Male Philosophy and Psychiatry

In a nice bit of irony (or maybe just grim prophecy. . .), all the invited speakers at Oxford’s upcoming conference ‘Philosophy and Psychiatry: The Next Hundred Years’ are male. They are:

Derek Bolton

John Campbell

Thomas Fuchs

Matthew Ratcliffe

Tim Thornton

 

There’s also a portion of the conference devoted to invited papers, however. See the call for abstracts below. Send your abstracts, ladies!

 

Abstracts are welcome from philosophers and clinicians, scientists and
others with experience of mental health issues. Though there is no
restriction as to seniority, preference may be given to younger academics,
post-docs and graduate students.

Accepted papers should be suitable for a 20-minute presentation. Please
send abstracts of 300 words to conferences@conted.ox.ac.uk by January 31,
2013. We expect to notify authors of accepted papers by the end of February.

Fuzzy feminist thinking

This is pretty unbelievable. Michael Calleri recounts how his relationship with the Niagra Falls Reporter came to an end when the new editor objected to publishing his movie reviews when the films in question featured strong female characters  (labeling Snow White and the Huntsman as one example of “fuzzy feminist thinking” that he found offensive).  The editor wrote:

If you care to write reviews where men act like good strong men and have a heroic inspiring influence on young people to build up their character (if there are such movies being made) i will be glad to publish these.

i am not interested in supporting the reversing of traditional gender roles.

i don’t want to associate the Niagara Falls Reporter with the trash of Hollywood and their ilk.

it is my opinion that hollywood has robbed america of its manliness and made us a nation of eunuchs who lacking all manliness welcome in the coming police state.

Horrifying, but kudos to Calleri.

One in six live in poverty in USA

The number of people living in poverty in the US is higher than previously thought, and close to 50 million, according to the U.S. Census, using the second annual Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM).  As reported on the CNNMoney page, “The alternative measure showed the importance of Social Security and the weight of medical care on the elderly. Without Social Security, some 54.1% of Americans age 65-plus would be in poverty, as opposed to 15.1%. But if they didn’t have to pay out-of-pocket health care costs, their poverty rate would have fallen nearly in half to 8%.”

An Idaho paper lifts out two more findings: “Without refundable tax credits such as the earned income tax credit, child poverty would rise from 18.1 percent to 24.4 percent. Without food stamps, the overall poverty rate would increase from 16.1 percent to 17.6 percent.”

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