural there. It's a handgun with flowers coming out of the end, and it was approved by the "Pitzer College aesthetics committee." (Who knew there was such a thing?)
*larger photo below
Well, Steven Glick reports at at the Claremont Independent that "Early Monday morning, Gregory Ochiagha (PZ '18), a Student Senator at Pitzer College, sent out an email to the student body" criticizing the mural:
"It's truly in bad taste to have a large depiction of a gun in a dorm space--especially when students of color also reside there," states Ochiagha. "Now let's imagine there were countless videos of white teenagers, white teenagers that look like you, or your brother or your sister, get shot to death by police officers. Imagine scrolling down Facebook everyday and seeing a new video of the same thing, over and over again. Really put yourself in that headspace. Then ask yourself whether it's the brightest idea to have white teenagers, who have a very real fear of getting shot, see a large gun every time they want to get food from the dinning [sic] hall."...Ochiagha continues, "My Black Mental and Emotional Health Matters. I shouldn't be reminded every time I leave my dorm room of how easy my life can be taken away, or how many Black lives have been taken away because of police brutality. This is emotionally triggering for very obvious reasons. And if you want to belittle or invalidate by [sic] black experience, I live in Atherton, come thru, let's have that idiotic conversation."
...Jessica Folsom (PZ '19) responded by providing additional background on the mural. "Just to preface this, I am not trying to dismiss how you feel or belittle your experience as a student of color," she states. "This mural is actually representative of a nonviolence movement to protest the Vietnam War in the 60s. There's a famous photo of a protester putting flowers in the barrel of a National Guardsman's rifle and everything." Folsom continues, "I thought it might be an important distinction to make between what the mural actually represents and perhaps the romanticized aesthetic of a gun which someone (maybe you?) could potentially mistake this for. I hope this helps."
Sadly -- sadly for free speech and the increasing chills on it that come when they are shown to work -- Spier said she "plans to modify" her mural -- and has (photo below). Glick continues, quoting Spier:
"I spoke with Gregory earlier and we agreed on a modification that preserves the integrity of the original piece while avoiding any potentially triggering content--it's a change I was absolutely happy to make in the interest of creating a safe and inclusive environment for everyone in my community," Spier told the Claremont Independent. "I have absolutely no right to decide whether or not my artwork is offensive to marginalized communities--nor does anyone else in a position of privilege, racial or otherwise."
Oh, hurl.
Like this Ochiagha guy never turns on TV -- even just "Law & Order" -- and never goes to the movies, or reads the newspaper, so as to avoid this supposedly debilitating experience of seeing a gun.
This is just such bullshit. As I keep noting, proclaiming yourself a victim over what would, at any other time, be seen as a triviality or just a normal part of life to deal with, is a way to have unearned power over others.
I have met people and known people who are Holocaust survivors -- who had babies ripped away from them and watched their entire families be marched into the gas chambers or be shot into mass graves. Knowing this and reading about this (and being kicked around by anti-Semites myself as a kid) doesn't make me feel fragile; it makes me realize I need to fight back.
And guess what: Art is sometimes about disturbing people. Well, that is when you aren't creating art for toddlers. Which, on campus, I suppose is what's being done.
Well, what disturbs me now -- deeply -- is what's been done to this art piece.
Once again, here's the original, in progress:
And now -- disgustingly denuded -- after newly-minted censor Ochiaga's power play (from a @HannahOh16 tweet):
And last but not least, that Hannah Oh tweet says it so perfectly:
@hannahoh16
This painting about peace triggered SJWs, who now decide what art is allowed. Kind of like Hitler & Mao but whiny.
Tink
Link tink. (Audrey Hepburn is nowhere to be seen, sorry.)
The Selective Feminism Of Tina Fey
On DeathAndTaxes, Jamie Peck notes that Fey complained all over the media that Colin Quinn had called her a "cunt" when she was head writer on SNL, but then rips into inappropriately sexual women. As Peck puts it:
Women who code as falling on the lower rungs of America's class society. Women who dare to use their sexuality to get by (or ahead) in a game that's doubly rigged against them.
Peck quotes Fey's rip on SNL's Weekend Update "into Michelle "Bombshell" McGee for "stealing" Sandra Bullock's husband Jesse James. (Jesse James himself was not mentioned.)" (Bracketed bits are by Peck):
There is no Oscar curse. The curse is that there are women like Bombshell McGee walking around.I know we shouldn't judge people on their appearance but when your body looks like a dirtbag's binder from 7th grade metal shop, it doesn't bode well for your character.
You know there's a term for women like Bombshell McGee, they're called Bombshell McGees. Seth, the world has always been full of whores. For every Sandra Bullock, there's the woman who got a tattoo on her forehead because she ran out of room on her labia. [Tattooed people are gross!]
For every Elin Nordegren, there's a Hooters waitress who spells "Jamie" with two e's and a star. [I'm sure she's working at Hooters because she loves it.]
You could be the woman who cures cancer and you'd still be up against some skank rocking giant, veiny fake boobs where the nipples point in different directions like the headlights on an old Buick. [She could at least have had the decency to be able to afford a better boob job.]
But wives, you are not the losers in these situations. You are the winners, because this has to be the loser.
Things are hard enough for women as it is...
Peck writes:
It's not my goal to police the feminism of random celebrities. But when you publicly brand yourself as a feminist and reap huge rewards from that brand, you open yourself up to criticism and debate. Being a feminist is not just about standing up for people like you. It's about standing up for all women who are being oppressed for bullshit reasons, which include interlocking factors of race, class, gender identity, sexuality, et cetera. I find it disappointing (if unsurprising) that not a single interviewer has held Fey's feet to the fire about this essential hypocrisy as she promotes her latest movie to the masses. Consider this my attempt at doing just that.
via @TranceWithMe
Obama's Legacy: The Ginormous And Growing Failure That Is Obamacare
As I've written before, I still have the healthcare -- formerly pretty good and affordable. Now, thanks to "Affordable" Care -- jacking up the monthly price and socking me with a big deductible -- I just can't afford to use it.
Well, things are going to be getting worse. Major insurer UnitedHealth just announced that, in the wake of losses over $1 billion for 2015 and 2016, they're pulling out of most of the Obamacare exchanges. Other big insurers are as well.
Marc A. Thiessen writes at the WaPo:
The president promised these insurers taxpayer bailouts if they lost money, but Congress in its wisdom passed legislation barring the use of taxpayer dollars to prop up the insurers. Without the bailouts, commercial insurers are being forced to eat their losses -- while more than half of the Obamacare nonprofit insurance cooperatives created under the law failed.So what happens now? Because commercial insurers are not going to keep bleeding cash to prop up Obamacare, they have three choices: 1) scale back coverage, 2) raise prices or 3) get out of the exchanges entirely. More and more are going to choose option 3.
Does this mean that Obamacare is finally entering its "death spiral"? Not exactly. As my American Enterprise Institute colleague Scott Gottlieb explains, while commercial insurers are starting to leave Obamacare, they are being replaced by Medicaid health maintenance organizations (HMOs) offering skimpy plans that mirror what they offer in Medicaid -- our nation's emergency health insurance program for the poorest of the poor.
This is a catastrophe for people stuck in Obamacare. According to a 2014 McKinsey survey, about three-quarters of those in the exchanges were previously insured on commercial plans, either through their employers or the individual market. They were doing fine without taxpayer-subsidized insurance but were pushed into Obamacare. They now face rising premiums and smaller provider networks -- and as commercial insurers flee, they will increasingly be stuck in horrible, Medicaid-style plans.
This is not what the president promised when he sold Obamacare to the American people.
...The president promised "if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor." But commercial insurers who stay in Obamacare are responding to massive losses by narrowing provider networks, with fewer doctors and hospitals to choose from. And those that quit are being replaced by Medicaid HMOs with even less doctor choice.
We're going to end up with a health care system modeled on the VA -- you know, that system that has such contempt for the vets who served our country that it often doesn't get around to actually treating them.
Linky
(Give 'em) headline of the day: "Eugene Police Say Primate Used as Payment for Prostitute"
via @instapundit
College As A Place Of Free Inquiry Is Being Ruined By The Government
I talked to a professor friend last night, who told me about the most unimaginable ways students are going after (or are able to go after) basically much of what any professor says. Innocuous stuff is being turned into speech crimes.
And the problem is, professors can't fight back -- say to the student who criticizes some words they've used, "Come on, let's discuss this in class."
Not without jeopardizing their careers. The younger profs are particularly at risk.
This is college we're talking about -- or what used to be college: a place for the free exchange of ideas. A place where rabid assholes debated politics and other issues -- because that's often of what being in your early 20s means (when you're convinced of certain things).
Hans Bader blogs at libertyunyielding that the Justice Department is now demanding censorship at the University of New Mexico, ordering the university to adopt an unconstitutional speech code that labels even innocuous speech -- like a quip that has to do with sex -- "unwelcome" sexual conduct:
On April 22, the Justice Department ordered the University of New Mexico adopt an unconstitutional speech code. It is demanding that the University label as "sexual harassment" all "unwelcome" sexual conduct, including "verbal" conduct (that is, speech). The university must encourage students to report it as such; and investigate it when it is reported.Thus, if a student is offended by a professor's comment in a lecture about how AIDS is transmitted through anal sex, or by another student's sexual joke, it would be deemed "sexual harassment." So would politely asking a student out on a date, if that offends her. This definition of "sexual harassment" as including any "unwelcome" sexual speech is vastly broader than the definitions struck down as unconstitutionally overbroad by the federal appeals court rulings in DeJohn v. Temple University (2008) and Saxe v. State College Area School District (2001). Those decisions ruled that even unwelcome, "hostile or offensive" speech about sexual issues is generally protected speech unless it "objectively denies a student equal access to a school's education resources."
The University won't necessarily have to expel people for a single unwanted remark, based on this definition, since the Justice Department is only demanding formal discipline for speech that is not only unwelcome, but also creates a "hostile environment" for the complainant. But it does have to encourage students to report such unwanted remarks for investigation by defining even a single instance as "harassment." And it has to investigate them to see if a "hostile environment" exists.
Mandating investigation of an "unwelcome" comment is alarming, because that will frequently trigger restrictions on the free speech rights and freedom of movement of the accused person, whose constitutionally protected speech is labeled as "harassment" under this definition, even if he is never subject to formal discipline.
And that's exactly what's happening with my friend -- a chill on his speech. I can't say more that that, because I don't want to expose him -- or expose him to the career issues that can come up for speaking freely these days.
Just consider the power that a person making a false accusation against a prof -- just for their speech -- has. And for speech we would formerly thought nothing of -- because it isn't offensive to any reasonable person, not schooled in the language that gives people unearned power over others through victimhood.
It's sick and dangerous, what's happening.
I've suggested that this professor write an op-ed with a few other professors, perhaps for The New York Times, explaining some of these utterly ridiculous speech dings they get and how it's transforming college into a giant witch hunt and a place little or no speech is actually free.
Oh, and how crazy is this? In this environment -- with the letter sent to UNM -- my book title, "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck," would be a speech crime and sexual harassment if somebody said they were offended by it.
Sure, in a sane world, you could argue that it's not meant sexually, but this isn't a sane world, and logical arguments mean little in the face of accusations.
Since Being Poor Isn't Yet A Crime, Why Are We Caging People For It?
Great points in a Dahlia Lithwick piece at Slate -- a conversation with Lava Records CEO Jason Flom. He's a founding member of The Innocence Project, which seeks to exonerate the wrongfully convicted.
Now Flom's got a new project -- getting rid of cash bail, which is to say, ending the practice of caging poor people arrested for misdemeanors and traffic violations unless they can come up with sums ranging from $300 to $500.
Lithwick notes:
In any given year, city and county jails across this country lock up between 11 and 13 million people just because they aren't rich enough to write a check for a few hundred dollars. Flom is convinced that every city in the United States should follow the lead of Washington D.C., which has done away with cash bail.
Flom explains:
You are absolutely right that cash bail is a tax on the poor. And it doesn't stop when they leave the jail because in many cases they are hit with court costs, processing fees, etc., which put them in a downward spiral of debt they can't pay and suddenly they find that there are warrants for their arrests, simply because they couldn't pay to be in jail for an alleged transgression. They cycle in and out of jail, and there are other hidden consequences--which may include loss of their drivers' licenses, their jobs, even custody of their children. This process also has a terrible impact on their future employment possibilities, which can thrust families further into poverty.The short answer to your question is that some state legislatures are in fact trying to reform the cash bail system. Connecticut, for instance, where the right and the left are aligned against the bail-bond industrial complex. So this is something you may be able to get your legislators to act on by calling your state representatives.
Flom explains why it's so serious and imperiling to go to jail:
People need to understand that while the word jail may sound more benign than the word prison, jails are overcrowded and violent, and they are incubators of disease.
We need to look at whether somebody's a threat, not whether they've got money in the bank, and make determinations on those grounds.
Traffic ticket you can't pay for? It's sick that we'd jail a person for this -- but part and parcel of a system that now allows the legal theft of people's money, sans conviction for a crime, called "asset forfeiture."
Linkrophilia
Having illicit activities with dead links.
Sansitation Job
Someone might have done Harriet the favor of not putting this particular quote in what appears to be Comic Sans.
If you need help understanding why, see here.
Twitter Panties Bunched By Charles Koch Supposedly Supporting Hillary
Of course, that's not what he actually said.
Kristen East reports at Politico that Koch spoke to ABC News' Jonathan Karl for an interview airing on ABC's This Week. Koch's words:
"As far as the growth of government, the increase in spending, it was two-and-a-half times under Bush that it was under Clinton," he said.Karl followed up by asking about whether or not Koch could see himself supporting Hillary Clinton.
Koch hesitated before giving an answer that didn't rule out the possibility.
"We would have to believe her actions would have to be quite different than her rhetoric, let me put it that way," he said.
Here's some of what Koch stands for -- from a WaPo op-ed he wrote about -- drum roll...Bernie Sanders:
The senator is upset with a political and economic system that is often rigged to help the privileged few at the expense of everyone else, particularly the least advantaged. He believes that we have a two-tiered society that increasingly dooms millions of our fellow citizens to lives of poverty and hopelessness. He thinks many corporations seek and benefit from corporate welfare while ordinary citizens are denied opportunities and a level playing field.I agree with him.
...Democrats and Republicans have too often favored policies and regulations that pick winners and losers. This helps perpetuate a cycle of control, dependency, cronyism and poverty in the United States. These are complicated issues, but it's not enough to say that government alone is to blame. Large portions of the business community have actively pushed for these policies.
When it comes to electing our next president, we should reward those candidates, Democrat or Republican, most committed to the principles of a free society. Those principles start with the right to live your life as you see fit as long as you don't infringe on the ability of others to do the same. They include equality before the law, free speech and free markets and treating people with dignity, respect and tolerance. In a society governed by such principles, people succeed by helping others improve their lives.
I don't expect to agree with every position a candidate holds, but all Americans deserve a president who, on balance, can demonstrate a commitment to a set of ideas and values that will lead to peace, civility and well-being rather than conflict, contempt and division. When such a candidate emerges, he or she will have my enthusiastic support.
And note that Koch said these things about Bernie despite Bernie vilifying him and his brother.
And here, from Marketplace's Kai Ryssdal, is Koch on welfare:
Koch: But here, let's go back through welfare. When LBJ started the war on poverty in 1965, his goal was to get rid of the dole as, these are his words, "I want to get rid of the dole and turn tax eaters into tax payers." OK, that's our goal, but now we've spent over 20 trillion since then on the war on poverty, and the poverty levels are the same, so this isn't working. So we need to reform it so it doesn't create these obstacles to the disadvantaged becoming productive, contributing citizens, and just sit there on the dole. And I don't believe for a minute people want that.They say, "Oh, well people are lazy." Yeah, because you block all opportunities. They smoke a joint, and they go to prison, and they can't get a job, they're ruined. Whereas we have a president who smoked a joint, and he becomes president. We have a candidate who says he smoke a joint, he's running for president. Now what's the equity, what's the fairness in that? We need to get rid of those distinctions and those differences in opportunity, and then we need to teach these kids the values and skills required for success.
Now, there will still be some who can't make it. So there needs to be a safety net. Now the question is, what's the balance between force, which our current welfare system is based on, and voluntary cooperation and competition? I would argue we have too much force just like we have in the criminal justice system, and it needs to be a balance, and we need to use local knowledge. That is are all these so-called benefits, are they helping people or hurting them? They're probably helping some, and they're hurting others because they have a disincentive to work. And as I learned that unless you start working, if you're frozen out of work, you will never learn the habits, the discipline, the values of cooperation and improvement unless you get a job, and that's what statistic show. It's, unless you get a job and keep it, you will not get out of poverty. If you do, you have a very good chance of working out of poverty.
So that's, we want the emphasis more on education and opportunity than, than dole, just like Lyndon Johnson wanted. Now, exactly how to do it? We don't have all the answers, but we think directionally we know that what's been done, in a large part isn't working, but there still needs to be a safety net.
Not the quite the demonspawn he seems to be, per how people react whenever his name comes up, huh?
He and his brother are actually for small government, criminal justice reform (especially for the poor and minorities), and gave $25 million to the United Negro College Fund. They've given tens of millions to museums for dinosaur and human evolution exhibitions. They gave $10 million to the ACLU to fight the Bush admin on the PATRIOT Act. And he condemns big bank bailouts and government handouts for the rich.
I'm sure don't agree with him on everything and approve of everything he and his brother do, but, well, I think it's pretty childish to expect that of anyone.
The Latest In Neighbors Reporting Parents
It gets crazier and crazier. A woman in Winnipeg was just reported to child services there for the horrible, neglectful practice of letting her kids play outside unsupervised...in their own fenced-in backyard.
