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Over the last few weeks and months I have read a lot on the topic, it has ranged from people saying Men are the worst thing ever , how women will be happy without men . Men calling how women behave etc etc etc.. I have gone and put my views on a few of the blogs where the articles have written the replies to some have been funny and made me smile.
So let's be frank and throw away all the hesitations we have, Slut walk is/was organised by people to let other people know that it's not the women who invite men to rape them by the way they dress up , That is what I think is the MAIN point although there are a billion branches to it which my small mind cant cope with.
I am writing this post to put my views on all this Walks , holding discussions , meetings etc as far as I am concerned Dont help there are reasons behind that, Has a walk or a demonstration ever helped anyone and I mean that in context to OUR country INDIA, not referring to any other nation because I don't believe taking examples of other nation will help us , things don't work the same in our nation.
My question is to all the people (male-female and any other category which is human included) .. the reason I put that in brackets is I am sure someone out there reading this will say I am talking only of females , yeah I get that a lot so to be POLITICALLY CORRECT I put all.. right the question is will this walk really help.. or has it helped ..
Again please hold your horses and take your fingers off that trigger .. and listen to what I have to say
I am not undermining anything, I totally support all kinds of walk , dharna's , agitations etc .. BUT my question is to all those who are quiet vocal,
what will they do if they found out that the person who eve teased or raped or molested is from their own house.. will they still want that male to be castrated …
All these crimes are done by a Male (again please I mean MAJORITY) though females too do it but lets assume here its a male who is the culprit .. Dont you think we should be teaching the MEN the male in our own house , in our own room for things to make a difference, I strongly believe that Once that happens then the things will change.
I feel that the BASIC MENTALITY of a MALE needs to be changed.. After all the rapist or the man who is eve teasing , or even thinking of it .. IS from our society and maybe from our own home ..
1. How many people will be there in the march, Pardon me for being a idiot but as far as i understand a Indian mindset many of them in the march will be going back to there own home shutting the door and then BITCH about it, Tell me if i am wrong in that …
2. How many of the people actually in the march will go home and to there Husband-Son-Father and point out to them that the way they look at a girl is not good.
3. How many MEN who are supporting this march will on a friday night get drunk or have a few drinks and then do the same thing against which they are standing up now. by this i dont mean they will go and Rape or molest someone I mean talking amogst their own friends .. Oh how sexy that girl is , look at her legs , this and that…
4. A baby boy grows , starts school , comes back home after a few days Mommy is probably the first one to ask "KOI GF banai".. A girl is taught and instructed about social conduct, given guidelines about how to dress and behave in public in general. But a boy is seldom/never taught about these things at home esp with regard to conduct towards girls. He learns from his peers, from the media which shape up his misguided notions which slowly get entrenched. Something needs to be done in this direction too. (copied this from Ajay's comment..)
I am copying "It is cool to address women as chick, babe, figure, item..It is cool if you are known for your 'long legs'…It is cool to ignore certain men who 'compliment your gorgeous shirt/top' with all the wrong intentions..it is cool to get a million likes when you wantedly put up a pic of you lounging by the beach ( yes, I know some ex-classmates who will do anything for attention. They are still insecure like hell. The funny part is they are showered with attention only when they put up such pics. I am in no way supporting 'it is women who provoke men' policy but I am convinced it is because of low self-esteem and insecurity that is making them stoop so low. I have also come across men who have asked them to think again.)"
I totally agree with the above ..
5. I also beleive that If a woman is dressed a certain way, it does NOT mean that she's looking for sex!.. But then I would not want a female who I know walking on the road half naked, as a prostitue would walk.. Again YES I know how they dress and walk. I know many out there probably wriggling there fingers to put in a comment How do i know, or how can i see.. Well my answer is Look at the one you care for and love , thats how they NOT DRESS.. hope you got a reply
I was brought up by parents who taught me how to treat a woman, I was always told that I should watch how i behave outside since I have sisters and I would not like them teased or hassled. DO you teach your son-husband-father this … Did you protest when a male in your family said something derogatory about a female in front of you.
Do have a think and let me know….


text:
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valsace.com 126.96.36.199
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subset: commoncrawl


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'Hair hanging': A rare and painful circus act
8 Ringling Bros. performers seriously injured in fall
"Hair hanging" is an incredibly painful, highly specialized aerial performance in the circus world, confined to certain families who pass their secrets about the tradition down through generations of performers.
Eight circus acrobats plummeted to the ground during such a performance at the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey circus Sunday in Rhode Island when the apparatus they were hanging from fell. Experts say the rare performance art — in which acrobats literally hang from the scalp as they fly through the air and perform various tricks — is practiced by fewer than a dozen circus families around the world, though it has existed for more than a century.
"It's a very unique, traditional circus act. And most circus schools that I'm aware of don't teach it," said Elsie Smith, the artistic director at the New England Center for Circus Arts.
Each acrobat's hair is wrapped around a steel cable ring attached to rigging that hoists the performer upward. And therein lies the secret: The specific technique used to secure the hair to the rigging is closely guarded.
"We all keep it to ourselves how we tie our hair and how we do it," said Christopher Williams, a 24-year-old hair hanger who counts some of the injured performers among his friends. "No one really knows the secret."
A third-generation hair-hanging circus performer who grew up on tour with his family, Williams has shiny brown hair that dangles down to his elbows. Like most hair hangers, he has a strict regimen that keeps his hair strong, including a regular treatment mixture of avocadoes, eggs, mayonnaise and vinegar.
The hair must be tied to the rig in such a way that the load of the person's weight is evenly distributed across the scalp. Otherwise, performers can literally scalp themselves accidentally or fluid can pool in one section of the head.
"It is very painful. There's a reason that not many people do it," said Williams, whose act includes juggling fire and hula-hooping while suspended high in the air. "We smile and we look like we're not in pain."
Out of respect for his friends, Williams canceled his scheduled performances on Sunday for Circus Sapphire, which is currently touring in Martinville, Ind. But he was soaring skyward again on Monday.
"The reason I put up with the pain is because of how rare it is," he said. "It's beautiful. It's really a beautiful act."


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Although it certainly raises the question of precisely what kind of roles Megan Fox will get that involve keeping her clothes on, Megan Fox will be keeping her clothes on in movies for awhile so that her baby son Noah doesn't get teased about it when he gets older:
"It changes your perspective about being overly sexual in a film when you have a baby. I'm going to be more cautious about choosing films because I'm already thinking about when he's in school and his friends are going to be showing him my photo shoots with me in a bikini and he's going to be horrified. So that will deter me from making some of the choices I made before."
Regarding her son's Biblical name, Fox says that the "rebellious" phase of her early 20s—during which she didn't care about religion or marriage—has given way to a new embracing of traditional values: "Maybe I've come back full circle."
And, shucks, this would hardly be a new-mom soundbite article without the weight talk! "I only gained 23 pounds when I was pregnant and I'm still 10 pounds heavier but I don't want to kill myself trying to get back into shape because it's not a priority right now. I'm too in love with Noah and I don't want to be away from him. I just want to be home." [Daily Mail]
Ali Lohan acted like a brat at L.A. consignment and vintage shop Wasteland, where in-debt sister Lindsay dispatched her to get rid of some used clothes, shoes and accessories for cash. Apparently Ali was not happy with the consignment rate, screaming: "Thirty dollars for these? They cost $700! This is ridiculous!... These HAVE to be worth more, Lindsay was photographed wearing them, that HAS to add value." Also features an unsubtle allusion to Ali having new breast implants. So there's that. [Radar Online]
Slowly but surely, like the proverbial hare (except two hares, with endless sex appeal, and zillions of dollars), Brangelina inch closer to the altar: At the end of last month, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie sent a stylist to quietly buy wedding rings from L.A. jeweler Neil Lane. Shhh, you guys. Shhhhhhhh. [In Touch]
Aw, mannnn. No picture yet, but Rihanna supposedly got a "Breezy" tattoo to support boyfriend Chris Brown. [MTV UK]
- Because hyperemesis gravidarum often appears in women who are having twins, there is a whole new flurry of speculation surrounding what's in K8 Middleton's womb. [People]
- Demi Moore weirdly petted a stray kitten on her lap throughout a Chanel dinner. [Page Six]
- Lakers player Devin Ebanks is facing a civil suit for sexual assault. [TMZ]
- Claire Danes, currently "incubating," can't wait to get that dang baby out. [Sky News]
- Oh, you know, Courtney Stodden and Doug Hutchison, "just doing them." [Daily Mail]
- Go ahead and rule Keira Knightley out of the 50 Shades of Grey adaptation. [Gather]
- Ariel Winter's mom Chrisoula Workman now denies contacting TMZ to leak a nude photo of her older daughter Shanelle Gray in order to cast doubts on Gray's capabilities as guardian of the underage Winter. And a lurrrveley Thanksgiving was had by all. [Ace Showbiz]
- "The weird thing is, I think there's something off about my PH because things smell totally different on me. When you stay at a Four Seasons hotel they have all this Bvlgari stuff and if I use the body wash I smell like pot the rest of the day. It makes no sense. It mixes with my chemistry and I just smell like I have clam-baked all day.'' —Emma Stone! You are perfect. [Contact Music]
- Louis Tomlinson of One Direction got in trouble with the NYPD for hanging out of the sunroof of a car and received a stern warning about road safety. [Express UK]
- Johnny Depp bought a $16 million, 19-room house in Tennessee for himself and Amber Heard. [The Sun]
- Ricky Gervais, usually an awesomely godless and nihilistic entertainer, adorably cried at a London salute to the military. [OK! Magazine]
- Miley Cyrus says that romantic movies make her feel "uncomfortable." [Express UK]
- Basically everyone starved themselves for Les Miserables, more or less. [Us Weekly]
- Nice! Halle Berry has a sweater with the lyrics of the chorus of The Cardigans' "Lovefool" on it. [Us Weekly]
- Anderson Cooper wears one pair of jeans that he washes "maybe" four times a year. [Us Weekly]
- Haha, Tyler Perry's director's chair. [TMZ]
- Gerard Butler's dating a model named Madalina Ghenea. [Page Six]
- Vince Vaughn (a conservative and a staid Ron Paul supporter) will co-produce a reality show for Glenn Beck's GBTV network. [Page Six]


