Sadly, The Deceased Muslim Army Captain's Mother Is Wrong: Women Are Anything But Men's Equals Under Islam
Eric W. Dolan reports at RawStory of the response by the mother of deceased U.S. Army Captain Humayun Khan to Trump: "All America felt my pain" -- except for Trump, whom she addresses:
After Trump talked about -- gag -- how he had "sacrificed," Ghazala Khan, the Captain's mother told ABC News:
"I don't think he knows the meaning of [the word] sacrifice, because when I was standing there all America felt my pain without saying a single word." she said. "Everybody felt that pain. I don't know how he missed that... Please Mr. Trump. Feel that pain and you will be better."Khan said she was upset to learn that Trump had criticized her for not talking during her husband's speech. She said she was in too much pain to speak out.
"I think my faith, Islam, has given us strength. All the men and women are equal in God's eyes," she added.
Sadly, women are anything but "equal" under Islam -- and the Quran is supposed to be the words of Allah, brought by the Angel Gabriel to Mohammed. It is thus to be followed unquestioningly and not interpreted as a historical document. (Christians are not going around slaughtering their neighbors for adultery.)
It is often the case that Muslims who do not go along with and are even opposed to the violence the Quran commands have no idea of what is actually in the Quran. This link gives Quran verses for women's lesser status, and explains:
The move to paint Islam as a pioneering force in women's rights is a recent one, corresponding with the efforts of Muslim apologists (not otherwise known for their feminist concerns) and some Western academics prone to interpreting history according to personal preference. In truth, the Islamic religious community has never exhibited an interest in expanding opportunities for women beyond the family role.The fourth Caliph, who was Muhammad's son-in-law and cousin, said just a few years after the prophet's death that "The entire woman is an evil. And what is worse is that it is a necessary evil."
A traditional Islamic saying is that, "A woman's heaven is beneath her husband's feet." One of the world's most respected Quran commentaries explains that, "Women are like cows, horses, and camels, for all are ridden." (Tafsir al-Qurtubi)
The revered Islamic scholar, al-Ghazali, who has been called 'the greatest Muslim after Muhammad,' writes that the role of a Muslim woman is to "stay at home and get on with her sewing. She should not go out often, she must not be well-informed, nor must she be communicative with her neighbors and only visit them when absolutely necessary; she should take care of her husband... and seek to satisfy him in everything... Her sole worry should be her virtue... She should be clean and ready to satisfy her husband's sexual needs at any moment." [Ibn Warraq]
...At best, Islam elevates the status of a woman to somewhere between that of a camel and a man.
Muhammad captured women in war and treated them as a tradable commodity. The "immutable, ever-relevant" Quran explicitly permits women to be kept as sex slaves. These are hardly things in which Muslims can take pride.
More here.
It helps none of us -- and keeps Islam from any (unlikely, unfortunately) possibility of reform -- by maintaining a fantasy notion of what Islam actually is.
UPDATE: This post started out as a comment I left at Raw Story -- which has deleted that comment. Two tweets from me about that to Eric W. Dolan at Raw Story. First tweet. Second tweet.
Andrew McCarthy On How The Constitution Doesn't Bar A "Religious Test" For Immigration
The way I see it, someone's religious beliefs are none of my business -- no matter how idiotic and/or irrational the stuff they believe in is -- as long as their particular belief system doesn't call for them to blow up, gun down, or otherwise horribly murder the rest of us.
Andrew McCarthy, who prosecuted the first Islam-driven attack (back in 1993) on the World Trade Center, has done some intensive study of Islam.
He is one of the few who has realized -- from early on -- that what Islam commands of its followers stands in conflict with the values of a free society. For example, its commands include the slaughter of gays and apostates, treating women as men's property, the removal of civil liberties, and the death or conversion of "the infidel"...among other niceties that run entirely contrary to human decency and a civilized way of life.
He writes at NRO:
Now for the suicidal part of denying the Islamic moorings of jihadism: Contrary to White House blather, people do not commit mass-murder attacks because of economic privation or over trifling slights. They commit it because they are seized by commands that they take to be divine injunctions rooted in scripture, their devotion to which will determine whether paradise or eternal damnation awaits.
About the subject of this post, also at NRO, McCarthy corrects a misconception from the 2016 presidential campaign:
Of all the ignorant pronouncements in the 2016 presidential campaign, the dumbest may be that the Constitution forbids a "religious test" in the vetting of immigrants. Monotonously repeated in political speeches and talking-head blather, this claim is heedless of the Islamic doctrinal roots on which foreign-born Islamists and the jihadists they breed base their anti-Americanism.It is also dead wrong.
The clause said to be the source of this drivel is found in Article VI. As you'll no doubt be shocked to learn, it has utterly nothing to do with immigration.
The clause states, "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States" (emphasis added). On its face, the provision is not only inapplicable to immigrants at large, let alone aliens who would like to be immigrants; it does not even apply to the general public. It is strictly limited to public officials -- specifically to their fitness to serve in government positions.
...Promotion of assimilation and fidelity to the Constitution have been historical bedrocks of immigration policy. Indeed, before immigrants are naturalized as citizens, they must swear what is pointedly called an "oath of allegiance." It calls on them to renounce any foreign sovereigns by whom they have been ruled, and to honor our Constitution -- principles that are inimical to sharia supremacism.
We should resist a categorical ban on Muslim immigration; but nothing in the Constitution prohibits the commonsense vetting of immigrants for beliefs that are antithetical to our principles, regardless of whether the immigrant perceives such beliefs as religious or political in nature.
We should welcome immigrants who embrace our principles, seek to assimilate into our society, and are value-added for -- rather than a strain on -- our economy. But if, in an era of jihadist violence, we cannot seriously vet immigrants to determine whether they fit this bill, it would be better to have a categorical ban. And if, based on an illiterate construction of the Constitution, the political class insists that its fictional "no religious test" rule forbids not only a categorical ban but the heightened scrutiny of Muslim aliens, it would be better to prohibit immigration across the board.
The United States government's first obligation is to shield the American people from foreign threats, not to shield foreign threats and render the American people defenseless.
Orca
Linkwhaling.
Dead Man Voting
A tweet:
@IMAO_
Honest question: Is there any other situation than voting where requiring a photo id is considered racist?
There's an argument (perhaps valid; perhaps not) that the indigent can't get birth certificates in order to get photo ID. They reportedly cost $20 in Wisconsin. How about making a provision for the poor to get their documentation at no fee?
The solution shouldn't be allowing countless dead and non-existent people to vote.
Related:
Glenn Reynolds just called for paper voting, writing in USA Today:
A foreign government could hack voting machines, shut down election computers, or delete or alter voter registration information, turning Election Day into a snarled mess and calling the results into question regardless of who wins.Worse yet, hackers are already working on this.
Voting systems rely on trust. Voters have to trust that their own vote is recorded and counted accurately; they also have to trust that the overall count is accurate, and that only eligible voters are allowed to vote. (When an ineligible voter casts a vote, it cancels out the vote of a legitimate voter every bit as much as if his or her ballot had simply been shredded.)
Great point.
Another call for paper-trail voting from security expert Bruce Schneier (via @MMasnick):
But while computer security experts like me have sounded the alarm for many years, states have largely ignored the threat, and the machine manufacturers have thrown up enough obfuscating babble that election officials are largely mollified.We no longer have time for that. We must ignore the machine manufacturers' spurious claims of security, create tiger teams to test the machines' and systems' resistance to attack, drastically increase their cyber-defenses and take them offline if we can't guarantee their security online.
Longer term, we need to return to election systems that are secure from manipulation. This means voting machines with voter-verified paper audit trails, and no Internet voting. I know it's slower and less convenient to stick to the old-fashioned way, but the security risks are simply too great.
Bernie vs. Miltie
Milton Friedman "debates" Bernie Sanders: Democratic Socialism Debunked, produced for the Foundation for Economic Education:
Stink
Skunkolinks.
The Virtue Signaling Of White People Apologizing For "White Privilege" And How The Real Privilege Is Being Lucky Enough To Be American
We've got problems in this country, for sure, but those of us who've grown up here are lucky, because this is the place on the globe that offers the most opportunity for all people -- even those who aren't born wealthy or born into "good families."
At Heat Street, there's a stark contrast between two boys whose stories went viral this week. Florina Rodov writes:
One of the boys, 14-year-old Royce Mann, attends the $22,000 a year Paedeia School in a tony section of Atlanta. His slam poem "White Boy Privilege," in which he apologizes to immigrants, black people, women, and other marginalized groups, earned kudos from celebrities and praise from millennial websites, which called him "woke," or aware.The other teen is black, homeless Fred Barley, 19, also a Georgia resident, but from the less-glamorous Conyers. Barley pedaled six hours in the blazing sun on a kid's bike, lugging water, a box of cereal, and a tent, to camp out at Gordon State College in Barnesville in order to register for classes. Barley captured the hearts of police officers, folks in his community, and regular people across America who contributed more than $180,000 to his GoFundMe campaign.
Mann offers a fatalistic, elitist, and divisive view of America. His rhetoric does nothing to actually help the people he professes to care about. Barley, on the other hand, exemplifies our country's pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps optimism, which is why he inspired people of all races to rally behind him.
Mann says that he and other white boys are at the top of the ladder, while everyone else is stuck on the "first rung." As an immigrant, I adamantly disagree with him. My family and I emigrated from the Soviet Union when I was three. My mom, a doctor, volunteered at an AIDS clinic while studying for her licensing exams. My dad, an engineer, toiled as a janitor at NYU and walked 13 miles from our home in Queens to lower Manhattan and back because he couldn't afford the subway fare. My friends' parents, who were from China, Haiti, Pakistan, and other countries, made similar sacrifices for them. As a result, we all went to college, became professionals, and achieved the American Dream.
Fred Barley isn't fortunate enough to have parents, so he's looking out for himself and doing everything he can to eventually attend medical school. It's this attitude that ingratiated him to military couple Casey and Cole Blaney, who have become his surrogate parents. Barley will undoubtedly reach the top of the ladder where Mann is perched and probably even surpass him. And when he does, it's doubtful he'll wish he'd been born there, since it's much more gratifying to have achieved success on your own.
That's what I tell inner-city kids I speak to once or twice a year at a high school. At one point, when I was living in New York, I couldn't afford my rent, health insurance, and a bed. So, for maybe six months or maybe a year, I slept on a door. Not like bat. It was an old door I found on the street, propped on two milk crates, with a sleeping bag I still have as the bedding.
Once you start making some money, you look back on those times and laugh -- but you also marvel at how far you've come and how your hard work paid off. It's cool as hell.
@Popehat today tweeted
@Popehat
When I think about it, my clients who are the most modestly, convincingly, and devotedly patriotic are immigrants. Hearts on their sleeves.
I tweeted:
@amyalkon
I find that in friends from Cuba and USSR, especially.
He added:
@Popehat
@amyalkon also Iran.
He's right.
The people I know who are wildly grateful to be here are not the ones increasingly mired in complaining that they are victims and expecting other people to apologize for their advantages. They are people who struggled to get here or whose parents did, and they tend to be among the most successful people I know -- inventors, prodigies, big buck fellowship winners...despite speaking English as a second (or third) language.
Bloomberg: "I'm A New Yorker, And I Know A Con When I See One"
Michael Bloomberg, the Republican former mayor of New York, handed Donald Trump his ass -- numerous times -- in his speech at the Democratic National Convention.
"Let's elect a sane, competent person..." Yes...this is what it's come to -- we're choosing the candidate who is sane and competent (but corrupt) over a corrupt demagogue who seems to have a generous helping of personality disorder.
I'm not a Michael Bloomberg fan girl -- soda ban, etc. -- but I have to say, that speech made me wish we could vote for Michael Bloomberg for President, and I bet a lot of people feel the same way.
At Slate, Reihan Salam explains:
Bloomberg's savage attack lines may well give Clinton a boost in November. But it was not so long ago that he thought seriously about running for president himself. Fearing voters might be left with a choice between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, the centrist billionaire devoted substantial time and resources to laying the groundwork for an independent presidential campaign, an idea he'd toyed with for years. When it became clear Clinton would prevail in the race for the Democratic nomination, Bloomberg broke the hearts of hundreds of high-priced political professionals by deciding not to run.What tipped the scales for Bloomberg? It certainly wasn't a reluctance to spend money on a presidential campaign. In addition to the tens of millions he spent to win three terms as mayor in the nation's most expensive media market, he's devoted millions more to promoting gun control, comprehensive immigration reform, and a host of other causes. It doesn't hurt that Bloomberg has amassed a fortune more than 10 times as large as Donald Trump's. Nevertheless, Bloomberg concluded the most likely result of his candidacy would be to tip the election to either Trump or Ted Cruz, both of whom he condemned as divisive nativists.
The appeal of Bloomberg is a right-left versus the left-left of the Democratic party.
Which brings us back to Michael Bloomberg, the consummate "socially liberal, fiscally conservative" political figure. This is not to say that Bloomberg's a libertarian, as evidenced by his jihad against cigarette smoking and sugary soft drinks and his defense of stop-and-frisk. Instead, he is best understood as a business-friendly moderate, a politician who's never seen eye-to-eye with liberals who are exercised by rising economic inequality. To Bloomberg, it's perfectly natural that a city like New York would be extremely unequal--what else do you expect when you have an economy in which low-wage immigrants make a living by catering to the needs of high-wage professionals? Having made his fortune by putting high-tech terminals in the hands of Wall Street traders, Bloomberg isn't one to bad-mouth the big banks either. After all, it's bankers' bonuses that keep cab drivers, doormen, and servers of all kinds employed.Where Bloomberg parts company with let-them-eat-cake types is in believing that low-wage workers should be provided with Medicaid, SNAP, and high-quality charter schools for their kids, because it's the right thing to do and because, to be blunt, it's an insurance policy against a reprise of the French Revolution. It's not an entirely crazy political philosophy, and it's shared by a decent number of upscale urban liberals and suburban moderates. Bloombergism is not far off from the progressive Republicanism once represented by Nelson Rockefeller and Jacob Javits. What it's emphatically not is Sanders-style socialism, which holds that the chief threat to democracy is the outsized power of "millionaires and billionaires" like, well, Michael Bloomberg.
Going forward, one can imagine a battle for the Democratic Party's soul that will pit the Bloombourgeoisie against the Sandernistas with both factions fighting to win over working- and lower-middle-class minority voters. The Republicans, meanwhile, might evolve into a more populist party that rails against the plutocrats of Wall Street and Silicon Valley--the spiritual homelands of the Bloombourgeoisie--just as much as they rail against unauthorized immigration. Is this future inevitable? Not at all. But it is looking ever more plausible.
Kinky
Linky red riding crop.
Gaps In Pay Or Advancement Aren't Evidence Of Discrimination
Social psychologist Lee Jussim has a very interesting post on this subject up at Heterodox Academy. He tells this story at the end:
When I chaired Rutgers Psychology Department (2010-2013), I received a call from some Rutgers administrative office, probably HR, which has an "Office of Employment Equity Investigations," seeking explanations for Rutgers' Psychology gender pay gap among its full professors.I did not even know we had one, so I asked our departmental administrators to track down the salary data of the full professors. They did. As it turned out, the women were making considerably more than the men. In fact, that was what UHR or whoever called were inquiring about -- they wanted me to explain why the women were making so much more than the men.
This, however, was not difficult to do. The department keeps each person's vita on file. In general, our female full professors were more productive (more publications, more grants). Rutgers gives both across-the-board raises (same for all faculty) and merit raises (higher raises for productive faculty), so, in general, more productive faculty make more money. In one case, the person was hired with both a PhD and MD, and the MD gave her a considerably higher starting salary than other assistant professors. Because raises at Rutgers are a percentage of the base salary, a higher starting base salary would produce a higher subsequent salary, even if their productivity was the same.
I did not catch a whiff of discrimination, but, then, maybe I was just a blind fool, and should have raised Hell over the mistreatment of men in my department. After all, "everyone knows" gap=discrimination, right?
Uh-oh! Should we send in the coddle squads -- and offer special fellowships for the men? (Would your answer be the same if the coddle squads and the special fellowships [sisterships?] were for women?)
Jussim links to a Christina Hoff Sommers piece debunking wage gap myths:
researchers count "social science" as one college major and report that, among such majors, women earned only 83 percent of what men earned. That may sound unfair... until you consider that "social science" includes both economics and sociology majors.Economics majors (66 percent male) have a median income of $70,000; for sociology majors (68 percent female) it is $40,000. Economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Manhattan Institute has pointed to similar incongruities. The AAUW study classifies jobs as diverse as librarian, lawyer, professional athlete, and "media occupations" under a single rubric--"other white collar." Says Furchtgott-Roth: "So, the AAUW report compares the pay of male lawyers with that of female librarians; of male athletes with that of female communications assistants. That's not a comparison between people who do the same work." With more realistic categories and definitions, the remaining 6.6 gap would certainly narrow to just a few cents at most.
Could the gender wage gap turn out to be zero? Probably not. The AAUW correctly notes that there is still evidence of residual bias against women in the workplace. However, with the gap approaching a few cents, there is not a lot of room for discrimination. And as economists frequently remind us, if it were really true that an employer could get away with paying Jill less than Jack for the same work, clever entrepreneurs would fire all their male employees, replace them with females, and enjoy a huge market advantage.
I think something unseen and not discussed that hurts women are these constant cries that women are discriminated against -- coupled with calls to treat women like eggshells, not equals (all in the name of equality, of course).
If I were looking for a job now, I'd somehow let on that I can take a joke (including a super dirty one) and even a compliment, and that I don't have kids, don't want kids, and will never have kids, and thus will not be leaving at 4 to take the kids to soccer or to have foreign objects removed from their nose.
I know -- some mothers work harder than their lazyass Tinder-swiping co-workers, but there are also plenty of mothers (and some fathers) making their kids a big priority (vis a vis their job) and then expecting the same pay as the single, work-obsessed co-worker.
If they get that same pay, maybe they're valuable and it's just the cost of retaining them -- or maybe that's discrimination.
via @SteveStuWill
Lakoff On Why Trump Got The Republican Nomination: It's The Metaphors Drawing Us In
George Lakoff is a very lefty academic whose non-political work on metaphor makes sense in terms of the way we best understand concepts, which is when they are metaphorical and tied to our physical experience of the world rather than when they are abstract.
If you are not on the left, try to separate that from his being on the left as you read this. By the way Jonathan Haidt, who argues for more balance in "the academy" -- as in, more "viewpoint diversity," more conservative voices -- tweeted the link to this George Lakoff piece on "Understanding Trump."
Haidt tweeted this quote from the piece that explains the thinking in it -- "Values come first, facts & policies follow... Give up identity politics." But it doesn't just explain Trump's popularity, of course, but that of other politicians, including those on the left. (Though there are different ways they get around our rational thinking.)
Lakoff explains why he thinks Trump got the nomination and why he's so popular with conservatives.
In the 1900s, as part of my research in the cognitive and brain sciences, I undertook to answer a question in my field: How do the various policy positions of conservatives and progressives hang together? Take conservatism: What does being against abortion have to do with being for owning guns? What does owning guns have to do with denying the reality of global warming? How does being anti-government fit with wanting a stronger military? How can you be pro-life and for the death penalty? Progressives have the opposite views. How do their views hang together?The answer came from a realization that we tend to understand the nation metaphorically in family terms: We have founding fathers. We send our sons and daughters to war. We have homeland security. The conservative and progressive worldviews dividing our country can most readily be understood in terms of moral worldviews that are encapsulated in two very different common forms of family life: The Nurturant Parent family (progressive) and the Strict Father family (conservative).
What do social issues and the politics have to do with the family? We are first governed in our families, and so we grow up understanding governing institutions in terms of the governing systems of families.
In the strict father family, father knows best. He knows right from wrong and has the ultimate authority to make sure his children and his spouse do what he says, which is taken to be what is right. Many conservative spouses accept this worldview, uphold the father's authority, and are strict in those realms of family life that they are in charge of. When his children disobey, it is his moral duty to punish them painfully enough so that, to avoid punishment, they will obey him (do what is right) and not just do what feels good. Through physical discipline they are supposed to become disciplined, internally strong, and able to prosper in the external world. What if they don't prosper? That means they are not disciplined, and therefore cannot be moral, and so deserve their poverty. This reasoning shows up in conservative politics in which the poor are seen as lazy and undeserving, and the rich as deserving their wealth. Responsibility is thus taken to be personal responsibility not social responsibility. What you become is only up to you; society has nothing to do with it. You are responsible for yourself, not for others -- who are responsible for themselves.
...Why His Lack of Policy Detail Doesn't Matter
I recently heard a brilliant and articulate Clinton surrogate argue against a group of Trump supporters that Trump has presented no policy plans for increasing jobs, increasing economics growth, improving education, gaining international respect, etc. This is the basic Clinton campaign argument. Hillary has the experience, the policy know-how, she can get things done, it's all on her website. Trump has none of this. What Hillary's campaign says is true. And it is irrelevant.
Trump supporters and other radical Republican extremists could not care less, and for a good reason. Their job is to impose their view of strict father morality in all areas of life. If they have the Congress, and the Presidency and the Supreme Court, they could achieve this. They don't need to name policies, because the Republicans already of hundreds of policies ready to go. They just need to be in complete power.
...Unconscious thought works by certain basic mechanisms. Trump uses them instinctively to turn people's brains toward what he wants: Absolute authority, money, power, celebrity.
The mechanisms are:
1. Repetition. Words ore neurally linked to the circuits the determine their meaning. The more a word is heard, the more the circuit is activated and the stronger it gets, and so the easier it is to fire again. Trump repeats. Win. Win, Win. We're gonna win so much you'll get tired of winning.
2. Framing: Crooked Hillary. Framing Hillary as purposely and knowingly committing crimes for her own benefit, which is what a crook does. Repeating makes many people unconsciously think of her that way, even though she has been found to have been honest and legal by thorough studies by the right-wing Bengazi committee (which found nothing) and the FBI (which found nothing to charge her with, except missing the mark '(C)' in the body of 3 out of 110,000 emails). Yet the framing is working.
There is a common metaphor that Immorality Is Illegality, and that acting against Strict Father Morality (the only kind off morality recognized) is being immoral. Since virtually everything Hillary Clinton has ever done has violated Strict Father Morality, that makes her immoral. The metaphor thus makes her actions immoral, and hence she is a crook. The chant "Lock her up!" activates this whole line of reasoning.
3. Well-known examples: When a well-publicized disaster happens, the coverage activates the framing of it over and over, strengthening it, and increasing the probability that the framing will occur easily with high probability. Repeating examples of shootings by Muslims, African-Americans, and Latinos raises fears that it could happen to you and your community -- despite the minuscule actual probability. Trump uses this to create fear. Fear tends to activate desire for a strong strict father -- namely, Trump.
4. Grammar: Radical Islamic terrorists: "Radical" puts Muslims on a linear scale and "terrorists" imposes a frame on the scale, suggesting that terrorism is built into the religion itself. The grammar suggests that there is something about Islam that has terrorism inherent in it. Imagine calling the Charleston gunman a "radical Republican terrorist."