Was she out at the mall? In a drug den?
Um, no -- just inside the house, feet away.
After the neighbor snitched on her, child services showed up to question the mother, asking her how she was raised, where the kids slept, and how they were punished. The rep also looked in the refrigerator.
Granted, child services agencies can't just ignore a report.
More from Canada's National Post:
Jacqui Kendrick, a stay-at-home mom, says a CFS worker showed up unexpectedly in early April, saying they had received a complaint about her children being unsupervised.Kendrick has three children ages two, five and 10, and says they often played in her fenced-in backyard after school.
Kendrick says she's either with them or watching them from her living room, though she says her oldest child also helps out by looking after her younger siblings.
...Kendrick says her children have been well trained in how to be safe.
"We've taught both the (older) kids so far that you look after each other. That's kind of the point. The older ones should be looking after the younger ones," Kendrick says.
"My 10-year-old is very responsible. We've taught the older ones already the whole stranger danger, and they know what to do. When my five-year-old's out there, she knows she's not supposed to go up to the fence."
As I've noted before, children, throughout human history, have been tasked with caring for younger siblings. It probably teaches responsibility.
As Lenore Skenazy puts it at Reason about this ridiculousness:
Barring actual abuse, parents must be allowed to raise their kids the way they think is best, even if a CPS worker would raise her kids some other way.And barring, say, a backyard filled with heroin and alligators, kids must be allowed to be outside, unsupervised, even if a neighbor faints at the idea.
Love the "heroin and alligators" line.
Dinky
Mini-links. Like those tiny doughnuts.
Dueling Microaggressions
John McWhorter writes at Chronicle:
In New York City it has been classified as a microaggression for affluent, white high school students to discuss their expensive vacations around black students. But then, on most campuses, it is also considered a microaggression to assume that most black people are poor. What is the etiquette here? Respectable minds will differ.Black campus protesters have claimed that it is a microaggression when a black student is expected to testify to the black experience in a class discussion. However, this runs up against one of the main planks of race-conscious admissions policies: that having black students on campus is valuable for exposing others to black experiences and concerns.
There is no easy answer here, which is why, again, a discussion is appropriate. To dismiss as "racist" any questions about such issues is simplistic.
I grew up in Whiteville -- the Detroit suburbs back in the late 70s and early 80s. There were a few black people in my junior high and high school -- all of them, I'm pretty sure, from families more affluent than mine.
The two female twins who were black were very smart, high achievers, and in all AP classes. Another black guy, who wasn't as high an achiever academically, did well, and went on to become a newscaster in a big market.
Is it kids like these who need help -- just because they have black skin -- or kids of any color who come from impoverished backgrounds?
My take is that it's the latter -- and that it's insulting to students like those I mention above and unfair to those who earn a place on merit to be knocked out of it on skin color grounds (like for being Asian).
But, as McWhorter points out, any sort of discussion along those lines has now been turned into a speech crime on campus.
via @SteveStuWill
Victimhood Envy: How The Holocaust Became Not "Inclusive" Enough
I see over and over that victimhood is a way to have unearned power over others. If you can't earn it, hey, why not wallow your way into it?
Accordingly, Brendan O'Neill writes in the Telegraph about why campus radicals take issue with -- yes -- commemorating the Holocaust:
In an era when victimhood is the key currency of politics, when feeling damaged counts for more than feeling strong or heroic, when being part of a victimised minority is all the rage, many have started to look with green eyes at the greatest act of victimisation in history.This is why so many groups now cynically exploit the language of the Holocaust to their own ends. Whether it's PETA grotesquely describing our chicken dinners as a "Holocaust on a plate" or Muslim community groups demanding that war crimes against Muslim peoples be recognised alongside the Holocaust, everyone wants a piece of the Holocaust action.
Worst of all, some radicals now use the Holocaust against Israel itself. They accuse the Jewish State of carrying out a new Holocaust against the Palestinians. Not content with trying to crib some of the moral authority of the Holocaust for themselves, they turn the Holocaust into a battering ram against Jews.
This perverse battle of victimhoods, this ugly oneupmanship among the "oppressed", is especially pronounced on campuses. There, with entirely straight faces, plummy white middle-class girls will tell you they're victims of misogyny, and privately educated gay students will claim to be part of an oppressed minority. Being a victim is all the rage, and proving you're more victimised than everyone else is the main game.
And this is where the "some kind of problem with Jews" comes into play. To the pseudo-oppressed identitarians who run student politics, Jews can't possibly have a hard time because they're mainly white and not poor, right?
...It's the grotesque end result of the cult of victimhood: the chipping away at the uniqueness of the Holocaust because foot-stomping radicals from the Home Counties think its super-unfair that Jews get to have such an act of victimisation and extermination all to themselves.
Here are the words of a woman, a friend of mine, Elyse Foltyn, whose father survived the Holocaust, and who is married to another child of survivors. This particular blog post of Elyse's is about a school assignment on family history done by her 12-year-old twins, Lily and Abby:
In a weakened voice, Lily mumbled, "My teacher asked me which adults cared for Papa Steve when he hid in the woods and what he ate?" Lily said. "I told her I didn't think there was an adult taking care of him and I didn't know what he ate. Did Papa Steve ever tell you what he ate?" she inquired. I was mortified. Could this teacher who we have only known to be sensitive and kind truly have been so detached? Didn't she recognize that the typical questions and rules of research could not be applied to the catastrophic lives Lily described?As Lily explained it to me, her teacher was seeking complete details on an incomplete life. She was hoping to teach our 12 year old, who is only now learning of her family's inexplicable past, how to research and analyze. In most teacher/student scenarios, this would have been an honorable and valuable lesson. However, in this situation, it was both insignificant and too late to compile this research. My father passed without ever being able to bring himself to share these specifics with us. In fact, it was merely a dozen years before he died that he had an epiphany of sorts and broke his silence. Only then did he begin sharing stories of his life during the Holocaust. Like most survivors, he didn't want to "burden his children" with this unimaginable history and pain.
...Although his European accent was always heavy, his words were barely audible each time he recollected leaving the family home with his sister in anticipation of the Holocaust destroying their town. He said he felt a hole in his heart when his parents would not join them and forbade them from taking their baby brother, Ephraim (after whom I am named), with them. He learned years later that his parents and brother were shot into a mass grave by the Nazis. On the rare occasions we spoke of all these weighty topics, my father never had an interest in telling me how he foraged for food in the woods. And, I never had the heart to ask him.
You can see how these horrors Elyse's father survived are just like how it feels to be a "victim" today on campus in America -- like by being "microaggressed" with "Where are you from?" (meaning "what's your ancestry?") or by passing a chalked message on the ground supporting a candidate you're opposed to.
Ducky
Quackolinks.
When Sloppy Science Reporting Reduces Penis Sensitivity
People bend over backward to justify Western circumcision -- the barbaric and medically unnecessary genital mutilation of boys -- while expressing horror at the practice, in Third World countries, of what is rightly called "Female Genital Mutilation."
Brian David Earp, a researcher who is so productive that I occasionally accuse him of being a machine, has come out with a terrific critique of the study on circumcision and penis sensitivity that's been in the news recently.
He writes at the HuffPo that what the researchers found was not what appeared in news reports, like the one in The New York Times. As Earp puts it:
Another day, another round of uncritical media coverage of an empirical study about circumcision and sexual function. That's including from the New York Times, whose Nicholas Bakalar has more or less recycled the content of a university press release without incorporating any skeptical analysis from other scientists. That's par for the course for Bakalar.
The actually finding? Earp explains:
For the one test the researchers used that measured actual tactile sensitivity (which is what most people think of when they hear the word "sensitive" in this context), they found that the foreskin was more sensitive than any other part of the penis, including all parts of the penis that remain in circumcised men.This is consistent with a previous finding by other researchers from 2007, who concluded that "Circumcision ablates [removes] the most sensitive parts of the penis."
Earp winds up with this:
Jennifer Bossio and her colleagues are to be commended for trying to "objectively" study a complicated issue (although the way they reported their results was woefully misleading). But at the end of the day, sexual experience is largely subjective: different people prefer different things when it comes to sex, and a lot of sexual enjoyment comes down to psychological factors, not penile anatomy.That is why there is a growing movement to leave the "circumcision decision" to the individual who will be affected by it, so that he can decide--when he's old enough to understand what's at stake--if he'd rather experience sex and masturbation with an intact penis (however sensitive his particular foreskin turns out to be), or with a modified one (if he wants to go for surgery).
With respect to the specific question of "sensitivity," the latest findings are a lot less definitive than media reports are making them out to be (and they don't even all point in the same direction as those reports are suggesting). As Bossio and her colleagues state at the end of their paper, "replication of this study is warranted with a larger sample size" and "associated conclusions should be interpreted as preliminary."
In the meantime, a precautionary approach suggests that we should leave boys' penises alone until they can assess the sensitivity of their own foreskins as compared to other parts of the penis--as well as their role in sexual experience more generally--in light of their own considered sexual preferences and values.
I absolutely agree.
Medically unnecessary surgery on a child is absolutely uncalled for -- and barbaric, and has no place in a modern society.
Also, as my epidemiologist friend often reminds me: All surgery has risks. No, they don't often slip in cutting the foreskin -- but they sometimes do.
I'm Pro-Choice, But The Fact That Somebody Disagrees With Me Doesn't Mean They're Evil Or "Hate Women"
I find abortion creepy and troubling -- but understanding biology, I don't see a fertilized egg as a person. It's a thing that has the potential to become a person.
Or, as neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga puts it in The Ethical Brain, neuroscience tells us that "life begins with a sentient being," around week twenty-three, or around the same time that the fetus can survive outside the womb with medical support.
In Gazzaniga's view, it is at this point, and not until then, that the fetus becomes "one of us," with all "the moral and legal rights of a human being." And thus Gazzaniga holds that we should allow unrestricted experimentation on human embryos up to week twenty-three.
To explain his argument, Gazzaniga uses an analogy: the embryo is like housing materials found at a Home Depot. Says Gazzaniga: "When a Home Depot burns down, the headline in the paper is not '30 Houses Burn Down.' It is 'Home Depot Burned Down.'" Similarly, to destroy a fetus is not to destroy a human life, but merely the "materials" of life.
Regarding abortion and how the left sees women on the right who are against it, Ashe Schow has a column in the WashEx, "Why don't Democrats think pro-life women exist?"
I don't think Dems think pro-life women don't exist; it's more like they shouldn't.
Schow asks:
Why do Democrats act like anyone who opposes abortion is anti-woman?
The short answer: politics. Liberals become consumed by the topic of abortion and have decided that they are on the right side of history; so anyone against abortion -- including the 46 percent of women who don't identify as "pro-choice" -- are anti-woman.They then proceed to either pretend pro-life women don't exist, or, when confronted by a pro-life woman, accuse her of "internalized misogyny."
I agree with Schow on this:
It's okay for women to be pro-life. Women can decide for themselves what they believe and what they find moral and immoral. Telling women they must think and believe certain things seems to be the opposite of empowerment, in my view.
I also think it's okay for a woman to want to be a wife and mother and stay home with her kids, though, for me, that would be like being very slowly eaten alive by thousands of tiny insects.
Schow winds up with this:
Note to liberals: Pro-life women do exist, and their belief that abortion is inhumane and hurtful to women doesn't make them anti-woman. In fact, you could even say it makes them pro-woman.
Again, I don't agree with them, but their beliefs aren't formed out of hating women, and it's pretty childish to characterize them that way, just to "win."
"Victim-Centered Justice" Makes Victims Out Of The Falsely Accused
I'm reminded of "feminist" science groups -- which I vehemently refuse to join and want nothing to do with, and not just because I am not a feminist but a humanist (someone who cares about the rights of all people, regardless of what sex they are).
For me, there is only science, not feminist science or masculinist science or any other flavor.
Likewise for justice.
Seeing that justice is done involves impartially investigating any charge that is made -- not doing the disgusting thing that "victim-centered justice" demands: "A thorough investigation must therefore begin from a position of Start by Believing" -- as in believing the person who is accused.
At The Daily Caller, Victor Zheng describes the hell he went through after he was accused of sexually assaulting his ex-girlfriend:
I was in the middle of my summer class when my phone went off around 11:40 am on Thursday, July 18th, 2013. It was my ex-girlfriend. As I answered, I heard her voice insisting that I admit to perpetrating an incident of sexual misconduct against her. I was puzzled by her request and did not know how to respond.A few minutes later I received a call from Darrin DeCoster, a Fairfax County, Virginia detective, who revealed the phone call was being recorded. Ordering me to not hang up, he threatened to arrest me on a "slew" of charges if I did not cooperate. As a 20-year-old in college, I was scared beyond imagination.
I was instructed to appear for an interview the next day at the Fairfax County Police Station. Since I was completely innocent, what did I have to fear? I assumed the police would conduct an unbiased investigation of the matter. That was before I heard about "victim-centered" investigations.
The interrogation consisted of repeated attempts to get me to confess to something that I had supposedly done. The detective hinted that the charge had something to do with sexual assault, but he refused to tell me any details. He said that he could work out a deal with me and convince the district attorney to reduce the punishment.
...My ex-girlfriend said the alleged assault happened in the spring of 2012 while we were both in high school without specifying a date or month. I was stunned to later learn that she claimed that we had never had a romantic relationship.
The detective also interviewed several of her friends. One claimed that he had picked up my ex-girlfriend after the assault during the spring of 2013 - not 2012 -- while I was a student at Virginia Tech. The detective was not deterred by the fact that I have never attended Virginia Tech, nor have I ever been to the town of Blacksburg.
On October 3rd, right before one of my history classes at the University of Virginia, I was arrested in front of my peers. I would go on to endure five nights and six days in jail.
An interesting note to add is that the detective was not present at the initial bail hearing despite efforts from the prosecutor to try to reach him. Without the detective present and any information, the judge allowed me to leave jail while I awaited my trial. During the time between my bail hearing and the preliminary hearing, I took and passed a polygraph test, at my own expense, to supplement my growing cache of exculpatory evidence. At my preliminary hearing, I brought over 40,000 documents in the form of emails, text messages, and other social media interactions that proved my ex-girlfriend and I indeed did have a romantic relationship.
The rape and abduction charges were soon dropped and the prosecutor agreed to have all charges expunged. Despite this favorable outcome, I now had to face $60,000 in attorney's fees, on top of the fact that I lost a semester's worth of school as I was unable to salvage any credits. And nothing could compensate for my suffering during six days in jail.
Hideous wrong done here. Anyone truly interested in justice -- rather than promoting a victimist ideology and going after men -- would see that.
via @CHSommers
Gloppy
Stickywickylinks.
Woman Sees Conspiracy Against Women In Tech
A female Pinterest engineer, Tracy Chou, is stunned to find the college and work world of tech a little tough and blames sexism:
But even though I was completely immersed in tech culture, I had trouble envisioning a career in software engineering for myself. The issue wasn't a lack of interest or ability. It was that the sexism I encountered, both in school and in the workplace, had me convinced that I wasn't just good enough to make it in tech.At Stanford, I took two introductory computer science classes. I soon became convinced that I was much too behind my male classmates to ever catch up. I was surrounded by men who'd breezily skipped prerequisite courses. As freshmen, they'd signed up for classes that I was intimidated to take even as a sophomore. They casually mentioned software engineering internships they had completed back in high school, and declared they were unfazed by any of the challenges professors might throw our way.
I remember the first "weeder" computer science course I took-meant to discourage the unworthy from pursuing the major. My classmates bragged about finishing assignments in three hours. Listening to them chat, I felt mortified: the same work had taken me 15 hours of anguish at the keyboard to complete. They are quantifiably five times better than I am, I told myself.
Lots of my classmates talked about how the course really wasn't as bad as everyone made it out to be. I disagreed. By the end of the quarter, their unflappable self-assurance had me convinced that I was meant to be rooted out. I decided not to major in computer science.
Like many a woman before me, I had run smack into the confidence gap. Researchers have shown that women consistently rate their abilities more negatively than men, while men give themselves inflated marks. In the face of my classmates' bluster, I didn't consider the idea that they might be bluffing. Instead I assumed the problem was me.
...My internships at Google and Facebook were both incredible opportunities. I could hardly believe my luck to be on the inside of two of the most glamorous and prestigious companies in Silicon Valley, picture badge clipped to my jeans pocket.
My colleagues complimented me on the way I looked, not the work I produced.
But the office environment turned out to be little better than the classroom. I could never shake the feeling of being petted as an adorably confused young intern. I felt as if I was welcomed because I was cute to keep around, not because there was any expectation of my doing useful, good work. My fellow interns and full-time coworkers were first friendly, then flirty. They floated awkward pick-up lines and complimented me on the way I looked, not the work I produced. One offered to give me a massage "because I looked stressed." Another tried to get me to watch a movie with him in a dark room with the door locked and blinds closed. Later, he gave me a custom-made t-shirt with his name emblazoned across the front.Meanwhile, I had to scavenge for scraps of work. The big project I had been promised for my internship was given to someone else.
My sister just went back to get an advanced degree, getting in to some of the toughest, most competitive schools in her field. She had to go back and take math and science classes before she applied. These classes were not easy for her, but she worked her ass off -- unbelievably hard, to a degree I don't think most people (let alone most women) would work -- and came out in the top of her class in each.
I work similarly intensely on this next book I'm writing. There are people out there who probably write faster. But for me, it takes what it takes, and I'm basically not leaving the house until September (which is when I'm slated to turn it in), because that's what it takes, and I want it to be the best book I can possibly make it.
