Art history at the crossroads

There’s nothing like a bunch of unemployed recent college graduates to bring out the central planner in parent-aged pundits, as the Washington Post reports. Unknown

“In a recent column for Real Clear Markets, Bill Frezza of the Competitive Enterprise Institute lauded the Chinese government’s policy of cutting financing for any educational program for which 60 percent of graduates can’t find work within two years. His assumption is that, because of government education subsidies, the United States is full of liberal-arts programs that couldn’t meet that test.

“Too many aspiring young museum curators can’t find jobs?” he writes. “The pragmatic Chinese solution is to cut public subsidies used to train museum curators. The free market solution is that only the rich would be indulgent enough to buy their kids an education that left them economically dependent on Mommy and Daddy after graduation.” But, alas, the United States has no such correction mechanism, so “unemployable college graduates pile up as fast as unsold electric cars.”Bill Gross, the founder of the world’s largest bond fund, Pacific Investment Management Co., has put forth a less free- market (and less coherently argued) version of the same viewpoint. “Philosophy, sociology and liberal arts agendas will no longer suffice,” he declared. “Skill-based education is a must, as is science and math.”There are many problems with this simplistic prescription, but the most basic is that it ignores what American college students actually study. Take Frezza’s punching bag, the effete would-be museum curator. It would be only a slight exaggeration to say that no such student exists.

“According to the National Center for Education Statistics, humanities majors account for about 12 percent of recent graduates, and art history majors are so rare they’re lost in the noise. They account for less than 0.2 percent of working adults with college degrees, a number that is probably about right for recent graduates, too. Yet somehow art history has become the go-to example for people bemoaning the state of higher education. A longtime acquaintance perfectly captured the dominant Internet memes in an e-mail he sent me after my last column, which was onrising tuitions. “Many people that go to college lack the smarts and/or the tenacity to benefit in any real sense,” he wrote. “Many of these people would be much better off becoming plumbers — including financially. (No shame in that, who’re you gonna call when your pipes freeze in the middle of the night? An M.A. in Italian art?)” While government subsidies may indeed distort the choice to go to college in the first place, it’s simply not the case that students are blissfully ignoring the job market in choosing majors. Contrary to what critics imagine, most Americans in fact go to college for what they believe to be “skill-based education.” Continue reading “Art history at the crossroads”

Butler withdraws from talk at the Jewish Museum

Judith Butler, a noted literary theorist who is the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Visiting Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University, has called off a talk she was supposed to give at the Jewish Museum in New York City, amid criticism of her support for the boycott of Israel.

InsideHigherEd reports that “Butler’s talk was not to have been about her views on the Middle East, but on Franz Kafka, who died well before the State of Israel was created. A statement from the museum said: “She was chosen on the basis of her expertise on the subject matter to be discussed. While her political views were not a factor in her participation, the debates about her politics have become a distraction making it impossible to present the conversation about Kafka as intended.”

“In an email to Inside Higher Ed, Butler said: “I did decide to withdraw when it became clear to me that the uproar over my political views (actually, a serious distortion of my political views) would overtake the days ahead and the event itself. As I understand it, the Jewish Museum also felt that it could not handle the political storm, and we were in complete agreement that the event should be canceled as a result.”

“She continued: “What is most important now, in my view, is for both educational and cultural institutions such as these to recommit themselves to open debate, not to become vehicles for censorship and slander, and not to become party to forms of blacklisting. It certainly should not be the case that any of us are forced to give up speaking in public on scholarly topics that have no bearing on the political issues that are so controversial. It constitutes discrimination against a person on the basis of political viewpoint, implying that the speaker ought not to be allowed to speak on any topic given the political viewpoint in question. It is one thing to disagree, say, with my political viewpoint and to give reasons why one disagrees, even to call for an open debate on that disagreement, and to ask the Jewish Museum to exercise its authority and commit its resources to such an open debate. It is quite another to say that anyone with my political viewpoint (itself badly distorted in this case) should not be able to speak at a Jewish cultural organization…. Continue reading “Butler withdraws from talk at the Jewish Museum”

California’s beer drought

Along with California’s water supplies and public health, the ongoing drought in the state may have yet another victim to claim: beer.

