Headlines of the Week (Or Whatever)

Death Penalty and Race: Race of Homicide Victims in Cases Resulting in an Execution since 1976

Economic harassment and the Ferguson crisis

Why I Don’t Call the Police: Michael Brown. Eric Garner. Debra Harrell. And that’s just the latest.

White Privilege: An Insidious Virus that’s Eating America from Within

What I've Learned from Two Years Collecting Data on Police Killings

What Militarization Has Done to Our Police Departments: A few facts you might have missed about the flow of military equipment and tactics to local law enforcement.

Whitewashing and the Problem With the Ice Bucket Challenge

James Kenneth Embry

James Kenneth Embry had a mental illness. James Kenneth Embry was a drug addict. James Kenneth Embry went to prison for drugs. James Kenneth Embry was denied medication for his mental illness in prison. James Kenneth Embry died of starvation in an American prison.

James Kenneth Embry was a human being. James Kenneth Embry deserved care on the streets of Murka and James Kenneth Embry deserved care in a cage in Murka.

Dammit, Murka. I'd bet $20 that this man took drugs because he had a mental illness. Instead of treating him, we imprison him and then instead of treating him, we kill him.

I don't have really anything else to say, except that we are not even close to the great country on Earth.

Headlines of the Week (Or Whatever)

Meet the American Nomads of Walmart’s Plentiful Parking Lots

Artist nails his scrotum to the ground in Red Square

40 Things To Say Before You Die

Living High and Letting Die: Our Illusion of Innocence

Be a sociopath—or just act like one!

Headlines of the Week (Or Whatever)

5 Steps to Separate Science from Hype, No PhD Required.

Revisiting Milgram's obedience experiment: what did he actually prove?

Drugs: Without the Hot Air, now in the USA!

A Tongue In Cheek Review of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition

The Case Against Brain Scans As Evidence In Court

Headlines of the Week (Or Whatever)

This week, I'm thinking about abortion. If you only read one of these, read the first one.

The Last Abortion Doctor

My Abortion: One in three women has an abortion by the age of 45. How many ever talk about it? New laws, old stigmas. 26 stories.

The Violinist: A Thought Experiment

My miscarriage, my abortion.

I wish my mother had aborted me: This is no 'I wish I'd never been born' howl of angst. I love my mother, and having an abortion would have given her a better life.

Headlines of the Week (Or Whatever)

The Irrational Consumer: Why Economics Is Dead Wrong About How We Make Choices: A new paper reviews how psychology, biology, and neurology are ganging up on economics to prove that, when it comes to making decisions, people are anything but rational.

IRS sued for not enforcing politicking restrictions on churches! Yay!

On the "mind-blowing" revelations offered by use of LSD in science. Because science!

Occupy Earth Day: An Expose of the Corporate Propaganda Systems that Undermine Systemic Change Activism

The Rape of Petty Officer Blumer: Inside the military's culture of sex abuse, denial and cover-up.

On the Nature of War

 From my weekly comments for Honors Colloquium:

"War is thus an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will." ~ Carl von Clausewitz

War. Genocide. Engagement. Atrocity. Intentionality. These are topics upon which we have touched. We discussed war as an act of politics, requiring a state-sanctioned entity; as an act of religion, requiring only hate of Other; and as an atrocity, no matter what form it takes. But at the core of all of these things is intentionality. Whether the motivation is political, religious, social, or even personal, war is, as von Clausewitz posits, “an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will”. The intention of force is war. Thus the machinations of divorce attorneys, Congressmen, and nations alike are all acts of war and part of a larger war, in which we all fight for power on multiple levels, every day of our lives. Which frankly sounds exhausting.

Counter Friction

Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience is a famous and well-regarded example of effective rhetoric. In this essay, Thoreau used all three corners of the rhetorical triangle to outline what he saw as the problems with the government of the time, and with government in general, due to their inherent lack of respect for the individual, instead preferring to maintain the status quo of the whole, even with the cost being widespread injustice and corruption, which Thoreau opined were the chief products manufactured thereby. Governments are by their nature, according to Thoreau, generally more harmful than helpful, although he did profess a respect for the concept of government, and wished for a better government that does more to respect the rights of individuals and liberty as a whole. Specifically, Thoreau spoke about the Mexican-American War, poll taxes, slavery, and other laws that he saw as unjust. In regards to these topics specifically and government in general, Thoreau attempted to persuade his audience, which was comprised of students in Concord, Massachusetts, to his point of view with skillful use of the rhetorical triangle, which is to say through the careful application of both logical and emotional arguments, combined with ethos in the form of his academic reputation.

