Silly Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor! Scholarship is for whites!
Fuck a bunch of CHE. Fuck them for publishing it, and fuck them for publishing her stupid response, in which she basically admits she has no credentials and blames the CHE for publishing it. At least we agree about something!
Studying narratives of midwifery and how they do and don't incorporate black experiences is an inherently worthless topic that no true scholar could be interested in, and AWB is just mean and possibly reverse racist.
This is an interesting experiment because the CHE article was the sort of thing, both in content and in sarcastic contempt, that gets posted 25 times a day in media catering to right-wing people. We've all seen things of this nature and been predisposed to hate them because of the source. But here is something that when you start reading it, you're predisposed to take seriously, because of the source. Kudos to humans in general for still hating it.
It's basically exactly the kind of article that appeared in Front Page Mag or whatever that conservative website was called that used to get attention a few years ago. I guess they might still exist.
I guess they might still exist.
David Horowitz, New Leftist Turned Right Winger, Has No Friends Left
The relevant CHE editor has weighed in. Guess what? That post is idiotic too!
Teach the controversy! There are other sides to the story! Join the debate! Who is anyone to say that racist ignorant calling out of vulnerable early-career scholars by name isn't an important thing for the Chronicle to support? Why not comment below with your very own special opinion?
Does Obamacare do anything to resolve the disconnect between health insurance and dental insurance? Or are they still going to be separate things, so that some ridiculous portion of the population doesn't have adequate dental coverage?
I know this is a pointless reaction, but the dissertations she's griping about don't even sound frivolous. Of course there's going to be good scholarship that sounds silly in a one-sentence summary, but these aren't even silly sounding. To have her reaction, you'd have to assume that anything that could be called black studies is ridiculous.
This is me ostentatiously not commenting on the prevailing quality of dentistry in any other country. As you were.
I'm amazed. I didn't think academics were allowed to mock each other's dissertation topics. Where would it end? Next thing you've got physicists in the cafeteria making loud remarks like "Well, I'm off for another afternoon's investigation of the fundamental structure of the entire universe. Have fun with your obscure dead bloke's letters, literature guy" and then it's stabbing time.
I have been fuming for 24 hours straight about the Chronicle thing. Its not just the racism, its the anti-intellectualism and complete illogic. She might as well have picked up a book about the civil war and said "Oh my god, who would write about such boring crap. It was over a hundred years ago!"
Has the Chronicle of Higher Education done an exposé on useless scientific studies on chipmunk rape and drunken fruit flies yet?
8: This is what I got on a quick google; I think dental is outside the mandate, but there are still new regulations and subsidies.
Naomi Schaefer Riley isn't an academic, she's just some malignant woman who for some reason was hired by the CHE.
4 - As I noted on Facebook, the woman who wrote this is a WSJ writer whose bio mentions her (two whole weeks!) stint lecturing about journalism at Hillsdale College, the "Harvard for conservatives".
Next thing you've got physicists in the cafeteria making loud remarks like "Well, I'm off for another afternoon's investigation of the fundamental structure of the entire universe. Have fun with your obscure dead bloke's letters, literature guy" and then it's stabbing time.
This is why essear is so tough.
11, 12 - "You analyzed decay particles to prove the existence of the Χ-b boson? Is that a Village People thing? Boring!"
Here's a whole academic journal about the *history* of *Africa.* Africa! Of all places! I can't possibly understand why anyone would want to read anything about that.
14: Subsidies are good, but I'm not seeing a mechanism by which it won't fall well short of universal dental coverage. Perhaps I'm missing something.
I read an article yesterday claiming that ER visits for tooth pain end up with way more prescriptions for hardcore pain meds than other types of ER visits, because there's usually not a dentist or oral surgeon around who actually knows what's going on.
21: and so it's normally handled by... nurses? Janitors? Staff electricians? Passers-by? Gastroenterologists? ("Don't worry, it's just I'm more comfortable working from this end")
Physicists in my experience are as bashful about the boringness of their work as anyone else, except when they get to tell stories about visiting Geneva or Antarctica or the Atacama Desert. It's always like "Okay, there are two measurements for the mass of the down quark. When we measure it one way, we get one result, when we measure it another way, we get another result. My boss thinks that the colder temperatures you use, the better your results get, so I've spent the last three years fine-tuning this box sort of thing."
9 was my reaction too, complete with the consciousness of the pointlessness of that reaction to any sort of debate. "But... those sound... interesting!" Couldn't she have even found a non-interesting-sounding example?
18: William Proxmire used to get tremendous millage mocking scientific research he and his constituents couldn't understand as a waste of government money. The American Family Institute, or one of those Christianist groups, routinely combs through NIH and NSF grants looking for things that sound dirty and attacking them.
"You analyzed decay particles to prove the existence of the Χ-b boson? Is that a Village People thing?"
R.H.I.C.!
It's fun to be in the R.H.I.C.!
12 made me laugh. History? LIVE IN THE NOW, PEOPLE.
24 - Schaefer Riley's post makes a lot more sense if you just plug in the assumption that black people are inherently ridiculous.
but these aren't even silly sounding
Not that she ever says it outright, but I suspect her disdain comes *at least* as much from the names of the authors as from their dissertation topics. Because, you know.
And here's a *biography* of Malcolm X! Didn't he already write one himself? I can't think of why we need another. What a waste of time!
9, 24: Totally. I was expecting the titles to be something goofy-sounding to an outsider, at least. The NYT used to have that yearly column in which they make fun of MLA presentation titles, and that was just stupid ignorant shit, but Riley didn't even bother to look for anything that could convince someone who is not 100% openly racist to agree with her.
We really need to let dental hygienists work on their own without dentists.
22: The emergency is the pain, not the dental problem. So an ER doc can treat the reported pain with opiates, and send the patient home to find a dentist in the morning, without any idea what's going on with the underlying dental problem.
32: Yglesias, I've told you not to come sockpuppeting around here anymore.
25: still happens. Look at Boy Exorcist Bobby Jindal who had great fun mocking spending money on, of all things, volcano monitoring. Two months later, up went Eyjafjallajokul.
14 & 20: Not universal dental, but under the expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (which preceded the Affordable Care Act), dental services are now a required benefit. And if memory serves, Medicaid also now includes dental as part of the screening/preventative coverage requirements.
31: Well yes, her "research" seems to have consisted entirely in looking at the thesis titles in the sidebar of a previous Chronicle article.
31 - To be fairer than Schaefer Riley deserves, her column might also convince someone who is 100% on-board with the idea that dissertations in the humanities are automatically risible, which is less disreputable but would still seem to make you a bad hire for the Chronicle of Higher Education if the editor's goal wasn't click-whoring..
The NYT used to have that yearly column in which they make fun of MLA presentation titles
I thought of that as well! At least an entire panel called "Holes in Chaucer" is worth a few guffaws.
It's rather weird to me that the three different dissertations get roughly the same level of scorn. The first one is a little crunchy, and I find the "authoritative" there pretty eye-roll-worthy. Nonetheless, history of midwifery is clearly an interesting topic, and it sounds like there's a hole in the literature there. The second one seems totally unimpeachable as a topic of scholarship, and is the real give-away that this article is pure racist bile. The third one is the sort of thing you'd expect a conservative to complain about, because it's taking a very liberal point of view. I can't really blame a conservative for getting upset about that one.
22: The emergency is the pain, not the dental problem. So an ER doc can treat the reported pain with opiates, and send the patient home to find a dentist in the morning, without any idea what's going on with the underlying dental problem.
Unless the emergency is a potential septicemia.
Right - a screwy aspect of the attack is that she's conflating 'this scholarship is goofy and frivolous' with 'this scholarship is ideologically disagreeable'. The topic of third dissertation obviously isn't goofy and frivolous, she just thinks the conclusions are so self-evidently wrong that no academic should draw them.
41: They can still do it. It's not necessarily going to turn out well, but they can do it.
