My Microaggressions: I've Apparently Ruined A Number Of People Emotionally Today, In Just Eight Hours
It's only been about eight hours that I've spent here, in Vancouver, at the annual Human Behavior and Evolution Society conference, but according to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's new list of "microaggressions," I'm a deeply offensive person.
Via ifeminists.com, here's a WND piece about the new UNC microaggressions list:
They ... define microaggressions as "brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, and environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial, gender, sexual orientation and religious slights and insults to the target person or group."These "indignities" include complimenting a speaker on her footwear, using the terms "husband/boyfriend" or "wife/girlfriend" instead of "partner/spouse," asking where someone is from, referencing Christmas vacation or suggesting a round of golf.
I hit almost all of these, I'm proud to say: Complimented Catherine on her shoes and meant to say something about Louise Barrett's, but got interrupted.
Said "boyfriend," etc., numerous times, asked about 12 people where they were from (though, admittedly, not because they looked exotic).
Referenced Christmas at one point, though I can't remember why.
I did not, however, suggest a round of golf -- though I did mention how people going out of turn at a four-way stop causes people to want to get out of their cars and put a golf club through their windows.
I explain why this is in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck":
Although the cost from that is minuscule, someone who imposes it on us is stealing from us (as well as turning us into a chump for obeying the rules), and psychologically, even tiny fairness violations are a big deal.Anthropologist Robert Trivers explains in his famous 1971 paper on reciprocal altruism that our sense of outrage at cheaters and rule-breakers probably developed when our ancestors started living cooperatively in small, stable hunter-gatherer bands. In an environment where group members survive by trading food and favors, there's a need to guard against the shifty-ass cheaters whose idea of reciprocity is give-and-take: You give; they take. To keep the two-legged rats at bay, our psychology evolved to include a cheater detection and punishment department, logging who owes what to whom and dispatching that information to the enforcement division, our emotions.
I now have a goal: To get lists of colleges' definitions of what microaggressions are and use them all in a single afternoon.
Schmoopy
Very unsexily-named links.
LAX TSA Sign: "Thank You For Participating In Security." "Participating."
That was the wording at the bottom of a sign at LAX TSA -- one telling you to take off your shoes, etc.
I thought of some changes to the sign this morning -- at just after 5 a.m., the time I had to arrive to go through the pointless TSA to get on a 7:15 a.m. flight. (Their recent 95% miss rate suggests that they couldn't catch a terrorist if he or she crawled up their ass and yodeled.)
This sort of thing:
"Thank you for participating in (hah hah) 'security'"
It also occurred to me that "participating" was one of those Orwellian words. I "participate" in a fun event.
What I'm doing here is being coerced into cooperating with a pointless, civil liberties-violating process that Americans accept as meaningful for our security when it was been shown countless times to be anything but.
Here's Jonathan Corbett easily defeating the scanners.
Here's the latest attack in Turkey -- likely ISIS, they say. And here is the Brussels attack -- which nobody needed to go through security to do, as many of us have talked about in previous years. (We are sitting ducks at the TSA civil liberties-violating stations.)
I'm not optimistic about the interest of many people in this country in protecting and preserving our civil liberties.
On the bright side, I didn't see Thedala Magee. (Thank you, thank you, Marc Randazza.)
My piece from a few years back on how the TSA molests our civil liberties is here.
White People Don't Get To Have Opinions About Non-White People
"Mattress Girl" Emma Sulkowicz posts at Instagram:
@emsulk
@oliviasulko caught me looking derpy with the Woman of Courage Award. From my speech today:Camille Paglia has publicly called my artwork a "masochistic exercise" in which I neither "evolve" nor "move-on." She speaks as if she, a white woman, knew what was best for me, a woman of color she's never met. Many people ask me how I've "healed" from my assault, as if healing were another word for "forgetting about it," "getting over it," or even "shutting up about it." To expect me to move on is to equate courage with self-censorship. The phrases--suck it up, move on, and get over it--are violence. People who say these phrases equate what is right with what is expected.
I think courage means, "Afraid in a way that makes you do what is right, even if it's unexpected." I dedicate this award to everyone who has not told me to get over it. Thank you for validating my fear and my way of handling it. Thank you for creating a world in which we can tackle the things that terrify us by doing the unexpected right thing.
Thank you #nationalorganizationforwomen
"Doing the unexpected right thing"?
Cathy Young writes at Minding The Campus:
Sulkowicz's account of her rape strains credulity to the extreme. Sulkowicz accuses Nungesser of an extremely brutal assault that should have left her visibly injured (with bruises not only on her face but on her neck and arms, unlikely to be covered by clothing in August and early September in New York) and in need of medical attention. Yet no one saw anything amiss after this attack, and both Nungesser and Sulkowicz went on to chat and banter on Facebook as if nothing happened. Sulkowicz's claim that she kept up a friendly act hoping to confront him about the rape seems extremely dubious, given the near-psychotic violence she alleges and the lack of any sign of unease or tension in their online conversations. (When I reread these archives recently, I checked the timestamps to see if there were any awkward pauses; there weren't, not even when Nungesser asks Sulkowicz to bring more girls to his party and she replies, "I'll be dere w da females soon.")Is Sulkowicz a "false accuser"? We don't know that. It's possible that something ambiguous happened between her and Nungesser that night--something that she later came to see as coercive and embellished with violent details. But I would say the odds of her account being factually true are very low.
Oh, and P.S. this notion of non-whiteness as a ticket to extra-special treatment and privileges (typically extra kid glove-ery) leads many people to strrrretch to claim a position as supposedly stomped-on minorities.
Take our mattress toter, Emma Sulkowicz. Sulkowicz's mother's last name is Leong, but her dad's this quite white Harvard-educated dude.
Poor underprivileged Emma.
Oh, that reminds me...anybody feeling at all sorry for the man in this, Paul Nungesser, whom the police decided not to even charge due to a lack of evidence that he actually did what he was accused of?
Instagram via @CHSommers
Lofty
Skylinks between buildings.
What Took The Cops So Long In Orlando?
There are a number of reasons I'm not a cop -- and one of them is that I tend to not be the person you'd want running things in some scary situation. My adrenaline takes off like a pack of hungry cheetahs after the Easter Bunny, and well, you can visit with my decision-making ability after it gets back from a restorative month in the Baltics.
Well, the Orlando cops are in those cop jobs, and survivors and families of victims are asking what the hell took the cops so long -- why it took three hours and six minutes from the time the officers entered the club to the time they finally shot Omar Mateen.
Laura Stevens, Tripp Mickle, and Arian Campo-Flores write in the WSJ (Google to get to it):
Over the course of Mateen's shooting rampage, which left 49 people dead and 53 injured, the gunman took the lives of roughly 15 people in the men's and women's bathrooms, including some shot after police had him cornered.For crucial minutes after police entered the nightclub, Mateen moved between the two bathrooms, shooting people there, survivors said.
It may take weeks or more for authorities to piece together a detailed account of the police response, especially the minutes after a half dozen armed officers first entered the club and confronted Mateen.
But some survivors and family members of victims have asked in recent days why police, after cornering the gunman, didn't raid the bathrooms right away. According to the FBI, 3 hours and 6 minutes elapsed from the time officers entered the club to the killing of Mateen during the hostage rescue, when he shot as many as three more people.
"I just feel that with so many cops to one person, it should have been a little quicker," said Albert Murray, whose 18-year-old daughter Akyra Monet Murray was the night's youngest victim, killed in the women's bathroom.
It's easy to stand back and second-guess here in the safety of my little house a coast away.
Do the actions of the police make sense to any of you?
Father Knows Best? No, FDA-Father Knows Best
Paul E. Peterson writes at the WSJ that the FDA is trying to take away his autistic son's treatment on ideological grounds:
Though they have never met my son David and have no information about his specific diagnosis or care, bureaucrats at the Food and Drug Administration are endangering his life by proposing to stop the one treatment that has allowed him to lead a happy life that includes learning, socializing and having loving relationships with his family.David is one of a small percentage of individuals with autism and mental disabilities who engages in life-threatening self-injurious behaviors, including shoving his hands down his throat and banging his head with such force as to permanently damage his ear. For the past 10 years he has been dissuaded from such activity by means of an abundance of rewards if he controls his self-harming behavior and an unpleasant, but harmless, two-second skin shock via an electronic stimulus device, or ESD, if he attempts self-injury.
While the device has been used effectively for many years with individuals like David at the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center, a residential special-needs school in Canton, Mass., the FDA is trying to ban it at the behest of ideologically driven advocacy groups such as the Disability Law Center in Massachusetts, whose executive director calls the therapy "horrible torture."
...The FDA also asserts that the skin shock constitutes physical and psychological harm. My wife and I have both experienced an ESD application. The experience is disagreeable, but not nearly as painful as a paper cut to the finger. Nor have we detected any sign of psychological damage to our son. Quite the contrary: David loves to visit his family, and he is no less happy to return to his friends in the residence where he lives.
...The FDA asserts that skin shocks are no longer necessary but it provides no documentation that drugs are effective for people like my son. In the past, drug therapy aggravated David's self-injurious behavior. The use of psychotropic drugs also poses multiple risks of physical and psychological side effects. By contrast, skin shocks have no demonstrated side effects beyond a temporary redness to the skin that usually disappears within minutes.
...Before arriving at his special-needs school, David's attempts at self-injury were continuous unless he was physically constrained. Today, he is in excellent physical health, and he has made striking gains in his sociability, curiosity and ability to carry out basic self-care. He participates in community events and visits his family about once a month. His attempts at self-injury average once a week, a low level he has sustained for the past several years.
Our son, who is now 45 years old, is enjoying a quality of life that my wife and I did not believe was possible before he had access to this treatment. The FDA's proposal would place his health--and life--at risk. The alternative treatment plan for him is physical restraints and mind-numbing drugs. For the sake of our son and others like him who have benefited from an electronic stimulus device, the FDA must withdraw its proposed regulation.
Here's the FDA press release.
And here's the thing. People are individuals. Drugs and devices are tested on the masses, but sometimes, a drug or device that isn't such a good idea for one person is a lifesaver for another.
For example, I can't get Betahistine (Serc) in this country. It is the one drug -- sans any real side effects for me -- that I can take to get across town without getting drowsy and without getting the least bit carsick.
I only learned this because a friend had to take it for vertigo -- a friend who lives in another country. I was so completely desperate to be able to go places by car without getting motion-sick that I ordered it and tried it.
It's a miraculous help. I can go long distances in traffic and make it across town when, before, I couldn't even go four miles in traffic without getting at least somewhat nauseated and maybe worse.
However, because the studies on this were poor, I can't get it here; I have to order this drug from foreign countries on eBay. Thanks, FDA!
This is annoying, lemme tell you -- but imagine if the one thing stopping your 45-year-old autistic son from doing serious physical harm to himself was something the FDA decided to put a kibosh on.
Linquacious
Loquacious with hot tippies.
Wild Conspiracy Theory Or Is There Something To It?
Story asking whether Tamerlan Tsarnaev might have been a double agent recruited by the FBI.
Making "The No Fly List" The "No Second Amendment For You!" List
There's sense and there's knee-jerk sense, and the headline of this post reflects the latter.
It's human nature to resort to knee jerk sense, and I bet most of us do it and/or do it more often than we know or admit.
About the subject of this post...the "no fly" list is the list of people thought to be too dangerous to board an airplane, because they might kill everyone on it for Allah (typically -- though there are apparently environmental nuts and other nuts and suspected violence-doers on it).
Now, if you ask, "Do you want people who seem like they might be terrorists to be able to get guns?" the answer seems obvious: "Well, duh...no."
Except...whoops...who's on the "no fly" list? 4-year-olds and members of Congress who, say, maybe have the same names as suspected terrorists.
How do you get off the no fly list?
Well, is there a god, and if so, are you close personal friends?
Otherwise, you're very likely shit out of luck.
When Congressman Tom McClintock found out he was on the list, here's how it went down, per Sac Bee's Christopher Cadelago:
Turns out that when he was in the state Senate a decade ago, McClintock said, he discovered he couldn't check into his flight."When I asked why, I was told I was on this government list," McClintock said, calling the whole experience "Kafkaesque."
"My first reaction was to ask, 'Why am I on that list?' 'We can't tell you that.' 'What are the criteria you use?' I asked. 'That's classified.' I said, 'How can I get off this list?' The answer was, 'You can't.' "
He said it ended up being a case of mistaken identity with an Irish Republican Army activist the "British government was mad at."
McClintock said he soon learned that a fellow state senator also had been placed on the list, as well as the late U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy. McClintock said he at least had the state Senate sergeant-at-arms to work through to clear up the confusion - "something an ordinary American would not."
Still, he said it took months of working with officials and repeated petitions to the government to get his name removed.
"The farce of it all was that I was advised in the meantime just to fly under my middle name, which I did without incident," he added.
Our Constitution says we get certain rights -- not that we have to go through some kafkaesque process to try to get these rights.
And there is zero due process being afforded people here. They're put on this suspect list, with no way to get off. And then we tell them they can't buy a gun?
But wait -- pause a moment before you answer, even if you think guns should be completely banned from ownership by private citizens.
Because...if you take someone's Second Amendment right away from them -- sans any sort of trial or conviction -- what right do you take away next? (Because eroding or removing one right makes it that much easier to erode or just take away the next.)
Oh, and how many people in nasty custody battles or neighborhood spats will be reporting the spouse or the guy next door for supposed "terroristic language" or something like that?
So...right...not so fast on this rush to keep "suspected terrorists" from owning firearms.
Also -- of course -- anyone who thinks making guns illegal will stop terrorism is, plain and simple, kind of an idiot.
Guns are illegal in France.
That sure did wonders to stop that Charlie Hebdo massacre, huh?
Dinky
Mini-links.
Open Sesame!
A tweet:
@existentialcoms
Ironically, half the time when people say "be more open minded," what they really mean to say is just "have my ideas."
Let's Get Honest On Race
Though modern life allows us to jet around, marry, and have babies with people very different from us -- making the world increasingly racially "blendo" -- races do exist.
Being against racism doesn't necessitate pretending that there's no such thing as race.
The reality is, various peoples have various things in common, from looks to talents to diseases they're prone to. If you're black, we're not going to test you for Tay Sachs (a disease Jews get), but we will look to see if you're a carrier for sickle cell (a disease blacks get).
Bo Winegard, with Ben Winegard and Brian Boutwell, write at Quillette
Most people believe that race exists. They believe that Denzel Washington is an African American, that George Clooney is a Caucasian, and that George Takei is an Asian.* Many intellectuals, however, contend that this belief results from an illusion as dangerous as it is compelling. "Just as the sun appears to orbit the earth", so too do humans appear to belong to distinct and easily identifiable groups. But, underneath this appearance, the reality of human genetic variation is complicated and inconsistent with standard, socially constructed racial categories. This is often touted as cause for celebration. All humans are really African under the skin; and human diversity, however salient it may appear, is actually remarkably superficial. Therefore racism is based on a misperception of reality and is as untrue as it is deplorable.With appropriate qualifications, however, we will argue that most people are correct: race exists. And although genetic analyses have shown that human variation is complicated, standard racial categories are not arbitrary social constructions. Rather, they correspond to real genetic differences among human populations.
If you want to staff a professional basketball team, I suggest you avoid Ashkenazi Jews -- especially this Ashkenazi Jew.
And no, my saying that doesn't mean I'm a hater. It suggests I have an IQ over 76.
Winegard, Winegard, and Boutwell continue:
Furthermore, we believe that scientists can and should study this variation without fear of censure or obloquy. Racism isn't wrong because there aren't races; it is wrong because it violates basic human decency and modern moral ideals. In fact, pinning a message of tolerance to the claim that all humans are essentially the same underneath the skin is dangerous. It suggests that if there were real differences, racism would be justified. This is bad science and worse morality. Promoting a tolerant, cosmopolitan society doesn't require denying basic facts about the world. It requires putting in the hard work and effort to support the legal equality and moral dignity of all humans.
Again, as they put it:
Racism isn't wrong because there aren't races; it is wrong because it violates basic human decency and modern moral ideals.
An interesting comment from Quillette:
RonCan you please define what "racism" is? If person A forms a private country club, and is comfortable only with members of his own race, is he "violating the dignity of individual humans"? Should such behavior be banned?
If a woman has an aesthetic preference for what her partner looks like partly because she wants children who look like herself?
Society would condemn both individuals, and punish the person with the private country club by law.
We accept that individuals have preferences about other humans they work, socialize, and live with. Sometimes their preferences are honorable, sometimes they're arbitrary, and other times they're neither ("we just hit it it off"). Why do we allow this for the most part but then condemn it as "racism" when it's based on certain physical characteristics, and say that it violates human dignity?
What society calls something "racist," it's usually about to interfere in something it should leave itself out of.
I find that when someone calls someone else racist, it's usually because they're trying to shut them up.
Lola
Her name was Linka. She wore a...
Sin Taxes Get Results -- Mainly In Making Smug Legislators Feel Good
There's this rush to pass soda taxes lately -- which the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Michelle Minton calls a "failed experiment that needs to end."