As ThinkProgress reports, “Lagunitas Brewing Company — one of California’s biggest craft breweries — told NPR last week that the drought is threatening the Russian River,

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where they get the water for their beer. Such sources play a key role in the brewing process — as NPR notes, producers like Coors and Cold Spring Brewing Co. tout their use of water from the Rockies and a Minnesota natural spring, respectively. But if the drought forces Lagunitas to switch from the river to groundwater for its supplies, the heavy minerals in the latter won’t go well with the beer.

“It would be like brewing with Alka-Seltzer,” Jeremy Marshall, Lagunitas’ head brewer, told NPR.

“In some [of the region’s wells] there are taste and odor issues,” added Jay Jasperse, chief engineer with the Sonoma County Water Agency. “You have high nitrate concentrations in places, from agricultural industries, and iron and manganese.”

“Lagunitas does have options: they could switch to another facility in Chicago, and they’re experimenting with a reverse osmosis system to purify the groundwater. But many other breweries also operate off the Russian River, and don’t have the scale and resources to pursue those alternatives.

“During recent tours of California, President Obama explicitly linked the drought to climate change: higher temperatures generally mean faster evaporation and drier conditions in dry areas. Rainfall shifts to longer dry spells broken by heavier deluges — so when precipitation does come, there’s less time for it to add to snowpack or soak into the ground. That means reduced water supplies for reservoirs like Lake Mendocino, which feeds the Russian River. California officials are worried the lake could come close to disappearing in the summer months if the drought continues.

“Beyond water, global warming and the resulting climate change bring shifts in rainfall, stronger storms, droughts, heat waves, and other forms of extreme weather that reduce yields of barely and hops. Heavy rains in Australia and drought in England have damaged barely crops in recent years, and scientists worry the damage could spread to New Zealand as well. A 2009 study suggested the quality of Saaz hops from the Czech Republic has been falling since 1954 due to warmer temperatures. And shifting seasonal patterns started hitting hops crops throughout Europe as early as the 1990s. Continue reading “California’s beer drought”

Appropriation versus fair use

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To many photographers, a federal appeals court ruling last spring that permitted Richard Prince to use someone else’s photographs in his art was akin to slapping a “Steal This” label on their work.

As the New York times reports, “The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reasoned that as long as Mr. Prince’s work transformed the images into original art, he was not violating anyone’s copyright.

But photographers are pushing back against that interpretation. Several membership and trade organizations have banded together recently to press their cause in Congress and the courts.

“More than half a dozen groups, including the National Press Photographers Association, Professional Photographers of America and the Picture Archive Council of America, have joined together to submit a friend of the court brief to support the photographer Patrick Cariou, after part of his case against Mr. Prince was sent back to a judge for reconsideration. That informal coalition is considering hiring a Washington lobbyist, said Victor Perlman, general counsel for the American Society of Media Photographers, and, last month, several of the groups sent representatives to meet with legislators, including members of a House of Representativessubcommittee.

“One photographer has also decided to pursue a similar court fight, despite last spring’s ruling. In December, Lois Greenfield, a dance photographer, filed a lawsuit in federal courtin Manhattan, arguing that paintings of dancers a Texas artist made violated her copyright. Continue reading “Appropriation versus fair use”

Student privacy and educational software

A leading California lawmaker plans to introduce state legislation on Thursday that would shore up privacy and security protections for the personal information of students in elementary through high school, a move that could

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alter business practices across the nearly $8 billion education technology software industry, the New York Times reports.

“The bill would prohibit education-related websites, online services and mobile apps for kindergartners through 12th graders from compiling, using or sharing the personal information of those students in California for any reason other than what the school intended or for product maintenance.

