Social Issues
j7uy5 | April 3, 2009From time to time, we hear of faux psychotherapy interventions that are
intended to convert persons from homosexuality to
heterosexuality. Mostly, the publicity has centered on
pseudomoralistic interventions that clearly have a religious agenda as
opposed to a health-enhancing agenda. As such these interventions
cannot be classified as therapy.
However, a recent survey has shown that there still is a small minority
of therapists who will, in some circumstances, attempt to have their
clients convert from homosexuality to heterosexuality. The
results were published in the open-access journal…
jstemwedel | March 2, 2009Times are tough all around these days. However, at schools like mine, a large public university with a population that includes a significant number of students who are older than traditional college age, are the first in their families to go to college, and/or were in economically precarious situations before the current economic crisis, the situation feels especially dire.
When I started teaching at San José State University in August of 2002, the U.S. had not yet gone to war in Iraq. By my third semester of teaching here, I was starting to lose students mid-semester because their…
jstemwedel | February 28, 2009You knew the California budget shortfall was going to have an impact on higher education in the state. But maybe you didn't know that the pain will not be distributed evenly. Last weekend, John Engell, a colleague of mine from San Jose State University (and currently chair of the Department of English & Comparative Literature), examined the pain that may be visited on our university in an opinion piece he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News:
Almost no one knows that this fall, San Jose State University will absorb one-third of all student enrollment cuts in the 23-campus California…
jstemwedel | February 25, 2009In last night's address to the joint session of Congress, President Obama said:
The third challenge we must address is the urgent need to expand the promise of education in America.
In a global economy where the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge, a good education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity - it is a pre-requisite.
Right now, three-quarters of the fastest-growing occupations require more than a high school diploma. And yet, just over half of our citizens have that level of education. We have one of the highest high school dropout rates of any…
jstemwedel | February 23, 2009Over at The White Coat Underground, PalMD looks at the ways in which delivering good health care to deaf patients depends on providing good interpreters -- and notices the difficulty of making this happen:
How do we approach this as a society?
Item 1: Deaf people have special needs with regards to interactions with the health care system.
Item 2: The government mandates that proper interpreters be provided for doctor visits.
Item 3: Neither patients nor doctors can afford to provide this service.
Now don't go telling me that "all you rich doctors can afford to get the interpreter"---we most…
jstemwedel | February 9, 2009
Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century
by P.W. Singer
New York: Penguin
2009
For some reason, collectively humans seem to have a hard time seeing around corners to anticipate the shape our future will take. Of those of us who remember email as a newish thing, I suspect most of us had no idea how much of our waking lives would come to be consumed by it. And surely I am not the only one who attended a lab meeting in which a visiting scholar mentioned a speculative project to build something called the World Wide Web and wondered aloud whether anything would…
jstemwedel | February 4, 2009There's a lively discussion raging at the pad of Dr. Isis (here and here) about whether there isn't something inherently obnoxious and snooty about identifying oneself as having earned an advanced degree of any sort. Commenter Becca makes the case thusly:
"Why are people threatened by the idea that a profession ought to have professional standards, anyway?"
1) It gives the gatekeepers even more power than they already have. Given a world where professional credentials are denied to certain groups, it can get a bit ugly. I think the worst part is that people who are traditionally trodden…
jstemwedel | February 2, 2009It would seem that the Los Angeles Times is uncomfortable around people who don't hide their advanced degrees:
[Jill] Biden [who earned a doctorate in education from the University of Delaware and is currently teaching two courses at Northern Virginia Community College] is thought to be the first second lady [i.e., spouse of the Vice President] to hold a paying job while her husband is in office.
"I think she is unique," said Joel Goldstein, a professor at St. Louis University School of Law and an expert on the vice presidency. Other second ladies -- Cheney, Quayle, Tipper Gore and Joan…
jstemwedel | January 19, 2009There were some really good discussions of ally work in the gender in science session led by Zuska, Alice, and Abel and in the race in science session led by Danielle Lee and AcmeGirl.
One of the issues that has become clearer to me is that there is an inescapable asymmetry in the relationship between allies and those (like scientists of color or women scientists) they are trying to support. (I think the discussion at Samia's blog helped me feel like I got it well enough to put into words.) An ally is someone who wouldn't have to care about the difficulties faced by members of the group s/…
jstemwedel | December 27, 2008Dr. Isis expresses reservations about signing on for Twisty Faster's revolution.
ScienceWoman offers a sketch of what her revolution might look like.
Me? I'm pretty exhausted from today's outing with my offspring, what with it being Winter Break, otherwise known as 24/7 parenting. But I have a few brief ideas of what I'd like to see on the post-revolutionary landscape.
It would be a joyous thing for us to create a world -- professional, civic, social, familial -- where each individual human being is regarded as fully human, rather than as part of some special category not deserving of our…
j7uy5 | December 11, 2008
href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1208/16514.html">Senate
rejects auto bailout
By DAVID ROGERS | 12/11/08 11:15 PM EST
A White House-backed bailout for ailing automakers collapsed in the
Senate Thursday night, pushing General Motors Corp. closer to almost
certain bankruptcy absent a major intervention by the Treasury
Department.