And yes, I have doubts -- I had night terrors, early on, when the science led to a change in what the book would be, that my publisher would ask for their money back. But my editor read what I had so far and loved it, which was a huge relief.
Few women would work as intensely as I do. Many have children and prioritize their relationships and family over their work. I love my boyfriend, but my work means everything to me, and he's wonderful about supporting me in that -- bringing me food, cooking me dinner, helping me in other ways so I can just write.
If you are this singleminded, you will probably do well in your career, whatever it is. If not, well, maybe you won't, and maybe that's to be expected.
We Women Are So Equal That We Need Joke Police
Quick -- somebody get me pearls so I can clutch them! (On a more serious note, I would like one of those velvet fainting couches.)
Mary Elizabeth Williams writes at Salon that sorority women were "humiliated" as part of a charity drive when guys asked them sexually charged questions:
As the Daily Beast's Katie Zavadski reports, the University of Mississippi's chapter of Sigma Chi fraternity is now under investigation for the gross behavior of its members during a "Derby Days" charity event. Over the weekend, an Ole Miss student named Abby Michelle Bruce posted on Facebook that she had just "watched women be humiliated in the name of 'philanthropy'":After a week long process of all the sororities on campus competing to raise money for Sigma Chi's philanthropy, the guys proceeded to ask the contestants for their Derby Days queen over the mic at the dance competition where hundreds of women were gathered "which sigma chi they would go down on," "what type of sausage would they prefer: linked or sigma chi," and other questions of the like.... Women were busting their asses in extremely choreographed routines some chanting "sigma chi, sigma chi," stroking the egos of guys whose only self worth is found in the letters they wear. If there are great guys in this organization, I have to wonder where they were tonight.During the event crowded event, emcees known as "Derby Daddies" asked a potential queen named Bobbie Jo, "What's your nickname?... We're gonna go ahead and take BJ on that one." They then asked her what her favorite memory of the Sigma Chi basement was, once again referring to her as "BJ."
Paging "The Man" -- because women are now considered children who are incapable of making adult decisions to speak up or bow out:
A weekend statement from the university notes that "Representatives of the Title IX Office at UM are actively investigating the allegations that have been discussed on social media platforms. If substantiated, the behavior reported at this event clearly violates campus policy and one of the UM community's core values, which is for our students to show respect and dignity for all."
The frat and sorority scene didn't appeal to me at all. Back when I was at the University of Michigan, I went to a single frat party, encountered a bunch of drunk assholes, and never went to another.
Wow.
Imagine that: All the way back in the 80s, too -- a young woman on campus making her own decisions about what works or doesn't work for her...without assistance from the government or calls to discipline anyone.
Radical, huh?
When Live Gives You Links
Find some whiskey and drown the fuckers.
Women Are Not Equal; Women Are Infants, Unable To Decide When They're Victimized
Wildly, absurdly terrible case reported by Robby Soave at Reason. A male athlete was expelled for raping a female student and trainer -- a woman who said, "I'm fine and I wasn't raped":
Colorado State University-Pueblo suspended a male athlete for years after he was found responsible for sexually assaulting a female trainer. But the trainer never accused him of wrongdoing, and said repeatedly that their relationship was consensual. She even stated, unambiguously, "I'm fine and I wasn't raped."That's according to the athlete's lawsuit against CSUP, which persuasively argues that the university not only deprived him of fundamental due process rights, but also denied sexual agency to an adult woman. Taken at face value, this case appears to represent one of the most paternalistic, puritanically anti-sex witch hunts ever reported on a college campus.
...To be clear, CSUP apparently believes that Title IX requires the university to investigate a student for sexual misconduct, even when his alleged victim resolutely insists that he is innocent and does not want the issue investigated. Administrators essentially treated Doe like an object that belonged to them--one that no one else was allowed to touch.
Neal and Doe, it should be noted, had consensual sex again--probably because they genuinely liked and were interested in each other, despite the university's herculean efforts to keep them from touching each other.
Doe told another administrator, "Our stories are the same and he's a good guy. He's not a rapist, he's not a criminal, it's not even worth any of this hoopla!"
Yet, this "good guy" has been expelled. Because who knows better than some administrator that a woman who says she had consensual sex -- and keeps insisting that it was consensual -- really did not?
The student-athlete, Grant Neal, is going to sue, and -- this is such a good thing -- has named the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights as a co-defendant.
It is one thing to decide a toddler has been victimized -- even when the toddler doesn't seem to know anything is amiss.
A grown woman? In college?
Please tell me how this is progress.
Oh, and if somebody is truly a rapist, they belong in jail. But there's been no arrest, no prosecution -- and for very good reason: There was no rape here. It's just the new normal -- government-driven deep injustice to men and infantilization of women.
Whole Foods Files Suit Against Apparent Cake Hoaxer
Best of all, Whole Foods notes that the poor falsely accused bakery worker is "part of the LGBTQ community."
TCTH explains why this is a hoax:
1. The cashier scans the barcode which is atop the cake. In the video made by Mr. Brown the barcode is on the side of the box - it has been moved after leaving the store.2. The top of the cake box is "windowed" for a reason. The customer is able to see the top of the cake - in order to believe Mr. Brown's claim you'd have to believe he didn't look at the writing after asking for the cake to be customized.
3. Anyone familiar with the process knows the cake is pre-made, the customization comes after the cake is already in a retail display case for the selection. The cake box exits the store unsealed because the original seal was removed *before* the clerk could write on it, and once customized the label is applied to the top of the box as evidenced in the CCTV checkout video.
What kind of person thinks they'll get away with this?
And why?
The Greenest Energy Of All
That's nuclear energy, and Holman Jenkins writes in the WSJ:
Honest greens have always said nuclear power is indispensable for achieving big carbon reduction. James Hansen, the former NASA scientist who has been chaining himself to fences since the first Bush administration, was in Illinois last week lobbying against closure of a nuclear plant. Ditto activist Michael Shellenberger. We might also include Bill McKibben, the Bernie Sanders of the climate movement and shouter of Exxon accusations, who told journalist William Tucker four years ago, "If I came out in favor of nuclear, it would split this movement in half."Nuclear (unlike solar) is one low-carbon energy technology that has zero chance without strong government support, yet is left out of renewables mandates. It's the one non-carbon energy source that has actually been shrinking, losing ground to coal and natural gas.
What keeps nuclear costs high? Why do so many opponents misread the Fukushima meltdown, where 18,000 deaths were due to the earthquake and tsunami, none to radiation exposure, and none are expected from radiation exposure? Why has the U.S. experience of spiraling nuclear construction costs not been matched in South Korea, where normal learning has reduced the cost of construction?
The answer increasingly appears to be a real scientific fraud. In a series of peer-reviewed articles, toxicologist Edward Calabrese of the University of Massachusetts Amherst shows how a cabal of radiation geneticists in the 1940s doctored their results, and even a Nobel Prize acceptance speech, to exaggerate the health risk from low-level radiation exposure. At the time, Hermann Muller, their leader, was militating against above-ground atomic-bomb testing. "I think he got his beliefs and his science confused, and he couldn't admit that the science was unresolved," Mr. Calabrese told a UMass publication.
Data developed to show high-dose effect on fruit flies, Muller claimed, showed a proportional low-dose effect. Thus was born LNT--the "linear no-threshold" model of radiation risk that has become the world's go-to standard for nuclear safety, source of repeated (and unfulfilled) forecasts of thousands of cancer deaths from Chernobyl or Fukushima. LNT is why nuclear plants shoulder artificially huge costs not to protect against accidents, but to protect against trivial emissions. Coal-plants, which don't have to meet U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission rules, actually put out thorium and uranium far in excess of what nuclear plants are allowed to emit.
Meanwhile, at Columbia, Todd Gitlin, a sociology and journalism prof and the chair of the Ph.D. program in communications, wants the university to divest from fossil fuel companies.
Do you think he'd support investing in nuclear power?
It's a childish version of economics to assume you can have it all -- a life powered by wind and people peddling really fast on bicycles...and "free" health care...and, oh (why not?!), a $50 minimum wage.
Dinky
Tinylinks.
Conflicting Sexist Messages: "Girl Power!" vs. "Girls And Women Are Victimized!"
Between the two, my suggestion is the unsexist "pick none."
In the New York Post, Karol Markowitz writes about the contradictive and sexist idiocy of preaching "girl power":
Just like we over-reassure our dateless friends that they're totally, totally awesome, we oversell the "rah-rah, girl power!" to our girls but don't entirely mean it. We're overemphasizing how simply amazing and capable girls are by virtue of their gender and not much else. Isn't that the opposite of what we should be doing?Hollywood, of course, loves this pitch to girls. Ellen DeGeneres has a new lifestyle brand called ED that is meant to, what else, "empower" girls.
DeGeneres collaborated on a clothing line for The Gap and produced shirts for girls that had words like "Genius" and "Gifted" printed across them. I'm concerned that my daughter will feel we "doth protest too much" and ask, "Why am I wearing a shirt that says I'm a genius? Is it because I'm actually not?" "Why do you keep saying I rule? Is it because I don't?" The result is more likely to be girls second-guessing themselves.
The language is the problem. Mainstream feminism tells girls they're better than the boys but then has events like "Equal Pay Day" demanding equal pay. Demanding from whom? The men who dole out the pay? Weren't girls just running the world? Which is it?
She writes about the salary issue:
The way we talk to girls needs to change. We need to teach our daughters that if they feel they deserve higher pay, they need to ask for it. It sends mixed messages to tell girls they can do anything . . . provided boys help them.
There's something that helps us understand why women don't ask and it's biological sex differences.
Sex differences researcher Joyce Benenson writes about how boys are competitive -- and show greater competitiveness, aggressiveness, and comfort with hierarchies from early childhood on. Boys hang out in groups and compete with each other, and see this as a natural part of life.
Girls, on the other hand, tend to hang out in "dyads" -- twos -- and when any girl stands out, they Mean-Girl her into her place. Is it any wonder that women aren't quick to sell themselves or ask for more money?
The (Liquid) Nuances Of How Money Buys You Happiness
Sonja Lyubomirsky, who researches happiness, has published a new study in Emotion with two colleagues, (first and second authors) Peter M. Ruberton and Joe Gladstone, on how it isn't just having money that "buys you happiness"; liquidity matters.
Liquidity -- having money actually available for use -- "confers a sense of financial security, which in turn is associated with greater life satisfaction."
Interestingly, they explain that: "Higher income and spending--the amounts going into or out of a person's bank account--were not associated with increased financial well-being" (once liquid wealth was included in the model).
People with low liquid account balances may feel more economically distressed--and thus less satisfied with their lives--than their peers with higher balances, even if their incomes and spending, considered separately from their account balances, would predict high financial security.To put our results into context, we found that going from having £1 to having £1,000 (a 3-log increase) in one's bank accounts each month--not rags-to-riches, but merely rags-to- sufficiency--is associated with an average gain of 2 points (10% of a 20-point scale) in life satisfaction by virtue of feeling more secure about one's finances.
However, because liquid wealth was log transformed, further increasing liquid assets from £1,000 to £10,000 (a 1-log increase) was associated with an expected increase of just 0.7 further points on the same scale.
As with income (e.g., Kahneman & Deaton, 2010), the role of liquid wealth in life satisfaction appears to be subject to diminishing returns. Our findings thus highlight the importance of holding a minimal financial buffer, but also the relative unimportance of having wealth above sufficiency levels.
More on that:
Holding investments and not being in debt are both associated with greater financial well-being, but having cash "on hand" is meaningful above and beyond those measures of wealth. That is, individuals with cash in their bank accounts feel more confident about their finances, and thus more satisfied with their lives, than those with less cash, regardless of whether or not the former are in debt or possess other investments: Even high-earners with no debt and large investments are happier if they keep some of their wealth easily accessible than if they live with consistently little money left available after expenses.
Ready cash -- an unexpected chill pill!
Their finding points to evolutionary psychologists Leda Cosmides and John Tooby's comment I quote in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck" about how "Our modern skulls house a stone age mind." We didn't have IRAs in an ancestral environment; we had the meat we could eat in hand before it spoiled. Regarding their "liquid wealth" finding, it makes sense that we are reassured by what is -- admittedly -- a bit of a stretch from goods in hand, but it still appears to come off in our brains as a meaningful form of ready access to resources.
Here's Sonja on my science-based radio show -- one of the earlier ones I did, from back in 2011.
Deduct, Deduct, Deduct...Goose! Bernie Rails Against People Who Do Exactly What He Did On His Taxes
Jim Geraghty writes at NRO that "the Democratic socialist from Vermont, a man who rages against high earners paying a lower effective tax rate than blue-collar workers, saved himself thousands using many of the tricks that would be banned under his own tax plan":
With all of his itemized deductions, Sanders's taxable income was significantly lower than it would have been if he had taken the standard deduction. The deductions left Sanders and his wife paying $27,653 in federal income taxes in 2014, on a joint income of $205,271 -- an effective federal tax rate of 13.5 percent. If that seems low to you, your instincts are right: According to the Tax Foundation, the average federal income-tax rate for a couple making $200,000 to $500,000 in 2014 was 15.2 percent. The "millionaires and billionaires" that Sanders is so fond of berating payed, on average, just more than twice as much of their income (27.4 percent) in federal taxes as he did.On the campaign trail, Sanders's taxation philosophy is simple: If you can pay more, you should; deductions are not a justifiable reason for a wealthy person to pay a lower effective rate than someone who earns less. His web site declares, "We need a progressive tax system in this country which is based on ability to pay. It is not acceptable that corporate CEOs in this country often enjoy an effective tax rate which is lower than their secretaries."
With such rhetoric, you might think that Sanders would be reluctant to take every deduction he possibly could.
Yes, Saint Bernie is like every other politician -- all talk.
RELATED: Apparent crony capitalism from Sanders' wife.
Linkie Doo Wop
Tunielinks.
The North Carolina Bathroom Thing Isn't About What People Say It Is
There's an op-ed by constitutional lawyer Robert A. Sedler in the Freep on the North Carolina bathroom thing -- or, as he puts it, "the new North Carolina law that requires people to use the public restroom for the gender listed on their birth certificate even though they now identify with the opposite gender."
Sedler writes:
Obviously the law is unenforceable. The state will not post guards at public restrooms to inspect the genitals of people going into the restroom. But the enactment of the law is intended to demean transgender people in the same manner as laws in southern states once demeaned African Americans by prohibiting "colored men" from going into restrooms for "white gentlemen" and prohibiting "colored women" from going into restrooms for "white ladies." The denigration of transgender persons is aggravated by the state's totally preposterous claim that the law is necessary to prevent "sexual predators" from going into women's restrooms.The Supreme Court has stated that, "It is a promise of the Constitution that there is a realm of personal liberty which the government may not enter," and that, "As the Constitution endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for greater freedom." Surely, this realm of personal liberty must include the right of all persons to determine their own gender identity, and to be free from all forms of governmental discrimination because of their gender identity.
The Constitution then should protect the right to gender identity and should prevent the government from discriminating against persons because of their gender identity. The odious North Carolina "bathroom law" violates the Constitution and cannot be permitted to stand.
My take?
Okay, it's a little odd to have a man in a dress in the ladies room, but the activity in there is not happening out in the open.
Personally, as a libertarian, I think we make a mistake with government intervention into everything. I am 52 years old, and lived in the arty weirdo sections of Manhattan (and now live in Venice, California), and I have yet to encounter a person visibly male and trying to pass in the ladies room -- ever.
It's also got to be pretty tough to be born one sex and feel like you're actually another. I'd personally rather be a little surprised at who's at the mirror in the ladies room next to me than have demeaning laws passed. If you don't feel that way, well, maybe just cross your legs and hold it till you get home.
As for the "eek, pervs!" notions -- perving in bathrooms is already illegal, which is why you occasionally see people being arrested who set up cameras to watch other people on the john.
Oh, How Sneaky: You're Expected To Pay For Your Stuff (Or They Could Take Your Stuff From You)
There are a lot of sneaky, nasty provisions in those pages and pages of contracts we sign (like that iTunes agreement I can't be bothered to read), but this -- from a David Lazarus column in the LA Times -- isn't one of them.
Oh, the horror. You buy stuff, don't pay for it, and won't be allowed to keep it.
Lazarus:
Like most of us, Larry Maizlish seldom scrutinizes the pages of fine print that accompany his credit cards. The other day, however, he decided to give it a go for his Lexus Pursuits Visa card, which offers points for vehicle repairs."I had the time," Maizlish, 53, told me. "My eyes were feeling good."
That was fortunate because he had to dig deep to come across a nasty little stink bomb planted by the card's issuer, Comenity Capital Bank.
About halfway through the pages of legalese, after the usual boilerplate about Comenity being able to change the terms of the contract any time it pleases, so there, Maizlish found this:
"You grant us a security interest in all goods you purchase through the use of the account, now or at any time in the future and in all ... proceeds of such goods."
That's a fancy way of saying that Comenity reserves the right to send guys to your home and take any stuff you've purchased with your card if you don't pay your bills.
Lazarus calls it "The Sopranos Clause."
Heh.
I call it a company trying to make good on bad debt.
Not that companies are likely to do this.
"That doesn't mean the store or bank is actually going to do it," said Douglas Crowder, a Los Angeles lawyer specializing in consumer debt issues. "It's all about the threat factor."They'd really send repo guys to a cardholder's home?
"If it was a large enough purchase, it might be worth their while," Crowder replied. "For anything with a resale value of less than $2,000, say, it's hard to imagine they'd go to the trouble and expense."
A Comenity spokesman, Larry Meltzer, declined to address whether the bank would dispatch repo men to cardholders' homes.
Uh, for "the threat factor" to work, people would actually have to read those agreements, and most -- I would bet -- do not.
