In Behind Yon Auld Fell Dyke

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2013/05/19/jubilee-why-old-man-potter-is-bad-for-business-in-bedford-falls/

Posted by Fred Clark

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=15506

The Insight Center for Community Economic Development crunches the numbers and confirms what everybody in Bedford Falls already knew: Debt-slavery to Old Man Potter isn’t good for the community.

The huge fees — the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau calculates the average APR on a payday loan is 392% — may make billions for lenders, but would be better for the economy if spent elsewhere.

Writes the Insight Center:

The economic activity generated by payday lending firms receiving interest payments is less than the lost economic activity from reduced household spending. Specifically, each dollar in interest paid subtracts $1.94 from the economy through reduced household spending while only adding $1.70 to the economy through spending by payday lending establishments.

As a result, for each dollar of payday lending interest paid, an estimated 24 cents is lost to the U.S. economy.

For example, a payday loan that carries an interest payment of $40.00 causes a loss of $9.60 — nearly one-quarter of the fee — from the economy.

The researchers calculate that for 2011, during which payday lenders took in an estimated $3.3 billion in interest, the net loss to the U.S. economy was $774 million, as household spending tends to outpace spending by payday lending businesses.

That’s a lot of numbers and figures and calculations, but just focus on that last line: “Household spending tends to outpace spending by payday lending businesses.”

Old Man Potter collects that $3.3 billion in interest every year and only spends part of it on his household staff, limousine maintenance, imported cigars, etc. The rest of it just sits there in giant piles that Potter sometimes swims through Scrooge-McDuck-style, but otherwise doesn’t put to any productive use.

If the working-class households had been able to use that $3.3 billion for something other than enriching the already too-rich Potter, they’d have spent all of it much more widely — circulating it throughout more of the economy where more of it would be put to productive use. They’d spend it at the butcher, the baker, the barber, Martini’s restaurant, the grocer, the deli. All of those businesses would benefit from the income and they would, in turn, spend it again elsewhere, further benefitting the whole community.

That’s the “multiplier effect” the Insight Center is trying to measure in its paper. And what they found — unsurprisingly — was that the multiplier effect was a lot less when the money landed in Potter’s vault than it was when the money stayed in the hands of members of the community.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2013/05/19/jubilee-why-old-man-potter-is-bad-for-business-in-bedford-falls/

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=15506

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SociologicalImagesSeeingIsBelieving/~3/Lb6lnepHIFE/

Posted by Lisa Wade, PhD

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/?p=52779

Writer Peg Streep is writing a book about the Millennial generation and she routinely sprinkles great data into her posts at Psychology Today.

Recently she linked to at study by Net Impact that surveyed currently-enrolled college students and college-graduates across three generations Millennials, Gen Xers, and Baby Boomers. The questions focused on life goals and work priorities. They found significant differences between students and college grads, as well as interesting generational differences.

First, students have generally higher demands on the world; they are as likely or more likely than workers to say that a wide range of accomplishments are “important or essential to [their] happiness”:

In particular, students are more likely than workers to say it is important or essential to have a prestigious career with which they can make an impact. More than a third think that this will happen within the next five years:

Wealth is less important to students than prestige and impact. Over a third say they would take a significant pay cut to work for a company committed to corporate social responsibility (CSR), almost half for a company that makes a positive social or environmental impact, and over half to align their values with their job:

Students stand out, then, in both the desire to be personally successful and to make a positive contribution to society.

At the same time, they’re cynical about other people’s priorities. Students and Millennials are far more likely than Gen Xers or Boomers to think that “people are just looking out for themselves.”

This data rings true to this college professor. Despite the recession, the students at my (rather elite, private, liberal arts) school surprise me with their high professional expectations (thinking that they should be wildly successful, even if they’re worried they won’t be) and their desire to change the world (many strongly identify as progressives who are concerned with social inequalities and political corruption).

Some call this entitlement, but I think it’s at least as true to say that today’s college youth (the self-esteem generation) have been promised these things. They’ve always been told to dream big, and so they do. Unfortunately, I’m afraid that we’ve sold our young people a bill of goods. Their high expectations sound like a recipe for disappointment, even for my privileged population, especially if they expect it to happen before they exit their twenties!

Alternatively, what we’re seeing is the idealism of youth. It will be interesting to see if they downshift their expectations once they get into the workforce. Net Impact doesn’t address whether these are largely generational or age differences. It’s probably a combination of both.

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Ta-nehisiCoates/~3/2vr6zPIHsLo/story01.htm

Posted by Ta-Nehisi Coates

The first lady went to Bowie State and addressed the graduating class. Her speech was a mix of black history and a salute to the graduates. There was also this:

But today, more than 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, more than 50 years after the end of "separate but equal," when it comes to getting an education, too many of our young people just can't be bothered. Today, instead of walking miles every day to school, they're sitting on couches for hours playing video games, watching TV. Instead of dreaming of being a teacher or a lawyer or a business leader, they're fantasizing about being a baller or a rapper.

And then this:

If the school in your neighborhood isn't any good, don't just accept it. Get in there, fix it. Talk to the parents. Talk to the teachers. Get business and community leaders involved as well, because we all have a stake in building schools worthy of our children's promise. ...

And as my husband has said often, please stand up and reject the slander that says a black child with a book is trying to act white. Reject that.

There's a lot wrong here.

At the most basic level, there's nothing any more wrong with aspiring to be a rapper than there is with aspiring to be a painter, or an actor, or a sculptor. Hip-hop has produced some of the most penetrating art of our time, and inspired much more. My path to this space began with me aspiring to be rapper. Hip-hop taught me to love literature. I am not alone. Perhaps you should not aspire to be a rapper because it generally does not provide a stable income. By that standard you should not aspire to be a writer, either.

At a higher level, there is the time-honored pattern of looking at the rather normal behaviors of black children and pathologizing them. My son wants to play Bayern Munich. Failing that, he has assured me he will be Kendrick Lamar. When I was kid I wanted to be Tony Dorsett -- or Rakim, whichever came first. Perhaps there is some corner of the world where white kids desire to be Timothy Geithner instead of Tom Brady. But I doubt it. What is specific to black kids is that our dreams often don't extend past athletics. That is a direct result of the limited cultural exposure you find in impoverished, segregated neighborhoods. Those neighborhoods are the direst result of American policy.

Enacting and enforcing policy is the job of the Obama White House. When asked about policy for African Americans, the president has said, "I'm not the president of black America. I'm the president of all America." An examination of the Obama administration's policy record toward black people clearly bears this out. An examination of the Obama administration's rhetoric, as directed at black people, tells us something different.

Yesterday, the president addressed Morehouse College's graduating class, and said this:

We know that too many young men in our community continue to make bad choices. Growing up, I made a few myself. And I have to confess, sometimes I wrote off my own failings as just another example of the world trying to keep a black man down. But one of the things you've learned over the last four years is that there's no longer any room for excuses. I understand that there's a common fraternity creed here at Morehouse: "excuses are tools of the incompetent, used to build bridges to nowhere and monuments of nothingness."

We've got no time for excuses -- not because the bitter legacies of slavery and segregation have vanished entirely; they haven't. Not because racism and discrimination no longer exist; that's still out there. It's just that in today's hyper-connected, hyper-competitive world, with a billion young people from China and India and Brazil entering the global workforce alongside you, nobody is going to give you anything you haven't earned. And whatever hardships you may experience because of your race, they pale in comparison to the hardships previous generations endured -- and overcame.

This clearly is a message that only a particular president can offer. Perhaps not the "president of black America," but certainly a president who sees holding African Americans to a standard of individual responsibility as part of his job. This is not a role Barack Obama undertakes with other communities.

Taking the full measure of the Obama presidency thus far, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that this White House has one way of addressing the social ills that afflict black people -- and particularly black youth -- and another way of addressing everyone else. I would have a hard time imagining the president telling the women of Barnard that "there's no longer room for any excuses" -- as though they were in the business of making them.

It's worth revisiting the president's comments over the past year in reference to gun violence. Visting his grieving adopted hometown of Chicago, in the wake of the murder of Hadiya Pendleton, the president said this:

For a lot of young boys and young men in particular, they don't see an example of fathers or grandfathers, uncles, who are in a position to support families and be held up in respect. And so that means that this is not just a gun issue; it's also an issue of the kinds of communities that we're building. When a child opens fire on another child, there is a hole in that child's heart that government can't fill. Only community and parents and teachers and clergy can fill that hole.

Two months earlier Obama visited Newtown. The killer, Adam Lanza, was estranged from his father and reportedly devastated by his parents divorce. But Obama did not speak to Newtown about the kind of community they were building, or speculate on the hole in Adam Lanza's heart.

When Barack Obama says that he is "the president of all America," he is exactly right. When he visits black communities, he visits as the American president, bearing with him all our history, all our good works, and all our sins. Among recent sins, the creation of the ghettos of Chicago -- accomplished by 20th-century American social policy -- rank relatively high. Leaving aside the vague connection between fatherhood and the murder of Hadiya Pendleton. Certainly the South Side could use more responsible fathers. Why aren't there more? Do those communities simply lack men of ambition or will? Are the men there genetically inferior?

No president has ever been better read on the intersection of racism and American history than our current one. I strongly suspect that he would point to policy. As the president of "all America," Barack Obama inherited that policy. I would not suggest that it is in his power to singlehandedly repair history. But I would say that, in his role as American president, it is wrong for him to handwave at history, to speak as though the government he represents is somehow only partly to blame. Moreover, I would say that to tout your ties to your community when it is convenient, and downplay them when it isn't, runs counter to any notion of individual responsibility.

I think the stature of the Obama family -- the most visible black family in American history -- is a great blow in the war against racism. I am filled with pride whenever I see them: there is simply no other way to say that. I think Barack Obama, specifically, is a remarkable human being -- wise, self-aware, genuinely curious and patient. It takes a man of particular vision to know, as Obama did, that the country really was ready to send an African American to the White House.

But I also think that some day historians will pore over his many speeches to black audiences. They will see a president who sought to hold black people accountable for their communities, but was disdainful of those who looked at him and sought the same. And then they will match that rhetoric of individual responsibility with the aggression the administration showed to bail out the banks, and the timidity they showed in addressing a foreclosure crisis which devastated black America (again.) And they will match the rhetoric with an administration whose efforts against housing segregation have been run of the mill. And they will match the talk of the importance of black fathers with the paradox of a president who smoked marijuana in his youth but continued a drug-war which daily wrecks the lives of black men. I think those historians will see a discomfiting pattern of convenient race-talk.

I think the president owes black people more than this. In the 2012 election, the black community voted at a higher rate than any other ethnic community in the country. Their vote went almost entirely to Barack Obama. I think they deserve more than a sermon. Perhaps they cannot practically receive targeted policy. But surely they have earned something more than targeted scorn.

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Posted by Ta-Nehisi Coates

My sense is that there is a need for an open thread today. I don't think I should say much more.

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ursulav_feed

http://ursulav.livejournal.com/1540538.html

WARNING: Biological Icky Bits Ahead!

Guess what I found!?

I’m a larva!

This peculiar devil is the larval form of the American Carrion Beetle! How cool is that? (They feed on mushrooms and dead bugs as well as rotting meat, so I hasten to assure you that I do not, in fact, have dead bodies rotting in the woods. At least, to the best of my knowledge.)

Spring sprung and was promptly batted aside by summer, so it’s hot and humid in the garden, and I am trying to stay ahead of the stiltgrass with copious amounts of mulch, because the flamethrower is questionable in a dry pine wood and would also take out all my nice jewelweed that has established so marvelously. Thinking of trying to fight it by transplanting in Virginia knotweed, which is an aggressive loon of a plant, but native, attractive, and host to a couple of butterfly species. (I have the variegated form, “Painter’s Palette,” which comes true from seed and boy, is there a lot of seed!)

Other than that, everything is blooming, the pollinators are out in force, I had a Zebra Swallowtail show up the other day (an uncommon butterfly in this neck of the woods!) and the pond is full of frogs and predacious diving beetles. On the downside, the weird cold/hot/cold/hot weather sent most of the spring veggies straight to bolting, so I got no daikons, some very sad beets, and the tomatoes are already starting to come in. Lost a bunch of peppers, too. Sigh. But the cucumbers and squash are happy, and I am holding out hope that the peas will produce a batch before the heat exhausts them. (A lot of local farmers just gave up and plowed the peas under. Can’t blame ‘em. This has been demented weather.)

Craw-Bob is still in residence. Haven’t gotten a good look at him, but we’ve got the night vision cameras and just need to get them working with the house network. Mostly he’s a flash of movement into the hole as I go by.

The Patio That Shall Not Be Named has been graveled, sanded, mortared, and now needs bricks. I’m traveling at the end of the week, but hold out hope of getting it done before June rolls around. (All productivity must be crammed into this month, because June is solid travel and July and August will be miserably hot.)

I had a bit of a wildlife mystery this morning. Was going out to feed the birds and found—there’s no other way to say it—a pile of viscera in the middle of the path. Somebody had left their guts in a neat pile on the ground.

Being me, I of course immediately poked them with a stick. Yup. That’s guts, all right.

Guts and….earthworms?

For whatever weird reason, there were a bunch of dead earthworms in the pile as well.

I wracked my brain—had something vomited and lost guts and earthworms together? Was this some kind of weird version of an owl pellet?—until I realized that the earthworms were from INSIDE the guts. Our deceased gut-owner had been out eating earthworms, and had quite a solid meal, then something jumped him, eviscerated him, and presumably ate the tasty bits. (I would have thought the viscera WERE tasty bits, but apparently somebody was picky.)

My guess is that the victim was a large frog, but I’ve got no idea what the killer was. I tossed the remains out of dog range—hopefully either Craw-Bob or the carrion beetles will find it and start the clean-up process.