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DALLAS, TX – Republican presidential nominee John McCain announced Monday he will suspend his campaign yet again in order to upgrade his cybernetic systems. Sources say he hopes to appear more passably human before the final debate.
McCain's need for an upgrade comes as no surprise to many insiders. During the Oct 7th debate his GPS systems were noticeably damaged, causing him to wander aimlessly for much of the evening.
Last month investigators discovered that John McCain had many of his internal organs replaced with cybernetic systems. Doctors believe his extensive cybernetic infrastructure is the only thing giving him a one in four chance of survival for the next seven years.
Glitches in the Arizona senator's operating system became most apparent in Dallas when he answered an economic question by engaging his loafer-jets and repeatedly flying headfirst into a wall. After a quick reboot the senator apologized and went on to talk about tax cuts.
The McCain campaign hopes an upgrade before the Oct. 15th debates will help the senator, who has been behind in polls for weeks, appear more modern and life-like. GOP cyborg specialist Dennis Fiorino said "Our candidate will receive the most up-to-date software for dealing with twenty-first century problems. After his Vista upgrade, he will be the best equipped to lead our nation."


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Rich Brains, Poor Brains?
Posted by The Situationist Staff on December 3, 2008
From a University of California, Bekeley press release, "EEGs show brain differences between poor and rich kids," by Robert Sanders.
* * *
University of California, Berkeley, researchers have shown for the first time that the brains of low-income children function differently from the brains of high-income kids.
In a study recently accepted for publication by the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, scientists at UC Berkeley's Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute and the School of Public Health report that normal 9- and 10-year-olds differing only in socioeconomic status have detectable differences in the response of their prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that is critical for problem solving and creativity.
Brain function was measured by means of an electroencephalograph (EEG) – basically, a cap fitted with electrodes to measure electrical activity in the brain – like that used to assess epilepsy, sleep disorders and brain tumors.
"Kids from lower socioeconomic levels show brain physiology patterns similar to someone who actually had damage in the frontal lobe as an adult," said Robert Knight, director of the institute and a UC Berkeley professor of psychology. "We found that kids are more likely to have a low response if they have low socioeconomic status, though not everyone who is poor has low frontal lobe response."
Previous studies have shown a possible link between frontal lobe function and behavioral differences in children from low and high socioeconomic levels, but according to cognitive psychologist Mark Kishiyama, first author of the new paper, "those studies were only indirect measures of brain function and could not disentangle the effects of intelligence, language proficiency and other factors that tend to be associated with low socioeconomic status. Our study is the first with direct measure of brain activity where there is no issue of task complexity."
Co-author W. Thomas Boyce, UC Berkeley professor emeritus of public health who currently is the British Columbia Leadership Chair of Child Development at the University of British Columbia (UBC), is not surprised by the results. "We know kids growing up in resource-poor environments have more trouble with the kinds of behavioral control that the prefrontal cortex is involved in regulating. But the fact that we see functional differences in prefrontal cortex response in lower socioeconomic status kids is definitive."
Boyce, a pediatrician and developmental psychobiologist, heads a joint UC Berkeley/UBC research program called WINKS – Wellness in Kids – that looks at how the disadvantages of growing up in low socioeconomic circumstances change children's basic neural development over the first several years of life.
"This is a wake-up call," Knight said. "It's not just that these kids are poor and more likely to have health problems, but they might actually not be getting full brain development from the stressful and relatively impoverished environment associated with low socioeconomic status: fewer books, less reading, fewer games, fewer visits to museums."
Kishiyama, Knight and Boyce suspect that the brain differences can be eliminated by proper training. They are collaborating with UC Berkeley neuroscientists who use games to improve the prefrontal cortex function, and thus the reasoning ability, of school-age children.
"It's not a life sentence," Knight emphasized. "We think that with proper intervention and training, you could get improvement in both behavioral and physiological indices."
Kishiyama, Knight, Boyce and their colleagues selected 26 children ages 9 and 10 from a group of children in the WINKS study. Half were from families with low incomes and half from families with high incomes. For each child, the researchers measured brain activity while he or she was engaged in a simple task: watching a sequence of triangles projected on a screen. The subjects were instructed to click a button when a slightly skewed triangle flashed on the screen.
The researchers were interested in the brain's very early response – within as little as 200 milliseconds, or a fifth of a second – after a novel picture was flashed on the screen, such as a photo of a puppy or of Mickey and Minnie Mouse.
"An EEG allows us to measure very fast brain responses with millisecond accuracy," Kishiyama said.
The researchers discovered a dramatic difference in the response of the prefrontal cortex not only when an unexpected image flashed on the screen, but also when children were merely watching the upright triangles waiting for a skewed triangle to appear. Those from low socioeconomic environments showed a lower response to the unexpected novel stimuli in the prefrontal cortex that was similar, Kishiyama said, to the response of people who have had a portion of their frontal lobe destroyed by a stroke.
"When paying attention to the triangles, the prefrontal cortex helps you process the visual stimuli better. And the prefrontal cortex is even more involved in detecting novelty, like the unexpected photographs," he said. But in both cases, "the low socioeconomic kids were not detecting or processing the visual stimuli as well. They were not getting that extra boost from the prefrontal cortex."
"These kids have no neural damage, no prenatal exposure to drugs and alcohol, no neurological damage," Kishiyama said. "Yet, the prefrontal cortex is not functioning as efficiently as it should be. This difference may manifest itself in problem solving and school performance."
The researchers suspect that stressful environments and cognitive impoverishment are to blame, since in animals, stress and environmental deprivation have been shown to affect the prefrontal cortex. UC Berkeley's Marian Diamond, professor emeritus of integrative biology, showed nearly 20 years ago in rats that enrichment thickens the cerebral cortex as it improves test performance. And as Boyce noted, previous studies have shown that children from poor families hear 30 million fewer words by the time they are four than do kids from middle-class families.
"In work that we and others have done, it really looks like something as simple and easily done as talking to your kids" can boost prefrontal cortex performance, Boyce said.
"We are certainly not blaming lower socioeconomic families for not talking to their kids – there are probably a zillion reasons why that happens," he said. "But changing developmental outcomes might involve something as accessible as helping parents to understand that it is important that kids sit down to dinner with their parents, and that over the course of that dinner it would be good for there to be a conversation and people saying things to each other."
"The study is suggestive and a little bit frightening that environmental conditions have such a strong impact on brain development," said Silvia Bunge, UC Berkeley assistant professor of psychology who is leading the intervention studies on prefrontal cortex development in teenagers by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
Boyce's UBC colleague, Adele Diamond, showed last year that 5- and 6-year-olds with impaired executive functioning, that is, poor problem solving and reasoning abilities, can improve their academic performance with the help of special activities, including dramatic play.
Bunge hopes that, with fMRI, she can show improvements in academic performance as a result of these games, actually boosting the activity of the prefrontal cortex.
"People have tried for a long time to train reasoning, largely unsuccessfully," Bunge said. "Our question is, 'Can we replicate these initial findings and at the same time give kids the tools to succeed?'"
* * *
For a related Situationist posts, see "The Situation of I.Q.," "A (Situationist) Body of Thought," "The Perils of "Being Smart" (or Not So Much)," and "Wise Parents Don't Have "Smart" Kids."
7 Responses to "Rich Brains, Poor Brains?"
December 4, 2008 at 4:47 pm
[…] Situationist Staff share a sobering look at research revealing that poverty may actually stunt brain development by creating an understimulating environment, with a look into research aimed at remedying the situation. Here's […]
December 5, 2008 at 7:01 am
[…] Simply put this short article shows the differences between the brains of high income kids and low income kids. I like the idea of being able to improve a child's cognitive skills by simply increasing that amount of time their brain processes information:books, puzzles, etc. Click Here To Skip The Introduction & Read About The Difference Between Rich Brains & Poor B… […]
December 9, 2008 at 1:32 pm
[…] Furthermore, recent studies show that poverty stunts brain development, not only by increased exposure to toxins such as lead, but simply by having parents who are too […]
December 9, 2008 at 1:32 pm
[…] Furthermore, recent studies show that poverty stunts brain development, not only by increased exposure to toxins such as lead, but simply by having parents who are too […]
December 10, 2008 at 4:19 am
I felt very strange when i read the article first. Never thought that there will be such kind of difference between the growth of the brains of kids living in poor and rich families. M feeling very upset that kids are suffering in such a way just because they are poor…
November 22, 2012 at 12:40 pm
[…] blindness triggered a memory of a study from a few years ago that shows that poor kids really do think differently from rich kids. This is both fascinating and completely […]
April 18, 2013 at 9:59 am
[…] a proven fact that kids who play games are smarter; see the research. I definitely want my kids to have every developmental advantage and I fully […]