“The bill would also prohibit the operators of those services from using or disclosing the information of students in the state for commercial purposes like marketing. It would oblige the firms to encrypt students’ data in transit and at rest, and it would require them to delete a student’s record when it is no longer needed for the purpose the school intended.

“We don’t want to limit the legitimate use of students’ data by schools or teachers,” Senator Darrell Steinberg, a Democrat who is the sponsor of the bill and the president pro tempore of the California Senate, said in a phone interview. “We just think the public policy of California should be that the information you gather from students should be used for their educational benefit and for nothing else.”

“Lawmakers like Mr. Steinberg are part of a growing cohort of children’s advocates who say they believe that regulation has failed to keep pace with the rapid adoption of education software and services by schools across the country.

“A federal law, called the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, limits the disclosure of students’ educational records by schools that receive federal funding. But some student advocates contend that an exception in the law, allowing the outsourcing of public school functions to private companies, may reveal personal information, hypothetically making children vulnerable to predatory practices. Continue reading “Student privacy and educational software”

Made in LA

Los Angeles is brimming with hidden treasures and at the Hammer Museum’s second biennial show, “Made in L.A. 2014,” some of the city’s best-kept art secrets will be revealed, as reported in the LA Times

“Consider the selections from the Los Angeles Museum of Art — not to be confused with Wilshire Boulevard’s Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

“Tucked down an alleyway, wedged

against the steel siding of an Eagle Rock garage, the LAMOA is a tiny, 9

la-la-et-made-in-la-2014-02-jpg-20140218-by-12-foot open-air wooden hut built by the artist Alice Könitz.

“Artworks from LAMOA’s permanent collection of local and international artists, including some of Könitz’s own sculptural installations, will be on display at the Hammer’s ambitious “Made in L.A. 2014.”

“The exhibition, which opens June 15, features emerging and under-recognized artists from the L.A. area. On Wednesday, the museum announced the lineup of 35 artists and collectives. Among them are emerging artists Marina Pinsky and Devin Kenny; AM radio station KCHUNG, which is also the Hammer’s public engagement artist-in-residence; and more widely known artists who include Gabriel Kuri, Wu Tsang and Judy Fiskin.

“The inaugural “Made in L.A.” show, a 2012 collaboration between the Hammer and the art space LAXART, took place in three locations: the Hammer, LAXART and the Department of Cultural Affairs’ Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery at Barnsdall Park. It featured 60 artists.  Continue reading “Made in LA”

The arts boost California’s economy

The results of the 2013 Otis Report on the Creative Economy were unveiled today at an event produced by Otis

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College of Art and Design, held at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica, CA.Speakers included California State Senator Ted Lieu (Chair of the Joint Committee of the Arts, and Chair of the Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee); Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation’s Chief Economist Robert Kleinhenz; Director, Western Region of the Actors Fund Keith McNutt; Otis President Samuel Hoi, California Arts Council Director Craig Watson; and Executive Director of Arts for L.A. Danielle Brazell.

The UCIRA reports that “Otis has commissioned this annual report from the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation since 2007, underscoring its commitment to measuring, benchmarking, and assessing trends of the creative economy. The Otis Report was expanded this year to include data for the entire state.

“Significant findings in the 2013 Otis Report on the Creative Economy include:
-In the Los Angeles region, the creative sectors supported 1 in 7 wage and salary jobs, with a net economic output contribution of 10.4% of the region’s gross total.
-The Los Angeles regional creative industries sustained 726,300 workers who earned labor income of $50.6 billion.
-California’s creative economy contributed 7.8% of the gross state product in 2012. Across the state, with a total of 1.4 million workers, the creative industries accounted for directly or indirectly 9.7% of all wage and salary employment, or roughly 1 in 10 jobs.
-Entertainment, fashion, and furniture and the decorative arts were the largest industries in California’s creative economy but nearly 6 of 10 (56%) creative occupations are found outside of the creative industries.
-The Los Angeles region is undisputedly the creative nexus of the state, with over 44% of California’s workers engaged in creative occupations.
-By 2017, creative economy employment will be up by 3.1% or 12,600 jobs from 2012 levels. Creative industry employment in the Los Angeles-Orange County region will total 416,500 wage and salary jobs by 2017.

