Penn Summer Course: Science and Fiction

A Summer Session course is coming up at Penn which may interest many people, titled Science and Fiction. A description and the website for registration follow.

Course Description: 

This class will consider the science fiction novel and story as developing genres. We will read work on the origins of the form, where science blurs with the fantastic. We will consider the alien as trope, both benevolent and ferocious, as well as science as practiced by humans itself escaping our control. We will read writers such as H. G. Wells, Stanislaw Lem, Arthur C. Clark, Kim Stanley Robinson and others from a number of cultures beyond the U.S.  We will also read examples of science fiction used as a device to imagine other ways of human being, embodiment, sexuality, and gender such as in the work of Octavia Butler, Samuel Delaney, and Ursula Le Guin. In addition, we will study the way the genre allows us to imagine and work through fears and new ideas about ourselves. Students will gain a sense of the development of the literary genre and narrative as well as exposure to the mutant discourse that strains of scientific forecasting and less linear narrative create. Students will complete assignments including two short papers and will contribute to classroom discussion. Please feel free to email the instructor with any questions you may have about the course: jzuzga@sas.upenn.edu.

http://www.sas.upenn.edu/summer/courses/term/2014B/subject/ENGL/course/ENGL075920

You're welcome!

I've completed my first workday as Majority Inspector on my precinct's election board.

For the most part, things went well. There were fewer problems than I seem to remember from my time as Machine Inspector in 2012. Of course this may be because it was an off-year election this time. And it may also be that I was less stressed simply on account of knowing from the previous experience that what snafus might arise could be managed.

Some time in the PM, a fellow poll worker got news that turnout was exceptionally light. This came as a momentary surprise, since he'd been commenting previously on a surprisingly good turnout in our division. But after a moment's reflection I understood.

You see, yesterday I distributed to nearly every house in my division (I couldn't access apartments except those in my own building) a letter I'd composed reminding people about today's election. I also included information about the location of the polling place and how to find the entrance, plus the fact that there were a Special Election and ballot questions on which all registered voters could vote regardless of party affiliation, and the Green Party's positions on two of the questions.

In the course of the day, a couple voters thanked me for this -- the first of them volunteering, even before knowing who I was, that "if it hadn't been for that letter from the Greens" he wouldn't have known where to vote.

As there's no other apparent reason why my division had an unusually high turnout at the same time turnout elsewhere was exceptionally low, it's reasonable to infer that the letter I delivered to my neighbors is what made the difference.

Why Reporting On Scientific Research May Warp Findings : NPR

Richard Feynman defined science as a set of procedures we've developed to avoid fooling ourselves. It's welcome, if long overdue, that scientists are starting to apply this kind of critical spirit to the functioning of their own institutions.

http://www.npr.org/2014/05/19/313844261/why-reporting-on-scientific-research-may-warp-findings

Quote of the Week

"A society that censors is a society that lies to itself
about its nature." -- McKenzie Wark, The Australian, 8 January 1997

Another Fairly Exciting Weekend

Saturday was busy. The Greens had our second door-to-door canvassing day, combined with petitioning, when someone answered the bell, to put Paul Glover on the ballot for Governor. (Paul and I had also gathered signatures at the $15-minimum-wage rally Friday.) We noted people's responses on a 1-5 scale for future reference.

That afternoon I attended a refresher election board training class. In addition to fulfilling a campaign promise (I'd said on my flyer that I'd do this if elected), showing the receipt will add a bonus to my pay after working on election day.

On the way to work this morning, I again saw a young woman visiting from Germany to do volunteer work this year. This time, after updating each other on recent activities I invited her to share her contact info. Just a few years ago I would not have had the nerve to do this; so, although in this case I didn't get it, the ask still gave me a feeling of accomplishment. And of course it did signal my interest,  which is important.

Today's March for 15 Now to raise the minimum wage provided a good opportunity for petitioning, and I got a number of signatures toward the 16000@+ (!) needef to put Paul Glover on the ballot as the Green Party's candidate for governorv of Pennsylvania.  http://www.Glover4Governor.com

Cass Sunstein Speaking at the Constitution Center

I found his book Nudge (co-authored with Richard Thaler) quite thought-provoking; likewise his paper "Conspiracy Theories."

http://constitutioncenter.org/calendar/conspiracy-theories-and-other-dangerous-ideas-with-cass-r-sunstein

My Recordings Are Now Online

I've finally created my musician account and uploaded two recordings: my reading of Chuck Stone's children's story Squizzy the Black Squirrel: A Fabulous Fable of Friendship, and my filk song "Trinity," based on Lois McMaster Bujold's novel The Curse of Chalion. myspace.com/strippy6/music/songs

I swear!

After election to the position of Majority Inspector for my voting precinct (the first position to which any Green has been elected in Philadelphia), I wondered whether I might get any grief for my intention not to swear on the Bible, or any other religious book, when taking office. When I put this question to City Commissioner Stephanie Singer, some of whose classes for candidates for neighborhood office I'd attended, she said her understanding is that the law requires one to be sworn -- not merely affirmed, an option mentioned in the Constitution -- but doesn't specify on what.

I decided that I wish to be sworn in on Rights of Man, Thomas Paine's defense of the early events of the French Revolution, which lays out many revolutionary-democratic ideas still relevant today. I've just ordered a copy from the online store of Powell's books, the Oregon-based union bookseller, through their union's portal.

Been too long since you saw the Addams Family?

Here they are, posing in front of their namesake building (Penn's Charles Addams Fine Arts Hall) at 36th and Walnut Streets.

I can't stop thinking it's funny that there's a car called the MKZ...

That was the name of a disease in a story by Zenna Henderson.

                        
 http://www.powells.com/partner/35751/biblio/9780380247370

Is Sasquatch a Relic of Bicamerality?

Yesterday I was recalling the fact that, purportedly, Native Americans had often spoken of Sasquatch (a.k.a. Bigfoot) in a very matter-of-fact way, much like any species of animal or tribe of people. This is cited as evidence that Sasquatch is real, notwithstanding the elusiveness of physical evidence. The way the argument goes is that an imaginary creature of legend would be spoken of differently, in tones of awe and mystery.

I was recalling this in the wake of being reminded about a book I heard of way back in college days but haven't gotten around to reading yet (though I intend to correct that soon now): Julian Jaynes' The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. The essential idea is that in ancient times -- before about 1200-1000 B.C.E. in the Near East, and up to more recently in the New World -- people's subjective volitional selves were not integrated with their rational, analytic side, being in different hemispheres of the brain (hence the term "bicameral"). Consequently they lacked self-awareness, and most of the time acted out of pure relexive habit. When faced with a situation of crisis or high stress falling outside what their habits prepared them for, the rational mind would perform an analysis and then verbally instruct the volitional self on what to do. But, since these parts of the mind weren't integrated, this would be experienced not as personal decision-making, but as an auditory hallucination (perhaps sometimes embellished with other sensory modalities) from an invisible entity that would be interpreted as a god or ancestor in accordance with the individual's culture.

A chief piece of evidence cited by Jaynes is the Iliad: in its entire voluminous length, there's not a single description of any character's engaging in inward reflection. Instead, whenever they face a tough choice, a god appears and tells them what to do. Jaynes holds that Homer tells the story this way because that's exactly how people in those days experienced things.

Another story cited in support of this view concerns a man traveling to a Greek city-state who encounters the god Pan on the road and has a conversation with him. Upon arriving he promptly informs the city's senate of Pan's advice, which is heard with complete seriousness and not a hint of skepticism nor suggestion that the man is crazy. And, indeed, in a bicameral world such as Jaynes depicts, one would have had to be some kind of crazy not to believe in gods, when they were a regular part of everyone's personal experience.

