"Cautious, careful people always casting about to preserve their reputation or social standards never can bring about reform. Those who are really in earnest are willing to be anything or nothing in the world’s estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathies with despised ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences."
- Susan B. Anthony
The Internet Is Changing Your Brain, Like Everything Else - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "With some regularity, the media will work itself and audiences into a tizzy over the way Thing X—some new technology, an online activity, a way of gathering information—"changes the brain". With great magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology comes great opportunity for scaremongering backed by pretty visual aids. And so we see how those orange splotches mean social media causes brain changes, and those yellow patches mean online gaming causes brain changes, and so on. This isn't wrong, per se—these new technologies and means of communication are almost certainly changing our brains in myriad ways. But it's wrong to see this as a negative, or even an anomaly. The human brain is shaped continually throughout life. Everything changes the brain."
From the NYCC.
Mike Huckabee, Social Conservatism, and Hypocrisy in the GOP - Reason.com: "...social conservatism is oxymoronic. Pure conservatism, what men like John Adams would have called "liberalism," seeks to maintain those inalienable and fundamental liberties established through the U.S. Constitution—liberties that protect the individual American's freedom to pursue happiness in any way he or she chooses. Social conservatism, however, seeks to establish a moral standard through the power of the government. It necessitates forcing others to adhere to certain moral principles in complete violation of individual freedom. It is impossible then for a person to be truly conservative and also willing to force moral standards on others. Huckabee disagrees. He has consistently argued that individuals should have the liberty to live without government interference, but he picks and chooses which issues allow for liberty and which issues do not.
For instance, Huckabee opposes government-mandated health insurance required by the Affordable Care Act, and he believes the First Amendment guarantees the right to Hobby Lobby and others to avoid paying for contraceptives and abortion. He stands against both policies precisely because they violate individual liberty... But it's illogical and appears disingenuous to declare the government has no right to infringe on personal freedom in one instance and then insist the government should establish standards of sexual morality and marriage in the next.
It's this hypocrisy which has led many Republicans to develop a position on marriage that values liberty above all else. For instance, Rep. David Jolly (R-Fla.), who claims that same-sex marriage is immoral, came out in support of legalizing gay marriage in July, arguing along with several other Republican congressmen that freedom should trump personal religious and philosophical beliefs. They aren't alone. According to a 2014 Pew Research Center poll, 61 percent of self-identified "young Republicans" say they now support same-sex marriage as well."
3 Reasons the U.S. MILITARY Should NOT Fight Ebola - Reason.com: "Here are 3 reasons why militarizing humanitarian aid is a very bad idea:
1. Militarized Aid Erodes Humanitarian Principles
Humanitarian aid must be perceived as neutral and not driven by political or military objectives. Using the military in a humanitarian crisis works against that and potentially instigates further unrest. Attacks against humanitarian personnel have been rising in the past decade precisely because of a perceived blurring of humanitarian, political, and military goals...
2. Militarized Aid is Ineffective in the Long Term
Militarized aid is often backed by huge budgets that are supposed to be spent quickly. Indeed, the Department of Defense has already allocated $1 billion to fight Ebola. The pressure to spend massive amounts is often coupled with pressure to achieve short-term political goals. That in turn translates into an ineffective use of funds. Accountability and follow-up are in short supply, too, meaning the same mistakes get repeated over and over.
3. Militarized Aid Diminishes the Supply of Civil Aid
Many politicians who support militarized aid claim that the military is the only institution capable of handling the humanitarian crisis at hand. If this is true—and too often it is—this highlights the neglect of civilian-led programs that are more likely to get the job done. By constantly relying on the military for humanitarian efforts, we're stifling efforts to grow civilian-led organizations that can handle the complicated logistics necessary to address large-scale humanitarian crises..."
The Dumb Republican Calls for a Travel Ban to Fight Ebola - Reason.com: "The main argument of ban proponents is that without it, infected Africans will flood the United States looking for treatment. But the U.S. embassy isn't exactly handing out visas like Halloween candy in affected countries. And if it were, the solution, beyond implementing more rigorous screening of passengers (which is already happening), would be stricter medical controls for visas — not an official travel ban. That's because such a ban would be both unnecessary and counterproductive.
Unnecessary because there is already a de facto private ban in place, given that U.S.-based airlines stopped flying to Ebola-afflicted countries two months ago (to protect their crew and passengers from exposure — and themselves from lawsuits). And counterproductive for a whole host of reasons.