“The Otis Report has firmly established that the ‘creative economy’ is a powerful force, both in Southern California and in the state,” said Otis President Samuel Hoi. “Signals abound that creativity and innovation are pivotal to the economy and general well-being of people and communities. Artistic services and intellectual capital are inarguably essential to the 21st century economy, which is dynamic, knowledge-based, and increasingly global.”

“Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation’s Chief Economist Robert Kleinhenz stated, “The health of the state economy depends on continued progress in the U.S. economy and among its major trading partners. Improvements in the consumer sector will be front and center in both California and the nation, as households respond to declining unemployment, increases in income, stronger real estate markets, and stock market gains.”An addendum to this year’s Otis Report is “L.A. Creates,” a special report by Director, Western Region of the Actors Fund Keith McNutt, detailing the way in which deliberate, collaborative, and regional efforts can support and develop the region’s creative industries.Lead sponsors for this year’s event are the California Arts Council and Mattel. Other support came from the James Irvine Foundation, Nike, Sony Pictures, City National Bank, The Boeing Company, Ovation, and the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.On Wednesday, February 12th in Sacramento, CA, the 2013 Otis Report on the Creative Economy will be presented at an informational hearing of the Joint Committee on the Arts. Senator Ted Lieu will convene the hearing in the state’s capitol to examine the role the creative sector plays in the state’s economy. The hearing starts at 10AM and is open to the public.”

 

More at: http://www.ucira.ucsb.edu/creativity-is-serious-business-in-the-state-of-california/

Injuries rise for Olympic women

At the Sochi Olympics, competitors were banned from wearing “Sarah” stickers honoring one of the most famous advocates for gender equity in extreme winter sports. Sarah Burke died of head injuries in 2012 while training for events like The Half Pipe competition, held last night at Sochi.

In a related story about the risks of these new extreme competitions,  the New York Times reports that “Sarka Pancochova, a Czech snowboarder, led the slopestyle event after the first run. On her second trip down the course of obstacles and jumps, she flew through the air, performed a high-arcing, spinning trick and smacked her head upon landing. Her limp body spun like a propeller into the gully between jumps and slid to a stop.images-1

“Pancochova was soon on her feet, and the uneasy crowd cheered. Her helmet was cracked nearly in half, back to front.

“She was one of the lucky ones, seemingly O.K., but her crash last week was indicative of a bigger issue: a messy collage of violent wipeouts at these Olympics. Most of the accidents have occurred at the Rosa Khutor Extreme Park, the site of the snowboarding and freestyle skiing events like halfpipe, slopestyle and moguls.

“And most of the injuries have been sustained by women.

“Through Monday night, a review of the events at the Extreme Park counted at least 22 accidents that forced athletes out of the competition or, if on their final run, required medical attention. Of those, 16 involved women. The proportion of injuries to women is greater than it appears given that the men’s fields are generally larger.

“The question, a difficult one, is why.

The Winter Games have always had dangerous events. But the Extreme Park, as the name suggests, is built on the ageless allure of danger. All of the events there have been added to the Olympic docket since 1992, each a tantalizing cocktail of grace and peril. Continue reading “Injuries rise for Olympic women”

Anteaters pursue Obama

Five years ago, UC Merced students successfully persuaded First Lady Michelle Obama to speak at their commencement ceremony that spring. imagesThey had bombarded her with hundreds of valentines and pulled every possible political string between Central California and Washington. To their delight and surprise, she accepted and addressed what was the new school’s first graduating class.

Now, UC Irvine is hoping similar tactics will work with her husband, reports the Los Angeles Times.

