Massive Saturday roundup

Holy $hit, the torture report. And the political responses.

Why better policy needs data:

As scholars Dara Kay Cohen and Amelia Hoover Green argued in the Journal of Peace Research in 2012, such figures persist in part because there are incentives for advocacy groups to base their campaigns on dramatic claims. Assuming that a global public is ever more inured to tales of horror, it becomes tempting to choose the most shocking number over the most accurate one. This is not to say that advocacy groups maliciously distort known data, but to warn that the periodic fixation on extreme cases necessarily means that responses are less consistent than they could be, and may fail to address the social and conflict dynamics that lie beneath shock figures.
The challenge for policy professionals is identifying when sexual violence is being orchestrated for the purpose terror, and when it is a spontaneous criminal act. On the one hand, they must deal with gaps in data and the considerable complexity of sexual violence across diverse settings, and on the other, they cannot allow ongoing debates over that complexity to stand in the way of concrete action.
This tension between knowledge and action can in part be resolved by seeing reliable research not as a distraction from, but as in fact integral to, effective policy. Organizations — whether governmental, non-governmental, or inter-governmental — need to invest in knowledge.

It's been a big week for blaming victims, with Bob Jones University coming in worst, followed closely by Princeton Mom. Sexual assault isn't something anyone "deserves" in spite of what you may find even in literature (oh, when writers we admire disappoint). So yeah we can train women to be prepared with language, or we can move toward a yes-means-yes paradigm because the onus is not on them, not on 'no.'

Lena Dunham speaks out on speaking out. Patton Oswald on Bill Cosby.

Also--in reference to some of these comments--it's not up to any of us to tell victims how they should feel.

Ironic that we're talking about what is about ethics in journalism; fact-checking isn't optional.

That's also, as we know, an issue in science, and press releases matter.

Toronto man is arrested for banking while black.

In appreciation of Michel Du Cille.

The cromnibus is bad for food. Organic farming really does deliver, but the certification system is broken. Wheat is very sustainable.

A teacher is fired for speaking out about dairy.

Very few chickens are humanely raised.

This is a more interesting discussion than I have time to address right now, but I've written on these pages about how I don't love the labels vegetarian/vegan not because, as suggested in the article, some vegans are jerks (guess what: some omnivores are jerks, too) but because I choose not to define myself by the way I eat. There's a fine line between "I don't eat animal products" and "I'm a vegan," and it's the line between "this is what I do" and "this is what I am."

Also on atheists and vegetarians.

I'm not advocating baking with animal products, but here's some interesting science-of-baking info.

We're coming up on the year of the pulses.

The prof took it too far, but we should hold restaurants and other establishments more accountable for posted prices.

There's even more plastic in the oceans than you thought.

Note that people who suffer from kids on planes complain about the parents, not the kids. Probably these parents (but not the last one, who is awesome).

What do you call the DC-area airport in Virginia that does not suck.

Penguins with iPads (because they improve their sex lives!)