Sin taxes have existed since at least the reign of Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt, who legend has it enacted a tax on beer to reduce public drunkenness and raise money to war against Rome. Also known as "lifestyle taxes," sin taxes are placed on goods based on the notion that increasing the price will discourage individual behaviors perceived as unhealthy--like smoking--or dangerous when consumed irresponsibly--like drinking--and as having negative effects on society. At the same time, these taxes raise revenue to offset the supposed public costs of the supposedly harmful products being taxed, or to fund other government programs. Today, public health advocates champion taxing sugary foods and drinks, like soda, as a way to fight obesity.
Except...oopsy!
In a survey of 8,000 households done before and after implementation of the soda tax, researchers at the Mexico Autonomous Institute of Technology (ITAM) found that those in the lowest socioeconomic strata were least likely to reduce soda purchases in response to the price increase. This may be due to wealthier people having access to a greater variety of substitutes or those in lower socioeconomic levels seeing soda as a luxury item they are not willing to give up. Whatever the reason, the result is that those with the least amount of money are paying a greater proportion of the soda tax, which raised $1.3 billion for the Mexican government in 2014.The most surprising finding from the ITAM study was that homes with an obese head of household were least affected by the change in soda prices, meaning that those individuals whose behavior the tax was designed to influence were the least likely to respond.
Even if sin taxes manage to influence sales or consumption decisions, there is no guarantee the effect will remain constant over the long term. In Finland, for example, a 2011 tax on confectionery items reduced sales of sweets at first, but within a year media and shops reported that sales had returned to pre-tax levels. Similarly, the Mexican soda tax correlated with a decline in sales volume of 1.9 percent, but rebounded the following year--increasing by 0.5 percent in 2015 over the previous year's sales.
One of the best ways to decrease obesity would be to build a time machine and go back and stop all the government bureaucrats from pushing the public to eat a high-carb, low-fat -- and scientifically unfounded diet.
People drank soda long before American blimped up. The difference was that they ate fatty (and thus satiating) food, so they weren't jonesing for sugar and snacks all day.
Look at a picture of a crowd from the 50s versus a crowd from, say, 2005. Or go to the Atlanta airport -- one of the scariest places I've been, vis a vis the large number of morbidly obese people moving through the place.
What made Americans so fat? No, not soda, which, again, they drank in the 50s, but meddling bureaucrats who were sure they knew what was best for us.
via @Mark_J_Perry
The Myth Of Moderate Islam
It is not "radical Islam" but Islam that calls for the death of gays and the stoning of women who commit "adultery" (sometimes this just means the women are raped without having four male witnesses present who can testify that it is a rape and not consensual sex).
As the YouTube description says:
The next time someone tries to convince you that what happened in Orlando has nothing to do with Islam, or at least, moderate Islam.....show them this video.
Note at the end, he answers a question from "the sisters' side" -- as women are corralled away from the men.
Another video (without embedding enabled) -- Bill Maher, talking about how liberals are afraid to criticize Islam and be called racist. All of his guests, who know zippo about Islam and what it commands, argue that it doesn't call for what it calls for.
Linka
Binka, bottle of inka...
What Kind Of Constitution-Trampling Country Are We Becoming?
Utah can't find money for the legal defense for poor people convicted of crimes who can't pay for their own -- but somehow found $2 million to study the subject of indigent defense systems. From Fault Lines at Mimesis Law:
The ACLU of Utah and law firm Holland & Hart have filed a class-action lawsuit against the State of Utah, claiming that its public defender system is underfunded, overburdened, inconsistent and generally inadequate. The ACLU claims it is suing Utah for "failing to meet its Sixth Amendment obligations under the U.S. Constitution."
Christina Flores writes at KUTV:
The problem is more pronounced in rural, smaller counties.David VanDyke, a private attorney in Wayne County said he spent one year as the county's public defender. He was paid $7,200 dollars for the entire year. To make a living he had to keep private clients and that meant he could not give all his attention to the indigent defendants he was hired to represent for the county.
The Sixth Amendment:
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
In other constitution trampling, at the border, another American citizen is medically raped as a form of search -- sans probable cause.
if you'd like your Fourth Amendment rights slightly less violated at the airport, you're being asked to pay $85 for the "privilege," via "Pre-Check."
On campus, students find the First Amendment a little too free speech-oriented for their liking.
On a positive note, this is still a far freer country than Iran or North Korea.
Your Government Prefers Itself More Powerful, Even If You're More Likely To End Up Dead
Scott Rasmussen writes at TownHall that Uber infuriates regulators but increases public safety.
Rasmussen asks:
What happens when less regulation leads to improved safety? Will the regulators back off to protect consumers or keep fighting to protect their turf?
I think we know the answer to that -- like in New York City, where politicians like Mayor Bill de Blasio claim that Uber is more dangerous than taxis. Why? As Rasmussen puts it, "because it is not heavily regulated by political appointees."
A new study, released by Angela K. Dills of Providence College and Sean Mulholland of Stonehill College, shows that reality is the opposite of what the regulators and politicians portray. When Uber first enters a market, there is a "6 percent decline in the fatal accident rate" and more than a 50 percent decline in DUIs.Not only that, the safety improvement continues to grow the longer that Uber is in a market. "For each additional year of operation, Uber's continued presence is associated with a 16.6 percent decline in vehicular fatalities." That seems logical as more and more people get in the habit of using the ride-sharing service.
For those who place their faith in the Regulatory State, these results don't make any sense. How can an unregulated service be safer than a heavily regulated service? The answer is that Uber is heavily regulated by consumers. They are a much tougher audience to satisfy than bureaucrats. If the company does not provide a safe and convenient service, people will not use it.
Not good enough for the politicos, because public safety is, uh, job two for them.
The politicians and regulators have declared war on services that reduce traffic fatalities and DUIs while improving customer services. Sadly, this shows that politicians and regulators are more interested in protecting their turf rather than protecting consumers.
Here's Vocative's Ryan Beckler on Austin, post-Uber and Lyft:
In their place, they left a patchwork of rogue Facebook groups, drivers struggling to find rides, bartenders terrified to over serve, and stranded drunks trying to get home.
Yodel
Linkelayheehoo!
The Sound Of One Anus Clapping
This post is not meant to offend people with two or three anuses or people who came into the world anus-free.
No, this post is meant to mock today's college students, many of whom have turned being pathetic into a fierce intercollegiate competition.
The clear winner, however, is this Colby College person -- the one who filed a response with the campus Stasi known as the Bias Incident Prevention and Response Team after hearing someone say something extremely offensive.
The remark: "On the other hand..."
This, of course -- how could you not know this? -- is offensive to people who lack hands.
From Robby Soave at Reason:
The BIPR Team's files note that these words were flagged for targeting people on the basis of "ability." I must therefore presume that the person offended by the phrase "on the other hand," possessed only one hand, or thought that a one-handed person might feel triggered by such a proclamation of dual-handedness.
Free speech rights?
I get it -- the First Amendment is mean.
Betraying Vets And Canceling Their Medical Care: Business As Usual At The VA
Just as how somebody shows their character by how they treat the "little people," especially when no one's looking, the VA reveals what a corrupt and awful bureaucracy it is by stiffing sick vets on care -- and then lying about it.
At PJM, Tyler O'Neil writes:
Contrary to popular belief, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is not getting better. An Inspector General (IG) report released Monday revealed excessive abuse in Houston, Texas. The report found that leadership at the VA medical center instructed staff to cancel veterans' appointments and record those cancellations as requested by the veteran. It also found that records understated many wait times, revealing systemic incompetence in the organization."Getting an appointment at the VA is much like the lottery -- maybe you get lucky, maybe you don't," Cody McGregor, national outreach director at Concerned Veterans for America (CVA) and a retired Army sniper who lives in Houston, told PJ Media in an interview Tuesday. He denounced VA staff as "manipulating the lives of people who have sacrificed everything."
The report found that "two previous scheduling advisors and a current director of two CBOCs [Community Based Outpatient Clinics] instructed staff to input clinic cancellations incorrectly as canceled by patient." The IG found that out of 373 appointments, staff incorrectly recorded 223 as canceled by the veteran.
While the staff rescheduled veterans' appointments for 219 of these 223 appointments, they did not reschedule the remaining four. Even worse, 94 of the rescheduled appointments were set beyond 30 days, with veterans waiting an average of 81 days.
Would you let your dog be treated this way?
Here's how it works for a guy who's fought wars on the behalf of the rest of us:
The result of these wait times has a very human face -- North Carolina veteran Wilbur Amos, who has waited over 9 months for surgery due to VA ineptitude. Staff not only delayed his appointments, they also sent him to the wrong facilities! Debilitated by three excruciating hernias, Amos said he's worried he might inadvertently twist his bowels and die from septic shock if he's not treated soon.
And here's what really matters at the VA:
Nevertheless, the VA is still requesting more money and hiring more non-medical employees than doctors. The agency added 39,454 new jobs between 2012 and 2015, but only 3,591 of them were doctors. At the same time, the VA spent $454 million on lawyers, $303 million on "painting, gardening and interior decorating..."
Yes, what really matters is that people who work in the VA have a nice environment in which to deny all those suffering vets medical care.
Zippity
Link-dah...
Austin Responds To Uber Response
Earn a living in Austin? Austin's response: "Fuck you!"
Get a ride as a consenting adult from another consenting adult who wants to drive you and take your money? Austin's response: "Fuck you!"
When Uber and Lyft pulled out of Austin after Austin tried to impose onerous regulations, gypsy cabs -- entirely unregulated -- popped up to fill the void.
Well, Blueberry Town reports that "the Austin Police Department has decided, or been instructed, to put its jackboots down on the necks" of drivers trying to recover some of the income they lost when these companies pulled out.
Oh, and note that Uber and Lyft vetted their drivers. In the non-Uber and -Lyft environment, there is no vetting at all.
And Blueberry Town notes that the cops are not only issuing fines but seizing cars, with the Transportation Department of Austin impounding four of the cars of drivers from Arcade CIty, a peer-to-peer network connecting passengers with drivers via Facebook.
Yeah, don't issue a ticket to these poor slobs. Impound their freaking cars so they cannot get to any other job, either. That'll fix 'em just right.
via @iowahawkblog
Are You Getting That Particular Drug Because You Need It Or Because Your Doctor Has Unwittingly Been Bribed By A Drug Company?
I write in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck" about research by psych prof Dennis Regan that suggests that giving someone even a small gift triggers our psychological mechanism for reciprocity:
Participants were told it was research on art appreciation. The actual study--on the psychological effects of having a favor done--took place during the breaks between the series of questions about art. Regan's research assistant, posing as a study participant, left the room during the break. He'd either come back with two Cokes-- one for himself and one he gave to the other participant--or come back empty-handed (the control group condition).After all the art questions were completed, the research assistant posing as a participant asked the other participant a favor, explaining that he was selling raffle tickets and that he'd win a much-needed $50 prize if he sold the most. He added that any purchase "would help" but "the more the better." Well, "the more" and "the better" is exactly what he got from the subjects he'd given the Coke, who ended up buying twice as many tickets as those who'd gotten nothing from him.
Regan's results have been replicated many times since, in the lab and out, by Hare Krishnas, who saw a marked increase in donations when they gave out a flower, book, or magazine before asking for money; by organizations whose fund-raising letters pull in far more money when they include a small gift, like personalized address labels...
Unfortunately, it's not so benign when it happens in a medical situation.
Charles Ornstein reports at NPR that whether a drug company rep buys your doctor lunch makes a difference in whether you get prescribed their pricey, brand-name drug:
Evidence is mounting that doctors who receive as little as one meal from a drug company tend to prescribe more expensive, brand-name medications for common ailments than those who don't.A study published online Monday by JAMA Internal Medicine found significant evidence that doctors who received meals tied to specific drugs prescribed a higher proportion of those products than their peers. And the more meals they received, the greater share of those drugs they tended to prescribe relative to other medications in the same category.
The researchers did not determine whether there was a cause-and-effect relationship between payments and prescribing, a far more difficult proposition, but their study adds to a growing pile of research documenting a link between the two.
A few examples:
Physicians who received meals related to Crestor on four or more days prescribed the cholesterol-fighting drug at almost twice the rate of doctors who received no meals. The difference was even more marked for the other drugs. Physicians who received meals prescribed Bystolic, a blood pressure pill, at more than five times the rate of their uncompensated peers; Benicar, for high blood pressure, at a rate 4.5 times higher; and Pristiq at a rate 3.4 times higher.Higher rates of prescribing were also observed when doctors received just a single meal, even after taking into account a physician's specialty and region of practice.
Dr. R. Adams Dudley, a professor of medicine and health policy at UCSF and one of the study's authors, said he and his colleagues expected to see "some evidence that doctors were responsive to incentives, what with their being humans and all."
Still, he said, "I think we were probably surprised that it took so little of a signal and such a low-value meal. ... It has changed our thinking."
Here's a good question:
In an editor's note, Dr. Robert Steinbrook wrote that the recent analyses "raise a broader question. Is it necessary to prove a causal relationship between industry payments to physicians and the prescribing of brand-name medications?"Other than for research and development, and related consulting, Steinbrook wrote, "it is already evident that there are few reasons for physicians to have financial associations with industry. Outright gifts, such as meals, may be legal, but why should physicians either expect or accept them?"
Swanky
Amber waves of cashmere.
Feminism Means Sneering And Snarling About Girly Girls
A tweet:
@SteveStuWill
Weird that people who wish their daughters were less girly, and more like boys, are viewed as PRO-female
The link he tweeted was this 2015 piece by Sarah Fletcher in The Daily Mail on a feminist mother who "cringes at her three-year-old daughter's love of princesses, frills and pink - and wishes she was into toy cars instead":
I'm a feminist, and I hate it when people decide a car is a toy for a boy, or a fairy outfit is for a girl. People should be able to like whatever they want and dress however they want.Yet I'm also a huge hypocrite - Alice has girly girl tastes, and I'm embarrassed by it.
I find myself making excuses for her love of pink dresses and frilly aprons. Every time she asks me to buy her a doll, I secretly cringe.
But feminism really isn't about having the power to do anything; it's about doing approved feminist things or being sneered at by feminists.
It seems this is really more about mommy than her little pink-loving girl:
Why do I think other people are judging me for having a girly girl?I think it's because I worry people will assume I've encouraged Alice's interest in stereotypically 'female' things, as though I've told her pink is for girls and blue is for boys.
More from mommy:
As a feminist, I believe people shouldn't be forced to act in a certain way based on what gender they are.It's an effort, but I'm going to embrace the pink. Maybe my younger daughter will be into monster trucks and burping contests.
Why would that be a good thing, necessarily?
In saying that, it's clear she isn't "embracing" anything -- she's just trying to pry herself away from the ugly business of denigrating girls for being girly (and all that comes with it, like the notion that being a mom isn't an okay life choice).
I've always loved pink, and especially hot pink, and I painted my NYC bike hot pink with orange leopard spots and covered it with hot pink flowers so nobody would steal it.
And nobody did. And I had it for going on 10 years there.
And that -- in New York City -- is damn powerful.
The Public's Right To Know Vs. The Government's Desire To Stick To Their Narrative
Islam is a religion of peace, we are told -- over and over, every time there is a slaughter by someone following the Quran's commands to slay the infidels (and especially the homosexual ones).
I don't care what you believe -- it's really none of my business -- unless your belief system commands its followers to hurt or murder other people, and at least some of them take this seriously.
The government released a version of the 911 transcript -- with the bits removed where mass murderer for Allah, Omar Mateen references ISIS and swears allegiance to the Islamic State's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
(Related.)
Then, after public protest, pressure from media and Republican lawmakers, they released the whole thing.
About the redacted version, via Heavy.com, the FBI feeds us a bunch of bullshit:
"The purpose of releasing the partial transcript of the shooter's interaction with 911 operators was to provide transparency, while remaining sensitive to the interests of the surviving victims, their families, and the integrity of the ongoing investigation," the FBI and Justice Department said in a joint statement. "We also did not want to provide the killer or terrorist organizations with a publicity platform for hateful propaganda."
What this provides is a narrative very different from the notion that Islam is a "religion of peace," that we keep hearing from our Presidents and other leaders.
Here's a transcript of his first call -- with the redactions unredacted, let's just say:
Orlando Police Dispatcher: Emergency 911, this is being recorded.Omar Mateen: In the name of God the Merciful, the beneficent [said in Arabic]
OD: What?
OM: Praise be to God, and prayers as well as peace be upon the prophet of God [said in Arabic]. I wanna let you know, I'm in Orlando and I did the shootings.
OD: What's your name?
OM: My name is I pledge of allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of the Islamic State.
OD: Ok, What's your name?
OM: I pledge allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi may God protect him [said in Arabic], on behalf of the Islamic State.
OD: Alright, where are you at?
OM: In Orlando.
OD: Where in Orlando?
[End of call.]
Islam means "submission," and this is what the religion calls for.
Here's Islamic leader Anjem Choudary, who openly praises violent jihad:
"You can't say that Islam is a religion of peace," Choudary told CBN News. "Because Islam does not mean peace. Islam means submission. So the Muslim is one who submits. There is a place for violence in Islam. There is a place for jihad in Islam.""The Koran is full of, you know, jihad is the most talked about duty in the Koran other than tawhid -- belief," he said. "Nothing else is mentioned more than the topic of fighting."
