Leettaschmidt

When you’re conducting research and investigations, it’s easy to get sidetracked by opinions, expectations, and wishful thinking. Sometimes we hope for or have too much invested in a particular outcome. Other times, we rely on our usual tools and techniques and don’t consider their limitations.

The technical term is cognitive bias, and it means that our assumptions and beliefs affect how we process or interpret our findings. It means that we alter our judgments based on these biases, and it distorts the truth.

When you’re conducting research or an investigation, it’s important to park your biases and proceed with an open mind. We’re not there to judge or prove anyone else’s point. We need to focus on the facts. And we can’t do our best when opinions get in the way.

What are some of the most common cognitive biases that you might encounter when you’re gathering information for research and investigations, and what can you do to avoid them? Here are just five that might come into play:

1. Confirmation bias – Favoring information that conforms to our opinion or hypothesis and discounting what doesn’t
We’re not here to prove what our clients want us to prove. We’re not here to judge the information we find, except for its authenticity and reliability. Just gather and report the facts, adding context as appropriate.

2. Anchoring bias – Relying too heavily on the first piece of information that we find
We all do it. We get excited when we finally find something useful and base the rest of the investigation on that one piece. While we need to follow leads, spend a little more time on gathering those initial facts before making changes in direction.

3. Automation bias – Over-reliance on automated tools and not verifying through manual methods
Comprehensive reports, packaged due diligence, online court record systems, software for mining social media, and other tools save time, but they’re a starting point. It’s just raw data that needs to be analyzed and verified, often through boots-on-the-ground research.

4. Overconfidence bias – Overestimating our ability or knowledge in a particular area
A lot of research and investigations is specialized these days, and you can’t do it all. I’ll never be able to take on surveillance cases, and even some research, like verifying patents, is best left to the experts.

5. Bias blind spot – Recognizing the effect of bias in the judgment of others but not in ourselves
Yes, it can can happen to any of us. We’re only human, and our own biases can get in the way. Take stock of how you approach your research, and stay aware throughout the process.

Don’t taint your research and investigations with cognitive biases. Keep an open mind, gather as many perspectives as you can, and explore the possibilities. Expand your toolkit, and never rely on just one source. Verify everything, and build your network of experts. It’s the only way to keep those biases from interfering with finding and reporting the truth.

The post Don’t let cognitive bias sidetrack your investigations appeared first on Marcy Phelps and Associates.

Three of the tiniest manatee calves ever treated at ZooTampa’s David A. Straz, Jr. Critical Care Center, have returned to ZooTampa at Lowry Park to continue their rehabilitation journey after traveling more than 1,000 miles alongside five other manatees as part of a multi-institution collaboration effort.  

In an intricate operation, the manatees- Piccolina, Soleil and Calliope who now weigh a total of more than 2500 pounds – were placed alongside five other manatees in custom-built, state-of-the-art containers on a specially scheduled DHL cargo plane. In the upcoming months, the manatees will complete the final stages of their rehabilitation before they are released back into the wild.  

Manatee calves are on the road to recovery in Tampa

“These transfers are extremely important as it allows us to make room to care for critically injured, ill and orphaned manatees,” said Tiffany Burns, senior director of animal programs. “We are grateful to our partners in Ohio for providing secondary rehabilitation. It’s an incredible team effort and we are excited about the manatees’ return to Florida waters early next year.” 

Yet even as the three females return to their native state, the conservation work to save manatees never ends – three other young manatees, Nolia, Waffles, and Amethyst caught the return flight back to Ohio to continue their rehabilitation. Juvenile manatees must reach a goal weight of 600 pounds to be considered for release. 

ZooTampa’s David A. Straz, Jr. Critical Care Center has cared for more than 500 injured, sick, and orphaned manatees. A dedicated team of animal care and medical staff tend to Florida’s iconic species 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  

Learn more about ZooTampa on its website.

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• The Tampa Fall Market Guide

 

The post Three rescued manatee calves return to ZooTampa for rehabilitation appeared first on That's So Tampa.

For the third year, the United States will officially observe Columbus Day alongside Indigenous Peoples Day on Oct. 9, 2023.

In 2021, the Biden administration declared the second Monday in October as Indigenous Peoples Day.

I am a scholar of Colonial-Indigenous relations and think that officially recognizing Indigenous Peoples Day – and, more broadly, Native Americans’ history and survival – is important.

Yet, Indigenous Peoples Day and Columbus Day should also serve as a reminder of the violent past endured by Indigenous communities in North America.

This past – complete with settlers’ brutal tactics of violence – is often ignored in the U.S.

My research on New England examines the important role that settlers’ wars against Native Americans played in their colonization of the region.

This warfare often targeted Native American women and children and was often encouraged through scalp bounties – meaning people or local governments offering money in exchange for a Native American’s scalp.

Understanding scalping

Scalping describes the forceful removal of the human scalp with hair attached. The violent act is usually performed with a knife, but it can also be done by other means. Someone can scalp victims who are already dead, but there are also examples of people being scalped while they are still alive.

Different groups have historically used scalping to terrorize people.

Native Americans certainly scalped white settlers dating back to the 1600s. Popular culture is full of examples of Native Americans scalping white settlers.

In several Indigenous cultures in North America, scalping was part of human trophy taking, which involves claiming human body parts as a war trophy. Scalps were taken during warfare as displays of military prowess or for ceremonial purposes. But just because scalping was practiced by some Native American societies, it does not mean that it was practiced by all.

Eyewitness accounts, histories and even art and popular films about the American West have perpetuated the false idea that scalping is a uniquely indigenous practice.

White settlers’ wide use of scalping against Indigenous peoples is far less acknowledged and understood. In fact, Colonists’ use of scalping against Native American people likely accelerated this practice.

Various European American colonizers also scalped Native American people from at least the 17th through the 19th centuries. It was a way to provide proof that someone killed a Native American person. Several North American colonial powers, from the British to the Spanish empires, paid bounties to people who turned in scalps of killed Native Americans.

Scalp bounties in New England and California

Colonies, territories and states in what is now the U.S. used scalp bounties widely from the 17th through the 19th centuries.

Colonial governments in New England issued over 60 scalp bounties from the 1680s through the 1750s, typically during various conflicts between Colonists and Native Americans.

Massachusetts made the widest use of scalp bounties among the New England Colonies in the 1700s.

Massachusetts’ lieutenant governor issued one of the most notorious scalp bounty declarations in 1775. This declaration, called the Spencer Phips Proclamation of 1755, provides a glimpse into how this brutal system worked.

“For every scalp of such Female Indian or male Indian under the Age of Twelve Years, that shall be killed and brought in as Evidence of their being killed …, Twenty Pounds,” the declaration reads.

This reward was a large amount of money for Colonists, equivalent to more than 5,000 pounds, or US$12,000 in today’s currency. The scalp of a male Native American could fetch two and a half times this amount.

In the Colonial era, such violence was normalized by anti-Native American sentiment and a sense of racial superiority among Colonists.

And the violent trend was long-standing. As several historians point out, violence against and scalping of Native Americans also played a significant role in the conquest of California in 1846.

One historian has called California “the murder state” in the 1800s, as the scalping and massacres of Native Americans accompanied white settlers’ taking Native American land. State and federal officials, as well as several businesses, supported this genocide by paying bounties to scalp hunters.

From a contemporary perspective, the United Nations would consider the targeted killing of Indigenous women and children to be genocide.

Memory and violence

Centuries later, California and Massachusetts have had different responses to their role in these sordid histories.

California has acknowledged “historic wrongdoings” and the violence committed against the Indigenous people who live in the state. In 2019, California Gov. Gavin Newsom set up a a Truth and Healing Council to discuss and examine the state’s historical relationship with Native Americans.

In Massachusetts, state officials have largely been silent on this issue. This places Massachusetts more in line with much of the United States.

This is true even as Massachusetts, under the leadership of then-Gov. Charlie Baker, put a special emphasis on genocide education in the school curriculum.

Legacies of scalping

The legacies of violence and scalping are deeply rooted and can be observed in numerous parts of U.S. society today.

For instance, various communities, including Lovewell, Maine, and Spencer, Mass., are named after scalp bounty hunters. Locals are often not aware of the history behind these names. Such town names, and the history of violence connected to them, often hide in plain sight.

But if you look closely, from the writings of early Euro-American colonizers and American literature to popular sport mascots and state and town seals, the brutality wrought upon Indigenous people remains at the forefront of U.S. culture more than five centuries after it began.

Christoph Strobel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

When Mitt Romney announced his intended retirement from the U.S. Senate on Sept. 13, 2023, the Atlantic published an excerpt from his upcoming biography, in which the 2012 Republican presidential nominee told author McKay Coppins, “A very large portion of my party really doesn’t believe in the Constitution.”

This claim would have been startling 15 years ago. For decades, the Republican Party has been the party of conservatism and a champion for the Constitution.

Romney is clear that Donald Trump, who leads what he calls a “populist” and “demagogic” portion of the party, is to blame. And Romney is not the only concerned Republican.

Former Vice President Mike Pence, now running for the GOP presidential nomination, recently asked a crowd at a campaign event, “Will we be the party of conservatism, or will we follow the siren song of populism unmoored to conservative principles?”

What are the conservative principles Romney and Pence spoke about? And what has happened to them since Trump’s rise?

As a political scientist, I spent the past five years researching ideological identity and Trump’s effect on conservatism and on the Republican Party.

Defining “conservatism” is complicated. It has taken many forms over the course of U.S. history. It reinvents itself over time. But a main tenet was summed up by President Ronald Reagan in his 1989 farewell address to the nation: “There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.”

I focus here on features of what’s called “principled conservatism,” the cohesive belief system that emphasizes liberty and the status quo.

Here is a short inventory of these ideals and how they were violated in recent years. This is not an exhaustive list – but it captures much of Reagan’s style of conservatism, which has been the touchstone for most Republican presidential candidates until recently.

The Constitution and limited government protect liberty

Outspoken conservatives often emphasize the importance of the Constitution, which established laws to protect the liberty of citizens.

First, the Constitution laid the groundwork for federalism, a system where local governments hold some level of power to ensure the national government does not have absolute control. This is where the conservative phrase “states’ rights” comes from.

Second, the Constitution established checks and balances between the three branches of government to prevent any one of them from abusing power.

These safeguards against tyranny are the beating heart of conservative thought.

But when Trump, backed by 126 Republican legislators in Congress, tried to overturn election results of key states in 2020, it was seen as a violation of states’ rights by conservative lawyers and a handful of Republican legislators. When only 17 Republicans voted to impeach or convict Trump for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, it gave the appearance that the abuse of power can go unchecked at the federal level.

Government intervention should be restrained

Since principled conservatism is averse to an overly active, centralized government, it typically opposes federal intervention in business, increased spending, higher taxes, public programs and subsidies.

But using the bully pulpit and his presidential powers, Trump threatened retaliation against companies that moved jobs overseas, increased the national debt, instigated trade wars by raising tariffs and gave subsidies to farmers who were harmed in the trade war process. These behaviors and policies also fly in the face of conservative principles.

Though Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley still considers Republicans to be “a party of free trade,” Trump’s trade war deviated from past GOP policies – with some exceptions – and was mostly met with “statements of discomfort”.

Institutions can support stable civic life

In addition to protecting limited government and free markets, conservatism strives to preserve American institutions such as the military and the justice system, in the belief that they help organize and maintain the stability of civic life.

Yet Trump’s rhetoric persistently attacked the free press, the Department of Justice, the FBI – often considered a conservative organization – military leadership and the integrity of the electoral system. Some of these organizations enforce justice and hold government accountable through free speech, ideals that are embedded in the conservative principles laid out by Republican Rep. Mike Johnson for the Republican Study Committee in 2018.

Conservatives in name only?

Is Donald Trump solely to blame for the unraveling of American conservative ideals?

Yes and no. One the one hand, he is responsible for implementing anti-conservative policies like trade wars, eroding trust in institutions through his rhetoric and inspiring candidates to run for office in his image.

However, Trump is also a product of his voter base. He loses power without them and therefore often reflects what they want. What do they want, though? Here’s where it’s handy to know some political science.

One of the most cited findings in political psychology is that the average American lacks “ideological sophistication.” Most people simply don’t structure their politics around an abstract attitude about the proper role of government. This includes many Americans who call themselves “conservatives.”

Instead, people often form preferences by asking, “How will this policy or person help me and people who are like me? How will this protect the status of my group?” Positive feelings toward one’s own group and positive – or negative – feelings toward other demographic groups hold real influence over political orientations. This is the stuff that motivates people politically – consequently, there has been a disconnect between the conservative ideals promoted by elites and the attitudes of their voter base.

You may hear conservative principles mentioned sporadically as the 2024 election nears. But until Republican voters reward politicians who embody them, it is unlikely actual conservative ideals do – or will – guide politics on the right.

Karyn Amira does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Researchers at the University of South Florida and Florida Atlantic University have released findings from a statewide survey that measures Floridian opinion on Coronavirus and other key health policy issues. The survey addresses how Floridians feel about topics including COVID-19 misinformation, artificial intelligence, medical marijuana and the opioid crisis. 

