Forbes | How Travel Bans Can Impede America's Progress - Forbes Forbes While President Trump's travel ban was recently rejected by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, there is ongoing concern that reinstatement of such a ban could ... |
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How Travel Bans Can Impede America's Progress - Forbes - Forbes
Progress Made, but Threat Lingers at California's Oroville Dam Wall Street Journal Tens of thousands of people living in the downstream area of Oroville Dam, in northern California, have been ordered to evacuate after an auxiliary spillway appeared in danger of failure. Photo: Josh F.W. Cook/Office of Assemblyman Brian Dahle/AP. By. |
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Progress Made, but Threat Lingers at California's Oroville Dam - Wall Street Journal
Set aside Adele splitting her Grammy like Solomon; forget, for a moment, all the pre-ceremony analysis about the awards fraught history with race and taste and tradition. Based solely on the performances last night, viewers would need to be arguing about Adele vs. Beyoncits hard to think of a more meaningful distinction in popular music than the one between them.
Adele performed twice on darkened stages where the focus could be on nothing other than her singing. For her George Michael tribute, she flubbed some notes and started again, because otherwise what would the point have been? Beyonc meanwhile offered a floral golden swirl of performance art and video wizardry and spoken word, with holographic and real bodies evoking da Vincis Last Supper. Some people will worship it, and some people will mock it; either way, sans sound, Beyonces performance could survive as gifs and memes and mashup videos. Adeles meanwhile could be ripped to MP3 and lose nothing for lack of images.
The Biggest Moments From the 2017 Grammys
Adeles song-no-dance routine, while often impressive, creates less entertaining TV and less daring art than Beyoncs audiovisual spectacles do. But the Grammys have made clear which it considers the better approach to music. Adele won all five Grammys for which she was nominated, including the three big awards where she competed with Beyonc: Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year. This extends a sweep of every category in which shes been nominated since 2011, resulting in a total of 15 Grammys.
If Adeles dominance seems unseemly to you, Adele sympathizes. Accepting Album of the Year with her team of producers and co-writers, she tearfully offered thanks and then pivoted: I cant possibly accept this award My artist of my life is Beyonc. Addressing Beyonc in the audience directly, Adele said that Lemonade was so monumental and so well thought-out and so beautiful, and that the way you make me and my friends feel, the way you make my black friends feel, is empowering. At the end, she broke her Grammy statue in twopresumably to split it with her idol.
Debates will now unfold about the optics of the moment, Adeles manners, the awkwardness of mentioning her black friends, and the parallels with Macklemores apology after beating Kendrick Lamar at the Grammys. But Adeles sincerity burns brightlyjust try to be cynical about her backstage testimony of being a Beyonc stan since she was 11 years old and now wondering what the fuck does [Beyonc] have to do to win Album of the Year?
Good question. A follow-up to the megaton musical engine 21, Adeles comparatively restrained 25 was a strong display of ability from a powerful singer; it sold well but got mixed reviews. As an artistic statement, Lemonade smokes it. Its not just that Beyoncs album had a fully realized video component; its not just that it played with juicy tabloid rumors; its that it told a story as it alchemized disparate sounds for seriously entertaining songs that no one but Beyonce could have made. It said something about its creator and its world, and it pushed at the boundaries of pop. It was progress.
But the Grammys arent, in the end, interested in progress. Adele could have pulled off last nights performances basically in any decade of the Grammys existence. Last years Album of the Year winner, Taylor Swifts 1989, was explicitly retro; Beck beat Beyonc in 2015 with a collection of folk rock that needed no timestamp; the only black artists to have won the Album of the Year prize in the last 14 years were septuagenarians performing covers.
Beyoncs display at last nights Grammys, by contrast, needed the now. Thats not only in a technological sense (I wasnt sure what was real and what was fakewere you?) but also an aesthetic and political one. Her forthright celebration of black sisterhood and maternity, her references to contemporary art, and, yes, her musicthe synth tapestry of Love Drought especiallyall reflect the moment. So does the notion of a singer who does more than sing, who disregards traditional notions of musical respectabilitythe ideal of a woman in a gown standing alone and beltingfor a broader sense of the mediums potential.
Black artists from Prince to Michael Jackson to Kanye West have been on the forefront of this sort of expansion of what pop music means. Maybe that fact has something to do with why they have mostly fared poorly in the Grammys general categories over the years even as they have served up exactly the kind of performances that make the Grammys worth watching at all. Or maybe its just a deeper sort of bias: With only three black women ever winning Album of the Year (Lauryn Hill, Natalie Cole, Whitney Houston), little in Grammys history suggests a non-white Adele would have the success of this white one. Beyoncs one televised win last night was for Best Urban Contemporary Albumfounded in 2013 surely to include more artists of color, but with the effect of highlighting how they are sidelined in the general categories.
The awards success of traditionalists like Adele, ultimately, comes across as a rejection of the forward thinkers, a rejection that stings especially when it fits a clear pattern of excluding black visionaries. Its not as if old-fashioned singers need the Grammys to defend them: 25 has moved more than 10 million copies, while Lemonade sales and streams figured out to 2.1 million units in 2016. Surely change is necessary when even the avatar of tradition, Adele, knows somethings amiss. By saluting Beyonc on stage, she joins a trend with Frank Ocean, Kanye West, and other influential stars pointing out how strange it is that the Grammys judgement of the best in music, year after year, looks about the same.
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Adele, Beyonc, and the Grammys' Fear of Progress - The Atlantic
The team owned by IndyCar icon AJ Foyt has undergone a bigger change in the 2016/17 offseason than any of its rivals, switching from Honda to Chevrolet engines, replacing both its drivers and hiring a new technical director, Will Phillips. Unfortunately, it has coincided with IndyCar drastically reducing test time.
Although new recruits Carlos Munoz and Conor Daly finished the Phoenix open test 17th and 20th overall, the pair were sixth and seventh in the final Saturday evening session, making them the fastest of the Chevy-powered cars. However, Larry Foyt cautioned against reading too much into those test times.
He told Motorsport.com: There were a lot of guys in race trim in that final session, whereas we were in between qualifying and race trim for a little bit. We never did a true qualifying sim[ulation], but were truly only scratching the surface with the Chevy kit on ovals, and theres so much to learn. I just wish we had more time before the season starts; theres a lot of potential so we want to use it.
If you think about it, we are literally years behind the other Chevy runners, and it feels like it! It is a different animal and it needs a different mechanical setup to get the best out of it, compared with Honda. Were looking at just the basic stuff, so thats why were behind the guys whove had years to refine it, but like at our last Sebring test, we got a lot done, we made good progress.
Put it this way, Carlos and Conor have experience of the Honda package and Carlos at least was happy with where we ended up with the setup.
Daly suffered a loose oil line that caused his engine to dump oil around the track on Friday afternoons session, but he eventually clocked 201 laps over the course of the 12 hours of track time, compared with Munozs 239. However, given that teams were only given six sets of tires to use over the course of those 12 hours, Foyt said it wasnt a huge loss.
It was a shame to lose that running time, but we were tire-limited anyway, so it probably didnt cost us too much, he observed.
Looking at the evening times, its probably a bit misrepresentative, but I do feel we were gaining the whole time over the two days. And we have another test at Sebring before [the season-opener] St. Petersburg, so weve got to keep making progress there, too.
