Category Archives: Society

The Dangers of Living in a Chicken Little Society

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Bruce Schneier explains why basing decisions solely on "worst case scenarios" is not a good thing.  

There's a certain blindness that comes from worst-case thinking. An extension of theprecautionary principle, it involves imagining the worst possible outcome and then acting as if it were a certainty. It substitutes imagination for thinking, speculation for risk analysis, and fear for reason. It fosters powerlessness and vulnerability and magnifies social paralysis. And it makes us more vulnerable to the effects of terrorism.

Worst-case thinking means generally bad decision making for several reasons. First, it's only half of the cost-benefit equation. Every decision has costs and benefits, risks and rewards. By speculating about what can possibly go wrong, and then acting as if that is likely to happen, worst-case thinking focuses only on the extreme but improbable risks and does a poor job at assessing outcomes.

h/t to Ed Cone for the link.

Jarvis: “A” Public Versus “The” Public

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Jeff Jarvis explores the hubbub over Facebook's (anti-) privacy moves and does the best job I've seen of explaining the recent angst of the digerati:

Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg seem to assume that once something is public, it’s public. They confused sharing with publishing. They conflate the public sphere with the making of a public. That is, when I blog something, I am publishing it to the world for anyone and everyone to see: the more the better, is the assumption. But when I put something on Facebook my assumption had been that I was sharing it just with the public I created and control there. That public is private. Therein lies the confusion. Making that public public is what disturbs people. It robs them of their sense of control—and their actual control—of what they were sharing and with whom (no matter how many preferences we can set). On top of that, collecting our actions elsewhere on the net—our browsing and our likes—and making that public, too, through Facebook, disturbed people even more. Where does it end?

In My Day it Was NoDoz and Mountain Dew

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Back when I was in college exam week meant little sleep and lots of stress, which resulted in most of us turning to artificial aids to keep us going.  Some people went hard core (i.e. speed), but everyone I knew stuck to some sort of toxic brew of NoDoz and Mountain Dew or Jolt.  By the end of the week nerves were frayed and stomachs were fragile, but for the most part we made it through the week legally.

Kids these days have other options that, quite frankly, scare the bejeezus out of me.  From the Freakonomics blog:

Students apparently consume mass quantities of the performance-enhancing drug Adderall during exam time. Normally the price is $3 for 10 mg, but it rises during exam week to at least $5.

The blog post actually focuses on the fact that drug dealers speculated on Adderall in anticipation of the rise in prices and did so in such volume that they actually drove the price down.  I, on the other hand, am focused on the fact that kids would routinely turn to an OTC drug that's essentially this generation's version of speed and I worry that they don't understand the potential side effects.  From the Wikipedia page about Adderall:

Adderall has a high abuse potential. Due to the fact that Adderall has a powerful effect of increasing blood pressure, it carries the same risk of sudden death, stroke, and heart attack in patients with pre-existing heart conditions, as does methylphenidate and other stimulants used to treat ADHD, as well as the same risk of seizures in patients with a history of seizures.

On Facebook

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I'm finding the Facebook thing more and more interesting.  Not Facebook itself, but the Facebook thing. There are several reasons for this, not the least of which is that it's the first tech related thing that my kids use regularly and have kept using even after "old people" started using it in droves.  Of course the fact that old people use it in droves also makes it interesting.

Personally I love Facebook because it's allowed me to reconnect with all kinds of people that I actually want to reconnect with and haven't seen in real life in decades.  Literally.  Of course there have been a few who have contacted me who I wish would have stayed un-reconnected but that's a very small minority.  My wife, who is much more cautious than I am, has resisted the Facebook light because she fears it will be a giant time suck.  She's right of course, but in my mind that's no reason to stay away.  Productivity is way over rated.

And of course the reason people leave Facebook is equally fascinating to me as the reasons that people use it.  Being stalked by a wacko from the gym?  By all means kill your Facebook account.  Actually, I think Fec has come up with the single best reason I've seen for killing a Facebook account:

I killed my Facebook account when I found all my old girlfriends had become lesbians, not that there’s anything wrong with that

Why Not a National White Theatre Festival?

