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A Brief, Checkered History of Prom in America

Mother Jones

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Do you remember how you were asked to your high school prom? (Or how you asked?) Maybe it was some cheesy romantic gesture. Or maybe it was a very informal conversation that took place near your locker between classes. Either way, it probably wasn’t documented and put online to become a viral hit. America’s prom tradition, instead of fizzling over the years, has only grown more sacred with time. From April to June, prom season reigns in high schools nationwide as juniors and seniors pair up, beautify, and ask older siblings to snag them some bottom-shelf booze to pass around at the after-party. But before party buses, $400 dresses, and hotel ballrooms were a thing, prom was just an annual dance that took place in the school gym under the watchful eye of teacher chaperones. With the season upon us, we decided to take a look back at the history of this peculiar institution.

1920s: The “democratic debutante ball” makes its high school debut. In theory, any student can attend a “promenade”—but teens of color are excluded thanks to Jim Crow and unequal access to education.

1930s: With the Depression in full swing, some Chicago principals cancel prom to ensure poor students aren’t “psychologically wounded.”

1950s: During the postwar boom, one advice book offers a warning: “Girls who try to usurp the right of boys to choose their own dates will ruin a good dating career.”

1960s: Despite the repeal of Jim Crow, white-only proms persist in the South.

1969: Jessica McClintock takes over dressmaker Gunne Sax and becomes America’s prom-dress queen, draping two decades of high school girls in “leg o’ mutton” styles—marked by puffy sleeves and corset bodices.

Sissy Spacek will forever be remembered as the telekinetic teen outcast in the movie Carrie, who gets drenched in pig’s blood at prom. MGM/Red Bank Films

1974: In Stephen King’s Carrie, a telekinetic outcast terrorizes her classmates at the prom. Sissy Spacek stars in the 1976 film.

1975: First daughter Susan Ford hosts prom at the White House. “I was told that we had to choose a band that didn’t have any kind of drug charge,” one organizer recalled later. “It was pretty hard.”

Susan Ford’s White House prom. Joseph H. Bailey/NGS/White House Historical Association

1979: Police in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, show up to protect the first openly gay couple in prom history. “Many students came over and congratulated us,” one of the boys said, despite threats to “tar and chicken feather” the pair.

1980: A Rhode Island senior sues his school after his principal rejects his request to bring a male prom date. A federal judge sides with the boy.

1980s: Hollywood goes gaga for prom flicks, with Valley Girl (1983), Footloose (1984), Back to the Future (1985), and Pretty in Pink (1986).

Jon Cryer and Molly Ringwald in 1986’s Pretty In Pink (left). Nicholas Cage and Deborah Foreman in 1983’s Valley Girl (right). Paramount Pictures, Valley 9000/Atlantic Releasing

1994: A biracial student in Wedowee, Alabama, sues her principal and school board after they threatened to cancel prom to keep interracial couples from attending.

1997: Actor Morgan Freeman offers to cover the cost of a prom in Charleston, Mississippi, so long as all races can attend. No such luck. The city’s proms remain segregated for 11 more years.

2009: Students at Fairfax High in Los Angeles pass over eight girls to select a gay senior boy as prom queen. “Tears were almost falling down my face,” a jubilant Sergio Garcia tells ABC News.

Amy Poehler, as the obsessive mother of popular girl Regina George (Rachel McAdams) in the 2004 hit Mean Girls, snaps a shot of her daughter. Paramount

2013: A group of girls from Georgia’s Wilcox County High holds an all-inclusive prom, eschewing the segregated affairs. The school makes it official in 2014. “The adults should have done this many, many moons ago,” notes the mother of one of the girls.

2016: #promposal is the hot Instagram meme: One student gets a cop to pull a girl over and hand her a “ticket”—his prom invite. Another takes his girlfriend to a gun range, with “yes” and “no” targets set to go.

I’ve got good aim

Others are more creative in design:

Thank you for the most legendary promposal in the 607â&#157;¤ï¸&#143;

A photo posted by Shayna Will (@shayna_will) on May 11, 2016 at 4:50pm PDT

I guess being pulled over isn’t always a bad thing

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A Brief, Checkered History of Prom in America

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Here’s Why the Airport Security Line is a Nightmare

Mother Jones

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On an uncharacteristically chilly Saturday earlier this month, travelers found themselves standing in line for more than two hours to get through security Chicago’s O’Hare airport. A staggering 450 American Airlines travelers missed their flights. Dozens spent the night in the airport, and the incident brought national attention to increasingly long wait times.

