1. Tayvon Martin: Walking While Black

Bird’s Eye: Everyone from the Boss to the Heat has a comment on the murder of Trayvon Martin. We start with a summary of what seems to have happened, deconstruct the laws that allow such acts, and at some of the responses to the killing.

* Trayvon Martin: Killing Of An Unarmed Teenager Sparks A Movement For Justice Rabble

Trayvon Martin, 17, was shot and killed by George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida, on February 26, 2012.

The African American teenager was shot by Zimmerman, a man of multi-ethnic heritage, who was patrolling a gated community in Florida. Martin had been walking back from a 7-Eleven where he had bought a bag of Skittles and an iced tea.

Speaking on his cell phone to his girlfriend, he was spotted by Zimmerman who called Sandford police to report a “suspicious person” in the Twin Lakes neighbourhood where he was leading neighbourhood watch.

Martin was unarmed when he was shot by Zimmerman’s semi-automatic. He can be heard begging for his life on the police dispatch recording of the incident.

* Who Killed Trayvon Martin?  Al Jazeera (Thanks, Gabe)

Zimmerman didn’t act alone. He had all kinds of help. For one thing, there was Florida’s two-pronged “Stand Your Ground” bill,…  The first prong of the law explicitly removes an individual’s duty to retreat from a conflict when he/she can safely do so – a long-standing duty under Anglo-American common law. The second prong explicitly protects killers acting under the first prong:

…This law, in turn, implicates many more people in the murder of Trayvon Martin, beginning with the NRA, who promoted the law, their Florida lobbyist Marion Hammer, who reportedly secured its passage, the legislators who voted for it, and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who signed the bill into law. It’s not as if none of them knew what they were doing. As Horwitz explains: “Florida’s elected leaders ignored the overwhelming opposition of prosecutors and law enforcement to the law, including the National District Attorneys’ Association, the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys’ Association, multiple state attorneys, and police chiefs from cities like Miami and St. Petersburg.”

The law proved every bit as disastrous as the police and prosecutors had warned it would be. It went into effect in mid-2005, and the next year there were 33 justifiable homicides reported in Florida, just one less than the average for the decade up until then. In 2007, as the new law became more well-known, that number more than tripled to 102. In 2008, the number dipped to 93 and rose again to 105 in 2009

* Politicians Who’ve Worn Hoodies to Protest the Trayvon Martin Shooting  David A. Graham  The Atlantic

Illinois Democrat Bobby Rush was kicked off the House floor Wednesday morning after he donned a hoodie during a speech about racial profiling and the death of Trayvon Martin. Rep. Gregg Harper, a Mississippi Republican who was presiding over the chamber, tried to cut Rush off, then had the sergeant at arms remove him for violating the rules of the House floor, which prevent the wearing of hats — a rule Harper interpreted to include hooded sweatshirts.

…Although the Illinoisan was able to find a uniquely attention-grabbing way to do it, he’s not the first to wear a hoodie in tribute to Martin, the black teenager shot in a Florida town under questionable circumstances last month. It’s a reaction to Geraldo Rivera’s it-would-be-funny-if-it-wasn’t-so-appalling statement last week, when he said, “I think the hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin’s death as George Zimmerman was.” [Editor’s note: Great Stephen Colbert response, “Yes, it was the hoodie's fault. A hooded sweatshirt can make an innocent teen look like a criminal. Just like a suit and glasses can make Geraldo Rivera look like a journalist.”] Since, then everyone from LeBron James to Keith Olbermann has been spotted sporting hoodies, with results ranging from the sobering to the silly. Here are a few of the most notable ones from the political sphere, and beyond.

* Editorial Cartoon Rob Rogers  Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 

Bird’s Eye: We’ve all heard the bromide “God don’t make no mistakes”. Well, maybe not, but He sure deals a tougher hand to some folks than He does to others. Two first person stories, one of a mother whose baby has Tay-Sachs disease (estimated life expectancy three years) and the other of a mother answering a question on Reddit, “If you knew your child was going to be mentally retarded at birth, would you abort it?” Her child is mentally retarded, so she has more experience than (I hope) any of us will ever have to have. And the third link is to the abstract (damned firewalls) of a long and excellent current New Yorker piece about premature babies. The abstract is pretty good, but.

* Notes From a Dragon Mom  New York Times

My son, Ronan, looks at me and raises one eyebrow. His eyes are bright and focused. Ronan means “little seal” in Irish and it suits him.

I want to stop here, before the dreadful hitch: my son is 18 months old and will likely die before his third birthday. Ronan was born with Tay-Sachs, a rare genetic disorder. He is slowly regressing into a vegetative state.  He’ll become paralyzed, experience seizures, lose all of his senses before he dies. There is no treatment and no cure.

How do you parent without a net, without a future, knowing that you will lose your child, bit by torturous bit?

* If you knew your child was going to be mentally retarded at birth, would you go ahead and abort it? Reddit

I think I can probably give the most honest answer.

I am the mother of a grammar school aged mentally retarded child. My child has an IQ of about 50. My child can dress, feed and wash herself.

She can not read, nor will she really ever be able to. She can and does memorize books and parrot them back to you, but she does so without really understanding.

She can not tell time. In fact she does not have a concept of time. There is no understanding of things like today, tomorrow, yesterday, months, days or years.

