Aug 6, 2015 | Politics
From ESPN article on Adrian Foster:"'No, bro, I don't believe there's a God, why would I believe there's a devil?'
[...]
With that, he displays his talent as a master of the eloquent shrug and leans back in an office chair in a back bedroom that he's turned into a recording and writing studio. The house, a rental, is modest for a man working on a five-year, $43.5 million contract. There's a Range Rover in the driveway but no fleet. "I don't want or need much," he says. "Just something fairly safe for the kids to grow up around, and that's about it, really. The rest is luxury, fluff. I've saved about 80 percent of what I've made, and I will continue that. I won't have to work when I'm done -- live off the interest, put my kids through college, let them have the money when I'm in a box and call it a day, man."
[...]
"Every once in a while she'll mention Jesus or God," he says. "One time she likened God and Jesus to Zeus and Hercules. She did it on her own. She said something along the lines of, 'They're the same. They're both stories.' I thought it was brilliant on her part to be able to distinguish it."
[...]
Foster stops short of calling himself an atheist, not because he isn't -- his language is the language of the atheist -- but because someday he might not be. "I have an open mind," he says. "I'm not a picket-sign atheist. I just want to be a happy human being and continue to learn." He also has a visceral dislike of labels. (On June 28 he tweeted, "hop in the uber and the driver immediately turns it to the rap station. he's absolutely correct, but don't judge me, yo.") "If I tell you I'm a Republican, your mind immediately starts telling you all the things I must believe," he says. "Same with the word 'atheist,' and I don't like people making assumptions about me.
[...]
The two running backs communicate almost daily, and when Forsett ends a conversation or text exchange with "I'll pray for you" -- as he often does -- Foster responds with "And I'll think for you."
Aug 5, 2015 | Education
"Self direction is a key outcome of a Montessori education. How do we, as adults, facilitate it?" asks the Maria Montessori blog? Jesse McCarthy gives the answer.From The Self-directed Child — Maria Montessori:
When I began teaching years ago, I had the view that I can change any child; overtime, however, through working with and alongside hundreds of unique students, I came to see that such a view is more accurately stated as any child can change himself. A subtle shift in phrasing, yet a fundamental distinction in pedagogy. This self-directed approach to education does not mean the teacher, the “guide,” is unnecessary. To the contrary, a thoughtful guide creates the content-rich, and often highly structured environment in which a child can thrive, but only through her own will. As Rachel’s story exemplifies – and as Maria Montessori spent her life both observing in children and demonstrating for adults – growth is impossible to achieve for another human being: “One must act for him or herself.”
Jul 31, 2015 | Philosophy
If you were to choose one of your most valued possessions in life, what would it be? When you have your unique item in mind -- maybe a wedding ring, an old family photo, a cherished book -- watch this video. I hope by the end you have a new perspective on just how important your love of that "thing" really is. -- Jesse McCarthyhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-3ESap0UTcJul 25, 2015 | Philosophy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCSWbTv3hngAccording to Psychology Today (Sept. 2011):- America didn't adopt the practice of circumcision until the 19th century, when anti-sex doctors promoted it as a way to stop kids from masturbating
- Cleanliness is no longer an issue thanks to modern hygienic standards
- The foreskin is a natural lubricant, contains millions of nerve endings, and prevents desensitization
There are rare cases where circumcision may be beneficial, but it is the exception and not the rule.
Jul 17, 2015 | Politics
From The Mythical Connection Between Immigrants and Crime - WSJ:
...numerous studies going back more than a century have shown that immigrants—regardless of nationality or legal status—are less likely than the native population to commit violent crimes or to be incarcerated. A new report from the Immigration Policy Center notes that while the illegal immigrant population in the U.S. more than tripled between 1990 and 2013 to more than 11.2 million, “FBI data indicate that the violent crime rate declined 48%—which included falling rates of aggravated assault, robbery, rape, and murder. Likewise, the property crime rate fell 41%, including declining rates of motor vehicle theft, larceny/robbery, and burglary.”A separate IPC paper from 2007 explains that this is not a function of well-behaved high-skilled immigrants from India and China offsetting misdeeds of Latin American newcomers. The data show that “for every ethnic group without exception, incarceration rates among young men are lowest for immigrants,” according to the report. “This holds true especially for the Mexicans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans who make up the bulk of the undocumented population.”It also holds true in states with large populations of illegal residents. A 2008 report by the Public Policy Institute of California found that immigrants are underrepresented in the prison system. “The incarceration rate for foreign-born adults is 297 per 100,000 in the population, compared [with] 813 per 100,000 for U.S.-born adults,” the study concludes. “The foreign-born, who make up roughly 35% of California’s adult population, constitute 17% of the state prison population.”[...]Every immigrant here illegally has already broken a law, though that doesn’t mean they are predisposed to crime. In a 2005 paper, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago reported that more recently arrived immigrants are even less crime-prone than their predecessors. In 1980 the incarceration rate of foreign nationals was about one percentage point below natives. A decade later that had fallen to a little more than a percentage point, and by 2000 it was almost three percentage points lower.
