Above: British and German troops meet during the truce
On Christmas Eve of 1914, five months into World War I, something amazing happened: thousands of British and German troops on the Western Front decided to put down their weapons, rise from the trenches, and greet each other peacefully. In fact, for the next few days, close to 100,000 men, British and German, chatted, exchanged gifts, sang carols and played football. Most importantly, they were even able to bury their dead without fearing for their own safety. On the evening of December 24th, the first day of the truce, Captain ‘Jack’ Armes of the 1st Battalion North Staffordshire Regiment wrote to his wife and described this incredible occurrence. Armes did return home to his family after the war; he died in 1948.
This letter, along with 121 other fascinating pieces of correspondence, can be found in More Letters of Note, the follow-up to the bestselling Letters of Note book. More info here.
Full transcript follows. Photo above via Wikipedia.
Transcript
24/12/14
I have just been through one of the most extraordinary scenes imaginable. To-night is Xmas Eve and I came up into the trenches this evening for my tour of duty in them. Firing was going on all the time and the enemy's machine guns were at it hard, firing at us. Then about seven the firing stopped.
I was in my dug-out reading a paper and the mail was being dished out. It was reported that the Germans had lighted their trenches up all along our front. We had been calling to one another for some time Xmas wishes and other things. I went out and they shouted "no shooting" and then somehow the scene became a peaceful one. All our men got out of their trenches and sat on the parapet, the Germans did the same, and they talked to one another in English and broken English. I got on top of the trench and talked German and asked them to sing a German Volkslied, which they did, then our men sang quite well and each side clapped and cheered the other.
I asked a German who sang a solo to sing one of Schumann's songs, so he sang The Two Grenadiers splendidly. Our men were a good audience and really enjoyed his singing.
Then Pope and I walked across and held a conversation with the German officer in command.
One of his men introduced us properly, he asked my name and then presented me to his officer. I gave the latter permission to bury some German dead who are lying in between us, and we agreed to have no shooting until 12 midnight to-morrow. We talked together, 10 or more Germans gathered round. I was almost in their lines within a yard or so. We saluted each other, he thanked me for permission to bury his dead, and we fixed up how many men were to do it, and that otherwise both sides must remain in their trenches.
Then we wished one another goodnight and a good night's rest, and a happy Xmas and parted with a salute. I got back to the trench. The Germans sang Die Wacht Am Rhein it sounded well. Then our men sang quite well Christians Awake, it sounded so well, and with a goodnight we all got back into our trenches. It was a curious scene, a lovely moonlit night, the German trenches with small lights on them, and the men on both sides gathered in groups on the parapets.
At times we heard the guns in the distance and an occasional rifle shot. I can hear them now, but about us is absolute quiet. I allowed one or two men to go out and meet a German or two half way. They exchanged cigars, a smoke and talked. The officer I spoke to hopes we shall do the same on New Year's Day, I said "yes, if I am here". I felt I must sit down and write the story of this Xmas Eve before I went to lie down. Of course no precautions are relaxed, but I think they mean to play the game. All the same, I think I shall be awake all night so as to be on the safe side. It is weird to think that to-morrow night we shall be at it hard again. If one gets through this show it will be an Xmas time to live in one's memory. The German who sang had a really fine voice.
Am just off for a walk around the trenches to see all is well. Goodnight.
Xmas Day.
We had an absolutely quiet night in front of us though just to our right and left there was sniping going on. In my trenches and in those of the enemy opposite to us were only nice big fires blazing and occasional songs and conversation. This morning at the Reveille the Germans sent out parties to bury their dead. Our men went out to help, and then we all on both sides met in the middle, and in groups began to talk and exchange gifts of tobacco, etc. All this morning we have been fraternising, singing songs. I have been within a yard in fact to their trenches, have spoken to and exchanged greetings with a Colonel, Staff Officers and several Company Officers. All were very nice and we fixed up that the men should not go near their opponents trenches, but remain about midway between the lines. The whole thing is extraordinary. The men were all so natural and friendly. Several photos were taken, a group of German officers, a German officer and myself, and a group of British and German soldiers.
The Germans are Saxons, a good looking lot, only wishing for peace in a manly way, and they seem in no way at their last gasp. I was astonished at the easy way in which our men and theirs got on with each other.
We have just knocked off for dinner, and have arranged to meet again afterwards until dusk when we go in again and have [illegible] until 9pm, when War begins again. I wonder who will start the shooting! They say "Fire in the air and we will", and such things, but of course it will start and tomorrow we shall be at it hard killing one another. It is an extraordinary state of affairs which allows of a "Peace Day". I have never seen men so pleased to have a day off as both sides.
Their opera singer is going to give us a song or two tonight and perhaps I may give them one. Try and imagine two lines of trenches in peace, only 50 yards apart, the men of either side have never seen each other except perhaps a head now and again, and have never been outside in front of their trenches. Then suddenly one day men stream out and nest in friendly talk in the middle. One fellow, a married man, wanted so much a photo of Betty and Nancy in bed, which I had, and I gave him it as I had two: It seems he showed it all round, as several Germans told me afterwards about it. He gave me a photo of himself and family taken the other day which he had just got.
Well must finish now so as to get this off to-day. Have just finished dinner. Pork chop. Plum pudding. Mince pies. Ginger, and bottle of Wine and a cigar, and have drunk to all at home and especially to you my darling one. Must go outside now to supervise the meetings of the men and the Germans.
Will try and write more in a day or two. Keep this letter carefully and send copies to all. I think they will be interested. It did feel funny walking over alone towards the enemy's trenches to meet someone half-way, and then to arrange a Xmas peace. It will be a thing to remember all one's life.
Kiss the babies and give them my love. Write me a long letter and tell me all the news. I hope the photos come out all-right. Probably you will see them in some paper.
Yours, Jake
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Gilmore Girls is one of the great triumphs of modern TV—a sharp, endlessly rewatchable dramedy that holds up better than most new television, with a Netflix fanbase as wide as its original audience on the (now-defunct) WB network. It also had one of the worst goodbyes in TV history, airing a tragically bad seventh season without the involvement of its creator Amy Sherman-Palladino. So Netflix is reportedly riding to the rescue, ordering a limited-series revival of the show, written by Sherman-Palladino and starring Lauren Graham, Alexis Bledel, and all the other cast favorites.
Netflix long ago began branding itself as some super-powered take on Nick at Nite, airing classic shows and bringing them back to life with new seasons. In Arrested Development’s case, it felt like an obvious move. A planned revival of Full House felt more cynical. The return of Wet Hot American Summer was unexpected and somewhat bizarre. But Gilmore Girls feels the most karmically appropriate of them all: a chance for Sherman-Palladino, who exited the show after its sixth and penultimate season because of a contract dispute, to right the wrongs done in her absence.
Not that Netflix cares one bit for karma. No doubt its internal algorithms have made the case for new Gilmore Girls episodes very clear. But the chance for redemption is a fun bonus storyline, and Gilmore Girls fans are an intense bunch. Michael Ausiello, who broke reports of Gilmore’s return at TVLine, has long stoked the fires for a revival, hanging on Sherman-Palladino’s comment that she’d written a series finale ending with four words that never aired after she left the show (his record as a reporter and sources within the show make the news all the more likely, though Netflix hasn’t confirmed it yet). When Gilmore Girls wrapped up in 2007, the concept of a revival, or even a goodbye movie, seemed ludicrous. With the rise of Netflix’s nostalgia machine, it became inevitable.
Apparently all the “major players” will be back—Graham and Bledel as the mother-daughter team Lorelai and Rory Gilmore, Kelly Bishop as Lorelai’s mother, Emily, and Scott Patterson as Lorelai’s chief love interest, Luke. The tragic loss of Edward Herrmann, who played Lorelai’s father, Richard, will have to be addressed, and who knows if the now-Oscar-nominated Melissa McCarthy (who played the ever-cheerful chef, Sookie) will be able to clear her schedule for the four 90-minute episodes being planned. But these are just details. What really matters: If Gilmore Girls is coming back, that’s plenty to be excited about.
I’ve been with my boyfriend for 3 years. We are both in our early thirties. When I first met him, I thought he was very attractive, and I still do. I like skinny dudes and he was skinny when I met him. About seven months into our relationship he put on about 15-20 pounds, which I found less attractive. His stomach was no longer flat and he carried weight around his middle in general. I expected him to lose it quickly, but he didn’t. Eventually I brought it up and he said I should have just said so and that he hadn’t really noticed, and that he would start a diet and exercise more.
It didn’t stick for long and since then every few months I ask him if he is still on his diet (which is all I do, I don’t bother him about it otherwise) and he gets upset and says yes (and sometimes no) and we had a fight about it recently where he said he wants me to stop asking.
I have stayed the same size, and I know he would not be super happy if I put on weight, since his preference is strongly skewed toward very thin women. I feel that while I do maintain my weight for my own sake, I also do it because I know he likes the way I look and I want him to be maximum attracted to me. That it’s been over 2 years makes me feel that it doesn’t matter to him if I am maximum attracted to him.
I am having a hard time distancing myself from this and figuring out what is right. I am a very goal-oriented person and also a “pusher,” one of those best/worst qualities — on the one hand, I always try my hardest at everything and I’ve accomplished some good things because of that, but on the other hand I also find it difficult to just let other people go at a slower pace and not micromanage. I try to rein this in, but I can’t tell if it applies in this situation. I want my boyfriend to stay in (reasonable) shape as we get older, but when I looked in the archives, particularly at #284, I saw people calling this mentality terrible and controlling (although I don’t think I’m like that guy, who sounds like he wants a different girlfriend. I don’t want a different boyfriend, I just want him to look a little more like he did when we met). Should I just deal with it, or is there a better way to approach this issue?
Thank you.
– sad, possibly a jerk
Dear Sad, Possibly A Jerk,
Watch (or rewatch) the movie Vertigo sometime. Scottie, played by Jimmy Stewart, becomes obsessed with a woman named Madeleine, played by Kim Novak. Things don’t work out between them. Later, he runs into a woman named Judy (also played by Kim Novak), who looks exactly like Madeleine except, not. Madeleine was blond and coiffed and wealthy and dressed in upscale, tasteful, elegant, “classy” clothes. She wore just the ‘right’ amount of makeup. Judy is “a tawdry redhead” and dresses in brassy, “cheap,” bright colors and wears very heavy makeup. Scottie sees Judy’s resemblance to Madeleine, who conformed utterly to a certain kind of beauty standard, and he’s haunted by that potential and the memory of Madeleine. So he buys Judy new clothes and a makeover and pressures her to dress like and do her hair like Madeleine, to become his Madeleine. There are many examples of vertigo as a paralyzing fear of and attraction to heights in the film, but this makeover sequence and the way Scottie browbeats Judy creates a different kind of emotional vertigo for the audience. Like Scottie, we are curious, and we want to see Judy’s transformation into Madeline so badly that we’re complicit in the horrific emotional abuse and destruction of “Judy” for the sake of even a glimpse of Madeline. Lots of movies have makeover montages, but director Alfred Hitchcock and costume designer Edith Head mix the pleasurable, aspirational aspects of transformation with the oppressiveness and destruction that comes with having this imposed by others. For audiences, especially audiences at the time, there is a perversity in Judy’s refusal to conform to the beauty standard because she’s so very close to it, like, if you could choose to look like Madeline why on earth wouldn’t you? Judy loves Scottie, so why wouldn’t she want to be “maximum attractive” to him?
My advice to you, Sad, is to make sure that you are not hurting the man you love in order to chase a memory or a status symbol. He is not a project or raw material to be sculpted (nor are you), he is a being and a universe entire. Bodies change with time, and if this becomes a lifelong relationship both of you are going to go through many changes in looks and abilities. What if you could decide to enjoy and love your body and your boyfriend’s body to the fullest extent that you can? Have sex as often and as joyfully as you can. Touch his body and your own with love and awe for the things it can do. Revel in its solidness and strength and in the miracle of his warm skin under your hands. If you like to dance, then dance. Someday you are going to be very old and you are going to look at pictures from this time in your life and think “why did I waste a single minute hating our bodies when we were so goddamn beautiful.”
One very concrete thing you can do is to practice saying only kind things about your boyfriend’s body and your own and about all the bodies that you see. Ask him to do the same, and refuse to tolerate any double standard that makes you feel dissatisfied with your own body. Having a preference about who you’re attracted to is one thing (though let’s not pretend that these preferences just spontaneously develop independent of the bombardment of idealized images of thin people and damaging shaming and denigration of not-thin people), mentioning and proclaiming and reinforcing that preference as a way to police the bodies of people in your life is quite another. If you and your boyfriend can wean yourselves off of negative self-talk, stop pointing out “figure flaws” on your own or other people’s bodies, let go entirely of the idea of what people should and should not wear or show on their own bodies, stop bonding over negative body talk and shame, and phase out consumption of magazines and other media that talk about bodies as a collection of “problem areas,” these things will go a long way toward increasing self- and mutual acceptance and joy that can last you both through all sorts of physical changes.
