Quotulatiousness

April 27, 2011

High computer use linked to “smoking, drunkenness, non-use of seatbelts, cannabis and illicit drug use, and unprotected sex”

Filed under: Cancon, Health, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:20

Talk about upsetting the stereotype of basement dwelling, dateless nerds:

The revelations come in research conducted lately in Canada among 10 to 16-year-olds by epidemiology PhD candidate Valerie Carson.

“This research is based on social cognitive theory, which suggests that seeing people engaged in a behaviour is a way of learning that behaviour,” explains Carson. “Since adolescents are exposed to considerable screen time — over 4.5 hours on average each day — they’re constantly seeing images of behaviours they can then potentially adopt.”

Apparently the study found that high computer use was associated with approximately 50 per cent increased engagement with “smoking, drunkenness, non-use of seatbelts, cannabis and illicit drug use, and unprotected sex”. High television use was also associated with a modestly increased engagement in these activities.

According to Ms Carson this is because TV is much more effectively controlled and censored in order to prevent impressionable youths seeing people puffing tabs or jazz cigarettes while indulging in unprotected sex etc. The driving without seatbelts thing seems a bit odd until one reflects that old episodes of the The Professionals, the Rockford Files etc are no doubt torrent favourites.

April 20, 2011

More on the use of “kettling” by the police

Filed under: Britain, Law, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:35

Patrick Hayes considers the “kettling” technique beloved of modern metropolitan police forces in the face of protest:

This is not in any way to defend kettling, which restricts basic freedoms of movement and protest. Being kettled is a deeply frustrating experience. You are penned into a small area with thousands of other protesters for hours on end, with no access to toilets or provisions and little to no knowledge of when the police will let you go. This repressive police technique should be abolished.

However, the emergence of kettling does not reflect a new era of police ‘barbarism’ or ‘gross police brutality’, as some have claimed. Rather, the logic behind kettling seems to be an attempt by the authorities to adapt to a new kind of aimless protesting.

[. . .]

The rise of kettling speaks to changes within the authorities too. This tactic reveals a new desire amongst the police to avoid engaging with protesters directly, to avoid beating and controlling them as they might have tried to do in the past. Instead, the police have developed mostly risk-averse, hands-off tactics for demos, of which kettling is a prime example.

Kettling is really a damage-limitation exercise. The hope is that in pinning protesters into one small area they will eventually become sedate or fall asleep after they have let off enough steam. In a bizarre turn of events, the police now even hand out glossy brochures explaining to protesters what kettling is all about and why the police do it. Kettling is analogous to parents sending children to the ‘naughty step’ to get them to calm down.

Indeed, in the absence of any clear collective ideas, protesters have in many ways become reliant on kettling as a focal point for their radicalism. Protests have turned into games of cat-and-mouse, as youths try to avoid being penned in by the police, using Twitter to organise flash mobs and effectively playing peek-a-boo with the police. The protesters achieve a semblance of collectivity through the experience of being trapped together in a kettle.

April 13, 2011

“Using the principle of ‘demonstrated preference,’ this music video ranks as the most popular in human history”

Filed under: Economics, Education, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:22

Jon sent me this article by Jeffrey Tucker which re-interprets Rebecca Black’s “Friday” as a libertarian allegory:

Far more significant is the underlying celebration of liberation that the day Friday represents. The kids featured in the video are of junior-high age, a time when adulthood is beginning to dawn and, with it, the realization of the captive state that the public school represents.

From the time that children are first institutionalized in these tax-funded cement structures, they are told the rules. Show up, obey the rules, accept the grades you are given, and never even think of escaping until you hear the bell. If you do escape, even peacefully of your own choice, you will be declared “truant,” which is the intentional and unauthorized absence from compulsory school.

This prison-like environment runs from Monday through Friday, from 8 a.m. to late afternoon, for at least ten years of every child’s life. It’s been called the “twelve-year sentence” for good reason. At some point, every kid in public school gains consciousness of the strange reality. You can acquiesce as the civic order demands, or you can protest and be declared a bum and a loser by society.

“Friday” beautifully illustrates the sheer banality of a life spent in this prison-like system, and the prospect of liberation that the weekend means. Partying, in this case, is just another word for freedom from state authority.

