"Two boats are sinking and you can save only one. One holds two dogs, the other a person. Which do you save? If you’re not sure, you can say, 'I can’t decide.'"

"When I put this to my 11-year-old, his response was immediate: “Save the dogs!” In his defence, he has grown up with a pet dog, which he adores — and, according to a new study in Psychological Science, most other kids would say the same thing.... Indeed, when the team put similar questions (varying the numbers of dogs, pigs and people) to adult participants, 61% opted to save one human over 100 dogs... and 85% of people prioritised one human over one dog, while 93% opted to save a human rather than a single pig.... When the team asked 249 kids aged between five and nine about what they thought, though, they found that just over 70% opted to let a person die to save 100 dogs. When it came to one human vs one dog, only about a third of the children opted to save the person, 28% were clear on going for the dog, and the rest couldn’t decide. When pigs, rather than dogs, were pitted against people... only 57% prioritised one human over one pig, and 18% reported that they’d save the pig. The child’s age had no impact — the 9-year-olds made the same judgements as the 5-year-olds." 

From "Children Are Much Less Likely Than Adults To Prioritise Human Over Animal Lives" (Research Digest).

IN THE COMMENTS: Leland said:

Dumb survey. Try thinking just a little bit like a child. You, a 5 to 9 (maybe 11) age kid, small, unsure around people, comfortable around pets that are typically your size or smaller; have to save a person (in their head one of those bigger people like a parent or teacher) or a dog (something your used to handling) in dangerous water. Simple self-preservation says they'll pick the object they can handle.

Yes, and you might think the human being might have a chance of figuring out on his own what to do, and, after all, he did, in all likelihood, choose to go out on a boat. The dog didn't take the boat out on its own, but has been put in a confusing situation by a human being and may therefore seem to deserve human intervention. 

"After years of smuggling his obsessions into reviews or radio programmes, he was finally able to publish whatever was on his mind..."

"... from racism, propaganda and freedom of speech to make-up, birdwatching and the price of clocks. The most sombre topics rubbed up against brainteasers, jokes and nuggets of trivia. Orwell had opinions about everything under the sun and they were all worth reading even if you disagreed with them, which many Tribune readers did, loudly and often." 

I'm reading Dorian Lynskey's "The Ministry of Truth/The Biography of George Orwell's 1984."

George Orwell wrote an essay about makeup?! I like the way his Tribune column sounds like a blog, but what I really want is to find that essay about makeup. I've looked, but so far, no success.

IN THE COMMENTS: Leland said: "I think you are referring to 'As I Please'" — yes, I am — "so perhaps his column on American Fashion Magazines?" Maybe. Here's that full essay, from 1946. It mentions lipstick and nail polish, but though it's heavily opinionated, he doesn't really opine on makeup. It's more about the natural physical attributes of the models, the clothing, the style of writing, and the absence of men :

Katie Hill shouldn't have resigned! She Frankened!

Get your Katie Hill background info by Googling "Katie Hill." I'm not into filling in on the details on this one. I think there's too much willingness to resign and get out of the way. You got elected by a set of people. Are they asking you to get out or are you letting members of Congress tell you to get out of their way? They're not you're constituents. Don't Franken!

ADDED: This is my first and perhaps only post about Katie Hill, but I've seen lots of talk about her in comments to my posts, and I responded to one of those comments, so let me front-page myself. I had a post about a WaPo column about Trump's supposedly horrible treatment of women (which began "Ew"). The commenter Leland wrote:

Thoughts on the morning after the Roseanne debacle.

I'm skeptical. Did ABC really cancel "Roseanne," or are we sucked into high-drama theater with more scenes to come? Is this like the Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un show, where it's on, then it's off, then it's on?

There's so much politics-and-showbiz going on, and I'm not going to sit passively in a comfy chair as a good little audience member. 

I predict Roseanne Barr will have more scenes to play, perhaps some slow rolling out of apologies as the new TV season approaches and new episodes are teased about how Roseanne Connor said something racist and kind of might actually be a racist or maybe Dan is a secret racist and Darlene comes to the rescue and the little he's-not-transgender boy shows us how to love again.

What soppy goo we slurp up every day! It's always something new. For example, right now, I'm seeing "Roseanne Barr blames sleep aid Ambien for racist tweet" (Reuters)...