If your boyfriend can’t agree to try out a “no negative body talk” practice, and if he insists that your body needs to look a certain way but rebels against that standard for himself, then you’ll know what to do. But if he’s just asking to be left alone about his diet and not scrutinized about his weight, and all else is light and love between you? Turn your ambition and your goal-setting energy to your own life instead of toward sabotaging something that makes you happy.
One grand boulevard with trees
with one grand cafe in sun
with strong black coffee in very small cups.
One not necessarily very beautiful
man or woman who loves you.
One fine day.
Please read the comments policy before adding your input. We have a strict “no-weight loss talk, no mention of specific weights, no promotion of dieting, no insulting your own or other people’s bodies” thing going on here and I’d like to keep it that way.
My comment derailing bingo card filled early today. We’ll try this another time.
Maggie Sunseri was a middle-school student in Versailles, Kentucky, when she first noticed a major difference in the way her school’s dress code treated males and females. Girls were disciplined disproportionately, she says, a trend she’s seen continue over the years. At first Sunseri simply found this disparity unfair, but upon realizing administrators’ troubling rationale behind the dress code—that certain articles of girls’ attire should be prohibited because they “distract” boys—she decided to take action.
“I’ve never seen a boy called out for his attire even though they also break the rules,” says Sunseri, who last summer produced Shame: A Documentary on School Dress Code, a film featuring interviews with dozens of her classmates and her school principal, that explores the negative impact biased rules can have on girls’ confidence and sense of self. The documentary now has tens of thousands of YouTube views, while a post about the dress-code policy at her high school—Woodford County High—has been circulated more than 45,000 times on the Internet.
Meanwhile, gender non-conforming and transgender students have also clashed with such policies on the grounds that they rigidly dictate how kids express their identities. Transgender students have been sent home for wearing clothing different than what’s expected of their legal sex, while others have been excluded from yearbooks. Male students, using traditionally female accessories that fell within the bounds of standard dress code rules, and vice versa, have been nonetheless disciplined for their fashion choices. These cases are prompting their own backlash.
Dress codes—given the power they entrust school authorities to regulate student identity—can, according to students, ultimately establish discriminatory standards as the norm. The prevalence and convergence of today’s protests suggest that schools not only need to update their policies—they also have to recognize and address the latent biases that go into creating them.
* * *
At Woodford County High, the dress code bans skirts and shorts that fall higher than the knee and shirts that extend below the collarbone. Recently, a photo of a female student at the school who was sent home after wearing a seemingly appropriate outfit that nonetheless showed collarbone—went viral on Reddit and Twitter.
The restrictions and severity of dress codes vary widely across states, 22 of which have some form of law granting local districts the power to establish these rules, according to the Education Commission of the States. In the U.S., over half of public schools have a dress code, which frequently outline gender-specific policies. Some administrators see these distinctions as necessary because of the different ways in which girls and boys dress. In many cases, however, female-specific policies account for a disproportionate number of the attire rules included in school handbooks. Arkansas’s statewide dress code, for example, exclusively applies to females. Passed in 2011, the law “requires districts to prohibit the wearing of clothing that exposes underwear, buttocks, or the breast of a female student.” These are certainly reasonable provisions, yet the rule makes no mention of male students revealing similar body parts.
Depending on administrators and school boards, some places are more relaxed, while others take a hard line. Policies also tend to fluctuate, according to the University of Maryland American-studies professor and fashion historian Jo Paoletti, who described dress-code adaptations as very “reactionary” to whatever happens to be popular at the time—whether it’s white go-go boots or yoga pants. Jere Hochman, the superintendent of New York’s Bedford Central School District echoes Paoletti in explaining that officials revisit his district’s policy, which has been in place “for years and years and years,” “on an informal basis.” “It’s likely an annual conversation, he notes, “based on the times and what’s changed and fads.”
While research on dress codes remains inconclusive regarding the correlation between their implementation with students’ academic outcomes, many educators agree that they can serve an important purpose: helping insure a safe and comfortable learning environment, banning T-shirts with offensive racial epithets, for example. When students break the rules by wearing something deemed inappropriate, administrators must, of course, enforce school policies.
The process of defining what’s considered “offensive” and “inappropriate,” however, can get quite murky. Schools may promote prejudiced policies, even if those biases are unintentional. For students who attend schools with particularly harsh rules like that at Woodford, one of the key concerns is the implication that women should be hypercognizant about their physical identity and how the world responds to it. “The dress code makes girls feel self-conscious, ashamed, and uncomfortable in their own bodies,” says Sunseri.
Yet Sunseri emphasizes that this isn’t where she and other students take the most issue. “It's not really the formal dress code by itself that is so discriminatory, it’s the message behind the dress code,” she says, “My principal constantly says that the main reason for [it] is to create a ‘distraction-free learning zone’ for our male counterparts.” Woodford County is one of many districts across the country to justify female-specific rules with that logic, and effectively, to place the onus on girls to prevent inappropriate reactions from their male classmates. (Woodford County High has not responded to multiple requests for comment.)
“These are not girls who are battling for the right to come to school in their bikinis—it’s a principle.”
“To me, that’s not a girl’s problem, that’s a guy’s problem,” says Anna Huffman, who recently graduated from Western Alamance High School in Elon, North Carolina, and helped organize a protest involving hundreds of participants. Further north, a group of high-school girls from South Orange, New Jersey, similarly launched a campaign last fall, #IAmMoreThanADistraction, which exploded into a trending topic on Twitter and gleaned thousands of responses from girls sharing their own experiences.
Educators and sociologists, too, have argued that dress codes grounded in such logic amplify a broader societal expectation: that women are the ones who need to protect themselves from unwanted attention and that those wearing what could be considered sexy clothing are “asking for” a response. “Often they report hearing phrases like, ‘boys will be boys,’ from teachers,” says Laura Bates, a co-founder of The Everyday Sexism Project. “There’s a real culture being built up through some of these dress codes where girls are receiving very clear messages that male behavior, male entitlement to your body in public space is socially acceptable, but you will be punished.”
“These are not girls who are battling for the right to come to school in their bikinis—it’s a principle,” she says.
There’s also the disruption and humiliation that enforcing the attire rules can pose during school. Frequently, students are openly called out in the middle of class, told to leave and change, and sometimes, to go home and find a more appropriate outfit. In some instances, girls must wear brightly colored shirts that can exacerbate the embarrassment, emblazoned with words like, “Dress Code Violator.” Some students contend this is a bigger detractor from learning than the allegedly disruptive outfit was in the first place. “That’s crazy that they’re caring more about two more inches of a girl’s thigh being shown than them being in class,” says Huffman. These interruptions can also be detrimental to peers given the time taken out from learning in order for teachers to address the issue, as Barbara Cruz, author of School Dress Codes: A Pro/Con Issue, points out.
Dress-code battles can also take place at events outside of the classroom, such as prom. At Cierra Gregersen’s homecoming dance at Bingham High School in South Jordan, Utah, administrators asked female students to sit against the wall, touch their toes, and lift their arms to determine whether their outfits were appropriate. “Girls were outside the dance crying hysterically,” says Gregersen, commenting on the public nature of the inspections and the lack of clarity around the policy. “We should not have to be treated like sexual objects because that was what it felt like.” The incident prompted Gregersen to create a popular Change.org petition and stage a walkout with more than 100 classmates, but she says she never heard back from administration. (Bingham High School has not responded to multiple requests for comment.)
* * *
Every year, Strawberry Crest High School in Dover, Florida, holds a Spirit Week right around Halloween, during which students wear outfits in accordance with each day’s theme. One of the themes last year was Throwback Thursday, enabling students to dress up in ways reminiscent of a previous decade. Peter Finucane-Terlop, a junior at the time who identifies as gay, decided to come to school in drag as a 1950s housewife.
Wearing a knee-length, baby-blue strapless dress, a button-up on top, a wig, and some make-up, Finucane-Terlop’s outfit, he says, wasn’t only accepted by his peers—it also complied with all the school’s dress-code rules: His shoulders and chest were covered, and his dress was an appropriate length.
But sometimes the ways that schools regulate attire have little to do with explicit policies. According to Finucane-Terlop, a school official commented on his outfit in the middle of the courtyard during lunch that day. Finucane-Terlop recalls him saying, “Why are you dressed like that?” and “You shouldn’t do that. You’re a boy—dress like it. What if little kids saw you?”
Finucane-Terlop says he mentioned the incident to his school counselor right after it took place but didn’t end up getting a response from administrators. April Langston, Finucane-Terlop’s counselor, and David Brown, his principal at Strawberry Crest, however, do not recall talking about or hearing of such an incident.
“This isn’t occasional; this isn’t just some students. This is something that happens quite regularly.”
Beyond this specific case, Emily Greytak, the research director at GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network), says the organization has noticed that incidents like the one Finucane-Terlop described are becoming more frequent, when LGBT students are discriminated against either verbally, or via disciplinary action, for clothing choices that don’t fall in line with either a dress code or dress expectations that starkly demarcate different rules based on gender. According to a recent GLSEN study, 19 percent of LGBT students were prevented from wearing clothes that were thought to be from another gender and that number was even higher for transgender students, nearly 32 percent of whom have been prevented from wearing clothes that differed from those designated for their legal sex.
“This isn’t occasional; this isn’t just some students. This is something that happens quite regularly,” Greytak says. The discipline is sometimes informed by teachers’ personal biases while in other cases, school policies discriminate against transgender or gender non-conforming students expressions of their gender identity.
As Emery Vela, a sophomore, demonstrates, eventually some students manage to navigate and help reform the policies. Vela, a transgender student who attends a charter school in Denver, Colorado, dealt with this issue when looking for footwear to match his uniform in middle school, which had different requirements for boys and girls and suspended students if they broke the rule. Despite some initial pushback, the school adjusted the policy after he spoke with administrators.
“While they’re trying to achieve this goal of having a learning environment that supports learning, it’s really disadvantaging transgender and gender non-conforming students when they have to wear something that doesn’t match their identity,” Vela says.
* * *
Dress codes trace back to the 1920s and ‘30s, and conflicts over the rules have been around ever since, says Paoletti, the fashion historian: “Dress has been an issue in public schools as long as teenagers have been interested in fashion.” Several cases, including Tinker vs. Des Moines Independent Community School District in 1969, in which students alleged that wearing black armbands at school to protest the Vietnam War constituted free speech, have even gone all the way up to the Supreme Court.
The subjectivity inherent to many of these judgment calls—like the dress-code cases contending that boys with long hair would be society’s downfall—is often what ignites conflict. As with the kinds of protests staged by Sunseri and Huffman, many of the larger movements to resist school attire regulations today echo a broader momentum for women’s rights, pushing back against existing attitudes and practices. “We’ve seen a real resurgence in the popularity of feminism and feminist activism, particularly among young people and particularly in an international sense, facilitated by social media,” says Bates, who sees dress code protests as one key everyday impact of such trends. “I think that one of the striking elements of this new wave of activism is a sense of our entitlement and our courage to tackle the forms of sexism that are very subtle, that previously it was very difficult to stand up to, because you would be accused of overreacting, of making a fuss out of nothing.”
Similarly, Greytak says these conflicts are also an indicator that LGBT students are feeling safer in their school environments and able to criticize them: “It’s very possible that we are hearing more and seeing more about these cases because before less students would even feel comfortable being and expressing themselves.”
As this issue has gained exposure and traction, students have also derived inspiration from the actions of their peers, including Sunseri, who’s now in the process of negotiating changes to the dress code with her school administration, “If high-schoolers across the country were standing up for what they believed was right, why shouldn’t I?”
* * *
According to students, the best solutions for remedying these issues entail more inclusive policymaking and raising awareness about the subject. And students and administrators tend to agree that schools should involve students early on in the rule-creation process to prevent conflicts from popping up. By developing a system like this, they have a stake in the decision and are significantly more likely to both adhere and respect the final verdict.
This also helps reduce some of the subjectivity that shapes the rules and acknowledges how touchy the topic can be for all stakeholders. “It’s sensitive for the students, it’s sensitive for the parents, it’s sensitive for the teachers,” says Matt Montgomery, the superintendent of Revere Local Schools in Richfield, Ohio. “You’re in a tough position when you’re a principal evaluating the fashion sense of a 15- or 16-year-old female. Principals are doing things like engaging female counselors and other staff members to make sure that everything is okay.”
Schools should involve students early on to prevent conflicts from popping up.
Similarly, when conflicts do arise, maintaining an open dialogue is critical. “I always tell administrators to not be on the defensive, to hear students out, to hear families out, and then to have a well-reasoned explanation and if at all possible, to look at some of the research and be able to cite some of that,” says Cruz, the author. “Most of the time, school administrators are basing their decisions more on anecdotal evidence rather than empirical research. They need to be able to explain their rationale.”
Huffman, too, highlighted the importance of student involvement.“Adults aren’t going to be shopping at American Eagle or Forever 21,” she says, “They don’t know that it’s not even possible to buy a dress that goes to your knees.” Like Huffman, Kate Brown, a senior at Montclair High School, in Montclair, New Jersey, met with school administrators after organizing a protest, helping secure many of the policy changes her campaign had sought: removing words like “distracting.”
After all, teachers and administration don’t always realize that their policies are offensive—and this is where more education comes in. “Even for a lot of teachers in 2015, they have never had a trans student or a gender-nonconforming student where they’ve had to deal with this,” Finucane-Terlop says. “It’s new to them, so I understand that they might not know how to react.”
