The Dish

While studying the causes and motivations of high school bullying, UC Davis sociologist Robert Faris found that kids who ascend the social hierarchy, especially girls, run a high risk of being victimized:

Faris was interested in understanding bullying at a deeper level, to identify “hotspots” of conflict and aggression in school-based hierarchies. He and his colleague Diane Felmlee, professor of sociology at Pennsylvania State University, investigated whether there were other reasons for students’ aggression toward one another, such as using it as a tool for social climbing.

Their results, published in American Sociological Review, suggest that kids get bullied not only when they don’t fit in, but also when they are simply trying to avoid being victims by moving up the social ladder. “As social status increases, the involvement in aggression–both as perpetrator and now as victims–also tends to go up until they get to the very top, when things start to reverse,” says Faris.

Emily Bazelon explains what this means for how we approach the problem of bullying:

That’s one finding from a recent survey showing how people in 17 countries perceive their level of freedom:

Some of the results of the poll will not surprise anyone who has heard of Edward Snowden: a majority of Americans and Germans feel they are not free from government surveillance or monitoring, and only a third of Americans and Canadians, 38 percent of Britons and 27 percent of Germans feel the Internet is a safe place to express their opinions. But the eye-catching figure is that 76 percent of respondents in China said they do feel free from government surveillance and monitoring – the highest proportion among the 17 countries polled (Australia came in second with 72 percent). And 45 percent of Chinese respondents said the Internet was a safe place to express their opinions, more than in most countries polled (France rated worst on this score, at 22 percent).

Another surprise was the proportion of respondents in China – 47 percent – who said their press, which is in fact rigidly censored, is free. This was higher than the result for France (24 percent), Spain (28 percent), Germany (39 percent), America (42 percent), Australia (42 percent) and Britain (45 percent).

Over at Quartz, Lily Kuo notes that China is easing off its “more Orwellian approaches” to information control in favor of “allowing a certain degree of open debate on the Internet”:

How does this work in practice? Since 2005, dozens of local governments have been hiring Internet commentators – known as wumao for the supposed ¢50-a-post state-backed bloggers receive for interjecting pro-government sentiment into online discussions and for defusing anti-Communist Party sentiment. This is consistent with government directives, advising officials to focus less on controlling online discussion, Yang says. For instance, in 2010, a local public security department in Fujian province published a document saying Internet management should combine “damming with channeling, with more focus on channeling.”

Another way the government attempts to influence public opinion via the internet is through actual government engagement. In the city of Ji’an, in Jiangxi province, Yang explains that rather than blocking bloggers’ comments or accounts, officials have been contacting bloggers, explaining the harm of their posts and encouraging them to delete or modify them of their own accord.

Mohan Matthen parses the philosophy of visual pleasure:

Aesthetic pleasure is pleasure in contemplating something. This pleasure could be sensory, like the enjoyment one derives from looking at a painting or listening to music. Or it could be intellectual, like the pleasure of reading the latest Robert Harris. In both cases, pleasure in contemplation has to be distinguished from wanting an object for other uses.

Immanuel Kant in the 18th century was among the first to understand this. His example was that of a palace. You might long to live in it, or you might hate it for its extravagance and want to destroy it. But both of these responses are distinct from the pleasure or displeasure derived from merely looking at it. Only the latter pleasure counts as aesthetic.

Discussing sexual selection, Charles Darwin wrote:

‘When we behold a male bird elaborately displaying his graceful plumes or splendid colours before the female … it is impossible to doubt that she admires the beauty of her male partner.’ Assuming that he really means beauty, and not sexual attractiveness, this is a mistake. It confuses sexual desire with aesthetic admiration. According to Darwin’s own theory, when a female looks at a male that way, she is not getting pleasure from looking at him for the sake of looking at him; rather, she is driven to mate with him. Darwin wrongly equates the lustful gaze with simple looking. Kant’s point was that aesthetic appreciation is disinterested. It is pleasure just in looking.