I'm no expert on Sasquatch lore, but it seems to me that the casual tone of some accounts is very much like that story about Pan. This matter-of-fact quality could be totally consistent with the lack of evidence for Sasquatch as a physically distinct entity, if what it actually is (or was until some relatively recent past) is a cultural interpretation of a separate module in people's own heads.

RIP Chuck Stone

I heard this morning that Chuck Stone, longtime columnist at the Philadelphia Daily News and first president of the National Association of Black Journalists, has died.

On a personal note, a few years ago I recorded a children's book he wrote onto tape for a shelter run by Women Against Abuse. It's titled Squizzy the Black Squirrel: A Fabulous Fable of Friendship. I'll try to upload this shortly. (Thanks to Jim Tigar for copying the recording onto disk for me.)

Pixelated Bullseye

Here's a piece of math art I just completed (colored pencil on graph paper).

I joined several members of the Philadelphia Area Atheist Meetup Group and the Peace Advocacy Network to protest an event by the anti-gay "conversion" "therapy" group misnamed Courage. My hand-made sign read, "True Courage Is Accepting Who You Are."

Medieval Monk?

I was rather appalled by an episode of *Monk* aired last night on MNT, in which he becomes distressed by his childhood TV idol's autobiography, about which his chief, if not only, complaint is that it reveals her as a "whore." I've written the following to the originating USA Network at http://www2.usanetwork.com/series/monk/.

"I generally love the show, but am dismayed at the regressive sexual attitude expressed in your recently aired episode about the former child star of Monk's favorite TV show. It's bad enough that Monk himself feels betrayed by his idol's "promiscuity"; that might be chalked up to an idiosyncrasy of his, perhaps related to his OCD.  Far worse is that it seems that everyone else in the show feels the same way.  The implicit prudery and sexism in this was quite off-putting."

Cosmos: There's No Place Else Like It

I just saw and loved the first episode of the new Cosmos. A particularly favorable impression was made when, right in the opening, Neil deGrasse Tyson outlined the rules of scientific method as the key to the Universe. Also noteworthy was that, even with all the snazzier special effects, there were some features of the original that couldn't be improved on -- like using a calendar to illustrate comparisons in cosmic time. Or directly quoting Sagan's line, "We are all made of star stuff." So it came as no surprise that he concluded by citing an early meeting with Sagan as an inspiration.

One quibble: Tyson presents, but doesn't critique, Giordano Bruno's argument for the infinity of the Universe. Although he later calls it only an educated guess, he never actually explains what's wrong with it. This is unfortunate inasmuch as it's an example of the sort of "argument from intuition" that people often need to resist in order to accept the counterintuitive findings of modern science.

 

 

15 Now! Campaign Comes to Philly

For International Women's Day, thirty or forty people rallied this afternoon in Center City for a $15/hr. minimum wage. It was the first such action locally for this movement, which got started in Seattle. In addition to comments by various speakers interspersed with chants, we broke up into groups that went into low-wage establishments to bring the message of the movement and give flowers to the women workers. My group chose a McDonald's.

Particularly gratifying was the way a meme I generated got copied by one of the speakers. He was making reference to "the so-called job creators" running corporations. I piped up, "We're the job creators. They're the job excluders!" referring to the ideological fiction whereby capitalists, who use their property  rights to limit who can work, are credited with creating that work, when it's really the working class that builds all the equipment making productive activity possible. When I'd barely started my second sentence,  the speaker repeated the fIrst one. He followed up with an off-the-cuff explanation of why it was true, which got it more or less right. Hopefully it also got him and others thinking, since, if fully appreciated,  this insight may help people overcome the dependency psychology that limits people's horizons to what's possible under capitalism.

http://www.15now.org

Putting a Human Face on an Inhuman System

Weekend Edition Sunday had an interview today with a federal prosecutor misleadingly described as "an attorney for young victims." Here's the comment I left:

"The problem is as time goes on, people start to want to heal."

What does it say about someone's job when their "success" depends on other people's being emotional rather than rational? Add to this that such proceedings often *delay* a family's healing. The guest disguises this issue by calling herself an "advocate for the child." But in reality nothing can be done for someone who's already dead.

However she may see herself, objectively she's an advocate for a state that parasitically manipulates and feeds off people's grief and rage to expand the resources and people under its carceral control.

Quotable: Timaree Schmit on "Objectification"

"In our culture, we have a notion that a woman can be either an object or she can be a person worthy of respect, not both. We let men exist in both those spaces; a man can be sexy and also considered respectable but we have difficulty conceptualizing that a woman might be sexy and sexual and intelligent and kind and worthy of listening to and respecting." -- Ph.D. sex educator Timaree Schmit  in the 2/13 *Philadelphia Gay News*

Seen in Center City Philadelphia

Quote of the Day

You show me a kid who doesn't like danger, and I'll show you someone with a library card." -- Danny King, School for Scumbags.

Rejoice! It's National Science Fiction Day.

In honor of which, I've signed the Philadelphia Weekly's petition for a historical marker at 50th and Spruce, where he lived for three years and wrote some of his most important work.

Hello Again

I've decided that I'm now able to manage my time on the Web, and so will resume blogging. Unfortunately I have little time to post anything now, except that I won my election. I'm Majority Inspector for my division for the next four years.

Meet the Elected Official

I won my campaign for ward 59, division 21's election board. I will be Majority Inspector for the next four years. This also makes me the Green Party's first elected official in Philadelphia.

Deny Deni Again

I wrote six years ago about the effort (unfortunately unsuccessful) to unseat slut-shaming judge Teresa Carr Deni from Philadelphia Municipal Court. Well, she's up for retention again next Tuesday, so I've moved that the Green Party of Philadelphia call again for a "NO" vote. The party endorsed my proposal and asked me to write a letter to the local papers. Here's what I submitted to the Inquirer and Daily News:

On Election Day next Tuesday, Philadelphia voters have the chance to take a stand against sexual violence and send a clear message that everyone's human rights must be respected.

Six years ago, in what the chancellor of the Bar Association called "an unforgivable miscarriage of justice," Municipal Court Judge Teresa Carr Deni threw out sexual assault charges in a multiple rape, at gunpoint and without protection, simply because the victim was a sex worker. Foreshadowing the recent outrageous comments of some politicians, she said to do otherwise would be a disservice to the victims of "true rape."

Judge Carr Deni has never repudiated her actions in this case. While she may prefer to forget the matter, Philadelphia voters have no reason to either forget or forgive. Let's all vote NO on Judge Carr Deni's retention November 5th.

Rape-Enabling Judge Up for Retention Again

Philadelphia Municipal Court Judge Teresa Carr Deni, who infamously ruled in 2007 that sex workers can't be raped, is up for retention again. On November 5, voters will get to say "yea" or "nay" on giving her another six years on the bench. (If nay, a replacement will be appointed.) Last night the Green Party of Philadelphia approved my motion to call for a no vote. You can follow the link below for more details on the case.

http://stripey7.blogspot.com/2007/11/update-on-rape-enabling-judge_04.html

When Is It All Right for the State to Break Its Promises?

In response to an item reported in this week's Public Record, I've submitted this comment to my state senator, Leanna Washington:

I understand the State House has just passed HB162, which would abrogate the confidentiality of sealed adoption records.

I have no personal stake in this issue, as I am neither a birth parent, adoptive parent, nor an adoptee. I care deeply, however, about honoring commitments. Birth parents who gave up their children for a sealed adoption did so based on the state's promise to keep their identity a secret. If this bill becomes law, the state will be breaching its trust with those citizens.

No matter how understandable and how intense adoptees' curiosity may be, it cannot trump the state's obligation to keep its commitments. The public's confidence in government is already at an all-time low; an abrogation of its commitment to birth parents would only push it lower still.

