Men marched topless, too

“Ladies: It is perfectly legal to be topless in public in the State of Maine. Gentlemen: Women’s breasts aren’t anything to get excited about. Really.“

That seemed to be the message organizers intended to convey when they marched topless through the streets of Portland last month. It’s difficult to tell, actually, since they didn’t publicize it or make a statement at the march.

In March I read a tweet from @portland_maine about a topless march planned for April 3rd. Interested, I read the scant press as well as several articles about the history of toplessness in Maine and the legal precedents. I was pleased to learn that women in Maine have as much right to be topless as men.

Tweet from @portland_maine

feminism · gender · maine · march · portland · protest · topless

Next time you decide to arbitrarily hate a group of people (blacks, Jews, Muslims, atheists, …), think of this and ask yourself if you are qualified to have an opinion.

Use those frequent flier miles.
Jessica Hagy, Indexed, August 9th, 2006

Xenophobia

bigotry · hate · xenophobia

This is just as instructive if you replace “Santa” with “God”.

Wondermark #474; In which you better Watch Out, December 23, 2008

Be good for goodness' sake

god · morality · philosophy · religion · santa · wondermark

This afternoon I selected a Stanford University Philosophy show by Professor Robert Harrison titled “Entitled Opinions About Life and Literature” from my iPhone to keep myself engaged during the commute home. I love the introduction, by way of unapologetic warning.

René Girard on Ritual Sacrifice and the Scapegoat (October 4, 2005)

Warning: The following is an unadulterated and unusually concentrated intellectual discussion. It should be avoided by anyone who does not have a very high tolerance for thinking. If you have an aversion to the exchange of ideas, if you’re deficient in curiosity, if you suffer from common American anti-intellectualism, then please tune out now.

This show promotes the narcotic of intelligent conversation. It takes us into the garden and seats us at the banquet table of ideas, where we feast on the bread of angels: clear and distinct thinking, intuitive analysis, and an enriched use of English. We bring them all to bear on the pursuit of self knowledge.

So be warned: we don’t dumb things down around here. We ratchet up and let it rip.

intelligence · itunesu · philosophy · stanford

Why We Must Ration Health Care
Peter Singer, NY Times, July 15, 2009

I was first introduced to Peter Singer when I read his thought-provoking book, Rethinking Life and Death: The Collapse of Our Traditional Ethics.

In this New York Times Magazine essay, Singer persuasively argues that we should make health care decisions based on the economics of treatment. This should be obvious, but many feel that it is immoral to place a dollar value on human life. That absurdity is untenable.

What do you think of formulas that attempt to place a dollar value on an individual? How much are you worth?

We need a health care rationing system that is economical.

The essay should be read in its entirety. Here are a few of my favorite excerpts.

Remember the joke about the man who asks a woman if she would have sex with him for a million dollars? She reflects for a few moments and then answers that she would. “So,” he says, “would you have sex with me for $50?” Indignantly, she exclaims, “What kind of a woman do you think I am?” He replies: “We’ve already established that. Now we’re just haggling about the price.”

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death · ethics · health care · life · peter singer · policy · singer · united states · usa

It’s nice to hear the anti-marriage drumbeat intensifying.

Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off
Sandra Tsing Loh, The Atlantic, July/August 2009, pg. 116

Sandra Tsing Loh is getting divorced. In this article for The Atlantic magazine she explains the usual trajectory of relationships and why monogamy is unnatural. She uses this to argue that the current model of marriage is outdated. Serial monogamy, she says, is a much more natural model for human beings.

I am a critic of both marriage and monogamy and agree with much of Loh’s analysis of each.

Why do we still insist on marriage? Sure, it made sense to agrarian families before 1900, when to farm the land, one needed two spouses, grand-parents, and a raft of children. But now that we have white-collar work and washing machines, and our life expectancy has shot from 47 to 77, isn’t the idea of lifelong marriage obsolete?

