[TW: relatively graphic descriptions of violence]
"When artist Zwelethu Mthethwa goes to trial in November, will we see crowds, cameras and the ANC Women’s League? Or does nobody care very much when the accused is an artist – and the victim is a sex-worker?" Daily Maverick
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[TW: Child sexual abuse]
Very interesting piece about young people who experience sexual attraction to children and are committed to not acting on this attraction. It makes the point that stigma and mandatory reporting laws for health care providers often make it very difficult for people in this position to seek treatment. Medium
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"In the 2013 Healthy Kids Colorado survey, 37 percent of high school students reported that they had ever tried marijuana, down from 39 percent in 2011. The percentage who reported using marijuana in the previous month (a.k.a. "current" use) also declined, from 22 percent in 2011 to 20 percent in 2013. The state Department of Public Health and Environment, which oversees the survey, says those decreases are not statistically significant. But they are part of a general downward trend in Colorado that has continued despite the legalization of medical marijuana in 2001, the commercialization of medical marijuana in 2009 ..., and the legalization of recreational use... at the end of 2012" Reason
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"In yet another crackdown on shack dwellers in Philippi East's "Marikana" settlement, dozens of shacks were demolished by the City of Cape Town's Anti-Land Invasion Unit on Monday. Police providing back-up and support, humiliated, assaulted and jeered at residents as they were evicted." M&G
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And now for a completely different (i.e. more humane and effective) approach to informal urban development...
"A policy of legalising unplanned structures if they meet minimum standards means new arrivals to the Vietnamese capital can build homes without official permission, and get basic services" Guardian
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Just for a change of pace, here's one for the philosophers of science! I thought this was interesting because the author is a theoretical physicist, and he's thinking about theory change in much the way I've suggested it works, following a sort of "methodological scientific realism".
"If Einstein had gone to school to learn what science is, if he had read Kuhn, and the philosophers explaining what science is, if he was any one of my colleagues today who are looking for a solution of the big problem of physics today, what would he do? He would say, “OK, the empirical content is the strong part of the theory. The idea in classical mechanics that velocity is relative: forget about it. The Maxwell equations: forget about them. Because this is a volatile part of our knowledge. The theories themselves have to be changed, OK? What we keep solid is the data, and we modify the theory so that it makes sense coherently, and coherently with the data.”
That’s not at all what Einstein does. Einstein does the contrary. He takes the theories very seriously. He believes the theories. He says, “Look, classical mechanics is so successful that when it says that velocity is relative, we should take it seriously, and we should believe it. And the Maxwell equations are so successful that we should believe the Maxwell equations.” He has so much trust in the theory itself, in the qualitative content of the theory—that qualitative content that Kuhn says changes all the time, that we learned not to take too seriously—and he has so much in that that he’s ready to do what? To force coherence between the two theories by challenging something completely different, which is something that’s in our head, which is how we think about time." New Republic
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"The Samaritans produced a set of guidelines for the media reporting suicides some years ago, in conjunction with journalists, in the understanding that there is a genuine public interest in exploring why people kill themselves. Nobody has ever suggested a news blackout. But the Samaritans and other mental health groups like Mind say that, above all else, reporting details of the manner in which somebody killed themselves may give the depressed individual information they lacked or an idea they had not thought of and spur them to try it." Guardian
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I've said it before (http://deansassortedthoughts.blogspot.com/2014/04/culture-bound-syndromes-sexual.html) and I'll say it again: the "born this way" argument is a problem, and moreover relies on a bizarre false dichotomy between behaviour being either "freely chosen" or "inborn".
"The “born this way” argument is part of a wider trend of socially conservative LGBT campaigning. Exemplified by David Cameron’s approach towards same-sex marriage (“I don’t support gay marriage despite being a Conservative, I support gay marriage because I’m a Conservative”), it aims to use modern social advances to promote the so-called “traditional moral values” that were once used to justify the introduction of Section 28. Having drained out any ambition of sexual liberation or personal freedoms, such beliefs aim to essentially “normalise” the gay community under an imitation of “traditional”, heteronormative society. In fact, the celebrated campaigns of gay rights have almost all fallen into the trend of mimicking "traditional" relationships; with discussion of marriage, commitment and family." New Statesman
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A review of Tolkien's translation of Beowulf. Recommended solely for beautiful use of language. Prospect
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Definitely an issue that needs more attention. We've all accepted the new status quo in Egypt far too readily.
"I doubt many of us have even heard of the Rabaa al-Aadawiya Square in Cairo, where more than 1,000 protestors were massacred by Egypt’s military and police last August. This “indiscriminate and deliberate use of lethal force”, according to Human Rights Watch, represents “one of the world’s largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in recent history”" Guardian
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The first woman to win a Fields Medal for contributions to mathematics. Hopefully the first of many.
"Most of the problems Mirzakhani works on involve geometric structures on surfaces and their deformations. She has a particular interest in hyperbolic planes, which can look like the edges of curly kale leaves, but may be easier to crochet than explain. According to a citation released by the International Mathematical Union, Mirzakhani won the prize for her "outstanding contributions to the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces"." Guardian
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The gap in treatment for mental illness is shocking, and this is in a wealthy country with universal coverage.
