Readability

My friend, Jackie, just told me about a helpful tool for online reading. With more newspapers and online publications moving toward funding through advertisements, our visuals of online articles are getting cluttered and distracting.

With the help of Readability, you can remove everything but the article with one click. So here's what you do:

1. Click here: Readability

2. Select your preferences for viewing.

3. Add readability to your favorites.

Now, you're good to go. So the next time you open an online text, just click readability on your favorites tab! Awesome, huh? Happy Reading.

Our Chemical Romance

Ah, Valentine's Day. Whether you're humming Barry White or Beyonce (single ladies, anyone?), we are all familiar with that pervasive, confusing, and exciting four letter word. Although it is often relegated to the emotion category, love can partly be explained by chemical reactions in our body.

Love, attachment, and attraction are correlated (causal relationship has not yet been proven) with the release of proteins from our brain, muscles, and adrenal glands (located above the kidney). These proteins bind to the membranes of our cells, eliciting an exchange of ions and series of secondary events. Said events include an increase in heart rate, obsessive thoughts, sweaty palms, or utter elation and joy. Other hormones implicated? Norepinephrine, oxytocin, dopamine, serotonin, and cortisol are all involved in the love potion. It makes sense that some of these are also associated with risk-taking activities or doing drugs.

So today, when you're enjoying the romantic moments with the S.O., take a little time to thank the systems in our body that allow this quintessential human emotion. If you're single, you could always go sky diving to get the same feeling.

Young love :)

Assigning Culpability

On July 12, 2008, a group of high school students came into contact with Luis Ramirez, a 25 year-old illegal immigrant, in Pottsville, Virginia (see story here). The students and Ramirez shouted at each other, and after the students yelled racial slurs at Ramirez, a physical altercation ensued. Ramirez was outnumbered and suffered numerous blows to the head. After falling into a coma and spending two days in the hospital, Ramirez died from his injuries. The students who delivered the fatal blows were 17 and 19 years of age. On May 1, 2009, a jury acquitted both students of murder leaving simple assault as the only charges from the fatal incident in July. Subsequently, the case and its verdict have elicited varied reactions from across the nation. Many perceived the court’s verdict as just, because the students were boys at the time and should not be treated as harshly or as culpable as adults, whereas others wanted the culprits tried and convicted as adults.

More recently, a Pennsylvania 12-year old is being charged with murder (see story here) for killing his father's fiance. The adolescent was 11 years old at the time of the incident. While the court has not decided on how the adolescent will be tried, this case has yet again raised the issue of when humans should be help responsible for their actions.

The American Psychological Association has weighed in on both sides of this debate. In 2005, APA contributed to the Supreme Court Decision of Roper v. Simmons, which addressed adolescents and the death penalty. Given what is known about the development of the frontal lobe (i.e., our executive functioning, the part of our brain that helps with inhibition), it was concluded that the adolescent brain is developmentally immature. However, in the 1990 case Hodgson v Minnesota, APA concluded that adolescents are mature adults, enough so to seek an abortion without parental consent.

In my own mind, I have struggled with this dilemma. Trained as a sociologist and psychologist, I see the ubiquitous shades of gray in this issue. Socialization, human development, and individual responsibility are heterogeneous, nebulous arenas comprised of complex, bidirectional interactions with collective and individual entities. How then, can we create and enforce concrete, uniform legislation? More times than not, it seems that our conclusions in this issue are based on our biases, allegiances, proximity to the incident, or value systems, rather than a uniform metric by which everyone is judged. There is not an easy answer to this, but the ramifications are grand. Moreover, we should acknowledge the reality of this decision-making process.

The courts of Pennsylvania will be confronted with this decision shorty. Their assignment of culpability will have lasting ramifications on the 12-year old. And after this incident, we--as a society--will undoubtedly confront this issue in the future.

Be the Match

On Sunday, I stumbled upon a great opportunity to help someone.

After a race in the city, I was walking through the race expo, which consists mostly of sports nutrition promotion, upcoming athletic events, and coupons to outdoor companies. Unexpectedly, a woman approached me, JR, and Tracy and encouraged us to visit the Bone Marrow Transplant tent. Instead of offering us food or coupons, the people at this particular tent offered us a chance to give.

Turns out, there is an organization (Be the Match) that organizes a registry to match bone marrow donors with those who need it most. After filling out the paperwork and taking four quick swabs in my mouth, I was registered! I think this is an important cause, and I encourage my readers to participate in becoming a donor. The website states "Thousands of patients with leukemia and other life-threatening diseases depend on the Be The Match Registry to find a match to save their life. Patients need donors who are a genetic match. Even with a registry of millions, many patients cannot find a match. Donors with diverse racial or ethnic backgrounds are especially needed."

Want more information? Check out their website here:

Be The Match

Bahati Foundation

Most frequently my posts revolve around education, psychology, or the outdoors (usually cycling). I'm excited to publish this post, because it embodies all three.

Bahati Foundation: Trailer

Rahsaan Bahati is the most successful African American cyclist, and this video shows how he is trying to reproduce his success in others. It is powerful testament to overcoming the odds and thriving in a domain where one's group is stereotypically absent from. In the video he addresses
the importance of motivation and high expectations in school and sport. I could not agree more.

Rahsaan's website can be found at: www.bahatiracing.com

"Ride, Dream, Win."

Ways of knowing

We believe facts for all kinds of reasons-- it serves us best, the evidence supports it, our experiences are such, or someone in a lab coat told us. In introductory science courses, one first-taught principles is how do we know something. I want to take a brief moment to outline those sources of knowledge.

Tradition: Based on custom, repitition, and habit. "It's they way we've always done things here."

Intuition: Sudden insight, clarovoyance. "I just had a weird feeling that something bad was going to happen."

Logic/Rational Thought/Common Sense: Practical thoughts that that follow logically to lead to some truth. "She's frequently late, and we're meeting at 3pm, so she'll probably arrive after 3pm."

Authority: Information from a person distinguish as an authoritative source. "Four out of five denists agree..."

Experiential: First hand observations. "The bank robber was about yay high, had a long beard, and was wearing sunglasses."

Science: Systematic observation that leads to truth. "Based on repeated random trials across different settings with a generalizable population, it is concluded that..."

Given this outline of the ways we come to believe/know a piece of information. I encourage you to think about your own beliefs and knowledge. What makes you think the earth revolves around the sun? Is homosexuality genetic or socialized? What about global warming? Your religious beliefs? It is an interesting thought experiment and a healthy one. I find that too much in academia, we rely on authority and experiential knowledge, when we should isolate ourselves to science. I'm not sure, however, if that ideal is even reachable. Regardless of the knowledge you're consuming, it's important to ask why you are intaking that information and not others.

State of Education

I want to share a short CBS video about the current state of education.

Schools Face an Uphill Challenge

Interestingly, the Harvard Ed.D. program that is mentioned is one that I (and many others) have highly coveted. Although I certainly would not change my path, I do wonder what life would have been like had I accepted Teach For America and then applied for a Education Policy program in Fall of 2011.

I digress... The clip is a nice snapshot of the larger picture of education, and Michelle Rhee seems to be the poster-girl of neo-education policy reform.