provides links to information management, information sources and other "useful stuff" with a strong bias towards the management of information in a careers guidance context.
As of 17 July 2017 I include mental health information and comment.
I tweet as @careersinfo and am on LinkedIn and Facebook as Hazel Edmunds
an article by Emanuele Ferragina (CNRS and Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire d'Evaluation des Politiques Publiques (LIEPP), France), Mark Tomlinson (University of Sheffield, UK) and Robert Walker (University of Oxford, UK) published in Social Policy and Society Volume 16 Issue 4 (October 2017) Abstract
Peter Townsend argued that poverty could be scientifically measured as a ‘breakpoint’ within the income distribution below which participation collapses.
This paper stands on Townsend's shoulders in measuring the level of poverty and participation by:
broadening his original measurement of participation;
using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) in conjunction with a new dataset including 40,000 households (Understanding Society, 2011; 2013); and
taking into account the multi-cultural/ethnic nature of British society.
We find that participation – defined as lack of deprivation, social participation and trust – reduces as income falls but stops doing so among the poorest 30 per cent of individuals. This may be indicating a minimum level of participation, a floor rather than a ‘breakpoint’ as suggested by Townsend, which has to be sustained irrespective of how low income is.
Respondents with an ethnic minority background manifest lower levels of participation than white respondents but the relationship has a less linear pattern. Moreover, the floor detected for the overall population is also replicated when combining all respondents from ethnic groups.
“Niceness is the psychological armor of the people-pleaser.” ~Harriet B. Braiker
I used to think that being kind, gentle, and agreeable was guaranteed to win me love and acceptance from others. I’d tiptoe around destructive people’s behaviors, no matter how uncomfortable I felt about it, believing to my core that if only I could be nice enough to them, they would one day lead a better life.
I lived my life constantly avoiding anything that might make me look like a bad, imperfect, antagonistic, or unlikeable person. Because as every people-pleaser knows, being disliked or disapproved of feels worse than ignoring your own feelings – at least at first.
Some people were easy to please; a kind gesture or smile was all it would take. Getting their approval so effortlessly made me happier than a kid at Disney World. But with other people, it seemed the more I tried to please them, the more likely they were to treat me like an old dish rag; and the more this happened, the less I liked myself.
Eventually, my efforts to please others left me feeling disrespected, violated, and disconnected – from life, from other people, and from myself.
By day, “Olivia Doll” sits on the boards of seven academic journals; by night, she’s a Staffordshire terrier named Ollie, owned by Mike Daube, a public health expert in Perth, Australia.
Daube ginned up an intentionally absurd CV for his dog, claiming that she was senior lecturer at the Subiaco College of Veterinary Science and past associate of the Shenton Park Institute for Canine Refuge Studies (e.g., she was a shelter dog) and laying out research interests that included “the benefits of abdominal massage for medium-sized canines” and “the role of domestic canines in promoting optimal mental health in ageing males”; then he submitted it to the boards of scammy predatory journals and every single one of them added her to their editorial boards.
an article by Jacquleen Joseph, Asha Banu Soletti and Kautillya Basumatary (Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India) published in International Journal of Emergency Management Volume 13 Issue 3 (2017)
Abstract
Low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) house a majority of the displaced exposed to conflicts and the mental health consequences for these communities are well documented. Although there is an increasing recognition for mental health and psychosocial support (MH&PSS) interventions in LMIC, the efficacy of these interventions is often debated.
Several approaches have emerged in response to these debates, but have limited influence on practice.
Thus, several key issues such as the neglect of people with mental illness (PWMI) continue to persist.
The paper revisits the approach to MH&PSS in LMIC by drawing from the lived experiences of PWMI living amidst ongoing conflict in Assam. The paper highlights the gaps in the current understanding that informs programming, and the need to reconsider the traumatic stress-based approaches to MH&PSS that do not address the mental health needs of large population groups and the most vulnerable like PWMI.
a post by Eve Hogan for the World of Psychology blog
As you likely know, I write articles. I also write books. I pour thousands of words onto pages of paper or digital media in an attempt to help people access their higher selves, create healthier relationships, and walk a higher path through life; a path of love, joy, integrity and self-mastery.
A while back, I was at a tradeshow where I spent hours setting up my display. I had all of my books out, and several dozen rocks with individual words engraved in them including, “Love,” “Peace,” “Gratitude,” and “Namaste.” As the day wore on, I started to recognize a clear reality that was rather uncomfortable as an author: I was selling rocks with a single transformational word on them at a rate of about twenty-to-one over my books full of words.
The next tradeshow yielded the same results. Mind you, the price wasn’t the issue as the rocks were nearly the same price as the books. It was then that I came to a intriguing realization. One word can carry as much, if not more, potential transformation than thousands.
Really, how many words do we need to read to remember to love? Is not “compassion” alone enough to remind us to be kind and caring of others? Is not “generosity” enough to remind us to give? Is not “courage” enough to help us overcome our fears?
Perhaps a lot of words are particularly handy when we need to know how to be courageous or loving or giving, but once we know how, a single word can guide us back to our path when we have lost our way.
an article by Nina Hein (Aarhus University, Copenhagen, Denmark) published in British Journal of Sociology of Education Volume 38 Issue 8 (2017) Abstract
This article explores the subject of parents with respect to children’s bullying at school. The overarching claim is that parental agency and positions on children’s bullying at school are produced and made possible by an apparatus of multiple, concurrent forces that provide poor conditions for a constructive partnership between parents and schools in cases of bullying.
This research adds to the existing literature in the field by suggesting that the connections between schools, parents and their children’s social behaviour at school must be seen as complexly entangled and involving a range of forces at local, societal and political levels.
Furthermore, based on an emergent research design, the article contributes to the discussion of post-qualitative research, drawing upon varied, qualitative empirical material and analytically experimenting with combining Adele Clarke’s idea of situational analysis and Karen Barad’s concepts of intra-action and apparatus.
via Arts & Letters Daily: Alexandra Stein in an essay for AEON
The brainwashing methods of isolation, engulfment and fear can lead anyone to a cult. I should know – I was in one.
I began my formal research in 1999, eight years after battling my way out of a secret, so-called Marxist-Leninist group whose leader controlled my life in its most intimate details. He determined what I wore: a version of the advice in John Molloy’s bestseller Dress for Success (1975), featuring tailored blue suits and floppy red silk bowties. More significantly, he decided when I could marry, and whether I might have children. The leader’s decrees were passed down via memos typed on beige notepaper and hand-delivered to me by my ‘contact’. Because I was a low-ranked member, the leader remained unknown to me.
I joined this Minneapolis-based group, called The Organization (The O) believing I was to contribute to their stated goal of social justice, a value instilled in me by my family. However, what I actually did revolved around, first, being a factory machinist tending numerical control lathes and, then, grunt work in the group’s wholegrain bakery (we did at least make good bread) and, finally, writing business computer programs. The fact that these tasks seemed oddly disconnected from any strategy for social change did not escape my notice. I regularly questioned (until I learned not to) how all this was leading to justice for the poor and the powerless. A stern ‘struggle with the practice’ was the only answer I ever received, and back to my labours I would go, like Boxer the horse in George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945), hardworking but still unenlightened as to the ultimate goal.
a post by Joshua Kauffman for the Tiny Buddha blog
“You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection.” ~Buddha
A popular topic in the glossy magazines, learning to “love yourself” always seemed to me to be a self-indulgent first-world pastime.