"People are still routinely waiting for – well, we don't really know, but certainly more than 18 weeks, possibly up to two years, for their treatment and that is routine in some parts of the country. Some children aren't getting any treatment at all – literally none. That's what's happening. So although we have the aspiration, the gap is now so big and yet there is no more money," Guardian
"When artist Zwelethu Mthethwa goes to trial in November, will we see crowds, cameras and the ANC Women’s League? Or does nobody care very much when the accused is an artist – and the victim is a sex-worker?" Daily Maverick
>>><<<
[TW: Child sexual abuse]
Very interesting piece about young people who experience sexual attraction to children and are committed to not acting on this attraction. It makes the point that stigma and mandatory reporting laws for health care providers often make it very difficult for people in this position to seek treatment. Medium
>>><<<
"In the 2013 Healthy Kids Colorado survey, 37 percent of high school students reported that they had ever tried marijuana, down from 39 percent in 2011. The percentage who reported using marijuana in the previous month (a.k.a. "current" use) also declined, from 22 percent in 2011 to 20 percent in 2013. The state Department of Public Health and Environment, which oversees the survey, says those decreases are not statistically significant. But they are part of a general downward trend in Colorado that has continued despite the legalization of medical marijuana in 2001, the commercialization of medical marijuana in 2009 ..., and the legalization of recreational use... at the end of 2012" Reason
>>><<<
"In yet another crackdown on shack dwellers in Philippi East's "Marikana" settlement, dozens of shacks were demolished by the City of Cape Town's Anti-Land Invasion Unit on Monday. Police providing back-up and support, humiliated, assaulted and jeered at residents as they were evicted." M&G
>>><<<
And now for a completely different (i.e. more humane and effective) approach to informal urban development...
"A policy of legalising unplanned structures if they meet minimum standards means new arrivals to the Vietnamese capital can build homes without official permission, and get basic services" Guardian
>>><<<
Just for a change of pace, here's one for the philosophers of science! I thought this was interesting because the author is a theoretical physicist, and he's thinking about theory change in much the way I've suggested it works, following a sort of "methodological scientific realism".
"If Einstein had gone to school to learn what science is, if he had read Kuhn, and the philosophers explaining what science is, if he was any one of my colleagues today who are looking for a solution of the big problem of physics today, what would he do? He would say, “OK, the empirical content is the strong part of the theory. The idea in classical mechanics that velocity is relative: forget about it. The Maxwell equations: forget about them. Because this is a volatile part of our knowledge. The theories themselves have to be changed, OK? What we keep solid is the data, and we modify the theory so that it makes sense coherently, and coherently with the data.”
That’s not at all what Einstein does. Einstein does the contrary. He takes the theories very seriously. He believes the theories. He says, “Look, classical mechanics is so successful that when it says that velocity is relative, we should take it seriously, and we should believe it. And the Maxwell equations are so successful that we should believe the Maxwell equations.” He has so much trust in the theory itself, in the qualitative content of the theory—that qualitative content that Kuhn says changes all the time, that we learned not to take too seriously—and he has so much in that that he’s ready to do what? To force coherence between the two theories by challenging something completely different, which is something that’s in our head, which is how we think about time." New Republic
>>><<<
"The Samaritans produced a set of guidelines for the media reporting suicides some years ago, in conjunction with journalists, in the understanding that there is a genuine public interest in exploring why people kill themselves. Nobody has ever suggested a news blackout. But the Samaritans and other mental health groups like Mind say that, above all else, reporting details of the manner in which somebody killed themselves may give the depressed individual information they lacked or an idea they had not thought of and spur them to try it." Guardian
>>><<<
I've said it before (http://deansassortedthoughts.blogspot.com/2014/04/culture-bound-syndromes-sexual.html) and I'll say it again: the "born this way" argument is a problem, and moreover relies on a bizarre false dichotomy between behaviour being either "freely chosen" or "inborn".
"The “born this way” argument is part of a wider trend of socially conservative LGBT campaigning. Exemplified by David Cameron’s approach towards same-sex marriage (“I don’t support gay marriage despite being a Conservative, I support gay marriage because I’m a Conservative”), it aims to use modern social advances to promote the so-called “traditional moral values” that were once used to justify the introduction of Section 28. Having drained out any ambition of sexual liberation or personal freedoms, such beliefs aim to essentially “normalise” the gay community under an imitation of “traditional”, heteronormative society. In fact, the celebrated campaigns of gay rights have almost all fallen into the trend of mimicking "traditional" relationships; with discussion of marriage, commitment and family." New Statesman
>>><<<
A review of Tolkien's translation of Beowulf. Recommended solely for beautiful use of language. Prospect
>>><<<
Definitely an issue that needs more attention. We've all accepted the new status quo in Egypt far too readily.
"I doubt many of us have even heard of the Rabaa al-Aadawiya Square in Cairo, where more than 1,000 protestors were massacred by Egypt’s military and police last August. This “indiscriminate and deliberate use of lethal force”, according to Human Rights Watch, represents “one of the world’s largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in recent history”" Guardian
>>><<<
The first woman to win a Fields Medal for contributions to mathematics. Hopefully the first of many.
"Most of the problems Mirzakhani works on involve geometric structures on surfaces and their deformations. She has a particular interest in hyperbolic planes, which can look like the edges of curly kale leaves, but may be easier to crochet than explain. According to a citation released by the International Mathematical Union, Mirzakhani won the prize for her "outstanding contributions to the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces"." Guardian
>>><<<
The gap in treatment for mental illness is shocking, and this is in a wealthy country with universal coverage.
"People are still routinely waiting for – well, we don't really know, but certainly more than 18 weeks, possibly up to two years, for their treatment and that is routine in some parts of the country. Some children aren't getting any treatment at all – literally none. That's what's happening. So although we have the aspiration, the gap is now so big and yet there is no more money," Guardian
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