Please also bear in mind that the public debate on this issue is inherently skewed, because one side's interest is based on a desire for confidentiality, which could be jeopardized by speaking out about this. If the mail you receive is one-sided, that doesn't mean public opinion really is.

Conventional Prejudice Isn't Reality -- and Neither Is "Reality"

NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday (5 October) featured an interview with Erica Jong concerning her classic book Fear of Flying. For the most part it was good, but I had a couple comments which I'm submitting in the letter below.

Thank you for the interview with Erica Jong. But no thank you for the way you prefaced it.

Your statement that it was "not appropriate for children" flies in the face of all scientific evidence. Nowhere has it been demonstrated that there is any age before which hearing about sex is harmful to people. In fact, clinical history-taking has indicated that people with violent psychosexual disorders come disproportionately from families which denied them information about sex. You do the public a great disservice when you repeat this harmful antisexual superstition.

For further information, I recommend that you read the National Coalition Against Censorship's amicus brief concerning the Child Online Protection (sic) Act, which can be found at http://www.fepproject.org/courtbriefs/ashcroft.pdf; and Susan Levine's book Harmful to Minors: The Hazards of Protecting Children from Sex.

On another point, Jong did not make clear on what she based her notion that young women aren't getting any satisfaction from hookups. The only fact she cited is that what she sees on hookup "reality" shows doesn't turn out well.

I don't watch "reality" shows, but one thing I know about them is this: they're not reality. Individual lines may be improvised, but the story lines are scripted, and the scripts are based on conventional social assumptions. Since it's a conventional social assumption that women can't get satisfaction from casual sex, it's no surprise that they don't do so on these shows. That's because they aren't reality but "reality."

Further, particularly in connection with casual sex, "discretion" tends to be more important to women, because of the sexual double standard. So, a woman who would enjoy casual sex under real-life conditions may well not do so when a camera crew is following her around.

An Example of Why We Can All Use a Refresher Sometimes

Yesterday I started rereading Change of Heart: What Psychology Can Teach Us About Spreading Social Change by Humane League founder and president Nick Cooney. And just now I got a reminder of why such refreshers can be important.

In my last post I copied a letter I'd sent correcting misinformation in a newspaper article about 9/11. Unfortunately I forgot one of the clearest lessons of the research on persuasion: one should never use the "Facts/Myths" format. The reason is that, in doing so, one must repeat the myths one means to refute, and people will often remember these as true even more than the corrective information, and even newly associate them with you as a trustworthy source. This is especially often true of older readers. The better approach, therefore, is simply to present the truth without making reference to the misinformation.

I had, in fact, initially meant to do that in my letter, but unfortunately forgot to when I was actually writing it. If I were writing it now, it would look something like this:

To the editor:

I appreciate your interest in helping the public understand the events of 9/11. Here are a few additional points not mentioned by the author of the article you published in your most recent issue:

1) The destruction of World Trade Center building 7 began when pieces of one of the much taller Twin Towers, only a block away, fell on it. This started a conflagration whose heat ultimately weakened the building's steel structure to the point where it collapsed -- in much the same way that the impact of planes started the fires that led to the Twin Towers' collapse.

2) Because WTC7 was hit by pieces of a building to one side of it, the fire started and remained primarily on that side of the building. The resulting asymmetric collapse is the reason that the rubble stretched over the width of a four-lane highway on that side.

3) Thanks to "a thorough internal study of the WTC collapses," the designers of the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Beijing  avoided a similar catastrophe. "For example, instead of the steel-only structural framework of Building 7, ARUP used a combination of concrete and steel framing." Also, "[t]he firefighters were able to gain control of the blaze in about an hour, fully extinguishing the fire six hours after it began. By contrast, the fires in Building 7 were never fought, because what access the FDNY had to water could not reach the building." (http://ae911truth.INFO) Both these differences meant that where fire had been able to destroy WTC7, the Mandarin Oriental was spared this outcome.

This information and much else is documented at http://ae911truth.INFO. Click on "WTC7" under Categories and on "Mandarin Oriental" under Pages for articles about those buildings.

A Theory That Collapses in Its Own Footprint

The latest issue of The Independent Voice -- successor to The Germantown Chronicle -- contains a story by a 9/11 "inside-jobber." I felt moved to correct some misinformation, as follows:

There are some errors in your article "Questions Still Linger About Official Version of 9/11."

It's misleading to say, as Sabina Clarke does, that World Trade Center building 7 "was not hit by a plane." More to the point is that it was hit by one of the Twin Towers, which was much taller than the distance between the two buildings. It was this impact that started the fire in WTC7, in the same way the impact of planes started fires in the first two buildings, leading to their catastrophic collapse.

Also inaccurate is the statement that WTC7 "fell in its own footprint." Photos actually show the rubble covering a four-lane highway.

This information and much else is documented on the website "Answers to Architects for 9/11 Truth's Questions," at http://ae911truth.INFO. Click on "WTC7" under Categories for articles about that building.

I'll try to post an update if it's printed. Strangely, my earlier letter about misconduct I witnessed at my polling place last year never was, even though it was prompted by a piece they'd printed alleging election fraud.

Meet the Candidate

After canvassing my entire division with the help of fellow Greens Chris Robinson and Dave Houck, I've submitted nominating papers bearing thirty-four valid signatures to be placed on the ballot as our party's candidate for Inspector of Election. The legal requirement is five.

Consulting election results on the City Commissioners' and PhilaDems websites, I observe that this past primary, just like four years ago, no one bothered running for Judge or Inspector of Election in either "major" party for my division. This means I'll be the only candidate on the November ballot for our election board!

I'm also pleased to note that while Shoshana Bricklin, the progressive candidate for Municipal Court who ran in the Democratic primary with the support of Greens like myself and Chris Robinson, didn't win citywide, she came in third (out of three openings) in my division, and #1 in his!

Notwithstanding this special update, what I wrote in the previous post still applies if you wish to get in touch with me.

Signing Off

I have determined that the Web is too tempting a distraction for me as I strive to become more present to my physical surroundings, and in particular opportunities to make more human connections. Consequently it is my intention not to go online for the forseeable future (say, at least a year). If anyone wishes to reach me, they can email me at my Yahoo! address (same username as this blog), and they will receive an auto-response including alternate contact information.

My Friend Joe Szimhart Has Written a Novel

Looks interesting.

http://www.aperturepress.net/books/mushroom-satori

Girl in Movement by Eva Kollisch

I'm adding this book to my Powell Partner Bookshelf. I saw a review of it several years ago in the magazine Against the Current, but only got around to reading it more recently. I've also posted a comment which you can read on  Powell's page for it. It's the coming-of-age memoir of a woman involved in the early Forties in Max Schachtman's Workers Party.

The Joke That "Spoiler Alerts" Have Become

Have you noticed how it seems that these days, when someone on radio or TV says "spoiler alert," they immediately follow that phrase with a spoiler? Do they not understand that most people don't have their hands perpetually on the radio, and will need more than a split second to turn it off to avoid hearing something?

Done in this absurd way, a so-called spoiler alert might more accurately be called a "spoiler taunt," as in, Don't want to learn the ending before reading the book? Screw you -- I'm telling you anyway!

Disability Program Hides True Unemployment Level

The latest This American Life is devoted to an examination of why beneficiaries of the Social Security Disability program have exploded over the past couple decades. It turns out that, in large measure, this is how states have offloaded the cost of supporting people for whom capitalism can't actually provide living-wage employment by transferring them from state-financed welfare programs to the federal Social Security system. While this keeps these people from starving or becoming homeless, it has the big disadvantage of not doing anything to assist them in getting out of poverty -- at the same time it erases them from unemployment statistics by no longer counting them as "looking for work."