COVID-19

Misinformation about the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines continues to persist after more than two years. A significant number of Floridians expressed some degree of belief in several statements classified as “False” by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The list below shows the percentage of respondents who said that each statement was either “probably” or “definitely true”: 

• 51% believe getting sick with COVID-19 builds better immunity than getting a vaccine
• 49% think COVID-19 vaccines contain a “live strain” of the virus
• 42% think COVID-19 vaccines are causing new variants of the virus to emerge
• 42% believe vaccines can cause you to get sick with COVID-19
• 42% think a COVID-19 vaccine will cause you to temporarily test “positive” for the virus
• 26% believe COVID-19 vaccines alter your DNA
• 24% think COVID-19 vaccines can cause infertility
• 14% believe COVID-19 vaccines contain microchips

During this recent uptick in COVID-19 cases, attitudes toward the pandemic remain starkly divided along political lines. Democratic respondents were significantly more willing to receive ongoing vaccine boosters than their Republican counterparts (84% of Democrats vs. 53% of Republicans). Conversely, Republicans reported lower levels of trust in public health guidance and were significantly more likely to express belief in the misinformation themes noted above.  

Artificial intelligence

Floridians are mostly divided on the benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) to American society. Although most express concerns over the risks associated with rapid AI development. While 46% of respondents believe that AI will improve American society, nearly the same portion (45%) disagree. Moreover, 75% say that they’re concerned about the risks AI poses to human security, and more than two-thirds (70%) would support a temporary “pause” on AI development in the United States.  

While a plurality of Floridians say that AI will improve health care outcomes, they are more comfortable with some proposed applications of the technology than others. A plurality of respondent (50%) believe that AI will improve patient outcomes, while just under a third (32%) disagree. When considering specific potential applications of AI, respondents expressed a range of comfort levels and concerns.  

The list below shows the percentage of respondents who say they are either “very” or “somewhat comfortable” with AI being used for each of the following purposes.

• To schedule patient appointments and follow-ups 84% 
• To collect and enter patient intake data (such as symptoms and medical histories) 61%
• To read and interpret medical imaging (such as X-rays and radiology images) 57%
• To assist doctors in making a diagnosis 50%
• To assist doctors in conducting surgical procedures 46%
• To recommend medication and treatment plans for patients 45%
• To administer prescribed medications to patients 34%

Related: Charted: The Rapid Decline of Global Birth Rates

Medical marijuana

Floridians are generally supportive of the legalization of both medical and recreational marijuana. When considering top concerns regarding medical marijuana, respondents generally disagreed that medical marijuana was being misused. The list below shows the percentage of respondents who say they “strongly” or “somewhat” agree with these statements about medical marijuana. 

• Medical marijuana is being abused 45%
• Medical marijuana is too easy to obtain 39%
• There should be harsh penalties for sharing medical marijuana 40%

Opioid crisis

When it comes to the opioid crisis, Floridians had mixed opinions on harm reduction policies, expressing stronger support for syringe exchange options than Narcan administration. A majority of respondents (73%) felt that exchange programs should be available in all counties, with 68% welcoming these programs in their own communities. Regarding Narcan, a slight majority of respondents (44%) would either “somewhat” or “strongly” oppose limiting the number of times first responders use Narcan on the same person.

Floridians hold mixed opinions about when persons living with HIV (PLH) should be required to disclose their HIV status to potential sexual partners. The top circumstances in which participants felt that persons living with HIV should be required to disclose their status to potential sexual partners were either before kissing (47%) or before intercourse (40%).

Floridians supported increasing public education on HIV prevention methods. The list below shows the percentage of respondents who say they either “strongly” or “somewhat” support the following HIV prevention efforts: 

• Raising awareness on condom use 95%
• Raising awareness on HIV medications 94%
• Making condoms easily accessible and free 88% 
• Making HIV medications easily accessible and free 85%

The survey included a representative sample of 600 adult Floridians, fielded Aug. 10-21, 2023. Respondents are representative of the state’s population based on age, gender, race, ethnicity and political affiliation. Results are reported with a confidence level of 95% and a margin of error +/- 4%.

Click here to read the complete survey.

The post Statewide Survey Reveals Floridian Opinion on Coronavirus, AI, and Medical Marijuana appeared first on ModernGlobe.

Next time you see a fox when out walking with your dog, pause for a moment and ponder their relatedness. Dogs and foxes are distinct but distantly related canine species.

Until recently, scientists thought it was impossible for them to breed. However, the discovery of a dog-fox hybrid in Brazil suggests that The Fox and the Hound might sometimes be a little more Lady and the Tramp.

The recent identification of the dog-fox hybrid known as a “dogxim” (a cross between dog and graxaim-do-campo, the Portuguese name for pampas fox) in Brazil also raises concerns about the impact that our pet dogs might have on wild animal populations and their survival.

This female, dog-like creature was first noticed when she was she was hit by a car and taken to a wildlife rehabilitation facility. The staff at the wildlife centre noticed she had a strange mix of physical and behavioural characteristics.

Her pricked ears and preference for eating small mammals seemed fox-like, but her barking was more reminiscent of a dog. Throughout the centuries there have been unverified reports of fox-dog hybrids, but none have been confirmed before with genetic testing.

Genetic testing revealed that she was a hybrid between a female pampas fox (Lycalopex gymnocercus) and a male domestic dog (Canis lupus familiaris). This is the first documented case of a dog-fox hybrid. Genetic analysis revealed she had a total of 76 chromosomes, compared to the 78 chromosomes of the domestic dog and 74 of the pampas fox.

What is a hybrid?

Hybridisation is when two species mate and produce offspring with mixed genetic ancestry. Normally, animals only mate with members of their own species.

Differences in the number of chromosomes (the structure in which DNA is packaged within the cell nucleus) often make species genetically incompatible with each other. Mating behaviour and courtship rituals tend to be individual to a species, such as the vocalisations of rutting deer, as is reproductive anatomy and physiology.

Many well-known hybrids, such as mules (horse and donkey), ligers (male lion and female tiger) and tigons (male tiger and female lion), are a result of human intervention. A lion and tiger would never meet naturally in the wild, as their native ranges are too far apart.

The more closely related (and thus genetically alike) two species are, the higher the chance of successful hybridisation. For example, dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) and grey wolves (Canis lupus) only diverged between 11,000 and 35,000 years ago. Wolf-dog hybrids are relatively common because their genetics, reproductive anatomy and behaviour are still fairly similar.

Most hybrids are sterile, meaning they are biological dead-ends. Even if differences in chromosome numbers and behaviour don’t prevent two species from producing young, it may make the hybrid infertile.

How common are hybrids?

Hybrids are more widespread than you might think - they are all around us in the plant world, both natural and as a result of human intervention.

Research suggests that approximately 25% of plant and 10% of animal species have been affected by interbreeding in the wild.

Many domesticated species can breed with their wild relatives too. In Poland, a 2018 study found high numbers of free-living wild boars had domestic genes, for example.

Hybrid offspring are not always infertile, and some people are concerned about how this affects the long-term survival and purity of individual species. Hybrids can outcompete and eventually even replace their parent species. For endangered species with small, fragile populations, this is a serious threat. In the case of the dogxim, her fertility was not verified. Sadly, reports suggest she has since died, so we will probably never know.

Why are hybrids controversial?

Hybridisation is important in the evolution of species, allowing populations to adapt to changing environments. Early humans are widely recognised in science to have mated with Neanderthals, helping our ancestors survive in some harsh environments. Long term, hybrids can lead to the development of entirely new species.

But there are also negative consequences. Physical abnormalities are common in hybrids including changes to skull, dental and horn structures, as seen in hybrid wildebeest.

Hybridisation is also a problem for vulnerable populations or endangered species, leading to reduced fitness and therefore the survival of individuals and even whole populations. The Scottish wildcat wild population, for instance, is now almost entirely made up of wildcat-domestic cat hybrids.

What does the dog-fox hybrid tell us?

The dog-pampas fox hybrid strongly suggests that contact between wild and domestic species is increasing, possibly because of human settlements encroaching on wild habitats. This can also significantly increase disease transmission risks.

The dogxim might well be a warning of the destructive impact humans and domesticated animals are having on biodiversity. We don’t know how many other hybrids may be living in the wild. Although the pampas fox is not considered endangered, this example of hybridisation between a domestic and wild species signals the importance of monitoring interactions between different species, to protect vulnerable or numerically low populations.

It is important to note that the pampas fox species is very different to the red fox (Vulpes vulpes). We probably do not need to worry about creating dog-fox hybrids on our daily dog walks, because of the genetic distance between the two. However, the dogxim should warn us that our dogs’ interactions with nature can have unexpected consequences.

Jacqueline Boyd is affiliated with The Kennel Club (UK) through membership, as Chair of the Activities Health and Welfare Subgroup and member of the Dog Health Group. Jacqueline also writes, consults and coaches on canine matters on an independent basis in addition to her academic affiliation.

Unless Congress and the White House can agree on a budget or extend funding short term, the federal government will shut down on Oct. 1, 2023.

This means that approximately 2.2 million civilian federal employees would be furloughed and face delayed paychecks and lost work hours – in addition to 3.7 million federal contractors who would also be forced to stop working and forgo their pay.

I am a scholar of public administration with a focus on government employees’ career paths. Much of my research centers on how turbulent politics filter into career employees’ daily lives, influencing their choices to join, stay with or leave the government workforce.

People don’t leave government because of a single event like a shutdown.

But negative experiences accumulate over time.

Shutdowns lead to more people being more likely to leave government employment – and higher workloads and lower motivation for those who remain. These conditions may feed Republican political goals, but they harm the millions of Americans who depend on competent, timely assistance from the public servants on the government payroll. This ultimately leads to lower work performance and employee retention problems.

My interviews with federal employees show that some will consider leaving if they are told that their work is not essential, they face financial stress or they don’t have a big enough project budget to do their job.

I have found that politicians and other people deriding government employees’ work is another factor that can push them to look for work elsewhere.

Financial stresses

The first U.S. government shutdown happened in 1976. Since then, the government has experienced 21 shutdowns.

The shortest shutdown lasted only a day, and the longest – and most recent – in 2019 was 35 days. The average shutdown is 7.6 days if all shutdowns are included. If you exclude the record-setting eight consecutive short shutdowns in 1981, the average length is 11.2 days.

These shutdowns are often expensive. The U.S. Congressional Budget Office estimated that one 35-day shutdown, from December 2018 to January 2019, cost the U.S. economy over US$3 billion, given the loss of federal workers’ contributions to the economy and other factors.

But federal employees and contractors – people who work for the government, though not in a full-time, salaried capacity – feel the worst effects of a government shutdown.

Essential and nonessential workers

Almost all civilian federal employees – with the exception of U.S. Postal Service workers – do not receive paychecks when the government is closed, regardless of whether federal agencies determine their work is considered “essential” or “nonessential.”

A large range of employees, from National Park rangers to medical researchers, are typically considered nonessential and stay home during a shutdown. Essential workers who must stay on the job could include law enforcement officials and federal prison guards.

Both nonessential and essential workers, whether they are working during a shutdown or not, won’t get paid until after the shutdown ends.

Even short delays in pay can have substantial financial effects.

In 2017, a quarter of the federal workforce made less than $56,143 a year, and the median salary was $79,386. Some of these workers live paycheck to paycheck.

My research shows this gap in pay can leave people unable to pay their rent or mortgages and can also lead to difficulty paying for everyday expenses like groceries.

Many end up depending on food banks and other resources to bridge the gap between paychecks. Federal workers like administrative assistants or security guards who receive lower wages, or young workers who haven’t built up financial reserves, are the first affected.

Different results for employees

Workers who are considered “essential” must work through a shutdown without receiving pay until after the government reopens. Their “nonessential” peers are not allowed to do any work, also without receiving their salary until the government reopens.

Contractors will not be allowed to work during a shutdown and will never receive any compensation.

But contractors and federal employees are often working in the same office. They are functionally co-workers who know that some will be paid and others will not if a shutdown happens.

Individual managers make the decision about which employees are “essential” and which are not.

Some managers use the work itself to guide their choices, while others may look at fairness concerns and individual employee circumstances, like how long someone has been on the job.

Inconsistency in these decisions leaves room for tensions over fairness.

‘Really offended’

My research shows that a discrepancy in how workers are treated during a shutdown can create workplace conflicts. As a result, employees can wind up feeling low morale, which reduces work productivity.

One federal worker I interviewed following a two-week shutdown in 2013 said: “Up to September 30th we were working 10-hour days. On October 1st we were nonessential.”

Another furloughed employee explained why the division between employees who were asked to continue working or stay home during a shutdown made some people upset.

“We had to put together two lists: mission essential and not. People who were not essential were really offended thinking that others thought what they did was not important. That government shutdown had a greater effect than what I thought it was going to have on the workforce,” this employee explained.

A loss for the workforce

Shutdowns have other hidden costs that could undermine the federal workforce’s strength.

In 2017, about 45% of federal employees were older than 50, while only 6% were younger than 30.

If a wave of future retirements leaves a smaller pool of workers who are questioning their careers in government, this could weaken the federal workforce and its performance.

Shutdowns become a part of workers’ decision-making process about their career paths.

My research shows that workers at the beginning of their careers are more likely to change jobs than colleagues who have been there longer.

Many people I have interviewed also say that the strain of shutdowns made them consider retiring earlier instead of waiting a few more years.

Long-term damage

Conservative politicians have long advocated for reducing the size of the federal government. Then-President Ronald Reagan succinctly made this point in 1981, when he said, “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.”

If one views government and spending as fundamentally flawed, then taking drastic action to reduce spending and even shutting down the government becomes a viable path for achieving policy goals and political points.

The problem is that shutting down government is expensive and causes long-term damage.

By authorizing a shutdown, elected officials are signaling in concrete ways that the work of the federal government and its employees is not valued. And regular Americans rely on federal employees to do quality work for all sorts of things, including maintaining national park monuments, inspecting hazardous waste sites and monitoring drinking water facilities.