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Foyt pleased with progress, regrets lack of time - Motorsport.com, Edition: Global
Dana Genshaft's, Chromatic Fantasy set to the music of Dave Brubeck's Chaconne from Chromatic Fantasy premiered Friday night at the NYU Skirball Center. Ms. Genshaft was looking - actually squinting - at the sun one day and saw all the colors of the rainbow wavering before her. The ensuing ballet and her search for the right music sprung from this moment. Six dancers - three men, three women - from the ABT Studio Company dressed in different chromatic colors weaved in and out of the music, at times with it and at others at a contrapuntal rhythm. Pairs swapped with ease and trios emerged only to dissolve quickly. The dance propelled, though there were quieter sections, and the colors flowed. A work of beauty and energy resulted. This work is Genshaft's first for ABT. Kevin McKenzie, the artistic director of ABT, to his and its credit, is making a concerted effort to commission new works by female choreographers. Last fall it premiered Jessica Lang's, Her Notes, set to the music of Fanny Mendelssohn, sister of Felix. It was a total success and has been added to the ABT repertoire. Other commissions by female choreographers are in the works at ABT, which is determined to smash the glass slipper. Genshaft more than proved her chops on a program that also featured such luminary choreographers as Frederick Ashton, Helgi Tomasson, Kenneth MacMillan and Liam Scarlett. That she was the only female choreographer is worthy of note only because usually there are none on the programs of any American ballet company. Genshaft was previously a soloist at San Francisco Ballet and teaches choreography in the school there. She is richly deserving of more commissions, including from her home company, which has yet to recognize her home grown talent. Kudos to Kevin McKenzie and ABT for doing so. And kudos also to ABT for commissioning its star, Marcelo Gomes, who gave the New York City premier of his ballet set to Kabalevsky Violin Concerto.
The gender disparity starts early in ballet. The Saturday afternoon performance was family friendly and there were, by my guess, over 100 children in attendance. I counted three boys. The rest girls. Change needs to come at all levels of ballet.
Note: the author is a trustee of the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation, which funds commissions of choreographic works by emerging female choreographers.
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When Bill Parcells took over as the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys in 2003, he brought the idea of progress stoppers with him. Aptly named, progress stoppers prevent others from developing into even better players at a given position.
Often, these are typically older, veteran players who may have once been stars or solid contributors but are now on the tail-ends of their careers. But, even younger players can be progress stoppers if better replacements exist lower on the depth chart. The current Cowboys front office philosophy seems to ignore the second possibility, however.
Despite the worries about pass rush before the season, the Cowboysfront office rebuffed the idea of getting outside veteran help. Instead they argued their young players just needed time to develop and a veteran would only hinder that progress.
From the chart above, its pretty clear that Tyrone Crawford and Demarcus Lawrence are progress stoppers.Even though he had over 600 snaps, Crawford only managed 4.5 sacks on the year. Still, since he was third in sacks on the defensive line, it might seem odd to claim that Crawford is a problem.
The issue is revealed when you look at their average salaries. Paying Crawford for one year could cover the combined salaries of Jack Crawford, David Irving, Demarcus Lawrence, Maliek Collins, Terrell McClain and Benson Mayowa.
Sep 25, 2016; Arlington, TX, USA; Dallas Cowboys defensive tackle Tyrone Crawford prior to the game against the Chicago Bears at AT&T Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Matthew Emmons-USA TODAY Sports
Furthermore, he doesnt really have a defined role. Collins proved himself at the 3-technique and has earned the right to enter the 2017 season as the starter. David Irving showed tremendous potential in limited snaps at left defensive end and nearly had as many sacks as Crawford on 139 less snaps. Playing Crawford ahead of either of the two only prevents the younger players from developing further.
Lawrence is problematic in a different way. Hes not particularly expensive and is still very young, only 24. However, the defensive end dissapointed last season. He managed only one sack on the year and was fairly ineffective. To make matters worse, 2017 will be the second season that he starts on the mend after back surgery.
Giving up completely on Lawrence doesnt make sense, but the team has to stop treating him as someone they can rely on. Until he can prove his back issues wont affect his performance as they did in 2016, the Cowboys should treat Lawrence as a rotational player at best. Continuing to pencil him in as a starting end each year only prevents players, like Mayowa and Irving, from getting more snaps to continue developing.
Oct 9, 2016; Arlington, TX, USA; Dallas Cowboys defensive end Demarcus Lawrence (90) prior to the game against Cincinnati Bengals at AT&T Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Matthew Emmons-USA TODAY Sports
Demarcus Lawrence is in the last year of his rookie deal and Crawford will cost over $10 million against the cap if cut this year. Thus, its unlikely either leave Dallas in 2017.However, to get this defensive line moving forward, the pair need to be relegated to rotational duties. If the two want their jobs back theyll have to show they deserve them.
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The surprising progress stoppers on the Dallas Cowboys defensive line - Cowboys Wire
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Now three weeks into President Trumps administration, Congress has confirmed nine members of the Presidents cabinet and less than two percent of thenearly 700 key positionsrequiring Senate confirmation putting the cabinet several positions behind after Barack Obamasfirst weekon the job back in 2009. Outraged over the fact that Mitch McConnell didnt grant Obama a Supreme Court seat last year, Senate Democrats have now decided to slow walk seemingly any and every nominee they canregardless of the individuals qualifications and the effect it will have on the country.
On Tuesday, the war of attrition over staffing the federal government reached its most unprecedented proportions yet. To bring the bitter fight over making Betsy DeVos Secretary of Education to an end, Vice President Mike Pence had to step in and cast thefirst tie-breaking voteto confirm a cabinet secretary in our nations history. In fact, with the exceptions of Trumpsfavorite Marines Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly the rest of President Trumps cabinet picks have been slammed by left-wing outlets and grilled by Democratic lawmakers, at least when those lawmakers have beenwilling to attendthe proceedings.
The irony here is that, as Democratic leaders will readily admit to themselves, the partys entire ethos is centered around the government functioning effectively. Under fire from a militant progressive movement and struggling to make themselves heard with what little power the American electorate has left them, the leadership has had to resort to theatrics, like committee hearing walkouts, and petty snubs to convince the base that they are taking a stand. By the standards of the august Senate, Schumers vote againstElaine Chao(McConnells wife) for Secretary of Transportation registers as scandalous.
These heroic last stands might be succeeding in sating the raw anger of the Democratic base, but they are also betraying the fundamental contract between the government and the voters by denying the American people a working government. While the vast majority of the news media hangs on President Trumps every tweet and taps into the White House rumor mill, the real cost of obstructionism on Capitol Hill is making itself felt. There are1.4 million federal employeesbut hardly anyone in place to monitor their work or implement a coherent policy agenda. All this begs the question: what is happening at these agencies that are working either undermanaged or entirely unsupervised?
The troubling answer is that nobody really knows. Government programs without direct oversight from the White House are currently muddling by as best they can, with political leadership now absent since President Obamas departure. Programs that provide critical services to millions of American citizens at agencies including Veterans Affairs, Housing and Urban Development, and Health and Human Services have been forced to make do without confirmed leadership. As a result, they remain either stalled while awaiting direction or stumbling ahead despite conflicts with the elected presidents agenda.