The largest segment of the video then deals with what this window of liberty, the weekend, means in the life of someone otherwise ensnared in a thicket of statism. Keep in mind here that the celebration of Friday in this context means more than it would for a worker in a factory, for example: for the worker is free to come and go, to apply for a job or quit, to negotiate terms of a contract, or whatever. All of this is denied to the kid in public school.

February 17, 2011

I believe this is my first-ever reference to “Justin Bieber”

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:57

And it’s prompted by Jimmie Bise, Jr, who also observes (most accurately) that “We bloggers are a mercenary lot who’ll find reason to write about almost anything if it’ll bring us that sweet, sweet blog traffic.”

The bad news is that Rolling Stone actually thinks anyone, anywhere, truly cares what Justin Bieber thinks about political parties, socialized medicine, or anything else beyond singing the word “baby” several times in a row.

Look, I get that we like to get inside the heads of entertainers we admire, but there really does have to be a limit. Rolling Stone, once upon a time, was a magazine that published real journalism from writers like Hunter S. Thompson, P.J. O’Rourke, and Lester Bangs. It was probably the go-to publication for details of the Patty Hearst abduction and its interview with Charles Manson in 1970 is one of the most chilling looks into a mind stuffed full of madness I’ve ever read. Now, thanks to the decline started by ardent progressive Jann Wenner, we just get a fluff interview with a 16 year-old kid on issues in which he has almost no knowledge or experience and wretched hacks like Matt Taibbi.

If nothing else, the Justin Bieber interview shows us what we lost. I’m actually sorry for it.

While a lot of what Hunter S. Thompson produced was vivid and entertaining, it probably skirted well clear of formal “journalism” even in the golden glow of nostalgia. But other than that little quibble, and that Jann Wenner was a co-founder of Rolling Stone . . . which means the decline he’s lamenting was actually baked in to the original recipie . . .

January 17, 2011

Another sexting case, with a slightly misleading headline

Filed under: Law, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:50

A brief report at the National Post implies something a bit different than the article actually says: Woman jailed after nude photo posted on Facebook.

Eighteen-year-old Angelica Nicholson of Portage, Ind. sent a nude photo of herself to a “male acquaintance” — apparently to the displeasure of the acquaintance’s girlfriend.

The girlfriend in turn posted the photo on Facebook and after an exchange of heated text messaging, Ms. Nicholson contacted Facebook to remove the photo.

Dissatisfied with Facebook’s response time, Ms. Nicholson called 911 and claimed she was 17 to get the photo removed faster.

Police found out the woman was 18 from government records, and Ms. Nicholson was arrested for false reporting.

So, yes, she was arrested, but not for posting a nude photo on Facebook. Abusing 911 services, yes, but not for posting to Facebook.

December 3, 2010

Tattoos and Parenting, by Dara O Briain

Filed under: Humour — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 16:57

I’ve said for years I should have invested my retirement savings in tattoo removal businesses . . .

H/T to William Penman for the link.

November 15, 2010

New on A&E: Psychics with Serious Mental Illnesses Hunting Hitler’s Ghost While Driving A Big Truck with Their Freakish Family

Filed under: Media, Randomness, Science — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:32

Another link from Chris Myrick: Bad move, A&E.

The A&E Channel has a new show coming up: Psychic Kids: Children of the Paranormal. Sounds awful already, doesn’t it? But it’s worse than you think: they’re looking for disturbed kids who think they’ve got magic powers, and then they’re flying in “professional psychics” to coach them in dealing with their awesome powers, i.e., indulge their delusions, get off on feeling superior to unhappy kids, and collect a paycheck for psychic child abuse.

They’re putting kids in the hands of a creepy skeevo like Chip Coffey, all for your entertainment.

This is quite possibly the most loathsome thing I’ve ever seen on TV, and my cable gives me access to the Trinity Broadcast Network, so that’s saying a lot.

Skepchicks are mobilizing the skeptic hordes. Call or write to A&E and let them know that their schlock has reached a new and despicable low.