Even if public proclamations about firing federal employees and “draining the swamp” are not acted on, they could make anyone interested in federal service think twice.

I think people need to recognize that government shutdowns have a price that is far greater than a temporary disruption.

Susannah Bruns Ali does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

At a press conference after talks with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, this afternoon, Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg sounded like a man determined to take a “glass half full” attitude when he said that “every metre that Ukrainian forces regain is a metre that Russia loses”.

His statement, if a bit obvious, showed commendable optimism. Reports from the frontlines in Ukraine have been mixed over the past few months, with nothing like the lightning-fast territorial gains made by Ukraine in its late summer offensive last year, when it liberated vast swathes of territory occupied by Russia. Some of this was retaken only days after it had been declared part of the motherland by Vladimir Putin, who annexed four regions in the east and south on September 30 – only to hear that quite a lot of these regions were now Ukrainian soil once again.

This year, Kyiv’s planned counteroffensive was late coming, partly due to the slow delivery of western military aid. This gave Russia ample time to build imposing defensive fortifications. The sort of swift manoeuvring responsible for last year’s successful counterpunches have been nigh on impossible this year.

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Since Vladimir Putin sent his war machine into Ukraine on February 24 2022, The Conversation has called upon some of the leading experts in international security, geopolitics and military tactics to help our readers understand the big issues. You can also subscribe to our fortnightly recap of expert analysis of the conflict in Ukraine.

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It hasn’t helped that western commentators have continuously talked up Ukraine’s chances of a signifcant military success. Ukraine’s allies should manage their expectations, writes Frank Ledwidge, a lecturer in military strategy at the University of Portsmouth and former military intelligence officer.

Ledwidge points to mounting Ukrainian losses this year. The body count is significantly higher than last year, with more to come as Ukraine struggles to push Russian forces back literally metre by metre. Beware all the talk of “gamechanging weapons” and “breakthroughs”, he warns. This is going to be a long, bloody and bitter struggle, and there is no prospect of an end in sight.

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Read more: Ukraine war: beware all the talk of 'breakthroughs' or 'gamechangers' – it's going to be a long, bloody and costly struggle

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This time last year, we were talking about Ukrainian morale being sky high and things being grim in Russia, where Putin had been forced to announce the first mobilisation since 1941 to shore up Russia’s faltering military. Then came the battle for Bakhmut – a “meatgrinder”, as it has been described, for both sides, but principally for Russia’s Wagner group mercenaries, 20,000 of whom are estimated to have been killed in the bid to take what was, in reality, a strategically insignificant target.

Alexander Titov, who researches Russian history and foreign policy at Queen’s University Belfast, visits Russia regularly and says the mood on the Moscow street in May this year was at rock bottom. Bad news from the front was amplified by the likes of the now late and unlamented Wagner group boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose viral videos regularly savaged Russian military commanders for their shambolic conduct. Meanwhile, there was trepidation as the Russian people awaited Ukraine’s counteroffensive.

Titov was back in Russia last month and reports a far more buoyant mood there, given the apparent failure of the counteroffensive to score any significant breakthroughs. Now, says Titov, it is Ukraine that is having to strengthen its conscription laws – and a recent scandal concerning people bribing recruitment officers has hit morale hard. Russia’s annual round of conscription, meanwhile, has delivered 300,000 fresh troops from its military reserves without Putin having to resort to what would have been a deeply unpopular second mobilisation.

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Read more: Ukraine war: Putin avoids further mobilisation while Kyiv suffers manpower shortage

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Diverse theatres of war

While things haven’t moved as quickly as Ukraine might have hoped on the battlefield, Kiev’s military has diversified its strategy by attacking Russian targets in the Black Sea region and Crimea. A missile strike on September 22 is reported to have killed 34 officers and wounded 105 others. Initially, the dead were said to include the commander of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, Admiral Viktor Sokolov – but this has been denied by the Kremlin, which has released an undated and unverified picture of Sokolov, apparently still alive.

Basil Germond, a maritime expert at the University of Lancaster, believes that this is akin to a second front in the war. Not only do these attacks undermine Russian morale, they have effectively denied it control of the Black Sea. This not only has implications for Russia’s grain blockade, but means Moscow will need to deploy troops away from the main defensive lines in the south and east of Ukraine.

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Read more: Ukraine War: why the Black Sea is key to Kyiv’s counteroffensive

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Meanwhile, one of the Kremlin’s reasons to be more cheerful is the recent deal it struck with North Korea, enabling it to address its shortage of ammunition. And according to Robert M. Dover – a professor of intelligence and security at the University of Hull – there are other reasons the west needs to be concerned about Moscow’s ever-closer relations with Pyongyang.

Once of these, Dover writes, is the fact that both countries have highly developed and sophisticated cyber-warfare capabilities. We’ve already seen how North Korea’s Lazarus group of hackers has been able to steal tens of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency, and the potential to wreak havoc by hacking into western military systems could be extremely dangerous.

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Read more: Russian and North Korea artillery deal paves the way for dangerous cyberwar alliance

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Conflict fatigue

As the war creeps towards its 600th day and the body count mounts on both sides, Kyiv’s allies in the west are also looking to their own depleted armouries, not to mention their national budgets. It has been calculated the US alone has spent or allocated US$113 billion (£92 billion) on supporting Ukraine, and the UK, the EU and Kyiv’s other allies have also strained their coffers. Meanwhile, the strain of increased energy and food prices has been heavy.

Stefan Wolff, from the University of Birmingham, and Tetyana Malyarenko, from the University of Odesa, have been watching for signs of combat fatigue among Ukraine’s allies, as well as anger from those countries in the global south who feel as if their concerns have been sidelined.

Zelensky’s visit to the US, where a growing number of Republicans are openly questioning Washington’s commitment to supporting Kyiv “whatever it takes”, as well as a recent row with Poland over Ukraine selling cheap grain to the disadvantage of its own farmers, are signs that there may be limits to the solidarity that was so evident last year.

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Read more: Ukraine war: mixed signals among Kyiv's allies hint at growing conflict fatigue

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Another country where support for Kyiv, once rock solid, looks to be crumbling is neighbouring Slovakia, which goes to the polls on Saturday. The election is too close to call, but one of the people most tipped to be able to form a coalition government is three-times former prime minister Robert Fico. Fico has said if successful, he will halt his country’s military aid to Ukraine.

As Veronika Poniscjakova, an expert in international relations and security at the University of Portsmouth, writes, it’s a campaign pledge which may mean Fico has to get into coalition with some extreme far-right partners. But with support for Ukraine falling among the Slovakian people, it’s certainly not a pledge that will lose him votes this weekend.

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Read more: Ukraine war: Slovakia may be about to elect a government which plans to halt aid to Kyiv

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Another war with Russian fingerprints

While Russia has been busy in Ukraine – or perhaps because Russia has been busy in Ukraine – hostilities have erupted once again in the troubled Nagorno-Karabakh region. Azerbaijan launched a massive assault on September 19 on the mainly ethnic Armenian enclave.

Stefan Wolff recounts the history of this troubled region and tracks the motivations of Russia, once a staunch ally of Armenia. Moscow, he writes, may be preoccupied with its war in Ukraine, but Putin is no fan of Armenia’s prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, so may not be dismayed at the mounting anti-government protests in Armenia’s capital, Yerevan, calling for him to go.

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Read more: Nagorno-Karabakh: longest war in post-Soviet space flares yet again as Russia distracted in Ukraine

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Writing as the flow of ethnic Armenian refugees across the Lachin corridor into Armenia grew steadily into a flood, Anna Matveeva – a visiting professor at King’s College London and expert in the post-Soviet space – took a broader look at the geopolitical implications of the 24-hour assault. Azerbaijan has its own enclave inside Armenia, Nakhichevan, which borders Turkey and Iran and is only accessible to Azerbaijan by air. Any peace deal over Nagorno-Karabakh, therefore, will have to involve Iran and Turkey as well as Russia, and could have consequences for the whole region.

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Read more: Nagorno-Karabakh: crisis in the Caucasus could destabilise the whole of Eurasia

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As a result of the Azerbaijani attack on the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh on September 19 and the forced exodus that followed it, this region will soon be empty of Armenians – for the first time in more than two millennia.

This was a tragedy that could have been avoided. The New York Times recently wrote about what’s now happening in Nagorno-Karabakh that “almost no one saw it coming”. Nothing could be more wrong. Armenians, as well as those who have followed the conflict, have warned for a long time that this was coming.

The global community and its institutions, including the EU, arguably let Azerbaijan get away with its military adventures, which only spurred the country on.

In the summer of 2022, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, visited Baku and concluded an agreement on gas supplies from Azerbaijan to Europe. She has several times since then praised the country as the EU’s “reliable energy partner”.

Bolstered by this backing, a few months later Azerbaijan launched an attack, not on Nagorno-Karabakh but on several areas inside Armenia itself. Since then, Azerbaijan has occupied more than 100 square kilometres of Armenia’s uncontested and internationally recognised territory.

The EU could only appeal for restraint and was relieved when the fighting stopped after two days.

Global inaction

In December 2022, Azerbaijan began a blockade of the Lachin corridor, the only connection between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia. In February, the International Court of Justice in The Hague issued a binding order that Azerbaijan must immediately allow the unimpeded movement of people and goods along the corridor. Azerbaijan ignored this.

During the summer, the situation worsened for the 120,000 residents of Nagorno-Karabakh, with acute shortages of food, petrol and medicine. Malnutrition was rife. The situation became so serious that several organisations warned of a possible genocide.

At the beginning of August, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, a former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court issued an expert opinion, in which he stated that what Azerbaijan was doing “should be considered a Genocide under Article II, (c) of the Genocide Convention”.

The article in question gives one definition of genocide as: “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

During the more-than-nine months that the blockade lasted, western leaders condemned it and demanded that Azerbaijan lift it. But no measures of force whatsoever were put behind this demand and there were no sanctions, or even threats of sanctions.

The government of Azerbaijan understood the signals. You can bring down a humanitarian crisis on more than a 100,000 people, even to the brink of genocide, without suffering anything but verbal condemnations.

This is ethnic cleansing

After the latest escalation, various prominent EU representatives have once again condemned the use of force and made various appeals. It is as if they don’t see what’s in front of them: the aggressive plans of authoritarian states are not stopped by condemnations and appeals. Much sharper measures are required.

The government that ran what Armenia called Artsakh, or the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh, has now collapsed. Its president, Samvel Shahramanyan, has declared that the state will be formally dissolved at the end of this year. The UN has estimated that 88,000 of its 120,000 inhabitants have already fled to Armenia.

Azerbaijan claims that they were not forced to do this, they fled voluntarily. On a superficial level, that is correct as no Azerbaijani soldiers forcibly removed them.

But they are not fleeing voluntarily. Instead they have been put in a situation where they have no other choice. In just over 30 years, Azerbaijan has attacked them four times.

In 2020, many of them sat for weeks in bomb shelters while Azerbaijan attacked with missiles and drones. This summer they have endured acute shortages of food and medicine due to the illegal blockade.

The last straw was the 24-hour bombardment on September 19 that has finally driven the ethnic Armenian population from their homes. I therefore believe it is correct to call this ethnic cleansing.

Five days before the Azerbaijani attack on the enclave a representative of the US government said that the USA would not tolerate the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh. Now it has happened and Washington seems to tolerate it, if the lack of sanctions on Azerbaijan are any indication.

It is not over

There is reason to remain concerned about Azerbaijan’s plans. After the suppression of the Karabakh Armenians, President Ilham Aliyev reiterated what he has said before that he sees what he calls “western Azerbaijan” as historical Azerbaijani territory that his country therefore has the right to reclaim.

By this he means Armenia. In these plans, he has the full backing of Turkey. The first target will be the southern part of Armenia, the province of Syunik, which Azerbaijan calls Zangezur.

Resolute action from the west is needed to ensure that the aggressive Azeri regime does not, in its current victory rush, embark on new military adventures. The EU could introduce sanctions against this regime, something that more than 60 MEPs from different party groups have already recently called for.

Azerbaijan’s assault on Nagorno-Karabakh must have consequences. Should the regime in Baku get away with this with impunity, it will be inspired to continue its aggression against Armenians. This would be a dangerous signal to leaders of other authoritarian states.

The lesson of the tragedy now unfolding in Nagorno-Karabakh is that verbal condemnations and appeals do not stop the aggression of authoritarian states. Only sharp measures can do that.

This article has been amended to say Syunik/Zangezur has been referred to as “western Azerbaijan”, not “western Armenia” as previously stated.

Svante Lundgren does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

It’s normal to have bacteria in your mouth. But harmful bacteria have been linked to a host of health problems. Medical scientist Glenda Davison and microbiologist Yvonne Prince, who have researched the oral cavity, explain why it’s so important to practise good oral hygiene.

Can poor oral hygiene lead to serious diseases? Why and how?

Abnormal bacterial communities in the oral cavity have been linked to liver disease, renal failure, cancers, heart disease and hypertension.

The oral cavity is the door to the gastrointestinal tract and the rest of the body.

Like the gut, the mouth is home to several diverse colonies of bacteria, fungi, viruses and protozoa. It’s the second largest microbial community in humans, after the gut.

More than 700 species of microorganisms reside in the mouth. New technologies, such as 16S rRNA analysis, have allowed researchers to study their genetic makeup and family trees.

These microbes are found all over the mouth: in and around the teeth, the gums, tongue, palate and saliva. They usually remain stable during our lifetime but if the balance in the bacterial community is disrupted, harmful bacteria may become dominant. This can lead to bleeding gums and oral diseases such as gingivitis and periodontitis.