Bound and Gagged: pornography and the politics of fantasy in America, by Laura Kipnis

That story about Iceland reminded me of a great book I read several years ago, before I started my Powell Partner Bookshelf. I've added it now.

http://www.powells.com/biblio/9780802115843?p_isbn&PID=35751

Stop Iceland from Banning Internet "Violent Pornography"

As recently reported on FetLife, the government of Iceland is considering a ban on online "violent pornography," in the name of protecting children from its putative harm, of course. You can read the UK Guardian article here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/16/iceland-online-pornography.

And here's what I've written the Prime Minister of Iceland at postur@for.stjr.is:

Dear Minister:

I am greatly concerned by the news that you are considering a law to ban Internet "violent pornography" in the name of protecting children.

In the first place, contrary to your statements, there is no consensus among researchers about this alleged harm. Consider, for instance, this statement by US scholars: http://www.ncac.org/media/related/20011205~USA~Letter_to_AAP_Concerning_Media_Violence_Statements.cfm.

In the second place, this is unquestionably an issue of free expression. Efforts to "protect" children with computer algorithms have had notoriously imprecise results -- including, for instance, the censoring of any and all gay-positive material -- so the only way to implement such a law would be to use human screeners, guaranteeing that those screeners' biases would come into play. Even terms like "violent" or "hateful" are construed in very different ways by different people. What one woman may call misogynistic, another finds arousing.

Thirdly, this goes beyond the desire of lone individuals to view erotica on their computers. Many people network online on the basis of shared erotic interests, such as BDSM (bondage and discipline/dominance and submission/sadomasochism). I belong to one such network based in the US. I am appalled at the thought that Icelanders with similar interests would become unable to find one another if this proposed law went into effect.

With a view to protecting their civil rights, I am determined that if this legislation is adopted, I will not buy any products from Iceland.

What Cognitive Dissonance Is and Is Not

In recent years I've been irritated by how often people misuse the phrase "cognitive dissonance." Understood correctly, it's a powerful and important theory about one of the things that can drive people to change their beliefs and/or their behaviors -- and which can be exploited by others for this purpose, including in underhanded and unethical ways, as often is practiced by cults for instance. But the colloquial usage completely fails to capture this dynamic aspect of the concept, reducing it instead to a sort of highfalutin insult.

I saw another example of this in the latest Savage Love column, and submitted this comment:

While the column may be a rerun, unfortunately an inaccurate idea expressed therein seems to be as widespread now as when it was first published: the definition, "cognitive dissonance: the holding of mutually exclusive beliefs."

As Wikipedia explains, "In modern psychology, cognitive dissonance is the feeling of discomfort when simultaneously holding two or more conflicting cognitions." Note the operative phrase, "feeling of discomfort." It's irrelevant whether SOMEONE ELSE perceives you to be holding mutually exclusive beliefs; what matters is whether YOU feel discomfort because YOU perceive a discrepancy. Leon Festinger, the author of the theory of cognitive dissonance, considered this effect important because people have a drive to REDUCE cognitive dissonance. You can't be driven to reduce a discrepancy that only other people, not you, perceive. Without this ingredient, it's reduced to an epithet, a pseudoscientific way of saying, "I think you're inconsistent!"

On the (Key)Spot

Today I'm writing from the Urban Affairs Coalition's KeySpot location, the first step to signing up for Wilco Electronics' low-cost home Wi-Fi service. That means soon, hopefully, I can blog, read email etc. from home for the first time in a couple years, and for the first time ever with a fast connection.

ICSA special event - Abuses in the Troubled Teen Industry

One of the participants in this event, Sunny Linkfield, has described her own experiences at the hands of this "industry" at ICSA-Philadelphia meetings. A couple political connections to this issue: the recent "kids for cash" scandal in PA involved a judge's railroading teens to a facility of this sort. And Mitt Romney has personal connections with Straight, Inc.

From: Michael Langone
To: International Cultic Studies Assoc.
Sent: Friday, March 15, 2013 1:48 PM
Subject: {ICSA Members:77} [ICSAMail:70] DC ICSA special event - Abuses in the Troubled Teen Industry

PDF Flyer: http://icsahome.com/pdf/fax_mail_spev_dc.pdf


Abuses in the Troubled Teen Industry

Saturday, April 20, 2013—10:00 AM – 5:30 PM

Comfort Inn, Pentagon City, 2480 South Glebe Rd., Bldg. 2, Arlington,
VA, US, 22206. Phone: (703) 682–5500 Fax: (703) 682-5505 Exit 7B
(Glebe Rd.), I-395. Free parking.

International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA) and Community Alliance
for the Ethical Treatment of Youth (CAFETY) are cosponsors of a one-
day conference that will bring experts together with individuals
harmed in teen treatment programs.

Some teen treatment programs have used psychological control
techniques commonly associated with manipulative, high-demand groups,
often called “cults.” Sometimes such techniques have contributed to
the psychological, physical, or sexual abuse of teens that the
programs were supposed to help.

The conference will include the following talks, followed by
discussion:

Overview of the Cultic Influences in the Troubled Teen Industry
(William Goldberg)
Clips from Surviving Straight Inc., a Documentary (Kelly Matthews)
The Great Drug War (Arnold Trebach)
Survivor Interviews: Surviving Straight Inc., a Documentary
Personal Story (Sunny Linkfield and Ethel Linkfield)
Cultic Practices in Residential Care and Applicable Human-Rights
Conventions (Katherine Whitehead)
How Do We Really Help Troubled Teens? What Science Tells Us (Steve
Eichel)
Overcoming and Healing After the Abuse (William Goldberg)
Healing Through Advocacy (Kathy Moya)

Space is limited, so please REGISTER ASAP. The registration fee is
$30, payable to ICSA.

To register, send:

Name(s):

Address:

City/State/Zip/Country:

Phone(s)/Fax:

E-mail (Important!):

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Presenters

Steve K. D. Eichel, PhD, ABPP, President of ICSA, is past President of
the American Academy of Counseling Psychology and the Greater
Philadelphia Society of Clinical Hypnosis. He is a licensed and Board-
certified counseling psychologist whose involvement in cultic studies
began with a participant-observation study of Unification Church
training in its eastern seminary (in Barrytown, New York) in the
spring of 1975. His doctoral dissertation, an intensive, quantified
observation of a deprogramming, earned him a John G. Clark Award for
Distinguished Scholarship in Cultic Studies in 1990. In 1983, along
with Dr. Linda Dubrow-Marshall and clinical social worker Roberta
Eisenberg, Dr. Eichel founded the Re-Entry Therapy, Information &
Referral Network (RETIRN), one of the field’s oldest continuing
private providers of psychological services to families and
individuals harmed by cultic practices. He also served as Clinical
Director of the St. Francis Homes for Boys from 1989 to 1994, and
subsequently as a consulting psychologist from 1994 to 2006. From 1993
to 1996 he was a family psychologist with Community Centered
Treatment, a multisystemic family-therapy program for delinquent
youth.

William Goldberg, LCSW, PsyA, is a clinical social worker and
psychoanalyst with more than forty years’ experience working with
former cult members. He and his wife, Lorna, colead a support group
for former cult members. This group has been meeting for more than
thirty-five years and is the oldest group of its kind in the world. In
2007 Bill retired from the Rockland County, New York Department of
Mental Health, where he directed several programs and clinics. He is
presently an adjunct professor in the Social Work and Social Science
departments of Dominican College, and he is on the faculty of the
Institute for Psychoanalytic Studies. Bill is a frequent speaker at
ICSA conferences, and he and Lorna have been the recipients of the
Authentic CAN Hall of Fame Award, and of the Leo J. Ryan Award. In
2010, Bill was the recipient of ICSA's Lifetime Achievement Award.