What we need to understand is the truth -- because without that we can't have any reasonable idea of a course of action.
Pink Panther
Sellars sold separately.
Let Your Classmate Die On The Floor: How To Succeed In School In America
In yet another example of school administrators showing off how they have the collective mental capacity of a terra cotta planter, a boy has been suspended for carrying his asthma-stricken classmate to the school nurse's office:
KLEW News's (sloppy, grammar-challenged) Csaba Sukosd reports:
Anthony Ruelas carried one of his classmate's to the school nurse after she collapsed on the floor. The teacher's aide email the school nurse a few minutes earlier when the student began showing signs of distress. The aid was waiting for her response response when Ruelas intervened after the student fell down."I wasn't really worried about what would happen to me I was worried about what would happen to her. If she was going to be ok. I just wanted to make sure she was all right." said Ruelas.
When he returned to class, Ruelas said he was suspended for leaving.
"I was just confused. I did something good and I still get bad consequences," he said.
What's confusing is why, whatever his supposed disciplinary record is (alluded to by school officials), a kid gets punished for showing empathy and taking action to save a girl's life.
Message: "Kids, let's not have any more of these life-saving, caring about your fellow classmates shenanigans!"
We're Looking A Little Too Hard For Criminals, AKA Men
There's this notion, more and more, that if you're male, you must be guilty.
Guilty...of what?
Not to worry -- they'll find something.
If you're a man, some seemingly innocuous thing you've done is surely criminal. Not because it is. Because they need something you've done to be criminal and because they'll just call you guilty first and work it out later. Um, maybe.
Maybe this sounds like paranoid craziness, but, from the news stories I read -- and not just those of the hurt feelz crowd on college campuses -- it increasingly seems like what it's like to be male, if you're one of the unlucky ones.
This, below, was a story from January, but I missed it then and it bears blogging because of how everyone was quick to go with the sick assumption.
A Yorkshire taxi driver was banned from making runs to a school after he was seen hugging and kissing two young girls outside a local school.
Lucy Crossley writes for the Daily Mail:
Tony Kemp, 60, from Kirkbymoorside was suspended from the school run for six days by North Yorkshire County Council after they said an allegation had been made against him.The council refused to tell him why he was suspended, but a colleague told him he had been seen kissing and cuddling two girls outside a school - which he then realised were his daughters, who are nine and 11.
Now, this is the UK, land of crazy libel laws and a lady called the Queen who runs around England followed by a bunch of corgis to the tune of bajillions of dollars, so there's already a level of WTF?
Still -- the guy wasn't even allowed to know why he was suspended.
Once officials realised the error, Mr Kemp was reinstated, but he is furious at how he was treated by the council and 'devastated' that the accusation was made.He says he can not understand why he was not told what the allegation was, and why he was not interviewed as a matter of urgency - which would have given him the opportunity to explain what had really happened.
What'll happen is that one of the women who stands for this sort of thing -- railroading men, first chance anyone gets -- will have this done to a man (or son) she cares about. Maybe it'll be in one of these campus cases where a guy gets a blow job from a woman when he's blacked out drunk and he gets tossed out of school for sexual assault.
Suddenly, when that happens to somebody's son, the injustice will become clear.
But I think maybe we -- here in America and the UK -- shouldn't be operating like this. And it's a sign that something is terribly broken in each of our countries.
The answer to that -- to the next guy who gets his due process rights yanked from him: "Hey, you're a man, dude. Suck it up."
It seems there's going to be only one way to change things, and that's for somebody who's been tossed out of school sans due process to sue the institution and everyone involved blind.
It can't happen soon enough.
Pookie
Linkie's girlfriend's name for him.
An Orthodox Jew (And Then Some) Walked Into A (Gay) Bar (To Mourn Orlando)
In the wake of the Pulse mass murder, some D.C. orthodox Jews ("modern Orthodox") went to a gay bar to show their support, reports their rabbi, Shmuel Herzfeld, in the WaPo:
When our synagogue heard about the horrific tragedy that took place at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, it was at the same time that we were celebrating our festival of Shavuot, which celebrates God's giving of the Torah.As Orthodox Jews, we don't travel or use the Internet on the Sabbath or on holidays, such as Shavuot. But on Sunday night, as we heard the news, I announced from the pulpit that as soon as the holiday ended at 9:17 p.m. Monday, we would travel from our synagogue in Northwest Washington to a gay bar as an act of solidarity.
We just wanted to share the message that we were all in tremendous pain and that our lives were not going on as normal. Even though the holiday is a joyous occasion, I felt tears in my eyes as I recited our sacred prayers.
I had not been to a bar in more than 20 years. And I had never been to a gay bar. Someone in the congregation told me about a bar called the Fireplace, so I announced that as our destination. Afterward, I found out it was predominantly frequented by gay African Americans.
Approximately a dozen of us, wearing our kippot, or yarmulkes, went down as soon as the holiday ended. Some of the members of our group are gay, but most are not. We did not know what to expect. As we gathered outside, we saw one large, drunk man talking loudly and wildly. I wondered whether we were in the right place. Then my mother, who was with me, went up to a man who was standing on the side of the building. She told him why we were there. He broke down in tears and told us his cousin was killed at Pulse. He embraced us and invited us into the Fireplace.
We didn't know what to expect, but it turned out that we had so much in common. We met everyone in the bar. One of the patrons told me that his stepchildren were actually bar-mitzvahed in our congregation. Another one asked for my card so that his church could come and visit. The bartender shut off all of the music in the room, and the crowd became silent as we offered words of prayer and healing. My co-clergy Maharat Ruth Friedman shared a blessing related to the holiday of Shavuot, and she lit memorial candles on the bar ledge. Then everyone in the bar put their hands around each other's shoulders, and we sang soulful tunes. After that, one of our congregants bought a round of beer for the whole bar.
I write in "Good Manners For Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck" about how we didn't evolve to be around strangers or feel empathy for them -- but also how little it takes for us to come to feel empathy and reach out to them.
Per the research of David DeSteno and Piercarlo Valdesolo, this simply takes recognizing -- in the smallest way -- how a stranger is like you. Like that they must like chocolate or have a dog or cat (as you do) or go to the same local coffee place you do.
It really is that simple -- and necessary, in a world where we're surrounded by strangers and people who are different from us a whole lot of the time.
via @AliceDreger
Welcome To Realism: Everything That Doesn't Work Out The Way You Want It To Is Not "Hate"
I have a lot of empathy for transgender people. Life can is hard enough in a lot of ways for those of us who grow up feeling we belong in our skin and in the sex we were born as.
However, I think there's a tendency (and a style) for people to find "hate" where there's really something a lot more benign going on.
There's also the notion that the world "should" be safe at all times for all people -- which would be wonderful and terrific, but just isn't realistic.
For example, there was an article on a site called Broadly asking whether the sharing economy is safe for women and minorities.
Guess what: If you're a woman, it's kind of important that you don't have your head up your ass when you book -- as I did (dumbass Amy!) when I went to an ev psych conference in Boston.
I stayed in an airbnb in someplace called Roxbury. Sounds almost posh, right? Well, from Wikipedia:
The high density population leads to large amounts of crime.
Yes, I was an idiot, taking an idiotic risk. Normally, I wouldn't have booked without investigating, but I was overwhelmed -- which really isn't any excuse, because they don't give you a break for being overworked when they rob, rape, or kill you.
Back to the Broadly piece, Sirin Kale also writes about a transgender woman trying to book a place:
When Shadi Petosky, a 41-year-old TV producer from Montana, tried to book an Airbnb rental in Minneapolis, she informed her host that she was a trans woman. "I don't want to end up in a space where someone bigoted punches me or causes a scene, so I always disclose [that I'm trans]."Although Petosky has experienced transphobia before in her life, she was unprepared for the response she received. "I really appreciate your honesty," the prospective host said. "I'll have to pass though, but thank you. I have a 13 year old boy going through puberty. I don't want him to feel any discomforts [sic] in his own home."
"I think what really bothered me was the fact she said I couldn't stay there because of her kid," Petosky explains. "This idea that transgender people are somehow dangerous to children was really hurtful."
Wait. Safety? Now perhaps there's something missing from this piece, but it sounds like the lady just didn't feel like having a big conversation with her teenager about being transgendered. And yes, a 13-year-old might be uncomfortable having a transgendered stranger in his home.
And really, being transgendered isn't something everybody encounters every day, and the notion that everybody's going to be as read-in on and okay with somebody being trans as a barista in The Haight...well, it's just unrealistic.
And no, I'm not saying that out of hate, either -- it's just the way things are for many people.
How does that change?
Well, John Callahan, my late quadriplegic cartoonist friend, probably got more people to treat disabled people like people instead of fragile china objects through his willingness to engage and his being realistic about how many people see disabled people.
This doesn't mean society instantly changed, but he surely changed at least a few minds.
The notion that discomfort is hate reminds me of all the screeching about Chick-fil-A and other businesses that don't support gay marriage.
Well, I'm an atheist, and I do support gay marriage, but I understand that not everybody shares my belief -- and not necessarily because they hate gays.
I think it would be useful all around to turn down the high volume hysteria everywhere and call out actual episodes of hate, and, especially violence.
People don't have to like you or approve of who you are, who I am, or who anyone is -- but they don't get to go violent.
That said, if you're somebody who has certain inherent safety risks simply because of who you are or how you present, don't just whine about it or be as stupid as I was: Be realistic and take responsibility for your safety.
Linkey
Is that your monkey?
You Can't Escape "Rape Culture" -- Even If There Are Barely Any Men On Campus
Women at St. Catherine University demonstrated against the "rape culture" there -- despite how 97 percent of the undergrads are women, according to the Star Trib story by Maura Lerner:
St. Catherine University has cut ties with an event organizer, Heartland Inc., after protesters accused both the school and the company's owners of being insensitive to rape survivors....The furor began on June 10, when Heartland held a seminar on women in leadership at St. Catherine.
That morning, a woman named Sarah Super led a small group of protesters on the edge of campus, drawing attention to the rape case involving the Neals' son, Alec. Super, 27, has publicly identified herself as the woman raped at knife point by Neal, who pleaded guilty last year and is serving a 12-year-prison term.
This is not rape culture -- where there's some encouraging and condoning of rape.
This is justice in action -- rape being treated as any decent, civilized, rational, mentally healthy person sees it: As a terrible crime.
What this really involved was campus organizers noticing that they could get some attention, vis a vis the protests of the Brock Turner case -- which is remarkably unsimilar to this one, save for how there was a sexual assault underlying:
"Turner's family rallied around Brock in ways that are pretty similar to my perpetrator's family," said Super. She criticized, in particular, a letter-writing campaign attesting to Alec Neal's character before his sentencing. Her goal, she said, was to show how that affects victims. "Brock Turner's case lit the flame for the conversation."The Neals, though, say they never attempted to minimize their son's crime. "We are heartbroken over the suffering Sarah has experienced," they wrote. "There wasn't a single letter that suggested Alec shouldn't be held accountable for his actions or that expressed anything but compassion and concern for Sarah."
Once again, this is a case of people seizing power by claiming there's been an injustice done -- and never mind whether one actually exists (beyond the rape itself, of course). They're talking about a culture of injustice that just isn't reflected here:
Heartland's supporters, meanwhile, have leapt to the Neals' defense. Jina Penn-Tracy, a Minneapolis investment adviser who has attended their workshops, wrote on Facebook: "I am very sorry for what Sarah suffered, but as a multiple rape survivor, I object to the families of offenders being targeted for attack and boycott ... This is not justice, but vendetta."In an interview, Penn-Tracy, 48, said she understands Super's anger, "but attacking their business, trying to drive them out of business, is an aggression, and I don't think it's going to bring healing."
Patricia Weaver Francisco, a Hamline University professor who has written a memoir of her own rape and recovery, said it's unfair to compare the Neals to the Stanford case, where the perpetrator's family seemed dismissive of the crime. In his most controversial remark, Turner's father stated that jail time would be a "steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action."
The Neals, by contrast, are "deeply thoughtful and caring people" who were "devastated for Sarah," said Francisco. "I've literally never heard them say a thing about Sarah that is anything other than concern."
Here's real rape culture:
If You're Raped In A Muslim Country, You're Guilty Of "Adultery" This Dutch woman, a rape victim when she was in Qatar, made the mistake of reporting her rape to authorities, which means she confessed to committing a crime (under Islam).Yes, being raped is a crime under Islam -- unless you are a woman captured by Muslim soldiers, in which case, they get to do what they want with you.
via @instapundit
Advice Goddess Free Swim
It's Friday night, and I'm a little zonked, so you pick the topics. I'll post more on Saturday.
P.S. One link per comment or my spam filter will eat your post.
Why Bust Scary, Dangerous Criminals When You Can Go After Easy Targets In Their Undies?
The only problem is that arresting people making a living through prostitution doesn't lessen the actual dangerous elements in society one iota.
Elizabeth Nolan Brown writes at Reason that cops in Costa Mesa are "being very proactive in regard to prostitution enforcement," according to the chief there, Bryan Glass:
In 2015, Costa Mesa police arrested one person on prostitution-related charges. From January through April 2016, they arrested 69. Police say this is thanks to a conscious decision to refocus a special investigations unit away from busting gang leaders, career criminals, and drug dealers and toward people involved in the sex trade.
It's all about looking good for making arrests.
"The squad of about 10 officers has typically had a broad focus, taking on complex investigations including drugs busts, tracking career criminals and keeping tabs on gangs," police told the Los Angeles Times. After a series of prostitution stings earlier this year, the cops realized that focusing on prostitution "made the team's enforcement efforts immediately apparent, Glass said. A long-term drug investigation could eat up hours of work from a half-dozen detectives before police took a suspect into custody, he said."
Hey, here's a suggestion -- go on the playground and arrest kids for making threatening remarks.
And Nolan Brown is exactly right:
Just to recap: the only reason sex workers and drug users need warrant excessive police intervention is because we have unnecessarily criminalized these people.
There is not a reason in the world why selling your body shouldn't be your right (as a consenting adult -- to another adult)...save for how arresting you for it provides such wonderful stats for cops. Understandably, they'd much rather take down people earning a living with their sexparts than with guns and knives (violent!) or through financial crimes like bank fraud (too complicated!).
"Inventory Searches": How Scummy Texas Cops Search Cars And Seize Your Possessions Under The Color Of Law (While Violating The Constitution)
Andrew Fleischman writes at Mimesis Law:
Inventory searches allow police to search a car to make an "inventory" of everything inside, to make sure that there are no claims that something is missing after the search. There are only two problems with these inventories. First, police have no liability at all if something is stolen, and thus no incentive to perform the inventory except to discovery contraband. Second, they rarely actually create an inventory. They usually just find drugs and stop looking.
Here's the story of a man whose vehicle was searched -- supposedly -- merely for, cough, inventorying purposes:
Miguel Herrerra was illegally stopped and arrested by police while driving in his 2004 Lincoln Navigator. The car was seized and "inventory searched." The police found drugs. So Herrerra filed a motion to suppress in his criminal case. He won.When he asked for his car back, Texas decided it would rather keep the Navigator for itself, and moved to forfeit the car. Herrerra objected, pointing out that if the State couldn't keep its wrongful proceeds for the criminal case, it should simply turn the car back over to him.
Herrerra won at the trial court. He won at the Texas Court of Appeals. And then he got to the Supreme Court of Texas, who proceeded to jam a bowie knife into his claim. Sure, the Court ruled, you can stop the State from using your car as evidence against you in a criminal trial. But this here case is civil, so Texas gets to keep the stuff it stole.
And this is exactly right:
Every wrongful search is a crime. Holding an innocent person without a case against him is false imprisonment. Arresting him unlawfully is kidnapping. Entering his home to steal his possessions is a burglary. And in every other facet of American law, the rule is clear: criminals should not profit from their crimes.But once again we come to the exception. The rule of law is for the protection of our governors, not the governed.
Border Officer-Thugs Have Doctor Medically Rape Girl; Hospital Then Bills Her Parents $575 For It
The non-consensual anal and vaginal cavity searches that were done on this girl -- Ashley Cervantes, a U.S. citizen who was returning from having breakfast over the border in Nogales -- were an absolutely horrible physical violation and a violation of numerous constitutional rights.
And -- disgustingly -- her story is not the only one like this.
Cyrus Farivar writes at Ars Technica that Cervantes just filed a civil complaint in federal court, seeking damages from the government, Customs and Border thugs, the specific Customs and Border Patrol agent who spearheaded the search, and the doctor who medically raped her (my term for it).
The court filing describes 18-year-old Ashley Cervantes' harrowing experience over the course of seven hours in October 2014. She had just returned from Nogales, Sonora (Mexico) back into Nogales, Arizona--she had come back from eating breakfast at one of her favorite spots.According to the complaint, after presenting her identity documents, an unidentified CBP agent accused Cervantes of possessing illegal drugs, which she denied. She was ordered to proceed to a detention room, where she was handcuffed to a chair. There, she was sniffed by a dog (in violation of CBP policy) and was taken to another room where she was ordered to squat so that female officers could visually inspect her.