Trump is aware this to at least some extent. As he said to Tony Schwartz, the ghost-writer who wrote The Art of the Deal for him, "I call it truthful hyperbole. It's an innocent form of exaggeration -- and it's a very effective form of promotion."
5. Conventional metaphorical thought is inherent in our largely unconscious thought. Such normal modes of metaphorical thinking that are not noticed as such.
Consider Brexit, which used the metaphor of "entering" and "leaving" the EU. There is a universal metaphor that states are locations in space: you can enter a state, be deep in some state, and come out that state. If you enter a café and then leave the café , you will be in the same location as before you entered. But that need not be true of states of being. But that was the metaphor used with Brexit; Britons believe that after leaving the EU, things would be as before when the entered the EU. They were wrong. Things changed radically while they were in the EU. That same metaphor is being used by Trump: Make America Great Again. Make America Safe Again. And so on. As if there was some past ideal state that we can go back to just by electing Trump.
6. There is also a metaphor that A Country Is a Person and a metonymy of the President Standing For the Country. Thus, Obama, via both metaphor and metonymy, can stand conceptually for America. Therefore, by saying that Obama is weak and not respected, it is communicated that America, with Obama as president, is weak and disrespected. The inference is that it is because of Obama.
7. The country as person metaphor and the metaphor that war or conflict between countries is a fistfight between people, leads the inference that just having a strong president will guarantee that America will win conflicts and wars. Trump will just throw knockout punches. In his acceptance speech at the convention, Trump repeatedly said that he would accomplish things that can only be done by the people acting with their government. After one such statement, there was a chant from the floor, "He will do it."
8. The metaphor that The nation Is a Family was used throughout the GOP convention. We heard that strong military sons are produced by strong military fathers and that "defense of country is a family affair." From Trump's love of family and commitment to their success, we are to conclude that, as president he will love America's citizens and be committed to the success of all.
9. There is a common metaphor that Identifying with your family's national heritage makes you a member of that nationality. Suppose your grandparents came from Italy and you identify with your Italian ancestors, you may proud state that you are Italian. The metaphor is natural. Literally, you have been American for two generations. Trump made use of this commonplace metaphor in attacking US District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is American, born and raised in the United States. Trump said he was a Mexican, and therefore would hate him and tend to rule against him in a case brought against Trump University for fraud.
10. Then there is the metaphor system used in the phrase "to call someone out." First the word "out." There is a general metaphor that Knowing Is Seeing as in "I see what you mean." Things that are hidden inside something cannot be seen and hence not known, while things are not hidden but out in public can be seen and hence known. To "out" someone is to made their private knowledge public. To "call someone out" is to publicly name someone's hidden misdeeds, thus allowing for public knowledge and appropriate consequences.
This is the basis for the Trumpian metaphor that Naming is Identifying. Thus naming your enemies will allow you to identify correctly who they are, get to them, and so allow you to defeat them. Hence, just saying "radical Islamic terrorists" allows you to pick them out, get at them, and annihilate them. And conversely, if you don't say it, you won't be able to pick them out and annihilate them. Thus a failure to use those words means that you are protecting those enemies -- in this case Muslims, that is, potential terrorists because of their religion.
I'll stop here, though I could go on. Here are ten uses of people's unconscious normal brain mechanisms that are manipulated by Trump and his followers for his overriding purpose: to be elected president, to be given absolute authority with a Congress and Supreme Court, and so to have his version of Strict Famer Morality govern America into the indefinite future.
These ten forms of using with people's everyday brain mechanisms for his own purposes have gotten Trump the Republican nomination. But millions more people have seen and heard Trump and company on tv and heard them on the radio. The media pundits have not described those ten mechanisms, or other brain mechanisms, that surreptitiously work on the unconscious minds of the public, even though the result is that Big Lies repeated over and over are being believed by a growing number of people.
This metaphor stuff is complicated, and some of it, I have problems with. "Knowing is Seeing" is supported by a subject group of one -- one kid named Shem. Not exactly an ideal-size subject group. However, I do find support for the way he believes metaphor works in others' research.
Try to do your best to look at this piece and his thinking objectively, if you aren't on the left. You can -- and, I hope, will -- read the whole piece at the link.
Do you think he's on to anything here?
via @jonhaidt
Donkey
Linkey's ass.
Under Capitalism, The Wealthy Subsidize Innovation That Benefits Everybody Else
Remember those bricks wealthy people used to have in their cars? It would cost a dollar a minute or maybe more to call your honey to tell her you were running late.
Now, a little over a decade later, a homeless guy who sometimes sleeps in the bushes across the street has a smartphone.
Kevin D. Williamson writes at NRO:
The mobile phone is a case study in that process, as is the electric car, as indeed were ordinary cars. The firm that developed the first automotive air-conditioning and power windows was a high-end marque that despite its landmark innovations is no longer with us: Packard. The Bonfire of the Vanities-era financiers who carried the first mobile phones paid for much of the research and development that made them ordinary products for non-gazillionaires.My own financial means at the moment do not, alas, afford the purchase of the new plug-in hybrid from Porsche -- which is a million-dollar supercar -- but the technologies developed for the 918 Spyder will make their way through the marketplace the same way that the automatic transmission (Oldsmobile, 1940), the supercharger (Mercedes, 1921), and the independent suspension (Mercedes, 1933) went from being expensive options on cars for the rich to being standard equipment on your Hyundai. We get our futuristic 21st-century cars the same way Johnny Cash got his Cadillac in 1976: One piece at a time.
F. A. Hayek wisely observed that this sort of experimentation is socially beneficial in no small part because the rich can afford to make mistakes and to follow technological dead ends: The technologies developed for the $100,000 Tesla or the $800,000 Porsche may not end up being the winners in the long run, just as many of the features of the 1983 Motorola DynaTAC were surpassed by those of competitors; but chances are that your high-tech supercar is not your daily driver, much less your only means of conveyance to work or the vehicle you use to get your kids to school, and if you own one, you can probably afford to make a sub-optimal choice. Most of the people facing the Betamax-VHS dilemma in the late 1970s were well off enough that going the wrong route caused no economic hardship.
Meanwhile, the government goes for the apparently crony capitalist hire of web-design firm CGI (where one of Michelle Obama's college buddies is a senior exec). After botching their part in the Obamacare rollout and getting fired, their punishment? Getting awarded a multimillion-dollar IRS contract to manage Obamacare issues.
Government, um, built that.
via @SteveStuWill
Democrats Of The Mainstream Media Ignored Trump Into Power
Even recently, there was barely a media shrug at the notion -- reportedly coming from John Kasich's aides -- that Trump, if elected, would outsource the work of the presidency to Kasich.
Jonah Goldberg writes in the LA Times that, oopsy, the mainstream media just realized Donald Trump is an actual threat:
Dear Mainstream Media and Democrats: It's your turn. Now that Donald Trump has been formally nominated, the formal responsibility to stop him passes from the right to the left, from Republicans to Democrats and the journalists that amplify their values.You're going to find it a very tough slog. And it's your own damn fault.
During the primaries, the task of exposing the true nature of the Trump takeover fell disproportionately to a couple of conservative magazines, columnists, renegade radio hosts and behind-the-scenes activists. We all failed. There will be plenty of time for recriminations and "we happy few" speeches later. (If you detect a note of bitterness on my part, I'm not being clear enough: I contain symphonies of bitterness.)
We failed in part because the mainstream media was having too good of a time to help. Last spring, Stop Trump operatives told me they brought damning stories to mainstream outlets. The response was usually: "We're not interested in covering that -- right now."
By May, Trump had already received roughly $3 billion worth of free media, thanks to ratings-hungry TV networks. CBS chief Les Moonves summarized it well at an investor conference in February: Trump's rise "may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS."
If Trump is elected, he will be the most anti-constitutional President we've ever had.
The media? Sorry...they were too busy running their stories through by DNC.
Oh, and the notion that they did this for accuracy is utter crap. You might call somebody to check a quote; you don't send the whole story over so the politican organization can "push back" if they don't like what's in it.
Where "Asian Privilege" Comes From
But wait -- at six percent of the population, aren't Asians a minority? And one that endured some pretty awful discrimination?
Yet, recent research by Pew found that Asian men, not surprisingly, earn 117 percent of the wages of white men.
And hey, good for them -- and for all of us -- because this country ultimately benefits from the most productive citizens, much as there are calls to promote people simply because they're a certain sex or skin color.
Helen Raleigh writes at The Federalist:
What contributed to Asian American's impressive economic success? The same research credited three factors:•Emphasis on education: "Educational attainment among Asian Americans is markedly higher than that of the U.S. population overall. Among those ages 25 and older, 49% hold at least a college degree, compared with 28% of the U.S. population overall."
•Emphasis on marriage and family: "(Asian) newborns are less likely than all U.S. newborns to have an unmarried mother (16% vs. 41%); and their children are more likely than all U.S. children to be raised in a household with two married parents (80% vs. 63%)."
•Emphasis on work ethic: "Nearly seven-in-ten (69%) Asians say people can get ahead if they are willing to work hard."
The research failed to mention another factor that distinguishes Asians: most Asians do not share the "us versus them" mentality. The majority of Asians do not demand that someone or some group be held responsible for their own happiness. Instead, they ask themselves, "What do I need to do to make my life better?" and then make it happen.
Not surprisingly, the political grievance industry ignores Asian Americans because they don't fit the narrative. Maybe it's time for Asians to become more politically active and point out the narrative is wrong, and even a liberal think tank's data proves it.
Corey Booker's Nursery School View Of America
Senator Corey Booker called on us to be a "nation of love," not a "nation of tolerance."
I guess this sells to voters, who -- judging by the two leading candidates -- are a bunch of gullible fourth graders with adult privileges. Or are all smoking a lot of pot.
Okay, so on Monday, I tweeted to a white supremacist that I love black people, brown people, yellow people. 
The truth is that I don't hate people for their color (and I love the melting pot-ness of America), but I find a lot of people (white, black, whatever) to be idiots who believe in idiotic things.
However...
...As long as these people don't try to kill other people who don't believe as they do or otherwise violate people's rights, I tolerate them. That's what this country is about -- tolerating people's right to do what they wish, and if they aren't harming you, hands the fuck off.
And yes, we do need to "aim higher" -- closer to constitutional principles that don't allow asset forfeiture, police abuse under the guise of policing, pointless searches sans probable cause at airports across America, removal of due process from (mostly) men on campus, and free speech being diminished on campuses across America...just to name a few.
In other words, what matters is "governmental toleration." This involves things like freedom of religion, free association, and property rights -- which are fundamental to a democracy and which Donald Trump shows little respect for (when someone else's property rights are getting in his way to make some money).
I love this from legal theorist and Cato VP of Legal Affairs, Roger Pilon:
In sum, the world envisioned by the Declaration, even when fleshed out more fully than I'm able to do here, is essentially one of live-and-let-live. It's a world in which we're free to pursue happiness as we wish, even if we offend others in the process--a world that tolerates disrespect (that second sense of tolerance I noted earlier), but respects rights, the violation of which cannot be tolerated (the first sense noted earlier). But of course it's also a world that encourages tolerance (the third sense), because in a free society, as history demonstrates, individuals who can bring themselves to tolerate and even respect the differences of others are more likely to engage in cooperative exchanges with those others, and both parties to a contract, by definition, improve their situation. Thus freedom, tolerance, and prosperity are intimately connected.
But we sure aren't going to get there with the likes of "Up with puppies and unicorns!"
Pilon is also on to something here:
So what's going on here with this more recent wave of intolerance? Let me suggest, as I only hinted earlier, that this intolerance is not unconnected to the gradual growth of government over the 20th century and the accompanying growth of economic regulation and concentration, which is why I've focused on that larger background issue. As evidenced in the Carolene Products decision, one of the core conceits of modern liberalism is that economic and personal lliberties occupy separate spheres, and that the regulation of economic affairs will not spill over to personal affairs. History suggests otherwise, something we see clearly in highly collectivized regimes: the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Cuba, and plainly today in Venezuela. Just to be clear: We're not there yet--far from it. But the risk is real. It's implicit in the slogan we've heard coming so often from the White House in recent years, especially concerning Obamacare: "We're all in this together." Well if we are, in fact, all in this together, whether we want to be or not, then presumably no one should be rocking the boat. We should all "get with the program," because dissent and controversy can only impede our progress and so cannot be tolerated. Progress toward what? Toward whatever the collective decides in the post-New Deal democratic order.
A little more from Booker:
"Here in Philadelphia, let us declare again that we will be a free people. Free from fear and intimidation," Booker said. "Let us declare again that we are a nation of interdependence, and that in America love always trumps hate. Let us declare, so that generations yet unborn can hear us. We are the United States of America; our best days are ahead of us."
That, sadly, seems unlikely.
Your take? On the DNC, the election, the political process...where we're headed?
My Fortuneteller Is Alexis de Toqueville
Welcome to our world. Econ prof Barry Brownstein writes at the Foundation for Economic Education:
Tocqueville foresaw that if despotism came to America, it would not be of the old-world European kind; it would seemingly be more benign, an "all-powerful government, but one elected by the citizens;" deadly, nevertheless, to freedom. Look around us today. Presidential executive orders, congressional legislation, and ruling by bureaucratic fiat are shifting more and more power to the federal government. Sadly, a critical mass of the public is comfortable with this - as long as the power is used in the direction that they favor.Democratic voting to elect our powerful masters is no guarantee of freedom. If Tocqueville was writing today, he might pen this same observation about the voting public in this year's election: "Under this system, citizens leave their state of dependence just long enough to choose their masters and then they return to it." If American-style despotism deepens, Tocqueville forewarns that it will:
Spread its arms over the whole of society, covering the surface of social life with a network of petty, complicated, detailed, and uniform rules through which even the most original minds and the most energetic of spirits cannot reach the light in order to rise above the crowd. It does not break men's wills but it does soften, bend, and control them. Rarely does it force men to act, but it constantly opposes what actions they perform. It does not tyrannize but it inhibits, represses, drains, snuffs out, dulls so much effort that finally it reduces each nation to nothing more than a flock of timid and hardworking animals with the government as shepherd.
This Linkey Has Fleas
Itchylinkeymonkey.
Philosophy Does Not Have "A Woman Problem": Academia Has A Coddling Of Women Problem
Christina Hoff Sommers, who has PhD in philosophy and taught it for more than 20 years, takes on the accusation that philosophy is an "unsafe hyper-masculine space" for women (video here):
In 2014, women earned 28% of the PhDs in philosophy. By contrast, they earned close to 60% in English, anthropology, and sociology--and 75% in psychology. When it comes to gender, philosophy looks more like math and physics. What explains the numbers?A group of feminist philosophers is persuaded it knows the answer: Women are kept away by sexism, both overt and unconscious. These philosophers have ascended to power in the American Philosophical Association (APA) and are hard at work addressing the alleged crisis. In the past few years, there has been a surge of alarmist articles, blogs, and conferences on the precarious state of women in philosophy. There is even a song! Anyone who is concerned about the current state of academia should be troubled. Academic philosophy prides itself on logic and analytical rigor, but the women-in-philosophy movement appears to prefer dogma and pop-psychology.
What happens in these cases is coddling of women -- at the expense of men. The women get special treatment, special legs up, special mentoring, special awards -- and even (gag!), as Hoff Sommers points out, even a song.
Personally, I'm shocked by organizations of academics in science that have "feminist" wings -- and I will never join one of these. Academics -- especially women -- are often surprised by that when, upon being invited to some meeting feminist wing of an ev psych organization, I tell them it's not for me. For me, there's only science -- not feminist science or masculinist science or any other special interest group science.
Hoff Sommers continues, taking on some of the idiocy:
In 2008, MIT feminist philosopher Sally Haslanger published a cri de coeur in an academic journal lamenting that philosophy is combative, judgmental, and "hyper-masculine." Now, I was a philosopher. My husband was a philosopher. My stepson is a philosopher. I've been around a lot of philosophers. They are many things--"hyper-masculine" isn't one of them. Nonetheless, Haslanger was passionate--actually combative. She attacked analytic philosophy for favoring masculine terms such as "penetrating," "seminal," and "rigorous." And she spoke of the "deep well of rage" inside her--rage over how she and others have been treated. Haslanger called on "established feminists," to organize and resist "the masculinization of philosophy spaces."Haslanger expected a backlash. Instead she ignited a hostile takeover. By 2013, she attained a top position in the American Philosophical Association, and wrote in the New York Times that her group's "persistent activism . . . is becoming institutionalized." Her article ended with these words: "We are the winning side now. We will not relent; so it is only a matter of time."
But Haslanger's winning side is based on a double standard. It treats the gender disparity in philosophy as self-evidently wrong--even "tragic," according to Yale philosopher Joshua Knobe. But much larger disparities that favor women, in fields like sociology, anthropology, psychology and veterinary medicine, are ignored. If disciplines with more men are ipso facto unjust, then how can fields with more women be acceptable? To be consistent, activists should be calling for gender parity across the curriculum. APA-sponsored posters with the word PhilosopHER are turning up in philosophy departments. Perhaps psychology and anthropology departments should have posters with the words PsychoBROS or Anthropolo-HE.
I've written before about how men are vastly more likely to have risky jobs (and in fact are the risk-takers of the species, generally speaking).
Steven Pinker, speaking at an ev psych conference in, I think, 2006, noted that we don't try to push men into, say, kindergarten teaching. So what's with pushing women into professions they don't want to be in -- and all the coddling that comes with it? An example of that from the computer programming world, by Sarah Hoyt:
"[Blog.CodingHorror.com author] Atwood's next effort is a long list of things that can be done to make programming a 'more welcoming profession for women'. Hell, it's not a welcoming profession for most men. It attracts weird, it attracts poorly-socialized people (yes, I'm one of these. I can fake it for a while, but sooner or later the truth shows). Programming is ultimately for people whose focus is on cutting through the crap that makes up most of everyday life and teaching a very fast moron to do things that the ordinary everyday people think are valuable. If you don't have the basic competence, you might as well not bother."
What all of this coddling does do is make these worlds less hospitable for women who want to be in them, deserve to be in them, and like Hoff Sommers, didn't have feminists bleating at them to feel like they're a victim class.
I love the end to Hoff Sommers's piece:
In my senior year of high school, my mother gave me Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy. I relished that book. It was written by a man, and it was about men--Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Nietzsche. But I thought it was written for me. I wasn't aware I had entered an unsafe hyper-masculine space--to me it felt like a sacred space. I pursued a BA and PhD in philosophy and taught it for more than 20 years. It never crossed my mind, in high school or as my academic career progressed, that I would be unwelcome because I was a woman. There were some unsavory characters along the way, but the vast majority of my professors and colleagues were supportive and encouraging. I am glad that today's grievance blogs, alarmist theories, and angry tirades weren't around back then to discourage me--and sorry to think of their influence today on young women who are drawn to this great and difficult calling.
If The FBI Won't Do Anything About Emailgate, Maybe Moscow Will
Security expert John Schindler writes in the New York Observer about some of the fallout
Last week the Associated Press broke a big story about how Clinton's "unclassified" emails included the true names of CIA personnel serving overseas under cover. This was hardly news, in fact I broke the same story four months ago in this column. However, the AP account adds detail to what Clinton and her staff did, actions that placed the lives of CIA clandestine personnel at risk. It also may be a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, a 1982 law that featured prominently in the mid-aughts scandal surrounding CIA officer Valerie Plame, which so captivated the mainstream media. More recently, former CIA officer John Kiriakou spent two years in Federal prison for violating this law.To make matters worse for Team Clinton, last week it emerged that several of the classified emails under investigation involved discussions of impending CIA drone strikes in Pakistan. Clinton aides were careful to avoid hot-button words like "CIA" and "drone" in these "unclassified" emails, engaging in a practice that spies term "talking around" an issue.
However, the salient fact is that the CIA--which has the say here--considers this information to be Top Secret, as well as enormously sensitive. It had no business being in anybody's unclassified emails.
And check this out:
...And in the unlikely event that nobody in our nation's capital is willing to go public with exactly what Hillary Clinton did, it now seems the Russians may do so. It's highly plausible that Russian intelligence services, among others, have many of Clinton's emails, perhaps all of them, given how slipshod her security arrangements were.Therefore the recent statement by Julian Assange, head of Wikileaks, that his organization plans to release more of Clinton's emails should not be dismissed out of hand. Although Assange is prone to flights of fancy, Wikileaks has long served as a front for Russian intelligence, as Western security services are well aware, so it may not be fantasy that he could get his hands on more of Hillary's emails. It would be supremely ironic if the Kremlin demolishes Hillary Clinton's presidential aspirations thanks to her own neglect of basic communications security when she was secretary of state.
via @jamestaranto
Lurky
Dark cornery links.
I Half Expect The Wicked Witch Of The West To Fly Through On Her Broom
The view due to the fire near Los Angeles. 
On a serious note, I hope people don't lose their homes.
This is how it looked closer to the beach (in Venice). That red dot is the setting sun.
photos by Gregg Sutter
Dating: The Double-Yellow Line Between Being Considerate And Being A Tool
LA Times publishes this series of lame dating pieces and this is one of them. A guy who seems to be a Mattel toy designer has a Tinder date. This is a dead giveaway that he's the sort of woman that gets walked on.
She said she lived in Beverly Hills. I suggested meeting at Urth Caffe so it would be convenient for her. What I didn't say is that I live in Santa Monica and I work in El Segundo, which meant making it to Beverly Hills on a weekday would be absolute torture. (Anyone who has seen "The Californians" on SNL knows what I am talking about.)
In other words, he bends over backward -- and then some -- for a total stranger. To the point where he goes through hours of hell in LA traffic.
It's great to be a guy who's considerate and who goes the extra mile -- once you have a girlfriend with an open heart who'll do the same for you.
But you can't just change the behavior; you have to change what's behind it -- probably some combo of dating out of your league and not having fixed whatever makes you feel all "I'm not worthy! I'm not worthy!"
Or this is what happens to you:
The drive took almost two hours. Still, I found parking and made it to Urth with 10 minutes to spare. When I arrived, however, I got a message telling me she was actually about two miles away, at the SLS Hotel on La Cienega Boulevard. She was there getting her hair done "for tomorrow's shoot" and asked if I wanted to meet there instead. It was going to be either a 30-minute drive in traffic or a 20-minute walk, so I decided to keep my parking spot and headed on over.I messaged when I reached the hotel, and she told me she still needed about 10 minutes. I said I'd be at the hotel bar.
Thirty minutes later ... she texted that she was "still getting worked on."
Fifteen minutes later (about an hour and a half since I arrived in Beverly Hills, and over three hours since I left my job), she messaged that she was on her way down.
She looked good, not amazing, but like her photos. I complimented her hair and went in for a friendly hug. She responded with a light, impersonal and slightly awkward embrace.
She looked at me and said, "You look nothing like your pictures!," to which I responded "You mean in a good way, I hope."
She just looked down.
I asked if she wanted to go back to Urth. She said "You're welcome to walk back and I'll meet you there," which I now realize was her first try at an exit strategy.