OK, but these are not even dissertations. They're titles. There isn't anything to mock. These are not award-winning late-career scholars sitting in a tenured chair and thinking about where in Italy to spend Christmas this year. No one has rewarded or validated this work, not even their committees, because the work hasn't even been done yet. What is Riley making fun *of*? I'm with Apo; she just doesn't like non-white-sounding names.
40,42: I think you guys are massively overthinking this (like the pineapple problem). She sometimes writes for The Weekly Standardwhere that level of lack of coherence is standard fare. She apparently temporarily forget what outlet she was writing that piece for.
44: That was my assumption, and I think she threw in the first just to cover her ass when people pointed that out. Because who could have a problem with a name like Ruth???
Poor dental health is dangerous to the body physical; poor health is dangerous to the body politic, but I suppose we take the latter to be so self-evident that we have let our imaginations lapse in its support. What argument would persuade America's stupid white trash peckerwoods of the desirability of universal health care, if not the cost-benefit analysis for which they profess such affection?
The first one is a little crunchy, and I find the "authoritative" there pretty eye-roll-worthy.
Women giving birth is crunchy? Dude.
This reminds me of the time when people I worked with at the Graduate School Admnistration were looking through a list of the classes offered, and they all decided it was hilarious that the University offered classes in Zulu. Unusually, for me as an adult, I tried to challenge them, "It's a language spoken by millions of people. What's silly about teaching it?"
Their counter-argument was irrefutable, "Zulu! Ha ha, ha ha, ha! That's so ridiculous! Ha, ha ha!"
...it's clear that they're not happening in black-studies departments.
Fucking moron.
I'm with Apo; she just doesn't like non-white-sounding names.
This was my thought exactly.
I think the asshole author of the CHE hit piece somehow thought "natural birth literature" meant "stories about babies!"
I don't even see black-associated names. That is, you're probably all correct about that, I just missed it completely as an issue.
6: I love it. "Join the debate" with someone who is clearly uninterested in debate! What an irresistible proposition!
somehow thought "natural birth literature" meant "stories about babies!"
Yeah. The "'natural birth literature,' whatever the heck that is" line did not make me think she is generally aware of, oh, anything.
I'm sure conservatives would take this as an indictment of social science and the humanities in general, but all three dissertations are topics that would be fine in the "traditional" disciplines.
55: I actually tried to get to the original article to see if she'd chosen two of the most "black" names (with Ruth in as a cover) but apparently you have to be a subscriber or something to see the list. If we're going with the list here, I stand by that claim.
59: Yes, but then how could she have not chosen La TaSha Levy? She thought that name sounded Jewish?
60: She did! It was Ruth Hayes, La TaSha Levy, and Keeanga Taylor. Names skipped were Tera, Ernest, Zinga, Cynthia, Josh, Dwayne, Carolyn, Frederick. And Josh even used parentheses ("(Re)conceptualizing") in his title, which should be catnip to people who hate humanities titles.
Further to 61 and per the OP, she uses "Keeanga-Yamahtta" and gives La TaSha's middle initial, but Ruth doesn't get anything more than Ruth.
60, 61: Oops! My 60 may win the most obviously wrong comment of the day!
But, that almost serves as objective proof that your theory is correct!
On a slightly related topic Todd Zwyicki at the Volokh Conspiracy is still convinced that Elizabeth Warren either got some kind of dishonest affirmative action benefit from admitting to having a Native American great-great grandparent, or at least obviously thought she might. So she doesn't really have any untainted professional accomplishments.
Feh.
all three dissertations are topics that would be fine in the "traditional" disciplines.
Exactly. The author of a book on housing trends and regulations for all Americans in the 60s and 70s would be a distinguished guest columnist at the Wall Street Journal. But if a black person writes about black housing, it is automatically laughable.
But, you know, people say racist shit on Stormfront all the time. Why should the Chronicle of Higher Education be any different?
64: Todd Zywicki is a fairly ridiculous hack for the credit card industry, of course he wants to discredit Elizabeth Warren. Seriously, even the non-liberal Volokh commenters routinely see through him.
Expecting it to be different would be allowing complacent academics to remain within their comfort zone of 'respect' and 'civility', and failing to engage with the very real concerns of people who despise everything they do.
Do you ever worry that the internet is gradually turning everyone into a whore?
That would explain where these fishnet stockings came from.
Using the word "natural" is a little crunchy. There's nothing necessarily wrong with things being a little crunchy.
Is there another word for "Person who will completely debase themselves for money" that doesn't imply scorn for sex workers, who, when compared to some journalists, ply a fairly honest trade?
70: Well, 'natural birth' is a thing; that is, the student isn't looking at some people giving birth and calling them 'natural' of her own accord, she's looking at a, um, movement? I don't know what to call it, and referring to it by a name that identifies it. The movement may be crunchy, but if you're going to study it at all, you have to call it something.
I guess we picked the wrong week to move our blog over to CHE.
I guess we picked the wrong week to move our blog over to CHE.
You are having a real streak of good fortune when it comes to the institutions you're affiliated with, huh?
71: What's wrong with "hack" (see 66)
Offensive to hardworking horses!
74: if you're asking if I'd pepper-spray Naomi Schaefer Riley Strauss Kahn, the answer is yes.
Hack is good for people who debase themselves in writing, but it leaves out all the people who debase themselves on, say, Fox news and the like.
79: I don't think that's fair. I haven't said a good word about Naomi Schaefer Gay Harden.
Hack also is not insulting enough. It misses the moral condemnation.
I don't think that research is about the "natural birth movement" which is much more recent and mostly white.
I suppose we could push for a distinction between "reporters", who merely report uncritically on what's apparently going on, stenographers to those in power, happy slaves to the news cycle, credulous tools who pass on the last thing they were told by someone in a suit or uniform... versus "journalists", who try to practice what journalism professes to be.
Making that distinction stick would be a lot of work, though.
It's hard to tell from the minimal summary, but it looks to me like she's talking about the black history of 'what we'd call the history of the natural birth movement if the people involved were white but as it is we mostly tend to just ignore it'.
Bootlicker isn't insulting to the footwear fetishist community, as debasement is part of the allure for them.
I failed to communicate. The "natural birth movement" is a reaction to the medicalization of childbirth, and as such is something that happened *after* widespread availability of modern medicine. Almost certainly the research mostly concerns childbirth *prior* to then.
64: or at least obviously thought she might. So she doesn't really have any untainted professional accomplishments.
I like how he prominently features the informed opinion of professional dickweed and shame of UVa, Larry Sabato*. Since one of the more blatant political horse-race hacks has decreed, "It's pretty obvious she was using (the minority listing) for career advancement", it must be the case.
*He's not always atrocious, but on things like the Swiftboaters his true colors came out.
Bootlickers and bedwetters, the lot of them. I don't know that the intenet is turning anyone into anything though: if you could go back in time and meet the Instaguy, or the Powerline guys, in high school, what do you think you'd find? Or Ann Coulter?
I wish I could find the actual thesis because although I found the use of "authoritative" there kind of off-putting (because it seems to me to be saying that anecdotal evidence is the best kind), it might be being used in a technical sense that I don't understand.
No, you communicated fine. I'm saying that the 'natural birth movement' appeals to pre-hippie midwifery as part of its own history, despite the fact that at the time, pre-hippie midwifery wasn't a reaction to medicalization but more just the type of medical care that was available in the time and place. The dissertation looks (again, as far as I can tell from a one sentence summary) at black pre-hippie midwifery in the context of its absence from what the natural birth movement understands as its own history. "Natural-birth literature" is used specifically about the white-hippie-reaction to medicalization.
The "natural birth movement" is a reaction to the medicalization of childbirth, and as such is something that happened *after* widespread availability of modern medicine. Almost certainly the research mostly concerns childbirth *prior* to then.
As a movement so named, sure. But it explicitly links itself to the ways women gave birth before that medicalization. Again, you can't know this from the description, but the transmission (or non-transmission) of knowledge and methods from that time to the present-day seems likely to be at least touched upon in this dissertation, no?