The VA, for one, already has a difficult time providing veterans with the care they earned in service to this country. How does delayingDavid Shulkin, an Obama appointee with a proven track record and President Trumps nominee to head the VA, make things any better? Similarly, how have mission-critical medical research programs and grant decisions been made at the NIH without the direction of the just-confirmed HHS Secretary? Despite theirgrandstanding, Democrats never had the votes to stop Rep. Tom Prices nomination to head the departmentand they knew it. At best, choosing these nomination battles as hills to die on accomplishes little more than throwing vital government programs into limbo for a few weeks longer than necessary.
Of all the confirmation battles yet to come, perhaps none will be more illustrative of out-of-control partisanship than the Senates deliberations over Neil Gorsuch. Gorsuch is, by any measure, athoroughly competentand qualified Supreme Court nominee who would sail through the confirmation process under anything approaching normal circumstances. A former Harvard Law classmate of Barack Obama and a veteran appeals court judge, Gorsuch has been endorsed by none other than Obama ethics czarNorm Eisenas a thoughtful and deliberate legal mind. In this poisonous political climate, however, the evenhanded judge is being portrayed as an extreme conservative by critics bothwithinandoutsidethe Senateseemingly because it was Donald Trump that made the pick.
These invectives against even the least controversial of nominees reveal that the Democratic establishment has still failed to learn a key lesson of its 2016 defeat. When you portray all of your opponents as reactionary zealots, it eventually becomes impossible to tell who holds views which are truly beyond the pale from those who simply disagree with you. The cries of wolf are, after much repetition, falling on deaf ears.
By engaging in tactics to halt his Cabinet from being assembled, the same lawmakers and protesters who criticize the President for ruling by executive order are inadvertently (or perhaps intentionally) forcing his administration to try and run the country without any political leadership, empowering the bureaucracy that no one elected. While the President draws his fair share of criticism, he also deserves the chance to govern that our Constitution dictates and as Hillary Clinton herself said in herconcession speechin November. Regardless of the partisan decide, the American public wants its governments to be successful for the good of the country. So long as Congress denies the administration a coherent staff, President Trump will be fighting unnecessary hurdles in trying to achieve that shared goal.
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The Democrats' Strategy: Hindering Progress For Partisan Politics - Daily Caller
To the editor: I would like to thank political scientist Jacob T. Levy for articulating the deepest problem with the Trump administration as we have seen it take shape over the last several weeks. The presidents recent interview with Fox News Bill OReilly, in which he brushed off Russian President Vladimir Putins misbehavior by saying the U.S. is not innocent of killing either, was particularly telling. (Hypocrisy isnt the problem. Nihilism is, Opinion, Feb. 8)
Americans generally seem to understand that those we elect to represent and govern us are imperfect humans, no matter the political party. Its good that we are offended by and point out what we believe is hypocrisy and flawed thinking of the other side. At least we are noting the shared principals we believe are being violated.
Trump is dismissive of the very idea that there are principles that are compromised. This is deeply disturbing.
Anne Tryba, La Caada Flintridge
..
To the editor: Levy cites as an example of Trump administration nihilism White House advisor Kellyanne Conways claim that people dont care about Trumps tax returns, which he refuses to release, because they voted for him.
No, the electoral college voted for him. The majority of actual voters supported Hillary Clinton, and we still care very much about and need to see Trumps tax returns.
Joanne Turner, Eagle Rock
..
To the editor: Hypocrisy is the fodder that nurtures our politics.
Railing against it is of no avail, nor should it be, leastways not for those of us who view politics as entertainment. It is mirthful, sustaining the status quo. Its absence would be jarring.
Memo to the concerned: Sit back, unclench your teeth and hands and revel in our foolishness, for it was ever thus.
Paul Bloustein, Cincinnati
Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook
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Why the White House's nihilism is so troubling - Los Angeles Times
Tired of the bleak February weather? You are not alone. Kevin Killeen feels your pain.
A longtime general assignment and feature reporter for KMOX (1120 AM) radio, Killeen is acutely aware of the hopeless futility of February in St. Louis. In a video recently shared by KMOX (and initially filmed this time last year), Killeen shares his thoughts on the calendar's shortest month. His outlook really couldn't get more bleak.
"February is the worst month of the year, but it's an honest month," Killeen says at the outset of the video. "It's a month that doesn't hold up life any better than it really is. I mean, look around here. These buildings, they look like they don't even have any lights in them during a work day. Something great happened here, but it's over with. And that's the way February is."
"This says it all," Killeen proclaims. "This has a spring-like or floral pattern on it, but somebody on this February day has abandoned it, with its broken shaft, like a desperate flinging-off of something that's not true anymore. The expedition is getting desperate people are throwing things aside."
Projecting his own intense nihilism onto the people walking the streets, Killeen speaks of downtown St. Louis as though it is a prison.
"Look around downtown on a February workday. This looks like a place where people who are being punished are sent," he says in a voiceover as his cameraman films the desolate streets. "If you notice the way people cross the street in February, it's different than in the summer. Nobody's tap-dancing or breaking into a Rodgers & Hammerstein song. It's their lunch hour and they're just barely able to get across the street and hunker over a bowl of chili."
Trapped in the impermeable darkness that is February, Killeen sees no light at the end of the tunnel. In his estimation, nature itself buckles to the relentless tyranny of the dreary month.
"Even the land is tired in February," he declares. "Most of the birds who can afford it have gone to Florida, and the trees that once cheered us they're hard to look at this month. It's as if there is some awful truth out there in the trees. It's hiding in the branches. Look at them. Something that's been bothering you for a long time is out there. What is it? You can almost see the shape of it when all the color is gone, when life is stripped down to the starkness of February."
The impermanence of life itself, and the inevitability of death these are what Killeen sees in the lifeless tree branches.
"To try to hide the bleakness of February, man invented Valentine's Day and also Mardi Gras," Killeen reasons. "But then February answered back with another holiday: Ash Wednesday. What other month could host a holiday that's designed to remind us that we're all gonna die?"
Are you.... OK, Kevin?
"My father used to have a saying," he says at the close of the video, "that if you can live through February, you can live another year."
This video was shot last year and Killeen is still active at his post, meaning he made it through February 2016. Here's hoping he has the wherewithal to make it through this month his charming style and sense of humor would be greatly missed if he went gently into that good night.
Might we offer a suggestion, though? A psychiatrist, Kevin. And maybe take the month off and head for warmer climates.
It works for the birds.
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In psychology, flow activities are ones that would presumably make us the happiest. They are activities like sports or cooking that require more work on our part but are characterized by full immersion and focus. A new paper argues that we are often faced with a dilemma - while studies show how engaging in flow activities would make us happier, we tend to spend more of our free time on passive activities, like Facebooking or watching tv.
In two studies, researchers L. Parker Schiffer and Tomi-Ann Roberts at the Claremont Graduate University and Colorado College, conducted a survey of about 300 people to find out what they thought of different types of activities. These ranged from passive like listening to music to flow-inducing like making art. As the paper explained, flow activities require clear rules, challenge, a high investment of energy.
The participants had to rate whether they found the activities enjoyable or daunting as well as how often they engaged in them. Another question related to which particular activities the participants regarded as providing lasting happiness.