The 52-35 roll call fell well short of the 60 needed to cut off debate,
and appeared to doom any chance of legislative action until a new
Congress convenes in January.
“We’re not going to get to the finish
line,” said Majority Leader Harry Reid “I dread…
jstemwedel | December 11, 2008Back at the end of November, Martin wrote a post on the ethics of overpopulation, in which he offered these assertions:
It is unethical for anyone to produce more than two children. (Adoption of orphans, on the other hand, is highly commendable.)
It is unethical to limit the availability of contraceptives, abortion, surgical sterilisation and adoption.
It is unethical to use public money to support infertility treatments. Let those unfortunate enough to need such treatment pay their own way or adopt. And let's put the money into subsidising contraceptives, abortion, surgical sterilisation and…
jstemwedel | November 19, 2008There are some newspaper stories that must be pretty easy to write at this point because it seems like they're essentially the same year in and year out. California is having another budget crisis, and the Californians who are going to take it in the teeth are students -- especially students in the California State University (CSU) system, to which the university that employs me belongs.
Once again, budget shortfalls at the state level mean enrollments will be capped at the 23 campuses in the CSU system. Practically, this means 10,000 or so qualified applicants will be turned away. In…
jstemwedel | November 18, 2008So, at the end of the PSA I was so sick that I took to my overpriced hotel bed, forgoing interesting papers and the prospect of catching up with geographically dispersed friends in my field who I can only count on seeing every two years at the PSA. I managed to get myself back home and then needed another eight days to return to a "functional" baseline.
Checking in with the internets again, I feel like maybe I was in a coma for six months.
In particular, I was totally sidelined when Isis the Scientist issued her manifesto and when Zuska weighed in on the various reactions to Isis and her…
jstemwedel | October 9, 20082008 is the tenth year of the L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science awards to remarkable female scientists from around the world. Indeed, our sister-site, ScienceBlogs.de, covered this year's award ceremony and is celebrating women in science more generally with a For Women in Science blog. (It, like the rest of ScienceBlogs.de, is in German. Just so you know.)
In addition to the global contest, three further scholarships are given to women scientists in Germany. But, the only women eligible for these awards are women with kids. (The rationale for this is that childcare options in…
jstemwedel | September 29, 2008You know how graduate students are always complaining that their stipends are small compared to the cost of living? It seems that some graduate students find ways to supplement that income ... ways that aren't always legal. For example, from this article in the September 8, 2008 issue of Chemical & Engineering News [1]:
Jason D. West, a third-year chemistry graduate student at the University of California, Merced, was arraigned last month on charges of conspiring to manufacture methamphetamine, manufacturing methamphetamine, and possessing stolen property. West allegedly stole…
j7uy5 | September 23, 2008Ever since the inception of the Global and Perpetual War on Terror,
there has been concern about the role of professionals with training in
psychology and psychiatry in the design, conduct, and interpretation of
torture programs.
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) banned such participation in
May 2006. The American Medical Association (AMA) followed a
few weeks later.
These associations do not have any regulatory authority.
Nonetheless, their proclamations and highly influential.
Oddly, the American Psychological Association [the other APA,
call it AP'A, (p-prime)] did not follow…
j7uy5 | September 8, 2008Toward the end of last week, the
href="http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gHs5OM3gFG_DytQQZFbWfgPT08MAD9303VJ01">US
stock market declined precipitously. Within the
space of a few days, we learned that
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/business/economy/06econ.html?partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all">unemployment
is way up, more than
href="http://www.housingwire.com/2008/09/05/prime-arms-set-tone-for-troubled-mortgages-in-q2-mba/">nine
percent of U.S. mortgages were delinquent or in foreclosure,
the
href="http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/…
j7uy5 | August 21, 2008In
the late '60's - early '70's, is was commonplace for bands to write
songs that were utterly meaningless, then pass them off as great works
of art. The products of pure genius.
I
head one such song on the way home from work:
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Horse_with_No_Name">A
Horse With No Name, by America, released in 1972.
Here's
a review on a site that has song lyrics:
bad
lyrics | Reviewer: george | 4/15/2008
This
song has a pretty good melody. It sounds good, IF YOU IGNORE THE
LYRICS. For example,
"in the desert, you can't remember your
name
'cause there ain't no one for…
j7uy5 | July 31, 2008This chart shows that the economy is almost back to normal.
Just a little farther to go, then the mission will have been
accomplished.
What is odd about this, is that it excludes income
from capital gains. I suspect that the income disparity would
be even greater, if capital gains were included.
The graph is from an article at Economist.com,
href="http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displayStory.cfm?source=most_read&story_id=11792366">Workingman's
Blues.
The article itself is annoying.
Phil Gramm, a former senator from Texas and adviser
to Mr McCain's campaign,…