[...]How do you balance border security and labor-market demand? Should relatives of people already here continue to be given an immigration preference? Is it time to move toward a skills-based immigration system similar to Canada’s? How should the federal government treat border states and cities that bear the upfront costs of illegal entries? Is walling off the southern border feasible? Would it make the U.S. safer? And what should be done about the estimated 12 million undocumented people already living here?
Jun 30, 2015 | Philosophy, Politics
The Undercurrent has an excellent interview with Onkar Ghate on Free Speech vs. Religion:
Dr. Onkar Ghate is a senior fellow and the Chief Content Officer at the Ayn Rand Institute. He has written and lectured extensively on philosophy and serves as Dean for the Institute’s Objectivist Academic Center in Irvine, CA. The Undercurrent’s Jon Glatfelter had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Ghate regarding the recent shooting at the “Draw Muhammad” cartoon contest in Garland, Texas, as well as religion and free speech more broadly.The Undercurrent: Many of the major U.S. media players, including CNN and FOX, still have not published the cartoon contest’s winning piece. Why do you think that is?Dr. Ghate: I haven’t kept tabs on which outlets have and have not published that cartoon, but there were similar responses in regard to the Charlie Hebdo cartoons and, before that, the Danish cartoons in 2005-2006. Sometimes a media outlet would try to explain why it is not showing its audience a crucial element of the news story, and I think these explanations have revealed a mixture of motives at work.Here’s a non-exhaustive list: fear, cowardice, appeasement, sympathy. Let me say a word on each. Some media outlets are afraid of violent reprisals and of the ongoing security costs that would be necessary to protect staff. And because the U.S. government refuses to take an unequivocal stand in defense of the right to free speech, the totalitarians are emboldened, which makes violent reprisals more likely. So that’s one reason. But despite this legitimate fear, I do think there is often an element of cowardice. The likelihood of an attack can be overstated, and of course if more news outlets publish the cartoons, it is more and more difficult to intimidate and attack them all, and less and less likely that a particular organization will be singled out. Here there is strength in numbers. A third motive is the appeaser’s false hope that if he gives in and doesn’t publish the cartoons, he will have satisfied the attackers and no further threats or demands will follow. Finally, many are sympathetic: out of deference to the non-rational, faith-based emotions of Muslims, they don’t publish the cartoons, even though those cartoons are news. They view the cartoonists and publishers as the troublemakers and villains. (The roots of this sympathy I think are complex and often ugly.)The Undercurrent: Some have condemned the contest’s organizer, Pamela Geller, and the winning artist, Bosch Fawstin. They say there’s a world of difference between good-natured free expression and malicious speech intended solely to antagonize. What do you think?Dr. Ghate: I disagree with many things that I’ve heard Pamela Gellar say but I refuse to discuss her real or alleged flaws when totalitarians are trying to kill her, as though those flaws, even if real, justify or mitigate the actions of the aspiring killers. The New York Times editorial to which you link is a disgrace. After a sanctimonious paragraph saying that we all have the right to publish offensive material and that no matter how offensive that material may be, it does not justify murder, the rest of the editorial goes on to criticize the victim of attempted murder. As my colleague and others have noted, this is like denouncing a rape victim instead of her rapists.And notice what the editorial glosses over: in the first paragraph stating that offensive material does not justify murder, it concludes with the seemingly innocuous point that “it is incumbent on leaders of all religious faiths to make this clear to their followers.”This is the actual issue. Why don’t you similarly have to tell a group of biochemists or historians, when they disagree about a theory, that their disagreements don’t justify murdering each other? The answers lies in the difference between reason and faith, as I’m sure we’ll discuss, a difference the editorial dares not discuss.But contra the editorial, the Garland event had a serious purpose. Look at the winning cartoon: it makes a serious point.
Read the rest of Free Speech vs. Religion: An Interview with Onkar Ghate - The Undercurrent:
Jun 30, 2015 | Politics
From Bosch Fawstin: CBLDF Writes About "Cartoonists Under Fire" while ignoring This Cartoonist who was Literally Under Fire:Comments Mitchell Berger on
Fawstin's blog on his view of CBDLF's position:
I was a founding board member of the CBDLF, but I speak only for myself here. Let me start off by saying that I liked your cartoon. It expresses the political cartoonist's credo perfectly. But it is impossible to separate it from the context of it's creation. Pamela Geller, the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) sponsored the contest.