She is often confused by the simple things around her, and with her not understanding and from frustration she throws temper tantrums. As she gets older this becomes more and more of a danger to the people around her. She is less than 12 , but she is already 5’2 and 100 lbs, she can and will put you on your ass.

* Premature Babies, Neonatal Research, and Difficult ChoicesThe New Yorker 

On August 7, 1963, when a second son was born to President and Mrs. Kennedy, expectations for premature babies were limited. The boy was delivered five and a half weeks early, by Cesarean section, and weighed four pounds ten and a half ounces. Shortly after birth, he was baptized Patrick Bouvier Kennedy. The infant had difficulty breathing and was rushed by ambulance to Children’s Hospital Medical Center, in Boston. He was put in a hyperbaric chamber. Baby Patrick died, thirty-nine hours and twelve minutes after his birth. 

“We hardly worry anymore about a baby like the Kennedy infant,” Dr. Camilia Martin, a senior neonatologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, told the writer. “Survival at thirty-two weeks’ gestational age is nearly a hundred per cent.” Until recently, neonatal care involved little more than warm blankets and supplemental oxygen. Today, however, the technologies of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit save increasing numbers of infants whose lungs, brain, gastrointestinal tract, skin, and immune system are not ready for life outside the womb. Still, babies die despite months of intensive care. And each treatment brings its own set of risks; many children who survive have neurological problems, like cerebral palsy, or severe cognitive limitations. They can be blind, deaf, or mentally retarded, or suffer with chronic lung disease. How do families and medical professionals make the agonizing decision whether to treat a premature infant at delivery and through the months in the NICU? 

Bird’s Eye: We all start, as children, believing what we are told about how the world is. At some point we run into rivers that aren’t on the maps by which we are navigating, and that’s when things get interesting. Four stories below which (in different ways) all question received truths: a Muslim woman takes off the hijab she’s worn for 25 years; school-kids think “Brain Gym” is bullshit; Salon reports on myths about dogs and their behaviour; a Redditor debunks myths about rape. Lot of emperors out there, many not wearing much, it seems.

* Hijab & society: What it’s like without the Muslim headscarf? altmuslim

I experimented last week. I took off my hijab – the headscarf many Muslim women wear to cover their hair. I have been wearing a headscarf when I leave the privacy of my home for 25 years, since I was 17. That’s a long long time in human years.

I took my hijab off during a recent trip to Europe. I wanted to know what it would feel like. I wanted to know how people’s perceptions of me would change and how my perception of myself would change.

I had been thinking about the whole hijab issue for years – if you haven’t already figured that out from my blog. Why is the hijab considered obligatory in Islam for women? Is it really obligatory or was it just something that a group of men decided was most appropriate for women of that time and age to protect them? Does what applied more than 1400 years ago still apply now? And if so, why? Does a woman really need to cover herself from head to toe to avoid being harassed or being seen as a sex object?

* Kids Who Spot Bullshit, And The Adults Who Get Upset About It Ben Goldacre The Guardian

This week I got an email from a science teacher about a 13 year old pupil. Both have to remain anonymous. This pupil wrote an article about Brain Gym for her school paper, explaining why it’s nonsense: the essay is respectful, straightforward, and factual. But the school decided they couldn’t print it, because it would offend teachers in the junior school who use Brain Gym.

Now, this is weakminded, and perhaps even vicious. More interesting, though, is how often children are able to spot bullshit, and how often adults want to shut them up. [Several great examples here]

People wring their hands over how to make science relevant and accessible, but newspapers hand us one answer on a plate every week, with the barrage of claims on what’s good for you or bad for you: it’s evidence based medicine. If every school taught the basics – randomised trials, blinding, cohort studies, and why systematic reviews are better than cherrypicking your evidence – it would help everyone navigate the world, and learn some of the most important ideas in the whole of science.

* How We Came To Misunderstand Dogs Salon (Thanks, Diana!)

It’s news that should shock and delight dog owners, scolded for decades by trainers and dog whisperers that they must relentlessly assert their dominance over their dogs: Yes, it’s perfectly acceptable to let Fido sleep in your bed.

You can also let him enter a room before you, and you can let him win at a game of tug of war, all without fearing that you will somehow signal that you are the submissive one and he is in charge. Contrary to long-cherished theories, dogs aren’t competing with us for position in the pack, but are largely performing for our approval. And that — no matter what the Cesar Millans of the world would have you believe — is because much of what we’ve been led to be believe about dogs’ hard-wired behavior has been totally wrong.

* Myths About the Causes of Rape Reddit

Myth: Women who dress or act provocatively are more likely to get raped.

Facts: Activity of victims at time of incident Working or on duty: 11% Going to or from work: 1% Going to or from school: 3% Going to or from other place: 4% At school: 5% Leisure activity away from home: 29% Sleeping: 20% Other activity at home: 25% Other: 2%

A Federal Commission on Crime of Violence Study found that only 4.4% of all reported rapes involved provocative behavior on the part of the victim. In murder cases 22% involved such behavior (as simple as a glance).

Most convicted rapists do not remember what their victims were wearing.

Most sexual assault victims are wearing regular clothes like blue jeans or pajamas when they are assaulted, not provocative clothing.

The most common outfit of rape victims is jeans and a t-shirt or sweatshirt. It is true that some articles of clothing are easier to remove than others, but there is no data to suggest that a potential victim is at greater risk because of how she is dressed. Remember, 70-80% of assailants are known to their victim, so tactics of stranger rapists aren’t needed.