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Recently, I made gluten-free Girl Scouts Tagalong cookies, or peanut butter pattties. We had leftover peanut butter filling, so my daughters and I decided to make homemade peanut butter cups, like miniature Reese's peanut butter cups — naturally gluten-free and naturally delicious!
My friend Chris had sent me a recipe for homemade chocolate candy cups, with a choice of either a peanut butter or peppermint filling, and I realized we could adapt her recipe using our leftovers. I had previously bought some mini baking cups (like miniature cupcake liners) at the dollar store, so we had all the ingredients on hand for this easy gluten-free chocolate candy.
Homemade Peanut Butter Cups, Gluten-Free
(gluten-free, dairy-free)
By Gluten-Free Nosh
- 3/4 cup creamy peanut butter (I used processed peanut butter, not natural peanut butter)
- 1/2 cup, plus 2 tablespoons, powdered sugar
- Pinch salt
- 2 cups milk chocolate chips or dairy-free chocolate chips
- mini baking cups or candy cup liners, about 1.25-inches in diameter
- Place mini baking cups in a mini muffin tin. (Note: It is fine if the mini baking cups are smaller than the muffin tin compartments.)
- In a large bowl, mix peanut butter, powdered sugar and a pinch of salt until well combined. Use your hands to roll peanut butter mixture into 1/2-inch balls; roll balls quickly so your hands don't get sticky. Set balls aside on a plate.
- Place chocolate chips in a large bowl. Heat in the microwave for 1 minute on half-power (such as power level 5). Stir chocolate thoroughly. If not melted, pop bowl in the microwave for subsequent 30-second intervals, stirring until chocolate is melted.
- Place a dollop of melted chocolate in the bottom of the mini baking cups, so the chocolate covers the bottom of the cup. Drop peanut butter balls in the middle of the mini baking cups. Spoon dollops of melted chocolate on top of the peanut butter balls. The melted chocolate should surround the sides and top of the peanut butter balls, evenly covering the peanut butter and leaving a smooth chocolate top.
- Stick the mini muffin tin in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes, so the chocolate hardens. Enjoy your homemade candy!
Yield: I'm sorry — I forgot to note the yield, but it probably makes around 20 to 24 mini peanut butter cups.


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Home » Japan and SE ASIA » ALTERED STATES: Altered States 4
ALTERED STATES: Altered States 4
The classic Japanese music and noise improvisation trio (all were also members of the last Ground Zero). Highly musical and inventive work that shows what can still be done with bass, drums and guitar (plus a few pedals !) and a lot of sensibility. Such a group only comes along once in a rare while. Japanese pressing. Few copies only.
Code: ZEN003
Price: £15.50


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Jackets, Gloves, Aprons, Sleeves
129 items
- As low as $2.50
- As low as $21.99
129 items
Here at Welding Supplies from IOC, we understand that amidst all the joys and excitement of welding, there are some dangers that need to be protected against. Welding Supplies from IOC has an array of protective clothing and equipment to protect you from heat, spark and spatter. From Miller, Lincoln, Tillman and Black Stallion, find the protective gear you need for your welding jobs. Welding Supplies from IOC offers ergonomic, durable Jackets, Gloves, Aprons and Sleeves from the best welding manufacturers around to provide optimum user safety.
One of Welding Supplies from IOC's best-selling welding jackets is the Tillman 3930 Black Onyx Heavy Duty Top Grain Cowhide Jacket. This welding jacket is made with premium top grain cowhide. It's extremely durable against wear and tear, its underarm gussets allow for easier movement, and its satin-lined sleeves make this jacket easy to take on and off. The Tillman 3930 jacket also has soapstone pockets for outside storage, and is sewn entirely with Kevlar thread for heat resistance and strength.
Another quality, top-selling, protective welding product from Welding Supplies from IOC is the Miller Heavy Duty MIG/Stick Gloves. You know you're doing real work when you're job calls for "Extra Heavy Duty" strength. The Miller Extra Heavy Duty MIG/Stick Gloves have introduced an industry first design by strategically placing silicone patches on the back of the gloves for heat and spatter protection. A multi-layered insulated palm and back help keep your hands cool and comfortable in extreme welding environments. A dual padded palm adds additional comfort.


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[This post was first published in September. "Ideology Is Back!" is back this week because the topic of this Saturday's conference at Harvard Law School, hosted by the Project on Law & Mind Sciences, is "Ideology, Psychology and Law" (for details, go to the conference webpage here).]
* * *
I published the essay below in the June 15 Times Higher Education Supplement. It summarizes a longer article, "The End of the End of Ideology," published in volume 61 of the American Psychologist, pp. 651-670 (2006).
* * *
The "end of ideology" was declared more than 40 years ago, after the titanic struggle between fascism and communism. The declaration was made by a tiny but influential band of sociologists and political scientists who were glad to see it go. Their assumption that ordinary citizens don't care about, or even understand, ideological concepts has dominated scholarship on voting behavior for decades. Increasingly, however, reality is getting in the way of believing, however conveniently, that political differences are only skin deep – and therefore easy to resolve.
An ideological divide that has loomed for years became gaping in the aftermath of the Bush Administration's polarising response to 9/11 and the Iraq War. Nearly everyone in the US now knows whether they live in a predominantly liberal, conservative or "swing" state. Almost all of us have friends and family whom we have learned, over the past five years, to avoid on the subjects of politics and religion.
Ideology is back with a vengeance, and psychologists are willing to study it, even if sociologists and political scientists are still reticent. There is a steadily growing list of differences between people who are drawn to liberalism and those drawn to conservatism. There are also situations or experiences, such as 9/11, that evoke intense feelings of threat and uncertainty and move most people to the Right, even temporarily. Other experiences, such as travel and education, make what is unfamiliar less threatening and what is uncertain less aversive, thereby moving most people to the Left.
Two of the most stable or "core" differences between the Left and the Right pertain to attitudes to traditionalism (versus change) and equality (versus inequality). People who call themselves conservatives hold significantly more favorable attitudes than liberals towards traditional cultural and "family values," including religious forms of morality. They are also more likely to support conventional authority figures and oppose activists who are seeking to change the status quo, especially toward greater equality.
People who identify themselves as liberals place a higher priority on egalitarianism, achieved through policies such as welfare, social security and affirmative action. They are also significantly less likely to hold prejudicial attitudes, at both conscious and unconscious levels, toward racial minorities, homosexuals, women and members of other disadvantaged groups. These differences may themselves be rooted in more basic psychological needs for stability versus change, order versus complexity, familiarity versus novelty, conformity versus creativity, loyalty versus rebellion.
Other differences, such as those involving aesthetic preferences, musical tastes, hobbies and personal belongings, may share the same psychological roots but seem more harmless. The bedrooms of conservatives, for example, are more likely to contain organizational supplies such as calendars, postage stamps and laundry baskets, the bedrooms of liberals art supplies, books, CDs and maps. As a rule, conservatives tend to pursue lives that are more orderly, conventional and conscientious, whereas liberals are more open-minded in their quest for creativity, novelty and diversity.
Results from the American National Election Studies reveal that more than three quarters of respondents since 1996 can and do place themselves on a continuous scale of liberalism-conservatism. These ideological self-placements account for an astonishing 85 per cent of the statistical variance in candidate preferences between 1972 and 2004. They also predict many other important outcomes for the individual, including traits, values, behaviors and even mental health characteristics.
Many other discoveries concerning the causes and consequences of ideological differences await us, but only if we accept the obvious fact that ideological differences exist and that they can be studied scientifically.
Ideology, because it appears to satisfy many social and psychological needs of our species, is probably a natural part of the human constitution and will always be present in one form or another. Human beings have required and will continue to require the characteristics that are associated with the political Left as well as the political Right. We need tradition, order, structure, closure, discipline, competition and conscientiousness, to be sure, but if the human race is to continue to survive new challenges we will also just as surely need creativity, curiosity, tolerance, diversity, co-operation and open-mindedness.
Getting both "sides" to agree on this is the hardest part.
* * *
To read a New York Times op-ed from February 2007 on this same topic, click here.


