Originally the colour associated with Saint Patrick was blue. However, over the years the colour green and its association with Saint Patrick’s day grew.[2] Green ribbons and shamrocks were worn in celebration of St Patrick’s Day as early as the 17th century.[3] He is said to have used the shamrock, a three-leaved plant, to explain the Holy Trinity to the pre-Christian Irish, and the wearing and display of shamrocks and shamrock-inspired designs have become a ubiquitous feature of the day.[4][5] Then in the 1798 rebellion in hopes of making a political statement Irish soldiers wore full green uniforms on 17 March in hopes of catching attention with their unusual fashion gimmick.[2] The phrase “the wearing of the green”, meaning to wear a shamrock on one’s clothing, derives from the song of the same name.

–Daniel Strauss

If a fraternity has an event that isn’t registered prior to taking place, it is subject to social probation, the maximum sanction of which is six weeks of social probation, Miniaci wrote in the e-mail interview.

Miniaci wrote that IFC’s Social Responsibility Committee will be “on rounds” tonight to look for the possibility of unregistered events. He added that he spoke with Sigma Pi’s president and was informed that the fraternity will not be hosting the event at night, though according to a Facebook event, the fraternity has an event planned during the day today.

And if you were outside at all today you saw that that policy really strikes fear into the hearts of  every Irish heritage faithful greek…All of which makes me wonder though, is there any way to find an agreeable balance between the safety and legality the IFC is trying to encourage and the fun times the frats are trying to have?

–Daniel Strauss

“It’s science’s dirtiest secret: The “scientific method” of testing hypotheses by statistical analysis stands on a flimsy foundation. Statistical tests are supposed to guide scientists in judging whether an experimental result reflects some real effect or is merely a random fluke, but the standard methods mix mutually inconsistent philosophies and offer no meaningful basis for making such decisions. Even when performed correctly, statistical tests are widely misunderstood and frequently misinterpreted. As a result, countless conclusions in the scientific literature are erroneous, and tests of medical dangers or treatments are often contradictory and confusing.

The study that recently raised this issue came to the conclusion that more than half of statistical studies are untrustworthy. That number may not be exactly right – apparently that study may suffer from some statistical issues of its own, but the philosophical and methodological issues it raises seem to be sound. Certain sciences rely much more heavily on statistics than others – most conspicuously the social sciences, such as psychology, economics, and political science – so this article isn’t saying that every scientific finding is bogus. You can probably remain pretty confident in the soundness of physics, for instance.

But many studies are conducted under various statistical flaws and misunderstandings (confused interpretations of p-values and neglect of Bayesian approaches, for instance), and that’s not something we can ignore. In fact, this all may lead us to reexamine several issues normally surrounded by a broad consensus. The negative effects of obesity*, the positive effects of pharmaceuticals*, and (dare I say it) the consensus on causes of global warming could all be called into question since each of these issues rests on a large body of statistical evidence.

Of course, it’s also possible that all of those conclusions are absolutely right. The thing is we just don’t know. If the statistical foundations of many of these studies simply collapse, we lose a lot of the former certainty we had about these issues. At the very least, this news is probably a good ego check for science. After all, science is an imperfect, constantly evolving human endeavor, and we should never be too sure we have all the right answers.

*More to come on these topics soon

Obese Passengers Create an Unfair Burden?

by:  Jae H. Chung

Anyone who needs multiple seats due to their size should be required to purchase multiple seats. Why? Let’s conduct a thought experiment where the large passenger sits in a seat located by the aisle. In order for the large passenger not to bother the passenger next to him, he would have to sit in such a way that a portion of his body is protruding into the aisle. This is unacceptable because the aisle needs to be clear. Passengers need to use the aisle to access the restrooms, and stewardesses need to use the aisle to provide service to passengers.

What if the large passenger sits in a way to clear the aisle? This would imply that a portion of the large passenger’s body would obtrude into the passenger next to him. That passenger would be forced into an uncomfortable position for a prolonged period of time. Besides the physical discomfort, there are serious health issues that are associated with this for both parties. For example, blood flow could be blocked, which could lead to other health issues. The only way to mediate this situation is for a large passenger to sit in multiple seats.
How do airlines determine whether a passenger requires multiple seats? According to Southwest Airlines, “the armrest is the definitive gauge for a Customer of size. It serves as the boundary between seats and measures 17 inches in width.” Is this policy ethical? Yes. Each passenger pays for one seat (space on the plane) and they should be entitled to all the space that they purchased. The armrest serves as an indicator of the boundaries of the purchased space. The armrest for airplane seats is analogous of the fence for houses. A landowner does not have the right to break down their neighbor’s fence and utilize their neighbor’s property.

