Links - 17th June 2010

"If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee -- that will do them in." - Bradley's Bromide

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Apple bans Gizmodo from wwdc - "If a free press needs to behave, then it is not free at all. The job of a free press is to get the story that a company, a government or another official company spokesman is trying to stop the public from knowing... It is a shorter route than you think from banning Gizmodo from a trade show to banning Fox News from a While House News Conference or a field press member being prevented from covering a war atrocity somewhere"

Apple turns sour on free speech - "Ulysses has now been declared obscene again — this time by Apple... Daryl Cagle, the cartoonist, had a series of gags on Tiger Woods refused in April, again because the work “contains content that ridicules public figures”. Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, says the media are not used to “news kiosks telling us what to write. The idea that ridiculing public figures is not appropriate pretty much means the entire media industry isn’t appropriate”.... Campaigners point out that the company praised the Dalai Lama in a 1997 ad campaign, but in 2009 PC World reported that apps mentioning the Dalai Lama are banned from Apple’s Chinese App Store... Padraig Reidy of Index on Censorship, the campaigning group, says Apple is a “monopoly in the making, a monolith which is forcing the media to tailor its products to the taste of one massive corporation”. He sees it as creating “a bland landscape where media tries to avoid controversy and breaking controversial stories”"

The Perils of Studying Economics - "On some issues people who study undergraduate economics are more doctrinaire free marketers than professional economists... Ph.D. economists were... more likely than economics majors (or, frankly, any majors) to think that income inequality should be reduced and that government spending should not be reduced, and they were somewhat less worried about federal budget deficits... it’s somewhat eye-opening to come to college and learn that free markets lead to maximum societal welfare and taxes impose a deadweight loss on society — the pictures are so simple and compelling... But when you learn more about principal-agent problems, information asymmetries, and so on, you learn that those simple pictures are simplistic to the point of being misleading. That’s why Joseph Stiglitz argues in Freefall that understanding economics is crucial to understanding why free markets often lead to suboptimal outcomes"

Sewage plant plays Mozart to stimulate microbes - "Sewage operator believes chords and cadences of compositions speed up way the organisms break down biomass... So far Stucki's preferred composition is The Magic Flute"

Daniel Klein: Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? - "Who is better informed about the policy choices facing the country—liberals, conservatives or libertarians? According to a Zogby International survey that I write about in the May issue of Econ Journal Watch, the answer is unequivocal: The left flunks Econ 101... the left has trouble squaring economic thinking with their political psychology, morals and aesthetics"
Addendum: So much for liberals mocking conservatives as ignorant

Feckblog: Male vs Female Privilege - "What I'm trying to do is refute the notion that either sex is privileged over the other. Of course, I don't deny that there are certain privileges given to men that are not given to women. What I reject is the concept of Male Privilege: The idea that men are unambigously privileged over women. In reality, women have their own privileges, and very often privilege and obligation go hand in hand... Which sex has the better package of privileges and obligations is largely a matter of personal preference. Yes, most feminists think men have it better, but that's because modern feminism, having little left to offer a woman who relishes her role as a full-time wife and mother, disproportionately attracts women who think they're getting a raw deal. This may also explain why lesbians tend to be overrepresented among feminists--denied male privileges and unable to take advantage of those female privileges tied to heterosexuality, they really do get a raw deal... a common feminist tactic is to cast any attempt to point out female privileges as whining by men afraid of feminism's challenge to their own privilege. Of course, talking about Male Privilege is speaking truth to power, not whining."

The End of Men - "Feminists [claimed that] “There’s no question that there exists a universal preference for sons”... couples were requesting more girls than boys... “It’s the women who are driving all the decisions... Women live longer than men. They do better in this economy. More of ’em graduate from college. They... do everything men do, and sometimes they do it a whole lot better”... Women... now hold a majority of the nation’s jobs. The working class, which has long defined our notions of masculinity, is slowly turning into a matriarchy, with men increasingly absent from the home and women making all the decisions. Women dominate today’s colleges and professional schools—for every two men who will receive a B.A. this year, three women will do the same. Of the 15 job categories projected to grow the most in the next decade in the U.S., all but two are occupied primarily by women... Women are also starting to dominate middle management, and a surprising number of professional careers... female CEOs... outearned their male counterparts by 43 percent, on average, and received bigger raises... marriage has disappeared because women are setting the terms—and setting them too high for the men around them to reach... the more women dominate, the more they behave, fittingly, like the dominant sex. Rates of violence committed by middle-aged women have skyrocketed since the 1980s, and no one knows why"
This won't stop feminists from complaining that women are oppressed

YouTube - lee enfield sniper rifle (lego)

Hippopotamus on menu at Beijing zoo - "After watching the beasts in their cages, diners at the zoo's restaurant can gnaw on the webbed toes of a hippopotamus, chew a kangaroo tail, nibble a deer's penis or slurp down a bowl of ant soup... In the past, notices on each of the zoo's animal cages included information about which parts were the tastiest and most useful according to traditional Chinese medicine. Those details have now been omitted"
Another reason to go to BJ - tout de suite!

The Case for Calling Them Nitwits - "It’s fair to say that the Taliban employ the world’s worst suicide bombers: one in two manages to kill only himself. And this success rate hasn’t improved at all in the five years they’ve been using suicide bombers... In Afghanistan, as in many cultures, a manly embrace is a time-honored tradition for warriors before they go off to face death. Thus, many suicide bombers never even make it out of their training camp or safe house, as the pressure from these group hugs triggers the explosives in suicide vests... One video, captured recently by the thermal-imagery technology housed in a sniper rifle, shows two Talibs in southern Afghanistan engaged in intimate relations with a donkey. Similar videos abound, including ground-surveillance footage that records a Talib fighter gratifying himself with a cow... Many laptops seized from the Taliban and al-Qaeda are loaded with smut. U.S. intelligence analysts have devoted considerable time to poring over the terrorists’ favored Web sites, searching for hidden militant messages"

Films featuring smoking to be given 18 certificate in bid to stop children taking up the habit - "Films including 101 Dalmatians, Pinocchio, Peter Pan and numerous James Bond classics would all be considered adult-only movies. More recent productions including Titanic and Lord of the Rings would also be affected by the plans put forward to Plymouth City Council by health officials."