rants – Page 22 – Treehouse Writers

At the beginning of R.F. Kuang’s novel The Poppy War (which I just started, so this isn’t a review), the main character Rin must strip naked and be patted down before taking an exam. She can’t even wear her own clothes into the exam room.

I immediately harkened back to reports that the Texas Bar and those of several other states were prohibiting those taking the bar exam from bringing their own tampons or pads with them to the exam. Since those reports came out, the Texas Bar has relented to the extent that it will allow women to bring their own products in a clear plastic bag (a la the ones you use for your liquids at the airport).

In both cases, the authorities are obsessed with preventing the test takers from cheating. I don’t know if there is a good argument for the exam in the world of Kuang’s novel, though given the amount of ugliness and corruption hinted at so far, I suspect the test is mostly a tool for keeping out the riff-raff, and might not be the best way to determine who should receive higher education.

But I have taken a bar exam – the Texas one, in fact – and can tell you that it is essentially a hazing ritual, a tool to make you put in a lot of wasted hours studying for the test, which is not the same as studying how the law works, so that you can show you are willing to do a lot of meaningless work to put “Attorney at Law” after your name.

When I read about the tampon rule, my first reaction, even before reacting to the misogyny and silliness, was “they’re giving an in-person bar exam during the pandemic? In Texas, where the pandemic is pretty much out of control right now?” Continue reading “Exams and Cheating”…

[political rant] Right Wing Media, Disinformation, and the Pandemic

by Deborah J. Ross

August 12, 2020July 29, 2020

I don’t often post political stuff. My readers may remember the series of posts, “In Troubled Times,” as I walked/crawled/screamed through my reactions to the unfolding events of the 2016 election. A more current version would be entitled, “In Perilous Times,” and has been on my mind. To get the discussion started, here are some thoughts on how the right-wing media and conspiracy theorists spread disinformation that resulted in a much worse pandemic in the US.

From The New York Times 7/28 morning report:

Why is the U.S. enduring a far more severe virus outbreak than any other rich country?

There are multiple causes, but one of them is the size and strength of right-wing media organizations that frequently broadcast falsehoods. The result is confusion among many Americans about scientific facts that are widely accepted, across the political spectrum, in other countries.

Canada, Japan and much of Europe have no equivalent to Sinclair — whose local newscasts reach about 40 percent of Americans — or Fox News. Germany and France have widely read blogs that promote conspiracy theories. “But none of them have the reach and the funding of Fox or Sinclair,” Monika Pronczuk, a Times reporter based in Europe, told me.

Fox is particularly important, because it has also influenced President Trump’s response to the virus, which has been slower and less consistent than that of many other world leaders. “Trump repeatedly failed to act to tame the spread, even though that would have helped him politically,” The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent has written. The headline on Sargent’s opinion column is: “How Fox News may be destroying Trump’s re-election hopes.”

Another factor creating confusion: The lack of an aggressive response to virus misinformation from Facebook and YouTube. Judd Legum, author of the Popular Information newsletter, has identified some of this misinformation, and the two companies have responded by removing the posts he cited. But Legum told me he had pointed out only a small fraction of the false information, and the companies had done relatively little to remove it proactively.

Twitter took a slightly more aggressive step yesterday, putting temporary limits on the account of Donald Trump Jr. after he shared the false Breitbart video.

Journalistic Ethics

by Nancy Jane Moore

August 7, 2020August 6, 2020

I was practically born in a newsroom. My mother always said that while she wasn’t the first woman copy editor at the Houston Chronicle, she was the first pregnant copy editor. When I worked there many summers later as a copy girl, there were people still there who knew me before I was born.

Which is to say, that while I was raised Episcopalian, the true religion in my childhood home was journalism. Both my parents worked on newspapers throughout their lives, eventually running several weeklies outside of Houston after they got tired of putting up with top management at the city’s dailies.

Their principles were rooted in journalism. Get the facts right. Do what it takes to get the story. And you gotta run the story even if it’s going to piss off the powerful people who might sue and who will certainly pull their advertising.