Fair enough. I still feel like the whole "appealing to pre-scientific understandings of human biology as a way to improve our knowledge" is undeniably a little crunchy.
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Twenty people in a room trying to explain to a non-native speaker postdoc that the diagram on his poster looks like a penis: comedy gold.
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97: As a way to improve our biological knowledge of childbirth, it's not scientifically rigorous. But that's not what she seems to be doing. Instead, she seems to be doing social history: you can't do biologically rigorous social history of people who weren't working in a scientific framework.
Be the unambiguous demonstration you wish to see in the world, Tweety.
I didn't just want to lament that journalists are hacks. I began by thinking "Click tracking give so much information so quickly it really ramps up the temptation to be a clown for attention." But I want to go beyond that, to saying "The internet increases the speed of capitalism, and capitalism makes us all whores. Therefore the internet is increasing the speed at which we all become whores."
I mean, LB has her new fishnets. I've got this ridiculous metal-studded g-string. What is happening to us?
I'm not attacking the work. I'm just saying its a little bit crunchy.
I found the use of "authoritative" there kind of off-putting (because it seems to me to be saying that anecdotal evidence is the best kind)
The title of the diss doesn't necessarily claim authority in some universal sense. A woman can be the authority on something in her community, among the people she knows. And good lord, of course you can be an authority based on experience ("anecdote").
103: But what does 'crunchy' mean to you that this dissertation could have been done differently, in a less crunchy way?
I'm just saying its a little bit crunchy
Maybe you didn't mean it that way, but that has more than a whiff of the pejorative about it, especially when you're talking about "evidence" and questioning the use of the word "authority".
Fair enough. I still feel like the whole "appealing to pre-scientific understandings of human biology as a way to improve our knowledge" is undeniably a little crunchy.
Huh. That's... weird. Isn't folk science the kind of thing that the history of science has been studying in a completely uncontroversial way for ages?
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Via Alex on twitter, NMM to MCA/Adam Yauch.
Genuinely sad one, that.
>
Henry Farrell at CT on the Chronicle thing:
A pro-tip: when you want to write a post entitled The Most Persuasive Case for Eliminating Black Studies? Just Read the Dissertations, it is a good idea, at the very minimum to, you know, actually 'just read' the fucking dissertations yourself.
I've got this ridiculous metal-studded g-string. What is happening to us?
This was a running gag on The Alan Partridge Show, which I found to be clever and mean-spirited.
Sometimes it can be so delightfully reassuring to check in and see that others find the same things outrageous. Thanks, heebie.
20, 21: Here's the article on ,a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/01/health/emergency-room-doctors-dental-patients-and-drugs.html">ER docs and the painkiller dilemma. The only part that seemed easily fixable to me was whether the ERs could standardize/institutionalize the process of checking a database to see if the patient had recently gotten painkillers elsewhere. Everything else about the problem seems complicated.
36: Right, although one of the issues is that it's not just about getting dental covered under CHIP or Medicaid. It's also about getting dentists to accept Medicaid patients. Right now we have a situation where the waiting lists for an appointment can be immense, because many dentists won't take Medicaid.
Sometimes I tell parents to take their kids to a university's dental clinic. They're getting a dental student rather than a professional dentist, but the care is way, way better than no care at all.
Holy....I don't even know what to say. Having now read the other links in the OP, that piece from CHE is even more awful than I imagined it could be.
Leaving aside the gratuitous and inflammatory personal and racial attacks, it's astoundingly ignorant just on the substance. Funny how she doesn't seem to acknowledge that, y'know, talking to midwives might possibly be relevant for a public health field that is still trying to figure out racial disparities in low-birthweight babies. So much for Seriously, folks, there are legitimate debates about the problems that plague the black community.
Ewww. Nothing like having your lunch-hour blog reading make you want a shower.
108
Wow. That is shocking.
My best "I saw them before they were popular" story is about the beastie boys. I saw them at the old 9:30 club before they released their first album. They were pretty amazing.
Yes, it's astoundingly ignorant. I feel roughly the way I do after reading a McMegan column.
102: I began by thinking "Click tracking give so much information so quickly it really ramps up the temptation to be a clown for attention." But I want to go beyond that, to saying "The internet increases the speed of capitalism, and capitalism makes us all whores. Therefore the internet is increasing the speed at which we all become whores."
I actually hadn't thought of this in terms of the (user) information provided by click tracking; my understanding of click-whoring generally was that eyeballs were desired by a site's administrators in order to talk up the quantity of its site hits, which figures are used in turn to attract advertisers and perhaps raise rates. It's the online version of keeping track of circulation numbers. I just checked to see whether CHE has ads (I rarely read it), then realized that I have ad-block enabled anyway.
113.2 I feel so lucky that we've had absolutely no problem finding good practitioners who take Medicaid for vision, dental, medical, or psychiatric care. I can't think of anywhere else I have friends who do foster care where that seems to be true. We also haven't had to deal with extreme medical or psychological problems, but even those seem to be handled well through our local children's hospital.
92 - His shilling (or, pace the thread, "hackwork") for racist dickwad Virgil Goode when Tom Perriello, pbuh, bumped him out of office in 2008 was particularly good, especially when he realized about two weeks before the election that he needed to disclose the fact that Goode was a major backer of his academic center.
Extreme medical problems are, as I understand, what children's hospitals do best. (Horrible diseases, etc.)
119: Sure, but we've got that as backup if there's anything awful and then we've got the community mental health clinic that does (decent, as far as I could tell) counseling for kids with Medicaid and the medical practice that only takes Medicaid/Medicare/uninsured patients and Medicaid covers the same dentist many of my well-off classmates saw as children and an optometrist who also sees people with insurance. I don't know if I'm lucky in where I live or if we have a more generous Medicaid system than other states or what, but I've never had any trouble finding doctors who take Medicaid and I know a lot of people, even those who aren't rural, do have that problem.
Honestly, the Naomi whatshername post is making me feel vaguely ill, having just read her follow-up. I understand that we should not really be linking to these things.
Still, though, the final paragraph:
Such is the state of academic research these days. The disciplines multiply. The publication topics become more and more irrelevant and partisan. No one reads them. And the people whom we expect to offer undergraduates a broad liberal-arts education (in return for billions of dollars from parents and taxpayers) never get trained to do so. Instead the ivory tower pushes them further and further into obscurity.
What's that, now? The people trained to provide a liberal arts education are not trained to do so? The ignorance is astonishing, the agenda is clear, and I want this woman out.
Sorry, I'm just stunned at the moment.
Unless I'm misunderstanding how authoritative is being used (which is possible, even likely, fields have precise uses of everyday words that have different meanings), I do think you could make the dissertation sound less crunchy. I dunno, "Midwifery in 19th century Black America" or whatever.
The point is that in isolation I think animus towards this thesis could be motivated by hippie-hating rather than black-hating. But the fact that all 3 get the same level of scorn shows that it must be black-hating that's doing the motivation.
I notice that some guy called Kelman on one of the Chronic's blogs has joined the debate rather strongly and well.
Given that there are half a dozen discussion threads there on the matter, I don't know which one you mean.
Ms. Riley was, until recently, the deputy Taste editor of the Wall Street Journal, where she covered religion, higher education and philanthropy for the editorial page. Her book, "God on the Quad: How Religious Colleges and the Missionary Generation Are Changing America," was published by St. Martin's in 2005. Prior to joining the Journal, she founded In Character, a magazine published by the John M. Templeton Foundation.Quoted for truthiness.
The point is that in isolation I think animus towards this thesis could be motivated by hippie-hating rather than black-hating.
I hate hippies as much as the next man who came of age during the Reagan years,* but that didn't occur to me.
* Wolverines!
107: The subject matter is totally fine, it's the implication that the folk science is authoritative that strikes me as odd. Greek understanding of physics is a fascinating topic, but there's nothing authoritative about it.
I'm sympathetic to the idea that medicalization of childbirth was a mistake, so I don't want to take this idea too far. But nonetheless when someone says "natural" in almost any context (whether they're hippies or Catholics) I assume they're saying something dumb.