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As with any sport, the items you carry in your swim backpack can help you feel comfortable and perform your best. When you have all the necessary equipment at your meets or even your practices, you will feel better prepared and able to handle the competition ahead of you because you will feel relaxed and prepared. The swimmers backpack is an important component of the overall swimming experience. Understanding what you should carry in your bag will ensure you have just what you need.
Shampoo and Conditioner
Any swimmer knows how hard the pool water is on their hair. The chemicals that are used in the water to keep the pool clean are wonderful for your health but wreak havoc on your hair. The faster you wash and condition your hair after leaving the pool, the better off your hair will be in the long run. There are a variety of shampoos and conditioners to choose from, but it is important to choose one that is made just for swimmers. Malibu C Swimmers Water Action Shampoo offers the perfect combination of a gentle shampoo with one that is meant to prevent the buildup of chlorine in the hair or those chemicals that cause green hair. After washing with this effective shampoo, it is important to follow it with the Malibu C Swimmers Water Action Conditioner to add body and bring the shine back to your hair.
It might seem obvious that swimmers need towels in their bags, but the right towel makes a major difference. The perfect towel for any swimmer is one that offers extra absorbency and comfort to wrap yourself in after a long, hard swim meet. Swimmers should carry one or more towels, such as the TYR Dry Off Sports Towel, that offers the perfect balance between softness and durability to ensure longevity, even after frequent use.
MP3 Player
Every swimmer needs time to relax and unwind. Music is the best way to provide this relaxation, either before or after a swim meet. There are even a variety of MP3 players, such as the Speedo Aquabeat 2.0 MP3 Player, that can be used underwater to provide you with the rhythm and motivation you need to keep up your endurance to help you be more competitive during your meets. Carry your MP3 player in your swim backpack to ensure you always have it when you are at the pool.


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You can't turn on the television or open a magazine these days without hearing or seeing the term fiscal cliff. The media is awash with reports of President Obama and Speaker John Boehner's negotiations over tax increases and spending cuts set to go into effect on Jan. 1, and of the likely dire macroeconomic effects of going over said cliff.
What gets less sustained attention is how the cliff, should it fail to be averted, will affect the individual taxpayer. This is primarily because the American tax code is very complicated, and the changes set to go into affect are manifold — so when the time comes, each of us is going to experience our own private cliff dive.
The well-off will be the hardest hit in dollar terms. Besides large marginal-tax-rate increases, the wealthy are most exposed when it comes to big hikes in capital gains and dividend increases, because they tend to generate more of their income from investments than those lower down the income ladder. And the more money you make, the better chance there is that you get hit with the Alternative Minimum Tax, which absent congressional action will ensnare 31 million taxpayers in 2013, up from 4.3 million in 2012, according to the Tax Policy Center.
But by no means are families in the middle class exempt from serious fiscal-cliff-related pain. In fact, one could argue that certain members of the middle class would suffer the most from our collective cliff dive — not because they'll get hit with the biggest tax bill (again, the rich win that prize) but because their relatively modest incomes are going to take a disproportionately large hit.
What's more, it's possible to describe the (hypothetical) middle-class family that would be the hardest hit in this respect. We'll call them the Cliffs. Mr. and Mrs. Cliff together make $82,000 and have four children. Because the Cliffs both work, they sometimes need to pay for child care. Even though money is tight in their household, however, the Cliffs have been able to invest in $10,000 worth of blue-chip, dividend-paying stocks, in addition to socking away money in their 401(k)s.
(MORE: Can the Estate Tax Solve the Fiscal Cliff?)
So how much will the Cliffs' taxes go up as we go off the cliff? Some $530 per month, or more than $6,000 a year. Yes, you read that right. Here's how:
Payroll-Tax Increase: As part of the effort to stimulate the economy, the payroll tax that workers pay for Social Security was reduced temporarily from 6.2% to 4.2%. That cut is set to expire in 2013, meaning the Cliffs will see 2% of their $82,000 go to the Social Security Trust Fund, rather than their bank account.
Annual hit: $1,640
Expiration of the Bush Tax Cuts: The temporary tax cuts that President Bush signed into law in 2001 and 2003 are set to expire on all levels of income on Jan. 1. That means that for married couples filing jointly, their first $17,800 of adjusted gross income will be taxed at 15% rather than 10%, and their adjusted gross income between $60,350 and $72,300 will be taxed at 28% rather than 15% (the marginal tax rate for income between $17,800 and $60,350 will remain unchanged at 15%).
Yes, you read that right too: their marginal rate will jump from 15% to 28%. In addition, the standard deduction for married couples filing jointly will decrease from $12,100 to $10,150.
Annual hit: $2,677
(MORE: Why Your 401(k) Match Will Get Cut)
Decreases in the Child Tax Credit: The Bush tax cuts also increased the child tax credit from $500 to $1,000. But with the expiration of those cuts, the child credit expires as well. The four Cliff children were saving Mr. and Mrs. Cliff $4,000 in federal income taxes, but that savings will be reduced $2,000 after Jan. 1.
Annual hit: $2,000
Dividend-Tax Increases: The Cliffs' $10,000 investment in the stock market is spread out among a few high-dividend paying stocks, which average a yield of 3% — or $300. With dividends scheduled to be taxed as ordinary income in 2013, that $300 will be taxed at 28%, vs. the 15% dictated by current law.
Annual hit: $39
For the Cliff family, this means a total tax increase of $6,356 in 2013, or roughly $530 per month. For a middle-class family, this amount is huge. That's more than what it takes to rent a one-bedroom apartment in Tulsa, Okla. It's more than twice the average employee-paid share of health-care coverage for families. And it's roughly the average cost of tuition for a private elementary school.
To think that America's leaders are in Washington now, using this debate as a way to score Brownie points with activist supporters, or as a chess piece in a larger game of political one-upmanship, is beyond depressing when you see how individual middle-class Americans will be hurt. While our economy is deeply depressed, and the American government is borrowing at historically low rates, politicians are dithering while the affordability of basic necessities like these hang in the balance for families like the Cliffs.
MORE: Fixing Inflation Adjustments Is the Smart Way to Shrink the Deficit