Unsatisfied that they had not found the drugs, the agents escalated their search. CBP Agent Shameka Leggett then filled out an Immigration Health Services' form, known as a Treatment Authorization Request (TAR), describing Cervantes as being "diagnosed" as an apparent "potential internal carrier of foreign substance." The agent recommended that she be X-rayed at a hospital.
Cervantes was then transported in custody from the border to Holy Cross Hospital.
There, as the complaint notes:
Dr. Martinez "forcefully and digitally probed her vagina and anus."
For which her parents were sent a bill for $575.
No drugs were found. And there was no probable cause to search her. Howard Fischer writes at the AZ Cap Times link just above:
Ashley Cervantes says in her lawsuit that she had crossed into Mexico on foot on a Saturday morning in October 2014 to have breakfast at a restaurant where she often eats. On returning, she presented border officials with her birth certificate and state identification card.Attorney Brian Marchetti said they accused the woman, 18 at the time, of possessing drugs. When she denied that was true, they took her into a detention room where, during the next several hours, she was handcuffed to a chair, had several dogs sniff her, and eventually taken into a separate room where she was patted down and asked to squat so female investigators could visually inspect her.
All that, said Marchetti, occurred without her consent or a warrant. In fact, he said, a request to call her mother was denied.
It was what happened next that Marchetti charges clearly violated his client's rights.
He said an agent of Customs and Border Protection signed a "Treatment Authorization Request" to have her taken to a medical facility as an alleged "potential internal carrier of foreign substance." That form, he said, requested an X-ray.Instead, Marchetti said Cervantes was taken in handcuffs to Holy Cross Hospital where the doctor probed her anus and vagina.
"Ashley had never before been to a gynecologist and, for the remainder of her life, will always remember that her first pelvic and rectal exams where under the most inhumane circumstances imaginable to a U.S. citizen at a hospital on U.S. soil," Marchetti charges in his lawsuit.
When government "routinely" violates citizens' rights -- and often in horrible ways like this -- it is a sign that government has gotten out of hand and needs to be rolled back.
The problem is, once you give some person or entity power, it's kind of impossible to get it all back in the bag.
The TSA circus is a perfect example. They aren't catching terrorists. Even trained FBI agents are letting terrorists slip by -- like Omar Mateen, who just shot up the nightclub in Miami for Allah:
Twice during his adult life, Mateen's actions prompted probes by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Agents concluded he didn't pose an immediate threat.
So why do we still have the TSA? Well, all that money and power, of course -- to lobbyists, makers of the machines the repurposed mall workers stare dully into as 95 percent of the test bombs and weapons sail through, and the workers themselves, who make the unemployment figures look a little better by having those gubbermint jobs.
Plus, how fun to be able to tell some CEO to bend over so you can give his balls a whacking -- uh, that is, check his testicles for a bomb.
The Islamic State Is Very Islamic
A quote from the March 2015 essay "What ISIS Really Wants" by Graeme Wood in The Atlantic:
The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.Virtually every major decision and law promulgated by the Islamic State adheres to what it calls, in its press and pronouncements, and on its billboards, license plates, stationery, and coins, "the Prophetic methodology," which means following the prophecy and example of Muhammad, in punctilious detail.
A tweet:
@patcondell
Be thankful that Islam is a religion of peace. Imagine the carnage if it was a religion of violent bigotry, supremacist hatred, and war.
Linko
Like lipo but without the creepy fat-sucking.
The New Attitude On Campus: Don't Offend The Customers, Uh, Students
I've heard these stories -- of complaints by students over the slightest imagined offense -- from friends who are academics, and they are chilling.
For example, one female student imagined that a professor friend of mine -- a guy who has been timid about hitting on women and frankly, has less "game" than my lamp -- was hitting on her.
He wasn't -- he was just trying to help her, and, per what his behavior was, a reasonable person wouldn't perceive that he was doing anything untoward. (Sorry I can't say more than that.) But it was enough that she complained that he was hitting on her. He suffered some consequences from this -- which I can't detail here.
In The Atlantic, Jonathan R. Cole writes that the coddling of students' minds has resulted in grave restrictions of free speech on campus -- for students and also for professors:
Students want to be protected against slurs, epithets, and different opinions from their own--protected from challenges to their prior beliefs and presuppositions. They fear not being respected because of a status that they occupy. But that is not what college is about. While some educators and policymakers see college primarily as a place where students develop skills for high-demand jobs, the goal of a college education is for students to learn to think independently and skeptically and to learn how to make and defend their point of view. It is not to suppress ideas that they find opprobrious. Yet students are willing to trade off free expression for greater inclusion and the suppression of books or speech that offend--even if this means that many topics of importance to their development never are openly discussed....Consider a few recent cases: Brown University, Johns Hopkins University, Williams College, and Haverford College, among others schools, withdrew speaking invitations, including those for commencement addresses, because students objected to the views or political ideology of the invited speaker. Brandeis University began to monitor the class of a professor who had explained that Mexican immigrants to the United States are sometime called "wetbacks," a comment about the history of a derogatory term that outraged some Mexican American students. Black students at Princeton University protested against the "racial climate on campus" and demanded that Woodrow Wilson's name be removed from its school of Public and International Affairs. The chilling effect of these kind of restrictions on speech were not lost in 1947 on Robert Hutchins, the president of the University of Chicago, who opined during the McCarthy period: "The question is not how many professors have been fired for their beliefs, but how many think they might be."
Professors realize that they cannot challenge students who accuse them -- in class or formally -- of violating the bounds of hurtfeelzville.
It doesn't matter whether they've actually done anything wrong; students can report anything as an offense.
So they sit and take it when students say they've been "microaggressed" and reformulate lesson plans to try to avoid giving any ammunition to students who might go after them.
I hate that this is happening, but these professors have student loans to pay off, mortgages to pay, and sometimes, kids to feed, and -- much as I wish professors would band together and fight this -- I understand the need to keep one's job.
Of course, a big part of this has to do with how administrators are overpaid and prefer to kowtow to the coddled complainers and avoid any bad press from the "triggered" and such, because they are running a giant, shiny edu-business first and an institution of higher learning and free inquiry way last.
Take That Israeli Boycott All The Way, College Boys And Girls
Google's Eric Schmidt, now head of Alphabet, said Israeli tech is second only to Silicon Valley.
A tweet from me:
@amyalkon
If you're boycotting Israel, be sure you aren't using any products w/Israeli parts or origin, like your cellphone
Another tweet:
@amyalkon
Israeli inventions (find a comfy chair): Wiki. Palestinian inventions: Wiki.
Unfortunately, Israeli Citizens Can't Run For U.S. President
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu speaks on Orlando.
via @AHMalcolm
Linklomania
It's an undiagnosed disorder of indeterminate symptoms.
Brock Turner's Victim's Statement Shows Absurdity Of "Affirmative Consent" Standard
Cathy Young writes at AllThink that it shows that the "affirmative consent standard has no relation to how real people have sex in the real world":
After mentioning Turner's claim that he asked for and received consent, she comments:Most guys don't ask, can I finger you? Usually there's a natural progression of things, unfolding consensually, not a Q and A.Cases involving victims who are raped while unconscious or incapacitated, and who never say "no," have also been sometimes invoked as reasons we need affirmative consent. The Brock Turner case shows that it is, in fact, possible to secure a conviction for such a crime. In these cases, an affirmative consent standard is unnecessary; in other cases, it is intrusive and unrealistic. A bad idea all around.
Requiring this standard allows too many to turn post-sex regret into supposed sexual assault, thanks to a phalanx of Title IX-driven lackeys ready to remove due process from the accused.
Actual rape -- of an unconscious woman behind a Dumpster, as in the Brock Turner case, shows those "Well, I was giggling because I was a little tipsy when I texted my friends to brag that I was having sex" for the opportunistic claims that they are.
And no, not all such claims are wrong. There are cases, say, when a person -- usually a woman -- doesn't want to keep going during sex and another person just does.
However, my feeling about those cases is the same as my feelings about other accusations that someone has committed a crime: We need to err on the letting somebody possibly guilty go free when there is a lack of evidence to avoid punishing the innocent.
Choices, Choices: Corrupt Or Unstable?
Corrupt? That's Hillary.
That's also Trump.
But he's also unstable -- a petulant, unstable little child prince.
Hillary, at least, can basically be counted on to act like a corrupt adult.
That's my take on it, anyway.
If you had to hold your nose and vote tomorrow, who would it be for and why?
And is there any hope of any miracle candidate?
P.S. I'd crawl over broken glass through a gauntlet of alligators to vote for Mitt Romney.
Govt Spends $500 Million Of Our Tax Dollars To Bring Kale To The Hood. Oops.
Other people's money spends so easily and so well -- and failing at your job in government tends to get you big bonuses, not fired, like in the private sector. (If you do get fired from a government job, it generally takes a huge outcry and perhaps a few dozen flattened kittens.)
About that kale-targeted $500K of taxpayer dollars, Elizabeth Nolan Brown writes at Reason:
"Since 2011, the Federal Government has spent almost $500 million to improve food store access in neighborhoods lacking large, well-stocked grocery stores," according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). "States and local governments have also launched programs to attract supermarkets or improve existing stores in underserved areas. For example, the Pennsylvania Fresh Food Initiative has provided $30 million of public funds (matched with $117 million of private investment) to help address limited store access in underserved urban and rural areas throughout Pennsylvania."The theory was simple: poor people simply lacked easy access to healthy food options. If you put fruits, vegetables, and whole grains in front of them, they would soon be singing the praises of Michael Pollan, too. And voila: no more obesity epidemic in these neighborhoods.
But of course things didn't work out that way. As many business owners in these neighborhoods and other food-desert skeptics have pointed out, the problem wasn't that they simply hadn't thought to offer more wholesome items. The problem was that these items just didn't sell. You can lead human beings to Whole Foods, but you can't make them buy organic kale there.
The USDA just admitted as much, with a new report on food deserts published in its magazine, Amber Waves. Highlights from the article note that proximity to supermarkets "has a limited impact on food choices" and "household and neighborhood resources, education, and taste preferences may be more important determinants of food choice than store proximity.
Duh.
Pinky
Pink like furry toilet seat coverlinks.
Idiotic State Licensing Keeps U of M Flint Econ Dept. Head From Being Allowed To Teach High School
Michigan Capital Confidential's Tom Gantert writes that teacher licensing requirements in Michigan keep highly qualified Ph.D.s from being high school teachers without jumping through a bunch of training hoops:
Christopher Douglas is an associate professor and the chair of the Department of Economics at the University of Michigan-Flint, where he teaches a half dozen classes. He has undergraduate degrees in electrical engineering and economics from Michigan Technological University as well as a doctorate in economics from Michigan State University.Yet, Douglas has said he would have to complete additional coursework and also pass the Michigan Test for Teacher Certification to teach at a public high school in Michigan. And he isn't alone.
Ross B. Emmett is a professor of political economy and political theory and constitutional democracy at James Madison College at MSU.
"According to the state of Michigan licensing requirements, I cannot teach economics in a Michigan high school," Emmett said in an email. "This, despite the fact that I have a Ph.D. in economics and over thirty years of experience in liberal arts college classrooms with excellent evaluations."
...Many highly qualified people are barred from teaching at DPS because, although they are qualified to teach at a public K-12 school, they have not completed the state-required licensing.
"Unions like barriers to entry, which is what this certification represents," Douglas said.
...All Michigan teachers must complete either a traditional teacher preparation program or an alternative program.
Teachers must also complete required reading courses. That means six semester credit hours for elementary teachers and three semester credit hours for secondary teachers.
Teachers must complete a course in first aid and CPR that is approved by the American Red Cross or similar organization.
Teachers must pass the Michigan Test for Teacher Certification and the Professional Readiness Examination/Basic Skills.
I recently looked up the exam for psychologist certification in California. I have spent years reading in psychology -- my current reading is a Michael Gazzaniga co-authored Cognitive Neuroscience textbook along with (yesterday night) a 20-page paper criticizing embodied cognition that I'm halfway through.
After looking at the test questions, I see that I could pass the psychologist certification exam, no problem.
The problem? I haven't taken classes in how to recognize child abuse, etc., or met other classic educational requirements.
Okay, so I won't get certified. I really just wanted to do it so I could stop having people not take me and my knowledge base as seriously (and it's mainly journalists who do that -- professors seem to respect me for my knowledge, enough that I got asked to speak at the big ev psych conference last year and enough that I'm the president of an organization of academics). Several chapters of the book I'm writing also take apart accepted thinking in psychology on a number of topics, laying out why that accepted thinking isn't solid science.
The sort of hilarious thing is how many people are certified as psychologists and therapists who haven't opened a book since college and really know fuck all about their topic. But, hey, they've got that nice rubber stamp from the state, so all good!
via @AdamKissel
Government Has No Business Shutting Advertisers Up To Protect Girls' Feelings
This particular speech squashing move comes from the UK, where increasingly, speech is becoming unfree -- as it is on college campuses across America.
In the UK, the new mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, announced that public transport would no longer run ads like this one below, which, as the article in the Standard/UK by Pippa Crerar reports, are deemed to possibly cause "body confidence issues, particularly among young people."
The Mayor, a father of two teenage daughters, warned the ads could "demean" women and encourage them to conform to unrealistic or unhealthy body shapes.
What I want to know is why this body shape is "unrealistic"? Women who look like this exist, and frankly, more women would look like this but for how the government-advised, scientifically bankrupt high-carb, low-fat diet plumped them all up. 
This seems to be yet another case of a politician wanting to be seen as doing something -- something wonderfully politically correct -- while really changing society not an iota.
Is he also going to send cops through the train to yank Vogue and other magazines out of girls' hands? Is he -- Muslim mayor that he is -- going to require beautiful women to go around in burkas, lest less beautiful women feel bad about their looks? And what of smart women? Is he going to make them take stupid drugs so women of lesser intelligence won't feel so dim?
(Harrison Bergeron, please call your office.)
Turlinkey
Surfed at Thanksgiving.
If You're Raped In A Muslim Country, You're Guilty Of "Adultery"
This Dutch woman, a rape victim when she was in Qatar, made the mistake of reporting her rape to authorities, which means she confessed to committing a crime (under Islam).
Yes, being raped is a crime under Islam -- unless you are a woman captured by Muslim soldiers, in which case, they get to do what they want with you.
The story from DW.com:
A 22-year-old Dutch woman who was held in Qatar for months after telling police she was raped was released on Monday, according to Dutch authorities. She faced an adultery charge for having sex out of wedlock.A court in the Qatari capital Doha handed her a one-year suspended prison sentence during a brief hearing on Monday. The woman also received a fine of 3,000 Qatari riyals ($800 or 710 euros) and will be deported after paying the fine, said court officials.
The Dutch ambassador to Qatar, Yvette Burghgraef-van Eechoud, who was present in court, told reporters the embassy is helping her to leave Qatar within the next few days.
...The male defendant, who also did not appear in court on Monday, was given a sentence of 100 lashes for adultery and an additional 40 lashes for consuming alcohol. He will not serve any time in jail.
...In mid-March, the Dutch woman, who was on vacation with a friend, went out for drinks at a hotel bar and believed that someone "messed with her drink," her lawyer Brian Lokollo said.
She remembered nothing until waking up the following morning in an unfamiliar apartment "and realized to her great horror, that she had been raped," he said.The woman reported her rape to police and was immediately detained after reporting the attack on suspicion of having sex out of wedlock. Her alleged attacker insisted that she consented and asked for money.
Why anyone goes to Qatar or other Muslim countries on vacation is absolutely beyond me. You have to have a fantasy view of Islam -- which, admittedly, I had before 9/11 (before I started reading in and about Islam). But still, I like to think I wouldn't have been such an idiot as to think you can go to a place like Qatar on vacation.
Support For Islamic Dissidents And Honesty About Islam: Our Best Hope Against The Deadly Totalitarianism Commanded By Islam
Islam commands the death or conversion of "the infidel" -- and the death of gays and apostates. To be fair, there is some dispute in the Hadiths (the words and deeds of Mohammed and his close followers) as to how gays should be slaughtered -- whether they are to be burned, stoned to death, or thrown off a tall building.
From the Saudi Ministry of Education Textbooks for Islamic Studies:
"Homosexuality is one of the most disgusting sins and greatest crimes.... It is a vile perversion that goes against sound nature, and is one of the most corrupting and hideous sins.... The punishment for homosexuality is death. Both the active and passive participants are to be killed whether or not they have previously had sexual intercourse in the context of a legal marriage.... Some of the companions of the Prophet stated that [the perpetrator] is to be burned with fire. It has also been said that he should be stoned, or thrown from a high place."
Unbelievable that we are dealing with this in the modern age, but we are.
