[In case it needs to be said: I don't agree with every word of everything I link to. --L.]
- Oh, *That’s* Why You Call Them Jerkoffs
- [Pandagon - Jesse Taylor]
[Some induhvidual is building a gay bar next to the non-mosque that is being built near Ground Zero. -L]
…Now, if there’s anything wrong with this plan, it’s not a gay bar qua gay bar next to a Muslim community center qua Muslim community center. It’s that it’s a gay bar qua people who are not gay and don’t particularly like gay people and don’t particularly like Muslims next to a Muslim community center qua Mohameddan obelisk of terror and jihadist victory.
…Oddly enough, this makes it eminently worthy of criticism if you believe that the community center is being built for one set of clearly stated reasons and the gay bar would be build for another set of clearly stated reasons that are based on a deliberate misunderstanding of the former set of reasons. (This isn’t even to mention the fact that another group, gays and lesbians, gets their identity appropriated for a cheap and insulting political stunt. If it works, the best that’s happened is that a bunch of straight Christian Republicans have made life harder for Muslims, gays and lesbians at no actual risk or harm to themselves. Well done!)
- From the "what do they have to do, kill Medgar Evers?" file
- [Hullabaloo - Digby]
All of this could be some sort of coincidence or statistical static but I doubt it. It's true that these attitudes are a common feature of conservatism, but they are a prominent motivating feature of the far right, which is what the Tea Party represents. Anyone who has a sense of how modern racism works can see that this movement is comprised of a large number of people who hold these beliefs. It's not hidden. But these polling numbers give some objective data to back up the heuristic assessments…
- The Right's Wrong Turn — Voting Against Middle Class Suburban Workers
- [Hullabaloo - Digby]
- How Degrading Is DADT?
- [Firedoglake - lewismd]
…an excerpt from the resignation of Cadet Katherine Miller. By every measure, Cadet Miller has been an exemplary officer candidate. As Andrew Exum put it, “Katherine Miller is exactly the kind of person we need in the ranks of our nation’s junior officer corps.” But because of the military’s discriminatory policy towards homosexuals, she resigned, and the Army lost exactly the sort of person it needs more of.
- Study: Big Biz Falls in Love With FOSS, but Not Just 'Cause It's a Cheap Date
- [LinuxInsider - Katherine Noyes]
Open source software is poised for rapid growth in enterprises over the next 12 months, but cost is no longer the primary driver behind open source adoption. That's according to a new study from global consultancy Accenture, which based its findings on interviews with 300 executives at organizations in the United States, the United Kingdom and Ireland with annual revenues above $500 million…
- Harvard Latino Law Review Seeks Paper on Arizona's SB 1070
- [ImmigrationProf Blog]
The Harvard Latino Law Review is seeking to publish a brief note on the impact of Arizona's SB 1070 on the Latino community. If you are interested in submitting a piece for consideration, please send us a short abstract describing…
- Pictures: Huge Solar Storm Triggers Unusual Auroras
- [National Geographic News]
See some of the colorful auroras triggered by last week's huge coronal mass ejection, which brought the sky show farther south than normal.
- A massive, "unprecedented escape" of genetically-modified crops into the wild
- [io9 - Annalee Newitz]
Genetically-modified canola has been breeding undetected in the American wilds for at least "several generations," say scientists. The escaped GM canola has already mutated into a never-before-seen strain, and now it may be modifying other plants too.
[I assume we're talking canola generations, not human ones. -L]
- Blach had learned that all life’s quandries
- [I Can Has Cheezburger]
[The eternal struggle of wildcat and porcupine. -L]
- Op-Ed Contributor – The Economy Needs a Bit of Ingenuity – NYTimes.com
- [Edmund S. Phelps]
…The good news is that some of the damage done in the past decade will heal. The pessimism that broke out in 2009 is dissipating. The oversupply of houses and office space, which is depressing construction, will wear off. Banks and households are saving quickly enough to retire most of their excessive debt within a decade.
But other problems are not self-healing. In established businesses, short-termism has become rampant. Executives avoid farsighted projects, no matter how promising…
…many of the factors that have long driven American innovation have dried up….We cannot simply assume that, when the recession ends, American dynamism will snap back in place.
Many pin their hopes for reviving the economy on gains in worker productivity. But such workplace advances often destroy more jobs than they create. That happened in the Great Depression…
- The Personality Paradox
- [Wired: Science]
There’s an interesting new paper in Biological Psychiatry on the genetic variations underlying human personality. The study relied on a standard inventory of temperaments – novelty-seeking, harm avoidance, reward dependence and persistence – as measured in 5,117 Australian adults. What did the scientists find? Mostly nothing. The vast genetic search came up empty…
There has been a longstanding debate among psychologists about the proper way to measure and define human personality. On the one hand, there are plenty of researchers and clinicians who endorse tests like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), which seeks to categorize people based on a series of supposedly innate personality dichotomies… [Walter] Mischel quickly concluded that, while prevailing theories held personality traits to be broadly consistent – a shy person was always shy – the available data didn’t back this up. In fact, Mischel soon concluded that human personality, at least as it was then conceived, couldn’t be reliably assessed at all. [...] the problem wasn’t the tests—it was their premise. Psychologists had spent decades searching for traits that exist independently of circumstance, but what if personality can’t be separated from context?
…Mischel proposed a model of personality called interactionism. One of his favorite metaphors for interactionism concerns a car making a screeching noise. How does a mechanic solve the problem? He begins by trying to identify the specific conditions that trigger the noise. Is there a screech when the car is accelerating, or when it’s shifting gears, or turning at slow speeds? Unless the mechanic can give the screech a context, he’ll never find the broken part. Mischel wanted psychologists to think like mechanics, and look at people’s responses under particular conditions…
- Unpredictable Arctic Ice Imperils Pacific Walrus
- [Scientific American]
For generations, Yupik and Inupiat hunters have depended on the Pacific walrus. They ate the walrus' meat and whittled its bones into tools. Walrus skin covered their boats, and walrus intestines, stitched into raincoats, covered their backs. Today, the walrus is still an important part of the subsistence diet in villages along Alaska's Chukchi and Bering sea coasts, and Native Alaskans sell handcrafts made from walrus ivory.
But as the Arctic warms, the landscape upon which both walruses and people depend is changing.
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