TresSugar

Arrested Professor: This Is What Happens to Blacks in America

TresSugar — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 09:00:00 -0700

Harvard faculty, students, and the surrounding community are mulling over a disturbing incident that went down last week. Last Thursday, prominent African-American scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested in his home after a woman saw him trying to unlock his jammed door and assumed he was a robber. Gates was arrested for disorderly conduct.

According to the police report, when an officer showed up to the house and asked Gates to step outside so he could discuss a potential break-in in progress, Gates asked, "Why, because I'm black in America?" (He's a prolific author of books on the African-American experience.)

Although the police officer believed that Gates was in his home lawfully (Gates produced his ID card), he claimed he was surprised and confused by Gates' behavior toward him. After Gates exhibited "loud and tumultuous behavior" by continuing to yell, the officer handcuffed him, put him under arrest, and took him in a police cruiser to be booked.

Some in the community are wondering: would this have happened to a white professor? Whether or not the motivation was racial, it sure seems like an overreaction to arrest a person who's at his own house for "loud and tumultuous behavior."

Immigrant Takes Unimproved SAT, Gets into All Ivy Leagues

LibertySugar — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 06:00:36 -0700

Lukasz Zbylut, who came to America only five years ago with a limited understanding of English, has secured admission to all seven of the country's Ivy League schools. The Polish immigrant chose to accept admission to Harvard, where he plans to study politics, law, and philosophy. Of the 21 schools Lukasz applied to, only MIT rejected him. Nobody's perfect!

So what's his secret? Lukasz's success may have to do with the fact that he does not use social networking sites, instant message, or watch entertainment television, which he says is a waste of time. He does, however, watch cable news - totally not a waste!

As for the rest of college bound Americans, the new and improved SAT, rolled out three years ago, isn't actually improved. Just like the last test, scores have a lower correlation to performance in college, than high school GPAs. As before, combining SAT scores with GPA does more accurately predict success; but the added writing section only improves correlation by .01.

I hope next year's students don't find out the extra test section is basically a waste of time! And, I have a feeling we'll be hearing about Lukasz Zbylut again on the political circuit.

Source

Say What? Harvard Professor on Henry Louis Gates's Arrest

TresSugar — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 04:00:00 -0700

"Ain't nothing post-racial about the United States of America."

- Lawrence Bobo, Harvard professor and colleague of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on Gates's arrest last week. The acclaimed Harvard scholar, author, historian and PBS documentarian was arrested trying to unjam the front door to his house after police were called by a neighbor who thought someone was breaking into the home. Although what happened isn't entirely clear (police say Gates was being "tumultuous" and Gates claims he was asking for the police officer's badge number), many see the incident, from beginning to end, as a classic case of racial profiling.

All You Need Is Love? Study Finds What Makes Us Happy

TresSugar — Wed, 13 May 2009 11:30:00 -0700

We can be so caught up in the day-to-day commotion of our lives that it's rare we get a chance to step back and look at life as a whole. But psychiatrist George Vaillant has been doing that every day for the last 42 years as head of the Harvard Study of Adult Development.

The study began in 1937 by following 268 Harvard male undergrads, who were deemed "well-adjusted" by the day's standards. It has followed the men through school, marriage, career, parenthood, divorce, illness, and - for half the participants - death.

What has Dr. Vaillant learned? "The only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people." "Happiness is love" he says, "full stop."

To see his interview with the Atlantic, (it will make you happy!), read more.

Source

Lighten Up: Barack Fought Vampires at Harvard?

LibertySugar — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 10:00:34 -0800

If you thought Obama girl was frightening, just wait for Barackula - a short political horror rock musical about young Barack Obama having to stave off a secret society of vampires at Harvard when he was inducted as President of the Harvard Law Review in 1990.

Um, ok. Check out the Barackula MySpace page for music and pictures from the bizarre production. It should premiere any day now!

