James Gleick's "The Information"

NYTimes

"The Information” is so ambitious, illuminating and sexily theoretical that it will amount to aspirational reading for many of those who have the mettle to tackle it. Don’t make the mistake of reading it quickly. Imagine luxuriating on a Wi-Fi-equipped desert island with Mr. Gleick’s book, a search engine and no distractions. “The Information” is to the nature, history and significance of data what the beach is to sand.

In this relaxed setting, take the time to differentiate among the Brownian (motion), Bodleian (library) and Boolean (logic) while following Mr. Gleick’s version of what Einstein called “spukhafte Fernwirkung,” or “spooky action at a distance.” Einstein wasn’t precise about what this meant, and Mr. Gleick isn’t always precise either. His ambitions for this book are diffuse and far flung, to the point where providing a thumbnail description of “The Information” is impossible. [...]

Ohel's response to The Jewish Week regarding mandated reporting

OHEL

The Jewish Week Has It Wrong, Again.

A Heinous Crime and A History of Proactive Prevention

Child sexual abuse is a heinous crime. While unashamedly denied or ignored by many in the community for too long, OHEL has for decades tirelessly treated victims and raised community-wide awareness - long before child sexual abuse became media headlines. OHEL initiated hundreds of prevention workshops, provided local and national consultations with schools and communities, distributed a multitude of videos, books and other supporting materials, while providing on-going treatment and support to victims and their families. The media has a very important role to play in boldly tackling issues such as child sexual abuse and all other social ills. However, The Jewish Week’s inflammatory coverage of OHEL, most recently in the article “Abuse Case Tests OHEL’s Adherence To Reporting Laws” once again demonstrates a complete disregard for facts driven by a very misguided agenda, and, at worst, a reckless disregard for a patients right to privacy.

Fundamental Misrepresentations in Jewish Week Article [...]

Brooklyn camp counselor charged in kid-sex case

Kenyon Schraeder wrote: A 65-year-old man's entire life, reputation and freedom are at stake here and since there's just this one alleged incident to go on at this point and since the Dept. of Ed found nothing disciplinary in his folder over almost 20 years, I'd say he was entitled, at the very least, to the benefit of the doubt, some objectivity and a fair trial by a jury of his peers BEFORE pronouncing him "guilty as charged"

NYPost

a retired New York City schoolteacher known by the nickname "Uncle Joe," is accused of molesting a 5-year-old boy in a bathroom last summer, authorities said.

The counselor was slapped with a slew of sex-abuse charges for the heinous July assault, in which he allegedly sneaked up behind his young victim and attacked him in front of a 4-year-old camper. [....]
 

Story of a victim:"The Man Who Molested Me"

NYTimes

Who might know a pedophile better than the child on whom he (it’s usually a he) has lavished his attention, sometimes for years? Who has studied him as intimately, allowing him his humanity as most of us refuse to do?

Child molesters, reviled even within prison caste systems, receive little sympathy from the adult world — so little it’s hard for most of us to imagine how long-term sexual abuse can be not only facilitated but perpetuated by a victim’s loyalty to his or her abuser. Children on whom pedophiles prey, often neglected and needy, advertise hearts as well as bodies to be plundered; for the child who loves his or her abuser the sexual price exacted for what is offered as affection represents a betrayal from which not every child recovers. The lesson learned — that to be loved one must endure violation — sows a lasting tolerance, even desire, for injury and subjugation. [...]

Armies of Expensive Lawyers, Replaced by Cheaper Software

NYTimes

When five television studios became entangled in a Justice Department antitrust lawsuit against CBS, the cost was immense. As part of the obscure task of “discovery” — providing documents relevant to a lawsuit — the studios examined six million documents at a cost of more than $2.2 million, much of it to pay for a platoon of lawyers and paralegals who worked for months at high hourly rates.

But that was in 1978. Now, thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, “e-discovery” software can analyze documents in a fraction of the time for a fraction of the cost. In January, for example, Blackstone Discovery of Palo Alto, Calif., helped analyze 1.5 million documents for less than $100,000.

Some programs go beyond just finding documents with relevant terms at computer speeds. They can extract relevant concepts — like documents relevant to social protest in the Middle East — even in the absence of specific terms, and deduce patterns of behavior that would have eluded lawyers examining millions of documents. [....]

Talk Doesn’t Pay, So Psychiatry Turns to Drugs

NYTimes

Alone with his psychiatrist, the patient confided that his newborn had serious health problems, his distraught wife was screaming at him and he had started drinking again. With his life and second marriage falling apart, the man said he needed help.

But the psychiatrist, Dr. Donald Levin, stopped him and said: "Hold it. I'm not your therapist. I could adjust your medications, but I don't think that's appropriate."

Like many of the nation's 48,000 psychiatrists, Dr. Levin, in large part because of changes in how much insurance will pay, no longer provides talk therapy, the form of psychiatry popularized by Sigmund Freud that dominated the profession for decades. Instead, he prescribes medication, usually after a brief consultation with each patient. So Dr. Levin sent the man away with a referral to a less costly therapist and a personal crisis unexplored and unresolved. [...]