How do problems in the mouth lead to other illnesses?

Changes in the pH (acidity or alkalinity), temperature and oxygen in the oral cavity are known to lead to abnormal growth of groups of bacteria which are usually harmless. When they become dominant, they can cause disease.

This disruption in the oral biota causes inflammation and the slow development of periodontitis, bleeding gums and tooth decay. As the gum disease destroys the gum and begins to erode the bone, inflammatory molecules called cytokines can enter the blood stream.

These chemicals activate immune cells and can result in low grade chronic inflammation with the development of diseases such as type II diabetes, atherosclerosis or thickening of the arteries and many others, even obesity. The bacteria themselves can also move from the gums into the surrounding tissue and release toxins which can move throughout the body.

Similarly, the gut hosts more than 1,000 species of bacteria which reside in the large intestine and play a vital role in digestion, absorption, immunity and protection against toxins and harmful bacteria.

Human beings cannot live without a healthy, diverse gut biota. If this well-balanced community of microbes is disturbed and not restored, gastrointestinal disorders can be experienced.

Recent research has linked an abnormal gut biome to diseases as diverse as autoimmunity, obesity, cardiovascular disease and even Alzheimer’s.

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Read more: Microbiome: certain gut microbes may warn of Alzheimer's disease long before the first symptoms begin

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Where do bacteria in the body come from?

It all starts with our microbes, tiny organisms which share our bodies and are vital to the health of human beings. There are 39 trillion microbes in the human body, outnumbering the estimated 30 trillion human cells, and they inhabit almost every organ and crevice in the human body. They can be found in the gut, skin, lung, seminal and vaginal fluid, eyes, scalp and mouth.

Each of these habitats has its own environment, attracting different organisms which adapt to their surroundings and make it their home. They live in synergy with each other and the surrounding tissue. If this relationship is disrupted it can result in disease.

Most of these microbes come from our mothers and enter our bodies when we are born. The womb is sterile but as the baby moves down the birth canal and enters the outside world, bacteria and other microbes occupy the newborn infant and create a unique ecosystem called the human microbiome.

As we grow and begin to explore the world, these microorganisms become more diverse and varied and are influenced by our diets, lifestyles, interactions with animals and the environment. It is important to maintain this balance to reduce the risk of developing disease.

What should people do to avoid these risks?

Good dental hygiene includes regular dental check-ups, preventing the build-up of plaque by brushing your teeth regularly, and avoiding foods high in carbohydrates and sugar, which can lead to increased tooth decay and cavities.

To further support the balance of the bacteria in the mouth it is recommended that foods rich in antioxidants, such as fresh fruit and vegetables, are included in our diet.

Dentists also recommend avoiding the use of antibacterial mouth washes, which have been shown to disrupt the balance of microbes. Overuse can lead to disturbances and stimulate species of bacteria that could cause disease.

Elevated levels of stress and lack of exercise have also been linked to disruptions in the balance of the oral biota. So a well balanced diet with enough rest, accompanied by good dental hygiene, is recommended.

The mouth is the door to the gut and the rest of the body. Ensuring the harmony of the microbes that live there is important to reduce the risk of disease.

Glenda Mary Davison receives funding from the South African Medical Research Foundation and serves as the Interim DSI-NRF SARChI chair in cardiometabolic health which is funded by Nedbank.

Yvonne Prince does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

If you’re looking for things to do this fall in Tampa, look no further than this Tampa market guide. Tampa is renowned for its funky vintage markets, dreamy nightlife, fresh […]

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For my friend Barb, who wrote a story I can’t forget. Ovipositors forever!

President Biden delivered a speech at a campaign reception on Thursday in which he posed a critical question to the American people: “What will we do to maintain our democracy?”

Biden emphasized the need to restore trust in democratic institutions and referenced polarization, the division of opposing ideology, as a core concern. Intolerance to conflicting views is establishing a democracy at the mercy of partisan divides. 

American democracy is under threat, and this issue is only amplified by biased news outlets and ideological echo chambers generated by internet algorithms. By mandating thorough media literacy courses in universities, we can prevent further political polarization and empower a more informed voter base.

Media literacy is defined as “the ability to critically analyze any story or event presented in the media and to determine its accuracy or credibility.”

The internet has allowed the media to widen its scope and its delivery, but simultaneously narrow the perspectives users consume. Many receive their news from social media – particularly college students. At USF, 35.2% of students admit to receiving news from social media.

Social media algorithms analyze user clicks to tailor users’ feed to feature more of what they regularly consume. Companies like Facebook curate news feeds based on predictive factors such as likes, follows and views. In terms of political and news content, this structure creates an echo chamber of information, ideology and influence. 

Social media algorithms have even been credited for polarization and the instigation of hate speech and political violence, according to an August paper by Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute.

The systems put in place by social media companies like Facebook reduce the perspectives users are exposed to. Naturally, polarizing patterns are likely if consumers are not receiving news from various viewpoints.

“We have moved from broadcasting to narrowcasting,” said former President of the Council on Foreign Relations Richard Haass in his 2023 book “The Bill of Obligations.”

“Many gravitate to outlets that reflect not just their interests, but their biases. Missing is any quality control. Misinformation is rampant, balance rarely found.”

All sources are not equal – many are biased. Of 70 major news media outlets, 43% were very politically biased and 37% were slightly politically biased, according to an analysis by AllSides. Additionally, citizens are 30% less likely to follow news stories that conflict with their views.

Media no longer serves as a means of informing citizens, but rather as an instigator of polarization. Students must understand their responsibility to educate themselves with information rooted in fact, and to recognize and work toward the public good despite common divisive ideology. 

But in order to do so, they must learn the skills to recognize biased sources through media literacy.

Beyond polarization, the media facilitates the rapid exposure of disinformation, or false content deliberately created for distribution. Unfortunately, disinformation is very present online, and particularly on social media. 

This false information not only prevents users from receiving factual news, but it is also used by creators to take advantage of the uninformed. Disinformation surrounds incredibly important news such as U.S. elections, COVID-19 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to a March 2022 article by The Hill. 

Misinformation on social media even resulted in real political violence in 2020 as demonstrated by the Jan. 6 riots.

The media only aggravates the flaws of democracy, therefore threatening its future. Despite the grave nature or these issues, there are solutions. And they can begin in universities like USF through media literacy education.

Media literacy is vital in identifying false information online. By requiring a course in media literacy and current events, USF can combat these issues and help create an informed student population.

While USF currently requires an Ethical Reasoning and Civic Engagement course for graduation, these courses do not focus on media literacy or civic duty. Universities such as UF or FSU do not require media literacy courses for graduation, but they do offer courses and graduate study for the topic.

USF must adapt to critical needs and develop a new course to immerse students in national and global affairs and teach critical analysis and civic engagement. If students graduate understanding the importance of media literacy as a democratic duty, American democracy has a second chance. 

Media is now a vast institution capable of demonizing government officials, lying about public health, weaponizing social media and diminishing democracy. 

However, universities can be the catalyst to restoring an informed population by instilling the value of democracy and providing students with the skills to sustain it.

The Feed-a-Bull pantry is experiencing an increase in demand from students compared to previous years, according to Program Director Katie Webster. 

The organization serves as supplemental food assistance to offset grocery expenses, Webster said. The pantry is already close to reaching the total number of visits typically seen in one school year.

From academic year 2021-22 to 2023-24, the total visits and pounds of food given to students for each school year are:

• 2021-22: 1,300 total visits, 16,000 pounds of food
• 2022-23: 4,770 total visits, 38,000 pounds of food
• First four weeks 2023-24: 1,000 total visits, 6,000 pounds of food (since Aug. 21)

Every category of food is in demand, including canned fruit, vegetables, snack or breakfast items, beans, tuna, chicken, rice, pasta, soup and tomato products, Webster said.

There are food limitations in place to help accommodate the demand. Students that come in can only retrieve a limited amount of certain types of food like fruit, vegetables and proteins. This helps with the rising demand so that the inventory is more controlled, Webster said.

Webster attributes the increased traffic to the pantry’s promotional efforts and USF’s rising student population. They have been featured on Bay 9 News and also have a donation page on USF Foundation, where donors are able to give back to the community. 

She said she wanted Feed-a-Bull to move into a larger pantry space, but could not do so due to inadequate funding.

The addition of more shelves would help to accommodate the influx of student demand, Webster said.

The need for a larger pantry space is also about implementing additional resources for students.

There are new programs that Feed-a-Bull wants to offer that require more space, Webster said, such as adding a station for students that want to apply for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.

The pantry receives standard biweekly deliveries. But to keep up with demand, the program has already ordered emergency deliveries from Feeding Tampa Bay to increase their inventory. 

Webster said she requested an emergency delivery within the first three weeks of this semester. The quantity of each delivery from Feeding Tampa Bay can sum up to 1500-2000 pounds of food and 100 pounds for produce, Webster said.

Webster has been keeping up with supply and demand by adjusting the pantry’s inventory as needed and ordering adequate amounts of food. She said a lot of what is needed generally has a price associated with it, clearing the misconceptions about the food being free.

Success at this year’s Charit-a-Bull, a food drive hosted at USF, would help the pantry manage demand, Webster said. The drive comes every fall semester with homecoming activities. The pantry partners with the organization in hopes of receiving donations and access to more resources. 

About two out of five of USF students are facing food insecurity, according to USF’s food resources website. Because of this and its large student population, many would benefit from Feed-a-Bull and their resources at the pantry, Webster said. 

“The utilization will continue to increase as more students learn that Feed-A-Bull is an available resource for any student struggling to afford adequate food for themselves,” she said.

When India invited delegates attending the G20 summit in September 2023 to dinner with “the President of Bharat,” rather than “the President of India,” it may have looked to the world like a simple case of postcolonial course correction.

The word “India” is, after all, an exonym – a placename given by outsiders. In this case, the name came from the British, who ruled the subcontinent from 1858 to 1947, a violent period of colonialism that later came to be called “the British Raj.”

“Bharat,” on the other hand, is the word for “India” in Hindi, by far the most spoken language in the nation. Alongside English, Hindi is one of two languages used in the Indian Constitution, with versions written in each language.

“Bharat” may, therefore, look like a well-reasoned and uncontroversial replacement for a term anointed long ago by outsiders – something akin to how Eswatini, Zimbabwe and Burkina Faso updated their countries’ names from the colonial designations “Swaziland,” “Rhodesia” and “Upper Volta,” respectively.

But the use of “Bharat” has elicited outcry from the political opposition, some Muslims, and Hindu conservatives in the south, reflecting ongoing tensions in India between language, religion and politics.

Two different language families

My book with fellow linguist Julie Tetel Andresen, “Languages in the World: How History, Culture, and Politics Shape Language,” covers the language history and politics of India.

Hindi is the most-spoken language in India, but its use is largely relegated to a part of the country that linguists refer to as “the Hindi belt,” a massive region in northern, central and eastern India where Hindi is the official or primary language.

Around 1500 B.C.E., a group of outsiders from Central Asia – known now as the Indo-Aryans – began migrating and settling in what is now northern India. They spoke a language that would eventually become Sanskrit. As groups of these speakers separated from one another and spread out over northern India, their spoken Sanskrit changed over time, becoming distinctive.

Most of the languages spoken in northern India today – Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali and Gujarati, among many others – derive from this history.

But the Aryans were not the first group to inhabit the Indian subcontinent. Another group, the Dravidians, was already living in the region at the time of the Aryan migrations. They may have been the original inhabitants of the Indus-Valley Civilization in northern India. Over the millennia, the Dravidians migrated to the southern part of the subcontinent, while the Aryans fanned out across the north.

Today, Dravidians number about 250 million people. Dravidian languages, such as Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam, have no historical relationship and virtually no linguistic similarities to the Indo-Aryan languages of the north.

Dravidians spurn Hindi

By the time the Raj ended in 1947, English had been established as the language of the elites and was used in education and government. As the new nation of India took shape, Mahatma Gandhi advocated for a single Indian language to unite the diverse regions and for many years championed Hindi, which was already widely spoken in the north.

But after independence, opposition to Hindi grew in the Dravidian-speaking south, where English was the favored lingua franca. For Tamils and other Dravidian groups, Hindi was associated with the Brahmin caste, whom many felt marginalized Dravidian languages and culture.

For many people in the south, Hindi came to be seen as a language as foreign as English. To keep tensions from spilling over, the first prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, supported verbiage in the constitution adopted in 1950 allowing for the continued use of English in government for a limited period.

Violence nevertheless continued in the south for years around what was seen as the unfair promotion of Hindi. It abated only when Indira Gandhi – Nehru’s daughter and the third prime minister of India – pushed to codify English, alongside Hindi, as an official language in the constitution.

Today, the Indian Constitution recognizes 22 official languages.

Nationalists push for one official language

The Partition of India in 1947 – corresponding to the dissolution of the Raj – led to the creation of Pakistan, which was set up to aggregate the majority Muslim regions from the colonial state. An independent India was set up to include the majority non-Muslim regions.

Today, roughly 97% of Pakistan’s population is Muslim. In India, Hindus make up about 80% of the population, while Muslims make up about 14% – more than 200 million people.

This is where modern domestic politics come into play.

“Hindutva” is a brand of far-right Hindu nationalism that emerged in the 20th century in response to colonial rule but gained its biggest following under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janta Party, or the BJP.

As a political ideology, Hindu nationalism should be distinguished from Hinduism, a religion. It advances policies that seek to promote Hindu supremacy and are widely considered anti-Muslim.