Ultimately, such rules could be the wrong way to handle some of the issues that they purport to cover. Since so many have previously been used to address the potential of sexual harassment in schools regarding male students paying inappropriate attention to female students, it’s clear other practices, like courses on respect and harassment, may be needed to fill this gap. These initiatives would shift the focus of school policies. “Is it possible that we can educate our boys to not be "distracted" by their peers and not engage in misogyny and objectification of women's bodies?” asks Riddhi Sandhil, a psychologist and co-founder of the Sexuality, Women and Gender Project at Teachers College at Columbia University.
“I think we live in a culture that’s so used to looking at issues of harassment and assault through the wrong end of the telescope,” Bates says, “that it would be really refreshing to see somebody turn it around and focus on the kind of behavior that is directed at girls rather than to police girls’ own clothing.”
There’s a growing interest in making dress codes as gender-neutral as possible as a means of reducing sexism and LGBT discrimination. But even beyond policy changes, students say there needs to be a fundamental shift in admitting that teachers and administrators come in with their own set of biases, which they may bring to creating and enforcing school rules. “I feel like there’s this misconception...that you can separate your prejudice from your profession, because so often prejudice is unconscious,” says Vela. “The biggest piece of advice I can offer is to recognize that.”
In order to combat latent prejudices, schools must first acknowledge that they exist.
Pro tip: if the sound of children’s laughter on a Sunday afternoon makes you curse the sky in rage, you might want to check yourself before you turn into a full-fledged cartoon villain. It might be too late for the “concerned” notewriter below.
A 3D face scanner designed to register details about individuals at the Siemens Airport Center in Germany, 2007. Michaela Rehle / Reuters
It might not be until something seems off that you realize you’re paying attention to the tiniest twitches and scrunches of another person’s face.
Humans are hardwired to catalogue and interpret minuscule clues about emotion this way. We find meaning in broken eye contact, a passing brow crinkle, the pause that goes on a beat too long.
But how good are people, generally, at discerning how others feel based on the faces they’re making?
In 1872, Charles Darwin laid out a case for the universality of key facial expressions in his book, The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. “Of all parts of the body,” Darwin wrote, “the face is most considered and regarded, as is natural from its being the chief seat of expression and the source of the voice... The face, therefore, will have been subjected during many generations to much closer and more earnest self-attention than any other part of the body.”
Scientists have found lots of evidence to back up the idea that some facial expressions are innate, but there are many layers of social and cultural complexities to consider. One 2012 study found that Westerners demonstrated distinct facial expressions in conjunction with six main emotional states (happiness, sadness, surprise, fear, disgust, and anger), whereas Easterners were more likely to use dynamic eye expressions.
Today, machine learning is giving scientists a new way to interpret the subtle movements of the face. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon, for instance, are using a multi-modal algorithm to analyze facial expression based on 68 separate points on the face, including the eyebrows, eye corners, mouth, and nose.
A new system called MultiSense can also track in real-time a person’s head position, the direction of that person’s gaze, and the person’s body orientation. This level of detail can be surprisingly revealing. Looking at what a person’s nose and eyebrows are doing can differentiate between a happy smile and an angry smile, for example, or a smile that’s triggered by a social situation rather than an actual emotion. “So a lot of time what we see [on a person’s face] is the social norm,” says Louis-Philippe Morency, an assistant professor in Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science. “Someone is smiling to smile back, so the dynamics of that smile would be different because of different emotional states and social states.”
Morency and his colleagues are particularly interested in using machine learning to trace connections between facial expressions and emotional state among depressed people. And what they’ve found so far is unexpected. For one thing, depressed people and non-depressed people smile with the same frequency. But the kinds of smiling they did were different. So while depressed people smiled as often as non-depressed people, the depressed people’s smiles lasted for a shorter period of time. (In addition to tracking smile duration, the sensor platform tracks smile intensity on a 100-point scale.)
There was also a pronounced gender difference in facial expressions among depressed people. In one University of Southern California study, Morency and three other researchers found that depressed men frown more often then non-depressed men, but observed the opposite effect among women: Depressed women frowned less frequently than non-depressed women.
“The really interesting next part,” Morency says, “is to see how [these findings are] aligned with social norms.” For instance, many women have had the experience of being told to smile. “Is it related to culture? Is it local? National? International? Or is there even another factor—social, cultural, physiological—that we don’t know yet?”
The implications of this technology, from a health-care perspective, could mean machine learning will help human doctors track their patients’s well being over time—and do so using objective, quantifiable data. In the short term, Morency believes MultiSense’s abilities are on par with an expert clinician. (“I think expert clinicians do see these cues,” he said. “They may not even realize it.”)
There are other implications for this kind of technology. It’s no surprise, for instance, that the U.S. military has funded much of the research into reading facial expressions. The Defense Department is interested in using facial-recognition platforms for treating people suffering from PTSD. It also has a longstanding goal of using such sensors as a way to understand and predict behaviors. Decades ago, the Department of Defense began amassing a huge database of facial expressions for this purpose.
Morency is excited by the surge in research, but he also urges caution, stressing that these tools are best suited to ongoing care for a patient with depression—and not as a diagnostic tool. Humans, it turns out, already pick up a number of these cues, but they do so in a subtle, less quantifiable way. And unlike machines, they balance their judgments against ethical considerations, about patient care, for instance.
“I personally would much prefer this technology as a decision-support tool, but not as a decision-making tool,” Morency said. “When we start talking about decision-making, this brings a large number of ethical issues that need to be addressed.”
This female reader wants women to fight back—literally:
I’ve argued with many newer feminists when debating the notion of self defense. Self defense and resistance as rape prevention are real and effective solutions supported by research[*]. Yet many newer feminists view even the very idea as victim blaming. I think this is a problem within many social movements today. In the interest of maintaining a united front, all nuance and subtlety is ignored!
And it completely ignores the historical significance of self defense in feminism from the ‘70s and ‘80s.
As young girls in the ‘80s, many of us had our first encounters with feminism through self-defense classes we took with our classmates and mothers. At the time, it was one of the most visible aspects of the movement, because the notion that a woman could protect herself, and was not dependent on a man for safety, was entirely subversive. After all, with increased freedom comes increased responsibility—and responsibility is not the same as blame.
New feminists, in my opinion, ignore this at the risk of becoming hypocrites and splintering the movement (all of the freedom, none of the responsibility). There is also an issue of choice at play here. As an autonomous, free-thinking woman, shouldn’t I be able to choose how I wish to respond to my own attack?!
And yet, the issue of rape culture still needs to be addressed. All things being equal, it should only be necessary to talk about the ways women can protect themselves in the rare instance when a crazed and violent perpetrator seeks to assault them.
We live in a society in which rape is ignored, victims are shamed and silenced, and a general climate persists in which otherwise normal young men and women are becoming perpetrators and victims because their view of consent and sexual agency is so incredibly skewed. Young men don’t know what they’re doing is rape, or feel so much pressure they don’t care. And young women don’t know they can say no and are afraid to speak up about assault if they do.
So society itself also needs to be addressed. I guess the full analysis leaves room for both aspects of the discussion.
* Below is some data to back up the assertion that “self defense and resistance as rape prevention are real and effective solutions.” From the National Institute of Justice:
In a 2005 report commissioned by NIJ, researchers examined a variety of sexual assaults and other physical assaults against women. The study did not focus specifically on college students. The researchers found that potential rape victims who resisted their attackers physically and verbally significantly reduced the probability that a rape would be completed and did not significantly increase the risk of serious injury.
Most self-protective actions significantly reduce the risk that a rape will be completed. In particular, certain actions reduce the risk of rape more than 80 percent compared to nonresistance. The most effective actions, according to victims, are attacking or struggling against their attacker, running away, and verbally warning the attacker.
In assaults against women, most self-protective tactics reduced the risk of injury compared to nonresistance. According to the researchers, the only self-protective tactics that appear to increase the risk of injury significantly were those that are ambiguous and not forceful. These included stalling, cooperating and screaming from pain or fear.
A separate study found that even when a rape was completed, women who used some form of resistance had better mental health outcomes than those who did not resist.[1]
A caveat:
Law enforcement officials, however, counsel caution against automatically using violence or other forms of resistance. People who are assaulted are advised to assess the situation and trust their own judgment about the best way to respond.
A UO sociologist finds that women who took a ten-week self-defense training were significantly less likely to experience unwanted sexual contact than those who didn’t. … Jocelyn Hollander [looked] at the outcomes for 117 college students who received this self-defense training versus a control group of 169 students who did not. Of those, seventy-five from the first group and 108 from the second agreed to take part in a follow-up survey or interview.
The results are clear: a much lower percentage of the women who took the self-defense class reported incidents of unwanted sexual contact than the women who did not take the class (see chart).
Something to add to the discussion? Drop me an email. And thanks for all the great ones so far, including the ones that don’t get posted because of space and pace.
His latest ugly truth came during a Bloomberg TV interview last Friday, when he said George W. Bush deserves responsibility for the fact that “the World Trade Center came down during his time.” Politicians and journalists erupted in indignation. Jeb Bush called Trump’s comments “pathetic.” Ben Carson dubbed them “ridiculous.”
Former Bush flack Ari Fleischer called Trump a 9/11 “truther.” Even Stephanie Ruhle, the Bloomberg anchor who asked the question, cried, “Hold on, you can’t blame George Bush for that.”
Oh yes, you can. There’s no way of knowing for sure if Bush could have stopped the September 11 attacks. But that’s not the right question. The right question is: Did Bush do everything he could reasonably have to stop them, given what he knew at the time? And he didn’t. It’s not even close.
When the Bush administration took office in January 2001, CIA Director George Tenet and National Security Council counterterrorism “czar” Richard Clarke both warned its incoming officials that al-Qaeda represented a grave threat. During a transition briefing early that month at Blair House, according to Bob Woodward’s Bush at War, Tenet and his deputy James Pavitt listed Osama Bin Laden as one of America’s three most serious national-security challenges. That same month, Clarke presented National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice with a plan he had been working on since al-Qaeda’s attack on the USS Cole the previous October. It called for freezing the network’s assets, closing affiliated charities, funneling money to the governments of Uzbekistan, the Philippines and Yemen to fight al-Qaeda cells in their country, initiating air strikes and covert operations against al-Qaeda sites in Afghanistan, and dramatically increasing aid to the Northern Alliance, which was battling al-Qaeda and the Taliban there.
But both Clarke and Tenet grew deeply frustrated by the way top Bush officials responded. Clarke recounts that when he briefed Rice about al-Qaeda, “her facial expression gave me the impression that she had never heard the term before.” On January 25, Clarke sent Rice a memo declaring that, “we urgently need…a Principals [Cabinet] level review on the al Qida [sic] network.” Instead, Clarke got a sub-cabinet, Deputies level, meeting in April, two months after the one on Iraq.
When that April meeting finally occurred, according to Clarke’s book, Against All Enemies, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz objected that “I just don’t understand why we are beginning by talking about this one man, bin Laden.” Clarke responded that, “We are talking about a network of terrorist organizations called al-Qaeda, that happens to be led by bin Laden, and we are talking about that network because it and it alone poses an immediate and serious threat to the United States.” To which Wolfowitz replied, “Well, there are others that do as well, at least as much. Iraqi terrorism for example.”
By early summer, Clarke was so despondent that he asked to be reassigned. “This administration,” he later testified, “didn’t either believe me that there was an urgent problem or was unprepared to act as though there were an urgent problem. And I thought, if the administration doesn’t believe its national coordinator for counterterrorism when he says there’s an urgent problem and if it’s unprepared to act as though there’s an urgent problem, then probably I should get another job.” In July, the Deputies Committee finally agreed to schedule a Principals level meeting on Clarke’s plan. But the schedule for July was already full, and in August too many Cabinet members were on vacation, so the meeting was set for September.
During that same time period, the CIA was raising alarms too. According to Kurt Eichenwald, a former New York Times reporter given access to the Daily Briefs prepared by the intelligence agencies for President Bush in the spring and summer of 2001, the CIA told the White House by May 1 that “a group presently in the United States” was planning a terrorist attack. On June 22, the Daily Brief warned that al-Qaeda strikes might be “imminent”
But the same Defense Department officials who discounted Clarke’s warnings pushed back against the CIA’s. According to Eichenwald’s sources, “the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat.”
The CIA fought back. “The U.S. is not the target of a disinformation campaign by Usama Bin Laden,” declared the Daily Brief on June 29, noting that the al-Qaeda leader had recently told a Middle Eastern journalist to expect an attack. The following day, the CIA included in its Daily Brief an article entitled “Bin Laden Threats Are Real.” On July 1, the Brief predicted that an attack “will occur soon.”
Then, on July 10, Tenet and CIA counterterrorism head Cofer Black held an emergency meeting with Rice to push for action against Bin Laden. But according to Woodward’s State of Denial, “both felt they were not getting through to Rice.” She “seemed focused on other administration priorities, especially the ballistic defense missile system that Bush had campaigned on” and “Tenet left the meeting feeling frustrated.”