So that’s all the excitement around here at the moment. Guts! Bugs! Mulch! THRILLS! CHILLS! ETC!

Originally published at Squash's Garden. You can comment here or there.

http://ursulav.livejournal.com/1540538.html

http://dailyotter.org/2013/05/20/otter-mum-shows-off-her-new-pup-at-tokyos-sunshine-aquarium/

Posted by Daily Otter

http://dailyotter.org/?p=6560

Otter Mum Shows Off Her New Pup at Tokyo's Sunshine Aquarium 1

Otter Mum Shows Off Her New Pup at Tokyo's Sunshine Aquarium 2

Otter Mum Shows Off Her New Pup at Tokyo's Sunshine Aquarium 3

Thanks, kashiwaya920!

http://dailyotter.org/2013/05/20/otter-mum-shows-off-her-new-pup-at-tokyos-sunshine-aquarium/

http://dailyotter.org/?p=6560

wonders_and_marvels_feed

Posted by tracybarrett

http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/2013/05/reading-women-and-reading-women.html

http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/?p=12701

by Tracy Barrett (W&M contributor)

That is, reading women (the act of reading works written by women) and reading women (women who read).

medievalwoman When I received a grant from the NEH to study texts about women written by women in the Middle Ages, many of my friends were puzzled that this was possible. “Medieval women were literate?” Well, yes—and some of them produced among the most interesting texts of the period.

Depending on the time, the definition of literacy (reading and writing, or just reading? Latin and the vernacular, or just one?), and the geographical region, estimates of female literacy in the Middle Ages vary between 1% and 50% (the ability to read and write in Latin produces the lowest figure). Members of the upper class of both sexes made up the vast majority of the literate, no matter what the definition, and there’s little reason to believe that more medieval men than women were literate in the vernacular.

Some scholars have credited women with spurring the growth of vernacular literature at the end of the Middle Ages, for several reasons. Perhaps the most important is that since women were largely unable to read Latin, love-poetry addressed to them had to be written in the vernacular, or the verse wouldn’t have its desired effect.

The growth of universities in the thirteenth century, usually heralded as a new burst of knowledge in Europe, actually led to the lowering of expectations for women. Now that the possibility of higher education was open to boys, families of the lesser nobility and merchant classes tended to neglect their daughters’ instruction in order to prepare their sons for this opportunity.

Women were not, however, always excluded from universities. Records refer to women teaching “law, philosophy, rhetoric and medicine at Bologna and other Italian universities in the thirteenth centuries. . . . But it is fairly certain that even in Italy, universities provided women with neither a formal education nor a license to teach.”¹ One instructor named Novella reportedly had to lecture to her classes at the university of Bologna from behind a screen, so as not to distract her students with her beauty.

Margery-Kempe-from-hanscomfamily-dot-com

Northern Europe proved, in general, to be more hospitable to female literacy than the south. Barbarians thought letters unmanly, even (or especially) for rulers. The Gothic Queen Amalasuintha (c. 494-535) “wanted to mold [her son] Athalaric on the pattern of a Roman ruler, and engaged tutors to oversee his education. Her plan was thwarted by the Goths’ conviction that literary pursuit was unmanly. Enforced study drove a youth to cower before his teachers–old men at that. . . . The noble advisers . . . summoned evidence that Theodoric had looked unfavorably on the enfeebling effects of book learning.”²

The husband of St. Margaret of Scotland, King Malcolm, admired his wife’s ability to read. Charlemagne was probably illiterate while at least one of his wives was probably literate, and his daughter Bertha wrote a lengthy history, Historiarum libri quator. William the Conqueror’s wife, Matilda of Flanders, was better educated than her husband. Hugh of Fleury dedicated his Historia ecclesiastica to Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror, rather than to “illiterate princes who scorn the art of literature.”³

Perversely, women’s very exclusion from writing helped them to compose some of the most interesting medieval texts. In most cases there was no fixed definition of what women could write–no “canon.” With few exceptions, they did not confront a long publishing tradition and try to break into it. Much of their writing thus seems to the tastes of many modern readers fresher, more original, and often more interesting than that of their male contemporaries.

¹Phyllis Stock. Better than Rubies: A History of Women’s Education. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, Capricorn Books, 1978, p. 25.

²Karen Cherewatuk and Ulrike Wiethaus, eds. Dear Sister: Medieval Women and the Epistolary Genre. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993, p. 75.

³Alexandra Barratt, ed. Women’s Writing in Middle English. London and New York: Longman, 1992, pp. 76-77.

Tracy Barrett is the author of numerous books for young readers, most recently Dark of the Moon (Harcourt) and the Sherlock Files series (Henry Holt). Forthcoming from Harlequin Teen in July, 2014 is The Stepsister’s Tale. She lives in Nashville, TN, where until last spring she taught Italian, Humanities, and Women’s Studies at Vanderbilt University. Visit her website and her blog.

http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/2013/05/reading-women-and-reading-women.html

http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/?p=12701

http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com/2013/05/focus-on-flying.html

There's a story that is making it's way around disability blogs and which is often posted and reposted on Facebook. It's about a woman with a disability who had be placed in an airplane seat at the front of the plane because the boarding staff didn't have an aisle chair available. An elite (?) flier demanded that she be given that seat because it was her right to premium seating because of her status. The article did not make it clear to me if she had booked that seat herself.

As you can predict .. uproar.

Two thing disturb me about this - first, and most concerning, over half of New Zealanders who were interviewed sided with the woman, thinking that she was well within her rights and that, though they would have given up their seats, they understand why the elite flier didn't. (a hit of a 'those damned disabled people and their demands' comes through). Yikes ... there is a hardening of attitudes towards those of us in the disability community.

The second is that the discussion is about the woman with a disability at all. She is a completely passive player in the story. Let's review:

1) she did not ask for that seat, she had a seat
2) the airline placed her there at their convenience, not hers
3) she could not have predicted that they wouldn't have an aisle chair available
4) the airline was asking the woman to move to accommodate the needs of the woman with a disability but that was disingenuous, they were actually asking her to move to accommodate the airlines needs.

Therefore this was a dispute between the airline and and elite flier. Disability is only a sidebar to the story. Yet, this story has made it out like:

1) disabled people are demanding
2) disabled people expect special treatment
3) disabled people are a nuisance

and most concerningly these days ...

4) disabled people take resources away from non-disabled people

I don't know Ms Black, of course, but I have been in these situations - I'd like to be as invisible as possible when in these situations. When stores, or hotels, or airlines centre me out I go through all 27 layers of hell (those who fit the norm think there are much fewer) as things get resolved. And yet, in each situation, I am seen as the problem - when, I'm not ...

A little example:

I book a hotel room, make it clear when I'm doing so I need the accessible room, I receive an email guaranteeing me the accessible room. I arrive to find out that a clerk has, five minutes before, checked another guest into the room reserved for me. Much upset ensues. The other guest is called and asked to vacate the room. Other guest comes down, glares at me for disturbing him. The reputation of disabled people sinks - seldom does anyone recognise that the guest is being asked to move by the hotel, because of their error, not by me. It becomes about me, not about a clerk who mistakenly gave my room away, not about a hotel that has a very loose policy about accessible rooms, not about the fact that I had only one option and that I booked that option. No, it becomes about what 'disabled people want.'

There are thousands of other examples. All of which shift the focus away from the real issue - which isn't my disability - and makes it suddenly like a spotlight has been shone on my wheelchair.

This story isn't about anything more than an airline asking a passenger to move to accommodate their needs in boarding the plane and getting off the ground on time. Yet, I'll bet that most of the people on that flight will talk about disability not about the unpreparedness of the airline with the right equipment and the attitude of someeone who believes that their needs need to be accommodated.

That's right - this is about needs demanding to be accommodated - the needs of ego, not the needs of mobility.

http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com/2013/05/focus-on-flying.html

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Posted by Jay Livingston, PhD

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/?p=55504

Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog.

Does “the abortion culture” cause infanticide? That is, does legalizing the aborting of a fetus in the womb create a cultural, moral climate where people feel free to kill newborn babies?

It’s not a new argument. I recall a 1998 Peggy Noonan op-ed in the Times, “Abortion’s Children,” arguing that kids who grew up in the abortion culture are “confused and morally dulled.”* Earlier this week, USA Today ran an op-ed by Mark Rienzi repeating this argument in connection with the Gosnell murder conviction.

Rienzi argues that the problem is not one depraved doctor. As the subhead says:

The killers are not who you think. They’re moms.

Worse, he warns, infanticide has skyrocketed.

While murder rates for almost every group in society have plummeted in recent decades, there’s one group where murder rates have doubled, according to CDC and National Center for Health Statistics data — babies less than a year old.

Really? The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports has a different picture.

Many of these victims were not newborns, and Rienzi is talking about day-of-birth homicides — the type killing Dr. Gosnell was convicted of, a substitute for abortion. Most of these, as Rienzi says are committed not by doctors but by mothers. I make the assumption that the method in most of these cases is smothering. These deaths show an even steeper decline since 1998.

Where did Rienzi get his data that rates had doubled? By going back to 1950.

The data on infanticide fit with his idea that legalizing abortion increased rates of infanticide. The rate rises after Roe v. Wade (1973) and continues upward till 2000.

But that hardly settles the issue. Yes, as Rienzi says, “The law can be a potent moral teacher.” But many other factors could have been affecting the increase in infanticide, factors much closer to actual event — the mother’s age, education, economic and family circumstances, blood lead levels, etc.

If Roe changed the culture, then that change should be reflected not just in the very small number of infanticides but in attitudes in the general population. Unfortunately, the GSS did not ask about abortion till 1977, but since that year, attitudes on abortion have changed very little. Nor does this measure of “abortion culture” have any relation to rates of infanticide.

Moreover, if there is a relation between infanticide and general attitudes about abortion, then we would expect to see higher rates of infanticide in areas where attitudes on abortion are more tolerant.

The South and Midwest are most strongly anti-abortion, the West Coast and Northeast the most liberal. So, do these cultural difference affect rates of infanticide?

Well, yes, but it turns out the actual rates of infanticide are precisely the opposite of what the cultural explanation would predict. The data instead support a different explanation of infanticide: Some state laws make it harder for a woman to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. Under those conditions, more women will resort to infanticide. By contrast, where abortion is safe, legal, and available, women will terminate unwanted pregnancies well before parturition.

The absolutist pro-lifers will dismiss the data by insisting that there is really no difference between abortion and infanticide and that infanticide is just a very late-term abortion. As Rienzi puts it:

As a society, we could agree that there really is little difference between killing a being inside and outside the womb.

In fact, very few Americans agree with this proposition. Instead, they do distinguish between a cluster of a few fertilized cells and a newborn baby. I know of no polls that ask about infanticide, but I would guess that a large majority would say that it is wrong under all circumstances. But only perhaps 20% of the population thinks that abortion is wrong under all circumstances.

Whether the acceptance of abortion in a society makes people “confused and morally dulled” depends on how you define and measure those concepts. But the data do strongly suggest that whatever “the abortion culture” might be, it lowers the rate of infanticide rather than increasing it.

* I had trouble finding Noonan’s op-ed at the Times Website. Fortunately, then-Rep. Talent (R-MO) entered it into the Congressional Record.

Jay Livingston is the chair of the Sociology Department at Montclair State University. You can follow him at Montclair SocioBlog or on Twitter.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2013/05/19/sunday-favorites-97/

Posted by Fred Clark

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=15167

Luke 11:11-13

Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2013/05/19/sunday-favorites-97/

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=15167

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2013/05/19/2-years-ago-disappointment-despair-and-harold-camping/

Posted by Fred Clark

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=15406

May 19, 2011, on this blog: Disappointment, despair and Harold Camping

The old preacher, you see, was a “Bible prophecy” enthusiast. He was a devotee of John Hagee, and of TV host Jack Van Impe and of anyone connected with Dallas Theological Seminary and its premillennial dispensationalist obsession with the End Times as interpreted through their crazy-quilt re-editing of Revelation and Daniel. He eagerly devoured all of their books and many other, even stranger works — self-published volumes of cryptic numerology, cramped and fevered tomes identifying the Antichrist as Kruschev or Kissinger or Ted Kennedy.

And somewhere, in one of those fringe-of-the-fringe books, he had encountered and adopted the idea that cremation rendered a body immune to resurrection. When the last trump shall sound and the dead in Christ are raised, when the sea gives up its dead and every grave is opened, he believed, those who have been cremated would remain only ashes.

The idea fit somehow with his stubborn illiteralist approach to the Bible. Those verses that spoke of the graves being opened or of “those that are asleep” being raised from their graves said nothing about those who had no graves but whose ashes had been, instead, scattered to the winds. And the idea was fortified by whatever author or radio preacher promoted it with a diatribe against cremation as a supposedly unholy, “pagan” practice — as though it were some sort of evil anti-sacrament that trumped every means of grace. I think he may have identified cremation, somehow, as the supposed “unforgivable sin,” a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

And it terrified him. Constantly. He expected the Rapture to occur any day, any moment, but he also knew that he was an old man and that, if the End tarried another year or five or ten, he might well die before Jesus came like a thief in the night. Once he was dead, he would be powerless to prevent the living from having his body cremated and if that happened he would be eternally separated from God. This is what he believed and what he lived in fear of every day.

