Delicious LiveJournal Links for 7-19-2010

[andrewducker]

• Klingon invasion of Scotland on the way
  (tags: scotland startrek)
• Why Ben Goldacre is battling it out with Gillian McKeith again
  (tags: science libel uk)
• Flu jab could be replaced by skin patch
  Less painful, more effective, but I'd be worried about letting people do it at home, because I'm fairly sure a large chunk of them wouldn't.
  (tags: vaccination uk technology)
• The British Government's guide to torturing children.
  (tags: prison abuse children violence humanrights uk)
• HG Wells writing competition demands handwriting, no science fiction; no one applies
  (tags: writing competition EpicFail)
• Every generation complains about its children
  (tags: children society history)
• Germans throw a 40 mile long picnic
  (tags: germany party picnic)
• Percentage of population going to university didn't actually rise under Labour.
  (tags: education politics uk labour)
• Cosplay photoshopping
  (tags: photoshop cosplay photography anime)
• Why you'll find Jeanette Winterson filed under "lgbt" rather than "fiction"
  (tags: fiction lgbt marketing)
• Omega imbalance can make obesity inheritable
  (tags: health diet obesity nutrition omega3)
• How minor differences between the genders get magnified on the playground
  (tags: school gender feminism)
• The case against women bishops in the Church of England, reduced to seven words
  (tags: christianity funny religion sexism)
• Roman Polanski Reviews 'Hannah Montana'
  (tags: funny satire film review)

Comments

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

I'm not entirely sure if the fuss about the "torture guide" is justified. They all sound like self-defence and restraint techniques to me. And for all the hand-wringing about 12-year-olds, if I had, say, two full-grown seventeen-year-olds with violent backgrounds and lots of experience fighting (not a huge stretch from "young offender") trying to kick my face in, I'd say using most of those techniques would be justified.

Of course, if they've been abused, that's a very, very serious issue. But the piece didn't seem to offer evidence they had been.

(Also - if you're in a brawl, you may end up with the other guy in a headlock. It's probably a good thing if your self-defence manual has pointed out that you need to watch out for impeding their windpipe.)

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

Argh, don't appear to be able to edit. For clarity, in para 2 I meant "If these techniques have been abused"

[andrewducker]

If the people who actually run these homes are against them, then they're clearly over the top:
One former manager of a secure children's home with almost 20 years' experience said the revelations were "horrifying" and described the self-defence techniques as "child abuse".

Malcolm Stevens, a former government policy adviser and director of secure training centres who helped to develop the government's guidance for staff working in secure centres during the 1990s, said he could not understand why pain-inducing techniques were endorsed. He said: "I have never seen the need to use pain-compliant techniques, and after 15 years my view has not changed. I have no truck with distraction techniques."

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

Fair point, but those are cherry-picked quotes not an overall poll. I've never heard of Mr Stevens, so have no idea how reliable he is, and the other speaker isn't even identified.

I don't really know what the atmosphere is like in these institutions - maybe serious violence almost never happens. I also don't know how these techniques compare against those used in adult prisons. However, I don't see why, on a practical level, defending yourself against or restraining a 17-year-old would be so different to doing the same against a 19-year-old.

(I'm going to ask a friend who has a lot more practical knowledge of these matters to comment.)

[andrewducker]

Yeah, my reactions are purely based on (a) the quotes from experts in the article, and (b) that the government was trying to hide it.

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

b), it must be said, does not send a good message.

(Conversely, the incredibly juicy subject matter - the government! hurts! children! makes me a little skeptical quite how much steak there is behind the sizzle. The journalists involved have a much, much stronger incentive to find that there are horrible dark secrets in the document than they do to conclude it's basically OK.)

[andrewducker]

Absolutely. I'm looking forward to more details appearing.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

The fact of deaths strongly suggests abuse.

I'm looking forward (in a sense) to accounts from ex-inmates.

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

Response from my friend (who has experience working with potentially violent youths as well as various jobs requiring restraint and self-defence techniques):

"If used in a true self defence context- ie with force proportionate to the attack - these are appropriate techniques. If you're being pinned or held then you need to use pain based attacks to get released- simple.

If used incorrectly or out of appropriate context then it is abuse. Just as if someone went for a copper with a knife he can use his baton(which will hurt and may lead to possibility of death even if used in the manner trained to be less than lethal), but if the copper just hits a person because he feels like it, or they simply moved too fast for his liking, it then it is wrong."

He goes on to say that these techniques are listed as being adapted from adult prison restraint techniques (""General service techniques") and says "bear in mind that in adult settings they use batons, body arnour and shields too so this is a medium suitable to the setting. An aggrieved 17 year old is no differnt from an aggrieved 30 year old. I've been belted on the chin at work by a 14 year old and it was no differnt from being belted on the chin by a fully grown adult."

Of course, the sticking point is that these will be used on children, and interestingly he also says that a lot of bouncers refuse to work under-18 clubs, because "It gets trickier when they are 12 as they can do as much damage to you as you can do to them; but when it goes wrong it goes really wrong. This is why lot of doorstaff refuse to do under-18 nightclubs as the risk of being charged by people who don't understand this is far too great."

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

Ahem, apologies for the typo there, my copy/paste fu is not mighty today.

[supergee.livejournal.com]

Over here, Borders has separate-but-equal shelf space for GLBT and black writing. Remember when we wanted sf out of the ghetto?

[andrewducker]

It's a tricky one, I think. Because, back when I used book shops, I'd go into the SF section and see what was there. If I was looking for gay writing then I'd find it useful to have it all clumped together. But this does mean that some writers won't be visible to a general reader.

I don't think there's a simple solution, sadly.

[broin.livejournal.com]

"Drive straight fingers into the young person's face, and then quickly drive the straightened fingers of the same hand downwards into the young person's groin area."

Dating was really different in my day.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

When I needed a flu jab last autumn, I had pretty much no choice of time/date to get it at my GP's. I was quite tempted to skip having the jab rather than waste a morning when I wanted to be elsewhere. One could easily imagine patches being sent through the post and people being asked to phone- or web-confirm when they've applied it, with medical staff calling people who've not bothered or who've had problems.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

I can't read the Erotic review link at work because everything to do with sex is obviously wrong and must be blocked. However, since when is Winterson filed under LGBT rather than Fiction? Not in any bookshop I've been into.

Presumably the wider point is that LGBT (and Black) sections of the bookshop are ghettoising and I agree with this. I do wonder if the books they contain would be stocked with out them though.

[andrewducker]

Sadly, I can't look at it either, or I'd pass on some of the detail!

The gist, as far as I can remember, is that things get filed in the areas that publishers tell them to file them, and that publishers choose the areas that cause the most sales. In this case a feminist work was filed in the LGBT area, meaning that heterosexual feminists would be unable to find it.

See my other response for supergee for further thoughts on this one. My general feeling is that this is going to be a problem in physical bookstores, but online stores should be able to file a book in multiple areas at once.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Oh that Gillian McKeith. She just won't learn.

The playground thing -- is it really a gender thing, or is it just rough kids vs quiet kids? Of course, it's a gender thing that more of the rough kids are boys. But their actual behaviour in their roughness I mean.

[phillipalden.livejournal.com]

That article about torturing children in custody is appalling!

I just read a similar article about how gay and trans-gendered kids are abused by the system.

It's not wonder they come out more fucked up than when they went in.