Slurp
Soupylinks.
Expecting Students To Show Up On Time Is White Supremacy
Blake Neff writes at The Daily Caller of a session at the 17th Annual White Privilege Conference -- yes, there is such a thing, and it's going on through today, in Philly.
One speaker is education consultant and former prof of multi-culti education at Minnesota's St. Cloud State (where she taught future teachers), Dr. Heather Hackman. She "argued at the White Privilege Conference (WPC) in Philadelphia that great teachers must also be liberal activists, and described in detail her goal for destroying the 'white supremacist' nature of modern education."
Neff:
In Hackman's telling, virtually everything associated with being a good student in modern education is actually just a tool of racist white supremacy."The racial narrative of White tends to be like this: Rugged individual, honest, hard-working, disciplined, rigorous, successful," she said. "And so then, the narrative of U.S. public education: Individual assessments, competition, outcome over process (I care more about your grades than how you're doing), 'discipline' where we care more about your attendance and making sure you're not tardy than we care about your relationships ... proper English must be spoken (which is just assimilation into standard U.S. dialect), hierarchical power structure, and heavy goal orientation."While the traits listed may simply be regarded as positive traits for success in the modern world, Hackman described them as specific cultural traits chosen and emphasized to favor whites to the detriment of non-white groups, who are forced to assimilate white traits such as good discipline and goal orientation or else be left behind.
Is there anything more racist than this woman's thinking?
Campbell Brown's Second Career: Al Qaeda Camp Counselor
How probable do any of us think it is that a famous former news anchor bringing a small container of pimento cheese through the airport is going to use it to blow up the plane?
Well, happy day -- the TSA dipshits caught former CNN anchor Campbell Brown trying to, uh, smuggle such a dangerous cheeseweapon aboard, and they did their duty and confiscated it.
It's only the actual weapons they miss -- 95 percent of them in a recent TSA test.
But, hey, I bet you all feel safer, knowing that they protected Campbell Brown's crackers from being topped with probably numerous servings of cheesefood on the airplane.
Meanwhile, "long lines" are predicted this summer at the TSA's pretend security checkpoints.
Of course, just as in Belgium, all the poor people standing in those lines are sitting ducks for anybody who wants to do harm.
And how do we catch "anybody who wants to do harm"? Through probable cause-driven policing -- rooting out suspects through use of trained investigators, long before those suspects reach the airport -- not searching every former newscaster and grandma-visiter who takes an airplane.
Linksapoppin!
There's a bear suit in here somewhere.
Rape Is An Integral Part Of Islam: We May Not Want To Believe That, But It's True
Under Islam, Mohammed's behavior is to be emulated by Muslims. And yes, that's looting, raping, mass-murdering Mohammed. (Scroll down for references at the link.)
As I've written here before, I'm an atheist, but I can get behind the Jesus stuff of "feed the poor, take care of the sick," etc.
The ideology behind Islam, however, is pernicious and dangerous to our lives and freedoms in a way no other religion is at this time. (And by "our lives," in this I include Muslims who do not practice Islam in fundamentalist ways, and especially former Muslims.)
Janet L. Factor lays out at Quillette what anyone knowledgeable about Islam understands -- that Islam encourages rape, and Muslim polygyny is an integral part of this:
This, I submit, is the true source of the rift between the Muslim world and the secular world of the West. Islam never gave up polygyny. Instead it enshrined the practice in Sharia law, allowing men up to four wives, and concubines into the bargain. In doing so it made it impossible for women to rise in social status--a rise that seems so natural and inevitable to us--and condemned itself to suffer the ongoing societal instability created by large numbers of unattached young males.Here, minus the pages of calculations, are just a few predictions of evolutionary theory about the consequences of polygyny. All have been thoroughly researched in humans and are solidly borne out by multiple converging lines of evidence in studies that are cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary. Further, the higher the degree of polygyny in a society, the stronger are the effects. These include:
1. Stringent controls on women in all aspects of life.
2. Decreased age of wives relative to husbands, sometimes to the point of pedophilia.
3. More children per woman, with less reproductive choice.
4. Higher infant mortality (but no so high as to offset the higher number of births).
5. Much greater domestic violence and child abuse.
6. Increased rates of crime, most especially rape and murder.
7. More frequent warfare.Does this list paint a familiar picture? I could go on.
These problems and many others are endemic to societies that practice polygyny and they arise directly from it. It exacerbates conflict between individuals to such a degree that the resultant behavior is often of a kind we would term barbaric. And yet the system persists, because our biology favors it. In the absence of a strong cultural counter-force it will prevail.
Polygyny is the poisoned soil that nurtured the explosive growth of radical Islamism with its sexual obsessions and salacious sacralization of violence. The revolt of ISIS and Boko Haram is not at root a religious one; nor is it truly political or even economic. It is an evolutionary uprising of frustrated young men. They have arisen and seek to claim their place as head of a harem, if not here, in the afterlife.
Modernity requires monogamy. But will followers of Mohammed accept it?
Here are anthropologists Joseph Henrich, Robert Boyd, and Peter Richerson on "The Puzzle of Monogamous Marriage":
We propose that the unusual package of norms and institutions that constitute modern monogamous marriage systems spread across Europe, and then the globe, because of the package's impact on the competitive success of the polities, nations and religions that adopted this cultural package.Reducing the pool of unmarried men and levelling the reproductive playing field would have decreased crime, which would have spurred commerce, travel and the free flow of ideas and innovations. Greater security would have reduced transaction costs and both public and private security expenditures.
Instead of engaging in risky status-seeking endeavours, low-status males would be more likely to marry, thus becoming risk-averse and future-oriented, and focus on providing for their offspring in the long run. Higher status males, instead of seeking to attract additional wives, would make long-term investments and attend to their offsprings' security.
More personal security and less crime would have meant that many more individuals could shift to investing in long-term payoffs, including businesses, apprenticeships and education. Reduced demand for brides would have increased the age of first marriage for women and gender equality, which would have reduced total fertility.
These expectations are broadly consistent with historical patterns in pre-modern England during the lead up to the industrial revolution.
Stop Telling Kids The Lie That Looks Don't Matter
Julia Baird with a more realistic view than you usually see -- from a 2015 NYT opinion piece:
The advantage of beauty has been long established in social science; we know now that it's not just employers, teachers, lovers and voters who favor the aesthetically gifted, but parents, too.We talk about body shape, size and weight, but rarely about distorted features. And we talk about plainness, but not faces that would make a surgeon's fingers itch.
Even in children's literature, we imply ugliness is either transient or deserved. Hans Christian Andersen wrestled with rejection from his peers as a child, most probably because of his large nose, effeminate ways, beautiful singing voice and love of theater; "The Ugly Duckling" is widely assumed to be the story of his own life. But the moral of that story was that a swan would emerge from the body of an outcast, and that you could not repress the nobility of a swan in a crowd of common ducks.
What if you just stay a duck?
Mr. Hoge tells us we don't need to apply a sepia filter. "I'm happy to concede the point," he says, "that some people look more aesthetically pleasing than others. Let's grant that so we can move to the important point -- so what?
"Some kids are good spellers; some have bad haircuts; some are fast runners; some kids are short; some are awesome at netball. But the kids who are short aren't only short. And the kids who are great at netball aren't only just great at netball. No one is only just one thing. It's the same with appearance."
It's important to talk to children, he says, before "they get sucked into the tight vortex of peer pressure, where every single difference is a case for disaster. Don't tell kids they're all beautiful; tell them it's O.K. to look different."
I say something similar in a piece I wrote back in 2010 for Psychology Today, "The Truth About Beauty":
If you're a woman who wants to land a man, there's this notion that you should be able to go around looking like Ernest Borgnine: If you're "beautiful on the inside," that's all that should count. Right. And I should have a flying car and a mansion in Bel Air with servants and a moat.Welcome to Uglytopia--the world reimagined as a place where it's the content of a woman's character, not her pushup bra, that puts her on the cover of Maxim. It just doesn't seem fair to us that some people come into life with certain advantages--whether it's a movie star chin or a multimillion-dollar shipbuilding inheritance. Maybe we need affirmative action for ugly people; make George Clooney rotate in some homely women between all his gorgeous girlfriends. While we wish things were different, we'd best accept the ugly reality: No man will turn his head to ogle a woman because she looks like the type to buy a turkey sandwich for a homeless man or read to the blind.
...It turns out that the real beauty myth is the damaging one Wolf and other feminists are perpetuating--the absurd notion that it serves women to thumb their noses at standards of beauty. Of course, looks aren't all that matter (as I'm lectured by female readers of my newspaper column when I point out that male lust seems to have a weight limit). But looks matter a great deal. The more attractive the woman is, the wider her pool of romantic partners and range of opportunities in her work and day-to-day life. We all know this, and numerous studies confirm it--it's just heresy to say so.
We consider it admirable when people strive to better themselves intellectually; we don't say, "Hey, you weren't born a genius, so why ever bother reading a book?" Why should we treat physical appearance any differently?
...Like French women, we, too, need to understand that a healthy approach to beauty is neither pretending it's unnecessary or unimportant nor making it important beyond all else. By being honest about it, we help women make informed decisions about how much effort to put into their appearance--or accept the opportunity costs of going ungroomed.
Klink
Colonel. In The Frying Pan. With A Library.
This Used To Be Reason For Institutionalization, Not Reason To Be Sued
I worked with Australians in New York and found them badass -- and have an Australian friend in LA, a tiny and gorgeous woman who is one of the toughest women I know.
But even Australia has been bitten by the SJW bug. From the Brisbane Times:
A university student accused of racial discrimination over a Facebook post has amassed a hefty legal bill, which could blow out to $200,000 if the case goes to trial.Alex Wood is being sued under the Racial Discrimination Act over a 2013 post he wrote after being asked to leave a Queensland University of Technology computer lab reserved for the use of Indigenous students.
"Just got kicked out of the unsigned Indigenous computer room. QUT is stopping segregation with segregation," he posted on a Facebook page called QUT Stalker Space.
The post attracted comments critical of both the incident and the existence of the Indigenous-only space.
"I wonder where the white supremacist lab is," wrote another student, Jackson Powell, who is also being sued.
The third student involved in the lawsuit, Calum Thwaites, has emphatically denied being responsible for a post that included a reference to "ITT N-----s" and has produced a volume of evidence supporting his denial.
The trio are being sued, alongside the university and two staff, by the administration officer who asked Mr Wood to leave the room, Cindy Prior.
An Indigenous woman, Ms Prior went on sick leave following the incident and reports she felt unsafe leaving her home because she was afraid somebody would say something offensive to her.
She also says she was unable to return to work in a role that required her to have face-to-face contact with white people.
Ms Prior is seeking hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages.
Not only do you get special privileges, if anyone talks about how they find that unfair, they will be financially ruined. Imagine starting off after school with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt -- not for school loans, but for legal fees because you said something I've said many times on this blog: You don't stop discrimination by discriminating.
And P.S. It's not an original idea -- in other words, lots of people say and think it.
Get this:
She felt unsafe leaving her home because she was afraid somebody would say something offensive to her.
Is this progress? Or encouraging mental illness and calling it progress?
And this:
She also says she was unable to return to work in a role that required her to have face-to-face contact with white people.
Imagine if a white person said that about other sorts of people.
By the way, the SJW thinking underlying this view is not helping the people whose welfare it professes to have an interest in.
P.S. New York City, where I lived for a good bit of time, is one big open-air commenting section on your looks and everything else.
My favorite comment ever, from a guy crossing the street near me in Times Square: "Never seen a body like that on a white woman!"
via @mike_hasarms
What Feminists Say They Want And What They Find Hot May Be Two Very Different Things
I love the word "hegemony," which seems to be a must-have in any feminist study about anything. (Personally, it makes me hot -- I typically stop reading and go off for a brief daydream about being held down.)
Todd Seavey writes at Splice:
Yes, women may talk a male into being a feminist--but then go find non-feminist mates (one study showed women are less attracted to men once they talk the men into doing household cleaning chores).
I write about this in my most recent book, "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck":
...Women evolved to feel compelled to seek men who are "providers."This hasn't changed, not even for powerful women making a lot of money. Research by evolutionary psychologist David Buss and others has shown that even when women are high-flying big earners, they seem to want men who are higher-flying bigger earners.
This is even true of women who consider themselves feminists. Another evolutionary psychologist, Bruce J. Ellis, wrote in The Adapted Mind of fifteen feminist leaders' descriptions of their ideal man--descriptions that included the repeated use of terms connoting high status, like "very rich," "brilliant," and "genius."
Back in 2012, I also wrote a column about this -- on the subject of "hypergamy," women's evolved preference for marrying up:
Yes, you can have it all -- a high-powered education, a high-powered career, and the perfect high-powered man to go with. Of course, it helps if you're willing to relax your standards a little, like by widening your pool of acceptable male partners to include the recently deceased....So, if you've become the man you would've married in the '50s, don't be surprised if your mating pool starts to seem about the size of the one that comes with Barbie's Dream House. Biology is neither fair nor kind. What those pushing feel-good sociology don't want to believe or tell you is that you increase your options by being hot -- or hotting yourself up the best you can. Obviously, looks aren't all that matter, but while your female genes are urging you to blow past the hot pool boy to get to the moderately attractive captain of industry, men evolved to prioritize looks in women, so powerful men will date powerfully beautiful waitresses and baristas. As evolutionary psychologist Dr. David Buss writes, "Women's physical attractiveness is the best known predictor of the occupational status of the man she marries and the best known predictor of hypergamy."
There isn't a person on the planet who doesn't have to settle. (Maybe Brad Pitt farts in bed.) Want kids? You're more likely to find yourself a husband to have them with if you do as Coontz suggests -- go for a man who's shorter, poorer, and not that intellectually exciting but who's emotionally present and willing to be appointed vice president of diaper rash. Problem solved -- if you can keep from seething with contempt for his lack of ambition and intellect. A lack of respect for one's spouse is definitely not the ground happy marriages are built on. That's why settling is most wisely discussed not as some blanket policy for women, but in terms of what an individual woman wants and what she's willing and able to give up to get it. Realistically assessing that for yourself is how you find your happiest medium -- between possibly being in a panic to find a sperm donor at 42 and trying to make it work now with some guy who watches the soaps after dusting a few surfaces and drinking a few too many glasses of blush wine.
Linkita
Like Chiquita, but with fewer bananas.
The Students Who Actually Need Help At Columbia
No, it isn't the "microaggressed" doing all the squawking about their hurt feelz, but those who are quietly embarrassed about being "micro" of money, food, and housing.
Toni Airaksinen writes in the Columbia Spectator about hungry and homeless students:
The first time a Columbia student asked me, "What's the best library to sleep in?" I thought they were being facetious. When I realized the student's question was serious, I felt my face flush and was overcome with emotion. I did not have an answer.I have been asked this same question by three Columbia students so far. I've also talked with students who experienced homelessness during the summer. One such student from Columbia College told me that he lived on the streets of New York before I was able to find him someone to crash with. Another, a Barnard student, explained to me how she spent nights sleeping in Riverside Park. Some graduate students are also affected.
I have been asked by dozens more about where they can find free food and food pantries. I've had people tell me stories about how they've had sex to pay for groceries and how they've passed out because of hunger.
I've heard and read about all these stories because last year I founded Columbia University Class Confessions, an online project designed to raise awareness of socio-economic issues. It went viral for about a week, and because of that, students began to see me as a person who could connect them to help.
But I am not a social worker, and my abilities are limited. Columbia, an institution with an endowment of $9.6 billion, is not limited by the same constraints that I am. Columbia, like many other universities, has a hunger and homelessness problem. Yes, it only affects a small subset of the population, but nobody should have their ability to learn and self-actualize so dramatically impeded.
Thus, I believe Columbia (inclusive of the graduate schools, the School of General Studies, and Barnard) needs to invest in long-term resources such as a food pantry, social workers, and emergency housing for students at risk.
The "Behave As You Are In Real Life" Rule
More on this in the Internet chapter of "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck."
A Modest Proposal: That High Schools Make Lasagna Out Of The Gutless, Sub-Literate Faculty And Administrators
A Maryland high school student successfully completes a "Write like Swift" assignment -- yes, that famous Jonathan Swift satire in which he, during a famine, suggested that the Irish sell their children to be turned into food for the rich.
That essay, full title, "A Modest Proposal For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland, from Being a Burden on Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick," is a fabulous thing -- meant to mock Brit heartlessness toward the Irish.
Only a person with chimp-like intelligence can mistake Swift's suggestion for anything but satire. A taste:
I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.
And, well, assign high school students to do something in the vein of Swift and, well, if you can't predict that you're going to get some hilariously horrible stuff back, well, you're unqualified to do much more than mop the school's floors.
From Robby Soave at Reason:
Of course, one student who actually followed through on the assignment is now an object of public scorn because his Swiftian essay suggested that black people should be deported to the Sahara Desert in order to solve U.S. racism.This seems perfectly in keeping with the spirit of Swift, who, lest we forget, proposed the murder of children in his famous piece of satire. But other students complained, and the school district had this to say:
"The student chose a subject matter that was clearly insensitive and struck a nerve with students here and staff members here. And so, they have been meetings today where the staff has tried to allow students to express their opinions and say why they're hurt, why they're angered," said Bob Mosier, Anne Arundel County Schools.Meanwhile, the school itself dodged criticisms along the lines of this is exactly what Swift did by noting that the famous essayist could also be credibly accused of "insensitivity":
In a letter sent home to parents, North County Principal Julie Cares said: "Just as one could argue that the content of [the original] piece was ill-advised and insensitive, such is the case with the content of the student's piece."
Julie seems dim, spinally lacking, and not all that literate.
