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The Wisdom Deficit in Schools - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...384713 wisdom literature classics English teaching learning Common Core skills
shared by Javier E on 28 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • When I was in high school, I chose to major in English in college because I wanted to be wiser. That’s the word I used. If I ended up making lots of money or writing a book, great; but really, I liked the prospect of being exposed to great thoughts and deep advice, and the opportunity to apply them to my own life in my own clumsy way. I wanted to live more thoughtfully and purposefully
  • Now I’m a veteran English teacher, reflecting on what’s slowly changed at the typical American public high school—and the word wisdom keeps haunting me. I don’t teach it as much anymore, and I wonder who is.
  • how teachers are now being informed by the Common Core State Standards—the controversial math and English benchmarks that have been adopted in most States—and the writers and thought leaders who shape the assessments matched to those standards. It all amounts to an alphabet soup of bureaucratic expectations and what can feel like soul-less instruction. The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium—referred to in education circles simply as "SBAC"—is the association that writes a Common Core-aligned assessment used in 25 States
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  • The Common Core promotes 10 so-called "College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards" for reading that emphasize technical skills like analyzing, integrating, and delineating a text. But these expectations deal very little with ensuring students are actually appreciating the literature at hand—and say nothing about the personal engagement and life lessons to which my principal was referring
  • Kate Kinsella, an influential author who consults school districts across the country and is considered "a guiding force on the National Advisory Board for the Consortium on Reading Excellence," recently told me to "ditch literature" since "literary fiction is not critical to college success." Kinsella continued, "What’s represented by the standards is the need to analyze texts rather than respond to literature.
  • As a teacher working within this regimented environment, my classroom objectives have had to shift. I used to feel deeply satisfied facilitating a rich classroom discussion on a Shakespearean play; now, I feel proud when my students explicitly acknowledge the aforementioned "anchor standards" and take the initiative to learn these technical skills.
  • But as a man who used to be a high school student interested in pursuing wisdom, I’m almost startled to find myself up late at night, literally studying these anchor standards instead of Hamlet itself.
  • It just feels like a very slow, gradual cultural shift that I don’t even notice except for sudden moments of nostalgia, like remembering a dream out of nowhere
  • I get it: My job is to teach communication, not values, and maybe that’s reasonable. After all, I’m not sure I would want my daughter gaining her wisdom from a randomly selected high-school teacher just because he passed a few writing and literature courses at a state university (which is what I did). My job description has evolved, and I’m fine with that
  • This arrangement, in theory, allows students to read the literature on their own, when they get their own time—and I’m fine with that. But then, where are they getting the time and space to appreciate the deeper lessons of classic literature, to evaluate its truth and appropriately apply it to their own lives?
  • research suggests that a significant majority of teens do not attend church, and youth church attendance has been decreasing over the past few decades. This is fine with me. But then again, where are they getting their wisdom?
  • I’m not talking about my child, or your child. I’m absolutely positive that my daughter will know the difference between Darcy and Wickham before she’s in eighth grade; and it's likely that people who would gravitate toward this story would appreciate this kind of thinking
  • I’m talking about American children in general—kids whose parents work all day, whose fathers left them or whose mothers died
  • even for the parents who do prioritize the humanities in their households, I’m not sure that one generation is actually sharing culturally relevant wisdom with the next one—not if the general community doesn’t even talk about what that wisdom specifically means. Each family can be responsible for teaching wisdom in their own way, and I’m fine with that. But then, does the idea of cultural wisdom get surrendered in the process?
  • Secular wisdom in the public schools seems like it should inherently spring from the literature that’s shaped American culture. And while the students focus on how Whitman’s "purpose shapes the content and style of his text," they’re obviously exposed to the words that describe his leaves of grass.
  • But there is a noticeable deprioritization of literature, and a crumbling consensus regarding the nation’s idea of classic literature. The Common Core requires only Shakespeare, which is puzzling if only for its singularity
  • The country’s disregard for the institutional transfer of cultural wisdom is evident with this single observation: None of the state assessments has a single question about the content of any classic literature. They only test on reading skills
  • But where are the students getting their wisdom?
  • Admittedly, nothing about the Common Core or any modern shifts in teaching philosophies is forbidding me from sharing deeper lessons found in Plato’s cave or Orwell’s Airstrip One. The fine print of the Common-Core guidelines even mentions a few possible titles. But this comes with constant and pervasive language that favors objective analysis over personal engagement.
  • Later, a kid who reminds me of the teenager I was in high school—a boy who is at different times depressed, excited, naive, and curious—asked me why I became an English teacher. I smiled in self-defense, but I was silent again, not knowing what to say anymore.
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This is why the Paris attacks have gotten more news coverage than other terrorist attac... - 1 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...e-than-other-terrorist-attacks washington post terrorism bias news media
shared by kushnerha on 18 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • probably bias in the coverage. People are more likely to be concerned about victims they can identify with. Research tells us that U.S. media outlets are more likely to cover terrorist attacks with U.S. victims. The news media are more likely to cover disasters in wealthier countries. And tragedies that are physically closer to the United States are more likely to appear in U.S. news
  • First, “news” is generally considered to be something especially unusual. The journalism truism is that “dog bites man” is not a story, but “man bites dog” is. That’s not a judgment on whether dog bites matter; it’s a judgment about what’s surprising.
  • news outlets are influenced by their consumers. Human beings are especially interested in events that might affect them personally.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • One reason the attack drew so much international attention was that France doesn’t experience nearly as much terrorism as countries with comparable recent attacks, such as Lebanon or Kenya.
  • attacks were unusually terrifying precisely because they did not target a particular class of people — such as only Christians, university students, or government officials. They targeted anyone and everyone. A life lost in this manner is not “more tragic” than a life lost in a civil war. However, it might be more newsworthy, because it’s unusual
  • Terrorists, of course, seek out such targets. Attacking tourism hot spots is excellent for drawing attention to their cause.
  • The attack on Paris also shocked observers around the world because many have been there, or plan to visit. France is the most visited country in the world. This creates an “it could happen to me” factor, and also suggests that terrorism could affect someone we know.
