Mother Jones
Here is a video of three grandmothers in Washington smoking pot for the first time. It is wonderful.
P.S. Smoking pot is legal in the Evergreen state so put your cuffs away.
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Grandmothers Smoke Pot for First Time, Play Jenga, Are Perfect
Mother Jones
A 6-year-old girl wearing a badass Albert Einstein t-shirt recently had the rare chance to ask everyone’s favorite cosmologist, Neil deGrasse Tyson, what first graders like her can do to help the Earth.
Tyson’s response? Keep banging those pots, keep stomping in those muddy puddles.
“You are making a splash crater,” Tyson explained. “These are experiments. Just tell your parents they’re experiments and you want to become a scientist and they won’t stop you from doing anything you want.”
Basically, don’t let the grown-ups squash your curiosity! Watch his heartwarming advice in full below:
Originally posted here –
Neil deGrasse Tyson Has Some Pretty Great Advice For This First Grader
Mother Jones
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Your kid probably isn’t a Leninist, but research suggests she’d like to divvy up other people’s stuff equally. Solodov Alexey/Shutterstock
At the playground, I watch my 10-month-old son beeline to the center of the sandbox where there is a bright pink shovel. But before he gets there, a rambunctious 2-year-old snatches up the coveted toy first. As my son watches the shovel slip away, a wobbly 14-month-old comes over and offers him a half-chewed cookie. I tear up a bit at this random act of kindness. It’s probably just “hormones,” but I am touched by the empathy that this little person is showing my child.
What caused this toddler to “do the right thing” and show kindness to a stranger? Was it good parenting or an innate personality trait? That’s the mystery that cognitive scientist Paul Bloom, author of the recent book Just Babies, is working hard to figure out: Can the youngest of our species distinguish good from evil practically from birth—or does morality need to be taught?
Philosophers like John Locke and psychologists like Sigmund Freud took for granted that we are born with a blank moral slate. But Bloom rejects that. He argues that babies actually have a natural sense of morality and fairness—one that simply emerges, like many other developmental milestones. “I think all babies are created equal in that all normal babies—all babies without brain damage—possess some basic foundational understanding of morality and some foundational moral impulses,” says Bloom on the Inquiring Minds podcast. “They’re equal in the same way that all babies come with a visual system, and the ability to move around, and a propensity to learn language.”
Bloom thinks this sense of morality emerged via Darwinian evolution, just like every other adaptive trait that marks our species. But how can he tell? How does one study morality in babies who can’t wax poetic? Scientists have come up with several clever solutions to break the language barrier.
“The way we do it here at Yale,” says Bloom, “is we show babies one-act plays.” These one-acts, playing at the Yale lab run by Karen Wynn, who is Bloom’s colleague and wife, star puppets who model behaviors that we would label as naughty or nice. Similar experiments are being conducted at the Center for Infant Cognition at the University of British Columbia, where Wynn’s former graduate student, Kiley Hamlin, now runs her own lab.
We asked Hamlin to share some short videos of the one-acts that Bloom describes in his book and on the podcast. In one play, for example, a dog is enjoying playing with a ball. She loses control of the ball or, depending on your interpretation of events, tosses it to one of two nearby cats. Then one of two things happens. In the first video below—from Hamlin’s lab at UBC—the orange cat refuses to return the ball and instead runs away with it. In the second video, by contrast, a gray cat returns the ball to the dog.
After watching the play, the babies are given a choice: Which kitty would they like to play with—the helpful gray one or the naughty orange one? The scientists carefully monitor the children’s reactions. “With the younger babies, like 3-month-olds, we can see which one they orient to, which one they look at,” says Bloom. Older babies can actually reach for and grab the preferred character. And with babies and toddlers alike, time and time again, “we find they look to the good guys.” Like in this video, again from Hamlin’s Lab:
But these labels of “good guy” and “bad guy” are adult constructs. Are we simply projecting our own judgments onto the behavior of the babies? “There’s no consensus even for adults what makes something moral or not moral,” acknowledges Bloom. “But one cue for adults, at least, is intuitions about reward and punishment.” So the scientists investigated how babies respond when the bad character is punished and the good one is rewarded.
For example, another play tells the story of a cow who is trying to open a plastic box full of toys. Flanked by two little piggies, the cow struggles with the box for a few moments. Then the play has one of two possible endings. Either one of the pigs helps the cow open the box and get the toys, as in this video…
…or the other pig hinders her efforts by jumping on the box and slamming it shut, as shown here:
Babies under the age of 1 then watch another character either reward or punish the naughty and nice pigs by handing out treats; the babies show a preference for characters who reward good and punish evil. Toddlers are given the opportunity to administer the reward or punishment themselves, and they tend to punish the hinderer and reward the helper.