Last Wednesday, called to Congress to account for the longer security lines, Transportation Security Administration Administrator Peter V. Neffenger told the House Homeland Security Committee that record travel, understaffed checkpoints, and some policy changes aiming to reduce risk of terrorist attacks means that the problem will continue into the summer. House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) told the committee that TSA is in a “crisis.”

So what is going on with TSA? Well, a lot.

For starters: Perhaps you’ve heard that TSA is short staffed in part due to security coverage at presidential campaign events. Actually, TSA has been staffing presidential campaigns since 2004. The agency insists that the additional work does not impact the staffing at airports, because the officers working these events would have been off-duty otherwise. And it doesn’t effect the TSA budget, because the United States Secret Service pays for the screeners’ time at campaign events. (The airport nearest to a campaign event provides this support.)

The staffing provided for Donald Trump’s events, though, have far exceeded that of any other candidate. As of March, 770 TSA officers had been provided to Trump events, 544 went to Sanders events, and 207 worked Clinton events. When asked how the agency determines the appropriate number of officials needed for any event, a TSA spokesman said, “We provide the number we feel is appropriate.”

So what about the agencies budget woes?

According to a TSA spokesman, money plays a big factor in the TSA’s struggle to shorten wait times and increase efficiency. From fiscal year 2012 to 2013, the agency’s budget fell from $7.8 billion to $7.2 billion.

But, from 2013 to late 2014, now-former TSA head of security Kelly Hoggan received under-the-radar bonuses that came to more than $90,000. This week, Hoggan was relieved of his duties in part, the agency said, because of these bonuses.

In an interview with The Washington Post, TSA Administrator Peter V. Neffenger called the bonuses that supplemented Hoggan’s $181,500 salary “completely unjustifiable.” (Hoggan also recently faced accusations of retribution toward employees who spoke out about mismanagement.)

Additionally, a TSA spokesman says the agency’s staffing budget has declined annually from 2012 to 2015, and the agency is at its lowest staffing level in five years.

TSA attributes the long wait lines partly to budget cuts and tightened security procedures that have led to a shortage of screeners. Jeh Johnson, Department of Homeland Security secretary, told NPR that despite the challenges, Congress recently held off on cutting another 1,600 positions, and TSA is expediting the addition of 800 new positions. They’re expected to be in place next month. Johnson said TSA is converting more part-time workers to full time and bringing in more drug-sniffing dogs.

Johnson also added that carry-on luggage is a major contributor to wait times, and he encouraged passengers to check their bags—and to arrive at the airport with plenty of time to spare.

Democratic Senators Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut wrote a letter to a dozen major airlines calling on them to aid in reducing wait times by waiving checked baggage fees.

“Without charges for checking their bags, passengers will be far less likely to carry them on, which snarls screening checkpoints and slows the inspection process,” they wrote.

Markey and Blumenthal echoed Johnson’s call for more passengers to sign up for TSA’s pre-check program, which has an average wait time of five minutes or less.

Despite the pressure to reduce wait times, Johnson insisted that TSA will not “shortcut passengers’ safety.” (His caution is understandable, given that in April, TSA agents discovered a record number of guns and other weapons in passengers’ carry-on luggage.)

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Here’s Why the Airport Security Line is a Nightmare

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Friday Cat Blogging – 27 May 2016

Mother Jones

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I was going to link to Dave Roberts’ post about Donald Trump’s big energy speech yesterday, but then I couldn’t think of anything to say about it. Before I knew it, catblogging time had arrived. So you’re on your own. Click the link and draw your own conclusions.

Or just skip it and instead admire Hilbert and Hopper peering out from under the rocking chair. For the record, they write all their own speeches.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 27 May 2016

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5 Times Rubio Slammed Trump—Before Promising to Vote for Him

Mother Jones

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Marco Rubio will vote for Donald Trump this November. He’s not yet ready to say the words “I will vote for Donald Trump,” but based on this tweet, a quick process of elimination makes his intentions clear.