  • The Paris attack also stands out for the tactics used by the perpetrators. This attack played out over time in multiple public locations. It also seemed to target everyone, instead of a specific group.
  • drawing international attention because it suggests a new outward turn for the Islamic State
  • The Islamic State leadership apparently directed the attack, according to French officials. That would set it apart from attacks that were only inspired by the group, such as the few killings that have occurred in Western countries in the past year.
  • One reason why we often see lone-actor attacks in high-capability states is that organized terror is difficult to accomplish in these countries
  • realization that the Islamic State is apparently willing and able to carry out complex, coordinated attacks in developed countries outside of its home region has European security services worried. Beyond Europe, what other targets might be next? This further adds to the global interest
  • Paris attack shocked the world for many reasons. It’s true that terrorism in less-developed countries is worth our attention as well. Crises, such as the Syrian civil war, deserve much more media coverage and policy focus. But the Paris attack continues to draw interest because of the relative rarity of terrorism in France, the fact that the country receives visitors from around the globe, the shocking nature of the attack, and the potential implications for the Islamic State’s future plans.
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What Drives Gun Sales: Terrorism, Obama and Calls for Restrictions - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...rorism-obama-restrictions.html new york times gun control
shared by kushnerha on 10 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • On Sunday, President Obama called for making it harder to buy assault weapons after the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif. On Monday, the stock prices of two top gun makers, Smith & Wesson and Ruger, soared.
  • “President Obama has actually been the best salesman for firearms,” said Brian W. Ruttenbur, an analyst with BB&T Capital Markets
  • Fear of gun-buying restrictions has been the main driver of spikes in gun sales, far surpassing the effects of mass shootings and terrorist attacks alone, according to federal background-check data
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  • When a man shot and killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., gun sales did not set records until five days later, after President Obama called for banning assault rifles and high-capacity magazines.
  • “It would be like you’ve never owned a toaster, you don’t really want a toaster, but the federal government says they’re going to ban toasters,” Mr. Ruttenbur said. “So you go out and buy a toaster.”
  • Gun sales rose in New Jersey in 2013 after Gov. Chris Christie proposed measures that included expanding background checks and banning certain rifles. (Mr. Christie later vetoed one of the most stringent parts
  • Catch-22 for gun control proponents: Pushing for new restrictions can lead to an influx of new guns.
  • Maryland approved one of the nation’s strictest gun-control measures in May 2013, gun sales jumped as buyers tried to beat the October deadline specified in the measure
  • after Hurricane Katrina, legally registered guns were confiscated from civilians. The confiscations outraged gun owners and prompted an increase in gun sales in the area. Conservatives responded by pushing for a federal law prohibiting the seizure of firearms from civilians during an emergency
  • Gun sales have more than doubled in a decade, to about 15 million in 2013 from about seven million in 2002. More firearms are sold to residents in the United States than in any other country
  • These estimates undercount total sales because they omit some purchases in states that do not require background checks for private sales. They also exclude permits that allow people in some states to buy multiple guns with a single background check.
  • The increase is mostly due to higher sales of handguns, which are typically bought for self-defense. Two of the fastest-growing segments of the market are women and gun owners with concealed carry permits.
  • When Missouri repealed a requirement that gun buyers obtain a permit to buy a handgun in 2007, estimated gun sales went up and stayed up, by roughly 9,000 additional guns per month. The influx shifted gun-trafficking patterns, reducing the number of guns used in crimes that had been brought in from neighboring states.
  • Supreme Court invalidated a ban on handguns in Washington, estimated handgun sales in the city went from near-zero to about 40 every month.
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The Trump Effect, and How It Spreads - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...effect-and-how-it-spreads.html new york times racism Trump politics refugees fear
shared by kushnerha on 10 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • do not make the mistake of treating him as a solitary phenomenon, a singular celebrity narcissist who has somehow, all alone, brought his party and its politics to the brink of fascism
  • The things he says are outrageous, by design, but they were not spawned, nor have they flourished, in isolation.
  • They have been harshening their campaign speeches and immigration proposals in response to the Trump effect. Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush want to allow only Christian refugees from Syria to enter the country, and Mr. Cruz has introduced legislation to allow states to opt out of refugee resettlement.
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  • In 31 states, governors — most but not all Republicans — have formed an axis of ignorance, declaring their borders closed to refugees fleeing the Islamic state in Syria.
  • defending the displaced against blatant discrimination. That it is even necessary to protect the victims of Islamic extremism from being victimized again, in the United States, is a national disgrace.
  • the danger right now is allowing him to legitimize the hatred that he so skillfully exploits, and to revive the old American tendency, in frightening times, toward vicious treatment of the weak and outsiders.
  • The internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II, as some Republicans have either forgotten or never understood, was a dark episode in American history. It is remembered today with regret, as something the nation struggled with, learned from, and moved beyond. But there are millions of Muslims who have good reason to fear that the darkness is falling again.
  • The time to renounce Mr. Trump’s views was the day he entered the race, calling Mexico an exporter of criminals and rapists.
  • He played to the politics of nativism and fear that was evident last year
  • The racism behind the agenda of the right wing on immigrants and foreigners has long been plain as day. Mr. Trump makes it even plainer.
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New Guidelines Call for Changes in Science Education - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...nges-in-science-education.html science education US policy
shared by Javier E on 10 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Educators unveiled new guidelines on Tuesday that call for sweeping changes in the way science is taught in the United States
  • The guidelines, known as the Next Generation Science Standards, are the first broad national recommendations for science instruction since 1996. They were developed by a consortium of 26 state governments and several groups representing scientists and teachers.
  • The focus would be helping students become more intelligent science consumers by learning how scientific work is done: how ideas are developed and tested, what counts as strong or weak evidence, and how insights from many disciplines fit together into a coherent picture of the world.
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  • Leaders of the effort said that teachers may well wind up covering fewer subjects, but digging more deeply into the ones they do cover. In some cases, traditional classes like biology and chemistry may disappear entirely from high schools, replaced by courses that use a case-study method to teach science in a more holistic way.