It seemed obvious that the commonly-repeated mantra “love yourself first” was just a sign of the times in a world where something like half of all marriages end in divorce. When I dug a little deeper I often found either a list of new spa treatments or a litany of new age catchphrases.
All meaningless – that is until a series of failed relationships taught me the hard way why you have to love yourself first.
I had always walked into relationships from the standpoint of something I needed or wanted. I wanted to feel valued and loved. I needed to feel that my struggles had meaning, and I found this in external validation. I craved for someone to stand by me and tell me that I was worth it.
In my extremely busy and fast-paced life, I was surrounded by people so very lonely, starved of meaningful connections in a world of transactional relationships. Always the alpha-male, I craved a safe space where I could lower my defenses and be affectionate. A relationship became my way of getting what I thought I needed.
an article by Roy K. Smollan (Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand) published in International Journal of Work Organisation and Emotion Volume 8 Number 2 (2017)
Abstract
Organisational change can exacerbate pre-existing levels of work stress and employees need to cope with the new stressors as well as the old.
A qualitative study was conducted in a New Zealand healthcare authority where a number of major restructurings and other changes had occurred. The findings show that the coping strategies used before, during and after change varied over time as new demands were faced.
While the choice of strategies was influenced by personality, emotional intelligence and social identity, specific stressors needed tailored coping strategies.
The lessons the participants learnt from coping with stressful organisational change included relying on their own strengths, taking problem-solving action, managing their thoughts and emotions and accessing support networks.
Managers have a key role to play in anticipating when organisational change may elicit stress and in helping those affected to cope with it.
an article by Sandra Costa and Pedro Neves (Nova School of Business and Economics, Lisboa, Portugal) published in Work & Stress: An International Journal of Work, Health & Organisations Volume 31 Issue 4 (2017)
Abstract
Job insecurity has received growing attention from researchers because it poses serious challenges for organisations and for society as a whole. However, there are insufficient studies about the processes through which job insecurity affects outcomes as well as potential ways to reduce its negative impact.
This study focuses on the relationship between job insecurity and individual-level outcomes (in-role performance and organisational deviance) and examines if:
job insecurity is positively and/or negatively related to work outcomes,
psychological contract breach acts as a mediator of the relationship between job insecurity and work outcomes, and
positive psychological capital (PsyCap) buffers the job insecurity–work outcomes relationship via psychological contract breach.
With a sample of 362 employee–supervisor dyads, in which the outcome measures were collected from the supervisors, we found support for our hypotheses. Specifically, we found a moderated mediation effect, whereby PsyCap moderates the negative indirect relationship of job insecurity on outcomes through psychological contract breach.
an article by Sarah N. Keller (Montana State University, Billings, USA) and Timothy Wilkinson (Whitworth University, Spokane, Washington, USA) published in Journal of Social Marketing Volume 7 Issue 4 (October 2017)
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine whether a community-based suicide prevention project could increase willingness to seek professional help for suicidal ideation among young people.
Design/methodology/approach
Online surveys were administered at baseline (n = 224) and six months post-test (n = 217), consisting of the Risk Behavior Diagnosis scale; self-report questions on suicidality; willingness to engage with suicide prevention resources; and willingness to communicate with peers, family members, teachers or counselors about suicide.
Findings
A comparison of means within groups from pre- to post-test showed increases in self-efficacy for communicating about suicidal concerns with a teacher, school counselor or social worker; increases in self-efficacy for helping others; and increases in response-efficacy of interpersonal communication about suicide with a teacher, school counselor or social worker.
Practical implications
Young adults need to be willing and able to intervene in life-threatening situations affecting their peers. In step with narrative empowerment education, personal experiences can be used to communicatively reduce peer resistance to behavior change.
Originality/value
Health communicators tend to rely on overly didactic education and awareness-raising when addressing suicide prevention. This research shows the importance of direct and personal forms of influence advocated by social marketing professionals.
If you say you’re depressed, people are quick to dispense wisdom on how to deal with it. Martha Mills decided to take them literally, and try them out for herself
So, it turns out I’m getting better at depression. That isn’t to say I’ve stopped suffering it, or that it is any less debilitating when it sneaks up after a two-year hiatus and pile-drives me into a blistering agony of mental carpet burns topped with a patronising tousle of the bed-hair, like a nostalgic school bully. No, what’s “better” about me is spotting it and moving quicker through the self-blame method of diagnosis.
We all have down days, and that’s what you hope these are. Only they stopped being a day or two of feeling blue that can be whiled away with the distraction of a conspiratorial sofa and questionable DVD collection, and have merged into weeks since you were last able to feel anything but disappointment on waking up, and the choice between showering or just smelling like a tramp’s undercarriage has gone beyond struggle into pure resignation.
Being especially practised at denial, I decided that I, a mere mortal with a solid history of depressive episodes since childhood, could fake my way out of this oncoming tsunami of debilitating black fog using the advice that people who have never experienced depression trot out – an experiment that could surely only succeed [sidelong glance to camera]. I would improve my diet and exercise, force myself to take up hobbies, I would “soldier on until it passed” and thrust myself (reluctantly) into social situations. I even tried “looking on the bright side” but it turned out to just be glare on my TV.
Continue reading and discover how Martha fared along the way.
Everyone wants to be happy.
The key to life is happiness.
Do what makes you happy.
This message is everywhere, the great happiness cliché, plastered across blogs, books, and billboards.
Happiness has become the universal currency of life: we know we’ve done well if we end up with a lot of it. But why are we so convinced that happiness should be our goal? Aren’t there other things to live for?
“Happiness” is used as a vague catch-all, standing in for any type of fulfillment and any “positive emotion”. It’s associated with satisfaction of desires and even a mild anti-consumerism (“money can't buy happiness”). Although happiness might seem like something everyone should want, it’s actually a very particular value, and it shouldn't be everyone’s ultimate goal.
Are you happy? Right now, this minute? I thought not. Do you have a goal of being happy? Possibly. Probably. Perhaps now is the time to reassess your goals because in my mind goals should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-based) and believe me happiness does not meet those criteria.
The New York Times has collaborated with Berkeley economics prof Gabriel Zucman to produce an interactive explainer that walks through the baroque tax-evasion strategies deployed by multinationals like Google and Apple, as well as the super-rich, using plain language and explanatory graphics to get past the deliberately eye-glazing tedium of these arrangements, a shield of boringness that has allowed the super-rich to hide $8.7 trillion from tax authorities while taking advantage of national courts, education, roads, police, and health care.
This system of representation without taxation gives the wealthy the best of all worlds: tiny and giant countries alike scramble for crumbs from the ever-more-rich 1 percent, tilting policies in their favor.
"Try to pose for yourself this task: not to think of a polar bear, and you will see that the cursed thing will come to mind every minute." Fyodor Dostoevsky, Winter Notes on Summer Impressions
Chances are you’ve heard this game before in some form, maybe with a pink elephant instead of a polar bear. And though it’s just a game, the similar phenomenon of being unable to rid your mind of intrusive thoughts can pose serious dangers to mental health, and it’s a hallmark symptom of psychiatric disorders like post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, and schizophrenia.
What’s going on in the brain when you’re trying to clear unwanted thoughts from your mind?
Scientists just got much closer to the answer, it seems. A study published in the journal Nature by researchers at the University of Cambridge details how people with higher concentrations of the amino acid neurotransmitter GABA in their brain’s hippocampal region tend to be better at blocking unwanted thoughts, images and memories.