Sunny Linkfield, President of CAFETY, is a survivor of Straight Inc.,
where she was a client from 1982 to 1984. This abusive teen “rehab”
center convinced thousands of parents that normal behavior was a sign
of “druggie” behavior. Sunny was an overachiever but became a moody
teenager, experimenting with pot, alcohol, and a few other drugs.
After her parents read an article in Reader's Digest, they dropped her
off in a warehouse called Straight Incorporated. Straight, Inc. was an
abusive, mind-control cult that practiced on youth torture techniques
formerly used in Communist China and North Korea. These techniques
were ostensibly employed to help Straight’s victims overcome the
problems and addictions that Straight claimed they had. Spin-offs
still exist today. Sunny is now a make-up artist/esthetician and a
trainer in retail cosmetics. She was recently interviewed in the new
movie, Surviving Straight Inc., a Documentary. Sunny was also the lead
make-up artist for the film. Ms. Linkfield is active with the
International Cultic Studies Association and serves on the Board of
Directors of the Community Alliance For the Ethical Treatment of
Youth.

Kathy Moya, BA (Psychology) is a former 15-year-old client of the
Straight, Inc. program in 1982. In 1999, Kathy helped spearhead the
online movement against institutional child abuse. Her personal
efforts began with a forum and Web site called Straight Inc.
Survivors, in an effort to share her research about the Straight, Inc.
program and speak to others who had been there so they could share
their stories and viewpoints about their experiences. In 2001, she
helped organize the Saving Our Children from Drug Treatment Abuse
conference presented by the Trebach Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.
Her research led to her discovery that an entire troubled-teen
industry existed within and beyond the United States. By 2004, she had
created the Fight Institutional Child Abuse (FICA) Web site, which
served as an informational campaign and forum for families considering
a residential program for their child(ren), as well as for families
who had already been affected by child abuse within a variety of
institutions for children. She authored two reports in 2006,
“Understanding the Con Game,” and “Understanding Brainwashing, Mind
Control & Aggression,” as part of the Fight Institutional Child Abuse
educational campaign. She attended the congressional hearings on Child
Abuse and Neglect at Residential Treatment Programs in 2007 and has
participated in several conferences over the years regarding this
topic.

Arnold Trebach, JD, PhD, is the founder, Chairman of the Board of
Directors, and Chief Executive Officer of The Trebach Institute. He
has had a long and varied career in the worlds of academia,
scholarship, teaching, writing, government service, and business
enterprises. He personally led the Institute on Drugs, Crime, and
Justice, an international seminar on drug treatment and policy, from
1974 to 1998. He founded the nonprofit Drug Policy Foundation (DPF) in
1986 and served as its first chairman and president until 1997. DPF
has been recognized as one of the leading forces for rational drug
policy reform in the world. He has been the subject of an
international campaign that sought his nomination for a Nobel Peace
Prize on the basis of his drug-policy-reform efforts. Also, he has
been called the Father of the Modern Drug Policy Reform Movement and
the Shadow Drug Czar, along with some much-less-favorable appellations
by some of those who support the status quo in drug control. He
retired from the American University, where he now holds the rank of
Professor Emeritus, and also from the Foundation at the end of 1997.
His books include The Rationing of Justice (Rutgers University Press,
1964); The Heroin Solution (Yale University Press, 1982); The Great
Drug War (Macmillan, 1987); and Legalize It? Debating American Drug
Policy (American University Press, 1993), which he coauthored with
James Inciardi. Dr. Trebach has edited or coauthored many other books
and has published numerous original articles in scholarly journals and
the popular press. He has appeared in hundreds of television and radio
programs. American University conferred on him its highest award for
scholarship for the academic years 1978–79 and 1983–84. He holds a JD
degree from the New England School of Law (1951) and a PhD in Politics
from Princeton University (1958). Since 1951 he has been a member of
the Massachusetts Bar.

Katherine Whitehead, JD, is a children’s-rights advocate and the
founder and director of Community Alliance for the Ethical Treatment
of Youth, CAFETY. The organization’s mission is to promote and secure
the human rights of youth in, or at risk of residential placement,
through education and advocacy led and driven by those with direct
experience in harmful residential placement and our allies. Ms.
Whitehead is a survivor of a therapeutic boarding school called
Mission Mountain School, and she formed CAFETY in an effort to give
voice to residential-care alumni and survivors concerned with human-
rights violations in residential programs for youth. A graduate of
Hunter College with a BA in Political Science, Ms. Whitehead dedicates
much of her time to civic engagement. She volunteers her time for
various organizations and working groups such as the Bazelon Center
for Mental Health Law and Policy’s Leadership 21 Initiative, and
Alliance for the Safe, Therapeutic and Appropriate Use of Residential
Treatment (ASTART).

Today I resumed going door to door in my neighborhood with the Green Party of Philadelphia's anti-fracking petition (I started two weeks ago), which will be presented on Earth Day, 22 April, to the head of the DEP regional office in Norristown. I'm doing this as a way of getting to know my neighbors and increasing the visibility of  GPOP, and with a view to further developing my capacity for extroversion/overcoming social anxiety. While I've done door-to-door things a few times before, this time it's my own initiative.

I saw in the City Paper that Tuesday night, Woodmere Art Museum is screening The Ipcress File, a film from 1965 in which "Michael Caine stars as an intelligence agent investigating the brainwashing of British scientists." Seeing an opportunity to offer some information about the reality behind the fiction, I've printed out Margaret Singer's article "Thought Reform Exists" from ICSA so I can make copies to hand out.

Who Do I Think I Am -- Some Kind of Einstein?

Well, not quite. I understand he had an IQ of 160. I do have a friend like that.

But it occurred to me recently that I might find more people to get romantically excited about -- and, at the same time, whom I could relate to on other levels as well -- if I spent more time around those on a similar intellectual level. So I contacted Mensa and learned when their next test for membership eligibility is.

I was never told my IQ as a child, but later self-administered a test I got at a bookstore. Though I was allowed 90 minutes to complete it, I got through it and reviewed my answers in less than an hour. When I scored myself I got 146. So I'm fairly confident I'll pass the test being administered next Saturday.

I just listened and commented on this edition of *Voices in the Family* from a month ago on a particularly fascinating topic. If you read the comments, you'll notice how conspiracist listeners heard the show selectively so that they could justify dismissing it as just "part of the conspiracy," completely ignoring that host and guests alike acknowledged the existence of actual conspiracies and the importance of maintaining a degree of suspiciousness toward official as well as toward dissident views. http://whyy.org/cms/voicesinthefamily/conspiracy-theory-mentality/

Flawed Reasoning About Hookups

In his interview on WHYY's Morning Edition today, Dr. Dan Gottlieb talked about "hookup culture." Unfortunately his remarks evinced a biased attitude toward the subject, as I discussed in this message I sent the station:

While Dan Gottlieb is right to say parents should tell their children that casual sex can be physically pleasurable (if only so they won't lose credibility), that's only half the story. His suggestion that it compares unfavorably in other respects with dating suffers from a fatal flaw: none of the figures he cited actually makes such a comparison. In the absence of corresponding numbers for dating, the findings about hookups that he reports are of little practical relevance.

In particular I would dispute the claim, for which he doesn't even cite any study data, that hookups involve "an increased risk of sexually transmitted infections." Quite the opposite, I think: because people who are hooking up do so for the explicit, unambiguous purpose of having sex, it's pretty certain that they'll bring protection. In a dating situation, by contrast, women in particular may tell themselves that they don't really intend to have sex -- especially if it's one of their first dates with someone -- while secretly hoping that something might "just happen." This sort of romantic fantasy often results in someone's coming to a date without birth control or, even if they bring it, failing to use it because they're "carried away by the moment," or because they're afraid showing they came prepared for sex (instead of relying on the man for birth control) will make them seem "slutty."

