A rambling yet still valuable article on why the #Occupy movement failed so spectacularly: “We insist on perfect politics and perfect language, to the exclusion of experimentation, learning, or constructive critique. We wear our outsiderness as a badge of pride, knowing that saying the right thing trumps doing anything at all. No one is ever good enough for us — not progressive celebrities who don’t get the whole picture, not your Facebook friend who doesn’t quite get why we say Black Lives Matter instead of All Lives Matter, not your cousin who mourned the deaths in Paris without saying an equal number of words about those in Beirut. Instead of organizing these people, we attack them.”
We all know I hate the word “privilege” but I can’t stop wondering what it must feel like to be so incredibly privileged, fortunate and carefree that one can worry about stuff like this: “January is the season to truly hate our bodies. We come out of the holidays with all of those INDULGE messages and then suddenly in January, we’re supposed to set a resolution to work out, eat “better,” lose weight–and generally feel shameful about our flabby, doughy, *DISGUSTING* bodies while torturing ourselves into thinness just in time for “bathing suit season.” It’s enough to make even the most body positive bitch, like yours truly, get a case of the January blues.” I’d love to be this person for just two minutes to know what it feels like to have such an easy life and a burden so light.
Workers these days don’t know how to protest against economic exploitation, so they turn out to strike against cultural appropriation and penis jokes.
The perfect example of somebody who projects his personal misery onto the rest of the world. If you know anybody like that, please avoid them. Just remove them from your life entirely because these people will sabotage you and grind you down until there is nothing left. After which, they will patter along, happy and sated.
Just one of the endless numbers of example of companies destroying their own product because reason and profit are always easily sacrificed to the need to fulfill a social mandate.
The brutal world of college chess. Well, at least it’s an intellectual game, so a college is justified in spending money on it.
I did not know about this and I am appalled: “Early last year, [Obama] made an effort to levy some taxes on college savings accounts, given that 70 percent of account balances in those and similar accounts are owned by families who make more than $200,000. The revenue from the tax would have been plowed into college subsidies that would reach low- and middle-income Americans.” Trying to raid people’s college funds is nothing short of disgusting.
Washington Post published a very poorly written and superficial article on the crucial subject of poverty. The text sucks but look at the photos. They are a reminder that American poverty is obese, not emaciated. But it’s still poverty! It still needs to be addressed! Let’s stop judging indigent people based on our Dickensian fantasies about poverty.
The psychological trigger for serious illness. Let’s remember how easy it is to talk ourselves into being ill.
A really fantastic preschool. It’s so amazing that it makes me want to weep. In my area, we have beautiful, fantastic nature, yet all of our preschools are located in ugly little buildings invariably stuck on busy highways. While the kids play on sun-beaten concrete slabs with not a single tree or flower in sight, cars and trucks are bathing them in gas fumes.
Clarissa's Blog 
A musical interlude:
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I now realize that I want someone to do a parody of Blurred Lines called Safe Space….
I had no idea I wanted this, but now if no one else does it I’ll have to do the lyrics myself.
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I followed the link described as “the psychological trigger for serious illness,” and found a NYT article about the limits of mammograms and other breast imaging technologies.
The truth is, mammograms miss a lot, especially in dense breast tissue (breasts with a lot of connective tissue and no, these breasts do not look or feel different than ones with less connective tissue).
Radiologists frequently can not be sure of what is going on in a breast image. A whooping 80 percent of the time they think they see something that might be malignant, followup testing shows it is either benign or is basically a shadow that doesn’t exist. And then there is the occasional tumor that can be felt but does not show up when imaged.
As described in the link, there are lots of interesting questions surrounding the relationship between some false alarms and later diagnoses but one thing is for certain, psychological triggers have nothing to do with it. No evidence exists that anyone is traumatized or talks themselves into developing mutations at the cellular level.
Sign me, An Amazon
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Everybody is entitled to their own reading and their own worldview.
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I’m not sure personal views and interpretations have much of a place in the science of medicine. As I understand it, it is all about replicable results.
So far the data shows no relationship between things like attitude or (shudder) prayer and the course of a cancer. (Yes there have been experiments involving people praying for cancer patients. As much as some people want to believe their prayers can have an effect, the numbers show they don’t.)
On the other hand, there is lots of reliable data showing that stress ups one’s chances of catching colds.