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Michael Ferguson tells AC360° that he participated in "very strange" interventions as part of a controversial therapy that was intended to change patients' sexuality from gay to straight.
Now he's suing the New Jersey counseling center Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing (JONAH) with three other men based on consumer-fraud and because of the traumatic experience.
"I was part of a group that formed a human barricade and on the other side of that barricade were a pair of oranges meant to represent another man's testicles. And there was a participant in the exercise who was supposed to break through that barricade and...squeeze them and drink the juice from them, and shove them down his pants. And all this was to symbolize that his homosexuality was related to his lack of masculinity," says Ferguson about one of the activities.
He tells Wolf Blitzer that he suffered from anxiety and depression and thought of hurting himself after trying and failing to do what he was told was possible – switching sexual orientation.
The Southern Poverty Law Center is representing the plaintiffs because they believe JONAH's services have no truth to them, and the outcome could set a precedent for other reparative therapy lawsuits.
"This idea that people can change their sexual orientation by doing these absurd treatments...is just completely fraudulent...we feel very confident we'll succeed in this case," says Christine Sun, deputy legal director of the SPLC.
Post by: Wolf Blitzer
Filed under: Gay & Lesbian Issues
As one who wanted to try and "fix" my sexual preference for Men, i started reading "Coming Out Straight" Understanding and Healing Homosexuality by Richard Cohen, M.A. I thought by doing this, not only would i "heal" my Homosexuality it would bring my closer to finding God. 3 pages in i stopped because my tears clouded the words. Thank God this happened, you can not change what God has made. You can not change a tall mountain into a short one, you can not make an ocean a river. It is what it is. God made them that way, just like He made me my way. He Loves us all, he creates everything for a purpose. I had to learn the hard way. But now i am Proud of who and what i am, just like God is.
The NASW strictly forbids social workers to even consider "conversion therapies" as effective because they are not evidence based therapies. They've simply been found to do a lot of harm and damage. This has been in the NASW Code of Ethics for years.
Homosexual conversion doesn't work because one can not pick & choose what one is tempted by. However, one may learn how to cope with the temptation.
I think I might have seen the original reporting on Dr. Recker
here on AC360-
It was typical for CNN to present a one-sided position on this issue, The "conversion therapies" presented were admittedly bizarre but are not typical of the treatments being used. I am sorry for the people exposed to these faulty approaches. But the truth is there many people I know who have successfully transitioned from a gay life style to a heterosexual life and are very happy as a result of genuine support and love they have received from their therapists and support system. They may still experience homosexual temptations just like heterosexuals continue to have inappropriate heterosexual sexual temptations but have found ways to manage those without giving into them. My hope is that as a company you will put forth a full exposure to this important issue and not just be agenda pushers.
Respectfully, I disagree with you.
You should read up on Dr. Recker, the man who invented
conversion therapy.
After you do so, you may not want to
advocate towards fixing what is not
CNN reports wisely, responsibly and
you misunderstood my post to Ms. Kaye,
I am offering her more to prove the points
she tackled in her impeccable reporting.
I hope you and your friends continue doing
well, I hope you all soon realize that you
can't beat the natural instincts out of any
living species, including us humans.
What other side is there? Science says this is bunk and does not work. Anecdotal evidence says this is bunk and does not work. Why is it okay for you to push an agenda, but no one else?
Sir, please show me the empirical evidence proving that your therapy is statistically significant and truly effective. You cannot, because it is based on your faulty annocdotal evidence.
It also operates from the wrong conclusion that there is something WRONG with being gay in the first place. Perhaps you are the one that is wrong!
I couldn't have said it better.
Just mulling the report over...
Ms. Kaye, it would be interesting...
if your producers could track him
down again, like today, and ask
him on camera how he feels about
psychiatrists out there following
his doctrine to treat their patients...
Mr. Blitzer hello,
Please tell Ms. Kaye
to look into Dr. Zecker (the expert),
in her report... the gentleman had
an incident at MIA.
Not all what he portrayed himself
to be to Ms. Kaye...
I believe he was debunked by
all his clients, the anti-gay power brokers.
If the psychiatrist she interviewed, who
treated the complainants... is claiming to
follow the teachings of Dr. Recker.
Read about Dr. Recker, please.
Thank you, sir.
*avid fan of all of you
Anderson Cooper goes beyond the headlines to tell stories from many points of view, so you can make up your own mind about the news. Tune in weeknights at 8 and 10 ET on CNN.
Questions or comments? Send an email
Want to know more? Go behind the scenes with AC361°