Interestingly, as the toddlers get a little older, this sense of fairness seems to morph into pure egalitarianism—at least when it comes to distributing other people’s stuff. “There’s a lot of research suggesting that when it comes to divvying up resources that strangers possess, they are socialists—they like to share things equally,” says Bloom.
When asked to hand out treats to other people or to stuffed animals, 3- and 4-year-old children will divide resources equally, if at all possible. Even if they know that one person deserves more of a resource than another because she worked harder for it, they will still opt for equal distribution. In a study of 5-to-8-year-olds, when it was impossible to divide resources equally—for example, if the children were given five erasers to distribute to two people—they would even throw the extra eraser in the trash instead of giving more to one person than the other.
But what happens when the children being studied are themselves the lucky recipient of the extra resources? Well, that changes everything. “So, they’re very egalitarian when it comes to other people,” says Bloom. “When it comes to themselves, they’re not the slightest bit egalitarian. Particularly when dealing with strangers, they want everything.” So while babies do seem to have an innate capacity to separate good from evil, their moral lives are still fairly limited. “Babies are kind of jerks,” Bloom says.
It turns out that humans aren’t the only primates that have evolved a sense of fairness. In one study, Capuchin monkeys performed a task and were rewarded with slices of cucumbers. But when they observed another monkey getting a grape—which tastes much better—for doing the same amount of work, they went on strike. The previously rewarding cucumber slices were no longer worth the effort.
Does this mean that babies (human or otherwise) are making actual moral judgments? Or are they simply learning what types of behaviors get rewarded in the society in which they are born? In other words, are the scientists really just observing a tool that helps infants navigate complex social interactions? As Bloom points out, babies don’t have a lot of control over their own lives—they can’t choose the people with whom they interact. So what’s the point of having a preference for those who are fair or moral? “It could be when choosing a social partner, and particularly who to learn from, they pay attention to how these individuals react towards other individuals,” notes Bloom.
But it also could be that this capacity is useless in the beginning. “A second possibility is that this capacity does no good for babies, but it’s just wired to pop in early on,” he says. “It’s like sexual organs, which emerge early in development even though they aren’t used as sexual organs until much later.”
So what separates a morally mature adult from a well behaved toddler? “As we get older, we become more like moral philosophers,” says Bloom. “We become more able to use reason and deliberation to figure out what’s right and wrong.” And we tend to grow out of our selfish phase. “Most adults are far nicer than babies and 2-year-olds,” says Bloom.
Inquiring Minds is a podcast hosted by neuroscientist and musician Indre Viskontas. To catch future shows right when they are released, subscribe to Inquiring Minds via iTunes or RSS. We are also available on Stitcher. You can follow the show on Twitter at @inquiringshow and like us on Facebook. Inquiring Minds was also singled out as one of the “Best of 2013” on iTunes—you can learn more here.
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Mother Jones
While students around the country join Emma Sulkowicz’s fight against flawed campus sexual assault policies, a new song by popular duo Play-N-Skillz is glorifying rape culture to the catchy tune of telling women to quit resisting and drink up already. The video, which came out in late October, has already been viewed more than 600,000 times.
Sample lyrics include: “A shot of vodka? I can’t. Tequila? I can’t. After party? I can’t. Girl-on-girl? I can’t. Literally I can’t. Literally I can’t.”
This back and forth banter is repeatedly met with a resounding: “Oh my god. Shut the fuck up!”
On the surface, “Literally, I Can’t” is a weak, and late, attempt to poke fun at an internet-established joke about a woman’s inability to utter concrete sentences to describe their unbridled excitement/disgust/horror/delight. But the result is an incredibly offensive mantra with an equally repugnant video starring fratty dudes in “STFU” varsity jackets, imploring the prude sorority girls of LIC to give in and let loose.
Lovely, no? As for a purely musical assessment, the song is just insufferable. Envisioning bros singing along to it, red Solo cups at the ready, is eye roll-inducing. But when you recall that Sulkowicz is still out there literally carrying the weight of the issue, that’s when it gets truly heartbreaking.
Continue reading here:
Oh Great, Here’s a Hit Song Demanding Women Shut Up and Drink
Mother Jones
Americans spend a colossal amount of money betting on the lottery, even when the chances of winning have always been near-impossible. In fact last year alone, lottery sales raked in a massive total of $68 billion, according to the latest Last Week Tonight.