Witnessing that terror and hopeless fear, seeing the suffering that it brought, I stopped thinking of his “Bible prophecy” obsession as a kooky, but mostly harmless set of beliefs. I began to realize that it was a framework that burdened its followers with the inevitability of disappointment, false hope, denial and an inconsolable fear. Its adherents were its victims. There were other victims, too, but its main damage was wrought in the lives of those who most believed it.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2013/05/19/2-years-ago-disappointment-despair-and-harold-camping/

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=15406

aqueductpress_feed

Posted by Nancy Jane Moore

http://aqueductpress.blogspot.com/2013/05/ebook-edition-of-nancy-jane-moores.html

Nancy Jane Moore's collection, Conscientious Inconsistencies, which was originally published in a now out-of-print limited hardcover edition by PS Publishing, is now available as an ebook from Book View Cafe.

The ebook includes the original introduction by Timmi Duchamp and the cover is based on the original cover painting by Edward Miller. You can see more of Miller's art on the Les Edwards website.

An excerpt from one of the stories in the collection, "Three O'Clock in the Morning," is on the Book View Cafe blog.

http://aqueductpress.blogspot.com/2013/05/ebook-edition-of-nancy-jane-moores.html

http://dailyotter.org/2013/05/19/floating-sea-otter-looks-long/

Posted by Daily Otter

http://dailyotter.org/?p=6557

Floating Sea Otter Looks Long

Via martins.nunomiguel

http://dailyotter.org/2013/05/19/floating-sea-otter-looks-long/

http://dailyotter.org/?p=6557

http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com/2013/05/colouring-controversy-rocking-with.html

This is Roxanne and she has become the subject of some controversy in my life. On Mother's Day we went out for lunch with Ruby and Sadie and Mike ... to celebrate and thank Marissa for all she does. To keep the kids occupied at lunch I spent some time making a colouring book for each of the girls that had pictures of things I knew they liked and a cover page with their names in large colourable letters. They seemed to enjoy it.

A few days later I asked Marissa if the girls liked the books and she said that Ruby, in particular loved the book. I then set about making another. This time I found a picture of a little girl in a wheelchair and put some text with the picture:

Hi, Ruby, my name is Roxanne. Both our names start with the letter R. Can you give my wheelchair really cool colours?

This picture was slipped in along with a bunch of other pictures of things and places that I know Ruby loves. Along with that I found some mazes and puzzles and jokes. I really enjoyed making the booklet.

I showed this to someone who surprised me by accusing me of trying to brainwash Ruby with 'my ideas about disabilities'.

What?

Hold it ...

Am I?

I just thought that since we, people with disabilities, were in the world, there was no reason for us not to
be in a colouring book. I didn't think I was putting forward an idea at all.

But ...

I am.

I am putting forward the idea of simple, natural, inclusion. Oddly, I didn't think of it as an 'idea' but as a 'reality' ... but it isn't a reality is it? It's still an idea.

OK.

So maybe I am putting an idea into a colouring book. I won't argue that I'm not.

But ...

It's a helluva good idea.

http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com/2013/05/colouring-controversy-rocking-with.html

geekfeminism_feed

Posted by yatima

http://geekfeminism.org/2013/05/18/book-club-coding-freedom-part-i-histories/

http://geekfeminism.org/?p=7666

(Sorry this is so late! Life kept happening, and then the blog went down :)

Since this is a book that deserves and rewards attention, and since we all seem to be reading it slowly as a result, let’s just discuss it one section at a time. From the introduction:

Free software hackers culturally concretize a number of liberal themes and sensibilities— for example, through their competitive mutual aid, avid free speech principles, and implementation of meritocracy along with their frequent challenge to intellectual property provisions.

(I’ll get to that “meritocracy” bit in good time.) One of the great points Biella makes early on is that hacking, while recognizably part of the liberal tradition, uses liberal techniques to critique liberalism itself. This restless contrarianism showed up earliest around IP, of course:

The expansion of intellectual property law, as noted by some authors, is part and parcel of a broader neoliberal trend to privatize what was once public or under the state’s aegis, such as health provision, water delivery,
and military services. “Neoliberalism is in the “first instance,” writes David Harvey (2005, 2), “a theory of political economic practices that proposes human well- being can be best advanced by liberating entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong property rights, free markets, and free trade.” As such, free software hackers not only reveal a long- standing tension within liberal legal rights but also offer a targeted critique of the neoliberal drive to make property out of almost anything, including software.

Oh, the 1990s. On the one hand you had a set of corporatist states seeking to exercise ever-more-restrictive controls around, for example, the precious, precious image of Mickey Mouse and music of Metallica; on the other hand you had a ragtag crew of approximately-libertarian hackers still simmering over the injustices handed down in the Unix wars. In between you had every other imaginable nuance of position. Shenanigans, naturally, ensued, and both Biella and I were on hand for the fun. I met her at various Bay Area Linux User Group and EFF events while she was conducting fieldwork in San Francisco around the turn of the millennium.

Those were glory days. The brilliance of Richard Stallman’s GPL was just beginning to make itself apparent. The GPL has radically transformed both the culture and the economics of software in ways that will continue to play out for the foreseeable future. Biella justly celebrates the terrific humor of hackers and hacking – I don’t think I really understood software, or my life partner, until I first looked into the Jargon file – and the GPL is one of hacking culture’s best and subtlest and most effective jokes.

Stallman approached the law much like a hacker treats technology: as a system that by virtue of being systemic and logical, is hackable. In other words, he relied on the hacker technical tactic of clever reuse to imaginatively hack the law by creating the GNU GPL, a near inversion of copyright law… By grafting his license on top of an already- existing system, Stallman dramatically increased the chances that the GPL would be legally binding. It is an instance of an ironic response to a system of powerful constraint, and one directed with unmistakable (and creative) intention— and whose irony is emphasized by its common descriptor, copyleft, signaling its relationship to the very artifact, copyright, that it seeks to displace.

What the GPL and the Jargon file share with the code itself is the ways in which they resemble literature – celebrating and codifying a culture – and the ways in which they resemble law – functioning as the constitutions of public spaces of the mind. (I think of the Unixes as a kind of Colossal Caves, only somehow more real.) And this, ultimately, is why we talk about coding freedom, and why the freedom part matters. Software systems are at once frontiers, meeting places and societies.

In the words of one programmer who helped me (a novice user) fix a problem on my Linux machine, “Unix is not a thing, it is an adventure.”

That’s the way I see Debian: alive.

This book is reminding me how much I love it here, but it’s also refreshingly blunt about hacker culture’s failings:

Along with the awkwardness I experienced during the first few weeks of fieldwork, I was usually one of the only females present during hacker gatherings, and as a result felt even more out of place.

That said, the answer is right there staring us in the face. Just as hacker culture uses liberal techniques to reform liberal techniques, geek feminists can and do hack hacker culture.

During cons, participants make crucial decisions that may alter the character and future course of the developer project. For example, at Debconf4, the few women attending, spearheaded by the efforts of Erinn Clark, used the time and energy afforded by an in- person meeting to initiate and organize Debian Women Project, a Web site portal and IRC mailing list to encourage female participation by visibly demonstrating the presence of women in the largely male project. Following the conference, one of the female Debian developers, Amaya Rodrigo, posted a bug report calling for a Debian Women’s mailing list, explaining the rationale in the following way:

From: Amaya Rodrigo Sastre <amaya@debian.org>
To: Debian Bug Tracking System <submit@bugs.debian.org>
Subject: Please create debian- women mailing list
Date: Tue, 01 Jun 2004 22:12:30 +0200
Package:lists.debian.org
Severity: normal

Out of a Debconf4 workshop the need has arisen for a mailing list oriented to debating and coordinating the different ways to get a larger female userbase. Thanks for your time :- ).

Given enough eyes, all bugs are shallow, right? I’m trying to feel my way towards an evidence-based geek feminism, in which my ideas and practices are continually tested and assessed for usefulness or otherwise. Maybe the trick is to be woman enough to cull my ideas when they are bad?

http://geekfeminism.org/2013/05/18/book-club-coding-freedom-part-i-histories/

http://geekfeminism.org/?p=7666

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SociologicalImagesSeeingIsBelieving/~3/TfVwrufaU6A/

Posted by Lisa Wade, PhD

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/?p=55278

Hint from Dmitriy T.C.: he probably wears shorts to work.

Here’s the infographic, sent in also by sociologist Michael Kimmel, revealing the highest paid employee in each state. Yellow, orange, and green states are all ones in which the most money goes to an athletic coach. More details at DeadSpin.

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SociologicalImagesSeeingIsBelieving/~3/TfVwrufaU6A/

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/?p=55278

http://dailyotter.org/2013/05/18/gif-of-eddie-the-sea-otter-making-a-basket/

Posted by Daily Otter

http://dailyotter.org/?p=6550

GIF of Eddie the Sea Otter Making a Basket

Someone made a GIF of Eddie the sea otter making a basket in one of his physical therapy sessions. Submitted by Pete!

http://dailyotter.org/2013/05/18/gif-of-eddie-the-sea-otter-making-a-basket/

http://dailyotter.org/?p=6550

wonders_and_marvels_feed

Posted by PamelaToler

http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/2013/05/stranger-magic.html

http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/?p=12695

by Pamela Toler

I’m fascinated by the Arabian Nights. By the stories themselves and the way they fit together into their complicated frame story. By their transformation from Arabic street tales to a established position in the Western canon. By their echoes in Western culture, from the Romantic poets to Disney.

So I was delighted to get a chance to review historian and critic Marina Warner’s new work on the tales.

Warner’s Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights is a multi-faceted study of the popular tales of wonder and magic known as the Arabian Nights.

Warner discusses the tales in the Arabian Nights with the interdisciplinary approach that she used to good effect in her earlier study of Western fairy tales, From the Beast to the Blonde. She examines them through the lenses of literary criticism, history, folklore studies, feminist theory and popular culture. She pays particular attention to the history of the Arabian Nights in the west, from the reception of the first translation from the Arabic by Antoine Galland in the eighteenth century through its influence in works as distinct as Mozart’s operas and the Harry Potter books.

Not assuming that readers will have the same familiarity with “The Prince of the Black Islands” as they do with “Sleeping Beauty”, Warner retells fifteen tales before she unravels them into their constituent themes, symbols and assumptions. She moves easily from the Biblical story of King Solomon to magic carpets, from the reputation of Egypt as the home of ancient magic to Sir Isaac Newton’s alchemical experiments, and from the wealth of the Islamic world in the twelve century to post-Reformation anxiety about Catholic religious practices.

Warner succeeds once again in balancing entertainment with erudition. Like her earlier works, Stranger Magic is accessible enough for the general reader and rich enough to keep a specialist scribbling in the margins.

This review appeared previously in Shelf Awareness for Readers.

http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/2013/05/stranger-magic.html

http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/?p=12695

http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-new-normal-adapting-to-less.html

I was in a local shop. It's small. It has the feel of a local village shoppe even though it's dead centre in the middle of a large city. Even though it's small the aisles are such that I can get to almost every point in the store. Sometimes I need to take a circuitous route, but devil be damned, that's fine with me. I CAN get in the store because they've taken a piece of metal and tacked it over the small lip that separates the entrance from the pavement in front. They replace this regularly as it wears out.

A friend was with me and we were chatting as I lead them over to the tea section of the shop. There is one brand of green tea that I think is better than all others. It's hard to find. This shop sometimes carries it and every time we go in I look to see if they have some in stock. If they do I buy three or four boxes. There's only 20 bags per box so that's not as much as it might sound.

The tea wasn't in stock but one of the clerks there, who I see regularly, said hello as he was passing the two of us. I stopped him and asked about ordering a few boxes of the tea. I'm right out of it and am desperate to get ahold of some more. He chatted with the two of us, agreed to order some for me and then he went about his business. At the counter the woman was quite affable as I placed my items on the counter and paid for them.

When we left I remarked to my friend about how exceptional the service was in the store. She stopped in her tracks and said, "Did you really find that exceptional?" I said that I did. I didn't feel even slightly 'in the way' in the store as I often do in the much larger chain grocery stores, I didn't feel spoken down to or patronised in any way. I felt that I was treated just like any other customer.

She said, "It's sad that for you, what I expect as the norm, you experience as exceptional."

Could this be true?

Six years in to the disability experience and I am so used to getting less that the 'new norm' is satisfaction as long as 'less' isn't accompanied by overt acts of discrimination. Covert? OK, that's fine.

I know that it's important when working with people that you set expectations high enough to encourage growth - to encourage striving for better - to demonstrate faith in potential.

I wonder if now I've set the bar so low because I have no faith in the potential of society to strive to become more - pick a word: welcoming, tolerant, inclusive - and I have absolutely zero belief that it has any desire to reach those goals.

Or I wonder if I've set the bar low just so I don't have to always be doing something, reacting to something, speaking to someone, writing to someone.

I don't know.

In fact I'm still so flustered by what my friend said that I'm working though it ... so, what do you think ... do you think that over time those of us in the disability community think that everything is fine just if it isn't horrible? I'm curious if anyone else has lowered the bar too.

http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-new-normal-adapting-to-less.html

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2013/05/18/10-years-ago-the-most-critical-time-in-the-history-of-the-world/

Posted by Fred Clark

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=15404

May 18, 2003, on this blog: The Most Critical Time in the History of the World

A while back, Josh Marshall posted a nasty little piece of hate mail he received … that illustrated this point.

It’s the typical supercilious undergrad tone — the kind of thing written by people who want to be Ben Shapiro when they grow small. But one sentence in particular (and yes, this is all one sentence, if not quite one thought) stood out:

This may be the most critical time in the history of the modern world much less of our country; and it is my fervent hope that the American People will remember and appropriately reward those, like you, who have chosen to use this opportunity to forward a political cause, and not incidentally their own careers, by attempting to sabotage an honorable effort to make the world a safer, better place.

You have to love the uppercase “American People” — and I’m guessing this guy never expresses a hope without it being “fervent.” But the important part here is the section in bold — that ours is “the most critical time in … history.”