I came up with a strong sense of journalistic ethics. So it surprised the hell out of me the first time I met a reporter who said they never voted because they didn’t think journalists should take sides. Continue reading “Journalistic Ethics”…

Protection Racket

by Nancy Jane Moore

July 24, 2020July 23, 2020

Back when I ran a non-profit law firm in D.C., we used to get fundraising calls from an organization that represented itself as a charity supporting the police. I was surprised to learn that we had made donations to them in the past. Our office manager explained that contributing made the police more amenable to helping you and seeing you as friendly.

Now I didn’t think this was true. Such charities are usually scams or something very close to that and rarely even do much for police officers. But I know my office manager believed it was true and so did lots of other people. Those organizations preyed on that belief.

In the wake of the change in the national dialogue about the police that has come about with the protests over the murder of George Floyd, I’ve come up with an institution that’s doing something similar: police unions. They look more and more like the gang-run protection rackets of old. “You’ve got a nice little city here. Be a shame if something happened to it.” Continue reading “Protection Racket”…

A Breath of Frustration

by Nancy Jane Moore

July 17, 2020July 16, 2020

Awhile back I listened to Terry Gross interview James Nestor about his book, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art. From the interview, it appeared that the book was about both the long-held knowledge about breath and breathing and the way science was now confirming that those old systems had a lot of value.

I was intrigued, because I have learned something about breathing in martial arts and qigong training and have studied a little bit of yoga breathing as well. I wanted to know about more of those practices and about what science was finding. From the way Gross did the interview, I assumed the book was built on quality reporting and good science.

I downloaded a sample and while I wasn’t impressed with the writing style (which, perhaps because Nestor primarily writes for Outside magazine and similar outlets, was overly personal and casual), I decided getting the information would be worth putting up with the style. So I bought the book.

And was terribly disappointed. There wasn’t as much information as I’d hoped for about traditional breathing practices (though there is good material in the appendix) and much of the scientific research came from the kind of people who go off and research on their own because no one else gets their genius. Every so often, such people are real geniuses, but most of the time, they’re cranks or quacks. Continue reading “A Breath of Frustration”…

Let’s Make America Smart Again!

by Jeffrey A. Carver

July 4, 2020July 4, 2020

That’s my Independence Day wish for 2020. Let’s restore sanity and civility to our great but struggling nation. Let’s wear masks and beat the virus before it beats us. Let’s root out racism. Let’s treat our friends like friends, and the Earth like it’s our home. Let’s stop cozying up to dictators and destroying families at our borders. Let’s end the national nightmare and Stop Being Stupid.

I wish I could distribute a million hats emblazoned with “Make America Smart Again.” And on the back it would say, “Make America Compassionate Again.”

In no particular order, here are just a few smart, compassionate Americans I wish were still with us:

Juneteenth

by Nancy Jane Moore

June 19, 2020June 18, 2020

There is talk these days about making Juneteenth a national holiday to mark the end of slavery in this country. And while setting a holiday doesn’t end abusive policing or systemic inequality or even microagressions, the history around Juneteenth makes talking about it a useful focus for addressing the racism that white people want to pretend don’t exist.

It could be argued that the day the Emancipation Proclamation became effective — January 1, 1863 — is a more appropriate holiday, since that’s when slavery became illegal in the states that were in rebellion against the United States (though not in the slave states still in the Union, such as Maryland). Though the day of ratification of the 13th Amendment, which legally abolished slavery in the United States — December 6, 1865 — is even more appropriate, because that’s when slavery was legally abolished across the entire country.

But I think Juneteenth makes the most sense. First of all, it is a celebration started by African Americans, who, as the people most affected, should set such dates. The Black people of Galveston began holding celebrations on June 19, 1866. Unlike most holidays, which are set by those in power and often for political reasons, this one came from the people affected. That makes the day powerful. Continue reading “Juneteenth”…

A Little Bit of Hope

by Nancy Jane Moore

June 12, 2020June 12, 2020

I felt a little hope this week.

The uprising in the streets of our country (and much of the rest of the world) brought me that hope.

Or more accurately, the reaction to that uprising, which for once veered away from the usual tut-tutting about property damage and instead focused on how the police attacked peaceful protestors. The blatant racism and casual police violence that have always been a part of our society are now under serious scrutiny.

There is a call for real and systemic change in how we handle public safety, something I’ve wanted to see for many years and yet never expected to see. Sometimes, despite being a science fiction writer, I lack imagination when it comes to change in my own world. Continue reading “A Little Bit of Hope”…