Even if the adjacent passenger consents, the airline has the right to demand that the large passenger purchase multiple seats. Given that there are health risks associated with a passenger being confined into a tight location for a prolonged period of time, the airline has the right to demand that the passenger follow the safety precautions established by the airline. As a private enterprise, the airline not only has the right to look out for its own interests but the obligation to look out for the well-being of its customers, even if its customers may not. A parallel scenario would be a bar that turns down an intoxicated patron. The bar maintains and enforces its safety precautions to protect itself and its customers.

Given that large passengers must take up multiple seats, the fundamental issue is whether a passenger of size should pay for the additional space. The current policy is one-seat-per-ticket. When passengers purchase an airline ticket, they are allotted a space on the plane. Although one could upgrade to first class if one wishes to purchase additional space, passengers cannot purchase one ticket and occupy more space than they were allotted. The alternative is a one-ticket-per-passenger policy where the airline charges passengers for the flight regardless of the amount of space the passengers take up. The former standardizes the cost per space whereas the latter standardizes the cost per travel.

The one-seat-per-ticket policy is the most equitable method because it takes into account more factors than the one-ticket-per-passenger policy. Although the primary reason for flying is to travel from one destination to another, passengers are also paying for comfort. The latter policy fails to address the issue of comfort for passengers traveling on an airplane. Although passengers have the right to relinquish comfort to save money, it cannot be at a cost to the other passengers. On the other hand, the one-seat-per-ticket policy charges a flat rate for a plot of space. It enables every passenger to purchase the appropriate amount of seating, so that they could travel without encroaching on another’s space. Secondly, the former policy addresses the issues concerning the health hazards. By requiring passengers to purchase the appropriate amount of seating, the policy effectively deals with the threat of decreased blood circulation and other health problems. Conversely, the latter policy increases the chances of health issues arising from cramming passengers together.

The one-seat-per-ticket policy is the most equitable method because it takes into account more factors than the one-ticket-per-passenger policy.

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It is Unethical to
Tax a Disability

by: Robert Hinck

I s it ethical to charge obese individuals extra for taking up extra space? Last spring the media blew up after United Air announced it was forcing passengers who could not fit within the airplane’s arm rests to pay for two tickets. Although this policy brought United Air in line with the five largest U.S. carriers, the policy drew heated debate and for good reason. Requiring obese passengers to purchase additional tickets is not only unethical, but sits on a slippery slope that could result in further discrimination.

The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) defines a disabled person as someone who has a physical or mental impairment that has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on his or her ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.

The fact is, obesity is a disability. The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) defines a disabled person as someone who has a physical or mental impairment that has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on his or her ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities. Obesity has long term health effects. The Center for Disease Control lists coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, hypertension, high cholesterol, stoke, liver disease and more as potential health risks arising from obesity. Obese individuals may have difficulties getting in and out of cars, chairs, and even bed. Morbidly obese individuals may even have problems walking. Regardless, discrimination against obese individuals runs high in America due to the belief that obesity results from individuals eating too much and not caring about their diets. Although this may true for individuals who are overweight or those barely considered obese, according to Medicine.net, obesity is often multifactorial, based on both genetic and behavioral factors. Treatment of obesity usually requires more than just dietary changes. Exercise, counseling and support, and sometimes medication can supplement diet to help patients conquer weight problems. Courts are even beginning to rule morbidly obese individuals as qualifying for benefits under the ADA.

Yet, the airline industry continues to charge morbidly obese passengers extra. Even though airlines are willing to accommodate passengers in wheel chairs additional space free of charge, obese passengers are forced to pay extra due to the distress they cause other airline passengers. First, morbidly obese passengers are the ones most often targeted by these policies, and morbid obesity is not a result of simply choosing to eat more. According to a New York Times article published in August 2007, genetics, psychological problems, and childhood eating habits significantly influence one’s weight later on in life. Dieting and exercise rarely work and relapse is high. Obesity, let alone morbid obesity, is not a choice we willingly make. Second, forcing obese passengers to pay extra merely ostracizes these individuals. The humiliation and pain caused by testing obese passengers whether they make the cut or not causes greater harm than the discomfort of passengers sitting next to them. Ethical approaches focusing on protecting the moral rights of individuals also speaks out against these airline policies. Human beings have dignity and are to be treated as ends, not means to an end. We cannot fine obese individuals to incentivize them to lose weight. Morbidly obese or other handicap individuals have not volunteered for their impairments, and should be treated with respect and dignity for who they are, not discriminated against so they feel unwanted or seen as some inconvenience to those around them.

