Sounding Circle - Category: Social Studies

Thursday, May 11, 2006

The Care Crisis 1 comment

11 May 2006 @ 15:23 The Care Crisis by Ruth Rosen, TPMcafe If you think its about sexual prowess, you’d be wrong. If you think it’s about size, forget it. And if you imagine we follow the various pissing contests going on among male liberals, you’re too self-absorbed. It’s about what I call the Care Crisis. During the last week, I’ve had a series of conversations with intellectual, liberal women who, like most of our male friends, companions and husbands, want to restore American democracy, end the war and free up our nation’s wealth to support the health and well being of our nation’s citizens. We care about the common good. We believe in a public good. We agree with those liberal men who are writing about how Democrats will have to be more than a “collection of aggrieved out-groups,” to quote David Brooks (New York Times, April 27). We agree with Brooks that “the message voters respond to best is notions of shared sacrifice for the common good…people are ready for an appeal to citizenship.” Multiculturalism and identity politics, gloats Brooks, are dead. Fine by me. Gleefully, Brooks announces that “Democrats are purging the last vestiges of the New Left and returning to the older civic liberalism of the 1950s and early 1960s.” But here’s the rub: Notice the years Brooks chooses as the historical moment to which we should return–before American women began demanding the equality that is essential to their citizenship. In these conversations you men never hear, this is what we discuss: For four decades, working women have poured into the paid labor force. Yet American society has done precious little to restructure the workplace or family life. The result? Working mothers are burdened and exhausted, families are fractured and children are often neglected. The dirty little secret, we repeatedly tell each other, is that it is both profitable and convenient to our government, business and many men, for women to wear themselves out trying to do the unpaid work of caring for children, caring for the elderly and caring about the social networks of our communities. It’s as though Americans are trapped in a time warp, certain that women will still do all this caring, even though they can’t, because more than half are outside their homes working in the paid workplace. And so, we have the mounting Care Crisis. But somehow male progressives and liberals continue to view these problems as those of a special interest group and part of identity politics. Yet it is the core dilemma faced by most middle class and working class American families, all along the political spectrum. These are some of the war stories we share with each other: A distinguished op-ed editor rejects an opinion piece that describes the need for high-quality, affordable, accessible child care because “It’s been written about thousands of times.” He’s right. But nothing’s changed. A distinguished editor tells a journalist that he doesn’t really want articles about “women’s” problems because he’s more interested in addressing the public good. Hasn’t he heard that women hold up half the sky and then-some? Fortunately, one person may have found a way around these gatekeepers who are so bored with vital changes that have never been addressed and implemented. Joan Blades, co-founder of the online activist web movement, Moveon.org, has launched a grassroots virtual campaign dedicated to making working mothers’s private choices and dilemmas a central part of our national conversation and political agenda. She and her co-author Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner have just published The Motherhood Manifesto (Nation Books), a book filled with elegantly accessible stories that reveal the problems faced by working mothers in the early 21st century Without using the F word, they also prescribe such essential changes as paid parental leave, flexible working conditions, after-school programs, universal health care, excellent, affordable and accessible child care and realistic living wages. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll finally hear us. True, it’s boring to discuss the vital needs of working mothers and families, when nothing ever changes. But while you’re talking about the common good, consider this: There is nothing more vital to the common good of our nation than the well-being of our working mothers and their families. And that, dear gentlemen, is where the votes are. Ruth Rosen is a historian and journalist who teaches public policy at UC Berkeley. She is a senior fellow at the Longview Institute.  More >

Tuesday, February 7, 2006

Robots race camels in Kuwait 9 comments

7 Feb 2006 @ 00:18 Robots race camels in Kuwait Monday, February 6, 2006 Posted: 0346 GMT (1146 HKT) A robotic jockey crosses the finish line Sunday at the Kuwait camel race championship. KUWAIT (Reuters) -- Kuwait on Sunday held the first regional camel race using robots as riders after child jockeys were banned from the lucrative sport following criticism by human rights groups. Teams from the six Gulf Arab states participated in the race held on the dusty tracks of a racing club outside the capital Kuwait City. "We hope this sport, which is part of our cultural heritage, will be spared from suspicion," said Kuwait's Energy Minister Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahd al-Sabah who opened the five-day championship. The remote-operated robots are shaped like small boys. Rights groups said thousands of boys, some as young as four, worked as jockeys in the wealthy Gulf Arab region where camel racing is a lucrative and popular sport. Last year, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates banned child jockeys. Kuwait held an experimental race with robot jockeys last October, along with similar trials by other Gulf states.  More >

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Prehistoric 'Kitchen' Found in Indiana 1 comment

17 Jan 2006 @ 08:35 Prehistoric 'Kitchen' Found in Indiana Mon Jan 16, 8:07 PM ET Workers building a boat ramp at southeastern Indiana's Charlestown State Park have uncovered the apparent remains of a 4,000-year-old "kitchen" ancient American Indians tribes may have used to prepare their winter food supply. The discovery of the site in eastern Clark County prompted the state to temporarily halt work on the Ohio River boat ramp project. Bob McCullough, who heads an archaeological survey team from Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, said the low-lying area was probably used by nomadic tribes of hunters and gatherers. He said they appear to have collected hickory nuts, used large slabs of rock to crush them and then made fires to boil them and extract fatty oils. Tribes often stored such high-energy nut oils for use during the lean winter months, McCullough said. The IPFW team has made two trips to the site and plans a third study of the area. The archaeological work is required under federal and state historic preservation laws. No human remains or bones have been found at the site. McCullough said he was surprised by how well-preserved the cooking area site was, but he said it was protected over the centuries by layers of silt deposited by floodwaters. Michael Strezewski, the lead archaeologist from IPFW on the first two visits to the park last fall, estimated the site dates from about 2000 B.C. He said it contains large amounts of Laurel chert, a stone from which stone tools can be created. Other artifacts included stone slabs used for grinding and cracking nuts, the remains of fire pits and some charred bits of plant material. The area being studied is part of a 2,700-acre expansion at the park closed to the public. Over the years, several archaeological sites have been found in the park area. Larry Gray, the park's property manager, said the $3 million project to install a five-lane boat ramp, a picnic area, parking lot and riverfront walking trail would probably be delayed until late this year or next year. "I wish we were going to be prepared to open it in April or May this year, but we're not. We have to do things properly, and it takes time," he said.  More >

Wednesday, January 4, 2006

Ancient humans brought bottle gourds to the Americas from Asia 2 comments

4 Jan 2006 @ 03:26 Some of you may not know that I am a gourd crafter. I specifically make ceremonial gourd rattles based on patterns from Neolithic Europe 1500-5000BC. Letecia Layson sent me this article that about the ancient migration of gourds. ----------------------------------------------------- Ancient humans brought bottle gourds to the Americas from Asia Plants widely used as containers arrived, already domesticated, some 10,000 years ago CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Dec. 13, 2005 -- Thick-skinned bottle gourds widely used as containers by prehistoric peoples were likely brought to the Americas some 10,000 years ago by individuals who arrived from Asia, according to a new genetic comparison of modern bottle gourds with gourds found at archaeological sites in the Western Hemisphere. The finding solves a longstanding archaeological enigma by explaining how a domesticated variant of a species native to Africa ended up millennia ago in places as far removed as modern-day Florida, Kentucky, Mexico and Peru. The work, by a team of anthropologists and biologists from Harvard University, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, Massey University in New Zealand and the University of Maine, appears this week on the web site of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Integrating genetics and archaeology, the researchers assembled a collection of ancient remnants of bottle gourds from across the Americas. They then identified key genetic markers from the DNA of both the ancient gourds and their modern counterparts in Asia and Africa before comparing the plants' genetic make-up to determine the origins of the New World gourds. "For 150 years, the dominant theory has been that bottle gourds, which are quite buoyant and have no known wild progenitors in the Americas, floated across the Atlantic Ocean from Africa and were picked up and used as containers by people here," says Noreen Tuross, the Landon T. Clay Professor of Scientific Archaeology in Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences. "Much to our surprise, we found that in every case the gourds found in the Americas were a genetic match with modern gourds found in Asia, not Africa. This suggests quite strongly that the gourds that were used as containers in the Americas for thousands of years before the advent of pottery were brought over from Asia." The researchers say it's possible the domesticated gourds -- differentiated from wild bottle gourds by a much thicker rind -- were conveyed to North America by people who arrived from Asia in boats or who walked across an ancient land bridge between the continents, or that the gourds floated across the Bering Strait after being transported by humans from their native Africa to far northeastern Asia. "This finding paints a new picture of the founding of the Americas," says co-author Bruce Smith of the Smithsonian Institution. "These people did not arrive here empty-handed; they brought a domesticated plant and dogs with them. They arrived with important tools necessary to survive and thrive on a new continent, including some knowledge of and experience with plant domestication." Thought to have originated in Africa, bottle gourds (Lagenaria sicereria) have been grown worldwide for thousands of years. The gourds have little food value but their strong, hard-shelled fruits were long prized as containers, musical instruments and fishing floats. This lightweight "container crop" would have been particularly useful to human societies before the advent of pottery and settled village life, and was apparently domesticated thousands of years before any plant was domesticated for food purposes. Radiocarbon dating indicates that bottle gourds were present in the Americas by 10,000 years ago and widespread by 8,000 years ago. Some of the specimens studied by the team were not only the oldest bottle gourds ever found but also quite possibly the oldest plant DNA ever analyzed. The newest of their archaeological samples, a specimen found in Kentucky, was just 1,000 years old -- suggesting the gourds were used in the New World as containers for at least 9,000 years. ### Tuross and Smith's co-authors on the PNAS paper are David L. Erickson of the National Museum of Natural History, Andrew C. Clarke of Massey University and Daniel H. Sandweiss of the University of Maine. Their work was supported by the Smithsonian Institution and the National Museum of Natural History and by Harvard's Department of Anthropology and Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.  More >