  • the standards are meant to do for science what a separate set of guidelines known as the Common Core is supposed to do for English and mathematics: impose and raise standards, with a focus on critical thinking and primary investigation.
  • “This is a huge deal,” said David L. Evans, the executive director of the National Science Teachers Association. “We depend on science in so many aspects of our lives. There’s a strong feeling that we need to help people understand the nature of science itself, as an intellectual pursuit.”
  • a group called Citizens for Objective Public Education, which lists officers in Florida and Kansas, distributed a nine-page letter attacking them. It warned that the standards ignored evidence against evolution, promoted “secular humanism,” and threatened to “take away the right of parents to direct the religious education of their children.”
  • In many states, extensive scientific instruction does not begin until high school. The guidelines call for injecting far more science into the middle grades, with climate change being one among many topics. In high school, students would learn in more detail about the human role in generating emissions that are altering the planetary climate.
  • While thousands of schools in the United States already teach climate change to some degree, they are usually doing it voluntarily, and often in environmental studies classes. In many more schools, the subject does not come up because students are not offered those specialized courses, and State guidelines typically do not require that the issue be raised in traditional biology or chemistry classes.
  • Outlining how the standards might change science classrooms, educators said they foresaw more use of real-world examples, like taking students to a farm or fish hatchery — perhaps repeatedly, over the course of years — to help them learn principles from biology, chemistry and physics.
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How Long Can a Woman Wait to Have an Abortion in America? - The Atlantic - 1 views

www.theatlantic.com/...485384
shared by proudsa on 03 Jun 16 - No Cached
  • Approximately 9,090 women in the United States had abortions after their 21st week of pregnancy in 2012
  • xceptions for medical emergencies or fetal anomalies
  • states like South Carolina, it can be difficult or even impossible to find an abortion provider who will perform the procedure at that stage.
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  • here’s a kind of national mean on abortion limits in the United States—a significant majority States, from the most conservative to the most liberal
  • Most of the newer limits on gestational age have to do with fetal pain—legislators claim they’re prohibiting the abortion of fetuses that can feel physical distress.
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America's Bald Eagle Population Has Quadrupled - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...bald-eagles-united-states.html science research animals government
shared by lucieperloff on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • The bald eagle population in the lower 48 states has quadrupled since 2009,
  • There were an estimated 316,700 bald eagles in the lower 48 states during the 2019 breeding season
  • her organization would keep working with state and federal agencies, tribes, private landowners and others to ensure that the bald eagle population continues to increase.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • truly a historic conservation success story.”
  • “When you look across the continent, the continental population is really a mosaic of smaller subpopulations,” Professor Watts said. “And those populations have started their growth phases at different times, and they will ultimately reach saturation at different times.”
  • The numbers are particularly remarkable given that the species was nearly driven to extinction in the last century.
  • The bald eagle population reached its lowest point of 417 known nesting pairs in 1963, researchers said.
  • “I really think that the population has reached a period where we are kind of moving beyond conservations restrictions,”
  • He does not see society reverting to a period where hunting bald eagles would be permitted, he said, adding that bald eagles are the United States’ national symbol. “I think they should be revered, respected and protected,
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(4) It's now a crime in Georgia to approach voters in line to give them food and water - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...830a6516f53d90e47bca2ba99ea293 georgia voters crime tok Law social media
shared by aprossi on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • The latest on Georgia's new law suppressing voting access
  • It's now a crime in Georgia to approach voters in line to give them food and water 
  • A lawsuit has already been filed over the new Georgia law limiting voting
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • A Georgia state lawmaker was arrested for protesting the bill outside the governor's office
  • Georgia passed a sweeping elections bill restricting voting access. Here's what you need to know.
  • Georgia secretary of state vows to "ensure" eligible citizens will be able to vote under new elections law
  • Stacey Abrams calls Georgia elections bill "nothing less than Jim Crow 2.0"
  • Voting rights groups have slammed Georgia's far-reaching bill, particularly for its provisions aimed at the secretary of state and local election officials.
  • At least 45 states have seen bills aimed at voter suppression. These are the key states to watch.
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NCAA Looms Large In Debate Over Transgender Sports Restrictions : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...ransgender-sports-restrictions NCAA transgender rights
shared by ilanaprincilus06 on 27 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • When the South Dakota state legislature passed HB 1217 in early March, South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem tweeted that she was "excited" to sign it.That bill would have stopped transgender girls and women from playing on sports teams designated for girls and women.
  • These types of bills have been introduced in 25 states nationwide and have become a nationwide cause for social conservatives like Noem.
  • The ongoing fight in South Dakota is indicative not only of the way the issue of transgender girls in sports has become a nationwide phenomenon, but of the way that the NCAA looms over debates over transgender rights, and especially over the fight over transgender sports bans
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  • In 2016, that state passed a bill restricting which bathrooms transgender people could use.
  • Because of that law, the NCAA and other sports organizations pulled events from the state. That included seven NCAA championship events, among them two rounds of men's March Madness basketball games.
  • Proponents believe the laws will keep girls and women's sports free of unfair competition.
  • In other words, it's a variety of NCAA events — well beyond March Madness — that can affect a city's economy, especially a small city like Sioux Falls. For now, people like Lee will be watching closely to see what the South Dakota legislature does next with the bill.
  • The NCAA is uniquely situated in this debate in that it is an economic force and a sporting organization - one that already has a policy on transgender athletes. That 2011 policy does allow transgender athletes to participate on their gender's teams.
  • Idaho passed the country's first transgender sports ban last year. The NCAA came out against that bill, calling it "harmful to transgender student athletes."
  • More than 500 student athletes have signed onto a letter asking the NCAA not to host events in states with these laws.
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My Mom Believes In QAnon. I've Been Trying To Get Her Out. - 0 views

www.buzzfeednews.com/...on-parents-millennial-children QAnon conspiracy theory language psychology
shared by Javier E on 13 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • An early adopter of the QAnon mass delusion, on board since 2018, she held firm to the claim that a Satan-worshipping cabal of child sex traffickers controlled the world and the only person standing in their way was Trump. She saw him not merely as a politician but a savior, and she expressed her devotion in stark terms.