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Doctors know how highly suggestible patients are and always make a huge effort to present all test results in the most positive light possible. Even if the results are obviously bad, a doctor introduces them with, “This is GOOD. You are doing really great! There’s just a few small things we need to change to make the results even better.” The reason why doctors do this is thar they know how easily patients become what you tell them they are. And the linked article demonstrates how that works: you tell people they have cancer, and they are likely to believe you.
Praying for others has nothing to do with any of this because the emotional state achieved by prayer is non-transferable.
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I do want to add that I have not seen a link to Arthur Silber in YEARS. Since my first days in following blogs in the early years of the 2000’s. His tune has not changed a single note! Still asking for money!
Such an interesting sensation, when something I haven’t thought about or been concious of in any form or manner suddenly reappears. Who knew those memories still existed? What else can I not call up now but might tomorrow, given the right reminder? If I can’t remember that I forgot it, what does that mean, versus the things I know I used to know but can’t recall?
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I has no idea this link would be such a profound experience for people. I’m glad it worked this way. 🙂
I’m very sorry for the fellow but the moment he begins to extrapolate, he becomes dangerous to the mental health of others.
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I have never heard of this Silber fellow but I am not sure why his life is such a mess. Why can’t he work?? I suppose this is a bit calloused of me but I truly don’t understand why people who are reasonably educated don’t work. I know he seems to be bothered by the heat. Can’t he find work in an air conditioned office?
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I just realized I don’t even remember. I’ve been reading his blog for so long that I just grew to accepting that he can’t work. I remember that it’s something sad but not what it is specifically.
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Wait — you say Arthur is a threat to mental well-being but have read his blog for years?
On another note, the prayer example was to show that science does not care what anyone believes. It only cares what the numbers say.
According to the linked article, being told your initial screening results were positive but because initial results are often incorrect we will do additional tests, and then being told the additional tests prove you do not have cancer, only raises your absolute (not relative) risk of later being dxed with breast cancer by about one percent.
So do a very, very small percentage of women who have scares later go on to develop diagnosable breast cancer because they were very suggestable? I would say that to date there is no evidence of this.
There is also of course the opposite occurence: women are told there mammograms show no suspicious activity for years and years and then one day they discover a lump — which was most likely growing for close to ten years (up until then, it was too small to register on a mammogram). It seems the confidence that one is healthy does not necessarily make it so.
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Your health doesn’t care what other people believe. It does, however, depend enormously on what you believe, think and feel. For instance, meditation will not help you bring somebody else’s blood pressure down (unless somebody else is your infant child). But it can bring your blood pressure down dramatically. And the same goes for blood sugar, toothache, extreme pain, etc. I once had a tooth in immediate need of a root canal and was climbing the walls in pain. My face was swollen, it was horrible. But there was no possibility of seeing a dentist for 36 hours. I removed the pain completely without any drugs and came to my appointment well-rested and calm.
As for Silber, if you have a psychoanalyst as strong as mine, he’s no threat to you. 🙂
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You said that ” the prayer example was to show that science does not care what anyone believes. It only cares what the numbers say.”
Apparently, you have a naive view of “science” – repeating their numbers as if they’re actually truthful and not misleading. So you go on stating that “the additional tests” after a mammogram “only raises your absolute (not relative) risk of later being dxed with breast cancer by about one percent.”
It had been known for decades that any invasive cancer treatment, from biopsies to mastectomies, significantly increases the risk of cancer (discussed and well referenced in Rolf Hefti’s ‘The Mammogram Myth’) – unsurprisingly, this new study found that the risk of developing breast cancer was especially high in women who had had a recommendation for biopsy after the initial mammogram. Of course, all the millions of women who had received false positive will have an increased rate of getting invasive treatments, such as biopsies. And therefore, a very large number of women will have an increased risk of getting cancer down the line….
But the corrupt medical establishment does what the do routinely with inconvenient evidence: they dismiss it as having inconsequential effects (like they do with this study). So if it concerns dangers they refer to absolute risks because to the unwitting public (and you) that “figure” looks tiny and inconsequential but when it concerns benefits the corrupt medical business prefers to use relative benefit statistics to amplify the alleged benefits, hoodwinking the unsuspecting public once more. Since the medical profession and commercialized medical “science” is a BIG BUSINESS they are ruled by what’s best for their bottom line, not what’s best for their customers, ie patients.
