One reason (one that most people are probably already aware of, at least intuitively) for adults not to model lying to children.
A new experiment is the first to show a connection between adult dishonesty and children’s behavior, with kids who have been lied to more likely to cheat and then to lie to cover up the transgression. [Read more…]
NPR has a great story about an inspirational music teacher and what students get from her teaching. I’m not going to lie, I’m a sucker for stories like that.
Debra Kay Robinson Lindsay rehearses one more time with her Honors Chorus group before a concert for Music in Our Schools month, a national event to celebrate music and emphasize its importance in school curriculum.
(Students singing) [Read more…]
Why did nobody think of it before? Get a homicide detective to investigate the Jesus story. Of course! Then even the small minority of people who are atheists will throw in the towel.
A New Jersey church will put a spin on the Easter story by bringing in a professional detective to examine Christ’s death and resurrection. [Read more…]
OB: As a fan of philosophy I’ve been delighted to see the rave reviews for Plato at the Googleplex in major media – the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, Slate, NPR, The Atlantic. This has to be a good thing: a sign that philosophy can be made interesting to the reading public, and itself a step to getting more people interested in philosophy. It’s all the more gratifying because part of your point, as I understand it, is to show readers that philosophy has value and has not been rendered superfluous by science. Can you tell us a little about why philosophy does indeed have value?
RG: I’ve been delighted to see the rave reviews, too.
Okay, why is philosophy of value? The short answer is that it addresses, in a systematic and progress-making way, questions of deep concern to everyone. There are of course, technical, narrow philosophical questions of concern to only professional philosophers, and I don’t mean to disparage them, since I’ve spent a good part of my life on them. But what I’m speaking about here are problems that just about all of us confront in virtue of our being thinking humans: What—if anything— are our lives about? Even if they’re not really about anything—goodbye to the old monotheistic usurpation of this question—can we find answers that will allow us to maximize our own flourishing and—of equal if not greater importance—reasons to care about the flourishing of others? (Caring about ourselves comes kind of naturally to us.) Philosophy has been addressing such questions and making significant, if invisible, progress with them almost ever since there’s been philosophy. [Read more…]
Hey who knew, god has a Facebook page – or rather, God, since if there’s a Facebook page, the person behind it must be a person, i.e. God.
It’s pretty funny.
Here’s another one.
Let me save you
From what I’m going to do to you if you don’t worship me.
It’s having some innocent fun with Fred Phelps, naturally.
Just this onnnnnnnnnnnne more thing.
Last year New York state did a little regulating of the modeling industry. Good.
The New York State Legislature approved a measure Wednesday night that would recognize fashion models under the age of 18 as child performers for print and runway work, a step that has the potential, if signed into law, to alter not only hiring practices in the fashion industry, but also the overall look of models appearing at Fashion Week.
As it stands, the majority of models start their careers well under 18, with some young women appearing in runway shows when they are 13 or 14. [Read more…]
Originally a comment by Jen B Phillips on You oughta be in pictures, you oughta be a star.
Suppose she’s bubbling over with excitement about her future educational plans, and one of the guests tells her, “You’re so pretty – you should go into modeling!”
Something very close to that scenario happened to me more than once. It’s vexing.
I thought the main point of Ophelia’s original post was that gendered limitations (through marketing) on toy choices fail to present girls with the full range of career possibilities that is more readily available to boys. I think this is dead on.
I have tried to get caught up on this in the other comment threads, but I’m probably still missing a lot. I think it’s safe to say that most of the 30% of girls who aspire to become models when they grow up are basing that opinion on how fun it is to play dress-up, and are not fully informed about the life of a professional model. [Read more…]
Look at it this way. Suppose you have a young daughter, or niece, or friend’s daughter whom you’re close to. Suppose you’re at a gathering with her and a bunch of people. Suppose she just won a math prize, or a scholarship, or a literary prize. Suppose she’s bubbling over with excitement about her future educational plans, and one of the guests tells her, “You’re so pretty – you should go into modeling!”
Would you find that insulting? I certainly would. Why? Well first of all it’s a diversion from what she’s talking about and planning – but it’s more than that. Why?
But maybe you wouldn’t find it insulting. Maybe you would suggest it yourself. If so, why?
ProPublica reports on a terrifying prosecution in Mississippi.
Rennie Gibbs’s daughter, Samiya, was a month premature when she simultaneously entered the world and left it, never taking a breath. To experts who later examined the medical record, the stillborn infant’s most likely cause of death was also the most obvious: the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck.
But within days of Samiya’s delivery in November 2006, Steven Hayne, Mississippi’s de facto medical examiner at the time, came to a different conclusion. Autopsy tests had turned up traces of a cocaine byproduct in Samiya’s blood, and Hayne declared her death a homicide, caused by “cocaine toxicity.” [Read more…]