  • “The prophets have said Trump is anointed,” she texted me once. “God is using him to finally end the evil doings of the cabal which has hurt humanity all these centuries… We are in a war between good & evil.”
  • By 2020, I’d pretty much given up on swaying my mom away from her preferred presidential candidate. We’d spent many hours arguing over basic facts I considered indisputable. Any information I cited to prove Trump’s cruelty, she cut down with a corresponding counterattack. My links to credible news sources disintegrated against a wall of outlets like One America News Network, Breitbart, and Before It’s News. Any cracks I could find in her positions were instantly undermined by the inconvenient fact that I was, in her words, a member of “the liberal media,” a brainwashed acolyte of the sprawling conspiracy trying to take down her heroic leader.
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  • The irony gnawed at me: My entire vocation as an investigative reporter was predicated on being able to reveal truths, and yet I could not even rustle up the evidence to convince my own mother that our 45th president was not, in fact, the hero she believed him to be. Or, for that matter, that John F. Kennedy Jr. was dead. Or that Tom Hanks had not been executed for drinking the blood of children.
  • The theories spun from Q’s messages seemed much easier to disprove. Oprah Winfrey couldn’t have been detained during a wave of deep state arrests because we could still see her conducting live interviews on television. Trump’s 4th of July speech at Mount Rushmore came to an end without John F. Kennedy Jr. revealing he was alive and stepping in as the president’s new running mate. The widespread blackouts that her Patriot friend’s “source from the Pentagon” had warned about failed to materialize. And I could testify firsthand that the CIA had no control over my newsroom’s editorial decisions.
  • “I believe the Holy Spirit led me to the QAnons to discover the truth which is being suppressed,” she texted me. “Otherwise, how would I be able to know the truth if the lamestream media suppresses the truth?”
  • Through the years, I’d battled against conspiracy theories my mom threw at me that were far more formidable than QAnon. I’d been stumped when she asked me to prove that Beyoncé wasn’t an Illuminati member, dumbfounded when research studies I sent her weren’t enough to reach an agreement on vaccine efficacy, and too worn down to say anything more than “that’s not true” when confronted with false allegations of murders committed by prominent politicians.
  • Eventually, I accepted the impasse. It didn’t seem healthy that every conversation we had would devolve into a circuitous debate about which one of us was on the side of the bad guys. So I tried to pick my battles.
  • But what I had dismissed as damaging inconsistencies turned out to be the core strength of the belief system: It was alive, flexible, sprouting more questions than answers, more clues to study, an investigation playing out in real time, with the fate of the world at stake.
  • With no overlap between our filters of reality, I was at a loss for any facts that would actually stick.
  • Meanwhile, she wondered where she’d gone wrong with me
  • She regretted not taking politics more seriously when I was younger. I’d grown up blinkered by American privilege, trained to ignore the dirty machinations securing my comforts. My mom had shed that luxury long ago.
  • The year my mom began falling down QAnon rabbit holes, I turned the age she was when she first arrived in the States. By then, I was no longer sure that America was worth the cost of her migration. When the real eState market collapsed under the weight of Wall Street speculation, she had to sell our house at a steep loss to avoid foreclosure and her budding career as a realtor evaporated. Her near–minimum wage jobs weren’t enough to cover her bills, so her credit card debts rose. She delayed retirement plans because she saw no path to breaking even anytime soon, though she was hopeful that a turnaround was on the horizon. Through the setbacks and detours, she drifted into the arms of the people and beliefs I held most responsible for her troubles.
  • With a fervor I knew was futile, I’d tell my mom she was missing the real conspiracy: The powerful people shaping policy to benefit their own interests, to maintain wealth and white predominance, through tax cuts and voter suppression, were commandeering her support solely by catering to her stance on the one issue she cared most about.
  • The voice my mom trusted most now was Trump’s. Our disagreements were no longer ideological to her but part of a celestial conflict.
  • “I love you but you have to be on the side of good,” she texted me. “Im sad cuz u have become part of the deep state. May God have mercy on you...I pray you will see the truth of the evil agenda and be on the side of Trump.”
  • She likened her fellow Patriots to the early Christians who spread the word of Jesus at the risk of persecution. She often sent me a meme with a caption about “ordinary people who spent countless hours researching, debating, meditating and praying” for the truth to be revealed to them. “Although they were mocked, dismissed and cast off, they knew their souls had agreed long ago to do this work.”
  • Last summer, as my mom marched in a pink MAGA hat amid maskless crowds, and armed extremists stalked racial justice protests, and a disputed election loomed like a time bomb, I entertained my darkest thoughts about the fate of our country. Was there any hope in a democracy without a shared set of basic facts? Had my elders fled one authoritarian regime only for their children to face another? Amid the gloom, I found only a single morsel of solace: My mom was as hopeful as she’d ever been.
  • I wish I could offer some evidence showing that the gulf between us might be narrowing, that my love, persistence, and collection of facts might be enough to draw her back into a reality we share, and that when our wager about the storm comes due in a few months, she’ll realize that the voices she trusts have been lying to her. But I don’t think that will happen
  • What can I do but try to limit the damage? Send my mom movie recommendations to occupy the free time she instead spends on conspiracy research. Shift our conversations to the common ground of cooking recipes and family gossip. Raise objections when her beliefs nudge her toward dangerous decisions.
  • I now understand our debates as marks of the very bond I thought was disintegrating. No matter how far she believes I’ve fallen into the deep state, how hard I fight for the forces of evil, how imminent the grand plan’s rapture, my mom will be there on the other side of the line putting in a good word for me with the angels and saints, trying to save me from damnation. And those are the two realities we live in. ●
  • understand
  • now understand our debates as marks of the very bond I thought was disintegrating. No matter how far she believes I’ve fallen into the deep state, how hard I fight for the forces of evil, how imminent the grand plan’s rapture, my mom will be there on the other side of the line putting in a good word for me with the angels and saints, trying to save me from damnation. And those are the two realities we live in. ●
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Tennessee Becomes 3rd State This Month To Enact Restrictions For Transgender Athletes :... - 1 views

www.npr.org/...strictions-for-transgender-ath LGBTQ transrights sports Tennessee
shared by cvanderloo on 28 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has signed into law a controversial bill requiring students to prove their sex at birth in order to participate in middle and high school sports.