text:
Rally Comedy
Comedy programmers & bookers
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Monday, July 18, 2011
Guest post:: Trying to conceive
I'm disappointed again today. I do this twice a day -- looking for my LH surge, looking for a sign that I'm ovulating. On my OR days, it's harder to test in that daytime window. I usually manage at least one pee-in-a-cup time a day, though. My cycles aren't regular enough for me to just count calendar days. My basal body temperature pattern isn't consistent enough just to test around "expected ovulation" time.
When the two lines are the same color, I'll get home at around 7 or 8pm and try to coax some energy into my body in order to get some lovin' from my husband and work on this conception business. Small windows in time where gettin' busy really matters. Small windows of time in my life where I want to catch up on sleep. In the 6 months we've been trying, there have only been one or two cycles where I was pretty sure I had an LH surge and I ovulated. After those cycles, it was hard not to get hopes up. Each time, blood in the underwear heralding menstruation left me disappointed.
Each morning, around 5am, I take my basal body temperature before getting out of bed. All the temperature/charting folks say 3 hours minimum of uninterrupted, good sleep are necessary for a reliable basal body temperature measurement. HA! Have they ever met a surgery resident before? My chart looks like a saw blade ... up down up down up down ... it's no wonder I can't figure out whether or not I've ovulated. My OB/Gyn doesn't really know what to make of my temperature charts. He tells me: "Sure, I'd love to say 'get more regular sleep,' or 'try for a more normal schedule,' or 'work on your stress levels,' but I was a resident once, too, and I know how ridiculous that sounds to you. He's right - if I had a "normal" job, or a "normal" life, those would be reasonable suggestions. I do what I can with the life I've chosen.
All of this is difficult, even though I've been off hormonal birth control and we've only been officially "trying" for about six months. What compounds the difficulty, though, is that all this has to be kept under wraps. Most women who start down the path of trying to conceive are, understandably, quiet about their journey, unless they have a kindred soul (who may also be trying) with whom to share their experiences. Being a surgical resident just adds another level to the need for secrecy.
In my program right now, there are several male residents whose wives are pregnant. All of those announcements were met with a lot of "way to go, man!" "Congratulations! When's she due?" "Not much longer until she'll want #2, eh? Too bad we've got residents' salaries!" In my program, we average one woman for every 5 or 6 men -- and that's actually a good number, for an Ortho program. There have been two women before me who had children during residency, and one woman in the class below me. When they got pregnant, there were significantly fewer "YEAH! Way to go! Congrats"-type responses. Instead, it was a whole helluva lot of "how much time are you taking off?" "Wait, you're due during a rotation where you're q3 call -- who is going to cover your call?" "We're going to have to book down that clinic for a month, aren't we?" And while they were away on maternity leave - most of them took 4-6 weeks - there was definitely a fair amount of grumbling. I found myself defensive for them: "If this were YOUR WIFE, I'll bet you'd be fighting for every single day of her leave," I'd tell the complainers. The double standard still gets me.
And so I continue to sneak away to pee in my cup and look for signs that I might be ovulating, despite this ridiculous schedule and stress I put on my body, my mind and my spirit. I'll deal with the double standard when I get to that point; right now, I'd just like to see two lines of the same color, and my husband and I will keep hoping.
-I'm an orthopaedic surgery resident on the west coast. No children yet.
29 comments:
Fantastic post. Great illustration of the double standard. I still remember my somewhat lazy male colleague referring to my maternity leave as extended vacation. Due to two maternity leaves in residency (8 weeks each - my program allowed me to start a month early in order to accomplish this), I did not get vacation for three years.ReplyDelete
Good luck to you. One of my best friends in residency told her OB she had been trying for a year after six months of frustration so she could start fertility work-up. Turned out she had polycystic ovaries - she was a marathon runner and did not fit typical picture. She started in vitro and has two beautiful kids now - second one conceived naturally when she was done nursing her first.
Ack. I'm now nervous about that comment. A truth, but I certainly don't advocate being dishonest with your doctor. I simply wanted to portray her frustration and desperation to express empathy. It all turned out well in the end.ReplyDelete
Great post -- I hope that by the time I make it to residency that this double standard will dissolve into something of the past... sadly, I doubt it'll be the case.ReplyDelete
Good luck!
When my daughter was about 6 months old, I made a joke at work that I was pregnant again, and I could literally see the blood drain out of everyone's faces before I said, "Kidding!"ReplyDelete
Good luck to you! Pregnancy during any residency is rough, but surgery I'll bet is going to be really hard. Don't let anyone bully you into doing more than you can handle. Practically every pregnant resident I know (including myself) had a first trimester threatened miscarriage.
- AnonymousJuly 18, 2011 at 10:33 AM
I hear you about not being able to tell anyone. It's true even if you're not a resident. If you've had any miscarriages and (god forbid) tell ANYONE, you will get one of the following reactions. 1) You must be doing something wrong. Let me tell you what those things are. 2) I had 15 miscarriages and it took me 10 years to get pregnant. You don't have it bad at all and therefore you don't deserve to be anxious and should shut up. 3) You can't get pregnant? What are you, some kind of failure?ReplyDelete
Anyway, not exactly the same thing as you're going through, but I think many women can relate.
BTW -- If the men in my program reacted that way to my pregnancy announcement (oh. who's going to cover your call?), it would make me want to punch them in the face. So, it's ok to feel that way if that's how you feel.
Hang in there. Things will work out for you and this too shall pass. I really admire your will to make yourself have sex with your husband when you haven't had much sleep. That's dedication right there!
I can see myself in your post...in less than 2 years. I'm a Foreign Medical Grad, working FT in Clinical Research and studying for my boards. I tried all that you did, but finally I decided I needed a break. It is very frustrating dealing with all these...I understand you. It is unfortunate how you get the same response from all co-workers and colleagues...male AND female...they only care about their "extra" work when you're out.ReplyDelete
Chill...you don't need that people...
I wish you the best in your journey to be a Mom. Don't give up!
- AnonymousJuly 18, 2011 at 11:49 AM
I made the "mistake" of getting pregnant when our first child was only 9 months old. It had taken such a long time to conceive with the first, so we didn't think we could have another. I was so scared of telling anyone, but had to tell my boss. The look of shock and dismay on her face told it all. I'm a postdoc and things are not as difficult as it is for residents. The attitude and double standard, though, seem to be universal.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousJuly 18, 2011 at 11:49 AM
I wish you success in conception. I'm a lot older than you - my baby is 30 - and I'm in finance not medicine. I was told at the time, and still believe to a certain degree, that you can't have it all. My pregnancy was disruptive to the running of the business and my daughter's early years were fraught with the tension between the demands of my career and her upbringing. In retrospect, her upbringing has brought me much greater fulfillment!ReplyDelete
thank you for sharing!ReplyDelete
i'm a second-year medical student, and my husband and i have been TTC for 3 months now, i think.
i want SO DESPERATELY to be able to share this experience with another woman...but, like you say, everything has to be kept under wraps.
school, at least the dean and faculty that i've told, are supportive. they say it'll make my career harder, but my life more fulfilling. but family, and classmates, can't understand, and so can't know. i already seem like a collection of foolish decisions, incapable or disinclined to pull my own weight...
hate the double standard. love to hear your voice on it. thank you for sharing!
- AnonymousJuly 18, 2011 at 4:02 PM
I definitely relate to the heartbreak of trying to conceive. I was age 29 when we started trying and month after month of getting of my period. After 7 mos of trying last year (during my OB/Gyn chief yr), I was on my REI (reproductive endocrinology and infertility) rotation and my attending and I struck up a conversation in which I revealed our lack of success. My REI considers work-up after 6 months of trying. I thought I was ovulatory (fairly regular periods), but he suggested confirmation with ovulation kits or a day 21 progesterone and also he offered to perform a semen analysis on my husband for free. I figured I had nothing to lose since it was free. My husband was nervous about the semen analysis, but reluctantly agreed. We found out that my husband's sperm count was extremely low (severe oligospermia) and that our chance of success in getting pregnant was very low unless we did IVF. We repeated the semen analysis a month later and also had my husband checked out by a urologist. I am now 1st trimester pregnant with twins because we started the work-up and treatment early (we had IVF a few months after we found out the diagnosis). Many REIs and OB/Gyns consider more than 6 mos a time when you consider starting some work-up or treatment. I would recommend totally skipping the basal body temperature measurements because that is extremely stressful and my REI no longer recommends doing them due to lack of reliability. It seems like you have put a lot of work into the ovulation kits without success. Sounds stressful and a pain in the butt. I personally thought they were hard to do accurately. I wouldn't suffer too much longer on your own, but form a plan with a OB/Gyn or REI. If your current Ob/Gyn doesn't seem helpful, try a different one or curbside your OB chief on labor hall. Even if it's just trying on your own a few more months and then some work-up, then you have a game plan. If it's really just a ovulation problem, then some clomid (fertility pills) could really do the trick. Or maybe you will get lucky this month and won't need the above advice! Either way, good luck! -New OB/GynReplyDelete
6 months is average for conception and an 80+h work week ain't average, but here's a tip:ReplyDelete
Those cheap ovulation kits off eBay suck. I bought them, too. An REI just shook his head when I mentioned them. If you can afford proper ones like the clear blue easy fertility monitor, at least they'll be more accurate.
Good luck! I wish you many babies and understanding colleagues!
Thank you for sharing your secret pee checks. Maybe your husband could surprise you for a quick burst of private fun when you are in between surgeries. I know, it sounds like I've never been a resident, but the sheer craziness of it might just do the trick. Okay, forget that, but I'm just hoping for some joy in trying and wishing the very best for you.ReplyDelete
It's not a double standard, though, if the consequences for your colleagues is different, is it? Assuming everything goes wellReplyDelete
Male resident's wife gives birth; He misses one or two days of work.
Female resident gives birth: She misses 4-6 weeks of work.
Unless the males are taking paternity leave (which it doesn't sound like they are), it's hardly a mystery that your colleagues aren't thrilled with having to take on extra work.
It's not about gender. It's not about fairness. It's the fact that the consequences are very, very different.
- AnonymousJuly 19, 2011 at 6:55 PM
hmm... it sounds like the maybe double standard the author is talking about is that the people who are complaining about the author (or her peers) taking maternity leave would put up a fight for their (also physician) wives to have their full maternity leave.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousJuly 19, 2011 at 6:59 PM
or maybe the double standard being that where the people complaining, should they be the ones to need maternity/paternity/other medical leave would expect to get all the leave that was legally allowed, but when it comes to someone else taking that leave, they complain?ReplyDelete
The issue is this: When someone tells you they're pregnant, your first out loud response should not be, "How will this affect ME???" It should be congratulations! I am so happy for you! Period. Details can be worked out later as necessary. It's not sexism, it's selfishness.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousJuly 20, 2011 at 6:44 PM
Suzanne Lucas is obviously assuming that all of the colleagues wives do not work, which is a dangerous and highly unlikely ASSumption.ReplyDelete
I am not assuming the wives do not work. I do assume that the wives do not work in the same group as the husbands. Therefore, their maternity leaves don't affect the husband's coworkers.ReplyDelete
Look, you cannot expect people to be excited about more work being thrust upon them. It just doesn't happen. Not in medicine. Not in any other situation. And, as a general rule, men care a heck of lot less about babies than women do. (You find birth forums all of the web, where women whose youngest child is 22 still talk about their birth experiences. Most men don't participate in that kind of stuff.) Men just don't care as much.
So, when you take into consideration that a. your pregnancy means more work for them and b. they don't care much about other people's babies in general you can't expect overjoyed reactions to a pregnancy announcement.
If you'd like to read more, I commented on this topic here: Is Your Sense of Entitlement Ruining Your Career?.
SL -- Expecting people to be polite is not the same thing as being entitled. What a sad world you live in where you think it's ok to respond to a pregnancy announcement with, "Am I going to have to cover for you while you're out." And if someone does respond to you in that rude way, it's only natural to feel a level of resentment, just as you might about someone who was rude about something NOT pregnancy related.ReplyDelete
I feel sorry for your colleagues.
And FYI -- I'm not a doctor.
Old MD Girl, I'm sorry for assuming you were a doctor. The fact that this is a "mothers-in-medicine" site and you have MD in your name, confused me. I edited my article to reflect that you are a commenter, and not a doctor.ReplyDelete
I don't think it's okay for anyone to do anything other than offer congratulations on someone's pregnancy. However, if you spend your life being angry because people react the way you expect them to act, then you're only hurting yourself.
You cannot change other people. You can't compel them to be happy for you. So no, you're not entitled to their happiness.
Awww.. I understand.. May You Get what You are wishing for.. soon.. :) Wishes..:)ReplyDelete
SL -- When did I ever say you were entitled to other people's happiness? It's called a filter, lady. You say something polite even though you're thinking something else? Maybe you've heard of it.ReplyDelete
I don't think anyone who commented here has "spent their life being angry" because people haven't reacted the way they wanted to their pregnancies. That's just you reading into things. Just because someone blogs about being disappointed in something doesn't mean that they have a giant cross to bear about it, and are stomping around work whining constantly.
Not sure what YOUR issue is, but you certainly have a lot of them.
- AnonymousJuly 22, 2011 at 2:37 PM
Please come back when you are pregnant and get your CONGRATULATIONS from these wonderful women, especially if you aren't getting in real life.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousJuly 23, 2011 at 1:00 PM
Ya, the ebay kits from the internet SUCK! So do the store bought ones, according to an REI guru that I just finished rotating with. He basically tells his patients (without a clear medical indication to their infertility) to throw the kits out and just have lots of sex. He said ..many times ..the problem is just that people aren't having enought sex! Especially the otherwise healthy Type A's ..doctors, etc. that are working to the bone. So...sex, q2 starting Day 8 from LMP... take a sick day and stay home and hit it!!ReplyDelete
- AnonymousJuly 24, 2011 at 10:01 AM
Anon -- Re the sex: they say every other day can be better than every day. But yes, the most useful thing I learned from my Ob/Gyn rotation was to have sex during your "fertile period" every other day. Which means basically day 7- day 17 or more if your cycles are longer. It's hard work!ReplyDelete
- AnonymousJuly 27, 2011 at 9:54 PM
yes, I meant q2 days..not hours!! ha ha !!ReplyDelete
I'm done with residency now, but I feel your pain. My advice is, eat LOTs of fruits and veggies, if you can juice for 7-10 days even better. Detoxify your body, and your fertility will increase... I have 4 kids, had 2 in med school and 2 during residency, and conceived everytime (while contracepting) when I did a high, high all veggie diet (I am now vegetarian, but was not at the time). Good luck!!!ReplyDelete
- AnonymousJuly 30, 2011 at 11:49 PM
umm. . . not sure if you are still trying or if it even matters, and you probably know that consistency of any discharge you may have changes to a egg white consistency when you are ovulating so you could try to look for that. Not a doctor yet, just what my doc told me so that I wouldn't get pregnant when I didn't want to. Well sort of. Not the best way to not get pregnant but anyway. Good luck to you!ReplyDelete
- AnonymousAugust 1, 2011 at 3:56 AM
Thank you so much for this post....it's something I really needed to hear. I am 27 and my husband 31. I will be starting a residency in ortho next year (if match goes well). We are planning on a baby for my third year. Being a total Type A I have though of everything from how to arrange my rotations and research time, to buying a bigger home, to the safest vehicle to get when it's time for a new one, to which neighborhoods have the best daycare centers...you get the point. The thing I didn't consider is that things don't always go to plan. I need to accept a little uncertainty in our family planning. Thank you for opening my eyes. I wish you the all the best.ReplyDelete