Fawstin, therefore, is guilty by association with a "right-wing" organization.Apparently, CBLDF only defends speech they agree with -- and not freedom of speech on principle. The latter which is best expressed by a quote from Beatrice Evelyn Hall's line attributed to Voltaire: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."Unless you are the so-called Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Jun 30, 2015 | Education
From Marva Collins, Educator Who Aimed High for Poor, Black Students, Dies at 78 - The New York Times:Marva Collins, a former substitute teacher whose success at educating poor black students in a private school she founded made her a candidate for secretary of education and the subject of a television movie, died on Wednesday in a hospice near her home in South Carolina. She was 78. [...] After working as a substitute teacher for 14 years in Chicago public schools, Ms. Collins cashed in her $5,000 in pension savings and opened Westside Preparatory School in 1975. The school originally operated in the basement of a local college and then, to be free of red tape (the same reason she said she had refused federal funds), in the second floor of her home.She began with four students, including her daughter, charging $80 a month in tuition. Enrollment at the school, on Chicago’s South Side, grew to more than 200, in classes from prekindergarten through eighth grade. It remained in operation for more than 30 years.Ms. Collins set high academic standards, emphasized discipline and promoted a nurturing environment. She taught phonics, the Socratic method and the classics and, she insisted, never expected her students to fail.
“Kids don’t fail,” she once said. “Teachers fail, school systems fail. The people who teach children that they are failures — they are the problem.”At Westside Prep, she said in 2004 when she was awarded the National Humanities Medal, “there are no dropouts, no substitute teachers, and when teachers are absent, the students teach themselves.”“We’re an anomaly in a world of negatives,” she added. “Our children are self-motivated, self-generating, self-propelled.”An article about the school in 1977 in The Chicago Sun-Times attracted national attention, an interview on “60 Minutes” and the interest of filmmakers, who went on to produce “The Marva Collins Story,” a 1981 television movie on CBS with Cicely Tyson playing Ms. Collins and Morgan Freeman as her husband. [...] As her stature as an educator grew, she began to train other teachers from around the country and published several books, including “ ‘Ordinary’ Children, Extraordinary Teachers” and “Marva Collins’ Way,” written with Civia Tamarkin. Speaking engagements followed.In 1980, President-elect Ronald Reagan was said to be leaning toward choosing Ms. Collins for secretary of education, but she said she would reject the job if it were offered. By that time she had already turned down offers to run the public school systems in Chicago and Los Angeles. [...]
She insisted that she never craved awards or publicity. All she wanted, she told The Island Packet, the local newspaper, in 2007, was “to be able to say I got an A-plus on the assignment God gave me.”
You can read some comments from past students at jetmag.com.Jun 30, 2015 | Philosophy, Politics, Sci-Tech
Capitalism Magazine contributor Ron Pisaturo has released a new book called "Masculine Power, Feminine Beauty: The Volitional, Objective Basis for Heterosexuality in Romantic Love and Marriage."According to the book description:
This book presents a theory of heterosexual romantic love. The book argues that heterosexuality enables romantic love in a way that integrates with all aspects of a man and woman, including masculine power and feminine beauty. Author Ronald Pisaturo identifies differences between men and women while recognizing the utmost intellectual ability, rationality, and resultant moral virtue possible in equal measure to each sex. He argues that sexual orientation is the result of volition in the same way that other values pertaining to romantic love are volitional: although we do not directly choose our sexual orientation, as we do not directly choose what personality traits will attract us, we do make more basic choices that cause our sexual orientation.Pisaturo debunks the mainstream theories that “affirm” non-heterosexual orientations, and argues that objective cognition—in particular, the holding of concepts that clearly identify and emphasize sex-specific romantic values—requires that the concept of marriage refer only to man-woman relationships. Moreover, the proper role of government in marriage is as protector of individual rights—of the husband, wife, and their children—not as social engineer for the ‘public good’.This book offers an objective alternative to the mysticism of religion and the subjectivism of much of modern philosophy, science, and culture.An overarching theme of the book is that every individual should understand the personal, chosen values that are consistent with his own sexual orientation. The author offers, in good will, this challenge to all readers: “I can explain my sexual orientation. Can you explain yours?”
The book makes many arguments -- some we are not sure we agree with -- but it looks interesting enough that it deserves a read.
