This article draws upon data collected as part of a 25-year longitudinal analysis of televised coverage of women’s sports to provide a window into how sexism operates during a postfeminist sociohistorical moment. As the gender order has shifted to incorporate girls’ and women’s movement into the masculine realm of sports, coverage of women’s sports has shifted away from overtly denigrating coverage in 1989 to ostensibly respectful but lackluster coverage in 2014. To theorize this shift, we introduce the concept of “gender-bland (...) sexism,” a contemporary gender framework that superficially extends the principles of merit to women in sports. Televised news and highlight shows frame women in uninspired ways, making women’s athletic accomplishments appear lackluster compared to those of men’s. Because this “bland” language normalizes a hierarchy between men’s and women’s sports while simultaneously avoiding charges of overt sexism, this article contributes to gender theory by illuminating how women can be marginalized in male-dominated, male-controlled settings via individualized merit-based assessments of talent. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 7, Page 21-23, July 2012.

Social media offers an attractive site for Big Data research. Access to big social media data, however, is controlled by companies that privilege corporate, governmental, and private research firms. Additionally, Institutional Review Boards’ regulative practices and slow adaptation to emerging ethical dilemmas in online contexts creates challenges for Big Data researchers. We examine these challenges in the context of a feminist qualitative Big Data analysis of the hashtag event #WhyIStayed. We argue power, context, and subjugated knowledges must each be central (...) considerations in conducting Big Data social media research. In doing so, this paper offers a feminist practice of holistic reflexivity in order to help social media researchers navigate and negotiate this terrain. (shrink)

We’ve all been at parties where there's one cookie left on what was once a plate full of cookies, a cookie no one will eat simply because everyone is following a rule of etiquette, according to which you’re not supposed to eat the last cookie. Or at least we think everyone is following this rule, but maybe not. In this paper I present a new paradox, the Cookie Paradox, which is an argument that seems to prove that in any (...) situation in which everyone is truly following the rule, no one eats any cookies at all, no matter how many there are to be eaten. The ‘Cookie Argument’ resembles the more familiar argument that surprise exams are impossible, but it's not exactly the same. I argue that the biggest difference is that, unlike the surprise exam argument, the Cookie Argument is actually sound! I conclude the paper by explaining how it could be possible for a group of people to engage in behavior (eating cookies) that guarantees that at least one of the members of the group will violate a rule, even when it's common knowledge in the group that everyone is committed to following that very rule. (shrink)

While e-commerce has grown rapidly in recent years, some of the practices associated with certain aspects of marketing on the Internet, such as pop-ups, cookies, and spam, have raised concerns on the part of Internet users. In this paper I examine the nature of these practices and what I take to be the underlying source of this concern. I argue that the ethical issues surrounding these Internet marketing techniques move us beyond the traditional treatment of the ethics of marketing (...) and advertising found in discussions of business ethics previously. Rather, I show that the questions they raise ultimately turn upon questions of technique and the ways in which technologies can transform the fundamental means by which relationships are established and maintained within a social environment. I then argue that the techniques of e-commerce are indeed transforming the means by which businesses relate to consumers, and that this transformation is affecting the applicability of our previous ways of demarcating the imperatives determining the limits of accessibility between consumers and businesses. Properly addressing the ethical status of the techniques of e-marketing as such necessarily moves us to consider the changes that Internet commerce are having upon the norms that govern individuals in their relations with others. (shrink)

It seems clear that second order fuzziness (indeterminacy) is possible. There can be borderline cases of borderline cases. But how about third order cases? Is there no end of degrees of borderlinehood? I offer a somewhat strange little 'language game' that seems to suggest that the ascension ends with second order cases. (The 'game' is intended to be somewhat like a simplified version of color perception.).

Web-cookies revolutionized the web because they gave it a memory. Cookies gave your actions on the web a ‘past’, which you have no idea about or access to. This think piece encourages an examination of ‘technical’ and ‘boring’ media phenomena such as cookies and spam, and points to their important contribution to the way we experience and understand the web.

This article addresses the question of whetherpersonal surveillance on the world wide web isdifferent in nature and intensity from that inthe offline world. The article presents aprofile of the ways in which privacy problemswere framed and addressed in the 1970s and1990s. Based on an analysis of privacy newsstories from 1999–2000, it then presents atypology of the kinds of surveillance practicesthat have emerged as a result of Internetcommunications. Five practices are discussedand illustrated: surveillance by glitch,surveillance by default, surveillance bydesign, surveillance by (...) possession, andsurveillance by subject. The article offerssome tentative conclusions about theprogressive latency of tracking devices, aboutthe complexity created by multi-sourcing, aboutthe robustness of clickstream data, and aboutthe erosion of the distinction between themonitor and the monitored. These trendsemphasize the need to reject analysis thatframes our understanding of Internetsurveillance in terms of its impact onsociety. Rather the Internet should beregarded as a form of life whose evolvingstructure becomes embedded in humanconsciousness and social practice, and whosearchitecture embodies an inherent valence thatis gradually shifting away from the assumptionsof anonymity upon which the Internet wasoriginally designed. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Two Views of Authenticity Being a Real Father Notes.

We consider the privacy of personal information on the World Wide Web, emphasizing a concept of privacy as an aspect of social relationships between individuals. We make three contributions to understanding the right to privacy on the Web: we highlight the role of informed consent as an important consideration for privacy, we identify conditions under which the collection and centralization of personal information can be ethically justified, and we offer an interpretation of a "reasonable expectation of privacy" for Internet (...) class='Hi'>cookies, a mechanism used by Web sites to remember information about visits to that site.The views, opinions, and conclusions of this paper are not necessarily those of the University of Illinois. Preliminary versions of this paper were presented at the Seventh Annual Meeting of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, Dallas, TX, February 26[28, 1998, and the ACM Policy 98 Conference, Washington D.C., May 10-12, 1998.Address for correspondence: Michael C. Loui, Graduate College, 801 S. Wright Street, Champaign, IL 61820-6210, e-mail: [email protected], telephone: 333-6715, fax: 333-8019. (shrink)

The relative reinforcing value of food measures how hard someone will work for a high-energy-dense food when an alternative reward is concurrently available. Higher RRV for HED food has been linked to obesity, yet this association has not been examined in low-income preschool-age children. Further, the development of individual differences in the RRV of food in early childhood is poorly understood. This cross-sectional study tested the hypothesis that the RRV of HED to low-energy-dense food would be greater in children with (...) obesity compared to children without obesity in a sample of 130 low-income 3- to 5-year-olds enrolled in Head Start classrooms in Central Pennsylvania. In addition, we examined individual differences in the RRV of food by child characteristics and food security status. The RRV of food was measured on concurrent progressive-ratio schedules of reinforcement. RRV outcomes included the last schedule reached for cookies and fruit, the breakpoint for cookies in proportion to the total breakpoint for cookies and fruit combined, and response rates. Parents completed the 18-item food security module to assess household food security status and the Behavioral Activation System scale to assess reward sensitivity. Pearson’s correlations and mixed models assessed associations between continuous and discrete child characteristics with RRV outcomes, respectively. Two-way mixed effects interaction models examined age and sex as moderators of the association between RRV and Body Mass Index z-scores. Statistical significance was defined as p < 0.05. Children with obesity had a greater cookie Pmax [F = 4.95, p = 0.03], higher RRV cookie [F = 4.28, p = 0.04], and responded at a faster rate for cookies [F = 17.27, p < 0.001] compared to children without obesity. Children with higher cookie response rates had higher BMIZ ; and RRV cookie was positively associated with BMIZ for older children and boys, but not younger children or girls. The RRV of food did not differ by household food security status. Low-income children with obesity showed greater motivation to work for cookies than fruit compared to their peers without obesity. The RRV of HED food may be an important contributor to increased weight status in boys and future research is needed to better understand developmental trajectories of the RRV of food across childhood. (shrink)

Why should we typically act in accordance with our resolutions when faced with the temptation to do otherwise? A much-maligned view suggests that we should do so because resolutions themselves provide us with reasons for action. We defend a version of this view, on which resolutions provide second-order reasons. This account avoids the objections typically taken to be fatal for the view that resolutions are reasons, including the prominent bootstrapping objections.