“It was 2 in the morning and I was Ambien tweeting-it was memorial day too-i went 2 far & do not want it defended-it was egregious Indefensible,” she wrote. “I made a mistake I wish I hadn’t but...don’t defend it please.”

What does "it was memorial day too" even mean? Roseanne has a disorderly mind — or speaks as though she does — but she's done a bang-up job of grabbing our attention and that draws into question how orderly our minds are. Step back. Get skeptical. You only have the hours and minutes in your life that you have. You must use that time as it happens in the now. Every second you pay attention to one thing, you lose a second that would have gone somewhere else.

How many seconds of human time can Roseanne or Donald Trump or Kim Jong-Un amass? Kudos to them for their unfolding victories in the game of paying attention.

IN THE COMMENTS: Eleanor said:

Personally, I think Roseanne saw some of next season's scripts, didn't like the way the story was going, and wanted out. She'll rehabilitate herself, maybe another network will pick her up, and she'll get more control of the show. If not, she can afford to enjoy her retirement, knowing she put liberal hypocrisy on grand display.

Leland said:

I think it is cancelled. She insulted the Obamas by insulting Valerie Jarrett. And the comment was definitely ugly, despite years of Chimpy McHitler. Fair enough, what she tweeted about VJ was not nearly as bad as dressing up as Hitler and pulling ginger bread men out of the oven. That latter joke didn't keep ABC from hiring her in the first place.

Yes, the problem of likening humans to apes, an interesting variation on the age-old resistance to the notion of evolution. We are primates, all of us, the same order as the apes. Bush was "Chimpy McHitler," and let's not forget that time Trump sued Bill Maher for joking that Trump was the son of an orangutan.

Oh! And I see that people have not forgotten. There's already: "Roseanne Supporters Are Calling For HBO To Fire Bill Maher For Calling Trump An Orangutan" (Hollywood Life).

Henry said:

I don't think Roseanne walks this one off -- at least not until she does a full Mel Gibson disappearance for a few years.

Pre-production on the next season was already underway. It wouldn't surprise me if Disney tries to reboot the show without Roseanne. Maybe she dies off-screen and Dan remarries Betty White.

Roseanne's next page is to go full Charlie Sheen. She's not getting her show back.

Yes, I thought that too. Do the show without "Roseanne." Before the reboot, the series had ended with Roseanne's husband dead. So come back with Roseanne dead. Was she really the without-which-none of the show? She's a bad actor compared to the others. John Goodman and Laurie Metcalf are at the complete opposite end of the scale — great actors. Sara Gilbert ("Darlene") seems to have been the brains of the reboot. She could become the central character. Build the new season around John Goodman, Laurie Metcalfe, and Sara Gilbert, and leave the dead weight of Roseanne behind.

Sal said:

My new script idea: Roseanne has an encounter with some black guy. He complains about her apes reference and she gives him ten bucks. His eyes light up!

LOL. (He's referring to this. I love comments that incorporate stuff from other posts.)

AND: daskol said:

Great actors are moons and need a planet. Great TV writers too, and even clever Sara Gilbert is merely a moon without a planet. Roseanne is a planet.

I read "I interviewed the Ohio State attacker on the first day of school. It felt important. Now it’s chilling" so you don't have to.

It's December 1st, so this link to The Washington Post won't hit the paywall, but consider whether you want to use your free access to read "I interviewed the Ohio State attacker on the first day of school. It felt important. Now it’s chilling." The "I" is an Ohio State student named Kevin Stankiewicz.

There's something irksomely twee about the headline. Is there really anything that once was "important," or is Stankiewicz humbly revealing that it felt important to him at the time? Is there anything about the text of the interview that is "chilling," or is it just supposed to be chilling to have access to some words from a man who later did something evil? That's what I'm wondering as I set out to read this on the theory that you're cagey about the WaPo paywall or you prefer Althouse reprocessings or both.

Stankiewicz needed material for the "Humans of Ohio State" feature in the student newspaper and he chose Abdul Razak Ali Artan because he was: 1. the first person he saw, and 2. sitting alone. Artan,  "surprised" to be chosen, was "friendly," open, "thoughtful," and "engaged."

Stankiewicz chose to focus on the problem Artan said he had praying on campus: He wanted to pray publicly, but "I was scared with everything going on in the media." According to Stankiewicz, Artan "ticked off examples of Islamophobia that garnered media attention." (The word "garnered" sets off my bullshit detector.) Artan claimed to worry that he might be shot if he prayed openly.