Jun 29, 2015 | Politics
From A great decision on same-sex marriage – but based on dubious reasoning - The Washington Post:
Today’s Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage is a great result, but based on dubious reasoning. It is undoubtedly a momentous occasion for gays and lesbians around the nation. In a comparatively short time, they have moved from being a widely despised minority whose intimate relationships were criminalized in many states, to full marriage equality around the country.For gays and lesbians seeking the right to marry and for many of us who have supported their cause, the result in today’s case matters more than the reasoning. But the Court’s legal reasoning also deserves attention, both because it is important in its own right, and because it establishes a precedent for future cases. Unfortunately, much of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion is based on dubious and sometimes incoherent logic.Gay rights advocates have advanced several different rationales for a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. In my view, the strongest is that laws banning same-sex marriage discriminate on the basis of sex, much like laws banning interracial marriage discriminate on the basis of race – a position defended in an amicus brief I coauthored with Prof. Andrew Koppelman. But some of the other rationales for a right to same-sex marriage are also plausible, particularly the theory that laws banning it engage in unconstitutional discrimination against gays and lesbians.Unfortunately, Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion doesn’t clearly endorse any of the various arguments previously advanced for a right to same-sex marriage, even as it to some degree nods at all of them. The result is a far from satisfying majority opinion.
Jun 22, 2015 | Politics
From Taylor Swift - To Apple, Love Taylor:
To Apple, Love Taylor
I write this to explain why I’ll be holding back my album, 1989, from the new streaming service, Apple Music. I feel this deserves an explanation because Apple has been and will continue to be one of my best partners in selling music and creating ways for me to connect with my fans. I respect the company and the truly ingenious minds that have created a legacy based on innovation and pushing the right boundaries.I’m sure you are aware that Apple Music will be offering a free 3 month trial to anyone who signs up for the service. I’m not sure you know that Apple Music will not be paying writers, producers, or artists for those three months. I find it to be shocking, disappointing, and completely unlike this historically progressive and generous company.This is not about me. Thankfully I am on my fifth album and can support myself, my band, crew, and entire management team by playing live shows. This is about the new artist or band that has just released their first single and will not be paid for its success. This is about the young songwriter who just got his or her first cut and thought that the royalties from that would get them out of debt. This is about the producer who works tirelessly to innovate and create, just like the innovators and creators at Apple are pioneering in their field…but will not get paid for a quarter of a year’s worth of plays on his or her songs.These are not the complaints of a spoiled, petulant child. These are the echoed sentiments of every artist, writer and producer in my social circles who are afraid to speak up publicly because we admire and respect Apple so much. We simply do not respect this particular call.I realize that Apple is working towards a goal of paid streaming. I think that is beautiful progress. We know how astronomically successful Apple has been and we know that this incredible company has the money to pay artists, writers and producers for the 3 month trial period… even if it is free for the fans trying it out.Three months is a long time to go unpaid, and it is unfair to ask anyone to work for nothing. I say this with love, reverence, and admiration for everything else Apple has done. I hope that soon I can join them in the progression towards a streaming model that seems fair to those who create this music. I think this could be the platform that gets it right.But I say to Apple with all due respect, it’s not too late to change this policy and change the minds of those in the music industry who will be deeply and gravely affected by this. We don’t ask you for free iPhones. Please don’t ask us to provide you with our music for no compensation.Taylor
May 27, 2015 | Politics, Sci-Tech
From Voices for Reason - Peter Schwartz on the Morality of Egoism | The Ayn Rand Institute:
When you hear the word selfishness what comes to mind? Typically, selfishness is associated with amoral, predatory behavior. It’s a word used to describe people like Bernard Madoff or Attila the Hun. On the other hand, selflessness is generally celebrated and aligned with friendship and love. In this talk, Peter Schwartz challenges these misconceptions.Discussing ideas in his new book, In Defense of Selfishness: Why the Code of Self-Sacrifice Is Unjust and Destructive(publication date June 2, 2015), Schwartz offers a radically different view of selfishness and altruism. The rationally selfish individual — he argues — is committed to moral principles and lives an honest, productive, self-respecting life. Schwartz refutes the ethics of self-sacrifice in all its forms and shows that friendship and love are acts, not of self-sacrifice, but of self-interest.This talk explains why you have a moral right to exist for your own sake, rather than a moral duty to serve the needs of others.Copies of the book will be available for sale at the talk. Mr. Schwartz will sign books after the talk.When will Peter be speaking in a city near you?
- Chicago — June 9. Refreshments begin at 6:30 PM. Talk begins at 7:00 PM at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers, 301 East North Water Street, Chicago, IL 60611.
- New York City — June 10. Refreshments begin at 7:00 PM. Talk begins at 7:30 PM. CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016.
- San Francisco — June 16. Refreshments begin at 7:00 PM. Talk begins at 7:30 PM at The Bently Reserve, 400 Sansome St, San Francisco, CA 94111.
- Irvine — June 17. Doors open at 7:00 PM. Talk begins at 7:30 PM at the Hilton Orange County/Costa Mesa, 3050 Bristol St, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.
Take the discussion online with #ARIonTour.FREE for students. $10 for all others.Register online. Walk-ins welcome.