What I do not agree with, however, is that relationships must necessarily end in order to start fresh with someone new. A more utopian model is polyamory, where individuals are free to love more than one person at a time. Each person satiates different needs and at different levels. This is what we should strive to achieve to maximize happiness.

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divorce · marriage · open marriage · the atlantic

Skye Danler

Each week Skye has Math Team one day after school. I usually leave the other two at home and drive to Skye’s school to pick her up. A few weeks ago I was stuck in Portland and unable to make it in time. I called Skye and told her she could either wait for me to arrive or just walk home.

Her excitement was palpable. “Really?”, she asked. We went over a few ground rules and basic pedestrian safety. I told her she had to call me when she left and again when she arrived home. She did, and has been walking ever since. A few times I’ve biked her scooter to her so she could scoot home instead of walking. Once she met Kirsten and I at the Dyer Library and gave to us her backpack so she wouldn’t have to carry it. (more…)

free range · freerangekids · independent · parenting · safety · security · skye · society · trust

Perfectly Happy
Drake Bennett, Boston Globe, May 10, 2009

I am passionate about happiness. I find myself reading all I can on the subject. I think most people spent too much energy and resources trying to attain happiness in ways that are often counterproductive. Most people are terrible at relationships, take too few risks and work to stay within predefined social constructs to their detriment.

Science can help focus our energies on those things that are more likely to appreciably increase happiness. It seems a bit counterintuitive–especially to those of us who struggle financially–that winning the lottery doesn’t make people happy. The research also illuminates one reason long-term relationships often fail: the initial happiness surge of new love eventually wanes.

In recent years, cognitive scientists have turned in increasing numbers to the study of human happiness, and one of their central findings is that we are not very good at predicting how happy or unhappy something will make us. Given time, survivors of tragedies and traumas report themselves nearly as happy as they were before, and people who win the lottery or achieve lifelong dreams don’t see any long-term increase in happiness. By contrast, annoyances like noise or chronic pain bring down our happiness more than you’d think, and having friends or an extra hour of sleep every night can raise it dramatically.

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boston globe · happiness · lottery · poverty · research · Science · wealth

Helen Fisher tells us why we love + cheat
Ted Talks, February 2006

And I’ve also come to think that it’s one of three, basically different brain systems that evolved from mating and reproduction. One is the sex drive: the craving for sexual gratification. W.H. Auden called it an “intolerable neural itch,” and indeed, that’s what it is. It keeps bothering you a little bit, like being hungry. The second of these three brain systems is romantic love: that elation, obsession of early love. And the third brain system is attachment: that sense of calm and security you can feel for a long-term partner. (more…)

anti-depressant · cheat · drive · evolution · love · lust · marriage · psychology · sex · TED · ted talks

What Makes Us Happy?
Joshua Wolf Shenk, The Atlantic, June 2009

I’ve long been intrigued by people and how they relate to one another. I have considered ad nauseum the source of human happiness. Since I was quite young I realized happiness could not be derived from riches alone; there are simply too many who are either happy and poor or sad and rich. When I became an atheist I realized happiness does not derive from god or faith in a higher power. Happiness, I’ve understood well, is all about relationships. It turns out I am correct.

Arlie Bock—a brusque, no-nonsense physician who grew up in Iowa and took over the health services at Harvard University in the 1930s—conceived the project with his patron, the department-store magnate W. T. Grant. Writing in September 1938, Bock declared that medical research paid too much attention to sick people; that dividing the body up into symptoms and diseases—and viewing it through the lenses of a hundred micro-specialties—could never shed light on the urgent question of how, on the whole, to live well. His study would draw on undergraduates who could “paddle their own canoe,” Bock said, and it would “attempt to analyze the forces that have produced normal young men.” He defined normal as “that combination of sentiments and physiological factors which in toto is commonly interpreted as successful living.”

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defense mechanism · grant study · happiness · harvard · psychology · relationship · Science · study · the atlantic