By this point, staffers at CIA counterterrorism headquarters had grown so dejected that they, like Clarke, debated asking for a transfer.
The warnings continued. On July 11, the CIA sent word to the White House that a Chechen with links to al-Qaeda had warned that something big was coming. On July 24, the Daily Brief said the expected al-Qaeda attack had been postponed but was still being planned. Finally, on August 6, the CIA titled its Daily Brief: “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike the US.” The briefing didn’t mention a specific date or target, but it did mention the possibility of attack in New York and mentioned that the terrorists might hijack airplanes. In Angler, Barton Gellman notes that it was the 36th time the CIA had raised al-Qaeda with President Bush since he took office.
On September 4, the Cabinet met and despite Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s insistence that Iraq represented the greater terrorism threat, it approved Clarke’s plan to fight al-Qaeda. On September 9, the Senate Armed Services Committee recommended taking $600 million from the proposed missile defense budget and devoting it to counter-terrorism. According to Gellman, Rumsfeld recommended that Bush veto such a move
On the morning of September 11, 2001, Clarke’s anti-al-Qaeda plan was sitting on Bush’s desk, awaiting his signature. It was the ninth National Security Presidential Directive of his presidency.
Would the Bush administration have stopped the 9/11 attacks had it taken the threat more seriously? Possibly. On August 3, a Saudi named Mohamed al-Kahtani tried to enter the United States in Orlando, Florida, allegedly to participate in the 9/11 plot. He was sent back home by a customs official whose only concern was that he might become an illegal immigrant. On August 16, FBI and INS agents in Minnesota arrested another potential hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui, after being tipped off by his flight instructor. But despite numerous requests, they were denied permission to search his apartment or laptop. These incidents “might have exposed the” 9/11 plot, writes Eichenwald, “had the government been on high alert.”
Clarke makes the same argument. When the Clinton administration received word of a potential attack in December 1999, he notes, President Clinton ordered his national security advisor to “hold daily meetings with the attorney-general, the CIA, FBI.” As a result, the leaders of those agencies instructed their “field offices to find out everything they can find. It becomes the number one priority of those agencies.” This vigilance, Clarke suggests, contributed to the arrest on December 14 of an Algerian named Ahmed Ressam, who was arriving from Canada with the aim of detonating a bomb at Los Angeles International Airport.
The Bush administration could have done similar in 2001. “Buried in the FBI and CIA,” Clarke notes, “there was information about two of these al-Qaida terrorists who turned out to be hijackers [Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi]. The leadership of the FBI didn’t know that, but if the leadership had to report on a daily basis ... to the White House, he would have shaken the trees and he would have found out those two guys were there.”
Would that have foiled the 9/11 attacks? “There was a chance,” Clarke argues, but top Bush officials “didn’t take it.”
When Donald Trump hurls insults at his opponents, respectable people generally roll their eyes. But it is precisely Trump’s refusal to be respectable that helps him spark debates that elites would rather avoid. And sometimes, those debates are important to have.
Given that George W. Bush’s advisors still dominate the Republican foreign-policy establishment—an establishment that has not broken with his ideological legacy in any fundamental way—his record both before and after 9/11 remains relevant to the terrorism debate today. For many years now, that foreign-policy establishment has insisted that questioning Bush’s failure to stop the September 11 attacks constitutes an outrageous slur. That’s why Fleischer is now calling Trump a “truther.” He’s purposely blurring the line between accusing Bush of having orchestrated the attacks and accusing Bush of having been insufficiently vigilant in trying to stop them. But Bush was insufficiently vigilant. The evidence is overwhelming.
If Jeb’s loyalty to his brother makes it impossible for him to confront that, fine. But he has no right to demand that the rest of the public avert its eyes.
Puglie, “a little pug with big dreams”, is the creation of Vancouver-based graphic designer Eugenia Leung. This darling little potato goes on all sorts of incredible adventures, which are available in the form of art prints, t-shirts, iPhone cases, and more! (The Puglie milk carton mug is a favorite for obvious reasons!)
These EASY shrimp stacks will satisfy your sushi craving, and they taste SO GOOD! Layered with cucumber, avocado, shrimp and brown rice, then topped with a spicy mayo – YUM!
You don't need any fancy tools, I layered everything in a one-cup measuring cup then flipped it over.
Then topped it with spicy mayo, soy sauce and Furikake which is a Japanese condiment made with blend of sesame seeds and seaweed and spices available at most health food stores, Amazon or you can just use sesame seeds.
I'm obsessed with Trader Joe's frozen brown rice, it's a great short cut for busy weeknights and the texture is perfect. Using their rice, this came together in less than 15 minutes. If you make the rice yourself, it's best to use short grain rice like you get from most Asian restaurants, the sticky texture is perfect for this.
This would also be great with crab meat to make a more traditional California roll, or even salmon or tuna!
If you want to track and learn more about your monthly flow, you can pre-order a Bluetooth-connected menstrual cup that sends reports to your phone.
Now on Kickstarter, the Looncup is a smart menstruation cup that women can insert into their vaginas during their periods. The cup tracks details like fluid volume and color, and compares that data on a monthly basis.
Further, the cup connects via Bluetooth to an app on your iPhone, Android or Apple Watch, and can send push notifications indicating how full the cup is, and when you should change it.
I track my periods on my iPhone with one of those apps that are clearly meant for fertility purposes; even after I turned off all the notifications, I still received notifications letting me know when I was ovulating and what kind of healthy secretions I should be seeing to indicate prime baby-making dates. At the time, that felt like an episode of Black Mirror. The idea of a menstrual cup that doesn’t even need you to properly upload your menarche-related data is the storyline of a horror movie that hasn’t been written yet.
If he were “very into self-improvement,” he’d be trying to get closer to your family, or his own. Pushing you to do this (or anything else) means he’s very into other-improvement.
Be very, very wary of that.
New boyfriend! So sensitive and helpful! So very helpful. Halpful. Helpy.
Here’s the thing: some people just aren’t meant to be friends. And some people don’t realize that they’re not meant to be friends with certain other people. I’ve been in your position before, where I start to establish a rapport with a coworker only to realize “yikes, we need to dial this thing back into colleague territory”; I’ve also been in a version of Helena’s position, where my efforts to become buddies with someone are clearly being rebuffed. It hurts to feel rejected, but putting someone on the spot with any version of “why don’t you like me?” is a bad way to handle it. It’s like asking a partner to explain—really explain—why they’re breaking up with you: any useful intel you’ll get out of it won’t be worth the salt you’re pouring into your own open wound.
Edited to Add: Breaking! Friend Jess White’s essay Living in Laramie: After Matthew Shepard is up at The Toast. It’s about landscape and being haunted and the stories we grow up knowing in our bones. Read it.
What’s the single best thing you’ve read online this week?
If you strip away everything else, CW’s The Flash is about a guy who runs fast—his only power. Sometimes he runs so fast that he summons some sort of tornado; other times, he blasts through the time barrier itself. No matter what, Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) remains apple-cheeked and prone to seeing the bright side of things, even if the planet is on the brink of destruction. The CW superhero drama seems cut out of a simpler era where a hero fighting a villain of the week was all you needed to make a comic-book adaptation shine.
But The Flash’s real skill is in balancing that throwback feel with dense, yearlong storytelling arcs that frequently fold time on itself and feature villains from the distant future. Its first season, a huge ratings hit for the network, recalled the soapy early years of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the best comparison a genre TV show could hope for. Like that show, it mixed small-change bad guys with a battle against a much bigger threat (resolved in a dramatic season finale). Even more importantly, it was about how heroes are defined by the support systems they build up around them. For all of its throwback charm, Barry’s blended family in The Flash—something Buffy had as well—was a quietly radical element in a genre that is usually anything but.
That emphasis on family continues into the second season, which premieres Tuesday on The CW. A supervillainous speedster killed Barry’s mother and framed his father for the crime when Barry was a child, so he was raised by a kind-hearted cop named Joe West (Jesse L. Martin). The show’s first season saw Barry given the power of supernatural speed, which he eventually used to uncover the identity of his mother’s killer. But in the second season, Joe remains a paternal figure, and his familial bond with Barry feels authentic. It would be easy for the show to reduce Joe to the role of wise African American mentor, but he’s a far more well-rounded figure. He acts a moral sounding board for Barry, but he’s also a father who’s often frustrated with the danger his son is in.
That’s where the Buffy comparison comes in. Joss Whedon’s revolutionary 1997 show was about a singular hero, but it was just as much about the ensemble around her that both informed and fed off her heroism. The Flash’s support crew includes the same archetypes: Buffy’s wise-cracking geek Xander takes the form of Cisco (Carlos Valdes), and the type-A know-it-all Willow seems reincarnated as Caitlin (Danielle Panabaker). Barry on his own is perfectly charming, but straightforwardly so: You’re rooting for him, but there’s not much drama to it, and his superpowers keep him at arm’s length. Mix in a team of lovable losers he has to protect, and he’s that much more human.
Buffy worked because it took its audience seriously while allowing itself to be silly. The Flash has some of that same spirit.
The Flash’s first season also perfectly imitated the classic Buffy structure, setting up a “big bad” in its first episode (the two-faced scientist Harrison Wells, played by Tom Cavanagh) and having his master plan slowly unfold over the course of 22 episodes before being vanquished, at a cost, in the season finale. It’s a structure Whedon borrowed from comic books themselves, where encounters with small-time foes (like the amusingly chintzy Captain Cold, played with dramatic relish by Wentworth Miller) feed into a larger battle on the horizon. In the first season’s finale, Barry defeated Harrison but lost an ally in the process; the season two premiere handles that trauma appropriately, without sacrificing the show’s overall sprightly tone.
When The CW launched as a merger of The WB and UPN (both of which aired Buffy) in 2006, it struggled for years to sustain the teen-focused brand of its predecessors. Only in recent years has it found a ratings groove by offering surprisingly complex genre dramas like The Vampire Diaries, Arrow, and The 100, which are mostly aimed at younger viewers. The Flash has attracted some of the best ratings in the network’s history because it balances all-ages appeal with institutional knowledge of what’s worked before. Buffy worked because it took its audience seriously while allowing itself to be silly; The Flash has some of that same spirit, meaning it can feature a pitched battle with a talking gorilla in the same episode as a heartfelt confrontation between an adoptive father and his son without feeling ridiculous.
Of course, Buffy’s real success was that it managed to strike that balance for a long time, and continued to find compelling villains for its season arcs as the years went on. The Flash’s second season begins, as Buffy’s always would, by having its heroes pick up the pieces, and it does so nicely. Here’s hoping the world’s fastest man can continue to keep up the pace.
Working from client-provided photographs, artist and photographer Alma Haser creates miniature papier mâché models of family pets then photographs them against colorful, two-tone backgrounds, providing pet parents with a sculptural representation of their furry friend plus a photographic print. This is basically the coolest “pet portrait” you could possibly ask for!
Prices start at £495 (about $750). Check out My Life in Art Gallery for more examples and to commission one of Alma’s unique pet portraits.
We share the work of various pet portrait artists pretty regularly around here, but fiber artist Dani Ives might be my favorite of all time. I am absolutely blown away by the detail of her felted wool “paintings”; the level of craftsmanship is just unreal.
Dani’s custom portrait work is in high demand, so she only takes a set number of commissions at certain times throughout the year. Get on her mailing list to be the first to know or follow her on Instagram to find out when her next pet portrait openings will be! Meanwhile, you can purchase various other felt paintings through her Etsy shop.
An employee takes a sample from a beer bottle at the lab of a Polar brewery in Maracaibo, Venezuela (Isaac Urrutia / Reuters)
Last week, I wrote about the lives of professional guinea pigs, people who support themselves mostly or entirely with money earned from professional drug trials. All of the guinea pigs I talked to for the story were men—not something I’m particularly happy about, but unfortunately, it’s not too far off from the makeup of the research-subject population. Overwhelmingly, clinical-trial research is still mostly research done on men.
A piece of history that didn’t make it into my piece, but that I found fascinating (and frustrating): A major reason women are so underrepresented in clinical trials today is because of thalidomide, the drug that caused thousands of birth defects in the 1950s and ‘60s.
In 1977, spooked by the thalidomide disaster, the FDA drew up guidelines encouraging researchers to ban women of childbearing age from their studies. That’s no longer the case—the FDA, after receiving blowback from women’s-health groups, reversed its position in 1993, the same year Congress passed a law requiring all NIH-funded studies to include both sexes. But it’s hard to argue that the decades-long ban hasn’t affected how women are included today.
I wrote about this issue in a different context last September, looking at the imbalance in the research that happens before human bodies get involved: studies done on cells, for example, or rats. In those cases, subjects still tend to skew pretty heavily male.
Granted, as I noted back then, women (and female cells, and female rats) can also make for trickier research subjects. There are monthly hormone fluctuations to account for, and most early-stage trials require subjects who aren’t taking any prescriptions, which can rule out women on birth control.
The problem is, leaving them out just makes for surprises further down the line. Ideal dosage can be different for men than it is for women. Same with side effects. Often, these things are sussed out long after a drug’s already made it to market—meaning, in other words, that the research subjects paid by the lab aren’t the only guinea pigs.