Consider how much better education would be over there in Anne Arundel County Schools if she'd been eaten as a baby. Perhaps in a fricassee or a ragout.
Luridlinks
Or maybe Lurex, or maybe both.
Felix The Car Dealer
There's some great vintage signage in Los Angeles. 
Photo purloined from the phone of Gregg Sutter.
Adult Skills An 18-Year-Old Should Have
Wishful thinking on the part of a former Stanford dean, posting at Quora, on the adult skills every 18-year-old should have:
5. An 18-year-old must be able to handle interpersonal problemsThe crutch: We step in to solve misunderstandings and soothe hurt feelings for them; thus, kids don't know how to cope with and resolve conflicts without our intervention.
Heh. There's a whole industry that's risen up on campus to manage hurt feelz.
The Quora post is by Julie Lythcott-Haims, a former Stanford dean and the author of the NYT bestseller How to Raise an Adult.
via @freerangekids
Government's Plan For Killing A Bunch Of Old People To Save Money
When government's paying for your medical costs, government has a considerable interest in seeing you die after you've become old and aren't working anymore.
This generally isn't what people think of when they think of Medicare -- but it's what they should.
Scott Gottlieb writes in the WSJ about aortic valve replacements -- which are superior to open-heart surgery and cost the same:
An ingenious medical device now allows the heart to be repaired using a catheter that introduces a replacement valve through a main artery in the leg--another miracle of modern medicine.
So, why is our government making them hard to get?
Government bureaucrats feared that the new replacement valve's lower risks and easier administration would mean that many more elderly patients would seek to fix their failing heart valves, pushing up Medicare's total spending. To limit their use, regulators created coverage rules based on a set of strained medical criteria. It was a budget prerogative masquerading as clinical reasoning.This episode is a vivid example of the government's increasing practice to regulate medicine and ration care.
How contrived are the guidelines?
For a patient to be qualified for the aortic valve device, Medicare required two cardiac surgeons to certify first that a patient wasn't a candidate for the open-heart repair.
So, you could have the less risky operation, but government is pushing you to have the riskier, more invasive one.
In fact, it's government policy that you have the riskier, more invasive one.
Nice!
Also mandated was the presence of a cardiothoracic surgeon and an interventional cardiologist in the operating room during the procedure.While regulators argued that both doctors had to be on site to rescue the patient in case of a botched procedure (which is extremely rare), in reality this costly and redundant condition was a not-so-veiled way to squelch "competition" between the two different medical specialties that might stoke wider use of the valve device. Medicare also confined the procedure to primarily large academic medical centers.
The limits represented an unprecedented collaboration between Medicare and the FDA, which put labeling rules on the valves that enabled the restrictions. Such a clumsy and forceful intrusion into the practice of medicine would never let medical care evolve with the pace of scientific advance.
The studies unveiled in Chicago confirm that many more patients could benefit from noninvasive valve repairs, and with a lower risk of death and other complications associated with open-heart surgery.
A commenter on the WSJ writes:
william O'Neill
I too have implanted hundreds of TAVR valves and could not agree more with Dr. Gottlieb. Today we know there are two major trials that show mortality is lower for TAVR than surgery.I cannot use that information today to offer the next lower risk patient I see a TAVR valve
because CMS will not pay for it. A very nice 80 yr old man was referred to me for TAVR evaluation. The man was the sole care provider for a wife with Alzheimers. He had no other family to help with the wife's care. Heart surgery would incapacitate the man and the wife would need other care for months. He wanted a less invasive valve procedure so he could cobble a few days of care for his wife from neighbors. He was distraught to learn that he was too low risk to qualify for a TAVR valve. I would have gladly called to plead his case..but guess what, there is no medical person to appeal to! The mechanism for this rationing is called National Coverage Decision (NCD). NCDs are the end of physician autonomy.
UItimately, as Gottlieb writes:
The alternative to this bureaucratic logjam is to leave the decisions to market participants like health systems and insurers who will compete to offer patients good prices and timelier access to the best services.
Government Has Found Yet Another Way To Violate The Rights Of Citizens -- This Time, An Immigrant Property Owner
Such a rotten and awful thing the city of Dallas is doing to a man who, in 1974, came here from Kenya, worked hard, and built a business -- but doesn't fit in with the hipster business plans they have for the area his auto repair shop is located.
(Back then, reports the WSJ, he opened on Ross Avenue, which was a major auto district.)
But the neighborhood has since gentrified and the city now sees the street as a gateway to its arts district.Mr. Mbogo's auto shop has made him an honest living and sewn his family into the Dallas community, but Hinga's Automotive Company doesn't conform to the city's new hip vision of itself. In 2005 the city changed its zoning laws to exclude auto-related businesses on Ross Avenue. Though Mr. Mbogo owns his property and his repair shop gets top reviews, he is on the cusp of having to shut down the business he spent years working to build.
Since the city rezoned the area to force him and other businesses out, he has been in a fight for time. Originally given a five-year amortization date of 2010, he won an extension to 2013. In 2013 he applied for a special 10-year extension but was given only two more years to use his property as he wished. On Wednesday he will appeal to the Dallas City Council in a last bid to avoid going out of business.
The city defends stripping Mr. Mbogo of his livelihood on grounds that this will allow the area to become more developed. But Mr. Mbogo has no plans to open a yoga shop or wine bar, which means he will have to sell the property, likely at a discount because buyers know it is a forced sale.
Amortization in his case violates Mr. Mbogo's property rights, and its retroactivity strips him of due process. That should alarm Texas voters, who acted to protect property rights after the U.S. Supreme Court's notorious Kelo decision in 2005. In 2009 the state, with overwhelming support from voters, amended its constitution to ban private takings in the name of economic development.
Like eminent domain, amortization takes advantage of property owners, often those of small means who are least equipped to fight.
The amazing Institute for Justice has taken his case.
Property rights are foundational to a democracy, and like so many other rights in our society, they are being eroded. Few people seem to notice or care.
I hope those who do value them donate to the few organizations (Institute for Justice and theFIRE.org among them) who defend the rights of people like Mr. Mbogo pro bono.
As someone who was the recipient of a pro bono defense -- by First Amendment lawyer Marc Randazza, when a TSA worker tried to go after not only my Fourth Amendment rights but my right to speak out about her violation -- I want to remind people that "pro bono" does not mean free.
These defenses can be extremely expensive, especially if they go to court. But they are not just cases for the individual involved. By defending the rights of people like Mr. Mbogo and me, lawyers and organizations who take these cases ultimately defend the rights of all of us.
Linkity
You were expecting a sea otter in a dress?
Who Loses From The Minimum Wage Mandate? Immigrants And Kids Trying To Make Something Of Themselves
It's the "Affordable" Care Act that ruined my (previously affordable) health care all over again. (I still have health care; I just can't afford to use it.)
As some legislators said, they passed that to find out what was in it. Lovely.
They've gone equally "let's close our eyes and hope it works out!" about the minimum wage increases.
Mark Antonio Wright writes at NRO at how it's likely to affect White Castle:
White Castle, established in 1921 in Wichita, Kan., now operates more than 400 locations, with many in the New York City metropolitan area, which makes the news of New York governor Andrew Cuomo's signing a bill that steeply hikes the minimum wage deeply personal. The wage will go from $9 to $15 an hour by 2018 in New York City, with the rest of the state seeing a more gradual phase-in schedule....Unfortunately, despite the Castle's Empire State history, the road ahead may be difficult: "We're disappointed. What this means for White Castle is we really have to evaluate how we manage our business," Richardson tells me. "About 30 percent of every sales dollar covers the pay of our hourly workers, and that doesn't include management."
..."Is there any room to raise prices to cover costs?" Richardson muses. "We think we'd need to increase menu prices by something like 50 percent. It's not something we've done before. It'd be catastrophic."
In fact, Richardson says that White Castle has historically seen its customers react noticeably to even slight increases in menu prices. "Some people think that we can just raise menu prices to cover the increased labor costs," he says. "But it's a ripple effect. We're not the only place to eat, we compete with other restaurants. And people alwayshave 'L cubed': Making Leftovers Last Longer."
Richardson says -- and common sense dictates -- that if menu prices at fast-food chains shoot up by anywhere near 50 percent, many people will stop eating out as much, replacing trips to White Castle with trips to the grocery store. Customers can always vote with their feet and their dollars.
But thinking through the implications of raising prices to cover increased costs, which could reduce sales, isn't what irks Richardson the most: To him and to White Castle, New York's minimum-wage hike is a threat to a culture of opportunity in the neighborhoods that they have always called home.
"Candidly, this could create a whole generation of kids who won't get their first job," Richardson laments. "We're in tough neighborhoods -- and White Castle hasn't abandoned those neighborhoods. On the surface, higher pay seems noble, but it's not - because it denies the reality of the free-enterprise framework that has allowed small businesses like ours to thrive."
White Castle is very proud of providing what for many of its workers is the first rung on the ladder of employment. And it loves to promote from within. Richardson tells me that of White Castle's 450 top employees in restaurant operations, "444 of them started out behind the counter in an hourly job." Susan Milazzo, the regional director in charge of the 35 Castles in the greater New York City area, is a prime example of a worker who started out on the bottom rung and worked her way up.
But some of White Castle's successes are even more exceptional: Richardson tells me the story of Jahangir Kabir, a Bangladeshi immigrant who came to America without knowing a word of English. He got a job as a cook at a White Castle and learned the vernacular by interacting with customers. In four years, he was a general manager. On the way to being promoted to district supervisor in charge of eight Castles, Kabir went to school, earning an MBA from St. Joseph's College in Brooklyn in 2005. Recently he completed a Ph.D. in business administration -- and it all started at White Castle, cooking fries.
Gregg picks up In-N-Out here when he's too tired to make us dinner. I think our bill for two burgers (double-doubles, protein style, with cheese and extra grilled onions) is maybe $8.36, if I'm remembering correctly.
If it rises to, say, twice that -- if In-N-Out's costs are anything like White Castle's, well, it suddenly becomes more motivating to pick up hamburgers at the supermarket.
The Ladies Of Badass-istan
Love this story -- by Norma Costello, in the Independent, about a bunch of Kurdish women fighting ISIS and scaring the crap out of them, because the jihadis believe they won't get into heaven if they get killed by a woman:
"They are so scared of us! If we kill them they can't go to heaven. It makes us laugh.... We make loud calls of happiness when we see them to let them know we are coming. That's when they become cowards," she says. Under the strict interpretation of Islam by Isis, if a fighter is killed by a women he cannot go to heaven, a fact the women clearly relish...."I like that when we kill them they lose their heaven. I don't know how many of them I've killed," Haveen says as she takes a drag of her cigarette. "It's not enough. I won't be happy until they're all dead".
...The YBS has attracted young fighters from neighbouring Syria.
"I came to kick Isis out of these lands," an 18-year-old fighter named Rozaline explains. "I came for the Yazidi women. I saw them cutting women's heads off in Rojava [what Kurds call the three Kurdish enclaves just south of the Turkish border in Syria]. I saw so many awful things. I don't want to see any more cutting and killing".
The former medical student left her studies to spend three months training with the YPG in the mountains in Syria. A recent recruit to the frontline - she arrived four days ago after Isis launched an attack to retake the village - Rozaline says she is there to avenge the Yazidi women.
"I must protect the Yazid women from those animals.... I hate them so much but I'm not afraid. Kurdish women sing when we go into battle. We know they are cowards," she says, while the other 'jin' fighters let out the shrill celebratory uluation call they use in battle.
via ifeminists
Double Dippity-Doo-Dah: California Legislators Collect Salary And Pension At The Same Time
Pension costs are breaking state budgets -- California's especially -- and 17 legislators are engaging in the (legal -- duh, it's government...taxpayer dollars, no big deal) game of picking up a salary and a pension at the same time, writes the AP.
And, of course, check out the hypocrisy:
The 17 include Republican state Sen. John Moorlach of Costa Mesa, a vocal critic of the state's soaring pension debt, according to the Los Angeles Times (http://lat.ms/1RMUT20).Moorlach receives an $83,827 government pension check while making $100,113 a year as a senator. His pension check is based on nearly 20 years of service that included time on the Orange County Board of Supervisors and as the county treasurer.
...The practice is legal under current rules, and advocates for pension system reform say elected officials are entitled to the benefits they earned in their previous careers. But, they add, the costly pension perk is an example of what is wrong with public retirement benefits: Government workers can retire too soon with benefits that the pension systems cannot sustain.
...Assemblyman Tom W. Lackey, R-Palmdale, agrees that additional action is required to make public pensions sustainable, but he defended his benefits. Lackey was 54 when he retired as a sergeant with the California Highway Patrol.
He receives an annual pension of $111,792 from the California Public Employees' Retirement System, in addition to his $97,188 legislative salary. He did not accept a pay raise last year.
The problem is, the amount cities and the state are paying in pensions is unsustainable. And I really don't understand how they'll get out of it. You can't offer somebody a deal with a job and then yank it away years later.
Government: Grease people now, and never mind how to pay for it, because you'll be out of office when the bill comes do.
via @reasonpolicy
Lucky
Linkiano.
Rudeness Is Theft: Geek Squad Stole My Boyfriend's Sleep (And Probably That Of A Bunch Of People On His Block)
As I explain in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck," rudeness is theft -- theft of someone's time, sleep, peace of mind (by persistent dog barking next door), or attention (in the case of the dicklint blabbing into his phone right next to you).
We need to see it that way, I explain, because we now live in societies too big for our brain, which, per British anthropologist Robin Dunbar's research, appear to be adapted for small social groups where everybody knows everybody.
Because of this, we don't quite know what to do about rude strangers. (In our small ancestral groups, the need to maintain reputation kept even the biggest buttwads in line.)
Seeing rudeness as theft changes that -- because we hate to be robbed, and we have some get-up-and-go to go after people who steal from us.
About the subject of this post, last week, my boyfriend, who does not live at a truck stop, awakened to that awful BEEEEEP-BEEEEEP-BEEEEEP! truck backing up sound.
He's in an apartment on a residential street in LA's Fairfax district.
He looked outside. It was a guy in a Geek Squad van backing out of a driveway, driving back in, and then backing out again. And again. Early in the morning. Early enough that most people would be presumed to be sleeping.
Woke him up, and then he couldn't get back to sleep, which meant one of those fun days of being tired.
This is rotten and ridiculous, because Geek Squad doesn't need to have this awful beeping installed on their trucks and vans, which, per a Google image search, don't even seem to be that big -- and sometimes are cars. They could get backup cameras!
But whoops -- backup cameras impose a greater cost on them, whereas BEEEEEP-BEEEEEP-BEEEEEP!s are cheap for them, but imposes the cost on, oh, lots of strangers. Best of all, in the wake of those costs (and I do mean wake), these strangers will probably do nothing but grumble and end up tired all day (or just be disturbed from whatever they're focusing on and annoyed).
Well, businesses should pay their costs out of their profits and not shift them onto others, as the late British economist Pigou said. Pigou was for laws to force businesses to do this; I prefer social pressure to do the right thing.
Geek Squad needs to ante up -- and stop stealing people's sleep, attention, and peace of mind.
P.S. I forgot to add this -- something Gregg and I talked about on the phone: Deaf children or people may not be able to hear that beeping. So, Geek Squad hates deaf people? (And yes,I know the exec who made the decision to save money by annoying people around Geek Squad visits probably just didn't consider that.)
College Students Now Need A Special Dictionary For All The New SJW Definitions Of Words
There's a piece by Haley Samsel in American University's The Eagle Online about a Black Lives Matter event on campus:
The event continued with remarks from Erika Totten, a Black Lives Matter activist who runs "emotional emancipation circles" for people of African descent in D.C. She broke down in tears as she recounted her experiences working with students of color who came in "hurting and crying" about the trauma they experienced at AU."That trauma shows up in our backs, our knees, and in our relationships with other people," Totten told the audience. "Black people are resilient...there is a lot we have been holding onto."
After mentioning President Neil Kerwin's op-ed in the Eagle last fall, Totten spoke out against the concept of inclusion, telling the crowd to take the term out of their vocabulary and replace it with "collaboration."
"Inclusion is a white supremacist tactic that really means assimilation," Totten said. "What exactly are you attempting to include people in? A system that has proven to be traumatic and violent? A system that labels them as other? It's not the way to go."
As somebody who was excluded by other kids until about age 15, I've always thought inclusion was a wonderful thing.
In fact, these days, I have kind of have a radar for people at parties and elsewhere who seem uncomfortable about not fitting in, and I try to introduce them, include them, make them feel welcome.
Oops -- sorry...is "welcome" now a "white supremacist" word, too?
And, if so...is it just if you use the lone word "welcome," or is "you're welcome" now out, too?
via @ScottGreenfield
Bill Clinton On The Emperor's New Gang Colors
Bill Clinton gave a scolding to Black Lives Matters protesters in Philly the other day, on the black lives nobody cares much about -- those snuffed out by other black people (who are not cops).
As Clinton put it:
"I don't know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped up on crack and sent them out into the street to murder other African American children--maybe you thought they were good citizens."
Lumpy
Linky got bumpy. Or maybe Bumpy, and they're the second-string Seven Dwarfs.
Concept Creep: How Chalked "Trump 2016" Messages Came To Be Seen As Death Threats And Why I Got Accused Of Hating "Brown People" Yesterday
Great piece in The Guardian on this by Jonathan Haidt and Nick Haslam (also explained at greater length on Heterodox Academy):
So how did it come to pass that many Emory students felt victimised and traumatised by innocuous and erasable graffiti?One of us (Haslam) recently published an essay titled "Concept creep: Psychology's expanding concepts of harm and pathology." Many concepts are "creeping" - they are being "defined down" so that they are applied promiscuously to milder and less objectionable events.