October 21, 2010

An excellent example of how not to teach

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Education, History — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:49

Cory Doctorow finds the worst example of teacher overreach (for this week, anyway):

Fundamentally, these teachers have prohibited doing any kind of outside work, having any productive discussion with your friends and family that might connect the history you’re learning with the world you’re living in. They have reduced education to absorbing and regurgitating a specific set of facts, divorcing it from any kind of critical thinking, synthesis, or intellectual rigor.

Parents have complained to the principal, who “will decide soon whether these rules are okay.”

I had a high school history teacher who marked me down for including additional information that wasn’t in the textbook (I read history for interest well before high school). I wonder if this is one of her relatives . . .

If I was a parent of one of these students, I’d be giving strong consideration to moving my kid to another school if the principal upholds this policy.

October 15, 2010

Elie Mystal on why bullying should not be a crime

Filed under: Law, Randomness — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 13:02

As someone who was bullied in my time, I found Elie Mystal’s story resonated for me. I had no real problem with bullies until I was about 10 or 11, when I didn’t grow as fast as the other kids. I was also non-athletic, addicted to books, and had a funny accent — I was probably a gift to the budding thugs in higher grades at school.

My experience was nowhere near as bad as Elie’s, however:

It needs to stop. No, not the bullying — which is unavoidable when more than one male competes for whatever status/prestige/sex is on offer — but the tragic overreactions to the bullying, and the accompanying rush to the courthouse steps.

I say this not as an alpha-male with a caviler attitude towards the feelings of others. I say this as a former omega-male who got the crap beat out of me like I stole something from the age of 7 through the point I realized that no girl would ever mate with a guy who couldn’t basically stand up for himself….

I wasn’t always this big or this strong. As a kid, I was a polite, articulate little boy who did well in school. Or “Oreo fa**ot,” as my friends liked to call me. I’ve shared some of my childhood scrapes before — and I still hate Halloween.

My best story (it’s funny now, I think) involves me trying to walk a girl home from school when I was 12. She was walking, I was walking and rolling my bike, and then the bullies spotted us. As they approached, she said, “It’s okay, you can run.” And I did — I hopped on my bike and booked out of there. They were on foot, so I easily put some distance between us. I looked back and flipped the head bully (we’ll call him “Lewis” because his name is Lewis and he’s in jail now so he can’t read this) the finger. But that took my eyes off the road — and the tree branch in front of me. Bad times. I tumbled, they caught up, and then five kids proceeded to twist my flimsy bike around me. They got both wheels around me, and I had to waddle the rest of the way home. I was a latchkey kid, and I couldn’t reach my keys since my arms were effectively pinned to my body and I couldn’t reach my pockets. I had to sit on my stoop for hours (which felt like days), until my parents came home to let me inside (and take me to the bike shop to free me).

H/T to Walter Olson for the link.

October 13, 2010

“I just taught them a new game . . .”

Filed under: Humour, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:28

H/T to Martina for the link.

September 30, 2010

It’s Banned Books week

Filed under: Books, Liberty, Media, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:53

Patricia Wrede had some disturbing discoveries when she tried to look up book banning incidents for a panel discussion:

[. . .] I told them about the teacher who almost got fired when a parent objected to her reading Calling on Dragons in her classroom, because “it taught witchcraft!” I mentioned the fellow YA author who was disinvited from a school visit (these are day-long programs where an author talks to several classes worth of kids and usually has lunch with the teachers, and for some YA authors, they contribute a goodly chunk to their income) because a parent noticed a title on her extensive bibliography that “sounded occult” (it was a mystery, with not a whiff of the supernatural anywhere in the text). I pointed out the well-publicized attempts to suppress the Harry Potter books (the series is #1 on the ALA’s top ten most challenged books of the decade for 2000-2009), and a few less-well-publicized attempts to remove from school shelves things like The Wizard of Oz (because Dorothy is too independent and solves her own problems), The Lord of the Rings (because it is “Satanic”), and Grimm’s Fairy Tales (because the stories are “too violent”).

None of this was, I thought, stop-the-presses news — certainly not to anyone who writes fantasy. But the other writers at the table were shocked all over again. One of them happened to be on the program committee for the regional conference, and she went home and put the panel together.

