Good German
When Angry Commenters Find Common Ground
Photo: Mikemol (CC)
A lot of visitors to disinformation could learn a lesson from these two. Joanna Schroeder, a feminist, and David Byron, an anti-feminist, write at the Good Men Project:
JS: So, David, you and I have a pretty interesting history, don’t we?
DB: I have talked with feminists on-line for years, and been thrown off hundreds of feminist sites. I am always looking for someone I can talk to, but I didn’t think you were a good prospect at first.
JS: Yeah, maybe I wasn’t at first. I have always been open-minded, but I started off pretty righteous.
As far as I remember it, you and I first met online at The Good Men Project in the comments section of a piece I wrote called The (Quiet) FeministRevolution. I was pretty sure I had written something so deeply based in common sense, that the whole world would read it and say, “Oh wow, now I…
When the Earth Gets Sick: Most Mass Extinctions Happened Slowly
Earth in the Permian period. Illustration: Kieff (CC)
Via ScienceDaily:
In geology as in cancer research, the silver bullet theory always gets the headlines and nearly always turns out to be wrong. For geologists who study mass extinctions, the silver bullet is a giant asteroid plunging to earth.But an asteroid is the prime suspect only in the most recent of five mass extinctions, said USC earth scientist David Bottjer. The cataclysm 65 million years ago wiped out the dinosaurs.
“The other four have not been resolvable to a rock falling out of the sky,” Bottjer said. For example, Bottjer and many others have published studies suggesting that the end-Permian extinction 250 million years ago happened in essence because “the earth got sick.”
The latest research from Bottjer’s group suggests a similar slow dying during the extinction 200 million years ago at the boundary of the Triassic and Jurassic eras. The latest research from Bottjer’s…
Patriarchy Is Dead
From 2010, Nichi Hodgson writing for the Guardian:
From reclaiming the F word to objecting to objectification – there’s a new feminist army determined to finally flatten the patriarchy. But here’s the really radical news: patriarchy is dead. It’s dead simplistic, dead inaccurate, and no longer a useful way of framing gender inequality in the UK. Forget about castrating patriarchy – it’s time to corral kyriarchy, the system identified by Harvard theologian Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, which explains how ethnicity, class, economics and education, as well as gender, intersect to oppress us all, men as well as women.
So, kyriarchy: the substitution of one elitist, etymological hair-splitting term for another, I hear my newly estranged sisters cry – just what feminism needs. But this is a neologism with a difference. Where patriarchy – literally, rule of the father – explains only how traditional male authority dictates to, and subjugates women, kyriarchy (from the…
PTSD And Homicidal Behavior
Benjamin Colton Barnes
Many commenters on CNN’s website believe this article unfairly conflates PTSD and homicidal behavior. What do you think?
A man opens fire in a national park, killing a ranger who was attempting to stop him after he blew through a vehicle checkpoint.A second man is suspected in the stabbing deaths of four homeless men in Southern California.
Both men, U.S. military veterans, served in Iraq — and both, according to authorities and those who knew them, returned home changed men after their combat service.
A coincidence — two recent high-profile cases? Or a sign of an increase in hostile behavior as U.S. troops complete their withdrawal from Iraq, similar to that seen when U.S. troops returned home from the Vietnam War?
“You’re going to see this more and more over the next 10 years,” said Shad Meshad, founder of the National Veterans Foundation, who has been working with veterans since 1970. “… There’s…
Vangelis Talks About The Role Of Music In Times Of Chaos
Via Al Jazeera English:
In December 2011, leaders from around the world gathered at the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations meeting in Doha, a forum meant to encourage dialogue between cultures and people.
The host nation, Qatar, asked Vangelis, the Greek composer, to create the music for the event, which also marked the inauguration of Doha’s cultural village and Greek-style amphitheatre. The event brought together celebrated artists from around the world and his music was written to formulate a message of hope.
Vangelis, one of the world’s most celebrated creators of electronic music and the Oscar-winning composer of the music for Bladerunner and Chariots of Fire, came to a Middle East in the midst of upheaval at a time of financial crisis in his own country.
Al Jazeera’s Tony Harris met the composer to talk about the role of music in our times.
A Black Man’s View of Schroedinger’s Rapist
Crommunist writes at the Freethought Blogs:
This morning I made a reference to the fact that men are often assumed to be potential rapists as an example of how sexism negatively affects men as well as women. The argument, commonly referred to as “Schroedinger’s Rapist”, goes something like this: because you can’t know for sure if the stranger approaching you in a dark alley or other unsafe place is a rapist or not, it is generally a good idea to be on your guard. Men can enhance their interactions with women by being aware of this mindset, and adjusting their own behaviour accordingly.