The answers revealed that whatever people thought would require more effort would also bring more happiness. But people were still more likely to spend their time in passive activities because they found them easier to get into and more enjoyable. On the flip side, flow activities were seen as harder to start up, even if generally better for you. Its just easier to stay sitting on the couch than getting up to run, which might be quite tiring and even painful at first.
To be able to navigate this paradox of happiness, researchers propose techniques that could help reduce the initial effort required to get into a flow activity like going to the gym. They recommend you do things like choosing a gym near your house and preparing your workout clothes the night before. Or if you want to get into painting or have something to write - set up your writing or painting materials in advance. Just doing that much can help get the process underway and make it easy to start doing something you will find ultimately very rewarding.
The researchers also suggest using controlled consciousness - mindfulness and meditation techniques to get the ball rolling before a flow activity. While the paper advocates for future research to come up with more techniques that would help us engage in happiness-creating flow activities, they do warn that there are high stakes involved here that could prevent us from achieving happiness due to a pursuit of hedonism:
People know that flow activities facilitate happiness better than more passive leisure and yet they are not doing these activities because it seems they do not know how to overcome the activation energy or transition costs required to pursue true enjoyment. This disjunction perhaps leads us to assume that happiness is going to happen to us as an outcome of our pursuit of hedonism. Thus, we develop a more passive approach to happiness, opting for the easier pleasurable activities that require less energy and are less daunting than high-investment ow activities.
Cover photo:Indian schoolchildren, their face and bodies painted as tigers, run at a park in Bangalore on August 1, 2015, during an awareness programme about the endangered tiger species. (Photo credit: MANJUNATH KIRAN/AFP/Getty Images)
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Science: How to Get into the "Flow" and Do What Makes You Happiest - Big Think
FrontPage Magazine | Leftism: From Bloody Tragedy to Therapeutic Parody FrontPage Magazine In less than a decade, the New Left's embrace of hedonism and identity politics transformed it into a life-style choice and New Age cult for the affluent, pampered boomers rich enough to postpone adulthood indefinitely, and to avoid the consequences of ... |
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Leftism: From Bloody Tragedy to Therapeutic Parody - FrontPage Magazine
13 Feb 2017, 1:04 p.m.
Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has condemned the Western Australian Liberal Party's unprecedented decision to preference One Nation ahead of the Nationals at the upcoming state election, a deal that has been defended by Mr Joyce's federal Liberal partners.
Prime Minister and Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull with Nationals leader and Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce and deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop. Photo: Andrew Meares
Trade Minister Steven Ciobo has defended One Nation's record defending the government, while Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has warned the deal could cost the Liberal Party government in WA. Photo: Andrew Meares
Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has condemned the Western Australian Liberal Party's unprecedented decision to preference One Nation ahead of the Nationals at the upcoming state election, a deal that is splitting opinion in the federal Coalition ranks.
Striking a different note to Liberal colleagues, former prime minister Tony Abbott agreed with the argument that One Nation leader Pauline Hanson was a "better person" today than when she was previously in Parliament but said the Nationals should be preferenced above all other parties.
While Mr Joyce described the deal as "disappointing", cabinet colleague and Trade Minister Steve Ciobosaidthe Liberal Party should put itself in the best position to govern and talked up Ms Hanson's right-wing populist party as displaying a "certain amount of economic rationalism" and support for government policy.
Mr Joyce said the conclusion "that the next best people to govern Western Australia after the Liberal Party are One Nation" needed to be reconsideredand the most successful governments in Australia were ones based on partnerships between the Liberals and Nationals.
"When you step away from that, there's one thing you can absolutely be assured of is that we are going to be in opposition," he told reporterson Monday morning.
"[WA Premier] Colin Barnett has been around thepoliticalgame a long while and he should seriously consider whether he thinks that this is a good idea or whether he's flirting with a concept that would put his own side and Liberal colleagues in opposition."
The deal will see Liberals preference One Nation above the Nationals in the upper house country regions in return for the party's support in all lower house seats at the March 11 election.
The alliance between the more independent WA branch of the Nationals and the Liberals is reportedly at breaking point over the deal, which could cost the smaller rural party a handful of seats.
"Pauline Hanson is a different and, I would say, better person today than she was 20 years ago. Certainly she's got a more, I think, nuanced approach to politics today," Mr Abbott told Sydney radio station 2GB.
"It's not up to me to decide where preference should go but, if it was, I'd certainly be putting One Nation ahead of Labor and I'd be putting the National Party ahead of everyone. Because the National Party are our Coalition partnersin Canberra and in most states and they are our alliance partners in Western Australia."
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull declined to criticise the deal, stating that preference deals in the state election were a matter for the relevant division who "have got make their judgment based on their assessment of their electoral priorities".
Mr Ciobo joined the Prime Minister and other federal Liberal colleagues in defending the WA division's right to make its own decisions.
"What we've got to do is make decisions that put us in the best possible position to govern," he told ABC radio of the motivations of his own branch in Queensland.
After Industry Minister Arthur Sinodinos called the modern One Nation more "sophisticated" now, Mr Ciobo also praised the resurgent party.
"If you look at, for example, how Pauline Hanson's gone about putting her support in the Senate, you'll see that she's often voting in favour of government legislation.There's a certain amount of economic rationalism, a certain amount of approach that's reflective of what it is we are trying to do to govern Australia in a fiscally responsible way.One Nation has certainly signed up to that much more than Labor."
When in government, former Liberal prime minister John Howard declared that One Nation would always be put last on how-to-vote cards.
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Barnaby Joyce condemns WA Liberals' preference deal with One Nation - Camden Haven Courier
Valentines Day is Tuesday, and I have something suitably romantic for you.
Being romantic or a romantic means different things to different people. Most commonly, of course, it means valuing the experiences and forms of falling in love and being in love -- what my fifth-grade daughter dismisses, with a grimace, as all that yucky kissy stuff.
Theres also the literary and cultural sense of Romanticism, the 19th-century European movement that was partly a reaction against industrialism and its midwife, Enlightenment rationalism. That romanticism elevated nature, the past, the individual in his susceptibility to emotion, the importance of intuition, the power of the sublime, and so on impulses and attitudes expressed in the poetry of Wordsworth or the portraiture of Caspar David Friedrich.
A lot of people consider themselves romantics. My father, who retired two decades ago from his career as a surgeon, liked to say about himself that he was a romantic in an unromantic profession. Im not entirely sure what being romantic to him, but I know it included the feeling that he didnt share a sensibility with most physicians he knew. To him being a romantic partly meant enjoying experiences rather than analyzing causes. It meant loving the surfaces of things the look, feel, sound and mood rather than the machinery below (he had suffered through one year of engineering school, basically flunking out, before landing in a liberal arts college). It meant loving music and singing. It meant admiring The Great Gatsby, and vaguely wanting to write something Gatsby-like himself. And certainly it said something to him about the stringencies of coming, as he did, from a working-class family with a no-nonsense father who himself had quit school after eighth grade to help support his widowed mother, and who would have had little patience for Wordsworthian ramblings from his son, the first in any branch of the family to go to college.