This chapter discusses Arnold Lobel's story “Cookies,” a story about will‐power, a concept central to moral psychology. The question of whether Frog and Toad both, or one or neither, possess will‐power at the end of the story is a good one to begin a discussion of this interesting philosophical topic with children. The concept of will‐power is linked to an important philosophical concept, weakness of the will. The Greek philosopher Aristotle first identified this phenomenon. This area of philosophical investigation (...) bridges the fields of ethics and philosophy of mind, developing an account of the mental faculties necessary for moral — and immoral — behavior. Moral psychology integrates ethics with the philosophy of mind. While ethics discusses questions of right and wrong, moral psychology focuses on what gives us the ability to do what's right despite the attractions of morally problematic courses of action. (shrink)

In this Black Mirror Christmas special, we meet two men in a desolate cabin, who each share stories that center around two different but related technologies: The cookie technology that allows one to make digital copies of individuals and use them as personal assistants, and the Z‐Eye technology, which can be used to block people in real life. As the stories unfold, they make for a very dark Christmas tale and it becomes clear that each of these technologies raise a (...) string of ethical questions, especially related to the trade‐off between the value of privacy vs. the value of access to information. The chapter looks at these problems through different ethical frameworks, in order to explore what solutions each framework would offer to these problems. (shrink)

Conscious technology features in many Black Mirror episodes. For example, there are the cookies in White Christmas, the people uploaded into the San Junipero simulation, Robert Daly's digital copies of his coworkers in USS Callister, and the copy of Clayton Leigh that is exhibited in Black Museum. But would such pieces of technology really be conscious? Would they, for example, feel pain? And how could we tell? Is uploading or replicating someone's consciousness even possible? This chapter explores these questions (...) and discusses the ethical issues that are raised by consciousness technology. (shrink)

Can the characters in Black Mirror survive the loss of their bodies? This chapter considers what happens to characters like Greta in White Christmas, Clayton in Black Museum, and Yorkie in San Junipero when artificial models are made of their minds. One possibility is that the original characters persist in cookie form, without their bodies, but retaining the essence of who they originally were. Another possibility is that cookies cannot replicate a person's essence: instead, each time a cookie is (...) created, a new, entirely distinct person comes into being. This chapter explores these and other possibilities, all having to do with personal identity, or the persistence of persons through time. (shrink)

The opaque use of data collection methods on the WWW has given rise to privacy concerns among Internet users. Privacy policies on websites may ease these concerns, if they communicate clearly and unequivocally when, how and for what purpose data are collected, used or shared. This paper examines privacy policies from a linguistic angle to determine whether the language of these documents is adequate for communicating data-handling practices in a manner that enables informed consent on the part of the user. (...) The findings highlight that corporate privacy policies obfuscate, enhance and mitigate unethical data handling practices and use persuasive appeals to increase companies’ trustworthiness. The communicative strategies identified provide starting points for redesigning existing privacy statements with a view to communicating data handling practices in a more transparent and responsible manner, laying the groundwork for informed consent. (shrink)

Use of the concept of `areasonable person and his or her expectations'is widely found in legal reasoning. This legalconstruct is employed in the present article toexamine privacy questions associated withcontemporary information technology, especiallythe internet. In particular, reasonableexpectations of privacy while browsing theworld-wide-web and while sending and receivinge-mail are analyzed.

Recent research has provided converging evidence, using multiple tasks, of sensitivity to fairness in the second year of life. In contrast, findings in the first year have been mixed, leaving it unclear whether young infants possess an expectation of fairness. The present research examined the possibility that young infants might expect windfall resources to be divided equally between similar recipients, but might demonstrate this expectation only under very simple conditions. In three violation-of-expectation experiments, 9-month-olds (N = 120) expected an experimenter (...) to divide two cookies equally between two animated puppets (1:1), and they detected a violation when she divided them unfairly instead (2:0). The same positive result was obtained whether the experimenter gave the cookies one by one to the puppets (Experiments 1–2) or first separated them onto placemats and then gave each puppet a placemat (Experiment 3). However, a negative result was obtained when four (as opposed to two) cookies were allocated: Infants looked about equally whether they saw a fair (2:2) or an unfair (3:1) distribution (Experiment 3). A final experiment revealed that 4-month-olds (N = 40) also expected an experimenter to distribute two cookies equally between two animated puppets (Experiment 4). Together, these and various control results support two broad conclusions. First, sensitivity to fairness emerges very early in life, consistent with claims that an abstract expectation of fairness is part of the basic structure of human moral cognition. Second, this expectation can at first be observed only under simple conditions, and speculations are offered as to why this might be the case. (shrink)

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to lay out an approach to addressing the problem of privacy protection in the global digital environment based on the importance that information has to improve users’ informational self-determination. Following this reasoning, this paper focuses on the suitable way to provide user with the correct amount of information they may need to maintain a desirable grade of autonomy as far as their privacy protection is concerned and decide whether or not to put their (...) personal data on the internet. Design/methodology/approach The authors arrive at this point in their analysis by qualitative discourse analysis of the most relevant scientific papers and dossiers relating to privacy protection. Findings The goal of this paper is twofold. The first is to illustrate the importance of privacy by default and informed consent working together to protect information and communication technology users’ privacy. The second goal is to develop a suitable way to administrate the mentioned “informed consent” to users. Originality/value To fulfil this purpose, the authors present a new concept of informed consent: active “informed consent” or “Opt-in” model by layers. “Opt-in” regimens have already been used with cookies but never with 2.0 applications, as, for instance, social network sites. (shrink)

The advance of technology has influenced marketing in a number of ways that have ethical implications. Growth in use of the Internetand e-commerce has placed electronic “cookies,” spyware, spam, RFIDs, and data mining at the forefront of the ethical debate. Some marketers have minimized the significance of these trends. This overview paper examines these issues and introduces the two articles that follow. It is hoped that these entries will further the important “marketing and technology” ethical debate.

The advance of technology has influenced marketing in a number of ways that have ethical implications. Growth in use of the Internetand e-commerce has placed electronic “cookies,” spyware, spam, RFIDs, and data mining at the forefront of the ethical debate. Some marketers have minimized the significance of these trends. This overview paper examines these issues and introduces the two articles that follow. It is hoped that these entries will further the important “marketing and technology” ethical debate.