The senator from Florida has come a long way since this past winter, when he attacked Trump with increasing savagery. In the final weeks of his presidential campaign, Rubio swung hard at the Republican front-runner in an attempt to win his home state. He failed, and dropped out the night he lost the Florida primary, but not before calling Trump a whole lot of names.

Here’s a sampling of the epithets and insults Rubio slung just a few short months ago at the man he is now supporting for president:

February 26: Rubio called Trump a “con artist who is telling people one thing but has spent 40 years sticking it to working Americans and now claims to be their champion.”

February 26: Rubio questioned Trump’s most basic qualifications, including his ability to spell words. “How does this guy—not one tweet, but three tweets—misspell words so badly?” he asked. “And I only come to two conclusions. No. 1, that’s how they spell those words at the Wharton School of Business, where he went, and No. 2, just like Trump Tower, he must have hired a foreign worker to do his own tweets.” Zing!

February 27: He said Trump is a “a lunatic trying to get ahold of nuclear weapons in America.”

February 29: He implied Trump has a small penis. “He’s like 6’2″, which is why I don’t understand why his hands are the size of someone who is 5’2″,” Rubio said. “Have you seen his hands? They’re like this. And you know what they say about men with small hands?” Rubio paused, then added, “You can’t trust them!”

March 12: He went after Trump for encouraging violence at his rallies, accusing him of “feeding into language that basically justifies assaulting people who disagree with you.” The same day, he called Trump “rude and obnoxious and offensive—deliberately offensive for the purposes of driving media narrative.”

Now Rubio will be voting for Trump. What happened to the man who said, “Friends do not let friends vote for con artists”?

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5 Times Rubio Slammed Trump—Before Promising to Vote for Him

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Conservatives Win Pyrrhic Victory in Facebook War

Mother Jones

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Facebook has caved in to conservative demands that it revamp its Trending Topics feed. Brian Fung describes how the algorithm works:

To be considered for a place in the Trending Topics portion of the site, a topic must generally be mentioned 80 times per hour or more. Facebook takes steps to exclude repeated events that don’t constitute news, such as the hashtag “lunch,” which usually produces more activity during lunchtime, the company said in its letter.

I’m glad to see that Facebook is on top of this. However, I suspect that conservatives are going to be disappointed in the results. Facebook has agreed to stop using external news sites to help it decide which topics are truly trending, and this is likely to have two effects: It will make the Trending Topics feed (a) stupider and (b) more liberal. After all, if you rely entirely on Facebook users, you’re relying on an audience that skews young and college educated. How likely is it that this will favor stories about Agenda 21 and Benghazi?

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Conservatives Win Pyrrhic Victory in Facebook War

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How to Run Faster

Mother Jones

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If you want to become a better runner, the obvious answer is to run more. Practice, practice, practice. Well, maybe not. It turns out that more time laced up, running longer distances, may not be the best way to improve. These days, many athletes are ditching long runs for interval training—and for good reason. Pushing the human body to maximum capacity, for shorter amounts of time, forces it to adapt quickly and could even change its physiology in the process.

Interval training helps the cardiovascular system by improving the body’s ability to use oxygen and insulin. It makes arteries more elastic than slower-paced exercise does, and some say it helps burn belly-fat. It isn’t just for athletes: Scientists in Denmark have found that patients with Type 2 Diabetes who did intervals of intense walking had enhanced fitness and better blood-glucose levels compared to a control group that walked at a moderate pace for an extended period of time.

If you’re not one for getting sweaty, running isn’t unlike the many other hobbies at which you might be desperate to improve. There’s tons of emerging science that can help show you how to get better—and that explains what separates the good from the best. On this week’s episode of the Inquiring Minds podcast, musician and neuroscientist Indre Viskontas talks with Swedish psychologist Anders Ericsson about what it takes to become great. You can listen below:

If you’re familiar with the 10,000-hour theory from Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, you may have heard of Ericsson’s work. Gladwell argued that we can become experts at a sport, musical instrument, or hobby in part by logging more than 10,000 hours doing it. Ericsson, who says Gladwell “misinterpreted” some of his work, argues that it’s not merely time that’s important. He points to what’s called “deliberate practice“—putting mindfulness into our chord progressions, tennis back swings, or Spanish vocabulary review—as one of the keys to becoming an expert. People often mistake the results of deliberate practice for raw talent, Ericsson says.

“It’s the belief that people are born with this thing, and it’s their job to find it,” he says. “We are arguing that you need to build it.”