Front Page: HPV Vaccine Reminds Girls of Sexual Risks

TresSugar — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 08:00:43 -0700

A new study shows that the HPV vaccine reminds girls of risks associated with sex, such as contracting STDs, instead of giving them a license to be promiscuous as some people feared. - Salon
Wal-Mart is now selling affordable coffins. - BBC News
A Dutch court has told 14-year-old Laura Dekker that she is too inexperienced to sail around the world by herself, and she will be placed under the guardianship of child protection authorities until next year. - New York Times
A sixth person has been arrested for the gang rape of the 15-year-old California girl outside her homecoming dance. - CNN
Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates and Cambridge Police Sergeant James Crowley sat down for another beer this week, this time without President Obama. - Huffington Post

Some Overweight People Are Calling For a Law to Protect Them

TresSugar — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 07:00:00 -0700

Overt racism is not tolerated in most places, but fatism is flourishing in our society. Many overweight people say that the normal rules of decency and common courtesy don't seem to apply to them, and they're trying to organize a new rights movement.

In a news article yesterday, the BBC recounted the plight of an overweight train passenger who was beaten up by another commuter for taking up two seats. The aggressor yelled "you big fat pig" before she kicked the victim in the stomach. In addition to suffering verbal and physical abuse, overweight people who are speaking out say they are victims of systemic discrimination. For example, many airline companies in the US now charge larger passengers for two seats. Such a policy is considered illegal discrimination in Canada, where there is a one-person-one-fare law. The US has no such rule, nor is there a federal law forbidding employers from firing people because of their weight. (Michigan is alone in prohibiting employers from firing people for being overweight.)

Last year, a study from Yale revealed that weight discrimination is tolerated because many believe that people have control over their size. The truth is more complicated. Economics, health issues like type 2 diabetes, and genetics can affect a person's weight.

The study also revealed that overweight women are twice as vulnerable to discrimination than overweight men. If you want to find out if you have implicit biases against overweight people take this quiz developed by Harvard researchers. You might be surprised by the results.

Would you like to see a federal anti-weight discrimination law?

Front Page: Obama Set to Deliver Big Gay Rights Speech

TresSugar — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 08:00:53 -0700

After appointing the country's third openly gay US ambassador, Obama plans to deliver a "big gay rights speech" on Saturday. - Huffington Post
Romanian-born German Herta Müller has won the Nobel Prize for literature for her novels, poems, and stories depicting repression in Romania. -
New York Times
Harvard has been ranked the world's top school. - Times Higher Education
France's culture minister Frederic Mitterrand is facing calls to quit after he wrote in a book, published four years ago, that he paid young boys for sex in Thailand. The book is making headlines following Mitterrand's support of Roman Polanski. - BBC News
An Australia TV show has come under fire for allowing contestants to perform a Michael Jackson "tribute" wearing blackface. - CNN

Food Really Is the Way to a Person's Heart

TresSugar — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 01:00:00 -0700

A new book, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, argues that hot food, and not sex, is the reason human beings originally paired up in domestic relationships.

According to author and Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangham, early marriages were really a trade off for hot food (prepared by the women) and protection (provided by the men). Evidence from primitive societies, including the fact that society tolerated women sleeping around but ostracized them if they ever cooked for men besides their husbands, is used to support the conclusion.

It seems that a domestic convention that is considered backward today actually made us move forward evolutionarily. Let's hope modern men won't use this finding as a reason to expect women to do all the cooking!

Stranger Than Fiction: Gates and Crowley Related!

TresSugar — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 06:00:00 -0700

Tonight when Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sgt. James Crowley sit down over a beer with President Obama, they can avoid talking about that awkward thing that happened last week. Instead, the Harvard professor and his arresting officer can discuss how they're related!

The pair at the center of a debate about racial profiling both trace their heritage back to Niall of the Nine Hostages, a fourth century Irish warlord. Gates discovered that he descended from an Irish immigrant and a slave girl when he hosted a PBS series on African-American ancestry last year. He went to Ireland to find out more about his line of ancestry, a line he shares with Sgt. Crowley.

What's a little misunderstanding among family?