Yet, who are the last to know? The FBI. Robert Spencer posts at JihadWatch:
While Omar Mateen was casing other gay clubs to determine where he wanted to commit jihad mass murder, law enforcement officials had no idea anything was amiss: "I have been in this business for 30 years, and we all in law enforcement have talked about one of the theme parks getting hit by these terrorist killers. Never in all my years of training, and being involved in several investigative units, to include the FBI Task Force, would we have ever guessed a LGBT club be a target of an terrorist attack."Why would they never have guessed? Because they don't study Islam. Because they are taught to downplay and deny the motivating ideology behind jihad terror attacks. Because they have no idea these sayings exist, or what their significance is: "If two men among you are guilty of lewdness, punish them both. If they repent and amend, leave them alone; for Allah is Oft-returning, Most Merciful." (Qur'an 4:16) That seems rather mild, but there's more. The Qur'an also depicts Allah raining down stones upon people for engaging in homosexual activity: "We also sent Lot. He said to his people: "Do you commit lewdness such as no people in creation committed before you? For you practise your lusts on men in preference to women: you are indeed a people transgressing beyond bounds....And we rained down on them a shower of brimstone: Then see what was the end of those who indulged in sin and crime!" (Qur'an 7:80)
Muhammad makes clear that Muslims should be the executors of the wrath of Allah by killing gays. A hadith depicts Muhammad saying: "If you find anyone doing as Lot's people did, kill the one who does it, and the one to whom it is done." (Abu Dawud 38:4447) And: "Stone the upper and the lower, stone them both." (Ibn Majah 3:20:2562)
At Gatestone Institute, Giulio Meotti explains that there's an essential ally in combating this terrible thinking and other terrible thinking (and calls for murder and/or the removal of freedoms of all non-Muslims), and it is "dissidents" from Islam.
•Today a new Iron Curtain has been erected by Islam against the rest of the world, and the new heroes are the dissidents, the apostates, the rebels, the non-believers and the heretics.•This rapidly growing army of Muslim dissidents is the best liberation movement for millions of Muslims who aspire to practice their faith peacefully without submitting to the dictates of fundamentalists and fanatics.
•They are alone against all. Against Islamism which uses Kalashnikovs and against an intellectual terrorism which submits them to media intimidation. Seen as "traitors" by their communities, they are accused by the élites in the West of "stigmatizing."
•We should support them -- all of them. Some of the bravest defenders of freedom come from the Islamic regimes. Europe should give financial, moral and political support to these friends of Western civilization, while our disgraced intelligentsia is engaged in slandering them.
Here are a few examples:
Le Figaro recently published a long report about Muslim French personalities threatened with "execution". "Placed under permanent police protection, regarded as traitors by Muslim fundamentalists, they live in a hell. In the eyes of Islamists, their freedom is an act of betrayal of the ummah [community]." They are writers and journalists of Arab-Muslim culture who denounce the Islamist threat and the inherent violence of the Koran. They stand alone against Islamism which uses the physical terrorism of Kalashnikovs, and against the intellectual terrorism which submits them to media intimidation. Seen as "traitors" by their communities, they are accused by the élites in the West of "stigmatizing."The French journalist Zineb El Rhazoui has more bodyguards than many ministers in the government of Manuel Valls, and for security, has to change houses in Paris often in recent months. For this young scholar, born in Casablanca and who works at the French weekly, Charlie Hebdo, walking down the street in Paris has become unthinkable. A fatwa put out after January 7, 2015 reads: "Kill Zineb El Rhazoui to avenge the Prophet."
Threats against another dissident, Nadia Remadna, do not come from Raqqa, Syria, but her own city: Sevran, in Seine-Saint-Denis. They reflect the growing influence of Islamists in the lost territories of the French Republic. What "crime" was she found guilty of? She created the "Brigade of Mothers" to combat the Islamist influence on young Muslims.
There's a really terrific piece in the New York Observer by John R. Schindler explaining that denying the realities of Islam leaves us cleaning up dead bodies in restaurants, concert halls, and nightclubs:
America just suffered our worst terrorist attack since 9/11. We need to start talking honestly about the enemy that keeps butchering Americans....Within hours of the massacre, progressives and jihad apologists were insisting that the Orlando attack was "really" about guns - and certainly not about Islamism or jihadism. The Pulse massacre was about guns the way that the 9/11 attacks were "really" about box cutters and the 2013 Boston bombing was "really" about pressure cookers. There are millions of guns in Florida (the state has issued 1.3 million concealed carry permits alone) plus plenty of people who are not overly fond of gays. Why, then, was Omar Mateen the one who assaulted a gay club and shot dozens of innocent people?
How he kept this job even though he was known to Federal authorities for suspected ties to jihadism is something that has to be asked - and answered.
Based on his statement on the atrocity, President Obama won't be asking that question anytime soon. Although Mr. Obama demurred from some of his customary evasions, actually calling the attack an "act of terrorism," he quickly defaulted to his usual talking points whenever radical Muslims butcher Americans: "hate" and "guns" were cited frequently by the president, while words such as "Islamism" and "jihad" were notable by their absence. Mr. Obama's denial of the obvious, perfected during his two terms in the White House, appears unshakeable.
These evasions are met with derision by counterterrorism professionals, who deduced Mr. Obama's agenda back in 2009 when he dismissed the Fort Hood massacre as "workplace violence." Spies and cops have gotten used to this president's persistent inability to call the enemy what he actually is, even though that enemy constantly calls himself such things. "What was he gonna call Orlando," asked an old FBI friend just hours after the Pulse attack: "gayplace violence?"
It's not difficult to determine what's really going on here. Just two months before this attack, an Orlando mosque hosted an Islamic theologian known for pronouncing homosexuals as deserving of death. "Death is the sentence" they merit as an act of "compassion," the imam stated. While his invitation got some coverage in Orlando media, one wonders what the mainstream media would have to say if a white preacher in Charleston had pronounced blacks as deserving the death sentence only two months before Dylann Roof murdered nine African Americans in a church.\
...In the aftermath of our own Bataclan, President Obama has offered his usual platitudes about "hate" and "guns." This is escapism-as-counterterrorism-policy. Americans must demand better, including a reality-based assessment of our terrorism threat, from our next commander-in-chief. If we cannot name our enemy, we are already halfway to losing the war.
Glenn Reynolds, in USA Today, makes a similar call for truth about Islam:
In the wake of the Orlando shootings, people are trotting out the usual post-massacre talking points about gun control, terrorism, etc. But the solutions aren't so easy.Gun control is much stricter in Europe, but that hasn't stopped mass shootings like the ones at Charlie Hebdo's offices or at the Bataclan concert hall. (It's also very strict in California, but that didn't stop the shootings at San Bernardino.) Talking about gun control is mostly a way of avoiding a tough problem.
...To prevent this sort of event in the future, we need to do several things.
First, interrupt the flow of radicalizing propaganda at the source: ISIL and various other jihadist outfits need to be neutralized or destroyed. These organizations pursue a deliberate strategy of radicalizing Muslims in Western countries to turn them into terrorists, and they operate networks of sympathizers throughout the USA. We used to cozy up to the Saudis, but thanks to hydraulic fracturing we don't really need their oil anymore, so they need to be told to put a stop to this sort of support or else. We likely could have nipped ISIL in the bud a few years ago at minimal cost -- or kept it from sprouting in the first place by maintaining a presence in Iraq -- but it needs to be brought down now.
We also need to be clear about what it is we're fighting. We're not fighting Islam as such. Many good Muslims are horrified by this violence. But we are fighting the jihadist strain of Islam, and unfortunately quite a few Muslims view that strain as legitimate.
We can't allow ourselves to be blinded to this reality, unless we want to see jihadist attacks like this -- which have, sadly, become normal in the past few years -- continue and increase.
Observer link via @KurtSchlicter
Linky Kong
How's your donkey?
Expectations For Kids, Contractually Agreed Upon -- Great Idea, "Tiger Mom"
In an age when less and less is expected of kids, many bristle on doing the slightest thing, basically acting like totally lazy alcoholics without the alcoholism (except for those who have that, too).
Well, when the "Tiger Mom," Amy Chua, had her two adult daughters sharing her New York City pied-a-terre for the summer, she came up with a contract she had them sign, spelling out what she expected of them. Chua, who teaches contracts law at Yale, writes in the WSJ:
RENTAL AGREEMENTWHEREAS Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld are the owners of Apt. [XXX] at [XXX], and their children are not;
WHEREAS Children owe their parents everything, even in the West, where many have conflicted feelings about this;
NOW THEREFORE
In exchange for Amy and Jed allowing them to stay in their NYC apartment from June 1, 2016 to August 1, 2016, Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld and Louisa Chua-Rubenfeld agree to the following irrevocable duties and conditions:
1. To occupy only the junior bedroom.
2. To greet Jed Rubenfeld & Amy Chua with spontaneous joy and gratitude whenever they visit.
3. To make their (joint) bed every day, and not to fight about who does it.
4. To never, ever use the phrase, "Relax--it's not a big deal."
5. To always leave all internal doors in the apartment wide open whenever Jed, Amy or any company whatsoever (including relatives) are in the apartment, with an immaculately made bed in full view and no clothing or other junk on the floor of the bedroom in sight.
6. Whenever any guests visit, to come out of the bedroom immediately in a respectable state, greet the guests with enthusiasm, and sit and converse with the guests in the living room for at least 15 minutes.
7. To always be kind to our trusty Samoyeds Coco and Pushkin, who Sophia and Louisa hereby agree have greater rights to the apartment than Sophia and Louisa do, and to walk them to the dog park at least once a day when they visit, within 30 minutes of being asked to do so by Amy.
8. To fill the refrigerator with fresh OJ from Fairway for Jed on days when he is in town.
9. To keep the pillows in the living room in the right place and PLUMPED and to clean the glass table with Windex whenever it is used.
ADDITIONALLY, Sophia and Louisa agree that the above duties and conditions will not be excused even in the event of illness, hangovers, migraines, work crises or mental breakdowns (whether their own or their friends').
Sophia and Louisa agree that if they violate any one of these conditions, Amy and Jed will have the right to get the Superintendent or a doorman to restrain them from entering the apartment; and to change the locks.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the parties have duly executed this agreement.
_________________ Amy Chua
_________________ Jed Rubenfeld
_________________ Sophia
_________________ Lulu
The contract was signed by all four of us and went into legal force two weeks ago, and I can now say with confidence that I highly recommend this approach for parents with grown children--at least in America, a land where the laws and social norms heavily favor children over parents. The last time Jed and I showed up at the apartment, the refrigerator was stocked with orange juice, the master bedroom looked duplicitously unused, and our daughters greeted us with spontaneous joy and gratitude.
She adds this:
In the end, of course, all that any of us really wants is to have our babies back, to hold them close and to spend time with them--and to have them want to spend time with us.Alas, we can't have their childhood again. But at least we have contracts.
She got a lot of sneering and huffiness in the WSJ comments, but there were also comments like this:
marc reichel
loved the article and idea, Amy!we have similar arrangements with our four kids on a different set of circumstances: summer jobs , household chores, and reading courses.
I suspect those commenting in the WSJ about what "nonsense" Chua's op-ed is have some other agenda. Here's "BILL OLIVER":
BILL OLIVER
Please. I cannot imagine taking time to write this nonsense if not desperate for attention and hungry for publicity. Life is short. Get on with it. Ignore this.
Again, I think this is a great idea. Without expectations, kids tend devolve to a level of laziness that isn't good for them -- or for kid-parent relations.
Things were expected of me as a kid, and though I grumbled about it (feeling largely like a suburban serf as I had to mow the lawn, etc.), it taught me a work ethic. Not long ago, my boyfriend and I had to cut out of a friend's really fun party at 10 p.m. His girlfriend, who wants to be a writer, said, "Are you taking a trip early tomorrow?"
I am a writer, and I said, "No, I have to be up at 5 a.m. to write."
From her reaction, I think she realized something about the difference between wanting to be a writer and actually being one.
via @CHSommers
These Two Texas Valedictorians Wouldn't Be Bragging About Being Illegal In Mexico
Two Texas valedictorians came out as "undocumented."
Um, I know that you weren't behind this, girls -- you were brought here by your families -- but you are in this country illegally.
I'm for immigration; I think our country is a far better place for all the people we've had mix in here. But there are huge costs from illegal immigration -- like an estimated $25.3 billion in California every year for "providing education, health care, law enforcement, and social and government services to illegal aliens and their dependents." That's $2,370 annually per California household (headed by a U.S. citizen).
Maybe we in the U.S. should get a choice in who gets to live here -- on, yes, both humanitarian and other grounds.
In The New York Times, Katie Rogers writes about valedictorians Larissa Martinez and Mayte Lara Ibarra publicly announcing that they are in this country illegally:
Jose Antonio Vargas, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and immigration activist who revealed that he is undocumented in The New York Times Magazine in 2011, said that gestures like Ms. Ibarra's were part of a larger effort on behalf of undocumented people to be open and upfront about their status."Being undocumented is part of her identity, as is being a Latina," he said Thursday. He added, "For many undocumented people, this is our way of telling people that we are not who people think we are."
Define American, a project Mr. Vargas started in 2011, holds events and online campaigns where people can share their immigration status, an effort, he said, that was meant to shape the conversation around immigration "so it's a more 'human' one."
Although people have been using Twitter and YouTube to make their immigration status public for years, Mr. Vargas said he thought the criticism of Ms. Martinez and Ms. Ibarra was coming at a tense time in the election cycle. In the case of Ms. Ibarra, he said that people were circulating misinformation, and he referred to the state law granting the waivers to valedictorians.
"This young woman is not taking somebody else's spot," he said of the waivers. "She's not getting special treatment. She is getting that because she graduated as valedictorian, and that's how it is in Texas."
If that's your "identity" in Mexico, you are a felon. And your ass is probably getting deported, pronto. (An article at Western Journalism is headlined: Mexico Deports More Illegals Than The US Does.)
Loopy
Wackyass links.
Outrage Leads To Impulse Rules And Laws -- Driven By Emotion Instead Of Justice
"Impulse laws" is how I think of those laws named for victims that can have unintended consequences.
Cathy Young talks at AllThink about a similar possible consequence of the outrage over the Brock Turner sentence -- only six months of jail time after a conviction on three counts of sexual assault on a severely intoxicated, unconscious woman.
She calls it "a new rallying cry for social justice advocates," and explains:
I think the victim's statement was moving and compelling. I also understand the disgust and anger at the attitudes exhibited in the statements submitted to the court by Turner's father (who infamously lamented that his son's life was being ruined for "20 minutes of action"), by his friends and other character witnesses who seemed to see him as an equal victim, and by Turner himself. While his statement makes several brief references to the pain and trauma his actions caused the victim, most of is steeped in self-pity and shows little accountability; he clearly sees himself as a victim of "the party culture" at Stanford.But I have other concerns, too. I think this case is clearly being used to whip a new moral panic about campus rape and "rape culture," which will be used to step up the policing of consensual sex and punish innocent people (most but not all of them men). Whatever one thinks of the sentence, letting self-righteous outrage mobs and ideological zealots such as Stanford law professor Michele Dauber shape law and policy is extremely dangerous.
Here's one of her points:
5) Turner's crime should not be reduced to a confused drunken hookup -- but, by the same token, confused drunken hookups should not be reclassified as sexual assault.While the Turner case did involve an incapacitated victim, many other recent cases in which young men (and in at least one case, a young woman) got expelled from college for sexual misconduct involved "victims" who were able to walk, procure condoms, text friends, and engage in other activities despite being intoxicated. Lena Dunham, who dedicated a sexual assault PSA to the Stanford victim, went public in 2014 with a story of "rape" by a fellow student while she attended Oberlin. By her own account in her controversial memoir, Not That Kind of Girl, Dunham voluntarily took her "rapist" home from a party while lonely, drunk, and high on Xanax and cocaine (angrily rebuffing a male friend's attempt to stop her). She admits that she was an active participant in the encounter and gave the man verbal encouragement; when she noticed that he had apparently removed the condom, she had sufficient presence of mind to kick him out. She also admits that when she told a friend about the encounter and her friend blurted out "You were raped," her first reaction was to laugh. Yet somehow Dunham has concluded that it was indeed rape about which she was initially in denial -- apparently because the intercourse was too aggressive (she was in pain for several days afterwards), because she knew she hadn't consented to being handled so roughly, and because "it didn't feel like a choice at all." Incidentally, her partner was so drunk he had no memory of the encounter the next day.
When such accounts are hailed as brave truth-telling about rape, this inevitably trivializes the real thing -- including incapacitated rape. Yet even the prosecutor in the Stanford case contributed to muddying the waters, saying that one of the lessons of this case is that "drunk means no." But if any level of drunkenness (not just unconsciousness or severe disorientation) negates consent, the question some people have raised about double standards -- why doesn't it also negate responsibility for Turner? -- are entirely legitimate.
via @BarbaraHewson
Advice Goddess Free Swim
It's Friday night, and I'm a little tired, so you pick the topics. I'll post more on Saturday.
P.S. One link per comment or my spam filter will eat your post.
Cultural Death By Immigration Policy
Europe is becoming increasingly unsafe for women and Jews.
I am pro-immigration, in that I love how America is a blending of peoples and cultures. I especially love that about California, and my part of Southern California. My ancestors emigrated from peasant shitholes in Eastern Europe to come to Detroit, where they quickly learned English and worked to become part of the culture and economy.
