Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
From The New York Times
Editorial
Don’t Stop the Debates
Published: January 30, 2012
Senator John McCain spoke for many nervous Republicans on Sunday when he
said it’s time to “stop the debates.” They’ve turned into mud-wrestling
contests, he said on “Meet the Press” on NBC, and are driving up negative impressions of the party’s presidential candidates.
Mr. McCain, who knows something about unfavorable ratings, is right that
the 19 debates so far have left an increasingly sour taste in voters’
mouths. Since the debates began, the popularity gap has grown between
the leading Republican candidates and President Obama.
But that’s not simply because the candidates have increased the
intensity of their attacks on each other, nor is it curable by cutting
back the mud-fighting, as Mr. McCain suggests. It’s also because voters
have been exposed to the broken windows of the Republican idea factory.
The value of debates is to put the candidates on stage to air their
ideas. If voters find them dishonest and divisive, the Republicans are
getting the wrong message if they think all they have to do to fix that
is to stop talking so much.
Consider some of the “bold ideas” the country learned about in just the
last two debates in Florida, leading up to Tuesday’s primary there.
Newt Gingrich wants to build a lunar colony on the moon in just eight
years, and he seems to believe that the private sector can be induced to
pay for it. He wants to convene a “gold commission” to get the country
back to hard money, which would shackle the economy to a single
commodity. He wants to end multilingual ballots (disenfranchising
millions), promote an uprising in Cuba and end the capital gains tax,
which would allow millionaires to pay less of their income to the
government than the minimum they pay now.
Mitt Romney promised to get millions of illegal immigrants to
“self-deport,” apparently by making their lives miserable. He would veto
the Dream Act, which would provide a path to citizenship for immigrant
college students and military service members. He would refuse to extend
any government help to struggling homeowners, while repealing the
Dodd-Frank law that finally regulated the banking practices that led to
the housing crisis.
The debates that Mr. McCain so deplores also gave voters a taste of the
incompetent candidacies of Herman Cain, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann,
helping to put an end to them. They have properly marginalized Ron Paul
and his cranky libertarianism.
And they have given Rick Santorum repeated opportunities to point out
that Mr. Romney’s bellicose opposition to “Obamacare” is an almost
comical contradiction to his support for the same idea in Massachusetts
when he was governor there. (Mr. Santorum’s strong debate performances
haven’t given him much recent traction in the primaries, though.)
Most of all, the debates have shown the complete lack of interest by all
the Republican candidates in the issues of economic fairness. While the
candidates argue over their investments and their complex tax returns
and who can cut taxes for the rich the most, the contrast to Mr. Obama’s
newfound voice on shared responsibility could not be more clear.
The long series of debates are an open window onto the failed policies
and dubious values of the Republican Party. No wonder some people want
to close it.
Monday, January 30, 2012
From LiveScience
Date: 26 January 2012 Time: 10:29 AM ET
The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario. Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience.
"Prejudice is extremely complex and multifaceted, making it critical that any factors contributing to bias are uncovered and understood," he said.
Controversy ahead
"They've pulled off the trifecta of controversial topics," said Brian Nosek, a social and cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia who was not involved in the study. "When one selects intelligence, political ideology and racism and looks at any of the relationships between those three variables, it's bound to upset somebody."
Polling data and social and political science research do show that prejudice is more common in those who hold right-wing ideals that those of other political persuasions, Nosek told LiveScience. [7 Thoughts That Are Bad For You]
"The unique contribution here is trying to make some progress on the most challenging aspect of this," Nosek said, referring to the new study. "It's not that a relationship like that exists, but why it exists."
Brains and bias
Earlier studies have found links between low levels of education and higher levels of prejudice, Hodson said, so studying intelligence seemed a logical next step. The researchers turned to two studies of citizens in the United Kingdom, one that has followed babies since their births in March 1958, and another that did the same for babies born in April 1970. The children in the studies had their intelligence assessed at age 10 or 11; as adults ages 30 or 33, their levels of social conservatism and racism were measured. [Life's Extremes: Democrat vs. Republican]
In the first study, verbal and nonverbal intelligence was measured using tests that asked people to find similarities and differences between words, shapes and symbols. The second study measured cognitive abilities in four ways, including number recall, shape-drawing tasks, defining words and identifying patterns and similarities among words. Average IQ is set at 100.