I suggested we just stay in the lobby for drinks. I began with some small talk, including asking why she's new to Tinder.
"Well, I just broke up with my boyfriend. Actually we broke up last month, but just stopped sleeping together this week. Like yesterday."
OK ...
The guy blames the fact that she's a lingerie model/actress/whatever.
Okay, sure, maybe she's looking for somebody richer or famous-er or whatever, but even if he dates girls who aren't looking for that, his problem will remain. (And no, it probably doesn't help that he's probably dating out of his league.)
But his real problem? It's not that he's a nice guy; it's that he's a pathetic guy who shows women he'll do anything to get them.
As I write in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck," first dates should be three things: Cheap, short, and local. And that's local for all involved, meaning you meet in the middle. You don't haul your ass through a traffic jungle so she won't have to muss her hair behind the wheel.
This says everything about you -- none of it good or helpful for getting a woman to do more than take you for a ride and then push you out the car door after you're doing paying for as much as she can squeeze out of you.
A Therapist On The Psychology Of Muslim Culture
Psychologist Nicolai Sennels has worked with numerous Muslim clients (more than 100, he says) and writes a very interesting analysis about psychological differences between Western culture and Muslim culture. Here are a few excerpts:
AngerMuslim culture has a very different view of anger and in many ways opposite to what we experience here in the West.
Expressions of anger and threats are probably the quickest way to lose one's face in Western culture. In discussions, those who lose their temper have automatically lost, and I guess most people have observed the feeling of shame and loss of social status following expressions of aggression at one's work place or at home. In the Muslim culture, aggressive behavior, especially threats, are generally seen to be accepted, and even expected as a way of handling conflicts and social discrepancies. If a Muslim does not respond in a threatening way to insults or social irritation, he, not "she" (Muslim women are, mostly, expected to be humble and to not show power) is seen as weak, as someone who cannot be depended upon and loses face.
In the eyes of most Westerners it looks immature and childish when people try to use threatening behavior, to mark their dislikes. A Danish saying goes "...Only small dogs bark. Big dogs do not have to." That saying is deeply rooted in our cultural psychology as a guideline for civilized social behavior. To us, aggressive behavior is a clear sign of weakness. It is a sign of not being in control of oneself and lacking ability to handle a situation. We see peoples' ability to remain calm as self confidence, allowing them to create a constructive dialogue. Their knowledge of facts, use of common sense and ability in producing valid arguments is seen as a sign of strength.
The Islamic expression of "holy anger" is therefore completely contradictory to any Western understanding. Those two words in the same sentence sound contradictory to us. The terror-threatening and violent reaction of Muslims to the Danish Mohammed cartoons showing their prophet as a man willing to use violence to spread his message, is seen from our Western eyes as ironic. Muslims' aggressive reaction to a picture showing their prophet as aggressive, completely confirms the truth of the statement made by Kurt Westergaard in his satiric drawing.
This cultural difference is exceedingly important when dealing with Muslim regimes and organizations. Our way of handling political disagreement goes through diplomatic dialogue, and calls on Muslim leaders to use compassion, compromise and common sense. This peaceful approach is seen by Muslims as an expression of weakness and lack of courage. Thus avoiding the risks of a real fight is seen by them as weakness; when experienced in Muslim culture, it is an invitation to exploitation.
...HonorHonor is a central concept in the Muslim culture. Many Danish newspapers experienced mass rage from Muslims, when they published and re-published the Danish Mohammed cartoons. They have realized that Muslims are very easily offended.
What kind of honor needs to be protected by threats of terror and boycotts? Is this really honor? Maybe if seen through the glasses of a culture based on a book written 1400 years ago. However, when seen from the perspective of modern Western psychology, it surely is not. From our perspective such behavior is closer to being dishonorable.
Having to constantly keep up one's appearances, becoming insecure and reacting aggressively when criticized is the result of low self esteem. Unfortunately the Muslim culture tells its men that criticism must be taken completely personally and met with childish reactions.
True self confidence would allow the individual the ability to think or say: "Ok. You have your own opinion about me or my religion. I have another opinion, and as I trust myself, I will not let my view of myself, or my central values, be disturbed by you." Knowing one's own strengths and weaknesses and accepting them is the core and basis of good self confidence.
If you had ever spent time in a Muslim community you experience this very clearly. You would find yourself constantly trying not to offend anyone and you'd treat everybody like a rotten egg. Jokes, irony and, especially, self-irony is as good as non-existent. It creates a superficial social environment where unhealthy hierarchies appear everywhere because nobody dares to, for instance, point out the weaknesses of childish men and make fun of the powerful. There is an old Danish fairytale about a little boy that points out the nakedness of the King; "He has no clothes on!!" embarrassing the proud King wearing his non-existent magic clothes, which are only visible to "good people" (actually, the King was just naked - because the tailor had cheated him!). Such a story could never have been written in a Muslim culture.
Many young Muslims become assailants. This is not just because of the Muslim cultural acceptance of aggression, but also because the Muslim honor mentality makes them into fragile, insecure men. Instead of being flexible and humorous they become stiff and develop fragile, glass-like, narcissistic personalities.
Unfortunately, most journalists and media people use the term "honor" when describing cases of violence where the offender makes excuses for himself by stating that his honor was offended. Since the concept of honor is completely integrated in the social rules of Muslim culture, it is seen to be justifiable when honor is threatened. This extends to beating or killing women who want to claim such basic human rights as to choose, for themselves, their own sexual partners. By using this term, as used by the offender, the media automatically takes the perspective of a clearly psychopathic and narcissistic excuse for treating other people badly. Instead, we should take our own Western culture as a basis when describing such crimes. Terms like "family execution," "childish jealousy," "control maniac" or "insecure" would be much closer to our cultural understanding of such behavior.
He winds up with this -- but the entire thing is worth reading.
...Since the Muslim world is already here - in thousands of Muslim ghettoes in Europe, Australia and North America - the possibility that violent conflict will happen in Western cities all over the world is very great.We need to understand the Muslim culture much better if we want to be able to stop such a catastrophe. We need to understand that it is not possible to integrate masses of Muslims into our Western societies. We need to understand that our non-confrontational Western ways of handling conflicts make us look weak and vulnerable to Muslim leaders. We need to understand that Muslim culture is much stronger and more determined than our guilt-ridden, self-excusing Western culture. We need to understand that Muslims will only feel at home in a Muslim culture and this is why their religious demands for Islamization of the West will never end.
Linkburger
Stinkylinks.
Arab Imperialism In Islam And The Slave Trade And Slaughter Of Blacks, Including Black Muslims
Very interesting article by Hugh Fitzgerald at Jihadwatch on Arab supremacism -- and, specifically, how Islam is a vehicle for Arab supremacism:
The second great fissure in Islam, after that of the Sunnis and Shia, and to which our discussion of the Berbers in Part I is obviously relevant, is that between Arab Muslims and the 80% of the world's Muslims who are not Arabs. It bears repeating (see the first paragraph of Part I), that because Allah chose to deliver his message in Arabic to a seventh-century Arab, because Muslims should read, recite, memorize the Qur'an in Arabic, because Muslims must turn toward Mecca in prayer at least five times a day, because Muhammad the Perfect Man and Model of Conduct was Arab, because the Qur'an was written in the Arabs' language, and they are its only true transmitters, because the earliest Muslims, whose customs and manners, written down in the Hadith, constitute the Sunnah, were all Arabs, because the Arabs were the first to conquer vast territories for Islam -- all this naturally produced a feeling of superiority in the Arabs. And wherever they conquered, along with Islamization came Arabization. That word describes two different things: first, the physical movement of Arabs into what were non-Arab lands, as in northern Iraq, where the Kurds live, and Saddam Hussein moved Arabs onto lands taken from them, in an attempt to change the demographics of the area, to "Arabize" it. But the Arabization that takes place even in Muslim lands without Arabs is different, and describes the change in the non-Arab population that follows Islamization: they lose their original identity and try to become, culturally, "Arabs."Among the outward and visible signs of this, think of how many Muslim non-Arabs have eagerly given themselves Arab names and false Arab pedigrees, and copied Arab dress of the seventh century. (Imagine someone in the Congo wearing a suit, carrying an umbrella and wearing a homburg, and calling himself Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper.) They wanted the prestige of being thought "Arab." In Pakistan, to take an extreme case, millions claim to be "Sayids" - that is, descendants of the Quraysh, the Prophet's tribe.
But there were also those non-Arabs who, as with the Berbers, resented being severed from their own culture, resented Arab indifference to, or hostility towards, the languages, cultures, and histories of those whom they conquered and converted; in short, they resented this cultural imperialism. The Berbers, by and large, nowadays do not want to be Arabs, and some of them don't even want to be Muslims, to judge by their online sites, and they identify Islam with centuries of oppressive Arab rule. The Arab attempt to efface every memory, no matter how innocuous, of Berber culture, has backfired. This anti-Arab feeling among non-Arab Muslims is not to be deplored, but encouraged by the world's Infidels. It is one way to weaken the hold of Islam on four-fifths of the world's Muslims.
Among non-Arab Muslims, the Kurds and the black African Muslims in Sudan are the latest victims of Arab atrocities. The Arab military of Saddam Hussein managed to kill 182,000 Kurds during the qur'anically-titled Anfal. Then more Arabs were moved into Kurdistan to Arabize the region. And not a single Arab ruler, diplomat, or intellectual, inside or outside of Iraq, protested this massacre of the Kurds. This is the memory that needs to be kept constantly fresh in Kurdish minds. We do not have a stake in Kurds remaining in Arab-ruled Iraq, as our leaders have in the past insisted. Rather, the interests of Infidels are better served by an independent Kurdistan, grateful to the West for its aid, and ideally carved out of territory that was formerly part of Arab Iraq and Arab Syria (the Kurds in Iran and Turkey will have to wait).As for the Sudan, northern Arabs attacked and murdered, over several decades, millions of black African Christians and animists and, more recently, Arab militias (the Janjaweed) murdered, in Darfur (in the western Sudan) nearly half a million black African Muslims. Given the attempts of Muslims in the West both to find allies among blacks (CAIR with its solicitousness for "Black Lives Matter") and the apparent attractiveness Islam holds for some blacks in Europe and North America (especially in prisons, where the conversion rate is high), there is ample reason to keep talking not only about what the Arabs did in the Sudan in the recent past, but about the longer history of the Arab slave trade in East Africa.
That Arab slave trade began earlier, and lasted longer, and claimed more victims, than the Atlantic slave trade of the Europeans. This trade was particularly hideous because the Arab slavers castrated young black boys while they were still in the bush, and only 10% survived to make it, by slave coffle to the coast and thence by dhow, to the Muslim slave markets of Egypt, Arabia, and Istanbul. For the same reasons, to create doubts among would-be black converts, we in the West ought to be discussing not only that African slave trade of the Arabs, but the continued enslavement by Arabs of blacks in the Sudan (see the testimony of the "Lost Boys") and Mauritania. It would also be useful to remind would-be black converts that Saudi Arabia and Yemen gave up slavery, reluctantly, and only because of terrific pressure from Great Britain, as late as 1962, and that there are reports of slavery continuing to exist in the Saudi interior, just as, despite being officially outlawed, it still exists in the Sudan and Mauritania. And finally, that Muhammad himself was a slave-owner, thus legitimizing slavery in Islam, needs to be more widely known, in order to dampen Islam's appeal among blacks.
Dampen Islam's appeal? Absolutely.
While not all Muslims practice Islam as it commands (which means they are in danger of being slaughtered as apostates, like the Ahmadis too often), many do. And Islam masquerades as a religion, but it is actually a totalitarian system that commands the conversion or slaughter of "the infidel" and the installation of the new Caliphate around the globe.
(This is not a place where documents like the American Constitution have the slightest bit of standing, in case you were wondering, and if you're gay or an atheist or a woman who is raped without four men to witness it, sorry, you're supposed to be slaughtered.)
ISIS has just put out a video urging Muslims (about "infidels") to "kill them wherever you find them."
Anyone familiar with the Quran knows that this is a passage from it (helpful commentary is from the excellent site, thereligionofpeace.com):
Quran (2:191-193) - "And kill them wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out. And Al-Fitnah [disbelief or unrest] is worse than killing... but if they desist, then lo! Allah is forgiving and merciful. And fight them until there is no more Fitnah [disbelief and worshipping of others along with Allah] and worship is for Allah alone. But if they cease, let there be no transgression except against Az-Zalimun(the polytheists, and wrong-doers, etc.)" (Translation is from the Noble Quran)The verse prior to this (190) refers to "fighting for the cause of Allah those who fight you" leading some to believe that the entire passage refers to a defensive war in which Muslims are defending their homes and families. The historical context of this passage is not defensive warfare, however, since Muhammad and his Muslims had just relocated to Medina and were not under attack by their Meccan adversaries.
In fact, the verses urge offensive warfare, in that Muslims are to drive Meccans out of their own city (which they later did). Verse 190 thus means to fight those who offer resistance to Allah's rule (ie. Muslim conquest).
The use of the word "persecution" by some Muslim translators is disingenuous (the actual Arabic words for persecution - "idtihad" - and oppression - a variation of "z-l-m" - do not appear in the verse). The word used instead, "fitna", can mean disbelief, or the disorder that results from unbelief or temptation. This is certainly what is meant in this context since the violence is explicitly commissioned "until religion is for Allah" - ie. unbelievers desist in their unbelief.
Cookie
Double chocolate-chip linkies.
Call Of The Fucking Wild Here Today
I woke up 22 minutes late (on a bit of a writing deadline), with a need to create an ant holocaust. (California summer fun!)
For the uninitiated, no, this isn't Florida, with those bugs the size of Mini-Coopers, but at some point in the summer, you wake up to a highway stripe-like line of ants. Today was the day.
Windex holocaust followed.
P.S. I generally save spiders -- take them outside on a sheet of paper -- but they tend to come in a one-pack.
The Sort Of Woman Who Isn't A Feminist
I'm not a feminist. As I've written here, I call myself a humanist, which means I stand up for the rights and fair treatment of all people, including those with a penis in their pants.
Feminism these days is too often a demand for special rights for people with vaginas -- under the guise of equal rights.
And it's too often a way to unearned power -- typically, unearned power over men, that comes at a high price: Playing the victim.
The problem is this: Play it long enough and you become it -- meaning it becomes who you are and how you go about the world.
Well, Lena Dunham, who absolutely is a feminist, talked to Estee Adoram, the famed booker for the Comedy Cellar in New York who has launched many a comedy career. Adoram said to her: "I am not a feminist."
Well, Dunham interviewed Adoram for her newsletter, and Lisa DePasquale reports on what she said:
It's clear that Dunham and Adoram could not be more different in their career path. Adoram served in the Israeli Army before becoming a hostess at the Comedy Cellar, and then eventually worked her way up to the most important job there. Dunham started with a series on HBO and Emmy nominations after the first season. Basically, Adoram has been successful in the male-dominated fields of the military and comedy and Dunham is dying to get her to join her cult of victimization. Adoram ain't having it and it's a beautiful thing to see.Here's a selection of Adoram's responses to Dunham's loaded questions.
On lack of females in comedy:
"I am not gonna put someone on who is not great just because she's female. And I really don't believe any club owner would not book a woman just because she's a woman. There's only one trend in comedy and that's to be funny. I don't go for gimmicks."
On what offends her:
"I hate vulgarity. I don't mind dirty. There's a difference between a comic who works dirty or is vulgar. I don't want the level of intelligence to go down the toilet because of that. I have personal stuff that I don't like. I wouldn't be offended, but I don't like it. I don't like Holocaust jokes."
On rape jokes:
"Depends on how you do it. You need to come and you're going to listen to Lynne Koplitz doing the rape joke. If you don't laugh, I'll buy you whatever you want."
On being stepped over in the business because she's a woman:
"Maybe they say things behind my back, I don't know. But no, I never felt it. I can't even think of an incident of somebody trying."
On whether the feminist ideology defines her:
"I was always in the position of authority, even when I was in the army. I was always in the position of authority."
"I was in charge. I have pictures to show, to prove it. There is something in my character, I guess, that makes it happen. I never felt: 'I am not allowed to do that because I'm a woman.' Feminism would step in and say, this is a blockage here. I never felt that. I worked, I worked hard, and I always was recognized for the job."
"The reality is, most people that I come in contact with give me my dues."
On "equal pay":
"Now, there's the big thing in show business. Equal pay for women and whatever. It probably is an issue. To me it's not. Yeah, I would like to make more money, of course. At the end of the day, for me, what matters is the satisfaction with what I do, my relationship with people, whether it's comics, coworkers, friends, people I meet. I feel happy. As long as I have enough to live for what I want to do, I'm good. I don't know if it's words of wisdom, but that's what kept me happy."
Clearly, Estee Adoram is the refreshing kind of broad who probably doesn't mind being called a broad. I identify with her more than I do with Dunham and today's feminist heroes. Hollywood should take note. We have enough movies and TV shows about the lives of vapid, self-important millennials like Lena Dunham. Give us more on the inspiring women like Adoram who came before them and don't subscribe to the victimhood worldview.
Welcome to my worldview, too.
Lame-ertarians: Meet The Anemic Duo The Libertarians Have Given Us
Meet Gary Johnson and William Weld. Together, they make up the anemic Libertarian ticket for President.
I've met Gary Johnson. Sadly, at a time when candidates with charisma are needed more than ever, he embodies that old joke -- that when a particular person (as in, Johnson) walks into the room, it's as if two people just left.
Steve Chapman writes at Reason about the somewhat anemic policy points of Johnson and Weld:
He and Weld are what you might call kinder, gentler Libertarians. Johnson decries the drug war but says the only drug they advocate legalizing is marijuana--harder ones being off-limits. They would not have intervened militarily in Iraq, Libya or Syria, but Johnson says, "I don't have any alliances I'd want to end.""We're right up the middle," asserts Weld. About the most radical ideas they offer are cutting the federal budget by 20 percent and abolishing the departments of Education, Commerce and Housing and Urban Development.
The overall effect of hearing all this is underwhelming, like going to see a Bears-Packers game only to discover they're playing flag football. The impression is probably not accidental or unwanted. What Johnson and Weld plainly aim to do is assure Americans disgusted by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump that the Libertarian Party offers an honest, proven approach, not a radical experiment.
Harvard's Gregory Mankiw, who served as chairman of President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, has written that he regards himself as a "libertarian at the margin." He explained, "Given our starting point today, I believe more reliance on individual liberty and less on governmental solutions is usually a step in the right direction, but I often recoil at more radical libertarian positions."
In that sense, Johnson's claim that most Americans are unwitting libertarians is entirely plausible. In principle, at least, they would most likely favor reducing taxes and spending, respecting individual autonomy in matters like marijuana, same-sex marriage and education, and exercising more caution about military intervention abroad. But those inclinations have firm limits, which Johnson doesn't propose to breach.
And yes, I'd rather vote for The Anemic Duo than Hillary or Trump. (If we're splitting hairs here, they're both corrupt, but she's at least a corrupt adult.)
Of course, I'd rather vote for Hitler's dead dog than either Hillary or Trump.
Of all the years for the Libertarians to get their shit together and put up a candidate who doesn't seem wacko nuts and who people actually might want to vote for, this would have been it.
Linkooroo
Dueling cuckoos.
Camp Dumps Trump
Jimmy Camp is just a super guy, and the Republican husband of my Blue Dog Democrat friend Samantha Dunn. Not long ago, I blogged her piece on their righty/lefty love.
Her piece is titled "I fell in love with a Republican" -- which isn't to say he's simply a guy who colors in the Republican side on the ballot:
The man I love personally called Henry Kissinger to tell him about Richard Nixon's funeral arrangements. He ran Orrin Hatch's bid for president and has worked for Rudolph Guiliani and even that poor, dumb bastard Rick Perry. His mother has a framed picture hanging in the house of her arm-in-arm with Robert Dole, autographed with a "Thanks Sharon! Bob." His father is pastor of an Evangelical church, a man who watches a defective television set built with only one channel. Fox News.
What Camp is is a person who's in the Republican party because he's a fiscal conservative who believes in liberty, opportunity, and personal responsibility, among other things.
So, I was pleased, but not surprised to see Martin Wisckol writing in the OC Register that Camp's quit the GOP because of Trump:
Orange-based political consultant Jimmy Camp, who has worked on high-profile Republican campaigns through the state for 30 years, announced today that he was leaving the GOP because of the party's presidential nominee."Donald Trump is a narcissistic, self-centered, unprincipled, miserable example of a human being," Camp said in a prepared statement. "I cannot support this man nor can I be a member of a party that would choose him as their nominee."
More from Camp, who says he turned down an offer of a position in the Trump campaign in April:
"I've dedicated 30 years of my life to make my party the party of opportunity, of freedom and of individual liberty and responsibility. I have worked within my party to make it one not of 'tolerance,' but one of inclusion and opportunity regardless of race, gender, religion, sexuality or nation of origin, and Trump stands for none of these things. I am truly sad to be leaving the party I have worked so hard for, built lasting friendships and dedicated my professional life..."
Why Grandma's Still In The Workplace And May Be A Better Employee Than Young Hipster Dude
Scientist Rosalind C. Barnett and journalist Caryl Rivers have an op-ed in the LA Times, "Why your grandmother is still employed."
Of course, the answer may be that she can't afford to retire -- I don't think I'll be able to, and I hope my prose and thinking won't get so musty that nobody wants to pay me for it. (I also can't imagine retiring; then again, my job involves reading, writing, thinking and speaking, not farm labor.)
And what I've noticed is that 80 -- or 70, or 60 -- has really become the new, oh, who the fuck knows, but old people aren't always old these days. They may have gray hair and heart meds, but they still think and act young (as much as that's possible with their aching whatever the hell it is).
As Barnett and Rivers write about the vitality of older people -- cognitive and otherwise:
People don't have a use-by date -- 65 isn't a magic age after which workers merely plod along, doing routine work, bereft of creativity and new ideas.In 2014, Los Angeles' own Frank Gehry, now 87, opened two museums, one in Panama City and one in Paris. In 2015, a Gehry building opened in Sydney, Australia. Among other projects, he's now embarked on an ambitious plan related to redeveloping the L.A. River.
At the same age, evolutionary biologist E.O. Wilson has launched a new project: preserving biodiversity by permanently protecting about half the planet, reserving it for the 10 million species other than Homo sapiens. He calls the project "Half Earth," as in "half for us, half for them."
...From 2000 to 2015, there has been a dramatic uptick in the ranks of retirement-age workers. The percent of workers 65 and over, although small, has grown 300% (from 2% to 6%), according to the ADP National Employment Report.
It used to be that if you were over 65 and working, you probably worked part time, but around 2001, the wind shifted, and full-time employment started climbing. By 2007, 55% of workers 65 and older were employed full time; by 2014, 60% of workers age 65 and older had full-time jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
...Yet these older workers aren't being hired or kept on the job for charity's sake. A major international study, done by the Max Planck Institute in Germany in 2010, punched a sizable hole in the commonly held notion that veteran employees are dim, slow and less productive.