Continue readingincludes links to further reading. Very interesting.
a post by Myra Espey for the World of Psychology blog
Mental health problems are infamously complicated. Although psychologists have a successful guidebook to identify and diagnose mental illness, those manuals are merely suggestions for treatment – and can’t predict exactly how you experience your psychological and emotional well-being. With that in mind, some people experience multiple forms of mental health disorders, often in various degrees. If somebody has several mental health conditions, it’s known as “comorbidity,” and anxiety and depression are the two most related diagnoses.
an article by Dani Rodrik published in The Milken Review [via 3 Quarks Daily]
Electorates around the world were told not only that globalization was inevitable, but also that it necessarily took the particular form they were witnessing. The nation-state, it was said, was the enemy of globalization, and therefore had to get out of the way. Globalization required ever-stronger global rules mandated by trade agreements, multilateral organizations and international networks of regulators. But not to worry: it would promote economic progress and political harmony, even if not for everyone right away.
None of this was quite true. There is nothing inevitable about advancing economic integration, nor about the route that globalization takes if it does move forward. And contrary to conventional wisdom, nation-states are absolutely essential to globalization because they provide the public services ranging from law enforcement to macroeconomic stabilization that are needed for open markets to thrive. By the same token, global governance is largely superfluous: proper trade, financial, monetary and regulatory policies required to sustain an open world economy do not require much coordination when governments do their jobs well.
Consider, too, the idea that nations needed to shape up to benefit from integration. This transformed globalization into an end rather than a means. The right and the left differed on the regimen needed. The right emphasized getting the investment environment right: cutting red tape, for instance, and reducing corporate taxes. The left talked about investment in skills, education and infrastructure. But in both cases, globalization was assumed to be the goal, not the route to the goal.
Hazel’s comment I like the style of one of the foremost economists in the world. He does not patronise his readers but at the same time makes his arguments understandable to most people. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did. My favourite thought on this issue is that organisations are free to spread around the world but the workers are not.
Some firms pay well while others don’t; and some are highly productive while many aren’t. Giuseppe Berlingieri, Patrick Blanchenay and Chiara Criscuolo analyse new firm-level data on the increasing dispersion of wages and productivity in both the manufacturing and services sectors in 16 OECD countries – the ‘Great Divergences’.
When I was thirteen, I experienced a monumental change in my young life.
It wasn’t a big move, no one close to me died, and although puberty was rocking my world in the worst way, it was something else altogether that shook me to the core:
The movie Titanic came out.
I know, I know, it’s just a movie, and I was just another swooning teenager wishing that I was the one Jack never wanted to let go of, but it hit me hard. Truth, love, the pain of loss: a woman following her heart and risking it all for true love. I relished every second of its three hours and fifteen minute run time.
So much that I saw it multiple times over winter break at school – usually with my equally enamored mom, sometimes with my best friend, always with a lump in my throat. I held back tears as I saw Jack’s face disappearing into the icy waters, always wondering why Rose couldn’t make room for him on the raft, each time imagining myself in the situation: falling in love, making tough choices, persevering through loss.
Continue readingplease as this intro has a purpose. Not everyone watching that film was moved by it in the way that Melissa was. The image above encapsulates the message. The girl in the rain prevents the water reaching her by using an umbrella, the boy with the bowl is collecting precious water.
a post by Rebecca Lee for the World of Psychology blog
“On a scale of 1-10, how do you feel?”
It’s a question that most psychiatrists ask when assessing mood and medication maintenance. The scale is used to monitor feelings of anxiety, depression and other mental health issues. A patient’s response is the main test used for treatment.
But if 1 means that a person feels ecstatic, and 10 means they are suicidal, what is a 6 or a 3? What happens if a patient feels like something is wrong, but nothing has happened? Or if they can’t stop crying since their dog died last week? How much of an impact do average issues have? Are they really feeling an 8 or is the magnitude of sorrow dependent on the specific moment they are experiencing at the time? The scale has problems of its own.
“Normal” is a popular word in U.S. culture. We all want to feel it, but the definition is murky. To believe in something unreal seems abnormal. For example, schizophrenia involves hallucinations or magical thinking that falls under the category of psychosis. This has no basis in reality. Religion, however, involves unexplained theories and ideologies that also may not have basis on this earth. According to the Pew Research Center, 70.6% of Americans are Christian. Are Christian’s abnormal?
Poppy meadow by Body-n-Care. Public domain viaPixabay.
When you stretch a rubber band, even after many times, it will likely return to its original form. We call this resilience. When children are stretched and bent out of shape due to bad experiences they encounter, we expect they will be resilient too and snap back to their previous self. However, after various types of difficult or traumatic interactions, children are not the same. The analogy of the rubber band does not hold up.
Most children experience bullying in some capacity – as victim, as witness, as bully – or maybe all three. As adults we tend to think there is no damage, with the exception of perhaps an uncomfortable memory or two. However, the science on this subject depicts something different.
I rarely provide a link to the book being promoted by the OUP but this one seems too important to leave to the chance that you will link through to the original post. More information and the chance to buy Out of my budget range at £19.99 but it may be available in a public library or possibly secondhand (published June 2016).
My time in the gutter taught me how much the homeless deserve our compassion.
George begs beneath the NatWest cashpoint across the road from Stockwell Tube station. Sometimes you’ll see other people begging there, but mostly this is George’s pitch. He’s a wizened man with the weathered-walnut complexion of the long-term street sleeper and addict-alcoholic. George is small and very thin and has hardly any teeth; I rather like him.
His backstory will be familiar to anyone who has ever taken an interest in the homeless: his father a drug addict who died young; his mother an alcoholic who couldn’t cope. George and his sister were in and out of care throughout their early childhood and then vanished into the system.
I haven’t been able to get from George a straight account of the events that precipitated him into a gutter near me, but that is not surprising: alcoholics are usually pretty resentful people, and because they are so ill-used by their malady it is difficult for them to distinguish between the world’s bemerding and the shit they’ve got themselves into. George speaks of a young daughter’s untimely death and an estranged wife. Once he had both a home of his own and a decent trade – plastering – but now he gets plastered to forget about everything he’s lost.
an article by Tamara Kayali Browne for the Guardian
Psychiatric diagnosis must serve an ethical purpose: relieving certain forms of suffering and disease. Science alone can’t do that
How do we decide what emotions, thoughts and behaviours are normal, abnormal or pathological?
This is essentially what a select group of psychiatrists decide each time they revise the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), considered a “bible” for mental health professionals worldwide.
But questions like this cannot be answered by scientists alone. This was famously demonstrated when homosexuality was declassified as a mental illness in the DSM in 1973. The decision was not based on new scientific evidence but came about due to pressure from activists. Cases such as this show the limitations of psychiatry and is where I believe philosophers, sociologists and ethicists could be of use.
a post by David Crotty for The Scholarly Kitchen blog
The societal and personal damage inflicted by unregulated technology companies is rapidly becoming evident.
As Justin Rosenstein, the engineer who created the Facebook “like” button notes, “One reason I think it is particularly important for us to talk about this now is that we may be the last generation that can remember life before [smartphones and social media].” Rosenstein is among a group of ex-Facebook and Google employees leading the backlash after seeing what their well-meaning but naïve work has become.
Continue readingYou can link to further information as well as watching a video which sets out the issues clearly.
a post by Jennifer Gregory for the Tiny Buddha blog
Julius Caesar has long been my favorite work of William Shakespeare. I am drawn to the political intrigue, the betrayal, the powerful words of Marc Antony.