In fact, there was such a push to become American that Temple Beth El, the oldest Jewish congregation in Michigan, where my family has long had a membership, used to prohibit Hebrew words in art and elsewhere in the temple because it was reportedly "too Jewish."
There's something very different going on in Europe now.
Hugh Ash writes in the JPost, "Welcome to Swedenistan...and have a lousy day":
There was a conspiracy of silence, or rather a policy to whitewash the adverse effects of accepting half-a-million immigrants from the Middle East, who plainly weren't interesting in adopting Sweden's values and Swedish culture....'It's like a laboratory experiment gone horribly wrong,' one told me. 'But the scientists won't admit they've made a monstrous mistake. So Sweden isn't Sweden as we knew it - it's become Swedenistan.'
...All this coincided with the nation that gave the world flat-pack furniture and smorgasbord welcoming 500,000 incomers, mainly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, the overwhelming majority Muslim, though the government releases no official figures about migrants' religious affiliations.
In this land of mystical forests and tranquil islands, whose population of around nine million remained relatively unchanged until contemporary times, such an influx was bound to have consequences, especially given where the huge wave of immigrants originated.
So, the impact on Sweden's Jewry has been predictably disturbing.
Malmö, Dan and Karla's former home and Sweden's third largest city, has seen a dramatic surge in anti-Semitic violence over the last decade, in tandem with the exponential rise of its Islamic community, now numbering at about 75,000.
In 2009, its Jewish center was set ablaze and, since then, Jewish cemeteries have been repeatedly desecrated, worshippers abused on their way home from prayer, and Jews in the streets targeted with anti-Semitic insults by men of 'dark and foreign' appearance.
...Meanwhile, as the pattern of unrest is being replicated throughout Europe, the ancient prejudices of the Middle East have spread their tentacles further and deeper into Sweden, where the dwindling, 20,000-strong Jewish community has been strongly advised against wearing any outward signs of their faith in public.
Like Dan and Karla did, many Swedish Jews are now contemplating futures away from a country that long boasted toleration as its totem. But no longer.
As Dr. Richard Prasquier, former president of France's national Jewish association, noted, 'Jews are a litmus test of what's going on in a country. It's not only Jews who will leave. And it's not only the country which will go down the drain; it's not only Europe, it's the entire Western world.'
Child Labor
It's illegal when you own a factory.
But it was part of how I grew up -- part of being part of our family.
From the time when I was 8, I mowed the lawn, and my sisters and I did garden-weeding, house-cleaning, and other chores.
My dad's view: "Build's character!"
I think it helped give me a good work ethic, though my sisters and I thought my parents were terrible slave drivers at the time.
When I was 11, my dad paid me 10 cents per envelope and listing on letterhead (I had to type the person's address on the envelope and the property he was pitching them on the letter). The faster I typed (and I had to be correct, too, or correct mistakes), the more money I made, so I learned to type VERY fast -- which has served me well ever since.
At Intellectual Takeout, Annie Holmquist posts about this -- with a pediatrician, Deborah Gilboa, contending that chores are a necessity for children.
Apparently, only 28 percent of parents make their special snowflakes do chores.
About parents who worry that chores will make their children miserable, Gilboa has this to say:
"Their happiness is not my responsibility. Their character is my responsibility."
More from Gilboa, from a TEDx talk quoted at the link just above:
"What do household chores tell us about where society is headed? Chores are the canary in the coal mine of kids' character," Gilboa states as she opened her talk, revealing that she discovered while talking to a group of affluent Silicon Valley parents that though most of them had chores -- laundry, cooking, cleaning --in their youth, only four of those 1500 parents in her audience give their children chores now.Parents, she said, feel their children have too many burdens between school, sports, and clubs, and jobs. In essence, their kids don't take out the garbage; instead, they are expected to excel academically and extracurricularly.
But by focusing on achievement instead of character-building activities and expectations like chores, Gilboa believes we might be letting our kids fall through the cracks when it comes to morals and manners. "As our expectations are rising on their achievements, our expectations are simultaneously dropping on the character of the child in front of us. Adults are willing to tolerate, excuse, even promote behaviors that damage these people that we love," she says in the talk.
Your thoughts on chores for the chillun?
Linkwit
Better than a fuckwit.
Hillary Clinton Has Her Own University Scandal
Law prof Jonathan Turley writes:
The respected Inside Higher Education reported that Laureate Education paid Bill Clinton an obscene $16.5 million between 2010 and 2014 to serve as an honorary chancellor for Laureate International Universities. While Bill Clinton worked as the group's pitchman, the State Department funneled $55 million to Laureate when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. That would seem a pretty major story but virtually no mainstream media outlet has reported it while running hundreds of stories on the Trump University scandal.There was even a class action -- like the Trump University scandal. Travis et al v. Walden University LLC, was filed in U.S. District Court in the District of Maryland but dismissed in 2015. It is not clear why it was dismissed. However, the size of the contract to Clinton, the payment from State and the widespread complaints over alleged fraud should warrant a modicum of attention to the controversy. The controversy has many of the familiar complaints over fraudulent online programs that take advantage of hard working people.
As an academic, I find both Trump University and Laureate to be deeply troubling stories. Yet, only one has been pursued by the media to any significant degree. I am not suggesting that Laureate as a whole is fraudulent. Moreover, there are distinctions that can be drawn with a university like Trump that is based entirely on the presumptive nominee and his promises in advertising. However, the money given to the Clintons, the involvement of the State Department, and the claims of fraud make this an obviously significant story in my view.
From Bloomberg's Richard Rubin and Jennifer Epstein:
Since 2010, Bill Clinton brought in just short of $16.5 million for his role as honorary chancellor of Laureate Education, a for-profit college company. He left the position earlier this year weeks after his wife launched her campaign.In 2014, Bill Clinton made $9 million off of paid speeches and $6.4 million in consulting fees. Of that, $4.3 million came from Laureate and another $2.1 million from GEMS Education, a Dubai-based company that runs preschool and K-12 programs. He made less from those two gigs in previous years - $5.6 million in 2013 and $4.7 million in 2012. In 2011, the former president was paid $2.5 million by Laureate...
The Clinton money trail is laid out in Peter Schweizer's Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich.
Nader On The Coddled Generation: Skins So Thin They Are "Blistered By Moonbeams"
That's a quote from Ralph Nader in a PS Mag interview by Lydia DePillis:
You see it on campuses -- what is it called, trigger warnings? It's gotten absurd. I mean, you repress people, you engage in anger, and what you do is turn people into skins that are blistered by moonbeams. Young men now are far too sensitive because they've never been in a draft. They've never had a sergeant say, "Hit the ground and do 50 push-ups and I don't care if there's mud there."
via @JonHaidt
Calling Offensive Speech "Hate Speech": Incoherent Thinking That Drives Authoritarianism
In the WaPo, Suzanne Nossel, executive director of the PEN America Center, goes after the trend of calling speech that offends people "hate speech."
Nossel explains that "hate speech" is a murky term that people use to describe three things: threats -- which are actually illegal; speech that is offensive but legal; and speech that is illegal in some places but not all (like how Holocaust denial is not permitted in Germany).
We also wrongly conflate hate speech and hate crimes, a critical distinction under the First Amendment that risks being lost as we use the term "hate speech" more loosely. Earlier this month, Danny Bakewell Sr., the owner of the Los Angeles Sentinel, a reputable African American-oriented newspaper in Los Angeles, referred to a drawing of a cross burning and Ku Klux Klan member on a card passed to a Los Angeles City Council member during a hearing as "unquestionably a hate crime." Bakewell said: "If you paint a swastika on a person's house, that is a hate crime. If you paint a picture of a man hanging from a tree on a house, that is a hate crime. It is no less offensive or hateful if you draw it on a piece of paper."But hate crimes are defined either as speech tied to a separate criminal act (an assault or vandalism, for example) or speech that itself crosses the line into action. Two acts that Bakewell conflates - trespassing in order to vandalize someone's house and drawing such an image on a piece of paper - are distinct under the law. For speech alone to be a crime, it must entail threats, such as vowing to blow up an airplane you're boarding or more recent phenomena such as cyberstalking and cyberbullying. While only a small segment of what we call hate speech is actually criminal in the United States, the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2012 (the most recent year for which its study is available) tallied nearly 300,000 real hate crimes involving violence or property damage: murders, assaults, arsons, vandalism and other acts motivated by bias against an identified group. We don't need the term "hate speech" to describe these crimes, and by calling them hate speech, we risk implying that lesser forms of unsavory speech (such as bigotry without violent action or a highly offensive doodle) verge into criminality, as well. In May, a Scottish man was arrested for posting a video showing images of Adolf Hitler juxtaposed with footage of his dog purportedly making a Nazi salute. The man was charged with improper use of electronic communication under Scotland's 2003 Communications Act, a worrisome misapplication of the law that could make any form of hate speech a de facto hate crime just as long as it is transmitted online.
...In recent years, important new movements have re-energized the drive to eradicate xenophobia, sexism, racism, homophobia and religious discrimination. In many circles, including on campuses, there is a new, more acute awareness of the ways once-tolerated remarks, including casual expressions and off-color humor, can cause lasting harm. We now have trigger warnings, gender-neutral pronouns and the concept of microaggressions. As students graduate, some of these new norms will migrate into workplaces and communities. In this context, defending provocative or even offensive speech -- once proudly undertaken by civil libertarians--has become a more complex task. When ugly but legally defensible expression is dubbed "hate speech," standing up for it can be misconstrued as sympathizing with offensive views. When Yale faculty member and administrator Erika Christakis sent a memo to Yale students defending their right to wear Halloween costumes that might be considered offensive, her message sparked a vociferous outcry from students who argued that she was undercutting the position and even the safety of marginalized students. She was accused not just of being wrong in rejecting the university's caution to avoid offensive costumes, but of being racist herself. She resigned her teaching position at the university. This kind of precedent casts a chill not only on provocative speech but also on free speech's would-be defenders.
...There is no perfect paradigm, and some speech will inevitably defy categorization. But in a shrinking world where it is ever more important both to be able to speak freely and to appreciate the subjective impact of speech on others, the concept of hate speech is too malleable to be of help.
I thought this comment in the WaPo was right on:
BrianC3
The only way to stop a bad guy with a pen is to have a good guy with a pen.
You can only win the battle of ideas by expressing ideas. Children at university try hiding from ideas they don't like, but this does not stop those ideas. If you suppress a bad person's bad ideas, you will necessarily suppress good people's good ideas as well and then you live in Stalin's Russia.
Pinkly
Jesse Pinklyman.
We Like Our Heroes Noble: Erasing The Wildly Ugly Racism Of Muhammad Ali
I've read all these tweets and pieces in recent days of how Muhammad Ali wasn't really a racist.
Actually, he was.
Jeff Jacoby writes:
When Ali was in his prime, the uninhibited "king of the world," he was no expounder of brotherhood and racial broadmindedness. On the contrary, he was an unabashed bigot and racial separatist and wasn't shy about saying so.
He was particularly against interracial marriage and even said so at a Klan rally. And by "against" it, that is, he thought interracial couples should be lynched.
In 1975, amid the frenzy over the impending "Thrilla in Manila," his third title fight with Joe Frazier, Ali argued vehemently in a Playboy interview that interracial couples ought to be lynched. "A black man should be killed if he's messing with a white woman," he said. And it was the same for a white man making a pass at a black woman. "We'll kill anybody who tries to mess around with our women." But suppose the black woman wanted to be with the white man, the interviewer asked. "Then she dies," Ali answered. "Kill her too."Ali was contemptuous of black boxers, such as Frazier or Floyd Patterson, who didn't share his racist outlook. His insults were often explicitly racial. He smeared Frazier as an "Uncle Tom" and a "gorilla" whose inferiority fueled stereotypes of black men as "ignorant, stupid, ugly, and smelly."
Ali was many fine things, but a champion of civil rights wasn't among them. Martin Luther King at one point called him "a champion of segregation." If later in life Ali abandoned his racist extremism, that is to his credit. It doesn't, however, make him an exemplar of brotherhood and tolerance.
It feels good to have heroes, but it's better if they're actually deserving of our respect.
I didn't know this about Muhammad Ali, but now that I do, I see him as a guy who was really great at a sport but whose championing of truly ugly and horrible thinking was, as Jacoby calls it, "grotesque" and an example of exactly how not to be.
via @Mark_J_Perry
Why Violence Keeps Islam Alive
Daniel Greenfield writes at FrontPage about Mohammed's clever strategy:
Islamic violence is nearly impossible to deny. But why is Islam violent? The usual answer is to point to Koranic verses calling for the conquest and subjugation of non-Muslims. That certainly covers the theological basis for Islamic violence. But it fails to explain why Muslims continue to practice it. Even against each other. Violence has become the defining form of Islamic exceptionalism.Optimists speak of reforming Islam. But such reforms had over a thousand years in which to take place.
Islam is an ideology. Its violence is a strategy. That strategy fit the needs of Mohammed. Mohammed chose to use force to spread his ideology. He needed to recruit fighters so he preached the inferiority of non-Muslims, the obligation for Muslims to conquer non-Muslims and the right of his fighters to seize the property and wives of non-Muslims as incentive for them to join his fight. Furthermore he even promised them that if they should fall in battle, they would receive loot and women in paradise.
The strategy was barbarous, but quite effective. Mohammed had created a new super-tribe in a tribal society. The tribe of Islam united different groups in a mission of conquest. The Islamic religion allowed the varying clans to be more effective and ambitious than their victims. Within a surprisingly short amount of time the chain of conquests made Islam into a world religion. The most effective Islamic conquerors could not only claim vast territories, carving up civilization into fiefdoms, but they could prepare their sons and grandsons to continue the chain of conquests.
Islam made the standard tactics of tribal warfare far more effective. Its alliance was harder to fragment and its fighters were not afraid of death. But at the same time Islam remained fundamentally tribal. It made tribal banditry more effective, but didn't change the civilization. It codified the tribal suspicion of outsiders and women into a religious doctrine. That still drives Islamic violence against non-Muslims and women today.
The conclusion:
Islamic civilization becomes unstable once it expands beyond its tribal limits. Its only coping strategy for that instability is violence, whether directed externally at non-Muslims or internally at other Muslims. Its economic development tools are limited and make supporting a modern society very difficult because they emphasize maintaining internal hierarchical stability over innovation and progress.Islam is violent because it's unstable. Its only tool is violence. Its societies exhaust their limited resources and then invade their neighbors. They repeat the same strategy until they are stopped. Then the exhausted Islamic civilization becomes a staid slave society that is stable, but backward. If that society is disturbed, then the egg cracks and the whole horrible process of war, invasion and exhaustion begins again. That is what we are experiencing right now. And there is no easy answer to this problem.
We can inhibit the expansion of Islamic migration. Or it will wash over our societies and destroy them.
If You Like Your Obamacare...
Valerie Richardson writes at the Wash Times that almost 100,000 Coloradans will lose their Obamacare coverage due to four leading insurance companies scaling back or eliminating their plans -- or proposing rate hikes of as much as 40 percent:
Colorado is one of 14 states that opted to launch its own Obamacare exchange instead of depending on the federal version after the passage of the Affordable Care Act.Sen. Cory Gardner, Colorado Republican, said in a Monday statement that "it's time for the president to admit Obamacare is a disaster for the American people."
..."When the president rammed his partisan health care law through Congress, he repeatedly promised the American people 'if you like your plan, you can keep it,'" Mr. Gardner said. "President Obama and those that supported this partisan law are now silent as 92,000 Coloradans must find a new insurance plan."
...About 450,000 residents have individual health insurance through the state exchange, meaning that about 20 percent will be affected by the elimination and reduction of coverage plans.
Many people -- like me -- who still have their insurance now have big deductibles that effectively make it unusable.
Rinky
Linkscapades.
How The TSA Kills Travelers
Why should terrorists attack all the people standing in line for "security" when the TSA is already taking out so many Americans through their incompetence and wait times?
Dylan Matthews writes at Vox via RSN :
The TSA doesn't save lives, but it probably ends them. One paper by economists Garrick Blalock, Vrinda Kadiyali, and Daniel Simon found that, controlling for other factors like weather and traffic, 9/11 provoked such a large decrease in air traffic and increase in driving that 327 more people died every month from road accidents. The effect dissipated over time, but the total death toll (up to 2,300) rivals that of the attacks themselves.Another paper by the same authors found that one post-9/11 security measure -- increased checked baggage screening -- reduced passenger volume by about 6 percent. Combine the two papers, and you get a disturbing conclusion: In their words, over the course of three months, "approximately 129 individuals died in automobile accidents which resulted from travelers substituting driving for flying in response to inconvenience associated with baggage screening."
This isn't just one set of studies; there's other evidence that 9/11 led to an increase in driving, which cost at least a thousand lives. The 129 deaths per quarter-year figure is, as Nate Silver notes, "the equivalent of four fully-loaded Boeing 737s crashing each year."
You can dispute the precise figures here; these are regression analyses, which are hardly perfect. But it stands to reason that having to get to the airport two or three hours before a flight reduces demand for flights relative to a world where you only have to arrive 30 minutes beforehand -- particularly for flights on routes where a two- to three-hour wait dramatically increases travel time relative to driving, like New York to Washington, DC, or Boston to New York. That means more driving. That means more death.