In 1992, as part of a larger charitable campaign, the Prince of Wales (Prince Charles, Queen Elizabeth’s older son and heir) launched a line of organic food products called “Prince’s Duchy Originals”.1 The first product that went on sale was an oat cookie: “the oaten biscuit.” Since then the oaten biscuit has been joined by hundreds of other products and Duchy Originals has become one of the leading organic food brands in the UK. Presumably, the Prince of Wales is very (...) proud of his Duchy Originals products, and of the oaten biscuits in particular. Let’s imagine that he is so proud of the oaten biscuits that he eats them regularly. Also, let’s imagine that one day Queen Elizabeth asks the Prince to water the plant in her room. As she explains to him, she’ll be gone for the day and the plant needs to be watered every afternoon. But the Prince decides not to water the plant. Instead of watering the plant, he spends his afternoon savoring some oaten biscuits, and the Queen’s plant dies. (shrink)

Most of us have had the experience of resisting our currently strongest desire, for example, resisting the desire to eat another cookie when eating another cookie is what we most want to do. The puzzle of synchronic self‐control, however, says that this is impossible: an agent cannot ever resist her currently strongest desire. The paper argues that one prominent solution to this puzzle – the solution offered by Al Mele – faces a serious ‘mismatch problem’, which ultimately undermines its plausibility. (...) It is furthermore argued that this problem can be avoided if we adopt a ‘divided mind’ solution instead. (shrink)

Big Data enhances the possibilities for storing personal data extracted from social media and web search on an unprecedented scale. This paper draws on the political economy of information which explains why the online industry fails to self-regulate, resulting in increasingly insidious web-tracking technologies. Content analysis of historical blogs and request for comments on HTTP cookies published by the Internet Engineering Task Force illustrates how cookie technology was introduced in the mid-1990s, amid stark warnings about increased system vulnerabilities and (...) deceptive personal data extractions. In conclusion, online users today are left with few alternatives but to enter into unconscionable contracts about the extraction of their personal data when using the Internet for private purposes. (shrink)

In this paper, we outline and defend a view on which in olfactory experience we can, and often do, smell ordinary things of various kinds—for instance, cookies, coffee, and cake burnings—and the olfactory properties they have. A challenge to this view are cases of smelling in the absence of the source of a smell, such as when a fishy smell lingers after the fish is gone. Such cases, many philosophers argue, show that what we perceive in olfactory experience are (...) odour objects, and not ordinary things. On behalf of our opponent, we articulate a screening-off argument based on cases of lingering smells for the thesis that we do not smell ordinary things. We then develop an alternative account of these cases that is consistent with our view. In doing so, we call into question two claims that are typically built into the notion of an odour object. (shrink)

The dervish lodge cuisine in the Ottoman lodge structuring has a central importance. The lodge cuisine helped Anatolia turn into a homeland. Travelers took shelter in the lodges in Anatolia. So, these buildings were a safe haven for those who travel. Lodge’s kitchens were always open. These kitchens offered a delightful “Sheikh Baba’s Soup” anytime and these kitchens gave peace and serenity to Anatolia. This article analyzes the Ottoman lodge food culture in the context of a manuscript which belongs to (...) an imaret. This manuscript called Majmūʿa al-fawāʾid was written in between 1240-1250 (1825-1835) in Istanbul. This work belongs to the period of Sultan Mahmud II and the Hudāyī Lodge Foundation. Institution Employees and accounting records were disclosed in this manuscript in which the names of kitchenware are mentioned and recipes are found. This work gives detailed information about foods that are cooked in the Hudāyī Lodge Foundation’s imaret kitchen. -/- SUMMARY Eating is thought always to be important and it is considered worthwhile to eat with guests and travelers in Turkish culture. In the process of Islamization, the dining table was accepted “Halil İbrahim’s Table” and this approach has strengthened further the hospitality. Eating with people, preparing the table for the guests, travelers and the needy were regarded as a factor increasing the fertility of the table. In addition, these movements were considered an act of social cooperation and deepen the collective consciousness. Especially the sufis played a dominant role in the process of Islamization in Anatolia and depending on this, they undertook various social and cultural functions that including catering. In this regard, the lodge was seen as a complex and this structure encompasses different units such as imaret or soup kitchen, mosque, tomb, library, dervish cells, public fountains, bakery and bathhouse. Travelers stay in the imaret and supply their needs, they also nurture themselves spiritually as well. Lodges were a safe haven for these travelers and lodge’s kitchens were open every hour of the day with serving the delicious “Father’s Soup.” Therefore, lodges became a representative of peace. These kitchens take reference the advices of the prophet about eating and serving meals. In addition, the effects of the old Turkish culture and of the Yesevī tradition on these kitchens are witnessed. While many documents related to the food culture in Anatolia could remain to us, regarding the life of lodges especially, information about the kitchens is still limited. Ali Eşref Dede’s cookbook, Yemek Risalesi, is one of the works written about the dishes of Ottoman period. This work is very important in relation to the Mevleviyye as well. This manuscript was written in the 19th century by Sheikh Ali Eşref Dede at Edirne. Majmūʿa al-fawāʾid, one of the other important sources that should be included in the Ottoman lodge food literature. This manuscript is registered in the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Atatürk Library Muallim Cevdet Yazmaları (number, 224). Two works were written in the same century. In Majmūʿa al-fawāʾid there are some financial and agricultural information concerning to “Hüdâyî Lodge’s Foundation”. This manuscript includes valuable information about accounting records and officers employed in imaret and other institutions. On the other hand, there are various recipes in this manuscript about the imaret meals, also lists of kitchenware and food materials. This record is thirty pages and was written during Mahmud II. period. Majmūʿa al-fawāʾid is related to Aziz Mahmud Hudāyī Lodge that is placed in a high and strategic location in Uskudar that connects Istanbul to Anatolia. This was a complex structure and established in a place of ten thousand square meters. It consisted of imaret, sheikh’s house (haremlik), mosque, tomb, library, dervish cells, bakery and bath. As mentioned above, Majmūʿa al-fawāʾid contains important information about Aziz Mahmud Hudāyī Lodge’s kitchen and recipes. In fact, the manuscript also provides several alternatives to some of the recipes. This record exhibits the structure of the order and the nutritional forms of the Sufis. Thus, to some extent, it is possible to analyze the theoretical and philosophical direction of the order. Because eating in the lodges is not an action just to satisfy a person's stomach. Rather there is a dining ritual in the lodge. In this frame, the importance of the dining table was emphasized in the lodge tradition in the dimension of human education and socialization. In the sense of Sufism, the information about food reveals symbolic and allegorical meanings, sometimes directly or indirectly. Rituals related to food are closely related to the educational process of the dervishes. In this respect, on the sacred journey of dervish it is necessary to eat food permissible in the religion. In this regard, the books about the customs of the order contain considerable information. Giving valuable information about meals Majmūʿa al-fawāʾid contains main course and dessert recipes. It revealed the food habits of the dervishes and the people who were living at that time. The recipes also contain some interesting features applicable in the Turkish kitchen today. In addition, the names of meals and desserts contribute to the richness of the Turkic language. There are soups and salads, meat grills and stew varieties, fish dishes, pastry varieties, dessert varieties, cookies and halvahs. Meals are cooked with butter mainly. Lamb and sheep are preferred in the meals. The use of spices is high. For example, cinnamon is used even when cooking meat and fish. The manuscript seems to have thirty recipes but there are also different cooking methods in the manuscript. Different cooking methods were used together in some meals as frying, boiling and baking. For this reason, the number of recipes in the manuscript increases even more. This article entitled “The Ottoman Dervish Lodge Cuisine and Majmūʿa al-fawāʾid” has been latinized by simplifying the manuscript based on with a single copy. In this article the place and importance of the lodge cuisine in a mystical life has been analyzed in addition to presenting valuable information about the literature that is related to the Anatolian Lodge Cuisine, the Ottoman Cuisine, and recepies cooked in the Ottoman. Furthermore, the work briefly presents some about the lodge because it is related to Aziz Mahmud Hudāyī lodge. Moreover, a dictionary section has been added for understanding the relatively abandoned words in the manuscript. Similarly, measurements and weigh units are briefly given in Majmūʿa al-fawāʾid. (shrink)