One such policy is the promotion of Hindi as the sole official language of India. Speaking in 2022 at a Parliamentary Official Language Committee meeting, BJP Home Minister Amit Shah said, “When citizens of states speak other languages, communicate with each other, it should be in the language of India.”

To Shah, the “language of India” and Hindi were one and the same.

Suppressing Urdu

Muslims in India speak the languages of their communities – Hindi among them – as do Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Christians.

However, making Hindi the national language could be viewed as one part of a broader political project that can be characterized as anti-Muslim. That’s why the political opposition is against using “Bharat,” even though many Muslims are themselves Hindi speakers.

These politics become even clearer in the context of the BJP’s attempts to limit the use of Urdu – a language with a high degree of mutual intelligibility to Hindi – in Indian public life.

Although Urdu and Hindi are remarkably similar, their differences take on outsized religious and national significance.

Whereas Hindi is written in the Devanagari script, which has strong cultural associations with Hinduism, Urdu is written in the Perso-Arabic script, which has strong associations with Islam. Whereas Hindi draws on Sanskrit for new words, Urdu draws on Persian and Arabic, again emphasizing associations to Islam. And whereas Hindi predominates in India, Urdu is the official language of Pakistan, along with English.

Thus the appearance of “Bharat” in official government correspondence may reopen old wounds for Muslims – and even for conservative Hindus in the Dravidian-speaking south who might otherwise support Modi and the BJP.

Although an official name change is unlikely in the immediate future, “Bharat” will likely continue to serve as a rallying cry for right-wing nationalists.

To them, the conciliatory language politics of Nehru and Indira Gandhi are a thing of the past.

Phillip M. Carter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

The U.S. is moving toward a government shutdown. House and Senate appropriators are divided on spending levels, policy riders and additional items, such as support for Ukraine.

As a political scientist who studies the evolving budget process, as well as brinksmanship in Congress, it is clear to me that this episode prompts many important questions for how the U.S. is governed.

There’s the larger, long-term question: What are the costs of congressional dysfunction?

But the more immediate concern for people of the country is how a shutdown will affect them. Whether delayed business loans, slower mortgage applications, curtailed food assistance or postponed food inspections, the effects could be substantial.

Affected: Farm loans to Head Start grants

The total federal budget is almost US$6 trillion. A little over one-fourth is discretionary spending that is funded by the annual appropriations process and thus debated in Congress. This portion of spending provides money for virtually every federal agency, roughly half of which goes to defense. The rest of yearly federal spending is on mandatory entitlement programs, mainly Social Security and Medicare, as well as interest on the national debt.

The Office of Management and Budget, which oversees both development of federal budget plans by federal agencies and their performance, regularly requires agencies to develop shutdown plans. Because agencies continually update these plans, no two shutdowns are exactly alike. Details depend on the agency, program and duration of the shutdown, as well as laws passed with funding since the previous shutdown, and the administration’s priorities. These plans identify a variety of ways the shutdown will affect Americans.

If a shutdown happens this year, new loan approvals from the Small Business Administration will stop. The Federal Housing Administration will experience delays in processing home mortgage loans and approvals. The Department of Agriculture will not offer new farm loans. Head Start grants will not be awarded, initially affecting 10,000 young children from low-income families who are in the program.

Some food inspections by the Food and Drug Administration, workplace safety inspections by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and environmental safety inspections by the Environmental Protection Agency could be delayed, as they have been when the government stopped functioning in the past.

During the last shutdown, about 60,000 immigration hearings, organized by the Department of Justice and not the courts, were canceled and had to be rescheduled. This year would also see cases involving noncitizens who are not being held by the government reset for a later date, even as other immigration services proceed.

Infrastructure projects awaiting approval from the Environmental Protection Agency could be stalled. The National Institute of Health’s clinical trials for diseases could also be slowed.

This is not a comprehensive list. Agency plans show what happens when federal workers are furloughed – that is, those who cannot report to work in a shutdown. Furloughs will apply to over 700,000 out of roughly 3.5 million federal employees, but even more workers will be “excepted” and required to work without pay until the shutdown ends.

That of course means employee hardship. But like past shutdowns, unpaid workers can fail to report to work in larger numbers. Americans relying on those services will face delays. There may be air travel delays as well, as air traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration agents go without pay.

Not affected: The IRS, postal service and entitlement programs

Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits are entitlement programs that are not included in the annual appropriations process. Americans relying on these programs will not see those benefits affected. But these programs require administration. Federal employees would not be available to verify benefits or send out new cards.

There are additional funding sources for government activities, beyond entitlement programs, that aren’t included in the annual appropriations bills and thus are unlikely to be affected by a shutdown.

The U.S. Postal Service, independently funded through its own services, will be unaffected by a shutdown. The federal judiciary could operate for a limited time, funded by court filings, fees and appropriations allocated off the yearly cycle. But this funding won’t last long – 10 days was an estimate for the 2013 shutdown. The Supreme Court, which has functioned in previous shutdowns, is expected to continue its typical schedule.

Sometimes, agencies have funding that exceeds the typical annual appropriations cycle. Or, earlier laws may have been passed that fund activities of an agency in whole or in part. The Inflation Reduction Act provided funds to run the IRS through 2031. Previous shutdowns saw significant IRS furloughs and employees walking off the job. This year, the IRS promises to be fully operational despite a shutdown.

A variety of advance appropriations also exist that provide funding for various programs one year or more beyond the year the appropriations bill was passed, including Veterans Affairs medical care; most VA benefits are unaffected.

The primary law governing funding gaps also makes exceptions for “emergencies involving the safety of human life or the protection of property,” which includes a variety of military activities.

The big question mark

The major unknown is, of course, how long a shutdown might last. Food assistance programs – including the federal food program for poorer women, infants and children, called WIC, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP – which have some contingency funds that carry over into the next fiscal year but are running low, run the risk of those accounts running out.

The federal judiciary has limited funds. There are also a variety of federal grants to states and localities that could be short on funds, such as disaster relief and economic development programs, in addition to nutrition assistance. Government officials at the federal, state and local levels will have to make choices about whether a federal shortfall should be covered by state funds, or if workers should be furloughed. Some of these funds have been protected by increased funding in recent laws: The Highway Trust Fund is solvent through 2027, due to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021.

The economy as a whole will suffer more the longer a shutdown continues. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the last shutdown, in 2018-2019, reduced gross domestic product growth by 0.2% in the first quarter of 2019. While that 35-day partial shutdown was the longest in U.S. history, it did not affect all agencies.

Federal employees and contractors are disproportionately hurt. Federal employees who are furloughed or excepted and do not receive pay during the shutdown will receive it retroactively, according to a 2019 law passed as a response to the last shutdown.

No such policy exists for contractors working for the federal government, including services ranging from janitorial to manufacturing. Beyond affecting individual workers, the private sector loses business and adjusts its hiring decisions and other practices.

Laura Blessing does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Of all the debate over teaching U.S. slavery, it is one sentence of Florida’s revised academic standards that has provoked particular ire: “Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

Does this sentence constitute “propaganda,” as Vice President Kamala Harris proclaimed, “an attempt to gaslight us?”

Or is it a reasonable claim in a discussion of a difficult topic?

Whatever it is, the sentence is of a sort not unique to the teaching of enslavement in Florida. It is, instead, an example of how some Americans transform the racist history of this country into an uplifting – and sanitized – moral lesson.

Truth or fiction?

In our view as cultural anthropologists, the disputed sentence is true as historians define facts – tiny nuggets of truth one can find in archives, artifacts and diaries.

It is a fact that small numbers of the enslaved acquired skills that allowed them to earn money, to save it and to buy their freedom and the freedom of family members.

It is also a fact that freed Black people in the antebellum era helped other Black people to also acquire skills and became part of a segregated Black middle class in many Southern cities.

One might argue that such a sentence, because it is true, should not give rise to protest. But as scholars who have studied how history is taught in America, we learned that this particular nugget is neither trivial nor insignificant.

Instead, the one sentence in Florida’s new standards allows Americans to transform a story about what we today call structural racism into an apocryphal story about Horatio Alger and America’s rags-to-riches melting pot.

As this line of thinking goes, enslaved ancestors of contemporary African Americans labored just as most contemporary Americans’ ancestors labored: at the bottom, but able to climb up the social ladder with hard work and discipline.

And this is the problem: To portray enslaved people as laborers like free laborers is exactly how not to teach about slavery.

But it is a commonly used method that is called a “switching mechanism.” In this example, the story about the horrors of the slave system is transformed into a story about opportunity, success and the American dream.

Switching the story at Colonial Williamsburg

Thirty years ago, when we conducted anthropological research at Colonial Williamsburg, we encountered the same narrative switching mechanism that is occurring now in Florida.

At that time, the world-famous Virginia outdoor history museum depicting a genteel, colonial America was trying to present the public with a truer picture of the past by incorporating the history of what they called “the Other Half” – the enslaved people who had been all but absent from the museum’s past portrayals.

But it was difficult, we found, for the museum to sustain a narrative about the evils of the slave system. That’s because much of its paying audience of white middle-class tourists did not want to dwell on such tales, and second, its “interpreters,” or guides, found ways to switch the narrative.

Starting from a story about the enslaved being someone else’s property, they would transition to one suggesting the enslaved were working for their own advancement.

We heard stories during our research like this:

• Don’t imagine that 18th century Williamsburg was like mid-19th century Mississippi cotton plantations, with families torn apart by avaricious masters, whippings, shackles and rape. Instead, in Williamsburg, slaves were valuable property.

• Consider that your average white yeoman farmer of the time had an annual income of about 20 pounds. Now consider that a highly trained slave cook was worth 500 pounds. Would your average owner be likely to abuse such a valuable piece of property? No! They’d treat that slave like an NFL quarterback!

Such stories conflated an enslaved laborer’s monetary value to his owner and the income of a white laborer. And that is how many visitors we listened to interpreted what they were hearing.

In other instances, we found conflicting messages.

In a skit that took us to the basement of an elite white Williamsburg household during Christmas, we witnessed Black interpreters portraying enslaved houseboys, maids and cooks complaining that they had to work harder than ever to create the festive atmosphere their owners desired. Meanwhile, upstairs, white interpreters portraying gentlemen conversing waxed philosophical about the evils of slavery coupled with the impossibility of getting rid of it.

At the conclusion of the story, we talked to two members of the audience who, it turns out, had learned different lessons.

One concluded that she had witnessed a universal story because workers everywhere grumble about their bosses. The other pointed out that if she disliked her boss, she could quit her job – something the enslaved couldn’t do.

Still, both were relieved to hear that slavery did not sit easy on the consciences of the white elite.

Structural inequality or Horatio Alger?

Switching mechanisms such as these are hard to dislodge. They remake the worst parts of the American story into a story consonant with the American Dream.

Today, not much has changed in Williamsburg. In Florida and many other states, switching allows designers of history curricula to avoid discussions on the lasting effects of racialized slave labor. They avoid discussing what that has meant to millions of people who did not, will not and cannot start on the same rung of the ladder of upward mobility that is available to other Americans who do not share a history of enslavement.

In our view, that is not a story that many Americans want to tell, teach or hear.

And so they switch to a different one, in which equal opportunity has been achieved, every one of us is capable of overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds, and failure to rise must be a result of individual weakness and vice.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

This Victorian dictionary collects the cant of thieves, the slang of costermongers, and many other argots.

Today a majority of U.S. Supreme Court justices are either self-described originalists or strongly lean toward originalism. Yet less than 50 years ago, originalism was considered a fringe movement, hardly taken seriously by most legal scholars.

So, what is originalism, and why is it so influential today?

Originalism is the theory that judges are bound to interpret the Constitution as it would have been interpreted in the historical era when it was written. Understood this way, originalism is the idea that judges must follow the law as written and not merely ignore it or reinterpret it to their liking.

Why, then, aren’t all judges and legal scholars originalists?

How to read a constitution

There is no real controversy among judges or politicians about many provisions of the Constitution, for example that the president must be at least 35 years old or that each state gets exactly two senators.

But the challenge arises with certain passages in the Constitution – for example, the Fifth Amendment guarantee of “due process,” that is, the right to some sort of legal procedure when the government attempts to deprive someone of “life, liberty or property,” or the 14th Amendment’s principle of “equal protection of the laws.”

What these have in common is that they are written in vague, open-ended language, with no concrete guidance for interpreting the law. Few if any people would deny that all Americans are entitled to the equal protection of the law. But what exactly does that mean?

Does a law providing for marriage only between a man and a woman violate equal protection, because it excludes gay marriages? Does a law that prohibits bigamy violate equal protection, since it excludes plural marriages? How is a judge to decide, given the vagueness of the text?

It is here in these moments that the originalists and their critics part ways.

For the critics, the only way to interpret the abstract principles such as “due process” or “equal protection” is to look to the overall values and purpose of the Constitution as well as evolving societal values – after all, the very words “due” and “equal” are value terms.

When the Constitution was written, for example, only men were eligible for public office. Thus, the Constitution uses “he” 26 times, in reference to the president, vice president, citizens and others, and never uses “she.” Do these rules now apply only to males?

Of course not.

When the Constitution was written, it was assumed that the sexes had separate spheres. Men belonged in politics, women to the domestic sphere. When that fundamental value judgment shifted radically in the 20th century – as expressed in the 19th Amendment giving women the vote – it meant that the Constitution had to be read in a new way so that “he” is now interpreted as inclusive.

Flexible originalism

Now compare the equal protection clause and its application to sexual orientation.