One line from the play has always remained lodged in my mind:
“The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”
The line often pops into my head when I feel unjustly persecuted or blamed. Shakespeare understood hundreds of years ago that human nature causes us to feel self-centered and unjustly targeted.
an article by AlbertBarque-Duran, Emmanuel M.Pothos and James A.Hampton (City, University of London, UK) and James M.Yearsley (Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA) published in Computers in Human Behavior
Volume 75 (October 2017)
Highlights
This is one of the first studies on the impact of Digital Age in moral judgments.
Moral judgments depend on the Digital Context in which a dilemma is presented.
Choices become more utilitarian vs. deontological when using Smartphones vs. PCs.
The results have implications regarding the Dual-Process Models of moral judgments.
The results have also implications regarding Human-Computer Interaction.
Abstract
Nowadays, several of the situations in which we have to make decisions are in digital form.
In a first experiment (N = 1010) we showed that people's moral judgments depend on the Digital Context (Smartphone vs. PC) in which a dilemma is presented, becoming more utilitarian (vs. deontological) when using Smartphones in high conflict moral dilemmas.
To provide additional evidence, we ran a second (N = 250) and a third experiment (N = 300), where we introduced time constraints and we manipulated time instructions.
Our results provide an extended perspective on Dual-Process Models of Moral Judgment, as we showed that the use of smartphones, often assumed to be hurried which would be consistent with gut-feeling decision-making, increased the likelihood of utilitarian responses and decreased deontological ones.
We suggest that the increase in utilitarian judgments is a result of inducing high construal, increasing psychological distance and giving rise to an abstract representation of actions.
A fourth experiment (N = 1211), where we measured psychological distance, provided some first evidence for our hypotheses. This is one of the first studies to look at the impact of the digital age on moral judgments and the results presented have consequences for understanding moral choice in our increasingly virtualized world.
an advanced review by Saul M Kassin published in WIREs Cognitive Science Volume 8 Issue 6 (November/December 2017)
As illustrated by numerous cases in recent years, DNA exonerations of innocent individuals have cast a spotlight on the counterintuitive problem of false confessions.
Studying the underlying psychology scientists have found that
innocent people are often targeted for interrogation because police make erroneous but confident judgments of deception;
certain interrogation techniques – namely, lengthy sessions, presentations of false evidence, and minimization themes that imply leniency, increase the risk that innocent people will confess;
certain individuals are particularly vulnerable to influence – notably, those with mental health problems or intellectual impairments, which render them overly compliant or suggestible, and children and adolescents, who exhibit ‘immaturity of judgment’;
confession evidence is highly persuasive in court as a matter of common sense, increasing perceptions of guilt, even among judges and juries who see the confession as coerced, and even at times when the confession is contradicted by exculpatory information; and
Miranda rights to silence and to counsel are not sufficiently protective, so proposals for reform have centered on the mandatory recording of interrogations, from start to finish, and a shift toward using investigative interviewing – a less confrontational, less deceptive means of questioning suspects.
People take fitness seriously. Those ten thousand steps. Marathon over, time to tackle the ultra-marathon. Pounds upon pounds on the squat rack – just make sure to post it or it never happened. And yoga, well, people take their yoga very seriously.
Taking health seriously is wonderful, arguably better than not considering it at all. That said, one of the greatest joys of exercise is play. Your workout should be hard, otherwise you’ll plateau and never grow stronger. Yet this does not imply it can’t be fun.
Many sequences I create for my classes begin with me rolling around on the floor. In fact, that’s what inspired me to pursue fitness in the first place, a dance class in which crawling around was mandatory. It reminded me of my youngest years rolling down hills because, well, the hill was there. Only later do we justify what once was spontaneous and pleasurable.
a column by Reda Cherif, Fuad Hasanov and Aditya Pande for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal
The motor vehicle was very quick to replace horses in the early 20th century, and the advent of the electric car suggests that another profound shift in transportation and energy could be around the corner. This column projects how different rates of electric car adoption will effect oil demand and consumption over the next three decades. In a fast-adoption scenario, oil prices could converge to the level of current coal prices by the early 2040s. Even under a slow adoption scenario, oil could become obsolete before it is depleted.
In High intelligence: A risk factor for psychological and physiological overexcitabilities, a group of academic and industry neuroscientists survey a self-selected group of 3,715 MENSA members about their mental health history and find a correlation between high IQ and clinical anxiety and depression disorders, an effect they attribute to “overexitabilities” – “the same heightened awareness that inspires an intellectually gifted artist to create can also potentially drive that same individual to withdraw into a deep depression”.
It’s an interesting study and it has a good sample size, but there are some big caveats here.
First, it’s not clear that IQ measures intelligence. People from higher incomes tend to score higher on IQ tests, and you can “study” for an IQ test, which suggests that what's being measured is a set of acquired skills and knowledge, not the capacity to acquire those skills and knowledge (your “quotient”).
Second, joining MENSA may be an indicator of some underlying insecurity about your intellect or place in the world, reflecting a predisposition to depression or anxiety, so they may have instead discovered that MENSA membership (not high IQ) is correlated with mental illness.
Third, the sample self-selected from an email blast to the MENSA membership, so again, perhaps they’ve found a link between a willingness to disclose mental illness to researchers and high IQ, or MENSA membership, or whatever.
Finally, in the US, access to medical care and thus formal mental health diagnosis is strongly correlated with income. That means that you’re more likely to have a professional affirm that your distress is caused by a clinical disorder if you’re wealthy than if you’re poor. High IQ correlates with wealth, and the wealth distribution in the study draws from disproportionately high-income subjects (“41.7% earned over $100,000; 16.9% earned between $76,000 and $100,000; 20.1% earned between $51,000 and $75,000; 14.9% earned between $26,000 and $50,000; and 3.9% earned less than $25,000”) so maybe they’ve found a correlation between wealth and mental health diagnoses.
Continue readingand discover that Cory himself has had mental health problems.
The latest edition of What do graduates do? has shown that a robust graduate jobs market combined with a sharp rise in students taking postgraduate courses has led to the lowest graduate unemployment rate since 1989.
What do graduates do? is the result of a close collaboration between AGCAS and Prospects, on behalf of the Higher Education Careers Service Unit (HECSU) to analyse the destinations of last year’s graduates, six months after leaving university.
Findings
It reported a fall in the graduate unemployment rate to 5.3% from 5.7% in 2016. Only three years in the last 40 has the UK experienced lower levels. The employment rate for graduates also fell, from 76% to 74%.
The reason both employment and unemployment rates fell is due to a sharp rise in graduates entering further study. Increasing from 13% to 16% this year – 39,135 graduates entered further study, up from 32,385 last year.
While the UK is currently not in recession, increasing numbers of graduates going into further study are historically linked to economic downturn, as demonstrated in the last three major downturns.
The report also found that while there were large rises in graduates entering nursing, marketing, finance and IT, there were significant falls in the number of graduates working in medicine, teaching and engineering, reflecting the decreasing number of students studying those subjects. Despite many industries such as these having a shortage of workers, this did not translate into higher graduate starting salaries, which remained flat at an average of around £21,000.
Recent research has challenged the consensus that sudden inflows of refugees have little or no impact on natives’ wages and employment, claiming instead that there are uniformly large detrimental effects on natives without school qualifications. Michael Clemens and Jennifer Hunt demonstrate the flaws in this analysis: the labour market impact of immigration is small even on natives with low skill levels.
