Re: Schadenfreude

In fairness, I thought I would post a link to Michael LaCour's LaCour_Response_05-29-2015.pdf.

defense of his publication, as mentioned in a blog post by myself on Thursday, May 28, 2015 (Schadenfreude).


This response is not convincing to me, or a lot of other folks.  (See

the response (The Strangest Thing About LaCour’s Response -- Science of Us) to LaCour's response by Jesse Singal, who wrote an expose article (The Case of the Amazing Gay-Marriage Data: How a Graduate Student Reluctantly Uncovered a Huge Scientific Fraud).


In LaCour's document there is a technical discussion about the data, though the basic question is not why a different group got different results, but why the original results looks too good.


And more disappointingly (as I was hoping for a good story), LaCour's response does not address

1. Why there is no trail for the surveys.  That survey data might be deleted as part of an IRB agreement is not unreasonable -- though typically, it is delayed for sometime because of just such potential issues. 
2. That the survey firm which was supposed to have conducted the survey denies that it did so.
3. That the existence of his alleged contact at the firm does not appear to exist.

In the "impeach the witness' credibility" category, it is reported that there is a lack of evidence that he received a teach award he reports on his vita, and that one of his funding sources appears not to exist (Michael LaCour Made Up a Teaching Award, Too -- Science of Us).

Ben Goldacre's rule and Ardent Creationist Finds Fossil

Ben Acre (see also Bad Science) has propounded a simple law of nature:

“You cannot reason people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into.”*


To whit:  Ardent Creationist Finds Fossilized Fish, Still Isn't Convinced Evolution Is Real


I particularly like the quote to refute science: "We all have the same evidence...and it’s just a matter of how you interpret it."


Yeah.


____________

 *I don't think this quote is uniquely his, but he seems to do good work.

Schadenfreude

It is said that some words are not translatable into English.

This is not true: if the concept is useful, the word will be in English, just wait.

This is one of the things I love about English.

Schadenfreude is now an English word (from the German  harm-joy).  It was once defined by Denis Norton, CBE on the BBC radio show My Word! as "That agreeable sensation one feels on watching someone spring on to a bicycle, only to discover the saddle [seat] is missing."

That is amusement at the expense of the pain of others.

Earlier, a major if unappreciated American sage and blogger wrote an article entitled,  Rare, surprising, interesting, and depressing event, about the This American Life 'article', Do Ask, Do Tell., of the show, The Incredible Rarity of Changing Your Mind.

He complained, there it was reported that a valid study that showed "changes in opinion came about not through 'reasoned' arguments, but by appeals to emotional connection ...", providing an uplifting story "in a 'Here we can see the importance of actual humans interacting'..." way.

This was depressing to the author because of what he perceived as the arational "limitations of most [people's] decision making" which he found "both alienating and depressing".

I would like to point out, because the data was reported was published in a peer reviewed, respectable journal (Science), and was reported to have been reproduced, the author said he would have to accept and deal with results -- you should not cherry pick science.

Oh, but he should have had faith.

The research article and the radio broadcast have both been retracted (see in Retraction Watch and (This American Life Retracts Story Based on Falsified Gay Marriage Study).

It seems that the surveys cannot be found to be 'missing', that the research unreporducilble by others, and that party conducting the research Michael LaCour, a graduate student at UCLA) fooled his advisor Donald Green, of Columbia.In fairness to Mr. LaCour, he states that he "will supply a definitive response on or before May 29, 2015."

(By the way, given recent research -- which I know is risky to quote -- the retraction will only make more people believe the underlying story....)

This pleases that author as:

1. It does show, in 'a mills of the gods gind slow, but exceeding fine'* sort of way,
   that science does work.
2. It gives some (small) hope that rational argument might be at least as
   valuable as emotional suasion in getting people to perform the correct action.
3. His disdain of this American Life may not be unjustified (which is unfair, but he doesn't care, he still finds Ira Glass' voice grating).

__________
* Earliest known source is in Adversus Mathematicos (Against the Mathematicians) by the Ancient Greek sceptic philosopher, Sextus Empiricus.  See also Retribution, by Longfellow.

Ceux qui ne sont pas charlie

A number of writers decided to exercise the right of free association and boycotted a recent PEN America awards ceremony (Two dozen writers join Charlie Hebdo PEN award protest ...), because of its honoring Charlie Hebdo, Journal irresponsable.



I like to think of these as members of the "Yes, but..." club. 



Here is a take on it, Cruelty and Perversity: Postprandial Reflections on the PEN Protester , found in Tablet Magazine, by Paul Berman, who did not boycott the affair.



For the record, I believe that if it isn't offensive, speech isn't likely to be free.

 

Because some footnotes need to be honored in the text.