Like many people who blindly support[ed] this war — including perhaps many in the White House and the Pentagon — the writer is desperate for his life to have some greater meaning or purpose than it apparently does. He hasn’t quite managed to stare into the abyss, but he’s taken a quick glance in its direction and seen something deep and dark and frightening that he doesn’t quite know how to deal with.

“All flesh is grass,” the prophet Isaiah said, and “the grass withereth.” This guy, understandably, doth not want to wither. He wants his life to matter, to mean something. He wants to be remembered after he is gone.

He has given this war a metaphysical, religious significance. For him, the war isn’t about oil, or “liberating” Iraq, or overthrowing an evil dictator. It’s grander than that — grander even than the dreams of empire that seem to be motivating Cheney, Perle and Wolfowitz. This war is an attempt to give his life meaning by turning our times into “the most critical time in the history of the modern world.” If our times are meaningful, he hopes (fervently), then our lives must also be meaningful.

The writer gives his life meaning by taking a part in this great, epochal, transcendent struggle.

And note how easy, how undemanding of sacrifice, it is for him to play a role in this epochal, historic event. All he has to do is watch Fox News and fire-off the occasional sophomoric e-mail — maybe even wave a flag, attend a corporate-radio rally, or rename some snack food.

This letter-bomber is not the only one narcotizing his existential crisis with an enthusiasm for “shock and awe.” This is widespread — it’s one of the reasons it is nearly impossible to have a civil conversation with our fellow Americans who believe — or want to believe, or need to believe — Bush’s baseless arguments for capricious war.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2013/05/18/10-years-ago-the-most-critical-time-in-the-history-of-the-world/

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=15404

yarn_harlot_feed

Posted by Stephanie

http://www.yarnharlot.ca/blog/archives/2013/05/17/make_it_dont_fake_it.html

I've been waiting all week to feel happier. To feel reconciled to recent events, to create a fragile peace and you know what? I suck at it. I'm as good at this as cacti are at cuddling and somewhere in...

http://www.yarnharlot.ca/blog/archives/2013/05/17/make_it_dont_fake_it.html

aqueductpress_feed

Posted by Timmi Duchamp

http://aqueductpress.blogspot.com/2013/05/seattle-science-festival.html

Here's a press release from the Seattle Science Festival (June 6-16), which will be offering a program of interest to anyone even slightly geeky:

I would like to take this opportunity to invite you and your organization to the second annual Seattle Science Festival. This year, the region’s largest celebration of science will take place June 6-16, 2013 to celebrate the importance of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to our community’s culture and to its continued growth and prosperity. The Seattle Science Festival will consist of the following components:

· Science EXPO Day, Saturday, June 8, will feature exciting, engaging events all day long throughout the grounds of Seattle Center. Over 15,000 students, parents, scientists, educators and other community members are anticipated to take part in this FREE event. Science EXPO Day will showcase over 150 hands-on activities and demonstrations; it will also feature live science performances on the EXPO Day Stage. FREE BUS PARKING IS AVAILABLE ON SCIENCE EXPO DAY! Contact Jordan Adams at jadams@pacsci.org for more details.

· Signature Programs, June 6-16, will provide events developed by our program collaborators specifically for the Seattle Science Festival. Signature Programs include behind-the-scenes tours, science adventures, field trip opportunities for classrooms, workshops, screenings of science-themed films, a Cool Jobs Series at the Seattle Public Library on June 9-Computer Science, June 12-Green & Clean Technology, and June 13-Biomedical Science, plus many other events held at venues all over the Puget Sound region.

· Opening Night at the Paramount Theatre, June 6, 8 – 10 PM Beyond Infinity? The Search for Understanding at the Limits of Space and Time. Featuring Brian Greene, Sean Carroll, Adam Frank and the West Coast premiere of Icarus at the Edge of Time, and music by Philip Glass, conducted by Marcus Tsutakawa and performed by the Garfield High School Orchestra. Avoid service charges by purchasing tickets IN PERSON at the Paramount Theatre Box Office at 911 Pine Street, Seattle, or for 10 or more tickets, contact their Group Sales Manager at (206) 315-8054.

· Closing Night at the Seattle Repertory Theatre, June 15, 7:30 – 9:30 PM Our 11th Hour: Straight Talk on Climate Change from People Who Know. Featuring Kevin E. Trenberth, Richard Alley, Andrew Revkin and a performance of Seattle Opera’s Heron and the Salmon Girl. Buy tickets at www.seattlesciencefestival.org.

These high profile events will present some of the greatest scientific and creative minds of our time and weave together science, music, art and philosophy for two inspiring, thought-provoking and engaging evenings.

How can you get involved?

· Sign up for the Seattle Science Festival E-Newsletter

· Coordinate a group of students to bring to a Seattle Science Festival event

· Become a Seattle Science Festival Ambassador and help spread the word

· Sign up to be a Seattle Science Festival volunteer by May 22

Visit www.seattlesciencefestival.org to learn more about how you can get involved and I hope to see you there!

http://aqueductpress.blogspot.com/2013/05/seattle-science-festival.html

pervocracy_feed

http://pervocracy.blogspot.com/2013/05/cosmocking-june-13.html

I don't know how long I can keep doing this. I thought Cosmo would be Cosmo forever, but now I'm afraid/hopeful it might not be. They have a new editor-in-chief, Joanna Coles, who is slowly and subtly steering Cosmo towards growing the fuck up.

It's not drastic--which I actually approve of; if it turned into Ms. Magazine overnight they'd just lose their audience--but changes are happening. Each issue has just a little more political and feminist content and just a little less "30 Reasons Your Vagina Is Doing Everything Wrong." This month's issue has profiles of a woman teaching teenage girls to program, a woman campaigning for better equal-pay laws and enforcement, a female soldier who was wounded in Afghanistan and talks about why she still believes women should be on the front lines... this is not the Cosmo I know.

The magazine is still mostly fluff, and the misogyny and general weirdness are far from gone. So I've got enough to write about this month. But if this keeps up, I don't know. I might have to switch to Maxim or something. Which might not be all bad; I've mined the well of Cosmo pretty deep at this point, and could use some freshness. Besides, making fun of Cosmo always has a little tinge of "dammit feminine women, stop oppressing yourselves!" to it; Maximocking (preliminary working title) would be addressing the intersection of masculinity and misogyny.

But for now... Cosmocking's not dead yet!

Purple color! Sofia Vergara! I don't know who she is, but to be fair, the only TV shows I watch are Mythbusters and Doctor Who, so I am not a very good arbiter of pop culture notability! Um... None of these headlines are entertainingly ridiculous! You see why I'm having problems here!

Ah, there's the Cosmo I know and... know. The left-hand image is "sexy," and the right-hand is of course "skanky." And it's a stunning contrast until you apply the slightest common sense: do you think Heidi Montag suntans in that position? She just hangs out that way all day? Or was she shifting position or getting up and the photographer took a picture at the exact moment that looks like she's doing a porn pose? If anyone's skanky here, it's that photographer.

Have Drunk Sex Sober!

Beats the reverse, I guess. The idea here is that you can have all the fun of drinking, but without the actual alcohol, by just acting uninhibited and a little bit confused. Oh, and you should have a red lightbulb. Red light is a lot like being drunk.

Fall into that bleary-eyed, no-words-needed kind of hookup that's the touchstone of drunk sex. Because you'll be in a slightly dreamy state, the next morning will feel almost the same: Did that really happen... or did I imagine it?

Kudos to Cosmo for not encouraging people to do this via actual alcohol, but I've never said to myself "that was pretty good sex, but dammit, I just remember it too well."

Recently, an anonymous NYC guy put up 600 fliers with the hashtag #ThisIsHowYouWinHerBack all over the city to try to get his ex back. His efforts, alas, didn't work, but he's just the latest in a slew of men who are trying to dispel their growing rep as wimpy beta boys by posting love declarations online. "We're seeing some young men use big, look-at-me-antics to publicly take back their status as dominators."

Oh my God that guy's poor ex. I mean, a couple points to the guy for not putting her name or picture out there, but all points immediately subtracted forever because being surrounded by hundreds of public "I won't let you go" messages from your ex is still horrifying no matter how memey-clever they are.

They're right, though, this is a very dominating gesture. And that's not a good thing. That's not "taking back" some God-given right he has as a man. It's putting someone in a submissive position who most likely did not want to and definitely did not agree to be in that position.

[When there's lube on your hands after sex,] use the excess lube to grease each other up. Rub it on his chest and your breasts, since those areas are less likely to come into contact with the fancy linens you scored for 50 percent off at OneKingsLane.com.

1. Ew. I mean, nothing against people who like it messy, but if you're just trying to be neat and tidy, this is... not neat and tidy.

2. Oh man, I want to see someone try this with silicone lube.

3. Really depends on position what parts of you touch the sheets.

4. Smooth product placement there, champ. Barely noticed it.

[How to tell if a male friend wants to date you:] Tell him all about other guys you're dating, and see how he reacts. Or ask about one of his good friends as though you're interested. If he gets annoyed or defensive, there's a chance he may have feelings for you.

Cosmo doesn't describe how you transition the conversation from "I'm dating a ton of dudes these days... by the way, is Steve single?" to "oh, never mind, I was just making things up to upset you, want to go out?" That seems like the difficult part.

Could You Fall for a Guy Wearing Clogs?

See? The new, more political Cosmo is all about tackling the tough issues.

[ETA: The video linked in comments on this post, and the ensuing discussion, deal with sexual harassment and assault.]

http://pervocracy.blogspot.com/2013/05/cosmocking-june-13.html

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2013/05/17/the-evangelical-habit-of-bearing-false-witness-against-mainline-protestants/

Posted by Fred Clark

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=15498

Brian McLaren shares a confession, and a personal testimony, about the pernicious and pervasive temptation to bear false witness against one’s neighbors.

Specifically, he addresses the widespread convention among white evangelicals — so widespread it’s an expectation, almost a requirement — that says it is somehow acceptable, and not vicious, to bear false witness against mainline Protestants:

I agree with Tony [Jones] that there’s a common rhetorical strategy among Evangelicals that I myself have indulged in, as has Tony by his own admission: trying to seize the middle ground as morally high ground. If you have critics to your right, the only way to gain some space to differ “to the left” is by throwing somebody farther to the left under the bus, so to speak. …

One example: years ago, I spoke with disdain about a “mainline liberal” writer — my attempt to bolster my Evangelical credentials and seize middle-moral high ground by throwing “a liberal” under the bus. I had actually never read anything he had written, but people I respected thought he was dangerous. So I echoed them, needing to bolster my reputation to my right, a sign of my immaturity and insecurity on my part. Again, things I’m not proud of.

Some time later, I was asked to speak at the same event as this person. He was easy-going and gracious. I suppose he knew what I had said about him, but he didn’t throw it in my face. Anyway, at the end of the event, there were long lines of people waiting to talk to us and get books signed. His line was much longer than mine.

So when my line dwindled away, I had the chance to eavesdrop on what people said to him. Person after person said, sometimes tearfully, “Thank you. If it weren’t for your books, I wouldn’t be a Christian,” or “Through reading your book, I became a Christian,” or “I left the church 30 years ago, but when I read book X, I came back.” That’s pretty moving for an evangelical to hear, you know? I realized that this fellow was actually an evangelist, reaching people for Christ who never would be reached by my more conservative friends, or by me!

… One of the challenges of getting older is that you have to keep leaving behind rhetorical “tricks” that you considered acceptable (or were completely unconscious of) when you were younger.

My guess is the other author was John Shelby Spong, the liberal writer unread but widely reviled by evangelicals as history’s greatest monster. But it could have been any number of other mainline Protestant writers. When it comes to liberals routinely condemned as “dangerous” by respected members of the white evangelical establishment — and thus supposedly fair game for disdainful, dishonest attacks — there’s no shortage of potential candidates.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2013/05/17/the-evangelical-habit-of-bearing-false-witness-against-mainline-protestants/

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=15498

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Ta-nehisiCoates/~3/DZc-FIOqCso/story01.htm

Posted by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Here are two more posts worth checking out. One is from Razib Khan, on the biological basis of race. The other is a follow-up from Andrew which engages (with much sincerity and seriousness) with the commenters here.

From Razib:

Ta-Nehisi has used an imagine of Walter White, the first African American head of the NAACP, to illustrate the pliability of the black identity. It certainly shows that there are no fixed definitions of race which are particularly useful. But that is a misconception of biological science, which is rife with exceptions and boundary conditions, and characterized by an instrumental perspective. The data above suggests that self-identified African Americans are characterized by some African ancestry, but over 90% are more than 50% African in ancestry. Walter White, who had five black great great great grandparents and 27 white ones, was almost certainly less than 20% African in ancestry. There are such people even today, but they are not typical, and do not disprove the reality that African Americans are predominantly of African ancestry.

I should be clear about something -- the invocation of Walter White or Mordecai Wyatt Johnson or Barack Obama isn't to say that most (or even many) black people share their particular ancestry. The point is that what you check on your census form in America is a product of social context. Social context is why someone who looks like me can be black (and proud, even!) in America and "colored" somewhere else. Social context is why our concept of race doesn't translate to, say, Brazil. This is a very present issue. Etta James didn't call herself "biracial." Perhaps if she were living today, she would.

Calling race a "social construct" does not mean that the biological ancestry -- and specifically West African ancestry -- of African Americans is mythical. It also doesn't mean that my ancestry has no actual implications. (See the map of sickle-cell density above.) And in the future, it may mean even more. Ancestry -- where my great-great-great-great grandparents are from -- is a fact. What you call people with that particular ancestry is not. It changes depending on where you are in the world, when you are there, and who has power.