This article reviews the incredible growth of electronic commerce (e-commerce) and presents ethical issues that have emerged. Security concerns, spamming, Web sites that do not carry an "advertising" label, cybersquatters, online marketing to children, conflicts of interest, manufacturers competing with intermediaries online, and "dinosaurs" are discussed. The power of the Internet to spotlight issues is noted as a significant force in providing a kind of self-regulation that supports an ethical e-commerce environment.

The advance of technology has influenced marketing in a number of ways that have ethical implications. Growth in use of the Internetand e-commerce has placed electronic “cookies,” spyware, spam, RFIDs, and data mining at the forefront of the ethical debate. Some marketers have minimized the significance of these trends. This overview paper examines these issues and introduces the two articles that follow. It is hoped that these entries will further the important “marketing and technology” ethical debate.

continent. 2.2 (2012): 66–75 ~*~ We’re Doomed. Pessimism is the night-side of thought, a melodrama of the futility of the brain, a poetry written in the graveyard of philosophy. Pessimism is a lyrical failure of philosophical thinking, each attempt at clear and coherent thought, sullen and submerged in the hidden joy of its own futility. The closest pessimism comes to philosophical argument is the droll and laconic “We’ll never make it,” or simply: “We’re doomed.” Every effort doomed to failure, every (...) project doomed to incompletion, every life doomed to be unlived, every thought doomed to be unthought. Pessimism is the lowest form of philosophy, frequently disparaged and dismissed, merely the symptom of a bad attitude. No one ever needs pessimism, in the way that one needs optimism to inspire one to great heights and to pick oneself up, in the way one needs constructive criticism, advice and feedback, inspirational books or a pat on the back. No one needs pessimism, though I like to imagine the idea of a pessimist activism. No one needs pessimism, and yet everyone—without exception—has, at some point in their lives, had to confront pessimism, if not as a philosophy then as a grievance—against one’s self or others, against one’s surroundings or one’s life, against the state of things or the world in general. There is little redemption for pessimism, and no consolation prize. Ultimately, pessimism is weary of everything and of itself. Pessimism is the philosophical form of disenchantment—disenchantment as chanting, a chant, a mantra, a solitary, monophonic voice rendered insignificant by the intimate immensity surrounding it. In pessimism, the first axiom is a long, low, funereal sigh. ~*~ We’re Still Doomed. No one has time for pessimism. After all, there are only so many hours in a day. Whatever our temperament, happy or sad, engaged or disengaged, we know pessimism when we hear it. The pessimist is usually understood as the complainer, forever pointing out what is wrong with the world without ever once offering a solution. But more often than not pessimists are the quietest of philosophers, submerging their own sighs within the lethargy of discontent. What little sound it makes is of interest to no one—“I’ve heard it all before,” “tell me something I don’t know,” sound and fury, signifying nothing. In raising problems without solutions, in posing questions without answers, in retreating to the hermetic, cavernous abode of complaint, pessimism is guilty of that most inexcusable of Occidental crimes—the crime of not pretending it’s for real. Pessimism fails to live up to the most basic tenet of philosophy—the “as if.” Think as if it will be helpful, act as if it will make a difference, speak as if there is something to say, live as if you are not, in fact, being lived by some murmuring non-entity both shadowy and muddied. Had it more self-assurance and better social skills, pessimism would turn its disenchantment into a religion, possibly calling itself The Great Refusal. But there is a negation in pessimism that refuses even such a Refusal, an awareness that, from the start, it has already failed, and that the culmination of all that is, is that all is for naught. Pessimism tries very hard to present itself in the low, sustained tones of a Requiem Mass, or the tectonic rumbling of Tibetan chant. But it frequently lets loose dissonant notes at once plaintive and pathetic. Often, its voice cracks, its weighty words abruptly reduced to mere shards of guttural sound. ~*~ Maybe It’s Not So Bad, After All. If we know pessimism when we hear it, this is because we’ve heard it all before—and we didn’t need to hear it in the first place. Life is hard enough. What you need is a change of attitude, a new outlook, a shift in perspective... a cup of coffee. If we have no ears for pessimism, this is because it is always reducible to something as reliably mutable as a voice. If pessimism is so frequently disparaged, it is because it brings everyone down, determined as it is to view each day as a bad day, if only by virtue of the fact that it is not yet a bad day. For pessimism the world is brimming with negative possibility, the collision of a bad mood with an impassive world. In fact, pessimism is the result of a confusion between the world and a statement about the world, a confusion that also prevents it from fully entering the hallowed halls of philosophy. If pessimism is so often dismissed, this is because it is often impossible to separate a “bad mood” from a philosophical proposition (and do not all philosophies stem from a bad mood?) The very term “pessimism” suggests a school of thought, a movement, even a community. But pessimism always has a membership of one—maybe two. Ideally, of course, it would have a membership of none, with only a scribbled, illegible note left behind by someone long forgotten. But this seems unrealistic, though one can always hope. ~*~ Anatomy of Pessimism. Though it may locate itself at the margins of philosophy, pessimism is as much subject to philosophical analysis as any other form of thought. Pessimism’s lyricism of failure gives it the structure of music. What time is to the music of sorrow, reason is to a philosophy of the worst. Pessimism’s two major keys are moral and metaphysical pessimism, its subjective and objective poles, an attitude towards the world and a claim about the world. For moral pessimism, it is better not to have been born at all; for metaphysical pessimism, this is the worst of all possible worlds. For moral pessimism the problem is the solipsism of human beings, the world made in our own image, a world-for-us. For metaphysical pessimism, the problem is the solipsism of the world, objected and projected as a world-in-itself. Both moral and metaphysical pessimism are compromised philosophically; moral pessimism by its failure to locate the human within a larger context, and metaphysical pessimism by its failure to recognize the complicity in the very claim of realism. This is how pessimism makes its music of the worst, a generalized misanthropy without the anthropos . Pessimism crystallizes around this futility—it is its amor fati , rendered as musical form. ~*~ Melancholy of Anatomy. There is a logic of pessimism that is fundamental to its suspicion of philosophical system. Pessimism involves a statement about a condition . In pessimism each statement boils down to an affirmation or a negation, just as any condition boils down to the best or the worst. With Schopenhauer, that arch-pessimist, the thinker for whom the philosopher and the curmudgeon perfectly overlap, we see a no-saying to the worst, a no-saying that secretly covets a yes-saying (through asceticism, mysticism, quietism), even if this hidden yes-saying is a horizon at the limits of comprehension. With Nietzsche comes the pronouncement of a Dionysian pessimism, a pessimism of strength or joy, a yes-saying to the worst, a yes-saying to this world as it is. And with Cioran yet another variation, futile yet lyrical, a no-saying to the worst, and a further no-saying to the possibility of any other world, in here or out there. With Cioran one approaches, but never reaches, an absolute no-saying, a studied abandonment of pessimism itself. The logic of pessimism moves through three refusals: a no-saying to the worst (refusal of the world-for-us, or Schopenhauer’s tears); a yes-saying to the worst (refusal of the world-in-itself, or Nietzsche’s laughter); and a no-saying to the for-us and the in-itself (a double refusal, or Cioran’s sleep). Crying, laughing, sleeping—what other responses are adequate to a life that is so indifferent? ~*~ Cosmic Pessimism. Both moral and metaphysical pessimism point to another kind, a pessimism that is neither subjective nor objective, neither for-us nor in-itself, and instead a pessimism of the world-without-us. We could call this a cosmic pessimism ... but this sounds too majestic, too full of wonder, too much the bitter aftertaste of the Great Beyond. Words falter. And so do ideas. And so we have a cosmic pessimism, a pessimism that is first and last a pessimism about cosmos , about the necessity and possibility of order. The contours of cosmic pessimism are a drastic scaling-up or scaling-down of the human point of view, the unhuman orientation of deep space and deep time, and all of this shadowed by an impasse, a primordial insignificance, the impossibility of ever adequately accounting for one’s relationship to thought—all that remains of pessimism is the desiderata of affects—agonistic, impassive, defiant, reclusive, filled with sorrow and flailing at that architectonic chess match called philosophy, a flailing that pessimism tries to raise to the level of an art form (though what usually results is slapstick). ~*~ Song of Futility. An