“That’s more than Americans spent last year on movie tickets, music, porn, the NFL, Major League Baseball, and video games combined,” John Oliver explained. “Which means Americans basically spent more on the lottery than they spent on America.”
It becomes even more bizarre when you understand it’s our states governments profiting from the giant business, which targets lower-income families who have historically spent more on tickets than the wealthy.
One of the frighteningly successful ways governments accomplish this is by creating ads that essentially mask the lottery as some kind of mutual fund or “charitable investment.” Watch below:
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Watch John Oliver Explain How the Government Seduces Americans to Spend Huge on the Lottery
Mother Jones
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Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges was recently participating in a neighborhood charity event aimed at boosting voter participation, when she stopped to pose in a photo with a volunteer named Navell Gordon. In said photo, Hodges and Navell point at each other.
Pretty typical stuff, and material for, at most, a quick news anecdote highlighting the mayor’s community involvement. But Navell happens to be a young black man, a fact that must have something to with what happened next: Newscasters at KSTP, the local ABC affiliate, took the innocuous photo and quickly warped it into an exclusive report accusing Hodges of “posing with a convicted felon while flashing a known gang sign” and thereby instigating violence in their fair city.
In the same report, KSTP goes on to admit there is zero evidence Navell actually belongs to a gang. But they’re certain he has “connections to gang members.”
“She’s putting cops at risk,” retired police officer Michael Quinn told the station. “The fact that they’re flashing gang signs at each other, showing solidarity with the gangs, she’s legitimizing what they’re doing. She’s legitimizing these people who are killing our children in Minneapolis.”
Here’s a tweet from the story’s reporter promoting the piece before it aired.
Mayor Hodges flashes gang signs with 2x convicted felon. Police not happy. Details on 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS at ten.
— Jay Kolls (@JayKollsKSTP)
KTSP has so far stood by the report, but issued a statement claiming Minneapolis police fed the item to them.
The story is infuriating. But just to drive the point of how insanely racist KTSP’s report truly is, watch the video below in which Navell discusses his involvement with non-profits like Neighborhoods Organizing for Change and how he’s working to move on from his past.
“I made some mistakes in life,” he says, while footage appears of him and Hodges posing for the photo in question. “I can’t vote. I’m not ashamed to say that. But I’m working on fixing that right now so I can be able to vote for my next president.”
Next up for KTSP? Well, word surfaced today that Obama is likely to tap US Attorney Loretta Lynch as the nation’s next attorney general. Perhaps the station should stage a timely investigation into her gang affiliations, given this shocking photo:
AP/Seth Wenig
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McConnell finally has the chance he’s been waiting for. Gage Skidmore/Flickr WASHINGTON -– The new Senate Republican majority creates an opportunity for likely Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to force a vote on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline he’s been waiting years to hold. By The Huffington Post’s count, the new Senate will have at least 61 votes in favor of a measure forcing the pipeline’s approval — a filibuster-proof majority. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said Tuesday in an appearance on MSNBC that passing a Keystone approval bill would be the second item on the Republican agenda, after a budget. “I actually think the president will sign the bill on the Keystone pipeline because I think the pressure — he’s going to be boxed in on that, and I think it’s going to happen,” Priebus said. To keep reading, click here. View original: Senate Now Has Enough Votes To Pass Keystone XL Pipeline Approval Bill ; ; ;
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Senate Now Has Enough Votes To Pass Keystone XL Pipeline Approval Bill
Mother Jones
The run-up to tomorrow’s midterm elections has seen an unprecedented spending surge from environmental groups. Climate and energy issues—from fracking in Colorado to coal mining in Kentucky—have taken center stage. But a far less prominent political fight in North Dakota is poised to have an outsized impact on America’s biggest oil boom.
The Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, on the shores of Lake Sakakawea in the northwest part of the state, is home to roughly half of the 14,000 members of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation. The community sits atop roughly one-third of an immense treasure-trove: The Bakken Shale, the oil formation that is home to North Dakota’s ongoing fracking boom. Tomorrow, MHA Nation members will head to the polls to elect a new chairman—the tribal administration’s chief executive. Out of about 8,000 eligible voters, 3,500 are expected to turn up tomorrow, according to a spokesperson for the Tribal Election Board.
Both men vying for the position say they plan to crack down on the oil rush that has brought their nation a complex mix of wealth, environmental degradation, and corruption allegations. Normally, a chairmanship election on a Native American reservation would draw little interest outside the reservation’s borders. But with so much oil development at stake, Fort Berthold is a different story.