In this time and in this place, I am the same as man who immigrates from Kenya. We are both "black." Even if our ancestry is different. I believe the article Razib links to bears this out:

As expected, PCA on our entire sample revealed the greatest genetic differentiation between the US Caucasians and the Africans, with the African Americans intermediate between them, reflecting their recent admixture between ancestors from Europe and Africa. Our estimate of European individual admixture (IA) in the African Americans was also roughly consistent with prior studies [3], with an average of 21.9%. We found considerable variation among individuals in terms of European IA, and a number of individuals with particularly high European IA values (eight individuals of 136, or 6% with values greater than 45%).

Prior studies focusing on mtDNA and Y chromosomes have found a greater African and lesser European representation of mtDNA haplotypes compared with Y chromosome haplotypes in African Americans, suggesting a greater contribution of African matrilineal descent compared with patrilineal descent [6,7]. For example, Kayser and colleagues [6] estimated that 27.5% to 33.6% of Y chromosomes in African Americans are of European origin, compared with 9.0% to 15.4% of mtDNA haplotypes.

Here is Andrew on a similar question of race and ancestry:

"Race" as a term is very nebulous. But human subgroups with similar ancestries can have group differences in DNA -- and intelligence is highly unlikely to have no genetic basis at all (although most now believe its impact is greatly qualified by cultural and developmental differences).

We are, indeed, agreed. So that leaves us with this:

But what I really want TNC to address is the data. Yes, "race" is a social construct when we define it as "white", "black," "Asian" or, even more ludicrously, "Hispanic." But why then does the overwhelming data show IQ as varying in statistically significant amounts between these completely arbitrary racially constructed populations? Is the testing rigged? If the categories are arbitrary, then the IQs should be randomly distributed. But they aren't, even controlling for education, income, etc.

I do not know. Andrew is more inclined to believe that there is some group-wide genetic explanation for the IQ difference. I am more inclined to believe that the difference lies in how those groups have been treated. One thing that I am not convinced by is controlling for income and education.

African-Americans are not merely another maltreated minority on the scale of non-WASPs. They are a community whose advancement was specifically and actively retarded by American policy and private action. The antebellum South passed laws against teaching black people to read. In the postbellum South, black communities were the targets of a long-running campaign of terror. The terrorists took very specific aim at the institutions of African-American advancement. They targeted churches. They targeted businesses. And they targeted schools. In the mid-20th century, as we have been documenting, it was the policy of this country to deny African-Americans access to the same methods of wealth-building, that it was making available to whites.

This alone would be bad enough, but what makes it much worse is segregation. In his book American Apartheid, Douglass Massey looks at the dissimilarity indexes among African-Americans in various cities across the country in the mid to late 20th century. To summarize (and I can talk more about this) the lowest levels of dissimilarity in black communities are higher than the highest levels of dissimilarity among "white" immigrants.

This is not merely a problem for your local diversity and sensitivity workshop. It is a problem of wealth and power. When you create a situation in which a community has a disproportionate number of poor people, and then you hyper-segregate that community, you multiply the problems of poverty for the entire community--poor or not. That is to say that black individuals are not simply poorer and less wealthier than white individuals. Because of segregation, black individuals and white individuals of the same income and same wealth, do not live in communities of equal wealth.

The consequences of this are profound.* In this paper sociologist John Logan looked at the intersection of housing and segregation and found that, because of segregation, affluent African-American families, on average, lived in poorer neighborhoods than white families of much lower income:

For example, consider only affluent households whose incomes were above $75,000 in each year (adjusted for inflation). Table 2 shows that the average affluent white household lived in a neighborhood where the poverty share was under 10 percent in every year. But poor white households (incomes below $40,000) lived in neighborhoods with only slightly greater poverty shares, about 12 percent or 13 percent.

In contrast, affluent blacks lived in neighborhoods that were 14-15 percent poor, and affluent Hispanics in neighborhoods that were about 13 percent poor. On average around the country, in this whole period of nearly two decades, affluent blacks and Hispanics lived in neighborhoods with fewer resources than did poor whites.

In a segregated America making individual one-to-one comparisons between black and white people is going to be fraught. That is the point of segregation.

What bearing does segregation have on IQ differential? I don't know. My skepticism of genetics is rooted in the fact that arguments for genetic inferiority among people of African ancestry are old, and generally have not fared well. My skepticism is also rooted in the belief that power generally seeks to justify itself. The prospect of actual equality among the races is frightening. If black and white people truly are equal on a bone-deep level, then the game might really be rigged, and we might actually have to do something about it. I think there's much more evidence of that rigging, then there is evidence of cognitive deficiency .

I must add that I can not pretend to be a dispassionate, nor impartial observer. I come from a particular place. I've now been out in the world, and seen how other people in other places live. They don't strike me as more intelligent. They strike me as better armed. There's nothing scientific about that. But I think we all have core faiths. These are mine. You've been warned.

*For more on this read Nikole Hannah-Jones' stunning piece for Pro Publica--"Living Apart: How The Government Betrayed A Landmark Civil Rights Law." It was through her work that I was exposed to Logan's research.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Ta-nehisiCoates/~3/DZc-FIOqCso/story01.htm

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SociologicalImagesSeeingIsBelieving/~3/u-LGA7TCevU/

Posted by Lisa Wade, PhD

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/?p=55262

I absolutely love this photograph of a collage on the wall of an activist in the rather new national movement to hold colleges and universities accountable for sexual assault. Referencing Title IX and the “bigger picture,” it documents cross-college efforts to use the amendment to ensure that sex crimes on campuses don’t interfere with women’s rights to equal access to education.

What is exciting is that this is a national movement. The many college names pinned to the board are just some of the schools that have filed, are filing, or will file Title IX complaints with the Office for Civil Rights. “Oxy” is my school.

I’ve been somewhat involved with Oxy’s role in this movement — the credit goes to Drs. Caroline Heldman and Danielle Dirks and the dozens of survivors who, as part of the coalition, have publicly and confidentially shared their stories — but I’ve had the pleasure of talking to journalists about our case. Regarding the national movement, they often ask me “Why now?”

Why Now?

This is a tough question to answer and, first and foremost, credit goes to the extraordinary people at the center of this fight, such as Annie Clark, Andrea Pino, Dana Bolger, and Alexandra Brodsky at Know Your IX. As Margaret Mead famously said:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

Importantly, though, the efforts of this small group have been greatly enhanced by the internet and, specifically, social networking sites. Students (and sometimes faculty, staff, and administrators) are no longer confronting these issues alone. They are reaching out across campuses and talking with each other; they are teaching each other how to file federal complaints; they are building and sharing templates; they are sharing stories of institutional foot dragging and spin and developing effective resistance and protest strategies.

For example, Annie Clark, who filed federal complaints against the University of North Carolina, helped Profs. Dirks and Heldman at Occidental College file their complaints: “Over the past few months,” she writes:

I have spent countless hours with them on Skype and the phone in order to share information and help the[m] write their complaints. Yet, six months ago, I had never even heard of Occidental College — and many of the 37 women there who filed had not yet heard about Title IX protection against gender discrimination beyond athletics.

These coalitions are creating both activist networks and fast friends. This is a picture of students at Swarthmore (Swat) showing their love for students at Occidental (Oxy). Both campuses filed Title IX complaints on the same day:

As Prof. Dirks explains, this collaboration is a big deal:

[L]earning the stories of other survivors who are actively pushing their colleges and universities to create safe and equitable learning environments has opened the floodgates of what students now feel empowered to do.

This is all possible, of course, because the internet is still at least a somewhat democratized technology. You and I are equals on the internet, at least in principle. So we all have the opportunity to produce content. In contrast, other forms of media — TV, radio, movies, magazines, books — typically offer us only the opportunity to consume.

The activists in this movement have a platform and a megaphone, then, metaphorically speaking. The technology — and our regulation of it in ways that preserve its democratic nature — is helping enable this movement. Just as the TV made a huge difference in shifting popular opinion about the Civil Rights Movement. Accordingly, we need to remember this when corporations fight to own and control the internet and its distribution. For reasons like this one, we should be fighting back with the goal of making the internet a public utility. Democracy depends on it.

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

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http://dailyotter.org/2013/05/17/otter-looks-at-the-humans-who-are-looking-at-him/

Posted by Daily Otter

http://dailyotter.org/?p=6545

Otter Looks at the Humans Who Are Looking at Him 1

Otter Looks at the Humans Who Are Looking at Him 2

Thanks, Cameron!

http://dailyotter.org/2013/05/17/otter-looks-at-the-humans-who-are-looking-at-him/

http://dailyotter.org/?p=6545

http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com/2013/05/tea-time.html

Yesterday I went for a cup of tea, where I sometimes go. It's one of two or three places I know where the tea is made and served, the money is turned into returned change and the tea is made - all by people with intellectual disabilities. My whole transaction, from start to finish, was done with the staff of the cafe - not with the staff of the staff.

My order was taken by a fellow who found the box of green tea, plopped it into a cup, asked me what size of cup I wanted and then poured the right amount of water into the cup. When it came to doing the money, he called for help - but he called for a fellow cafe staff. The two, both with intellectual disabilities, punched numbers into the cash register. Well, that not quite right, the other staff, who was obviously good with numbers - simply showed the tea maker which buttons to push. He seemed to know that it was the other man's sale and the other man's responsibility - so he didn't take it from him.

It was great to watch such teamwork. It was great to see them rely on each other without calling for help from one of their support staff.

This means of course that their support staff are doing a really, really good job.

They must understand that their job isn't to be there and do for ... but rather teach a whole whack of, a real variety of ... skills.

We had our tea, I had gone with a friend from work, and chatted in the cafe. It was full of sound and laughter and great good spirit.

My tea was good.

The whole experience was better.

http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com/2013/05/tea-time.html

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2013/05/17/nra-steppin-out-with-my-baby/

Posted by Fred Clark

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=15493

Nicolae: The Rise of Antichrist; pp. 147-153

Rayford Steele is home alone in his apartment in New Babylon. For just a second, it seems as though he’s about to have a real human emotion:

Rayford thought he had had enough sleep, catching catnaps on his long journey. He had not figured the toll that tension and terror and disgust would exact on his mind and body.

“Tension and terror and disgust” are surprisingly appropriate responses to what he has witnessed over the past 24 hours — hopscotching across America just ahead of the destruction of Chicago, Dallas and San Francisco. But we quickly realize that the scope of Rayford’s concern isn’t big enough to include everyone in those cities — or even to include anyone in those cities, not even the young co-pilot whom he had sent off to certain death without any word of warning.

In his and Amanda’s own apartment, as comfortable as air-conditioning could make a place in Iraq, Rayford disrobed to his boxers and sat on the end of his bed. Shoulders slumped, elbows on knees, he exhaled loudly and realized how exhausted he truly was. He had finally heard from home. He knew Amanda was safe, Chloe was on the mend, and Buck — as usual — was on the move. He didn’t know what he thought about this Verna Zee threatening the security of the Tribulation Force’s new safe house (Loretta’s). But he would trust Buck, and God, in that.

Rayford’s circle of concern includes his wife, his daughter and his son-in-law — the four members of the “Tribulation Force” — and that’s it. Even Loretta exists only parenthetically, as the source of something he needs more than as a person. After witnessing the destruction of several major cities, including his own home town, Rayford thinks of only one refugee from that violence, and then only to worry that her finding refuge with Loretta might jeopardize Loretta’s ability to provide a refuge for him.

It seems the only way Rayford is able to acknowledge other people is when he imagines he has some cause to resent them.

Rayford stretched out on his back atop the bedcovers. He put his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling. How he’d love to get a peek at the treasure trove of Bruce’s computer archives. But as he drifted off to a sound sleep, he was trying to figure a way to get back to Chicago by Sunday. Surely there had to be some way he could make it to Bruce’s memorial service. He was pleading his case with God as sleep enveloped him.

Getting back to Chicago by Sunday could prove difficult, what with Chicago no longer being there.

By “Chicago,” of course, Rayford really means the Chicago suburbs — which were miraculously unscathed by the non-radioactive nuclear bombs that fell inside the city limits and on O’Hare International Airport (killing an untold number of Rayford’s former colleagues there).

But Rayford desperately wants to attend “Bruce’s memorial service” — the ceremony he and Buck have arranged in honor of their late friend, and only their friend. Bruce was one of dozens killed in the first wave of missile strikes on Chicago, which destroyed the hospital near the church where he had been a patient. Other members of the New Hope Village Church congregation may also have been patients there, or health workers, and it seems unlikely that Bruce would be the only person the congregation would need to memorialize even just from that first attack.

But that attack was quickly followed by the destruction of the airport, and then the all-out assault on the city of Chicago itself. The authors, like their heroes, never seem interested in how many thousands or millions might have been slain or injured in these attacks, but surely it must include so many people — including so many personally and directly beloved by members of NHVC — that the idea of a memorial service focused only on Bruce would have to seem absurd and appalling.

Keep in mind that the authors told us about “a huge aerial attack on the city of Chicago” on page 63. We’re only on page 148. In Chapter 3 they destroyed the city of Chicago and here we are, opening Chapter 8 with Rayford Steele “trying to figure a way to get back to Chicago by Sunday.”

That’s not merely a continuity error. That’s a rejection of the entire principle of continuity.

(I’m trying to do justice to how very, very wrong those two sentences are, but all I can come up with is: “As she drifted off to a sound sleep, Leia was trying to figure a way to get back to Alderaan by Sunday. Surely there had to be some way she could make it to Obi Wan’s memorial service.”)

After a short scene between Buck and Chaim Rosenzweig (which we’ll return to later) Rayford is jolted from his sleep by — what else? — a ringing telephone.

It’s Hattie Durham calling. This provides Jerry Jenkins with a chance to review and rehash Hattie’s history in this chapter the same way he did Chaim and Tsion’s history in the last chapter. First, though, we get one of those unnecessary phone conversation scenes in which characters belabor all the logistical details of when they will next meet to talk in person.

