In 1982, the Supreme Court ruled that children of undocumented immigrants have the right to a free public school education alongside native-born children. But when these undocumented kids leave high school, they transition from protected child to illegal immigrant. That is, the laws support the undocumented child, but not the undocumented adult they’ll eventually become. Roberto G. Gonzales (American Sociological Review, August 2011) explores how these youth experience their status transformation through interviews with 150 “1.5-generation” Latinos in California.
It's an interesting and little-discussed side of the "illegal immigration" debate in the US. It also highlights the arbitrariness of much of the discourse about "saving the children", and of children's right to fair treatment and equal opportunity, a set of entitlements that have a clear and definite expiry date (your 18th birthday). You see this false distinction again when it comes to popular discussions of children and gangs, imprisonment, poverty, etc. After that point, the discourse shifts from "victim" to "perpetrator", from "innocent" to "guilty" as arbitrarily and suddenly as we go from child to adult. Am I right?Adolescents, Gonzales writes, first recognize their illegal status in their late teens, when their lack of a Social Security number prohibits such rites of passage as getting a part-time job or a driver’s license. Assimilation alongside their native-born peers led these kids to believe they would have more opportunities than their parents, but undocumented youth get a harsh reality check at graduation: no papers means no future. The young adults must “learn to be illegal,” which includes re-evaluating their future goals. And parents—who often believed that their children would have citizenship by the time they reached adulthood—don’t prepare them for this transition.Despite speaking fluent English and earning high school (and sometimes college) degrees, undocumented young adults end up no better off in the labor market than their uneducated parents. Gonzales argues that the system has created a “new disenfranchised underclass”—2.1 million young adults who are stuck in what might be called “illegal limbo.” Link
It's all very ironic, of course, given how prevalent and brutal child labour practices were, but also highlights the bourgeois origins of the discourse.
The man usually credited with - or accused of - creating the modern notion of childhood is Jean Jacques Rousseau. Building on the ideas of John Lockeand other 17th-century liberal thinkers, Rousseau formulated childhood as a brief period of sanctuary before people encounter the perils and hardships of adulthood. "Why rob these innocents of the joys which pass so quickly," Rousseau pleaded. "Why fill with bitterness the fleeting early days of childhood, days which will no more return for them than for you?"The Victorian Era has been described as a source of the modern institution of childhood. Ironically, the Industrial Revolution during this era led to an increase in child labour, but due to the campaigning of the Evangelicals, and efforts of author Charles Dickens and others, child labour was gradually reduced and halted in England via the Factory Acts of 1802-1878. The Victorians concomitantly emphasized the role of the family and the sanctity of the child, and broadly speaking, this attitude has remained dominant in Western societies since then. Link
"The Meth Epidemic" tells the story of two potential solutions to the crisis and examines why neither was fully tried. In the mid-80s, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration first proposed controlling the retail sale of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine in cold medicines by having customers register at the counter and limiting how much they could buy. Pharmaceutical companies, however, resisted the DEA's plan. Allan Rexinger, a lobbyist for the pharmaceutical industry, felt the DEA was overreacting and unfairly punishing a legitimate business: "They have a different way of thinking. DEA agents carry guns; DEA agents are killed in the jungles of South America. But when you're working in Congress, you don't need to carry a gun. We felt like we were being treated just like a Colombian drug lord." Meanwhile, Gene Haislip, a former deputy administrator at the DEA, says: "They live in the business community, where the name of the game is to make money and sell product. They're highly skilled, very well organized and very well funded, and they can be quite formidable." Faced with a choice, the White House and Congress ultimately exempted cold medication from the regulatory proposals.Here is the full documentary.
Read more: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/meth/etc/synopsis.html#ixzz1dtmLzgmj
They are brutal and scary, and hopefully effective.they all start out with a seemingly benign shot of the user. Then the camera pulls out to reveal a scene of horror meant to illustrate what you’re getting yourself into if you decide to try Meth, and it ain’t pretty.
Here is the official video for M83‘s ubiquitous summer hit ‘Midnight City‘ coinciding with the release of the album ‘Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming‘ this week.
directed by French duo Fleur & Manu; the video follows a group of gifted children running away from their captors with Los Angeles acting as a backdrop. Anthony Gonzalez‘s recent relocation to LA may have played a part on the choosing of a location.
Summary courtesy of Cougar Microbes
This may be one of the earliest images in Western art of a woman giving birth, but that isn't the only reason it's incredible; it was found by a student who's legally blind. William Nutt of the University of Texas at Arlington found the 2,600-year-old relief on a fragment of a pot in an ancient Etruscan site near Florence, Italy. "I used dental tools and a sharpened trowel to slide along the ground. I'd run my hands along the soil, feeling and uncovering different layers," says Nutt. "The image is unique because in the classical world, we don't see a lot of birthing scenes." In January Nutt and the other researchers will be present their findings to the Archaeological Institute of America.
While we're on the topic of psychos, did you know that according to psychologists, leaders are four times as likely as the average person to be psychopaths (though they tend to be sloppy in their work duties)... A study by psychologist Paul Babiak indicates that one in twenty-five leaders could be a psychopath. This affliction could actually be an advantage in a workplace:
The survey suggests psychopaths are actually poor managerial performers but are adept at climbing the corporate ladder because they can cover up their weaknesses by subtly charming superiors and subordinates.
This makes it almost impossible to distinguish between a genuinely talented team leader and a psychopath, Babiak said. Hare told Horizon: “The higher the psychopathy, the better they looked – lots of charisma and they talk a good line.
More in this article from The Guardian (1 September 2011)
Maybe so, according to psychologists studying convicted murderers. In a new study of previously diagnosed psychopaths and non-psychopathic murderers, the researchers were able to discern who are psychopathic by analyzing their word choices:
Psychopaths were far more likely to say they committed the crime because of personal needs, like food and money, and they described their deeds in the past tense, suggesting it happened a long time ago and there was little that the perpetrator could do to prevent it. They seemed emotionally detached from the murder, and as might be expected, they showed no remorse. [...]
The non-psychopathic killers, by contrast, were far more likely to describe their past in terms that reflected social needs, like family, religion and spirituality.
"In the context of a committed murder, it is likely that the non-psychopaths were aware of and affected by the profound effects their crime would have had on their own families and the victim's family," the study says. No such concern was shown among the psychopaths.
The bottom line: "Psychopaths operate on a primitive but rational level," say the researchers (Link).
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