Sunday, November 6, 2005

Study: Religious use of peyote not harmful to American Indians 15 comments

6 Nov 2005 @ 06:43 Study: Religious use of peyote not harmful to American Indians By Michael Kunzelman, Associated Press Writer | November 4, 2005 BOSTON --For John Halpern to study the effects of peyote on American Indians who use the hallucinogenic cactus in religious ceremonies, observing from a distance was not an option. Halpern lived on the Navajo Nation reservation for months at a time and participated in prayer ceremonies. Earning their trust and cooperation would have been impossible if he refused to ingest peyote, he said. "It never would have happened if I hadn't done that. It's one of the ways they take the measure of a man," said Halpern, a psychiatrist at the Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital in Belmont, just outside of Boston. A 1994 federal law allows roughly 300,000 members of the Native American Church to use peyote as a religious sacrament, but Halpern set out to find scientific proof for the Navajos' belief that the substance is not hazardous to their health. After five years of research, Halpern and other McLean researchers did not find any evidence of brain damage or psychological problems in church members who frequently use peyote, which contains the hallucinogen mescaline. In fact, they found that members of the Native American Church performed better on some of the neuropsychological tests than other Navajos who do not regularly use peyote. Church members believe peyote offers them spiritual and physical healing, but Halpern and his colleagues could not say with any certainty that its pharmacological effects are responsible for their test results. "It's hard to know how much of it is the sense of community they get (from the religion) and how much of it is the actual experience of using the medication itself," said Harrison Pope, the study's senior author and director of McLean's biological psychology laboratory. Test results for 61 church members who have used peyote at least 100 times were compared against those for 79 Navajos who do not regularly use peyote and 36 tribe members with a history of alcohol abuse but minimal peyote use. Those who had abused alcohol fared worse on the tests than the church members, according to the study. The researchers argue that their findings should offer "reassurance" to the 10,000 Native American Church members serving in the military who were barred from using peyote before new guidelines were adopted in 1997. "We find no evidence that a history of peyote use would compromise the psychological or cognitive abilities of these individuals," they wrote in a paper published in the Nov. 4 issue of Biological Psychiatry. The researchers are quick to note that their study draws a clear distinction between illicit and religious use of peyote. And they did not rule out the possibility that other hallucinogens, such as LSD, may be harmful. "In comparison to LSD, mescaline is described as more sensual and perceptual and less altering of thought and sense of self," they wrote, adding that peyote does not seem to produce "flashbacks" the same way that LSD apparently does. However, the researchers are optimistic that their findings could open the door to another area of research: testing the theory that peyote could be an effective treatment for alcoholism. "It's an anecdote you hear from the Navajo themselves but something that has never been formally tested in any fashion," Pope said. Halpern settled on members of the Native American Church as ideal subjects for his research because they have had little or no exposure to other drugs. But he met with stiff resistance when he first visited the Navajo reservation in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. "These are very proud peoples, and many of them are smarting over the stigmatizing cliche about (American Indians') substance abuse," he said. "It's a real problem, but it's a real problem in many communities." Halpern found an ally on the reservation in Victor Clyde, who was a vice president of the Native American Church of Navajoland. Clyde persuaded skeptical church members to cooperate with Halpern. "A lot of members did not want to allow him to do the research," said Clyde, a justice of the peace in Chinle, Ariz. "No one wants to be put under the microscope like that." The project was funded in part by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. A NIDA spokeswoman would not comment on the study. Lester Grinspoon, a Harvard Medical School psychiatry professor who was not involved in Halpern's research, said the study lends scientific weight to a long-held belief that peyote is not harmful. "The thing that excites me most about the paper is that the study was actually done," he said. "The U.S. government -- and NIDA, in particular -- has been rather balky about allowing studies of psychedelic drugs of any kind."  More >

Tuesday, September 6, 2005

From The Courage to Raise Good Men? 2 comments

6 Sep 2005 @ 21:20 From The Courage to Raise Good Men? Think "male" not "masculine." The word masculine itself leads to defining behavior in terms of social norms rather than the individual boy. Boys are male. Girls are female, not feminine. Recognize the wonderful differences among little boys. Some are tough, action oriented, suited for the athletic field. They need help in developing their gentler side. This is best done by mothers or other women in their lives. There are gentler little boys who prefer more sedentary pursuits, drawing, reading etc. They need encouragement to develop some physical skills, maybe swimming, bike riding etc. They are not to be pushed into competitive sports and shamed for their lack of interest. Pay attention to your language. The language has words, which carry tremendous social weight. The perceived positives are "little man," "tough guy," "winner," "go-getter," etc. The negatives: "nerd," "egg head," "wus," "momma's boy," etc. All such labels are harmful. They should be seen to be as bad as racial slurs. Every boy needs a mother's love. It helps him to grow up to be able to receive and then to give love to another woman and to children. Children, male and female, optimally should have two parents. Lacking that, one good parent, most often a mother, will do fine. The widely held post Freudian notion that boys need to be separated from their mothers in order to achieve "masculinity" is just that - a notion. A mother's love does not "feminize" a boy. Foster the development of a whole person. Separating attributes into male and female perpetuates the development of half people. We have, thanks to the women's movement, recognized that girls need to be competent. It's time to recognize that boys need to be caring. Competence and caring are the very basic necessary attributes for both genders. We need whole people as partners. Don't emphasize "male role models." That is just another way of elevating the masculine. Some day, hopefully, both men and women will be able to model loving, ethical, moral and competent behavior. For now, I think mothers have the edge. Emphasize the "good" man over the "strong" man. The old ideal of the "strong" man does not serve our boys well. Strong is too often interpreted as aggressive. We have many demonstrations in the current news where that ideal has lead us. Time for parents and society at large to shift our emphasis to the "good" man, who will be empathic and strong, autonomous and connected- responsible to himself as well as others. Talk to your boys -respond to them as emotional, feeling humans, not as heroes in training. Be aware of the emotional shut-down too often associated with strength, as in the "strong, silent man." Olga Silverstein is the author of The Courage to Raise Good Men, Paperback Reprint edition, March 1995, Penguin USA. Buy the book from Amazon.com. The Invisible Web : Gender Patterns in Family Relationships, by Marianne Walters, Betty Carter, Peggy Papp, Olga Silverstein, Paperback, May 1992. Guilford Press. Buy the book from Amazon.com.  More >

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Alternative Media Amplifies as Mainstream Gatekeepers Decline 1 comment