Another basic part of being romantic is the inclination toward nostalgia and its fascination with time, change and memory. As I have written before in this space on the topic of music boxes nostalgia was long thought of as an illness. The term was coined by a Swiss physician whose 1688 dissertation cobbled together two Greek words to fashion a neologism for the pain of homecoming. The impulse has been particularly powerful among Germans, with their worship of Heimat, but animates other European traditions as well, from Poland, with its odes to nobility, to Portugal with its swooning fado music.
At any rate, you can find my own expression of romance here, in a short essay, Dreaming of Gerry, published in the current issue of Hartford Magazine. Like those homesick Swiss soldiers of yore, listening to their music boxes, I was moved by the memory of a song, and the role that song played on a long-ago day in my life.
I dont think of the ranks of Commonweal readers as rife with hopeless romantics. But the Catholic tradition did supply the obscure Roman martyr whose annual feast was eventually transformed -- by European Romanticism -- into the modern Valentines Day, in all its kissy yuckiness. So this is for the romantics among you. RRC
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"Please let us remember that to investigate the constitution of the universe is one of the greatest and noblest problems in nature, and it becomes still grander when directed toward another discovery."
Climate scientists stand up outside the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco
IN THE age of Trump, the person writing those words has much to teach us about the impending scientific struggles of our own time.
So spoke Salviati on day two of his debate with Sagredo and Simplicio in a hypothetical discussion imagined by the great scientist and astronomer Galileo Galilei, for his book Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems, published in 1632.
In the Dialogue, Galileo puts forward his heretical view that the Earth and other planets revolve around the sun in opposition to the Catholic Church-sanctioned Ptolemaic system in which everything in the universe revolves around the Earth.
Galileo hoped that by adopting a conversational style for his argument, it would allow him to continue his argument about the true nature of the universe and evade the attentions of the Inquisition, which enforced Church doctrine with the force of bans, imprisonment and execution.
However, Galileo's friend, Pope Urban VIII, who had personally authorized Galileo to write the Dialogue, didn't allow sentimentality to obstruct power. Galileo was convicted of heresy and spent the rest of his days under house arrest--the Dialogue was banned by the Inquisition, along with any other book Galileo had written or might write.
Typically portrayed as the quintessential clash between religion and science, Galileo's conflict with the Papacy was, in fact, just as rooted in material considerations of political power as it was with ideas about the nature of the solar system and our place within it.
Amid parallels to today's conflict between Donald Trump and the scientific community over funding, research, unimpeded freedom of speech and the kind of international collaboration required for effective scientific endeavor, neither situation exists solely in the realm of ideas.
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GALILEO'S CONTROVERSIAL and extended trial on charges of heresy coincided with the political and military problems faced by Pope Urban VIII.
Under pressure from what came to be known as the Thirty Years' War raging across central Europe between Catholic and Protestant armies, Urban was attempting to shore up and re-establish the might of Rome through the Inquisition, racking up massive Papal debt from increased military spending, while promoting rampant nepotism and corruption.
The analogy with the U.S. of 2017 and the political and economic situation is quite striking, as today's right wing seeks to assert its authority and impel the country politically and socially backward by launching attacks on immigrants, Native Americans, women and reproductive health, unions, and the gains of the LGBTQ, environmental and civil rights movements. These attacks have been extended across a broad swathe of society, encompassing both the arts and sciences.
After reports emerged in the first days of the Trump administration that he intended to defund the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities--responsible for 0.01 percent of the federal budget--Suzanne Nossel, writing in Foreign Policy, called this "an assault on the Enlightenment."
Meanwhile, with the election of Trump and his comments on climate change, scientists in charge of the Doomsday Clock moved it another 30 seconds closer to midnight. This is the closest it's been to midnight since 1953, at the height of the Cold War and following the decision by the U.S. to upgrade its nuclear arsenal with thermonuclear weaponry.
"The Trump administration needs to state clearly and unequivocally that it accepts that climate change is caused by human activity," theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss said at a press conference announcing the Doomsday Clock time change. "Policy that is sensible requires facts that are facts."
Unfortunately, fact-checking website Politifact has shown that 71 percent of Trump's public statements range from "mostly false" to "pants on fire" levels of absurdity.
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WITHIN HOURS of Trump's inauguration, rumors began to circulate that government agencies such as National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had been ordered to scrub references to climate change from their websites. There were other reports of gag orders on the Department of Agriculture and a freeze on EPA grants.
NASA climate scientist James Hansen was famously gagged during the presidency of George W. Bush, along with hundreds of others at seven different federal agencies who were ordered against using the term "global warming."
However, scientists at the EPA say Trump's mandate that any data collected by them--including information that is of direct consequence to people's health and that of the planet--must first undergo political vetting before being release to the public takes things much further down the road to outright censorship.
As far as gutting the EPA entirely, it's certainly not beyond possibility, considering that a key adviser to Trump and his head of transition for the EPA, Myron Ebell, called environmentalists "the greatest threat to freedom and prosperity in the modern world."
One wonders if he had in mind an editorial in Nature, one of the world's leading science journals, which, under the headline "Scientists Must Fight for the Facts," described Trump's energy plan as "a product of cynicism and greed" for its adherence to talking points taken directly from the fossil-fuel industry.
As bad as our air, water and soil is today, we know before the EPA's creation under Richard Nixon in response to a wave of gigantic pro-environment marches in the 1960s and '70s, things were much worse.
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IN RESPONSE to these attacks--and the resulting increase in stress and anxiety over job security--scientists have called a March for Science on Earth Day, April 22, in Washington, D.C. Like the giant Women's March on Washington the day after Trump's inauguration, the science march has already spawned calls for solidarity protests in other cities across the country.
One-fifth of scientists in the U.S. are immigrants, meaning the lives of thousands of scientists and science students have already been affected by the travel ban, leaving people traumatized, but also mobilizing for the protests. A petition drawn up by academics against the anti-Muslim immigration ban, Academics Against Immigration Executive Order has garnered more than 20,000 signatures, including over 50 Nobel Laureates.
The head of the largest professional science organization in the world, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, physicist Rush Holt described the change under Trump as taking long-standing attacks against science in the U.S. to another level: "In my relatively long career I have not seen this level of concern about science...This immigration ban has serious humanitarian issues, but I bet it never occurred to them that it also has scientific implications."
But resistance from scientists is emerging from all quarters. As Republicans tried to pass a bill to sell off more public land to corporations and fossil-fuel interests, workers at the National Park Service went rogue around the country, setting up their own social media sites to combat disinformation and let the public know what was happening.
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PREDICTABLY, THE March for Science has drawn controversy for "politicizing" science, even though scientists have signed a range of open letters calling for stronger action to combat climate change, and climate scientists have already held a rally in San Francisco in December last year protesting Trump's election victory and his anti-science rhetoric.
By selecting Earth Day, the march is clearly connected to Trump's specific and highly political attacks on government bodies and scientists associated with climate change research and other environmental concerns.
Despite this, renowned Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker tweeted: "Scientists' March on Washington plan compromises its goals with anti-science PC/identity politics/hard-left rhetoric"--apparently because the website included information about the importance of diversity and intersectionality.
Meanwhile, science writer Dr. Alex Berezow, who penned a blatantly political book about the supposed anti-science proclivities of the left, tells us he won't be on the march because it doesn't mention white men, Christians or privately-funded science research.