In fact, the study found that older workers' productivity was more consistent than younger workers'. The researchers compared 101 young adults (20-31) and 103 older adults (65-80) on 12 different tasks over 100 days. These included tests of cognitive abilities, perceptual speed, episodic memory and working memory. Researchers expected that the younger workers would perform more consistently over time, while the older workers would be more variable.
...The researchers suggested that older workers' wealth of experience enabled them to design strategies to solve problems. In addition, their motivation was higher than the younger workers'. "On balance, older employees' productivity and reliability is higher than that of their younger colleagues," says Axel Börsch-Supan of the Max Planck Institute. Other studies back up the Planck research: Older people are more focused, less distracted, and more able to zero in on the job at hand than younger workers.
Part of the reason is that they've seen a lot and they don't panic. As one over-65 manager told the AARP, "The patience you develop as you get older helps you deal with stressful situations. A crisis comes up and rather than getting emotional, you're more likely to think, 'This too shall pass.' When you can be dispassionate about a problem, it's easier to see what's urgent and where to put your resources."
The best evidence indicates that the significant cognitive and physical declines that may come with aging set in much later than 65, and they are variable, not absolute.
They left out a big reason -- Grandma may also be a little less into chasing the boys than the 20-something employee.
Free Speech Isn't Easy, And It Can Get Ugly, But It's Better Than The Alternative
Twitter is a private business and can ban Breitbart tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos -- as it did. Permanently, they say. It has not explained the reason for the ban, though there's talk of it being about a series of ugly exchanges with Ghostbusters actress Leslie Jones.
This started with a review, by Yiannopoulous at Breitbart, in which he reports that Ghostbusters is kind of a PC horror show:
An early mission for the new team will be a disturbance at a health food store. An obese female ghost is tearing the place apart, upset she can't find anything tasty to eat. Maybe she is worried she will be late to the ghostly JC Penney sale. Anyway, she is being lectured in the health food store by the ghost of Dr. Atkins who wants her to shed weight.The Ghostbusters capture Dr. Atkins while scolding him that "Ghosts can be healthy at any size." The girls point the portly poltergeist toward the nearest pizza shop and try to give her a high five on the way out, but the ghost is so large she slimes them all.
More:
The feminists themselves commit plenty of crimes. Spoiler alert: they kill Bill Murray. They don't just kill him; the movie chucks him out of a window. It's a clumsy metaphor for the treatment of boys in college campus kangaroo courts and in general in public life these days.
Sara Ashley O'Brien writes at CNN.com:
The review coincided with the deluge of hate tweets toward Jones -- but Yiannopoulos told CNNMoney that he's "not responsible for what strangers on the Internet post."
And there was terribly mean and heartbreakingly racist, terrible stuff said to her. In one case, somebody (apparently) impersonated her on Twitter, writes Kristen V. Brown at Fusion:
At one point, Yiannopoulos even began tweeting out obviously fake tweets masquerading as tweets from Jones herself. Though it is unclear whether Yiannopoulos actually authored the falsified tweets himself or simply shared them, it was clearly an attempt to further smear Jones online.
That's when she finally had it and went off Twitter.
As somebody who's had a mob after her online, my heart really goes out to her. I think this is absolutely terrible. Here's this woman who's worked as a comedian, who gets a big role in a major motion picture, and all of these tiny turds use that to shit on her. Even if she's the worst actress to ever walk a set, she didn't deserve this. It's "Lord of the Flies" treatment.
Spiked's Brendan O'Neill writes about the horrible, racist Twitter-hounding of Jones:
Jones is a very funny African-American comedian and the only good thing in the otherwise flat, weird and mirth-free Ghostbusters reboot. Yet for the past 48 hours she has been subjected to vile racist abuse by alt-right tweeters and gamers and other assorted saddos for her part in what they view as the feministic crime of remaking Ghostbusters with a female cast.The comments made about Ms Jones have been genuinely nauseating. She has been called the N-word. She has been sent photographs of apes. It's like something from the 19th century. No one who believes in racial equality and basic human decency could fail to be moved by her pained tweet following two days of relentless racial slurs: 'I feel like I'm in personal hell. I didn't do anything to deserve this. It's just too much. It shouldn't be like this. So hurt right now.' For any black person to be subjected to racist abuse is horrific; for it to happen to a woman whose only 'crime' was to land a breakthrough role in a female-oriented summer blockbuster is particularly despicable. Ms Jones hits the big time and is instantly bombarded with racist smears -- awful.
...What is most striking is how much this alt-right shares in common with the lefty SJWs (Social Justice Warriors) it claims to hate. Both are fuelled by the politics of victimhood: SJWs claim a massive culture of misogyny is ruining their lives; alt-righters insist a feminist conspiracy is destroying theirs. Both are mean: peruse the blogs or tweets of any vocal alt-right or SJW and you'll be struck by their disgust for anyone who disagrees with them. And both are censorious. Don't be fooled by the alt-right's freedom-lovin' postures. They're just as keen as SJWs to slam and ultimately end culture that offends them, whether it's Beyonce doing a Black Power dance at the Super Bowl or Ghostbusters with four women in it.
Jonathan Turley, who rightly called the attacks on Jones "disgusting and racist" and "highly offensive" -- which they are. In observing that Jones ultimately quit Twitter over them, he writes:
Yet, Jones is a celebrity and, in a free and open forum, there will be inevitable trolls and vile commentators. It is the cost of free speech that we often have to put up with a degree of garbage, including racists like some of those attacking Jones. On our own site, we have a civility rule and I try to catch racist or personal attacks but I also try hard to minimize deletions on a site committed to free speech. That results in commentary that I often dislike or find offensive. Yet, such hateful commentators are often shouted down by more mature commentators.Moreover, when people like Jones are subjected to racist or obnoxious attacks, it serves to lay bare the serious racial problems that we continue to face in this country. Removing evidence of such views just forces these commentators under ground and turns them into victims. As difficult as the trolls must be for celebrities like Jones (and I do not belittle the emotional toll even for a celebrity), these postings expose the problem rather than scrub it away through bans and sanctions.
...I remain very concerned about the increasing content-based censorship on Twitter, Google, and other sites. Yiannopoulos has objected that he is being punished for the comments or actions of fans and trolls as opposed to his own statements. Moreover, he has raised what he views as a double standard in the treatment of groups like Black Lives Matter and more conservative groups.
...I continue to believe strongly that, despite hateful or obnoxious speech on social media, we are far better off in maintaining a free and robust forum on the Internet than engaging in private censorship. The desire to silence critics can become insatiable as companies like Twitter sanitize their media through bans and sanctions. Whatever problems people have with Yiannopoulos, he remains a strong voice for young conservatives. Critics should answer him, not work to silence him.
I wholeheartedly agree.
Linko!
Polo!
Melania's Speech-Cribbing A Big Ploy?
Interesting -- and plausible.
Louise Mensch writes at Heat Street:
You're falling for this? Seriously?Look, of course Melania Trump didn't write the speech. And of course a speechwriter plagiarized Michelle Obama. But this wasn't a mess-up or a foul.
Let's assume the speechwriter has Michelle's speech in front of him. He chuckles as he lifts a paragraph practically word for word. He knows perfectly well that this is the age of the internet and that it will instantly be found online.
He also knows that Trump has no money, and that Melania is Trump's third wife, without accomplishments other than some risqué modeling. He further knows that SOMETHING has to be done to get the media talking about something other than the hellish Trumpster Fire of the RNC convention - Reince Priebus gerrymandering the rules, the WWE style Trump-entrance, the rows upon rows of empty seats, the embarrassing, political pastoral prayer opening - and the total lack of Republican superstars like, say, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Is she right?
It's All That TV Those Infants Watched In The Womb!
Science Daily reports on yet another study that shows evolved sex differences in toy preferences. And that's SEX differences, not gender differences, though that's how it's put in the article.
From my Apple computer dictionary:
Although the words gender and sex both have the sense 'the state of being male or female,' they are typically used in slightly different ways: sex tends to refer to biological differences, while gender refers to cultural or social ones.
The Science Daily report:
To investigate the gender preferences seen with toys, the researchers observed the toy preferences of boys and girls engaged in independent play in UK nurseries, without the presence of a parent. The toys used in the study were a doll, a pink teddy bear and a cooking pot for girls, while for boys a car, a blue teddy, a digger and a ball were used.The 101 boys and girls fell into three age groups: 9 to 17 months, when infants can first demonstrate toy preferences in independent play (N=40); 18 to 23 months, when critical advances in gender knowledge occur (N=29); and 24 to 32 months, when knowledge becomes further established (N=32).
Stereotypical toy preferences were found for boys and girls in each of the age groups, demonstrating that sex differences in toy preference appear early in development. Both boys and girls showed a trend for an increasing preference with age for toys stereotyped for boys.
Speaking about the study, Dr Brenda Todd, a senior lecturer in psychology at City University said, "Sex differences in play and toy choice are of interest in relation to child care, educational practice and developmental theory. Historically there has been uncertainty about the origins of boys' and girls' preferences for play with toys typed to their own sex and the developmental processes that underlie this behaviour. As a result we set out to find out whether a preference occurs and at what age it develops.
"Biological differences give boys an aptitude for mental rotation and more interest and ability in spatial processing, while girls are more interested in looking at faces and better at fine motor skills and manipulating objects. When we studied toy preference in a familiar nursery setting with parents absent, the differences we saw were consistent with these aptitudes. Although there was variability between individual children, we found that, in general, boys played with male-typed toys more than female-typed toys and girls played with female-typed toys more than male-typed toys.
"Our results show that there are significant sex differences across all three age groups, with the finding that children in the youngest group, who were aged between 9-17months when infants are able to crawl or walk and therefore make independent selections, being particularly interesting; the ball was a favourite choice for the youngest boys and the youngest girls favoured the cooking pot."
The study is here.
For an excellent book on this subject (by a researcher who's done research on sex differences in infant preferences), check out Warriors and Worriers: The Survival of the Sexes, by Dr. Joyce Benenson.
via ifeminists
Linker
Toys.
The Creative Mental Twisties Women Do To Call Themselves Oppressed
With some frequency, I feel grateful to be living now, as opposed to any other time in history, because, as a Western woman, I have more rights and I'm safer than women have ever been.
Yet, amazingly, women find more and more reasons to complain about their circumstances.
Students at the Colorado School of Mines, a public university in Colorado for engineering and applied science, voted to name their athletic arena "The Mine Shaft."
But Jillian Kay Melchior writes at Heat Street:
In an email sent last August, a student (whose name was redacted) describes being "shocked and disgusted" at the nickname choice for the university's Lockridge Arena."The idea behind the name, at least from the students perspective, was that the students could tell the opposing team they had been 'shafted,'" the student wrote. In making her complaint, the student used another racially loaded term (and some misspellings) in an email to administrators: "The most common definition of the word means to get jipped out of a deal, which doesn't make since [sic] for us to be telling another team. But the other and most disturbing definition is to be raped. Bottom line, I think the name supports rape culture. If Mines is truly trying to diversify the campus maybe they should not have the student section have such a phalic [sic] name."
Administrators sprung into action after receiving the student's complaint.
Katie Schmalzel, assistant director of housing operations, took the complaint so seriously that she forwarded it to the university's Title IX coordinator. "I agree with [pronoun redacted] about the name being inappropriate, and goes against everything our work stands for," she wrote.
What, humorlessness, lack of due process, giving women unearned power over men and a democratic process, and treating women as eggshells, not equals?
Also, what a dipshit -- the two words are used together, first of all. And hilariously, "The Mine Shaft" is typically the name of a gay bar. If there are women there, the last thing anybody there wants to do is rape them.
Oh, and the original "Shaft"? (Cue 70s soundtrack!) Or did you just see the remake, you pussy?
Rape culture, by the way, is what they have a number of countries in the Middle East, and which is absolutely trivialized by women saying that it exists on campus because of the name of an athletic arena.
First World Problem: No Free Tampons In Co-Working Spaces
Did Slate's XX run short on topics?
Occasionally, I check in there to see if there is something particularly ridiculous, and this time, I wasn't disappointed.
Christina Cauterucci has an article-length snivel on the absence of free tampons in co-working spaces.
As co-working spaces engage in an arms race of amenities to convince ever hipper companies to untether from old-school office setups, many have left their members to figure out menstrual supplies on their own. Washington, D.C.'s Canvas Co boasts on its website that "you won't find any carpets, water-coolers or Ikea" there.You also won't find any tampons or pads in the restroom. You will find free snacks, soda, beer, monthly catered lunches, and a ping-pong table.
MakeOffices has locations in Chicago, Philadelphia, and D.C.; the chain will soon expand to New York. In addition to beer and wine, members get fresh fruit, granola bars, Red Bull, twice-monthly breakfasts, and occasional in-office massages from professional massage therapists--all free.
Menstrual products are some of the only amenities behind a paywall: Unless an individual building management company decides to provide them to MakeOffices members, tampons and pads are only available from bathroom vending machines.
Cove doesn't offer menstrual supplies, though it does provide San Pellegrino, soda, snacks, and discounts at yoga studios.
The Oficio website features a testimonial commending the space's "rotating artwork" and "Zen music." Members get free lattes, access to a fully stocked bar cart, and monthly catered lunches. If they bleed through their tampons, though, they're out of luck.
Um, because Oficio and these other companies are located in the middle of the Sahara, a continent away from the nearest Rite-Aid?
If you can't figure it the fuck out to carry a bunch of tampons in your purse or backpack, do you really think you're equipped to deal with the stress of the workplace?
I would like to formally announce that I am not part of the set of women who show how equal they are by complaining bitterly that they don't get special treatment.
P.S. In France, I carry toiletpaper around. It's really not a big deal.
Rocky
Linky Raccoon.
The Art Of The Ghost: Donald Trump's Ghostwriter Tells All
"Donald Trump's Ghostwriter Tells All," the headline on the New Yorker piece by Jane Mayer reads. And the subhead:
"The Art of the Deal" made America see Trump as a charmer with an unfailing knack for business. Tony Schwartz helped create that myth--and regrets it.
The book made "The Donald," as they used to call him in the New York Post, big beyond New York City. People all thought the book was his words, his thinking, the secrets behind his success:
The book expanded Trump's renown far beyond New York City, making him an emblem of the successful tycoon. Edward Kosner, the former editor and publisher of New York, where Schwartz worked as a writer at the time, says, "Tony created Trump. He's Dr. Frankenstein."Starting in late 1985, Schwartz spent eighteen months with Trump--camping out in his office, joining him on his helicopter, tagging along at meetings, and spending weekends with him at his Manhattan apartment and his Florida estate. During that period, Schwartz felt, he had got to know him better than almost anyone else outside the Trump family. Until Schwartz posted the tweet, though, he had not spoken publicly about Trump for decades. It had never been his ambition to be a ghostwriter, and he had been glad to move on. But, as he watched a replay of the new candidate holding forth for forty-five minutes, he noticed something strange: over the decades, Trump appeared to have convinced himself that he had written the book. Schwartz recalls thinking, "If he could lie about that on Day One--when it was so easily refuted--he is likely to lie about anything."
The interview process:
Trump had been forthcoming with him during the New York interview, but it hadn't required much time or deep reflection. For the book, though, Trump needed to provide him with sustained, thoughtful recollections. He asked Trump to describe his childhood in detail. After sitting for only a few minutes in his suit and tie, Trump became impatient and irritable. He looked fidgety, Schwartz recalls, "like a kindergartner who can't sit still in a classroom." Even when Schwartz pressed him, Trump seemed to remember almost nothing of his youth, and made it clear that he was bored. Far more quickly than Schwartz had expected, Trump ended the meeting.Week after week, the pattern repeated itself. Schwartz tried to limit the sessions to smaller increments of time, but Trump's contributions remained oddly truncated and superficial.
"Trump has been written about a thousand ways from Sunday, but this fundamental aspect of who he is doesn't seem to be fully understood," Schwartz told me. "It's implicit in a lot of what people write, but it's never explicit--or, at least, I haven't seen it. And that is that it's impossible to keep him focussed on any topic, other than his own self-aggrandizement, for more than a few minutes, and even then . . . " Schwartz trailed off, shaking his head in amazement. He regards Trump's inability to concentrate as alarming in a Presidential candidate. "If he had to be briefed on a crisis in the Situation Room, it's impossible to imagine him paying attention over a long period of time," he said.
In a recent phone interview, Trump told me that, to the contrary, he has the skill that matters most in a crisis: the ability to forge compromises. The reason he touted "The Art of the Deal" in his announcement, he explained, was that he believes that recent Presidents have lacked his toughness and finesse: "Look at the trade deficit with China. Look at the Iran deal. I've made a fortune by making deals. I do that. I do that well. That's what I do."
But Schwartz believes that Trump's short attention span has left him with "a stunning level of superficial knowledge and plain ignorance." He said, "That's why he so prefers TV as his first news source--information comes in easily digestible sound bites." He added, "I seriously doubt that Trump has ever read a book straight through in his adult life." During the eighteen months that he observed Trump, Schwartz said, he never saw a book on Trump's desk, or elsewhere in his office, or in his apartment.
About Trump:
Schwartz says of Trump, "He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it." Since most people are "constrained by the truth," Trump's indifference to it "gave him a strange advantage."When challenged about the facts, Schwartz says, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent. This quality was recently on display after Trump posted on Twitter a derogatory image of Hillary Clinton that contained a six-pointed star lifted from a white-supremacist Web site. Campaign staffers took the image down, but two days later Trump angrily defended it, insisting that there was no anti-Semitic implication. Whenever "the thin veneer of Trump's vanity is challenged," Schwartz says, he overreacts--not an ideal quality in a head of state.
...When Schwartz began writing "The Art of the Deal," he realized that he needed to put an acceptable face on Trump's loose relationship with the truth. So he concocted an artful euphemism. Writing in Trump's voice, he explained to the reader, "I play to people's fantasies. . . . People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It's an innocent form of exaggeration--and it's a very effective form of promotion." Schwartz now disavows the passage. "Deceit," he told me, is never "innocent." He added, " 'Truthful hyperbole' is a contradiction in terms. It's a way of saying, 'It's a lie, but who cares?' " Trump, he said, loved the phrase.
Make room for daddy:
In "The Art of the Deal," Trump cites his father as "the most important influence on me," but in his telling his father's main legacy was teaching him the importance of "toughness." Beyond that, Schwartz says, Trump "barely talked about his father--he didn't want his success to be seen as having anything to do with him." But when [the Village Voice's Wayne] Barrett investigated he found that Trump's father was instrumental in his son's rise, financially and politically. In the book, Trump says that "my energy and my enthusiasm" explain how, as a twenty-nine-year-old with few accomplishments, he acquired the Grand Hyatt Hotel. Barrett reports, however, that Trump's father had to co-sign the many contracts that the deal required. He also lent Trump seven and a half million dollars to get started as a casino owner in Atlantic City; at one point, when Trump couldn't meet payments on other loans, his father tried to tide him over by sending a lawyer to buy some three million dollars' worth of gambling chips. Barrett told me, "Donald did make some smart moves himself, particularly in assembling the site for the Trump Tower. That was a stroke of genius." Nonetheless, he said, "The notion that he's a self-made man is a joke. But I guess they couldn't call the book 'The Art of My Father's Deals.' "
Tony Schwartz has an agenda -- he is an embarrassed liberal who sold out.
But you can look to Barrett and other sources to see -- rather easily -- to fact-check a good deal of this stuff.
This isn't to say Hillary is peachy-keen to vote for. As I keep putting it, she's just the corrupt adult in the picture -- the known quantity; corruption as usual.
There's a great piece at Reason, by Jesse Walker: "Clinton vs. Trump: Who's Worse? Libertarian-leaning luminaries weigh in." A few of these:
Radley Balko
Washington Post blogger and former reason staffer
"Ugh. I guess I'd say Trump is worse. Clinton is at least a known commodity, and clearly better on trade and immigration, though even those are grading on a steep curve. Trump seems marginally less enthusiastic about starting wars, but who knows? He's been all over the place. On criminal justice, Clinton has a proven record of awfulness, but has vaguely vowed to do better. Trump has a record of demagoguing crime, has brought horrendous people like Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie into his campaign, and has vowed a heaping pile of more awfulness as president. So I guess that one goes to Clinton. I'd imagine Clinton would be a standard center-left Democrat on tax, spend, and regulatory issues. Trump's policies could well be economically calamitous. So again, a begrudging nod to Clinton."It's probably also worth noting that as a white guy, I'm of a demographic that has the least to fear from a Trump presidency (and there's still plenty to fear). For Latinos, blacks, and Muslims, the prospect must be terrifying. So I guess in short, I'm thinking Clinton would be terrible. But Trump would be worse, and could be catastrophic."
Penn Jillette
half of the comedy/magic team Penn & Teller
"For many years I have believed two things about presidential politics: 1. Every major-party candidate was smarter than me. 2. There is no one worse than Hillary Clinton."I have been proven wrong on both of these this year."
Virginia Postrel
Bloomberg View columnist and former reason editor
"That the president of the United States should not be a self-aggrandizing, xenophobic bully who scorns the rule of law, lacks a sixth-grade knowledge of how the government works, neither appreciates nor understands the decentralized workings of the economy, and believes conspiracy theories he reads in the National Enquirer shouldn't be something readers of reason need to be convinced of. But, alas, too many libertarians have convinced themselves that all politicians are equally terrible (correctly discerning that Hillary Clinton is awful in many ways) and that we'd be better off if someone would blow up the system. Clinton would still be subject to the checks that system provides, including the demand for a modicum of deference to the law. For the very reason that she is such a conventional politician, her opponents would know how to effectively oppose her. Trump would be much harder to counter and would simply ignore the checks on his powers, claiming--with some justification--a mandate for one-man rule."
Govt Is Here To Protect You -- Just Not From Obviously Fake Companies Looking For Material To Make Dirty Bombs
It's got to be hard for terrorists to get their hands on dirty bomb material, right?
It's not like they can just ask nicely and fill out paperwork with some company name they made up, and get then some government functionaries to stamp a big A-OK! on their request...right?
Well, at Free Beacon, Adam Kredo reports that inspectors working undercover were able to fool the US's top nuclear regulator into granting it licenses to acquire material necessary to make dirty bombs:
As part of a covert GAO [Government Accountability Office] test, the accountability agency established several dummy corporations and attempted to procure licenses needed to purchase dangerous radioactive materials, including those needed to build a crude nuclear explosive device.The accountability agency did not take steps to make it appear as if these dummy corporations were legitimate businesses, according to the report, which showed that the NRC granted a license to the fake organization in one of three test cases.
In each case, the GAO attempted to acquire the licenses needed to purchase increasingly dangerous radioactive materials, the most dangerous of which are known as category 1 materials. The least dangerous materials are dubbed category 3, but all are classifications that include hazardous nuclear substances coveted by terror groups and other criminal outfits.
...However, "in a third case, GAO was able to obtain a license and secure commitments to purchase, by accumulating multiple category 3 quantities of materials, a category 2 quantity of a radioactive material considered attractive for use in a 'dirty bomb'--which uses explosives to disperse radioactive material," according to the report.
