Category: Rights

Animals, Eco, Freak U.S.A, Politics, RightsLeave a comment

Recreational Fishing Industry Won’t Slow Down for Right Whales

Fernando Kaskais

Top: A North Atlantic right whale calf, about a month old, was killed by a sportfishing yacht in February 2021. That year, it was estimated that the whales’ population had dropped to 340 members. Visual: Tucker Joenz/FWC/NOAA Fisheries permit #18786 Proposed, science-backed speed limits could save whales. But boating advocates push back, citing economic impacts. BY DARREN INCORVAIA ALONG THE EASTERN COAST of North America, North Atlantic right whales and boats navigate the same waters, which can get dicey for both. Fully grown, the whales can top out at more than 50 feet and weigh 140,000 pounds. A midsize, 58-foot-long pleasure yacht weighs … Continue reading Recreational Fishing Industry Won’t Slow Down for Right Whales

Health, Living, Politics, Psychology, RightsLeave a comment

People With Disabilities Deserve Better Health Care. We All Do.

Fernando Kaskais

Visual: Cavan Images/Getty Images Patients who need special accommodations struggle to find doctors. But the barriers they face affect everyone. BY TARA LAGU IWAS A RESIDENT working in an underresourced health clinic when, one afternoon, my triage paper indicated that my next patient needed a Pap smear. I walked into the room and found a woman sitting in a wheelchair. Although I smiled and tried help her feel welcome, I felt nothing but panic. During medical school, I had not been trained to care for people with disabilities. Now a resident, I didn’t even know to ask whether the clinic had access … Continue reading People With Disabilities Deserve Better Health Care. We All Do.

Brain, Politics, Psychology, Rights, ScienceLeave a comment

Criminologists, Looking to Biology for Insight, Stir a Racist Past

Fernando Kaskais

Visual: Bea Hayward for Undark Using biology to understand criminal behavior has long been controversial. Top criminology programs are pursuing it anyway. BY MICHAEL SCHULSON NEARLY 2 MILLION PEOPLE, most of them Black or Latino men, are locked up in the United States. In October 2021, the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Justice, published a report arguing that correctional officials should examine the biology of imprisoned people — their hormones, their brains, and perhaps even their genes. The report describes a future in which corrections sounds a bit more like practicing medicine than meting out punishment. Correctional … Continue reading Criminologists, Looking to Biology for Insight, Stir a Racist Past

Globalization, Philosophy, Politics, RightsLeave a comment

How To Govern The World Without World Government

Fernando Kaskais

Forget globalist fantasies — voluntary cooperation among nation-states is the only way humanity can survive, says Brazilian philosopher Roberto Unger. Noema Deputy Editor Nils Gilman and Associate Editor Jonathan Blake recently met with Harvard Kennedy School professor Roberto Mangabeira Unger to discuss his latest book, “Governing the World Without World Government.” Noema: Your new book makes the case for how we should produce global public goods without relying on what you call “globalism” — that is, the belief in the possibility of supranational government. While it is obviously the case that the sovereign nation-state remains the bedrock of national politics and … Continue reading How To Govern The World Without World Government

Globalization, Living, Politics, RightsLeave a comment

Anthropologists Reveal Why Women Around The World End Up Working Hardest

Fernando Kaskais

Young female sheep herder. (SAKDAWUT14/iStock/Getty Images Plus) By YUAN CHEN & RUTH MACE For most people around the world, physical work takes up a great amount of time and energy every day. But what determines whether it is men or women who are working harder in households? In most hunter-gatherer societies, men are the hunters and women are the gatherers – with men seemingly walking the furthest. But what’s the labour breakdown in other societies? We carried out a study of farming and herding groups in the Tibetan borderlands in rural China – an area with huge cultural diversity – to uncover which … Continue reading Anthropologists Reveal Why Women Around The World End Up Working Hardest

Activism, Europe, History, Politics, RightsLeave a comment

Women at the barricades

Fernando Kaskais

A propaganda photomontage, c1871 by Ernest-Charles Appert, depicting Chantiers prison in Versailles, where women of the Paris Commune were imprisoned. All images courtesy the Musée Carnavalet, Paris The transgressions of working-class women formed the revolutionary heart of the 1871 Paris Commune Carolyn Eichner is professor of history and women’s and gender studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is the author of The Paris Commune: A Brief History (2022), Feminism’s Empire (2022) and Surmounting the Barricades: Women in the Paris Commune (2004). Before dawn on 18 March 1871, the French National Army sent troops to the working-class neighbourhood of Montmartre in Paris, charged with retrieving the cannons left … Continue reading Women at the barricades

History, Politics, Racism, Rights, ScienceLeave a comment

Race Is a Biological Fiction, and Potent Social Reality

Fernando Kaskais

Visual: Logan Cyrus/AFP via Getty BY CHARLES M. BLOW Science showed decades ago that race was a fiction. Has that changed anything? In his 1940 essay “Dusk of Dawn,” the renowned scholar W.E.B. Du Bois reflected back to his early-career appointment, some 44 years prior, as a temporary instructor at the University of Pennsylvania — a time he described as coinciding with a clarifying vision he had on America’s “race problem.” At that time, near the dawn of the 20th century, Du Bois says he believed the primary impediment to enlightenment on racial issues was “stupidity” — and the cure … Continue reading Race Is a Biological Fiction, and Potent Social Reality

Politics, Rights, Science, TechnologyLeave a comment

Opinion: What the World Can Learn from Brazil’s Shifting Stance on Science

Fernando Kaskais

 In 2019, a woman works on technology related to the Sirius Synchrotron particle accelerator, which was supported by a push for greater scientific funding in Brazil, and then later faced funding challenges. Visual: Carl De Souza/AFP via Getty Images How the country fostered research and innovation through scientific investment – and what happened when it disinvested. BY DANIEL HENRYK RASOLT IN 2010, Brazil’s economy was booming, students were entering higher education institutions at unprecedented rates, and quality research output was soaring. At the time, I was visiting the country as a physics Ph.D. student, and I was struck by the enthusiastic optimism of the Brazilian … Continue reading Opinion: What the World Can Learn from Brazil’s Shifting Stance on Science

Activism, China, Fascism, Politics, RightsLeave a comment

The Spontaneous Activation Of China’s Civil Society

Fernando Kaskais

Protesters in Beijing on Nov. 27. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images) Digital connectivity escapes the lockdown. BY NATHAN GARDELS, Nathan Gardels is the editor-in-chief of Noema Magazine. The startling public demonstrations against the zero-COVID lockdowns in China have shown yet again that inflexible hardlines set by autocrats are always brittle because they inexorably rouse the revolt of common sense. But there is a deeper story: the nascent emergence of an activated civil society sparked by Xi Jinping’s departure from the adaptive authoritarianism that has made China so successful over recent decades.  The spontaneous eruption of protests across the whole of China — from Beijing … Continue reading The Spontaneous Activation Of China’s Civil Society

Activism, Hypocrisy, Rights, SexLeave a comment

What happened to Stephen Fry’s belief in scientific reason?

Fernando Kaskais

by Brendan O’Neill Here’s my question for Stephen Fry after he said his trans friends had felt ‘deeply upset’ by some of the comments made by J.K. Rowling: why didn’t you just say to them, ‘So what?’ Fry used to be all about saying ‘So what?’ to people who went on about feeling offended by words. His irritation with offence-takers has even become a meme. ‘It’s now very common to hear people say, “I’m rather offended by that”. As if that gives them certain rights’, he once said. ‘It’s actually nothing more… than a whine. “I find that offensive.” It has … Continue reading What happened to Stephen Fry’s belief in scientific reason?