More seriously, Robert Young, one of the co-authors of a report on rising sea level and its impact on the coastline of North Carolina--which drew the ire of the real estate lobby and conservative politicians, along with scathing humor from Stephen Colbert--argued in the New York Times that the march is a bad idea:
A march by scientists, while well intentioned, will serve only to trivialize and politicize the science we care so much about, turn scientists into another group caught up in the culture wars, and further drive the wedge between scientists and a certain segment of the American electorate.
On the other side of the debate, biologist Christina Agapakis tweeted, "Is it going to be a fuck yeah science facts march or a science is political and made by humans march?"
Agapakis importantly went on to argue that not having political demands doesn't make any sense nor help achieve the goals of the scientists: "If 300 years of scientists pretending to be apolitical wasn't enough to convince someone that climate change isn't a hoax, then erasing political issues from the march isn't going to change anyone's mind either."
As far as the substance of this discussion is concerned, one immediate and obvious question would be to ask who is "politicizing" science?
Given Trump's rejection of climate change, his attacks on science, his appointment of the former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State and his intended appointment of Scott Pruitt to head the EPA--a federal department which Pruitt spent his tenure as attorney general of Oklahoma suing over a dozen times--if anyone is "politicizing" science, surely it's already being done by the president.
Indeed, when the editors of the thoroughly mainstream USA Today issue a statement calling for Pruitt's rejection as head of the EPA because Trump "couldn't have nominated someone more opposed to the agency's mission," you know you're involved in politics.
Although Texas Republican Congressman Lamar Smith might disagree. The inveterate climate denier and anti-science champion--but nevertheless somehow chair of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology--has said that listening to President Donald Trump, as opposed to the media or scientists, was likely "the only way to get the unvarnished truth."
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TO TALK of a supposedly apolitical science is wrongheaded to begin with. Science has been political since its modern inception with the Scientific Revolution, which began in part with Galileo's experiments on projectile motion for the highly political purpose of launching more accurate cannonballs.
Science is as much a cultural artifact of society as art, music or fashion. Of course, science is about investigating the natural world through rationalism and empirically verified investigation, but the questions asked by scientists, what they obtain funding to investigate, and the methodology they use are all contoured and distorted by the society within which they are embedded.
We can see that contradiction with climate change research itself.
The reason we know so much about the atmosphere and climate is because climate research grew out of the military's need in the 1950s to track wind currents so it could predict where radioactive fallout would be most severe following nuclear war (which scientists working on the Manhattan Project had made possible in the first place).
In the U.S., that research gave rise to the building of the interstate highway system to facilitate military transportation and the evacuation of population centers--which in turn generated the phenomenon of the suburbs and the growth of a culture centered around the automobile and fossil fuels.
There is a difference and a contradiction between the philosophy and method of science based in empirical evidence and rationalism and how it is practiced in a class-stratified society, by people just as subject to social prejudices and norms as anyone else.
Though some individual scientists may profess and even believe they are disinterestedly studying the way the universe works merely for the sake of it, science is part of class society. As such, it is faced with the same contradictions as any other facet of an unequal and exploitative social system.
However, because scientific explanation for the way the natural world works needs to correspond to objectively observable and experimentally verified facts and rationality, the contradictions inherent to it and the field's intrinsically political nature are often more clearly expressed than other areas of human culture.
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AS HAS been repeatedly shown through history, science can be used to bolster the political status quo or help tear it down.
Famed American sociologist of science Robert K. Merton argued in the 1940s that science was a collective endeavor for the civic good, in which sharing of ideas within the scientific community and the wider public was a paramount consideration.
"The communism of the scientific ethos is incompatible with the definition of technology as 'private property' in a capitalistic society," Merton wrote. "Patents proclaim exclusive rights of use, and often, nonuse." According to Merton, science would come into conflict with rulers whenever efforts were made to enforce "the centralization of institutional control."
One of the most infamous stories in the history of science is scientists' role in justifying the characterization of racial superiority of the so-called "white race" with the rise of scientific racism in the 19th century--a precursor to Hitler's anti-Semitic policies of the 1930s.
Another example of science justifying the status quo: Social Darwinism is rooted in the idea that we are genetically predisposed to behave in greedy and selfish ways--these human attributes are naturalized in modes that just happen to coincide with the values necessary for capitalism to survive.
And of course, it was scientists and engineers who developed atomic weapons, nerve gas, pesticides and fracking.
Conversely, a better understanding of the natural world through science also gives us wondrous things: birth control, modern medicine and vaccinations, to list only a tiny fraction of the vast contribution to socially useful knowledge and technologies we have obtained through scientific experiments and theoretical development. We are going to need to apply this knowledge and technology to avoid dangerous, human-induced climate change.
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THESE EXAMPLES illustrate what really irks Trump about science--and why the March for Science in Washington is such a crucial development.
Here it's important to be clear about what Trump isn't doing. He's not saying corporations or private funding for science should be cut, only government funding of science--particularly climate science, while carefully exempting the military. The question Trump is ultimately posing--and what scientists and everyone else need to understand--is this: Should there be any science in the public good?
Trump is not telling businesses to stop doing science. He wants the federal government to stop doing science in the public interest. He wants an end to fact-based discourse wherever the facts run counter to right-wing ideology.
Understanding his assault on science in this manner connects it to the wider Republican and corporate attacks on public education and health care. It is the logical endpoint of capitalism in its most unrestricted form.
As such, it is an intensely political attack that can only be successfully repelled by a similarly political response.
We want and need more funding for all branches of science in the public good and an increase in research into areas of climate change, agro-ecology, renewable energy technologies, medical research and so on. We can only justify these on the grounds of our values, values that emerge from our political orientation and desire for just social outcomes with regard to health, clean air, and unpolluted soil and water.
This is really what scientists who are genuinely opposing the "politicizing" of science--as opposed to those with conservative politics using the complaint to oppose protest--mean: science can furnish us with facts about the way the physical world works, but it doesn't tell us anything about what to do with those facts once we have established them.
For example, science and technology have furnished humans with the ability to hunt down and drive whales to extinction. But it tells us nothing about whether we should or not. Which is to say, science tells us nothing about what is right or wrong--that comes down to our values and is therefore an ethical and political question.
But most people would decry such a rigid attempt at fence-sitting, particularly when people's lives and the health of the biosphere are at stake. And especially when one considers the already highly political nature of scientific research, grants and so on under capitalism. As radical educator Paolo Freire commented, "To sit on the fence in the struggle between the oppressed and the oppressor means to take the side of the oppressor, not to be neutral."
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THOUGH TRUMP is clearly attempting something even more extreme, we can learn much about state repression of publicly funded scientific knowledge, research and communication from the behavior of the conservative administration of Canada's former Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Under Harper, Canadian scientists were followed, threatened and censored, while libraries were closed and science research programs cut.
Noting that 24 percent of Canadian scientists reported being required to exclude or alter scientific information for non-science-based reasons, Robert MacDonald, a Canadian federal government scientist for three decades, commented:
That's something you would expect to hear in the 1950s from eastern Europe, not something you expect to hear from a democracy like Canada in 2013...And I think, by all indication, that's what our sisters and brothers are going to be faced with down in the United States.