Social conservatives were defined as people who agreed with a laundry list of statements such as "Family life suffers if mum is working full-time," and "Schools should teach children to obey authority." Attitudes toward other races were captured by measuring agreement with statements such as "I wouldn't mind working with people from other races." (These questions measured overt prejudiced attitudes, but most people, no matter how egalitarian, do hold unconscious racial biases; Hodson's work can't speak to this "underground" racism.)
As suspected, low intelligence in childhood corresponded with racism in adulthood. But the factor that explained the relationship between these two variables was political: When researchers included social conservatism in the analysis, those ideologies accounted for much of the link between brains and bias.
People with lower cognitive abilities also had less contact with people of other races.
"This finding is consistent with recent research demonstrating that intergroup contact is mentally challenging and cognitively draining, and consistent with findings that contact reduces prejudice," said Hodson, who along with his colleagues published these results online Jan. 5 in the journal Psychological Science.
A study of averages
Hodson was quick to note that the despite the link found between low intelligence and social conservatism, the researchers aren't implying that all liberals are brilliant and all conservatives stupid. The research is a study of averages over large groups, he said.
"There are multiple examples of very bright conservatives and not-so-bright liberals, and many examples of very principled conservatives and very intolerant liberals," Hodson said.
Nosek gave another example to illustrate the dangers of taking the findings too literally.
"We can say definitively men are taller than women on average," he said. "But you can't say if you take a random man and you take a random woman that the man is going to be taller. There's plenty of overlap."
Nonetheless, there is reason to believe that strict right-wing ideology might appeal to those who have trouble grasping the complexity of the world.
"Socially conservative ideologies tend to offer structure and order," Hodson said, explaining why these beliefs might draw those with low intelligence. "Unfortunately, many of these features can also contribute to prejudice."
In another study, this one in the United States, Hodson and Busseri compared 254 people with the same amount of education but different levels of ability in abstract reasoning. They found that what applies to racism may also apply to homophobia. People who were poorer at abstract reasoning were more likely to exhibit prejudice against gays. As in the U.K. citizens, a lack of contact with gays and more acceptance of right-wing authoritarianism explained the link. [5 Myths About Gay People Debunked]
Simple viewpoints
Hodson and Busseri's explanation of their findings is reasonable, Nosek said, but it is correlational. That means the researchers didn't conclusively prove that the low intelligence caused the later prejudice. To do that, you'd have to somehow randomly assign otherwise identical people to be smart or dumb, liberal or conservative. Those sorts of studies obviously aren't possible.
The researchers controlled for factors such as education and socioeconomic status, making their case stronger, Nosek said. But there are other possible explanations that fit the data. For example, Nosek said, a study of left-wing liberals with stereotypically naïve views like "every kid is a genius in his or her own way," might find that people who hold these attitudes are also less bright. In other words, it might not be a particular ideology that is linked to stupidity, but extremist views in general.
"My speculation is that it's not as simple as their model presents it," Nosek said. "I think that lower cognitive capacity can lead to multiple simple ways to represent the world, and one of those can be embodied in a right-wing ideology where 'People I don't know are threats' and 'The world is a dangerous place'. ... Another simple way would be to just assume everybody is wonderful."
Prejudice is of particular interest because understanding the roots of racism and bias could help eliminate them, Hodson said. For example, he said, many anti-prejudice programs encourage participants to see things from another group's point of view. That mental exercise may be too taxing for people of low IQ.
"There may be cognitive limits in the ability to take the perspective of others, particularly foreigners," Hodson said. "Much of the present research literature suggests that our prejudices are primarily emotional in origin rather than cognitive. These two pieces of information suggest that it might be particularly fruitful for researchers to consider strategies to change feelings toward outgroups," rather than thoughts.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Jimmie Rodgers
In December of 1967 Jimmie Rodgers was severely assaulted by an off-duty Los Angeles Police Department officer on the San Diego Freeway in Southern California, fracturing his skull. He later sued the LAPD and settled out of court for $200,000. The reason for the assault has never been established. Within a year or so it seemed that he had recovered from his injuries. However, years later he was diagnosed with Spasmodic Dysphonia.
From the New York Times
In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad
The explosion ripped through Building A5 on a Friday evening last May,
an eruption of fire and noise that twisted metal pipes as if they were
discarded straws.
Color China Photo, via Associated Press
An explosion last May at a Foxconn factory in
Chengdu, China, killed four people and injured 18. It built iPads.
SAFETY PRECAUTIONS After a rash of
apparent suicide attempts, a dormitory for Foxconn workers in Shenzhen,
China, had safety netting installed last May. Foxconn said it acted
quickly and comprehensively to address employee suicides.