The interview was on August 23rd, and the summary of the interview ran in the student newspaper a few days later. That is, Artan began the semester surrounded by many students who'd read the piece and were probably moved to feel sympathetic toward him. There was a photograph of the distinctive-looking young man, enabling students to act upon a desire to help him feel included. I'd be interested in hearing from students who read the piece and, especially, students who interacted with Artan after feeling sympathetic because they believed he was sad, feeling like an outsider.

But we only hear from Stankiewicz, who tells us how he felt talking to Artan, which is that he had no access to the inner life of the man he experienced as "friendly" and "thoughtful":

There is nothing I heard from Artan that day that would have ever made me think he could be responsible for the brutal, senseless attack that would come just three months later. Nothing to indicate his thoughtful frustrations and fears would lead him to drive a car into a crowd of people on campus, that he would lash out with a knife at students and faculty, that he would make national news for what many believe was a terrorist attack. That he would be dead, shot by a police officer trying to prevent him from killing others.

Sentence fragments. Allowed by WaPo. Expressive of feelings of author. Clueless author who accepted polite exterior manifestations as evidence of another nice person looking for friends at college. Don't misjudge him. Stankiewicz wanted students to feel. Ironic, considering.

Oh, but Stankiewicz assumes he did see the real Artan that day. It's just that later the "thoughtful, engaged student I had met on the first day of classes... snapped."

I wished the whole day was a dream in the first place; I wished a gray Honda sedan never drove over a curb, struck a group of people, before being lunged at with a knife; I wished the sirens I heard on my walk to class were phantom. And then I wished — like I’ve never wished before — that the assailant was not Artan.

And then I wished that I was not reading The Washington Post. That I was reading a young adult novel. Because that's what this sounds like.

IN THE COMMENTS: Leland said:

Artan was shot while preying openly.

Oh, Bissage, et al., you have made Althouse so very much better than I am.

I'm just reading the comments on yesterday's carrot post. ("Shed a tear for the orange and its desperate problems.")

Campy started us off at a high level by referencing one of this blog's most controversial posts:

Carrot sticks! Where are the onion rings?

So, yes, we know what the carrots are.

Mr. Forward introduced a classic "orange" subject:

Nothing rhymes with orange.

Hector Owen responded:

I suppose, if one were to make a ceramic porringer, and glaze it the color of those carrots, and set it on the table with other things that did not include carrots, or yams, or (of course) oranges, that one could then proudly say, "Nothing is oranger than my porringer!"

Still, nothing rhymes with "orange." Now, if that porringer had a flange … no, the "a" would still be different.

I thought the right answer was "door hinge."

Lucid sledgehammers the meaning of the post:

This is clearly a very penetrating (???!!!!) photographic comment: While women (pink) are to be carefully considered, the photographer also feels concern for the tribulations of men and their special appendages.

Freeman Hunt provides an amazing list of things that an orange ribbon is supposed to reflect/create awareness of — according to this creepy awareness site:

Agent OrangeCultural Diversity
Feral Cats
Hunger
Leukemia
Lupus
Melanoma
Motorcycle Safety
Racial Tolerance
Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Syndrome
Self Injury

Not prostate cancer, though. Prostate cancer gets light blue. Get it?

Freeman Hunt had an afterthought:

Why is there a ribbon for feral cats but not feral dogs?

I think it's more important to be aware of feral dogs because they could kill you.

Feral cats, not so much. You could probably throw a crazy cat away from you if it attacked you. Man > cat.

Ironrailsironweights said:

Self Injury...

Somehow I never thought of that as a "cause" requiring the ribbon treatment.

Maybe these people crave (carve) attention.

Michaele said:

There's some sad orange wearers right this minute 'cause University of TN just missed knocking off #1 Alabama...the score was 12 to 10 and UT had a chance at making a field goal in the last couple of seconds.

Knox(ville) — who "just ordered myself a black 'Amish Support' ribbon car magnet!" — said:

Yeah, yeah, keep it to yourself.

Oh, who am I kidding, I don't give a sh*t about football.

You are talking about football, right?

Leland said...

Texas A&M, in the[ir] hatred for University of Texas and all things orange, learned how to grow maroon carrots.