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The Rational Choice Myth – Abstract
Posted by The Situationist Staff on April 18, 2008
Michael Dorff recently posted his interesting paper, "The Rational Choice Myth: The Selection and Compensation of Critical Performers," on SSRN. Here's the abstract.
Some positions within an organization wield unusual impact over the entity's success. The decision makers who hire these critical performers face a daunting task: to distinguish among closely comparable finalists in a context where small differences in talent can produce enormous outcome divergences. I apply research from psychology and behavioral law and economics to argue that decision makers demonstrate unwarranted confidence in their ability to distinguish among nearly identical candidates. The illusion of validity, representativeness bias, insensitivity to predictability, and the fundamental attribution error all impede decision makers' ability to make these fine distinctions. Once they have made a selection, cognitive dissonance induces inappropriate confidence in the outcome's validity and promotes excessive compensation. Involving a group in the decision may worsen these effects by imbuing outcomes with the false veneer of market legitimacy through social cascades and by discouraging contrary views throug hexcessive consensus or groupthink.
I examine two types of critical performers with these insights: professional baseball players (where individual contributions to the enterprise can be measured directly) and public company CEOs (where they cannot). I conclude that in both contexts, these phenomena produce inefficient selection and compensation outcomes. While the relative absence of externalities argues against mandatory regulation in baseball, I propose changes in private ordering that should improve efficiency. In the corporate context, I argue that regulation is called for and propose a combination of mandatory compensation caps linked to firm size and a reverse auction among CEO finalists to determine the successful candidate.
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This entry was posted on April 18, 2008 at 12:44 am and is filed under Abstracts, Choice Myth, Situationist Sports, Social Psychology. Tagged: baseball, Choice Myth, executive compensation, fundamental attribution error, groupthink, professional baseball, rational choice, representativeness heuristic, Situationist Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.


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Dear Reader,
Please take one moment to scroll down the page a little and look at the fancy little avatar photos we have below, exhibiting the contributing writers to this here blog. Go ahead. I'll wait. Have any first impressions? Thoughts? I know I did. When bringing this group together for purposes of writing about library school and the profession we are about to enter, I approached the bloggers I had been reading, heard about, or came across in my daily interweb scanning life. It wasn't until all those photos were posted on this page that I saw an issue. 1 white guy and 5 white girls. Two things bothered me about this discovery. First, if this little group of writers is any sort of microcosm of the greater LIS student body and the profession, there is a problem. Second, and this was most embarrassing to me, when scanning my Twitter lists and blogs for confirmation, I found very little evidence of diversity there.
Coming out of a liberal studies background, I could write you 50 pages on feminist theory applied to any cultural text of your choice. Or I could give a lecture on the necessity of the post (post) modern student having a grasp on all things race, class, gender related. Transferring those comprehensions to my studies in Librarianship however has been complex. In the LIS world "Diversity" comes out in discussions of the digital divide, information literacy and access. The public library is most often the case study for these discussions, and working in one for the past 6 months, I have gained greater insights to the complexity of such issues. But, ignorantly, I never thought it would echo into my own little worldview in the way it has when I saw the 6 faces that represent the inaugural class of HackLibSchool to the internet. And that bugs me.
What to do? Well, "say something about it" is the only thing I could come up with. I know there are myriad issues surrounding diversity in this world, and I think it can be amplified in a profession like ours that is so focused (and rightly so, I believe) on free access to information and knowledge to any person, regardless of race, color, creed or any other culturally inflicted "difference." We are fortunate to have a forward-thinking, sometimes even radical, organizational body like ALA that does its organizational best to acknowledge the value of diversity to our world. But what about this little collaborative effort I have put together to discuss and be a resource by, for and about library school students?
It is my dearest hope that in the near future we, HackLibSchool, become more representative of the spectrum of students and future professionals that make us invaluable to a misunderstanding and judgmental world.
Personally, I promise to try harder to broaden my scope of view. It'd be great if sooner than later we had a few more beautiful and diverse photos in the array below. Another guy wouldn't hurt either.
Micah Vandegrift
Categories: Diversity


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Having tasted Jack's Gourmet award winning delicious new product – Facon – at last week's Kosherfest 2012, I just had to find a way of incorporating it into a dish and last evening I did just that!
Chicken, Potato and Facon Soup
Serves 4
- 1 tablespoon margarine
- 2 garlic cloves, chopped
- 1 onion, sliced
- 9 ounces, Jack's Gourmet Facon , chopped
- 2 large leeks, sliced
- 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 4 cups chicken stock
- 1 pound 12 ounces potatoes, chopped
- 7 ounces skinless breast, chopped
- 1 1/4 teaspoon cornstarch dissolved in water (for thickening the soup and making it creamy)
- salt and pepper to taste
- cooked facon and sprigs of fresh parsley to garnish
- Melt the margarine in a large pan over medium heat. Add the garlic, the onion and cook stirring for 3 minutes, until slightly softened. Add the chopped bacon and leeks and cook for another 3 minutes while stirring.
- In a bowl mix the flour with enough stock to make a smooth paste and stir mixture into the pan. Cook, stirring, for 2 minutes. Pour in the remaining stock; add the potatoes and chicken. Season with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil and lower the heat, simmer for 2o minutes or until the chicken and potatoes are tender and cooked through.
- Stir in the dissolved cornstarch and cook for another 2 minutes. Remove from heat and ladle into serving bowls. Garnish with the cooked facon and parsley and serve immediately.
Enjoy, gentle reader, enjoy! I certainly did; in fact, this is about to become one of my favorite winter soups.