Rediscovering the First Woman Rabbi

 

Ordained in 1935, Regina Jonas died at Auschwitz. Now, she’s being honored.

By Laura Geller|

October 15, 2014 2:55 PM

Tablet Magazine

Judaism acknowledges the day of one’s death and not one’s
birthday. It makes a certain kind of sense: You can only really measure
the impact of a person’s life after it is over. But what if we don’t
know the date of a yahrzeit? That is what happened to the first woman
rabbi, Regina Jonas, who was deported from Terezin on October 12, 1944,
and arrived at Auschwitz on October 14. It was Shabbat, Shabbat
Bereshit, which this year falls on Oct. 18. After that there is no
record of her.


It is time to honor her memory. That’s why a growing number of rabbis
and Jewish leaders have designated this Shabbat, Oct. 18, as her
yahrzeit and will say kaddish for her.


Born in Berlin in 1902 into a poor Orthodox Jewish family, Jonas was
influenced by her rabbi, Dr. Max Weil, who, though Orthodox, allowed
girls to become bat mitzvah. At his urging, Jonas continued her studies
at the liberal Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin
from 1924 to 1930. All the other women in her classes were there to
become teachers; Jonas, like the men she studied with, wanted to become a
rabbi. Her primary supporter was Rabbi Eduard Baneth, who was
determined to ordain her, but died just before she finished her
training. Though her thesis—“Can a Woman Be a Rabbi According to
Halachic Sources?”—received praise from her teachers, none of them
agreed to ordain her, including Rabbi Leo Baeck, the leader of the Jews
in Germany, who wasn’t willing to jeopardize the unity of the Jewish
community as the Nazi threat was intensifying.


Jonas was ultimately ordained, in a private ceremony, by Rabbi Max
Dienemann, the president of the General Association of Rabbis in
Germany, on December 27, 1935. She struggled to be accepted. A 1936
article in Der Israelit cites a comment describing Jonas’ ordination as a form of “treason and a caricature of Judaism.”


At first, she worked in hospitals, homes for the elderly, and
schools, but as more rabbis emigrated she began to preach in synagogues
around Germany. In November 1942, she and her mother were deported to
Terezin, where she worked with the famous psychiatrist Victor Frankl to
care for new prisoners.


Though some survivors, including Baeck, who had also been imprisoned
at Terezin, certainly knew Jonas, they didn’t refer to her by name in
their writings. The reason in part may found in the forward to Frankl’s
classic, Man’s Search for Meaning. He wrote that he erased from
his memory everything that happened before he entered Auschwitz. Part
of what he erased was the legacy of Regina Jonas.


Her name began to appear in the early 1970s. Rabbi Sally Priesand,
the first woman ordained by the Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of
Religion, mentions Jonas in her 1975 book Judaism and the New Woman.
Jonas is also cited in a 1972 article by Rabbi Jacob R. Marcus,
founding director of the American Jewish Archives, and by Alexander
Guttmann in an article celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the
Hochschule. She is mentioned in The Jewish Almanac by Richard
Siegel and Carl Rheins. But in my years as a rabbinical student at
HUC-JIR, from 1971 to 1976, not once did I hear her name. It would have
been helpful to me, the only woman in my class, to have known her story.



It didn’t come to light until 1991, when Katerina von Kellenbach, a
professor of Religious Studies at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, while
doing research in a small archive in Berlin, accidentally discovered a
small box of Jonas’ papers. Among them is a note dated November 6, 1942,
written by an acquaintance of Jonas’, explaining that these documents
were given to him on the day that Jonas and her mother were deported.
Her papers included a photo of her in rabbinical robes, a copy of her
thesis, and her ordination certificate.


Jonas had also kept some newspaper clippings that referred to the
challenges she faced in her struggle for acceptance as a rabbi, letters
from Jewish refugees abroad thanking her for taking care of their
parents, and thank you notes from congregations where she had preached.
This archival collection inspired Elisa Klapheck, a German native who
would became the first woman rabbi in the Netherlands, to write her 2004
biography of Jonas. Most recently, Diane Groo’s documentary film Regina
fills out the contours of Jonas’ story. It reveals that shortly before
being deported to Terezin, Jonas fell in love with a fellow rabbi,
Joseph Norden. In a letter dated July 13, 1942, just as he was about to
be deported from Hamburg to Terezin, he wrote, “The time has come to say
goodbye… maybe Berliners will be sent, too. In that case perhaps there
will be a chance for us to see each other again.” They never did.


A few of Jonas’ papers remain at Terezin, including a handwritten
list of more than 20 lecture topics delivered at the camp, including the
role of women in Judaism, women in the Bible, women in the Talmud, and
Jewish holidays and beliefs. All women rabbis have given those sermons,
but none under such circumstances.


