Trivia (should have been 27 December)

Iron Pony: 1905
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave

New Zealand circa 1905
“E class locomotive, E 66, at the Petone Railway Workshops, with William Godber standing on the front. Known as ‘Pearson's Dream’, designed by G.A. Pearson, and built in 1905 for use on the Rimutaka Incline; written off in 1917”
Glass negative by A.P. Godber
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Humans have innate grasp of probability
via 3 Quarks Daily by Ewen Callaway in Nature

Study of indigenous Maya people finds probabilistic reasoning does not depend on formal education.
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Can art still shock?
Shock is no longer chic. We’re right to be weary, but we’ve become too weary. Is offensive art still possible?… more

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30 Unforgettable Books Every Parent Should Read To Their Kids Before They Grow Up
via Lifehack by Carmen Sakurai
    
The comfort and nurturing one-on-one attention from parents while reading together encourages children to form a positive association with reading and books. Books have always played an important role in my son’s life, even before he was born. I read all sorts of marketing and self-improvement books, as well as fashion and computer magazines to the baby in my tummy, hoping it would help him (or her) grow familiar with my voice and the different sounds of the words being read.
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It was so difficult to pick just one illustration that I've got three for you -- and the video from Burning Man of “Oh the Places You’ll Go” which is a real favourite of mine.

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Stop! Thief! Prevent Your Camera Being Stolen With Lenstag
via MakeUseOf by Harry Guinness
Earlier this year Lenstag reunited their first photographer with his stolen gear. When Philip Martin checked his recently purchased lens against Lenstag’s database he found it was stolen. He contacted Lenstag and returned it to the original photographer.
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Islamism and the left
Michael Walzer detects much anxiety on the left, where fear of being called Islamophobic seems greater than fear of Islamist zealotry… more

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Monuments and other media
an article by J.A. Tillmann published in Eurozine

Protest in Budapest against the whitewashing of Hungary's role in the Holocaust.
Szabadság tér / Liberty Square, 4 July 2014. Photo: Karli Iskakova. Source: Flickr
Recent controversy surrounding Budapest's proposed "Monument of Occupation" leads Hungarian philosopher J.A. Tillmann to reflect on perceptions of space and time in central Europe. And the sinister convergence in how public space and national media are currently managed in Hungary.
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F. Scott Fitzgerald, Literary Legend
via AbeBooks.co.uk
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, arguably one of the best writers of all time, lived a brief life and died without knowing his true fame. A member of the Lost Generation, a group of literary expats that included Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce, Fitzgerald lived in Paris after World War I and made a living writing short stories for magazines. He didn’t know his novel The Great Gatsby would become a timeless classic read around the world.
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
From poesy to carrot carnations
Poetry and the short story have slipped from minor arts to crafts, of interest primarily to other poets and short-story writers… more

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The otherworldly digital fantasy art of Guangjian Huang
via Boing Boing by Xeni Jardin

Stunning fantasy scenes by Guangjian Huang.
"I’m a concept artist. I work in a game company in China. My network name is G.J.”
[via crossconnectmag.com]
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‘I was bullied too’: stories of bullying and coping in an online community

an article by Katie Davis, David P. Randall, Anthony Ambrose and Mania Orand (Information School, University of Washington) published in Information, Communication & Society Volume 18 Issue 4 (2015)

Abstract

The American Academy of Pediatrics has identified bullying as a serious health risk for adolescents. In today’s age of social media and smartphones, this health risk has taken on new forms and extended its reach. Strategies to reduce the prevalence of and negative consequences associated with both traditional bullying and cyberbullying require knowledge of victims’ lived experiences as well as the coping strategies they employ – both effectively and ineffectively – to respond to their tormentors.

This article presents findings from an in-depth content analysis of the entire set of 1,094 comments from a viral blog post about cyberbullying in which people shared their personal stories of bullying and coping. These stories included a mix of both traditional and online forms of victimization, as well as more general reflections about the distinct qualities of networked publics that serve to magnify, spread, and exacerbate the effects of bullying.

The findings suggest that victims of both traditional bullying and cyberbullying are often targeted because they do not conform in one way or another to mainstream norms and values. Victims employed similar coping strategies to respond to their online and offline tormentors. Common behavioral strategies included seeking social support, ignoring/blocking, and finding a creative or expressive outlet.

The two most commonly cited cognitive strategies were self-talk and taking the bully's perspective. Not all strategies were judged to be effective. The findings have relevance to researchers seeking to understand bullying from the perspective of victims and to practitioners seeking to develop effective interventions to support bullying victims.

not many Taylor & Francis articles allow full access

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Why was there no religious war in premodern East Asia?

an article by David C. Kang (University of Southern California, USA) published in European Journal of International Relations Volume 20 Number 4 (December 2014)

Abstract

In premodern East Asia, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and China rarely experienced anything like the type of religious violence that existed for centuries in historical Europe, despite having vibrant religious traditions such as Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, and numerous folk religions. How do we explain a region in which religion was generally not a part of the explanation for war and rebellion?