Brad wanted a cool diaper bag when Ozzy was born, but I wasn’t willing to give up the ease of a bag that hooks onto the stroller handle. We were using Hank’s old Skip Hop Diaper Duo bag, until we came across Topo Design’s Mini Mountain Bag.
It’s not built as a diaper bag, obviously, but we’ve been using it for a few months and it’s perfect. The strap has a clasp near the bag that makes it adjustable, so we’re able to tighten it most of the way and hang it across the stroller handles. It looks small, but it accommodates everything we need, even when we’re traveling.
Luna is an artistic lamp design inspired by the Moon, available in a range of seven sizes from the XXS 3.2 inch model to the XXL 23.6 version. Stunning.
College football’s popularity probably has a lot to do with how personal it is: Few other sports combine the camaraderie of Saturday afternoon tailgates, the rush of a victory in a decades-long rivalry, and, for some, the tradition of wearing the same school colors as one’s parents or grandparents. The sport also gets by on its perceived amateurism. Its players may look like fully-grown men, but they are in the earliest stages of adulthood. And they aren’t getting paid, which lends a sense of passion and scrappiness that are less evident in the NFL and other sports leagues.
But, as Gilbert M. Gaul, who has won Pulitzer Prizes for his coverage of blood banks and the American coal industry, explains in his new book Billion Dollar Ball: A Journey Through the Big-Money Culture of College Football, there’s nothing scrappy or amateurish about the sport’s business side. As Gaul explains, most college-football programs have come to operate more or less independently from the universities that chartered them, and money has become their raison d’etre. TV contracts, corporate sponsors, and “seat donations”—in which elite teams charge their fans above and beyond the price of a season ticket for the privilege of securing a seat—are just three reasons why a program such as the University of Texas’s could go from making $18.7 million in 1999 to $104 million in 2012.
I recently talked to Gaul about the intricacies and implications of the college-football business model, which can be problematic because there is a lack of incentive for big schools to reel in their spending, and the example that sends to smaller, less-accomplished programs to try to overspend their way to success. We talked about what a football team can—and can’t—do for a university, as well as how a number of schools are spending massively in order to keep up with the programs, such as Michigan and Texas, that comprise college football’s 1 percent. The interview that follows has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Adrienne Green: In your book, you talk about the elite football programs working off of a “new financial model” that has changed how universities interact with their football programs. Could you explain this new model?
Gilbert M. Gaul: College presidents are uncomfortable with what's happening, particularly with their football programs, and to an extent with their men's basketball programs. So they came up with this idea. They would tell their athletic departments, ‘Okay, if you want to grow bigger and richer, fine, but we don't want to use university money. We don't want to use general revenues. We want you to go off and raise this money on your own.’ Basically, setting them up as stand-alone businesses in a corner of the campus. And the schools I'm talking about are the 65 members of the five so-called “super conferences.” And then you have these 60 other schools trying to play Division I football, like Akron and Eastern Michigan and New Mexico State, where the model doesn't work for them. They're really not making money.
One of the things they came up with was this whole notion that you can charge your best fans a mandatory fee or payment—call it a “seat donation”—so in order to get a seat at the stadium, you have to pay above and beyond the face value of the tickets. You can charge them thousands of dollars—in some cases it's $10,000 or $20,000. There's a waiting list at Alabama of 26,000 fans waiting to get a seat. And then you have the television contracts. The cable companies and particularly ESPN have been willing to pay more and more over the years because they get live content.
The third piece of this business model is the corporate money—the money from Nike, Under Armour, Adidas that comes into the programs, the apparel deals and the licensing and marketing arrangements. And then the fourth prong is season tickets, which have been escalating in price.
Just the top 10 football teams had revenues of about $229 million in 1999 and by 2012 it had gone up to nearly $800 million. And they've just continued to go up in the last two years. The amount of money coming in is extraordinary, and that explains why you see the salaries for football coaches go through the roof; it helps to explains why you see the schools building these gigantic new stadiums; it helps explain why the schools invest all this money in these academic support programs to keep the players eligible and on the field; it helps explain why you see the side of the athletic department explode during this time, going from 100 employees to maybe 400 employees. All of this stuff is tied together.
Green: If football is a business, as you suggest, and not an extension of college academics, what do you think that does to football's relationship with its fans?
Gaul: Everyone is aware of what's going on inside the stadium. The most concrete impact is the availability on television. There's such an over saturation of college football right now. You have games running almost the entire week now, especially on ESPN. There are so many games now on Saturdays.
This means that football becomes an entertainment product for the university. The presidents—they're conflicted. Because on the one hand they are expected to be cheerleaders and to attend the games, and entertain people in their luxury skyboxes, and on the other hand they are supposed to be in charge of making sure that it doesn't distort the university brand, and that education is still the key focus. When you speak with them, the few that will speak with you, they're clearly embarrassed by what's going on and yet they feel powerless to do anything about it. But there is nobody else to help them. The NCAA is not going to do it. Congress isn't going to do it.
Green: The whole model seems to be built on constant spending. It doesn’t seem sustainable.
Gaul: Yeah, I mean some of the schools have some reserves, but they're not gigantic reserves. It's what economists call a revenue theory of cost, where basically you spend every nickel you take in. A few of the schools do give a few million dollars to academics. But it's not like athletics is supporting academics in any significant way.
You go to Oregon and look at the academic support center that Phil Knight built for them, the $42 million sports center. Baylor just build a new $266 million stadium on the Brazos River; Texas A&M they called it a renovation of Kyle field, and spent what $420 million. Alabama built a new 37,000 square foot weight room and a $9 million locker room with a waterfall in it. When I looked at all of this I kept wondering: Is there a model where someone is successful at building a program, but doing it with not much money? And the answer is, I couldn't find a single one.
Green: Is there a chance that there’s a college-football bubble? What if the revenue streams run out?
Gaul: That's a really tricky question. I don’t see an immediate bubble. I asked a couple of athletic directors and they laughed at me when I asked that. For the moment—because they are still in contracts where they are getting gobs of money from television and where you haven’t seen a huge downturn in the fanbase—I don’t see any evidence of a bubble within the next 5 years.
Once you get outside of that time period I see a number of factors that if I were an athletic director, I would worry a little bit about. One of those factors is the kids who are in school now don't seem quite as loyal to the team as their parents and grandparents are or were. For example at Alabama, Nick Saban, the coach, actually screamed at them for leaving the games at halftime. Will this be revealed to be a bubble? I don't know. There's an awful lot of debt exposed because there's an awful lot of debt involved in this stadium building that you see.
Green: Is anyone interested in limiting spending?
Gaul: Once you take it outside of the university, and you take it outside of the normal university budget, where is the discipline going to come from? When you have a model that can bring in all this money, where is the incentive to be disciplined about how you spend it? If you run it through the university budget, then you at least have the normal restraints going on—in theory. If you’re doing layoffs and you’re cutting classes, then you’d be forced to apply some of that same discipline to your athletic department. In fact, schools that run it through the normal budget, you do see that happening. But, when you have this model outside of it and you have all this money coming in, there’s very little incentive to say no to building a new 37,000 square foot weight room.
Green: Then who's responsible? You mention that outside fundraisers—executives who want to support the program—don’t worry about the entertainment dimension, fans just want to enjoy their favorite team, and universities feel like their hands are tied.
Gaul: It lies in several places. It starts with the presidents. I'm tough on the presidents in my book, but deservedly so. It's a bit shameful that they haven't been more aggressive at taking this on, but a lot of them are just afraid to. You don't win any votes with your Board of Trustees by challenging the notion that your athletic department is now an entertainment division, that your football team is now involved more in entertainment than it is in education.
It certainly lies at the feet of the Congress, because they're the ones who have allowed all of this to be protected as tax-exempt revenue. That has evolved over time and stuck around even though college football has become clearly a huge commercialized industry that pays no taxes. The idea that all this TV money is untaxed goes back to Congress. And they're not going to take it on, because they don't win any votes by taking on the state university.
One athletic director at a huge football school actually told me that they would send a coach or an athletic director or two up to Congress once a year to make the rounds. He said the members would "slobber over the football coaches." They lose any sense of their actual role and they're just fawning over them, because they are celebrities and it's college football. If you try to take these things on you often get beaten back.
Green: You mentioned earlier that some of the smaller schools—the ones that are not the big football programs—are running their football costs through their university budgets. What do you think is the difference in philosophies between these big football schools that believe they're crafting the next NFL superstars and those whose students who will go on to do other things?
Gaul: When you look at the Akrons of the world, they're trying to play Division I football. They want to be Alabama. They want to be Oregon. But they're never going to get there because the model doesn't work for them. If you look at their financial statements—now admittedly, the accounting on the financial statements is problematic—they're losing millions of dollars.They do it because they buy into the magical thinking that if they don't have a big football team, they're not a real university.
Green: You mention frequently in the book that football is kind of an insurance policy for non-revenue sports. When people hear ‘non-revenue sports’ oftentimes they think of women's sports. So, when I was reading what you wrote about Title IX and the athletic department's mentality towards women's sports, it looked to me like they could give time, attention, and money to female sports only if it balances—but doesn't take that time, attention, and money away from—male ones.
Gaul: Well, I don't think the attitude is quite that bad anymore. I do think the athletic directors are serious about supporting women's sports, some of them more than others.
The narrative of Title IX is that it's been this huge success, and that it’s a good thing, whether men came to it reluctantly or not. But then there's still numbers game that's clearly being played with Title IX, and I don't hear too much about that in the narrative.
I wrote about this through the prism of women's rowing—a sport that I absolutely fell in love with, by the way. In the mid-90's the athletic directors are looking around and they notice that they have football squads of 130 athletes, and they have no women's sport that's remotely close to that. So they needed a sport that they could pack women into, so they could offset those football numbers. They came up with this brilliant idea: women's rowing. It's relatively cheap. You need some water, some boats, you need a coach and maybe an assistant or two. And it costs, even today, a good women's rowing program, one of the very elite programs, might cost $2 million or less. Whereas an elite football program is going to run somewhere around $42 million, so you see the difference right there.
A woman's rowing coach at a place like Wisconsin is responsible for anywhere between, during tryout 200 athletes, to during the regular season 130. It's clearly as big a sport as football, and in some ways the responsibilities are very similar coaching wise. But, a woman's rowing coach gets paid probably $120,000 at a top program like Wisconsin. At an elite football school, it’s about $3 million for the head coach. So the head football coach is making more in one month than the rowing coaches are earning combined for an entire year.
If their responsibilities are similar and they are responsible for similar number of athletes, how could thereby this much of a gap in pay? It makes absolutely no sense—unless you say as the athletic director, “Well, the football coach is responsible for filling up this giant stadium and putting out a winning team that continues to bring in all the money.” And if you say that, then it’s a business, and that salary is fair. But that gets you back to all those questions about tax exemptions.
When Thomas Gilbert found the Annamite striped rabbit, he wasn’t traipsing through the jungles of Vietnam where the exceedingly rare creature lives. He wasn’t inspecting a trap, or peering through binoculars. He wasn’t even flicking through photographs captured by a camera-trap. He was, instead, looking at the rabbit’s DNA.
Which he had pulled out of a leech.
There are some 700 species of leech and many of them suck the blood of mammals. In doing so, they achieve with ease what scientists find difficult: they sneak through thick, tropical rainforest and collect DNA samples from rare and elusive species. By collecting these mini-vampires in turn, and sequencing the DNA in their bodies, scientists can get a cheap and surprisingly comprehensive snapshot of a jungle’s fauna.
The idea behind this unorthodox census technique started with Mads Bertelsen, a vet from Copenhagen Zoo. Bertelsen was doing fieldwork in Malaysia when he saw a leech fastened to the side of a tapir, and thought: Hmmm. He approached Gilbert with his crazy idea, and the duo tried to test it.
First, they fed leeches with goat blood, and showed that goat DNA survives in their bodies for at least four months. Next, they asked a colleague to collect wild leeches from the Central Annamite region of Vietnam, a lushly forested area where five new mammal species had been recently discovered.
From just 25 leeches, the team found DNA from six mammals, including pigs, cows, the small-toothed ferret-badger, and the threatened goat-like serow. They also found DNA from the Annamite striped rabbit, which was discovered in 1999 and had (at the time) never been seen in over 2,000 hours of camera-trap recordings. And they even detected DNA from the Truong Son muntjac, a small deer that was discovered in 1997 and has never been seen in the flesh. “That suggests that these animals aren’t as rare as we think or that the leeches are very good at finding them,” says Gilbert.
All conservation efforts are predicated upon knowing what lives where, and that knowledge is hard to come by in dense, rugged forests, whose residents are often rare, reclusive, and wary of humans. In such places, direct observation is almost impossible. You could interview villagers, but that’s challenging and often imprecise. You could pepper an area with camera-traps, but you’d have to lug heavy and expensive batteries to and fro. And all of these methods might miss small, tree-dwelling, or burrowing species.
Leeches, however, seem to feed on everything, and so miss little. Collecting them is also cheap, fast, and requires no special skills; as Gilbert says, “The leech collector simply offers his/herself up for bait.” Just by standing around in a rainforest for a day, a lucky collector (or unlucky, depending on how you look at it) can attract hundreds of leeches.