For the originalist, the 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection was clearly not intended to protect gay rights, given that sodomy was a crime at the time. For the non-originalist, societal values have changed radically on this issue, so they believe that now the Constitution should be read in a new way, such that equal protection extends to sexual orientation as well.

For the originalist, allowing such interpretive freedom is to abandon the Constitution altogether.

Yet, as a scholar of law and philosophy, I believe that flexible interpretation was the original intention of the framers.

James Madison, for example, wrote in Federalist 37 – part of a collection of essays by Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay endorsing adoption of the Constitution – that all new laws will always be “more or less obscure and equivocal, until their meaning be liquidated and ascertained by a series of particular discussions and adjudications.”

That is, the meaning of these phrases are not fixed at the time of the passage of the Constitution. That meaning is only “liquidated,” that is, made determinate, in light of future experience involving debate that Madison called “particular discussions” and judicial decisions that he called “adjudications.”

Laws, for Madison, may not have a determinate meaning until they are tested by experience: Just what level of process is “due,” and what does “equality” require?

Hence, in Madison’s view, faithfulness to the original understanding actually requires that laws be interpreted in light of changing values and new circumstances. Principles in the Constitution like “due process” and “equal protection” were deliberately left vague and open-ended precisely so they could evolve in the future.

Ironically, I believe, it is the non-originalists who can claim to be the true originalists.

Why then is originalism so influential? The answer is that the movement arose in the 1970s and 1980s among conservatives, in response to the liberal decisions of the Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren. Originalism began not as a neutral theory of interpretation but as a rallying cry for conservatives. It is no surprise that the originalists on today’s Supreme Court are also the conservatives.

The central and plausible core of originalism is the idea that judges should not impose their own personal values on the Constitution. But the real debate, I believe, is not about originalism versus the freedom to ignore the Constitution, but rather it is about just what the true, original meaning of the Constitution is.

Whitley R.P. Kaufman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

When I first heard the acronym BIPOC, my stomach tightened and I immediately felt resistance. It was a gut reaction at having my identities seemingly collapsed into an acronym.

Exploring this discomfort, I read an article by American author Kearie Daniel. She shared similar unease from her perspective as a Black woman. Reading Daniel’s words, I knew I was not alone in my reaction to the abbreviation.

BIPOC is an acronym for “Black, Indigenous and People of Colour,” and has become increasingly popular in recent years. The acronym came about as a way to address the erasure of Black and Indigenous Peoples and centre their unique struggles while promoting solidarity.

However, the problem is BIPOC amalgamates distinct experiences of racism and colonialism and misses those that do not fit within one category, like individuals of mixed ancestry.

What’s in an acronym?

Acronyms like POC, BIPOC, IBPOC, BAME, AAPI and others can highlight the similar ways racism, colonialism and inequality impact different communities. However, they can also undermine and gloss over the distinct experiences of those who do not easily fit into one of those letters.

Observed race can shift based on context, clothing and appearance. For instance, if I show my tattoos or wear clothing with Haida designs, I am more likely to be seen as broadly Indigenous. Based on my appearance, I might be vaguely classified as a person of colour, however, I am also white. Instead of being Haida, Irish, Ojibwe and British, my identities are collapsed into an acronym for ease of reference.

Indigenous identity: contestation and self-determination

Indigenous Peoples have long been subject to identity control through legislated elimination in the Indian Act and categorized as non-status versus status Indian, Inuit or Métis.

Our Nations have been identified as one group (Aboriginal, Native, First Nations, First Peoples, Indian, Indigenous) to facilitate colonial control, and the BIPOC acronym contributes to the further grouping of distinct identities.

Being Indigenous in Canada involves continually pushing for our self-determination and inherent rights to be recognized while ensuring our survival as distinct nations. Acronyms like BIPOC represent a step back in the struggle to assert and sustain nationhood.

Oppression Olympics

Scholars have argued that Indigenous and Black liberation movements are interconnected, and the possibility of coalition-building increases the chances for racial justice.

However, despite the intentions of those who use BIPOC, the combination of these experiences can have the opposite effect and contribute to a sort of oppression Olympics.

For example, some organizations and news outlets have more recently switched the order of the acronym to IBPOC (Indigenous, Black and people of colour) to recognize Indigenous Peoples as First Peoples. This Indigenous first acronym is an inadequate solution. It still results in racialized people being broadly categorized and essentialized.

Furthermore, these kinds of debates over the order of letters can also disrupt coalition-building among racialized people. American activists Angela Davis and Elizabeth Martinez suggest that competition between racialized peoples, or the oppression Olympics, perpetuates harm and division.

This kind of debate further reinforces white supremacy and settler colonialism that rely on the continued marginalization of racialized peoples.

Indigenous Peoples are in a place of contestation over lands, rights, self-determination and reparation. Being amalgamated further into acronyms distracts attention from our work towards self-determination. Rather than accepting the convenient terminology of BIPOC, IBPOC, First Nations, Indigenous or Aboriginal, we need to assert our Nationhood and unique identities.

So, what should we call people?

When discussing individuals, use the terms they use to identify themselves where possible and do not assume someone fits within a predetermined category. Many people occupy the space in between racialized categorizations. If a broad term is required, “racialized” is much more appropriate. It includes recognition of the socially constructed nature of race and allows room for further specificity.

The terminology that we use has real-world impacts. Racial justice requires recognizing the distinct and socially situated identities of racialized people and providing space for those with diverse identities.

The right of Indigenous self-determination is asserted and affirmed in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. To protect our identities as distinct Nations, we must be cautious of the language we use to describe ourselves and others use to describe us.

Michaela M. McGuire receives research funding from the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship.

I don’t have a dog in this fight, no skin in the game as they say. There is more benefit to me opting out of this conversation and staying quiet. In fact, speaking up would be ill-advised; I only stand to lose. First, a quick statement about my personal background, as that will be context …

Continue reading In Defense of Indie Deck Review; Also: On AI Generated Images

The allegations of rape, sexual assault and emotional abuse by comedian and actor Russell Brand seemed like a bombshell scoop to many readers and viewers. But for the journalists at The Times, Sunday Times and Channel 4’s Dispatches, the publication of their report was the result of four years of reporting, investigating and fact checking.

The claims related to four alleged victims from 2006-13, when Brand was at the height of his fame. Pre-empting the release of the Channel 4 documentary and the Sunday Times splash, Brand posted a video denying the allegations and stating that all his previous relationships were consensual.

Brand, who has amassed a following of over 6.5 million with his videos on wellness, politics and conspiracy theories, criticised the “mainstream media” and claimed he was a victim of a “coordinated attack” by those wanting to silence him. He ended by questioning whether there was “another agenda at play”.

Some of Brand’s defenders have added to this narrative, implying that the timing of the report was connected to his critiques of mainstream media. In a reply to Brand’s video, X CEO Elon Musk wrote: “Of course. They don’t like competition.”

But allegations of serious criminal offences cannot be published at the drop of a hat without serious consequences. Newspapers must be rigorous in reporting to avoid violating the Defamation Act 2013.

Defamation is a spoken or written statement that turns out to be false, but is harmful to the reputation of the person spoken or written about. To sue for defamation, a claimant must prove they suffered “serious harm” to their reputation, trade or profession as the result of a published statement. The statement can be spoken (slander), or published in writing or broadcast (libel).

How much proof is needed?

The “burden of proof” in England and Wales is different in criminal and civil courts. A jury in a criminal case must find the defendant guilty beyond “reasonable doubt”. In a civil case, like defamation, the burden of proof is lighter. The judge will decide on the “balance of probabilities” – they will weigh up all the evidence and decide who is telling the truth.

Among the handful of defences available, publishers or individuals accused of defamation may use the defences of “truth” and “public interest”.

A judge hears evidence from both sides and decides whether or not the allegations are “substantially true”. If the defendant uses a public interest defence, the court will scrutinise whether the information was researched and presented responsibly and the publisher reasonably believed publication was in the public interest.

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Read more: Wagatha Christie: what the judgment said, and what it means for future libel litigants

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A publisher may present their reporting as proof of a truth defence. When actor Johnny Depp sued The Sun newspaper, which published a story calling him a “wife-beater”, News Group Newspapers’ lawyers did just that.

They produced a raft of evidence including 38 witness statements, video recordings, live witness testimony, medical evidence, photographs, digital evidence and text messages. Depp lost the case, but two years later won a defamation suit in the US against his former partner Amber Heard, which was decided by a jury.

How do newspapers investigate sexual assault allegations?

Allegations about Brand were reportedly an “open secret” in the industry. But rumour and gossip is not enough to defend a defamation case in court and it seems no outlet can have believed they had enough evidence to publish.

The Sunday Times said reporters were working on the investigation since 2019. As part of any investigation of this nature, media regulators set out guidelines around how ethical journalism should be conducted in their codes of practice.

The Independent Press Standards Organisation’s editor’s code of practice – to which The Times and Sunday Times have signed up – says journalists must keep an “audit trail” of evidence gathered. The Ofcom broadcasting code has a similar provision.

The journalists in the Brand investigation reportedly interviewed “hundreds” of sources including friends and relatives of the alleged victims, comedians, TV and film executives, taxi drivers and therapists. It has been reported that accusers undertook lengthy interviews and provided information intended to corroborate the allegations.

Generally speaking, the material for an in-depth investigation can include signed and dated witness statements, affidavits, text messages, medical evidence, therapy notes, telephone call records, photographs, emails and other communications. Everything must be verified, and logged meticulously, which is why it takes so long for an investigation to see the light of day.

Once it is reported, the story is scrutinised by defamation lawyers – “legalled”, in industry lingo. Lawyers’ advice is given, intended to ensure every word is legally sound, and enough evidence has been gathered to run a defence in court, should the subject sue. It is up to the editors, however, if that advice is taken.

In order to run either a truth or public interest defence, the news organisation must usually offer the subject the chance to respond, known in law as a right of reply. Brand was approached and initially his lawyers refused to comment. He later published his YouTube denial.

What are the consequences of a defamation suit?

A defamation lawsuit can be costly – damages can reach £350,000 and court costs run into the millions. This is why most defamation cases are settled out of court.

But it is not just the financial cost which makes editors cautious. Journalists have a professional responsibility to be accurate, and being successfully sued for libel could damage the reputation of a trusted media brand and a journalist’s career.

Editors may run a mile from difficult stories for fear of being sued, particularly if the subject is rich and famous. This was evident in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal, which was not reported until after his death – you can’t, in law, defame the dead.

Why are Brand’s accusers anonymous?

In response to the reports, many social media commentators have made potentially libellous statements of their own about Brand and his accusers – remember, individuals can be sued for defamation too.

Some of the comments about the victims have been rife with misogyny and misconceptions about sexual assault victims, accusing them of lying and questioning why they have remained anonymous.

In England and Wales, the identity of victims and alleged victims of sexual assaults are protected by law. They are granted lifelong anonymity from the moment they disclose the attack to someone else, and even if they don’t report it to the police. It is illegal to publish their name or other identifying details, unless they are over 16 and waive their anonymity in writing.

Reporters do not just publish the allegations of anonymous victims. The complainant will not be anonymous to the reporter, they will know the person’s true identity and will be under pressure to conduct a detailed and meticulous investigation to verify their claims.

Ultimately, taking someone at their word alone is too risky. If you want to know whether you can trust a newspaper or television report, consider the amount of work that has gone into the story – and the high stakes for the publisher. The history of successful libel cases does, however, show that these high standards are not always adhered to.

Polly Rippon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

There are plenty of health claims about humming. They include reducing stress, helping you breathe more easily, relieving sinus congestion, lowering your blood pressure and lifting your mood.

That’s a lot of potential benefits for something that comes pretty naturally to most of us.

Can something so simple really be healthy? Here’s what we know so far.

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Humming’s all around us

Humming is likely connected to our earliest memories of comfort and care, as caregivers soothe infants with lullabies and humming. Infants, unable to comprehend speech, take in the melodic information, making humming one of our earliest forms of bonding through sound.

As we get older, we hum when we’re happy, embarrassed, displeased or in agreement with someone. Mmm. Hmm.

We often hum tunes unconsciously, even ones we don’t like, by mirroring what we hear. Some tunes can even get stuck in our heads if they contain hooks and repetition. And let’s face it, humming’s also handy when we can’t remember the words.

Then there are songs that feature humming, such as Enya’s The Humming, the 90s smash hit Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm by the Crash Test Dummies, or James Blake’s Retrograde.

What happens when we hum?

When we hum, we create a buzzing sound with our mouth closed. We force air through our vocal folds (the newer term for vocal cords), causing them to vibrate and produce sound. We can control the pitch by adjusting the tension of our vocal folds to hum a tune.

All this vibration likely stimulates our vagus nerve (we actually have two), part of our parasympathetic nervous system. This is the nervous system that calms and restores body functions such as our heart rate, digestion and respiration.

People often hum as a way to relax. Their heart rate can decrease and their heart rate variability can increase. Heart rate variability refers to the slight fluctuation in time between each heartbeat. A higher heart rate variability is associated with better health.

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À lire aussi : Heart rate variability – what to know about this biometric most fitness trackers measure

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When we hum, oscillating sound waves may also affect the sinuses, leading to increased levels of nitric oxide in the nose. One study found a 15-fold increase of nasal nitric oxide from humming compared to exhaling quietly. Nitric oxide is involved in everything from brain and immune function to blood flow to the lungs and sexual arousal.

In another study, researchers looked at people with allergic rhinitis (such as people with pollen or dust allergies). When they hummed, they had higher levels of nasal nitric oxide and had fewer sinus problems compared to those who exhaled silently.

