To Test Housing Program, Some Are Denied Aid

It has long been the standard practice in medical testing: Give drug treatment to one group while another, the control group, goes without.

Now, New York City is applying the same methodology to assess one of its programs to prevent homelessness. Half of the test subjects — people who are behind on rent and in danger of being evicted — are being denied assistance from the program for two years, with researchers tracking them to see if they end up homeless.
But some public officials and legal aid groups have denounced the study as unethical and cruel, and have called on the city to stop the study and to grant help to all the test subjects who had been denied assistance.
“They should immediately stop this experiment,” said the Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer. “The city shouldn’t be making guinea pigs out of its most vulnerable.”

Desperate Housewives Quells Jihad

From Slate (12-08-10):
Desperate Housewives may seem the epitome of American decadence, but in Saudi Arabia, the show is turning youth away from jihad according to a secret May 2009 cable released by Wikileaks. The cable, titled "David Letterman: Agent of Influence," says the satellite broadcast of U.S. TV shows like Housewives and the Late Show With David Letterman has been more effective at quelling extremist zeal than the U.S.-funded TV news channel al-Hurra. The $500 million Al-Hurra, which features extended interviews with policians, can't compete with Eva Longoria and Jennifer Aniston, reported U.S. diplomats who met with Saudi media executives. The diplomats also said Saudi audiences were particularly attracted to certain themes like "heroic honesty in the face of corruption" as evinced by films such as the George Clooney vehicle Michael Clayton, reports the Guardian. "Saudis are now very interested in the outside world and everybody wants to study in the US if they can. They are fascinated by US culture in a way they never were before," the cable reads.

Read original story in The Guardian | Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2010

Apple Patents Sext-Blocking Technology

Apparently just keeping porn off the iPad isn't enough for Steve Jobs and Co. Now Apple is trying to take the tawdry out of text messaging with a technology that can prevent their devices from sending or receiving "objectionable" texts. The U.S. Patent and Trademark office approved a patent for "Text-based communication control for personal communication device" Wednesday. The background information Apple submitted with their patent request expressed concern that there is currently "no way to monitor and control text communications to make them user appropriate. For example, users such as children may send or receive messages (intentionally or not) with parentally objectionable language." Their new see-no-evil application would evaluate whether a given text contained "approved" content based on "objective ratings criteria or a user's age or grade level." If the text is too naughty, the application "prevents such text from being included in the text-based communication," and alerts the user (or his parents) that a text has been blocked. TechCrunch's Alexa Tsotsis says isn't overly optimistic about the chances of Steve Jobs saving the nation's teenagers from themselves. Serial sexters will just "find some clever workaround to express how much they want to bang, screw, hit it or a myriad of other words that don't immediately set off the censorship sensors," she predicts. And just keeping kids in line won't rid us of the nation's worst sext offenders, unless Brett Favre's mom still pays his phone bill. 

From Slate (10-14-10)

Read original story in TechCrunch | Wednesday, Oct. 13, 2010

Street artist enlivens The Simpsons

Banksy revives "Simpsons'" edge with wild opening scene

It's not the annual Halloween episode, but the opening of "The Simpsons" last night was equal parts dark, morbid and amazing.
Street artist Banksy came to Springfield last night, becoming the first artist to ever storyboard a "Simpsons" opening. And what an opening it was.
An underground sweat shop, a dying unicorn, a cat fur wood chipper: You have to watch the clip to understand the full horror and brilliance.

Banksy came to prominence with subversive stencils that started appearing on London streets in the '90s. He's an interesting choice for the cartoon show, and he has definitely vaulted the longtime TV giant back into conversation.

This is not the first time Banksy has visited "The Simpsons." The Daily Wh.at points out that Bansky took on Bart Simpson and the chalkboard gag in New Orleans in 2008.
After the jarring opening, the show went back to its regular routine of guest cameos, self-referential jokes and tangential story lines.

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By Melissa Bell  | Washington Post | October 11, 2010; 9:14 AM ET

Lost in the world of screens?

Click on this link to read a rant from Truthdig by Chris Hedges about how we are all losing ourselves in the world of screens (computers/phones/etc.).  This article was contributed by Robert Stanton.

Shoot-'Em-Ups Make You Smarter

From Slate (9-14-10):

Playing violent, fast-paced video games may actually make you smarter , researchers say. Subjects who spent 50 hours playing Call of Duty 2 were able to complete timed computer tasks about a quarter more quickly, and substantially more accurately, than people who played the Sims. The results suggest that playing shoot-'em-ups increases people's ability to conduct probablistic reasoning and quickly infer useful facts from fuzzy data. "It's not the case that the action game players are trigger-happy and less accurate—they are just as accurate and also faster," said the neuroscientist who conducted the study . Researchers say the results suggest that playing video games could provide a useful performance boost to people like surgeons and soldiers who need to make quick, high-stakes decisions based on limited information.

Read original story in Bloomberg | Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2010

"Medal of Honor" game banned on US military bases

Click on this link to read a Washington Post article about how the videogame "Medal of Honor" has been banned from bases because it allows a player to assume the role of the Taliban and shoot American soldiers in the game.  Do you agree with the ban?  What are the dangerous consequences imagined by those who forbid the game?

Will Craig's List censorship eliminate its online prostitution business?