The recent surge in migration to Europe has brought renewed attention to research on the labour market effects of sudden major inflows of refugees and a reassessment of the findings of four particularly influential studies:
Card (1990), who finds that a large inflow of Cubans to Miami in 1980 did not affect natives’ wages or unemployment.
Hunt (1992), who finds that a large flow of refugees from post-independence Algeria to France caused a small increase in native unemployment.
Friedberg (2001), who finds that a large inflow of post-Soviet Jews to Israel 1990-94 did not reduce natives’ wages.
And Angrist and Kugler (2003), who find that a surge of Balkan refugees during the 1990s was associated with higher native unemployment across 18 European countries, but who do not interpret the association as causal because it is unstable and statistically insignificant.
Two recent studies have challenged these results by re-analysing all four of the refugee waves. The researchers claim that earlier work obscured uniformly large detrimental effects from all four waves, either by aggregating the affected workers with unaffected workers (Borjas, 2017), through inadequate identification of causality (Borjas and Monras, 2017) or both.
a column by Donald R. Davis, Jonathan Dingel, Joan Monras and Eduardo Morales for VOX: CEPR's Policy Portal
Smart devices and online activity generate a stream of data describing human behaviour in great detail. Social scientists can tap such data to examine previously unexplored topics. This column uses online restaurant reviews to measure consumption segregation. In New York City, restaurant consumption is considerably more racially integrated than residences. A substantial share of consumption segregation is attributable to the fact that consumers are less likely to visit restaurants in neighbourhoods with demographics unlike their own.
a post by Dr. Alicia H. Clark for the your tango blog
I wish that someone would illustrate a story about anxiety with an image of a man. Black, white or any shade in between but something which shows that men feel the effects of anxiety disorder as much women.
How we think about anxiety (and what we do with it) are critical to how it impacts us.
It isn’t easy to tell the difference between healthy and unhealthy anxiety. Few emotions conjure more definitional confusion than anxiety.
Websters Dictionary defines anxiety as “apprehensive uneasiness or nervousness usually over an impending or anticipated ill: a state of being anxious”. A rare few of us hasn’t felt this normal human emotion, so ubiquitous is its experience.
But anxiety is also a class of psychopathology driving more than 25 diagnoses that span nearly 100 pages in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM5), the diagnostic measuring tool for psychological disorders.
So what is it? Healthy or unhealthy?
Like to so many constructed dichotomies, the answer to this one is: it depends.
Anxiety can be both healthy and unhealthy. And telling the difference largely depends on how it impacts you, what you think about it, and what you do with it.
an article by Camilla Borgna (Research Unit “Skill Formation and Labor Markets”, WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Germany) published in Journal of European Social Policy Volume 27 Issue 4 (October 2017)
Abstract
Education is increasingly seen as a substitute for social policy, but opportunities for skill development vary by social background and educational institutions are not neutral in this respect.
While previous research has extensively examined how schooling affects skills distribution, the role of post-compulsory education has been long overlooked.
Using data from the 2011/2012 Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competences, this article investigates how selected features of upper secondary and tertiary education are connected to the social stratification of young adults’ literacy skills in 18 OECD countries.
First, I use individual-level regressions to assess the extent to which disparities in the skills of 24- to 29-year-old individuals are explained by parental education in each country.
Second, I apply fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis across countries to investigate under which institutional conditions the social stratification of young adults’ literacy skills is most severe.
The findings point to the existence of functionally equivalent education regimes:
young adults face severe disparities not only in socially selective higher education systems but also in relatively open systems characterized by institutional differentiation; moreover,
disparities arising during compulsory schooling are consequential for the skill distribution of young adults, underscoring the importance of a life-course approach to education policies.
“When I loved myself enough, I began leaving whatever wasn’t healthy. This meant people, jobs, my own beliefs and habits—anything that kept me small. My judgment called it disloyal. Now I see it as self-loving,” ~Kim McMillen
I started learning about self-love a long time ago.
In fact, I started learning about self-love so long ago that when, fifteen years later, a shaman in Peru I told me that self-love was the answer to all my questions, I got really pissed off!
I had struggled with depression as a teenager. For about two years, I lived a very sad life. I don't even remember much to be honest. I felt the pain of existence. I avoided people. Every day felt like yet another obstacle to overcome. I existed rather than lived. Eventually, I overcame it and discovered some tools that I still use to help me with any low moments l might have today. One of them was the practice of self-love.
I found a few helpful books on meditation, the Silva Method, visualization, and the famous book You Can Heal Your Life, by Louise Hay.
I wrote affirmations daily. I kept doing my mirror work. I started to be more appreciative and kinder to myself. I meditated regularly and gradually rebuilt myself. I thought I had nailed self-love. I thought I had really understood what self-love was.
an article Eliane Bucher and Christian Fieseler (BI Norwegian Business School, Norway) published in New Media & Society Volume 19 Issue 11 (November 2017)
Abstract
Digital microwork is a type of labor that many – typically poorly paid – workers engage in. In our research, we focus on an experience-based model of digital labor and the nonmonetary benefits derived from such activities.
Based on a survey of 701 workers at Amazon Mechanical Turk, we demonstrate that experiences during digital labor sequences generate flow-like states of immersion. We show that reaching flow-like states while performing microwork depends on certain work characteristics, such as the particular worker’s degree of autonomy, the extent to which a worker’s skills are utilized, and the apparent significance of and feedback derived from the task.
The results both highlight the importance of flow-like immersion in explaining why individuals engage in digital labor projects and point to avenues that can lead to the design of better digital work experiences.
a guide for employers written exclusively for ByteStart by Poppy Jaman, CEO of Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) England, and CEO of City Mental Health Alliance, a coalition of London based businesses working to increase understanding of mental health issues and to create a culture of good mental health in the City.
A bit of background: I was first introduced to Bytestart not long after I had set up my own business in 1995. I would not have survived without the advice given – seriously I would not have. I’m glad I have continued reading the regular posts. Now there’s this fantastic guide for employers / line managers about dealing with mental health issues in the workplace. If you are an employee who is affected then showing your manager this item might help.
Each year around ten million adults in the UK will experience mental ill health, meaning one in four of us will experience a mental health issue at some point in our lifetime.
Over the past decade, mental health awareness has accelerated, and more and more employers now understand that mental health is not only a serious issue for society but for businesses too.
With ‘mental health in the workplace’ as the theme for this year’s World Mental Health Day, we asked Poppy Jaman, CEO of Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) England, to share her advice on how to look out for, and respond to, signs of mental ill health in your employees.
an article by Philip McCann (Sheffield University Management School, UK) published in Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society Volume 10 Issue 3 (October 2017)
Abstract
This article examines the geographical drivers and outcomes of demographic ageing and population decline and the possible differential impacts on cities and regions.
Evidence from OECD and European Union regions and cities is used to motivate discussions about the likely long-run effects of demographic change on the efficacy of public policy to manage the population decline and the fiscal implications of trends towards governance decentralisation.