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This past week Winston-Salem hosted what has become a very prominent arts festival, the National Black Theatre Festival.  It's a big deal and it's a heck of a boost to the city, and as you'd expect the Winston-Salem Journal has given it significant coverage.  Also not surprising is the feedback that the Journal's editor has gotten.  In a couple of words it's that the paper is "too black."  In his blog post about the issue Ken does the best job of explaining why there's not a "National White Theatre Festival":

One of the issues is of course terminology, its the National BLACK Theatre Festival. And so one caller asked when we were going to cover the National WHITE Theatre Festival and wouldn’t people be up in arms if such an event existed. But of course, such events exist. They’re just not labeled as such. And we do cover them. The labeling along racial and ethnic lines is part of minority groups—racial, ethnic, religious—banding together to tell the majority that they exist. Majority groups don’t have to label. They’re implied.

I think he's right, but I'll add my own two cents.  I don't think there's a need for a national "white" anything, but the day is approaching when whites will no longer be the majority in America.  When that happens and when someone decides that there's a need for a National White Theatre Festival I hope that the same acceptance applies.

Ugh

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I think I'm getting old and cranky.  I read the letters to the editor in the paper or the comments posted on local news stories and I really kind of get hot and bothered.  Take this comment from a story on WXII's site about Andy Griffith's affirmation of faith with Grace Moravian Church in Mt. Airy:

"I grew up admiring Andy Griffith and his values. I was shocked and disappointed when he endorsed Obama, who is actively Pro Abortion. Christians need to stand up."

I'd LOVE to know the commenter's feelings about Obama's predecessor's stance on capital punishment. 

Yep.  Old and cranky.

Dying Anonymously

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Yesterday I received a text message from one of my kids that said a girl from her freshman class had died the night before.  She didn't provide details so I replied and asked if she knew the girl.  She replied in the affirmative.  I then asked if they'd been told what had happened and she texted back that they hadn't.  All she knew was that during morning announcements the principal had said that this girl had died the night before.  She also said that one of her teachers had read an email from the principal that had provided a little more detail.  My last question was to ask if the school had provided any counselors for kids to talk to if they needed it and she said that she hadn't heard of any.  My son who also goes to school there said he assumed they had because they usually do, but he hadn't heard of anyone going to see a counselor or an announcement that counselors were available.

Later in the day I went to get my hair cut and while there the barbers told me that the girl had lived right across the street from their shop and that she'd had a tough life.  She didn't know her father and her mother had moved north without her or her brother and left them to live with the girl's grandparents.  Her great-grandparents lived next door and apparently they were all pretty close.  A while back both great-grandparents passed away on the same night and not long after that her grandfather died.  Her mother moved back home for a year but then left again to return north, again without her and her brother.  Despite all that they said she seemed to be a really happy kid, always with a smile on her face. 

All of this has been running through my head over the last 24 hours.  What's troubling to me is that when we lose one of our students under tragic circumstances like a freak accident on the football field or a car full of students killed by a drunk driver, we tend to pay a lot of attention and go to a lot of effort to honor those students' memories. That's as it should be. On the other hand when a student dies in quiet solitude we don't seem to react the same way.  If we speak of the child at all we do so in hushed whispers.  We don't come together as a community to celebrate that person's life or to acknowledge the impact of their loss on our community.  I think that's a shame and I think it robs our children of the opportunity to deal with the impact of losing one of their peers.  

Sadly a young member of our community died two days ago and very few of us know what we've lost.

The Bigot Belt

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An interesting piece at the Freakonomics blog looks into the "bigot belt" which is the swath of counties from Texas to West Virginia that actually went more Republican from 2004 to 2008 in the presidential elections.  The question, simply put, was whether or not the reason was Obama's race.  The answer ended up being yes, but the details of the research offered some enlightening conclusions.