Humming also leads to some unexpected psychological effects. These include increased body awareness and “decentering” – the ability to separate oneself from thoughts, emotions and sensations.

How about chanting?

Humming also plays an important role in chanting. One example is in the ancient meditation technique bhramari pranayama (which can involve humming while gently closing the ears with your fingertips).

It is no coincidence one of the world’s most chanted sounds – om – involves a long, sustained hum at the end. Chanting all sorts of various sounds and prayers is believed to connect practitioners to the spiritual realm and induce feelings of peace.

Chanting has cognitive benefits, such as mindfulness, and altered states of consciousness, such as flow – a feeling of being absorbed by and deeply focused on an activity. Chanting also reduces stress.

In a nutshell

We hum for lots of different reasons, suggesting that these common vocalisations play an important role in our lives.

Is humming healthy? More research is needed. But humming feels good, improves our mood, distracts us from boring tasks, and can even be used for spiritual practice. Happy humming!

Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.

Taxpayers fund a lot of university research in the U.S., and these findings published in scholarly journals often produce major breakthroughs in medicine, vehicle safety, food safety, criminal justice, human rights and other topics that benefit the public at large.

The bar for publishing in a scholarly journal is often high. Independent experts diligently review and comment on submitted research – without knowing the names of the authors or their affiliated universities. They recommend whether a journal should accept an article or revise or reject it. The piece is then carefully edited before it is published.

But in a growing number of cases, these standards are not being upheld.

Some journals charge academics to publish their research – without first editing or scrutinizing the work with any ethical or editorial standards. These for-profit publications are often known as predatory journals because they are publications that claim to be legitimate scholarly journals but prey on unsuspecting academics to pay to publish and often misrepresent their publishing practices.

There were an estimated 996 publishers that published over 11,800 predatory journals in 2015. That is roughly the same number of legitimate, open-access academic journals – available to readers without charge and archived in a library supported by a government or academic institution – published around the same time. In 2021, another estimate said there were 15,000 predatory journals.

This trend could weaken public confidence in the validity of research on everything from health and agriculture to economics and journalism.

We are scholars of journalism and media ethics who see the negative effects predatory publishing is having on our own fields of journalism and mass communication. We believe it is important for people to understand how this problem affects society more broadly.

In most cases, the research published in these journals is mundane and does not get cited by other academics. But in other cases, poorly executed research – often on science – could mislead scientists and produce untrue findings.

Misleading practices

Publishing in journals is considered an essential part of being an academic because professors’ responsibilities generally include contributing new knowledge and ways of solving problems in their research fields. Publishing research is often a key part of academics keeping their jobs, getting promoted or receiving tenure – in an old phrase from academia, you publish or perish.

Predatory publishers often use deception to get scholars to submit their work. That includes false promises of peer review, which is a process that involves independent experts scrutinizing research. Other tactics include lack of transparency about charging authors to publish their research.

While fees vary, one publisher told us during our research that its going rate is $60 per printed page. An author reported paying $250 to publish in that same outlet. In contrast, legitimate journals charge a very small amount, or no fee at all, to publish manuscripts after editors and other independent experts closely review the work.

These kinds of journals – about 82.3% of which are located in poor countries, including India, Nigeria and Pakistan – can prey on junior faculty who are under intense pressure from their universities to publish research.

Low-paid young faculty and doctoral students, who may have limited English language proficiency and poor research and writing skills, are also especially vulnerable to publishers’ aggressive marketing, mostly via email.

Authors who publish in fraudulent journals may add these articles to their resumes, but such articles are rarely read and cited by other scholars, as is the norm with articles in legitimate journals. In some instances, articles are never published, despite payment.

Predatory publishers may also have an unusually large breadth of topics they cover. For example, we examined one Singapore-based company called PiscoMed Publishing, which boasts 86 journals in fields spanning religious studies and Chinese medicine to pharmacy and biochemistry. Nonpredatory publishers tend to be more focused in the breadth of their topics.

The Conversation contacted all of the journals named in this article for comment and did not receive a response regarding their work standards and ethics.

Another journal, the International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, says it publishes in about 40 fields, including criminology, business, international relations, linguistics, law, music, anthropology and ethics. We received an email from this journal, signed by its chief editor, who is listed as being affiliated with a U.S. university.

But when we called this university, we were told that the school does not employ anyone with that name. Another person at the school’s Art Department said that the editor in question no longer works there.

It is extremely difficult for people reading a study, or watching a news segment about a particular study, to recognize that it appeared in a predatory journal.

In some instances, these journals’ titles are almost identical to titles of authentic ones or have generic names like “Academic Sciences” and “BioMed Press.”

Scholars deceived

In a 2021 study, we surveyed and interviewed scholars in North America, Africa, Asia, Australia and Europe listed as editorial board members or reviewers for two predatory journalism and mass communication journals.

One company, David Publishing, gives a Delaware shipping and mailbox store as its address and uses a Southern California phone number. It says it publishes 52 journals in 36 disciplines, including philosophy, sports science and tourism.

Some scholars told us they were listed as authors in these journals without permission. One name still appeared as an author several years after the scholar’s death.

Our latest, forthcoming study conducted in 2023 surveyed and interviewed a sample of authors of 504 articles in one of those predatory journals focused on journalism and mass communication.

We wanted to learn why these authors – ranging from graduate students to tenured full professors – chose to submit their work to this journal and what their experience was like.

While most authors come from poor countries or other places such as Turkey and China, others listed affiliations with top American, Canadian and European universities.

Many people we contacted were unaware of the journal’s predatory character. One author told us of learning about the journal’s questionable practices only after reading an online posting that “warned people not to pay.”

A lack of concern

Some people we spoke with didn’t express concern about the ethical implications of publishing in a predatory journal, including dishonesty with authors’ peers and universities and potential deception of research funders. We have found that some authors invite colleagues to help pay the fees in exchange for putting their names on an article, even if they did none of the research or writing.

In fact, we heard many reasons for publishing in such journals.

These included long waits for peer review and high rejection rates from reputable journals.

In other cases, academics said that their universities were more concerned with how much they publish, rather than the quality of the publication that features their work.

“It was very important for me to have it at that time. I never paid again. But I got my promotion. It was recognized by my institution as a full publication. I profited … and it did the job,” one author from the Middle East told us in an interview.

Why it matters

Predatory publishing creates a major obstacle in the drive to ensure that new research on critical topics is well-founded and truthful.

This can have implications in health and medical research, among other areas. As one health care scholar explained, there is a risk that scientists could incorporate erroneous findings into their clinical practices.

High standards are crucial across all areas of research. Policymakers, governments, educators, students, journalists and others should be able to rely on credible and accurate research findings in their decision making, without constantly double-checking the validity of a source that falsely purports to be reputable.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

We expect medical professionals to give us reliable information about ourselves and potential treatments so that we can make informed decisions about which (if any) medicine or other intervention we need. If your doctor instead “bullshits” you (yes – this term has been used in academic publications to refer to persuasion without regard for truth, and not as a swear word) under the deception of authoritative medical advice, the decisions you make could be based on faulty evidence and may result in harm or even death.

Bullshitting is distinct from lying – liars do care about the truth and actively try to conceal it. Indeed bullshitting can be more dangerous than an outright lie. Fortunately, of course, doctors don’t tend to bullshit – and if they did there would be, one hopes, consequences through ethics bodies or the law. But what if the misleading medical advice didn’t come from a doctor?

By now, most people have heard of ChatGPT, a very powerful chatbot. A chatbot is an algorithm-powered interface that can mimic human interaction. The use of chatbots is becoming increasingly widespread, including for medical advice.

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Read more: ChatGPT's greatest achievement might just be its ability to trick us into thinking that it's honest

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In a recent paper, we looked at ethical perspectives on the use of chatbots for medical advice. Now, while ChatGPT, or similar platforms, might be useful and reliable for finding out the best places to see in Dakar, to learn about wildlife, or to get quick potted summaries of other topics of interest, putting your health in its hands may be playing Russian roulette: you might get lucky, but you might not.

This is because chatbots like ChatGPT try to persuade you without regard for truth. Its rhetoric is so persuasive that gaps in logic and facts are obscured. This, in effect, means that ChatGPT includes the generation of bullshit.

The gaps

The issue is that ChatGPT is not really artificial intelligence in the sense of actually recognising what you’re asking, thinking about it, checking the available evidence, and giving a justified response. Rather, it looks at the words you’re providing, predicts a response that will sound plausible and provides that response.

This is somewhat similar to the predictive text function you may have used on mobile phones, but much more powerful. Indeed, it can provide very persuasive bullshit: often accurate, but sometimes not. That’s fine if you get bad advice about a restaurant, but it’s very bad indeed if you’re assured that your odd-looking mole is not cancerous when it is.

Another way of looking at this is from the perspective of logic and rhetoric. We want our medical advice to be scientific and logical, proceeding from the evidence to personalised recommendations regarding our health. In contrast, ChatGPT wants to sound persuasive even if it’s talking bullshit.

For example, when asked to provide citations for its claims, ChatGPT often makes up references to literature that doesn’t exist – even though the provided text looks perfectly legitimate. Would you trust a doctor who did that?

Dr ChatGPT vs Dr Google

Now, you might think that Dr ChatGPT is at least better than Dr Google, which people also use to try to self-diagnose.

In contrast to the reams of information provided by Dr Google, chatbots like ChatGPT give concise answers very quickly. Of course, Dr Google can fall prey to misinformation too, but it does not try to sound convincing.

Using Google or other search engines to identify verified and trustworthy health information (for instance, from the World Health Organization) can be very beneficial for citizens. And while Google is known for capturing and recording user data, such as terms used in searches, using chatbots may be worse.

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Read more: ChatGPT is a data privacy nightmare. If you’ve ever posted online, you ought to be concerned

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Beyond potentially being misleading, chatbots may record data on your medical conditions and actively request more personal information, leading to more personalised – and possibly more accurate – bullshit. Therein lies the dilemma. Providing more information to chatbots may lead to more accurate answers, but also gives away more personal health-related information. However, not all chatbots are like ChatGPT. Some may be more specifically designed for use in medical settings, and advantages from their use may outweigh potential disadvantages.

What to do

So what should you do if you’re tempted to use ChatGPT for medical advice despite all this bullshit?

The first rule is: don’t use it.

But if you do, the second rule is that you should check the accuracy of the chatbot’s response – the medical advice provided may or may not be true. Dr Google can, for instance, point you in the direction of reliable sources. But, if you’re going to do that anyway, why risk receiving bullshit in the first place?

The third rule is to provide chatbots with information sparingly. Obviously, the more personalised data you offer, the better the medical advice you get. And it can be difficult to withhold information as most of us willingly and voluntarily give up information on mobile phones and various websites anyway. Adding to this, chatbots can also ask for more. But more data for chatbots like ChatGPT could also lead to more persuasive and even personalised inaccurate medical advice.

Talking bullshit and misuse of personal data is certainly not our idea of a good doctor.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

I don’t think I’ve ever had a story sent in to me more than Bill Willingham’s Substack/press release announcing that he was putting the Fables comic book property into the public domain, as part of a dispute he’s having with DC Comics.

As of now, 15 September 2023, the comic book property called Fables, including all related Fables spin-offs and characters, is now in the public domain. What was once wholly owned by Bill Willingham is now owned by everyone, for all time. It’s done, and as most experts will tell you, once done it cannot be undone. Take-backs are neither contemplated nor possible.

If you know Techdirt, you know that we’ve always encouraged people to put works into the public domain (and to use the public domain). Every year we run a public domain game jam. We’ve long noted that anything of our own that we publish on Techdirt should be considered in the public domain, and you are free to do with it what you will. The reports we’ve published are generally in the public domain as well. When I published two short sci-fi stories in our larger collection of sci-fi stories about the future of work, I put them into the public domain as well (a few other stories in that collection are also public domain).

Willingham’s reasons for doing so are a bit more complex than ours, but he admits that he’s become disillusioned by our copyright and trademark laws recently, recognizing (as we’ve long pointed out), that they seem mostly designed to empower gatekeepers in ways that harm the creators themselves, rather than help them. From that he even has his own idea on how copyright should be reformed:

In the past decade or so, my thoughts on how to reform the trademark and copyright laws in this country (and others, I suppose) have undergone something of a radical transformation. The current laws are a mishmash of unethical backroom deals to keep trademarks and copyrights in the hands of large corporations, who can largely afford to buy the outcomes they want.

In my template for radical reform of those laws I would like it if any IP is owned by its original creator for up to twenty years from the point of first publication, and then goes into the public domain for any and all to use. However, at any time before that twenty year span bleeds out, you the IP owner can sell it to another person or corporate entity, who can have exclusive use of it for up to a maximum of ten years. That’s it. Then it cannot be resold. It goes into the public domain. So then, at the most, any intellectual property can be kept for exclusive use for up to about thirty years, and no longer, without exception.

And thus, he decided to practice what he’s preaching:

Of course, if I’m going to believe such radical ideas, what kind of hypocrite would I be if I didn’t practice them? Fables has been my baby for about twenty years now. It’s time to let it go. This is my first test of this process. If it works, and I see no legal reason why it won’t, look for other properties to follow in the future. Since DC, or any other corporate entity, doesn’t actually own the property, they don’t get a say in this decision.

There’s also the… being mad at DC thing. He notes that when he originally signed his deal with DC, the company was good to work with, and whenever any problems arose, they were able to work things out. However, as Willingham puts it DC has “fallen into bad hands.” It seems that a part of that is Warner Bros. Discovery, which now owns DC. There have long been concerns that Warner Bros. Discovery is basically destroying what’s left of DC (while trying to wring extra cash out of it).