“The Orange County campus has asked President Obama to deliver the school’s commencement address on June 14, possibly at Angel Stadium in Anaheim. An anticipated 10,000 invitation postcards from students, alumni and staff are scheduled to be delivered to the White House soon.

“Plans are in the works to also send a special video from the campus basketball team, aiming at the president’s love of watching and playing hoops.

“UC Irvine spokeswoman Janet Wilson said a presidential visit would be appropriate because then-President Johnson spoke at the dedication ceremony for the campus on June 20, 1964. “We’d like to kick off our 50th anniversary celebration with another visit from the president of the United States,” she said.UC Irvine officials understand that there is a lot of competition among universities, but the school is “very hopeful” to receive a positive response in April, Wilson said. Last spring, Obama delivered three graduation speeches: at Morehouse College in Georgia, Ohio State University and the U.S. Naval Academy.”

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-uc-obama-20140218,0,7621620.story#ixzz2tjxPexxh

The case for game addiction

First it was Doodle Jump. Then Dots. And now — will it never end? — Flappy Bird.

So many of the games that we download on our smartphones are a waste of time, but we can’t seem to stop playing them. My current high score on the late, lamented Flappy Bird is three. After weeks of tap-tap-tapping to keep that stupid little bird flying.

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Three.Why do we keep falling for these things?

The answer to that question just might be found in, of all places, a medical laboratory at the University of California, San Francisco. Researchers there are trying to figure out what makes games addictive — and how we might use video games to make our minds stronger, faster and healthier.

Using neuroimaging techniques, researchers are peering into gamers’ heads, hoping that the data they collect will help them make video games that change as you play, getting easier or harder, depending on your performance. The idea is to keep people at the addiction point. You know, that infuriating flap-flap-flap zone.

From there, they say, the possibilities seem limitless. One day, we might develop games to treat depression or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Or games that rewire our brains to improve memory and cognitive function. The list could go on and on. Continue reading “The case for game addiction”

High-tech baby boom

More test-tube babies were born in the United States in 2012 than ever

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before, and they constituted a higher percentage of total births than at any time since the technology was introduced in the 1980s, according to a report released on Monday, reports Reuters.

“The annual report was from the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART), an organization of medical professionals.

“SART’s 379 member clinics, which represent more than 90 percent of the infertility clinics in the country, reported that in 2012 they performed 165,172 procedures involving in vitro fertilization (IVF), in which an egg from the mother-to-be or a donor is fertilized in a lab dish. They resulted in the birth of 61,740 babies.

“That was about 2,000 more IVF babies than in 2011. With about 3.9 million babies born in the United States in 2012, the IVF newborns accounted for just over 1.5 percent of the total, more than ever before.

“The growing percentage reflects, in part, the increasing average age at which women give birth for the first time, since fertility problems become more common as people age. The average age of first-time mothers is now about 26 years; it was 21.4 years in 1970.

“Although the rising number of test-tube babies suggests that the technology has become mainstream, critics of IVF point out that the numbers, particularly the success rates, mask wide disparities. Continue reading “High-tech baby boom”

The internship treadmill

Like other 20-somethings seeking a career foothold, Andrew Lang, a graduate of Penn State, took an internship at an upstart Beverly Hills production company at age 29 as a way of breaking into movie production. It didn’t pay, but he hoped the exposure would open doors.

“When that internship proved to be a dead end, Mr. Lang went to work at a

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 second production company, again as an unpaid intern, reports the New York Times “When that went nowhere, he left for another, doing whatever was asked, like delivering bottles of wine to 27 offices before Christmas. But that company, too, could not afford to hire him, even part time.

“A year later, Mr. Lang is on his fourth internship, this time for a company that produces reality TV shows. While this internship at least pays him (he makes $10 an hour, with few perks), Mr. Lang feels no closer to a real job and worries about being an intern forever. “No one hires interns,” said Mr. Lang, who sees himself as part of a “revolving class of people” who can’t break free of the intern cycle. “Is this any way to live?”