In a hookup situation this isn't an issue, since by agreeing to it a woman makes clear she's not ashamed about wanting sexual pleasure. So she not only will come prepared, but is highly likely to use what she brought.

Class Participation

I find my face has again appeared in the Philadelphia Public Record, this time in connection with one of Commissioner Stephanie Singer's classes for candidates (which was sponsored by the local chapter of the National Organization for Women and the Coalition of Labor Union Women). If you click on the image under "Our latest issue" for 28 February, you'll find the picture on page 11. Though you probably can't see it, the sign I'm holding says "Independent." They didn't have one for "Green."

Real Beliefs Have Consequences

Yesterday a coworker told me that very shortly, on a date I won't quote here, "they're going to be putting chips in us." He was speaking of microchip implants that will be "the Mark of the Beast," without which we won't be able to engage in commerce.

Of course I'd heard such predictions before, but without a specific date attached. I told him I think this is nonsense: "Humanity is a chaotic system. No one is in control." I added, "I'm quite certain that no one will be putting any chip in me on [the date]." He insisted, "Just you wait. A year from now, I'll be telling people  'I told you so.'"

Finally I asked, "So, do you want to put some money on it?" His answer? "Well, I'm not that sure."

Note that there were actually two testable claims here. The first was that we'd all be forced to get implants on a certain date. The second was that my coworker believes we will be. If the second were true in any empirically meaningful sense, he'd have jumped at the chance to make some money on it  -- especially since I hadn't specified how much I wanted to bet, or even what odds. The fact that he backed down as soon as I suggested a wager tells me he doesn't really believe what he's saying.

To be consistently empirical, one must define all one's terms of discourse, including those pertaining to the discourse itself, in an empirical way. Only in this way can one distinguish true beliefs -- the kind that induced some people to give away all their possessions and euthanize their pets ahead of 21 May 2011, for instance -- from meaningless cocktail party (or office) chatter. For that matter, one can't even define lying without this distinction.

A real belief makes someone act differently, not just talk differently.

Thanks to my friend and neighbor, fellow Green Chris Robinson, I learned of somewhere else to send my account of my Election Day experience that for whatever reason the Germantown Chronicle didn't print. It turns out the Mayor's office is soliciting people's stories about that day, so I copied mine to his web page created for this purpose.

Also thanks to Chris, I learned that City Commissioner Stephanie Singer is holding classes for people seeking neighborhood leadership positions such as block captain, committeeperson, and election board. I've attended two of them and she knows my face now. She says she's glad there's an effort to build the Green Party in this city. She herself was a Democratic ward leader before voluntarily resigning that post after her election to the Commission, but perhaps appreciates that her party would function better with a more credible opposition than the GOP has much chance of becoming here.

On another front, I attended a speed dating event at the central library Monday, where I selected about half of the thirteen women I met and was matched with two of them. I'd attended a commercial speed dating event in 2002, where I selected four out of ten women but didn't match anyone.

I invited one of them to a Valentine's Day Dessert Party and Buddhist Love Panel last night, of which I'd learned after attending a free meditation class at the PCI library off Rittenhouse Square. (Even prior to the class, I'd started getting results practicing mindfulness on my own.) I only invited one to avoid any awkwardness, but she didn't show and hasn't responded to my email as of about 6:30 yesterday evening.

The people were friendly and the practical advice from the panel (answering written questions submitted in advance) seemed psychologically sound, but I don't subscribe to the metaphysical aspects like belief in reincarnation. A couple people to which I mentioned this said I could just take the parts I find useful.

P.S. Singer says that the best thing to do in view of improper conduct such as I witnessed would be to call the district attorney. A call from him to the Judge of Election would probably stop the problem behavior. She pointed out to me that since election board workers are elected, they haven't necessarily attended the trainig and so may not realize what's permitted and what isn't.

Literary speed date

The Free Library held a speed dating event Monday evening. I'd only participated in one such event previously, over ten years ago, and though I'd picked four women I got no matches that time. Since I don't suppose I was any less intelligent or physically attractive then than now, I must assume my greatly reduced social anxiety and improved self-confidence are the reason that this time there were two.

Reminding Elected Officials That They're Human

The other day I heard city councilmember Bill Green on the radio indignantly rejecting the idea that a large contribution might influence him. I left this message on his website:

As someone who has voted for you in the past, I am dismayed by the facile way you in which you dismiss the idea that $30,000 could influence you. That's an incredibly naive statement, and suggests that you need to study some psychology.

The classic work in the social influence field is Influence by Robert Cialdini. In it, on the basis of both experimental research and his own undercover investigation among "compliance professionals" such as marketers, Cialdini identified six major tools of influence. One of these is "reciprocity," the principle that if someone does something for you, you feel obliged to return the favor. You can't simply turn this off, because it operates on an unconscious as well as a conscious level. Pure intentions are no guarantee against it.

Because this effect can't be negated by an act of will (and public disclosure requirements prevent reliably shielding yourself from knowing contributors' identities), the only protection lies in declining donations from those whom you don't wish to influence you.

Understanding that everyone is susceptible to bias, scientists have instituted the system of peer review to keep each other's errors in check. This same principle of critical thinking applies to everyone, not just professional researchers. To minimize the risk that even seemingly benign contributors could exercise an unwholesome influence, it's important to make their role well-known or at least easily knowable.

Richard Feynman, the Nobelist who uncovered the cause of the Challenger disaster, defined science as "a set of techniques we've developed to avoid fooling ourselves" -- techniques that presuppose we have the humility to recognize our capacity for self-deception. In my view, assisting each other in this regard is one of the most important forms of human solidarity. I hope you will receive what I've written in that spirit and take it on board as you continue your public service.

Today I took part in Brandywine Peace Community's monthly anti-drones protest on the Penn campus, where drone warfare research is taking place. You can learn more about this issue at http://www.kNOwdrones.com.

Today I started reading Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point by Huw Price, which was recommended to me by my friend, time freak John Ashmead.

My Election Day Experience

I've retitled an earlier post to make its subject matter apparent.

http://stripey7.blogspot.com/2012/12/letter-to-germantown-chronicle.html

The Roots of 9/11: A Concise Explanation

In a 1998 Le Monde [actually it was Le Nouvel Observateur -- stripey7] interview, President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbignew Brzezinski had bragged about how he conceived of arming Islam-extremist militants against the Afghan government as a ploy to draw in the Soviet Union more deeply and thus help destroy their system.[8] What Brzezinksi proudly proclaimed as his contribution to defeat the Soviet Union in the Cold War appears in retrospect as a highly problematic U.S. intervention in the late 1970s that intensified civil war in Afghanistan. Overthrow of the secular and modernizing regime in Afghanistan by Islamic fundamentalists helped mobilize and empower the forces that would turn on the U.S. and institute a reign of global terrorism in the current situation.U.S. intervention in the Afghan conflict, that now appears as the last great clash of the Cold War, helped create the context for the current crisis. As a response to U.S. intervention, the Soviet Union sent increased aid and personnel to prop up the moderate modernizing Taraki regime that was opposed by Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan. When Taraki was killed by Afghan army officers in September 1979, the Soviets invaded in force in December 1979 and set up a government to avoid a fundamentalist Islamic and U.S.-backed takeover.