  • The new law in Tennessee requires students beyond the fourth grade to show legal documents demonstrating their assigned sex at the time of their birth in order to participate in school athletics. The law only allows students to participate in sports with other students with the same biological sex designated at birth.
  • "I signed the bill to preserve women's athletics and ensure fair competition," Lee tweeted after approving it. "
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The Human Rights Campaign calls the slew of legislation restricting the access of trans children to sports "unprecedented," grouping it in with other bills introduced recently in states like South Carolina and Texas that would limit certain kinds of medical treatments for trans youth.
  • Already this year, state legislators have introduced at least 35 bills aimed at restricting trans girls and women from playing on girls' and women's sports teams, according to the LGBTQ advocacy group Freedom for All Americans. That's up from only two in 2019.
  • "Transgender kids are kids," the organization said. "Excluding and discriminating against them does great harm to them and it weakens the communities in which these children feel excluded and marginalized."
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How Do You Know When Society Is About to Fall Apart? - The New York Times - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...societal-collapse.html collapse civilization decline history crisis politics economics culture complexity
shared by Javier E on 21 Dec 20 - No Cached
  • Tainter seemed calm. He walked me through the arguments of the book that made his reputation, “The Collapse of Complex Societies,” which has for years been the seminal text in the study of societal collapse, an academic subdiscipline that arguably was born with its publication in 1988
  • It is only a mild overstatement to suggest that before Tainter, collapse was simply not a thing.
  • His own research has moved on; these days, he focuses on “sustainability.”
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  • He writes with disarming composure about the factors that have led to the disintegration of empires and the abandonment of cities and about the mechanism that, in his view, makes it nearly certain that all states that rise will one day fall
  • societal collapse and its associated terms — “fragility” and “resilience,” “risk” and “sustainability” — have become the objects of extensive scholarly inquiry and infrastructure.
  • Princeton has a research program in Global Systemic Risk, Cambridge a Center for the Study of Existential Risk
  • even Tainter, for all his caution and reserve, was willing to allow that contemporary society has built-in vulnerabilities that could allow things to go very badly indeed — probably not right now, maybe not for a few decades still, but possibly sooner. In fact, he worried, it could begin before the year was over.
  • Plato, in “The Republic,” compared cities to animals and plants, subject to growth and senescence like any living thing. The metaphor would hold: In the early 20th century, the German historian Oswald Spengler proposed that all cultures have souls, vital essences that begin falling into decay the moment they adopt the trappings of civilization.
  • that theory, which became the heart of “The Collapse of Complex Societies.” Tainter’s argument rests on two proposals. The first is that human societies develop complexity, i.e. specialized roles and the institutional structures that coordinate them, in order to solve problems
  • All history since then has been “characterized by a seemingly inexorable trend toward higher levels of complexity, specialization and sociopolitical control.”
  • Eventually, societies we would recognize as similar to our own would emerge, “large, heterogeneous, internally differentiated, class structured, controlled societies in which the resources that sustain life are not equally available to all.”
  • Something more than the threat of violence would be necessary to hold them together, a delicate balance of symbolic and material benefits that Tainter calls “legitimacy,” the maintenance of which would itself require ever more complex structures, which would become ever less flexible, and more vulnerable, the more they piled up.
  • Social complexity, he argues, is inevitably subject to diminishing marginal returns. It costs more and more, in other words, while producing smaller and smaller profits.
  • Take Rome, which, in Tainter's telling, was able to win significant wealth by sacking its neighbors but was thereafter required to maintain an ever larger and more expensive military just to keep the imperial machine from stalling — until it couldn’t anymore.
  • This is how it goes. As the benefits of ever-increasing complexity — the loot shipped home by the Roman armies or the gentler agricultural symbiosis of the San Juan Basin — begin to dwindle, Tainter writes, societies “become vulnerable to collapse.”
  • haven’t countless societies weathered military defeats, invasions, even occupations and lengthy civil wars, or rebuilt themselves after earthquakes, floods and famines?
  • Only complexity, Tainter argues, provides an explanation that applies in every instance of collapse.
  • Complexity builds and builds, usually incrementally, without anyone noticing how brittle it has all become. Then some little push arrives, and the society begins to fracture.
  • A disaster — even a severe one like a deadly pandemic, mass social unrest or a rapidly changing climate — can, in Tainter’s view, never be enough by itself to cause collapse
  • The only precedent Tainter could think of, in which pandemic coincided with mass social unrest, was the Black Death of the 14th century. That crisis reduced the population of Europe by as much as 60 percent.
  • Whether any existing society is close to collapsing depends on where it falls on the curve of diminishing returns.
  • The United States hardly feels like a confident empire on the rise these days. But how far along are we?
  • Scholars of collapse tend to fall into two loose camps. The first, dominated by Tainter, looks for grand narratives and one-size-fits-all explanations
  • The second is more interested in the particulars of the societies they study
  • Patricia McAnany, who teaches at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has questioned the usefulness of the very concept of collapse — she was an editor of a 2010 volume titled “Questioning Collapse” — but admits to being “very, very worried” about the lack, in the United States, of the “nimbleness” that crises require of governments.
  • We’re too vested and tied to places.” Without the possibility of dispersal, or of real structural change to more equitably distribute resources, “at some point the whole thing blows. It has to.”
