Even males of goodwill are likely to underestimate the horror of rape. Renee Devesty describes her rape and the aftermath:
I was mentally, emotionally and spiritually broken, and the thought of what had resulted from this vile act took my self-hatred into another dimension. I wanted no memory of that night, would do anything possible to erase it in the hope that it would somehow ease the sick, disgusting feeling I got every time I looked in the mirror. I realized that in order to maintain what little sanity I had left, I had to terminate the pregnancy.
Six months after the rape, I dropped out of college and developed an eating disorder. I collapsed into alcohol abuse and had abusive relationships. It took me 12 years of trying to kill myself before I could actually verbalize to a trusted counselor what happened to me. I spent the next eight years trying to reverse the damage that was done.
Twenty years of serving time for a crime I didn’t commit.
h/t: The Dish
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Michael Sandel Encore
Michael Sandel talks to Tony Harris of Talk to Al Jazeera about justice, its meaning and its context within the Arab Spring demonstrations and protest. What is justice? From Tunisia to Egypt to Irag, youth are particularly active in this revolution, but what is it that they want? Democracy? Employment? Rights? Sandel discusses these issues and more in this interview.
Plato's Cave
If you've read any philosophy, you probably have some notion of Plato's cave (from The Republic) in the back of your head, and even a vague recollection of an illustration in the text provided by a translator. H/t for this clip to The Dish, which also provides some comments on Plato as a sci-fi author.
Saturday, August 18, 2012
The Cardinal & the Sexy Gurl
A friend writes about my alma mater:
Cardinal Hayes HS is doing well. They got a tremendous donation from Helen Gurley Brown of Cosmopolitan magazine who recently died. She wrote Sex and the Single Girl back in the ‘60’s. Cardinal Dolan gave her a big hug when he got the loot. Money conquers all!
From the Times:
By VIVIAN YEE
Cardinal Hayes HS is doing well. They got a tremendous donation from Helen Gurley Brown of Cosmopolitan magazine who recently died. She wrote Sex and the Single Girl back in the ‘60’s. Cardinal Dolan gave her a big hug when he got the loot. Money conquers all!
From the Times:
By VIVIAN YEE
Of all the men Helen Gurley Brown charmed in her many years of selling sex, beauty and diet tips to the modern woman (and taking full advantage of them herself), Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan - the country's most influential Roman Catholic bishop - might rank among the most unlikely.
But picture this: the burly, 6-foot-3 archbishop, clad in his clerical robe, embracing the frail, 5-foot-4, 88-year-old editor of Cosmopolitan magazine in a tender waltz on the steps of Cardinal Hayes High School, a prominent Catholic boys' school in the Bronx.
It was Oct. 20, 2010, about eight months after Ms. Brown's husband of 51 years, David Brown, had died. Ms. Brown, who died on Monday at age 90, had donated $1 million to the Cardinal Hayes foundation, endowing a slew of student scholarships and establishing a permanent fund for the school's annual play in honor of her husband, a longtime producer for Hollywood and Broadway. Ms. Brown, Archbishop Dolan, who was elevated to cardinal in February, and Regis Philbin, one of Cardinal Hayes' best-known alumni, had converged on the high school for a special Mass and ceremony celebrating Mr. Philbin, a frequent donor.
Mr. Philbin, his wife, Joy, and Ms. Brown were waiting on the school steps, Ms. Brown was leaning on a cane and being supported by an aide when Archbishop Dolan pulled up in his car. As Kevin Meenan, the school's fund-raising director, recalled on Tuesday, Archbishop Dolan had never been to the school, and he walked slowly toward the building to take in its elegant brick-and-stone facade.
Ms. Brown tried to walk forward to greet him, but she started tottering. Archbishop Dolan spotted her and jogged up the steps to help. Meanwhile, the school's marching band burst into the Cardinal Hayes marching song, inspiring the archbishop to take Ms. Brown in his arms and twirl her around.
The dancing lasted only for a minute or so, Mr. Meenan said, but he will not soon forget the image of the bearlike archbishop squiring Ms. Brown. He wore his black bishop's garment and a pink cap; she wore a drop-waist dress, black fur and lace-topped stockings.
"Everybody's clapping, everybody's amazed," he said.
Ms. Brown, Cosmopolitan's editor from 1965 until 1997, decided to donate to Cardinal Hayes after a senior attorney at the Hearst Corporation, which owns Cosmopolitan, told Ms. Brown about the school. Ms. Brown had a history of donating to educational and other causes, and her husband's death may have made her even more eager to donate to the arts, said her biographer, Jennifer Scanlon.
