"about one-sixth of eating disorders can be blamed on cultural environment"

This interview (found via this salon article) makes some very good points. This is the quote people are talking about:

Therapists pretty much agree that there are three main causes of eating disorders, and most of us who get them have a combination of the three. One is your genetics. Second is your physiology, like the biology of your actual brain—your personality. Some people are incredibly resilient and slough off difficult messages; other people are not. In my book I call them Velcro; things stick to them. I’m Velcro. The third thing is environment. Environment is broken into two parts: the environment of your home, what your mom and dad said to you, the behaviors they modeled. The other part of environment is culture. So about one-sixth of eating disorders can be blamed on cultural environment, like the pictures we’re shown. That’s what I mean when I say skinny models don’t cause eating disorders. I just think that’s completely oversimplified and kind of ridiculous. If we magically were able to suddenly change the images we see in order to be diverse in all ways, gradually that part of the pressure would relieve itself. But it wouldn’t relieve that need of a girl to control her food intake because she can’t control her life.

A lot of this must be oversimplifying. Genetics and physiology are intertwined, so any attempt to separate them as causes must be a little arbitrary. She also exaggerates her own position when she jumps from "about one-sixth of eating disorders can be blamed on cultural environment" to "I say skinny models don’t cause eating disorders."

Still, I think there is something basically right here. It jibes also with the stories reported in conjunction with the trend of exporting the American style of mental illness. (See also here.) People in Hong Kong used to develop a form of anorexia different than the American model. They refused to eat, but not because they thought they were fat. However as more American culture got picked up in the Chinese speaking world, the way people talked about the illness changed. It became something about women wanting to look thin when it wasn't before.

The fact that a style of mental illness can be based in a culture and then exported is fascinating in itself. But what is also interesting is that we can talk about anorexia separately from its current cultural connotations. Even minus the skinny models, people can develop pathological desire not to eat.

Kaptur vs. Kucinich.

Redistricting has pitted two of the House's most progressive democrats against each other in the democratic primary for our district: Dennis Kucinich and Marcy Kaptur. Kaptur is from Toledo. Kucinich is from Cleveland. The legislature has gerrymandered a district that includes every progressive household alon I-90 between the two cities. We have to decide whom to vote for.

Kucinich is well known on the national stage. Kaptur I know less about. But...

She has a lot more seniority (=power) in the House than Kucinich. In fact she ranks 25 in seniority and sits on the Appropriations committee. Kucinich is 125th, and has no good committee posts. The Kaptur campaign is playing this as a "workhorse vs. showhorse" contest.

Kaptur has progressive bone fides. She was named "most valuable house member" in 2008 by The Nation, and is a member of the House Progressive Caucus.

On the other hand, Kucinich has a slightly more progressive voting record than Kaptur, particularly on peace and civil liberties issues. Plus he does things like introduce articles of impeachment against Dick Cheney.

Kucinich is has also made noises about a Cleveland issue that doesn't seem to be on Kaptur's radar: the soon-to-collapse-catastrophically Inner Belt Bridge. The bridge is the same age and design as one that collapsed in Minnesota recently, and generally has lanes closed to decrease the amount of weight on it at any given time.

So, we've got our mail-in ballots, and need to figure this out.

Bleg: Web hosting for my version of a logic textbook.

I want to create a simple webpage to promote a version of a free logic textbook that I have been working on. Basically, I want to have a dedicated website to host the .pdf file for the text, the LaTeX source file, some text promoting the virtues of the book and open access textbooks in general, supporting textbook materials, and maybe some tools for collaboration. And I should have an easy to remember URL.

I was thinking that Wordpress would be the easiest software to use. What should I do for hosting? Pick the cheapest host that partners with Wordpress? Will there be much of a learning curve with Wordpress?

The last time I created a website was almost 10 years ago, and I just wrote something in HTML and transferred it to some host using FTP software. Can you still build websites like that?

Child's play

Child's play
Originally uploaded by rob helpychalk.

Caroline and Joey were playing Buffy using the big lego set up. This is Willow, being held captive by The Master, on the evil side of the lego world.

Who is behind myedu.com, and why do they have so much information about me?

Myedu.com is a website that lets students compare professors. The main thing they have over sites like ratemyprofessor.com is that they have access to the complete grade records of each instructor, so you can select the instructor who gives out the highest number of As. Here is my profile.

I'm happy that this information is published. I would have offered it to anyone who asked. But how did myedu.com get it? Apparently, someone at LCCC has given them access to our enterprise level software, as have people at many many other colleges and universities. Now myedu.com is a for-profit company that makes its money from advertising, and probably also selling information on its registered users. They have been accused of sending spam using the emails they gather.

The founder of myedu.com got a fawning article in the New York Times, which strikes me as supremely misleading, given that they never mention that the point of the website is to find easy graders.

My question is this: if myedu.com is making money using information we gave them, why don't we get a cut? There is no reason they should be the ones to make money off information that we collect.