In the 1980s, the U.S. began more aggressively supporting Islamic fundamentalist Jihad groups and the Afghan project was a major covert foreign policy project of the Reagan-Bush administration. During this period, the CIA trained, armed, and financed precisely those Islamic fundamentalist groups who later became part of the Al Qaeda terror network who are now the nemesis of the West, the new “evil empire.” In the battle to defeat Soviet Communism in the Cold War, the U.S. poured billions of dollars into Afghanistan to train “freedom fighters” that would overthrow the purportedly communist regime. This was a major project with overt and covert aid from the U.S., Pakistan, China, Saudi Arabia, and other countries. The military aid went into training and arming radical Islamic groups who would emerge with a desire to fight other wars for Islam in the countries that had earlier supported them in their Jihad against the Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan administrations. These groups included Osama bin Laden and those who would later form his Al Qaeda network.

from "Theorizing September 11" by Douglas Kellner, pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/papers/theorizing911.htm

My Election Day Experience

The 20 December issue of Germantown Chronicle carried a column by Republican activist J. Matthew Wolfe titled "Democrats Investigate Election Problems but Avoid the Real Election Fraud." I'd been thinking for a while about writing the City Commisssioners about some aspects of my experience on the election board, but had been unsure of how to proceed or whether it would get any attention. This column made me realize I didn't need to rely on the Commissioners' interest to express my concerns. I wrote the paper as follows:

Matt Wolfe's opinion piece has prompted me to describe my own experience on Election Day, when I served as a Machine Inspector. There was a Minority Inspector at my polling place (59/21), but I have reason to be skeptical about how effectual he was. The elected Judge of Election, I was given to understand, had not shown up, so someone from another division was filling in for her.

Although she had presumably received the same training I had, this substitute Judge of Election seemed oblivious of a basic rule that is stated unambiguously in the training paper: the Judge of Election is not permitted to assist a voter with voting. The reason for this rule is readily apparent: as a partisan officer in charge of the polling place, "assisting" voters can easily be abused to exercise undue influence on their choices.

For much of the day, this Judge of Election was routinely opening the curtains for voters. While this might be seen as a courtesy, she also frequently offered (prohibited) assistance when none had even been asked for. In one case I clearly heard her assume, "You want to vote straight Democrat." When I told her she wasn't permitted to assist voters, she acted as if I were just inexperienced and didn't know what I was talking about. Eventually the Majority Inspector joined me in calling her on this, and she finally relented. She didn't acknowledge that she'd been doing anything wrong, however, and represented that she was leaving the assisting to me "now that I see you know how." I'd always known how; I just hadn't offered it when not asked. (And unlike her, when I did, I was strictly nondirective.)

For a little while the Judge of Election left to vote in her own division, and I filled in for her at the table. I observed a good bit of confusion. The Minority Inspector, who preceded me in the procedural sequence, repeatedly put the same number on two consecutive voters' cards. I don't know what partisan purpose this could have served and, as he looked past retirement age, I supposed it was innocent error. Still, the confusion and extra work it created for me were frustrating.

Afterward, it struck me as odd that, whereas the Majority Inspector had eventually joined me in taking the Judge of Election to task for her improper conduct, the Minority Inspector -- whose role would seem more logically to encompass this -- had not spoken up. It's possible she'd only "assisted" while he was out of the room, and that I didn't notice this because I was focused on what she was doing and what I could do to stop it myself; but she did it so much, he must have been absent quite a bit for that explanation to hold water.

Short of abolishing party primaries and ballot columns -- in my view the ideal solution -- the best strategy for curbing such abuses is to build a credible opposition -- one whose values are in sync with those of most Philadelphians.This is one reason I'm a Green.

Definition of the Day

Fanfare, n. food eaten by fans. (Ex.: "He provisioned the con suite with great fanfare.")

Republican state senator Dominic Pileggi has proposed that Pennsylvania change the way we choose our Presidential Electors. He did so last year as well, in a way that was easily criticized for its potential to "lock in" an unfair GOP advantage based on gerrymandering, because it would have let each Congressional district choose its own Elector.

His new proposal is different. Now -- except for two Electors who would still be determined by the statewide plurality -- he'd like us to choose them by proportional representation. While his likely partisan motivations are just as obvious as before, this strikes me as a progressive proposal, and I have written him, as well as my own state legislators, to express my support. Here's the text of my letter to Sen. Shirley Kitchen:

I support Sen. Pileggi's proposal to adopt proportional representation (PR) in our presidential elections. As the prospects of our continuing to be viewed as a "close" state appear to be dimming, this would restore the average voter's sense that te has some chance of affecting the outcome. As other states followed our example, it would also reduce the danger of a popular vote/electoral vote mismatch while gradually familiarizing people with PR, thereby making it easier to extend it to other elections such as for state legislatures and Congressional delegations -- which would, in turn, better guarantee the representativeness of these bodies by eliminating the role of gerrymandering.

I am proposing that the Green Party also endorse this measure, as PR has long been one of the electoral reforms it supports.

The Trouble With Steven Spielberg’s 'Lincoln'

http://www.thenation.com/blog/171461/trouble-steven-spielbergs-lincoln#


The Nation  November 26, 2012

The Trouble With Steven Spielberg’s 'Lincoln'

Jon Wiener

Daniel Day Lewis deserves the Oscar for best actor for his wonderful portrayal of Lincoln in the new Steven Spielberg movie. But while the acting is great, there’s a problem with the film: it is dedicated to the proposition that Lincoln freed the slaves. Historians say that’s not quite right. The end of slavery did not come because Lincoln and the House of Representatives voted for the Thirteenth Amendment.

The best work I know about the end of slavery is Eric Foner’s unforgettable book The Fiery Trial: Lincoln and American Slavery, published in 2010, which won the Pulitzer Prize, the Bancroft Prize and the Lincoln Prize. Foner and many other historians over the last couple of decades have emphasized the central role played by the slaves themselves, who are virtually invisible in this movie. During the three weeks that the movie deals with, Sherman’s army was marching through South Carolina, where slaves were seizing plantations. They were dividing up land among themselves. They were seizing their freedom. Slavery was dying on the ground, not just in the House of Representatives. You get no sense of that in the movie.

In the film Lincoln is dedicated to the great task of getting the House to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment. But the film fails to note that Lincoln did not support the Thirteenth Amendment when it was proposed in 1864—by the Women’s National Loyal League, led by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Lincoln’s view at that point, as Foner shows, was that slavery should be abolished on a state-by-state basis, since slavery had been created by state law. He changed his mind in response to political pressure from Radical Republicans.

According to the film, Lincoln in 1865 was in “a race against time” (this synopsis comes from the semi-official Internet Movie Data Base), because “peace may come at any time, and if it comes before the amendment is passed, the returning southern states will stop the amendment abolishing slavery before it can become law.” That is simply not true. The movie focuses on the lame duck Congress that met in January 1865. If it had failed to ratify the amendment, Lincoln had announced that he would call a special session of the new Congress in March, where the Republicans would have a two-thirds majority. It would have passed the amendment easily—slightly more than one month later than the lame-duck Congress featured in the film.

The film makes another false argument, that once the Southern states were back in the union, they would have the power to block the amendment’s ratification, which required the vote of three-quarters of the states. Lincoln and the rest of the Republicans were not going to allow the Confederate state governments to remain in power after surrender—that was what “Reconstruction” was all about. Louisiana, Tennessee and Virginia had already formed new governments that abolished slavery. There was no “race against time”—and thus the central drama of the film is bogus.

Another question raised by the film but not really answered is why the Emancipation Proclamation, which Lincoln issued on January 1, 1863, did not free all slaves. Lincoln knew that, under the Constitution, the president had no power to repeal laws passed by states—including the laws making slavery legal in the South. But he did have the power as commander-in-chief to take action in wartime that he deemed a “military necessity” to save the government—in this case, undermining the Confederacy by declaring its slaves free and recruiting them as Union soldiers. Thus the Emancipation Proclamation was a military measure that applied only to slaves in areas under Confederate control. A half-million slaves in the four border states and West Virginia remained enslaved. Lincoln believed that once the “military necessity” had passed, legislation would be required to end slavery permanently.
Abolitionist critics argued that the Emancipation Proclamation in fact freed no slaves at all. But as Foner explains in The Fiery Trial, the proclamation “was as much a political as a military document.” Before the war Lincoln and many others had argued that slavery should be ended by the states, gradually, and by compensating slaveholders. Now his proclamation “addressed slaves directly, not as the property of the country’s enemies but as persons with wills of their own whose actions might help win the Civil War.” Foner emphasizes the point made by the Abolitionist Wendell Phillips, that the proclamation “did not make emancipation a punishment for individual rebels, but treated slavery as ‘a system’ that must be abolished.”

