Just Because You\u27re Offended Doesn\u27t Mean You\u27re In The Right: A Perspective on Language, Comedy, and Ethics

Some humor is offensive, but does this convey a moral constraint on what comedians can include in their jokes? Using stand up bits and reflections on comedy from George Carlin, Louis C.K., and Doug Stanhope, various philosophies of humor, and the linguistic philosophy of H.P. Grice, I explore the given question and attempt to settle the disputes about when it is prudent to be offended, in what ways comedians should be allowed to offend, and whether or not words can hurt just as much as sticks and stones

Man to Man: We Can Stop Sexual Violence

I was lucky enough to grow up with a loving mother who taught me early on to respect every woman and, more so, to never overstep the boundaries between people unless I am invited to do so with full cognizance of the actions of both parties. To be less philosophical, she was always very clear with me that touching no-no parts with any person (in my case, a lady) without express consent is wrong every time and that I would never forgive myself if I forgot that maxim in a flight of “passion.” At no time in my life have I ever thought that it was okay to “go the distance” with a woman who had not opened herself up to me in that way. This all makes sense, right? Everybody with me? See, I never thought I had to clarify that understanding; that is, until I got to college. [excerpt

Community empowerment and scaling-up in urban areas

"CARE began PROSPECT (Program of Support for Poverty Elimination and Community Transformation) in 1998. PROSPECT aims to reduce poverty in peri-urban areas of Lusaka. It employs a community-based approach to carry out three types of activities: social empowerment (institution building at the local level), personal empowerment (microfinance), and infrastructure improvement (mostly water supply schemes). PROSPECT has attempted to carry out these activities largely through its support of area-based organizations (ABOs) that now form part of city government. The zone development committees (ZDCs) and residents' development committees (RDCs) are the basic components of the ABO structure. These are community-level representations of municipal government; they are the community's mechanisms for expressing its voice and driving development. PROSPECT is itself an extension of an earlier project, PUSH II (Peri-Urban Self-Help Project). PUSH II and PROSPECT are fundamentally about developing community-based and community-driven development (CDD) mechanisms and strengthening community capacities to identify and respond to community needs. The paper examines the scaling-up experience of PUSH II and PROSPECT, looking especially at the mechanisms of CDD, the ABOs." Authors' AbstractCARE ,Poverty alleviation ,Community organizations ,Urban poor ,Peri-urban areas ,

Living life

"With urban dwellers purchasing 80 percent or more of their food, understanding urban employment is critical to designing policies and programs to address urban hunger and poverty. Reviewing the literature, but also using data from household surveys conducted by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and others in five countries of Latin America, Asia, and Africa, this paper profiles urban employment in developing-country cities. It highlights some often-overlooked aspects of urban conditions, most especially the importance of agriculture, the continuing importance of the formal sector, and seasonality of income, even among those not connected to agriculture. It also examines the connections between poverty and employment; looks at where people work and what they do; and highlights the importance of personal networks, the informal sector, and the concerns of women. Finally, it notes some dynamic forces shaping the future of urban employment and suggests some guidelines for policies and programs." Author's AbstractHunger ,

Living life

"With urban dwellers purchasing 80 percent or more of their food, understanding urban employment is critical to designing policies and programs to address urban hunger and poverty. Reviewing the literature, but also using data from household surveys conducted by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and others in five countries of Latin America, Asia, and Africa, this paper profiles urban employment in developing-country cities. It highlights some often-overlooked aspects of urban conditions, most especially the importance of agriculture, the continuing importance of the formal sector, and seasonality of income, even among those not connected to agriculture. It also examines the connections between poverty and employment; looks at where people work and what they do; and highlights the importance of personal networks, the informal sector, and the concerns of women. Finally, it notes some dynamic forces shaping the future of urban employment and suggests some guidelines for policies and programs." Author's AbstractHunger ,

Beyond rural urban: keeping up with changing realities

"Policies built on presumptions of separateness or on traditional notions of urban and rural livelihoods diminish the possibilities for economic growth and poverty reduction. More effective policies will take the diversity of livelihoods along the continuum into account and also appreciate the differences among urban and rural areas and the links between them. Focusing on the connections between urban and rural areas can help to reframe our understanding of development in these areas. We can see that rural and urban lives and livelihood strategies span rural and urban geographies in integrated and interdependent ways.With better understanding of the current reality of urban and rural areas and the connections between them, policies will better reflect the ways people actually live. Policies will take into account the different livelihood strategies, links, and localities that exist across “urban” and “rural.” And they will be able to promote synergies—such as market exchange—that benefit all, no matter where they live." from Textrural livelihoods, urban livelihoods, economic growth, Poverty reduction, Urban-rural linkages, Markets,

A 2020 vision for food, agriculture, and the environment in Latin America.:

This is a thoughtful statement representing a genuine Latin American perspective of the goals and strategies relating to food, agriculture, and the environment as we head toward the year 2020. This document represents a synthesis of documents prepared by three working groups participating in a workshop on Latin America, jointly sponsored by IFPRI, the Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT) and the Instituto Interamericano de Cooperación para la Agricultura (IICA), in Cali, Colombia, March 20–22, 1995.Food security Latin America., Agricultural development Latin America., Agriculture Environmental aspects Latin America.,

Experimentalist Equal Protection

Elsewhere Garrett and Liebman have recounted that though James Madison is considered the Father of the Constitution, his progeny disappointed him because it was defenseless against self-government\u27s mortal disease -the oppression of minorities by local majorities-because the Framers rejected the radical structural approach to equal protection that Madison proposed. Nor did the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment\u27s Equal Protection Clause and federal courts enforcing it adopt a solution Madison would have considered effectual. This Article explores recent subconstitutional innovations in governance and public administration that may finally bring the nation within reach of the constitutional polity Madison envisioned To explain how Madisonian governance mechanisms can solve the problem of equal protection, the authors turn to the thinking of another homegrown practical philosopher who was ahead of his time, John Dewey. Dewey sets out what he calls an experimentalist problem-solving method for curing the equal protection ills Madison diagnosed In two core civil rights contexts, public school reform and workplace discrimination, solutions both Madisonian and Deweyan already point the way to an experimentalist equal protection regime that remains well within our reach. Such experimentalism may not only open our rigid, tepidly enforced equal protection doctrine to an evolving, problem-solving approach, but in the process transform democratic institutions and community

Rapid assessments in urban areas

The diversity of urban areas presents substantial challenges to the validity of information from rapid assessments, yet CARE's experiences in Bangladesh and Tanzania suggest a number of ways that rapid assessment procedures can be strengthened to address these concerns.Urban poor ,Bangladesh ,Tanzania ,