30. juli 2003

Not colour blind A group of parents of high school students will not accept a teacher of a particular subject because of the colour of his skin. The subject is African-American history. The teacher is white. Some experts say the best qualified teacher, white or black, should teach African-American history - or any class, for that matter. But others, like the Oberlin parents, say a black teacher brings more credibility and compassion to the subject. A white teacher may know the dates and events, but can a white person ever truly understand the culture? ... It would be a problem for A.G. Miller, an associate professor of American and African religious history at Oberlin College. In Oberlin's case, he said, placing a white teacher in the African-American history course would send the wrong message to black high school students. "The message is that we are not concerned about the importance of your historical background . . . that that is less important than a schedule conflict," said Miller, whose three children graduated from Oberlin High School. Jaqui Willis, a black Oberlin parent, sees Kurt Russell as more than a teacher - he's a role model, she said. She, too, worries what message children will get if they see the class taken from Russell. What would these parents say if somebody argued that a black teacher should not teach, say, European history? And why do they teach "African-American history" anyway? What is wrong with an inclusive American history? I don't know what is on the curriculum in this particular history course, but I have an uneasy feeling about the whole field. I do remember the mess over Martin Bernal's revisionist history Black Athena, which argued against evidence that the accomplishments of the Greeks were really stolen from Africans. It was an ethnically motivated attempt to teach myth as history. I don't think the right way to motivate blacks is to teach them nonsense maqueraded as history. Again, I don't know what this particular high school course wanted to tell its students, but by segragating the history curriculum, you certainly don't do anything to increase objectivity. 11:14:45 PM    comment []

The causes and intentions of the Iraq war Steven Den Beste has written a great Strategic Outline that explains the objectives and methods of the extended war on terror. If you have any interest in debating the war on terror or the Iraq war, pro or con, this is the basic facts you should know. 8:59:01 PM    comment []

Homeland insecurity Just as the Dept of Homeland security has issued a specific warning of al-Qaeda plans to hijack planes, the Transportation Security Administration is seeking approval to reduce funding for air marshalls by $104m. A cynic would notice that the latest terror warning had a very convenient timing for anyone wanting to secure more funds for homeland security. 8:03:54 PM    comment []

A dog for credit The folks in the Royal Bank of Scotland are generous and they love animals. So much, in fact, that they sent an application form for a gold credit card with a £10,000 limit to Raymond Slater's pet Shih Tzu, Monty. 7:16:02 PM    comment []

Don't mess with my false memories! Susan Clancy had no idea how much controversy she would cause when she started researching alleged recovered memories. Perhaps unwisely, she chose first to investigate recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse. While many clinicians still believe that our minds suppress traumatic childhood experiences like sexual abuse, cognitive psychologists disagree, and they have a lot of lab research to back it up. Recovered memories, they say, are almost invariably false. Clancy's research was simple. She wanted to find out if those who suffered these recovered memories were more likely to do badly in a standard memory test. And indeed, they were. She published the result, and caught hell. Meanwhile, hate mail started pouring in, in quantities Clancy would eventually measure ''by the ton.'' The reaction was not altogether surprising. The moral dimension of research on child sexual abuse makes it uniquely explosive in psychology, and almost from Day 1 Clancy had, beyond the safe zone of her own department, taken heavy flak for even suggesting that memories of abuse can be faulty. The simple act of conducting research into the matter struck some as an enterprise ''designed to cheer on child molesters,'' as one anonymous letter writer wrote, ''and ridicules the suffering sustained by children who are abused as well as therapists who are knowledgeable about the effects of trauma on children's minds and bodies.'' Clancy was a ''bad person,'' according to another letter writer, to question such reports. Yet another suggested that she was probably an abuser herself. In 2000, when Clancy was invited to give a lecture at Cambridge Hospital, the chairman of the hospital at the time told her that several members of its psychiatric department had protested her appearance. Her colleagues told her that she had probably ruled herself out of future academic positions in any psychology department, Harvard pedigree or no. Obviously, sexual abuse of children is too emotional an issue for objective scientific study. Clancy then went on to study "UFO abductees" using the same methods, and found essentially the same result. Surprisingly, controversy was just as fierce, and she is facing the academic world's answer to the Inquisition's star chamber: the ethics committee, always a last resort for those who lost the actual scientific debate. She has now accepted a visiting professorship in Nicaragua. 7:08:30 PM    comment []

"as the situation in post-war Europe deteriorates..." What if the current brand of leftist journalists were writing during WWII like they do during the Iraq war and its aftermath? Read this brilliant parody in the Telegraph. 6:26:14 PM    comment []

Most unlikely headline ever "Church celebrates sex" (Telegraph frontpage headline for this article) 6:25:41 AM    comment []

Working to win the peace A very interesting WaPo article about how US troops in troubled Fallujah has worked to easen the tension after a few unfortunate incidents. The troops have listened to the people, learned about local customs, and using that knowledge to smoothe over differences. One of the new efforts is to formally apologise for tribal leaders and pay blood money to relatives ($1,500 for a death and $500 for an injury). It may sound weird for us, but it is common in rural Iraq and may both increase respect and reduce the risk of revenge attacks. A nice change from the more common "everything is going to hell" reports in the press. Yes, the US forces in Iraq make mistakes and no doubt will continue to do so. But if there is one thing Americans have always been good at, it is to learn from mistakes and change course. 4:59:44 AM    comment []

Catchy yawning for nice people If you are likely to start yawning when you see somebody else do it, this is actually evidence that you are a nice person, research shows. If you are never affected by people yawning, you may well be a psycho. 2:58:31 AM    comment []

Genetically modified crops neither hell nor heaven An article in the Economist outlines the evidence that the anti-GM crowd's scaremongering was unfounded. GM crops are not that different from 'natural' ones, and will not bring on all sorts of disasters. The flipside of this is that it may not be such a great reward to harvest from GM technology, either. 2:38:27 AM    comment []

Win the battle, lose the war Puerto Ricans fought long and hard to make the US Navy leave the island of Vieques, where the military conducted live fire exercises. Now the base is closing down completely, and the island loses its largest employer. Gone will also be the $300m the military used there annually. So now, of course, the islanders are complaining that the closure is "revenge" from the US Navy, and they are fighting to retain the base. By all accounts, that is too late. 1:43:51 AM    comment []

One way to fix the deficit "SEC has collected $324 million in Enron-related fines so far" (Miami Herald) 1:30:10 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.08.2003; 01:53:33.