Fear in Philadelphia That Abusive Priests Are Still Active

NYTimes

Three weeks after a scathing grand jury report accused the Philadelphia Archdiocese of providing safe haven for as many as 37 priests who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse or inappropriate behavior toward minors, most of those priests remain active in the ministry.

The possibility that even one predatory priest, not to mention three dozen, might still be serving in parishes — “on duty in the archdiocese today, with open access to new young prey,” as the grand jury put it — has unnerved many Roman Catholics here and sent the church reeling in the latest and one of the most damning episodes in the American church since it became engulfed in the sexual abuse scandal nearly a decade ago.

The extent of the scandal here, including a cover-up that the grand jury said stretched over many years, is so great that Philadelphia is “Boston reborn,” said David J. O’Brien, who teaches Catholic history at the University of Dayton, referring to the archdiocese where widespread sexual abuse exploded in public in 2002. [...]

Fence separates haredi, secular Jerusalem kids

YNET

The Jerusalem Municipality on Friday began constructing a separation fence between two kindergartens, an ultra-Orthodox and a secular one, highlighting the complex relations between the different communities living in the capital.

The children of the two adjacent kindergartens have been playing happily together for six months, and were somewhat unsettled by the mayhem upon arriving at the site Friday morning. The municipality plans to cover the fence with blue cloth so the children will no longer be able to see each other. [...]

Rav Sternbuch: Ben Torah Every Step of the Way

Protection against abusers when only rumors are known

Torah always right in conflicts with perceived Reality

from Daas Torah - translation copyrighted

Rav Shalom Shwadron (Daas Torah Orech Chaim - Shoneh Halachos page 8): If witnesses come and testify that someone had been killed and there are other witnesses who contradict them the two pairs of witnesses cancel each other’s testimony. Even if the two contradict the testimony of thousands of witnesses – the testimony of the opposing sides is canceled because two witnesses are as valid as 100 or 1000 witnesses. However the case is different if the purported murder victim shows up alive. In fact this is just the opposite of the previous case. Because even if 1000 witnesses had testified that he was dead, it is obvious that what they said is false and therefore their testimony is completely invalidated. So why is it in the first case that 2 witnesses can invalidate thousands of witnesses while in the second case thousands of witnesses are simply ignored? The answer is simple and clear. Testimony has no significance except when there is a doubt that needs clarifying. However testimony is irrelevant when it contradicts reality which needs witnesses to establish it. Now we should understand that we in our incompetence think that the events of the world are reality and the words of Torah constitute testimony, therefore when we come across events in our lives where Torah is at variance to what we perceive as reality our heart becomes filled with all sorts of rationalizations and explanation that enable us to explain the words of Torah to be consistent with what we consider to be reality. This is because we feel that what we hear from the Torah cannot be of greater validity than what we see with our eyes….However the pious Torah scholars know the real truth which is that there is no reality in the world except for the holy Torah. And all the phenomena of the world are insignificant in comparison to even the point of a letter “yud” in the Torah. Therefore if you find anything in the world which the Torah contradicts then we are forced to say that we did not perceive the world correctly and therefore the testimony from the world is totally null and void in relationship to the reality of the Torah.

The Unrealistic Optimism of Cancer Patients

NYTimes

For almost four decades, researchers and patient advocates have debated the ethics of informed consent in early-phase clinical trials, studies that test only toxicity and dosing and offer little, if any, therapeutic benefit to those enrolled. A major part of the debate has focused on the motivations of patients who participate. Some research on patient motivations has had disturbing ethical implications, indicating that patients may never fully understand the purpose of trials, despite explanations by the researchers. Others have been more reassuring, noting that patients are driven by a sense of altruism and a desire to help others who may one day suffer from the same disease.

More recently, a few studies have offered what appears to be the happiest of hypotheses. Patients may simply be optimistic and have strong needs to express hope. And because optimism has long been considered an effective coping mechanism for patients with terminal diseases, other researchers have also then assumed that optimism in this context poses few ethical issues.

Now one group of ethicists has just published a study challenging that assumption. It turns out that when it comes to being hopeful, not all optimism is created equal. [...]

Supreme Court rules for anti-gay protesters at military funerals

NYTimes

The case arose from a protest at the funeral of a Marine who had died in Iraq, Lance Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder. As they had at hundreds of other funerals, members of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., appeared with signs bearing messages like “America is Doomed” and “God Hates Fags.”

The church contends that God is punishing the United States for its tolerance of homosexuality.

The father of the fallen Marine, Albert Snyder, sued the protesters for, among other things, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and won a substantial jury award that was later overturned by an appeals court.

Supreme Court: Can police interview "abused" child without consent of parents?

Fox News

The facts of the case are fairly straightforward. In 2003, an investigator for the Oregon Department of Social Services had reason to believe that Nimrod Greene may have sexually abused his daughters. That investigator and a sheriff's deputy went to the school of the nine year old girl, described in court documents as S.G., and pulled her out of class to ask if she'd been harmed.

The young girl denied abuse for most of the interview but later said she changed her story in an effort to end the inquiry. Greene was indicted on several counts of felony sexual assault but those charges were dismissed after a jury couldn't reach a verdict. The father eventually pleaded guilty to another unrelated incident of sexual abuse.

The mother filed a lawsuit saying the investigator and deputy had no right to pull her daughter out of class without approval from her or a court. [...]