16 Aug 2005 @ 05:12 Website Traffic Shows People Are Turning from Corporate Media to Alternative Internet Sites for Their News Alternative Media Amplifies as Mainstream Gatekeepers Decline Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones August 7 2005 [link] The number of individuals worldwide who acknowledge that there is a hidden hand shaping world events is growing at a faster rate than ever before. This is directly due to the burgeoning power of the alternative media and the declining influence of the establishment media. Mainstream media has been caught so many times colluding with government in order to sell major domestic and foreign policy initiatives on a foundation of lies. People are voting with their feet and turning away from the mainstream and seeking the truth. The alternative media is by no means perfect, we make mistakes just as the mainstream does. The difference is that the alternative media actively attempts to tell the truth rather than actively attempting to hide it or misdirect the reader. Furthermore, when we make a mistake we also make the retraction clear, rather than burying it in small type on page 27. The consistent reports of reducing newspaper subscribers is mirrored on the Internet, as alternative news websites begin to surpass big city newspapers in readership. Using the Alexa web rankings as a benchmark, we compared a number of popular alternative websites to big city newspaper websites. The results are very encouraging. The Alexa system has several different filters for measuring traffic to a particular site but the base number appears at the top of the page for every website URL. The lower the number, the more visitors the website gets. For example, Yahoo.com is number one. Let's take a look at two major market big city newspapers, the Las Vegas Sun and the Daily Oklahoman. The Sun comes in at 13,699. The Oklahoman comes in at 10,312. Bear in mind that the websites for these kind of newspapers are run by a staff of anything from five to twenty people. And that's just the people putting the website together. If you add in the writers who contribute then the number is even greater. Alternative media websites like Prison Planet.com, WhatReallyHappened.com and Rense.com are run by two people apiece, and in some cases just one. If the journalists who wrote for the establishment papers went back to the old school mentality of muck-raking journalism then more people would read their articles. The fact that the raw truth is infinitely more popular means more and more of these establishment journalists are having to move further over to our side and be more honest in their reporting. Prison Planet.com comes in at 11,655, but the very latest figures show our traffic trend to be around 8,000-9,000. This means that more people are reading Prison Planet.com than are reading Oklahoma's biggest newspaper online. Furthermore, a paper like the Oklahoman has many different sections, for example classifieds, which attract people for different reasons than just wanting to read the news. Our websites are solely focused on news. So if you compared the websites just on people who visited to read the news, we'd be even further ahead. Papers like the Austin Chronicle are way behind alternative media sites like WhatReallyHappened.com and Rense.com. We are not bragging, we are simply pointing out the good news. The numbers continue to trend in our favor. At 3,732, Rense.com is bigger than the vast majority of mainstream news websites. Only internationally renowned outlets like BBC, New York Times and Washington Post are bigger. See how far a growing alternative media site like Raw Story, which is little over a year old, is ahead of one of Wes Virginia's biggest newspapers. It is time for the alternative media to have the credibility afforded to it that it deserves. If the establishment media continue to dismiss the alternative as badly researched, minority appeal, conspiracy mongering, then they only continue to insult and alienate the general public. People instinctively know deep down that there is something very wrong with this world and that the truth behind modern day developments is being purposefully shielded from them by media conglomerations owned by faceless corporations in league with Kafkaesque authorities. This is why the establishment is trying to shut down the alternative media by controlling and regulating the Internet. Laws passed in the aftermath of the London bombings talk of targeting 'extremist' websites who indirectly support terrorism. When the definition of extremism and supporting terrorism is disagreeing with the government's official story behind an act of terrorism, then they have carte blanche to silence anyone they choose. The fact that one blog is created every second and that a sizeable portion of those are political has the elitists very worried. This is why you should continue to support alternative media and oppose those who wish to see it disappear forever. Copyright © 2002-2005 Alex Jones  More >

Friday, August 12, 2005

Why Life in Finland is a Lot Better Than the USA 0 comments

12 Aug 2005 @ 05:14 Why Life in Finland is a Lot Better Than the USA washingtonpost.com [link] 015.html In Finland's Footsteps If We're So Rich and Smart, Why Aren't We More Like Them? By Robert G. Kaiser Sunday, August 7, 2005; B01 Life in Finland, one of the world's best functioning welfare states and least known success stories, can be complicated. Consider the dilemma confronting parents looking for day care for a 4-year-old daughter in Kuhmo, a town of 10,000 near the middle of the country. Should they put their child into the town nursery school, where she could spend her weekdays from 6:30 a.m. until 5 p.m. with about 40 other children, cared for by a 47-year-old principal with 20 years' experience, Mirsa Pussinen, as well as four teachers with master's degrees in preschool education, two teacher's aides and one cook? The girl would hear books read aloud every day, play games with numbers and the alphabet, learn some English, dig in the indoor sandbox or run around outside, sing and perform music, dress up for theatrical games, paint pictures, eat a hot lunch, take a nap if she wanted one, learn to play and work with others. Or should that 4-year-old spend her days in home care? Most parents in Kuhmo choose this option, and put their children into the care of women such as Anneli Vaisanen, who has three or four kids in her home for the day. The 49-year-old Vaisanen doesn't have a master's, but she has received extensive training, has provided day care for two decades and has two grown children of her own. The kids in her charge do most of the things those at the center do, but with less order and organization. They also bake bread and make cakes. How to decide? There's no financial difference; both forms of day care cost the parents nothing. There's no difference in the schooling that will follow day care -- all the kids in Kuhmo (and throughout Finland) will have essentially identical opportunities in Finnish schools, Europe's best. There is no "elite" choice, no working-class choice; everyone is treated equally. It's a dilemma that American parents don't have a chance to confront. And it's a vivid example of the difference between what the Finns call a social democracyand our society. Finland is a leading example of the northern European view that a successful, competitive society should provide basic social services to all its citizens at affordable prices or at no cost at all. This isn't controversial in Finland; it is taken for granted. For a patriotic American like me, the Finns present a difficult challenge: If we Americans are so rich and so smart, why can't we treat our citizens as well as the Finns do? Finns have one of the world's most generous systems of state-funded educational, medical and welfare services, from pregnancy to the end of life. They pay nothing for education at any level, including medical school or law school. Their medical care, which contributes to an infant mortality rate that is half of ours and a life expectancy greater than ours, costs relatively little. (Finns devote 7 percent of gross domestic product to health care; we spend 15 percent.) Finnish senior citizens are well cared for. Unemployment benefits are good and last, in one form or another, indefinitely. On the other hand, Finns live in smaller homes than Americans and consume a lot less. They spend relatively little on national defense, though they still have universal male conscription, and it is popular. Their per capita national income is about 30 percent lower than ours. Private consumption of goods and services represents about 52 percent of Finland's economy, and 71 percent of the United States'. Finns pay considerably higher taxes -- nearly half their national income is taken in taxes, while Americans pay about 30 percent on average to federal, state and local governments. Should we be learning from Finland? The question occurred to me repeatedly as I traveled around Finland this summer. Americans could easily get used to the sense of well-being that Finns get from their welfare state, which has effectively removed many of the tangible sources of anxiety that beset our society. But the United States could not simply turn itself into another Finland. Too much of Finnish reality depends on uniquely Finnish circumstances. Finland is as big as two Missouris, but with just 5.2 million residents -- fewer than metropolitan Washington. It is ethnically and religiously homogeneous. A strong Lutheran work ethic, combined with a powerful sense of probity, dominates the society. Homogeneity has led to consensus: Every significant Finnish political party supports the welfare state and, broadly speaking, the high taxation that makes it possible. And Finns have extraordinary confidence in their political class and public officials. Corruption is extremely rare. CLICK TO READ  More >

Monday, June 13, 2005

BREAST IS STILL BEST, EVEN IF IT IS DAD'S 0 comments

13 Jun 2005 @ 22:39 BREAST IS STILL BEST, EVEN IF IT IS DAD'S By Alexandra Frean Times Online June 13, 2005 A man's nipples are perfectly suited to soothing a crying baby until it can be fed, according to a report on fatherhood. It names the Aka Pygmies, a hunter-gatherer tribe from the northern Congo, as the best fathers. When the mother is not available, the father calms his baby by giving him or her a nipple to suck. Aka Pygmy men do more in the way of childcare than fathers in any other society, according to the FatherWorld report, published today by Fathers Direct, a British charity. Aka fathers may hold their baby close to their bodies for a couple of hours at a time, according to Barry Hewlett, an American anthropologist who has studied the tribe for more than 20 years. On average, Aka fathers hold or are within reach of their infants 47 per cent of the time. They beat Swedish fathers, who are number one in the developed world, and who, on average, do 45 per cent of parental childcare. British fathers are the fourth-most involved in the West, and do a third of parental childcare, according to the report, which is based on a review of existing research literature. Caroline Flint, the former president of the Royal College of Midwives, said that she had come across many examples of men in Britain ³suckling² their babies, even though it might not be something they talked about very much. She said: ³It¹s not a case of the man saying to the baby, ŒHere you are, have my booby¹, but usually of the baby snuffling along the father¹s chest, finding the nipple and sucking. The men are usually very surprised, but the babies seem content.² Sebastian Kraemer, a child psychiatrist at the Whittington Hospital in London, said: ³It is possible that in prehistoric societies this was a normal way of fathering.² He said that it would be wrong to assume from the past 10,000 years of history that our prevailing model of mother-based childcare was the right one. Of 156 cultures studied for the report, only 20 per cent were found to promote men¹s close relationships with infants, with only 5 per cent doing the same for a father¹s involvement with young children. The report estimates that fathers worldwide contribute between a quarter and a third as much time as women to childcare, but it notes that active fathering is on the increase. In Britain the amount of time that fathers spend with their children has risen by eight times in the past 30 years. Michael Lamb, professor of psychology at Cambridge University and a world expert on fatherhood, said: ³Internationally, over the past 20 years, we have seen fathers who live with their children spending more time with them and doing more diverse activities, not just in Britain but in every known society.²