Here’s a sense of the scale of Fort Berthold’s petroleum power, from the Bismarck Tribune​:
The reservation has 25 rigs drilling, 1,300 oil wells and produces 333,000 barrels of oil per day. About $25 million in oil tax revenue flows to the tribal treasury each month and the tribes’ annual budget has swelled from a modest $20 million annually to $520 million.
That heap of cash is administered by a tribal council, which is headed by the tribes’ current chairman, Tex Hall. A former oil-field services company executive, Hall was elected in 2010, just as the oil rush was getting underway. Fewer than half of the tribes’ members own mineral rights they can lease to drilling companies, according to Sebastian Braun, head of the Indian Studies department at the University of North Dakota. Since many residents don’t benefit directly from the fracking boom, they depend on the tribal administration to spend the money wisely and to help the residents cope with rising housing and grocery costs and the other ancillary impacts of oil development.
Instead, Braun said, “people felt the money was spent in ways they didn’t understand”—for example, on a helicopter to ferry VIPs to the reservation and a cruise ship for Lake Sakakawea—while the main town has only one stoplight for the increasingly heavy stream of truck traffic. And a report this August commissioned by the tribal council made various allegations about Hall’s financial dealings with oil and gas companies. In September, Hall denied those allegations and, in a statement reported by the Bismarck Tribune, dismissed the report as a “smear campaign.” Hall did not respond to Climate Desk’s request for comment.
The video above shows oil production at work on Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. Via Lunker Federal 2-33-4H from Georgianne Nienaber on Vimeo.
Read More:
How 3,500 Voters in North Dakota Could Put the Brakes on America’s Biggest Fracking Boom
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The Cannabis Grow Bible – Greg Green
The definitive guide to growing marijuana just got better! Greg Green’s original Cannabis Grow Bible set a new standard for handbooks on cannabis horticulture and established Green as the leading authority in the field. Green’s comprehensive and professionally presented work on how to cultivate superior cannabis struck a chord with beginner, amateur and professional growers […]
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White Dwarf Issue 40: 1 November 2014 – White Dwarf
Watch the skies! For from beyond the coldest depths of space come the Toxicrene and Maleceptor, two new Tyranid monstrosities hellbent on devouring the imperium of man. Issue 40 of White Dwarf has the full rules for both of these huge new kits. Also in this issue: building a Chaos Legion, a Tyranid Paint Splatter […]
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The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up – Marie Kondo
This best-selling guide to decluttering your home from Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo takes readers step-by-step through her revolutionary KonMari Method for simplifying, organizing, and storing. Despite constant efforts to declutter your home, do papers still accumulate like snowdrifts and clothes pile up like a tangled mess of noodles? Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo takes […]
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The Well-Tended Perennial Garden – Tracy DiSabato-Aust
With more than 180,000 copies sold since its original publication, The Well-Tended Perennial Garden has proven itself to be one of the most useful tools a gardener can have. Now, in this expanded edition, there’s even more to learn from and enjoy. This is the first, and still the most thorough, book to detail essential […]
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No Better Friend – Elke Gazzara
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The Art of Raising a Puppy (Revised Edition) – Monks of New Skete
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Warhammer: Glottkin – Games Workshop
From out of the northern wastes march the Brothers Glott, Champions of Chaos bloated with Nurgle’s foul favour. At their heels comes a festering tide of horror, a sickening horde of the diseased and the deranged fit to sweep away the civilised world forever. Before them lie the war-torn lands of the Empire, the greatest […]
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The Other End of the Leash – Patricia McConnell, Ph.D.,
The Other End of the Leash shares a revolutionary, new perspective on our relationship with dogs, focusing on our behavior in comparison with that of dogs. An applied animal behaviorist and dog trainer with more than twenty years experience, Dr. Patricia McConnell looks at humans as just another interesting species, and muses about why we […]
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How to Raise the Perfect Dog – Cesar Millan & Melissa Jo Peltier
From the bestselling author and star of National Geographic Channel’s Dog Whisperer , the only resource you’ll need for raising a happy, healthy dog. For the millions of people every year who consider bringing a puppy into their lives–as well as those who have already brought a dog home–Cesar Millan, the preeminent dog behavior expert, […]
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The Billionaire’s Vinegar – Benjamin Wallace
“Part detective story, part wine history, this is one juicy tale, even for those with no interest in the fruit of the vine. . . . As delicious as a true vintage Lafite.” —BusinessWeek The Billionaire’s Vinegar , now a New York Times bestseller , tells the true story of a 1787 Château Lafite Bordeaux—supposedly […]
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