But in other respects, Cardinal Hayes was an odd choice for the woman who spent years teaching women to enjoy sex - premarital, marital and extramarital - and embrace Catholic taboos like birth control. Though her family was Protestant, she was not religious as an adult, Ms. Scanlon said.
"She didn't have much use, actually, for organized religion," Ms. Scanlon said. In fact, when Ms. Brown was marketing "Sex and the Single Girl," her best-selling 1962 book, she tried to bring it to the Catholic Church's attention in the hopes that church leaders would decide to censor it. (She thought it would be good for sales; they ignored her attempt.)
Almost a half-century later, however, she was pledging $1 million to a bastion of Catholic education -- and dancing in the archbishop's arms.
But picture this: the burly, 6-foot-3 archbishop, clad in his clerical robe, embracing the frail, 5-foot-4, 88-year-old editor of Cosmopolitan magazine in a tender waltz on the steps of Cardinal Hayes High School, a prominent Catholic boys' school in the Bronx.
It was Oct. 20, 2010, about eight months after Ms. Brown's husband of 51 years, David Brown, had died. Ms. Brown, who died on Monday at age 90, had donated $1 million to the Cardinal Hayes foundation, endowing a slew of student scholarships and establishing a permanent fund for the school's annual play in honor of her husband, a longtime producer for Hollywood and Broadway. Ms. Brown, Archbishop Dolan, who was elevated to cardinal in February, and Regis Philbin, one of Cardinal Hayes' best-known alumni, had converged on the high school for a special Mass and ceremony celebrating Mr. Philbin, a frequent donor.
Mr. Philbin, his wife, Joy, and Ms. Brown were waiting on the school steps, Ms. Brown was leaning on a cane and being supported by an aide when Archbishop Dolan pulled up in his car. As Kevin Meenan, the school's fund-raising director, recalled on Tuesday, Archbishop Dolan had never been to the school, and he walked slowly toward the building to take in its elegant brick-and-stone facade.
Ms. Brown tried to walk forward to greet him, but she started tottering. Archbishop Dolan spotted her and jogged up the steps to help. Meanwhile, the school's marching band burst into the Cardinal Hayes marching song, inspiring the archbishop to take Ms. Brown in his arms and twirl her around.
The dancing lasted only for a minute or so, Mr. Meenan said, but he will not soon forget the image of the bearlike archbishop squiring Ms. Brown. He wore his black bishop's garment and a pink cap; she wore a drop-waist dress, black fur and lace-topped stockings.
"Everybody's clapping, everybody's amazed," he said.
Ms. Brown, Cosmopolitan's editor from 1965 until 1997, decided to donate to Cardinal Hayes after a senior attorney at the Hearst Corporation, which owns Cosmopolitan, told Ms. Brown about the school. Ms. Brown had a history of donating to educational and other causes, and her husband's death may have made her even more eager to donate to the arts, said her biographer, Jennifer Scanlon.
But in other respects, Cardinal Hayes was an odd choice for the woman who spent years teaching women to enjoy sex - premarital, marital and extramarital - and embrace Catholic taboos like birth control. Though her family was Protestant, she was not religious as an adult, Ms. Scanlon said.
"She didn't have much use, actually, for organized religion," Ms. Scanlon said. In fact, when Ms. Brown was marketing "Sex and the Single Girl," her best-selling 1962 book, she tried to bring it to the Catholic Church's attention in the hopes that church leaders would decide to censor it. (She thought it would be good for sales; they ignored her attempt.)
Almost a half-century later, however, she was pledging $1 million to a bastion of Catholic education -- and dancing in the archbishop's arms.
What I Built — with Government Help
By James C. Roumell
I was born in Detroit in 1961 and grew up in a working-class neighborhood just south of the famed 8 Mile Road. My block was stable; most of the fathers of my friends worked in the auto plants. In 1968 my parents divorced and my mother, armed with a high school degree, was thrust into the workforce. We were taken out of our Catholic school and moved into public schools. Dinner was often breakfast foods, which was fine with us. Mom is still a great cook.
Today, I own a small business, an asset management firm with $300 million in assets. Last year we launched the Roumell Opportunistic Value Fund (RAMSX) and hired three more people. We’re growing and creating jobs. I suppose I could pound my chest and take credit for my journey from Detroit to Chevy Chase, from working class to professional. I could say I built it myself. But this wouldn’t be true.
