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‘Diversity’ Doesn’t Include Disabled Veterans Like Me
Matthew Winans September 11, 2024 At college campuses nationwide, the newest students are starting class, but I’m not among them. Many medical schools rejected my application, and when I asked why, several told me that my service in our nation’s armed forces didn’t matter, and that I should have spent more time proving my commitment to “diversity” and “equity.” I served in the United States Army from 2012 to 2017. During my service, I intended to apply to the F. Edward Hébert School of Medicine, the military’s medical school, but health-related issues and a service-related disability cut my career short. After being honorably discharged, I set my sights on attending…
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Writing Disabled Voices
Journalists often struggle to cover disabled people. Here’s what experts say about getting the story right. Bonus: A primer on correcting the media when they get it wrong. By Ryan Prior October 6, 2022 We all want—need, really—to have our stories told. And it takes wise storytellers to do it, especially if we become unable to fully do it ourselves.As human beings, many of us, if not all, will be disabled at some point in our life. As journalists, our profession must take that fact into account, with stories portraying disabled people in ways that are dignified, accurate, and forward-thinking. One in four American adults lives with a disability of some sort,…
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How COVID-19 Changed College Athletic Recruiting
Hoboken High School in Hoboken, New Jersey (Photo/Luigi Novi -Wikimedia Commons) By Nicole McNulty April 19, 2021 ARCELIA MARTIN, HOST: On average only about 6% of high school athletes go on to play sports in college. In a normal year, graduating seniors would be signed to their college teams by now. But COVID has disrupted this cycle. Nicole McNulty explores what that means for kids hoping to play sports in college. NICOLE MCNULTY, BYLINE: Tyler Sims has been playing basketball since he was 9 years old. And like a lot of kids. TYLER SIMS: My dream school is definitely Duke University. You know, I’ve been watching them since I was…
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Moral Shaming: “You do You”
By Jill Neimark November 4, 2022 When people have different views about health and freedom, they misuse morality to demonize one another, letting policymakers and corporations off the hook. One evening last September, Gavin Yamey, professor of global health at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, dined indoors and tweeted a selfie of himself and his two tablemates—Chris Beyrer, director of the Duke Global Health Institute, and Gregg Gonsalves, a Yale epidemiologist and global health activist who won a MacArthur genius grant for his work on AIDS, global health, and social justice. Gonsalves has long been a voice for the vulnerable and disabled. Throughout the pandemic he lofted the torch of COVID caution and…
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Evolution of moral outrage:
I’ll punish your bad behavior to make me look good Jillian Jordan Ph.D. Candidate in Psychology, Yale University What makes human morality unique? One important answer is that we care when other people are harmed. While many animals retaliate when directly mistreated, humans also get outraged at transgressions against others. And this outrage drives us to protest injustice, boycott companies, blow whistles and cut ties with unethical friends and colleagues. Scientists refer to these behaviors as third-party punishment, and they have long been a mystery from the perspective of evolution and rational self-interest. Why should people invest time, effort and resources in punishing – even when they haven’t been harmed directly? While…
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Why grammar mistakes in a short email could make some people judge you
Julie Boland, Robin Queen I’m a cognitive psychologist who studies language comprehension. If I see an ad for a vacation rental that says “Your going to Hollywood!” it really bugs me. But my collaborator, Robin Queen, a sociolinguist, who studies how language use varies across social groups, is not annoyed by those errors at all. We were curious: what makes our reactions so different? We didn’t think the difference was due to our professional specialties. So we did some research to find out what makes some people more sensitive to writing mistakes than others. What prior research tells us Writing errors often appear in text messages, emails, web posts and other types…
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‘I’m So Burned Out’: Fighting to See a Specialist Amplified Pain for Riverside County Woman
By Molly Castle Work OCTOBER 10, 2023 SAN JACINTO — Teresa Johnson can’t escape the pain. It’s as if she’s getting pierced by needles all over her body, all at once. At night, she sometimes jolts out of sleep thinking bedbugs are attacking her. But it’s just the unfailing pain — day in and day out. Johnson, 58, said her ordeal started in September 2022, when she went for a CT scan of her abdomen after a bout of covid-19. Though Johnson warned the lab she was allergic to iodine, she believes the lab tech used it in an injection, triggering an allergic reaction. She spent the next three weeks in…
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The hidden extra costs of living with a disability
Disability is often incorrectly assumed to be rare. However, global estimates suggest than one in seven adults has some form of disability. The term “disability” covers a number of functional limitations – physical, sensory, mental and intellectual. These can range from mild to severe and might affect someone at any time across the lifespan, from an infant born with an intellectual impairment to an older adult who becomes unable to walk or see. What is perhaps less well-known is that studies consistently show that people with disabilities are disproportionately poor. They are more likely to become poor and, when poor, are more likely to stay that way, because of barriers to getting an…
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Why grammar mistakes in a short email could make some people judge you Julie Boland, Robin Queen I’m a cognitive psychologist who studies language comprehension. If I see an ad for a vacation rental that says “Your going to Hollywood!” it really bugs me. But my collaborator, Robin Queen, a sociolinguist, who studies how language use varies across social groups, is not annoyed by those errors at all. We were curious: what makes our reactions so different? We didn’t think the difference was due to our professional specialties. So we did some research to find out what makes some people more sensitive to writing mistakes than others. What prior research tells us Writing…
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Shoe Envy
