End the use of long-term solitary confinement in Illinois!

Hey all. I haven't been posting since last summer, mostly because I've been drowning in graduate school duties. One of these duties has been interning at Chicago's Cook County Jail. There, I sit in on group therapy sessions for inmates with drug-related offenses. I've been consistently touched by the philosophical and psychological depth of these men, their gentleness and the span of their regrets. These are men who will sit down and opine for hours on topics you wouldn't expect low-SES drug dealers and addicts to have much knowledge of: gender identity is a big topic, for example (these guys live firsthand the consequences of masculinity). And when it comes to living with shame or regret, these guys are almost the best resource you can find. The only place where you can find more affecting people, I think, is at prisons. I've been volunteering for a Chicago-based group called Tamms Year Ten, which advocates for prisoners housed in long-term solitary confinement. I write and read inmates' letters, respond to their requests for photos and magazines, and read their countless reports of abuse-- from medical staff, from Corrections Officers, from mail room staff, and from the state itself. Let's be clear on what "long-term" solitary confinement means. These men at Tamms are housed alone for 23-hours a day, with zero human contact, for decades. Some have been locked up alone for 23-28 years. [More . . . ]

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Walmart Censors the Bible

Granted that the one they chose to censor isn't a typical, dull, dry Bible that you actually have to read to get to the good parts. This one is gaily illustrated with photographs of Lego™ dioramas for every juicy story. Years of work went into developing the Brick Testament as an online presence. Then a paper publisher got interested, and more work went into producing several volumes (Available on Amazon). But Walmart refused to distribute the books as is, full of literal illustrations of the stories in the Holy book, including the sexual parts. So the publisher persuaded the author to pull the most explicit scenes. And they produced a new volume specifically for Walmart and its clientele. But after an initial small order, Walmart felt that even this censored version of the Bible was still too graphic, and refused to carry the volume. The other Bibles they sell, all of which include even the stories and scenes excised from the Brick Testament, are still for sale. Want more details? Here's a CNet report. Here's a "Patriot Update" report (I find that a Tea Party source can be an interesting perspective).

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Two new DI site enhancements

I've recently installed two new plugins that DI readers might find useful. I certainly do. A) DI now has an enhanced search function. It looks exactly like the previous search box (see arrow immediately below), but it will now search for more than the text of posts. It will also search for comment text, comment authors, categories and tags. The plug-in that allows this expanded search is called "Search Everything." B) If you'd like to receive email notifications when future comments are approved regarding a particular post, you can do that by checking a little box beneath the field where you leave your own comment (though there is also an option to follow comments even if you don't wish to leave a comment). The WordPress plugin that allows this magic is called Subscribe to Comments Reloaded. These are two examples of why I really appreciate the WordPress blogging platform.   There is a huge community of people who develop plugins. This site runs with the help of 31 active plugins, and it has become a rather simple process to add or customize most of these plugins.

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What scientific concept would improve everyone’s cognitive toolkit?

This question from The Edge and the dozens of thoughtful answers make for some good reading. Basically, each author picks a single idea they feel is necessary for everyone to "get" in order to understand the world we live in; to have a successful technological civilization. I found this via Pharyngula, who suggested that the Mediocrity Principle may be The One. That is, the basic understanding that we are not the special reason for the existence of the universe. His argument is that basic math skills would help. We're talking about skills that even average college students seem to lack, but are nominally taught to most people who graduate secondary schools. Adjacent to PZ, Sue Blackmore argues for the primacy of understanding that CINAC (Correlation Is Not A Cause). Apparently this lesson is hard to drum into even college students who are nominally studying science. Most of the answers are direct explanations of ideas necessary to scientific understanding. But a few are more of the "what would be nice to discover" variety. But go see for yourself. There are many insightful replies to this question by 160 authors.

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DI traffic

I founded Dangerous Intersection back in March, 2006.  That was 4,500 posts and 21,000 comments ago.  Now that we've reached the end of another year, I decided to check DI's traffic.  We're not a huge site but we're not small either.  I thought readers might find it interesting to see the same stats that I periodically check. Here they are (this is a clickable image): As you can see, we receive almost 6,000 daily visitors these days, which is gratifying and a great honor to each of us who write at this site.  [Note: We changed servers in mid-August, so you will not see the full year's stats in this image]. Thanks to all of you have visited DI or commented at DI over the past year.  Our plan is to keep improving and keep growing.  For those who have not commented before, please do consider leaving a comment, especially if you disagree with us. And happy new year to everyone.

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