Links roundup 22-28 January 2013
In Australia, the Catholic Church argues that discrimination is its fundamental human right, characterising it as "freedom of religion". Their spokesperson remarked: "If a teacher in a church school publicly argues against church teachings or lives in such a way to challenge those teachings, the school should have the freedom to refuse to employ that person." This lends weight to Joumanah El Matrah's argument that discrimination represents the views only of a conservative minority, who can use it not just to exclude sinners but as a weapon to silence dissent amongst the faithful (particularly from whistleblowers).
There's an obvious parallel between the "flexible" attitude to celibacy taken by some priests and the "flexible" attitude to virginity encouraged by abstinence-only sex education. Time to change an unsustainable, damaging rule.
From the BBC, US gun debate: Guns in numbers gives a useful summary of existing laws and Obama's proposals, as well as a hair-raising graph of the rate of gun homicides in developed countries.
CIA officer is jailed for leaking details on torture. The alleged torturers will not be prosecuted.
The popularity of quinoa in the West is having mixed results in Bolivia and Peru, benefitting farmers, but pricing the nutritious grain out of the reach of some. (The shift towards a Western-style diet isn't going to do them any good, either.)
Science! I've called this the "mathematics of grace" - how cooperation can be a more effective strategy in life's struggles than competition. (If it wasn't, your body wouldn't stick together.) In game theory computer simulations, there's a strategy called Tit for Tat, where you match other players' behaviour, returning good for good and bad for bad, encouraging them to play fair. But even more effective is one called Generous Tit for Tat, in which you sometimes "forgive" bad behaviour. Scientist Martin Nowak said: "What we were seeing [in the simulations] was the evolution of forgiveness. Generous Tit for Tat suggests that we never forget a good turn, but we occasionally forgive a bad one. It makes a lot of sense. Tit for Tat can create a vendetta, but Generous Tit for Tat allows you to move on." (ETA: In an article for Scientific American, Nowak argues that the need to keep track of "who does what to whom and why" drove the rapid "cultural evolution" of human beings.)
There's an obvious parallel between the "flexible" attitude to celibacy taken by some priests and the "flexible" attitude to virginity encouraged by abstinence-only sex education. Time to change an unsustainable, damaging rule.
From the BBC, US gun debate: Guns in numbers gives a useful summary of existing laws and Obama's proposals, as well as a hair-raising graph of the rate of gun homicides in developed countries.
CIA officer is jailed for leaking details on torture. The alleged torturers will not be prosecuted.
The popularity of quinoa in the West is having mixed results in Bolivia and Peru, benefitting farmers, but pricing the nutritious grain out of the reach of some. (The shift towards a Western-style diet isn't going to do them any good, either.)
Science! I've called this the "mathematics of grace" - how cooperation can be a more effective strategy in life's struggles than competition. (If it wasn't, your body wouldn't stick together.) In game theory computer simulations, there's a strategy called Tit for Tat, where you match other players' behaviour, returning good for good and bad for bad, encouraging them to play fair. But even more effective is one called Generous Tit for Tat, in which you sometimes "forgive" bad behaviour. Scientist Martin Nowak said: "What we were seeing [in the simulations] was the evolution of forgiveness. Generous Tit for Tat suggests that we never forget a good turn, but we occasionally forgive a bad one. It makes a lot of sense. Tit for Tat can create a vendetta, but Generous Tit for Tat allows you to move on." (ETA: In an article for Scientific American, Nowak argues that the need to keep track of "who does what to whom and why" drove the rapid "cultural evolution" of human beings.)