127. Talkin' 'bout your generation. I was far more upset about Lloyd Brevett, mostly because of circumstances.
But nonetheless when someone says "natural" in almost any context (whether they're hippies or Catholics) I assume they're saying something dumb.
If you'd like to blog at CHE, just let me know. I know people there.
I bet you're one of those people who wrote a dissertation.
re: 131
I didn't know the circumstances until you mentioned it, which are very sad, I just knew he was old. They played a medley on the radio earlier and it was striking how many amazing tunes the Skatalites produced in such an incredibly short period together.
Women giving birth is crunchy? Dude.
Now that I'm on the board of the M/dw/fe Center, I'm discovering that a lot of people find the idea of midwifery and natural childbirth unbearably crunchy. Part of it is the DFH contagion - if any hippies do a thing, then all people doing it must be DFHs - but there's also something to it, in that, because that's a big chunk of the clientele, it is a big part of the atmosphere (at least at ours; never been to another). Frex, all the birthing suites are nature-themed - very crunchy.
Meanwhile, we talk a lot about how overwhelmingly white the clientele is, and how to change it, and I therefore very much would like to read the dissertation scorned.
But nonetheless when someone says "natural" in almost any context (whether they're hippies or Catholics) I assume they're saying something dumb.
Please stop opining on anything to do with childbirth whatsoever.
Meanwhile, we talk a lot about how overwhelmingly white the clientele is....
Any surprises lurking behind "white"? Age, education, religion, nationality, etc.?
Unless I'm misunderstanding how authoritative is being used
I think it just means there was an author. Academic usage can be very unintuitive.
Any surprises lurking behind "white"?
Organic primer made entirely of birch bark and spring water.
Yeah. The Skatalites was like an intervention: "Look, it should go this way, now fuck off and do it." But that ended badly too. I can see no upside to dying of shock because your kid's been murdered.
The people trained to provide a liberal arts education are not trained to do so?
I think she was referring to the fact that graduate students get no training in how to teach, which is true. But I bet she doesn't like what goes on in schools of education either.
137: I haven't been there long enough to get a sense of the demographics. Or, not a complete sense. It's certainly not limited to UMC, and there's at least some ethnic diversity, but Pittsburgh remains a mostly black & white city (less than 5% Hispanic IIRC), so "white is mostly just white.
Full range of ages AFAIK (probably skewing higher in distribution, but I don't know for sure), and I know that there's a fair amount of low income (it's much cheaper than a hospital birth).
I know Catholic hippies and they are really crunchy.
I think she was referring to the fact that graduate students get no training in how to teach, which is true.
Except when it isn't, of course.
But nonetheless when someone says "natural" in almost any context [...] I assume they're saying something dumb
143: Actually, Rod Dreher flirted with being interesting with his whole crunchy con thing, but whether it was audience chasing or simply his own sociopolitical commitments, he couldn't resist rightwing hackdom - he'd post about the Liberal Outrage of the Day, he'd punch hippies, he'd sneer at Establishment Dems, etc.
135: Huh. The midwife practice I went to was very un-hippie; birthing center in a hospital (on a different floor than the regular L&D floor, but still literally inside the hospital) and the office vibe was very doctor's-office. Actual visits were a little less rushed and more information-exchangey than most doctors, but not a hippie vibe at all.
And I don't recall the clientele as being overwhelmingly white. Probably very UMC, but integrated UMC. Come to think, I may be wrong, but isn't Pittsburgh much whiter than NY? Maybe Flip's right, and a class filter ends up looking like a race filter.
If food say "natural" on the packaging, it's probably made with all sorts of horrible chemicals.
it's the implication that the folk science is authoritative that strikes me as odd.
You could try looking up what authoritative means in this context. Also, this is "natural" as part of the phrase "natural-birth" which is simply the name of a particular approach to giving birth.
148: I don't know him. I know a nun who went on and on about how the Contras were bad. I used to make Oliver North jokes because I couldn't possibly agree with any of my high school teachers regardless.
But nonetheless when someone says "natural" in almost any context (whether they're hippies or Catholics) I assume they're saying something dumb.
I used to do teaching and research in environmental ethics, including the history of the concept of nature, and I was very close to reaching the conclusion that the words "nature" and "natural" so many contradictory meanings, and so often pointed to concepts that were in themselves incoherent, that the they should just be retired.
This isn't just a hippy health food thing. I think when scientists and philosophers of science talk about "naturalistic" explanations, they are really close to not saying anything meaningful at all.
I grew up around Protestant hippies, who were quite the freewheeling kaleidoscopes of interest, charm and anecdote that one would expect.
149: I wasn't inquiring sophisticatedly enough to be thinking of class, specifically. I was just wondering whether any of the people seeking midwife services defied expectations in any respect or were otherwise remarkable.
130: Upetgi, you're really digging yourself a hole here.
In any case, I wound up getting a community college job, and now will probably never write my book Against the Concept of Nature.
talk about "naturalistic" explanations,
I realize you're saying that this doesn't mean anything, and now I'm going to ask you what it means, but what does naturalistic mean in that context that seems incoherent to you? I'd read it as 'not supernatural or magical', which is coherent but not terribly exciting: does it have a broader meaning?
155: Somebody has to, from time to time.
Huh, you can access the new EoTAW at http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/edgeofthewest/ but not at https://chronicle.com/blognetwork/edgeofthewest/.
Someone should alert the Chron.
157 is what I was just about to post. It's how I use to term.
151: I did try, but google is swamped by discussion of the CHE article, google scholar didn't have it, and I didn't know where else to look. Thanks for locating it!
I keep giving talks with some variant on "natu/ral supersy/mmetry" in the title. I'm such a fucking hippie.
I'll remark just for the record, not that I need to repeat it, since I've said it before, that this "I hate hippies as much as the next guy" crap is stupid crap.
And on 'natural' as an incoherent concept -- I'd buy that it's incoherent generally, but in specific contexts it can have a concrete meaning. Obviously, for example, whether or not you think 'natural' is a good word for it, 'natural childbirth' denotes something identifiable: an objection to 'natural' in that context would be because you thought the connotations were misleading, not because it was difficult to understand what was meant.
Natural as opposed to supernatural isn't the problem, it's natural vs artificial where the issues come up.
I had not heard about Lloyd Brevett until just now when I looked at "Recent Deaths" on Wikipedia to see who Adam Yauch was pushing off the news. Very sad as well. Of course, as with his son, it's particularly sad how many Jamaicans, musicians or otherwise, tend to die at very young ages. To see so much hardship and death visited upon people who have created such amazing works, with so few resources, is brutal.
Better must come.
130: But nonetheless when someone says "natural" in almost any context . . . I assume they're saying something dumb.
The reason that 136 is pretty much right is that you may want to, you know, actually figure out what they mean by "natural" in the context they're discussing before assuming they're saying something dumb. Otherwise you're basically operating more-or-less the way Riley is. (Helpy-Chalk has a point that there are huge imprecisions in the use of the word and a need for new and more precise terminology, but that still doesn't excuse the laziness of simply correlating "natural" with "dumb." That's dumb.)
159: They don't support https for any of the blog network. I had to stop https everywhere from trying to redirect their site when I saw I was no longer able to read Tenured Radical, when she moved there.
The 'authoritative' thing reminds me of one of those discussions of religion with Kotsko where some theologian was quoted as having said that he believed in God but not in a theistic way, and I copped an attitude about this being self-evidently stupid. And who knew, if you're a theologian there's a recognized sense of 'theistic' that means something specific and more limited than just 'believing in god', making the statement actually perfectly coherent. Not my finest hour.
I hate people who hate hippies as much as the next guy.
In UPETGI's qualified defense, I was just using a similar argument about a big anti-vaxxer piece that one of my hippie-anarchist friends posted on FB a little while ago. It was all "and vaccines aren't natural", "we shouldn't have changed our disease environment from what naturally gave us immunities!" It certainly did nothing to undermine my cynicism about hippie anti-vaxxers, let me tell you.