In Ericsson’s new book, Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertiseco-authored with Robert Poolhe argues that becoming great at an activity is not about practicing hard enough to fulfill one’s potential, but practicing well enough to maintain motivation. And as for the willpower supposedly needed to become an expert? Ericsson balks at that idea and instead says that experts produce a continued enjoyment in their playing or performance, which leads them engage in yet more deliberate practice. So in short: If you don’t like what you are doing, you’ll probably have trouble becoming great at it.

There’s another habit that Ericsson says is helpful for improving performance: rest. In the early 1990’s, he and his team found that elite violinists slept an hour more each night than average ones—and they frequently took naps, as well. So as you strive for greatness, you might want to consider spending a little less time practicing and a bit more time sleeping. Are you listening, Donald Trump?

Inquiring Minds is a podcast hosted by neuroscientist and musician Indre Viskontas and Kishore Hari, the director of the Bay Area Science Festival. To catch future shows right when they are released, subscribe to Inquiring Minds via iTunes or RSS. You can follow the show on Twitter at @inquiringshow, like us on Facebook, and check out show notes and other cool stuff on Tumblr.

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How to Run Faster

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Sunday Goose Blogging – 22 May 2016

Mother Jones

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As promised, here’s our local crop of Canada goose babies. First up, this is one of the goslings that we originally saw a few weeks ago. As you can see, he’s going through those traumatic teenage weeks. But I’m sure he’ll get over it and grow up to be a majestic, honking adult:

And here comes the brand new crop of babies:

Aren’t they adorable? But I’ll tell you something: I’ll never complain about photographing the cats again. These little guys are hard. You can’t get too close or else the mama geese get upset. So that means using the longest zoom setting on the camera. And these goslings zigzag along relentlessly. Keeping them in focus and in the middle of the viewfinder is tricky business. But I succeeded a few times:

Here’s a couple of them taking a (very) short break from the grueling task of eating whatever it is they’re eating.

Finally, breakfast is over and it’s nap time under the watchful eye of mama.

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Sunday Goose Blogging – 22 May 2016

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Evil Dex For the Win!

Mother Jones

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The Evil Dex is becoming eviller. Or perhaps more cunning. As you already know if you obsessively follow every word I write, my doctor recently switched me to a lower dose of dexamethasone. I now take only 12 mg once a week, so my sleeping should be less disrupted. Right?

Well…not so much. The problem is that the effects of dex accumulate over time, so it becomes hard to predict exactly how it’s going to work. In my case, it takes 4-5 hours to kick in and lasts for about 36 hours. But I’m taking a lower dose! So on Friday I decided to try taking it in the morning. On the bad side, that meant it would be at full strength by bedtime. On the good side, it would be worn off completely by Saturday night.

So I took the dex in the morning and then took a double dose of sleep meds at bedtime. Remarkably, this had no effect. None. I was up all night and only barely a little drowsy. This accounts for the late night blogging (remember to subtract three hours when you look at the time stamps on my posts). The silver lining to this is that my experiment had extremely clear results, so next week I’ll go back to taking the dex at night.

So why the headline? You may recall that a couple of weeks ago I promised you pictures of our Canada goose babies. That turned out to be harder than I expected. I found them again once, but the pictures I took were pretty so-so. After that, they just weren’t around. But yesterday, since I was up at 6 am anyway, I figured I’d go out and see if they were active in the morning. And they were! So later this morning I’ll regale you with a photo album of adorable Canada goslings. Never say that this isn’t a full-service blog.

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Evil Dex For the Win!

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What’s So Great About 401(k)s, Anyway?

Mother Jones

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After I wrote my Thursday post on 401(k) plans, I got a fair amount of pushback. Essentially it boiled down to “What’s so good about them compared to old-style pensions? Why not just get rid of them and expand Social Security instead?”

The answer to the second question is simple: 401(k)s are meant as supplements to Social Security. If we want to expand Social Security, that’s fine. But that’s no reason not have additional options to save privately for retirement.

Fine. But why 401(k)s? What is so good about them? The basic answer, of course, is that they’re set up to encourage monthly contributions in a hassle-free way and the money you contribute is tax-deferred. Beyond that, though, there are several advantages that a 401(k) plan has over a traditional pension. Here are five:

401(k) plans are portable. They begin accumulating immediately (or close to immediately) when you start a new job, and if you leave your job your 401(k) comes with you. This isn’t true of old-style pensions.