As it becomes evident, there are significant, demographically driven asymmetries regarding both the fiscal underpinnings of local government and the efficacy of local land-use management and adjustment policies. In general, regions facing adverse demographic trends appear to be increasingly vulnerable over the long-term to increasing fiscal constraints, thereby limiting their ability to effectively and pragmatically manage decline.
a post by Stephen Abram for Stephen’s Lighthouse blog
“A short article on the Royal Statistical Society’s Statslife site by Hetan Shah (RSS Executive Director) a few days ago asserts that:
Critical thinking and stats literacy are the answers to a post-truth age. It finishes by saying that “We should explore new ways of promoting critical thinking, statistical literacy and a curious mindset among people young and old. As is so often the case, technical and policy fixes can only take us so far; education is the only sustainable answer to this major societal issue.” Shah, H. (2017, May 17).
The RSS site is worth exploring further, especially the Resources section, where the section “for journalists” could be equally useful for students: it includes exercises, presentations etc. https://www.statslife.org.uk/
When I was actively involved in the production of statistics and/or reporting on stats that other people had produced I used the RSS site frequently. I also went to meetings of labour market statisticians and others. I miss those activities but life changes. H
an article by Jamal Al-Nabulsi (The Hashemite University, Jordan; Al-Ahliyya Amman University, Jordan), Jumana Ma'touq (Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany), Emad E. Abdallah (The Hashemite University, Jordan) and Tarek Haloubi and Ali Manasra (Al-Ahliyya Amman University, Jordan) published in International Journal of Innovative Computing and Applications Volume 8 Number 3
Abstract
Because of the wide use of smartphones in our daily activities, a wide range of mobile applications have been developed to serve as assistive technologies. However, there is a lack of applications in the Arabic language to assist disabled people.
The main aim of this paper is to build a simple yet accurate Arabic language application that is capable of helping blind users in real-time.
In the proposed technology, the blind user captures a photo and records his/her voice inquiry. The query is instantly sent with the captured photo to a set of volunteers. The volunteers answer the blind user enquiries and send the answers back.
Fifteen visually impaired persons and ten volunteers were used in the experimental testing. The scenarios were carefully created based on realistic situations. The subjects were then asked to answer a questionnaire to test if their queries were answered effectively and efficiently.
The early results are promising because all blind users found the proposed technology useful and 80% of them wanted to use it on a daily basis. In addition, all volunteers found the application easy to use with clear instructions and 80% of them were excited about using it to assist blind users.
an article by
Philip M. Napoli (Duke University, NC, USA) and
Robyn Caplan (Data & Society Research Institute, New York, USA)
published in First Monday Volume 22 Number 5 (May 2017)
Abstract
A common position amongst social media platforms and online content aggregators is their resistance to being characterized as media companies. Rather, companies such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter have regularly insisted that they should be thought of purely as technology companies.
This paper critiques the position that these platforms are technology companies rather than media companies, explores the underlying rationales, and considers the political, legal, and policy implications associated with accepting or rejecting this position.
As this paper illustrates, this is no mere semantic distinction, given the history of the precise classification of communications technologies and services having profound ramifications for how these technologies and services are considered by policy-makers and the courts.
a post by Kimberly Diaz-Rosso for the Tiny Buddha blog
“Change your thoughts and you change the world.” ~Norman Vincent Peale
We all encounter times in life when someone says or does something that offends us. After the fact, no matter how hard we try to let go of feelings of hurt or resentment, we might find it hard to move on.
I know, I’ve been there before myself, mostly when I wished I'd told people how I really felt in certain encounters, or when I doubted what I said or did and then replayed past events over again in my mind.
I am a reformed people pleaser, and as a result, I haven’t always expressed my honest feelings to others.
More times that I can count, I felt self-conscious and anxious while approaching certain people and situations in life.
A simple practice? Nobody said it would be easy. Remember to breathe is simple, I know how to do it going round the four sides of the square in 16 seconds. It is not easy within the context of a panic attack!
WARNING: A single study of 22 people is no reason to try this for yourself. Besides which I believe that it is illegal.
As we have mentioned on Big Think before, psychedelic drugs are currently enjoying a surge of new interest in medicine. Psilocybin (the compound in magic mushrooms) is showing potential in the treatment of anxiety, and LSD shows promise against alcoholism. While some of these drugs were used previously for therapeutic purposes, their association with the counterculture proved dangerous to their legality. As such, only now are their potential benefits being reconsidered.
A recent study shows yet another psychedelic to have potent and potentially therapeutic effects. The drug is Ayahuasca, a concoction consisting primarily of the chemical DMT, with other elements added to aid in the absorption of the drug. DMT is incredibly powerful; users often report the sensation of being in a different world, and when brewed as Ayahuasca the length of a trip goes from five minutes to several hours. Ayahuasca is therefore regarded, justly, as one of the most extreme psychedelic drugs in existence.
The study by José Carlos Bouso and others examined the brains of 22 long-term users of Ayahuasca. When their brains were measured for thickness in the posterior cingulate cortex it was found that they had reduced levels of brain activity in that region. This isn’t as bad as it sounds; this part of the brain is associated with anxiety and depression. The size of this region is also negatively associated with working memory performance.
Continue readingthere are many links to other sources of information.
an article by Simon Duffy published by the Centre for Welfare Reform October Newsletter
For more than 12 years Barnsley Council has been quietly pressing ahead with a series of interconnected reforms whose purpose has been to transform the relationship of local government with local people. Even while austerity has savaged local government funding, Barnsley Council has persisted with this strategy: to advance social justice, not through public services or privatisation, but by giving citizens, families and local communities more power and control over their own destinies.
This report is an independent perspective on the nature and meaning of these reforms. The report argues that the only sustainable future for local government that is consistent with social justice is one where the rights and responsibilities of citizens are made central. Barnsley has already demonstrated that:
Local people and employers can help people find work better than the privatised providers who have been parachuted into local communities by Whitehall
Local families can be empowered to organise more effective health and social care for themselves if they are given clear entitlements and the right kind of support
Local people can improve their own communities, if local government works in partnership with them and focus more on the smaller communities where people live
Not only does the report document some of the important progress made, it also brings together important sources of information to demonstrate that:
Local government and poorer communities have been the primary target of central government cuts
Resources and power are centralised in London and in other non-accountable bodies
The current distribution of resources severely disadvantages proud Northern towns like Barnsley
There is an enormous reservoir of citizen capacity within our communities, which can be galvanised by the kinds of strategies developed in Barnsley
Barnsley is not alone in trying to develop a socially just response to austerity and in trying to develop a positive role for local government in the twenty-first century. However its quiet long-term commitment to the values of citizenship and community are striking and the results very impressive. Moreover, when you examine the detail of its achievements then serious questions are raised about current talk of devolution:
Will devolution really offer any meaningful change?
Will power be shifted to local communities or simply to large regional bodies?
Will the overall financial settlement continue to be so radically unfair and biased against the North of England?
What constitutional protections will protect the rights of citizens and the coherence of any emerging structures?
Everyone is agreed that the England needs to become much less centralised. Paying attention to the learning from Barnsley offers insight into what is possible, but also the grave obstacles in our way.
Researchers from Politecnico di Milano and Trend Micro conducted an audit of the information security design of commonly used industrial robots and found that these devices are extremely insecure:
robots could be easily reprogrammed to violate their safety parameters, both by distorting the robots' ability to move accurately and by changing the movements the robots attempt to perform;
hacked robots can also be made to perform movements with more force than is safe;
normal safety measures that limit speed and force can be disabled;
robots can be made to falsify their own telemetry, fooling human operators;
emergency manual override switches can be disabled or hidden;
robots can be silently switched from manual to automatic operation, making them move suddenly and forcefully while dangerously close to oblivious, trusting humans; and of course,
robots can be caused to manufacture faulty goods that have to be remanufactured or scrapped.
an article by Robbie J. Marsh, Joseph John Morgan, Kyle Higgins, Allison Lark and Jack Thomas Watts (University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA)published in Journal of Disability Policy Studies Volume 28 Issue 2 (September 2017)
Abstract
Mental health is quickly becoming a major topic of concern in education, particularly as it relates to the provision of services for students with emotional and behavioral disorders. In this study, state policies related to the provision of mental health services were reviewed, with specific attention paid to the capacity of services and relationships between state policies and the educational environment.