Women rabbis stand on her shoulders. She had been totally alone,
independently ordained, unsupported by most of the Jews around her. I
wonder if she had imagined us when she left her papers to be discovered.
Could she have imagined the rebirth of Jewish life in Europe and the
role of so many young women rabbis and activists in nurturing that
renewal? Could she have imagined the flowering of Jewish scholarship
from gifted women academics or the number of Reform, Conservative,
Reconstructionist and, in the not so distant future, Orthodox woman
rabbis? Could she have imagined the way feminism has totally transformed
Jewish life so that women’s experience is no longer marginal and that
women’s stories are fully part of the larger Jewish story? Now her story
is part of it too.
udaism acknowledges the day of one’s death and not one’s birthday. It makes a certain kind of sense: You can only really measure the impact of a person’s life after it is over. But what if we don’t know the date of a yahrzeit? That is what happened to the first woman rabbi, Regina Jonas, who was deported from Terezin on October 12, 1944, and arrived at Auschwitz on October 14. It was Shabbat, Shabbat Bereshit, which this year falls on Oct. 18. After that there is no record of her.

It is time to honor her memory. That’s why a growing number of rabbis and Jewish leaders have designated this Shabbat, Oct. 18, as her yahrzeit and will say kaddish for her.

Born in Berlin in 1902 into a poor Orthodox Jewish family, Jonas was influenced by her rabbi, Dr. Max Weil, who, though Orthodox, allowed girls to become bat mitzvah. At his urging, Jonas continued her studies at the liberal Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin from 1924 to 1930. All the other women in her classes were there to become teachers; Jonas, like the men she studied with, wanted to become a rabbi. Her primary supporter was Rabbi Eduard Baneth, who was determined to ordain her, but died just before she finished her training. Though her thesis—“Can a Woman Be a Rabbi According to Halachic Sources?”—received praise from her teachers, none of them agreed to ordain her, including Rabbi Leo Baeck, the leader of the Jews in Germany, who wasn’t willing to jeopardize the unity of the Jewish community as the Nazi threat was intensifying.

Jonas was ultimately ordained, in a private ceremony, by Rabbi Max Dienemann, the president of the General Association of Rabbis in Germany, on December 27, 1935. She struggled to be accepted. A 1936 article in Der Israelit cites a comment describing Jonas’ ordination as a form of “treason and a caricature of Judaism.”

At first, she worked in hospitals, homes for the elderly, and schools, but as more rabbis emigrated she began to preach in synagogues around Germany. In November 1942, she and her mother were deported to Terezin, where she worked with the famous psychiatrist Victor Frankl to care for new prisoners.

Though some survivors, including Baeck, who had also been imprisoned at Terezin, certainly knew Jonas, they didn’t refer to her by name in their writings. The reason in part may found in the forward to Frankl’s classic, Man’s Search for Meaning. He wrote that he erased from his memory everything that happened before he entered Auschwitz. Part of what he erased was the legacy of Regina Jonas.

Her name began to appear in the early 1970s. Rabbi Sally Priesand, the first woman ordained by the Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion, mentions Jonas in her 1975 book Judaism and the New Woman. Jonas is also cited in a 1972 article by Rabbi Jacob R. Marcus, founding director of the American Jewish Archives, and by Alexander Guttmann in an article celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the Hochschule. She is mentioned in The Jewish Almanac by Richard Siegel and Carl Rheins. But in my years as a rabbinical student at HUC-JIR, from 1971 to 1976, not once did I hear her name. It would have been helpful to me, the only woman in my class, to have known her story.

It didn’t come to light until 1991, when Katerina von Kellenbach, a professor of Religious Studies at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, while doing research in a small archive in Berlin, accidentally discovered a small box of Jonas’ papers. Among them is a note dated November 6, 1942, written by an acquaintance of Jonas’, explaining that these documents were given to him on the day that Jonas and her mother were deported. Her papers included a photo of her in rabbinical robes, a copy of her thesis, and her ordination certificate.

Jonas had also kept some newspaper clippings that referred to the challenges she faced in her struggle for acceptance as a rabbi, letters from Jewish refugees abroad thanking her for taking care of their parents, and thank you notes from congregations where she had preached. This archival collection inspired Elisa Klapheck, a German native who would became the first woman rabbi in the Netherlands, to write her 2004 biography of Jonas. Most recently, Diane Groo’s documentary film Regina fills out the contours of Jonas’ story. It reveals that shortly before being deported to Terezin, Jonas fell in love with a fellow rabbi, Joseph Norden. In a letter dated July 13, 1942, just as he was about to be deported from Hamburg to Terezin, he wrote, “The time has come to say goodbye… maybe Berliners will be sent, too. In that case perhaps there will be a chance for us to see each other again.” They never did.

