User:Ina301/Miscellaneous

=Miscellaneous=

Penguins
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-18370797

Steven Pinker Quotes
Outbreaks of violence The inverse is true as well. When law enforcement vanishes, all manner of violence breaks out: looting, settling old scores, ethnic cleansing, and petty warfare among gangs, warlords, and mafias. This was obvious in the remnants of Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, and parts of Africa in the 1990s, but can also happen in countries with a long tradition of civility. As a young teenager in proudly peaceable Canada during the romantic 1960s, I was a true believer in Bakunin's anarchism. I laughed off my parents’ argument that if the government ever laid down its arms all hell would break loose. Our competing predictions were put to the test at 8:00 a.m. on October 17, 1969, when the Montreal police went on strike. By 11:20 a.m. the first bank was robbed. By noon most downtown stores had closed because of looting. Within a few more hours, taxi drivers burned down the garage of a limousine service that had competed with them for airport customers, a rooftop sniper killed a provincial police officer, rioters broke into several hotels and restaurants, and a doctor slew a burglar in his suburban home. By the end of the day, six banks had been robbed, a hundred shops had been looted, twelve fires had been set, forty carloads of storefront glass had been broken, and three million dollars in property damage had been inflicted, before city authorities had to call in the army and, of course, the Mounties to restore order.99 This decisive empirical test left my politics in tatters (and offered a foretaste of life as a scientist).

Neuroplasticity Critics of new media sometimes use science itself to press their case, citing research that shows how “experience can change the brain.” But cognitive neuroscientists roll their eyes at such talk. Yes, every time we learn a fact or skill the wiring of the brain changes; it’s not as if the information is stored in the pancreas. But the existence of neural plasticity does not mean the brain is a blob of clay pounded into shape by experience.

Experience does not revamp the basic information-processing capacities of the brain. Speed-reading programs have long claimed to do just that, but the verdict was rendered by Woody Allen after he read “War and Peace” in one sitting: “It was about Russia.” Genuine multitasking, too, has been exposed as a myth, not just by laboratory studies but by the familiar sight of an S.U.V. undulating between lanes as the driver cuts deals on his cellphone.

Free Speech
reddit:

January 21, 2005 || [Don't Worry Your Pretty Little Head: The pseudo-feminist show trial of Larry Summers.](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_nature/2005/01/dont_worry_your_pretty_little_head.html)

October 16, 2013 || [‘Students are acting like Victorian censors’](http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/14161) November 3, 2013 || [The Slow Death of Free Speech at Harvard](https://web.archive.org/web/20131107120536/http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2013/11/the_slow_death_of_free_speech_.html)

September 16 2014 || [The Offense Industry On The Offense](http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/09/16/the-offense-industry-on-the-offense/)

February 19, 2015 || [Identity politics has created an army of vicious, narcissistic cowards](http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2015/02/identity-politics-has-created-an-army-of-vicious-narcissists/) May 12, 2015 || [Classical Mythology Too Triggering for Columbia Students](https://reason.com/blog/2015/05/12/trigger-warning-mythology) June 29, 2015 || [38 Ways College Students Enjoy ‘Left-Wing Privilege’ on Campus](http://time.com/3939933/college-students-left-wing-privilege/) August 10, 2015 || [The Hell You Say: The new battles over free speech are fierce, but who is censoring whom?](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/10/the-hell-you-say) September 14, 2015 || [Obama on liberal college students who want to be "coddled": "That’s not the way we learn"](https://www.vox.com/2015/9/14/9326965/obama-political-correctness) September 2015 || [The Coddling of the American Mind: In the name of emotional well-being, college students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don’t like. Here’s why that’s disastrous for education—and mental health](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/) September 22, 2015 || [Declining Student Resilience: A Serious Problem for Colleges](https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201509/declining-student-resilience-serious-problem-colleges) September 23, 2015 || [ Wesleyan University Students Want to ‘Boycott’ Student Newspaper by Destroying and Defunding It](https://www.thefire.org/wesleyan-university-students-want-to-boycott-student-newspaper-by-destroying-and-defunding-it/)

Kids today
>Henry Bexwyx, and Johanne his widow, who founded a school at Manchester in 1524, give as their reason for so doing that "the children of the county of Lancaster have pregnant wits, but that they have for the most part been brought up rudely and idly, and not in virtue, cunning, erudition, literature, or good manners. >Walter Gale, 1750

>The world is passing through troublous times. The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they knew everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is foolishness with them. As for the girls, they are forward, immodest and unladylike in speech, behavior and dress. >Peter the Hermit, 1274

>I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on the frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words. When I was a boy, we were taught to be discrete and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise and impatient of restraint. >Hesiod, ~800 BC

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thilo_Sarrazin

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>Data: Police don't shoot blacks disproportionately. Problem: Not race, but too many police shootings. http://nyti.ms/1VX7R0E via @UpshotNYT /sapinker/status/655389531429064704 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/upshot/police-killings-of-blacks-what-the-data-says.html?smid=tw-share

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A Belgian archaeologist who has excavated many Iron Age burials was criticized by several colleagues at a recent conference for referring to burials from this period as “warrior” graves, even though they contained spears, swords, shields, a male corpse clothed in armor, and in some instances the remains of a chariot. The critics asserted that these weapons and armor were merely status symbols and had only a symbolic function rather than a practical military one. Similarly, copper and bronze axes from the Late Neolithic and Bronze ages, formerly referred to as battle axes, are no longer classified as weapons but are considered a form of money. The 5,000-year-old Austrian glacier mummy recently reported in the news was found with one of these moneys mischievously hafted as an axe. He also had with him a dagger, a bow, and some arrows; presumably these were his small change.

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Too Asian https://web-beta.archive.org/web/20101112085449/http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/11/10/too-asian https://web-beta.archive.org/web/20101114070931/http://www2.macleans.ca:80/2010/11/10/too-asian/2/ https://web-beta.archive.org/web/20101114070936/http://www2.macleans.ca:80/2010/11/10/too-asian/3/ ==== https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/6997b6/ugirlwriteswhat_provides_a_thorough_rebuttal_to/?sort=top http://archive.is/1TCvg http://archive.is/OdZ7Z