ethics of futility pervades pessimism. Futility, however, is different from fatality, and different again from simple failure (though failure is never simple). Failure is a breakage within the heart of relations, a fissure between cause and effect, a fissure hastily covered over by trying and trying again. With failure, there is always plenty of blame to go around; it’s not my fault, it’s a technical difficulty, it’s a miscommunication. For the pessimist, failure is a question of “when,” not “if”—failure as a metaphysical principle. Everything withers and passes into an obscurity blacker than night, everything from the melodramatic decline of a person’s life to the banal flickering moments that constitute each day. Everything that is done undone, everything said or known destined for a kind of stellar oblivion. When scaled up in this way, failure becomes fatality. Fatality is the hermeticism of cause and effect. In fatality, everything you do, whatever you do, always leads to a certain end, and ultimately to the end—though that end, or the means to that end, remain shrouded in obscurity. Nothing you do makes a difference because everything you do makes a difference. Hence the effects of your actions are hidden from you, even as you deceive yourself into thinking that, at last, this time you will outwit the order of things. By having a goal, planning ahead, and thinking things through carefully, we attempt, in a daily Prometheanism, to turn fatality to our advantage, to gain a glimpse of an order that seems buried deeper and deeper in the fabric of the universe. But even fatality has its comforts. The chain of cause and effect may be hidden from us, but that’s just because disorder is the order we don’t yet see; it’s just complex, distributed, and requires advanced mathematics. Fatality still clings to the sufficiency of everything that exists... When fatality relinquishes even this idea, it becomes futility. Futility arises out of the grim suspicion that, behind the shroud of causality we drape over the world, there is only the indifference of what exists or doesn’t exist; whatever you do ultimately leads to no end, an irrevocable chasm between thought and world. Futility transforms the act of thinking into a zero-sum game. ~*~ Song of the Worst. At the center of pessimism lies the term pessimus , “the worst,” a term as relative as it is absolute. The worst is about as bad as it gets, “the worst” as “the best” in disguise, shrouded by the passage of time or the twists and turns of fortune. For the pessimist, “the worst” is the propensity for suffering that gradually occludes each living moment, until it eclipses it entirely, overlapping perfectly in death... which, for the pessimist, is no longer “the worst.” Pessimism is marked by an unwillingness to move beyond “the worst,” something only partially attributable to a lack in motivation. In pessimism “the worst” is the ground that gives way beneath every existent—things could be worse, and , things could be better. “The worst” invariably implies a value judgment, one made based on scant evidence and little experience; in this way, pessimism’s greatest nemesis is its moral orientation. Pessimism’s propositions have all the gravitas of a bad joke. Perhaps this is why the true optimists are the most severe pessimists—they are optimists that have run out of options. They are almost ecstatically inundated by the worst. Such an optimism is the only possible outcome of a prolonged period of suffering, physical or metaphysical, intellectual or spiritual. But does this not also describe all the trials and tribulations of each day—in short, of “life?” It seems that sooner or later we are all doomed to become optimists of this sort (the most depressing of thoughts...) ~*~ Song of Doom. Rather than serving as a cause for despair, gloom and doom are the forms of consolation for any pessimist philosophy. Neither quite affects nor quite concepts, gloom and doom transform pessimism into a mortification of philosophy. Doom is not just the sense that all things will turn out badly, but that all things inevitably come to an end, irrespective of whether or not they really do come to an end. What emerges from doom is a sense of the unhuman as an attractor, a horizon towards which the human is fatally drawn. Doom is humanity given over to unhumanity in an act of crystalline self-abnegation. Gloom is not simply the anxiety that precedes doom. Gloom is literally atmospheric, climate as much as impression, and if people are also gloomy, this is simply the by-product of an anodyne atmosphere that only incidentally involves human beings. Gloom is more climatological than psychological, the stuff of dim, hazy, overcast skies, of ruins and overgrown tombs, of a misty, lethargic fog that moves with the same languorousness as our own crouched and sullen listening to a disinterested world. In a sense, gloom is the counterpoint to doom—what futility is to the former, fatality is to the latter. Doom is marked by temporality—all things precariously drawn to their end—whereas gloom is the austerity of stillness, all things sad, static, and suspended, a meandering smoke hovering over cold lichen stones and damp fir trees. If doom is the terror of temporality and death, then gloom is the horror of a hovering stasis that is life. At times I like to imagine that this realization alone is the thread that connects the charnel ground Aghori and the graveyard poets. ~*~ Song of Spite. There is an intolerance in pessimism that knows no bounds. In pessimism spite begins by fixing on a particular object of spite—someone one hardly knows, or someone one knows too well; a spite for this person or a spite for all of humanity; a spectacular or a banal spite; a spite for a noisy neighbor, a yapping dog, a battalion of strollers, the meandering idiot walking in front of you on their smart phone, large loud celebrations, traumatic injustices anywhere in the world regurgitated as media blitz, spite for the self-absorbed and overly performative people talking way too loud at the table next to you, technical difficulties and troubleshooting, the reduction of everything to branding, spite of the refusal to admit one’s own errors, of self-help books, of people who know absolutely everything and make sure to tell you, of all people, all living beings, all things, the world, the spiteful planet, the inanity of existence... Spite is the motor of pessimism because it is so egalitarian, so expansive, it runs amok, stumbling across intuitions that can only half-heartedly be called philosophical. Spite lacks the confidence and the clarity of hatred, but it also lacks the almost cordial judgment of dislike. For the pessimist, the smallest detail can be an indication of a metaphysical futility so vast and funereal that it eclipses pessimism itself—a spite that pessimism carefully places beyond the horizon of intelligibility, like the experience of dusk, or like the phrase, “it is raining jewels and daggers.” ~*~ Song of Sleep. A paraphrase of Schopenhauer: what death is for the organism, sleep is for the individual. Pessimists sleep not because they are depressed, but because for them sleep is a form of ascetic practice. Sleep is the askesis of pessimism. If, while sleeping, we have a bad dream, we abruptly wake up, and suddenly the horrors of the night vanish. There is no reason to think that the same does not happen with the bad dream we call “life.” ~*~ Song of Sorrow. Nietzsche, commenting on pessimism, once castigated Schopenhauer for taking things too lightly. He writes: ...Schopenhauer, though a pessimist, really —played the flute. Every day, after dinner: one should read his biography on that. And incidentally: a pessimist, one who denies God and the world but comes to a stop before morality—who affirms morality and plays the flute... what? Is that really—a pessimist? We know that Schopenhauer did possess a collection of instruments, and we also know that Nietzsche himself composed music. There is no reason to think that either of them would ever banish music from the Republic of philosophy. But Nietzsche’s jibes at Schopenhauer are as much about music as they are about pessimism. For the pessimist who says no to everything and yet finds comfort in music, the no-saying of pessimism can only be a weak way of saying yes—the weightiest statement undercut by the flightiest of replies. The least that Schopenhauer could’ve done is to play the bass. I’m not a big fan of the flute, or, for that matter, wind instruments generally. But what Nietzsche forgets is the role that the flute has historically played in Greek tragedy. In tragedy, the flute ( aulos ) is not an instrument of levity and joy, but of solitude and sorrow. The Greek aulos not only expresses the grief of tragic loss, but it does so in a way that renders weeping and singing inseparable from each other. The classicist Nicole Loraux calls this the mourning voice . Set apart from the more official civic rituals of funerary mourning, the mourning voice of Greek tragedy constantly threatens to dissolve song into wailing, music into moaning, and the voice into a primordial, disarticulate anti-music. The mourning voice delineates all the forms of suffering—tears, weeping, sobbing, wailing, moaning, and the convulsions of thought reduced to an elemental unintelligibility. In the collapsed space between the voice that speaks and the voice that sings, pessimism discovers its mourning voice. Pessimism: the failure of sound and sense, the disarticulation of phone and logos . Have we rescued Schopenhauer from Nietzsche? Probably not. Perhaps Schopenhauer played the flute to remind himself of the real function of the mourning voice—sorrow, sighs, and moaning rendered indistinguishable from music, the crumbling of the human into the unhuman. Failure par