A unique data set of over 950 entries of Chinese and Korean violence over a 473-year span allows granular measurement of religious violence. I argue that the inclusivist religions of historical East Asia did not easily lend themselves to appropriation by political leaders as a means of differentiating groups or justifying violence. Addressing the paucity of religious war in historical East Asia is theoretically important because it challenges a large body of scholarly literature that finds a universal causal relationship between religion and war that is empirically derived mainly from the experience of only Christianity and Islam.

In contrast, it may be that certain types of religious traditions are less amenable to mass mobilization for violence. Moving beyond Christianity and Islam to include East Asian religious traditions promises both to address a potentially serious issue of selection bias and also to be a rich field for theorizing about the relationship between religion and war.

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Trivia (should have been 21 December)

Swim Class: 1905
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave

Florida circa 1905
“Surf bathing at Palm Beach”
No ocean was ever a prettier shade of gray
8x10 glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company
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Seaweed: In a World Hungry for Protein, It's the Kale of Meat
via Big Think by Orion Jones

Meat consumption is increasingly seen as a health risk, an environmental risk, and a misuse of precious land and water resources. Meat substitutes, however, have so far proven unsuccessful. Fake meat grown in a lab has proven costly and is widely mocked; eating bugs, which are rich in protein and nutrients, is simply unpalatable; substitutes such as (soy) beans still require much land and water for farming.
Enter seaweed...
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
On Van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh, drama queen. Rejected in love, he threatened to burn his hand. When broke, he cajoled and guilt-tripped his brother for money… more

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The Ridiculously Long Flowchart To Help You Choose A Video Game
via MakeUseOf by Dave LeClair
Have you ever decided that you wanted to play a video game, but couldn’t decide which one to play? There’s a lot of fantastic games out there, whether you fancy getting your hands on a strategy game, or you want to play an MMO like World of Warcraft, it’s never easy to decide.
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Friday Fun: Little-Known Punctuation Marks
via Stephen’s Lighthouse by Stephen Abram

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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
History of lying
Here’s the thing about lying: We all do it – three times in every 10 minutes of conversation – while finding it the most blameworthy of acts… more

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Pigs on Trial
via Boing Boing by Futility Closet

For 500 years of European history, animals were given criminal trials: Bulls, horses, dogs, and sheep were arrested, jailed, given lawyers, tried, and punished at community expense. In the latest Futility Closet podcast we’ll explore this strange practice and try to understand its significance to the people of the time.
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The Shocking State Of Humanity: Our World With Just One Hundred People
via Lifehack
I’ve seen this inforgraphic before but it never fails to shock me.
View it here

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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Houellebecq’s francophobic satire
Michel Houellebecq is not a polemicist but a satirist. And his target is not Islam but spineless French intellectuals… more

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High winds blow waterfall back up
via Boing Boing by Rob Beschizza

The River Kinder, in England's peak district, meets such high winds the flow is blasted back into the plateau. On better days, the Kinder Downfall drops 80 ft.
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dead

Destitution in the UK: an interim report

a report by Suzanne Fitzpatrick et al for JRF

JRF’s Destitution in the UK programme focuses on the very bottom of the poverty spectrum – those in the most extreme hardship. Over the last few years there has been growing discussion in the media about destitution, with public figures citing the rising use of food-banks as evidence of an increase. However, there has been remarkably little attention paid to whether there is any solid evidence about the extent of destitution in the UK, what causes it or whether it has changed over recent years.

JRF’s Destitution in the UK programme aims to provide this evidence, and this interim report by a team at Heriot-Watt University is the starting point, reviewing the literature and agreeing a definition of destitution. The definition was developed with experts from across the UK and a survey of 2,000 members of the public:

“People are destitute if they lacked two or more of these six essentials over the past month, because they cannot afford them:

• Shelter (have slept rough for one or more nights)

• Food (have had fewer than two meals a day for two or more days)

• Heating their home (have been unable to do this for five or more days)

• Lighting their home (have been unable to do this for five or more days)

• Clothing and footwear (appropriate for weather)

• Basic toiletries (soap, shampoo, toothpaste, toothbrush)

People are also destitute if their income is so low that they are unable to purchase these essentials for themselves.”

A large majority of the public agree that being in this situation constitutes destitution.

Click here for more on our Destitution in the UK programme.

Full report (PDF 73pp )

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Between whisper and voice: Online women’s movement outreach in the UK and Germany

an article by Henrike Knappe (Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (KWI) Essen, Germany) and Sabine Lang (University of Washington, USA) published in European Journal of Women’s Studies Volume 21 Number 4 (November 2014)

Abstract

Women’s movements in Western Europe are not dead, but they have altered their strategies in ways that require adaptation of investigative repertoires.

Recent research highlights women’s movements’ pathways into institutions as well as the transnationalisation of activism.

This article focuses on the shifting public communication repertoire associated with these developments. Communication and movement outreach across Europe are increasingly constituted online. The authors investigate the degree to which women’s networks in Germany and the UK mobilise constituencies via online means.

Utilising network mapping tools as well as original data from women’s NGOs, they analyse the density and distribution of relationships in German and UK networks, as well as their interactive communication repertoires as indicators of their capacity to engage constituents.

The findings show that information-focused means of communication are more prevalent than interactive mobilisation tools. Women’s NGOs in the UK utilise more public engagement features than those in Germany. The authors relate these findings to second-, third- and fourth-wave feminisms, focusing on their distinct mobilisation strategies.

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