 Libhom said:

This post is as senseless as everything else on this blog.

Chip Ahoy said:

This post has no meaning!

Just like everything else on this blog -- meaningless.

Just like my life has no meaning. Except for the meaning I give it by spending time here noting your abject absence of meaning and returning regularly and reaffirming that observation and then setting aside my other meaninglessness to take the time and effort to remark on your meaninglessness, even so far as to bother with a CAPTCHA to do it. Yes, that's right, my remark on your meaningless blog does have meaning although I assert your blog that I make the remark on does not.

But then I wouldn't recognize meaning if it jumped up and bit my penis. I do not understand photography or art or getting out and seeing my city or recording it with my own unique eye and through my own lens, or forests or farmers market or flower boxes, animals or odd things in nature or within human constructions. They're meaningless to me! Now, start being meaningful Goddamnit! And give me something meaningful to foul.

Then my other self says,

I once had a careless carrot patch. There was loose tilled dirt directly under an air conditioner that dripped steadily throughout the hot summer directly onto that patch of dirt, so watering was automatic. I had a packet of carrot seeds that I broadcast into the soil and, being an ordinary kid, didn't pay much attention to them thereafter, just checked back occasionally. The plants are beautiful at every stage of development, more so because they were not arranged in tight farmerly rows. At first the foliage looks like delicate little green feathers, then lacy ferns, then they expand, fill in, and strengthen to proper deep dark green carrot tops. The bright orange carrot roots were delicious.

LoafingOaf said:

These are gross looking carrots. They look like fucked up fingers or pathetic penises or something. Ick.

Uh, yeah. Have you no pity! Why are cancerous breasts a big warm fuzzy cause, but a pathetic penis is just something against which to hurl contempt? Sexist. You must wear a light blue ribbon for penance. Penis penance.

And yet the Oaf continues:

I have a question. Why is everything that Obama says or does horribly wrong to Althouse and her commenters, yet Dick Cheney is such a hero the Althouse world wants to build him a statue in Madison? Is Obama really that awful and Cheney really that righteous? Or is this blog getting carried away by the right wing?

(Link added.)

Bissage said:

I find myself disappointed that Loafing Oaf didn’t post a link to his blog where we’d all find his twelve point plan specifying what each and every one of us should do to make Althouse so very much better than it is.

Oh, Bissage, et al., you have made Althouse so very much better than I am.

Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman faked it.

Oh, they say they had to because it was so cold.

The conditions raised the possibility of broken piano strings, cracked instruments and wacky intonation....

Well, hell, they knew it was going to be January. If these candyass classicists can't play in the cold, they should have hired some musicians who can.

***

So we were listening to recorded music when the clock hit noon, the constitutional moment for the President to be sworn in! Then, he was sworn in and that might have been fake and there was a second of that too.

IN THE COMMENTS: Gahrie said:

It was real before it was fake, and after all isn't that all that really matters?

... [A]fter the campaign the president ran, can we really be surprised?

Jason said:

This is amazing. Just yesterday I heard the music show on NPR praising the musicians for their amazing skill "people are still talking about it." God I hate them. You think they're giving you useful information and it turns out to be junk

hdhouse said:

between Ma and Perlman they are using about 5million in instruments that do not like cold. unlike Mr. Bush, they "fake it" for a reason.

I'm fine with them keeping their precious objects out of the cold, but let them keep their precious bodies off the stage. And, yeah, they are different from Bush. Bush was President, and as such, he had to perform, whether the circumstances challenged the limits of his capacity or not. They did not have an obligation. They received an invitation do something they knew they couldn't do, and they accepted it knowing it exceeded their capacity and they would fake it.

Paul Zrimsek said:

Folks, give it up for Milli Violinni!

Simon said:

Still, look on the bright side: Obama hadn't been inaugurated yet, so they sneaked it in under the wire before the trickery was over.

LOL. Very funny! I knew those words would come back to bite me. Let it be known that I am on trickery alert.

Leland said:

Fake but accurate.

Bearing said:

It's not that they didn't play in the cold. It's that they faked playing in the cold. That's just cheesy.

We can give the new president his own super-secure Blackberry, but we can't put four musicians in a heated tent with cameras?

And — considering that $170 million was being spent on the big show — project holograms of them outdoors.

Palladian said:

It's not the crime, it's the cover-up.