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Sorority Files Lawsuit After Sacred Secrets Posted On Penny Arcade Forums
Limekiller42 writes: Lawyers for the Phi Sigma Sigma sorority have filed suit in Seattle's King County Superior Court against an unidentified person for "publicizing the sorority's secret handshake, robe colors and other practices." The well-written article is by Levi Pulkkinen of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and states that the sorority is seeking a restraining order and financial compensation for damages.
Wouldn't these be considered trade secrets and under the responsibility of the sorority to guard against disclosure? If the physical pieces are not trademarked, nor the written contents or acts copyrighted as a performance. Note that a quick Google shows they were founded in 1913, which would make all of their original text public domain.
(Oh, and Streisand Effect, of course)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I'd argue that having a tribe is not necessarily a bad thing.
I know that a good number of /. posters would disagree with this, but this is why I don't think religion is a terrible thing. If you have a group with which you identify, with which you share a common history and traditions and common points of view, it may not be useful anymore as a "protective" thing, but rather meets the simple need to be a part of something larger than oneself.
I know this is purely anecdotal, but I don't have much of a family to speak of. Consequently, finding a church to belong to is somewhat comforting to me because I don't have that "tribal" feeling that comes from having a family. I imagine that it might be helpful to people in similar situations.
This is ultimately why people, even with families, seek out "tribes" outside of their family, because of the need to "belong", not just show up and exist.
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.
What I do not get is how they keep dress colors secret. I mean you wear it and peoples can see the color. Maybe these are not "real" secrets, but just thing people pretend are secret?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
On the other hand, I could see an MRI actually destroying a hypothetical human magnetic navigation sense.
- A number of animals, including birds, are documented to have a magnetic sense they use in navigation.
- Bacteria are known to migrate vertically using the earth's field to align them as "dipping needles" so their cilia drive them downward to lower-oxygen water.
- The bacteria obtain their magnetic alignment by depositing crystals of magnetitie of a size that will hold no more than a single magnetic domain, and thus be automatically magetized. New crystals are deposited next to old, making them align in the same direction. The row of crystals is a strong enough magnet to align the bug like a compass needle. The row is normally split when the bug reproduces, so the two new bugs are both magnetized the same way, rather than one getting a 50/50 chance of swimming the wrong way. (No doubt the occasional offspring gets none and has to take the chance - which let the species survive magnetic reversal events.)
-Some nerve cells in a number of animals contain such magnetite particles, leading to the speculation that these may be the basis for a magnetic sense.
- Among such nerve types is on in the human nose, leading to the speculation that some humans may be able to "smell" magnetic fields (or have some magnetic sense in some OTHER group of neurons that ALSO produces the particles and that those in the nose are vestigial mis-triggering of the mechanism, or that an organism in their ancestry may once have had a magnetic sense, of which this is a vestigial remanent.)
- (I have a small number of personal, anaecdotal, experiences that lead me to believe that I once had a magnetic sense that was input to my brain's location processing, but at a priority far below visual observation. These all occurred before I ever had an MRI.)
- If some nerves do detect ambient magnetism by monitoring mechanical forces originating in magnetitie particles, the strong magnetic field of an MRI machine might be expected to disrupt this by modifying the magnetization of the particles, or by yanking on then so strongly they disrupt, or even kill, the nerves in question.
So if humans DO have a magnetic sense of this form, it might actually be destroyed by exposure to, and especially testing in, an MRI machine.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Yes, but, you don't understand how afraid feminists are of post-op trans women.
See the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival.
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November 2011: Somebody posts anonymously on PennyArcade about Phi Sigma Sigma rituals
Late 2012: Phi Sigma Sigma discovers the post about rituals
2013: Nothing happened
2014: Nothing happened
2015: Phi Sigma Sigma attempts to file lawsuit
So now, we have somebody who made a post to an online forum almost four years ago, under an account that has exactly one post, and has not been active since November 2011, faced with a potential lawsuit. That's assuming that there is enough data to actually identify who the member is. And assuming that the user who posted is actually a former member and not somebody else who learned about the 'sacred secrets' some other way.
Considering it is a breach of contract suit, I'd be interested to see what the actual contract looks like.
Sororities and frats are nothing alike. I teach. We work with the Greek councils (the general one and the black one) to correlate their membership with our grades, and we compare the frats and sororities to find out which are trouble, and we compare them to the general population.
The result? Sorority girls have higher GPAs than average, with few exceptions. Frat members have below average GPA.
Sororities are highly structured support groups and in some ways are closer to a military unit in how they regulate members' time. There is mandatory study hall (yes, we know about your file cabinets where you keep copies of our old tests) and there are both mandatory academic performance requirements and a strong social push to excel. Frats, on the other hand, seem to have little more than beer and excessive free time.
Having taught for a while and read the reports, I would put my daughter in a sorority, but I would never let my son join a fraternity.
Here are the GPA numbers from the University of Florida: https://www.studentinvolvement.ufl.edu/Portals/1/Sorority%20and%20Fraternity%20Affairs/Grade%20Reports/Fall%202013%20Academic%20Report%20by%20Council%20PUBLIC%20VERSION.pdf
The fun numbers are at the end:
Women: 3.36
Sorority: 3.41
Men: 3.20
Fraternity: 3.18
University average: 3.29
By being male, you lose 0.9 GPA, and by joining a frat, another 0.2, for a total of 0.11 loss.
By being female, you gain 0.7 GPA, and by joining a sorority, you gain 0.5 more, for a 0.12 gain overall.
Note that the effect of joining a sorority is greater than that of joining a fraternity.
Interestingly, the fraternity with the highest GPA just got suspended for spitting on wounded veterans and trying to urinate on the flag at the beach. Interpret that as you will.