Other approaches contend that individuals should be treated equally and justly. Obese passengers have just as much of a right for air travel as others. Crying babies cause discomfort for passengers, so do individuals with poor hygiene among a dozen other causes for inconveniences when people are crammed in close courters for hours, yet we do not charge those individuals extra. Obese individuals are people too, and should be treated like people. To promote the common good, we should be taking care of those who cannot take of themselves. We should not be chastising obese passengers, who cannot control their eating and must experience the dirty stares and everyday discrimination as a result of our societies demand for good looks. We must protect their rights and help them carry their burden.

Creating vague discriminatory policies will only cause us greater harm in the future. Although we might be rationalizing fining obese passengers for the “discomfort” they cause us today, who knows what we will find inconvenient tomorrow. Where is the threshold for a significant discomfort? Where is the cutoff for how fat is too fat? Charging obese passengers for additional space is simply unethical. It does not produce the greatest amount of happiness, nor promote the common good, and questions the dignity and rights of those who find themselves in violation. Although we might find ourselves in the majority today, perhaps tomorrow we will fall in the minority. What then? We must protect the rights of all people and fight against discrimination. We must change our outlook towards obesity and, instead of hindering those who hinder us, help those so they no longer hinder us.

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edited by: Eric Eaton

–Aaron Bekemeyer

Texas
Though it has a reputation for rural industries like ranching and oil, Texas has always been at the forefront of cutting-edge technology industries. A NASA home base, Texas is a hotbed of aerospace research. It has a strong university system, as well as a consumer electronics industry (Texas Instruments and Dell Computers are located here) and today has a growing web industry in Austin as well.

The polls are still open so you can cast your vote if you strongly disagree!

–Daniel Strauss

It’s been years since anyone thought the military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy was the compromise it was touted as back when it became law in 1993. A majority of Americans support a repeal of the ban on LGBT servicemembers, and a number of high-ranking military officials such as Colin Powell and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen believe that forcing LGBT servicemembers to lie about who they are doesn’t actually contribute to so-called “unit cohesion.” And yet the latest news out of Washington is that Defense Secretary Robert Gates wants to give DADT one more chance:

Service members threatened with potential discharge under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” may soon be able to breathe easier after Pentagon lawyers complete their assessment on finding a “more humane” way to implement the law.

The assessment, due for completion this week, is taking place because Defense Secretary Robert Gates tasked the Pentagon’s Office of the General Counsel to review the regulations for “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” to see if the Department of Defense could implement the law in a fairer manner.

After asking last year for a preliminary assessment for what he called a potentially “more humane” policy, Gates announced before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Feb. 2 the review would be complete in 45 days. Earlier this month, Jeh Johnson, the Pentagon’s top lawyer, said during congressional testimony the assessment would be finished on or around March 19.

Okay, let’s clear one thing up: there is no “humane” way to implement DADT. None. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is a policy which mandates that LGBT Americans cannot join the military; what is more, it is a policy which mandates that LGBT Americans who are serving their country in the military must be discharged if they are found out–even if they are essential personnel like Arabic translators, and even if they have made enormous sacrifices in the service of their country. Employment discrimination is employment discrimination, no matter whom in what institutions it affects. DADT was a mistake when it was implemented 17 years ago–people were misguided, then, to think that it was an improvement on laws which did ask recruits if they were homosexual before they could enlist. DADT doesn’t ask, but it still closets LGBT soldiers by requiring them not to tell, and that’s not the way to run a military or a country. Let’s hope that the Pentagon finds that there’s no way to obscure the realities of second-class citizenship, because in the meantime soldiers who have fought in Afghanistan and Iraq are being fired from their jobs for doing so while gay.

–Emily Rutherford

Sure all the networks of social change and advocacy platforms are visible online, people are connected, and internet organizing does receive serious national attention in decision making (eg Google Fiber), but should we ride the momentum of organizing online in place of face-to-face and feet-on-the-street?