The attacks, cuts and muzzling of scientists by the Harper government, particularly in any field even remotely connected to climate change, were extensive and systematic, undermining any claim to a democratic, truth-oriented administration.
Highlighting the purpose of the censorship, the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations explained in the run-up to Canadian demonstrations by scientists in 2013:
In the absence of rigorous, scientific information--and an informed public--decision-making becomes an exercise in upholding the preferences of those in power.
In Canada today, as in most of the developed world, power has become increasingly concentrated in fewer hands-- hands which are inevitably attached to the bodies of big business and the state. And in light of Prime Minister Harper's agenda to rebrand Canada as the next energy superpower, it would seem that both the corporate interests and the state are focused on the expansion of the resource extraction industry in Canada.
In the federal capital of Ottawa, hundreds of scientists clad in lab coats carried a coffin in a funeral procession to mark the "death of scientific evidence." This and dozens of smaller marches elsewhere had an observable impact on people's perception of the Harper government.
In a lesson U.S.-based scientists should take to heart, the decline in popularity of the Harper government--and the subsequent electoral victory of Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party, signaling a more positive, less hostile approach to science, if not a break with big business, including the energy industry--can be traced in part to the 2013 marches by scientists.
Hence, for all the naysayers in the scientific community who want empirical evidence about the efficacy of a political protest, look no further than the Canadian experience. According to one of the organizers with the group behind the protests, Evidence for Democracy--which is advising U.S. scientists on their march--commented, Trump's attack on science:
absolutely echoes what we saw under George Bush in the States and what we saw under Harper, except it's so much swifter and more brazen than what we saw under Harper...But at the same time there's been a huge resistance coming out of the scientific community and that's been really heartening to see.
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MICHAEL MANN, one of the world's leading climate scientists, has written that "scientists are, in general, a reticent lot who would much rather spend our time in the lab, out in the field, teaching and doing research." Nevertheless, Mann went on to call for a "rebellion" against Trump, due to the severity of Trump's assault.
As Dr. Prescod-Weinsten, a cosmologist and particle physicist at the University of Washington, commented: "What history has taught us is that...[w]hen we work with extremist, racist, Islamophobic or nationalist governments, it doesn't work for science." Nor one could add, for humanity.
The assault on science must be recast and seen as entirely political. It is being made in order to further the interests of fossil fuel-based corporations. Beyond that, it is part and parcel of a larger political project to drive society back and call into question all forms of publically funded scientific, fact-based research, data gathering and dissemination in the interests of ordinary people and the public good.
Which brings us back to Galileo and what should be the purpose of scientific endeavor.
One of the other things that so angered the Inquisition was that Galileo chose to write his treatise not in Latin, the language of academia and the well to do, but in the language of common people. Galileo quite deliberately wrote his book in Italian so that it would be widely read--before being banned, it was a best seller--and discussed.
Galileo was doing science for the common good--presenting a fact-based, better understanding of the world to more clearly inform people of how their world worked. As Bertolt Brecht wrote in his essay on "Writing the Truth," "The truth must be spoken with a view to the results it will produce in the sphere of action."
Scientists must be political in order to be more effective scientists, not less effective. The struggle is really about the question and need to further democratize science. That means scientists seeing themselves as "citizen scientists"--in the mold of Rachel Carson, Barry Commoner, Carl Sagan or Stephen Jay Gould.
For Commoner, scientists are obligated to rebel to fulfill their mission of science in the public interest and for social good. He wrote:
The scholar's duty is toward the development of socially significant truth, which requires freedom to test the meaning of all relevant observations and views in open discussion, and openly to express concern with the goals of our society. The scholar has an obligation--which he owes to the society that supports him--toward such open discourse. And when, under some constraint, scholars are called upon to support a single view, then the obligation to discourse necessarily becomes an obligation to dissent. In a situation of conformity, dissent is the scholars duty to society.
If science is all about taking a critical eye toward the investigation of natural phenomenon for the betterment of humanity, then rather than seeing protest and public involvement as somehow detrimental to that project, these should be seen as at the heart of the process.
We must pose the question: What are the goals we want for society? How can we help society realize those goals? To effectively answer those questions, scientists must necessarily dissent from those in power who seek to stifle empirical research and do so by informing and involving laypeople to aid their cause.
Making the March for Science on Earth Day big and political as possible is the best way to help further that process, push back Trump's right-wing agenda and enlist more people to support science in the public good."
See the rest here:
Will science go rogue against Donald Trump? - Socialist Worker Online
The company we keep Elvis Presley, Big Bird, South Park, Lena Dunham have all been censored. Composite: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty; Scott J. Ferrell/Congressional Quarterly/Alamy; Chris Buck for the Guardian
If Lena Dunham had her way, one episode of Girls would have featured a shot of freshly-ejaculated sperm looping through the air. This was brought up during a recent oral history of the show ahead of its last ever series as well as the fact that HBO stepped in and stopped it from happening on the grounds of basic taste.
With its money shot that never was, Girls has now entered the hallowed halls of censored TV shows. Heres a potted history of the company it keeps.
When Elvis Presley waggled his pelvis on the Milton Berle Show in 1956, an appalled New York Daily News described the performance as being tinged with the kind of animalism that should be confined to dives and bordellos. So, when Elvis appeared on the Steve Allen Show some months later, nervous executives forced him to tone down his sexually suggestive dance moves by making him perform Hound Dog to a dog in a hat on a plinth.
One evening, Tonight Show host Jack Paar told a long and rambling anecdote that contained several references to the term WC as a euphemism for toilet. NBC censors, outraged at the filth inherent in discussing water closets on television, cut the anecdote without informing Paar. The following night Paar close to tears walked off set mid-episode and refused to return for a month.
An episode entitled The Fix saw Hutch get addicted to heroin, and the BBC refused to broadcast it. The episode would eventually air during a special Channel 4 Starsky and Hutch night 24 years later. Note: this video is a fan-made montage, although the original would have arguably been more traumatic had it also been soundtracked by How to Save a Life by The Fray.
A first-series episode entitled The Klansmen has never been broadcast in the UK. This could be because it deals with a violent white power organisation and is therefore full of racial epithets. Or it could be because Bodie one of the good guys, remember repeatedly outs himself as a racist in fairly graphic terms. Or it could be down to its big reveal: the leader of the racist organisation was black. Either way, ick.
No footage from the episode Snuffys Parents Get a Divorce exists, because it has never been aired in any form. The story was meant to deal with the breakup of Mr Snuffleupagus family, but test screenings revealed the litany of unintentionally negative effects the episode had on children. Reports suggested that the kids who watched it were in tears, adding They thought nobody loved Snuffy. They worried their own parents were going to get divorced. As a result, the episode was canned forever.
Although it may appear placid to the point of tedium, an episode of the plodding American sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond entitled Maries Sculpture has never been broadcast on British television. Why? Perhaps because this is the episode where Raymonds mother unwittingly creates a giant (and fairly graphic) statue of a female sexual organ. And, since Everybody Loves Raymond only airs at 8am in the UK, its likely the channel decided that a colossal ceramic vagina shouldnt be the last thing kids see before they leave for school of a morning.
When Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad in 2005, the outrage was such that South Park was bound to weigh in at some point. The episode Cartoon Wars Part II was initially supposed to show another depiction of Muhammad, but ended up running a black title card reading Comedy Central has refused to broadcast an image of Mohammed on their network in its place.
Between 2001 and 2006, Fear Factor was a modestly diverting dare show, like Im a Celebritys Bushtucker Trials stretched out over an hour. However, when NBC revived it in 2011, Fear Factor became a programme where girls in skimpy outfits drank donkey semen while men watched and vomited. After viewing the episode in question, NBC chose not to air it in America. Still, its good to know where the line of decency is. That line is donkey sperm.
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South Park to Sesame Street: the TV censorship hall of fame - The Guardian
Just remember, when an authoritarian government expresses interest in your opinions, its not necessarily with your best interests at heart.
Thats what the Chinese government has been doing over the last few years, according to a study by researchers in Hong Kong, Sweden, and the United States.
The study found that the regime has been selectively loosening its grip on social media censorship and allowing users to discuss some sensitive topics but its doing this in part to better track dissent and nip potential protest movements in the bud.
For the study, titled Why Does China Allow Freer Social Media? Protests versus Surveillance and Propaganda and published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, researchers analyzed more than 13 billion posts made to Sina Weibo, a Chinese-language microblogging platform akin to Twitter, and correlated these with 545 collective protest events.
They discovered that online censors often allowed free discussion of controversial topics including official corruption and pollution, in many cases accompanied by calls for protests and strikes, apparently with an eye to preventing or limiting the latter.
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Overall, around three million posts relating to protests or social conflict and another 1.3 million relating to strikes were allowed to remain by censors.
Towards that end, the authors state we find that social media can be very effective for protest surveillance, as Most of the real-world protests and strikes that we study can be predicted one day in advance based on social media content.
In one case, the city government of Chengdu simply canceled the weekend, requiring workers to show up at their workplaces and students to be in school, in order to head off a protest over a planned toxic chemical factory.
In fact, users seem to assume that their social media is being monitored, and use it as a channel to circumvent local officials and communicate directly with the central government.
In one interesting example, the user wrote: Billions of money went into the pockets of local officials and their business partners! President Xi, Premier Li, and Secretary Wang in the Central Discipline Inspection Department, do you read our microblogs? Can you hear our voice? Please eradicate these corrupt officials! Right now!
Read more here:
China Loosens Social Media Censorship To Uncover Dissent - MediaPost Communications
USA Today Network Adam Tamburin, The Tennessean 8:22 p.m. ET Feb. 9, 2017
Milo Yiannopoulos holds a sign as he speaks at the University of Colorado in 2017.(Photo: Jeremy Papasso/file/AP)
NASHVILLE Inspired by a Breitbart News editor whose speeches have spurred protests at colleges across the country, state lawmakers on Thursday touted abill that they said would protect free speechon Tennessee campuses.
While discussing the bill in a news conference, sponsors Rep. Martin Daniel and Sen. Joey Hensley referenced the protests against controversial conservativeMilo Yiannopoulos, who is a senior editor at Breitbart.Violence eruptedat a protest against a plannedYiannopoulos speech at the University of California, Berkeley, prompting officials there to cancel the speech.The lawmakers indicated that the violence had hampered the expression of conservative ideas at Berkeley. Similar issues have cropped up in Tennessee, they said.
Daniel, R-Knoxville, called his legislation "the Milo bill," and said it was "designed to implement oversight of administrators' handling of free speech issues."
USA TODAY COLLEGE
Violence and chaos erupt at UC-Berkeley in protest against Milo Yiannopoulos
Hensley, R-Hohenwald, said the bill was specifically tailored to defend students with conservative views that he said had been silenced in the past.
"We've heard stories from many students that are honestly on the conservative side that have those issues stifled in the classroom,"Hensley said."We just want to ensure our public universities allow all types of speech."
The bill said public universities"have abdicated their responsibility to uphold free speech principles, and these failures make it appropriate for all state institutions of higher education to restate and confirm their commitment in this regard."
Daniel and Hensley sponsored similar legislation last year which sought to make it easier for students to advocate for various causes on campus.He notably saidthe Islamic State, the terrorist organization,should be allowed to recruit on college campuses in Tennessee.
The lawmakers referenced the University of Tennessee's flagship campus in Knoxville while promoting the bill. UT said in a statement that free speech is encouraged and protected on campus.
USA TODAY
Milo Yiannopoulos buys more time for controversial book
"The constitutional right of free speech is a fundamental principle that underlies the mission of the University of Tennessee," Gina Stafford, spokeswoman for the UT system, said in an email."The University has a long and established record of vigorously defending and upholdingall students right to free speech.
To pass, the bill would likely needto win approval from lawmakers who regularly take issue with socially liberal speech on campus, from events during UT's annual Sex Week toposts on the UT websiteabout gender-neutral pronouns and holiday parties.
FollowAdam Tamburin on Twitter: @tamburintweets
After a violent protest forces UC Berkeley to cancel a speech by right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, students wonder what has become of an institution known as the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement. (Feb. 2) AP
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Breitbart's Milo Yiannopoulos inspires Tennessee 'free speech ...
Forbes | Marco Rubio, Not Elizabeth Warren, Is A Free Speech Hero Forbes When Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell decided to enforce Senate rules and prevent Elizabeth Warren from personally impugning the character of her colleague, Jeff Sessions, many on the Left howled that Warren had been silenced and censored. |
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Marco Rubio, Not Elizabeth Warren, Is A Free Speech Hero - Forbes
Federal Employee Free Speech Tied in Knots Common Dreams The biggest limitation is that government workers have no as in zero First Amendment free speech rights when acting in their official role. That is because the government owns their speech according to a major constitutional ruling by the Roberts ... |
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The city of Smyrna has thrown out ordinances that prompted a recent lawsuit in which Southern Christian Leadership Conference members alleged free speech violations.
SCLS members filed the lawsuit Jan. 23 in federal court after they said Smyrna police violated their constitutional rights.
Richard Pellegrino and Aaron Bridges were handing out leaflets in the downtown Smyrna area to protest Thomas March 24, 2015, death by a Smyrna police officer when they were confronted by officers.
Thomas was shot in the back as he fled, in a customers Maserati, Smyrna and Cobb police officers attempting to serve him with a warrant for a probation violation.
Atlanta civil rights attorney Gerald Weber said the free speech lawsuit challenged sections of an ordinance city police had invoked to stop them from passing out leaflets in that downtown square.
While distributing leaflets on a public sidewalk to educate the public about the killing of Thomas, they were repeatedly seized, threatened with arrest and unlawfully removed from public property without cause, Weber said.
Smyrna City Council met Feb. 6 and agreed to rescind the ordinance that unconstitutionally discriminated based on content of a speakers message and an ordinance that created animpermissible presumption of criminality for citizen leafleting in certain circumstances, Weber said Sunday in a statement.
Under the order of a federal injunction, Smyrna agreed not to re-enact the challenged provisions.
Weber said he appreciated the citys willingness to resolve key portions of the lawsuit and respect the rights of citizens to protest.
This order vindicates our clients right to raise important questions about the killing of yet another unarmed black man, Weber said.
Excerpt from:
Smyrna residents win free speech battle in protesting police killing - Atlanta Journal Constitution