Well, yes, but the defense is pretty qualified. There are many silly things that can be said using the word 'natural' as an argument, and in a lot of contexts my ears would be pricking up to detect the stupid if I heard the word. But when you've got someone doing social history talking about 'natural birth literature', they're clearly pointing at an identifiable thing which is reasonable to study, not making some vague value-judgment where undefined-'natural' is good, and 'artificial' and 'chemicals' are bad.
161: See, this is why someone should hire me to do, like, library and informationish stuff.
It appears that at least some of the dissertations the CHE piece attacked are still in progress, making the "just read the dissertations" crap even shittier.
169: As I said before, I thought it was likely that authoritative was used in a technical sense. Anyway, I'm sure it's interesting work (once you get past phrases like "transform the urban birthing place (the hospital)"), but I think if you were lazy and hippie-bashing was your favorite activity making fun of that title is not that surprising.
170: Me too. I mean, that is, rather, I try to reserve my hatred for people who engage in much more harmful activities, but then again, hippie-hating can be pretty harmful, so it has to be taken on a case-by-case basis.
once you get past phrases like "transform the urban birthing place (the hospital)"
Seriously, please stop. You've made it clear that you aren't in a field that uses language the way this dissertation does and that you have little sympathy for it. Leave it alone.
161.2: Well, that was just an editing error. It should have read, "Just read the dissertation titles."
And, if she wanted to be completely honest, ".. and look at the authors' funny names!"
174: if you were lazy and hippie-bashing was your favorite activity
Then your behaviour would be not worth defending at all.
They came for the hippies and I didn't say anything because I wanted to see if I could steal a drum after the hippies were in jail.
And I don't recall the clientele as being overwhelmingly white. Probably very UMC, but integrated UMC. Come to think, I may be wrong, but isn't Pittsburgh much whiter than NY? Maybe Flip's right, and a class filter ends up looking like a race filter.
Pittsburgh is almost entirely white people and black people.
172.last I think it's both referring to a well-defined thing *and* making a value judgement. Also the natural-birth movement is very much anti-medicine (painkillers specifically), so I think you're overstating your case there. That said, unlike anti-vaxxers they have some good points, but I don't think the "natural" framing is harmless.
180: The Asian population is rising rapidly, especially if you never bother to leave the East End.
Come to think, I may be wrong, but isn't Pittsburgh much whiter than NY?
Much, much whiter than NYC, and whiter than most large metros, partly due to absence of Hispanics and Asians, but also just not that - I think Cleveland, frex, has almost twice as high a proportion of African-Americans. Also, de facto segregated in a lot of ways.
Maybe Flip's right, and a class filter ends up looking like a race filter.
As I say, I know that low income is a big chunk of the clientele, although it may be low income in the sense that grad students and other culturally middle class types can be low income. At any rate, the mission explicitly includes outreach to women of all statuses/backgrounds, so this is an ongoing discussion.
The midwife practice I went to was very un-hippie; birthing center in a hospital (on a different floor than the regular L&D floor, but still literally inside the hospital)
Fairly certain we have one of these in town as well. Personally, I'd prefer an MD at a home birth than a midwife at a hospital, but it's evidently a common enough model.
182: More people born in Asia than in Europe, but we're talking about small numbers. A lot of South Asians, in particular, have settled in eastern suburbs rather than the city proper.
Also the natural-birth movement is very much anti-medicine (painkillers specifically), so I think you're overstating your case there.
This is feeling more contentious than I understand how it got that way, but what case am I overstating? I didn't think I was saying much of anything about the natural-birth movement, just that it existed, and if you were doing social history referring to 'natural-birth literature' didn't make you silly, because that was in fact a comprehensible way to refer to a genre of literature that a social historian might have occasion to discuss.
A lot of South Asians, in particular, have settled in eastern suburbs rather than the city proper.
They are still very likely to work in Oakland.
Personally, I'd prefer an MD at a home birth than a midwife at a hospital, but it's evidently a common enough model.
It worked for me. What I wanted from a midwife practice was a lower risk of abdominal surgery, but I'm pretty allopathic-medicine friendly, and really liked the idea of having easy access to all the medicine there is if something went screwy. And had no interest in figuring out how to properly dispose of a placenta at home.
And had no interest in figuring out how to properly dispose of a placenta at home.
Call an anemic vegan and don't ask.
I think it's both referring to a well-defined thing *and* making a value judgement.
No. Writing about a movement and its history /= adopting the value judgements of that movement.
I think this is pretty clearly about what has come to be called largely through the efforts of the "natural birth movement "natural birth" rather than about the "natural birth movement." I haven't read any more of her research than the abstract I linked to, but I would guess that what she's identifying in the paper is the transition, among migrants, from the south where birthing took place in rural settings using methods that now would be considered "natural birth" to Chicago where birthing had been moved to a hospital-based setting (urban birthing space). Yes, the use of "space" in that sense is a bit of jargon, but it's completely within the norms of academic writing that employs the concept of space.
157: In this case, the problem is that the word "natural" is completely redundant with "empirically tractable." If we found a way to quantify the actions of spirits and faerie folk and make accurate predictions based on those models, spirits and and faerie folk would suddenly become natural.
A lot of philosophers of science, though, are committed to the idea that a "natural, empirical explanation" in some way adds to the concept of an "empirical explanation." Faerie folk aren't just ruled out because we can't use them in verifiable predictions. They are ruled out because they are the wrong kind of thing.
Oh, she wrote "place" rather than "space." Well [looks around for any geographers lurking] in this context it seems to be pretty much the same thing.
It worked for me.
Well of course, and I do understand the model. Just feels a bit like the wrong side of the compromise to me. But then, we were lucky enough to have a doctor who'd trained with midwives (and is on the board with me), so we didn't have to worry about having a c-section pushed on us.
Anyway, this does help me realize that part of the reason we (the Center) end up being so hippyish is that our population is doubly self-selecting: only women who want a midwife and don't want a hospital.
They are ruled out because they are the wrong kind of thing.
And here you see the ugly prejudice underlying the modern academy.
192: Huh. Isn't there a possible world in which most phenomena behave in an empirically tractable manner, but there are some things that do verifiably exist and have effects on the world, but those effects are not empirically tractable? There are fairies, but there's no way of accurately defining their capacities or predicting the effects of their actions?
I'd think that we live in a world where there are no such things, but if there were, it would make sense to call them magical or supernatural.
Not that anybody really asked, but Pittsburgh proper's percentage of people who reported they were Asian went from 2.8% in 2000 to 4.4% in 2010. The county from 1.7% to 2.9%. That seems pretty rapid, if still small.
Having now read the other links in the OP, that piece from CHE is even more awful than I imagined it could be.
I like to think of myself as someone who is not easily shocked, but yeah, I had the same reaction. I mean, I know the world is full of people like this, but what the fuck was the Chronicle thinking?
What the fuck is "crunchy" about midwifery for god's sake? Unless the term means something radically different in America (which I don't rule out), midwives are nurses qualified to degree level and then with an additional certification and a professional association to keep them in line. Over here at least, there's a midwife involved in all hospital births, with an obgyn poking her head round the door occasionally.
People who insist on midwife only deliveries probably team up with a certain class of midwives, but you can't damn the whole profession on that basis, and even the "hippies" are still monitored by their professional association.
194: Also, social/partner pressure -- a homebirth is the kind of thing that's going to be disturbing to lots of stakeholders. Male partners, grandparents: I probably would have won the arguments if I'd wanted a homebirth, but I would have had to put a lot of effort into convincing Buck that I wasn't risking death, and I'm not sure about my parents (who obviously didn't have a veto, but might have kicked up a fuss). In a hospital, no arguments necessary. Someone who doesn't have any trouble selling a homebirth to everyone involved is likely to be fairly far out on the hippie spectrum.
midwives are nurses qualified to degree level and then with an additional certification and a professional association to keep them in line.