Sunday, May 29, 2005

Media ignores pro wrestling 0 comments

29 May 2005 @ 23:35 Media ignores pro wrestling By Scott E. Williams The Daily News Published May 29, 2005 The wrestling industry’s leaders have often bemoaned the fact that wrestling does not get the mainstream media attention it deserves, but WWE should feel lucky about it. In the early 20th century, sports pages in newspapers covered wrestling, but various elements quickly exposed that pro wrestling was less competitive sport than performance art. Sports writers, instead, preferred the word “fake,” and serious coverage of wrestling became rare. By the time Vince McMahon took over his father’s World Wrestling Federation in 1982, most newspaper pieces on pro wrestling were attempts at “exposing” that wrestling was not legitimate competition. However, this was something the vast majority of wrestling fans tacitly accepted, even as they suspended disbelief long enough to love their heroes and hate their villains. A 1985 piece on “20/20” remains infamous in wrestling circles 20 years later, as a story that fully exposed the business as performance with predetermined outcomes. That piece also was the beginning of the end of the word “fake,” as media members applied it to wrestling. This happened for a couple of reasons. First, wrestler David Schultz slapped half the hearing out of reporter John Stossel’s ears. The second reason was, WWF boss Vince McMahon was starting to make the admission that wrestling promoters for years had thought would mark the doom of the pseudosport — that it was all a show. In a weird way, this admission opened the doors for a flood of media coverage in the late 1990s that allowed reporters to deal with other aspects of the business. Earlier in the decade, however, a flood of coverage occurred that wasn’t nearly as positive. At that time, the WWF was awash in scandal. Former employees claimed sexual harassment, and a steroid case involving a doctor who treated WWF wrestlers blossomed into a federal charge against McMahon himself. A jury in 1994 exonerated McMahon of what was left of his steroid-distribution charges after a federal judge dumped the other charges because of jurisdictional issues. Not long after, the media scrutiny of the WWF went away, with the exception of the occasional report on salacious content. If only the media could see WWE now. Well, actually, they can, but they’re apparently not. Recently, on “Raw,” announcer Jerry Lawler made a borderline-racist remark about wrestler Viscera, whose new gimmick is that he’s a huge, black man who hits on little white women. Isn’t that hilarious? Imagine, for a moment, the outcry if this had happened on “Desperate Housewives,” or another, more mainstream show. On the same “Raw” show, Randy Orton came out for an interview, only to be interrupted by McMahon, who told him he needed to “bulk up” before his return. Yes, in this era of congressional investigations, the owner of the biggest pro wrestling company in the world implicitly told one of his performers to take steroids, on live, national television. Meanwhile, on “Smackdown,” WWE’s other main program, one of the top feuds is Kurt Angle against Booker T, with the lynchpin of their dispute being that Kurt keeps trying to rape Booker’s wife, Sharmell. Kurt has also repeatedly said that he is into “bestiality,” implying that Sharmell, also African-American, is other than human. No one seems to be batting an eye at any of this stuff, and that’s a sign that the mainstream media has taken an “it’s only wrestling” approach to the goings-on in WWE. And for WWE, that’s a good thing, because this garbage is impossible to defend. +++ Scott E. Williams is a Daily News reporter, a longtime wrestling fan and author of “Terry Funk: More Than Just Hardcore,” on sale in bookstores everywhere.