When workers in the cafeteria ran outside, they saw black smoke pouring
from shattered windows. It came from the area where employees polished
thousands of iPad cases a day.
Two people were killed immediately, and over a dozen others hurt. As the
injured were rushed into ambulances, one in particular stood out. His
features had been smeared by the blast, scrubbed by heat and violence
until a mat of red and black had replaced his mouth and nose.
“Are you Lai Xiaodong’s father?” a caller asked when the phone rang at
Mr. Lai’s childhood home. Six months earlier, the 22-year-old had moved
to Chengdu, in southwest China, to become one of the millions of human
cogs powering the largest, fastest and most sophisticated manufacturing
system on earth. That system has made it possible for Apple and hundreds of other companies to build devices almost as quickly as they can be dreamed up.
“He’s in trouble,” the caller told Mr. Lai’s father. “Get to the hospital as soon as possible.”
In the last decade, Apple has become one of the mightiest, richest and
most successful companies in the world, in part by mastering global
manufacturing. Apple and its high-technology peers — as well as dozens
of other American industries — have achieved a pace of innovation nearly
unmatched in modern history.
However, the workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often
labor in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants,
worker advocates and documents published by companies themselves.
Problems are as varied as onerous work environments and serious —
sometimes deadly — safety problems.
Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and
live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell
until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s
products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of
hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and
advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable,
independent monitors.
More troubling, the groups say, is some suppliers’ disregard for
workers’ health. Two years ago, 137 workers at an Apple supplier in
eastern China were injured after they were ordered to use a poisonous
chemical to clean iPhone
screens. Within seven months last year, two explosions at iPad
factories, including in Chengdu, killed four people and injured 77.
Before those blasts, Apple had been alerted to hazardous conditions
inside the Chengdu plant, according to a Chinese group that published that warning.
“If Apple was warned, and didn’t act, that’s reprehensible,” said
Nicholas Ashford, a former chairman of the National Advisory Committee
on Occupational Safety and Health, a group that advises the United
States Labor Department. “But what’s morally repugnant in one country is
accepted business practices in another, and companies take advantage of
that.”
Apple is not the only electronics company doing business within a
troubling supply system. Bleak working conditions have been documented
at factories manufacturing products for Dell, Hewlett-Packard, I.B.M.,
Lenovo, Motorola, Nokia, Sony, Toshiba and others.
Current and former Apple executives, moreover, say the company has made
significant strides in improving factories in recent years. Apple has a supplier code of conduct
that details standards on labor issues, safety protections and other
topics. The company has mounted a vigorous auditing campaign, and when
abuses are discovered, Apple says, corrections are demanded.
And Apple’s annual supplier responsibility reports, in many cases, are the first to report abuses. This month, for the first time, the company released a list identifying many of its suppliers.
But significant problems remain. More than half of the suppliers audited
by Apple have violated at least one aspect of the code of conduct every
year since 2007, according to Apple’s reports, and in some instances
have violated the law. While many violations involve working conditions,
rather than safety hazards, troubling patterns persist.
“Apple never cared about anything other than increasing product quality
and decreasing production cost,” said Li Mingqi, who until April worked
in management at Foxconn Technology,
one of Apple’s most important manufacturing partners. Mr. Li, who is
suing Foxconn over his dismissal, helped manage the Chengdu factory
where the explosion occurred.
“Workers’ welfare has nothing to do with their interests,” he said.
Some former Apple executives say there is an unresolved tension within
the company: executives want to improve conditions within factories, but
that dedication falters when it conflicts with crucial supplier
relationships or the fast delivery of new products. Tuesday, Apple reported
one of the most lucrative quarters of any corporation in history, with
$13.06 billion in profits on $46.3 billion in sales. Its sales would
have been even higher, executives said, if overseas factories had been
able to produce more.
Executives at other corporations report similar internal pressures. This
system may not be pretty, they argue, but a radical overhaul would slow
innovation. Customers want amazing new electronics delivered every
year.
“We’ve known about labor abuses in some factories for four years, and
they’re still going on,” said one former Apple executive who, like
others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of confidentiality
agreements. “Why? Because the system works for us. Suppliers would
change everything tomorrow if Apple told them they didn’t have another
choice.”
“If half of iPhones were malfunctioning, do you think Apple would let it go on for four years?” the executive asked.
To read the entire article click here.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
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