excellence of pessimism. ~*~ Song of Nothing. In Buddhist thought, the First Noble Truth of existence is encapsulated in the Pali term dukkha , conventionally translated as “suffering,” “sorrow,” or “misery.” The Buddhist teachings are clear, however, that this is an objective claim, and not simply one point of view among others. Existence is suffering and sorrow—and yet this is not, the teachings tell us, a pessimistic attitude. It is likely that Schopenhauer, reading the Buddhist texts available to him, recognized some filiation with the concept of dukkha . But dukkha is a multi-faceted term. There is, certainly, dukkha in the usual sense of the suffering, strife, and loss associated with living a life. But this is, in turn, dependent on the finitude and temporality of dukkha , existence as determined by impermanence and imperfection. And this ultimately points to the way in which both suffering and finitude are grounded by the paradoxical groundlessness of dukkha as a metaphysical principle—the insubstantiality and the emptiness of all that is. Beyond what is worse to me, beyond a world ordered for the worst, there is the emptiness of dukkha as an impersonal suffering... the tears of the cosmos. In this context, it is easy to see how Schopenhauer’s pessimism attempts to compress all the aspects of dukkha into a nothingness at the core of existence, a Willlessness coursing through the Will. Though one thing for certain is that with Schopenhauer we do not find the “ever-smiling” countenance of Buddhism—or do we? The texts of the Pali Canon also contain lists of the different types of happiness—including the happiness of renunciation and the strange happiness of detachment. But Buddhism considers even the different types of happiness as part of dukkha , in this final sense of nothingness or emptiness. Perhaps Schopenhauer understood Buddhism better than he is usually given credit for. Thus the experiment of Schopenhauer’s philosophy—the point at which a Western pessimus and an Eastern dukkha overlap or exchange glances. Empty sorrow, a lyricism of indifference. The result is a strange, and ultimately untenable, nocturnal form of Buddhism. ~*~ Cioran once called music a “physics of tears.” If this is true, then perhaps metaphysics is its commentary. Or its apology. ~*~ Pessimism would be more mystical were it not for its defeatism. Mysticism is much too proactive for the pessimist, and pessimism too impassive even for the mystic. At the same time, there is something enviable about mysticism—despite its sufferings. There is a sense in which pessimists are really failed mystics. ~*~ You, the Night, and the Music. In a suggestive passage, Schopenhauer once noted that, “music is the melody to which the world is the text." Given Schopenhauer’s view on life—that life is suffering, that human life is absurd, that the nothingness before my birth is equal to the nothingness after my death—given all this, one wonders what kind of music Schopenhauer had in mind when he described music as the melody to which the world is text—was it opera, a Requiem Mass, a madrigal, or perhaps a drinking song? Or something like Eine kleine Nachtmusik , a little night music for the twilight of thought, a sullen nocturne for the night-side of logic, an era of sad wings sung by a solitary banshee. Perhaps the music Schopenhauer had in mind is music eliminated to non-music. A whisper would suffice. Perhaps a sigh of fatigue or resignation, perhaps a moan of despair or sorrow. Perhaps a sound just articulate enough that it could be heard to dissipate. ~*~ Teach me to laugh through tears. ~*~ Pessimism always falls short of being philosophical. My back aches, my knees hurt, I couldn’t sleep last night, I’m stressed-out, and I think I’m finally coming down with something. Pessimism abjures all pretenses towards system—towards the purity of analysis and the dignity of critique. We didn’t really think we could figure it out, did we? It was just passing time, taking a piss, something to do, a bold gesture put forth in all its fragility, according to rules that we have agreed to forget that we made up in the first place. Every thought marked by a shadowy incomprehension that precedes it, and a futility that undermines it. That pessimism speaks, in whatever voice, is the singing testimony to this futility and this incomprehension—take a chance and step outside, lose some sleep and say you tried... ~*~ Is there a music of pessimism? And would such a music be audible? ~*~ The impact of music on a person compels them to put their experience into words. When this fails, the result is a faltering of thought and language that is itself a kind of music. Cioran writes: “Music is everything. God himself is nothing more than an acoustic hallucination.” ~*~ If a thinker like Schopenhauer has any redeeming qualities, it is that he identified the great lie of Western culture—the preference for existence over non-existence. As he notes: “If we knocked on the graves and asked the dead whether they would like to rise again, they would shake their heads.” In Western cultures it is commonly accepted that one celebrates birth and mourns death. But there must be a mistake here. Wouldn’t it make more sense to mourn birth and celebrate death? Strange though, because the mourning of birth would, presumably, last the entirety of that person’s life, so that mourning and living would the be same thing. ~*~ To the musical idea of the harmony of the universe corresponds the philosophical principle of sufficient reason. Like the music of mourning, pessimism gives voice to the inevitable breakdown of word and song. In this way, music is the overtone of thought. ~*~ The Patron Saints of Pessimism. The patron saints of pessimism watch over suffering. Laconic and sullen, the patron saints of pessimism never seem to do a good job at protecting, interceding, or advocating for those who suffer. Perhaps they need us more than we need them. Lest we forget, there do exist patron saints of philosophy, but their stories are not happy ones. There is, for instance, the fourth century Saint Catherine of Alexandria, or Catherine of the Wheel, named after the torture device used on her. A precocious fourteen year old scholar, Catherine was subject to continual persecution. After all forms of torture failed—including the “breaking wheel”—the emperor finally settled for her decapitation, a violent yet appropriate reminder of the protector of philosophers. There are also patron saints of music and musicians, but theirs too are sad stories. In the second century, Saint Cecilia was also subject to persecution and torture. As she knelt to receive the blade that would separate her head from her body, she ardently sang a song to God. It took three attempts before she was fully decapitated, all the while she continued, perhaps miraculously, to sing. Does pessimism not deserve its own patron saints, even if they are unworthy of martyrdom? But in our search, even the most ardent nay-sayers frequently lapse into brief moments of enthusiasm—Pascal’s love of solitude, Leopardi’s love of poetry, Schopenhauer’s love of music, Nietzsche’s love of Schopenhauer, and so on. Should one then focus on individual works of pessimism? We could include Kierkegaard’s trilogy of horror— Sickness Unto Death , The Concept of Dread , and Fear and Trembling —but all these are undermined by their fabricated and unreliable authors. Besides, how can one separate the pessimist from the optimist in works like Unamuno’s The Tragic Sense of Life , Shestov’s Postetas Clavium , or Edgar Saltus’ under-read The Philosophy of Disenchantment ? Even in cases where the entire corpus of an author is pessimistic, the project always seems incomplete—witness Cioran’s trajectory, from his first book, On the Heights of Despair , to the last unpublished notebooks of acrid and taut aphorisms. And this is to say nothing of literary pessimism, from Goethe’s sorrowful Werther, to Dostoevsky’s underground man, to Pessoa’s disquiet scribbler; Baudelaire’s spleen and ennui, the mystical Satanism of Huysmans and Strindberg, the hauntologies of Mário de Sá-Carniero, Izumi Kyoka, H.P. Lovecraft, grumpy old Beckett... even the great pessimist comedians. All that remains are singular, perhaps anomalous statements of pessimism, a litany of quotes and citations crammed into fortune cookies. Patron saints are traditionally named after a locale, either a place of birth or of a mystical experience. Perhaps the better approach is to focus on the places where pessimists were forced to live out their pessimism—Schopenhauer facing an empty Berlin lecture hall, Nietzsche mute and convalescent at the home of his sister, Wittgenstein the relinquished professor and solitary gardener, Cioran grappling with Alzheimer’s in his tiny writing alcove in the Latin Quarter. ~*~ There’s a ghost that grows inside of me, damaged in the making, and there’s a hunt sprung from necessity, elliptical and drowned. Where the moving quiet of our insomnia offers up each thought, there’s a luminous field of grey inertia, and obsidian dreams burnt all the way down. ~*~ If pessimism has any pedagogical value, it is that the failure of pessimism as a philosophy is inextricably tied to the failure of pessimism as voice. I read the following, from Shestov’s The Apotheosis of Groundlessness : When a person is young he writes because it seems to him he has discovered a new almighty truth which he must make haste to impart to forlorn humankind. Later, becoming more modest, he begins to doubt his truths: and then he tries to convince himself. A few more years go by, and he knows he was mistaken all round, so there is no need to convince himself. Nevertheless he continues to write, because he is not fit for any other work, and to be accounted a superfluous person is so horrible. (shrink)