Elsewhere, Willingham noted that he had turned in scripts for Fables two years ago, and DC has basically dropped the ball on the property, so he’s freeing it for everyone else to use.

And… here’s where it gets complicated. Lots of people asked if he can actually do that, and the likely answer is that… we really don’t know. It may depend very much on the specific contracts Willingham has with DC Comics. It is possible that he signed a contract in which he retains the copyrights and trademarks. He certainly claims as much in his announcement:

The one thing in our contract the DC lawyers can’t contest, or reinterpret to their own benefit, is that I am the sole owner of the intellectual property. I can sell it or give it away to whomever I want.

A few people have pointed to the notice on Fables indicating the copyright is jointly owned by both and that the trademark is owned by Willingham:

But… if you go digging into the copyright registration database… well… it’s messy. There are a bunch of registrations for Fables, though as I flip through them, many suggest that he assigned the copyright to DC. If that’s true, then… he doesn’t actually have the copyrights to free and his claim that he’s the sole owner of the IP is incorrect.

However, other registrations do list them as co-owners of the copyright, including what I believe is the original copyright registration for the original Fables series:

And… if that’s the case, then there’s potentially more legitimacy to Willingham’s decision. When there’s a jointly created work with multiple authors holding the copyright, each author is able to license out the work to others without gaining permission from the other authors. They just need to let the co-copyright owners know about it.

So… this is… messy. DC, for it’s part, says no fucking way does Willingham have the right to do this:

The Fables comic books and graphic novels published by DC, and the storylines, characters, and elements therein, are owned by DC and protected under the copyright laws of the United States and throughout the world in accordance with applicable law and are not in the public domain. DC reserves all rights and will take such action as DC deems necessary or appropriate to protect its intellectual property rights.

Which means, we’re likely to see some sort of legal fight. Well, that is if anyone actually takes Willingham up on the offer. Because of DC’s posturing here, it will likely scare off some from going forward with things.

Willingham notes that he told DC that he was going to do this, and also tried to get them to write clearer contracts (which suggests that the existing contracts are about as messy as many such contracts tend to be):

I gave them an opportunity to renegotiate the contracts from the ground up, putting everything in unambiguous language, and they ignored that offer. I gave them the opportunity, twice, to simply tear up our contracts, and we each go our separate ways, and they ignored those offers. I tried to go over their heads, to deal directly with their new corporate masters, and maybe find someone willing to deal in good faith, and they blocked all attempts to do so. (Try getting any officer of DC Comics to identify who they report to up the company ladder. I dare you.) In any case, without giving them details, I warned them months in advance that this moment was coming. I told them what I was about to do would be “both legal and ethical.” Now it’s happened.

I hope it is true that he has the rights, and that this is legitimate, because we need more works in the public domain.

For what it’s worth, Willingham also notes that he’s still bound by his contracts with DC that if he creates more Fables works, they have to go through DC, but since none of the rest of us are bound by that contract, we can do whatever we want. But, as he notes (entirely correctly!) copyright law is a fucking mess, and you’ll find copyright lawyers who will argue all sides of this:

Note that my contracts with DC Comics are still in force. I did nothing to break them, and cannot unilaterally end them. I still can’t publish Fables comics through anyone but them. I still can’t authorize a Fables movie through anyone but them. Nor can I license Fables toys nor lunchboxes, nor anything else. And they still have to pay me for the books they publish. And I’m not giving up on the other money they owe. One way or another, I intend to get my 50% of the money they’ve owed me for years for the Telltale Game and other things.

However, you, the new 100% owner of Fables never signed such agreements. For better or worse, DC and I are still locked together in this unhappy marriage, perhaps for all time.

But you aren’t.

If I understand the law correctly (and be advised that copyright law is a mess; purposely vague and murky, and no two lawyers – not even those specializing in copyright and trademark law – agree on anything), you have the rights to make your Fables movies, and cartoons, and publish your Fables books, and manufacture your Fables toys, and do anything you want with your property, because it’s your property.

I hope that is the case, but DC is making it clear that if anyone takes him up on that offer, they’re likely to take legal action, which might just (unfortunately) be enough to make sure that no one even tries.

But, without seeing the details of the contracts (and even if we had them, that wouldn’t mean any of this would necessarily be any clearer), it’s very difficult to tell who is really correct here. It’s even possible that some characters/plots/etc. are public domain, and some are not. Without the contracts, it just becomes a big ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Anyway, I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least mention that Fables itself is based on taking public domain characters from old fairy tales and folklore, and building storylines around them in modern day New York. It seems only fitting that they should be released to the public domain for others…

The term “liberal arts” is one of the most misunderstood terms in the public discourse on higher education today. A higher education expert once said that putting the words “liberal” and “arts” together was a “branding disaster” – one so toxic that it was undermining public support for higher education. To break down the meaning and origin of the term, The Conversation reached out to Blaine Greteman, a professor of English, who looks at how the term emerged in ancient times.

What does the term mean?

Contrary to how it might sound, “liberal” in the phrase “liberal arts” has nothing to do with political liberalism. And the “arts” part is not really about the arts as most people understand them, such as painting, dancing and the like.

The “liberal” in “liberal arts” derives from the Latin “liberalis,” meaning “free.” “Arts” comes from Latin “ars”, for “knowledge” or “skill.” The word “artifact” has the same root: something made by human skill or knowledge. “Liberal arts,” in this sense, is education that equips a person for life as a free citizen.

That was how the Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero meant it 2,000 years ago when he became the first on record to refer to a “liberal arts” education. Cicero did this in “De Inventione,” an influential handbook on rhetoric written around 90 B.C. Cicero composed the book as a young man considering the role that public speaking served in the life of a republic.

In his later and more comprehensive work, “De Oratore,” Cicero explained that the full liberal arts education will equip students with a deep understanding of human emotion, skills in literary expression and a “comprehensive knowledge of things,” or “scientia comprehendenda rerum plurimarum.” This is the “education befitting a free person,” or “eruditio libero digna.”

It’s easy to get bogged down in what exactly that comprehensive or universal education entailed for Cicero or his followers in the Renaissance. But “liberal arts” for Cicero didn’t mean some subject, like “art” or “English,” so much as it meant a broad, general education.

Classically, meaning from the ancient Roman educational system up through the 1800s, when the Victorians began to reform education as practical training for the masses, students would pursue the “trivium” – grammar, logic and rhetoric – before continuing to the “quadrivium” – arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. But to get hung up on where painting, ballet or history fits into this scheme kind of misses the point.

“Liberal arts” really means education that is broad, and not strictly vocational, in that it gives you the ability to exercise free choice as a citizen and thinker. A course in philosophy or history will improve a student’s communication skills in ways that will ultimately help them find a job, but the core purpose of the class is to study deeper lessons of the self or the past. That’s very different from the way a course in electrical engineering might cultivate skills students will use in a career designing circuits.

Why does studying the liberal arts matter?

True freedom, as I see it, is the ability to choose wisely between arguments and theories about how the world works and understand how language can manipulate or elevate us. This is why 17th-century English poet and revolutionary John Milton focused his foundational anti-censorship text, “Areopagitica,” on the civic value of the liberal arts. “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties,” Milton wrote.

One of the greatest defenses of the liberal arts in America was written just 37 years after the Civil War by W.E.B. Du Bois. “The Souls of Black Folk” is probably best known today as a groundbreaking work of sociology.

Du Bois also insisted that without access to a complete and comprehensive liberal arts education, Black Americans can never truly be free. To the question, “Shall we teach them trades or train them in liberal arts?” Du Bois answered, “Both.” But he maintained that liberal arts must always be the foundation, because “to make men, we must have ideals, broad, pure, and inspiring ends of living, not sordid money-getting, not apples of gold.”

He was concerned that Booker T. Washington’s “unnecessarily narrow” emphasis on vocational education might come at the expense of this broader education in the arts of freedom. For his part, Washington felt that inspiration, ideals and “dead languages” were less important than learning “how to apply the knowledge of chemistry to the enrichment of the soil, or to cooking, or to dairying.”

Are the liberal arts a luxury?

A similar debate is playing out today in places like West Virginia University. The state’s government and university leadership announced in August 2023 plans to cut 32 programs, including its entire Department of World Languages, Literatures and Linguistics.

Many faculty and students protest that this move sacrifices a broad civic education and equates a college education with job training.

The governor, university president and legislature have argued that the university’s offerings “must align majors with future careers.”

Republican Eric Tarr, state Senate finance chair in West Virginia, explained in an opinion piece written for the West Virginia Record that the goal of the budget decisions is to “provide degrees that lead to jobs.” In other words, to train workers to work, rather than educating citizens in what Du Bois and Cicero would have called “the knowledge of being free.”

Blaine Greteman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

If you have a rhododendron in your garden or pass one by on an afternoon walk perhaps you think of it as just a colourful and pretty shrub. You may have heard that they come from the Himalayas, and that they are invasive plants that destroy ecosystems.

Neither of these is quite accurate. Rhododendrons have an ancient legacy older than the Himalayas and a history intertwined with poison, medicine and folklore.

Rhododendrons may be deciduous or evergreen, anything from a tree to a creeping dwarf shrub, with leaves a centimetre to a foot long, and flowers any shade of white, yellow, orange, pink, red or purple. There are around 1000 species in total, and modern DNA-based work confirms that all “azaleas” are in fact species of rhododendron.

Rhododendron fossil pollen is easy to identify, as are rhododendron seeds, and some of these fossils are 60 million years old. By contrast, the Himalayas as we know them only began forming 50 million years ago, when India collided with Asia. So while around half of all rhododendron species are endemic to the Himalayas (meaning they grow nowhere else), the genus cannot have originated there.

Over 60 million years rhododendrons spread around the northern hemisphere, from boreal woods and high mountains, to tropical rainforests, where many species perch on high branches as epiphytes (a plant or plant-like organism that grows on the surface of another plant). They reached North America, Japan, parts of Europe, most of Asia and even Australia. It was native in the British Isles for a while, until the later ice ages drove it out.

But the mountain ranges and plunging valleys of the Himalayas created a dizzying diversity of rhododendrons as neighbouring populations were isolated from each other. Tourists flock to see the colourful blooms found there, especially in Yunnan and the Baili areas of China.

Rhododendron pollen has microscopic tentacles that make it sticky. Pollen shoots out from the stamens like strings from a party popper when triggered by the buzzing of an insect, and drapes itself across the body of the pollinator.

Detractors might say rhododendrons are invasive. But that only applies to one species out of over a thousand – the nefarious Rhododendrom ponticum. If left uncontrolled, this particular rhododendron will eventually dominate the habitat to the virtual exclusion of all other plant life. Other species do not have this problem.

Folklore remedies with risks

There is also far more to humanity’s relationship with rhododendrons than horticultural beauty, and the never-ending battle against Rhodendrom ponticums in the wetter parts of Britain. Rhododendrons have been used to treat everything from colds and diarrhoea through leprosy and STDs, to flagging sex drive and diseases of pigs. Few of these have been tested scientifically.

In Labrador, north-east Canada, infusions of the local rhododendron are commonly drunk. People claim it has many health benefits, but the evidence is limited.

But like so many medicinal plants, some rhododendrons are poisonous, and not to be consumed by the unwary. Some species, including the common yellow azalea, contain toxins in their nectar, which can cause sickness and bad “trips” in humans.

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Many people think of plants as nice-looking greens. Essential for clean air, yes, but simple organisms. A step change in research is shaking up the way scientists think about plants: they are far more complex and more like us than you might imagine. This blossoming field of science is too delightful to do it justice in one or two stories. This article is part of a series, Plant Curious, exploring scientific studies that challenges the way you view plantlife.

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Cause of ‘mad honey disease’

Eating raw honey in some places in the world including Turkey can cause “mad honey disease”. This can happen when bees gather nectar from rhododendron flowers in certain places and times of year.

The symptoms of mad honey disease were first recorded around 400BC by the Greek historian Xenophon. According to legend, during a war in 67BC, an army of 1000 Roman soldiers in Turkey were rendered insensible after consuming the pots of honey locals had left out for them, and consequently were slaughtered by the followers of King Mithradates. Much more recently, in some time around 2010, there was a case in Scotland, when a photographer licked two tiny drips of nectar from his hand in a botanic garden. Like most victims, he recovered within a few hours.

Rhododendrons are also poisonous to farm animals which will suffer paralysis and slowly die if they eat the leaves, unless given the antidote, black tea.

A Chinese story tells of how a herd of cattle became drunk after witnessing the beauty of glorious red rhododendron flowers in the Baili scenic area. But the story probably was based on the effect the plants had on cows eating the unfamiliar shrub. Fortunately, animals including sheep can learn not to eat it, as has happened in Scotland.

Botanical fables

The numbers of rhododendrons in western China is probably why they feature in so many myths and legends. The stories are often tragic. In one story doomed lovers are transformed into Dujuan birds who fly around crying tears of blood, that turn into the plants. Dujuan are cuckoo-like birds which pollinate red rhododendrons, and are strongly linked to them in folklore.

In the Dongba religion of the Naxi people, who live in the Himalayan foothills of the Yunnan province, is dramatic. They believe three huge rhododendrons guard the entrance to the world of the dead. They also believe swords and armour made from the plants played key roles in the epic battles that shaped their world.

In the west, rhododendrons have also featured in stories. “Massed red rhododendrons” are repeatedly used to evoke the spirit of the title character in Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 Gothic thriller Rebecca.

So next time you walk past a rhododendron, perhaps you’ll think of them differently.

Richard Milne does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.