Take the concept of bullying:
It has crept outward or "horizontally" to encompass new forms of bullying, such as among adults in the workplace or via social media. More problematic, though, is the creeping downward or "vertically"so that the bar has been lowered and more minor events now count as bullying.For example, the criteria of intentionality and repetition are often dropped. What matters most is the subjective perception of the victim. If a person believes that he or she has been made to suffer in any way, by a single action, the victim can call it bullying.
As the definition of bullying creeps downward for researchers, it also creeps downward in school systems, most of which now enforce strict anti-bullying policies.
This may explain why Emory students, raised since elementary school with expansive notions of bullying and subjective notions of victimhood, could perceive the words "Trump 2016" as an act of bullying, intimidation, perhaps even violence, regardless of the intentions of the writer.
A second key concept that has crept downward is trauma. Medicine and psychiatry once reserved that word for physical damage to organs and tissues, such as a traumatic brain injury. But by the 1980s, events that caused extreme terror, such as rape or witnessing atrocities in war, were recognised as causing long-lasting effects known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The original criteria for PTSD required that a traumatic event "would evoke significant symptoms of distress in almost everyone" and would be "outside the range of usual human experience."
But in recent trauma scholarship these stringent criteria are gone; like bullying, trauma is now assessed subjectively. In one recent definition used by a US Government agency, trauma refers to anything that is "experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or threatening and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual's functioning and physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being."
It's not surprising that I got a letter from a woman who believed she had PTSD -- because she dated a compulsive liar for three months. Here's an excerpt from my correction of her "concept creep" in my column:
Tales from your PTSD support group:THEM: "I was held captive with a burlap bag over my head and beaten with electrical cords."
YOU: "I'm right there with you, bro. This dude I was dating told me his Ferrari was paid for, and it turned out to be leased!"YOU: "My boyfriend pretended he was buying a mansion, but he really lives with his parents."
THEM: "That's terrible. Can you help me put on my prosthetic leg?"Sure, according to Pat Benatar, "love is a battlefield." But spending three months fighting with a sociopathic boyfriend doesn't leave you ducking for cover whenever a car backfires like a guy who did three tours of IED disposal in Iraq and came home with most of the parts he went in with. Ofer Zur, a psychologist who specializes in treating post-traumatic stress disorder, explains, "To meet the diagnostic criteria for PTSD, the stressor experienced must involve actual or threatened death or serious injury."
Haidt and Haslan point out something I've long recognized: Self-proclaimed victims get status out of their victimhood (as well as unearned power over those they accuse of victimizing them).
Accordingly, I experienced something outrageous yesterday.
I was in the green room at a big event, waiting for Gregg to show up, and editing pages from a chapter I'm working on for my next book.
I'd chosen a two-person table (instead of sitting down with a group at a big table, which I would otherwise have done -- being a friendly person and an extrovert).
It was a crowded room where I could tune out the din just fine (because our brains do that). Then, all of a sudden, some guy sits down at the table behind me -- right behind me -- and starts having a loud cellphone call.
I waited for it to pass. And waited, and waited.
Because I was an invited guest at the event (and grateful for that and not wanting to cause any problems for the organizers), I eventually just turned around and gave him a look a couple times (which most people seem to understand as "Hey, I'm bothered by your call" -- that is, people whose orientation is as mine is: caring about being considerate of other people).
This guy, amazingly, called out to me -- accused me of being disturbed by him because he is "the only brown person."
The thought that actually rose up in my mind that I (as an invited guest) didn't speak: "No, it's because you're the only asshole."
Who gets yakkitying on their cellphone loudly and assumes that somebody's giving them a look out of, yes, racism?!
Assuming this knowing zero about the person they're accusing.
This was particularly hilarious because the guy didn't look "brown." And I think he was upset when I told him I had no idea he was "brown" and that he looked white, just like me. (Truth is, nobody's quite as white as I am -- I have barely gone outdoors all year while writing this book -- but you get my drift.)
I tried to politely explain the science to him. (Though I thought his leap to "brown hate!" was ludicrous, I don't like to be a source of hurt for people, and who likes to be falsely accused of being a racist?)
Here's some of what I tried to tell him -- which I laid out in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck" -- on how a one-sided conversation is interruptive in to the brain in a way a two-sided call is not.
A public cell phone call is an invasion of mental privacy.Cellboors in restaurants and coffeehouses will often justify shoving their conversations on us by sneering, "What's the difference whether two people are sitting at a table talking or one person's talking to somebody on the other end of the country?" There is a difference. Research by University of York psychologist Andrew Monk and colleagues showed that a one-sided conversation commandeers the brain in a way a two-sided conversation does not, apparently because your brain tries to fill in the side of the conversation you can't hear. (It doesn't help that people tend to bark into their cell phones in the way white men in cowboy movies talked to Indians.)
A team at Cornell led by then grad student Lauren Emberson deemed these one-sided conversations "halfalogues" and rein- forced Monk's findings when they tested halfalogues made up of gibberish words against those with words that could be understood. They found that when the words spoken were incomprehensible, the brain drain was removed; there were no costs imposed on bystanders' attention. So, although many see public cell phone yakking as a noise issue, which it often is, it's the words being spoken that are the real problem. Basically, even if somebody on a cell phone is trying to keep their voice down, they're probably giving many around them an irritating case of neural itching.
This mind-jacking is an annoying side effect of the very useful human capacity to predict what others are thinking and feeling and use that information to predict how they'll behave. This is called "mental state attribution" or "theory of mind" (as in, the theory you come up with about what's going on in somebody else's mind). When you see a man looking deep into a woman's eyes, smiling tenderly and then getting down on one knee, your understanding and experience of what this usually means helps you guess that he's about to ask "Will you marry me?" and not "Would you mind lending me a pen?"
Unfortunately, this mind-reading ability isn't something we can turn on and off at will. "It's . . . pretty much automatic," blogged University of Pennsylvania linguist Mark Liberman. "You can't stop yourself from reading [others'] minds any more than you can stop yourself from noticing the color of their clothes." But when you're only getting half the cues, like from one side of a stranger's cell phone conversation, your brain has to work a lot harder, and it interferes with your ability to focus your thoughts on other things.
Sound a little more plausible than that some girl hates you because you're brown?
For the record -- and I don't want to name this guy, whose identity, to some degree, seems to be built around considering himself a victim -- he is a humanities prof who seems to be of Arab origin, who looks like Ricky Riccardo (whom I always found wildly handsome).
Truly, when I saw him walk past me to sit down my first thought is: "Wow, he's handsome and beautifully dressed."
It was then dismaying when Mr. Handsome started yammering on his cell. I realize that may people don't know about the science I explain in my book, so I will gently explain it if somebody's open to it -- which I did, or rather, tried to. But the guy clung -- like a rat on driftwood -- to his knee-jerk assumption that I was some KKK-type chiquita, hating him for his "brownness."
Meanwhile, because I hate "brown people," my previous assistant was named Farasati (Iranian origin) and was about six shades "browner" than this guy, and I adored him.
To work for me, I don't care what sex or color you are (assistants have been black, white, Korean, gay, straight, male and female) or whether you've been in jail (current assistant, whom I love the hell out of). Also, I have, in my last two ads, encouraged physically disabled people to apply, since I work with my assistant over Skype (making this an ideal job for somebody who has a hard time getting to a workplace).
And, regarding this guy, really, what sort of person is yakking into their cell and somebody near them looks annoyed, and their first thought is "She hates me for my color!" -- and especially when they're somebody you'd see and think, "White guy!"
It is psychologically easier than being accountable. And again, proclaiming oneself a victim is a way to unearned status.
And back to Haslam's paper (full text here):
12) IMPLICATIONS OF CONCEPT CREEP Those drawn to a pessimistic assessment of these changes might argue that the expanding meaning of concepts such as abuse, bullying, and mental disorder is creating a culture of weakness, fragility, and excuse-making, in which everyone is a victim and no one is responsible for their predicament....Understanding what drives this trend and evaluating its costs and benefits are important goals for people who care about psychology's place in our cultures. Equally important is the task of deciding whether the trend should be encouraged, ignored, or resisted. Ultimately this question depends on whether we would be content for most interpersonal frictions to be ascribed to abuse and bullying, for everyday stresses to be described as traumas and habits as addictions, for mental disorder to be more common than its absence, and for prejudice to be seen as a constant undercurrent in social life.
SCOTUS Yawns About Random Border Patrol Stops In US
Jacob Sullum wrote at Reason a few weeks back (sorry -- forgot to post this then):
Today the Supreme Court passed up an opportunity to impose limits on a disturbing exception to the Fourth Amendment that allows random detention of motorists within 100 miles of a border--a zone that includes two-thirds of the U.S. population. Since the rationale for these stops is immigration enforcement, they are supposed to be very brief. Yet in 2010 Richard Rynearson, an Air Force officer who brought the case that the Court today declined to hear, was detained at a U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint in Uvalde County, Texas, for a total of 34 minutes, even though there was no reason to believe he was an illegal alien or a criminal.
This sort of behavior from our government is not the stuff of a democracy but a totalitarian state.
It's being used as the "cop"-costumed TSA thugs use their power -- to push around citizens they, as government-repurposed mall workers, would never have the power to push around in life.
Where does the Supreme Court's decision not to hear this leave us?
The Supreme Court's decision to pass over Rynearson v. Lands leaves American motorists (especially those driving in the states that comprise the 5th Circuit) vulnerable to the whims of armed government agents who can stop them at will. "The net effect of the Fifth Circuit's decision is quite remarkable," Rynearson's brief concludes. "It permits the Border Patrol to conduct suspicionless seizures free of the constraints that obtain even for suspicion-based seizures--to hold someone more than 30 minutes for purportedly brief questioning, while spending most of the time pursuing unrelated inquiries and calling an individual's employer. Most troublingly, the Fifth Circuit allows agents to unreasonably extend a detention because an individual asserted his rights--all without even the barest minimum of individual suspicion at any time during the encounter."
Here's the kind of ugliness these government-empowered turds put citizens through -- sans probable cause:
Two minutes into the stop, Rynearson presented his military ID and his driver's license, placing them against the window on the driver's side door. That should have been the end of the stop, since a driver's license is the only form of identification motorists are legally required to carry, and Texas issues licenses only to U.S. citizens or legal residents. But the Border Patrol agent questioning Rynearson--identified in the lawsuit only by his last name, Lands--insisted those IDs were not good enough, at which point Rynearson offered his military and civilian passports.Instead of immediately verifying the passports and sending Rynearson on his way, Lands and his supervisor, Raul Perez, detained him for another 23 minutes, much of which was spent on irrelevant calls to Rynearson's military base. It seems clear from Rynearson's recording of the encounter that Lands and Perez, irked by his insufficiently deferential attitude, decided to punish him by detaining him much longer than necessary while trying to get him in trouble with his employer. Rynearson, who had started recording his interactions with the Border Patrol because he was tired of being hassled at the checkpoint, declined to roll down his window all the way, declined to get out of his car, and repeatedly asked if he was free to go and, if not, why he was being detained.
When I was a kid, having read about how things were in the USSR, I was so amazed at my luck to be American and proud of our freedoms -- freedoms that are rapidly being eroded, and to the sound of...crickets.
That's one of the more disturbing things -- how few Americans even care about the erosion.
Advice Goddess Free Swim
It's Saturday night, and I'm just back from LA Times Festival of Books and a little tired, so you pick the topics. I'll post more on Sunday.
P.S. One link per comment or my spam filter will eat your post.
Pretty Soon, The Only Right Left On Campus Will Be The Right To Remain Silent
Feminist groups are now trying to get colleges to go waaay out of bounds on shutting down speech -- just as they they have in dealing with sexual assault accusations (removing due process from men).
Now -- from The College Fix:
The Feminist Majority Foundation and dozens of similar groups are threatening to pursue legislation that would regulate Yik Yak if the company, founded by recent graduates of Furman University, does not turn over the identities of alleged harassers to authorities "outside law enforcement."The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the groups held a news conference in Washington on Wednesday to announce the anti-harassment campaign.
It includes a letter to the Department of Education asking that it require colleges to identify and discipline "perpetrators" on Yik Yak and create "technological barriers" to using apps that "harassers favor," the Chronicle said.
The groups are mad at Yik Yak for requiring a court order to turn over such information and for relying on users to "downvote" boorish content so that it quickly disappears from view.
One of the lawyers for the feminist groups told the news conference she had convinced the Department of Ed's Office for Civil Rights to investigate the University of Mary Washington in Virginia for not taking action against harassing posts on Yik Yak.
Here's a solution for those who are upset by the discussion on Yik Yak -- avoid it.
If information on it is defamatory, instead of trying to shut down speech for all, go get yourself a lawyer and get a court order to unmask the person.
And, because you're maybe curious, what kind of horror is there on Yik Yak? This is a screenshot from the Chron link above.
Another one -- apparently to get around the filter -- said, "Gonna tie those feminists to a radiator and grape them in the mouth."
I've gotten a good many threats via Internet and mail, by the way.
How many people here think actual rapists are posting on Yik Yak -- announcing that they're going to commit a crime?
Here's some law on this:
Threats of Violence Against Individuals.--The Supreme Court has cited three "reasons why threats of violence are outside the First Amendment": "protecting individuals from the fear of violence, from the disruption that fear engenders, and from the possibility that the threatened violence will occur."In Watts v. United States, however, the Court held that only "true" threats are outside the First Amendment. The defendant in Watts, at a public rally at which he was expressing his opposition to the military draft, said, "If they ever make me carry a rifle, the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J."
He was convicted of violating a federal statute that prohibited "any threat to take the life of or to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States."
The Supreme Court reversed. Interpreting the statute "with the commands of the First Amendment clearly in mind," it found that the defendant had not made a "true 'threat,"' but had indulged in mere "political hyperbole."
The Ninth Circuit concluded that a "true threat" is "a statement which, in the entire context and under all the circumstances, a reasonable person would foresee would be interpreted by those to whom the statement is communicated as a serious expression of intent to inflict bodily harm upon that person."
"It is not necessary that the defendant intend to, or be able to carry out his threat; the only intent requirement for a true threat is that the defendant intentionally or knowingly communicate the threat."
Slinky
Sultry little linkiepoos.
I Found The "Cleveland Caucasians" Shirt Hilarious
That's because I don't go around all butthurt about everything, which many people seem to do as a form of identity.
So, to backtrack a little, ESPN, sports journalist Bomani Jones wore a shirt that, instead of "Cleveland Indians," read "Cleveland Caucasians."
Supposedly, it is a crime against everything good and right to have "Cleveland Indians" as a name.
From Raw Story's David Edwards, Jones said about the Indian guy on their shirts:
"The reason they won't get rid of Chief Wahoo -- it's completely indefensible -- is because they can still sell stuff with it," Jones added. "They can say they're going to deemphasize it, but they're not going to set money on fire.""If you're quiet about the Indians and now you've got something to say about my shirt, I think it's time for introspection."
Well, I wasn't in a panty bunch over the Indians (there or in any other sports team), nor am I in a panty bunch over the Cleveland Caucasians. I think it's very funny. I even want a shirt like that, save for how I don't actually wear any t-shirt with messages, save for a USMC one a Marine sent me that's, um, figure-fitting, and a pink "Yes To Michigan!" shirt, also figure-fitting, that I got in a thrift store in Joshua Tree 20 years ago.
And yes, I think it would be okay and quite funny to call the team the Cleveland Ashkenazi Jews and then have a little cartoon of a guy in a "Hey, 1892 Poland called and they want their look back" black hat and little ear curlies. (As long as it's a cartoon figure and it's funny and not some hate thing, why should anybody be mad?)
Though...admittedly...you'd better not hire Ashkenazi Jews (like me) for your basketball team -- if you'd like the team to win at basketball instead of chess.
RELATED: Who *Isn't* Complaining About "The Redskins"?
Well, the other "Redskins" team from Red Mesa High School -- a school with a population that is mostly Navajo.It's kind of like "queer." It used to be a term of disparagement. Gays reclaimed it.
Not only do the kids on the Red Mesa team not view it as racist, they seem to love it. Check out their mascot -- a painted-faced "brave" in a horse carrying a spear.
You Aren't Really Your Kids' Parents
You're just babysitting them for the government.
In the latest case of parents being arrested for exercising judgment over what their kids are mature enough for and when, a South Carolina mom let her 9-year-old nephew walk her 3-year-old son to a McDonald's less than a quarter of a mile away.
I'm not a parent, but I've seen with kids that if you give them responsibility, they rise to the occasion. And some individual kids are quite responsible, even at a young age. I was. I got left with neighbors' infant child when I was 12. I babysat my sisters from...maybe age 8 on, though maybe I'm a little foggy on that.
In this case, the copper said the boys had to cross a street (wow!) and pass businesses and homes to get to the place, which supposedly put their safety at risk.
At 9, you know how to cross a street. If you don't, you're probably developmentally disabled. Correct me if I'm wrong parents -- I know you will.
Lenore Skenazy writes at Reason that the mother in this case had trusted the older boy to "take care of his cousin":
Which, apparently, he was doing. Nonetheless, when the kids were spotted without an adult, or drone, or armored tank to keep them safe, the cops swooped in and accompanied them back to their home. Then the Spartanburg police department then issued an arrest warrant for mom.Because anytime a child is unsupervised, a parent must be arrested.
...Seems like America would like nothing better than to raise children who are completely inert unless an adult is on-hand to make sure nothing happens.
My "job" as a kid was to come back home for dinner before dark.
Latke
Fried potato links.