In the US, this is a CNM -- certified nurse midwife. There are also direct entry midwives who aren't nurses, and may have varying levels of training depending on the state.
what the fuck was the Chronicle thinking?
Revenues are down, get bloggers who can turn out commercially viable copy immediately.
On the dental side of the original post. I don't think there's any dental coverage in the British Columbia universal health insurance, or if there is, it's minimal. Dental is more like the US, a world of in-network and out-of-network doctors and claim filing and maybe even copays, and it seems to be something people usually get through work/school as a supplemental plan (vision care too). I uh, should have gone to the dentist, but didn't so I don't know exactly. Other provinces may have better dental coverage. There's no national plan.
189: I really appreciate Moby's humor on threads like these. There's nothing like the image of a vegan guiltily eating a placenta to break the tension.
196:Naturalism
'Is "mind" or "consciousness" a natural or supernatural kind of thing' kind of thing? Hard to directly observe that "mind" thang, only it's cause and effects? Does that make "mind" or "will" unnatural? Unnatural, I say?
Nah. Doesn't fucking exist, like fairies and unicorns.
No mind, no world, no Buddha.
Over here at least, there's a midwife involved in all hospital births, with an obgyn poking her head round the door occasionally.
This part is very much not the norm in the states. Except at the margins, the only people who have midwives involved in their births are ones who seek them out, which makes them a self-selecting population, and one that is going to prize relatively hippyish values like not having your belly cut open over more mainstream American values like having your baby born on a scheduled date.
There are far more scheduled c-sections (most of which, but certainly not all, are not medically indicated) than there are midwife-assisted births.
Which is not to say that midwifery is, in fact, crunchy - see LB's experience - but it certainly is in that general direction. Remember, this is a country that views Volvo station wagons not as symbols of middle class dullness, but as symbols of radical leftism/environmentalism. Midwives may as well be Wiccan priestesses.
I view Volvo station wagons as symbols of "the rest of you drive like shit so I'll buy a Swedish suit of armor"-ness.
As far as the CHE thing, horrible horrible outrage, but most days I feel like I am watching an underwater naked lacrosse match to the death between teams I can't identify.
USIH Post Civil Rights Intellectual Ferment
Adolph Reed:
Ironically, as the basis for a politics, antiracism seems to reflect, several generations downstream, the victory of the postwar psychologists in depoliticizing the critique of racial injustice by shifting its focus from the social structures that generate and reproduce racial inequality to an ultimately individual, and ahistorical, domain of "prejudice" or "intolerance." ... All too often, "racism" is the subject of sentences that imply intentional activity or is characterized as an autonomous "force." In this kind of formulation, "racism," a conceptual abstraction, is imagined as a material entity. Abstractions can be useful, but they shouldn't be given independent life. .... I can appreciate such formulations as transient political rhetoric; hyperbolic claims made in order to draw attention and galvanize opinion against some particular injustice. But as the basis for social interpretation, and particularly interpretation directed toward strategic political action, they are useless. Their principal function is to feel good and tastily righteous in the mouths of those who propound them. People do things that reproduce patterns of racialized inequality, sometimes with self-consciously bigoted motives, sometimes not. Properly speaking, however, "racism" itself doesn't do anything more than the Easter Bunny does.
There is something interesting here, involving the move from ? to individualized emotivism as a basis for social interaction, moral judgement, and political action...but I mostly can't be bothered.
206 is pretty foreign to me, here in Enlightened not-quite-Topless not-quite-Europe. The two hospitals in Cambridge (are there just two?) both have midwife-staffed birthing centers. There's a home birth midwife practice three blocks from my house. But I'm sure Pittsburgh is way more representative of the U.S. as a whole than Cambridge is.
>
Kotsko has a new book and the excerpt is really good:
http://thenewinquiry.com/features/why-we-love-sociopaths/
the last psychiatrist is all pissy about it:
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/04/why_we_love_sociopaths.html#more
207. Damn right. A friend of mine managed to turn a Landrover onto its roof, but they all walked away from it and they've driven Volvos ever since.
180, 182, et seq: Having just run the numbers a few weeks ago, I can say definitively that the Pittsburgh metro area (meaning Allegheny County) has a small foreign-born population -- just 4.6 percent.
This is not a perfect proxy for percentage of Asian or Hispanic residents, but in an old Midwesternish/Rust Belt city it's not a bad starting place. (Compare to Philadelphia area at 9%, NY metro area at 28%.)
Interestingly, Pittsburgh is also home to an unusual population of secondary migrants (i.e., immigrants who moved there after having lived elsewhere in the U.S.). They're Bhutanese.
What the fuck is "crunchy" about midwifery for god's sake? Unless the term means something radically different in America (which I don't rule out), midwives are nurses qualified to degree level and then with an additional certification and a professional association to keep them in line. Over here at least, there's a midwife involved in all hospital births, with an obgyn poking her head round the door occasionally.
It's crunchy in the US in part because there was a long and passionate fight in the '70s to permit midwives to supervise births. As I understand the history, the AMA and other physician organizations were strongly opposed to it, and insurance companies were reluctant to the point of refusing to provide malpractice coverage (which, in the world of obstetrics, is obviously the kiss of death for a potential practice).
I know someone who was on the board of a small birth center in the '80s, and the amount of institutional harassment they got was enormous. It actually created a selection pressure for counter-cultural people, because not many others wanted to buck societal trends.
To give context to how radical non-"traditional" hospital birth experiences were perceived, recall that in the 1980s in the US, fathers in the delivery room was controversial enough to be a talk-show topic.
Everybody says they are from Bhutan but nobody comes to the Bhutan Days street festival.
209: And, indeed, our doctor did her residence in Cambridge.
Hospital births, 98.9%
Home births, 0.7%
Birth center births, 0.3%
Backs of cabs, I guess, 0.1%
Of hospital births:
Attending MD, 86.7%
Attending osteopath, 5.4%
Attending midwife, 7.4%
So traditional MDs delivered almost 11X more babies than midwives (~90% of whom were working in hospitals). Obviously, some fraction of midwife births had an MD as the nominal attending doctor even if the midwife caught the baby, but that would be a rounding error in the big picture, which is that midwifery is a niche in the US, and as such is prone to stereotyping.
210: I think they're all missing the point. We love sociopaths because they move the plot forward. The opposite extreme is someone who ruminates endlessly and never comes to any conclusion. They're terrible for plots, so we never see them on TV.
I'd attend the Bhutan Days street festival, Moby. I really liked Bhutan.
The opposite extreme is someone who ruminates endlessly and never comes to any conclusion. They're terrible for plots, so we never see them on TV.
They're called "showrunners," I believe.
206 gets it right. If I heard someone had a midwife orchestrating their birth rather than a doctor I would presume they were born at least 70 years ago. In fact my immediate response to the word is that it's the sort of profession that's extremely popular in fairy tales, like "cobbler" or "scullery maid".
I basically agree with rob about naturalism. Usually it turns out to mean physicalism, in which why not just say 'physicalism'?
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I'm not sure how many Canadians or people with connections in Canada read/comment/lurk here, but the current Canadian government is slashing funding for Canadian heritage institutions, from the national library and archives to the smaller provincial and local institutions that rely on national support. If there's someone you can contact up there, please get the word out.
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Does Obamacare do anything to resolve the disconnect between health insurance and dental insurance? Or are they still going to be separate things, so that some ridiculous portion of the population doesn't have adequate dental coverage?
Pediatric dental coverage is one of the essential benefits that health insurance policies will have to cover post-ACA. The states have some leeway to define essential benefits, but this is one of 10 categories of benefits that HHS will require the states to include. So the stories about people dying preventable deaths from septic abscesses should become both rarer and marginally less heartbreaking, as they will involve adults rather than children. Some states may end up mandating dental coverage; it all depends on what benchmark plan they choose to base their essential benefits definition on. If a state chooses the public employees' plan as a benchmark, for example, you could end up with a requirement to cover dental. It all depends.