There’s a full page of that here, but here’s the important bit:

“Rayford, I really need to talk to you. Nicolae … said he didn’t have a problem with my talking with you. I know you want to be appropriate and all that. It’s not a date. Let’s just have dinner somewhere where it will be obvious that we’re just old friends talking. Please?”

Rayford warily agrees, then says:

“Hattie, do me a favor. If you agree this shouldn’t look like a date, don’t dress up.”

“Captain Steele,” she said, suddenly formal, “stepping out is the last thing on my mind.”

“Stepping out” has many meanings, but it seems the authors are only aware of the sense of the phrase as sung by Fred Astaire in Easter Parade. I choose to think this is meta-Hattie briefly asserting herself, subtly mocking the middle-aged Rayford by tossing in some antiquated 1940s slang.

The odd thing here is that it would make sense for Rayford to worry that this meeting appear “appropriate and all that” and that it mustn’t “look like a date.” Hattie Durham is the fiancee of the global potentate — a man whose word is law and who annihilates whole cities on a whim. It could be very dangerous for anyone to get the misimpression that you are stepping out with his girlfriend. Rayford should be nervous about this meeting for all the same reasons that Vincent Vega had to be nervous about taking Marsellus Wallace’s wife out to dinner in Pulp Fiction.

Yet none of those very reasonable fears seem to occur to Rayford Steele. He isn’t worried about angering the potentate. He isn’t even worried about providing what could later be a pretext for his disappearance/detention/dismemberment by his boss the Antichrist. (Although, to be fair, the Antichrist of these books doesn’t seem devious and conniving enough for that to be something Rayford would have to worry about. This is disappointing. I prefer my super-villains more on the devious and cunning side.)

No, Rayford wants to be sure that this dinner “shouldn’t look like a date” because he is a married man and he doesn’t want to give any hint of moral impropriety.

And that’s just kind of weird. He doesn’t have to worry about Amanda getting the wrong idea about this non-date dinner meeting, because Amanda presumably knows him and trusts him. And it seems odd that he would worry about setting a bad moral example for the Antichrist.

The sense I get, actually, is that Rayford’s insistence on keeping up appearances here has to do with some idea about not damaging his “Christian witness.” It seems to be an attempt to “abstain from all appearances of evil,” as 1 Thessalonians 5:22 doesn’t actually say, but the KJV-toting authors think it does.

But that, again, is odd because once Rayford and Hattie actually meet, he spends most of their conversation elusively dodging her questions about God and the Antichrist and the whole End Times prophecy business that Rayford and the authors think of as “the gospel.” Rayford takes great pains not to do anything that would damage his “witness,” but he takes even greater pains not to “witness” when he’s given the chance to do so.

This seems like the confused behavior of a man who’s decided that appearing “good” is more important than doing good.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2013/05/17/nra-steppin-out-with-my-baby/

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=15493

ursulav_feed

http://ursulav.livejournal.com/1540255.html

So, if you haven’t already read Hyperbole and a Half’s absolutely brilliant write-up about severe depression, go forth and read. I’ll wait.

How ’bout that, huh?

I was talking to Kevin about the post (we’re both fans, and have both had our own bouts with depression) and as I was talking, I realized that before I had my particular breakdown, two people had said something to me—two people, one of whom I don’t know, one of whom said one word—and those two people had a profound impact on my experience with depression.

One was good, one was bad.

The first—the good one—was my doctor. When I’d gone in for my checkup after my divorce, when I was getting all the medical stuff done fast before I went off my ex-husband’s insurance, she asked me if I needed antidepressants.

I told her no, that I was fine, because it hadn’t occurred to me that what was happening wasn’t fine, if that makes any sense. Yes, I couldn’t sleep and was sobbing a lot, but I was getting a divorce! I’d moved out! Random sobbing and epic insomnia are normal in that circumstance! It’d be weird if I wasn’t miserable and irrational!

That’s what I was thinking, anyhow. I don’t know how coherently I expressed any of that, but she looked at me over the clipboard and said “Uh-huh. Well, call me if that changes, and we’ll get you started on something right away. It’s a lot easier to start it now than when you’re at the bottom of a hole you can’t get out of.”

I can’t say that this phrase saved my life, because I’ve never had suicidal tendencies (the closest I ever got was a profound hope that the atheists were right and I eventually wouldn’t have to deal with this any more) but it sure as hell saved me a lot of time and grief.

It normalized everything. It made it a medical problem. It still took me awhile to figure out that a lot of things were probably linked to depression (insomnia, say!) but when I finally broke, at some point what I thought was “Oh, hey! I’m at the bottom of that hole she warned me about! I will call my doctor. She will fix it.”

(And may Ganesh give her every blessing known to nurse practitioners, because she handled it like a pro. “Oh, no! Okay…okay…yes, that’d be anxiety.” (I believe I said “Oh! Is that what that is? Neat!” because even in a hole, I am still fundamentally me.) “Now where are you? Let’s find the nearest pharmacy, and I’ll call in what I can over state lines. Come in as soon as you’re back in NC.”)

If she hadn’t said that one sentence, I would have floundered around for ages, trying to do the brain chemistry equivalent of fixing a broken leg through the power of positive thinking. But she did say it and so when I finally realized what was going on—”Hey! This is a nervous breakdown!”—I didn’t go through any of the stages of trying to figure out how you treat that or was it bad enough or whatever, because she had set the stage.

Thank god.

The other person was…well, less helpful. And I don’t know her name and couldn’t pick her out of a line-up, but I still feel a vague bitterness toward her, because when I was newly moved out of my house and away from my garden, I went to a local garden center to ask what I could grow in pots in the shade of a building–real, true, deep dry shade, in permanent shadow.

She curled her lip and said “Plastic.”

I know I tried asking a few questions, and maybe she suggested ivy or something, but it ended quickly and she walked off with the you-are-wasting-my-time air. And I, in innocent despair, believed her and went home and didn’t garden again until I moved in with Kevin.

I know perfectly well WHY I believed her—I was depressed and getting a divorce and leaving one of the cats with him and it made total sense that of course something else I loved was going to be taken from me, because that was just how life was going to be. But I do wish I’d cracked a book open, because, as it happens, she was incredibly wrong.

I mean, jeez, I had flowerpots, I could have done ferns. Impatiens. Sedges. I could have grown moss, if nothing else. If I didn’t feel like watering, there are epimediums and cast iron plant and any number of things. Meehania will grow in a dark closet. (Fine, that’s obscure, I can’t blame her for missing that one. But I could have taken up growing mushrooms, for cryin’ out loud!)

There’s no knowing what road you don’t walk down, of course, but that definitely slowed my recovery. Gardening is what I DO. I say “I’m a gardener,” as often as I say “I’m an artist.” Gardening is where I feel the most like myself. (Art is where I don’t actually notice myself, if that makes any sense.) If I’d been digging around, I think I would have been much more resilient. (And by “resilient” I may mean “would have put grow-lights all over the living room and been living in a jungle” because if that had occurred to me, I expect I would have done it in a heartbeat.)

Plus there’s that one soil bacteria that gives your serotonin levels a boost, which is not to be sneezed at when one is fighting chemical wars inside one’s skull.

So I don’t know. Life is better now and both these things have largely faded, but Hyperbole reminded me. Much like single pieces of corn.

(Mind you, at the time I found duck decoys pretty damn hysterical…)

Originally published at Tea with the Squash God. You can comment here or there.

http://ursulav.livejournal.com/1540255.html

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SociologicalImagesSeeingIsBelieving/~3/u2vHJ2rd20w/

Posted by Lisa Wade, PhD

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/?p=55195

Cross-posted at The Huffington Post.

Sociologist Alexandria Walton Radford has some new research that is rather disheartening. Radford was interested in the college choices of ambitious and high-performing high school students from different class backgrounds. Using a data set with about 900 high school valedictorians, she asked whether students applied to highly selective colleges, if they got in, and whether they matriculated.

She found a stark class difference on all these variables, especially between high socioeconomic status (SES) students and everyone else. Over three-quarters of high SES valedictorians (79%) applied to at least one highly selective college. In contrast, only 59% of middle SES and 50% of low SES valedictorians did the same. Admission and matriculation rates followed suit.

Interviews with a smaller group of these valedictorians shed light on why we see such dramatic differences in the application choices of low, middle, and high SES students. Radford explains that most students applied to schools with which they were already familiar. High SES students were much more likely to know people who had attended highly selective colleges, so they were more comfortable applying. They also felt more confident that they’d be successful at such an institution; less affluent students were more intimidated by these schools.

Radford concludes by arguing that it’s a mistake to leave decisions about whether and how to apply for college admission to families. Doing so, she writes, “allows the advantages (and disadvantages) of one generation to be passed on to the next generation.” School-based college guidance would go some way towards evening out the differences and making higher education admissions more meritocratic.

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

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http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/?p=55195

http://dailyotter.org/2013/05/16/otter-breaks-through-the-water/

Posted by Daily Otter

http://dailyotter.org/?p=6541

Otter Breaks through the Water

Via TrishaLyn

http://dailyotter.org/2013/05/16/otter-breaks-through-the-water/

http://dailyotter.org/?p=6541

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2013/05/16/christian-denominations-and-marriage-equality-a-simple-quiz/

Posted by Fred Clark

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=15489

This doesn’t need to be complicated. Here’s a simple quiz to help sort things out.

Some Christian denominations regard marriage as a sacrament — a tangible “outward sign of inward grace.” For others it is an “ordinance” — a rite performed in obedience to the commands Christ gave to his followers. Those are the two views shared by nearly all Christian denominations.

All any Christian needs to do, then, is to consider whether they view marriage as a “sacrament” or as an “ordinance.” That distinction will determine, in turn, any given Christian’s logical view on marriage equality.

1. Does your denomination regard marriage as a sacrament?

If “yes,” see Answer A below.

If “no,” then your denomination regards marriage as an ordinance. See Answer B below.

2. Does your denomination regard marriage as an ordinance?

If “yes,” see Answer B below.

If “no,” then your denomination regards marriage as a sacrament. See Answer A below.

Answer A:

Congratulations! You support marriage equality!

Sectarian arguments against same-sex marriage all boil down to arguments that only sectarian marriages should be legal. These are not good arguments.

Your particular denomination may or may not regard same-sex relationships as a sin, but this is irrelevant. Because your denomination regards marriage as a sacrament, it already accepts the distinction between civil marriage and sacramental marriage. You and your church have already accepted a framework in which members of other denominations, adherents of other religions, the non-religious, and former members of your own denomination are legally free to marry as they like.

This framework — your framework — holds that marriage is a holy sacrament for members of your denomination, but recognizes that marriage is not, cannot be, and should not be restricted only to those of your own denomination who share your sacramental view. If you are Catholic, for example, you already believe it would be wrong — ethically, morally and legally — to deny Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, Muslims, Mormons and Baptists the legal right to marry simply because they do not share your view of marriage as a sacrament. You recognize that the Catholic church has the right to deny the Catholic sacrament of marriage to whomever it wishes to deny it (the divorced, the ordained, Jews, atheists, Baptists, etc.), but that this sectarian sacrament must not be equated with the legal and civil right to marriage.

So, since this is your framework — since this is already how you understand marriage — there is no reason for you to oppose marriage equality for same-sex couples. You have already accepted that those who are not members of your church have a legal right to marry as they see fit. You have already accepted that their ethical claim to this right is legitimate. You have already conceded that it would be immoral for your denomination to claim a sectarian monopoly on marriage.

This is what you already believe. This is what your denomination has been teaching and practicing for your whole lifetime. This is your rule. You support marriage equality.

Answer B:

Congratulations! You support marriage equality!

Your particular congregation may or may not regard same-sex relationships as a sin, but this is irrelevant. You’re a Baptist or a member of some Baptist-y congregation, so you already know it would be wrong — evil, a sin — to try to impose your religious views on someone else.

That’s why you don’t baptize infants who are too young to decide for themselves. And it’s why you demand the strict separation of church and state — the civil expression of the very same doctrine from which you Baptists take your name.

You and your church have already accepted a framework in which members of other denominations, adherents of other religions, the non-religious, and former members of your own denomination are legally free to marry as they like. This framework – your framework — holds that marriage is an ordinance for members of your congregation, but recognizes that marriage is not, cannot be, and should not be restricted only to those of your own denomination who share your particular view.

Since this is your framework — since this is already how you understand marriage — there is no reason for you to oppose marriage equality for same-sex couples. You have already accepted that those who are not members of your church have a legal right to marry as they see fit. You have already accepted that their ethical claim to this right is legitimate. You have already conceded that it would be immoral for your denomination to claim a sectarian monopoly on marriage.

This is what you already believe. This is what your denomination has been teaching and practicing for your whole lifetime. This is your rule. You support marriage equality.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2013/05/16/christian-denominations-and-marriage-equality-a-simple-quiz/

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=15489

http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com/2013/05/home-finally-home.html

I turned the corner and there she was. Quietly talking to someone beside her. She looked up at me and smiled. A lovely quiet smile then, "Hi, David!"

My heart near burst.

I saw her first sitting, alone, on a ward in an intuition. Someone no one wanted. Someone left behind. When she moved to the community I would see her from time to time. Whenever that happened she leapt with joy, ran to me, calling my name. She was desperate, had always been desperate, for attention. For acknowledgement. For mattering.

Even though I always felt the edge of her desperation cut my soul, she endeared herself to me. Simply, I liked her. There lurked, behind her dark eyes, real joy. There lingered behind the craving need for attention, a heart that wanted to give. There lived, somewhere in the hidden recess of her soul, a quiet strength. I always knew that. I always felt that. And who she was ... along with who she could be ... drew me to her.

