Ormond

I guess that using McMartin as an example of the above is problematical for me because the main person who "discovered" the false "recovered memories" in that case was a social worker who did not have any certification as a psychotherapist, though she claimed to be a "therapist", and so I don't think that case was actually based on "accepted medical fact" in the same way other examples might have been. I think the majority of real child psychotherapy experts were skeptical about that case and thought law enforcement was way too accepting of the claims of that particular social worker back while it was going on.

As I just said in the UK politics thread, I am starting this to get the topic out of just the UK thread, which Momont asked people to do. I am not sure that the evidence here is as weak as the author of the Cass report concluded. But even if it is, that is no reason for governments to step in and ban all treatments. Trans adults who are personal friends of mine have told me how going through a puberty which was opposite their gender identity was particularly traumatic for them. It would seem to me that the use of puberty blockers is reasonable for any pubertal child who has been diagnosed as trans by a mental health professional who has expertise in the subject. I think that the present nature of the research should be presented to parents and guardians (and to the children themselves) as part of informed consent. They certainly should be told that the research is preliminary and conclusions about the efficacy and side effects of any treatment could change as more research evidence becomes available. But I think once the information has been clearly given, the decision on which treatments to use should be left up to the family and their medical and mental health professionals, without the government being involved. And as that report itself seems to me to say, government health agencies should be providing a lot MORE support to trans children and their parents than they now are, not using them as political punching bags. I must add that I was a bit jarred when the McMartin preschool case was brought up as an analogy. I think that is only relevant if one is claiming that a large percentage of children being given treatment for "trans" issues have been "brainwashed" by their parents or psychotherapists into thinking they are transgender when they really aren't. I think there is way LESS evidence for that than there is for efficacy of diagnosie or treatment, and mentioning it is (unintentionally, I believe, from the poster on this board) insulting to the huge majority of parents and caregivers of transgender children worldwide.

I would like to comment on the issue, but it seems to me a moderator has clearly asked that this NOT be done in this thread, and in terms of politics the issue certainly extends to other countries beyond the UK, so I will start a new thread myself.

Here is the link to today's column: https://omaha.com/life-entertainment/local/cleveland-evans-daphnes-meaning-goes-back-to-the-greeks/article_7cdc1b38-fd06-11ee-b7ff-3fb07be04e7e.html This was one of the most fun names to research. Though I certainly knew about slaveowners giving "Classical" Roman and Greek names to slaves, Daphne hadn't been one that I thought of as being heavily used that way until I research the name in USA census records. It was quite a surprise to see that there were two free Black families in Talbot County, Maryland headed by women named Daphne in 1800. It was interesting to see how the name seems to have been used for slaves in the USA before I could find evidence that it was ever used in Britain. Charlotte Yonge, one of the very first authors of a book on the history of names, said this about Daphne in the first edition of her book in 1863: "Daphne has not subsequently been used as a name except for dogs" (the "subsequently" referring to the original Greek myth! Though Daphne has a stereotype as an aristocratic English name, the first Daphnes in the 18th century in England were definitely NOT upper-class. As I mention in the column, Daphne Crossley, the second earliest Daphne I could find in the UK census, was listed as a "power loom weaver" in 1851. What I didn't have room to mention in the column was that she had two brothers and a sister who were also listed as "power loom weavers" that year. Their widowed mother Daphne Douglas Crossley never has an occupation listed in the census. By the way, her maiden name isn't in the census -- the reason I know it was Douglas is that she had a son whose first name was Douglas who emigrated to Massachusetts, and on his death certificate in Massachusetts it says his mother's maiden name was Douglas. Ancestry.com is putting a lot of links to other records in its census data, which helps one find such things out! It would be great if we could find out who the first Douglas's parents were back in Edinburgh, Scotland and why they gave her that name, but that information may well be completely lost. The first aristocratic Daphne in England, as the column states, was Daphne De La Poer Beresford (1854-1941), a great-great-granddaughter of the first Earl of Tyrone. Her great-grandfather was a member of Parliament, while her own father was an army officer, which seems to be a career at lot of younger sons in noble families of Britain went into. Interestingly, this first aristocratic Daphne never married. The name rather suddenly starts turning up in the 1880s in multiple wealthy and upper middle class families in England, which is where it developed its modern "British upper class" stereotype. But there just wouldn't have been noticeable adult Daphnes among the British aristocracy until the start of the 20th century. So the character in "Bridgerton" is an anachronism, as are any other instances of fictional aristocratic Daphnes before 1854. Julia Quinn, the American author of the novels the TV series is based on, was simply guilty of projecting the name and its stereotype back into a past where it really did not exist. Finally, I know in terms of TV characters that many Americans are going to first think of Daphne Moon, the character on the sitcom "Frasier" played by Jane Leeves, or Daphne Blake, the character in the "Scooby-Doo" animated universe. But I didn't have room to mention them, because they just didn't have the impact on baby names that the Daphnes from "Surfside 6" and "Bridgerton" did.