I was born in Detroit in 1961 and grew up in a working-class neighborhood just south of the famed 8 Mile Road. My block was stable; most of the fathers of my friends worked in the auto plants. In 1968 my parents divorced and my mother, armed with a high school degree, was thrust into the workforce. We were taken out of our Catholic school and moved into public schools. Dinner was often breakfast foods, which was fine with us. Mom is still a great cook.
Today, I own a small business, an asset management firm with $300 million in assets. Last year we launched the Roumell Opportunistic Value Fund (RAMSX) and hired three more people. We’re growing and creating jobs. I suppose I could pound my chest and take credit for my journey from Detroit to Chevy Chase, from working class to professional. I could say I built it myself. But this wouldn’t be true.
Friday, August 17, 2012
Boys Who Want to Wear Dresses
A fascinating article in the New York Times Magazine
and a wonderful French-made movie (with subtitles) on the same topic
Monday, August 13, 2012
A John Rawls Primer
The Veil of Opulence
By BENJAMIN HALE
More than 40 years ago the philosopher John Rawls, in his influential political work "A Theory of Justice," implored the people of the world to shed themselves of their selfish predispositions and to assume, for the sake of argument, that they were ignorant. He imposed this unwelcome constraint not so that his readers - mostly intellectuals, but also students, politicians and policy makers - would find themselves in a position of moribund stupidity but rather so they could get a grip on fairness.
Rawls charged his readers to design a society from the ground up, from an original position, and he imposed the ignorance constraint so that readers would abandon any foreknowledge of their particular social status - their wealth, their health, their natural talents, their opportunities or any other goodies that the cosmos may have thrown their way. In doing so, he hoped to identify principles of justice that would best help individuals maximize their potential, fulfill their objectives (whatever they may happen to be) and live a good life. He called this presumption the "veil of ignorance."
The idea behind the veil of ignorance is relatively simple: to force us to think outside of our parochial personal concerns in order that we consider others. What Rawls saw clearly is that it is not easy for us to put ourselves in the position of others. We tend to think about others always from our own personal vantage; we tend to equate another person's predicament with our own. Imagining what it must be like to be poor, for instance, we import presumptions about available resources, talents and opportunities - encouraging, say, the homeless to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and to just get a job, any job, as if getting a job is as simple as filling out an application. Meanwhile, we give little thought to how challenging this can be for those who suffer from chronic illnesses or disabling conditions. What Rawls also saw clearly was that other classic principles of justice, like the golden rule or mutual benevolence, are subject to distortion precisely because we tend to do this.
more
Rawls charged his readers to design a society from the ground up, from an original position, and he imposed the ignorance constraint so that readers would abandon any foreknowledge of their particular social status - their wealth, their health, their natural talents, their opportunities or any other goodies that the cosmos may have thrown their way. In doing so, he hoped to identify principles of justice that would best help individuals maximize their potential, fulfill their objectives (whatever they may happen to be) and live a good life. He called this presumption the "veil of ignorance."
The idea behind the veil of ignorance is relatively simple: to force us to think outside of our parochial personal concerns in order that we consider others. What Rawls saw clearly is that it is not easy for us to put ourselves in the position of others. We tend to think about others always from our own personal vantage; we tend to equate another person's predicament with our own. Imagining what it must be like to be poor, for instance, we import presumptions about available resources, talents and opportunities - encouraging, say, the homeless to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and to just get a job, any job, as if getting a job is as simple as filling out an application. Meanwhile, we give little thought to how challenging this can be for those who suffer from chronic illnesses or disabling conditions. What Rawls also saw clearly was that other classic principles of justice, like the golden rule or mutual benevolence, are subject to distortion precisely because we tend to do this.
more
Saturday, August 11, 2012
Romney Picks Ryan
Nate Silver discuss the graph and the VP pick here.
See also Jonathan Cohn, "Six Things to Know About Ryan"
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Recent Reading
Benefactors Take Note
No need for you to agonize once again over what to buy me for Christmas . . .
The Woolworth Building is about to have another defining moment. The uppermost floors of the neo-Gothic tower that once stood as the world’s tallest skyscraper will be turned into about 40 luxury apartments. . . .
A five-level penthouse of around 8,000 square feet will be housed in the copper-clad cupola that tops out at 792 feet. Originally designed as a public observation area, the cupola has a wraparound outdoor deck reached by a private elevator.