I have often heard from people making an anti-feminist argument that Schroedinger’s Rapist is profoundly sexist and unfair. After all, most men do not rape – why should every man be treated like a rapist? Isn’t that discrimination? How can you claim to be opposed to sexism, yet promote a fundamentally…
The Attraction Of Conspiracy Theories
Author: Sodacan (CC)
Via ScienceDaily:
Distrust and paranoia about government has a long history, and the feeling that there is a conspiracy of elites can lead to suspicion for authorities and the claims they make. For some, the attraction of conspiracy theories is so strong that it leads them to endorse entirely contradictory beliefs, according to a study in the current Social Psychological and Personality Science (published by SAGE).
People who endorse conspiracy theories see authorities as fundamentally deceptive. The conviction that the “official story” is untrue can lead people to believe several alternative theories-despite contradictions among them. “Any conspiracy theory that stands in opposition to the official narrative will gain some degree of endorsement from someone who holds a conpiracist worldview,” according to Michael Wood, Karen Douglas and Robbie Sutton of the University of Kent.
To see if conspiracy views were strong enough to lead to inconsistencies, the researchers asked 137 college students about…
Obama Administration Selling Arms to Bahrain
Via Common Dreams:
As the Arab Spring unfolded last year, protesters in the streets saw something startling about the tools of repression being used on them. The Humvees, tanks, helicopters were from the US government; the canisters of chemical agents used to attack them said, “Made in the USA.”
Bahrain, home to the US Fifth Fleet and close ally of Saudi Arabia, brutally suppressed the uprising among their citizens. More than 40 pro-democracy protesters were killed and thousands more were arrested and tortured. While speaking out loudly on Libya’s brutality, the Obama administration remained largely silent on Bahrain.
Last fall the Obama administration announced plans to sell Bahrain $53 million worth of military weapons including bunker buster missiles, armored vehicles and wire-guided missiles. The Pentagon said at the time the sale “will improve Bahrain’s capability to meet current and future armored threats. Bahrain will use the enhanced capability as a deterrent to regional…
Family History of Psychiatric Disorders Shapes Intellectual Interests
Cleveland tower at the Graduate College, Princeton University. Artist: Magneticcarpet (CC)
Via ScienceDaily:
A hallmark of the individual is the cultivation of personal interests, but for some people, their intellectual pursuits might actually be genetically predetermined.
Survey results published by Princeton University researchers in the journal PLoS ONE suggest that a family history of psychiatric conditions such as autism and depression could influence the subjects a person finds engaging.
Although preliminary, the findings provide a new look at the oft-studied link between psychiatric conditions and aptitude in the arts or sciences. While previous studies have explored this link by focusing on highly creative individuals or a person’s occupation, the Princeton research indicates that the influence of familial neuropsychiatric traits on personal interests is apparently independent of a person’s talent or career path, and could help form a person’s basic preferences and personality.
Princeton researchers surveyed nearly 1,100 students from the University’s Class of 2014 early…
Playing Music Can Offset Aging Process
Photo: Stilfehler (CC)
Via ScienceDaily:
Age-related delays in neural timing are not inevitable and can be avoided or offset with musical training, according to a new study from Northwestern University.
The study is the first to provide biological evidence that lifelong musical experience has an impact on the aging process.
Measuring the automatic brain responses of younger and older musicians and non-musicians to speech sounds, researchers in the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory discovered that older musicians had a distinct neural timing advantage.
“The older musicians not only outperformed their older non-musician counterparts, they encoded the sound stimuli as quickly and accurately as the younger non-musicians,” said Northwestern neuroscientist Nina Kraus. “This reinforces the idea that how we actively experience sound over the course of our lives has a profound effect on how our nervous system functions.” …
Read more here.
Does The Military Make The Man Or Does The Man Make The Military?
Via ScienceDaily:
“Be all you can be,” the Army tells potential recruits. The military promises personal reinvention. But does it deliver?
A new study, which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that personality does change a little after military service — German conscripts come out of the military less agreeable than their peers who chose civilian service…
France Defeats Monsanto
Gordon Davidson writes in the Scottish Farmer:
France has held firm in its opposition to Monsanto’s genetically modified MON 810 maize [trade name: YieldGard] – and the agri-chemical multinational has admitted defeat.
Monsanto had been putting legal pressure on the French government to lift its 2008 cultivation ban on MON 810, firstly with a successful appeal to the European Court of Justice, then with a follow-up case heard in France’s own highest court, the Council of State.But despite both these institutions ruling that the ban was “insufficiently justified in law”, the French Government, backed by President Sarkozy, has insisted that it will still not allow cultivation of the biotech maize.
Now Monsanto has announced that it would not be selling seeds for MON810 in France this year.