Attracting funding is a bigger problem. “The funny thing about leeches is that I’ve spectacularly failed to get anyone in Denmark to give me any money to study them,” says Gilbert. Fortunately, others have had better luck. Douglas Yu from the University of East Anglia and China’s Kunming Institute of Zoology, has enthusiastically leapt onto the leech-sequencing bandwagon, bringing money and extensive sequencing facilities with him. His involvement allowed the team to scale up.
They are now working with the WWF in Vietnam to find traces of the saola—a recently discovered, rarely seen, and critically endangered antelope that’s also known as the Asian unicorn. Yu has also been working with the Forestry Department of Yunnan Province to train an army of leech collectors. Some two hundred of the departments’ rangers have been walking around, plucking leeches from their bodies, stashing them in rubber pouches, and noting their GPS locations along the way.
Through their efforts, Yu ended up with some 20,000 leeches. Once preserved, the worms turn into dense, rubbery pellets that are too painful to pulverise by hand—the team resorted to small blenders. They then analysed the resulting slurry using a technique called metabarcoding, which amplifies small sections of DNA that vary distinctively between species, and compared these sequences against existing databases. They discovered sequences from martens, bears, tree shrews, mice, mongooses, monkeys, deer, cats, and more.
For now, the biggest remaining obstacle is developing a reference database to compare the results against. The gaps in the existing databases become clear when the team gets unexpectedly hilarious results, like matches for the bearded seal. “Either it migrates down from the Arctic to South-East Asia, or something else is happening,” jokes Yu. (There’s precedent for such problems: one study of microbial DNA found that the platypus has been surreptitiously conquering the globe.)
The bearded seal: not found in Vietnam. Credit: Smudge9000, Flickr
Seals are closely related to dogs, bears, and weasels, so the team’s algorithms might be misidentifying a member of those other groups that hasn’t itself been sequenced yet. “Often, we’ll get a sequence and we won’t know what it is,” Gilbert says. “We had a 90 percent match to some kind of cat, and we don’t know if it’s a known one that hasn’t been sequenced, or one that hasn’t been described. So, we beg people for samples,” he adds. “We’ve sequenced mitochondrial genomes from tissue biopsies, bones, pickled bats, and soala skins. It’s very unglamorous but someone has to do it.”
Inevitably, the leech data will also have biases, depending on how easy different leeches are to catch, how they react to changes in climate, and which animals they prefer to feed from. But every census method suffers from bias, and few are as cost-effective or informative. “You can get everything from tiny mammals to large arboreal ones,” says Yu. “You just can’t do the kind of censuses that we can do in other ways.”
“This is really exciting,” says Holly Bik, a computational biologist at the University of Birmingham. “Accurate data is especially crucial for conservation initiatives and policy directives, and I think this work makes a strong case for why molecular tools could now start replacing expensive and laborious morphological taxonomy.”
Indeed, other scientists are already planning to use these methods in creative ways. For example, the Forest Stewardship Council certifies wood products that come from allegedly sustainable forests. Does this help the forests? Andreas Wilting from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research wants to find out by collecting leeches from certified and non-certified forests and working out how many mammals live in each. Similarly, Rosie Drinkwater at Queen Mary’s University of London is using leeches to study the effects of deforestation on wildlife in Borneo.
Leeches have long been banes of tropical hikers, and tools for doctors. Now, they are finding new gainful employment, as auditors of conservation projects, collectors of DNA, and census-takers of jungle menageries.
A recent ProPublica analysis of The Princeton Review’s prices for online SAT tutoring shows that customers in areas with a high density of Asian residents are often charged more. When presented with this finding, The Princeton Review called it an “incidental” result of its geographic pricing scheme. The case illustrates how even a seemingly neutral price model could potentially lead to inadvertent bias—bias that’s hard for consumers to detect and even harder to challenge or prove.
Over the past several decades, an important tool for assessing and addressing discrimination has been the “disparate impact” theory. Attorneys have used this idea to successfully challenge policies that have a discriminatory effect on certain groups of people, whether or not the entity that crafted the policy was motivated by an intent to discriminate. It’s been deployed in lawsuits involving employment decisions, housing, and credit. Going forward, the question is whether the theory can be applied to bias that results from new technologies that use algorithms.
The term “disparate impact” was first used in the 1971 Supreme Court case Griggs v. Duke Power Company. The Court ruled that, under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, it was illegal for the company to use intelligence test scores and high school diplomas—factors which were shown to disproportionately favor white applicants and substantially disqualify people of color—to make hiring or promotion decisions, whether or not the company intended the tests to discriminate. A key aspect of the Griggs decision was that the power company couldn’t prove their intelligence tests or diploma requirements were actually relevant to the jobs they were hiring for.
In the years since, several disparate impact cases have made their way to the Supreme Court and lowercourts, most having to do with employment discrimination. This June, the Supreme Court’s decision in Texas Dept. of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc. affirmed the use of the disparate impact theory to fight housing discrimination. The Inclusive Communities Project had used a statistical analysis of housing patterns to show that a tax credit program effectively segregated Texans by race. Sorelle Friedler, a computer science researcher at Haverford College and a fellow at Data & Society, called the Court’s decision “huge,” both “in favor of civil rights…and in favor of statistics.”
So how will the courts address algorithmic bias? From retail to real estate, from employment to criminal justice, the use of data mining, scoring software, and predictive analytics programs is proliferating at an exponential rate. Software that makes decisions based on data like a person’s zip code can reflect, or even amplify, the results of historical or institutional discrimination.“[A]n algorithm is only as good as the data it works with,” Solon Barocas and Andrew Selbst write in their article “Big Data’s Disparate Impact,” forthcoming in the California Law Review. “Even in situations where data miners are extremely careful, they can still affect discriminatory results with models that, quite unintentionally, pick out proxy variables for protected classes.”
It’s troubling enough when Flickr’s auto-tagging of online photos label pictures of black men as “animal” or “ape,” or when researchers determine that Google search results for black-sounding names are more likely to be accompanied by ads about criminal activity than search results for white-sounding names. But what about when big data is used to determine a person’s credit score, ability to get hired, or even the length of a prison sentence?
Because disparate impact theory is results-oriented, it would seem to be a good way to challenge algorithmic bias in court. A plaintiff would only need to demonstrate bias in the results, without having to prove that a program was conceived with bias as its goal. But there is little legal precedent. Barocas and Selbst argue in their article that expanding disparate impact theory to challenge discriminatory data-mining in court “will be difficult technically, difficult legally, and difficult politically.”
Some researchers argue that it makes more sense to design systems from the start in a more considered and discrimination-conscious way. Barocas and Moritz Hardt established a traveling workshop called Fairness, Accountability and Transparency in Machine Learning to encourage other computer scientists to do just that. Some of their fellow organizers are also developing tools they hope companies and government agencies could use to test whether their algorithms yield discriminatory results and to fix them when necessary. Some legal scholars (including the University of Maryland’s Danielle Keats Citron and Frank Pasquale) argue for the creation of new regulations or even regulatory bodies to govern the algorithms that make increasingly important decisions in our lives.
There still exists “a large legal difference between whether there is explicit legal discrimination or implicit discrimination,” said Friedler, the computer science researcher. “My opinion is that, because more decisions are being made by algorithms, that these distinctions are being blurred.”
When Donald Trump flirted with a 2012 presidential run, I argued that starring on The Apprentice had helped him to build a brand that any politician would envy: decisive, averse to bullshit, impossible to swindle, and guided in all decisions by common sense. Kevin Drum has similar thoughts about the billionaire’s appeal in the 2016 primary. After describing The Celebrity Apprentice to his readers, Drum urged them to reflect on how the hit show made Trump look to millions of NBC viewers:
He is running things. He sets the tasks. The competitors all call him ‘Mr. Trump’ and treat him obsequiously. He gives orders and famous people accept them without quibble. At the end of the show, he asks tough questions and demands accountability. He is smooth and unruffled while the team members are tense and tongue-tied. Finally, having given everything the five minutes of due diligence it needs, he takes charge and fires someone. And on the season finale, he picks a big winner and in the process raises lots of money for charity. Do you see how precisely this squares with so many people's view of the presidency?
The president is the guy running things. He tells people what to do. He commands respect simply by virtue of his personality and rock-solid principles. When things go wrong, he doesn't waste time. He gets to the bottom of the problem in minutes using little more than common sense, and then fires the person responsible. And in the end, it's all for a good cause.
That's a president.
As Drum goes on to note, “Obviously this is all a fake. The show is deliberately set up to make Trump look authoritative and decisive. But a lot of people just don't see it that way.”
In fairness, Trump has actually had success running a large business organization. At the same time, calling The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice “reality TV” has given millions of voters a misleading impression about a man now seeking the White House. And that’s why NBC News ought to be busy right now. Its employees owe Americans an exclusive news story that only their network can provide.
In the interest of giving the public as accurate an understanding as possible of a leading presidential candidate, NBC’s news division should upload all of the raw footage from The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice to the web. Let voters see what Trump was really like while the show was being filmed, for better or worse; let them judge if the hours that they spent with the billionaire left an accurate impression or constituted a false portrayal of someone less presidential than he seemed.
We’re all poring over Hillary Clinton’s email. Why not scrutinize this too? If NBC News had exclusive access to hours of video featuring Marco Rubio or Scott Walker or Jeb Bush on the job surely they would mine it for newsworthy moments. If Trump is legally entitled to block the release of the footage and exercises that option, that, too, would be telling. But maybe he won’t mind extra publicity.
Has he ever?
“Dear Donald,” a network executive could write him, “we decided to release all the file footage we have from taping The Apprentice––you’re so damned handsome that we felt bad depriving the public of these scenes, and the ratings will be huge, as you know.”
NBC should make this happen. The footage is newsworthy, it’s in their possession, and the network has an official obligation to serve our informational needs.
The other day at a used-book shop I picked up what might be my new favorite book. Written in the days of Nancy Reagan’s “JUST SAY NO” campaigns is this amazing read:
This is a real book for children. It is not a parody. And that’s what makes it so amazing.
I’m not going to spoil it for you but I will tell you that Latawnya doesn’t immediately say no to drugs. First she gets totally shitfaced with the other naughty horses. Because that’s what naughty horses do, y’all.
These horses can’t seem to keep from dropping their smokes and they also can’t hold their liquor. I’m embarrassed for these horses.
Brace yourself. It gets worse before it gets better*
First off, if his cigarette is still smoking he’s probably still alive, Father Horse. Apparently horses can smoke and drink and talk but none of them can dial 911 or start CPR because they’re too busy judging each other. Secondly, how does a horse open a childproof container of pills? I call shenanigans. This horse was murdered. Probably by Latawnya’s father. Who is part of the mafia. And who leaves horse heads in the beds of people who don’t give out sugar cubes. (This is just my guess but it’s actually a more realistic story than the one in the book.)
*It never actually gets better.
Sadly, LATAWNYA, the Naughty Horse, Learns to Say “No” to Drugs is now out-of-print, but I just discovered that you can buy the sequel!
“Latawnya The Naughty Horse Two points out the low life drug pusher. Latawnya and two of her friends will see the back of a low life who is trying to hook everyone on drugs. He tries to entice them to use cocaine and meth, but they laugh at him. They let him know he can take his drugs and go. They also let him knows they have better activities to do than using drugs. Latawnya and her friends are on the basketball team. There will be a big talent show. Everyone will audition. Someone will create a beautiful original song and dance.”
Happy early Christmas to me, y’all.
UPDATED: My sister just sent me this. Just say no to horses.
I’m starting a difficult challenge tomorrow where, like last year’s SNAP challenge, I’m going to attempt to eat only $4.50 worth of food per day. I remember how hungry I was last year, so I kinda wanted to have one last indulgent hurrah just before I started the challenge. What’s the best indulgent food, IMHO? Pizza, of course.
But this isn’t just any pizza. This is a thick crust, crispy edged, pan pizza topped with a rich and creamy spinach sauce, chopped up artichoke hearts, and a final layer of melted mozzarella cheese. Ohhhhh yeeeahhhh.
I decided to make this pizza with the no-knead pan crust, which needs to be started the night before, but you could always do this on a regular pizza crust, or even a super fast thin crust. It’s up to you. I used a 10-inch lodge skillet, but these toppings are enough for a 12-inch pan pizza, or even a 14-inch regular crust pizza. It’s pretty flexible, so you can use your favorite type of crust. I think the thick, fluffy pan crust is perfect with this creamy sauce, though. MMmm.
Begin the dough the night before. In a large bowl stir together the flour, salt, and yeast. Combine the olive oil and ¾ cup water, then pour it into the bowl with the flour. Stir until a single (slightly wet and sticky) ball of dough forms with no dry flour left on the bottom of the bowl. Add one to two tablespoons more of water, if needed, to form a ball of dough. Loosely cover the dough and let it sit at room temperature for 12-18 hours.
The next day let the spinach thaw and then squeeze out as much moisture as possible. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees and pour 1 Tbsp of vegetable oil into a 10 or 12-inch cast iron skillet. Spread the oil around the skillet, including up the side walls.