Simply.

I liked her.

Then, suddenly and for no apparent reason, I just stopped seeing her. She wasn't in the places I was used to seeing her. She wasn't the topic of concerned conversation. She wasn't named in reports, incident or otherwise. She seemed disappeared. And. I kind of missed her. Though I knew that it wasn't me she wanted when she'd call out my name, it wasn't my attention she secretly craved, it wasn't our history that mattered, I still liked hearing my name pronounced from lips that smiled.

Over time, I think I stopped noticing that she wasn't there, wasn't part of the world I lived in any more. She was gone. The older I get the more I notice the footprints left in my life as evidence that others had once stood with me. The older I get, the more I need seeing the tread where others trod.

But, yesterday I saw her. Where I'd never seen her before.

Like I'd never seen her before.

She said my name with calm, with fond remembrance - gone was the need, the desperation, the sense of deep aloneness. Gone.

And so too was missing the cutting edge of isolation.

When we talked I noticed that the sun had come out from behind her eyes.

This is why we fought for community ... people come home to houses first, then, finally, to themselves.

I am honoured to be part of a huge civil liberties movement - aimed at garnering freedom for those with disabilities to live as a valued part of their community.

Aimed at having first one 'coming home' party.

And then ... another.

http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com/2013/05/home-finally-home.html

aqueductpress_feed

Posted by Timmi Duchamp

http://aqueductpress.blogspot.com/2013/05/tanith-lees-space-is-just-starry-night.html

I'm pleased to announce that Aqueduct Press has taken delivery of Tanith Lee's new collection, Space Is Just a Starry Night. The tales in Space Is Just a Starry Night range across genres, as elegant as the field of stars spanning a clear dark sky. A lone survivor of plague receives a mysterious visitor; a prison planet tortures political prisoners by methodically manipulating their memories; a young woman uncovers the ghastly truth about the cryogenically preserved ancestor who’s been thawed; a ship's officer struggles with his suspicions about a shy drab woman taking passage aboard a ship of sun-worshipers—Tanith Lee explores these and other scenarios in her ever intense sensual prose.

Tanith Lee's work has long been noted for its masterful beauty and sensuality. Wierdifctionreview.com's list of 101 Weird writers slotted her in at #10, observing that “Whatever her subject, Lee's vision is intense and feverish; like many of her characters, she seems to navigate the waters of unseen worlds. And it’s difficult to resist the call of that spell; there's something haunting about these visions.”

And here's the first review:

Lee’s powerful science fiction collection assembles 12 tales published between 1979 and 2011, plus two originals. All of them showcase her strong, entertaining, and often gorgeous writing. “The Beautiful Biting Machine” packs an irresistible wallop as it describes a sensuous sideshow at the Nightfair, a sort of giant carnival of dark desires. The werewolf myth takes on a deep space element in “Moon Wolf,” in which Lee's prose is lovely: “The ocean came in, sigh on sigh, quintessential sea, to solace the onyx shore, under the solar light that did not glare any more but was smooth as the taste of cream.” The intriguing “With a Flaming Sword” puts an unusual spin on the story of Adam and Eve (in a manner that might fluster Biblical literalists). “Written in Water” also tackles creation myths, with a far grimmer outcome. This is a solid grouping of stories that deserves a broad audience. —Publishers Weekly July 06, 2013

"Once worlds have ended, and the curtains of space closed upon them, where does their genius go? Their great music and art, their architecture, literature, and thought, their beauty—all held till then in vessels of physical form, or the records of machines, or simply in the memory of humankind. Is everything obliterated merely, rinsed away and lost?" —from “Within the Ghost”

You can purchase the book now, in trade paperback as well as e-book editions, in advance of the official release date, directly from Aqueduct Press. Eventually, of course, it will be available in all the usual places.

http://aqueductpress.blogspot.com/2013/05/tanith-lees-space-is-just-starry-night.html

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Ta-nehisiCoates/~3/rUPxhkf6gUs/story01.htm

Posted by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Walter White. Chairman of the NAACP. Black dude. (The Walter White Project)

Andrew Sullivan and Freddie Deboer have two pieces up worth checking out. I disagree with Andrew's (though I detect some movement in his position.) Freddie's piece is entitled "Precisely How Not to Argue About Race and IQ." He writes:

The problem with people who argue for inherent racial inferiority is not that they lie about the results of IQ tests, but that they are credulous about those tests and others like them when they shouldn't be; that they misunderstand the implications of what those tests would indicate even if they were credible; and that they fail to find the moral, analytic, and political response to questions of race and intelligence.

I think this is a good point, but I want to expand it. Most of the honest writing I've seen on "race and intelligence" focuses on critiquing the idea of "intelligence." So there's lot of good literature on whether it can be measured, its relevance in modern society, whether intelligence changes across generations, whether it changes with environment, and what we mean when we say IQ. As Freddie mentions here, I had a mathematician stop past to tell me I needed to stop studying French, and immediately start studying statistics -- otherwise I can't possibly understand this debate.

It's a fair critique. My response is that he should stop studying math and start studying history.

I am not being flip or coy. If you tell me that you plan to study "race and intelligence" then it is only fair that I ask you, "What do you mean by race?" It's true I don't always do math so well, but I understand the need to define the terms of your study. If you're a math guy, perhaps your instinct is to point out the problems in the interpretation of the data. My instinct is to point out that your entire experiment proceeds from a basic flaw -- no coherent, fixed definition of race actually exists.

The history bears this out. In 1856, Ralph Waldo Emerson delineated the significance of race:

It is race, is it not, that puts the hundred millions of India under the dominion of a remote island in the north of Europe. Race avails much, if that be true, which is alleged, that all Celts are Catholics, and all Saxons are Protestants; that Celts love unity of power, and Saxons the representative principle. Race is a controlling influence in the Jew, who, for two millenniums, under every climate, has preserved the same character and employments. Race in the negro is of appalling importance. The French in Canada, cut off from all intercourse with the parent people, have held their national traits. I chanced to read Tacitus "on the Manners of the Germans," not long since, in Missouri, and the heart of Illinois, and I found abundant points of resemblance between the Germans of the Hercynian forest, and our Hoosiers, Suckers, and Badgers of the American woods.

Indeed, Emerson in 1835, saw race as central to American greatness:

The inhabitants of the United States, especially of the Northern portion, are descended from the people of England and have inherited the trais of their national character...It is common with the Franks to break their faith and laugh at it The race of Franks is faithless.

Emerson was not alone, as historian James McPherson points out, Southerners not only thought of themselves as a race separate from blacks, but as a race apart from Northern whites:

The South's leading writer on political economy, James B. D. De Bow, subscribed to this Norman-Cavalier thesis and helped to popularize it in De Bow's Review. As the lower-South states seceded one after another during the winter of 1860-61, this influential journal carried several long articles justifying secession on the grounds of irreconcilable ethnic differences between Southern and Northern whites. "The Cavaliers, Jacobites, and Huguenots, who settled the South, naturally hate, contemn, and despise the Puritans who settled the North," proclaimed one of these articles. "The former are a master-race; the latter a slave race, the descendants of Saxon serfs." The South was now achieving its "independent destiny" by repudiating the failed experiment of civic nationalism that had foolishly tried in 1789 to "erect one nation out of two irreconcilable peoples."

Similarly, in 1899 William Z. Ripley wrote The Races of Europe, which sought to delineate racial difference through head-type:

The shape of the human head by which we mean the general proportions of length, breadth, and height, irrespective of the " bumps " of the phrenologist is one of the best available tests of race known. Its value is, at the same time, but imperfectly appreciated beyond the inner circle of professional anthropology. Yet it is so simple a phenomenon, both in principle and in practical application, that it may readily be of use to the traveller and the not too superficial observer of men.

To be sure, widespread and constant peculiarities of head form are less noticeable in America, because of the extreme variability of our population, compounded as it is of all the races of Europe; they seem also to be less fundamental among the American aborigines. But in the Old World the observant traveller may with a little attention often detect the racial affinity of a people by this means.

Two years later, Edward A. Ross sought to apprehend "The Causes of Race Superiority." He saw the differences between the Arab "race" and the Jewish "race" as a central illustration:

It is certain that races differ in their attitude toward past and future. M. Lapie has drawn a contrast between the Arab and the Jew. The Arab remembers; he is mindful of past favors and past injuries. He harbors his vengeance and cherishes his gratitude. He accepts everything on the authority of tradition, loves the ways of his ancestors, forms strong local attachments, and migrates little. The Jew, on the other hand, turns his face toward the future. He is thrifty and always ready for a good stroke of business, will, indeed, join with his worst enemy if it pays. He is calculating, enterprising, migrant and ambitious

You can see more of this here.

Our notion of what constitutes "white" and what constitutes "black" is a product of social context. It is utterly impossible to look at the delineation of a "Southern race" and not see the Civil War, the creation of an "Irish race" and not think of Cromwell's ethnic cleansing, the creation of a "Jewish race" and not see anti-Semitism. There is no fixed sense of "whiteness" or "blackness," not even today. It is quite common for whites to point out that Barack Obama isn't really "black" but "half-white." One wonders if they would say this if Barack Obama were a notorious drug-lord.

When the liberal says "race is a social construct," he is not being a soft-headed dolt; he is speaking an historical truth. We do not go around testing the "Irish race" for intelligence or the "Southern race" for "hot-headedness." These reasons are social. It is no more legitimate to ask "Is the black race dumber than then white race?" than it is to ask "Is the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?"

The strongest argument for "race" is that people who trace their ancestry back to Europe, and people who trace most of their ancestry back to sub-Saharan Africa, and people who trace most of their ancestry back to Asia, and people who trace their ancestry back to the early Americas, lived isolated from each other for long periods and have evolved different physical traits (curly hair, lighter skin, etc.)

But this theoretical definition (already fuzzy) wilts under human agency, in a real world where Kevin Garnett, Harold Ford, and Halle Berry all check "black" on the census. (Same deal for "Hispanic.") The reasons for that take us right back to fact of race as a social construct. And an American-centered social construct. Are the Ainu of Japan a race? Should we delineate darker South Asians from lighter South Asians on the basis of race? Did the Japanese who invaded China consider the Chinese the same "race?"

Andrew writes that liberals should stop saying "truly stupid things like race has no biological element." I agree. Race clearly has a biological element -- because we have awarded it one. Race is no more dependent on skin color today than it was on "Frankishness" in Emerson's day. Over history of race has taken geography, language, and vague impressions as its basis.

"Race," writes the great historian Nell Irvin Painter, "is an idea, not a fact." Indeed. Race does not need biology. Race only requires some good guys with big guns looking for a reason.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Ta-nehisiCoates/~3/rUPxhkf6gUs/story01.htm

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SociologicalImagesSeeingIsBelieving/~3/hnLhwutSabA/

Posted by Philip N. Cohen, PhD

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/?p=55175

Cross-posted at The Atlantic and Family Inequality.

The Census Bureau has a new report on nonmarital births. Based on the American Community Survey — the largest survey of its kind, and the only one big enough to track all states — the report shows that 35.7 percent of births in 2011 were to unmarried mothers.

Beneath the headline number, two patterns in the data will receive a lot of attention: education and race/ethnicity. I have a brief comment on both patterns.

Education

The education patterns show a very steep dropoff in nonmarital births as women’s education increases. From 57 percent unmarried among those who didn’t finish high school to just nine percent among those who have graduated college.

Given the hardships faced by single mothers (especially in the United States), it looks like women with more education are making the more rational decision to avoid childbearing when they’re not married. And I don’t doubt that’s partly the explanation. But we need to think about marriage, education and childbearing as linked events that unfold over time. The average high-school dropout mother was 26, while the average college-graduate mother was 33. Delaying childbearing and continuing education are decisions that are made together, based on the opportunities people have. And completing more education increases both the likelihood of marriage and the earning potential of one’s spouse.

So I think you could tell the story like this: Women with better educational opportunities delay childbearing, which increases their marriage prospects, and makes it more likely they will be married and financially better off when they have children in their 30s.

Race/Ethnicity

The differences in nonmarital birth rates between race/ethnic groups in the U.S. are shocking, from about two-thirds for black and American Indian women to 29 percent for whites and 11 percent for Asians.

This pattern is related to the education trend, naturally, but that’s not the whole story. One aspect of the story is race/ethnic geography of opportunity in this country. I’ve written before about the shortage of employed men available for women to marry, a particular expression of racial disparity first popularized by sociologist William Julius Wilson a quarter century ago.

Using the new numbers on nonmarital birth rates for each state from the Census report, I compared them to the male non-employment rate — specifically, the percentage of unmarried men ages 22-50 that are not currently employed. Here’s the relationship:

The states with more single men out of work have higher rates of nonmarital births. Single mother, meet jobless man.

My conclusion from these patterns is that unmarried parenthood is primarily a symptom of lack of opportunity, especially for education and employment. Surely that’s not the whole story. Maybe we should be persuading people to marry younger or shaming them into avoiding parenthood. But I think those approaches increase stigma more than they change behavior or improve wellbeing — Pew surveys show that 77 percent of people already say raising a family is easier if you’re married and only 12 percent of single people say they don’t want to marry. So who needs convincing? Meanwhile, if we addressed the problems of education and employment, is there any doubt family security and stability would improve, and with it the wellbeing of children and their parents?