Friday, March 4, 2005

Welcome to Doomsday 6 comments

4 Mar 2005 @ 17:37 Welcome to Doomsday If you care about the fate of the planet, start worrying about fundamentalists eagerly awaiting the end of the world. By Bill Moyers This article is based on a lecture Bill Moyers gave in December 2004 upon receiving the Global Environmental Citizen Award from the Harvard Medical School's Center for Health and the Global Environment. That original speech was widely circulated throughout the internet. More recently, Moyers has written this updated version to correct errors in the original and expand on his views. This essay will appear in the paperback edition of his collection 'Moyers on America,' to be published by Anchor Books in June. There are times when what we journalists see and intend to write about dispassionately sends a shiver down the spine, shaking us from our neutrality. This has been happening to me frequently of late as one story after another drives home the fact that the delusional is no longer marginal but has come in from the fringe to influence the seats of power. We are witnessing today a coupling of ideology and theology that threatens our ability to meet the growing ecological crisis. Theology asserts propositions that need not be proven true, while ideologues hold stoutly to a worldview despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. The combination can make it impossible for a democracy to fashion real-world solutions to otherwise intractable challenges. In the just-concluded election cycle, as Mark Silk writes in "Religion in the News," the assiduous cultivation of religious constituencies by the Bush apparat, and the undisguised intrusion of evangelical leaders and some conservative Catholic hierarchs into the presidential campaign, demonstrated that the old rule of maintaining a decent respect for the nonpartisanship of religion can now be broken with impunity. The result is what the Italian scholar Emilio Gentile, quoted in Silk’s newsletter, calls “political religion”—religion as an instrument of political combat. On gay marriage and abortion— the most conspicuous of the “non-negotiable” items in a widely distributed Catholic voter’s guide—no one should be surprised what this political religion portends. The agenda has been foreshadowed for years, ever since Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and other right-wing Protestants set out to turn white evangelicals into a solid Republican voting bloc and reached out to make allies of their former antagonists, conservative Catholics. What has been less apparent is the impact of the new political religion on environmental policy. Evangelical Christians have been divided. Some were indifferent. The majority of conservative evangelicals, on the other hand, have long hooked their view to the account in the first book of the Bible: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” There are widely varying interpretations of this text, but it is safe to say that all presume human beings have inherited the earth to be used as they see fit. For many, God’s gift to Adam and Eve of “dominion” over the earth and all its creatures has been taken as the right to unlimited exploitation. But as Blaine Harden reported recently in "The Washington Post," some evangelicals are beginning to “go for the green.” Last October the National Association of Evangelicals adopted an “Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility,” affirming that “God-given dominion is a sacred responsibility to steward the earth and not a license to abuse the creation of which we are a part.” The declaration acknowledged that for the sake of clean air, clean water, and adequate resources, the government “has an obligation to protect its citizens from the effects of environmental degradation.” But even for green activists in evangelical circles, Harden wrote, “there are landmines.” There are millions of Christians who believe the Bible is literally true, word for word. Some of them—we’ll come back to the question of how many—subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the nineteenth century by two immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them with their own hallucinations into a narrative foretelling the return of Jesus and the end of the world. Google the “Rapture Index” and you will see just how the notion has seized the imagination of many a good and sincere believer (you will also see just where we stand right now in the ticking of the clock toward the culmination of history in the apocalypse). It is the inspiration for the best-selling books in America today—the 12 novels in the "Left Behind" series by Christian fundamentalist and religious- right warrior Tim LaHaye, a co-founder with Jerry Falwell of the Moral Majority. The plot of the Rapture—the word never appears in the Bible although some fantasists insist it is the hidden code to the Book of Revelation—is rather simple, if bizarre. (The British writer George Monbiot recently did a brilliant dissection of it and I am indebted to him for refreshing my own insights.) Once Israel has occupied the rest of its “biblical lands,” legions of the Antichrist will attack it, triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. As the Jews who have not been converted are burned the Messiah will return for the Rapture. True believers will be transported to heaven where, seated at the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents writhe in the misery of plagues—boils, sores, locusts, and frogs—during the several years of tribulation that follow. I’m not making this up. Like Monbiot, I read the literature, including "The Rapture Exposed," a recent book by Barbara Rossing, who teaches the New Testament at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, and "America Right or Wrong," by Anatol Lieven, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. On my weekly broadcast for PBS, we reported on these true believers, following some of them from Texas to the West Bank. They are sincere, serious, and polite as they tell you they feel called to help bring the Rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. To this end they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish settlements and backed up their support with money and volunteers. For them the invasion of Iraq was a warm-up act, predicted in the Book of Revelation, where four angels “bound in the great river Euphrates” will be released “to slay the third part of man.” A war with Islam in the Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed—an essential conflagration on the road to redemption. The last time I Googled it, the Rapture Index stood at 144—approaching the critical threshold when the prophecy is fulfilled, the whole thing blows, the Son of God returns, and the righteous enter paradise while sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire. What does this mean for public policy and the environment? Listen to John Hagee, pastor of the 17,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, who is quoted in Rossing’s book as saying: “Mark it down, take it to heart, and comfort one another with these words. Doomsday is coming for the earth, for the nations, and for individuals, but those who have trusted in Jesus will not be present on earth to witness the dire time of tribulation.” Rossing sums up the message in five words that she says are basic Rapture credo: “The world cannot be saved.” It leads to “appalling ethics,” she reasons, because the faithful are relieved of concern for the environment, violence, and everything else except their personal salvation. The earth suffers the same fate as the unsaved. All are destroyed. How many true believers are there? It’s impossible to pin down. But there is a constituency for the End Times. A "Newsweek" poll found that 36 percent of respondents held the Book of Revelation to be “true prophecy.” (A Time/CNN poll reported that one quarter think the Bible predicted the 9/11 attacks.) Drive across the country with your radio tuned to some of the 1,600 Christian radio stations or turn to some of the 250 Christian TV stations and you can hear the Gospel of the Apocalypse in sermon and song. Or go, as "The Toronto Star"’s Tom Harpur did, to the Florida Panhandle, where he came across an all-day conference “at one of the largest Protestant churches I have ever been in,” the Village Baptist Church in Destin. The theme of the day was “Left Behind: A Conference on Biblical Prophecy about End Times” and among the speakers were none other than Tim LaHaye and two other leading voices in the religious right today, Gary Frazier and Ed Hindson. Here is what Harpur wrote for his newspaper: I have never heard so much venom and dangerous ignorance spouted before an utterly unquestioning, otherwise normal-looking crowd in my life.... There were stunning statements about humans having been only 6,000 years on Earth and other denials of contemporary geology and biology. And we learned that the Rapture, which could happen any second now, but certainly within the next 40 years, will instantly sweep all the “saved” Americans (perhaps one-half the population) to heaven.... But these fantasies were harmless compared with the hatred against Islam that followed. Here are some direct quotes: “Islam is an intolerant religion—and it’s clear whose side we should be on in the Middle East.” Applause greeted these words: “Allah and Jehovah are not the same God.... Islam is a Satanic religion.... They’re going to attack Israel for certain....” Gary Frazier shouted at the top of his lungs: “Wake Up! Wake Up!” And roughly 800 heads (at $25.00 per) nodded approval as he added that the left-wing, anti-Israel media—“for example, CNN”—will never tell the world the truth about Islam. According to these three, and the millions of Americans they lead, Muslims intend ultimately “to impose their religion on us all.” It was clear, Harpur wrote: “A terrible, final war in the region is inevitable.” You can understand why people in the grip of such fantasies cannot be expected to worry about the environment. As Glenn Scherer writes in his report for the on-line environmental magazine Grist, why care about the earth when the droughts, floods, famine, and pestilence brought by ecological collapse are signs of the apocalypse foretold in the Bible? Why care about global climate change when you and yours will be rescued in the Rapture? Why bother to convert to alternative sources of energy and reduce dependence on oil from the volatile Middle East? Anyway, until Christ does return, the Lord will provide. Scherer came upon a high school history book, "America’s Providential History", which is used in fundamentalist circles. Students are told that “the secular or socialist has a limited resource mentality and views the world as a pie…that needs to be cut up so everyone can get a piece.” The Christian, however, “knows that the potential in God is unlimited and that there is no shortage of resources in God’s Earth.... While many secularists view the world as overpopulated, Christians know that God has made the earth sufficiently large with plenty of resources to accommodate all of the people.” While it is impossible to know how many people hold these views, we do know that fundamentalists constitute a large and powerful proportion of the Republican base, and, as Anatol Lieven writes, “fundamentalist religiosity has become an integral part of the radicalization of the right in the US and of the tendency to demonize political opponents as traitors and enemies of God and America”—including, one must note, environmentalists, who are routinely castigated as villains and worse by the right. No wonder Karl Rove wandered the White House whistling “Onward Christian Soldiers” as he prepared for the 2004 elections. 2. I am not suggesting that fundamentalists are running the government, but they constitute a significant force in the coalition that now holds a monopoly of power in Washington under a Republican Party that for a generation has been moved steadily to the right by its more extreme variants even as it has become more and more beholden to the corporations that finance it. One is foolish to think that their bizarre ideas do not matter. I have no idea what President Bush thinks of the fundamentalists’ fantastical theology, but he would not be president without them. He suffuses his language with images and metaphors they appreciate, and they were bound to say amen when Bob Woodward reported that the President “was casting his vision, and that of the country, in the grand vision of God’s master plan.” That will mean one thing to Dick Cheney and another to Tim LaHaye, but it will confirm their fraternity in a regime whose chief characteristics are ideological disdain for evidence and theological distrust of science. Many of the constituencies who make up this alliance don’t see eye to eye on many things, but for President Bush’s master plan for rolling back environmental protections they are united. A powerful current connects the administration’s multinational corporate cronies who regard the environment as ripe for the picking and a hard-core constituency of fundamentalists who regard the environment as fuel for the fire that is coming. Once again, populist religion winds up serving the interests of economic elites. The corporate, political, and religious right’s hammerlock on environmental policy extends to the U.S. Congress. Nearly half of its members before the election—231 legislators in all (more since the election)—are backed by the religious right, which includes several powerful fundamentalist leaders like LaHaye. Forty-five senators and 186 members of the 108th Congress earned 80 to 100 percent approval ratings from the most influential Christian Right advocacy groups. Not one includes the environment as one of their celebrated “moral values.” When I talk about this before a live audience I can see from the look on the faces before me just how hard it is for a journalist to report on such things with any credibility. So let me put on a personal level what sends the shiver down my spine. I myself don’t know how to be in this world without expecting a confident future and getting up every morning to do what I can to bring it about. I confess to having always been an optimist. Now, however, I remember my friend on Wall Street whom I once asked: “What do you think of the market?” “I’m optimistic,” he answered. “Then why do you look so worried?” And he answered, “Because I am not sure my optimism is justified.” I’m not, either. Once upon a time I believed that people will protect the natural environment when they realize its importance to their health and to the health and lives of their children. Now I am not so sure. It’s not that I don’t want to believe this—it’s just that as a journalist I have been trained to read the news and connect the dots. I read that the administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency has declared the election a mandate for President Bush on the environment. This for an administration: that wants to rewrite the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act protecting rare plant and animal species and their habitats, as well as the national Environmental Policy Act that requires the government to judge beforehand if actions might damage natural resources; that wants to relax pollution limits for ozone, eliminate vehicle tailpipe inspections, and ease pollution standards for cars, sport utility vehicles, and diesel-powered big trucks and heavy equipment; that wants a new international audit law to allow corporations to keep certain information about environmental problems secret from the public; that wants to drop all its New-Source Review suits against polluting coal-fired power plans and weaken consent decrees reached earlier with coal companies; that wants to open the Arctic Wildlife Refuge to drilling and increase drilling in Padre Island National Seashore, the longest stretch of undeveloped barrier island in the world and the last great coastal wild land in America; that is radically changing the management of our national forests to eliminate critical environmental reviews, open them to new roads, and give the timber companies a green light to slash and cut as they please. I read the news and learned how the Environmental Protection Agency plotted to spend $9 million—$2 million of it from the President’s friends at the American Chemistry Council—to pay poor families to continue the use of pesticides in their homes. These pesticides have been linked to neurological damage in children, but instead of ordering an end to their use, the government and the industry concocted a scheme to offer the families $970 each, as well as a camcorder and children’s clothing, to serve as guinea pigs for the study. I read that President Bush has more than one hundred high-level officials in his administration overseeing industries they once represented as lobbyists, lawyers, or corporate advocates—company insiders waved through the revolving door of government to assure that drug laws, food policies, land use, and the regulation of air pollution are industry-friendly. Among the “advocates-turned-regulators” are a former meat industry lobbyist who helps decide how meat is labeled; a former drug company lobbyist who influences prescription drug policies; a former energy lobbyist who, while accepting payments for bringing clients into his old lobbying firm, helps to determine how much of our public lands those former clients can use for oil and gas drilling. I read that civil penalties imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency against polluters in 2004 hit an fifteen-year low, in what amounts to an extended holiday for industry from effective compliance with environmental laws. I read that the administration’s allies at the International Policy Network, which is supported by Exxon-Mobil and others of like mind and interest, have issued a report describing global warming as “a myth” at practically the same time the President, who earlier rejected the international treaty outlining limits on greenhouse gases, wants to prevent any “written or oral report” from being issued by any international meetings on the issue. I read not only the news but the fine print of a recent appropriations bill passed by Congress, with obscure amendments removing all endangered species protections from pesticides, prohibiting judicial review for a forest in Oregon, waiving environmental review for grazing permits on public lands, and weakening protection against development for crucial habitats in California. I read all this and look up at the pictures on my desk, next to the computer —pictures of my grandchildren: Henry, age 12; Thomas, 10; Nancy, 8; Jassie, 3; SaraJane, 1. I see the future looking back at me from those photographs and I say, “Father, forgive us, for we know not what we do.” And then the shiver runs down my spine and I am seized by the realization: “That’s not right. We do know what we are doing. We are stealing their future. Betraying their trust. Despoiling their world.” And I ask myself: Why? Is it because we don’t care? Because we are greedy? Because we have lost our capacity for outrage, our ability to sustain indignation at injustice? What has happened to our moral imagination? On the heath Lear asks Gloucester: “How do you see the world?” And Gloucester, who is blind, answers: “I see it feelingly.’” I see it feelingly. Why don’t we feel the world enough to save it—for our kin to come? The news is not good these days. But as a journalist I know the news is never the end of the story. The news can be the truth that sets us free not only to feel but to fight for the future we want. The will to fight is the antidote to despair, the cure for cynicism, and the answer to those faces looking back at me from those photographs on my desk. We must match the science of human health to what the ancient Israelites called hochma—the science of the heart, the capacity to see and feel and then to act as if the future depended on us. Believe me, it does.  More >