A few of Jonas’ papers remain at Terezin, including a handwritten list of more than 20 lecture topics delivered at the camp, including the role of women in Judaism, women in the Bible, women in the Talmud, and Jewish holidays and beliefs. All women rabbis have given those sermons, but none under such circumstances.

Women rabbis stand on her shoulders. She had been totally alone, independently ordained, unsupported by most of the Jews around her. I wonder if she had imagined us when she left her papers to be discovered. Could she have imagined the rebirth of Jewish life in Europe and the role of so many young women rabbis and activists in nurturing that renewal? Could she have imagined the flowering of Jewish scholarship from gifted women academics or the number of Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist and, in the not so distant future, Orthodox woman rabbis? Could she have imagined the way feminism has totally transformed Jewish life so that women’s experience is no longer marginal and that women’s stories are fully part of the larger Jewish story? Now her story is part of it too.
e

May 19, 1865 Jefferson Davis is Taken Prisioner

With the capture of the Davis, today 19 May, 2015 (when I write this) could be argued to be the 150th anniversary of the official end of the Civil War (although Davis met with the Confederate Cabinet for the last time on May 5 and officially dissolved the Confederate government).

In light of that, I thought I would mention an interesting historical reflection in the New York Times,How the Civil War Changed the World, by Don Doyle.

While I think the article is somewhat over blown (and the support of massed 'progressive' forces in the UK and Europe is in dispute), it provides a useful example of looking at events a historical context.

We, for our own reasons, often like to concentrate on the issue of slavery, or of federal state relations, or of separate nationalisms.

But the real issue that the article brings up, was that for many, what was really in play was whether a 'self created' state, and a representative republic was a viable institution for  governing.

We forget what the world looked like at that time, hence Doyle's reference to Lincoln's reference to “last best hope of earth,” in his December 1, 1862 message to Congress.

What we might now call anti-democratic forces had been waiting for a rupture in the union.  To them it was inevitable. How could a state based on some notion of consent actually work.

History, they argued (with some force) showed that such societies could be torn apart if a disgruntled minority withdrew, rather than attempting to participate.

And they asked how could this state then attempt and justify (as a king or traditional ruling class believe they could) to restrain the dissidents.

Lincoln had to show that a republic created on a voluntary basis could provide government, up to an including force.  Which, I believe, is why he said:

I would save the Union. ...If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would
do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery...I do because I believe it helps to save the Union

The willingness to view as binding the covenants that were used to create a legitimate state, and enforce them is, in my opinion, the greatest lesson of the Civil War.

When I look at the feeble responses often provided by those who should defends such legitimacy -- more than the false claims of defending liberty used to attack our state --  I am not sanguine what Doyle refers to as the "trial of democracy".

May 19, 1865 Jefferson Davis is Taken Prisioner

With the capture of the Davis, today 19 May, 2015 (when I write this) could be argued to be the 150th anniversary of the official end of the Civil War (although Davis met with the Confederate Cabinet for the last time on May 5 and officially dissolved the Confederate government).

In light of that, I thought I would mention an interesting historical reflection in the New York Times,How the Civil War Changed the World, by Don Doyle.

While I think the article is somewhat over blown (and the support of massed 'progressive' forces in the UK and Europe is in dispute), it provides a useful example of looking at events a historical context.

We, for our own reasons, often like to concentrate on the issue of slavery, or of federal state relations, or of separate nationalisms.

But the real issue that the article brings up, was that for many, what was really in play was whether a 'self created' state, and a representative republic was a viable institution for  governing.

We forget what the world looked like at that time, hence Doyle's reference to Lincoln's reference to “last best hope of earth,” in his December 1, 1862 message to Congress.

What we might now call anti-democratic forces had been waiting for a rupture in the union.  To them it was inevitable. How could a state based on some notion of consent actually work.

History, they argued (with some force) showed that such societies could be torn apart if a disgruntled minority withdrew, rather than attempting to participate.

And they asked how could this state then attempt and justify (as a king or traditional ruling class believe they could) to restrain the dissidents.

Lincoln had to show that a republic created on a voluntary basis could provide government, up to an including force.  Which, I believe, is why he said:

I would save the Union. ...If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would
do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery...I do because I believe it helps to save the Union

The willingness to view as binding the covenants that were used to create a legitimate state, and enforce them is, in my opinion, the greatest lesson of the Civil War.

When I look at the feeble responses often provided by those who should defends such legitimacy -- more than the false claims of defending liberty used to attack our state --  I am not sanguine what Doyle refers to as the "trial of democracy".