Philip N. Cohen is a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and writes the blog Family Inequality. You can follow him on Twitter or Facebook.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SociologicalImagesSeeingIsBelieving/~3/hnLhwutSabA/

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/?p=55175

http://dailyotter.org/2013/05/15/check-out-this-sea-otters-long-whiskers/

Posted by Daily Otter

http://dailyotter.org/?p=6534

Check Out This Sea Otter's Long Whiskers

Via webted

http://dailyotter.org/2013/05/15/check-out-this-sea-otters-long-whiskers/

http://dailyotter.org/?p=6534

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2013/05/15/9-years-ago-c-s-lewis-on-theocracy/

Posted by Fred Clark

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=15402

May 15, 2004, on this blog: C.S. Lewis on theocracy

I am a democrat because I believe that no man or group of men is good enough to be trusted with uncontrolled power over others. And the higher the pretensions of such power, the more dangerous I think it both to rulers and to the subjects. Hence Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant a robber barron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point may be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely more because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations.

And since Theocracy is the worst, the nearer any government approaches to Theocracy the worse it will be. A metaphysic held by the rulers with the force of a religion, is a bad sign. It forbids them, like the inquisitor, to admit any grain of truth or good in their opponents, it abrogates the ordinary rules of morality, and it gives a seemingly high, super-personal sanction to all the very ordinary human passions by which, like other men, the rulers will frequently be actuated. In a word, it forbids wholesome doubt. A political programme can never in reality be more than probably right. We never know all the facts about the present and we can only guess the future. To attach to a party programme — whose highest claim is to reasonable prudence — the sort of assent which we should reserve for demonstrable theorems, is a kind of intoxication.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2013/05/15/9-years-ago-c-s-lewis-on-theocracy/

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=15402

wonders_and_marvels_feed

Posted by CarolineLawrence

http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/2013/05/secrets-of-a-roman-sewer.html

http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/?p=12676

by Caroline Lawrence

Recently I attended a fascinating lecture by Professor Mark Robinson of Oxford University on the subject of Roman organic waste.

Excavating the Ancient Sewers of Herculaneum was part of the British Museum’s fabulous ongoing exhibition Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum. For a fuller account, please read my History Girls blog post. But here are seven fascinating facts I took away with me:

1. An enormous septic tank – the so-called Cardo V septic tank – at Herculaneum produced the largest amount of organic matter recovered from any Roman site to date. The excavation also produced 170 crates of solid material like builders’ waste, pottery, coins and jewelry.

2. The contents of the Herculaneum septic tank would have been periodically emptied, presumably by slaves. The utterly disgusting muck was an extremely effective fertilizer and was probably sold to farmers at great price.

3. However, pottery remains suggest the sewer had not been emptied for up to fifteen years before the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, which of course destroyed Herculaneum. (The carbonizing effect of the famous pyroclastic surge did not affect the material in the tank.)

4. The contents of this long septic tank contained a variety of foods that had passed through the systems of Herculaneans. And we also have kitchen waste like eggshells, animal bones and olive pits. From this we get a mouth-watering catalogue of what they ate: eggs, chicken, fish, shellfish, green leaf vegetables, berries, grapes, figs, dates, lentils, beans, millet for porridge, olives, plus black pepper, poppy seeds, dill and coriander for seasoning. Bones of small birds suggested the beccafico or “fig-eater” bird (like the one in the fresco above, from a villa near Herculaneum) was on the menu. We know from poets like Martial that Romans enjoyed eating these little birds.

5. The Romans thought wet and smelly things should be restricted to one area. This is why so many latrines are found in kitchens, and why so much kitchen waste was found in the sewers and septic tanks.

6. Not a single sea-sponge turned up in the mass of organic matter from the Cardo V Septic Tank. This suggests that citizens of this part of Herculaneum probably didn’t use the notorious sponge-stick as a bottom wiper. Scraps of calcified fabric in the organic matter suggest their version of luxury toilet paper was more probably cloth. Presumably the scraps would be washed and re-used, like a baby’s diaper. This task no doubt fell to an unhappy slave.

7. A preponderance of oil lamps in the septic tank suggests that some Romans might have read on the seat of ease. As it says in the Bible “There is nothing new under the sun.” (Eccl 1:9) Or maybe it should be: “There is nothing new where the sun don’t shine.”

Caroline Lawrence (left) tries hard to be scholarly about ancient Rome but gets unduly excited by food, jewellery, poop and suchlike. Just as well she writes for kids and kids-at-heart. She will be giving two talks of her own at the British Museum on 27 and 31 May, 2013. For more information, go to Animals in Pompeii & Herculaneum OR Children in Pompeii & Herculaneum. And for more info about Caroline’s history-mystery books, go to www.carolinelawrence.com

http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/2013/05/secrets-of-a-roman-sewer.html

http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/?p=12676

http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com/2013/05/walking-two-blocks-north.html

You stare at me
And think you know
Exactly who I am.

You see my weight
The push of my belly against my belt
And the math, of who I am, comes easily to you.

You stare at me
And think you know
Exactly who I am.

You see the wheels that I push
To get round the barriers in my way
And the geography, of my soul, maps out in you mind.

You stare at me
And think you know
Exactly who I am.

You see my gender
And you compare me to other others
And the architecture, of my heart, blueprints perception.

You stare at me
And think you know
Exactly who I am.

You see the colour of my skin
And in your mind you see this as information
Allowing you to code, your approval, of my existence.

You stare at me
And think you know
Exactly who I am.

But I see you
Stare at me
And I know all I need to know ...

of you.

© dave hingsburger 2013

http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com/2013/05/walking-two-blocks-north.html

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2013/05/14/some-infinite-thing/

Posted by Fred Clark

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=15482

“None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions about life after death. …”

Click here to view the embedded video.

“The alternate is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant, gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.”

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2013/05/14/some-infinite-thing/

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=15482

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Ta-nehisiCoates/~3/Qm1OK2g-lbM/story01.htm

Posted by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Here's a video of The New Yorker's Richard Brody giving his take on François Truffaut's L'homme Qui Aimait Les Femmes (The Man Who Loved Women). I watched this film recently and it went right over my head.

I felt like it wasn't so much watching a film about a man who "loved" women, so much as it was about a man who had devoted his life to having sex with women. Which is fine. I can certainly identify with the feeling. But then what? It was like watching a film about a guy who really liked pancakes—apart from the whole "Women are human beings, not possessions" jazz. (Who knew?)

It could be me. I didn't get 400 Blows either. I'm learning French, but I remain a Philistine.

I did really enjoy Agnes Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri's Les Gouts Des Autres (The Taste of Others). It's a small, quiet, beautifully acted film. Bacri, who wrote the script and plays the lead, is exceptional. It is one of the few films I've seen recently in which the lead and his romantic interest (Anne Alvaro, who is also awesome) are the same age.

Les arts sont bizarre. Souvent, je ne peux pas savoir que c'est bon, et pourquoi. Mais, je sais que ça j'aime bien. Mais, je sais quoi j'aime bien. (Those sentences are written to be corrected. No google translate. Francophones, have at it.)

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Ta-nehisiCoates/~3/Qm1OK2g-lbM/story01.htm

ursulav_feed

http://ursulav.livejournal.com/1540075.html

Not dead, just very busy!

I am running around like a chicken with my head cut off, trying to write a book, edit another book, do art for an anthology, prep for two cons and one gallery show, and get mulch down before the Japanese stiltgrass Eats The World. (Nasty weed. Nasty, nasty weed.) And also I just made major progress on the Patio That Shall Not Be Named, which will soon be ready for a layer of gravel. Woo!

In lieu of anything clever, have a painting.

Saint of Bulls, mixed media on board, 8 x 12. My scanner hates blue, he’s actually more turquoise and has stronger contrasts, but eh, what can you do?

He’s going to Anthrocon, and I actually kinda hope he doesn’t sell so that I can use him in the gallery show, which is the great trap of shows—”AUGGH! I love money! But I need to fill this wall! But money! AUAUUUGH!”—and then when you say “But ALL MY ART SOLD! What will I doooooo!?” you get no sympathy from anyone, except occasionally other artists.

Ahem.

Now I have to go mail things and maybe get some gravel. I will be sane again after Anthrocon. For a value of sane.

Originally published at Tea with the Squash God. You can comment here or there.

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Posted by Lisa Wade, PhD

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This past semester I had the genuine pleasure of giving my talk about hook up culture to students at my own institution, Occidental College. This was a treat — and also a little bit scary — not only because I was talking to my own community, but because many of the students in the audience had been part of the two studies that informed my talk (here’s one). I wanted to do them justice and make them feel good about their contribution, even if they had mixed feelings about the stories of theirs that I was telling.

In the end, it felt like an incredible catharsis. The students, who I adore, seemed genuinely thrilled that I was there to bring their experiences into the light; whether they were a part of the study or not, they knew that on some level this was about them. Their response was overwhelming. So I post this talk — with relatively bad video and decent audio — but an amazing audience response, as evidence of how receptive college students are to interesting analyses of their lives by (relatively) impartial analysts. And, also: I love you, Oxy! Y’all are my favorite!

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

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Posted by Lisa Wade, PhD

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/?p=55251

Dieting is for women.

I mean we all know that dieting and women go together like peas and carrots. We know this — collectively and together, even if we don’t agree that it should be this way – not because it’s inevitable or natural, but because we constantly get reminded that women should be on diets and dieting is a feminine activity.

@msmely tweeted us a fabulous example of this type of reminder. It’s a reduced fat block of Monterey Jack cheese, re-named “Monterey Jill.” There’s curvy purple font and a cow in pearls with a flower, in case you missed the message. And, oh, on the odd chance you thought that this was about health and not weight, there’s a little sign there with a message to keep you on track: “Meet Jack’s lighter companion.”

So now we’ve gendered cheese and managed to affirm both the gender binary (heavy vs. light), heterocentrism (Jack’s companion Jill), and the diet imperative for women. And it’s just cheese people! Cheese!

That is all.

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

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Posted by Lisa Wade, PhD

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2007/11/08/individual-racism-alive-and-well/

It’s been six months since we’ve discovered evidence of another racist party or antic on a college or high school campus. I guess it was about time for another… well, three more. Updated and re-posted.

This post is a collection of racially-themed parties and events at college and high school campuses. They’re examples of one kind of simple individual racism that still perpetuates daily life in the U.S.

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April 2013: This still is from a video celebrating the spring semester induction of new recruits into UC Irvine’s Asian-American fraternity Lambda Theta Delta (via Colorlines). It features a fraternity member in blackface. The entire video can be seen here.

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February 2013: Three hockey fans in the audience of a North Dakota high school semifinal donned Ku Klux Klan-ish hoods as a “joke,” they later said:

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October 2012: The photograph below depicts the members of the Chi Omega sorority at Penn State (source). It was taken during a Mexican fiesta-themed party around Halloween. The signs read: “will mow lawn for weed & beer” and “I don’t cut grass I smoke it.”

The Vice President of the college’s Mexican American Student Association, Cesar Sanchez Lopez, wrote:

The Mexican American Student Association is disappointed in the attire chosen by this sorority. It in no way represents our culture. Not only have they chosen to stereotype our culture with serapes and sombreros, but the insinuation about drug usage makes this image more offensive. Our country is plagued by a drug war that has led to the death of an estimated 50,000 people, which is nothing to be joked about.

The president of the sorority sent out an apology. Penalties are under discussion as of this posting.

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May 2012: The University of Chicago’s Alpha Delta Phi fraternity required pledges to wear ”Mexican labor outfits” and sombreros while mowing the frat house lawn to Mexican ranchera music (source).

[image redacted]

UPDATE: A University of Chicago student involved in reporting this incident wrote it to say that the photograph we originally published is likely unrelated to the Alpha Delta Phi incident (that is, a fake or a photo of a different event). In other words, the incident happened, but the photograph was not of the incident. Accordingly, we’ve removed the photo.

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September 2011: Students at Hautes Etudes Commerciales, a Montreal business school, were filmed “wearing black makeup [and] chant[ing] with mock Jamaican accents about smoking marijuana” as part of a skit (source). A student explained that it was part of a skit in honor of Jamacian Olympian Usain Bolt. A spokesperson for the school explained that Francophone Canadians were unaware of the racial history behind blackface.

Anthony Morgan, a law student at McGill University, caught the students on film. He welcomed an apology from the school, is eager to follow up on their own investigation of the incident and, in the meantime, is filing a complaint with the Quebec Human Rights Commission (source). He explained:

[Being black] is not a costume that you put on… This is not just about a few bad apples. This is about a greater problem about what we think about, how we value, how we understand, how we discuss — if we discuss — black history, culture and contribution.

Race-themed events at colleges and universities are a yearly ritual. I include our collection of such parties and “celebrations” below.

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February 2010: Members of the Athletics Union at the London School of Economics painted their faces brown and “dressed up as Guantanamo Bay inmates and drunkenly yelled ‘Oh Allah’…” At least 12 students were found to have dressed up in costumes that were deemed “racist, religiously insensitive and demeaning.”

LSEAU

Source: Photo One, Photo Two.

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October 2009: University of Toronto students decided to dress up like the Jamaican bobsled team from Cool Runnings for Halloween (source). Their costume, which earned them a “Costume of the Night” award at this college-sponsored party, included blackface.

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February 2007: Pictures from a “South of the Border” party at Santa Clara University in California. Indeed, that IS a pregnant woman, cleaning ladies, and a slutty gang member.

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January 2007: A party in “honor” of Martin Luther King Day at Tarleton State University in Texas:

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January 2007: A party in “honor” of Martin Luther King Day at Clemson College in South Carolina:

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January 2007: A party in “honor” of Martin Luther King Day at University of Connecticut School of Law:

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May 2007: A party at the University of Delaware (via Resist Racism):

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2007: Students at Wilfrid Laurier University, celebrating Nations of the World, represented Jamaica by putting on blackface (via @LindaQuirke):

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October 2001: A Delta Sigma Phi Halloween party at Auburn University (via):

3bfa69b952c9a-51-2 3bfa69b952c9a-51-1

The Greek letters on the purple shirts reference a black fraternity on campus.

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

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