Friday, January 21, 2005

MEN PREFER SUBORDINATE WOMEN TO EQUALS 17 comments

21 Jan 2005 @ 21:45 MEN PREFER SUBORDINATE WOMEN TO EQUALS Reuters December 30, 2004 [link] NEW YORK - Men would rather marry their female assistants than equal-ranking women or their supervisors, according to social psychologists. The results are based on a study of men's ratings of imaginary women with different job titles, during which they judged them according to their appeal as a one-night stand, friend, or long-term partner. Men's preferences for less-dominant women may be rooted in evolution, the researchers suggest. "Males who preferred to mate with relatively subordinate partners - as opposed to higher dominance partners - may have been better able to limit the chance - or amount - of paternal uncertainty, either by preventing their partner from having sex outside of the partnership or by being able to closely monitor their partner's sexual behavior for possible infidelity," write Stephanie L. Brown and Brian P. Lewis. Brown is based at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and Lewis at the University of California in Los Angeles. Previous investigations into what type of mate men and women prefer have defined dominance in different ways. Some studies, for instance, have described dominance by personality - such as aggressiveness - or by possession of desirable resources, such as status, fame or fortune. Many of these studies, in contrast to the current research, found that men did not appear to have a preference for women who were less dominant than themselves, according to their definitions of dominance. In the current study, Brown and Lewis based dominance on differences in rank in the workplace, where dominant, potential mates have the ability to "exercise their own will at the expense of a less dominant other," they write in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior. During the study, 120 male and 208 female undergraduates read scenarios about different people at work, looked at their pictures, and noted how much they would like to be associated them. All photos were deemed by judges to be of people similar in age and attractiveness. Men said they would prefer a less-dominant women both as long-term partners and as friends they would enjoy doing things with, such as exercising and going to a party. In contrast, for women, a man's status had no influence on his desirability as a partner. SOURCE: Evolution and Human Behavior, November 2004.  More >

Saturday, January 15, 2005

CROWS AS CLEVER AS GREAT APES, STUDY SAYS 1 comment

15 Jan 2005 @ 03:20 CROWS AS CLEVER AS GREAT APES, STUDY SAYS By James Owen in London National Geographic News December 9, 2004 [link] Anyone who has watched crows, jays, ravens and other members of the corvid family will know they're anything but "birdbrained." For instance, jays will sit on ant nests, allowing the angry insects to douse them with formic acid, a natural pesticide which helps rid the birds of parasites. Urban-living carrion crows have learned to use road traffic for cracking tough nuts. They do this at traffic light crossings, waiting patiently with human pedestrians for a red light before retrieving their prize. Yet corvids may be even cleverer than we think. A new study suggests their cognitive abilities are a match for primates such as chimpanzees and gorillas. Furthermore, crows may provide clues to understanding human intelligence. Published tomorrow in the journal Science, the study is co-authored by Nathan Emery and Nicola Clayton, from the departments of animal behavior and experimental psychology at Cambridge University, England. They say that, while having very different brain structures, both crows and primates use a combination of mental tools, including imagination and the anticipation of possible future events, to solve similar problems. They base their argument on existing studies. Emery and Clayton write, "These studies have found that some corvids are not only superior in intelligence to birds of other avian species (perhaps with the exception of some parrots), but also rival many nonhuman primates." Increasingly, scientists agree that it isn't physical need that makes animal smart, but social necessity. Group living tends to be a complicated business, so for individuals to prosper they need to understand exactly what's going on. So highly social creatures like dolphins, chimps, and humans tend to be large-brained and intelligent. Large Brains The study notes that crows are also social and have unusually large brains for their size. "It is relatively the same size as the chimpanzee brain," the authors said. They say that crows and apes both think about their social and physical surroundings in complex ways, using tool use as an example. Like apes, many birds employ tools to gather food, but it isn't clear whether chimps or crows appreciate how these tools work. It may be that they simply discover their usefulness by accident. However, studies of New Caledonian crows, from the South Pacific, suggest otherwise. New Caledonian crows manufacture two very different types of tool for finding prey. Hooks crafted from twigs are used to poke grubs from holes in trees, while they also cut up stiff leaves with their beaks, carefully sculpting them into sharp instruments for probing leaf detritus for insects and other invertebrates. A New Caledonian crow in captivity learned how to bend a piece of straight wire into a hook to probe for food. (Watch a video of the crow doing this: ) Such sophisticated tool manufacture and use is unique in non-human wild animals, according to Jackie Chappell, a UK-based zoologist who has studied the birds. Emery and Clayton compare the crow's handiwork to minor human technological innovations. And because different New Caledonian crow populations make these tools to slightly different designs, some scientists take this as evidence of some form of culture, as has been suggested in chimpanzees. Other corvids may use memories of past experiences to plan ahead. In the case of Western scrub jays, a previous study by Emery and Clayton suggests jays with past experience of pilfering food caches collected by other jays can then use this knowledge to protect their own caches. Lab experiments showed that if a habitual thief was observed while burying its own cache, it would later go back and move it when no other bird was looking. Meanwhile, "innocent" jays did not exhibit the same cunning. Imagination? The researchers also argue that such behavior suggests Western scrub jays are able to second guess another's intentions, or, to put it another way, get into another bird's mind. In which case, this could be evidence for imagination. Emery and Clayton write, "Western scrub jays may present a case for imagination because the jays needed to have remembered the previous relevant social context, used their own experience of having been a thief to predict the behavior of a pilferer, and determined the safest course of action to protect the caches from pilferage." Studies to assess similar cognitive abilities in apes have been inconclusive, according to John Pearce, professor of psychology at Cardiff University in Wales. "[The Western scrub jay study] is some of the best evidence going that one animal can understand what another is thinking," he added. Pearce believes we can gain insights into the basic mechanisms of human intelligence through the study of animals. He says language is generally considered to be one of the major divisions between human and animal intelligence, which makes Western scrub jays especially noteworthy. He said, "What's so interesting is that while Western scrub jays may not have language, the research shows they've got many of the intellectual abilities that humans have. This suggests that many of our intellectual abilities which we think we need language for perhaps we don't in fact need language for. That then makes us try to understand these abilities in a different way." If we're as smart as we think we are, perhaps we need to keep an even closer eye on those clever old crows.  More >

