The long-term ambitions of the for-profit prison industry

The ACLU is reporting on a heinous new proposal being made by the private prison industry to almost every state:

If you live in one of 48 states, right now there's a proposal sitting on your governor's desk from a company called Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). That for-profit corporation is offering to buy and run prisons across the nation. In exchange, states must agree to keep the prisons at least 90 percent full. Two articles in USA Today examine the ethical concerns raised by the proposal. . . . And, since private prisons thrive from keeping the bottom line low and their profits high, they have an incentive to cut corners — meaning lower-paid, less experienced staff and little accountability. The results can be troubling: in 2008, a study by the Idaho Department of Corrections found that the CCA-run Idaho Correctional Center (ICC) had four times as many prisoner-on-prisoner assaults as Idaho's other seven prisons combined.
Privatizing prison leads to much more prison violence, as indicated in the following video:

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Make sure your children experience failure

Tom Hoerr is the is head of school at the New City School in St. Louis (a school both of my daughters have attended). In an article titled, "Got Grit?" at the website of Educational Leadership, Tom reminds us that it is critically important for children to experience failure:

As important as scholastic preparation is (and it is important), it is only part of what students need to succeed in life. Howard Gardner's personal intelligences, Daniel Goleman's emotional intelligence, and Carol Dweck's mindsets all reflect the fact that our attitudes are even more important than our skills . . . As educators, part of our job is to ensure that every child finds success, and an important part of finding success is knowing how to respond to failure. As soccer star Mia Hamm said, "Failure happens all the time. It happens every day in practice. What makes you better is how you react to it." People who have not learned to respond well to frustration and failure are likely to choose paths without much risk or challenge and thus destine themselves to a life of predictability, safety, and mediocrity.
I've also been impress with the writings of Gardner, Goleman and Dweck, and I've commented on each of them at this site.

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Many species of animals are homosexual; only human animals are homophobic

At Slate, Will Oremus reminds us that many species of animals are homosexual, though very few are exclusively so. There is no evidence that any animals other than human animals are homophobic:

Not as far as we know. Homosexual behavior has been documented in hundreds of animal species, but the same does not hold for gay-bashing. For starters, few animals are exclusively gay. Two female Japanese macaques might have playful sex with each other on Tuesday, then mate with males on Wednesday. Pairs of male elephants sometimes form years-long companionships that include sexual activity, while their heterosexual couplings tend to be one-night stands. For these and many other species, sexual preferences seem to be fluid rather than binary: Gay sex doesn’t make them gay, and straight sex doesn’t make them straight. In these cases, the concept of homophobia simply doesn’t apply.

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Susan Cain discusses the challenges and advantages of being an introvert

Susan Cain is an introvert in a world dominated by extroverts who insist that introverts should act like extroverts. She recently wrote a book titled, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking. I took special interest in Cain's talk because I am an off-the-charts introvert. The world constantly dominated by extroverts is a great loss, Cain asserts, because introverts, who avoid great amounts of stimulation, often "feel their most alive, their most switched on and their most capable when they are in quieter, more low key, environments. Unfortunately, our most important institutions (schools and work places) "are designed for extroverts, and extroverts' need for lots of stimulation." Society has a prejudice that creativity comes from gregarious gatherings. Schools and workplaces typically assemble students and workers into groups and ask them to work "together," even in activities such as writing. Kids that seek to work alone are seen as outliers and problems. Most teachers think of extroverts as superior students even though research shows that "introverts get better grades and are more knowledgeable." Introverts are often passed over for leadership positions, even though they tend to be careful and avoid unnecessary risks. Research shows that introverted leaders tend to let proactive workers run with their ideas, whereas extroverted leaders tend to interfere with the process (min 6:45). At min 8:00, Cain suggests that "ambiverts" probably have the best of both worlds.

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Nude body airport scanners: Eight billion dollar fraud

Take a look at this short video by Jonathan Corbett. He makes a pretty good case that the nude body scanners at American airports constitute an $8 Billion fraud, in addition to exposing us to supposedly safe radiation and invasive searches. Most important, these scanners are technically flawed to such a degree that any terrorist can slip virtually anything into an airplane. Corbett points out that the Israelis refused to invest in these scanners, because they are "useless." This is a rather unsurprising accusation against the folks who never considered locking the cockpit doors prior to 9/11--boondoggle and ineffective. But at least a lot of Americans will see those shiny expensive new nude body scanners and assume that they are safe. After all, these new scanners are newer than the "old fashioned" metal detectors that actually work. But it seems to be the prime objective of the TSA to cause people to believe that they are safe. For more information, see Corbett's website posts on this topic here and here. If Corbett's analysis is correct, these nude body scanners exemplify this country's approach to many issues. Hype a problem, inject with the fear of terrorists, spend a lot of money that isn't really needed, violate lots of fundamental civil liberties and cover up the fact that the money is not being well-spent.

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