"In the third case, the official from the regulatory body accepted GAO's assurances without scrutinizing key aspects of the fictitious business, which led to a license being obtained," according to the report.
The findings are particularly concerning as GAO "made no attempt to outfit the [fake business] site to make it appear as if a legitimate business was operating there."
The NRC handed a paper license to an undercover GAO operator during the undercover operation.
Well, if you're a fan of consistency, at least the "security" of our nuclear material is kind of on par with the "security" at airports. As I have recently been describing that particular puppet show, the employees they have couldn't find a terrorist if he crawled up their ass and yodeled.
The Happy Lazy Slacker Problem
Tina Cormier interviews macroeconomist Erik Hurst for the Becker Friedman econ research center at the U of Chicago:
Your work on labor supply may be able to shed light on some major sociological shifts occurring within a specific group in our workforce. Can you elaborate?In my third summer project, I'm trying to understand the labor market and patterns in employment over the last 15 years in the US. Specifically, I'm interested in employment rates of young (in their twenties), non-college educated men. In prior work on changes in demand for low-skilled labor, the theory exists that as technology advances, both employment and wages fall due to decreased demand.
In this strand of my research, I'm almost flipping that theory on its head by asking if it is possible that technology can also affect labor supply. In our culture, where we are constantly connected to technology, activities like playing Xbox, browsing social media, and Snapchatting with friends raise the attractiveness of leisure time. And so it goes that if leisure time is more enjoyable, and as prices for these technologies continue to drop, people may be less willing to work at any given wage. This explanation may help us understand why we see steep declines in employment while wages remain steady - a trend that has been puzzling economists.
Right now, I'm gathering facts about the possible mechanisms at play, beginning with a hard look at time-use by young men with less than a four-year degree. In the 2000s, employment rates for this group dropped sharply - more than in any other group. We have determined that, in general, they are not going back to school or switching careers, so what are they doing with their time? The hours that they are not working have been replaced almost one for one with leisure time. Seventy-five percent of this new leisure time falls into one category: video games. The average low-skilled, unemployed man in this group plays video games an average of 12, and sometimes upwards of 30 hours per week. This change marks a relatively major shift that makes me question its effect on their attachment to the labor market.
I wonder how many have been stymied by the labor market -- and also, how many really play a ton of video game hours per day. 12 hours a week isn't all that much. Less than two hours per day. Some people watch TV for that much time -- and some do it for much more time.
His remark continues:
To answer that question, I researched what fraction of these unemployed gamers from 2000 were also idle the previous year. A staggering 22% - almost one quarter - of unemployed young men did not work the previous year either. These individuals are living with parents or relatives, and happiness surveys actually indicate that they quite content compared to their peers, making it hard to argue that some sort of constraint, like they are miserable because they can't find a job, is causing them to play video games. The obvious problem with this lifestyle occurs as they age and haven't accumulated any skills or experience. As a 30- or 40-year old man getting married and needing to provide for a family, job options are extremely limited. This older group of lower-educated men seems to be much less happy than their cohorts.I am currently working to document this phenomenon, but there is a real challenge in determining what the right policy response might be to address the underlying issues.
If you have to find a job, you go pound the pavement for one. If mommy and daddy give you a nice couch in the basement, it's not like dire things will befall you if you don't get a job this week...or next...or the next.
via @margrev
Dorky
Dweebylinks.
UC Berkeley "Income Inequality" Experts Earn More Than $300K A Year
Nobody is stopping them from writing a bunch of checks to the lesser-paid employees there at UC Berkeley. Yet -- and yes, we are all so surprised -- that doesn't seem to be happening.
At The College Fix, Michael McGrady writes:
Several UC Berkeley economics professors who support "income inequality" research each earn more than $300,000 a year, putting them in the top 2 percent of the public university's salary distribution, according to a recent report by a nonpartisan California think tank.The report pointed out that the prominent scholars leading or advising the Cal Berkeley Center for Equitable Growth are richly compensated as professors, even as the center seeks to research ways to create economic growth that is "fairly shared," the center's website states.
But the California Policy Center report, using 2014 data from the state's public records, found Cal's equitable growth center's director, economics Professor Emmanuel Saez, earned an annual salary of just under $350,000.
The center's three advisory board members - all economics professors - made similar amounts: Professor David Card made $336,367 in 2014; Professor Gerard Roland took in $304,608; and Professor Alan Auerbach earned $291,782. That's not even including their pensions -- equal to 2.5 percent times their final average salary times the number of years employed.
Gentlemen, you'll find my address on the "Bio/Contact" link above. Or you can just put the money in my PayPal through the "Donate" button on the left.
Or feel free to just buy $6 million worth of merchandise through my Amazon links. I'm not picky.
The reality is, income inequality isn't the demon it's made out to be.
Ben Domenech writes at The Federalist:
Upon closer inspection, you'll see that income inequality and wealth concentration don't inhibit economic mobility; they don't inhibit economic growth; and they are not detrimental to democracy or to human liberty....The real inequality problem is that of the Two Americas: not divided between one that is rich and one that is poor, but between one that is protected by government and another is punished by it. It's a class war, yes, but not along economic lines - instead, it runs along the lines of the unprotected vs. the protected. The protected ruling class, thanks to its friends and cronies in government, gets the most lucrative opportunities with the least amount of risk, while the unprotected working class gets the opportunity to pay, via taxes, for the bailouts, subsidies, and rigging of the rules which largely run against their interests.
Also, the other ways people remain poor can be changed. They include learning English -- as my immigrant relatives did, which allows a person to truly join our economy. The other issue holding people back is having children as single mothers -- which means those children are likely to grow up in poverty.
Approximately 70 percent of black children are born to single mothers. That's fixable -- and if black lives really do matter, those marching for that cause might take on the less sexy notion that children should be brought up in families, which gives them the best shot to be middle class, live in a safe neighborhood, go to an adequate school, and make something of their lives.
GOP: Chasing Libertarians Away Like We're Contagious
I'm fiscally conservative, which means I find the Republicans the party of slightly less ginormous government -- people who talk about the free market but are really for crony capitalism handouts (as long as they go to rich people, not poor).
Still, they are less economically idiotic and terrible than the Democrats, generally speaking.
However, the stupid thing the Republicans keep doing is kowtowing to the religious conservatives -- making themselves unpalatable to a lot of libertarians.
Their latest push to remove freedoms is the anti-porn amendment in their platform.
Libertarian Christian blogs:
It's no secret that the GOP is doing all it can to push intelligent, liberty loving Americans as far away from their party as possible. While this has been the truth for years, never has it been more apparent than during this election cycle, and if the draft of the Republican 2016 platform is any indication, they have no plans to stop anytime soon, as the GOP takes on freedom of expression and all but endorses child abuse.Let's start with the first. An amendment was unanimously adopted that stated that: "Pornography, with his harmful effects, especially on children, has become a public health crisis that is destroying the life of millions. We encourage states to continue to fight this public menace and pledge our commitment to children's safety and well-being." This is much more extreme than the 2012 platform, which focused on child pornography, and stated that: "We urge active prosecution against child pornography, which is closely linked to the horrors of human trafficking. Current laws on all forms of pornography and obscenity need to be vigorously enforced."
The 2012 platform's stance on pornography, aside from the somewhat vague statement that "Current laws on all forms of pornography and obscenity need to be vigorously enforced," is admirable, as it seeks to protect children from the horrors of child pornography and human trafficking. The 2016 amendment, however, takes the focus off of child pornography and instead focuses on fighting "this public menace", even when produced by consenting adults.
Cleary, I'm not endorsing pornography, but there is a clear difference between endorsing pornography, and speaking out against regulations against it.
If Republicans don't want porn in their own lives, well, they can avoid looking at it. But nobody has any right to tell consenting adults what sex they can and cannot see or have with each other.
As another part of their platform, there's also the sick emotional and sometimes physical abuse that is "conversion therapy" for LGBTQ kids.
Is it any wonder the Republican party is falling apart?
via ifeminists
Linkity
Splits.
Why Pokémon Go Represents The Best Of Capitalism
It really is amazing -- and very exciting -- to see how this free game has taken off.
Yet, there was a Vox article by Timothy Lee earlier this week, "Pokémon Go is everything that is wrong with late capitalism" because it's diverting money from local businesses:
If you were looking to have fun with some friends 50 years ago, you might have gone to a bowling alley. Maybe you would have hung out at a diner or gone to the movies.These were all activities that involved spending a certain amount of money in the local economy. That created opportunities for adults in your town to start and run small businesses. It also meant that a teenager who wanted to find a summer job could find one waiting tables or taking tickets at the movie theater.
You can spend money on Pokémon Go too. But the economics of the game are very different. When you spend money on items in the Pokémon Go world, it doesn't go into the pocket of a local Pokémon entrepreneur -- it goes into the pockets of the huge California- and Japan-based global companies that created Pokémon Go.
Economist and engineer Michael Farren counters at Medium:
In fact, we think that Pokémon Go actually represents the best of capitalism. In less than a week the game has topped 15 million downloads and the 21 million active daily users spend an average of 33 minutes a day playing. That amounts to over 11.5 million hours of playing per day, and those numbers only look to increase. The app doesn't cost anything to download and play, which means that Nintendo and Niantic (the game developer) are essentially giving away tens of millions of dollars of value to the eager players. We know that's a bold statement. But this is why it's true: A person's time is scarce and valuable. Every moment they spend playing Pokémon Go they could instead be doing something else. The fact that they're voluntarily choosing to play means that the benefit of playing is more than the cost.Economists call this the "consumer surplus" -- the difference between a customer's willingness to pay for a good or service and the price that it actually costs. It's a measurement of the dollar value gained by the consumer in the exchange. If a person was to buy a game of bowling for $5 that they value at $7, instead of playing an hour of Pokémon that they value at $3 for free, that person would lose out on value that would have made their life better.
So even if the average consumer surplus is only a measly dollar an hour, consumers are getting $11.5 million dollars of value each day. The fact that customers are buying special items to use in the game, spending upwards of $1.6 million each day, implies that the value players receive from the game is actually higher.
Farrell explains that economic growth doesn't simply come from spending money.
This view can lead us astray because it ignores the importance of entrepreneurs, whose role is critical in the creation of new products and services that improve everyone's well-being....Think of what would have been lost to society if entrepreneurs didn't have the funds and the freedom to take that gamble. And their success has spawned a sub-industry of "Poképreneurs" who are selling drinks and providing rides to Pokémon players. Economic growth -- and our increased social well-being -- depends on this kind of permissionless innovation.
...In short, Pokémon Go represents the very best of capitalism because it's premised on voluntary exchange -- no one is forced to download the game, players can stop playing at any time they like, and if they value the special items available in the game store they can buy them to enhance their fun.
How cool about the Poképreneurs -- this, to me is one of the great things about America: Coming up with creative entrepreneurial ideas, and the spirit in this country that encourages this.
Harry Cheadle writes at Vice (linked above on Poképreneurs):
Pokémon Go has become a boon to restaurants, bars, and other small businesses that have savvily purchased lures to attract Pokémon--and therefore the customers who love them--to their establishments. But you don't need a business to attempt to monetize Pokémon Go, all you need is a car. Craigslist is full of posting from people offering to drive players around in cars often equipped with WiFi, phone chargers, and snacks, letting them track down and catch rare Pokémon quickly.Prices vary, but many drivers charge between $20 and $30 per passenger. A little unbelievably, some people are willing to pay these prices--one Pittsburgh-based driver and Pokémon guide says he's been "fully booked" from 11 AM and 3 PM, and his business is looking to partner with local ridesharing apps.
UPDATE: Loved this tweet:
@ClarkHat
Vox says embrace local, not distant, economySo why should we read global Vox, w HQ in DC?
Genes Vs. Environment
Kaja Perina, editor-in-chief of Psychology Today, writes in her editor's letter:
WHILE GROWING UP I moved to a different country every two or three years, and because such increments are essentially geological time before age 20, each place was a life unto itself: Russia, though it was only preschool, might as well have been the entire Cold War, replete with perennially understocked markets, skating with my sister on gelid parking lots, and a fire triggered by too much surveillance equipment in the H walls of our apartment building.My sister and I (obviously) share genes I galore and are extremely close in age, yet we responded differently to the same peripatetic upbringing. This realization, long before I had any knowledge of behavioral genetics or the science of individual differences, was my first inkling that distinctions between people can be far more illuminating than their similarities. Today when people ask me what impact a move will have on a child, I have a four-word answer: Depends on the child.
WWMD? What Would Mohammed Do?
Well, probably tell his followers to do exactly as it seems they did at Bataclan -- not only murder "infidels" but engage in the most barbaric torture of their victims.
Yes, mass-murdering psychopathic "prophet" "Muhammad himself approved of torture as both an interrogation technique and a way of putting an offender to death."
Oh, and if you are an "infidel" -- or gay, or an apostate, or you are a woman who is raped without four male witnesses standing by as it happens -- you are an "offender."
Here is the testimony in French.
Louise Mensch writes about it at Heat Street -- how France suppressed reports of the sick and terrible torture that the Muslim terrorists did to their infidel victims. As one investigator put it:
Bodies have not been presented to families because there were beheaded people there, the murdered people, people who have been disemboweled. There are women who had their genitals stabbed.
The father of one of the victims wrote this:
"On the causes of the death of my son A., at the forensic institute in Paris, I was told, and what a shock it was for me at that moment, they had cut off his testicles, had put them in his mouth, and he was disemboweled. When I saw him behind glass, lying on a table, a white shroud covering it up to the neck, a psychologist was with me. He said: This is "the only presentable part, your son's left profile." I found that he had no right eye. I made the remark; I was informed that they had punctured his eye and sliced down the right side of his face, where there was a very large hematoma that we could all see."
More on the torture Islam sanctions:
Rather than prescribing quick methods of execution there were times when Muhammad ordered his men to make a victim's death as slow and agonizing as possible. In one case, his men literally pulled apart the body of an elderly woman named Umm Qirfa by tying her limbs to camels then sent in opposite directions (Ibn Ishaq 980).One of the most influential Shi'a religious leaders in Iran recently extended the validity of torture to the practice of raping prisoners in the defense of Islam. Mesbah-Yazdi said that it was advisable for the rapist to "perform a ritual washing first and say prayers while raping the prisoner."
Mesbah-Yazdi went on to add that "If the judgment for the [female] prisoner is execution, then rape before execution brings the interrogator a spiritual reward equivalent to making the mandated Haj pilgrimage [to Mecca], but if there is no execution decreed, then the reward would be equivalent to making a pilgrimage to [the Shi'ite holy city of] Karbala."
According to the cleric, "If the prisoner is female, it is permissible to rape through the vagina or anus." When asked if the rape of men and young boy was considered sodomy, he said, "No, because it is not consensual."
A 2006 fatwa on the popular Islam Web website authorized burning people as a form of punishment. (It was pulled after ISIS began doing this to people in 2015).
Muslim apologists often tell a different story in the West, where rhetorical strategy creates the impression that they oppose torture in and of itself, thus attracting the support of a broader coalition. (CAIR's short-lived 2006 "Campaign against Torture" is one of the best examples of this). The scope of their efforts, however, rarely extend beyond condemning Western countries in general (and the US in particular). Sympathies are also tellingly limited to the alleged treatment of Muslim terror detainees.
In fact, these organizations have very little to say about ending the less ambiguous and far more brutal human rights violations practiced by Muslim governments, even though the victims there are usually Muslim as well (such as the cleric Mesbah-Yazdi's unfortunate victims of rape). The goal of these "anti-torture" campaigns is not an end to torture, but rather an attempt to capture the moral high ground on a controversial issue by exploiting Western attitudes - with no regard for the victims of true torture.
The barbaric treatment of hostages by groups like ISIS is a direct product of religious belief. The Quran is quite explicit in teaching that the 'merciful' Allah tortures non-believers for eternity using supernatural methods to inflict pain that are not even possible in this life. There is no reason for a believing Muslim to think that Allah would disapprove of a far more temporal and limited practice against those whom he has destined for such anguish.
In summary, Islam is not fundamentally opposed to torture in certain circumstances, as long as it is the Muslim party applying it. This is a good example of the many common double standards within the religion that must be recognized and brought out in the open to facilitate honest dialog.
(Note: There are Muslim individuals who sincerely object to torture on principle. So, it would not be right to make assumptions about anyone's personal view on this subject - or any other - based on nominal religious affiliation).
What's terrible about the suppression of information is that only by being honest about what Islam calls for -- and what some Muslims carry out (and many more sanction, per Pew and other polls) -- we cannot begin to deal with the terrorism that is increasingly being waged on non-Muslims (and Muslims of the "wrong" sects) around the globe.
Toto
Take me back to Linksas!
The Paradox Of Tolerance
Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies:
Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.
Junior Achievement, Palestinian-Style
Palestinian leaders tell teenagers that the highest form of achievement is dying while murdering other people for Islam. Itamar Marcus writes at Palestinian Media Watch:
Since fear of death is a natural inhibiting factor to participating in violence and terror, to mitigate this fear, the Palestinian Authority educates its children that death as a Martyr should not be feared. Martyrdom, the PA teaches, is the highest achievement and is more valuable and more rewarded than life itself.
...Palestinian teenagers' willingness to go out on what are probably suicide missions, is in all likelihood the result of years of PA education presenting Martyrdom death as the Palestinian ideal. Palestinian education starts inculcating this message when children are very young.
New York Times Headline About The Horrible Attack In Nice, France
"Truck Attack On French Crowd; Scores Die."
Yes, a truck, angry down to its spark plugs at all the infidels celebrating Bastille day, revved itself up and ran them all down, babies in strollers included.
Ben Shapiro tweet called it:
@benshapiro
Strong contender for worst headline of all time
Here's a link to the updating story in The Guardian.
And this is from SputnikNews about the murderer in the track being a 31-year-old Tunisian-born Nice resident:
The attack occurred when the driver plowed through a crowd celebrating Bastille Day during a firework display along the city's waterfront. He drove for more than a mile before being shot dead by police, according to French Interior Ministry spokesperson Pierre-Henry Brandet....In a 2014 video, an unnamed French-speaking Daesh spokesperson gave an order saying, "There are weapons and cars available and targets ready to be hit. ... Kill them and spit in their faces and run over them with your cars."
I've been reading in Islam since 9/11, and Gregg and I were talking today about how, a few years back -- maybe in 2010 -- I started to feel we should stop going to the movies at Santa Monica's outdoor mall, the Third Street Promenade.
Part of me felt, "Don't be ridiculous," but I thought about it and realized that my fear came not out of some nebulous heebie jeebies but out of my understanding about Islam and its commands to slaughter the "infidel" and install the New Caliphate around the world.
I began to feel it was only a matter of time before there were attacks in public places -- showy public places in showy places, like here, in the land of Hollywood, infidel cinema by the sea.
And, as always, it must be said that not all Muslims practice Islam in this way or even understand what Islam commands of them. (This is why, so often, Muslims slaughter other Muslims -- for not being Islamic enough.)
However, perhaps -- and it's terrible that it may take this -- perhaps with each attack on people guilty only of being non-Muslim and going to a restaurant or a concert or a parade, people will begin to understand that Islam is not a "religion of peace"...far from it.
It is a totalitarian system masquerading as a religion -- and one that calls on its followers to murder others who worship differently or not at all.
To understand that better, the terrific site, The Religion Of Peace (meant ironically, obviously) has a helpful post, "Is The Quran Hate Propaganda." If it won't come up (perhaps because the site is getting a lot of traffic now, here's a cached version.)
The only way we'll possibly be able to change the trajectory we're on is to be honest about the realities of what Islam calls for -- not by pretending it's like other religions or, absurdly, that it is a "religion of peace."
I'm a post-Jewish atheist, but even I can recognize a difference between religions. It starts with the difference in "prophets." Mohammed commanded people to mass-murder to advance Islam (and loot, rape, and steal). How about Jesus? Would Jesus tell people, "Go run down mothers and their baby carriages with a gigantic truck?"
Mink
Or lynx.
Blinders, Right And Left
Jonah Goldberg at NRO:
Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani (who did not lose his lazy certainty) spent the weekend attacking the Black Lives Matter movement as "racist." He wants people to focus on the fact that most black murder victims die at the hands of other blacks. That's true, and tragic, and fairly irrelevant.Conservatives, of all people, should understand that misdeeds committed by agents of the state are categorically different from the same acts committed by normal citizens. A father who slaps his son for no good reason, however wrong that may be, is very different from a cop who slaps a citizen for no good reason.
...Is it really so unfathomable that African-American citizens should be outraged or distrustful of government when they have good reason to believe the state is murdering young black men?
Harvard economist Roland Fryer found that when black suspects encounter the police, they are slightly less likely to get shot than white suspects. He called it "the most surprising result I have found in my entire career." Fryer, by the way, is African American.
But Fryer also found that blacks are disproportionately victims of bias when it comes to non-lethal use of force by police, such as use of pepper spray, manhandling, and the like. Is it so unreasonable to assume that citizens who experience such bias would also believe that it extends into police shootings? Particularly when such tragedies receive so much attention in social media and the press? In other words, if blacks experience being unfairly stopped, frisked, and manhandled, is it really nuts for them to think the unfairness extends to shootings as well?
Liberals, meanwhile, have their own blinders when it comes to the police.
Although they have seemingly boundless faith in the power and nobility of government, many draw a line around cops, creating one of the strangest ironies of modern liberalism: Many of those most eager to support new laws and new regulations suddenly lose faith when it comes to the government employees charged with enforcing them. It's particularly amazing given that law-enforcement personnel typically receive far more training than your typical bureaucrat or legislator.
USA Today takes a surprisingly honest view of the root of the problems, quoting from speeches by the President and the Dallas police chief:
Officers often face the brunt of societal problems they had nothing to do with creating and over which they have no control."We ask the police to do too much, and we ask too little of ourselves," the president told mourners at the service for five police officers ambushed last Thursday by a hate-filled black Army veteran. The nation underinvests in education, allows poverty to fester and floods communities with guns, Obama said -- and then expects police to be social workers, teachers, drug counselors and parents and to "keep those neighborhoods in check."
Obama's using the moment to call for more failed investment in a broken education system (in which terrible teachers can't be fired) and gun control, which they have in Chicago, where, in some neighborhoods, getting shot is a risk you take whenever you go outdoors.
Poverty festers when you have single motherhood as a matter of course -- 71 percent in 2014 in the black community. If "Black Lives Matter," how come you don't hear that movement calling for the right of children to have a daddy and grow up in an intact family?
In two-parent households, surely the income disparity wouldn't be as great (between black households and white), and -- I think -- far fewer children would grow up in terrible neighborhoods, with all the ensuing problems that come from that. (This, if you're interested in anthropology, correlates with a fast life history strategy -- impulsivity, sex earlier rather than later, and all sorts of "get it now" strategies that are adaptive in a risky environment, as opposed to a stable one.
My friend, cognitive scientist, Scott Barry Kaufman writes about the work on that of my other friend, AJ Figueredo, and others, here at Psychology Today. (If you look at AJ's work on this at the link on his name above, scroll down through the stuff on stats and wasps -- and sorry, it only goes to 2010.)