On the above photo by Mohammad Reza Domiri Ganji:

The stunning Nasir al-mulk Mosque hides a gorgeous secret between the walls of its fairly traditional exterior: stepping inside is like walking into a kaleidoscope of colors. Every day, the rays of the early morning sun shine through colorful stained-glass windows, transforming the halls into a dazzling wonderland of rich hues, patterns, and light that play on the floor of the mosque.

In addition to the glorious display of light and color through the stained glass, the mosque features other striking elements of design and architecture, including intricate geometric tile designs, painted arches and niches, and spectacular domes. The usage of beautiful rose-colored tiles in the interior design earned the mosque the nickname Pink Mosque in popular culture.

The mosque, located in Shiraz, Iran, was built from 1876 to 1888 by the order of one of the Qajar Dynasty lords. The beautiful structure was designed by Muhammad Hasan-e-Memar and Muhammad Reza Kashi Paz-e-Shirazi.

More stunning shots of the mosque here.

A reader writes:

I have a response to two different but related items at the Dish: the recent post about why we like sad songs, and the moving, thoughtful remarks about suicide prevention from Jennifer Michael Hecht.  I want to offer up one of the most poignantly beautiful songs about suicide that I know of, Lucinda Williams’ “Sweet Old World.”  Written in response to a friend’s suicide, the song basically catalogues the many things the departed friend is now missing out on.  The song manages to express mourning for the loss of the person who chose to leave “this sweet old world” and also becomes a sort of meditation on things for which we should be grateful.  It’s a remarkable song. Here’s Lucinda herself performing the song [unembeddable]. And it happens that Emmylou Harris also did a very nice cover [above]. Here are the lyrics:

See what you lost when you left this world, this sweet old world
See what you lost when you left this world, this sweet old world
The breath from your own lips, the touch of fingertips
A sweet and tender kiss
The sound of a midnight train, wearing someone’s ring
Someone calling your name
Somebody so warm cradled in your arms
Didn’t you think you were worth anything
See what you lost when you left this world, this sweet old world
See what you lost when you left this world, this sweet old world

Millions of us in love, promises made good
Your own flesh and blood
Looking for some truth, dancing with no shoes
The beat, the rhythm, the blues
The pounding of your heart’s drum together with another one
Didn’t you think anyone loved you
See what you lost when you left this world, this sweet old world
See what you lost when you left this world, this sweet old world

Sending thanks from NYC, a city where one can be surrounded by tens of millions of people and yet still feel quite alone …

A new study (pdf) from the Urban Institute suggests that access to cars makes low-income Americans more likely to escape poverty. Co-author Rolf Pendall explains the findings:

Our evidence comes from two Department of Housing and Urban Development demonstration programs: Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing and Welfare to Work Vouchers. Both were designed to test whether housing choice vouchers—that is, subsidies that allowed participants to choose where they live—propelled low-income households into greater economic security. …

The results? Housing voucher recipients with cars tended to live and remain in higher-opportunity neighborhoods—places with lower poverty rates, higher social status, stronger housing markets, and lower health risks. Cars are also associated with improved neighborhood satisfaction and better employment outcomes. Among Moving to Opportunity families, those with cars were twice as likely to find a job and four times as likely to remain employed.

Emily Badger considers the implications:

All of these findings are as much a reflection on the value of cars as the relatively poor state of public transit.

The underlying issue also isn’t so much that cars create opportunity. Rather, it’s that we’ve created many places where you can’t access opportunity without a car. Which also means that we’ve created places that punish people who don’t have one (or can’t afford to get one). That’s a much larger critique. …

How, though, would you increase car access among the poor in a way that doesn’t simply saddle families with even more unsustainable expenses? Car ownership, for any kind of family, comes with all kinds of related costs: in insurance, in repairs, in gas. The burden of those costs, though, tends to weigh even more heavily on the low-income. They’re more likely to access financing through a predatory loan. They may have less access in the neighborhood to a reliable mechanic. A family living in a low-income neighborhood with high crime by definition faces higher insurance rates.