  • In Turchin’s case the key is the loss of “social resilience,” a society’s ability to cooperate and act collectively for common goals. By that measure, Turchin judges that the United States was collapsing well before Covid-19 hit. For the last 40 years, he argues, the population has been growing poorer and more unhealthy as elites accumulate more and more wealth and institutional legitimacy founders. “The United States is basically eating itself from the inside out,
  • Inequality and “popular immiseration” have left the country extremely vulnerable to external shocks like the pandemic, and to internal triggers like the killings of George Floyd
  • Societies evolve complexity, he argues, precisely to meet such challenges.
  • Eric H. Cline, who teaches at the George Washington University, argued in “1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed” that Late Bronze Age societies across Europe and western Asia crumbled under a concatenation of stresses, including natural disasters — earthquakes and drought — famine, political strife, mass migration and the closure of trade routes. On their own, none of those factors would have been capable of causing such widespread disintegration, but together they formed a “perfect storm” capable of toppling multiple societies all at once.
  • Collapse “really is a matter of when,” he told me, “and I’m concerned that this may be the time.”
  • In “The Collapse of Complex Societies,” Tainter makes a point that echoes the concern that Patricia McAnany raised. “The world today is full,” Tainter writes. Complex societies occupy every inhabitable region of the planet. There is no escaping. This also means, he writes, that collapse, “if and when it comes again, will this time be global.” Our fates are interlinked. “No longer can any individual nation collapse. World civilization will disintegrate as a whole.”
  • If it happens, he says, it would be “the worst catastrophe in history.”
  • The quest for efficiency, he wrote recently, has brought on unprecedented levels of complexity: “an elaborate global system of production, shipping, manufacturing and retailing” in which goods are manufactured in one part of the world to meet immediate demands in another, and delivered only when they’re needed. The system’s speed is dizzying, but so are its vulnerabilities.
  • A more comprehensive failure of fragile supply chains could mean that fuel, food and other essentials would no longer flow to cities. “There would be billions of deaths within a very short period,” Tainter says.
  • If we sink “into a severe recession or a depression,” Tainter says, “then it will probably cascade. It will simply reinforce itself.”
  • Tainter tells me, he has seen “a definite uptick” in calls from journalists: The study of societal collapse suddenly no longer seems like a purely academic pursuit
  • Turchin is keenly aware of the essential instability of even the sturdiest-seeming systems. “Very severe events, while not terribly likely, are quite possible,” he says. When he emigrated from the U.S.S.R. in 1977, he adds, no one imagined the country would splinter into its constituent parts. “But it did.”
  • He writes of visions of “bloated bureaucracies” becoming the basis of “entire political careers.” Arms races, he observes, presented a “classic example” of spiraling complexity that provides “no tangible benefit for much of the population” and “usually no competitive advantage” either.
  • It is hard not to read the book through the lens of the last 40 years of American history, as a prediction of how the country might deteriorate if resources continued to be slashed from nearly every sector but the military, prisons and police.
  • The more a population is squeezed, Tainter warns, the larger the share that “must be allocated to legitimization or coercion.
  • And so it was: As U.S. military spending skyrocketed — to, by some estimates, a total of more than $1 trillion today from $138 billion in 1980 — the government would try both tactics, ingratiating itself with the wealthy by cutting taxes while dismantling public-assistance programs and incarcerating the poor in ever-greater numbers.
  • “As resources committed to benefits decline,” Tainter wrote in 1988, “resources committed to control must increase.”
  • The overall picture drawn by Tainter’s work is a tragic one. It is our very creativity, our extraordinary ability as a species to organize ourselves to solve problems collectively, that leads us into a trap from which there is no escaping
  • Complexity is “insidious,” in Tainter’s words. “It grows by small steps, each of which seems reasonable at the time.” And then the world starts to fall apart, and you wonder how you got there.
  • Perhaps collapse is not, actually, a thing. Perhaps, as an idea, it was a product of its time, a Cold War hangover that has outlived its usefulness, or an academic ripple effect of climate-change anxiety, or a feedback loop produced by some combination of the two
  • if you pay attention to people’s lived experience, and not just to the abstractions imposed by a highly fragmented archaeological record, a different kind of picture emerges.
  • Tainter’s understanding of societies as problem-solving entities can obscure as much as it reveals
  • Plantation slavery arose in order to solve a problem faced by the white landowning class: The production of agricultural commodities like sugar and cotton requires a great deal of backbreaking labor. That problem, however, has nothing to do with the problems of the people they enslaved. Which of them counts as “society”?
  • Since the beginning of the pandemic, the total net worth of America’s billionaires, all 686 of them, has jumped by close to a trillion dollars.
  • If societies are not in fact unitary, problem-solving entities but heaving contradictions and sites of constant struggle, then their existence is not an all-or-nothing game.
  • Collapse appears not as an ending, but a reality that some have already suffered — in the hold of a slave ship, say, or on a long, forced march from their ancestral lands to reservations faraway — and survived.
  • The current pandemic has already given many of us a taste of what happens when a society fails to meet the challenges that face it, when the factions that rule over it tend solely to their own problems
  • the real danger comes from imagining that we can keep living the way we always have, and that the past is any more stable than the present.
  • If you close your eyes and open them again, the periodic disintegrations that punctuate our history — all those crumbling ruins — begin to fade, and something else comes into focus: wiliness, stubbornness and, perhaps the strongest and most essential human trait, adaptability.
  • When one system fails, we build another. We struggle to do things differently, and we push on. As always, we have no other choice.