More from USA Today:
Obama's words echoed those of David Brown, the weary and saddened Dallas police chief who said a day earlier that "policing was never meant to solve all these problems," ranging from drug addiction to single motherhood.Certainly some of the tension between police and the black community can be lain at law enforcement's door, particularly the shooting deaths of black men in cases where non-lethal alternatives could and should have been employed. But police officers, the only government officials some people interact with, deal directly with consequences of broad problems that have persisted for generations.
USA Today makes a point libertarians often do as well: That, when we have a public education system, a child's address shouldn't be the difference between a shitty education and a good one.
NRO via @SteveStuWill
George Bush Accused Of Grieving Wrong
A dear friend of mine who is a liberal, David Wallis, takes on the accusations that George Bush was swaying to the music at the Dallas memorial for the slain police officers.
This was after Bush gave an impassioned speech at that memorial -- but that's not where the attention went. It was, as David puts it in the New York Observer, for "his boisterous, joyful swaying and singing while the church choir belted out 'Battle Hymn of the Republic.'"
The title of David's NYO piece:
He Can Dance If He Wants to: A Liberal Defends George W. Bush at the Dallas Memorial
David writes:
As the video of the memorial goes viral, and many commentators scold Bush for inappropriate behavior, this proud liberal must say...enough.I agreed with few--really none--of George W. Bush's policies; he must live with himself for lying the country into the Iraq war and his economic malpractice led to the great recession. But the attacks on his method of mourning strike me as cynical and churlish--the general mood in the country right now. I felt the same way when the conservative media lit into Bill Clinton for laughing at the 1996 funeral of his Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, who tragically died in an airline crash while serving his country.
We all grieve in different ways. Many people cry. Some bow their heads in silence and reverence. Others have sex with fellow funeral attendees. Apparently, George W. Bush publicly rumbas to "Glory Glory Hallelujah." Mr. President, sway all you want. Pay little mind to the bitter, petty critics who want to police our public servants' every move.
David, I'm almost positive, has not read the work of George A. Bonanno, but what he's saying -- about how people grieve differently -- is one of the things I got out of Bonanno's research and his book, The Other Side of Sadness: What the New Science of Bereavement Tells Us About Life After Loss.
Grieving -- or even feeling very sorry about someone's loss -- does not necessarily mean being wall-to-wall somber.
You can have a moment where you enjoy the music at a memorial. You really can.
I had a lot of problems with George Bush as president -- as I do with Obama.
But I get the sense this lady in the tweet below does from him. And I like her for not feeling compelled to hate him or put him down just because he's on the other side:
@mrsdianek
@amyalkon @nicolegelinas @observer Absolutely. He's a joyful gospel kind of guy. Leave George alone! BTW, enthusiastic liberal here.
Here's Bush's speech from the Dallas memorial -- which the people sneering at him seem to have ignored:
Some Of Us Call This "Conversation"
What's with women who think of themselves as men's equals, yet seem to need conversation police and a psychiatrist when they speak with a man who hasn't had himself voluntarily deballed to please feminists around him? (Translation: As a back-door beta tactic to get chicks -- or "chycks," or whatever men are supposed to call women now.)
Roxane Gay tweets:
@rgay
Men keep explaining things to me. Thank god they aren't worried about my doctoral degree, tenure, books, and accolades.
I've been working day and night on my next book, so I don't get out much, but when I did, I would sometimes be in a bar and have somebody tell me all about evolutionary psychology -- usually getting a bunch of things wrong.
It's particularly funny when they're telling me about somebody's research -- and it's somebody I know well, whose research I also know well.
But I don't assume they're doing this because they think I'm a moron and want to lord over me. It's usually because they want to seem like they know something, and that's the thing that occurred to them to say.
What's with all these paranoid women who assume it's about them?
And even if it is, why not speak the fuck up instead of going all protestypants to the feminist echo chamber on Twitter?
I've written about this before -- about the woman, Rebecca Solnit, who started this big snivel about what she ended up calling "mansplaining":
Solnit opens her piece by describing how she was conversationally pummeled by a guy about Eadweard Muybridge, when she'd actually written the very book the guy was holding forth on. "Men explain things to me," complains Solnit, "and to other women, whether or not they know what they're talking about. Some men. Every woman knows what I mean."We do? I think somebody forgot to send me the memo. Yet, Solnit claims this terrible injustice is something "nearly every woman faces every day," which "makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field," and "keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare." ("When they dare"? The woman writes like Mr. Darcy is going to pop up from behind the copier at any moment.) Solnit goes on and on about how this "syndrome" (yes, everything must be pathologized) "crushes young women into silence" and "trains" women "in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men's unsupported overconfidence."
First of all, I write a syndicated dating and relationship column, and I have to say, if there's one problem with men these days, it isn't "unsupported overconfidence." I likewise can't say I've ever felt "crushed into silence" or any of the maudlin rest. So...either my dad, who taught me to stand up for myself, and told me over and over that I could do anything boys could do, is unique among fathers in America, or there's a name for what Solnit's peddling, and it's "grassy-knoll feminism."
Meanwhile, Solnit herself, who, most annoyingly, Likes To Use Capital Letters For Emphasis All Over The Damn Place, says that even she, a woman who has "public standing as a writer of history," had a moment when she "was willing to believe Mr. Very Important and his overweening confidence over (her) more shaky certainty."
Sorry, but if you have "shaky certainty," do you blame men, or sign up for a little assertiveness training? So much of what women do blame men for -- women's lower starting salaries in the workplace, for example -- traces back to women passively accepting what's presented to them, whether it's some boorish jerk's assertion, or the first dollar offer they're made for a job. This is correctable, but not by writing long-winded screeds against men in the Los Angeles Times.
P.S. The late British theoretical evolutionary biologist and geneticist, John Maynard Smith, called the back-door beta male strategy the Sneaky Fucker strategy. (I've always loved that name and it probably was part of what inspired me to write a (science-based!) book titled "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck.")
Linkberry
I think it's a kind of Crunchberry.
Obama Calls For Turning Healthcare Into The VA
Now that Obamacare has caused enough companies to leave the Obamacare marketplace, the time is ripe...
The WSJ writes about his revived calls for single payer -- lending support to Hillary Clinton's call for it this weekend:
Mr. Obama is re-endorsing what he had hoped in 2010 would be a way station for government-run single payer that would gradually wipe out anything resembling private insurance. Insurers can't outbid a "free" program that is open to all or most and has the unlimited access to the Treasury that Medicare enjoys. A market exodus would be inevitable.
Here's the sort of thing you have to look forward to -- the despicable lack of care we give to vets.
Lick Dirt -- For Good Health
Agata Blaszczak-Boxe reports in Sci Am on a three-decade study that suggests that young kids who thumb-suck or bite their nails may be less likely to develop allergies:
Although the results do not suggest that kids should take up these habits, the findings do suggest the habits help protect against allergies that persists into adulthood, the researchers said."Many parents discourage these habits, and we do not have enough evidence to [advise they] change this," said Dr. Robert Hancox, an associate professor of respiratory epidemiology at the University of Otago in New Zealand. "We certainly don't recommend encouraging nail-biting or thumb-sucking, but perhaps if a child has one of these habits and [it] is difficult [for them] to stop, there is some consolation in the knowledge that it might reduce their risk of allergies."
In the study, the researchers pulled data from an ongoing study of more than 1,000 children born in New Zealand in 1972 or 1973. The children's parents were asked about their kids' thumb-sucking and nail-biting habits four times: when the kids were 5, 7, 9 and 11 years old. Researchers also tested the children for allergies using a skin-prick test when they were 13, and then followed up with the kids again when they were 32.
It turned out that 38 percent of the children who had sucked their thumbs or bit their nails had at least one allergy, whereas among kids who did not have these habits, 49 percent had at least one allergy.
Moreover, the link between these childhood habits and a lower risk of allergies was still present among the study participants when they were 32 years old.
...The new findings also lend support the so-called hygiene hypothesis, which holds that environments that have too little dirt and germs may make children more susceptible to certain conditions, including allergies.
I wrote about this here -- Marlene Zuk's talk on how parasites are important to our health at the 2006 Human Behavior and Evolution Society Conference at Penn.
Anti-Harassment Training Doesn't Work
But let's keep it up so we can feel like we're doing something. (More on that below.)
By the way, as I've written before, referencing the work of evolutionarily-driven law professor Kingsley Browne, men give each other shit -- in the workplace and as a way of competing with each other.
Sure, there's a point at which this can become toxic, but if you can't take a joke or a bit of teasing, maybe you need to strengthen up so you can make it in the work world, as opposed to demanding that the work world conform to nursery school niceness standards.
Then again, you can always stay home and just care for the kiddies while your spouse braves those, "Hey, nice pants, dude!" jokes.
By the way, men's competitiveness comes out of evolved sex differences -- how men are the warriors (and competitors) of the species and are comfortable in competition with each other and with hierarchies in a way women are not.
Sex differences research Joyce Benenson explains that women group in "dyads" -- twos -- and are covert competitors, engaging in sniping and casting out any women who seem to stand out as better than the rest. (Women seem to have evolved to show vulnerabilities rather than strengths to other women in order to show they are trustworthy -- which may be why women tend to be apologizers and put themselves down.)
As for the latest news on anti-harassment training in the workplace, Christina Folz writes at SHRM.org:
Harassment is generally defined as any unwelcome conduct based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age (40 and over), disability or genetic information. It becomes unlawful when employees are forced to endure offensive behavior in order to keep their jobs or when the conduct is severe or pervasive enough to create a hostile work environment....The biggest finding of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's (EEOC's) Select Task Force on the Study of Harassment in the Workplace may be what it failed to find--namely, any evidence that the past 30 years of corporate training has had any effect on preventing workplace harassment. "That was a jaw-dropping moment for us," said EEOC Commissioner Victoria A. Lipnic in a Sunday Session at the Society for Human Resource Management 2016 Annual Conference & Exposition.
Lipnic and Chai R. Feldblum, the Select Task Force co-chairs, shared a preview of the research and recommendations that have come out of the group's work over the past 18 months. They expected to formally present their findings at a public commission meeting June 20 in Washington, D.C. The Select Task Force was convened in January 2015 by EEOC Chair Jenny R. Yang and comprises academics, social scientists, plaintiff and defense attorneys, employer and employee advocacy groups, representatives of organized labor, and others.
Despite finding no data that harassment training works, Lipnic and Feldblum advocate that HR professionals build on the foundation of their organization's existing policies. "We're not suggesting throwing out the old," Lipnic said. However, "what we want people to understand is that if you are thinking training alone is a panacea to helping out any type of harassment, [it's not]. It doesn't work," she said.
It's effective to take a holistic approach that starts with getting the buy-in of senior leaders. "For [training] to matter, employees have to feel their leaders are being authentic," Feldblum said. "They have to believe that leaders mean what they say" when they claim to want to stop harassment.
One of the key purposes of the task force's work is to give HR professionals the tools and talking points they need to educate leaders and help shift their organizations toward becoming more-respectful work environments. "We're trying to change behaviors," Feldblum said. "The best way to do that is to create a culture where it's just not cool to sexually harass someone or racially harass someone."
What they're trying to do is create a culture where speech is curtailed, jokes are off-limits (beyond, "Say, why did the chicken cross the road?"), and white men are considered pre-criminals.
Oh, and best of all, harassment training may have the opposite effect that's desired -- possibly provoking a backlash in males. Sam Levin writes at The Guardian:
Studies testing the effects of harassment training are very limited, but some research has suggested counterintuitive and troubling consequences - that after men complete trainings, they may be more inclined to brush aside allegations and discount victims.
I find these trainings demeaning, with the notion that, as a woman, I need some sort of fragile flower treatment.
"The purpose of sexual harassment policy is to make men and women more equal in the workplace," said Justine Tinkler, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Georgia and co-author of the study. "If the policies are sort of activating gender stereotypes rather than challenging them, they may not be promoting that broader goal."
EEOC link via @overlawyered
I'm Having Trouble Figuring Out The Point
Robert Sapolsky, whose scientific work and thinking I generally respect, has an op-ed in the LA Times that seems, well, pointless.
Is he arguing for the richer to give money to the poorer to even things out? (If so, please give me him my address and ask him to send a check.)
Does Trump Actually Want To Be President?
Andrew Malcolm asks at McClatchyDC -- what he asked last year:
What if Trump's idea of winning is electing Hillary Clinton? And devastating the GOP in the process?
He explains:
Trump and Hillary Clinton are longtime friends and supporters of liberal causes. He's contributed generously to her campaigns and family foundation. Trump conferred with her husband just before announcing his candidacy. And with Hillary Clinton's FBI exoneration last week, we've seen the power of a Bill Clinton chat, at least with Attorney General Loretta Lynch.More significant, though, is Trump's behavior. Yes, it seems unpredictable. And that's compelling as Sunday night entertainment. He has mocked the handicapped, POWs and a woman's menstrual cycle, among other crude displays, with no apparent damage.
But Americans aren't clicking a remote control for a TV pitchman. They mark a secret ballot for the world's most powerful person. Showmanship and stage presence help, as Ronald Reagan proved. But will they choose as controller of the nation's nuclear launch codes someone whose trademark phrase is "You're fired!"?
Since locking up the requisite delegates to hijack the GOP, Trump has done everything possible to torpedo his campaign as a serious candidate - and help Clinton's stumbling candidacy.
His fundraising is tardy and halfhearted. He's being battered by millions of dollars' worth in unanswered negative ads like the ones that bloodied Mitt Romney beyond repair in 2012. His campaign staff turmoil dominated June news.
And he's left the GOP flailing and trying to figure out what to do -- to save face and to not lose everything.
Your diagnosis?
And another question: If you could pick replacement candidates, left and right, and/or third party candidates, who would they be?
Muslim Parents Cheering Their Children's Terrorist Acts
If astrology buffs were murdering thousands of people around the globe (Capricorn Akbar!) might we give some thought as to whether astrology was a pernicious ideology?
Andrew Lappin writes at The Hill about the parents of terrorists -- and how the apple seems not to fall at all far from the tree.
Hallel Yaffa Ariel, a 13-year-old Israeli-American child, was sleeping soundly in her bed last Thursday when 17-year-old Muhammad Tarayrah broke into her home in Kiryat Arba, Israel, proceeded to her bedroom, and repeatedly stabbed the life out of her. This heinous desecration of life was immediately celebrated by the Palestinian Authority's official news agency, proclaiming the neutralized murderer a "martyr." Tarayrah's mother expressed pride in her son, describing him as a hero.Seddique Mateen, the father of Omar Mateen, is a resident of Port St. Lucie, Florida. Hours before his son slaughtered 49 people in Orlando, Seddique, of Afghan ancestry, posted a pro-Taliban video on Facebook. On June 13, the day after his son committed the massacre, Seddique posted on Facebook,"God himself will punish those involved in homosexuality."
Could there possibly be an ideological connection between these acts of atrocity - the teachings of the proud mother and the rants of the homophobic father? Could it be that these parents have been reading from same 1,400-year-old "playbook" of Islamist subjugation? Might we speculate, from the same gruesome pattern of butchery found at the scene of similar bloodbaths worldwide, that the same "playbook" has been followed to breed a multi-tentacled army of predatory monsters?
Since 9/11, radical Islam has claimed over 28,000 attacks across the globe. Nevertheless, the U.S. government maintains two decades' worth of policy delirium that refuses to name radical Islam as the cause.
Well, it isn't "radical Islam" but Islam.
But he's right about this:
Until we recognize and explicitly identify the enemy's ideology, creating an effective strategy will not be possible.
Lumpy
Links like the mixer broke halfway through.
Two American Women, Two Very Different Fates: Hillary Clinton Scott-Free; Ebony Conner Arrested For Not Cutting Her Grass
Hillary Clinton jeopardized national security multiple times with her cavalier and illegal use of her own server for her email, and she is scott free.
A mother in St. Louis, on the other hand, was arrested for -- yes -- not cutting her grass and also not moving some broken-down cars from her driveway. Not fast enough, anyway.
Sure, there are zoning laws and all, but we need to be very careful about who we throw in cages and why.
Courtney Bryant and Ashlee Carlstrom write at KMOV:
CAHOKIA, Ill. (KMOV.com) - A single mother of five in Cahokia is left reeling after her arrest for failing to cut her grass.Ebony Conner is a mother of five and says she is not entirely sure why she was arrested. But she says the only explanation is a complaint from the Village of Cahokia listing failure to cut her grass.
"I'm from the State of Wisconsin, I've lived in St. Louis, Missouri and I've never heard of being arrested for grass," said Conner.
Conner says she was given a verbal warning by a code enforcement officer at the end of June to cut her grass, remover trash and tow derelict cars from her driveway.
But Conner says she thought she would have had more time to correct the issues.
"I understand I violated a code but take the channels, give me a ticket first, make me appear in court. I know there's gotta be channels other than if you don't cut your grass, we're arresting you right now," said Conner.
She's exactly right -- and luckily, she was only jailed for 30 minutes, though her children were left alone during her arrest.
Often, when poor people are jailed on some bullshit offense -- or just an offense that does not endanger others in any way -- it means that they lose their job, their home, and their children.
I'm very worried about the direction this country is going -- very anti-liberty -- and how few people seem to notice or care.
They will care -- when, to their surprise, it finally affects them.
But for that not to happen, we all need to start caring now and having that drive the sort of candidates we vote for and the way political parties are run in this country.
About that, I have tried to ignore the political process going on now to some degree -- as much as that's possible while being a person who's interested in news and politics -- because I find it heartbreaking that we have only a corrupt, petulant child and a corrupt adult as our choice for President.
Oh, and don't forget the Libertarian candidate -- though that's wildly easy to do, as he's basically the walking chalk outline of somebody with a personality. (Thanks, Libertarian party -- nobody there could figure out that this was the year to put somebody forward with at least a little charisma?)
via ifeminists
Our Tax Dollars Have Been Funding Palestinian Terrorism
Patrick Goodenough writes at CNS:
The Palestinian Authority dedicates an estimated ten percent of its budget to pay the families of Palestinian terrorists, including those killed during attacks and those in prison, the House Foreign Affairs Committee heard Wednesday.American taxpayers will account for $442 million in aid to the P.A. in FY 2016.
In the P.A.'s 2016 budget, $137.8 million was earmarked for prisoners and their families, and $172.5 million for the families of "martyrs," Yigal Carmon, founder and president of Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), told the panel.
Carmon said a P.A. government regulation instituted in 2010 stipulated that the amount paid to prisoners' families depended on the length of sentence - ranging from $364 a month for jail terms of up to three years, to $3,120 a month for 30 years or more.
In addition, he said, terrorists from Jerusalem get a further $78 monthly supplement while Arab Israelis get an $130 monthly supplement.
Anyone imprisoned for five years or more is automatically eligible on release for a job with the P.A. institution, he added.
Terrorism -- it's a living.
Put yourself in this woman's shoes -- as she was chopped up while alive by a Palestinian terrorist with a machete. (Her friend, hiking with her, was killed, back in 2010. She reportedly only lived because she played dead.)
Even sicker, as usual, the Palestinian terrorist and his family are being paid off for his efforts. And have been -- with our tax dollars.
Rocky
Craggylinks.
"Equality" Hits The Marine Corps
We used to be looking for "A few good men." We're now looking for a few sort of chubby women who can't do all the strength tests.
Yes, how do you get more women into the Marines? Easy! Relax the standards. Ray Starmann writes at US Defense Watch:
This week, as reported in the Washington Post, the Marine Corps will now allow chubbier women to slip through the cracks."Female Marines will be allowed to weigh five to seven pounds more than before for each inch of their height, according to new guidelines published by the service. A 5-foot-6 woman, for example, was previously allowed to weigh up to 155 pounds, but can now be 161. A 5-foot-9 woman was allowed to be up to 169 pounds, but can now be 176."...The Corps is also relaxing the rules on pull-ups for men and women.
The new rule will eliminate fixed-arm hanging as an alternative choice to pull-ups for women. In place of fixed-arm hanging women, and men, will have the option to choose push-ups instead.
I do 10 push-ups every time I make coffee. The full kind, not the from-the-knees kind.
At first, I could only do three, but I worked up to them.
I have never been able to do pull-ups. I doubt I could work up to them, but maybe I could.
However, the notion that I would fit in, strengthwise, with men in the military, and be able to carry some brother in arms (or even a big heavy thing a man could carry), is just ludicrous.
Any woman who can't meet the standards doesn't belong in the military, except in a job that will never, ever involve her to physically challenge herself beyond what she can actually do.
UPDATED -- got this tweet back:
@gboddicker
@amyalkon @instapundit Semper Pie
via @instapundit
"Do Me Like Hillary, Bro"
Let's call it the "reverse George Orwell" -- a sort of non-sex reverse of that "some animals are more equal than others" line.
The story?
A Marine Corps officer in trouble for disseminating classified information now wants the same treatment Hillary Clinton got.
"Tyler Durden" writes at ZeroHedge:
Maj. Jason Brezler sent a classified message using an unclassified Yahoo email account to warn fellow Marines in southern Afghanistan about a potentially corrupt Afghan police chief. A servant of that police chief killed three Marines and severely wounded a fourth 17 days later, on August 10, 2012, opening fire with a Kalashnikov rifle in an insider attack WaPo reports.Brezler, who is still in the reserves and who works full time for the New York City Fire Department, was not charged criminally in the case, but he was issued a potentially career ending fitness (fit to continue serving) report after self-reporting that he sent the classified email to Afghanistan. Rep. Peter King (R-NY) even wrote then-Commandant Gen. James F. Amos about the case in August 2013 and asked whether it was necessary to be so harsh on someone who had warned fellow Marines of a potential threat in combat. Furthermore, the Naval Criminal Investigation Service reviewed electronics voluntarily turned over by Brezler and determined that there were more than 100 classified documents on his personal, unclassified hard drive and thumb drive. The board of inquiry recommended removing Brezler from the service in December 2013 after prosecutors argued that he knowingly kept classified information in order to help him write a book about his experiences in Afghanistan.
...Sadly, we must admit that unless your name is Clinton, there will be consequences to storing and sending classified information using an unsecured network - even if it is to warn fellow Marines of imminent danger.
Coopy
Chickeny links.
Roadside Drug Tests With False Positives Are Fast-Tracking Innocent People To Prison
Ryan Gabrielson and Topher Sanders write in The New York Times about how a $2 roadside drug test -- one that routinely produces false positives -- sends innocent people to jail. However, police departments across the country are still using them -- and prosecutors are still going by them:
Police officers arrest more than 1.2 million people a year in the United States on charges of illegal drug possession. Field tests like the one Officer Helms used in front of Amy Albritton help them move quickly from suspicion to conviction. But the kits -- which cost about $2 each and have changed little since 1973 -- are far from reliable.The field tests seem simple, but a lot can go wrong. Some tests, including the one the Houston police officers used to analyze the crumb on the floor of Albritton's car, use a single tube of a chemical called cobalt thiocyanate, which turns blue when it is exposed to cocaine. But cobalt thiocyanate also turns blue when it is exposed to more than 80 other compounds, including methadone, certain acne medications and several common household cleaners. Other tests use three tubes, which the officer can break in a specific order to rule out everything but the drug in question -- but if the officer breaks the tubes in the wrong order, that, too, can invalidate the results. The environment can also present problems. Cold weather slows the color development; heat speeds it up, or sometimes prevents a color reaction from taking place at all. Poor lighting on the street -- flashing police lights, sun glare, street lamps -- often prevents officers from making the fine distinctions that could make the difference between an arrest and a release.