I'll have to share this with the other tenants, I suppose:
The Woolworth Building is about to have another defining moment. The uppermost floors of the neo-Gothic tower that once stood as the world’s tallest skyscraper will be turned into about 40 luxury apartments. . . .
A five-level penthouse of around 8,000 square feet will be housed in the copper-clad cupola that tops out at 792 feet. Originally designed as a public observation area, the cupola has a wraparound outdoor deck reached by a private elevator.
I'll have to share this with the other tenants, I suppose:
An abandoned 55-foot-long basement swimming pool, once part of a health club said to be used by Woolworth himself, will be restored as an amenity for residents.
Separate and Unequal
Thomas B. Edsall reviews The Price of Inequality, a new book by Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz, who argues:
“Inequality leads to lower growth and less efficiency. Lack of opportunity means that its most valuable asset — its people — is not being fully used. Many at the bottom, or even in the middle, are not living up to their potential, because the rich, needing few public services and worried that a strong government might redistribute income, use their political influence to cut taxes and curtail government spending. This leads to underinvestment in infrastructure, education and technology, impeding the engines of growth."
“Inequality leads to lower growth and less efficiency. Lack of opportunity means that its most valuable asset — its people — is not being fully used. Many at the bottom, or even in the middle, are not living up to their potential, because the rich, needing few public services and worried that a strong government might redistribute income, use their political influence to cut taxes and curtail government spending. This leads to underinvestment in infrastructure, education and technology, impeding the engines of growth."
Monday, August 6, 2012
Arithmetically Challenged
Jared Bernstein’s highly readable critique of the Ryan budget -- with assists from the Congressional Budget Office and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities* -- concludes that the "numbers just don’t add up."
*For example:
*For example:
"The CBO report, prepared at Chairman Ryan’s request, shows that Ryan’s budget path would shrink federal expenditures for everything other than Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and interest payments to just 3¾ percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) by 2050. Since, as CBO notes, 'spending for defense alone has not been lower than 3 percent of GDP in any year [since World War II]' and Ryan seeks a high level of defense spending — he increases defense funding by $228 billion over the next ten years above the pre-sequestration baseline — the rest of government would largely have to disappear. That includes everything from veterans’ programs to medical and scientific research, highways, education, nearly all programs for low-income families and individuals other than Medicaid, national parks, border patrols, protection of food safety and the water supply, law enforcement, and the like." [my bold]
Sunday, August 5, 2012
Friday, August 3, 2012
A Quote for the Day
"Mr. Lincoln . . . has been denounced as a despot, as a usurper, as a man who arbitrarily annulled the Constitution, as a magistrate under whose administration all the securities of liberty, property, and even life, were deliberately disregarded and imperiled. . . . If there was a military despotism in this country, as was declared, he was the despot. If there were a tyranny, he was the tyrant. Is it surprising that somebody should have believed all this, that somebody should have said, if there is a tyranny it can not be very criminal to slay the tyrant?"
Harper's Weekly, April 29, 1865
Headline of the Day
Ann Romney's horse fails to win dressage but avoids offending British
Rafalca, owned by Mrs Mitt Romney, was impeccably behaved and well received by Olympic equestrians in Greenwich.
Never for a second during her seven-minute performance did a hoof stray dangerously mouthwards, nor did she do anything at all to offend or upset the host nation. From the moment she entered the Greenwich Park equestrian arena at 12.15 on Thursday afternoon, the most famous political horse since Caligula toyed with making a consul of Incitatus seemed in her element.
She bowed her neatly plaited head on cue, trotted diagonally across the sand, did the jogging-on-the-spot thing, the skipping thing, the rhythmic boogying thing, the controlled trotting thing: in short, Rafalca did everything that the occasion and the peculiar rules of the dressage demanded of her.
At one point, she appeared to give a snort of exhilarated delight, although, to be fair, it's not easy to say precisely what emotion a huge horse is aiming to convey; it could equally have been a snort of ennui or a snort of frustration at the Obama administration's glee over Mitt's gaffe-spree. Perhaps it was just her way of telling the predominantly British crowd that, like the Romneys, she was just happy to be in the UK.
Her part-owner seemed equally delighted. Ann Romney, who was in the VIP section of the equestrian arena, rose to give Rafalca a standing ovation and a wave. "She was consistent and elegant," said Mrs Romney. "She did not disappoint. She thrilled me to death."
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