Thoreau's Use of the Rhetorical Triangle in 'Civil Disobedience'

From an in-class writing exercise on rhetoric from Honors Composition II:

Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience seeks to outline the problems with our current mode of government and with government in general due to their inherent lack of respect for the individual, instead preferring to maintain the status quo of the whole, even at the expense of injustice and corruption, which Thoreau opines are the chief products manufactured thereby. Governments are, according to Thoreau, generally more harmful than helpful, although he does profess a respect for the concept of government, and wishes for a better government that does more to respect the rights of individuals and liberty as a whole.

Honors Econ Research Proposal

Unemployment & the Labor Force; Definitions Thereof

We currently define the unemployment rate as the percentage of workers without jobs in our labor force. We currently define our labor force as workers who are actively looking for jobs. However, those definitions are both simplistic and problematic, excluding complicated factors and variables that keep us from arriving at a more precise unemployment rate.

"Vell, Mitt's just zis guy, you know?"*

Dressage. Really. Although I have friends whom are avid riders, I had to search to see for the definition of 'dressage'. Apparently, it's horse ballet**, and is also known as the highest expression of horse training. Regular folks - folks who work and pay taxes and worry about a mortgage - don't own dressage horses. We also don't declare a tax loss of $77,000 for the care and feeding of a dressage horse that qualifies for the next Olympics. An interesting parallel is that in 2010, the same year in which they declared that loss, the mean yearly per capita income was less than $28,000.

But, hey, he totally represents me as a citizen!***

*Zaphod is equally well-suited to be our President, and for exactly the same reasons.

**I'm not being sarcastic. That's really what it's called!

***I am totally being sarcastic.

On Abortion

So here's the deal. Thousands of children die each year because they can't find organ donors. You can donate lobes of your liver with almost no problems. Kidneys are a little more problematic, but neither even comes close to having a child, much less raising one. So, if you haven't signed up to donate one, the other or both, then you have no business voting for a law that would force someone else to donate their organs to a child without consent. This seems like simple logic to me. Again, to recap:

If you think that unborn children have a right to my organs, then actual, live children surely have a right to your organs. So put up or shut up.

Yo, Christians.

Malachi.

“Is there not one Father of us all? Did not one God create us? Why, then, does each one of us despise his brother, violating the covenant of our fathers?” -Malachi 2:10

Why do so many modern Christians despise gay people, people of color, poor people, etc.? Love them. Feed them. Heal them. LOVE THEM.

A Horrible Irony.

A fellow Oklahoman gamer posted a video on Google+ today. I'm not going to link to it here, because I'm not going to send any traffic that way. Anyway, he commented that:

"If you want some good ideas on how to tackle the problem of harassment in online gaming, this is a great place to start. We need to change things as a group if we want it to stop. We need help from game developers and platform developers as well."

This is, in general, a sentiment with which I heartily agree. However...

On Welfare Queens

What!? No. That's asinine.

I keep seeing all of these hate graphics about poor people. They usually invoke the fantasy world wherein welfare queens receive free rent, free food, and can afford luxury items with the cash that they receive from the jobs that they don't have. It's pretty illogical, but the myth persists.

Personally, I'm really curious as to how people can tell when people are using food stamps, since it's a plastic card that looks and works exactly like the average debit card. How can you tell the difference between my brown CNB bankcard and someone else's brown SNAP card? How close are you folks getting to the people in front of you? Usually, I'm still unloading my cart while the person in front of me is checking out, and I can't really see what their card looks like, so all I can see is if they're using a check, a card, or cash.

So the next time you see a graphic like that, you should ask the poster, "Exactly how close are y'all getting, and why?".

A timely reminder...

A timely reminder about the importance of separating your religion from your government:

"I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

Random Thoughts.

I really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really want to convene a Civics 101 & Source Vetting course on my Facebook feed. Really. The President is not magic and a jpeg with some text and Obama's face is not a reliable source. Really. I promise.

Banned Book Week

Remember, folks, read a banned book for Banned Book Week! We picked up And Tango Makes Three, with no problems. Also, here's a funny article about a few banned books.

About Dr. Bachmann's Sexuality

About Dr. Marcus Bachmann: If he is heterosexual, then speculating about and/or harassing him about his sexuality is entirely unethical and beneath me as a human being. If he is not heterosexual, then then speculating about and/or harassing him about his sexuality is entirely unethical and beneath me as a human being. My intense dislike of them does not extend to their sexuality, which is none of my business. End of story.

About the Pledge of Allegience

I originally wrote this on Friday, October 15, 2010.  I am posting it here with minor edits, mainly for grammar.

Kevin is publicly shamed for his refusal to take an oath.

Yeah, that cartoon is cute. It shows someone who simply doesn't care in contrast to someone who cares so much that they gave their health, and was willing to give their life. It makes a point, and makes us feel good about being better than the lazy guy. It makes us feel proud of our veterans. (Although that pride doesn't seem to extend to caring for them, but that's a an entirely different post...) and it makes us feel patriotic. Yay!