To make the sauce, mince the garlic and add it to a small pot along with the butter. Sauté the butter and garlic for 1-2 minutes over medium-low heat, or until the garlic is soft and fragrant. Add the cream cheese, milk, and salt to the butter and garlic. Whisk and cook over medium-low heat until the cream cheese has melted into the milk and a thick sauce forms (3-5 minutes). Finally, stir the squeeze-dried spinach into the sauce, breaking up any clumps as you stir. Remove the sauce from the heat and set aside.
Use the excess oil from the skillet to coat your hands, then scrape the fermented dough out of the bowl. Gently press and stretch the loose dough into the skillet until it evenly covers the bottom.
Spread the creamy spinach sauce over the dough, covering from edge to edge. Drain the artichoke hearts, give them a rough chop, then sprinkle over the creamy spinach sauce. Add a pinch of red pepper flakes, if desired. Finally, top the pizza with the shredded mozzarella.
Bake the pizza in the fully preheated oven for 20-25 minutes, or until the edges are sizzling and the top is golden brown. Remove the pizza from the oven and slide a butter knife around the edges to loosen any melted cheese. Either slide the whole pizza onto a cutting board or carefully slice the pizza in the pan. Cut into six slices and serve.
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Step by Step Photos
If you’re using the pan pizza dough that I used above, begin the night before. In a large bowl (or pot) stir together 2 cups flour, 1 tsp salt, and 1/8 tsp instant or “bread machine” yeast. Combine 1 Tbsp olive oil and 3/4 cup water, then pour it into the bowl with the flour. Stir until a sticky ball of dough forms with no dry flour left on the bottom of the bowl. If needed, add one to two more tablespoons of water to help it come together in one single piece of dough.
Loosely cover the dough (that’s why I like using a pot, I just set the lid on slightly crooked) and let it sit at room temperature for 12-18 hours. As it ferments it will spread out and get very bubbly. It will still be quite sticky compared to most bread doughs.
On the day you’re making the pizza, take 1/2 lb. of frozen spinach out of the freezer to thaw (thaw at room temp, or in the microwave for a faster thaw).
Once the spinach is thawed, squeeze as much moisture out as possible. I just grab a handful and squeeeeze until no more liquid comes out.
Next it’s time to make the sauce (and begin preheating the oven to 450 degrees). Mince one clove of garlic. Add it to a small pot along with 1 Tbsp of butter. Sauté the garlic in the butter over medium-low heat until the garlic is soft and fragrant (about 1-2 minutes).
Add 1/2 cup milk, 4 oz. cream cheese, and 1/4 tsp salt to the butter and garlic. Continue to cook over medium-low heat, while whisking, until the cream cheese has melted in and a thick sauce has formed.
Add the squeeze dried spinach to the cream sauce and stir until it’s combined (break up any clumps of spinach as you stir). Remove the sauce from the heat and set it aside.
Spread 1 Tbsp vegetable oil in a 10 or 12-inch cast iron skillet (including up the sides). Use the excess oil in the skillet to coat your hands, then scrape the dough out of its bowl. Carefully stretch and press the dough into the skillet until it evenly covers the bottom.
Spread the spinach cream sauce over the dough from edge to edge.
Drain one 15oz. can of artichoke hearts. Take half of the can and give them a rough chop (the other half can be frozen or used for a second pizza).
Sprinkle the chopped artichoke hearts over the pizza. If you like things a little spicy like me, sprinkle on a few red pepper flakes.
Finally, top with one cup of shredded mozzarella.
Bake the pizza for 20-25 minutes, or until the edges are sizzling and the top is golden brown. Use a butter knife to loosen around the edges where cheese may have melted onto the skillet. Slide the pizza onto a cutting board or carefully slice it while in the pan.
Cut into six pieces and serve! This is pretty rich and filling, so two pieces goes a lot further than you think. ;)
My parents keep visiting me over the summer and living in my apartment on my couch. One of my parents is looking for a job both in my current state and in the state of my hometown (where she actually officially lives when she is not visiting me). She sometimes has interviews out here and I am her host.
My dad, meanwhile, stayed three weeks at my place over the summer. I repeat: three fucking weeks. I did not need his “help” (his reason for visiting), but I felt bad telling him because I know he is going through a difficult time in his life (unwanted retirement) and wants to feel useful. I know I don’t *have* to satisfy those feelings for him, and I’m in therapy to try to get over this thinking.
I feel like crying. I was (and still am) a “parentified child” (chaotic home, traumatized parents told me about their adult sexual and financial struggles as though I were a healthy confidant) and having to host my parents now in my early 20’s is really triggering the sad feelings of powerlessness and numbness I used to feel. The feeling that I have to care for and baby my parents rather than enjoy being young, being a kid and having a fun place to live *on my own*.
I was saying to my therapist yesterday that I need to balance what my parents want from me as a daughter, to what society thinks a daughter should reasonably do to help her struggling parents. I burst into tears because she said, “Well, and you also have to balance those things with what YOU want.” I hadn’t even considered my own desires in terms of my apartment and my boundaries with them.
Do you have any scripts on re-setting (or rather, setting for the first time) boundaries with my parents? I know that part of the process will probably involve my knowing what I actually WANT for boundaries–but frankly yesterday is the first time I have ever thought about it with such precision.
My mom still doesn’t have a job yet, and I know she is probably going to come back out for more interviews. I have suffered enough of my parents’ rage and regret over finances and lost jobs. I am so tired and fragile right now. I also am terrified of setting boundaries–I don’t know that I believe they can get on without my help. Plus, you know, I love them.
Any help or advice or scripts would be amazing.
–Healing from parentification
[Ed. note: Description/definition of parentification is here.]
Dear Healing,
I’m glad you have a smart therapist who can remind you that your needs matter on an ongoing basis.
My best suggestion is that you get a notebook or open a file on your computer and start writing. Finish these sentences:
“In a perfect world, when I see my parents we would…”
“My ideal houseguest would….”
“I would be up for hosting my parents ____ times/year for no more than _____ days at a time with at least _____ of notice.” (Your ideal number can be zero, by the way: Zero times/year for Zero days at a time).
“The things that really bother me the most about their visits are…”
“If I talk to them about it and set a boundary, I am afraid they will…”
See what comes up when you write it all out, and bring it all to your therapist to process.
In the meantime, start practicing setting boundaries and stating preferences in small ways in your day-to-day life, both with your parents and with other people you interact with. Pay attention to how you assert yourself in lower-stakes situations that aren’t so emotionally charged.
“Server, this sandwich isn’t what I ordered.”
“Coworker, can you turn the music down please?”
“Mom/Dad, this isn’t a good time. I’ll need to call you back.”
“I’d prefer to sit closer to the front.”
“That movie doesn’t interest me. Howabout this one, instead?”
“Your party sounds lovely but I won’t make it this time.”
“Please put me on your Do Not Call list.”
“No beer for me, thanks. Do you have iced tea?”
“No iced tea for me, thanks. Do you have a beer?”
“No thank you, I’m not interested.”
“Thanks for lending me that book, but I know I won’t get to it any time soon, so I’m going to give it back to you.”
“That restaurant is out of my budget right now. Can we do something less expensive, or save it for another time?”
“Excuse me, but I was next in line.”
“It was really nice meeting you, but I don’t think I’m interested in another date.”
“It’s awesome how much you love ____ (show, book, movie, band). I never could get into them, myself.”
“Boss, I’d love to take that project on, but given x, y, and z projects I can’t make it a priority unless something else goes. What do you suggest?”
“Whoa, TMI! Let’s change the subject.”
“I’m sure you didn’t mean to be offensive, that that comment was pretty racist.”
“I’m going to have to reschedule our meeting.”
“I wish I could stay but I have a busy day tomorrow, so I’m going to head out.”
“Do you mind putting your phone down and not texting while we’re trying to talk?”
“That’s all the time I have today, we’ll have to pick this up another time.”
“I can’t do that favor this time, sorry.”
Practice not picking up the phone if you don’t want to take a call.
Practice not answering the door if you weren’t expecting visitors.
Practice cutting a conversation short when it’s going nowhere.
Practice asserting yourself positively, too. “You look great today!” “You did a good job on this.” “I really appreciate the ride.” “You made my drink just right.” “I am really happy to see you.” “Thank you for introducing me to that organization.” “I loved that book you recommended.” “I really liked going on a date with you, let’s do it again sometime.” It’s all part of not sitting on your feelings.
Pay attention to how it feels when you say “no” to someone. What are your anxieties? How does the other person react, relative to your anxieties? What’s hard about it? Does it get easier over time? Do you find yourself apologizing a lot? Negotiating an adult relationship with parental figures is rarely easy for anyone, but I think you have been particularly trained and groomed to never disappoint people (i.e. your parents), and that it’s unrealistic to go from “Sure, whatever you need” to “Have you considered the hotel?” with your family without some practice in realizing that disappointing someone is not the Worst Thing In The World. With a little practice, you can work up to:
“Three weeks is just too long, Dad. Three days is more like it.”
“Thanks for your offer of help! I’ve got it handled, though, so let’s plan a visit where I come home next month instead.”
“Mom, I’m happy to put you up for a job interview for a day or two as long as I have x days’ notice.”
“I love seeing you, but hosting somebody on short notice/for so long really stresses me out, and we need to figure out an alternate arrangement.”
“I need you to ask me if you can stay, and sometimes I need to be able to say no if it’s not a good time.”
“It’s just not a good time right now.”
“Sorry, that won’t work for me.”
“Parent, can you take your private financial/relationship stuff to a counselor or your friends? I’m not comfortable hearing about that stuff.”
The first time you set a boundary is the hardest time and when you will most likely get the strongest pushback of the “But we’re a faaaaaamily and families do ________” or “We’re not guests, we’re faaaaaamily” sort.You might get some guilt trips and cutting comments about ungrateful daughters and all kinds of cultural pressure. If you remain clear and stick by your boundaries, people mostly can and do learn to ask first and to take “no” for an answer. And you can be very direct about what you are doing, and why. “Mom, Dad, I love that we’re a close family and I do love seeing you. But now that we’re all adults, I want us to have more of an adult relationship, and I want to be able to balance being able to count on and support each other with adult behaviors, like, asking before you plan to come stay, setting limits on how long visits should be, and being respectful of each other’s limits and space. My tiny apartment isn’t built to have more than one person living in it for any length of time. I know money is tight right now, so I’m not saying you can’t crash here sometimes, I’m just saying we need to put some limits in place so that it can be a very pleasant, happy thing when you do come.”
Or “Mom, Dad, if you want to visit (city), please plan to stay in a hotel from now on. Hosting you won’t work for me anymore.” You are allowed to choose whatever honors your needs, your wants, and your safety and I don’t want to give the impression that you should somehow make short visits work if you don’t want to. FYI, my parents almost never stay with me when they visit, so don’t believe any “ALL families do this!” nonsense.
It also helps if you model the behavior back at them – ask if you can stay with them when you visit, ask if they can pick you up from the airport, thank them for hosting you, etc. They may say “You don’t have to ask!” (translate this is “You don’t really expect us to ask, do you?” h/t @brigidkeely) but keep asking. Some families really have a culture that says “manners are for OTHER people, families shouldn’t have to worry about them” and those families will keep me in letters until I am old and gray. I think manners & consideration in your close relationships are even more important than they are for casual social interactions. You’d probably laugh at how much my Gentleman Caller and I say “thank you” to each other – “thank you for breakfast,” “thank you for reading my resume,” “thank you for picking up groceries,” “thank you for coming with me” “Am I interrupting you?” “Do you have time to do x?”, etc. – but if we’re gonna share this 600 square feet for the forseeable future I think we gotta be gentle and considerate and not take things for granted.
Your parents can survive some limits around visiting. You can survive not being the most accommodating daughter. Your relationship and your love for each other can survive all of this. A new normal, where asking first/limiting visits is just the routine thing that y’all do, is possible.
One of my friends has mental health issues of severe depression (along with some other stuff) that is being ineffectively treated–a situation that they are trying to change, but solutions are slow going.
The depression brain weasels are causing my friend to regularly assume that everyone they know and care about is actively furious with them. I (and other mutual friends) will regularly check in with our friend only to hear how they were sure we were mad at them for a litany of tiny “infractions” that most of us would never even notice.
I know that my friend can’t help what the depression tells them. But it is also becoming incredibly difficult to spend the first hour of any interaction with this friend repeatedly reassuring them that no, really, I’m honestly not mad. The extended confessions (“I was so sure you were mad at me for the following reasons…”) seem to spin them up into a state of heightened tension and to be causing harm to them in spite of the “forgiveness” afterward. I think the harm is stemming from their viewing the confession as evidence that they are awful and that their forgiveness is predicated on our saintliness, which will surely run out someday.
In short: while I’m not mad at them and I do love them dearly, the weekly confessions are hurting them and are a genuine drain on my own limited spoons for social interactions, causing an avoidance spiral that doesn’t help them believe people aren’t angry with them. Is there a set of scripts you might can recommend for cutting through the litany of specifics each time and reminding them that we’ve done this before and those recurring feels are just the depression speaking?
Much love!
Much love back, because you sound like a great friend and this is very delicate stuff.
Interrupting is rude and we were all raised not to do it, right? But there is a case to be made for it here. Give your friend a short interval, and, when you feel yourself running out of patience, interrupt the flow.