That might be worth it for a system that we know for a fact prevents attacks. But there's no evidence the TSA does. Meanwhile, as Bloomberg's Adam Minter notes, a classified TSA study found that private screeners were more effective than TSA staff, and a 2011 report from the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee suggested that private screeners are considerably more efficient at processing passengers.
The solution is clear: Airports should kick out the TSA, hire (well-paid and unionized) private screeners, and simply ask people to go through normal metal detectors with their shoes on, their laptops in their bags, and all the liquids they desire. The increased risk would be negligible -- and if it gets people to stop driving and start flying, it could save lives.
Target Didn't Have Sex With Mr. Costello And Make A Baby
This suggests, that you, Mrs. Costello -- not Target -- are your son's mommy.
(And do forgive me if I'm leaping to conclusions.)
Yet, in the New York Post Lia Eustachewich reports that Target is getting sued for not doing mommywork -- the mommy job of keeping one's little urchins from doing really stupid things and injuring or killing themselves:
A New Jersey mom is hitting Target right where it hurts with a $1.6 million lawsuit that claims her son was seriously injured while playing on one of the large, red, concrete balls that are situated outside many of its stores.In her Brooklyn federal court suit filed Tuesday, Venus Costello says the over-sized round bollards are a "nuisance that attracts children to play" on top of them, like her own son, Vince.
Vince, who was 5 years old at the time, was on top of a ball outside the Jersey City Target when he fell off it one evening in September.
He shattered his right elbow and had to undergo surgery to install metal pins and rods, according to the family's lawyer Frank Andrea.
The boy may have permanent problems with his range of motion down the road, the suit says.
...The brightly colored balls are designed to prevent cars from driving up on the curb, Target says on its website.
But Costello claims they are an "extreme hazard" to people and she says Target was negligent for not preventing kids from goofing around on them.
Yes, it seems suburban New Jersey is just packed with orphans.
How The Government Causes A Lot Of Regrettable Sex On Campus
It's the drinking age, says an unbylined editorial at Scragged -- and I think the author is right.
The author, who attended MIT back in 1963 and now has a granddaughter attending college, calls (so-called) "rape culture" on campus "a lesson in unintended consequences."
Personally, I don't feel there's "rape culture" on campus. People aren't pro-rape. It's just easier on the psyche to blame "rape culture" for regrettable sex than to take responsibility and not get trashed enough that you do things you regret the next day.
An excerpt from the editorial:
Collegians' instincts haven't changed, any more than human nature has. If you put college-age kids in a bag and shake it, you get couples just as in ancient times.Alcohol hasn't changed either. As always, "Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker." Take couples and add alcohol, you get coupling, even if the outcome might be traumatic for some.
If neither booze, boys, nor girls have changed, what has? Our drinking laws.
My freshman year, the drinking age was 18 which let just about all students drink legally. The administration always had at least one faculty couple at dorm or frat parties. One professor and his wife couldn't proctor hundreds of kids, so MIT also had a Judicial Committee of elected seniors and grad students who took turns being non-drinking "designated adults." The DAs intervened before trauma could occur.
Was this a perfect system? No, not any more than chaperons had been perfect when I was in high school. Was there sex? Of course. Was some of it less consensual than would be ideal? Yep. Were there incidents of "severe trauma?" Sure, but not nearly as many as we have now.
What changed? The drinking age was boosted to 21. Faculty and judcomm members faced severe legal liability for letting under-age students drink, so they stopped having official parties.
Students away from home for the first time were just as interested in booze as before; the law didn't stop kids drinking any more than prohibition stopped Al Capone from brewing. The law forced drinking underground where the administration couldn't influence outcomes. There wasn't any less "underage" drinking than before. In fact, it seems like there's more drinking because there's nobody around to inject a voice of sanity and good sense into an alcohol-sozzled young mind.
Set free of adult restraint, sophomoric libidos rage and the end result is "severe trauma." Kids haven't changed at all - the same thing would have happened in my day without adult supervision.
On a personal responsibility note, how hard is it to not drink? Now, I'm not an alcoholic, but I love white wine and getting a wee buzz on, and I used to have a glass or glass and a half of it every night. But then I realized that I was foggy in the mornings -- and not foggy if I had no wine the night before. Yes, pathetically, I get something of a hangover from the sparrow's portion of wine.
I realized I'd never make my book deadline if I didn't get more done, so I just decided to stop drinking alcohol entirely until I turn in the book in the early fall. I go to parties and just have sparkling water. It was a little hard to not have wine the first few weeks -- I wanted it -- but I just told myself, "Oh, go get a book to read," and ignored my craving until I got engaged in some chapter and forgot about it.
Bubbly
Linkieblubblubblub.
Invented Sexual Assaults Often Aren't Without Victims
A girl invented a story of being sexually assaulted, and a man who fit the description of the man who she claimed attacked her ended up having his life ruined.
The police were complicit in this, too.
From London, Ontario, in Canada, Jennifer O'Brien writes in The London Free Press of a 26-year-old artist who had his life "ripped apart":
A London man who was arrested for a crime that never happened has filed a $1.1-million lawsuit against the police, the area public school board and the family of the girl who invented the assault.Adam Gillespie, 26, says his life was "ripped apart" after London police arrested him, searched his home and kept him in a holding cell overnight three years ago.
After the arrest -- which he alleges included hours of interrogation, before police abruptly let him go -- the artist says he was the target a drive-by threat from someone calling him a sex offender.
His marriage also broke up, he moved back in with his father, became suicidal and ended up in a psychiatric ward, he said.
"Everything was ripped apart," says Gillespie, 26.
"It changed me forever. I couldn't stop thinking about it for so long. It was terrible. Police still stress me out. I see them in public and I feel so tense in my chest. "
He said he decided to sue mainly to force police to think about the impact such an arrest and detention can have on people.
His statement of claim alleges investigators were negligent in their investigation, failed to properly scrutinize false allegations and arrested someone who didn't match the description of the suspect.
The suit also contends police searched Gillespie's home unreasonably and that officers made a public display of their presence at his home, attracting the attention of neighbours and the community at large.
A statement of claim contains allegations not yet tested in court.
"I was singled out for the way I looked and they didn't care. There was no apology. If police would have publicly said, 'We made a mistake,' there would be no lawsuit," said Gillespie.
I wrote about this in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck" vis a vis medical malpractice suits. Though doctors are often advised by legal teams not to apologize about a medical accident or error, it's often the case that if doctors just say they're sorry, they either pay much less or sometimes don't have to pay settlements at all.
This poor guy just wanted to see somebody show some remorse for what was done to him, but no, they couldn't even give him that.
via @TimCushing
The Article About Trump Nobody Would Publish
An editor's note at Quillette, where it finally landed:
This article was rejected by 45 different magazines, periodicals, and journals across the political spectrum: Far left, left, center, unaffiliated, right, far right, and libertarian.
James A. Lindsay and Peter Boghossian write at Quillette:
Trump is a monstrous choice for president. Monstrous. He's a demagogue with a clear bent to authoritarianism. He's completely politically inexperienced and has no clear idea what constitutes successful, appropriate, or even legal behavior for an elected official. He has repeatedly proven himself to be virtually incoherent on foreign policy, economics, diplomacy, and the military. His only true assets are self-promotion, juvenile tweets, and belittling his enemies. He's barely qualified to be president of anything, especially anything with a military. It goes without saying, then, that essentially no one in their right mind should want him as President of the United States of America. The problem, however, is that America is no longer in its right mind. Major political cancers are driving it to madness.But what would happen should Trump get elected? On the Right, President Trump would force the GOP to completely reorganize--and fast. It would compel them to abandon their devastating pitch to the extreme right. The Republican Party would have to get back on the rails, and do so quickly, to reclaim a stable position in American politics. On the Left, the existence of the greatest impossible dread imaginable, of President Trump, would rouse sleepy mainline liberals from their dogmatic slumber. It would force them to turn sharply away from the excesses of its screeching, reality-denying, uncompromising and authoritarian fringe that provided much of Trump's thrust in the first place.
...The United States is a carefully constructed democratic republic with divided powers, and a terrible president, while coming at a serious cost, will prove limited in the scope of his capabilities. Congress is very unlikely to back much of what Trump proposes, for instance, and they just spent eight years demonstrating that if only half of our elected legislators have such a mind, they can grind American politics largely to a halt. Even if he is able to unduly pressure Congress, Trump would still have the Supreme Court to reckon with, and it would rarely go in his favor even were he able to stack the deck slightly to his favor by placing a few justices. Some in the US Military have already indicated that it is unlikely to follow his orders as Commander in Chief, if they are unconscionable or outright war crimes (a concept that Trump, in all his bluster, clearly doesn't understand). In all likelihood, the force of the laws and traditions of the United States will be strong enough to render Trump largely impotent as president.
Is it a risky bet? Absolutely. A Trump presidency cannot be seen in a more flattering light than an attempt to drink a little chemo, get sick, and kill a handful of political cancers at once. Is it flirtation with fire? Yes. The whole gambit rests upon the horror of a Trump presidency creating a political backlash that repairs our most damaged institutions. Are we going to vote for Trump? No. No one should. What we've written constitutes the only reasonable case for supporting Trump, and it's weak. That there's even such an argument to be made, though, tells us a great deal about what's going wrong in our society.
via @CathyYoung63
Finky
Rattylinks.
Fatherhood In Checkbook Only: State-Supported Paternity Fraud
Joe Vandusen hasn't even seen his wife for about two decades, but because they never divorced and she's had a baby, he's on the hook for child support.
Charley Haley writes in the Des Moines Reg:
Joe Vandusen, 45, received a letter earlier this month from the Iowa Department of Human Services notifying him that he would be required to pay child support for his estranged wife's child, even though he is not the father, Vandusen told The Des Moines Register Friday evening.Vandusen and his wife have hardly talked in 15 to 17 years, aside from an occasional phone call or Facebook message, he said. "I was married to my ex a couple of years, but we didn't see eye-to-eye, so we split up," without filing for an official divorce, Vandusen said. The child Vandusen is expected to help support is about 1 year old, he said.
Vandusen contacted the Department of Human Services' Child Support Recovery Unit to say he's not the biological father of his wife's child, and he offered to take a paternity test to prove it -- but he was told it didn't matter, according to state law, he said.
"They said since I'm still legally married, I'm going to be responsible for the child support," Vandusen said.
...Vandusen was recently laid off from his job, so he doesn't have the money to pay child support, he said. He also doesn't have the money to pay for an attorney to file for divorce and to fight in court against the child support requirement.
Yes, obviously, it's important to legally detach from somebody you're no longer with, but this man should not be paying for a child of a woman he hasn't even seen for decades.
And most importantly, the child is not his.
Legislators, like California's Sheila Kuehl, who vote for measures that support paternity fraud against men like this (where even a DNA test showing you're not the father won't get you out of paying), should be voted out of office (in lieu of putting them in a public place in stocks and pelting them with rotten fruits and vegetables).
Prostitution Is A Choice, Not A Crime
This 2014 Economist piece is right on:
Prohibition has ugly results. Violence against prostitutes goes unpunished because victims who live on society's margins are unlikely to seek justice, or to get it. The problem of sex tourism plagues countries, like the Netherlands and Germany, where the legal part of the industry is both tightly circumscribed and highly visible....The failure of prohibition is pushing governments across the rich world to try a new tack: criminalising the purchase of sex instead of its sale. Sweden was first, in 1999, followed by Norway, Iceland and France; Canada is rewriting its laws along similar lines. The European Parliament wants the "Swedish model" to be adopted right across the EU. Campaigners in America are calling for the same approach.
Sex sells, and always will
This new consensus is misguided, as a matter of both principle and practice. Banning the purchase of sex is as illiberal as banning its sale. Criminalisation of clients perpetuates the idea of all prostitutes as victims forced into the trade. Some certainly are--by violent partners, people-traffickers or drug addiction. But there are already harsh laws against assault and trafficking. Addicts need treatment, not a jail sentence for their clients.Sweden's avowed aim is to wipe out prostitution by eliminating demand. But the sex trade will always exist--and the new approach has done nothing to cut the harms associated with it. Street prostitution declined after the law was introduced but soon increased again. Prostitutes' understandable desire not to see clients arrested means they strike deals faster and do less risk assessment. Canada's planned laws would make not only the purchase of sex illegal, but its advertisement, too. That will slow down the development of review sites and identity- and health-verification apps.
The prospect of being pressed to mend their ways makes prostitutes less willing to seek care from health or social services. Men who risk arrest will not tell the police about women they fear were coerced into prostitution. When Rhode Island unintentionally decriminalised indoor prostitution between 2003 and 2009 the state saw a steep decline in reported rapes and cases of gonorrhoea*.
Prostitution is moving online whether governments like it or not. If they try to get in the way of the shift they will do harm. Indeed, the unrealistic goal of ending the sex trade distracts the authorities from the genuine horrors of modern-day slavery (which many activists conflate with illegal immigration for the aim of selling sex) and child prostitution (better described as money changing hands to facilitate the rape of a child). Governments should focus on deterring and punishing such crimes--and leave consenting adults who wish to buy and sell sex to do so safely and privately online.
As a commenter, sojmmae, at The Economist writes:
Since you cant stop it what do you do? You control it and you guide it. This way you can mitigate the negative impacts that could come of it should it run lawless (like it does now). It would become much harder for criminals to force woman into it since it is a regulated and monitored market. Making it legal gives you control of the market, control that can be used to ensure anyone providing services is doing so of their own free will and desire to. You will never have complete control but you will have a great deal more if its legal then you will if it's illegal.I once had a conversation with a friend of mine about consenting prostitutes and he made a very good point. He asked "Assuming all you want is to get laid, whats the difference between a prostitute and chick at the bar your trying to get at?" He followed by saying "the only difference between the prostitute and that girl at the bar is that the prostitute will let you know upfront how much it will cost to get in her pants."
Say what you will but as man you end up paying for sex one way or another. I like the idea of having an option that's more clear cut. Call me a pig or whatever you like but sometimes i just want to get my jollies (no I'm not married so it wouldnt be cheating) off and I dont want to have to deal with the hassle of trying to pick up on some woman (and all the time, money and effort that it entails) just so i can get in her pants. So should there be woman in the world that is morally ok with and willing to engage in a purely physical sexual encounter for some money then no harm no foul. She got what she wanted, I got what I wanted everyone's happy.
As for all you pissed off woman griping about it seeding infidelity. As a man i will tell you this, your man's either going to cheat or he isn't. Whether he cheats on you with a prostitute, his secretary, the lady down the street or with whomever the point is if he is going to cheat he is going to cheat. As for the people complaining about it objectifying woman, get over yourself. As if plenty of woman in the world don't use their attractiveness and sexual appeal to get what they want from a guy. At least the prostitute is making her intentions clear.
Linkiano
Lucky, for short.
X-Men Poster Isn't "Casual Violence Against Women"
It's fictional violence against a movie character with a blue face by some royal-looking space dude.
Anyone with an IQ over the highway speed limit can understand that -- and surely does.
But there'd be nothing to tweet without a little manufactured outrage: 
Megan Lasher posts at Motto:
Twitter has been flooded with photos of a promotional billboard that features Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) being strangled by Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac). While some argue that this is just a scene in the movie, others--like actress Rose McGowan--are saying it promotes violence against women."There is a major problem when the men and women at 20th Century Fox think casual violence against women is the way to market a film," McGowan told The Hollywood Reporter. "There is no context in the ad, just a woman getting strangled. The fact that no one flagged this is offensive and, frankly, stupid."
Oh, please.
Silly, trendy manufactured offense.
Women (and their male feminist doggie boys) seem to be in a pitch battle to demand that we ladies all be treated like eggshells instead of equals.
If anybody gets stabbed, shot, pulverized, thrown over cliffs and down elevator shafts in movies, it ain't the women. (Men, overwhelmingly, are the risk takers and risky job-takers in real life, too, and die at a much higher rate than women.)
Yoohoo, ladies? If you're truly for equal rights, where's the horror?
More popcorn?
Defending Free Expression -- In The Slightest -- Is Now "Hate Speech" On Campus
Precisely the sort of scholarly leaders you want at a university -- those who encourage students to think for themselves, express themselves freely, and be open to ideas and experience -- are now gone from Yale.
Zachary Young, a Yale student, writes in the WSJ:
Nicholas Christakis and his wife, Erika, came to Yale University in 2013 with high expectations. At Harvard, the couple had held prominent teaching and administrative roles. At Yale, Dr. Christakis, a sociologist and physician, received a laboratory directorship and four appointments; Ms. Christakis, an expert in early-childhood education, became a seminar instructor. Two years after their arrival at Yale, Dr. Christakis and Ms. Christakis were awarded positions as master and associate master of Silliman College, Yale's largest residential college. (I attend the university and reside at Silliman).Last week, the Christakises resigned those posts.
Their departure comes as no surprise. For seven months, the couple has been subject to bullying, harassment and intimidation. They inadvertently became a national media story last fall and catalyzed a month of campus protests, prompting Yale President Peter Salovey to tell minority students: "We failed you."