“The intern glass ceiling isn’t limited to Hollywood. Tenneh Ogbemudia, 23, who aspires to be a record executive, has had four internships at various New York media companies, including Source magazine and Universal Music Group.

“In any given month, I’d say I apply to at least 300 full-time jobs,” she said, noting these attempts were to no avail. “On the other hand, I can apply to one or two internship positions a month and get a call back from both.”Call them members of the permanent intern underclass: educated members of the millennial generation who are locked out of the traditional career ladder and are having to settle for two, three and sometimes more internships after graduating college, all with no end in sight. Like an army of worker ants, they are a subculture with a distinct identity, banding together in Occupy Wall Street-inspired groups and, lately, creating their own blogs, YouTube channels, networking groups and even a magazine that captures life inside the so-called Intern Nation. It is a young, rudderless community that is still trying to define itself. “I’m just wondering at what point how many internships is too many,” said Lea, who received a master’s degree from Parsons, the New School for Design two years ago and aspires to work as a magazine art director. (She was allowed to use only her first name to avoid jeopardizing a current job application.) So far, her résumé has been limited to three internships — planning events for teenagers at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, compiling news clippings for a public relations agency in New York, and being the “fetch-the-coffee girl” at an art gallery.While feeling trapped inside what she calls a “never-ending intern life,” Lea satisfies her creative impulses by editing a food and drinks column at a lifestyle blog, selling coral fan necklaces on Etsy, and starting a charity to teach children about “responsible” street art. She wonders if she should surrender to a fourth internship or settle for an office job outside her chosen field. Continue reading “The internship treadmill”

The end of snow days

“At 9 a.m. on Thursday the snow was piling high outside and officials had long since made the call to shutter the local schools.images-1

The New York Times reports: “But Alexa H. Hirschberg, 17, was not curled up in bed, watching videos on her Netflix account or making plans on Facebook for sledding with her boyfriend. She was showered and dressed, seated before a laptop in her family’s kitchen searching for the day’s assignments her French teacher had left online. School was out, but she was in virtual class.

“As classrooms become more electronically connected, public schools around the country are exploring whether they can use virtual learning as a practical solution to unpredictable weather, effectively transforming the traditional snow day into a day of instruction.

“About a third of school districts in the United States already have “significant one-to-one initiatives,” where students and teachers are given laptops and can work away from school on some assignments, said Ann Flynn, the director of education technology at the National School Boards Association. A byproduct “could be their application in times of health crises or in weather emergencies,” Ms. Flynn said. Continue reading “The end of snow days”

White history month

Invariably, around February of each year, coinciding with Black History Month, you’ll hear people asking, “Why isn’t there a White history month?”

Do these people mean we should condense all the American history centering around White people to just one month and devote the other 11 to people of color?

Of course not. It’s readily accepted that White history is taught, year-round, to the exclusion of minority histories. But the literal history of Whiteness — how and when and why what it means to be White was formulated — is always neglected. The construction of the White identity is a brilliant piece of social engineering. Its origins and heritage should be examined in order to add a critical layer of complexity to a national conversation sorely lacking in nuance. I’m guessing that’s not what they mean, either. In conversations about race, I’ve frequently tried and failed to express the idea that Whiteness is a social construct. So, here, in plain fact, is what I mean:

The very notion of Whiteness is relatively recent in our human history, linked to the rise of European colonialism and the Atlantic slave trade in the 17th century as a way to distinguish the master from the slave. From its inception, “White” was not simply a separate race, but the superior race. “White people,” in opposition to non-whites or “colored” people, have constituted a meaningful social category for only a few hundred years, and the conception of who is included in that category has changed repeatedly. Continue reading “White history month”

Facebook moves beyond female and male

You don’t have to be strictly a man or a woman on Facebook anymore.images

CNN today reports that “In a nod to the “it’s complicated” sexual identities of many of its users, the social network on Thursday added a third “custom” gender option for people’s profiles. In addition to Male or Female, Facebook now lets U.S. users choose among some 50 additional options such as “transgender,” “cisgender,” “gender fluid,” “intersex” and “neither.”