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Functional magnetic resonance imaging | Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry - 0 views

jnnp.bmj.com/6
shared by katedriscoll on 03 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • A variety of methods have been developed over the past few decades to allow mapping of the functioning human brain. Two basic classes of mapping technique have evolved: those that map (or localise) the underlying electrical activity of the brain; and those that map local physiological or metabolic consequences of altered brain electrical activity. Among the former are the non-invasive neural electromagnetic techniques of electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG). These methods allow exquisite temporal resolution of neural processes (typically over a 10–100 ms time scale), but suffer from poor spatial resolution (between 1 and several centimetres). Functional MRI (fMRI) methods are in the second category. They can be made sensitive to the changes in regional blood perfusion, blood volume (for example, using injected magnetic resonance contrast agents), or blood oxygenation that accompany neuronal activity. Blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) fMRI, which is sensitive primarily to the last of these variables, allows an image spatial resolution that is of the order of a few millimetres, with a temporal resolution of a few seconds (limited by the haemodynamic response itself). An accessible and more detailed introduction to the technique than is possible in this brief review is found in a recent book.1
  • Methods such as positron emission tomography (PET) provide an absolute measure of tissue metabolism. In contrast, BOLD fMRI can at present be used only for determining relative signal intensity changes associated with different cognitive states during a single imaging session. The most time efficient approach for comparing brain responses in different states during the imaging experiment is the “block” design19 (fig 3). This design uses relatively long alternating periods (for example, 30 seconds), during each of which a discrete cognitive state is maintained. In the simplest form, there may only be two such states, which are alternated throughout the experiment in order to ensure that variations arising from fluctuations in scanner sensitivity, patient movement, or changes in attention have a similar impact on the signal responses associated with both states.
  • katedriscoll on 03 Nov 20
     
    In TOK we talked about an experiment that used fMRI, so I thought this article was very interesting in understanding fMRI in a more broader context.
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What is hypnosis and how might it work? - 0 views

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...PMC6357291
shared by katedriscoll on 03 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • Hypnosis can be seen as ‘a waking state of awareness, (or consciousness), in which a person’s attention is detached from his or her immediate environment and is absorbed by inner experiences such as feelings, cognition and imagery’.1 Hypnotic induction involves focusing of attention and imaginative involvement to the point where what is being imagined feels real. By the use and acceptance of suggestions, the clinician and patient construct a hypnotic reality.
  • Everyday ‘trance’ states are part of our common human experience, such as getting lost in a good book, driving down a familiar stretch of road with no conscious recollection, when in prayer or meditation, or when undertaking a monotonous or a creative activity. Our conscious awareness of our surroundings versus an inner awareness is on a continuum, so that, when in these states, one’s focus is predominantly internal, but one does not necessarily lose all outer awareness.
  • Hypnosis could be seen as a meditative state, which one can learn to access consciously and deliberately, for a therapeutic purpose. Suggestions are then given either verbally or using imagery, directed at the desired outcome. This might be to allay anxiety by accessing calmness and relaxation, help manage side effects of medications, or help ease pain or other symptoms. Depending on the suggestions given, hypnosis is usually a relaxing experience, which can be very useful with a patient who is tense or anxious. However, the main usefulness of the hypnotic state is the increased effectiveness of suggestion and access to mind/body links or unconscious processing. Hypnosis can not only be used to reduce emotional distress but also may have a direct effect on the patient’s experience of pain.2
  • katedriscoll on 03 Nov 20
     
    This article dives deeper into what hypnosis is and how it works.
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Opinion | China Has a Big Economic Problem, and It Isn't the Trade War - The New York T... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...china-economy.html
shared by tongoscar on 20 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • Today, it is progress on the trade war with the United States, or the recoupling of China’s economy with those of other countries, that is seen as the way for it to regain momentum.But to think in these terms is to miss the main point: The trade war has merely compounded an economic slowdown in China that is substantially of the country’s own making.
  • In 2018, China’s gross domestic product grew by about 6.5 percent, the lowest rate since 1990. And part of the slowdown is a predictable result of deliberate government decisions, in particular policies that favor the state sector at the expense of the private sector
  • The most striking evidence, documented by the Peterson Institute of International Economics in October, is the drop in credit to the private sector and the rise in credit to the state sector in recent years.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • In the face of restrictions on liquidity, defaults and bankruptcies in the private sector have multiplied. The Chinese banking system operates on the basis of cross-guarantees, which means that a single bankruptcy can ricochet through an entire network of connections.
  • Trade tensions with the United States seem to have hurt China, and this week’s deal, however timid and tentative, is a welcome step forward. But China itself needs to get its own economy back on track — it needs to support its private sector again.
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Goldman Sachs issues warning about US unemployment - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html crisis
shared by katherineharron on 14 May 20 - No Cached
  • The unemployment rate in the United States will peak at 25%, rivaling the worst period of the Great Depression, Goldman Sachs warned on Wednesday.
  • The unemployment rate spiked to 14.7% in April as the economy lost more than 20 million jobs during the self-imposed shutdown to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
  • Goldman Sachs previously projected the unemployment rate would peak at 15%. The new forecasts are based on government statistics, the first glimpse of the reopening process and new big data sources, the bank said.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Annual data, which go back to 1929, show that the unemployment rate peaked during the Great Depression at an average of 24.9% in 1933.
  • Goldman Sachs warned Wednesday that the real jobless rate will peak at 35%, up from the bank's previous projection for a peak of 29%.
  • , told CNN last week that the real jobless rate could hit 25% before "hopefully" falling following a transition period this summer.
  • Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, said Tuesday that the "consequences could be really serious" if states reopen ahead of the guidelines issued by the White House.
  • Goldman also upgraded its GDP forecasts, predicting a "somewhat more V-shaped path" as states relax lockdown orders. The bank now expects rapid annualized growth of 29% in the third quarter, up from 19% previously.
  • And Goldman noted several "serious health risks": "insufficient testing and contact tracing" in some states, reopening high-risk sectors and limited evidence of how effective measures like social distancing and will be.
  • "Prolonged weakness could cause severe scarring effects such as permanent layoffs and business closures that delay the recovery," Goldman Sachs economists wrote.
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State Department tracking 50k Americans who might need help getting home - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html
shared by katherineharron on 28 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • The State Department is tracking 50,000 Americans who might seek assistance returning to the US due to the coronavirus pandemic, the head of the repatriation task force said Wednesday -- a dramatic increase from the department's estimate from days ago.
  • "At the moment we're tracking approximately 50,000 we think might seek to return to the United States," he said.
  • "We're planning on another 66 flights over the next nine days or so," he said. "We have some 9,000 people scheduled -- identified for those flights and we hope to move those numbers up."
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  • "If you are a US citizen, and you are abroad at the moment, take a look at your circumstances, determine whether this is a place where you'd be willing to hunker down for an indeterminate period of time, as airspace and borders, etc., close down," the senior official said.