Contrary to the official narrative, there is marginal, if any, reliable evidence that mammography reduces mortality from breast cancer in a significant way but a lot of solid evidence shows the procedure does more serious harm than serious benefit (read: Peter Gotzsche’s ‘Mammography Screening: Truth, Lies and Controversy’ and Rolf Hefti’s ‘The Mammogram Myth’).
Mammography has always been about politics instead of real science.
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Thank you for the great comment, Emma. This is very enlightening.
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Aside from being very ill, Silber apparently has no employable skills: He’s tried being a concert pianist, an art critic, and political opinion writer, and apparently doesn’t do any of these well enough to be paid for his efforts.
He’s also a “left-libertarian” nut who thinks that everybody will be equal in a blissful, peaceful world if all forms of government simply cease to exist. He won’t stoop so low as to allow ads on his website, but has no qualms about telling his sob story and asking readers for donations via PayPal.
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I had no idea this fellow was so famous. I’m beginning to feel envious of him.
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Maybe you should get rid of the ads on your website and add a PayPal “Donate” button. 🙂
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That’s what my blog looked like for the first 3 years of its existence! But I was never convincing as a pitiful person.
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I remember the left-libertarian stuff. Do I remember correctly that this belief system prevented him from pursuing food stamps, Medicaid, and the like?
Arthur must be the Internet version of one of those roadside beggers who become such fixtures that they are known by the locals. I pass two of them on a bi-weekly basis: the old one-legged white guy with the sign that says he is a vet, and later on my drive, the young skinny black guy. They are almost always at their regular corners, in all types of weather. Evidently, this line of “work” pays well enough that no alternatives look better.
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“Instead of organizing these people, we attack them.”
Am i the only one who thinks that sounds horribly arrogant? I had no slightest desire to read the link before I read that part and now I have any less.
I have no desire for other people to “organize” me. I’m willing to be a partial ally for some things but I’m not going to give up my personal judgement to a mob.
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And I’ll add the author is right in criticizing the extremely infantile people who need everybody to agree with them 100 % of the time about everything and to use just exactly the right word or they’ll have a tantrum.
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I copied the best part of that post. The rest is not very worth reading. It’s very wordy and self-pitying. “I feel so guilty for being a straight white male that I don’t know if I deserve to live”, etc.
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Since you mentioned psychological causes of illness, is there anything known about the psychological causes of migraines?
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Yes, migraines are probably the most “psychological” of all illnesses. Usually, the way to go is to ask what the illness allows the sufferer to do and to avoid doing. Migraines specifically tend to be a highly demonstrative illness. It might be very helpful to determine who the audience is and remove them from that role.
I have witnessed a case of severe, very long-term migraines that were completely incapacitating and resistant to all forms of treatment go away 100% for good once the audience was removed. It looked like a miracle because the person was just cured overnight after suffering for almost 20 years.
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University wins victory over BDS efforts
Spanish government pays compensation to Ariel Universy, which is in the West Bank, after lawsuit over decision to disqualify school team from academic competition because it comes from ‘occupied territories’.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4749397,00.html
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I knew Spaniards were going to make total idiots out of themselves over this.
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But the Spanish government ultimately made the right decision on this issue.
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I wish it made the right decision before and didn’t have to spend the money it doesn’t have right now.
Few things are more ridiculous than Spain getting into the Palestinian conflict right now. It’s deeply self-defeating.
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Have you seen that? I was stupidly surprised:
Forget academic boycotts and protesting Israeli oranges in the produce aisle. The new BDS targets are Jewish charities with a special focus on those that provide services and support in ’67 Israel.
…
the BDS campaign against Jewish charities has reached a new level of ugliness with a lawsuit by CAIR’s favorite lawyer which demands that Jewish charities be stripped of non-profit status and that the charities and their donors be potentially listed “as specially designated global terrorists”.
The lawsuit targets a number of pro-Israel groups, including Friends of IDF, an organization that helps wounded Israeli soldiers who have lost arms and legs in the fight against Muslim terrorism learn to live fulfilling lives again.
https://warsclerotic.wordpress.com/2016/01/05/cairs-lawyer-claims-pro-israel-charities-are-terrorists/
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We all know what I think about the idiotic BDS campaign. Right now at the MLA there are sessions dedicated to it. Of course, when Russia invaded Ukraine, nobody in the academic world gave a crap. It’s pathetic.