“Users also now have the ability to choose the pronoun they’d like to be referred to publicly: he/his, she/her, or the gender-neutral they/their. “When you come to Facebook to connect with the people, causes, and organizations you care about, we want you to feel comfortable being your true, authentic self,” Facebook said in a post on its Diversity page.

“An important part of this is the expression of gender, especially when it extends beyond the definitions of just ‘male’ or ‘female,’ ” the post continued. “So today, we’re proud to offer a new custom gender option to help you better express your own identity on Facebook.” Facebook said it worked with a group of leading lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocacy organizations to come up with the new gender categories.”Facebook users from across the country have been asking for the ability to reflect their gender accurately, and today Facebook showed they have been listening,” said Allison Palmer, a former GLAAD vice president, who worked on the project with Facebook. Continue reading “Facebook moves beyond female and male”

Non-binary gender roles

“I wouldn’t mind having a mustache to twirl,” says S.E. Smith, who likes to be referred to with the pronoun “ou” instead of she or he and her or him – and prefers seeing ou name in lowercase.

As SF Gate reports, “Smith was female-assigned at birth but doesn’t like to be viewed as a woman. But “male” doesn’t fit either. Smith identifies as “genderqueer,” a word whose definition lacks consensus, but is broadly described as someone who “does not subscribe to conventional gender distinctions but identifies with neither, both or a combination of male and female genders.”

“What does genderqueer look like? To Smith, who is 29 and divides time between Fort Bragg and Berkeley, expressing ou gender can mean slicking ou hair back, binding ou chest and sliding into a suit. And it can mean “dressing up in floofy things and heels,” as ou wrote for the website xoJane, where ou works as its social justice editor.

“In that article, Smith wrote that ou “felt a growing sense of wrongness” starting in elementary school, when sent out to play with girls. “I wanted to be with the boys; I wanted to be a boy – but not exactly.” Smith’s eureka moment struck in college when ou got in with a crowd of transgender people. “It’s OK not to be a girl or a boy, there’s a word for that. You’re genderqueer,” said a friend. Continue reading “Non-binary gender roles”

Life coaches for the wealthy

IN 2005, Ali Riaz, then president of a search technology company that would eventually be sold to Microsoft, was having dinner with one of his board members when he admitted that he was struggling with managing everything that running a fast-growing, cutting-edge company entailed, as reported in the New York Times.images-1

“I said, ‘I feel like there must be a better way to deal with the inflow of pressure,’ ” Mr. Riaz said. “Kids getting bigger, parents getting older, business is growing — just using hard work and natural-born talents was getting hard. I wondered if there were techniques I could use.” The board member suggested he get a coach and offered to make an introduction. Mr. Riaz, a smart, driven entrepreneur, thought this was a horrible idea.

“I was a little like, I don’t need a psychologist, buddy,” he said. “We Type A entrepreneurs don’t talk about this kind of stuff. We solve problems and push ahead.” Mr. Riaz quickly saw that she had some insight into how entrepreneurs think and how to help them. “I realized at the end of our first conversation that in order to work with her meant work,” he said. “In my 25-hour day of work, I realized I didn’t have time to work with her.” A few months later, he changed his mind.

Continue reading “Life coaches for the wealthy”

Understanding gender diversity

There are two core concepts that help in understanding transgender people and their experiences. A recent article in The Guardian suggests some guidelines for writing about transgender people.

“First, gender and sex are distinct in this context: sex = biology, ie sex assigned at birth; gender = one’s innate sense of self. Thus, transgender (where the Latin trans means “on the other side of”) signifies someone whose gender differs from their assigned sex.

“Second, while transgender refers in the broadest sense to someone whose sex and gender do not match, cisgender (from the Latin “on this side of”, ie the antonym of trans) refers to those whose sex and gender do match. In other words, anyone not trans is cis.