Click on this link to read a Washington Post article about Craig List's decision to "censor" prostitution ads on its site.  The article explores whether this will likely eliminate or reduce the solicitation of sexual services on the site.

Flag trampling upheld (for Baptists)

From Slate (9/3/10):

Federal Judge Overturns Ban on Flag Mutilation

U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf overturned Nebraska's ban on flag mutilation Thursday. It is unclear whether his ruling, that the law can't be applied as long as the person in question is otherwise acting peacefully, would affect only the individual who filed the lawsuit and her fellow church members or everyone in the state. "Thursday's ruling is a victory for activists from a Kansas church who trample on the U.S. flag when they protest at military funerals," the Associated Press reported. Megan Phelps-Roper, a member of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., filed the lawsuit in July on the grounds that the ban violated her right to free speech. Westboro Baptist members often protest at soldiers' funerals across the United States because they believe troop deaths are a punishment for the country's tolerance of homosexuality. Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning has previously said that his state's ban on flag mutilation is not consistent with U.S. Supreme Court rulings that declared desecration of the flag a form of protected speech and that he wouldn't fight to save it. Should Bruning refuse to appeal, Thursday's ruling would stand.

Read original story in The Associated Press | Friday, Sept. 3, 2010

Plato and pop culture

Click on this link to read a column by Princeton philosopher Alexander Nehamas that applies Plato's critique of poetry in The Republic to the contemporary argument about violent video games (and a court's recent rejection of a California attempt to regulate them).

Disaster at the Top of the World

Excerpt from NY Times Article
Policy makers need to accept that societies won’t make drastic changes to address climate change until such a crisis hits. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing for them to do in the meantime. When a crisis does occur, the societies with response plans on the shelf will be far better off than those that are blindsided. The task for national and regional leaders, then, is to develop a set of contingency plans for possible climate shocks — what we might call, collectively, Plan Z.

Link to the the NY Times article
 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/opinion/23homer-dixon.html?pagewanted=1&emc=eta1

Article submitted for posting by Virginia DeMers

Autism Gives Woman An 'Alien View' Of Social Brains by Jon Hamilton

The story leads into some interesting thoughts about empathy. Below is an excerpt from the program and a link to the NPR article.

People like Daxer have taught scientists a lot about how typical humans interact socially, says Simon Baron-Cohen, a professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge in the U.K.
"We didn't really focus on how complex social development is until people with autism pointed out to us that this is something that doesn't always just develop naturally," Baron-Cohen says.
Most children quickly figure out the importance of making eye contact, how to read facial expressions and social cues, and how to fit into a group.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129379866&ft=1&f=1001

Performance Rights Act under consideration by Congress

Click on this link to read a Washington Post story (8-23-10) about a new piece of legislation that seeks to resolve controversies over Internet radio stations, among other issues.

Target faces boycott due to political sponsorship

When Target gave money in July to a pro-business group in Minnesota, the company thought it was helping its bottom line by backing candidates in its home state who support lower taxes. Instead, the retailer has found itself in a fight with liberal and gay rights groups that has escalated into calls for a nationwide boycott and protests at the company's headquarters and stores. It is an embarrassing stumble for a company that has carefully cultivated an image of urbanity and hipness -- and that has earned goodwill with the gay community along the way.  Click on this link to read the full story from the Washington Post (8-19-10).

Don't send in the clones

Click on this link to read a New York Times column (8-10-10) by Maureen Dowd that argues for the importance of diversity in picking college roommates.  Dowd worries about services that now help incoming students to pick roommates matched exactly like themselves.  Do you agree that living as a roommate with someone very different than oneself is a good preparation for future life and profession, or could such a selection turn out to be disastrous? 

"Grey market" for I-phones heats up in China

Click on this link to read a Washington Post (8-9-10) story about the red hot market in China for the new I-Phones and I-Pads (and their counterfeit clones).  Are attempts to suppress this illegal market futile, as with other forms of prohibition (software and song pirating, etc.)?

Pressure on Craig's List to stop sex service advertising

Click on this link to read a Washington Post article (8-9-10) about a young girl's crusade to end the Craig's List ads that helped enslave her in the sex trade.  Craig's List has responded that it is already taking steps to regulate the ads.

Did a cell phone photo create a sexual offender?

Click on this link to read Tom Lyons' column in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune (8-8-10) about how a man was arrested for taking a cell phone photo of two 15 year old flashers.  Do the details provided by Lyons suggest that he should be charged as a sexual offender?  Or is Lyons correct that this would be an overreaction?  How have cell phone photos and videos changed the nature of a variety of crimes?

David Brooks on "Moral Naturalism"

Click on this link to read a New York Times (7-22-10) column by David Brooks that explores interesting questions of human moral psychology.

YouTube and Google win over Viacom re: intellectual property

Click on this link to read a USA Today article (6-24-10) on Viacom's lawsuit against YouTube (now owned by Google).  Viacom sued YouTube for a billion dollars for copyright infringement and a judge has ruled in favor of YouTube.  Despite some self-incriminating statements by some of the YouTube execs, the judge found that YouTube had been doing a good job at identifying and taking down clips that violated copyright.  The trial has been extremely nasty and Viacom is expected to appeal.

You better buy those girl scout cookies