There are no established error rates for the field tests, in part because their accuracy varies so widely depending on who is using them and how. In Las Vegas, authorities re-examined a sampling of cocaine field tests conducted between 2010 and 2013 and found that 33 percent of them were false positives. Data from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement lab system show that 21 percent of evidence that the police listed as methamphetamine after identifying it was not methamphetamine, and half of those false positives were not any kind of illegal drug at all. In one notable Florida episode, Hillsborough County sheriff's deputies produced 15 false positives for methamphetamine in the first seven months of 2014. When we examined the department's records, they showed that officers, faced with somewhat ambiguous directions on the pouches, had simply misunderstood which colors indicated a positive result.
No central agency regulates the manufacture or sale of the tests, and no comprehensive records are kept about their use. In the late 1960s, crime labs outfitted investigators with mobile chemistry sets, including small plastic test tubes and bottles of chemical reagents that reacted with certain drugs by changing colors, more or less on the same principle as a home pregnancy test. But the reagents contained strong acids that leaked and burned the investigators. In 1973, the same year that Richard Nixon formally established the Drug Enforcement Administration, declaring "an all-out global war on the drug menace," a pair of California inventors patented a "disposable comparison detector kit." It was far simpler, just a glass vial or vials inside a plastic pouch. Open the pouch, add the compound to be tested, seal the pouch, break open the vials and watch the colors change. The field tests, convenient and imbued with an aura of scientific infallibility, were ordered by police departments across the country. In a 1974 study, however, the National Bureau of Standards warned that the kits "should not be used as sole evidence for the identification of a narcotic or drug of abuse." Police officers were not chemists, and chemists themselves had long ago stopped relying on color tests, preferring more reliable mass spectrographs. By 1978, the Department of Justice had determined that field tests "should not be used for evidential purposes," and the field tests in use today remain inadmissible at trial in nearly every jurisdiction; instead, prosecutors must present a secondary lab test using more reliable methods.
But this has proved to be a meaningless prohibition. Most drug cases in the United States are decided well before they reach trial, by the far more informal process of plea bargaining.
Poor people accept plea bargains -- never mind whether they are innocent of the charge -- because it seems the best trade-off under the circumstances.
This ruins lives. People lose jobs, cars, homes, and the custody of their children -- ruining their lives in the process.
One woman whose live was torn apart by this had her "drug" sample from her arrest locked up in a lab, untested, for five months beyond when she'd completed her sentence:
On Feb. 23, 2011 -- five months after Albritton completed her sentence and returned home as a felon -- one of Houston's forensic scientists, Ahtavea Barker, pulled the envelope up to her bench. It contained the crumb, the powder and the still-unexplained syringe. First she weighed everything. The syringe had too little residue on it even to test. It was just a syringe. The remainder of the "white chunk substance" that Officer Helms had tested positive with his field kit as crack cocaine totaled 0.0134 grams, Barker wrote on the examination sheet, about the same as a tiny pinch of salt.Barker turned to gas chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis, or GC-MS, the gold standard in chemical identification, to figure out what was in Albritton's car that evening. She began with the powder. First the gas chromatograph vaporized a speck of the powder inside a tube. Then the gas was heated, causing its core chemical compounds to separate. When the individual compounds reached the end of the tube, the mass spectrometer blasted them with electrons, causing them to fragment. The resulting display, called a fragmentation pattern, is essentially a chemical fingerprint. The powder was a combination of aspirin and caffeine -- the ingredients in BC Powder, the over-the-counter painkiller, as Albritton had insisted.
Then Barker ran the same tests on the supposed crack cocaine. The crumb's fragmentation pattern did not match that of cocaine, or any other compound in the lab's extensive database. It was not a drug. It did not contain anything mixed with drugs. It was a crumb -- food debris, perhaps. Barker wrote "N.A.M." on the spectrum printout, "no acceptable match," and then added another set of letters: "N.C.S." No controlled substance identified. Albritton was innocent.
But oops, she'd already lost her job and her home.
And here's the latest:
The Texas Criminal Court of Appeals overturned Albritton's conviction in late June, but before her record can be cleared, that reversal must be finalized by the trial court in Houston. Felony records are digitally disseminated far and wide, and can haunt the wrongly convicted for years after they are exonerated. Until the court makes its final move, Amy Albritton -- for the purposes of employment, for the purposes of housing, for the purposes of her own peace of mind -- remains a felon, one among unknown tens of thousands of Americans whose lives have been torn apart by a very flawed test.
We in this country have become very cavalier about our own and others' civil liberties, not really noticing the accumulation of erosions.
The thing that the individual can do, at the very least, is to start talking about this -- and if possible, start writing about this and taking action. Work for organizations that defend civil liberties or at least donate to them.
These are not big things in and of themselves, but if many people make at least a small effort, it's a start -- one that may help do the very difficult task of moving our standards back to liberty rather than a bully state that treats its citizens as criminals (whether or not they are actually guilty of doing anything hurtful to the rest of us).
Free College Tuition...Wheee! Hillary's Plan To Bribe The Voters -- With Others' Tax Dollars, Of Course
Other People's Money -- OPM -- always spends so dreamily.
That's what Hillary's got her eye on with her tuition-free public college proposal. Students from families with an annual income of $85,000 or less would get free tuition at in-state public colleges or universities.
"Free" doesn't mean free. Free means somebody else pays.
Anthony Gockowski writes at Campus Reform:
In a likely effort to win over her rival's supporters, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton rolled out a tuition-free public college proposal before a campaign stop Wednesday in Atlantic City.While Clinton has maintained a promise throughout her campaign to make public college debt-free if elected president, her opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders, has taken the idea one step further by vowing to make all public colleges tuition-free.
...Under Clinton's revised plan, prospective students from families with an annual income of $85,000 or less would be exempt from paying tuition at in-state public colleges or universities, a campaign aide told CBS. Over the next four years, the income requirement would increase by $10,000 annually, with that number capping out $125,000 by 2021.
Sanders has estimated that his tuition-free plan would cost $750 billion over a 10-year period, while Clinton has estimated that her debt-free plan would cost $350 billion over 10 years, but the Clinton campaign has yet to indicate where her revised proposal might fall on that spectrum.
"American families are drowning in debt caused by ever-rising college costs," Clinton said in a statement Wednesday. "It is imperative that the next president put forward a bold plan to make debt-free college available to all. My New College Compact will do just that--by making sure that working families can send a child or loved one to college tuition-free and by giving student debt-holders immediate relief."
Something tells me, if this comes to be, there will be more students than ever majoring in the hegemonics of Foucaultian pottery theory. (And no, I have not a fucking clue what that means, either.)
Why do the Democratic nominees so often seem like they never made it any further than second-grade math?
Bernie seems a little crackers -- kind of like some crazy Jewish uncle of mine that I never knew I had -- but Hillary?
I think, in her case, she can add and probably even do percentages and long division. My guess is that it's just another example of corruption (pay for votes) Halloween costumed as "I care about you, voters!"
P.S. In case you're wondering, no I am not voting for Trump.
I'd prefer to vote for the personality-free libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson, but I'll see if I have to vote for Hillary. As I've been explaining, like Trump, she's corrupt, but at least she's a corrupt adult.
We'll get more of the same crap we've gotten for the past eight years (with a big scooping of Clinton cronyism) -- but at least it won't be "Risky Business goes to the White House" (crossed with Kim Jun Un with goldilocks and a spray tan).
Linko Bell
Sorry, fresh out of tacos.
The Right To Bear Arms -- Except If You're Black
I still can't believe the two shootings of black men by police yesterday -- or the terrible shootings of cops in Dallas in apparent retaliation.
A tweet:
@AnonOpsLegion
Cops shouldn't kill innocent people.People shouldn't kill innocent cops.
#Dallas
Another tweet, about the man in the car, Philando Castile, a school lunchroom worker who was shot trying to comply with the police officer's demands:
@xeni
What kind of man was #PhilandoCastile? He memorized names of 500 kids he served daily, with their food allergies.
David A. Graham writes in The Atlantic about blacks as "The Second Amendment's Second-Class Citizens," with the subhead noting:
Black citizens of the United States have seldom enjoyed the same right to bear arms that whites do.
The case of Alton Sterling also shows how ridiculous gun control is -- a childish notion that we prevent dangerous people (or anyone) from carrying a gun by saying they can't and promising punishment if they do.
This doesn't seem to stop any bad guys (including terrorists in very gun-controlled France) from 1. possessing guns, or 2. shooting people.
But, again, neither of these men appeared to have been doing anything but complying.
The two shootings give a strong sense that the Second Amendment does not apply to black Americans in the same way it does to white Americans. Although liberals are loath to think of the right to bear arms as a civil right, it's spelled out in the Bill of Rights. Like other civil rights, the nation and courts have interpreted it differently over time--as an individual right, and as a collective right. But however it's been applied, African Americans have historically not enjoyed nearly the same protection as their white fellow citizens...."The gun-control laws of the late 1960s, designed to restrict the use of guns by urban black leftist radicals, fueled the rise of the present-day gun-rights movement--one that, in an ironic reversal, is predominantly white, rural, and politically conservative," Winkler wrote.
Signs of that shift are visible around the nation now. In Texas, gun owners (largely white) staged an open-carry rally on the capitol grounds in Austin in January, an echo of the Panthers' rally in Sacramento. (Even some gun advocates looked askance at that move.) Meanwhile, the Panthers' tactic of carrying guns and watching the police has an echo in the rapidly spreading practice of filming encounters with the police, just as happened in the Sterling and Castile shootings. Black Americans may not enjoy the full protection of the Second Amendment, but technology has offered a sort of alternative--one that may be less effective in preventing brutality in the moment, but has produced an outpouring of outrage.
...In any case, the American approach to guns is, for the moment, stable. The courts, and particularly the Supreme Court, have inched toward much broader gun rights, including a suggestion of a personal right to bear arms. The death of Justice Antonin Scalia may, in the long term, produce a more liberal court, but that will require reversing years of precedents. In the meantime, spates of mass shootings and a slightly increase in violent crime have produced highly vocal calls for gun control, but there's little reason to expect those efforts to succeed. To date, they have almost universally failed. In fact, the last few years have brought ever looser gun laws. Quick changes in gun laws, regardless of whether they're desirable, are a remote possibility. As a result, the most relevant question right now is not whether gun laws should change, but whether existing gun laws apply equally to all Americans--and if not, why they don't.
Oh, and The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf is right:
There is no need for a cop to approach a motorist's window over a broken taillight.I am not saying that all broken taillights should be ignored.
What I'm suggesting is a change in protocol: A police officer who sees a car with a broken taillight, or a malfunctioning blinker, should pull it over, park behind it, photograph the license plate, and issue a "fix it" ticket to the registered owner of the vehicle without ever approaching a window or interacting with anyone on the roadside.
Some traffic stops are unavoidable. Police officers need to interact with drunk-driving suspects to determine their blood alcohol level. They need to interact with a person driving a car reported stolen to recover the property and arrest the thief. But broken taillights and similar matters can be addressed without any human contact. And minimizing interactions between police and motorists is a good thing.
On the roadside, approaching people sitting in their own car, many cops fear for their safety. In their vehicles, many motorists, particularly black and Hispanic motorists, fear that they're going to be met with a racist or panicked police officer. These interactions are hugely stressful for both sides even when they end without incident. And rarely, but far too often, these roadside stops end in needless injury or death.
To what end?
So that cops making a stop for a broken taillight can occasionally discover an outstanding warrant or an expired registration or narcotics in a vehicle? The benefits of these incidental discoveries are not worth the costs, in stress and incidents gone wrong, especially when one adds opportunity costs to the calculus: The more time police officers spend on roadside stops for "fix-it" tickets, the less time they're engaged in patrolling, investigating, or responding to more serious crimes.
Graham story via @instapundit
Helicopter Parenting: The Birthplace Of Campus Crybabies
(And crybullies.)
Terri Murray writes at Spiked:
So who is to blame for generation snowflake, in all its victimhood-seeking, offence-taking inglory? [Claire] Fox fingers us, its elders. We have socialised these youngsters in a culture of health and safety, in which we catastrophise life's challenges and obsess about health scares and child protection. And it's this overprotection of children, their immersion in our risk-averse culture, in which we now see threats and suspect abuse everywhere, argues Fox, that has blurred the line between physical and psychological harm.Until very recently, liberals followed 19th-century philosopher John Stuart Mill's definition of 'mental harm'. He defined it as anything that impairs an individual's development, for example, depriving children of an education. He also understood harm as something that happens against our will.
For Mill, then, offensive words or sentiments would not have qualified as causes of 'mental harm'. For example, when we find someone offensive we can avoid them and continue our lives unimpaired. As for today's claim that we are harmed by the mere existence of people who live in ways of which we disapprove, Mill's response is that not being offended is less important than not being physically injured, detained, or criminally deceived. Fox urges her readers to get back to this more robust understanding of harm - a definition that leaves room for legitimate parental discipline and proper academic pressure.
But there are considerable obstacles barring a return to this definition of harm. Children's charities and NGOs are constantly broadening definitions of abuse, actively encouraging children to deem as abusive, 'being pressurised or manipulated into making decisions', or being 'pushed too hard'. Widening the scope of bullying, and therefore victimhood, to include everything from 'spreading rumours' to 'just being ignored' creates an environment in which kids are discouraged from developing coping mechanisms, and are taught to seek psychological 'support' when faced with any challenge or criticism.
So, instead of helping young people to put unpleasant experiences into perspective, we have been encouraging children to over-react, to become traumatised by minor slights. It is no wonder that young people now head off to college, obsessed with their psychological wellbeing, and conscious of themselves as vulnerable and victimised. As Fox writes, we have pathologised what were once considered basic experiences of student life, from being broke, to staying up all night to get an essay finished. Disappointment, stress and frustration are no longer integral parts of life, of growing up; they're sources of mental distress and illness.
Just call the "The Unhireable Generation."
If you're looking for employees, and would have focused on people starting out, I highly recommend the accidental wonderfulness I've experienced by hiring two people who were starting over (my previous assistant [30s] and my current one, whom I love to pieces [40s]).
This isn't to say there are no millennials worth hiring. That would be idiotic.
For example, I follow this great girl on Twitter, a Columbia student named @Toni_Airaksinen. Smart, thinking, opinionated, and strong, and sees beyond herself and her own needs (click on the link).
Unfortunately, in my experience, she's kind of rare these days.
Park Your Unicorn Next To "Moderate Islam"
Are there Muslims who are -- and consider themselves -- moderates? Absolutely.
Unfortunately, they will be considered apostates by many who practice actual Islam -- which means they are to be slaughtered.
Raymond Ibrahim writes at FrontPage:
One of the greatest problems with the much cherished "moderate/radical" Muslim dichotomy is that it's entirely based on Western assumptions that have nothing to do with the realities of Islam.This came out in a study published in Arabic (my recent translation here):
Islamic researchers are agreed that what the West and its followers call "moderate Islam" and "moderate Muslims" is simply a slur against Islam and Muslims, a distortion of Islam, a rift among Muslims, a spark to ignite war among them. They also see that the division of Islam into "moderate Islam" and "radical Islam" has no basis in Islam--neither in its doctrines and rulings, nor in its understandings or reality.In keeping with various disturbing polls , the study found that everything associated with "radical Islam"--adherence to Islamic law (Sharia), subordinate position for women and non-Muslims, draconian punishments, jihad to spread Islam, and opposition to democracy--is a reflection of authentic Islam.
...Faith in moderate Islam is faith in the notion that a human can be both secular and Muslim at the same time.
Exactly. And a person cannot be both of those things.
Ibrahim more eloquently explains what I wrote at the top of this post:
There are of course Muslims who fit into secular societies. But that's because they are not observant of Islam--and not because they are observant of some sort of "moderate Islam." "There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam," as Turkish president Recep Erdogan famously pointed out.
And this is essential:
The idea that Muslims can be true to their religion and yet naturally fit into Western society is false--and built on an equally false premise: that Christianity somehow also had to moderate itself to fit into a secular society--when in fact, Christian principles, which are so alien to Islam, were fundamental to the creation of the West.
Clinky
Jailtime links.
I Can't Get Over The Teflon On Hillary Clinton
I know I blogged about this yesterday (how, sickeningly, "too big to fail" has been applied to Hillary Clinton).
However, I just can't stop thinking about the response to Hillary's email scandal. I'm still sickened -- but not surprised -- that Hillary will only suffer some uncomfortable questions from people in the media from her email scandal. As a WashEx editorial put it:
Special people receive special treatment. Equal protection under the law turns out to be a fancy fiction.Some people are more equal than others. Notably, the Clintons are less equal than the rest of us. An average government official who spent five years breaking the rules to frustrate the Freedom of Information Act, and who recklessly compromised classified information (more than 100 times), including top secret information (eight times), would serve time in federal prison.
But Hillary Clinton is almost certain to suffer no consequences at all. To hammer home the message that she is free, the country was treated to the nauseating sight of President Obama campaigning for her and proclaiming himself ready to pass her the baton of leadership.
And then there's this -- how it works if you're a government employee who is not HIllary:
Clinton broke the rules, continued to hide emails from congressional oversight after they were legally demanded, lied about it repeatedly and will now probably proceed unimpeded to the Oval Office.The government has consistently prosecuted and obtained convictions for smaller offenses. The late Sandy Berger had to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge after he was caught ferreting relatively old classified papers out of the National Archives. David Petraeus "mishandled" much smaller amounts of classified information and the Justice Department came down on him like a ton of bricks. Former CIA Director John Deutch was caught with a small amount of classified information on his home computer, and it took a presidential pardon to save him from prosecution.
But if you're a Clinton, you can commit much larger offenses and it doesn't matter. That's the message FBI Director James Comey sent when he issued his recommendation against Secretary Clinton's prosecution. In his Tuesday press conference, ironically, he laid out an airtight case for prosecuting the Democrats' presidential pick. The law prescribes a sentence of up to ten years imprisonment for anyone who acts with "gross negligence" when handling classified information. In the first 10 minutes of his remarks, Comey made it abundantly clear that Clinton had done just that, stating that she and her colleagues were "extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information." Yet he followed up by adding that he could find no evidence of intention and "no reasonable prosecutor" would bring charges in such a case.
This is bunk. Intention is something this law does not require. "Gross negligence" alone is sufficient grounds for prosecution because the officials to which it applies are entrusted with secrets that bring greater obligations than average citizens must bear. Precisely because of that greater risk of prosecution, high-ranking government officials who handle classified information, including Clinton, sign agreements that spell out their legal jeopardy.
David French writes at NRO about how it would work for a person in the military who did what Hillary Clinton did:
And if Hillary Clinton was a soldier, she would lose her security clearance, face administrative action, and face the specter of criminal prosecution. I've not only seen the pattern, I've also participated in the process. Here's how it would work.Imagine for a moment that an officer downrange in Afghanistan comes across timely drone footage of suspected insurgents -- information that would be clearly Secret (if not Top Secret) at the moment of inception. Unfortunately, however, she doesn't have immediate access to SIPRNet (for Secret) or JWICS (for Top Secret), so she grabs her iPhone -- which is on the base's civilian WiFi system -- and bangs out a text message to a superior officer. She doesn't describe exactly what she's seeing, but from context, the message is plain. Shoot or don't shoot? She needs a decision.
Honestly, it's hard to imagine such a moment. It's so counter to military training and the military ethos that actions like this are few and far between. But Hillary is nothing if not special, and it's clear from FBI Director Comey's press conference yesterday that she sent and received e-mails concerning "matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level" on her homebrew system, a system less secure than Gmail.
Had she been in the military:
...Her actions would have ended her military career, and she would have been fortunate to resign in lieu of enduring a court-martial. In her post-military civilian life, she would have been unemployable in any serious government position, and if any president made the mistake of appointing her to, say, undersecretary for food safety in the Department of Agriculture, the appointment would be immediately shot down in committee.
And I think this will make your blood boil like it did mine -- a great Reason TV video with Hillary lying and Comey fact-checking her ass:
This -- this fountain of corruption -- is who the Democrats give us for President?
Yes, thank you, Democrats: Hillary Clinton is the only thing between us and the Republicans' turd candidate -- a petulant, corrupt baby a spray tan and a suit.
And thanks, Libertarians, you idiots. Your presidential candidate, Gary Johnson, whom I've met at a Reason event, is the embodiment of the old joke, "When he walked into a room, it's as if two people just left."
If there were ever a year to dig up somebody with a little charisma, Libertarians, this would have been it. But no. Nobody in your end of things could figure that out.
Something in our country is very broken and I don't have enough background in politics or spend enough time analyzing the political system to figure out what it is.
Lamely, I also have no ideas -- not a clue -- on how to fix our system. Any of you got any?
Victimization As A Source Of Power
It seems like a joke -- a gay pride parade stopped by Black Lives Matter activists.
I've written lately about feminism -- as practiced by too many these days -- as a way to unearned power over men.
Well, now Black Lives Matter activists got a bit miffy that gay lives weren't stopping to bow down to their demands -- basically their attempt to seize power.
Well, of course, what was there for BLM to do but to go all victimbully -- shut down the pride parade (and, in doing that, the speech of those participating) and try to extort some money from them?
James Kirchick writes in the LA Times:
On Sunday, Black Lives Matter activists pulled off the sort of victory that right-wing hooligans could only hope to achieve: They stopped a gay pride parade."We are calling you out!" Alexandria Williams, co-founder of the group's Toronto chapter, shouted through a megaphone as the Black Lives Matter float came to a halt and marchers sat down. Amid rainbow-colored smoke bombs, she accused event organizers of harboring "a historical and current culture of anti-blackness" -- a curious claim considering how the festival welcomed Black Lives Matter as "guests of honor."
Black Lives Matter refused to budge unless pride organizers acquiesced to a list of demands, which included increased funding for black-related pride events, "prioritizing black trans women" in hiring, and "a commitment to more black deaf & hearing ASL interpreters." Surely, these issues -- which are always "demands," never "requests" -- could have been taken up in a constructive manner before the parade. But dialogue has never been the preferred mode of communication for Black Lives Matter, not even, apparently, in uber-polite Canada.
It took only 30 minutes for festival organizers to surrender to this bullying. Gay rights activists are adept at challenging authority. Beginning with the very act of coming out, gay liberation's whole gestalt is defiance. That's easy to do when it comes to a government denying you basic equality. When their interlocutors are people claiming to be more oppressed, however, gay progressives are at a loss. Out-radicalized, they're utterly helpless.
Of course, real power comes through achievement, not achieving a shut-down of somebody else's speech and extortion of money from them for your own events.
That's thuggery.