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97-year-old is oldest person to make aliyah this year
Melba Landa made aliyah from Moscow after devoting her life to fighting for Soviet Jewry and for human rights in the USSR and modern Russia.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4746345,00.html
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Anti-Semitic indoctrination in Swedish schools
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/anti-semitic-indoctrination-in-swedish-schools/
AND
I think I understand why some Germans may want to hide what happened in Cologne:
Польша и Словакия оказывают еще большее сопротивление введению обязательных квот на распределение беженцев в ЕС после нападений на женщин, которые произошли в новогоднюю ночь в Кельне, пишет Немецкая волна.
…
Вице-премьер Польши Петр Глинский также использовал пример кельнских беспорядков, говоря о своих оговорках в отношении беженцев. По его словам, Варшава будет тщательно проверять тех, кого принимает. “Мы хотим помочь беженцам, которые бегут от войны, женщинам, детям и пожилым людям. Но не видим никакой необходимости, чтобы молодые люди, “герои” Кельнских беспорядков, также находились в Польше”, – отметил он.
http://gazeta.ua/ru/articles/life/_posle-napadenij-v-kelne-polsha-i-slovakiya-ne-hotyat-videt-u-sebya-bezhencev/670322
But most refugees are exactly young men, not children or families.
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Well, what a drag that it isn’t easier to shop for the kind of refugees one prefers to purchase.
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\ Well, what a drag that it isn’t easier to shop for the kind of refugees one prefers to purchase.
I don’t understand you here. Haven’t you yourself previously supported leaving the concept of the refugee in the past and, instead of that, each country choosing how many (if any) and which immigrants it’s ready to receive? The countries in question wisely want to follow Canada’s example and move closer to immigrants’ model.
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I probably didn’t explain very well what Canada’s professional emigration program is about. The goal of the program is to invite people of valuable professions who will become economically independent immediately. Women and children fleeing from the war aren’t going to become economically independent any time soon. Possibly ever. These are not Hispanic or Russian-speaking women, mind you. The likelihood of these women being successful in the job market or even wanting to be successful in the job market is nil.
No, this is not about immigration. This is about trying to purchase a toy.
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Uri’s last column about the banned book and the fear of assimilation:
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1452268361
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That’s simply horrible:
The government is promoting legislation that would increase the benefits for Israel’s ultra-Orthodox sector, including state-funded life insurance for yeshiva students and discounts on car insurance to those who don’t drive their cars on Saturdays.
Meanwhile, Likud MK Miki Zohar’s legislation aimed at closing all stores on Shabbat, and thus changing the status quo in favor of the ultra-Orthodox, has encountered a bump in the road.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4750019,00.html
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Why is it horrible?
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\ Why is it horrible?
Because I subsidize those not working, only Torah learning yeshiva students too much already. Without new ways to help them live better. Even when their wives work, they don’t earn enough to support their large families. Most ultra-Orthodox men don’t serve in IDF, many ultra-Orthodox children study only Torah at schools (f.e. math only till fifth grade, I think). They should be pushed to work and to serve in IDF, not given more money to continue live on others’ backs.
Look:
\ United Torah Judaism has demanded to increase the benefits given to 120,000 yeshiva students so they could buy life insurance. […] the ultra-Orthodox parties pushed to double the benefits given to yeshiva students in order to bring them back to what they were before former finance minister Yair Lapid led the move to cut the benefits. Now, yeshiva students will receive an additional NIS 36 million a year to pay for life insurance.
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But they will never commit genocide by assimilating while you just might. So it makes sense for you to keep paying them.
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\ But they will never commit genocide by assimilating while you just might. So it makes sense for you to keep paying them.
Only if I agree to pay to prevent “committing genocide.” 🙂 I bet, you wouldn’t pay for that happily.
Also, yours is “galut” (exile) kind of thinking. Have you read the latest column by Uri I linked to? He describes the matter there.
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This is actually not my thinking at all. The “dangers of assimilation” is an idea that’s very alien to me.
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\ The “dangers of assimilation” is an idea that’s very alien to me.
I know. But in the column Uri, who cares about the continuation of the Jewish people, defines caring about assimilation as a sign of galut / exile, which Jews in their nation state should leave behind.
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From what I understand the ultra-orthodox are essentially social parasites in Israel, first in line for any kind of government help/welfare and nowhere to be found when it comes to doing something for broader Israeli society.
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What they are doing for Israel is replenishing the number of Jews, which is the most important post-genocidal task. That’s their job – making babies – and they get paid to do it.
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