France’s stand – and Monsanto’s capitulation – has been warmly welcomed by anti-GM lobbyists GM Freeze, whose campaign director Pete Riley said: “The decision by Monsanto not…
Anonymous Attacks Monsanto (Video)
Via the Earth First! Newswire:
Anonymous, which briefly knocked the FBI and Justice Department websites offline as well as Music Industry websites in retaliation for the US shutdown of file-sharing site Megaupload, is a shadowy group of amazing international hackers.
The Price of Your Soul: How the Brain Decides Whether to ‘Sell Out’
Via ScienceDaily:
A neuro-imaging study shows that personal values that people refuse to disavow, even when offered cash to do so, are processed differently in the brain than those values that are willingly sold.”Our experiment found that the realm of the sacred — whether it’s a strong religious belief, a national identity or a code of ethics — is a distinct cognitive process,” says Gregory Berns, director of the Center for Neuropolicy at Emory University and lead author of the study. The results were published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.
Sacred values prompt greater activation of an area of the brain associated with rules-based, right-or-wrong thought processes, the study showed, as opposed to the regions linked to processing of costs-versus-benefits.
Berns headed a team that included economists and information scientists from Emory University, a psychologist from the New School for Social Research and anthropologists from the Institute Jean Nicod in Paris,…
The 8 Most Obnoxious Internet Commenters
I’m a combination of #8, #5, #6, #3 and #2. Which are you? (Don’t lie now, all Disinfo commenters are at least one.) Via Cracked:
Under every video on YouTube or Break, and under every story on Digg or even right here on Cracked, there is a mini-culture that forms down in the comment section. The hit-and-run nature of the comments means it’s fertile ground for some really annoying personalities to thrive.
These are the eight commenter personality types you’d most like to avoid, but can’t because they’re freaking everywhere.
#8. The Non-Believer
Typical Comment: “FAKE! Did you see how that guy exploded just BEFORE he hit the tree. Fake, don’t waste my time.”
Who Are They? They like to think of themselves as the jaded skeptic in a world full of gullible sheeple, determined to be a flickering light of truth in a dark internet full of lies and fake viral videos. “No one could really fart on…
Personality Disorders To Be Removed From Psychiatrists’ Bible
Via ScienceDaily:
A newly published paper from Rhode Island Hospital reports on the impact to patients if five personality disorders are removed from the upcoming revision to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 5th edition (DSM-5).
Based on their study, the researchers believe these changes could result in false-negative diagnoses for patients. The paper is published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry and is now available online in advance of print.
The DSM-5 Personality and Personality Disorders work group made several recommendations to change the approach toward diagnosing personality disorders. One of those recommendations is to delete five personality disorders as a way to reduce the level of comorbidity among the disorders. The ones originally slated to be removed include paranoid, schizoid, histrionic, narcissistic and dependent personality disorders.
More recently, the Work Group recommended that narcissistic be retained. Lead author Mark Zimmerman, M.D., director of outpatient psychiatry at Rhode Island Hospital, points out, however, that no…
Iran Calls Video Games Part Of CIA Plot
Amir Mirzaei Hekmati
Robert Mackey writes for the New York Times:
According to Iranian state television, a former United States marine who was convicted of spying on Iran and sentenced to death on Monday was also involved in a nefarious plot to brainwash the youth of the Middle East using an unlikely tool: video games.
In a video report broadcast last month, Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, the former marine of Iranian descent who was arrested during a visit to Tehran in August, allegedly confessed to a career in American intelligence that included a stint at a video game company in New York that was “a cover for the C.I.A.”
According to an English translation of the report published by The Tehran Times, an Iranian state-run newspaper, about one-third of the way through the report, Mr. Hekmati said he had worked for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, after he left the Marine Corps in 2005. Then, according…
Ron Paul And The Liberty Of Bullies
Paul Rosenberg writes in Al Jazeera:
On January 12, a great blow was struck against freedom, if you subscribe to the philosophy of Ron Paul. The Ohio Civil Rights Commission voted 4-0 to uphold its earlier finding that a Cincinnati landlord, Jamie Hein, had discriminated against a ten-year-old biracial girl by posting a “White Only” sign in June 2011, aimed at keeping her out of a swimming pool. According to Paul’s worldview, this was a grave and terrible blow to the white landlord’s liberty. The girl’s white father, however, sees things a bit differently.
“My initial reaction to seeing the sign was of shock, disgust and outrage,” the girl’s father, Michael Gunn, said in brief comments the day the final decision was announced. The family quickly moved away, in order to protect their daughter from exposure to such humiliating bigotry – but they also filed the lawsuit.
According to Ron Paul’s view of “liberty”,…