Tuesday, September 21, 2004

MEN DO CRY - ALL OVER THE WORLD 3 comments

21 Sep 2004 @ 20:59 MEN DO CRY - ALL OVER THE WORLD By Paul Majendie Reuters September 21, 2004 LONDON - British men are abandoning their stiff upper lips but still do not wear their hearts on their sleeves like Americans, a new survey showed on Tuesday. When it comes to raw emotion, the once buttoned-up Brits are now happy to shed tears quite openly -- but Italians can still "out-sob" them. "Thirty percent of all British males have cried in the last month. That is a very high figure," said Peter Marsh, director of the Social Issues Research Center which took the emotional temperature of Britain. "Only two percent said they could not remember when they last cried," the head of the independent research group said. Long gone is the "No Tears -- We're British" era when emotion was considered distinctly bad form. "In our poll of 2,000 people, very few people in their forties or fifties had seen their father cry. Now it is twice as many," he told Reuters. "Seventy-seven percent of men considered crying in public increasingly acceptable." Almost half the British men opened the floodgates over a sad movie, book or TV program. Self-pity got 17 percent crying. Nine percent sobbed at weddings. "You can see what is happening over the generations. Role models burst into tears at the drop of a hat -- people like (England soccer captain) David Beckham with his New Man image. "He had a little cry when he took his son Brooklyn to school for the first time," Marsh said. Women's battle for equal rights has certainly had an effect -- both in the workplace and at home. "Men in their twenties or thirties are interacting with women on equal terms much more so than a generation ago. They have to relate to the opposite sex. Women become more man-like and men become more female. That transfers into the work place too," Marsh said. >From the days of Empire, the British have always considered themselves models of reserve, haughtily mocking "excitable foreigners" who show no restraint. Marsh argued the divide was still there: "We have probably not caught up with the Americans or the Italians when it comes to the actual display of emotions." "But we are clearly shifting. What we take as typical British reserve has been significantly eroded." Reflecting on the survey's findings, clinical psychologist Ron Bracey agreed. "We are catching up with Americans but are not nearly as open as the French, Italians and the Greeks," he told Reuters. "In the United States, there are five times as many psychologists as there are in UK. That might be self-indulgent but the Americans want to know what makes them tick."  More >

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

What Makes People Happy 4 comments

12 May 2004 @ 19:26 PSYCHOLOGISTS NOW KNOW WHAT MAKES PEOPLE HAPPY By Marilyn Elias USA TODAY December 10, 2002 The happiest people surround themselves with family and friends, don't care about keeping up with the Joneses next door, lose themselves in daily activities and, most important, forgive easily. The once-fuzzy picture of what makes people happy is coming into focus as psychologists no longer shun the study of happiness. In the mid-'90s, scientific journals published about 100 studies on sadness for every one study on happiness. Now a burgeoning "positive psychology" movement that emphasizes people's strengths and talents instead of their weaknesses is rapidly closing the gap, says University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin E. P. Seligman, author of the new book, Authentic Happiness. The work of Seligman and other experts in the field is in the early stages, but they are already starting to see why some people are happy while others are not: The happiest people spend the least time alone. They pursue personal growth and intimacy; they judge themselves by their own yardsticks, never against what others do or have.  More >

Friday, April 23, 2004

The Double - Men Loving Men 5 comments

23 Apr 2004 @ 18:30 The Double - Men Loving Men One of the many sad legacies of patriarchy is the taboo put by Western society and churches on mens' love for other men whether genital or not. For a man to become whole a close, intimate friendship with another man is important for reflecting his deep maleness back to himself. Every male needs to find a Double, a soul mate or soul friend with whom he can communicate openly, with warmth, affection, and love. While the gay movement recognizes this need in its affirmation of passionate, creative, and caring relationships among males, the archetype is not limited to those who call themselves homosexual. Rather, it is at the foundation of every man's innate desire for intimacy with other males, starting with his own father. When we love another of our own gender, we are getting in touch with an unconscious spiritual reality, the Divine within us that can teach us understanding and compassion. The problem in our Western culture is that a man's desire for union or communion with other males is the source of much suspicion. While other societies acknowledge this need,Western culture with its patriarchal values that emphasize competition among men (and women), strength over tenderness, the rational over the intuitive, logos over eros is fearful, if not outrightly condemnatory, of it. Emphasis is consistently placed on male-female relating, and on the belief that male-female relationships should act as containers of all eros. While obviously important for the propagation of the human race as well as for personal transformation and social harmony, such expectations of intimate exclusivity can lead to marital conflicts and breakdowns. No one relationship can contain everything. Complete Article - The Double - Men Loving Men  More >

Friday, March 26, 2004

Academic turns city into a social experiment 0 comments

26 Mar 2004 @ 18:16 Academic turns city into a social experiment Mayor Mockus of Bogotá and his spectacularly applied theory By María Cristina Caballero Special to the Harvard News Office Antanas Mockus had just resigned from the top job of Colombian National University. A mathematician and philosopher, Mockus looked around for another big challenge and found it: to be in charge of, as he describes it, "a 6.5 million person classroom." Mockus, who had no political experience, ran for mayor of Bogotá; he was successful mainly because people in Colombia's capital city saw him as an honest guy. With an educator's inventiveness, Mockus turned Bogotá into a social experiment just as the city was choked with violence, lawless traffic, corruption, and gangs of street children who mugged and stole. It was a city perceived by some to be on the verge of chaos. People were desperate for a change, for a moral leader of some sort. The eccentric Mockus, who communicates through symbols, humor, and metaphors, filled the role. When many hated the disordered and disorderly city of Bogotá, he wore a Superman costume and acted as a superhero called "Supercitizen." People laughed at Mockus' antics, but the laughter began to break the ice of their extreme skepticism. Mockus, who finished his second term as mayor this past January, recently came to Harvard for two weeks as a visiting fellow at the Kennedy School's Institute of Politics to share lessons about civic engagement with students and faculty. "We found Mayor Mockus' presentation intensely interesting," said Adams Professor Jane Mansbidge of the Kennedy School, who invited Mockus to speak in her "Democracy From Theory to Practice" class. "Our reading had focused on the standard material incentive-based systems for reducing corruption. He focused on changing hearts and minds - not through preaching but through artistically creative strategies that employed the power of individual and community disapproval. He also spoke openly, with a lovely partial self-mockery, of his own failings, not suggesting that he was more moral than anyone else. His presentation made it clear that the most effective campaigns combine material incentives with normative change and participatory stakeholding. He is a most engaging, almost pixieish math professor, not a stuffy 'mayor' at all. The students were enchanted, as was I."

Tuesday, January 27, 2004

HEARING YOUR SONG - EXPRESSIONS OF SOUL 0 comments

27 Jan 2004 @ 11:05 Letecia Layson sent me this beautiful story. It offers an alternative to cultivate compassion and community. HEARING YOUR SONG - EXPRESSIONS OF SOUL When a woman in a certain African tribe knows she is pregnant, she goes out into the wilderness with a few friends and together they pray and meditate until they hear the song of the child. They recognize that every soul has its own vibration that expresses its unique flavor and purpose. Then the women attune to the song, they sing it out loud. Then they return to the tribe and teach it to everyone else. When the child is born, the community gathers and sings the child's song to him or her. Later, when the child enters education, the village gathers and chants the child's song. When the child passes through the initiation to adulthood, the people again come together and sing. At the time of marriage, the person hears his or her song. Finally, when the soul is about to pass from this world, the family and friends gather at the person's bed, just as they did at their birth, and they sing the person to the next life. In the one other occasion upon which the villagers sing to the child. If at any time during his or her life, the person commits a crime or aberrant social act, the individual is called to the center of the village and the people in the community form a circle around them. Then they sing their song to them. The tribe recognizes that the correction for antisocial behaviour is not punishment; it is love and the remembrance of identity. When you recognize your own song, you have no desire or need to do anything to hurt another. A friend is someone who knows your song and sings it to you when you have forgotten it. Those who love you are not fooled by mistakes you have made or dark images you hold about yourself. They remember your beauty when you feel ugly; your wholeness when you are broken; your innocence when you feel guilty; and your purpose when you are confused. You may not have grown up in an African tribe that sings your song to you at crucial life transitions, but life is always reminding you when you are in tune when you feel good, what you are doing matches your song, and when you feel awful, it doesn't. In the end, we shall all recognize our song and sing it well. You may feel a little warbly at the moment, but so have all the great singers. Just keep singing and you'll find your way home.