“Never before had so large a number of slaves been declared free,” Foner concludes. “By making the army an agent of emancipation and wedding the goals of Union and abolition, it ensured that Northern victory would produce a social transformation in the South and a redefinition of the place of blacks in American life.” All that is missing from Spielberg’s film.

It is altogether fitting and proper that this film honor Lincoln. But historians have shown how slavery died as the result of the actions of former slaves. As Eric Foner concludes, “That would be a dramatic story for Hollywood.”

"Right to Work": Rhetorical Misdirection

The misnamed "right to work" laws are based on an ideological sleight-of-hand. Union shop contracts are enforced not by unions but by employers, because it's their private ownership of the means of production that gives them the power (backed by the state's guns) to exclude people from social production. When they do so they are simply exercising exactly the same right as when they exclude someone -- i.e., decide not to hire them -- for any other reason (aside from those specifically excluded by law like "race" or gender). And they will do so whenever they've judged it's in their interests as capitalists to sign such contracts, just as when they exclude people on any other basis. Laws prohibiting such contracts don't create an actual right to work because they leave untouched the institution that actually stands in its way: capitalist private ownership of productive wealth.

Yesterday I saw the film of The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, the first sizable book I ever read at age eight, at Bryn Mawr Film Institute. They made a few changes but it kept to the spirit of the book, and I found the ending moving. It's ironic this film came out in 1970, close to the time I read it, yet I didn't know of its existence till I saw the screening announced in the paper the other day.

Warning!

I was just -- very briefly -- subscribed to a purported hookup site called CitySex. I immediately unsubscribed after ascertaining that the user who supposedly had a crush on me was nonexistent. If you read the terms of service, you'll notice that they actually reserve the right to create such dummy profiles to "promote participation." Don't waste your time on them!

Campaign to Rein In Criminal Landlords

My friend Deborah is campaigning for legislation that would facilitate coordination between agencies on different levels to help identify and rein in criminal landlords, such as the one who killed her friend and fellow tenant activist Roben Woodson. She particularly would like assistance in drafting a petition on Change.Org to push for this legislation.

To help Deborah with the petition or any other aspect of this work, contact her at kfirstfoundation@aol.com.

You know what this means, don't you? Now Roswell really HAS had a visitor from outer space!

Salvation Road play soon to be produced in New York City and Louisville, KY

I have seen this play and it is excellent. If you are living in either of these areas please go see it. The information is forwarded from ICSA's Michael Langone:

SALVATION ROAD, a new play by D.W. Gregory about the cult experience, will be produced at the New York University Steinhardt School of Educational Theatre Oct. 26 to Nov. 4. Tickets are $15 and can be obtained online at http://www.nyu.edu/ticketcentral/calendar

An early version of the play was originally presented in a staged reading at the ICSA's 2008 conference in Philadelphia.

THE STORY:

When his hip older sister Denise disappears with members of a fundamentalist church, 17-year-old Cliff Kozak struggles to hold it all together, pretending that he isn't hurt by her decision to cut him out of her life. But a year later, a chance sighting of Denise at a New Jersey strip mall leads Cliff and his best buddy Duffy on a road trip into the heart of a deepening mystery. Why would a smart and talented girl like Denise fall for the hollow promises of a sleazy preacher? Could it be that blind faith is just another term for a desperate need to belong?

Salvation Road also is scheduled for production at Walden Theatre in Louisville, Ky, Nov. 8 to 18. Tickets go on sale three weeks before the production; tickets to public productions are available from the Walden Theatre box office (502) 589-0084.

17 September 2012: After a period of less focus on my social anxiety disorder, I've started going on the offensive again. The day before my birthday, I decided to cancel the Web part of my wireless service, and also stop taking printed matter with me when I leave home. I did this because these temptations were too strong and were diverting me from taking advantage of opportunities to make conversation and meet new people. This was shortly after deciding to be more selective about things I do after dark, particularly during the week, because I wasn't leaving myself with enough energy even to think of going clubbing -- with the added disadvantage that getting home late often meant not having time and energy to prepare meals for the next day, and ending up spending more on vended food.

The effects of my choice are starting to show. I made good small talk with several attractive women this morning. This included making remarks when I previously would have fatalistically though tthat "the moment had passed." I'm feeling pretty good about myself.

Over the past few months I had four dates with the same woman. The fact that she approached me and suggested we date doubtless did something for my self-confidence, but I think my willingness to break it off with her a few weeks ago (she was only interested in being "friends") probably did more. That would explain the steps I've taken subsequently and the progress I'm now showing.

18 September 2012: I talked with Jim again today. I really appreciate the way he's able to give me frank advice and criticism, like about the importance of eye contact -- not breaking it for extended periods while accessing memories, for example. It's kind of like having a therapist without the fees. Actually, it's kind of like having a parent -- one who involves himself more than mine often did.

I've made some more small talk today. While eating lunch I did some intuitive-type art (as opposed to the highly analytical "math art" I've done more of in the past), featuring oft-outre organic figures as it tends to when I do it. I put my logo on it as a signature and will put it on my wall (or rather a copy of it, as I just ran several off here at the library).

The radio show Studio 360 asked if listeners had some song, play, book, etc. that changed their lives. This reminded me of something I'd been thinking about already recently (having in fact borrowed a related item from the library in this connection), so I submitted the following as a comment:

At age nine I read Lincoln Barnett's The Universe and Dr. Einstein. It was only my third sizable book, and it came at a time when I was distressed by disorder in the family's situation and a feeling that my parents weren't paying attention to me. I was also starting to get alienated from my schoolmates. I was very moody that year and talked a lot about killing myself.

Although my previous couple books already suggested an intellectual bent, I think that deepened with this one, as the idea that the Universe had a more beautiful, symmetrical order below the surface of things deeply appealed in these circumstances. The significance of this book for me may also be suggested by the fact that it was the first book (or anything else) that I mentally associated with a song that was on the air at the time -- and associated it with another one when I reread it the following year.

On the subway today, a girl sitting next to me was getting repeated calls, evidently from her boyfriend. She asked him why he kept "acting like you think I'm lying" -- it seemed he kept asking where she was and where she was going, even after she'd told him. I thought I really should tell her that this sort of jealousy is a bad sign and is predictive of abusive behavior. I tried to screw up the courage but hadn't managed to by the time we both got off the train and went in different directions.

This is just the fourth day since I decided to cancel mobile Web service and stop taking reading matter with me when leaving home. It's already been conducive to my starting conversations in a couple other cases. But here the fear that I'd be told to "mind my own business" still inhibited me.

I mentioned yesterday that I'm cancelling my mobile Web service. For the same reason, I won't be bringing reading matter to work. I may need certain information from the weekly papers, but I'll wait till after work to pick them up and read them after I get home. I tried something similar a couple years ago, but retreated from the discomfort in a couple days. This time I'm deploying the commitment-and-consistency principle (by publishing all this) to prevent that.

Having mobile Web has cut across my efforts vs. social anxiety disorder. So I'll be cancelling that service tomorrow. I'll keep multimedia for person-to-person only.

Dear Prudence

I've been listening to the second disc of the White Album. I don't hear this song the same way since learning about its origins a couple years ago at the cultic studies conference. Now it has a somewhat sinister undertone.

youtube.com/watch?v=7ppmdvXsMBE