In this paper, we outline and defend a view on which in olfactory experience we can, and often do, smell ordinary things of various kinds—for instance, cookies, coffee, and cake burnings—and the olfactory properties they have. A challenge to this view are cases of smelling in the absence of the source of a smell, such as when a fishy smell lingers after the fish is gone. Such cases, many philosophers argue, show that what we perceive in olfactory experience are (...) odour objects, and not ordinary things. On behalf of our opponent, we articulate a screening-off argument based on cases of lingering smells for the thesis that we do not smell ordinary things. We then develop an alternative account of these cases that is consistent with our view. In doing so, we call into question two claims that are typically built into the notion of an odour object. (shrink)

I once opened a fortune cookie containing the message, ‘All happiness is in the mind’; it is still affixed to my refrigerator. I did not put it there to signal.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Little Body Hidden WithinTara ChapmanBeing “fat” was not a choice. It was my life and it slowly happened over time. Being obese is a disease that I have struggled with my entire life. I am 36 years old, nearing 37.I might not have eaten the right foods, but I didn’t overeat. I grew up eating typical American food and continued to cook that way into my adult life. I (...) ate eggs and toast for breakfast, sandwiches, chips and a few cookies for lunch, or leftovers, and some kind of meat and potatoes or pasta for dinner, with a canned vegetable. I very seldom ate fresh vegetables, but I did like summer fruits. However, those are filled with natural sugar and are only in season for a few months out of the year. I didn’t eat out, other than having my daily Starbucks Mocha Frappuccino on the way to work five days a week. I didn’t load my plate up with food. I ate less than my brother, sister and parents who are smaller than me. I took exercise and fitness classes all through college and knew what I was supposed to do. I exercised over the years, only to quit because I never lost weight and got discouraged. I would feel [End Page 93] better physically; however, I just kept packing on the pounds, which took a toll emotionally.By November 2012, I topped the scale at 291 pounds and could barely fit into my size 22 jeans and 3xl tops. I would sweat uncontrollably because of all the extra weight I was carrying around and could barely make it up the ramp at work or a flight of stairs without huffing and puffing. Because I would sweat profusely, my wardrobe consisted of white or black shirts. I had to hide the sweat stains. I had high blood pressure and cholesterol. I was on medication for both. My insulin levels were all over the boards. I knew that when I was shaky and my levels were high, it was time to eat. I would control my type II diabetes by eating a small piece of candy, which would instantly control my shakes. I would follow the candy up with a meal. My diet and exercise habits were causing me to have terrible headaches. In my early 20’s, I was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). Besides having ovarian cysts and unbalanced hormones, the major issue with PSOC is unexplained weight gain and not being able to lose it. My health was spinning out of control and I secretly knew it. I just didn’t know how to fix it or what to do.I had to do something and I needed help. I didn’t want to die by the time I was 40; and the path that I was on was leading me to an early grave. I could hear it in my mom’s voice every time I talked to her. She knew something was wrong; she would try to talk to me about it and tell me I was going to have a heart attack. She would tell me how worried my dad was. I wouldn’t listen. I began to sleep more and more every day after work and on weekends. I had to take naps almost daily because I was so exhausted and had no energy. I didn’t know what to do. I was depressed and felt like I was alone. Nobody in my family understood and my friends couldn’t relate to what I was going through. I was fat and they weren’t.I heard about a special clinic that focused on women’s health issues from a co–worker. Under the close watch of the clinic’s doctor and her medical staff, I began a therapeutic lifestyle change on February 27, 2013. I had no expectations because I had always been obese. I had never lost weight, so why would this be any different? This lifestyle change includes committing to a healthy diet of high protein, vitamins and supplements, balancing hormones for PCOS and exercising. However, before I could begin changing my eating habits... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Invisible ChildrenMaureen KelleyИсчезаю в весне,в толпе,в лужах,в синеве.И не ищите.Мне так хорошо...I fade into spring,or into a crowd,or into a puddle,sometimes into the blue.There's no sense in looking for me.I feel fine...—¾"Absentee" by Arvo Mets"You have to go through Lesha to get to Danil," Alexandra told me. Lesha was a small but unmoving dog with matted hair and a fierce growl. The dog was pressed against the little (...) boy, who looked no more than three or four years old. Alexandra later told me he was eight. Danil was wearing a Spider Man shirt that was four sizes too big and came down to his feet and mismatched sandals. He was huddled against his dog not only for security but warmth. His tiny arm circled Lesha's neck and he looked at me with a mix of curiosity and caution. I knelt and put my hand out for Lesha to smell me. Apparently I didn't pass the smell test. The dog didn't budge from his post. We stood like that for a long time, at the base of the steps to the shelter. I tried the few Russian words I had learned while visiting as a volunteer. The dog didn't understand my broken Russian, or pretended not to, but I managed to get a shy smile from Danil.Alexandra, a nurse volunteer at the shelter, eventually mediated the standoff by giving Lesha, the dog, a cookie. I introduced myself to the little boy. And just like that, he leaned up against me and put both arms around my legs. It didn't matter that I was a stranger, and a stranger who spoke terrible Russian. "Spidey" was an affectionate little guy. He gripped my hand while Alexandra led us up the steps and Lesha followed close behind. Inside was a small room, warm and full of color. One wall was covered in kids' drawings. Another had public health posters in Russian, some with instructions for condom use, others on literacy. There were about fifteen kids in the shelter that afternoon. The young ones were drawing pictures at a low table. Two teenage boys were hunched over a small TV playing a video game. There was only one teenage girl, Irina. She was cooing at the little kid's drawings, showing one girl how to draw a princess. Alexandra said quietly to me, "Most of the teenage girls are only here in the morning. The rest are back at work right now." I found out later "back at work" meant on the streets as sex workers. This city was frequented by businessmen and itinerant workers heading to the factories or lumber mills in the North. The best money for homeless girls was in prostitution. Danil unwrapped himself from me and ran over to the two older boys playing video games. One put his controller down long enough to pull Danil into his lap. The three boys stared intently as Super Mario hopped from mushroom to magic cloud, golden coins spinning above his cartoon head.To the right of the main room was a closet-sized office for the shelter director, Anya, a pediatrician who donated her time to running the shelter for homeless and orphaned youth living on the streets. Alexandra and I stood in the doorway waiting for Anya to finish a phone conversation. Her desk was covered in papers. Behind her were photos of the kids who had "graduated" from the streets. There were cards and letters pinned to a cork board. When [End Page E4] she finished, Anya greeted us with bear hugs and showed us to the clinic area. Next to her office was a small bathroom with a shower and tub. She explained that bath days were on Wednesdays. Around back, with a separate entrance was the small clinic space. The outside metal door had a sliding window that you see at some nightclubs. They ran a needle exchange program out of that door. It was funded for street youth, but from time to time they would get adult addicts. Anya was adamant that this side of the clinic remain separate from the central space for the children. In reality the distance... (shrink)