Your friend: “I was sure you were never going to call me again because I am so awful…”
You: “Let me stop you right there. I am not mad at you. In fact, I am calling because I like you and want to talk to you. But I don’t have the energy to hear the Jerkbrain Memo Re: Why You Suck today.”
Them: “You’re so good to me, but I’m sure any day you are going to give up on our friendsh-.”
You: “I am not going to do that, and I don’t like listening to you talk about yourself this way.” + SUBJECT CHANGE.
Ideas for subject changes:
Ask them about something they are a fan of. “Have you finished The Martian yet? It reminds me of old MacGyver episodes.”
Ask them about a hobby. “How is the terrarium coming together?”
Ask them for help figuring something out. “I can’t figure out which pair of glasses looks best on me. Can I text you some photos and get your feedback?”
Follow up on something you talked about last time. “Any news on your Grandma’s trip around the world?”
You’re not going to suddenly become a shitty friend if you do this. You aren’t going to stop asking “How are you?” and listening and caring about the answer. This interrupting the initial flow of self-hatred and criticism is not about not listening to your friend, or not honoring their pain, or about asking them to pretend that everything is all right for you. It is about interrupting something that has become an automatic, crippling, horrible, spiraling habit. There is a ritual happening here, where they vomit their horrible feelings and you reassure them, but they don’t believe it and they don’t become more reassured. If you give yourself permission to stop completing the ritual, over time ritual may become much shorter or even stop entirely, making room for more intentional conversations.
Be warned: The first couple of times you interrupt it might be even more awful than usual. Your friend might have a shame spiral that is now about how you have to cut them off from talking about their shame (instead of just their normal routine shame-spiral). If you’re not an interrupt-y sort, you will feel mortified and brittle. Keep doing it, though. I predict that if you do it consistently, the habit will change and your friend will catch themselves, with something like, “You don’t want to hear all that.” It might sound passive-aggressive as hell when they say it at first, so don’t protest that you DO in fact want to hear all that, just keep saying gentle things and keep changing the subject. Them catching themselves is good.
Other scripts & strategies:
“I need to be your Distracting, Talk About Puppies And Rainbows Friend Today.”
“I can listen to 5 minutes of venting, so make it good. Then you will listen to five minutes of venting from me, and then we will proceed to new business.”
“That sucks, I am so sorry you are feeling like that.” Sometimes there is nothing TO say. Just empathize and let them get it out.
“That sounds really difficult/annoying/awful. What do you think you’ll do?” “Solution-oriented” sounds like such a corporate robo-douche term, but asking the person to tell you their plan is another way of breaking up the ritual of negative brain-dumping.
“I don’t know what I can say to reassure you that I am not mad at you. I am mad at your Jerkbrain right now, because it keeps accusing me of lying about my intentions and feelings. What could I do or say that might make you feel better?” They might not know, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask.
Sometimes, but ONLY SOMETIMES AND WITH GREAT CARE AND IF YOU THINK THE PERSON CAN ROLL WITH IT, agree in a joking, hyperbolic way that mimics what the depression is doing. “Yes, you are terrible. That is why I call you every week and why you make me laugh until I literally pee myself and why I love giving you hugs: Your terribleness.” “Yes, I am furious at you. That is why I can’t wait to find out how your job interview went, and to send you 10,000 cute animal gifs.” “You are literally the world’s worst person. That’s why I called, actually, to see if the World’s Worst Person would be interested in having ice cream with Saint Me, the World’s Most Patient and Selfless Person.” One (again, ritualized) thing that happens with these conversations is that they say “I’m terrible,” you say “No you’re not,” and then it becomes Asshole Brain Debate Club where they try to convince you of their terribleness by offering detailed evidence. If they say “I’m terrible” and you say “Sure, ok. Also, your hair looks pretty like that,” it breaks the automatic call-and-response they are used to.
Routine is important. Having a regular check-in can help your friend predict and count on you and lessen anxiety (somewhat).
If communication is draining to you, make sure you do this at a time when you have a lot of energy to spare, and when you can relax/treat yourself in some small way. Take care of yourself.
If you live nearby and can see each other in person, shake up the routine of what you do together. If your normal thing is to stay in and watch TV or movies, try going out and doing something instead, or try coloring books/games/puzzles/knitting/crafting (something participatory). If you always talk on the phone, try using a chat program. If you always chat, try a phone call. Depression likes patterns and settles into them like a pair of comfy old slippers. Change what you do and see if depression lags a bit to catch up.
If you do invite your friend out (instead of going to see them) or otherwise change things up, make it about your preferences rather than “for their own good.” “A walk in the park will do you good” ==> “I’m in the mood to be outside, care to walk with me for a bit?”
If you don’t have the energy for whatever reason, be (strategically) honest. Your friend may sense that they are being managed and call you out on it. Be honest: “It’s really good to catch up with you, but I am not feeling so awesome today and I need to talk about light subjects.“
If you have to cancel plans for some reason, reach out the next day with a text to say hello. It’s reassuring.
Small, frequent doses of company or thoughtfulness might work better for you right now than infrequent, more intense hangouts.
Get in the habit of treating each new day and interaction like a blank slate. Maybe last time your friend ran themselves down for half an hour before you could interrupt, and you are dreading how it will go today. Do your best to show your friend that you don’t hold onto past irritations and slights. “Yeah, last week was pretty intense, but I’m not upset with you. What’s new today with (safe, interesting subject)?“
Remember: Your friend needs a trained counseling and medical pro to treat their illness and help them feel differently. While it’s good to be gentle with your friend and their feelings, you aren’t responsible for fixing their feelings and even if you were you wouldn’t be able to do that just by being a great friend. You are allowed to try to redirect conversations and set limits on what you can handle. Remember also: Being consistently present and engaged is more important than getting any one interaction perfect. Forgive yourself for mistakes, and for getting impatient or bummed out sometimes.
Readers, if your friends have been especially good at interrupting or getting around your shame spirals when you’re in one, I’d love to hear what worked.
Although the language of thinking is deliberate—let me think, I have to do some thinking—the actual experience of having thoughts is often passive. Ideas pop up like dandelions; thoughts occur suddenly and escape without warning. People swim in and out of pools of thought in a way that can feel, paradoxically, mindless.
Most of the time, people don’t actively track the way one thought flows into the next. But in psychiatry, much attention is paid to such intricacies of thinking. For instance, disorganized thought, evidenced by disjointed patterns in speech, is considered a hallmark characteristic of schizophrenia. Several studies of at-risk youths have found that doctors are able to guess with impressive accuracy—the best predictive models hover around 79 percent—whether a person will develop psychosis based on tracking that person’s speech patterns in interviews.
A computer, it seems, can do better.
That’s according to a study published Wednesday by researchers at Columbia University, the New York State Psychiatric Institute, and the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in the Nature Publishing Group journal Schizophrenia. They used an automated speech-analysis program to correctly differentiate—with 100-percent accuracy—between at-risk young people who developed psychosis over a two-and-a-half year period and those who did not. The computer model also outperformed other advanced screening technologies, like biomarkers from neuroimaging and EEG recordings of brain activity.
“In our study, we found that minimal semantic coherence—the flow of meaning from one sentence to the next—was characteristic of those young people at risk who later developed psychosis,” said Guillermo Cecchi, a biometaphorical-computing researcher for IBM Research, in an email. “It was not the average. What this means is that over 45 minutes of interviewing, these young people had at least one occasion of a jarring disruption in meaning from one sentence to the next. As an interviewer, if my mind wandered briefly, I might miss it. But a computer would pick it up.”
Researchers used an algorithm to root out such “jarring disruptions” in otherwise ordinary speech. Their semantic analysis measured coherence and two syntactic markers of speech complexity—including the length of a sentence and how many clauses it entailed. “When people speak, they can speak in short, simple sentences. Or they can speak in longer, more complex sentences, that have clauses added that further elaborate and describe the main idea,” Cecchi said. “The measures of complexity and coherence are separate and are not correlated with one another. However, simple syntax and semantic incoherence do tend to aggregate together in schizophrenia.”
Here's an example of a sentence, provided by Cecchi and revised for patient confidentiality, from one of the study’s participants who later developed psychosis:
I was always into video games. I mean, I don’t feel the urge to do that with this, but it would be fun. You know, so the one block thing is okay. I kind of lied though and I’m nervous about going back.
While the researchers conclude that language processing appears to reveal “subtle, clinically relevant mental-state changes in emergent psychosis,” their work poses several outstanding questions. For one thing, their sample size of 34 patients was tiny. Researchers are planning to attempt to replicate their findings using transcripts from a larger cohort of at-risk youths.
They’re also working to contextualize what their findings might mean more broadly. “We know that thought disorder is an early core feature of schizophrenia evident before psychosis onset,” said Cheryl Corcoran, an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University. “The main question then is: What are the brain mechanisms underlying this abnormality in language? And how might we intervene to address it and possibly improve prognosis? Could we improve the concurrent language problems and function of children and teenagers at risk, and either prevent psychosis or at least modify its course?”
Intervention has long been the goal. And so far it has been an elusive one. Clinicians are already quite good at identifying people who are at increased risk of developing schizophrenia, but taking that one step farther and determining which of those people will actually end up having the illness remains a huge challenge.
“Better characterizing a behavioral component of schizophrenia may lead to a clearer understanding of the alterations to neural circuitry underlying the development of these symptoms,” said Gillinder Bedi, an assistant professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University. “If speech analyses could identify those people most likely to develop schizophrenia, this could allow for more targeted preventive treatment before the onset of psychosis, potentially delaying onset or reducing the severity of the symptoms which do develop.”
All this raises another question about the nature of human language. If the way a person speaks can be a window into how that person is thinking, and further, a means of assessing how they’re doing, which mechanisms of language are really most meaningful? It isn’t what you say, the aphorism goes, it’s how you say it. Actually, though, it’s both.
As Cecchi points out, the computer analysis at the center of the study didn’t include any acoustic features like intonation, cadence, volume—all characteristics which could be meaningful in interpreting a person’s pattern of speaking and, by extension, thinking. “There is a deeper limitation, related to our current understanding of language and how to measure the full extent of what is being expressed and communicated when people speak to each other, or write,” Cecchi said. “The discriminative features that we identified are still a very simplified description of language. Finally, while language provides a unique window into the mind, it is still just one aspect of human behavior and cannot fully substitute for a close observation and interaction with the patient.”
Then topped it with spicy mayo, soy sauce and Furikake which is a Japanese condiment made with blend of sesame seeds and seaweed and spices available at most health food stores, Amazon or you can just use sesame seeds.
“Latawnya The Naughty Horse Two points out the low life drug pusher. Latawnya and two of her friends will see the back of a low life who is trying to hook everyone on drugs. He tries to entice them to use cocaine and meth, but they laugh at him. They let him know he can take his drugs and go. They also let him knows they have better activities to do than using drugs. Latawnya and her friends are on the basketball team. There will be a big talent show. Everyone will audition. Someone will create a beautiful original song and dance.”
If you’re using the pan pizza dough that I used above, begin the night before. In a large bowl (or pot) stir together 2 cups flour, 1 tsp salt, and 1/8 tsp instant or “bread machine” yeast. Combine 1 Tbsp olive oil and 3/4 cup water, then pour it into the bowl with the flour. Stir until a sticky ball of dough forms with no dry flour left on the bottom of the bowl. If needed, add one to two more tablespoons of water to help it come together in one single piece of dough.
Loosely cover the dough (that’s why I like using a pot, I just set the lid on slightly crooked) and let it sit at room temperature for 12-18 hours. As it ferments it will spread out and get very bubbly. It will still be quite sticky compared to most bread doughs.
On the day you’re making the pizza, take 1/2 lb. of frozen spinach out of the freezer to thaw (thaw at room temp, or in the microwave for a faster thaw).
Once the spinach is thawed, squeeze as much moisture out as possible. I just grab a handful and squeeeeze until no more liquid comes out.
Add 1/2 cup milk, 4 oz. cream cheese, and 1/4 tsp salt to the butter and garlic. Continue to cook over medium-low heat, while whisking, until the cream cheese has melted in and a thick sauce has formed.
Add the squeeze dried spinach to the cream sauce and stir until it’s combined (break up any clumps of spinach as you stir). Remove the sauce from the heat and set it aside.
Spread 1 Tbsp vegetable oil in a 10 or 12-inch cast iron skillet (including up the sides). Use the excess oil in the skillet to coat your hands, then scrape the dough out of its bowl. Carefully stretch and press the dough into the skillet until it evenly covers the bottom.
Spread the spinach cream sauce over the dough from edge to edge.
Drain one 15oz. can of artichoke hearts. Take half of the can and give them a rough chop (the other half can be frozen or used for a second pizza).
Finally, top with one cup of shredded mozzarella.
Bake the pizza for 20-25 minutes, or until the edges are sizzling and the top is golden brown. Use a butter knife to loosen around the edges where cheese may have melted onto the skillet. Slide the pizza onto a cutting board or carefully slice it while in the pan.
Cut into six pieces and serve! This is pretty rich and filling, so two pieces goes a lot further than you think. ;)