After talking to some friends at Albion College, which is amidst a financial and academic crisis, it seems hard to believe that just the power of Internet petitions and emails is really that powerful. Can reading an email change as much as physically attending a protest?

These recent questions and feelings led me to cynically envision the future of activism until two moments of viral activism caught my attention:

First, video footage of UC-Davis’s student protest. And, the ACLU’s new campaign in protest of a Mississippi High School denying a lesbian couple from attending prom.

Something about these Internet pages, displaying and promoting, the use of the Internet to organize and rally struck me as different. Having access to these images and ideas connects students and minority groups, but the ACLU’s Internet campaign and UC-Davis’s coverage of their protest is just a supplement to their physical protests. Though it’s often hard to find a balance between relying on the Internet for social protest and using it as a tool, I think as long as we maintain a willingness to jump from our computers when called to, activism will be a potent force.

–Lexie Tourek

RONALD REAGAN deserves posterity’s honor, and so it makes sense that the capital’s airport and a major building there are named for him. But the proposal to substitute his image for that of Ulysses S. Grant on the $50 bill is a travesty that would dishonor the nation’s bedrock principles of union, freedom and equality — and damage its historical identity. Although slandered since his death, Grant, as general and as president, stood second only to Abraham Lincoln as the vindicator of those principles in the Civil War era.

[...]

Had his wife not declined to go to Ford’s Theater the night of April 14, 1865, Grant might well have been killed himself. With Lincoln’s assassination, Grant was left as the greatest Union hero of the Civil War. He chafed under the neo-Confederate presidency of Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, won the Republican presidential nomination in 1868 almost by acclamation and was elected twice — the only president to serve two successive full terms between Andrew Jackson and Woodrow Wilson.

As president, Grant was determined to achieve national reconciliation, but on the terms of the victorious North, not the defeated Confederates. He fought hard and successfully for ratification of the 15th Amendment, banning disenfranchisement on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude. When recalcitrant Southern whites fought back under the white hoods and robes of the Ku Klux Klan, murdering and terrorizing blacks and their political supporters, Grant secured legislation that empowered him to unleash federal force. By 1872, the Klan was effectively dead.

[...]

Grant did not confine his reformism to expanding and protecting the rights of the freed slaves. Disgusted at the inhumanity of the nation’s Indian policies, he called for “the proper treatment of the original occupants of this land,” and directed efforts to provide federal aid for food, clothing and schooling for the Indians as well as protection from violence. He also took strong and principled stands in favor of education reform and the separation of church and state.

[...]

In reality, what fueled the personal defamation of Grant was contempt for his Reconstruction policies, which supposedly sacrificed a prostrate South, as one critic put it, “on the altar of Radicalism.” That he accomplished as much for freed slaves as he did within the constitutional limits of the presidency was remarkable. Without question, his was the most impressive record on civil rights and equality of any president from Lincoln to Lyndon B. Johnson.

[...]

Now, Ronald Reagan also has historic achievements — chiefly, discarding the advice of his hard-right supporters, embracing the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, and taking the first important steps toward ending the cold war. On the other hand, his record on domestic affairs — especially his unsubtle winking at pro-segregationist Southerners and his administration’s fiercely reactionary policies on civil rights — was appalling.

To honor Reagan’s genuine achievements by downgrading those of Grant would deepen our chronic historical amnesia about the Civil War and Reconstruction, the central events of the first 250 years of American history, and their legacy of nationalism, freedom and equal rights. It’s hard to imagine that Ronald Reagan, whose modesty was part of his charm, would have approved of such a disgraceful act toward another president from Illinois.

–Jasper Hart

Mr. Ballmer snatched the iPhone out of the employee’s hands, placed it on the ground and pretended to stomp on it in front of thousands of Microsoft workers, according to people present.

One iPhone-using Microsoft employee says he will not pick up the phone if he’s in a meeting with Ballmer, no matter who is calling. To appease Ballmer, Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft’s business division, put his iPhone in a blender at his first sales meeting after joining the company in 2008.

I’d like to think that if I were Ballmer, I’d see this as motivation to direct the company to make some kind of new competitive product but I’ve got a feeling that a) Ballmer already tried that and b) I would probably do the same thing if I was CEO of Microsoft. Part of me would love to have Ballmer’s job but there’s another part of me that feels nothing but pity for him right now. What’s he supposed to do?

–Daniel Strauss