Crimes Against Feelings At The University Of New Hampshire
University of New Hampshire has published a "Bias-Free Language Guide." A sampling from its contents:
Forms of Aggression
Micro-assault, verbal attack.
- Example: "Why do you need a wheelchair? I saw you walk... You can walk, right?" to a person who is using a mobile chair for long-distance travel.
- Example: "Dogs smell funny" to a blind person using a guide dog.
Micro-insult, a form of verbal or silent demeaning through insensitive comments or behavior.
- Example: A person exhibits a stubborn, begrudging attitude, that they will accommodate an accessibility request. The verbalization is appropriate but the tone seems insulting.
Micro-invalidation, degrading a person's wholeness through making false assumptions about the other's ability, causing a sense of invalidation.
- Example: "You have a learning disability? How can you be a lawyer?" to a person with a learning disability.
- Example: "The new international student is having language challenges." (More appropriately, we would say that the new international student is concentrating on learning a new language.)
Okay, let's take on one of these -- asking a person in a wheelchair about what the deal is, for one.
No, let's not do that -- let's not engage with the person in the wheelchair; much better to do what many people do -- just look right through them.
The late quadriplegic cartoonist John Callahan was a friend of mine, and with his extremely un-PC cartoons, tried to show that people in wheelchairs are people -- meaning you can joke about them (not to mention ask them questions about themselves), same as other people.
Here's a bit about Callahan from an advice column I wrote, responding to a letter from a guy with a disability -- some kind of shaking disorder:
Your tremors, however, become public the moment you walk into a place to meet a woman -- which is actually the perfect time to make a crack like, "Is it freezing[ "Don't worry; I only shake like this on first dates...and every day since I was born."] in here, or do I have a muscular disorder?" Maybe while wearing a T-shirt with "That's my groove thing I'm shaking."How dare I joke about a disability?! Truth be told, I can't really take credit for this approach. I call it "The Callahan," after my late quadriplegic cartoonist friend, John Callahan, who buzzed around Portland in a motorized wheelchair, cracking jokes like, "See my new shoes? I hear they're very comfortable."
Callahan understood that a person's disability often becomes a big wall between them and the rest of us because we're afraid of doing or saying the wrong thing. But through his refusal to, uh, pussychair around the subject, Callahan told people how the disabled want to be treated, which is "just like everyone else." And because the rest of us get poked fun of, Callahan did cartoons featuring disabled people. One of these has a posse on horseback in the desert looking down at an empty wheelchair. The posse leader reassures the others, "Don't worry, he won't get far on foot" -- which became the title of Callahan's autobiography.
Adopting a more Callahan-esque attitude -- using humor -- would allow you to set the tone for your condition to be just a fact about you instead of a fact people pity you for. And by offering to answer questions they might have, you can shrink any big scary mysteries down to a more manageable size.
Callahan also had no problem with people asking him about why he was in a chair or anything else.
This mandate about how all people in wheelchairs supposedly must be treated is infantilizes them. It also is likely to cause people to not talk to or engage with people who are disabled, out of fear that they'll commit some speech crime.
If somebody finds your question insensitive, let them be a grownup and shut you down.
Treating people like precious little victims from the get-go -- and assuming they can't speak for themselves if they're offended (or even that you're offending them by asking about something about them) -- is seriously insulting to anybody who wants to be seen as a person and not a disabled person, or a whatever person (insert color, etc., here).
New Rule: White People Are Not Allowed To Have Opinions About Black Voters
Well, it's possible they are able to have them but must keep them tucked away inside, perhaps next to their guilt at breaking Auntie Martha's candy dish but never admitting to it.
At Gawker, a person who is entitled to write about black people -- a black person named Jeff Ihaza -- writes about the error white man Jonathan Chait made in thinking he, a man with yards of white skin, could do the same:
Jonathan Chait is a columnist for New York Magazine, a respectable publication with many great writers. Chait, a white man, is also one of our nation's foremost experts on what black people are thinking.In his latest column titled, "The Pragmatic Tradition of African American Voters," Chait argues that Hillary Clinton's "firm command of the Democratic primary" is a result of her popularity amongst black voters. The black voter, according to Chait, is a pragmatic one.
...In some ways, Chait's column makes sense. Black voters (as well as women voters) have plenty more to lose with a republican in office and that has been true for some time. Still, Chait seems to fall into a line of thinking that has become quite common amongst well-meaning white people--that all black people are the same.
...Mr. Chait quotes Brett Gadsden, a historian and professor of African-American studies at Emory who told him, in an email "a few months ago," that "Black voters have always [been] faced with the difficult choice between candidates who have only offered incremental support for their concerns and have been perfectly willing to turn their backs, albeit to slightly different degrees, on black communities when it was politically expedient."
Again, this is true. To be a black voter, or a female voter, or basically any voter who is not white and a man, means taking the easier pill to swallow. Chait's column, and the line of thinking it pushes, seems to think there is only one such option in this election, which is fine. People disagree on things all of the time. What makes Chait's column a flaming pile of shit is that it uses black people as a tool for political gain. It says "see, black people know struggle and they support Hillary." It is a refrain that has gone uncomfortably unchecked from Clinton supporters.
Over and over, Gawkerblackdude says, "Well, I kind of agree..."
...leading to a Jonathan Chait tweetslap:
@jonathanchait
Gawker writer admits he agrees with all my points, argues I had no right to make them because I'm white
Islam Is Colonialism
Daniel Greenfield explains at Front Page about the bullshit claim that Israel "colonized" Palestine, "a country that doesn't exist and which has produced nothing worth studying except terrorism":
The only reason there's a debate about the Temple Mount is because Caliph Omar conquered Jerusalem and ordered a mosque built on a holy Jewish site. The only reason there's a debate about East Jerusalem is because invading Muslim armies seized half the city in 1948, bombed synagogues and ethnically cleansed the Jewish population to achieve an artificial Muslim settler majority. The only Muslim claim to Jerusalem or to any other part of Israel is based purely on the enterprise of colonial violence.There is no Muslim claim to Israel based on anything other than colonialism, invasion and settlement.
Israel is littered with Omar mosques, including one built in the courtyard of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, because Islam is a colonial entity whose mosques testify to their invasive origins by celebrating colonialism as their true religion. The faith of Islam is the sworn religion of the sword.
Islam is a religion of colonialism that spread through invasion, settlement and conquest. Its caliphs, from the original invaders, including Omar, to the current Caliph of ISIS, wielded and wield religious authority in the service of the Islamic colonial enterprise.
Allah is the patron deity of colonialism. Jihad is just colonialism in Arabic. Islamic theology is nothing but the manifest destiny of the Muslim conquest of the world, colonial settler enterprises dressed up in the filmy trappings of religion appropriated from the culture of conquered Jewish and Christian minorities. Muslim terrorism is a reactionary colonial response to the liberation movements of the indigenous Jewish population.
Even "Allahu Akbar" did not originate as a religious sentiment. It does not mean "God is Great", as it is often mistranslated. It was Mohammed's taunt to the Jews he was ethnically cleansing. His purge of a minority group proved that "Allah was Greater." Islamic colonialism is used to demonstrate the existence of Allah. And the best way to worship Allah is through the colonialism of the Jihad.
As luj pointed out here recently, the Jews bought land from the Arabs -- terrible, mosquito-ridden, swampy, or sandy land...crap land -- and for inflated prices.
Up Your Nose With A Linky Hose
Mature, I know. I'm like that.
Colonel Sanders Or Bernie Sanders?
Bernie Sanders is more qualified to be president than my water glass -- but not by much.
Jonathan Capeheart, in the WaPo, runs bits of Sanders's talk with the New York Daily News, and the guy's cluelessness and apparent lack of interest in even considering the issues are pretty stunning.
As he put it:
The more I read the transcript, the more it became clear that the candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination doesn't know much beyond his standard stump speech about breaking up the banks and how he had the good judgment to vote against the Iraq War in 2002.
Here's one:
1. Breaking up the banksDaily News: Okay. Well, let's assume that you're correct on that point. How do you go about doing [breaking up the banks]?
Sanders: How you go about doing it is having legislation passed, or giving the authority to the secretary of treasury to determine, under Dodd-Frank, that these banks are a danger to the economy over the problem of too-big-to-fail.
Daily News: But do you think that the Fed, now, has that authority?
Sanders: Well, I don't know if the Fed has it. But I think the administration can have it.
Daily News: How? How does a President turn to JPMorgan Chase, or have the Treasury turn to any of those banks and say, "Now you must do X, Y and Z?"
Sanders: Well, you do have authority under the Dodd-Frank legislation to do that, make that determination.
Daily News: You do, just by Federal Reserve fiat, you do?
Sanders: Yeah. Well, I believe you do.
On the other side, I'll vote for my dog or the urn containing your dead cat before I vote for Donald Trump.
Second-Grade Sex Ed(ible) Attempt By Feminist Mom (Yes, Those Are Vagina Cookies She Brought In)
Yes, I'm all for being comfortable with our sexuality -- but maybe we can wait a few years beyond second grade to "celebrate the vagina"?
Also, I call it the "vagina" because that's what people call it (and that's how I write) -- but if she really wanted to "celebrate" it, she'd call the "vulva."
AmericanNews.com's Charles Roberts, a parent ("Autumn" -- not her real name) volunteered to bake cookies for the weekly snack the teacher uses to reward students' good behavior:
When Autumn delivered the cookies, she told the teacher to use them as an opportunity to teach her students about vaginas. What do cookies have to do with vaginas? Our teacher was about to find out. Here's what happened next."Baffled and completely caught off guard I slowly peel the aluminum foil off the pan to behold a plethora of sugar cookie and frosting vaginas," the teacher writes. "Not just any old vagina, but ALL KINDS OF VAGINAS. There were small, puffy, white, brown, shaved, bald, and even a fire crotch with beef curtains. Perplexed, I give the parent the most professional look I can muster and quietly reply 'I'm sorry Autumn, but I can't give these to my students. This just isn't appropriate.'"
That's when things got ugly.
Autumn snapped back and said the teacher "should be proud of [her] vagina," and accused her of "settling for woman's role in life." Mind you, all of this happened in front of the students.
The teacher says she had no choice but to "stand and stare at the woman as the word 'vagina' is yelled in front of my second grade class about 987,000 times. Finally after what seemed like an eternity, she storms out of the class leaving her vagina cookies on my desk."
Later that night, the teacher received a scathing email from Autumn. In it, Autumns says the teacher is "closed minded" and "settled for less when you became a teacher because that is known for a women's job." She says that women need to stand together and "inform people about the vagina and how to please it." She closes the email by saying "I hope you end up with an abusive husband that beats on you every night."
Lovely.
P.S. What's wrong with a (sic) "women's job"?
A few of the bits from the mom's message to the teacher:
"We as women should stand together and inform people about the vagina and how to please it."
As somebody said on Reddit -- "To 2nd graders?"
A response:
Yeah, everyone's debating "true feminism" and I'm sitting here thinking about how much easier life would have been if I had learned the secrets of pleasuring a woman at age 8.
Another:
"He's performing cunnilingus at a highschool level!"
*This story was originally posted about a year ago on Reddit by a friend of the teacher.
via @X_Aeon_X
Hillary LinkedIn
Ashe Schow, who wrote the WashEx piece on how New York is not Hillary Clinton's "home state" -- though it is a convenient location from which to rake in bajillions from Wall Street:
With the Empire State primary just a couple of weeks away, political pundits are starting to wonder whether Clinton will be able to win the state where she maintains a residence....New York is not Clinton's "home state," it's just where she maintains an address. She wasn't born there, she didn't grow up there, and she never lived there until after she and her husband Bill left the White House. Even then, she only moved there because Bill had the connections to help her mount a senate campaign (which she won) that could lead to a presidential campaign.
....I get that people move, and that the term "home state" is somewhat subjective.
...It seems Clinton would have moved anywhere if she could have mounted a successful Senate bid there. New York provided her a simple path forward with help from her and her husband's friends.
As I tweeted to Schow:
@amyalkon
Home is where the illegal server is.
Link Peas
Garbanzos to their friends.
When Yale Became Nursery School With Beer
Alexandra Wolfe writes in the WSJ of Erika Christakis's view. Does that name sound familiar? She's a lecturer who left Yale after she and her fellow dorm-master husband were screamed at by a bunch of college-age, tantrumming infants (see Lukianoff piece below):
Erika Christakis, an early-education expert who most recently taught at Yale University, thinks that adults and children have reversed roles. Adults, she says, now act like children, reading children's books and dressing like college students, while children have become overscheduled and hyper-pressured, their childhoods cut short. "Adults are paying attention to their own self-care with mindfulness and spa care and yoga, yet children are really suffering," she says.In her new book, "The Importance of Being Little," Ms. Christakis, 52, argues that giving children less downtime has made them more fragile. She fears that overburdening them with facts, figures and extracurricular activities has led to a decrease in their autonomy and resilience. Giving children free time to play with others, she says, allows them to learn how to solve problems and deal with conflicts.
In this she echoes the work of psychologists Peter Gray and Gabrielle Principe, and anthropologist David Lancy. From one of my syndicated advice columns:
When I was growing up, I'd have to play with toys by myself or go out and poke a worm with a stick. These days, parents go way over the top in how involved they think they should be in playtime, and kids exploit this, extorting constant adult attention. Developmental psychologist Peter Gray explains that play evolved to be the "primary means" for children to learn to solve their own problems, overcome their fears, and take control of their lives, and this parents as playmates thing may stunt kids' self-reliance. Gray, like anthropologist David Lancy, points out that parents being all up in kids' playtime business is a very recent development. Throughout human history, parents have been too busy doing the little things -- you know, like trying to keep the family from starving to death -- to read the hieroglyphic version of "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" to their kid 500 times in a row.
More from Wolfe on Christakis and the crybullies:
Ms. Christakis herself was at the center of a conflict last year over Halloween costumes on campus. It started when Yale's Intercultural Affairs Committee advised students that they should not be culturally insensitive by wearing feathered headdresses, turbans or "war paint" or by "modifying skin tone" and linked to a website listing appropriate and inappropriate costumes. In response, Ms. Christakis sent out her own email wondering if such oversight was necessary. "Whose business is it to control the forms of costumes of young people?" she asked, and noted, "Free speech and the ability to tolerate offense are the hallmarks of a free and open society."Students said her email was racially insensitive and staged protests, with some calling for her and her husband to be removed from their positions as heads of an undergraduate residence at Yale. (Her husband, Nicholas Christakis, is a physician and sociology professor.) In December, Ms. Christakis resigned from her teaching job at Yale, and her husband is on sabbatical this semester. They still have their residential positions.
The gist of the email was in keeping with the educational philosophy she outlines in her book. "My intention in writing that email was to validate our students' ability to practice social norming with each other," she says. She agrees with her critics about the need to be sensitive but felt that her words were received the wrong way. "It just was very surreal to me...but I still feel very committed to the idea that kids are powerful."
Turns out the tape of the screaming crybully at Yale was made by free speech defender Greg Lukianoff, of theFIRE.org. He writes in the WaPo:
I was visiting to give a long-planned lecture on campus free speech. When I showed up, students were in an uproar over an email sent by one of the heads of the very dormitory where I was scheduled to speak.Enter Erika Christakis, lecturer and associate master of Yale's Silliman College (for non-Yalies, a dormitory). Erika is open-minded and a consistent critic of groupthink. When Yale's Intercultural Affairs Committee sent an e-mail urging students to be sensitive in their choice of Halloween costumes, Erika sent out a thoughtful response asking if such e-mails were in tension with students' right to autonomy and expression.
Readers may not realize that Halloween has become a season of campus controversy. For years, college administrators have been issuing stern warnings to students not to wear "offensive" costumes. I'd always assumed students were privately rolling their eyes at these often overbearing instructions from authority figures on how to dress.
Nopies!
I managed to record some of the confrontation, knowing that the easiest way for Nicholas to be fired would be for a student to claim that he flew off the handle. But he didn't. Instead, Nicholas addressed the crowd for more than an hour, even after it became clear that nothing short of begging for forgiveness would satisfy them.
Listen to this hysterical girl who believes that college is supposed to be a place of intellectual comfort. I think it would be a service to employers for her name to come out.
And then Lukianoff spoke:
When I described just how fierce the students' reaction to Erika's e-mail had been, the audience seemed skeptical, so for emphasis I said, "You would think that given the reaction to what she had written that she had actually wiped out an Indian village."Shortly after, I paused when I heard commotion on the other side of the room: a student appeared to respond to my comments and began putting up posters. I couldn't make out much of what he said as he fought with the security guard who asked him to leave (the student was not registered for the event), but I agreed he could post the posters and attempted to continue my speech.
As the guard struggled to lead him to the exit, the student yelled, "You people speak like you don't know the history of the country you pretend to love! And you talk about burning Indian villages, which gets a lot of laughs!"
Word of my "offensive" comment spread quickly. Over 100 students gathered to protest the event, chanting and holding signs reading "Genocide is not a joke."
Who needs nutcase asylums when we have these nice ivy-covered places called universities?
Republican Presidential Candidate's Name In Public View Called A "Hate Crime"
How soon before breathing while being a student Republican is considered a "hate crime"?
I'm not a Republican. (I'm libertarian and fiscally conservative.)
And I'll vote for my dog or your dead cat before I vote for Donald Trump.
What I am is for free speech. But free speech is something the Big Girl's Blouses on campus these days (aka current students) are having a terrible time with.
In latest report from the capital of ridiculous -- Steven Glick writes at Campus Reform that a Claremont Pitzer student government member has deemed pro-Trump graffiti "a hate crime."
Yes, really.
