Links - 19th September 2011

Apple bans satirical iPhone game Phone Story from its App Store
More Apple censorship! Of course, it's available on the Android Market. Even if it's banned from there the case is different since you're not banned from going elsewhere to download it.
Comment: "I hate these evil corporations, gobbling up the world's resources just so rich Westerners can own the next 'must have' thow-away gadget. The manufacturers and the purchasers of these items are all going to hell.
Sent from my iPhone"

The Disappearing Spoon - "A Russian-Canadian team pulled an even neater trick in 1937 with pure helium. When cooled down to −456°F, helium turned into a superfluid, with exactly zero viscosity and zero resistance to flow—perfect fluidness. Superfluid helium defies gravity and flows uphill and over walls. At the time, these were flabbergasting finds. Scientists often fudge and pretend that effects like friction equal zero, but only to simplify calculations. Not even Plato predicted someone would actually find one of his ideal forms... Returning to the theme of The Symposium and Plato’s theory of erotic longing for a missing half, we find that virtually every element seeks out other atoms to form bonds with, bonds that mask its nature... Before about 1890, scientists judged acids and bases by tasting or dunking their fingers in them, not exactly the safest or most reliable methods... the strongest solo acid is still the boron-based carborane (HCB11Cl11). And this boron acid has the best punch line so far: It’s simultaneously the world’s strongest and gentlest acid"

The Four Myths of Inequality in Singapore - "Myth #1: Inequality is a necessary counterpart of economic dynamism and competitiveness
Myth #2: The best way to help the poor is to help the rich
Myth#3: Inequality is not really a problem as long as there isn’t extreme poverty and incomes are rising across the board
Myth #4: Since pay is tied to ability, rising inequality is simply the result of increasing differences in people’s ability"

Why do women who have anal sex get more orgasms?

American diplomatic memo outlined rules for Yeti hunting in Nepal

Understanding current causes of women's underrepresentation in science - ""Explanations for women's underrepresentation in math-intensive fields of science often focus on sex discrimination... Claims that women scientists suffer discrimination in these arenas rest on a set of studies undergirding policies and programs aimed at remediation. More recent and robust empiricism, however, fails to support assertions of discrimination in these domains... some of these claims are no longer valid and, if uncritically accepted as current causes of women's lack of progress, can delay or prevent understanding of contemporary determinants of women's underrepresentation... the ongoing focus on sex discrimination in reviewing, interviewing, and hiring represents costly, misplaced effort: Society is engaged in the present in solving problems of the past... we suggest potential avenues of intervention to increase gender fairness that accord with current, as opposed to historical, findings"
They even find that sometimes there is bias in favour of women. And I liked "female PIs fared well when rated by male reviewers at NSF, but less well when rated by female reviewers". Interestingly they recommend part-time tenure track positions for women - but not for men

New Dutch Game Show Has Immigrants Compete to Reveal Unjust System - "The show Weg van Nederland, which translates to Far from the Netherlands, involves five asylum seekers that have failed all legal avenues and are set for deportation. The first show that aired last week included questions on Dutch culture, history and language. The winner took home £4,000 Euros ($5,774 USD) to “to make a fresh start outside the Netherlands.” But one of the losers took home a bullet proof vest as a consolation prize... the intention of the program was to demonstrate how well-integrated many immigrants are in Holland"

“Iconatomy”: Celebrities and Reification - "In “Iconatomy”, Art Student George Chamoun, from Sweden, mixed movie icons from two different eras in a collage that’s even more outstanding because the pictures were not distorted in any way."

Breast-feeding mothers are more aggressive finds study that reveals 'mama bear' effect - "Mothers who breastfeed their babies are twice as aggressive as bottle-feeding moms and women without children when confronted by a threat"


Do Voters Discriminate Against Obese Candidates? - "Obese male candidates were actually evaluated more positively than non-obese male candidates... these findings dovetail with previous work by Miller and Lundgren, who also find an “obesity penalty” for women candidates but not men"

Brother and sister in lift sex
And incestophobia continues to reign unchecked; unsurprisingly, it seems only the brother was placed on the sex offenders' register

Lab chimps freed after caged fior 30 years and injected with HIV - "Like prisoners emerging from a lifetime behind bars, a group of chimpanzees step blinking into the sunlight with what appears for all the world to be a wave and a smile... Though a few of the chimps were born in captivity, most were kidnapped from African jungles as babies... Hooked up to machines and pumped full of chemicals, they were truly prisoners of utter despair. With no stimulation, no nurturing love and no hope, many were driven to the brink of madness and sometimes beyond
The anthropomorphic language is interesting; Just because you have concern for animals does not mean you are a nice person.
Comment: "Stop this cruel practice of experimenting on animals immediately. There is a vast species out there who will give very accurate results of how drugs, cosmetics etc will react on humans. They're called the scum of the earth and they inhabit our jails. Let's see if they can still play electronic games after having caustic substances dropped in to their eyes or are fit and able enough to function after they've been injected with various viruses. As for the bleeding heart liberals and the lawyers who defend this scum why don't you step up and join them and do the world a favour. Leave our innocent wildlife alone and perform some definitive research on a captive bunch of low lifes. Accurate results and suffering caused to those who made others suffer. Now bring on the red arrows."