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How are controversial ideas handled by modern science? A common charge leveled against science (generally by those who are unhappy with its conclusions) is that the only way to get funding or continue your research is by going along with the current theories and not rocking the boat. For those who spend their careers in science, this is laughable—it is those who successfully rock the boat who are the most successful. In this article, we are going to look at a manuscript that purports to overturn hundreds of years of accepted ideas about gravity, and use it as an illustration of how controversial ideas are dealt with in modern physics.
It was Isaac Newton who first proposed a universal law of gravitation, where every massive body in the universe was attracted to every other one. This simple law proved extremely powerful, able to explain the orbits of planets and the reason the apocryphal apple fell on his head. However, Newton was never able to explain why gravity worked or what exactly it was. Two hundred plus years later, Albert Einstein was able to offer a more complete description of gravity—one where Newton's laws are a limited case. According to Einstein, gravity was due to the warpage of spacetime by mass and energy; all objects followed straight paths, just on curved spaces.
With the advent of quantum theory over the past 100 years, scientists have been able to develop an elegant mathematical framework capable of uniting three of the four fundamental forces that are thought to exist in the universe. The fourth, gravity, still remains the fly in the ointment, and has resisted unification to this point. Early last year, Dutch theoretical physicist Erik Verlinde published a manuscript to the arXiv that purports to explain why science cannot reconcile all four fundamental forces. According to him, it is simple: "gravity doesn't exist."
Some background reading
Before we dive into this seemingly unphysical statement, we need to take a detour to discuss some of the ideas from modern physics that form the basis of Dr. Verlinde's argument: black hole thermodynamics and the holographic principle. Black hole thermodynamics was worked on extensively in the 1970s. It's needed in order to reconcile the second law of thermodynamics with the idea of a black hole event horizon. To do this, one has to admit that a black hole must have finite, non-zero entropy. If a black hole has zero entropy, then throwing mass into a black hole would violate the second law of thermodynamics, as the sum total entropy of the universe would decrease by the amount of entropy contained within the mass.
This also demands that, oddly, black holes cannot be purely black. If something has a non-zero entropy, then it must also have a non-zero temperature. This temperature is the temperature of the Hawking radiation that is given off due to the quantum nature of the black hole itself. A simple way to imagine Hawking radiation involves considering the particle-antiparticle pairs that spontaneously form the vacuum fluctuations. If one forms near the event horizon, it can fall in, never to be seen again, while its mate flies off into the Universe. To a faraway observer, the black hole just emitted a particle (even trippier is the fact that the particle that fell in must have had negative energy, and decreased the total energy of the black hole—something that could cause the black hole to evaporate over time).
Leading us further down the (black) rabbit hole are other results of Stephen Hawking's calculations, which fixed the maximum entropy that a black hole can have. Since that's a (quasi) measurement of how much information can be stored by an object, a black hole represents the most informationally dense object possible in the Universe. Surprisingly, the maximum entropy a black hole can obtain is exactly Planck's constant times one quarter of its area in Planck lengths—not its volume, an important distinction. This result implies that every bit of information the black hole can contain (as an Infosphere) is described entirely by its surface, the event horizon.
An extension to this line of surface-focused thinking came in the 1990s, when Gerardus 't Hooft, and later Leonard Susskind, postulated that the universe is a form of a hologram, a lower dimensional object that looks like a higher dimensional one (think of the two dimensional hologram images that look three dimensional). The holographic principle says that all space and time contained within an N dimensional body is emergent and can be described by a completely separate set of physics on the N-1 dimensional surface of the body.
This is one of those mind-bending ideas that float around and form the basis of a not-insignificant portion of modern physics, so I'll try and give a simple example. Imagine the entire Universe is a beach ball, and all physics within it—space, time, matter, energy—is described by the ideal gas law. The holographic principle then states that the entirety of the Universe (the inside of the beach ball) can also be described by a different set of equations that describe only the surface of the ball, the vinyl part itself; as an example, maybe a set of equations linking the surface tension to the area of the ball.
There's a corollary to this (one that will be heavily relied on in a minute): all the information about the Universe (in this case the beach ball) is encoded on the two dimensional surface of the ball. Another analogy I have seen used to describe this is that of a soup can: everything you could know about what is in the can of soup is printed on its label.
Tying this back to the black holes we started with: the holographic principle suggests that everything we could want to know about the interior of a black hole is encoded in some manner on the surface of its event horizon. Since we can never recover information from beyond the veil of the event horizon, everything that can be known about a black hole, and everything that has ever fallen into it, must be represented on the event horizon itself. In fact, in some variants of string theory, this concept resolves the black hole information paradox.
This idea may sound completely abstract (and it is), but it has turned out to be remarkably useful, because it has produced what is called the AdS/CFT correspondence. This uses the holographic principle to show a direct correspondence between problems in what is known as Anti-deSitter space, where gravity is present (a cosmological way of describing the Universe) and problems in conformal field theory in a lower dimensional space where gravity does not exist (used heavily in quantum mechanics). Problems not solvable in one regime (cosmology, the AdS portion) have an equivalent problem that may be trivially solvable in the other (quantum field theory, the CFT portion).
A mind-bending proposal
Dr. Verlinde's proposition is not entirely unique. Others have argued that gravity, instead of being a fundamental force of the Universe, is instead an emergent phenomenon. A good deal of this thinking comes from the fact that the equations that describe gravity (in the Newtonian limit, at least) are mathematically similar to those that describe other emergent phenomena, such as fluid mechanics or thermodynamics. Where Dr. Verlinde goes the next step forward is by arguing for a definite mechanism behind gravity: differences in entropy.
In his freely available manuscript, entitled "On the Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton,"—the title seemingly paying homage to Einstein's famous paper whereby special relativity was laid out—Verlinde sets out his case for why gravity is, as he terms it, an "entropic force." The manuscript uses a combination of the holographic principle and black hole thermodynamics to (re)derive the basic equations of motion that Newton presented over 300 years prior.
Verlinde makes extensive use of the holographic principle in his derivations. He works with a thought experiment that assumes one has a holographic screen—one where all the information about what is contained inside of it is encoded as bits on its surface—and asks how it would interact with matter or energy that is being held just outside of it.
To show how Newton's equations of universal gravitation are derived, Verlinde begins with the difference in entropy between a mass M and a spherical holographic screen with entropy S—the information encoded on the screen would describe the emergent space inside, which would be "viewed" as equivalent to a mass M at its center. The attractive force between the the mass and the screen—what we would commonly call gravity—becomes, as Verlinde describes it, an entropic force due to the different informational densities between the two regions.
Not being content to leave it there, Verlinde goes further and rederives Newton's famous second law, F=ma (fun historical note: F=ma appears exactly zero times in Newton's famous Principia). Through that derivation, Verlinde is able to associate acceleration with an entropy gradient. According to his work, a particle at rest will stay at rest because there is no entropy gradient around it. This allows him to identify Newton's potential—the negative of the gradient, which is the acceleration a particle feels—as a potential that "keeps track of the depletion of the entropy per bit."
With such a description, extending the idea further becomes feasible. The entropic potential previously identified is shown to follow the common Poisson equation that describes the distribution of matter about a system. So he concludes that, if temperature and informational density on the holographic screen are chosen properly, then the laws of gravity fall out of this theory in a straightforward fashion.
Up to this point in the manuscript, everything Verlinde has derived applies to non-relativistic cases. How well does such a radical departure hold up when viewed through the lens of relativity theory? Here, Verlinde starts with the general relativistic description of Newton's potential. He then goes on to derive the force required to hold a particle a fixed distance away from a holographic screen, and again is able to derive the commonly accepted equation with force now described by a difference in entropy between the point and the screen. Furthermore, the manuscript lays out a path—but does not explicitly follow it—for one to rederive the full set of Einstein's field equations that form the cornerstone of general relativity using the fact that gravity, in Verlinde's work, is an "entropic force."
The paper is clearly unconventional, but it provides a compelling argument, and backs it up with actual work. Despite the highly controversial ideas it puts forth and the fact that it has not gone through peer review, it has caused some people in the scientific community to sit up and take notice.
Clearly, one paper making extraordinary claims will not be taken as fact until others can replicate the work, or in the case of a theoretical paper such as this, verify it with experimental evidence. A paper published in a recent edition of Physical Review D has attempted to do just that.
Not so fast
Dr. Archil Kobakhidze, a research fellow in theoretical particle physics at the University of Melbourne, points to recent results that may undermine Verlinde's ideas. Kobakhidze acknowledges that Verlinde's work successfully reproduces gravity on the Newtonian scale, and possibly in the more general relativistic sense, but it must also work at the quantum level as well, or it's not going to change modern physics.
Kobakhidze attempts to apply Verlinde's ideas to see if they are in agreement with the results from experiments on ultra-cold neutrons falling in the Earth's gravitational field. Solving the conventional quantum mechanical equations that describe this system give results that are in good agreement with the experiment. Verlinde's paper does not fully explain how to work with microscopic systems in his modified view of gravity, but according to Kobakhidze, enough ideas are present to work it out as homework.
Kobakhidze uses Verlinde's approach to re-derive the wave equation that will describe the energy levels of neutrons falling in Earth's gravitational well. What he finds is that, in contrast to the more conventional equation, there are two extra terms now present. One would appear to account for the relativistic rest energy of the neutron; the other is a form of an extreme suppression of certain parts of the neutron's wavefunction. Both of these additions result in problems for Verlinde's theory.
The first extra term, the relativistic rest energy, would manifest itself as a constant shift in the neutron's energy states (height above the bottom of the well)—this is not seen at all in the experiments. According to Kobakhidze, though, it is the second extra term that really throws a wrench into entropic gravity. The second term, if correct, would significantly change the dynamics of the experiment, essentially causing neutrons to fall through the small hole in the bottom of the potential well. There's no sign of this happening in any meaningful way in the experiment. Thus, Kobakhidze concludes, "we are driven to the conclusion that gravity is not an entropic force."
This is how science works. Ideas are proposed, they are backed up, they are shot down. Over time, it would not surprise me to see Verlinde defend his work. Perhaps Kobakhidze's derivation and its extension to the microscopic case is incorrect. Perhaps Verlinde will revisit his original work to revise how microscopic cases should be handled. Whatever happens, science will move on; time, further arguments, and experiments will be the ultimate arbiter of which drastically different view of reality is correct.
Physical Review D, 2011. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.83.021502