And here's a good question from the LA Times comments:
Ridgeley
Where are the BLM activists to mentor Black boys at my school, who are often left adrift without fathers at home? Ounce of prevention and all that.
Milky
Linkquid cow.
"Big Politician" -- Joining Big Corporations And Big Banks In Bailoutville
"Too big to fail" has been applied to Hillary Clinton.
Granted, "the only one between us and President Trump" may have a part in this, but it shouldn't -- though I will vote for the corrupt adult (Hillary) over the corrupt petulant child (Trump).
I am disgusted at the need to do that.
However, as I said at our table Friday night at the conference, with Hillary, it's more of the same -- more of what we've always had: Some corrupt person in office. But you know what to expect and the markets and other countries know what to expect.
I think a President Trump would do damage to America's image and standing in the world -- both of which, yes, are important.
Also, anybody who lived in New York in the late 80s and 90s, as I did, and was at least minimally conscious during that time, is horrified to their core at the thought of President Trump.
But back to corrupt Hillary Clinton, a statement from the Libertarian Party that I got via email:
ALEXANDRIA -- The FBI has decided not to push for criminal charges against Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server for her State Department emails.
"This is a serious miscarriage of justice," says Nicholas Sarwark, chair of the Libertarian National Committee. "One key criteria for laws to be just is that they must be applied equally to all."
Countless other people who have served in roles handling classified information have been prosecuted, fined, and jailed for far lesser breaches of protocol and security.
Hillary Clinton's complete mismanagement of highly sensitive information while Secretary of State, and dismissive attitude towards the situation since, shows that she is not qualified for the very serious role of President of the United States.
"What is particularly sad is that while most of us understood the egregiousness of this situation, we also knew from the beginning that Hillary Clinton was not going to be prosecuted or punished for it. Our system is allowing big corporations, big banks, big politicians to get away with things that normal Americans would never be allowed to. We bail out the banks. We bail out the corporations. We bail out the politicians. This is not justice. This is crony capitalism and crony politics," says Sarwark.
"In essence, Hillary Clinton thinks that she should not be held to the same standards that other Americans are and our Justice system is allowing that to happen. No one should be above the law. This is elitist, tyrannical, and completely un-American."
Actually, it's become extremely American, and that's the problem.
Don't think the email scandal is sign enough of Hillary Clinton's corruption? There are many other examples of it, but try this lawsuit on for size.
Parents Are Now Serfs, Desperate To Please Their Foreshortened Masters
Parenting -- as I knew it -- is going the way of the Betamax.
Lately, many parents seem to see themselves as the adult staff for their children and treat their children as their equals: "Cody, will you hate me if I don't serve you macaroni and cheese tonight?"
At Intellectual Takeout, Abby Schachter quotes physician and psychologist Leonard Sax on this:
Over the past three decades, there has been a massive transfer of authority from parents to kids. Along with that transfer of authority has come a change in the valuation of kids' opinions and preferences. . . . what kids think and what kids like and what kids want now matters as much, or more, than what their parents think and like and want. . . . These well-intentioned changes have been profoundly harmful to kids.
The quote is from Sax's book, The Collapse of Parenting: How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grown-Ups.
Schachter explains:
The first negative result of this transfer of authority is the "culture of disrespect" that Sax argues has blossomed as a result. He chronicles how and why some basic rules of behavior, such as apologizing for hurting someone else, are no longer taught to kids. Sax says kindergarten and first grade educators used to teach these basic rules--clean up your own mess, don't take things that aren't yours, say sorry when you hurt somebody, play fair, don't hit--but that such behavioral instruction has been supplanted by phonics and other academic lessons. With schools no longer inculcating these important and basic rules of behavior, parents are really on the hook. Instead, he argues, parents have abdicated their authority.
This isn't to say parents should come on like angry despots. But kids need to learn that they can't be little spoiled savages -- so they don't end up going away to college in that state...convinced that nobody ever has a right to make them feel the least bit uncomfortable.
On that note, I have to say, when my last assistant, Adam, moved on, I thought I'd hire somebody starting out. What a nightmare. The completely amazing woman who works for me was, instead, starting over.
Now, I know all millennials are not cut of the same cloth, but after a tough few months interviewing and working with those from the just-out-of-college set, I came to joke -- bitterly: "Generation Y? It stands for 'Y show up just 'cuz I said I would?'"
Clucky
Chicken linkies. (The nice, fatty, juicy Costco roast chicken kind, not the Whole Foods kind that tastes like a chicken refugee or maybe a chicken who's been on a long diet.)
Bias In Social Science
José L. Duarte blogs about some of the socio-political bias he sees in social science:
An example:
4. We've got people measuring a purported fundamental personality trait of Openness to Experience by asking participants "I see myself as someone who..."... is ingenious, a deep thinker.
... values artistic, esthetic experiences.
... is inventive.
... is sophisticated in art, music, and literature.
... likes to reflect, play with ideas
You've got to be kidding. These items are obviously grounded in - and biased in favor of - academia. This core personality trait of "openness" is measuring intellectualism and urban sophistication. These items are invalid on their face, and should not have lasted this long.
How are people in rural communities going to show up on this scale? How about people in developing countries? How would they express their openness to experience? Where do we give them a voice? They don't have opera houses, symphonies, and gallery openings with which to express their "sophistication" in art, music, and literature. They're structurally excluded and marginalized here. The items are not situated at the level of analysis necessary for a valid underlying human personality construct that is commensurable across cultures and backgrounds. We're not even speaking their language. I guarantee that many people in rural communities would be embarrassed to say that they are "ingenious" or "sophisticated". It would be unseemly to them, narcissistic and snobby. They might never use words like esthetic or inventive, not because they're stupid, but because they live in a different world and don't necessarily have use for the same terminology that contemporary intellectuals use.
This is deeply offensive. We're denying these people a voice. I grew up in a rural copper mining town with a population of 2,000. I know these people. I am one of these people. The bias of these items should be obvious to anyone, but it will be most obvious to people who never lived within 100 miles of an opera house. If openness is a real personality trait (I doubt it), commensurable across cultures, then we might ask them:
If they enjoy learning new things from their kids.
If they enjoy looking at the stars at night (FYI, seeing the stars well outside of a city is a radically different, much more powerful experience)
If they enjoy being in the woods.
If they enjoy the tranquility of being on a boat at the lake.
If they enjoy figuring out how something works and repairing it, physical things, like car engines, transmissions, or TVs.
If they enjoy the uplifting experience of church.
If they enjoy reading.
Note also that rural communities are likely to be conservative, and urban sophisticates are likely to be liberal or libertarian, so we've rigged a systematic political bias against conservatives showing up on our "openness" measure. The fact that conservatives score lower on openness is widely reported and savored by politically biased and incurious science writers and sloppy scientists. Take another look at the items. That's what "openness" is. That's what conservatives are scoring lower on. It's urban intellectualism and perhaps narcissism. Given its profound cultural bias, we have no justification for calling it openness.
Duarté's Behavioral and Brain Sciences paper, co-authored with Jarret T. Crawford, Jonathan Haidt, Lee Jussim, and Philip E. Tetlock: Political Diversity Will Improve Social Psychological Science.
via @SteveStuWill
The End Of Ambivalence
Oxford neuroethicist Brian David Earp has a piece up at Quillette making some good points -- and quoting the good points of another friend of mine, medical bioethicist Alice Dreger:
Alice Dreger, the historian of science, sex researcher, activist, and author of a much-discussed book of last year, has recently called attention to the loss of ambivalence as an acceptable attitude in contemporary politics and beyond. "Once upon a time," she writes, "we were allowed to feel ambivalent about people. We were allowed to say, 'I like what they did here, but that bit over there doesn't thrill me so much.' Those days are gone. Today the rule is that if someone -- a scientist, a writer, a broadcaster, a politician -- does one thing we don't like, they're dead to us."I'm going to suggest that this development leads to another kind of loss: the loss of our ability to work together, or better, learn from each other, despite intense disagreement over certain issues. Whether it's because our opponent hails from a different political party, or voted differently on a key referendum, or thinks about economics or gun control or immigration or social values -- or whatever -- in a way we struggle to comprehend, our collective habit of shouting at each other with fingers stuffed in our ears has reached a breaking point.
Alice had an article yanked from a publication because somebody complained that she wasn't parroting the party line on transgenderism.
Trans people have gone after her in ugly ways for this.
And by the way, as Earp notes:
Dreger is widely regarded as being a supporter of trans rights, as well as rights for intersex people, for gender non-conformers generally, and for other marginalized groups...
However:
Dreger has written, in her recent book and elsewhere, about a condition called "autogynephilia." If you haven't heard of this condition, you are not alone; but it turns out to be really important. What it refers to is the tendency of certain individuals who were male-assigned at birth to be sexually aroused by the thought or image of themselves as a female.Some of these individuals later transition into being women, which is why this is relevant.
The problem is, some people, including some members of the trans community, strongly disagree with Dreger's analysis of the scientific evidence on this condition.
Autogynephilia -- getting turned on by the thought or image of oneself as a woman -- doesn't fit with the socio-political goals of the trans movement. So, the idea must be disappeared, and anyone who dares so much as mention it -- like Alice Dreger -- gets met with ugliness and banning.
More from Earp on Dreger:
No one, however, who has charitably read even a small portion of Dreger's scholarship on these issues, could honestly mistake her for an enemy to trans people, an opponent of trans rights, or anything along those lines.She may not be perfect, but she is on the same team.
To conclude otherwise -- as the editors of Everyday Feminism appear to have done -- is, in my view, to throw out the pro-trans baby with the autogynephilia bathwater ... when it isn't even obvious that the bathwater is dirty.
Feminism, gatekeeping, and freedom of speech
This raises a delicate question: Who gets to decide if you're the "right kind" of feminist (and so potentially qualified to write for a feminist website); similarly, who gets to decide if you're an ally on some issue or really just a bigot in disguise?
And here's the problem. The journal editors "were trying to shield their own readers from exposure to a particular article":
Not because the article itself was likely to upset them, but because it was written by an individual the editors had deemed to be ideologically tainted.
And here's the problem -- one I believe is at root of the silencing that's going on on college campuses across America and other places in the West:
The political theorist Rebecca Reilly-Cooper, herself a controversial figure in this debate, argues that there is "a creeping trend among social justice activists of an identitarian persuasion" towards what she calls ideological totalism.This is "the attempt to determine not only what policies and actions are acceptable, but what thoughts and beliefs are, too." Anyone who does not sign on to the latest dogma, down to the last detail, no matter how passionately on board they are with the general program, is "seen as not only mistaken and misguided, but dangerous and threatening, and must therefore be silenced."
And here's what I call the Free Speech, Free Thought, Advancing Thinking Through Debate approach:
Even if you disagree with, say, Alice Dreger's stance on autogynephilia, you still might try to see if you -- or your readers -- could learn something from her work on sex education. Similarly, despite her harsh rhetoric and uncompromising beliefs about trans identity, you could try being open to the idea that Germaine Greer -- a pioneering figure in the fight against patriarchy -- might have something important to say about women and power in the 20th century.Publishing an essay on your website doesn't mean that you endorse every other word the author has ever written. And letting someone speak at your university on subject X doesn't mean that you agree with their views on subject Y.
"I like what they did here," you might say, "but that bit over there doesn't thrill me so much."
I've had some worries about the science in the book I've been working feverishly on, and at the Human Behavior and Evolution Society conference I just got back from, they had a speaker that a few people groused about.
Well, this disagreement was actually a fantastic thing. I talked to a couple scientists after her talk, about her talk, and learned that the worrisome conflict I thought there was between two areas of science doesn't actually exist.
Without that talk taking place there, these questions would have been too complicated and out of nowhere to bring up.
And in general, I've found that disagreeing with someone's point of view helps me hone my own point of view and come up with better arguments for it.
This is why I am not only open to hearing people I disagree with, I sometimes go out of my way to do it.
Earp explains an approach -- explained by Alice in her post:
"I like what they did here," you might say, "but that bit over there doesn't thrill me so much."
Well, I don't agree with Erwin Chemerinsky about Citizens United, but the guy has argued before the Supreme Court and we are on the same page on civil liberties. I heard him speak at a friend's law firm, and I somehow managed to stay in my seat when he said stuff I disagreed with -- rather than rolling on the floor and foaming at the mouth.
It was a fascinating night and I'm better for having been there.
Linkeramadome
Your spaceship is double-parked.
The Fourth Of Tweet
Where are we today?
@ScottGreenfield
To promote equality and diversity, the Declaration of Independence is hereby declared hate speech and shall be deleted from history.
Judgment Calls: The Multi-Culti-Colored Dream Coat
I've written before about how my late friend Cathy Seipp would respond when someone would gasp, "But...but...that's a value judgment!"
Cathy: "I have values, so I make judgments."
There are too many people -- especially on campus -- who now take this to be a thought crime (or its more expressive cousin, the speech crime).
Walter E. Williams gets it right, writing in his syndicated column:
Multiculturalists are right to argue that people of all races, religions and cultures should be equal in the eyes of the law. But their argument borders on idiocy when they argue that one set of cultural values cannot be judged superior to another and that to do so is Eurocentrism.That's unbridled nonsense. Ask a diversity/multiculturalism advocate: Is forcible female genital mutilation, as practiced in nearly 30 sub-Saharan African and Middle Eastern countries, a morally equivalent cultural value? Slavery is practiced in northern Sudan. In most of the Middle East, there are numerous limits placed on women, such as prohibitions on driving, employment and education. Under Islamic law, in some countries, female adulterers face death by stoning, and thieves are punished by having their hand severed. In some African and Middle Eastern countries, homosexuality is a crime, in some cases punishable by death. Are all these cultural values morally equivalent to those of the West?
He explains:
The vital achievement of the West was the concept of individual rights, which saw its birth with the Magna Carta in 1215. The idea emerged that individuals have certain inalienable rights. Individuals do not exist to serve government; governments exist to protect their rights....Western values are superior to all others. But one need not be a Westerner to hold Western values. A person can be Chinese, Japanese, Jewish, African or Arab and hold Western values. By the way, it is no accident that Western values of reason and individual rights have produced unprecedented health, life expectancy, wealth and comfort for the ordinary person. There's an indisputable positive relationship between liberty and standards of living. There is also indisputable evidence that we in the West are unwilling to defend ourselves from barbarians. Just look at our response to the recent Orlando massacre, in which we've focused our energies on guns rather than on terrorists.
The obvious truth is that gun control won't stop Orlandos from happening -- any more than they stopped the Charlie Hebdo mass murder from happening.
But calling for gun control and not giving that point (above) too much though does feel like you're doing something.
Why He Left Islam
This man, a devout Muslim for 16 years, left Islam over the ugly moral teachings of Mohammed and the Quran -- like the rapey thing: How Islam says "infidel" women can be used as sex slaves.
Unfortunately, Islam also commands the death of apostates (people who leave Islam), like this guy...which is why people are said to be courageous when they make statements like this.
Meanwhile, I comment frequently that I'm an atheist and -- having grown up Jewish -- have obviously left Judaism.
People can't be bothered to even shrug at my announcement of, uh, post-Jewishness, let alone go to the trouble of trying to hack my head off or stone me over it.
The point -- and the point that I keep making -- is that Islam is an enormously pernicious ideology. It is totalitarianism masquerading as religion. Many Muslims don't understand Islam or know that this is what it's about, but it is not a bastardization of Islam but faithful Islam that's being practiced when there are these murders and mass murders for Allah.
By the way, Allahu Akbar does not mean "God is great." It means "God is greater" -- right in keeping with the imperialism that is built into Islam and demanded of Muslims.
That's what's being enacted in the attacks on people out in cafes and concert halls and nightclubs who are gunned down and blown up for Allah -- most recently in Dhaka.
Shubhajit Roy writes in The Indian Express:
Back home from the US for summer vacations, Tarishi Jain, 19, had gone out with two of her friends on Friday evening. Holey Artisan Bakery, famous for its bagels, croissants, crème brûlée tart and coffee, was one of their favourite haunts in Dhaka.The cafe was also close to Tarishi's residence in the posh Dhaka neighbourhood of Gulshan. Her father, Sanjeev Jain, has run a garment business in the Bangladesh capital for 15-20 years.
On Saturday, Tarishi became among the first victims of Dhaka's siege to be identified. Her friends Abinta Kabir and Faraaz Hossain were also killed in the attack.
According to sources, Tarishi was among the hostages who may have been subjected to torture before being killed. "That was apparent from the injuries," a source said.
19-year-old Tarishi Jain reportedly made a final phone call to her father -- before she was hacked to death for Allah. Look at her picture and those of her friends, happy and full of life, with presumably promising futures ahead of them, and see what a tragedy their murders are.
P.S. Dying while killing for Allah guarantees a Muslim a fast track to salvation.
Oh, and if you're wondering why Muslims often murder other Muslims, it's because they consider them apostates for not believing as their particular sect does. (See "takfir" -- deeming another Muslim a dirty "kafir": unbeliever, and thus suitable for slaughter.)
Nice, huh?
By the way, I don't think reform of Islam is possible, thanks to the failsafes built into it (like how leaving equals a death sentence) -- which is to say I think the world as we know it is fucked.
That said, there may be some tiny chance of reform for Islam (though I don't think it's at all likely), and if so, discussing Islam honestly, instead of pretending that there's this fantasy "religion of peace" is how maybe, possibly, that reform might be achieved.
Gumby
Rubberylinks.
Advice Goddess Free Swim
I'm packing to go home from a truly fantastic Human Behavior and Evolution Society conference in Vancouver, BC. So...you pick the topics. I'll try to post more on Sunday.
Oh, and happy Fourth of July, fellow Americans.
It was "Canada Day" here the other day -- which is kind of like the Fourth of July, from my cursory understanding of it.
The Canadians are so cute. They're even nice to you when you go through Canadian Customs, and it's pretty there in the airport. They have art on the walls and nice friendly employees to help you.
Contrast that with Customs at LAX. Linoleum floors, hard lighting, and employees screaming at you. It's like that old TV show "Oz" contrasted with, oh, Mr. Rogers or something.
P.S. Oh, and back to the "You post" thingie: One link per comment or my spam filter will eat your post.
Why Islam Probably Can't Be Reformed
I think one of the great problems of this century is the spread of Islam -- and how it is "sticky" in a way other religions aren't, especially in the modern world.
William Kilpatrick explains at Crisis Magazine that there is no exit from Islam for most Muslims:
One of the complaints of those in Britain and Europe who want to part company with the EU is that it has evolved into a soft totalitarianism--a milder version of the old Soviet Union. Indeed, it's been suggested that one of the reasons the pre-Brexit polls were so far off the mark is that Brits are afraid to tell pollsters what the really think for fear that Big Brother will be listening in on the phone conversation.If the EU is a soft totalitarianism, then Islam is a hard form of the same. It suppresses dissent more effectively than the EU could ever hope to do. It is arguably as oppressive as the Nazi regime in Germany and the Communist dictatorship in the Soviet Union.
The chief evidence for this totalitarianism are the blasphemy laws and the apostasy laws. The first make it a crime to criticize Islam, and the second make it a crime to leave Islam. The apostasy laws perform a function similar to the border walls and fences erected by the communists in Eastern Europe. Just as at the Berlin Wall kept East Berlin residents firmly within the communist camp, the apostasy laws keep Muslims inside Islam. Except that the apostasy wall is moveable. If you are a Muslim, it follows you wherever you go so that, wherever you are, any Muslim can execute the death sentence on you if you fail to remain faithful to the faith. Like Trotsky in Mexico, you are never completely safe from the reach of the purists.
Without the blasphemy laws, Muslims would be free to criticize Islam, and without the apostasy laws, many would leave it. How many? Again, it's difficult to say. But as Yusuf al-Qaradawi, perhaps the most influential cleric in the Muslim world, once put it, "if they [Muslims] had gotten rid of the punishment for apostasy, Islam would not exist today." Coming as it does from a true believer, that is a fairly frank admission of the totalitarian nature of Islam.
Islam is a religion that is held together by force. Western societies profess to be opposed to such constraints on freedom of religion. In other matters, we are quick to say that people should free themselves from such oppression. Yet very few are willing to apply this principle to Islam.
Linkomotion
If Tattoo yelled, "Da train! Da train!"
Well-Intentioned Bullshit On The Supposed Wonderfulness Of Daycare
Carrie Lukas and Steven E. Rhoads write at National Affairs:
While there are obviously many good things to be said about the professional progress of women and the significant contributions they have made in their fields, good things tend to come with tradeoffs. More women in the workforce means that more children need some form of child care. (A small but growing minority of fathers in the United States stay at home with their children: 2 million fathers, or 16% of stay-at-home parents, in 2012. Over half of these men were either unemployed or disabled.) For many parents, decisions about work and child care are among the most difficult choices they must make.These decisions are made all the more difficult by a lack of reliable research on daycare. There is more research than anyone needs on the dangers of certain fabrics used in car seats and backpacks or the risks of drinking from a garden hose or eating conventionally grown fruit. And sober examination of the actual findings of these studies consistently reveals that the risks are being exaggerated; unless a child eats the fabric on his backpack, he isn't really at risk.
But when it comes to daycare -- something that instinctively worries many parents -- few are willing to take a hard look. The media, which seemingly report constantly on alarming new risks to children, rarely present the public with information from studies on the impact of daycare, especially when the findings suggest that daycare is associated with significant negative outcomes.
The reasons for this are several, and are understandable. Many reporters may be reluctant to highlight such studies because of the politically charged nature of the issue. Some may worry that acknowledging any downsides to daycare would impede the cause of women's equality, by inviting people to conclude that children would be better off if mothers dropped out of the workforce. And many journalists send their kids to daycare, and therefore may be predisposed to overlook negative findings about a choice they have already made for their own children.
A deeper reason may be that the psychologists who study daycare have attempted to downplay or put a comforting spin on troubling findings. Just last year, an important study found that the culturally liberal outlook of almost all social psychologists had biased the studies and conclusions they reached. It is likely that a similar outlook, and in particular an unwillingness to present findings that may interfere with women's progress in the workplace, has similarly harmed the work of developmental psychologists regarding daycare.
This bias and lack of information does a serious disservice to parents, who need to know about the best research in order to make fully informed choices for their families -- even, and especially, if that research does not validate their biases. Politicians also need to know what the full range of research shows, especially as they consider policy reforms that could lead many families to change their decisions about how their children are cared for. President Barack Obama and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton have both called for increasing government's financial support of paid child care, but it is not at all clear that increased use of child care would produce better results for children.
They continue:
The available research suggests that heavy use of commercial daycare leads to some poor outcomes for many children. Subsidizing this form of child care effectively discourages the use of other arrangements that have not shown these negative effects. A better policy would help parents in a broader way, providing financial help regardless of families' child-care choices.Acknowledging evidence that daycare may have drawbacks is not meant to demonize parents using daycare. One of the authors of this essay, a mother of five, currently uses part-time daycare for her own children. Like millions of other parents, she believes it is the best option for her family in balancing different considerations such as cost, convenience, and the desire to support a work life as well as ensure the well-being of her children.
via @JonHaidt
Blinky
Linky with a bit of sand in its eye.