No, Yale is failing the student body at large.
Here's the incident:
The Christakises encountered a witch-hunt mentality on a contemporary college campus. It began fittingly on the day before Halloween, when Ms. Christakis questioned guidelines from Yale's Intercultural Affairs Committee warning against "culturally unaware or insensitive" costumes. Ms. Christakis reasoned, in an email to Silliman residents, that students should decide for themselves how to dress for Halloween, without the administration's involvement.Student radicals of the 1960s might have recognized her note as a defense of free expression, but those days are long gone. Instead, Ms. Christakis was denounced as a proponent of cultural insensitivity. Irate students circulated petitions, wrote editorials and posted social-media tirades. They scribbled criticisms in chalk outside the Christakises' home and posted degrading images of them online. Two student groups demanded their removal from Silliman.
Oh, and what sort of people are the Christakises?
The Christakises made remarkably unlikely targets for purging by student activists. The couple has a long record of advocating for minority students, and the Christakises have devoted much of their academic work to highlighting health and development problems facing underserved communities.
In announcing their resignation, Nicolas Christakis wrote:
"We remain hopeful that students at Yale can express themselves and engage complex ideas within an intellectually plural community."
I think there's less and less reason to think that will be the case at Yale and other universities.
Naive Welcome Of Islam In Europe
An Algerian writer -- a former Muslim, Boualem Sansal, has written a dystopian novel, 2084: The End Of The World, picturing a Europe "subjugated by radical Islam."
Hugh Fitzgerald writes about Sansal's thoughts about the current situation in Europe:
He claims that the "welcoming" culture of Germany is "completely naïve," that the condition of women will inevitably worsen with the continuing islamisation of Europe, that "more young people" in Europe are "turning to religion" (and by "religion" he means Islam), that "Islam is gaining traction" among the young, and he blames Europe's refusal to stand up for itself on an "overly tolerant" society.
Gaby Levin writes in Haaretz:
He is courageous and stubborn, ready to shout his opinions, which are unacceptable in his country, Algeria. He has won many literary awards and is greatly admired in countries where his books are published, but he and his family live under threats to their lives.That is Boualem Sansal, an Algerian writer and engineer with a doctorate in economics who was fired from his civil-service job in 2003 due to criticism of the religious establishment and the administration of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who still runs the country.
...In what way is the book's protagonist like you? Is Ati's ambition of breaching the boundaries of Abistan akin to your visit to Jerusalem despite the risks?
"I identify with all those who fight for freedom, and I believe that overall freedom is meaningless unless each of us is free. Those who are enslaved to a murderous ideology like radical Islam, who are presumably fighting for the freedom of the nation, are not coherent. They want to liberate their people in order to enslave them.
"Freedom must be a coherent act that includes many risks. You have to decide what you want: coherent freedom or enslavement and a lack of dignity. My visit to Jerusalem is part of that coherence, since the freedom I'm talking about is not words only, but deeds."
I was especially struck by this comment from Sansal:
Your opinions in your books and during your visit to Jerusalem put you and your family in mortal danger. How do you live in Algeria today?"If we devote too much thought to danger, we're paralyzed and do nothing. To do nothing means to die -- it's suicide.
Linkito
Zika-free.
Racial "Safe Space" Is A Hate Space
Robby Soave writes at Reason about a now-closed virtual "safe space" created on Facebook -- a private group for "women of color" (a term that makes me gag -- because it's about excluding women of the color white).
Well, that's not all it was about about.
One woman, an Asian student, referred to Asian men as "nerdy ones who can just hide in their tech caves" and "they get all angry when it comes to how Asian men are asexualized/emasculated." Another female student, who works for the Asian American Resource Center and sits on the mental health committee, commented, "F*ck your masculinity whiny Asian cis bros this is why I only hang out with femmes."This person agreed to an interview with the Independent, so I will quote her by name:
"As a feminine gay Asian woman," Kristine Lee told the Independent, "I'm not interested in surrounding myself with the kind of possessive, toxic masculinity exhibited by the type of Asian American men we were discussing in the post."Other students talked about their unwillingness to enroll in classes that would be "dominated by white men." Another student didn't want to take a class that was taught by a conservative professor of color.
One student, who had been adopted, complained about her white parents. Another responded by making fun of white people's paleness and receding hairlines.
It was okay to make fun of white people because they were responsible for colonialism, said another.
A real "safe space" should be the university, and by that, I mean -- as a friend of mine put it the other night -- a space where it's safe to express and try out ideas of all kinds, not have them shot down as "microaggressions."
The thing about this group that we see is that the students calling loudest for kumbayah-speak are those who, in private, are little racist haters themselves.
Nutrition "Science," Bought And Paid For -- And It's Far From Alone
Yes, we've got candymakers shaping nutrition...uh, "science."
Candice Choi writes for the AP:
NEW YORK (AP) -- It was a startling scientific finding: Children who eat candy tend to weigh less than those who don't.Less startling was how it came about. The paper, it turns out, was funded by a trade association representing the makers of Butterfingers, Hershey and Skittles. And its findings were touted by the group even though one of its authors didn't seem to think much of it.
"We're hoping they can do something with it -- it's thin and clearly padded," a professor of nutrition at Louisiana State University wrote to her co-author in early 2011, with an abstract for the paper attached.
The paper nevertheless served the interests of the candy industry -- and that's not unusual. The comment was found in thousands of pages of emails obtained by The Associated Press through records requests with public universities as part of an investigation into how food companies influence thinking about healthy eating.
...It's not surprising that companies would pay for research likely to show the benefits of their products. But critics say the worry is that they're hijacking science for marketing purposes, and that they cherry-pick or hype findings.
The thinner-children-ate-candy research is an example. It was drawn from a government database of surveys that asks people to recall what they ate in the past 24 hours. The data "may not reflect usual intake" and "cause and effect associations cannot be drawn," the candy paper authors wrote in a section about the study's limitations.
The candy association's press release did not mention that and declared, "New study shows children and adolescents who eat candy are less overweight or obese."
Actually, per my conversations with an epidemiologist, it isn't just the nutrition science that's dishonest. Medical device manufacturers and drug companies skew studies and hide data that don't conform to the message they want to send.
How'd you like to have a hip implanted -- a bum one -- thanks to a drug and device company, Johnson & Johnson, hiding the design flaw in the thing?
Here's a quote from a Barry Meier NYT article:
The device's ball and cup components, both of which were made of metal, rubbed together as a patient moved, producing shards of metallic debris that destroyed tissue and bone.The DePuy Orthopaedics division of Johnson & Johnson estimated in an internal document in 2011 that the device would fail within five years in 40 percent of patients. Traditional artificial hips, which are made of metal and plastic, typically last 15 years or more before replacement.
DePuy officials have insisted that they acted properly in handling the device, including waiting until 2010 to recall it. However, internal company documents show that company officials were warned years before by their own consultants that the device was so problematic they would not use it in their patients.
Back to the candy "study":
For the paper on candy-eating children, a disclosure says the funders had no role in the "design, analysis or writing of this manuscript." But emails obtained from LSU show the National Confectioners Association made a number of suggestions."You'll note I took most but not (all) their comments," Fulgoni wrote to O'Neil about the paper in 2010.
"I have finally waded through the comments from NCA. Attached is my attempt to edit based on their feedback," he wrote about a similar paper on candy consumption among adults.
And then there's this (and FYI, "publication bias" is a form of cherrypicking -- withholding studies that don't have the desired effect):
Many researchers fear that the body of scientific literature is being distorted by withheld results. On its registry for clinical trials, the National Institutes of Health explains that reporting results reduces publication bias and facilitates systemic reviews."That's part of science. You publish the result you get. You don't just publish the results you want," said Deborah Zarin, who oversees the registry at NIH.
Please tell that to others in our government, Deborah, like US Dietary Guidelines chair Barbara Millen, who led way to having author/journalist Nina Teicholz being kicked off National Food Policy Conference panel -- as reported by Peter Heimlich at The Sidebar. Oh, and that's author/journalist Teicholz who's critical of the unscientifically based US Dietary Guidelines.
Here's Teicholz on my science-based podcast, on why butter, meat, and eggs are the foundation of a healthy diet.
Candy link via @BigFatSurprise
Linkhole
It's like "asshole," but with links.
What Kind Of Sicko Violates His Wife's Privacy Like This?
Kevin Roderick at the Los Angeles mediawatch site, LA Observed, links to a bizarre full-page ad in the LA Times -- a husband-to-wife letter with loads of personal information. (Full view of the ad is there at his site.)
It took me about three seconds on Google to figure out who they are.
As I wrote in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck," private citizens who have done nothing wrong (in a sense of injuring the public or another person) have a right to privacy:
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 embarrassing 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.
Your mental health, marital issues, and health problems are most certainly among the things that are most private.
Your assessment? Is this an attack on the wife meant to look like a mea culpa and a longing to make things work out?
(Doesn't this seem like a note that could be left on the kitchen counter or slipped under the door? There is such a thing as a "costly signal" -- needless extravagance (like a diamond wedding ring) that sends a message that some message is probably not a put-on -- but the guy would have been spending the couple's money, so it kind of fails at that.
And, finally, vis a vis the privacy violation, do you think anybody at the LA Times had any responsibility to turn down the ad?
"Equal-Opportunity Injustice": Man's Post-Sex Regret About Fat Female Partner Gets Her Expelled From College
@SteveStuWill put it that way -- "equal opportunity injustice" -- and he's exactly right.
There's similar language in the Cathy Young piece he tweeted on HeatStreet.
Young writes:
With campus gender warriors expanding the definition of rape so far as to include virtually all drunk sex followed by morning-after regrets, some of us have long pointed out that under such rules men should get equal or near-equal time as victims.After all, there's more than 30 years' worth of studies showing that when surveys include both sexes, large numbers of men as well as women disclose unwanted sexual experiences due to intoxication. (In one large 2005 survey at the University of New Hampshire, 11 percent of women and 8 percent of men reported having sex when "too drunk to consent" in the past six months.) So how long before we start seeing female students getting kicked out of college for sexually assaulting guys?
More often than not, schools have used blatantly sexist double standards. Testifying in one male student's lawsuit in 2014, Duke University dean Sue Wasiolek explicitly stated that if both parties are intoxicated, "it is the responsibility ... of the male to gain consent before proceeding with sex." In a particular egregious case at Amherst College in Massachusetts, a male student was expelled even though his female accuser admitted being an active participant in sexual activity while he remembered nothing due to being blackout drunk--which should have made him the victim.
But now, it seems, gender justice is here at last: ladies, you too can have your lives ruined by a complaint over regretted drunk sex! Buzzfeed has a long article on the plight of a young woman identified only by her middle name, Rose, who was expelled from Washington State University after the school's Office of Equal Opportunity (OEO) concluded that she had subjected a male student to "unwanted, nonconsensual sexual contact" and was "a danger" to other students.
Well, like women who've been pushed by their friends or others to call regret rape, the guy got teased by his dorm mates about his drunken tryst with Rose. She believes this had to do with her being short and overweight. I would guess it's just about the overweight thing.
Rose found herself a victim of the same lack of due process men usually go through -- and that's not a good thing...for anyone on campus, though, again, it's usually men who are drop-kicked out of universities for Title IX violations.
And Cathy Young gets it right:
When I was in college in the 1980s, students were generally expected to handle such unpleasant on their own. If you got drunk and had an awkward sexual experience that made you cringe afterwards, you dealt with it as best you could and chalked it up to a life lesson. To be honest, I still think there is something to be said for that approach. But if we must have parent-like interventions by colleges, surely appropriate intervention in a case like this is counseling for both parties, on everything from alcohol abuse to relationship skills and responsible sexual behavior. Instead, the current Title IX-based system forces schools to play detective, judge and jury and find a culprit and a victim. Then, the culprit must be punished, often with devastating consequences, while the victim is absolved of all accountability.
UCLA Was A "Gun-Free" Campus
Of course, a person looking to commit murder-suicide would hear of that policy and think, "Naw, I think I'll just go fishing instead."
Here's the university policy on guns and other weapons:
III. POLICY STATEMENT Subject to the exceptions below, no person shall bring to or possess on University Property or areas adjacent to University Property, a loaded or unloaded Firearm, Generally Prohibited Weapon, Lethal Weapon, Less Lethal Weapon, Stun Gun, Imitation Firearm, Fireworks or other Incendiary or Destructive Device.Subject to the exceptions below, UCLA students, faculty, and staff shall not bring to or possess a loaded or unloaded Firearm, Generally Prohibited Weapon, Lethal Weapon, Less Lethal Weapon, Stun Gun, Imitation Firearm, Fireworks or other Incendiary or Destructive Device to activities of or programs conducted by the University, whether on- or off-University Property.
Any person, who possesses a Firearm, Generally Prohibited Weapon, Lethal Weapon, Less Lethal Weapon, Stun Gun, Imitation Firearm, Fireworks, or Incendiary or Destructive Device on University Property or at off-campus University activities or programs, may be subject to criminal penalties and/ or disciplinary action under University policies, except where one of the exceptions below applies.
The professor who was slaughtered by the student (who may have been mentally ill) sounds like a great guy. The LA Times' Sarah Parvini, Kate Mather and Hailey Branson-Potts write:
Several sources identified the victim as William S. Klug, 39, a father of two who studied the interaction between mechanics and biology.Klug, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, was described as both brilliant and kind, a rare blend in the competitive world of academic research, colleagues said.
"I am absolutely devastated," said Alan Garfinkel, a professor of integrative biology and physiology who worked with Klug to develop a computer generated virtual heart. "You cannot ask for a nicer, gentler, sweeter and more supportive guy than William Klug."
Melissa Gibbons, one of Klug's former doctoral students, said he was an exceptional mentor. She recalled that Klug noticed another student struggling in his finite element modeling class and asked Gibbons to tutor her. "He didn't want to see her fail. To care that much in an undergraduate class says a lot about his character," she said.
Lumpen
Linkieprole.
What You Might Not Be Involved In, Thanks To People Taking Uber
Mark J. Perry blogs at AEI about a new research paper, Ride-Sharing, Fatal Crashes, and Crime, by economists Sean Mulholland and Angela Dills. The essential bit:
We find that Uber's entry lowers the rate of DUIs and fatal accidents....1. Fatal Accident Rate. Specifically, we find that entry [of Uber] is associated with a 6% decline in the fatal accident rate. Fatal night-time crashes experience a slightly larger decline of 18%.
In both the weighted and unweighted estimations, we also discover a continued decline in the overall fatal crash rate and the rate of vehicular fatalities for the months following the introduction of Uber. For each additional year of operation, Uber's continued presence is associated with a 16.6% decline in vehicular fatalities.
2. DUIs and Crime. We find a large and robust decline in the arrest rate for DUIs. Depending upon specification, DUIs are 15 to 62% lower after the entry of Uber. The average annual rate of decline after the introduction of Uber is 51.3% per year for DUIs. For most specifications, we also observe declines in the arrest rates for non-aggravated assaults and disorderly conduct.
Hey, Austin, Texas...sorry, we'll just call bullshit on your claim that regulating Uber out of your market has the slightest thing to do with keeping the public safe.
(Austin is also keeping the public safe from the deadly tragedies that go on at children's lemonade stands, every day across America.)
The American Royals
We have them here in the US; we're just under the impression (a constitutional confusion, really) that we don't.
Hillary Clinton is one of them.
The Washington Post editorial board writes about her "inexcusable, willful disregard for the rules."
HILLARY CLINTON'S use of a private email server while secretary of state from 2009 to 2013 has been justifiably criticized as an error of judgment. What the new report from the State Department inspector general makes clear is that it also was not a casual oversight. Ms. Clinton had plenty of warnings to use official government communications methods, so as to make sure that her records were properly preserved and to minimize cybersecurity risks. She ignored them.
It's the arrogance of somebody who is very clear that rules are for the little people.
During her tenure, State Department employees were told that they were expected to use approved, secure methods to transmit information that was sensitive but unclassified, or SBU. If they needed to transmit SBU information outside the department's network, they were told to ask information specialists for help. The report said there is no evidence that Ms. Clinton ever asked, "despite the fact that emails exchanged on her personal account regularly contained information that was marked as SBU."
Hacking? Whatevs!
On March 11, 2011, an assistant secretary sent a memorandum on cybersecurity threats directly to Ms. Clinton, noting a "dramatic increase" in attempts to compromise personal email accounts of senior department officials, possibly for spying or blackmail. That didn't stop Ms. Clinton either.
A Little Person dared raise security concerns:
After a staff member "raised concerns" with another official about Ms. Clinton's personal email server, the staff was instructed "never to speak of the Secretary's personal email system again."
And finally:
But there is no excuse for the way Ms. Clinton breezed through all the warnings and notifications.
I would say there actually is, and it's an attitude thing:
"You may kiss the royal hand."
At least the British royals just run around in odd hats and christen ships and visit hospitals.
Also, as much as I find royalty disagreeable and backward, there's a certain self-possessed battleaxeness I see in the Queen -- and she's got all those oddly short-legged Corgis. Beats having state secrets running around via lax email practices.
Twinkie
Creamy filling in snackycake HTML.
