If it's mandatory, it's not volunteer

At school districts, that includes not just students who have required community service, which goes against the spirit of that type of service, but also includes parents, mainly moms.

And now, parents are pushing back against school demands, even as budget-strapped school districts redefine "volunteer":

As local and state economies continue to struggle, budget cuts to rich and poor school systems are increasing the reliance on unpaid parent help. The need is so great that some school districts, like a couple of specialty schools in Prince William County, Va., have made it mandatory to commit to a small amount of volunteer time, and others are considering it. In San Jose, Calif., one elementary school district has been discussing a proposal that the families of its 13,000 students commit to 30 hours of volunteer work during the year.

I say good, not just for parents' sake, but for states' sake. Maybe this will get states to be more progressive in their taxation. That said, they're going to need the help of the federal government against ... Tea Party/red/GOP/Southern-Texan type states.

Big Pharma is Big Editor, too

Big Pharma ghostwrote two family psych books, ghostediting them and all.
Specifically, SmithKline Beecham was the guilty party. I don't believe in conspiracy theories, but when drugmakers do stuff like this, it's easy to see how conspiracy

Oxytocin, MSM science reporting, scientist fluffery

Oxytocin is a two-edged sword; it can increase distrust as well as trust or love; further confirmation of that here. Once again, the claim that it's the "love hormone" is in part the fault of MSM science reporters, but it's also the fault of scientists playing up preliminary or partial research findings too much.

Read the story for just how varied oxytocin's effects actually are. That said, the research that showed it increased mistrust in some cases had a small sample size, so there may be some self-referential irony to both the story and this blog post.

Yet, two years AFTER that first piece, we have Paul Zak writing a book calling oxy the "love molecule." Even worse, he now calls it "the moral molecule."

Consciousness doesn't need a mirror for proof

Some humans as well as theoretically intelligent animals fail the psychological classic mirror test of self consciousness. With humans, the "failure" appears sociologically related. There's thoughts in this for both human and animal psychology.

There are two things we should take away from this. First, self-awareness is not a hard and fast line. Instead, it is probably a continuum. That is an especially important lesson to keep in mind with animal research. A species might have the skill, even if some individuals do not. This is true for chimpanzees, who do not all pass the mark test, and can lose the ability as they age.

A takeaway?

"Self-awareness is like gravity," Johns Hopkins's Roma says. "We can't touch it directly, so if we want to measure it, scientists must develop valid techniques to directly observe its effects. Currently, mirror mark tests are the best-known and most accepted method, but the absence of an effect does not necessarily mean the absence of the thing we're trying to measure. Ultimately, evidence from multiple techniques should converge on the truth, whatever it may be. Such is the beauty of how scientific advances turn controversy into common knowledge."

At bottom line — if the mirror test is sociologically influenced, this is a powerful, if indirect, undercutting of the universality of IQ tests, no? Take THAT, hereditarians, racialists, et al.

RIP Ron Santo -great guy but NOT a Hall of Famer

How about ‘none of the above’?
This is partially reposted from a 2008 blog post on that year's MLB Veterans Committee trotting out "the same old names" as putatively worthy of the Hall of Fame.

Ron Santo? One of the two biggest myths on the list Not. A. Hall. Of. Famer. Sorry, Cubbies, but other than a brief flare-up in his BA in 1972, his career was over by the time he was 30.

Or, to put it another way?

You want Ken Boyer in the HOF? Because they’re the same player, down to Gold Gloves (five each) BA, slugging, etc. If you don’t believe me, go to Baseball-Reference.com and see for yourself.

And, Cubbies fans, if you want to honor Santo as a great man, then JUST eulogize him for that for the next day or two. Truly let him, and the debate, rest in peace. If you will, I will.

Second biggest myth on the 2008 list?

Gil Hodges? Gimme a break. A first baseman with a career slugging average of under .500 AND less than 2,000 hits. Why the hell was his name even on the list?

The one reasonably deserving candidate from that 2008 list?

Luis Tiant? You know, I’d never even thought of him before, but…

Decent ERA for spending much of his career in Fenway. Solid WHIP. Four 20-win seasons. Nearly 2,500 strikeouts back in the day when Gibby was the only 3K-Ker besides The Big Train.

Two ERA titles. Five times in the top 10 in K/9 ratio. His 49 shutouts are 21st-best ever.

You could call him “the poor man’s Catfish Hunter” and not be wrong.

He’s got the best case here. Better than Ron Santo. Better than Gil Hodges. Better than not-on-the-list Ken Boyer, too.

Argentina latest WikiLeaks embarrassment for US

In the latest from WikiLeaks' cable dump: We've apparently charged President Christina Fernandez and her late husband, former President Nestor Kirchner, with money laundering, as well as accusing the country of being lax on drug law prosecutions.

And, what's up with rhetorically asking if yet another world leader is "off their meds"