Is the jury pool for this trial drawn from all of New York City, or just from Manhattan? If it's the latter, I am sure Manhattan would have a higher percentage of corporate lawyers as residents than almost any other jurisdiction in the United States.

So far I have only read Fevre Dream and a couple of his books of short stories. But in some ways I liked Fevre Dream even more than ASOIAF. I am normally not a fan of vampire tales, but the way Martin describes his vampires and what causes vampirisim in Fevre Dream seemed better to me than any other way I've seen it done. I really think it's an excellent novel.

I don't know where the authors of the above are from themselves, but as someone who's never read Rothfuss, does he really use the word "fannies" to describe female genitalia? That would be remarkable for an American author.

I got so busy yesterday I forgot to post the link to my column: https://omaha.com/life-entertainment/local/cleveland-evans-russell-is-a-surname-that-became-a-common-first-name/article_393d2bd0-f2af-11ee-b562-07d76feb49a8.html One of the interesting differences in naming between the UK and USA is how in the former people called "Rusty" and "Ginger" are normally thought to have the nickname because they have red hair, while until very recently in the USA these were primarily thought of as pet forms for Russell and Virginia, respectively. "Ginger" as a term for "redhead" in particular is a Britishism which has only started being used in the USA in the last few decades. The famous American actress Ginger Rogers was born as a Virginia and did not have red hair.

If you're not into Christian Nationalist Bibles -- my latest Trump email informs that I can get an official Metal Black Trump Card!

I guess whether this is more or less likely with the Electoral College or with direct popular vote isn't my main point. I still think it's a much greater possibility with first-past-the-post rather than with either a runoff system or ranked choice voting. Of course even those don't make it entirely impossible, but at least if a demagogue is elected with one of those systems we could more truly say the electorate has gotten what they deserve.

Back in 2020 Ann Leckie declined a nomination for The Raven Tower. I wonder why she didn't do the same for Translation State.

Yes, that would be one of the other options as an alternative to ranked choice voting.

Personally I think for a bipartisanship or "moderate" movement to really work we need to get every state to adopt something like "ranked choice" voting as now exists in Alaska and Maine, or something similar that would lessen the problems with "first past the post" elections. I would certainly be in favor of moving to a national vote total Presidential election rather than the electoral college. But my worry about that is that it might encourage people to run as third party candidates even more than the present system, and that would make a Trump-like demagogue even more likely to come out with the highest % of votes even if well over 50% of the voters are actually rejecting them. So if we go to a national popular vote system, I want ranked choice or some other system that makes such an outcome less likely as part of it.

And a couple of links to obituaries for John Barth: https://hub.jhu.edu/2024/04/02/john-barth-writing-seminars-obituary/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2024/04/02/john-barth-author-dead-obituary/

Maryse Conde, who won the "alternative Nobel Prize" and has generally been considered one of the authors in the running for the actual Nobel for years, has died at age 90. https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/03/style/mayse-conde-author-nobel-literature-dies-90/index.html https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-68712276 https://www.conchovalleyhomepage.com/entertainment-news/ap-maryse-conde-prolific-grande-dame-of-caribbean-literature-dead-at-age-90/amp/

That we all have images in our dreams from our personal past (and especially from what went on the day before) doesn't mean that every single image is from something that personally happened to you. For modern people, the "personal past" would also include all the images you have from all the movies and TV shows you've seen and books you've read, which might account for a lot of bizarre imagery these days.