Return of the Big Monkey Reverse Difference Principle.

It is time to invoke what I have called in other contexts "The Big Monkey Reverse Difference Principle."

The plutocrats are motivated in part by a desire for wealth, and in part by a desire for inequality. They want to be sure to have more wealth than others. The Reverse Difference Principle is a rule for balancing these two goals. It says that equality is to be tolerated only to the extent that it benefits the best off.

Imagine two societies. One has a great deal of inequality, but the richest 1% are relatively poor. Another society has less inequality but the richest 1% are much better than the people in the first society. Now which society to you want to be a plutocrat in?

I believe it is now the job of political philosophy to convince the plutocrats of the US this truth.

Dear Chancellor Katehi

Linda P.B. Katehi
Offices of the Chancellor and Provost
Fifth floor, Mrak Hall
University of California, Davis
One Shields Avenue
Davis, CA 95616

Dear Chancellor Katehi,

I am writing to express my outrage and dismay at the actions of the UC Davis police office who pepper sprayed sitting protesters, now visible to the entire world on Youtube. The Davis Enterprise is reporting that he is Lieutenant John Pike. Numerous cell phone video and still pictures show that Pike's attack was completely unprovoked and the protesters where being assiduously nonviolent.

I have two children who will be college age in a few years. I cannot imagine sending them to an institution that treats its own students in this fashion.

I urge you to relieve John Pike of duty immediately. You also must change your policies toward Occupy protesters. The Enterprise reports that you personally ordered that the encampment be cleared. This incident makes clear the folly of using force to stop students from exercising their freedom of speech when your only justifications are "liability concerns and limited staffing."


Sincerely,

Rob Loftis

Links:

Video of the Attack.

Davis Enterprise Story on the events

UC Davis police professional standards unit. The second and command of the unit seems to be Lieutenant John Pike himself.

Office of the Chancellor: officeofthechancellor@ucdavis.edu

For Armistice Day, Two Poems about Vietnam.

By my co-worker Bruce Weigl

Song of Napalm

for my wife

After the storm, after the rain stopped pounding,
We stood in the doorway watching horses
Walk off lazily across the pasture’s hill.
We stared through the black screen,
Our vision altered by the distance
So I thought I saw a mist
Kicked up around their hooves when they faded
Like cut-out horses
Away from us.
The grass was never more blue in that light, more
Scarlet; beyond the pasture
Trees scraped their voices into the wind, branches
Crisscrossed the sky like barbed wire
But you said they were only branches.

Okay. The storm stopped pounding.
I am trying to say this straight: for once
I was sane enough to pause and breathe
Outside my wild plans and after the hard rain
I turned my back on the old curses. I believed
They swung finally away from me ...

But still the branches are wire
And thunder is the pounding mortar,
Still I close my eyes and see the girl
Running from her village, napalm
Stuck to her dress like jelly,
Her hands reaching for the no one
Who waits in waves of heat before her.

So I can keep on living,
So I can stay here beside you,
I try to imagine she runs down the road and wings
Beat inside her until she rises
Above the stinking jungle and her pain
Eases, and your pain, and mine.

But the lie swings back again.
The lie works only as long as it takes to speak
And the girl runs only as far
As the napalm allows
Until her burning tendons and crackling
Muscles draw her up
into that final position

Burning bodies so perfectly assume. Nothing
Can change that; she is burned behind my eyes
And not your good love and not the rain-swept air
And not the jungle green
Pasture unfolding before us can deny it.

Elegy for Peter

That night we drank warm whiskey
in our parked car
beyond woods now lost to the suburbs,
I fell in love with you.

What waited was the war
like a bloody curtain,
and a righteous moment
when the lovely boy’s

spine was snapped,
then the long falling into hell.
But lately, you’ve been calling me
back through the years of bitter silence

to tell me of another river of blood
and of the highland’s
howl at dusk of human voices
blasted into ecstasy.

That night in sweet Lorain
we drank so long and hard
we raised ourselves
above the broken places,

mill fires burning
red against the sky. Why
is there is no end
to this unraveling.

Their lies, your power.

People sympathetic to the Occupy Wall Street movement have frequently noted that the 1% have done nothing that justifies their massive share of the wealth. As Krugman says, "They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs." They're really just a bunch of boiler room hucksters our of Glengarry Glen Ross. Elizabeth Warren reminds us that no one gets rich on their own.

The myth that the rich are responsible for well-being of the economy is the strength of the working class. Things don't grind to a halt if Wall Street stops working. Sometimes it even helps things: that's why Roosevelt declared a bank holiday. They talk about "Going Galt" but they know if they did nothing would change. But if everyone else stopped doing what they do, society would stop. Wall street cannot call a general strike, but main street can. The economy exists because people wake up every morning and make it exist. And if we don't like it we can make it go away. This is the power of nonviolence. They can shoot rubber bullets, but you control the fabric of the world.