Tuesday, January 6, 2004

How Do Children See Race? 0 comments

6 Jan 2004 @ 23:59 How Do Children See Race? Printed with permission from Dr. Marguerite A. Wright's book I'm Chocolate, You're Vanilla, available from PLI at http://www.parentleaders.org/Literature Note: This section, titled "Do White Children See Race Differently?" concludes the first section of Dr. Wright's book, in which she outlines the developmental steps in which young children first perceive skin color and race, and the meanings they attach to these attributes. Dr. Wright has outlined her advice on how to raise black and biracial children (and indeed, all children) with as little racial bias as possible in our race-conscious world, and ends her section on preschoolers with this passage. We highly recommend the book to parents of every ethnic background. Johnny Lee, a white man who was a former imperial wizard and a founder and recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan Youth Corps, vividly remembers his experience when he was five and saw a black man for the first time. Johnny said to his father, "Look, Daddy, there's a chocolate-covered man." Daddy replied, "No, son, that's a nigger." Lee said that it was at that moment that "the seeds of hatred" were planted that resulted in his life in the Klan, a life he later repudiated.Unlike young Johnny, white children who have not been sensitized to race ascribe little importance to skin color. Relatively few studies have been done on how children of other races, including whites, become aware of racial differences. Those available suggest that skin color is not as salient an issue for white children at the early grade-school stage of development as it is for blacks. It is understandable that young white children do not tend to regard skin color as important, since racial prejudice is generally not a factor in their lives. I am impressed by how little race seems to matter to many of the white young grade-schoolers I encounter. Most of them, from families of friends and acquaintances, attend integrated schools or live in mixed-race communities. Their answers to my question about race are similar to Ian's, a six-year-old white youngster. Ian described the colors of the white and black people as, respectively, "whitish" and "brownish"; he can identify the "Chinese" people and says that he has friends who speak Spanish, although he doesn't have a special name for them. Like black children who do not come from racially obsessed families, Ian did not spontaneously describe or categorize people by skin color or race. Despite my repeated promptings, Ian could not think of a single way, other than skin color, in which blacks and whites differed. Although his level of understanding about how people get their color and his awareness of the existence of different racial groups was similar to that of black children, skin color did not seem as emotional an issue for him as it was for some blacks. I have heard of Latino and Asian children for whom "race" became an emotional issue when they were subjected to teasing and other mean behavior because of their accents, their limited fluency in English, their different types of dress or the lunches they bring to school. Fortunately, however, most early grade-schoolers, regardless of race, do not seem to have stereotypes of themselves or of people who are different colors. Like preschoolers, they are inclined to see people as individuals rather than as members of a group--color, racial or otherwise. Because of this developmental advantage, these early years are an optimum time for children of different races to get to know each other, before they become aware of the stereotypes that in time will rob them of their racial innocence. I suspect that children in other countries with a history of racial discrimination develop race awareness in ways similar to American children. Several years ago, I met a lovely white six-year-old at the home of friends of friends while visiting Australia. From the start, she seemed very comfortable with me, unlike a few of the adults, all gracious people, who it seemed to me were trying a little too hard to appear at ease with a black person. Circumstances led to my spending much of the afternoon talking and playing games with her. It wasn't until much time had passed and we rejoined the adults' conversation that she began to ask me about myself. First, she asked questions about my skin color (like "How did your skin color become brown?" and "Will it change back?"). Next, she asked me about my full lips. Her parents understandably were discomfited by her questions and took turns trying to dissuade her from asking me anything else. Actually, it was quite amusing. The parents were growing increasingly tense trying not to offend me, while their daughter, oblivious to their discomfort, became increasingly more persistent in her questioning. To make matters worse, their guest was not being very cooperative with the parents' efforts to restrain their daughter. In spite of my assurances that I didn't mind answering the questions, the parents continued to try various strategies to silence their daughter, all the while doing their utmost not to appear anxious. Eventually, they found some pretext to escort her from the room. She had never seen, much less talked to, a black person before, and her curiosity was perfectly normal. I knew that to her, skin color and lip shape were just physical attributes, not the hot potatoes they were to her parents. When we said good-bye later that day, I felt a tinge of sadness; I wondered if I visited her again several years in the future whether she would see my color more than she would see me. Even at this stage of development, children who have not been exposed to the racial prejudices of their family and society retain the remarkable gift of obliviousness to the social baggage attached to race. Dr. Laura Schlessinger, author and nationally syndicated talk show host, once told a marvelous story on her show about a childhood incident that illustrates this point. When she was a girl, she had a piano teacher named Charlie. Whenever he came to her home to give her piano lessons, he greeted her younger sister by hoisting her on his shoulders. One day, about a year after Laura had been taking lessons, Charlie did not hoist her sister on his shoulders. Instead, he bent down and gave her a candy. Her sister said, "Charlie, your hands are black!" This was the first time her sister had noticed Charlie's skin color despite all the time they has known each other. Although she had been oblivious to his different skin color when she was younger, as she grew older, she was developmentally able to see the difference. Dr. Schlessinger concluded: "Racism is not congenital; it has to be learned."

Saturday, December 20, 2003

HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS TRACED ONLINE 1 comment

20 Dec 2003 @ 17:16 HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS TRACED ONLINE Associated Press / Wired December 17, 2003 SEATTLE, WASHINGTON -- Nearly 60 years after World War II and the Holocaust, survivors who had once despaired of finding long-lost loved ones are being reunited with them with the help of computer databases and the opening of Soviet bloc archives. In just the past four months, the Red Cross Holocaust and World War II Tracing Center in Baltimore has reconnected at least 40 people with loved ones missing since the war. George Gordon, 77, was one of them. Gordon, a Catholic from Poland, had been told long ago that his parents, sister and baby brother died in the Warsaw uprising of 1944. This fall, Gordon learned that his mother lived until 1986 and that his sister was still alive in Poland. The Polish Red Cross had discovered his mother's death certificate, and it listed a sole survivor -- Gordon's sister. Gordon and his sister were reunited at her home in September. "I couldn't believe it," said Gordon, who lives in Seattle. "Finding somebody that was missing for 60 years is just amazing." The tracing center was established in 1990 to sort through 47 million papers released after the Iron Curtain fell, including records from the Soviet Union and other East Bloc countries and seized Nazi documents. About 1,000 people have been found by the tracing center since it was established. But not everyone is lucky enough to find a relative. More often, said spokeswoman Elise Babbitt, a search turns up "dates of death, which camps family members were in, which deportation trains they were on." Even when the search turns up only a slip of paper, "people are just happy to know anything, anything at all," said Seattle Red Cross volunteer Tammy Kaiser, who worked on Gordon's case. "It documents the fact that they were alive, they're being remembered. Sometimes that IS a happy ending." With time running out for those who were adults in the 1940s, 34,000 people hoping to find others lost during the war have contacted the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., over the past year. The museum shares information with the Red Cross tracing center. Leon Schipper hugs Michael Hartogs after the two Holocaust survivors were reunited at the Los Angeles International Airport December 9, 2003. I'm really shook up. -- Michael Hartogs, 65, as he hugged Leon Schipper, the man who carried him to safety. "There's a new burst of energy," said Scott Miller, director of the museum's survivors registry. The Internet has helped, too. Some people were found by Red Cross volunteers using the birth-date search engine anybirthday.com , Babbitt said. "We hear all the time, 'Isn't this all over?"' Babbitt said. "That's why we're working so hard to get the word out." Last week, Red Cross tracing center reunited a Holocaust survivor with the man who pulled him from a crib 61 years ago to keep him from being sent to Auschwitz. Leon Schipper was 14 when a last-minute request by the queen of Belgium sent him and about 50 other children from a detention camp to an orphanage. Before a truck arrived to pick them up, Schipper passed a room where 4-year-old Michael Hartogs was in a crib and took him to safety. "I'm really shook up," Hartogs, now 65, said as he hugged the 75-year-old Schipper on Tuesday at the Los Angeles airport. Both men now live in the United States. Schipper had filled out a form in Los Angeles, supplying Hartogs' birth name -- Max Kohen -- approximate age, and the place where he was last seen. The request was forwarded to the Baltimore tracing center and to a Red Cross tracing service in Germany. There, researchers combed through documents and found paperwork from when Hartogs changed his name. In Gordon's case, the Red Cross' involvement began with a letter he sent, describing such things as his neighborhood in Warsaw and the Catholic church where he attended services. Born Jerzy Budzynski, Gordon fought for the Polish resistance during the war. He survived the Nazi death camp at Buchenwald before serving as one of Gen. George Patton's Nazi hunters, helping bring war criminals to justice at Nuremburg. During the war, he had been told his mother and sister were killed in the bombing of a hospital where the two had been rolling bandages for resistance. And they were told Gordon had been killed in a concentration camp. Gordon's first contact with his sister, Krystyna Budzynska, in Wroclaw, Poland, was by telephone. "When I heard her voice, I knew. A voice hardly changes, you know," he said. When he later went to Poland, he visited his mother's grave. "A man is not supposed to cry," he said, "but I couldn't hold back."  More >

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