Yesterday, the phrase "Make America" (presumably the beginning of Republican frontrunner Donald Trump's slogan, "Make America Great Again") appeared in faint letters on a mural at Pitzer College. Additionally, the word "Trump" was spray painted on Pitzer's clock tower.In a widely shared Facebook post, Pitzer College Student Senate Executive Board member Elijah Pantoja described the statement as a "hate crime," and called for the individual who painted it to be prosecuted. Pitzer College joins Scripps, Emory, Michigan, and other schools in protesting recent pro-Trump messages.
"A 'post-racial America' is far from what we have," the Pantoja writes. "Instead, we face hate crimes like this across the nation and in high frequency. This isn't simply vandalism. And, in case it's too difficult to read, the mural with the flag and faces has, 'Make America' scrawled on it. This is a clear attempt to intimidate students of color at Pitzer College. I'm honestly in disbelief at how light the response has been."
"We are a community with a core value of 'social responsibility,'" the statement continues. "Yet the perpetrators most likely committed these acts in broad daylight? I have seen campuses across the country deal with similar attacks, and felt a great anger, but the proximity of these atrocious acts shake me to the core. This isn't a lighthearted joke we can simply laugh away, this isn't a drunken mishap that can be solved with a sheepish apology. Under California law, this is a hate crime and I hope the individual/s responsible are dealt with not only by the institution, but by the law of the state as well."
Yes, graffiti is obnoxious and some low-level offense, but as for the messages, even when we don't agree with what you're saying, we call this "political engagement."
A Publicly "Moderate Muslim" May End Up A Dead Muslim
In Scotland, as in so many places, a Muslim man who called for other Muslims to stand up against Islamic violence -- the murder of infidels (and apostates) that Islam commands -- has received death threats.
Karin Goodwin writes in the Scotland Herald:
SCOTLAND's leading human rights lawyer has received death threats from Islamic extremists over his calls for unity within the country's Muslim community.
Though unable to give details due to an ongoing police investigation, Aamer Anwar said the threats came from individuals who have taken issue with his call for Muslims of all backgrounds and denominations to stand up together against Islamic extremism....He said: "When you walk out of the house and give your children a hug and a kiss, you do find yourself wondering, 'is that the last time I'll see them?' I did that the other night because I was scared. In my head I thought anything could happen and to live with that is extremely difficult."
via Jihadwatch
Clink
Itty-clink-link.
Female "Junior Doctor" In UK Complains That Women In Her Position Will No Longer Be Able To Work Part-Time For Full Pay
Of course, the fact that the government sets pay for doctors is part of the problem.
There's an opinion piece in the Independent, headlined with "This junior doctors contract throws women under the bus. You'll be shocked by the detail. It seems single parents - disproportionately women - are considered expendable."
A junior doctor in the UK, Reena Aggarwal, writes that she is "locked in a bitter dispute with the government about the junior contract":
Until now, salaries for female doctors in training have kept pace with men's due to small annual pay awards to prevent part-time doctors - of whom the vast majority are women - earning less than their full-time colleagues over time. The new contract will remove these safeguards widening the gender pay gap in medicine.
A commenter, tomspenc, gets it right:
So what are you suggesting? If women with children want to work part time or not work evenings and weekends that their childless colleagues should pick up the slack?Forgive me but I really don't know how doctors are any different from other professionals who have to work beyond 9-5.
Though I'm a woman, I don't happen to want children. Never have.
What matters to me is my work. My next book turned out to be far harder to research and write than I'd anticipated, and basically, I'm barely leaving the house until September, assuming I can turn it in on time.
Gregg is great -- grocery shops for me, cooks me dinner a few times a week, picks up my mail, and is coming over today to hook up my new modem.
The thing is, all I want to do is write -- my book and my column and do related stuff like my podcasts in between -- and figure out how to have as much time and energy as possible to do that. But for Gregg feeding me and stocking my fridge, I'd probably just eat frozen hamburgers and hot dogs all the time.
Yes, I'm that driven. I will put everything I have into this book and make it the absolute best book I can.
Now, compare me with some woman (or person) who is the sole parent or main caretaker of three kids.
Sure, I have a dog. She's sleeping in my lap as I write this, and when I leave the house, I kiss her and goober over her a little and put out a clean pee pad, in case she has to go. No school to get her to, no getting her dressed every day (she's fine wearing the same purple sweater day after day), and none of the million little things to do that come with having kids.
Should I really be rewarded for the work I'm doing at the same rate as somebody who can only put in maybe half or less of what I do?
When It Makes Sense To Jail A Man For 20 To Life For Stealing $31 Worth Of Snickers
When you run a for-profit prison, that kind of mandatory sentence is what keeps your jail cells all prisonered up and your coffers filling with government-supplied money.
At ThinkProgress, Judd Legum writes about Jacobia Grimes, a New Orleans man who could spend the rest of his life in jail after allegedly jamming $31 in candy bars into his pockets at a Dollar General store.
Louisiana has a "habitual offender law" that leaves the judge little discretion over the sentence, if Grimes is found guilty.
Grimes has five prior convictions for theft. All of Grimes convictions "involved thefts of less than $500." His last conviction was for stealing "some socks and trousers."...Louisiana's habitual offender law has been in place for 30 years. The result has been that "[s]entences of several decades, or even life, for nonviolent crimes are not unusual in Louisiana." In other states, individuals convicted of similar crimes "would have received a much shorter sentence or no jail time at all."
...Grimes case is an example of how Louisiana became the "world's prison capital." A 2012 expose by The Times-Picayune found that the state imprisons more of its citizens than any other states and its incarceration rate is "nearly five times Iran's, 13 times China's and 20 times Germany's."
A major factor driving Louisiana's massive inmate population is money. Each prisoner costs Lousiana an average of $18,800 per year. Sending Grimes to prison for 20 years would cost the state around $376,000.
"A majority of Louisiana inmates are housed in for-profit facilities, which must be supplied with a constant influx of human beings or a $182 million industry will go bankrupt," The Times-Picayune reported.
And no, this guy isn't likely to become a model citizen if he isn't sent to jail for 20 to life, but he didn't murder anyone and a life sentence for stealing candy simply does not fit the crime.
via @LucyStag
Mink
Furrylittlelinks.
Skid Row, Burbank-Style
Wednesday in Burbank was not a good day for Santa.
A Solution To The Payment Disparity For Female Soccer Players
It comes from a tweet by economist Mark J. Perry, and it's that the ladies should just try out for the better-paying men's team.
@Mark_J_Perry
Top Female Players Accuse US Soccer of Wage Discrimination. Couldn't They Try Out for the Men's Team to Make More?
The article, by Andrew Das, in The New York Times, is about top female players accusing U.S. Soccer of wage discrimination:
In response to the complaint filed Wednesday, U.S. Soccer argued that not only was the [female] players' pay collectively bargained, but that the players had insisted more than once on a salary-based system as a means of economic security over the bonus-centric plan the men work under. Russell Sauer, the outside counsel for the federation during labor talks, also said the women's labor contract included provisions -- severance and injury pay, health benefits and maternity leave, for example -- not available to the men's team."The truth is," Sauer said, "the players are claiming discrimination based on a more conservative structure, based on guaranteed compensation rather than pay to play, which they themselves requested, negotiated and approved of not once, but twice."
Furthermore, U.S. Soccer noted, a major source of revenue and contention -- World Cup prize money -- is determined by FIFA, world soccer's governing body, not the federation. But the women's complaint seems to take aim at a bigger share of domestic revenue, like sponsorships and television contracts, and U.S. Soccer financial reports hint at a richer future involving the team: The federation's budget projections for 2016 include $2.3 million for a 10-game victory tour after this summer's Olympics.
P.S. I ran boys' cross country in junior high school. I sucked compared to many of the boys (note that I'm in the back on the JV), but there was no girls' team. Nobody cared that I was on it, and I didn't do it to make a point. I did it because I loved running and competing and wanted to be in some kind of formal running situation.
To me, being men's equal means doing what men do -- as much as that's realistic or possible or what you want -- but without feeling a need to shriek about it.
The Path From Voluntary Speech-Squelching And Cultural Capitulating To Terrorism And Continuing Subjugation
An excerpt from Charlie Hebdo from March 30, 2016:
The visible part of a very big iceberg.Take the local baker, who has just bought the nearby bakery and replaced the old, recently-retired guy, he makes good croissants. He's likeable and always has a ready smile for all his customers. He's completely integrated into the neighbourhood already. Neither his long beard nor the little prayer-bruise on his forehead (indicative of his great piety) bother his clientele. They are too busy lapping up his lunchtime sandwiches. Those he sells are fabulous, though from now on there's no more ham nor bacon. Which is no big deal because there are plenty of other options on offer - tuna, chicken and all the trimmings. So, it would be silly to grumble or kick up a fuss in that much-loved boulangerie. We'll get used to it easily enough. As Tariq Ramadan helpfully instructs us, we'll adapt. And thus the baker's role is done.
Take this young delinquent. H has never looked at the Quran in his life, he knows little of the history of religion, of colonialism, nor a great deal about the proud country of his Maghreb forefathers. This lad and a couple of his buddies order a taxi. They are not erudite like Tariq Ramadan, they don't pray as often as the local baker and are not as observant as the redoubtable veiled mothers on the street. The taxi heads for Brussels airport. And still, in this precise moment, no one has done anything wrong. Not Tariq Ramadan, nor the ladies in burqas, not the baker and not even these idle young scamps.
And yet, none of what is about to happen in the airport or metro of Brussels can really happen without everyone's contribution. Because the incidence of all of it is informed by some version of the same dread or fear. The fear of contradiction or objection. The aversion to causing controversy. The dread of being treated as an Islamophobe or being called racist. Really, a kind of terror. And that thing which is just about to happen when the taxi-ride ends is but a last step in a journey of rising anxiety. It's not easy to get some proper terrorism going without a preceding atmosphere of mute and general apprehension.
These young terrorists have no need to amass the talents of others, to be erudite, dignified or hard-working. Their role is simply to provide the end of a philosophical line already begun. A line which tells us "Hold your tongues, living or dead. Give up discussing, debating, contradicting or contesting."
Lookie
Linkie with a rear window.
Gay Talese Unable To Name A Single Inspiring Female Writer. Women Are Aghast. My Response: So What.
Panty-bunched women at a journalism conference apparently marched out of the room when Gay Talese couldn't name a female non-fiction writer who'd inspired him.
From the New York Daily News, Laura Bult reports:
Women writers didn't inspire Gay Talese because they aren't interested in "uneducated" or "anti-social" types, the literary journalist said Saturday to a stunned audience of female journalists.Talese was speaking at a Boston University conference on journalism called "The Power of Narrative" when he was asked by an audience member which women writers inspired him.
Unable to conjure the name of a single woman, the "New Journalism" pioneer apparently dug himself deeper in a hole, shocking the audience of reporters and writers, many of whom were women.
"I didn't know any women writers that I loved," Talese said, before rejecting the suggestion from another audience member that Joan Didion may have influenced him because she didn't "report on anti-social ppl," according to a tweet from NBC reporter Andrea Swalec.
After Talese was unable to name a non-fiction women writer, he mentioned that he admired the novelist and poet George Eliot, the 19th century author of "Middlemarch," according to Janelle Lawrence, a freelance writer based in Boston who was in the audience.
"Many women walked out of the #gaytalese talk," tweeted journalist Michelle Garcia.
They asked him for his view and he gave it.
I don't agree with everyone I go to hear speak, nor do I share all of their views -- nor do I need to to find them worth hearing.
I likewise don't need them to agree with me or find writers with vaginas "inspiring." (P.S. I do happen to be a fan of Joan Didion's writing.)
The notion that it is horrifying that Gay Talese wouldn't have a female writer he finds inspiring -- and doesn't seem to care to lie -- shows how women, who claim to be equal to men, are actually too hurt feelz to manage in a number of venues.
Talese's great Sinatra profile, Frank Sinatra Has A Cold, is here. Esquire's note at the top:
In the winter of 1965, writer Gay Talese arrived in Los Angeles with an assignment from Esquire to profile Frank Sinatra.The legendary singer was approaching fifty, under the weather, out of sorts, and unwilling to be interviewed.
So Talese remained in L.A., hoping Sinatra might recover and reconsider, and he began talking to many of the people around Sinatra -- his friends, his associates, his family, his countless hangers-on -- and observing the man himself wherever he could.
The result, "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," ran in April 1966 and became one of the most celebrated magazine stories ever published, a pioneering example of what came to be called New Journalism -- a work of rigorously faithful fact enlivened with the kind of vivid storytelling that had previously been reserved for fiction.
The piece conjures a deeply rich portrait of one of the era's most guarded figures and tells a larger story about entertainment, celebrity, and America itself.
Somehow, the fact that he isn't "inspired" by Joan Didion does not change that.
News You Knead: What Percentage Of Women Have Breast Implants?
The answer:
Almost 4 percent of women in America, or one in every 26, has breast implants.
It's from a piece at FiveThirtyEight by Guardian data editor Mona Chalabi.
PS Some of us have big boobs the natural way, which means "Victoria's Secret" is "We ain't got no bras for you."
via @econoflove
What A Miracle That None Of Us Died In Childhood Due To An Unlicensed Lemonade Stand
Institute for Justice's Nick Sibilla reports on the regulations for kids' lemonade stands in Austin, Texas -- and that special day, May 7, when kids can sell sugary lemon liquid without a license. Yes, really:
Ever gracious, the Austin City Council approved an ordinance to spare young lemonade sellers from parts of the city's mind-numbing bureaucracy. On Lemonade Day--and only on Lemonade Day--registered participants do not have to spend $35 to obtain a "temporary food permit," and are also exempt from spending a staggering $425 on "a license agreement and fees" to use public property.
Lemonade stands run by kids must comply with Austin's "temporary food service guidelines." Some of the rules include:"NO HOME PREPARED FOODS ALLOWED. ALL FOODS MUST BE OBTAINED FROM AN APPROVED SOURCE.""Provide potable water for cleaning and sanitizing utensils. Use three (3) containers for WASHING, RINSING & SANITIZING. Sanitizing solution must be kept between 50-100ppm chlorine. Test papers can be found at restaurant supply stores."
"Hand washing - Use a gravity-type water dispenser for hand washing. Example: drink dispenser with a spout or spigot. Do not forget hand washing soap, paper towels and catch basin. Wash hands for at least 20 seconds. Use of liquid alcohol sanitizer or single-use gloves is required for all food handling."
"Provide a ceiling or canopy above beverage preparation and service areas. Example: wood, canvas or other material that protects the interior of the establishment from the weather and other agents."
"All food, equipment, single service items shall be stored at least 6 inches above the floor."
"No eating, drinking, smoking is allowed in the food booth."Parents or legal guardians who want their kids to participate in Lemonade Day must also sign a waiver, and "agree to release, indemnify, defend and hold harmless the organizers of Lemonade Day and anyone associated with it or Lemonade Day from any and all claims for personal injuries or property damage resulting from my child/ren's participation in Lemonade Day, even if such injury is caused by the negligence of them."
Do you get the sense that we have a wee bit too much government?
via @mark_j_perry
Linkus Adronicus
Linky fingers.
Chalk Is Not A Weapon, You Sniveling Crybullies At The University Of Michigan
Pathetic. I attended U of M back in the 80s. Back then, people protested everything but the grass growing up between the sidewalks. Protested by carrying signs and shouting -- not by calling the cops because somebody hurt their feelz.
Today, we've got University of Michigan students calling the university police -- over chalked "Trump 2016," "Stop Islam," and "Build The Wall" messages.
Chalk is not a weapon.
Speech is not dangerous unless you are mentally ill.
If you are too fragile to handle speech, we can put you on the list for a bed in a nice facility where they'll give you medication and psychiatric attention.
Here's the University president's disappointing speech from a Michigan Daily story by Alexa St. John:
University of Michigan president Mark Schlissel responded to several political and religious statements chalked on the Diag this week, including "Stop Islam," "Trump 2016" and "Build the Wall," Thursday afternoon, stressing a campus committment statement to creating a welcoming and inclusive environment for all groups on campus"Attacks directed toward any individual or group within our community, based on a belief or characteristic, are inconsistent with the university's values of respect, civility and equality, " Schlissel said. "These are core values and guiding principles that will help us as we strive to live up to our highest ideals."
Why aren't free speech and free inquiry "our core values and guiding principles that will help us as we strive to live up to our highest ideals"?
This is a university, after all, not -- as I've called these institutions that capitulate to the crybullies -- "nursery schools with beer."
My suggestion I posted in the comments on the Michigan Daily article:
I suggest that those alumni and parents who'd intended to give money to the University of Michigan instead donate to the pro-bono campus speech defenders, TheFire.org.
Hello, Government: All Skim Milk Should Be Called "Water With A White Color And A Bit Of Cow Liquid In It"
A federal judge just agreed with the Florida Department of Agriculture that a dairy can't label skim milk "skim milk" because it doesn't add vitamins to it.
From the AP story by Brendan Farrington:
The dictionary definition of skim milk is simply milk with the cream removed. But the Department of Agriculture says under state and federal law, skim milk can't be sold as skim milk unless vitamins in the milk fat are replaced so it has the same nutritional value as whole milk.
What a joke. It won't. Because the fat part is the important part.
Of course, dietary science -- the kind with good evidence behind it -- finds that fat is not the bogeyman it was made out to be. And dietary researchers -- Dr. Jeff Volek, for example -- who take an evidence-based approach, will tell you that fat is essential, especially for growing kids.
Volek agreed with me when he appeared on my podcast that feeding kids skim milk is practically child abuse. It's particularly disgusting that it's part of Michelle Obama's lunch plans for kids in public schools.
They should advertise those lunches honestly: "Hey, go back to class hungry, kids! Because government loves you."
Dorky
Awklinkwardylinks.