Open coding was used to determine the variables and services provided within each state’s policies. Axial coding was used to determine relationships between codes and ensure alignment and accuracy of findings.
Interrater reliability, using a 7-point rubric, was conducted to ensure accuracy of coding. Findings indicate that the majority of states have policies related to the provision of mental health services, but the structure and implementation of these services differ vastly by state.
Similarities were found in the provision of mental health services within the educational environment, which typically occurred as a collaboration between schools and community agency partnerships.
Implications for practice and the preparation of educational professionals will be discussed.
an article by Bilal Afsar and Mariam Masood (Hazara University, Mansehra, Pakistan) and Sadia Cheema (National College of Business Administration and Economics, Lahore, Pakistan) published in International Journal of Information Systems and Change Management Volume 9 Number 2 (2017) Abstract
Although emotional dissonance has been broadly investigated in the literature, the relationship of emotional dissonance and emotional intelligence with job-stress, burnout and well-being in nursing profession requires further exploration.
This study examines the extent to which emotional dissonance and emotional intelligence are associated with job-stress, burnout and well-being among nurses working in public sector hospitals of Pakistan.
The moderating role of emotional intelligence is evaluated as a key factor in the rescue of healthcare workers from job-stress and burnout thus increasing job retention.
Data were collected from 379 nurses working in public sector hospitals of Pakistan through a cross-sectional quantitative research design. The results show that both emotional dissonance and emotional intelligence have significant effects on nurses' perceived job-stress, burnout and well-being.
The moderating effect of emotional intelligence is also confirmed.
These findings provide additional evidence for the important effects that emotional dissonance and emotional intelligence can have on nurses' job-stress, burnout and well-being. The potential benefits of emotional intelligence in the nurses' emotional work have been explored.
a post by Olivia Goldhill in Quartz with grateful thanks to 3 Quarks Daily
Self-help really can help (AP Photo/Bob Wands)
Seeking out the perfect therapist can feel as significant and difficult as finding a romantic partner. A study on the effectiveness of trained therapists versus self-help treatment, though, suggests that therapists are not as important as they seem.
A meta-analyses of 15 studies, published in this month’s volume of Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research, found no significant difference in the treatment outcomes for patients who saw a therapist and those who followed a self-help book or online program.
The researchers, led by Robert King, psychology professor at Queensland University of Technology in Australia, evaluated the outcomes of 723 patients who were treated for a variety of mental health conditions, including anxiety, PTSD, OCD, and depression.
Of course in the UK you get what you are given (or not as the case might be) unless you are willing and able to pay but the ideas here may help when waiting for help. H.
Street artist turns drab urban spaces into whimsical delights
via Boing Boing by Andrea James
Street artist Tom Bob has made it his mission to turn a world full of drab and unremarkable little corners into charming moments with his brightly-colored re-renderings. Continue reading
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Frozen in time: the miraculous gold rush movies buried under the Yukon ice
via the Guardian by Christina Newland Washing Gold on 20 Above Hunter, Klondike, 1901, and image from Dawson City: Frozen Time. Photograph: Kino Lorner/Everett Collection/Alamy
In 1978, in north-west Canada’s Yukon territory, construction on a new recreation centre was under way in a small rural settlement called Dawson City. As bulldozers tore up the ground where the previous sports hall had stood, a remarkable discovery came to light: hundreds of reels of ancient nitrate film. Some 533 silent films were recovered, including newsreels and features of all types, dating from the 1910s and 20s. Most were previously unknown to film scholars or thought to be totally lost. But for 49 years the inhospitable cold of the Yukon landscape had safely protected the films – which had been found at the bottom of an old swimming pool. Continue reading
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10 of the Best Poems about Stars
via Interesting Literature
The best starry poems
Stars, like flowers and the moon and sunsets, are part of the ‘paint-by-numbers’ poetry toolkit: if you want to write a passable poem that sounds consciously ‘poetic’, you can, as S Club 7 put it, reach for the stars. But poets throughout the centuries have put the stars to more thoughtful and interesting use than mere poetic decoration, offering songs in celebration of the starry firmament and more pessimistic takes on the stars in the sky and what they tell us about ourselves. Continue reading
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Always a Critic
The political consequences of Norman Mailer and Norman Podhoretz’s friendship
via Arts & Letters Daily: Paula Marantz Cohen for The Smart Set
We all know that a book can change the shape of history. Think The Communist Manifesto and Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, not to mention the Bible and the Koran. But a book review? How much influence could a book review possibly have?
Judging from Norman Mailer’s review of Norman Podhoretz’s 1967 memoir, Making It, a lot. Serving as a catchall and a coda for the collective judgment of liberal intellectuals of the day, Mailer’s review would help turn Podhoretz against his progressive roots and harness his exceptional energy and intellect on behalf of neoconservatism, a movement that played a role in the election of Ronald Reagan, the two Bushes, and Donald Trump. Continue reading
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Pelléas et Mélisande review – fresh light on Debussy's mysterious fairytale
an article by Tim Ashley for the Guardian A spy in the house of love … Andrea Carroll as MéŽlisande, William Davies as Yniold and Jonathan McGovern as PelléŽas. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian
We tend to think of Debussy’s symbolist tragedy primarily as a hermetic work, examining half-voiced, festering emotions in an aristocratic world remote from the mundane. But are we right to do so? And if not, then what is the external reality that its protagonists so carefully seek to avoid? These are some of the questions posed by Michael Boyd’s new staging, a striking achievement that blends tradition with innovation to shed fresh light on the opera’s complexities. Continue reading
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How to turn a carrot into a recorder
via Boing Boing by Caroline Siede
That is all! =============================
From Persia to Iran, via Inglistan
via The National Archives blog by Dr Juliette Desplat
‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’ Or would it? In 1933, the Persians asked governments around the world to make slight adjustments to the way in which they referred to their country and ruler. In 1934, they informed foreigners that from 21 March 1935 Persia should be officially called Iran.
This may sound like reasonable requests given the Persians (or Iranians, as they were to be called) had been calling their country this for, well, ever. The Foreign Office, however, didn’t see it that way.
On 1 December 1933 the Oriental Secretary in Tehran, Trott, sent a memo on the change of titles requested by the Persians, and its importance. The Persians, he explained, wanted their country to be referred to as the Imperial Persian State and their ruler, the Shah, to be acknowledged as Sháhinsháh (King of Kings), a title used since Antiquity. ‘It is arguable,’ he wrote, ‘that the Persians are entitled to decide for themselves what their State and their Government should be called.’
However, he continued, the British Government had never used these names in the past, and it was clear it was merely ‘an attempt to magnify the importance of the Persian Government through the re-adoption of an ancient appellation’ (FO 371/17890). The story goes through a lot of what we in the present age would probably see as silliness [interesting reading though] and ends with this:
But at least, in 1952, confirmation was given that it should be safe enough to speak of the Shah of Iran but stroke Persian cats, on Persian rugs. Read for yourself
Because my father was working in Abadan for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in the late 40s and up to nationalisation of the oil company I thought I would look that up too.