When she asked me to be on the panel, I immediately said yes, and then I went off to the internet to do some research. I wanted some examples that would hit closer to home. I found quite a lot, but as I looked through the web sites, I noticed something interesting. I live in Minnesota. All of the descriptions of book-banning incidents in Minnesota were from the websites of organizations based in distant states: Florida, Texas, Washington D.C., Georgia.

So I poked a little more. There were quite a few local web sites publicizing Banned Books Week, and all of them did indeed have descriptions of surprising book-banning incidents. Incidents that took place in other states, like Texas, Georgia, and California.

September 29, 2010

Cory Doctorow on what George Orwell got wrong

Filed under: Books, Liberty, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:03

September 22, 2010

NFL still not setting the right example for concussed players

Filed under: Football, Health — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:20

Gregg Easterbrook shows that the NFL’s thoughts about the proper way to address concussions still haven’t changed:

The core problem is that football coaches at the high school, college and professional levels are rewarded for winning games but not penalized for allowing their players to be harmed. A coach who sits a player down out of concern for the player’s health may pay a price, if a game is lost. A coach who sends a concussed player onto the field may never be penalized in any way if that player suffers another concussion. Human beings respond to incentives, and right now the coaches’ incentive is to be irresponsible with players’ health.

Yes, the culture of football macho contributes to the problem: Many players ask to return to action when battling injury, including neurological harm. But coaches are the ones who make the decisions. They’re the adults in charge. And their incentive structure is all wrong.

Coaches receive money and accolades if they mistreat players and win; they are not disciplined, or seemingly even criticized, if players are harmed. Same for the front office in the NFL, the athletic department in college and the athletic director in high school. If the team loses, the fans and boosters are furious. If players suffer harm, there are no consequences whatsoever for the people making the decisions. And at the high school level, legally they are caring for children!

September 8, 2010

Another side effect of Afghan cultural preferences

Filed under: Asia, Middle East — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:25

Rural Afghans (especially Pushtuns) have very unusual views on the role of women (mentioned here last week). Human nature being what it is, there are substitutes:

It’s after midnight. I’m at a wedding party in a remote village in northern Afghanistan.

There is no sign of the bride or groom, or any women, only men. Some of them are armed, some of them are taking drugs.

Almost everyone’s attention is focused on a 15-year-old boy. He’s dancing for the crowd in a long and shiny woman’s dress, his face covered by a red scarf.

He is wearing fake breasts and bells around his ankles. Someone offers him some US dollars and he grabs them with his teeth.

This is an ancient tradition. People call it bachabaze which literally means “playing with boys”.

The most disturbing thing is what happens after the parties. Often the boys are taken to hotels and sexually abused.

The men behind the practice are often wealthy and powerful. Some of them keep several bachas (boys) and use them as status symbols — a display of their riches. The boys, who can be as young as 12, are usually orphans or from very poor families.

July 29, 2010

BC government finds an issue to distract the media

Filed under: Cancon, Health, Law — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:44

Adrian MacNair linked to this Vancouver Sun article, saying “”B.C. halts penis-arousal test for youth sex offenders” Say whaaaaaaatttt?”

A moratorium has been placed on tests done on B.C. youth sex offenders measuring their penis arousal in response to sexual stimuli after the province’s top child advocate launched an immediate investigation Wednesday.

The device in question is called a “penile plethysmograph” — or PPG. In a lab setting, it is attached to male genitals so technicians can measure changes in “penile tumescence” — essentially erections that reflect the state of arousal in subjects shown photographs of adults, children and even babies in varying states of undress while at the same time being read a story that describes coercive or forced sexual activity.

So, until it came to light, the government was showing provocative images and reading pornographic stories to teenage boys to find out if they got erections during the process? Would anyone be surprised to find that teenage boys found this whole exercise sexually arousing? Teenage boys are hard-wired to find all sorts of things sexually arousing!

The point of the test is to reportedly predict whether offenders have gained control of their deviant arousal patterns through treatment or if they have not learned how to suppress deviance and will be a strong risk for re-offending.

Again, we’re talking about teenage boys . . . I’d be more suspicious if they found that one of them was managing not to react to such stimulus!

Okay, yes, I’m unfairly stereotyping, at least to some degree. But this sort of “test” or “experiment” would be flagrantly illegal if it were being done by anyone other than a government-funded health organization, wouldn’t it?

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