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How an Organized Republican Effort Punishes Companies for Climate Action - The New York... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...blicans-blackrock-climate.html companies climate action new york times
shared by peterconnelly on 01 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • In Texas, a new law bars the state’s retirement and investment funds from doing business with companies that the state comptroller says are boycotting fossil fuels.
  • Conservative lawmakers in 15 other states are promoting similar legislation.
  • Across the country, Republican lawmakers and their allies have launched a campaign to try to rein in what they see as activist companies trying to reduce the greenhouse gases that are dangerously heating the planet.
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  • In doing so, Mr. Moore and others have pushed climate change from the scientific realm into the political battles already raging over topics like voting rights, abortion and L.G.B.T.Q. issues.
  • “There is a coordinated effort to chill corporate engagement on these issues,” said Daniella Ballou-Aares
  • They have worked alongside a nonprofit organization that has run television ads, dispatched roaming billboard trucks and rented out a Times Square billboard criticizing BlackRock for championing what they call woke causes, including environmentalism.
  • That activism has often put companies at odds with the Republican Party, traditionally the ally of big business.
  • as pressure has grown from consumers and liberal groups to take action, corporations have warmed to the notion of using capital and markets to create a cleaner economy
  • When President Trump declared in 2017 that he would pull the United States from the Paris climate accord, more than 2,000 businesses and investors — including Apple, Amazon and Mars — signed a pledge to continue to work toward climate goals.
  • “Every company and every industry will be transformed by the transition to a net-zero world,” Mr. Fink wrote. “The question is, will you lead, or will you be led?”
  • And in January, Mr. Moore pulled about $20 million out of a fund managed by BlackRock because the firm has encouraged other companies to reduce emissions. BlackRock still manages several billion for West Virginia’s state retirement system. “We’re divesting from BlackRock because they’re divesting from us,” Mr. Moore said in an interview.
  • “These big banks are virtue signaling because they are woke,”
  • Mr. Fink of BlackRock has emerged as a main target of conservatives.
  • “We are perhaps the world’s largest investor in fossil fuel companies, and, as a long-term investor in these companies, we want to see these companies succeed and prosper,” BlackRock’s head of external affairs, Dalia Blass, wrote in a letter to Texas regulators in January.
  • “BlackRock is trying to have it all ways, acting like it is trying to please everyone.”
  • “ESG is a scam,” he said on Twitter on this month. “It has been weaponized by phony social justice warriors.” Shortly after that he shared a meme that declared an ESG score “determines how compliant your business is with the leftist agenda.”
  • “Climate change is not a financial risk that we need to worry about,” adding, “Who cares if Miami is six meters underwater in 100 years?”
  • That view is at odds with the findings of the world’s leading climate scientists. A major United Nations report warned last month that the world could reach a threshold by the end of this decade beyond which the dangers of global warming — including worsening floods, droughts and wildfires — will grow considerably. In 2021, there were 20 weather or climate-related disasters in the United States that each cost more than $1 billion in losses, according to the federal government.
  • “Our ambition is to be the leading bank supporting the global economy in the transition to net zero,” he said.
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How Some States Are Combating Election Misinformation Ahead of Midterms - The New York ... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...sheriff-election-midterms.html new york times states election
shared by peterconnelly on 02 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • Ahead of the 2020 elections, Connecticut confronted a bevy of falsehoods about voting that swirled around online. One, widely viewed on Facebook, wrongly said absentee ballots had been sent to dead people. On Twitter, users spread a false post that a tractor-trailer carrying ballots had crashed on Interstate 95, sending thousands of voter slips into the air and across the highway.
  • the state plans to spend nearly $2 million on marketing to share factual information about voting, and to create its first-ever position for an expert in combating misinformation.
  • With a salary of $150,000, the person is expected to comb fringe sites like 4chan, far-ri
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • ght social networks like Gettr and Rumble, and mainstream social media sites to root out early misinformation narratives about voting before they go viral, and then urge the companies to remove or flag the posts that contain false information.
  • These states, most of them under Democratic control, have been acting as voter confidence in election integrity has plummeted.
  • In an ABC/Ipsos poll from January, only 20 percent of respondents said they were “very confident” in the integrity of the election system and 39 percent said they felt “somewhat confident.”
  • Some conservatives and civil rights groups are almost certain to complain that the efforts to limit misinformation could restrict free speech.
  • “State and local governments are well situated to reduce harms from dis- and misinformation by providing timely, accurate and trustworthy information,” said Rachel Goodman
  • “Facts still exist, and lies are being used to chip away at our fundamental freedoms,” Ms. Griswold said.
  • Officials said they would prefer candidates fluent in both English and Spanish, to address the spread of misinformation in both languages. The officer would track down viral misinformation posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube, and look for emerging narratives and memes, especially on fringe social media platforms and the dark web.
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Republicans have a candidate who could take back the White House. They're just not voti... - 0 views

www.vox.com/...asich-clinton-general-election social science politics
shared by mcginnisca on 14 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • John Kasich may be running a distant third in the primary, but he's the Republican presidential candidate best positioned to beat Hillary Clinton in a general election matchup
  • The researchers then took the results of those interviews and combined them with voter demographics and economic data to forecast an outcome in each state. These models, as expected, show Clinton pretty easily winning Electoral College majorities over Trump and Cruz, the two Republican frontrunners.
  • Yet she still loses overwhelmingly — she trails Kasich in a couple of traditional swing states (Colorado and Kasich's home state of Ohio), and even narrowly trails him in bluer states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Maine, and Oregon.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • By contrast, both Ted Cruz and Donald Trump would lose to Clinton in a general election battle, according to the Morning Consult projections — though, interestingly, not in historic blowouts but instead by similar margins to Mitt Romney's 2012 loss
  • "If the election were held today, John Kasich would receive 304 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton’s 234, largely due to strong performances in the Midwest and mid-Atlantic,
  • Trump would get just 210 electoral votes, and Cruz would get 206.
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