Right, although one of the issues is that it's not just about getting dental covered under CHIP or Medicaid. It's also about getting dentists to accept Medicaid patients. Right now we have a situation where the waiting lists for an appointment can be immense, because many dentists won't take Medicaid.
One of the underappreciated aspects of Obamacare is that it will require states to increase Medicaid reimbursement levels for primary care providers to the same level as federal Medicare reimbursements. Many, many more doctors accept Medicare than Medicaid. This doesn't solve the problem of Medicaid dentists, but it will go along way to closing the disparity in access for Medicaid patients. Also, the fact that Medicaid will cover everyone up to 133% of the poverty line will reduce some of the stigma associated with being on Medicaid, which in some states covers only the most desperately poor families.
direct entry midwives
Not as naughty as it sounds.
221: But don't you poor kids even think about turning your grubby poverty-stricken eyes on my jar of lollipops. My father stigmatized the poor and needy all his life and by God I'm going to do the same, no matter what Obama says.
223: you poke fun, but there is a real issue there, especially with respect to dentistry, where the prevailing business model has come to rely heavily on cosmetic dentistry for patients who can pay out of pocket. One can't afford to have Those People lounging about in the waiting room.
220: Seconded.
Probably the most parsimonious way to go about this -- because they are wingnuts and as such will commit an endless procession of these outrageous and terrible acts -- is to go for the heart. Pester your MP about the very suspiciously-timed budget cuts to an Elections Canada that is in the process of investigating electoral fraud in multiple ridings in the last election, and push for new elections; at minimum for by-elections in the affected ridings.
224: And now I feel sad and guilty.
One of the underappreciated aspects of Obamacare is that it will require states to increase Medicaid reimbursement levels for primary care providers to the same level as federal Medicare reimbursements. Many, many more doctors accept Medicare than Medicaid.
For two years only, though (2013 and 2014). Makes limited sense as a response to the influx of patients into the system starting 1/1/14, but does nothing long-term, which is a shame.
Unless the term means something radically different in America (which I don't rule out),
In Alabama, midwifery is illegal. To have a midwife when Caroline was born, we had to travel to Tennessee.
228: Whoa.
Was the jar nice, at least?
Ms Riley's rebuttal to the criticisms in a subsequent post:
"Finally, since this is a blog about academia and not journalism, I'll forgive the commenters for not understanding that it is not my job to read entire dissertations before I write a 500-word piece about them"
It's not my job! Ah yes. And she writes pridefully of being a journalist who specializes in education. In which one of the key success factors would appear to be "being able to tell a book by its color."
I think of midwifery these days as a SWPL thing. Not crunchy, exactly, but the kind of thing that tracks one's educational and social contexts. It's one reason I thought the diss abstract about rural black midwifery/city birth comparisons has the potential to be really interesting.
215: My theory is that it's easier to write an interesting sociopath than it is to write a compelling hero. Sociopaths are more interesting because of a lower degree of difficulty.
Hm, I was birthed by a midwife in a NYC hospital. Parents a bit *crunchy by background (someone please suggest a less annoying word) but not to the point of, for example, going drug-free.
That's a good point, that going with a midwife does not necessarily mean forgoing drugs. Especially in a hospital setting.
I was a home birth (1980, suburb of Boston, hippie-ish parents), but I don't know whether there was an attending midwife or what. I didn't know anyone else who was, growing up.
Which is to say: I always considered being my being born at home, along with being brought up to address my parents by their first names, as the most evocative examples of my parents' hippie-ness. (Again, given the time and the place.) But yeah, I think it's become more SWPLy.
235: home birth here too. Small town in ruralish Oregon. Midwife attended (later jailed for some kind of murder or solicitation thereof!). Was highly unusual in my childhood, too... Parents sorta hippyish, but mostly distrusting the hospital after a real near miss with my older sisters birththere.
Interestingly, like my parents, my first was born in hospital, my second at home.
We definitely have swipply tendencies, bonsaisue and I.
This is probably pseudonymity-perilous if any of my family is reading, but my midwife was also our landlord.
If your midwife was your landlord and solicited a murder, that would be really pseudoynmity-perilous.
Probably perilous in other ways as well.
Not that dangerous. Almost everybody with a non-mob/gang/lobbying job who solicits murder screws up and tries to hire an undercover cop.
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Is this the super non-conforming Marin County property someone posted about recently?
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It is 7 PM on a Friday night and I am contemplating going to bed.
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Teo, had you seen this on Vero Beach human skeletons dated to same time as those of surrounding large extinct mammals? I had never heard of Vero Beach as an early North American human site (or if I had it did not register). Also am not very familiar with rare earth element dating.
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243: Remember, this evening is the first evening of the rest of your life.
screws up and tries to hire an undercover cop.
I say cut out the middleman:
"Is this 911? I'd like to hire a corrupt cop for a hit job."
243: ess is exhausted from dealing beatdowns to liberal arts faculty.
244 reminds me: teo, when you came through Pgh, did you stop at Meadowcroft? I'm so old, I remember when human sites older then 10,000 years were suspect.
But, to be clear, I am not 10,000 years old.
243: You can stay awake by thinking of giant millipedes having sex.
Teo, had you seen this on Vero Beach human skeletons dated to same time as those of surrounding large extinct mammals?
I had not; thanks for pointing it out. That sounds like a really interesting approach. I'm not familiar with rare earth element dating either, but if the article's summary is correct, it sounds like it's a relative rather than an absolute dating technique, which provides a way to get around the lack of collagen in the bones for radiocarbon dating.
Vero Beach is also where they found that bone a couple years ago with the image of a mammoth scratched in it. There was another recent paper (I think with some of the same authors as this new one) establishing its authenticity pretty definitively. I'm surprised the article you linked didn't mention it, actually.
teo, when you came through Pgh, did you stop at Meadowcroft?
I considered trying to, but I ended up not for a couple of reasons: it happened to be closed on the day I came through, and the admission fee is quite high so I wasn't super motivated to reschedule stuff to see it. I would like to see it whenever I'm back in that area.
Honestly, I'd come with. It's on our to-do list, and I'm kind of ashamed that I've never been.
I did a paleoanthropology concentration at Pitt, but I never studied with the Meadowcroft guy*. The architect for the new building bugs me, but he's basically a good guy.
* I did study with the otherwise reputable guy who believes we're baboon-descended. I actually did a project in his class of which I was (and am) extremely proud that fell victim to storage technology woes: I somehow lost my hard copy, and the digital copy was on a Bernoulli disc, which was effectively unreadable within about 3 years of my completing the class. It was actually a grad class that I was taking as an undergrad in another field at another school. To pat myself on the back.
253.last: that is well done.
253: Gosh, you didn't have to go through all that effort to pat yourself on the back. You can just lift your arm up and over.
Anyway, yeah, I don't know when I'll be back in that area (I had some family there for a while but they recently moved to Ann Arbor), but I'll let you know if an opportunity arises and we can work something out.
Actually, I think the Meadowcroft guy is now at some other school (Allegheny College?), but I believe he was at Pitt when he discovered it.
256: well, I had to take 3 science classes in a single field, and I didn't think I could convince the administration that back-patting deserved that much focus, so...
essear and ursyne are off to watch millipede videos?
I just don't understand club culture anymore.
Are the new Bhutanese in Pittsburgh ethnic Bhutanese, or non-ethnic Bhutanese refugees from Bhutan? I understand there has been a lot of Bhutanese-refugee resettlement as of late. Apparently the US is taking in 60,000 of them.
189, 204: Eating your placenta is vegan! No less vegan than swallowing your own spit!
I mean, not my bag, but not because of that.
263: The "and don't ask" in my comment was to suggest the donor was queasy, not the vegan donee diner.
265: I am sure the consent you gave for others to eat your placenta was very lovingly given, Moby.
267: Not everyone who moves to Pittsburgh does so to get out of refugee camps. I'd bet at least 10% had at least one other option.