Is the "Best Game or Interactive Work" a new category? I don't remember that one from the past, but as I am seriously old and not the best at paying attention to the Hugos, maybe my memory is faulty.

On the "Evangelicals" and politics issue -- more and more people, especially Southern White men, who label themselves "Evangelical" actually never or almost never go to church. They are actually more right-wing and Trumpist on average than Evangelicals who do actually participate in churches. Here's an article from Christianity Today by a historian about this: https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2022/august-web-only/church-attendance-sbc-southern-evangelicals-now-lapsed.html His conclusions (when he says "When people leave church", he's just talking about the White Evangelicals who he gives statistics on earlier in the article):

The idea that most Buddhists are "atheists" seems to be a big misunderstanding to me. Buddhism may not have a "Creator God" concept or an idea that there is a God/Goddess who is omniscient or omnoipotent, but they certainly have a belief in a separate realm of spiritual existence where there are many powerful beings -- often specifically called gods or goddesses -- who can have some influence on humans. Wikipedia has an article on Buddist dieties that explains the variety of such beings that many Buddhists believe in. There are probably some highly educated and sophisticated Buddhists who would accept "atheist" as a self-definition, but they would be a minority among adherents of that religion. For the most part, people who call Buddhists "atheists" are adherents of Western religions who think if you don't believe in an omnipotent Creator you are an "atheist", which would make all sorts of polytheists "atheists", which seems untenable to me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_deities

If you think there should be an RIP thread in General Chatter, start one!! I did exactly that in the Literature section so that discussion of the deaths of authors could be moved out of this thread in Entertainment, and it's worked out well. There is no reason why you or someone else couldn't do the same in General Chatter. As a retired psychology professor I of course think Daniel Kahneman's death does deserve to be mentioned somewhere.

I think it's fine for atheists to declare themselves as such. But I do not think saying you "have no religious affiliation" in an exit poll means that one is an atheist. I think it simply means that one does not identify as being a member of a particular religious group or congregation. Not only would the "no religious affiliation" people include most who identify as "agnostic" rather than "atheist", but depending on exactly how the question was worded and what alternatives were given, it could include people who have strong religious beliefs but who do not belong to or attend a church or other religious organization. And there are now millions of such people in the USA -- many people who will claim to be "evangelical Christians" never attend church -- and those people are even more likely to hold "Christian nationalist" views than self-identifed "Evangelicals" who do attend church. And there of course would also be many Americans who have vague "New Agey" or "cafeteria" religious beliefs who would say they have "no religious affilication" while still saying they "believe in God."

Did you read what you linked to? Though this is good news, it is NOT a "deep red" district: I would think an Alabama district which Trump only won by a single % point in 2020 must actually be one of the more liberal areas within that state.

Sorry, I did not see what you were responding to. I disagree that there is "very little" research indicating causal linkage. Researchers can't do "causual" research on violence which would involve people really harming others, but there certainly is research examining things through cross-lagged correlations and the like that seems to show that more of the causation is from watching violent media to being violent, rather than being violent getting one to consume more violent media. No, there are no easy fixes. And it is ridiculous that many right-wing politicians try to blame recent violence just on video games -- as I understand it there being no evidence that video games are more likely to be associated with real violence in their users than simply watching violent TV or movies -- and more importantly, gun control would be a way more effective way to reduce violence in the USA than doing any censorship of media. I personally think parents should be encouraged to limit the amount of violent media of any type their children consume -- and that depictions of violence in the media should be encouraged to show more realistic consequences for the victims -- but I think that should be voluntary and not mandated by government.

No one with any sense has ever claimed that violent media was the ONLY factor in violent behavior. Within Japan, as in other countries, those who consume more violent media are more likely to be violent themselves. That the overall rate of violence is lower in Japan is due to all the other cultural differences they have.

I know some of you are skeptical of the Lincoln Project, but as a fan of musicals I love how this video uses The Phantom of the Opera to laugh at Trump: