This guy might be the craziest state legislator in the U.S. (and that's saying a lot): He introduced a bill that would require the Georiga police to investigate all miscarriages as murder and issue fetal death certificates.
A study of Hebrew day school students finds they are skeptical of the information they are taught at school about Israel and Zionism, and prefer less biased sources of information.
The Tallahassee Democrat retells the story of the 1959 gang rape, by four white men, of Florida A&M student Betty Jean Owens. She was impregnated during the rape and had to travel to New York to obtain an abortion. At trial, Owens took the stand to testify against her rapists; one defense attorney referred to her as a "(N-word) wench" in front of the all-white, all-male jury. Nevertheless, the four men were convicted and sentenced to life in prison. The trial was a civil rights watershed, helping to end the conspiracy of silence around white sexual violence against black women.
WNYC's Leonard Lopate interviews Liz Canner, director of the new documentary "Orgasm Inc.," about the pharmaceutical industry's desperate quest to create a "female Viagra," and whether normal female sexual response is being pathologized along the way.
If you've been following the Silvio Berlusconi news with interest and are looking for some context on Berlusconi's perverse, oligarchical tenure, it's worth revisiting Alexander Stille's April 2010 New York Review essay, "The Corrupt Reign of Emperor Silvio."
It's hard to derive anything meaningful from a sample size of 43 students. This is how many students were interviewed for the Melton study. I'm not debating whether students are skeptical of what they're taught or not, just that statistics can be distorted to affect perceptions. For instance if I said 70% of Hebrew day school students don't believe in Torah I may have left out that I polled 8 students and may have phrased the question in a way which was misleading. However people would find the statistic shocking even though it may be inconsequential.
On another topic - why can't Italy get rid of Berlusconi???
Posted by: Sal | February 22, 2011 at 05:35 PM