For starters, the most reliable study modeling the effect of the ban concluded that even if the world managed to scale back air traffic flows by 80 percent, it would delay the international spread of the disease by only a few weeks. But the 80 percent goal is itself completely unrealistic. Why? Because it would require a far wider ban than one against Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone, the three countries at the epicenter of the outbreak. It would require, for example, America to ban flights from countries that themselves have not banned travel to the affected countries. Otherwise, potentially infected people could simply fly to some country where they could get a connecting flight to their final destination, just like Duncan did, flying from Monrovia to Brussels before boarding a flight to the U.S. But even if it were possible to impose a blanket travel ban, it wouldn't be advisable, because it would undermine the world's ability to fight the spread of the disease in the source countries, ultimately leaving everyone far more vulnerable...
The vast majority of the aid and relief efforts are being organized not by government agencies with access to government planes but private volunteer organizations such as Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders that rely on commercial travel. These entities are providing crucial protective gear and expertise to handle and treat Ebola patients safely without spreading the disease. If they are not able to respond expeditiously, thanks to a travel ban, we'll be basically consigning a whole lot of people to a death sentence."
As it turns out, meth laws have unintended consequences - The Washington Post: "Nebraska gets a lesson that other states have already learned. One of Mexico’s most powerful drug cartels is now the main distributor of methamphetamine in Nebraska, federal law enforcement officials say. The Sinaloa Cartel has built a sophisticated drug-trafficking operation in Omaha over the past five to eight years, according to the FBI . . . Cartels increased their presence in Nebraska about the same time state officials effectively shut down local meth labs through laws limiting the sale of cold medicines, U.S. Attorney Deborah Gilg said...
So Nebraska has fewer homemade meth labs, but there’s more meth on the street, and now instead of busting small, localized distributors, local officials are up against an international crime syndicate. These results may have been unintended, but they certainly weren’t unpredictable. Other states that put heavy restrictions on cold medication have seen similar problems. The pseudoephedrine restrictions went national in 2006 when Congress snuck the provision into reauthorization of the Patriot Act. Within five years, we knew the law had little effect on the meth supply...
And of course, as is often the case with the drug war, the government’s decision to focus on supply instead of treatment, and to punish everyone for the deeds of a few, has led to a number of horror stories in which new laws and aggressive police tactics have targeted innocent people."
They know what they did.
Scott Adams Blog: Adding Context to the News 10/13/2014: "A recent study that got picked up by the media says that 90% of women in restaurant jobs that depend on tipping report being sexually harassed at work. That sounds like sexist behavior out of control. But allow me to put some context on that based on my restaurant-owning experience. I believe it is true that 90% of women working for tips in restaurants are sexually harassed by coworkers and/or customers. That fits my personal observations after working in the industry. But let's put some context on that and see if your feelings about the story change...
In my experience, attractive female bartenders and servers are completely conscious of trading their sexuality for higher tips. They talk about it freely. They pick blouses to accentuate their best assets. And some will admit they choose jobs that allow them to trade on their looks. If I were in my twenties and could make money in a job that depended on my looks instead of my muscles I would take it in a heartbeat, assuming I had good looks. My best guess is that if you remove from the stats the women who are intentionally using their sexuality to improve their income, you get about 50% of women in tipping jobs who get sexually harassed and have done nothing intentionally to inspire unwanted attention. That is still a horrible number.
But 50% is also the rate of men who report being sexually harassed in server jobs. In my restaurant experience, when we had handsome male bartenders or servers the female staff and customers were shameless with their non-stop sexual banter, flirting, and direct sexual offers. And if you thought all of that attention was the good kind, you'd be wrong. It was an ongoing problem for the guys. The handsome gay servers had it the worst because they had no upside potential from the female attention. So here's the proper context, in my opinion, based on years of direct restaurant experience: 100% of attractive men and women are sexually harassed at work in the restaurant business. And nearly every one of them took the job knowing that would be the case, but they decided it was worth it for the relatively easy money....
The bottom line is that sexual harassment in restaurants is not so much a gender issue as an attractive person issue. But it doesn't become a story until you layer on the sexism angle and leave out the context. Would you read a story with a headline that says, "Attractive people get more unwanted sexual attention than ugly people" or would you think you already know that story? Sometimes good context makes a bad story. In related and not-so-surprising news, a study says attractive women get more job interviews than unattractive women. Attractive men have no similar advantage. "
Tumblr feminism is the worst.
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