…
The immediate consequence was that the Iranian oil business was brought to a standstill, as the Britons who operated the Abadan refinery left the country and the international oil companies, supported by the British and American governments, refused to buy or transport Iranian oil. Full story
I was discussing this with my husband who said, “that sounds like what Robert Mugabe did to the white farmers”. =============================
Deconstructing pseudoscience
via OUP Blog by Charles M. Wynn Snr and Arthur W. Wiggins Ball by FeeLoona. Public domain via Pixabay.
Can magicians (illusionists) really levitate themselves and others or bend spoons using only the power of their mind? No. Emphatically no. But they surely make it seem as if they can.
Enjoy being fooled? Then you’ll love watching really good magic shows that allow people the opportunity to suspend their disbelief momentarily. But don’t let this suspension become permanent. Continue reading
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A story that breaks the skin
via 3 Quarks Daily: Hannah Atkinson in The F Word
Meena Kandasamy’s When I Hit You opens one of those huge great wounds. Based on her own experiences, she weaves a tale of a young wife and her abuser in India. Taken away from her family and isolated from her friends, her husband, a political revolutionary, quickly goes from controlling to violent, to eventually a very real threat to her life. Kandasamy’s poetic style jars with the violence she depicts, creating an increasingly uncomfortable read, yet one I was unable to put down. Although our narrator remains nameless, and in some ways quite distant, her thoughts became my own. She is a writer, and one of the most powerful narrative tools is her journey to completely losing her voice. Her abuser starts by removing her from social media, and it spirals from there, until she is silent. As the narrative switches from her husband to past lovers and relationships, we see her outgoing personality and vivacity, putting her silence into shockingly stark contrast. Continue reading
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Digging into the surprisingly mysterious life of Bob Ross
via Boing Boing by Caroline Siede
The YouTube channel Today I Found Out takes a look at the life of famed PBS artist Bob Ross – a beloved public figure whose biography is surprisingly opaque.
a post by Margarita Tartakovsky for the World of Psychology blog
It’s been a terrible week. You barely checked off any tasks on your to-do list, and nothing went the way you wanted it to. You’re finally able to sit on the couch and savor a tall glass of wine – or three.
Your toddler finally fell asleep after yelling nonstop for 30 minutes about…you can’t recall. You have some peace and quiet – and can drink your wine. After all, you deserve it after the day you’ve had.
You’ve been worrying about so many things lately, so you jump at the chance to meet your coworkers for cocktail hour. You literally jump. You could use a fun escape. In fact, you require it.
In our culture, alcohol is seen as everything from an effective stress relief to a wonderful way to spend an evening. People post and repost wine quotes all over social media:
“The answer may not lie at the bottom of this wine bottle… but we should at least check.”
“A day without wine is like…just kidding, I have no idea.” “Wine may not solve your problems, but neither will water or milk.”
“The most expensive part of having kids is all the wine you have to drink.”
“I drink coffee because I need it and wine because I deserve it.”
“OMG. I so need a glass of wine or I’m gonna sell my kids.”
“Some days you just need to drink all the wine in the house and that’s OK.”
Continue readingto find out why it is actually not a good idea, and what you can do if up until now you have thought it was OK.
a post by Alison Garnham, Chief Executive in the Child Poverty Action Group blog
Today [6 November 2017], CPAG publishes a major new study on the impact of austerity on families with children: ‘The Austerity Generation: the impact of a decade of cuts on family incomes and child poverty‘.
Here are the key points:
1. The promise of greater rewards from work under universal credit - its organising idea - has been broken.
Universal credit (like tax credits) has been mercilessly cut by the Treasury. The universal credit system we have today isn’t the same as the one that was sold to us.
Working families in the UK stand to lose £930 a year on average from cuts in the tax credit system and £420 a year from cuts to universal credit – these are losses across the population, so the losses for tax credit and universal credit recipients would be much higher.
2. David Cameron’s single mother is a good example of how badly universal credit is failing
In 2009, in his last party conference speech before being elected as Prime Minister, David Cameron had an angry riff on tax credits leaving a single mother with two children, earning £150 a week, facing an effective tax rate of 96p (factoring in the withdrawal of benefit and additional taxes) if she worked another hour. You can watch the short clip here: https://twitter.com/imran_1/status/926381637511843840
Our new report includes a lone parent with children as a model family. Earning £150 a week means working about 18.5 hours. Although universal credit reduces the effective tax rate to 74 per cent, this lone parent and her children would be £2,336 a year worse off (see box 4.2 and figure 4.10 of the report). In other words, like many others on universal credit, this family’s finances have been thrown down a deep hole with only a very short ladder thrown in to get them out of it.
3. It is almost impossible for many to make up these losses by working more hours
Freezes and cuts to universal credit work allowances will leave lone parents worse off by, on average, £710 a year, couples £250 a year (again, losses here are across the whole population – they’ll be much higher for those affected).
In order to make up the losses caused by the cut in work allowances in universal credit, for example, a full-time working couple on the so-called ‘national living wage’ would have to work 17 extra days a year.
A lone parent already working full time for the ‘national living wage’ would have to work 41 extra days a year to recoup their loss – equivalent to a fourteen month year. In any case, working extra days will depend on family responsibilities and whether it’s actually possible to increase your hours at work.
4. Families already at greater risk of poverty will lose most
The poorest 10 per cent will lose 10 per cent of their income (£450 a year) on average compared with what was promised by universal credit.
For larger families, cuts to universal credit mean the average family with three children will be 10 per cent (£2,540 a year) worse off, and the average family with four or more children 19 per cent (£5,000 a year) worse off due to universal credit cuts.
Cuts to universal credit mean families containing someone with a disability will be £300 a year worse off; families containing someone with a severe disability will be £530 a year worse off.
5. We’re creating an austerity generation
Since 2010, rather than investing in our children, government policy has been creating an Austerity Generation whose childhoods and life chances will be scarred by a decade of political decisions to stop protecting their living standards.
A major study by the LSE found poorer children have worse cognitive, social-behavioural and health outcomes because they are poor, and not just because poverty is correlated with other household and parental characteristics.
Our study today estimates that the cuts to universal credit would put 1,000,000 children in poverty and 900,000 in severe poverty by the end of the decade (assuming it was fully rolled-out by then). 6. Universal credit needs a full-scale rescue mission
This month’s Budget is an opportunity for the Chancellor to mount a full-scale rescue mission for universal credit. CPAG was the first to sound the alarm about the 6 week wait for universal credit, so progress on that would be very welcome, but this report makes it clear that the problems are more fundamental – the whole point of universal credit is being undermined.
The Chancellor should use this month’s Budget to:
Restore work allowances – the income level at which universal credit starts to be withdrawn. This would benefit all working families by an average of £150 a year – so those on universal credit would benefit by much more than this figure.
Triple-lock child benefit and the child element of universal credit: this would be the single most effective intervention to reduce child poverty (it would reduce numbers by 600,000).
My career in information management started back in 1987 working on the Training Access Points project. Nearly thirty years later I am still concerned to ensure that end users, and their mediators, have access to appropriate, relevant information in a form that they can understand, at a time and in a place that is right for them. The Internet seems to be for everyone and everywhere but the digital divide gets bigger. By pointing advisers in the direction of resources I hope to increase what can be done to help clients/customers.
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