One of the hardest parts of being a leader is handling disagreements about values. The skills required to do this are increasingly important in polarized societies where there is pressure for businesses and organizations to have a sense of purpose and "do the right thing." Our book helps readers address these challenges. To do this, we don''t give a simplistic cookie-cutter recipe for what is right and wrong. Rather, we guide readers on a journey to rigorously explore their values and (...) better understand the values of others. We discuss the human psychology that drives conflicts over values as well as the philosophical frameworks that have guided people for millennia. We provide strategies, based in research from psychology and the behavioral sciences, whichthat readers can use to implement their values in their lives and their organizations. Topics covered include moral intuitions, self-serving biases, situational pressures, social norms, the role of business in society, consequentialism/utilitarianism, motives, perspective-taking, justice, fairness, and liberty. (shrink)

Herman Daly once identified the absurdity of shipping Danish cookies to the United States; if efficiency were in fact ‘economic’, one might just e-mail the recipe, save the fuel, reduce the greenhouse gases and still enjoy the cookie. This argument playfully illustrates that resources are scarce, ideas are Inherently Not Scarce (INS) and current financial systems are inefficient and not ‘economical’. The unprecedented industry of 7.5 billion people is now concerned about the resulting scarcity and pollution of the finite (...) resource base. Until humanity shares inherently-not-scarce ideas for effectively managing what is in a steady state, scarcity and pollution will be a constant source of crisis on the landscape. Since 2004, I have made transforming colour field paintings with mud taken from the most pristine to the most toxic landscapes of northeast United States of America (NE USA). Although difficult to see individually, microbes existing within mud photosynthesize pigments. As a species grows from individual to colony, it becomes visible as pointillist pigments amass horizontal blocks of transient colour. As these bacteria express themselves (i.e., live: consume, reproduce, deplete resources, release wastes), they exhaust their habitat and create an altered landscape suitable to a successor. Like us, bacteria are bound by the law of conservation of mass; they constantly select and reject resources from the finite landscape. The resulting processes of growth and decay are intimately linked inversions resulting in beautiful transforming colourfields. As evidenced by my vibrant and literal portraits made from mud, these simple, highly adaptable, single-cell organisms craft a unique, colourful and synthetic existence. As a model system, they exhibit a viable steady state of infinite expression in a finite landscape where life and landscape is an intimate, malleable and reciprocal whole. Here I discuss the beauty of our landfill paradises, made evident by mud taken at two different kinds of landfilled ecosystems in New York City. (shrink)

The design of Web browsers has resulted in a transfer of power to Web users and developers who often lack an ethical framework in which to act. For example, the technology makes it simple to copy and use other people’s Web page formatting without their permission. The author argues that we need to educate more people about ethical Web practices, and the author asks for “rules of the road” which amateurs and professionals can understand and follow. This article discusses four (...) areas of concern about Web development: the browser wars, information storage and retrieval, access for the handicapped, and cookies. For teachers, there are suggestions on how to use browsers to help students learn about Web ethics. (shrink)