Makes Bhutan's Gross National Happiness kick seem a bit Orwellian. Apparently achieving Buddhist happiness involves kicking out the Hindus.
257: Mercyhurst. He may actually have retired by now.
Those hindus clearly weren't happy enough. They're still happier than Americans, thus allowing their resettlement to increase the per capita Gross National Happiness of both nations: win-win! This is known as the Weaselteats Effect.
220: They've also slashed probably 1000 scientist jobs and moved all the environmental assessment to just two department and imposed ridiculously short deadlines for completion.
I've been out of the country so long I can't vote any more. Not that 'my MP' would know. My mother is a single issue voter (abortion) so I'm going to try to change her mind and get her to vote for someone else (not that it matters - NS probably won't ever support the new Conservatives).
Maybe they like our hills. Or maybe the big ass Hindu temple in the suburbs.
33
22: The emergency is the pain, not the dental problem. So an ER doc can treat the reported pain with opiates, and send the patient home to find a dentist in the morning, without any idea what's going on with the underlying dental problem.
If this is routine practice then I suspect a lot of emergency room visits have nothing to do with a lack of preventive care.
64
On a slightly related topic Todd Zwyicki at the Volokh Conspiracy is still convinced that Elizabeth Warren either got some kind of dishonest affirmative action benefit from admitting to having a Native American great-great grandparent, or at least obviously thought she might. ...
Seems likely to me.
That strategy doesn't work in Bhutan, apparently.
196
192: Huh. Isn't there a possible world in which most phenomena behave in an empirically tractable manner, but there are some things that do verifiably exist and have effects on the world, but those effects are not empirically tractable? There are fairies, but there's no way of accurately defining their capacities or predicting the effects of their actions?
What does empirically tractable mean exactly? Earthquakes aren't very predictable but we can say something about them based on past experience. How would your hypothetical fairies differ?
270, 271: "Mercyhurst Weaselteats" may have to become the new go-to pseudonym suggestion for this blog.
260:I just don't understand club culture anymore.
The Gothicks were into it, whoever. They were thrashing and stomping and generally into major tree-rat identification. Leon's new hit tape, Bobby decided.
181: but I don't think the "natural" framing is harmless.
I'm not getting it. What is the "harm" you are seeing?
For two years only, though (2013 and 2014). Makes limited sense as a response to the influx of patients into the system starting 1/1/14, but does nothing long-term, which is a shame.
That's true, and I should have been clearer about that.
Personally, though, I'm optimistic that this "temporary" provision will become effectively permanent through the expedient of recurring one-year extensions. My reasoning is as follows: The money for the temporary increase comes from the feds, not the states, so it can be deficit-financed. The provision was temporary because it would have been been scored as too expensive for the arbitrary one trillion price limit for the bill. There will be intense pressure on Congress not to allow a "pay cut for doctors"--the same dynamic that gives us the annual spectacle of the override of the Medicare sustainable growth rate (the "doc fix", which has achieved "must-pass" status on par with the defense appropriations bill).
Now I will grant that Republicans (and no small number of Democrats) are more willing to piss on poor people than on elderly Medicare recipients. And I will also grant that they've been increasingly willing to go after funds for, say S-CHIP, which many of them used to support. But my sense is that they have opposed the S-CHIP expansions because they would expand eligibility -- i.e. put more freeloaders on welfare -- whereas this provision does nothing to extend eligibility; it just puts more money in the pockets of influential constituents. And when the American Medical Association revs up its lobbying machine, and sympathetic white-coated doctors are appearing on CNN talking about how they won't be able to afford to see patients if Congress cuts their pay...well, let's just wait and see.
Oh, yeah, and the Republicans will be able to frame voting for the extension as "repealing the Obamacare pay cut to doctors". If that's what it takes, fine.
Just on a side note, but having a huge portion of your income reset every year by Congressional action is a very good way to make sure the rank and file doctor is reluctant to question the AMA.
Very late to the, uh, funeral, but feeling very weird about both Adam Yauch and Lloyd Brevett. I never met either of them though I had many chances to. I hung out with a lot of people who knew Yauch way back in the day and my best friend in high school played keyboards for the Skatalites in the early 90s. It was a bit surreal, seeing my friend on stage, white kid from Long Island, 35 years or so their junior, hair out to here, bouncing around on the keyboards. He spoke very highly of Brevett.
But doesn't the AMA barely represent PCPs?
Smokin' that dust at St Anthony's Feast
That "Last Psychiatrist" blog is quality.
Actually, let me reverse ferret that:
On the one hand The Economist is an intelligent magazine that does promote free market, free thinking, "liberal" values in a mostly non-partisan way
NOOOOOOO!
The Economist is a nice source for straightforward, well demarcated argument arguments for critical thinking students to diagram.
276 Being a very tiny part NA was not at all a factor in her getting the Harvard job. The fact that she was a woman who fit the profile of the type of person Harvard Law goes after (star in their field at a good but clearly lower prestige school) did give her extra leverage over what they were willing to offer her for the job. Or at least that was my impression based on what I was hearing at the time from someone closely connected to the negotiations.
287
That "Last Psychiatrist" blog is quality.
narcissist
Huh. I've never read the Last Psychiatrist before. Interesting.
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Coghlan's Snap And Tap plastic grommets are totally useless and for shit, and if anyone tells you differently you should spit in his face and tell him he's a goddamned liar.
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276 Being a very tiny part NA was not at all a factor in her getting the Harvard job. The fact that she was a woman who fit the profile of the type of person Harvard Law goes after (star in their field at a good but clearly lower prestige school) did give her extra leverage over what they were willing to offer her for the job. Or at least that was my impression based on what I was hearing at the time from someone closely connected to the negotiations.
What are you saying here? That Warren claimed she was entitled to higher pay because she is a woman?
The length of your pseud does not leave very many options for further shortening.
If the length of essear's pseud leaves something to be desired, teo, it probably needs no shrinkage.
There's nothing wrong with short pseuds. They just make it more challenging to come up with shorter nicknames.
In the land of six-letter pseuds the boy with a seven-letter pseud will be king.
That would be another, and admittedly a better, option.
I kinda want a new pseud, but I fear LB.
I'm sure she'd be okay if you switched to PUPPYMASTER.
Puppymaster is great, but GUINEA PIG would be more stable in the long run.
Did teo just make a reference to music?
“essear—erases”
Sere seers see, sear essear!
Essear assesses: essear's ass-areas are rare.
Seas erase essear.
arse.se, for the swedish bum enthusiast.
Or rather, apparently, for the swedish domain squatter.
307: Mercyhurst Weaselteats is still available.
Did teo just make a reference to music?
Not really. I was just vaguely aware of the phrase.
316: I'll have you know that I am happily married and do not appreciate any aspersions being cast on my faithfulness, sir.
"but I fear LB" is an excellent choice for your new pseud, essear.
294 A potential employee's leverage is dependent on how much the employer wants them relative to their second choice. In this case the fact that she was a woman and they were under pressure to diversify meant she was able to drive a harder bargain. I know it must be shocking for you that the market for star academics is not based on just the minutely calculated objective measure of their research output.
323
... I know it must be shocking for you that the market for star academics is not based on just the minutely calculated objective measure of their research output.
Actually I don't find it shocking at all to learn that Harvard wanted to hire Warren because she is a woman.
To OP.1, an interesting new article points out that dentistry is much more laissez-faire than regular medicine (and insurance plays a much smaller role) but it has resulted in the same, if not worse, inequities.
No more aggravating to NSR at CHE.
Also, the world's fattest cat died. I mean, there is by definition still a fattest cat in the world, but the 17kg one is dead.
There was a 17kg cat? That's big enough to hunt dinosaurs.
I like that they translate 18 kg to the even more useless (to this American reader, at least) "2 st 9 lbs". Which doesn't actually seem to equal 18 kg, as far as I can figure out.
327: Wow. I honestly did not expect that.
323Actually I don't find it shocking at all to learn that Harvard wanted to hire Warren because she is a woman, good old alma mater that she is.