The author, Eric Oliver, looked at whether it was really just race or perhaps the fact that these counties tended to be in heavy coal mining and oil drilling areas had something to do with it.  Or maybe it was that these counties had a different racial breakdown than other areas.  His conclusion was very interesting: these counties tended to have large white populations in states that were otherwise racially diverse.  From the article:

The answer comes in looking at both the county and the state together.
One of the biggest demographic differences between “scarlet” and
“azure” counties is the racial composition of the state population: 72
percent of the “scarlet” counties are in states that are over 10
percent black compared to only 49 percent of the “azure” counties. In a
multivariate regression analysis using all the variables listed above,
the best predictor of a county’s Republican vote margin is its white
racial percentage relative to its state’s black population size. In
other words, the counties where Republican margins grew the largest
tended to be predominantly white places in otherwise racially mixed
states.

These patterns are consistent with research on individual racial
attitudes. Historically, the greatest levels of racial violence
occurred within white enclaves near larger black populations,
particularly when these enclaves are poor and uneducated. Even today,
whites who live in poor, racially segregated neighborhoods within more
diverse metropolitan areas tend to be more racially hostile than whites
who live in either integrated neighborhoods or within largely white
regions. In more diverse settings, locally segregated whites have less
contact with nearby minorities yet also feel greater competition for
jobs and public goods. The combination of both increased racial
competition and racial isolation seems to be a recipe for generating
racial animosity.

As the author concludes we should not be fooled into thinking that this election has somehow catapulted us into an era of racially harmony.  The fear of "other" has been with us since we crawled out of the primordial ooze, and I fear it will be ever thus.

Want to Dump Your Teenager? Move to Nebraska

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In a true example of unintended consequences, Nebraska’s recently passed "safe haven" law that allows parents of unwanted infants to drop off their babies without any questions asked was written in such a way that parents (or other caregivers) of older children can also legally drop off their kids with no questions asked.  Of course the law was intended to address the problem of babies being left in dumpsters and such places by young parents who don’t want them, but so far the first three cases of people taking advantage of the law are caregivers of a 15-year old, a 13-year old and an 11-year old.

As the parent of a teenager I can tell you that there are occasions when you’re ready to throw in the towel, or at least throw your kid, but I can’t imagine literally just dropping them off somewhere and saying "adios" forever.  Of course I think we have great kids and we’ve never had real nasty issues to deal with, knock on wood, so I’m not going to sit in judgment of these people without knowing the whole story. However, it seems to me that if you make it easy for parents to give up then more than a few are going to do it.

Who knows, maybe it will end up being better for the kids.  After all, you need a license to drive but any fool with a hormone can be a parent.  That doesn’t mean I think this is a good thing, though, because in my mind people need to be held responsible for their actions and a parent being able to just abandon their child because things get tough just doesn’t seem right.  If nothing else the state should make sure the parents are held accountable for the child’s future care until the child is 18 through something like child support payments.  In addition maybe they could require counseling for the parents with the goal to move the children back into the parent’s home if appropriate.  Anything would be better than enabling abandonment with no questions or consequences.

Troubling Trend

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In 2006 more women under the age of 30 who had babies did so out of wedlock.  I won’t delve into the moral arguments here, rather I’ll focus on the practical.  First and foremost, I can’t imagine being a single parent at any age.  Being a parent is exhausting and when you don’t have someone to share the burden it is doubly so.  Second, as a single parent you’re fighting an uphill battle financially.  Even if you get child support you still have to find a way to make ends meet and that means either working, living on public support, living on family support or some combination of the three.  Third, you’re not going to have a lot of spare time to spend with your kids.  Where do they turn for the attention that you can’t give them?

This trend is troubling because in the end it will impact all of us.  As the person who conducted the study cited in the article said:

The inequality of incomes in these families is unbelievable,” said
Sum, who has written numerous books and articles about the job market,
young families and poverty. “Forty percent are poor, or near-poor. A
large fraction is dependent on public assistance. Unless the mother is
very well-educated and has a bachelor’s degree or above, there’s a huge
fiscal cost to the rest of us.

Hat tip to Ed Cone for the link to the article.