Adventures close to home

There's an estate sale around the corner from us--about 100 yards down our street and another 100 yards down the busy street ours comes off of. Molly sent me there and authorized me to pay up to $100. They had this great workbench, with 8 drawers and wheels and and a vice for 75 dollars. So I say I'll take it. I say, "I guess I'll have to clean all that stuff out of it."

This is when I start running into trouble. The guy says he'll throw in the contents of the bench for another $75. I say $25. He says, we'll lets look what's in it. Couple hammers, some files, copper wire, pipe cutter, trowels and gardening stuff. Ok, I'll pay 75 for it. "That's just for the stuff in the drawers. Another $25 for the stuff on top." "Ok."

He totally upsold me! What started as a good deal for $75 became a crappy deal for $175! I think Cialdini has something to say about why people always fall for this. Ungh.

In any case, since I don't have a car, and its only about 200 yards back to our house, I decide to roll the thing home. Its heavy, the wind is picking up, and I have to push it up hill. I get about 25 yards and a wheel breaks off, the drawers all slide open facing downhill and the whole thing nearly tips over. I'm trying to figure out how to finish wheeling it home, but I really only have the strength to keep it from tipping over.

"So you bought Marcellus's old workbench." A guy who has raking leaves up from his yard has come over to see what's up. We chat. I say I'm going to get a wagon to carry the contents of the drawers away so the thing is manageable. It looks like with his help, though, we can roll the thing up the hill. We get to the top of the hill and turn onto our street when another wheel breaks. Well, the nice man has helped me out enough, so he leaves and I go to get a wagon to empty the thing.

There's a lot of junk in it. Old mouse traps, the kind from the cartoons with the spring and the thwapper. A lot of wood files. Will I ever use these? The electric sander does a fine job for what I need. Nails. Screws. Thistle seed. People plant thistle? Should I plant thistle? A broken gauge of some sort. "2004 Classification and Handbook of Dahlias." Sockets for a socket wrench. Metal things that look like dental instruments for dinosaurs. Drill bits of various sizes.

Even with all the junk out of the drawers, the workbench is hard to roll down the bumpy sidewalk. I go back for twine to tie the drawers in place. It is still tough going. Then another wheel breaks. Well, there's no way to move it with just one wheel. So I home, get the kid's wagon, take of the sides, and plop the whole workbench down on top of it. By some small mercy, the whole thing is stable, and I get the bench home.

Splice

Unable to stick very long to my resolution to be productive while the family is gone, I have plopped Splice into the DVD player, staring Adrian Brody and Sarah Polley (two very good looking people) as Dr. and Dr. Frankenstein. So far the movie has done a good job of communicating the fundamental horror of human reproduction. You fall in love with what you have made, but they are monsters. Also, as Brody notes into his audio recorder "Observations of feeding cycles show that subject H50 craves sucrose."

Ooh the H50 just listened to Polley, and did what it was told, when it was told not to kill Brody's brother.

More bad news

This has not been a good year for dogs in our family. Yesterday while walking Neville I noticed that his collar was loose enough that he might be able to slip our of it if he was determined enough. I didn't adjust it though. Later that evening, the kids and I went down to the lake to get some ice cream, and took the dog. Neville saw a dog on the other side of a busy street, broke off the leash, ran out into the street and was struck by a car. I ran to him but didn't know what to do. The driver of the car got out and didn't know what to do. Another woman pulled over, got out of her car, put her hand on my shoulder, and began praying loudly for me to Jesus. An ambulance stopped. The driver told me he had called the police, but couldn't stay, because he had a human patient. A person, did I understand. The generous woman drove Neville and I to an animal hospital and another generous woman walked the kids back to our house. On the way to the hospital Neville died.

Molly has made a donation to petsofthehomeless.org for all our friends who have lost pets this year. There have been too many. We are holding all of you in the light.

one of the things that are wrong with me.

I've been reading in this book about the hypothesized existence of a "reorientation module." Googling the phrase leads quickly to this article which suggests a genetic component to such a module. Now I get lost really easily, and so did my maternal grandmother. There is also a distinct pattern to the way get lost that seems to go beyond simple inattention to my surroundings.* One problem comes when I go into an area that is psychologically closed off from a larger area--for instance if I am walking along a row of shops, and then enter one of them, or if I am walking along a corridor and enter a room--upon returning to the larger space, I am completely disoriented and unable to identify the direction I was originally traveling.

I don't know if that quite relates to the skills tested in material I'm reading. They mostly look at tasks where people and animal have to find an object hidden in a rectangular room, where you have to remember that the object is in a corner that has the short wall on the right and the long wall on the left. Its interesting stuff. there is evidence of modularity for this kind of task: people who can do it are unable to explain how they did it, the skill is only sensitive to certain kinds of environmental input, etc.


*Although inattention to my surroundings is clearly a factor, too. A few months ago I became lost while traveling from my work to home because I was completely distracted by this Philosophy Bites podcast.

Edie

Edie, a set on Flickr.

Old friend