If you want, you can withdraw your 401(k) as a lump sum when you retire. This can be handy if you want to use a portion of your retirement savings for a single large purchase, like a house or a motor home.

If you die early, your kids will inherit your 401(k). They won’t get a dime from Social Security or an old-style pension. This may or may not be something you personally care about, but a lot of people do.

The main drawback of a 401(k) is that it’s risky: since you don’t know how long you’ll live, you can never be sure how much you can safely withdraw each year. But in 2014 the Treasury issued guidance that made it easier for 401(k) owners to allocate all or part of their contributions into an annuity fund that pays out steadily upon retirement.

Annuities are getting better, but it’s still true that you have to be pretty careful selecting one. Some are bad deals. But there’s another way to effectively annuitize your 401(k) without paying a dime: delay your Social Security retirement age. Here’s how it works.

More and more people are retiring at age 62, but this reduces your Social Security payment by about 20 percent compared to retiring at age 65. For example, a $2,000 monthly Social Security payment would be reduced to $1,600 if you retire at 62.

Instead, use your 401(k) to fund your retirement from 62 to 65. In this example, it would require a final 401(k) balance of about $72,000 or a little less. You’d draw out $2,000 per month and then, at age 65, switch over to your Social Security payout. You’ve basically guaranteed yourself a lifetime income of $24,000 per year instead of $19,200 without any worries about whether your 401(k) will last forever.

Nothing in life is perfect. There are also advantages to old-style defined-benefit pensions, as well as to a simple expansion of Social Security. And 401(k)s require workers to shoulder more responsibility for figuring out how to invest their savings. They also have to shoulder more of the risk of market downturns.

Nonetheless, 401(k)s aren’t bad. The 2006 Pension Protection Act improved them by allowing employers to sign up workers automatically (they can opt out if they want), and this has significantly increased the number of workers who participate. It’s especially raised the number of low-income workers who participate. The PPA also allowed employers to automatically increase the contribution rate over time (again, workers can opt out), which promises to make 401(k)s more substantial retirement vehicles. It also encouraged the use of low-fee lifecycle funds that make riskier investments when you’re young and slowly switch to safer investments as you get closer to retirement.

All of these things have improved the 401(k) landscape. The economic recovery has too: a lot of the scare stories about 401(k) plans were based on using data through 2011 or 2012, which meant choosing an end date literally in the middle of the worst recession since World War II. That’s cherry picking of the worst kind. 401(k) plans were bound to recover within a couple of years, and they did. If you look at data through 2014 or 2015, average 401(k) returns look pretty good. When it comes to retirement funds, you have to look at the long term, not just the best or worst years.

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What’s So Great About 401(k)s, Anyway?

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How to Deal with Cretinous Twitter Mobs: A Bleg

Mother Jones

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I’m going to venture into dangerous territory and just hope that everyone will give this a sympathetic reading. I’m not trying to shift blame or dismiss a real problem.

The problem in question is the treatment of women by men on Twitter and other social platforms. In a word (or two), there’s a subset of really loathsome assholes out there who harass women mercilessly: comments about looks, about rape, about death threats, etc. etc. The best solution, of course, is to get these men to knock it off, but there’s no way that will happen quickly. At best, it will take many years to leach this kind of misogyny out of the internet.

In the meantime, the problem is that this treatment causes women genuine pain and stress. I don’t get anywhere near this kind of abuse, but I sometimes get a bit of it, and it’s no fun. So I have at least a glimmer of what it’s like.

So here’s my question: is there any kind of relatively simple therapy that can train people not to succumb to panic attacks over Twitter mobs attacking them? I’m not talking about ignoring genuine threats, like folks posting addresses and suggesting someone should be raped. Those should go straight to the police. It’s all the rest that I’d like to learn to take in stride as nothing more than the meaningless ravings of cretinous sad sacks.

So: Is there anything like this? Does anyone know a reliable method for building up a thicker skin? Sort of like the hypnosis of Peter Gibbons in Office Space, except something that actually works. I know we shouldn’t have to, but sometimes it’s worth it even if it’s galling that we need to do it at all.

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How to Deal with Cretinous Twitter Mobs: A Bleg

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