“If that sounds like a strange or even offensive concept, you are probably cis. We hope it doesn’t make you feel embarrassed or ashamed. If so, consider yourself endowed with a new level of empathy for your trans brothers and sisters. But rest assured it’s only meant as a helpful linguistic signpost for understanding gender diversity.

“With that in mind, here are some proposed guidelines. Transgender should be used as an adjective, shortened to trans after first use: transgender person, trans person. Never “transgendered person” or “a transgender”. (In the case of trans*, the asterisk represents a wildcard, ie any gender minority. Stick to transgender or trans in formal contexts.) Continue reading “Understanding gender diversity”

The stresses of being rich

Last week, billionaire investor Tom Perkins of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers sent a letter to the editor of The Wall Street Journal likening criticism of the 1 percent to Nazi attacks on the Jews. imgresAs Mother Jones puts it:

“He’s not an outlier. As Paul Krugman pointed out on Sunday, the rich have been lamenting the “demonizing” and “vilifying” of the 1 percent for years. “I…suspect that today’s Masters of the Universe are insecure about the nature of their success,” Krugman wrote. But the wealthy are not just afraid of losing their money to an angry middle class. Class warfare also makes the rich uncomfortable because they worry the non-rich are judging their character and personality by how much money they have, according to therapists who counsel the rich.

“I think that with Occupy Wall Street there was a sense of the heat getting turned up and a feeling of vilification and potential danger,” Jamie Traeger-Muney, a psychologist who counsels people who earn tens of millions of dollars a year, told Politico on Thursday. “There is a worry among our clients that they are being judged and people are making assumptions about who they are based on their wealth.”

“In 2012, Mother Jones reported on how banks, including Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley, are increasingly hiring psychotherapists like Traeger-Muney to help their extremely wealthy clients deal with the complications that come with being extremely wealthy.Here’s a bit more of what wealth therapists can tell us about how the rich may be feeling right now:

‘Although wealth counseling has existed for years, the 2008 financial crisis really sent the aristocracy sprinting for the therapist’s chair. The 2010 Capgemini/Merrill Lynch World Wealth Report, a survey that takes the pulse of zillionaires around the world, found that after the crisis, spooked clients were demanding “specialized advice.” Financial advisers must “truly understand the emotional aspects of client behavior,” the report warned… Continue reading “The stresses of being rich”

Obamacare HIV problems

Hundreds of people with HIV/AIDS in Louisiana trying to obtain coverage under President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform are in danger of being thrown out of the insurance plan they selected in a dispute over federal subsidies and the interpretation of federal rules about preventing Obamacare fraud, Reuters reports

“Some healthcare advocates see discrimination in the move, but Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana says it is not trying to keep people with HIV/AIDS from enrolling in one of its policies under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

“The state’s largest carrier is rejecting checks from a federal program designed to help these patients pay for AIDS drugs and insurance premiums, and has begun notifying customers that their enrollment in its Obamacare plans will be discontinued.

“The carrier says it no longer will accept third-party payments, such as those under the 1990 Ryan White Act, which many people with HIV/AIDS use to pay their premiums.

“In no event will coverage be provided to any subscribers, as of March 1, 2014, unless the premiums are paid by the subscriber (or a relative) unless otherwise required by law,” Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana spokesman John Maginnis told Reuters. The dispute goes back to a series of statements from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the lead Obamacare agency. In September, CMS informed insurers that Ryan White funds “may be used to cover the cost of private health insurance premiums, deductibles, and co-payments” for Obamacare plans. In November, however, it warned “hospitals, other healthcare providers, and other commercial entities” that it has “significant concerns” about their supporting premium payments and helping Obamacare consumers pay deductibles and other costs, citing the risk of fraud. The insurers told healthcare advocates that the November guidance requires them to reject payments from the Ryan White program in order to combat fraud, said Robert Greenwald, managing director of the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School, a position Louisiana Blue still maintains. Continue reading “Obamacare HIV problems”