Links - 6th December 2011

"The price of being a wolf is loneliness. The price of being a sheep is boredom. Choose carefully what you will be." - Hugh MacLeod

***

To Be Young (Like 9, on Average?) and Homeless - NYTimes.com - "Is the average age of a homeless person 9 years old? Such a statement is made in a new video from the Coalition for the Homeless, which describes itself as the nation’s oldest advocacy and direct service organization helping homeless men, women and children... we reached out to the city’s Department of Homeless Services. Heather Janik, a spokeswoman, said that the department data showed that the average age across the whole system was 24; the average age of single adults was 45, and the average age of people in families, with children and without, was 19. All would lead to an average much higher than 9... Patrick Markee, senior policy analyst for the Coalition for the Homeless, said that the statistic was from the NYC Homes for the Homeless Institute for Children and Policy, and that it has been used and cited by dozens of other organizations (which, while it will be noted, doesn’t make it accurate, just often repeated)"

Fliers Still Must Turn Off Devices, but It's Not Clear Why - NYTimes.com - "Surely if electronic gadgets could bring down an airplane, you can be sure that the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, which has a consuming fear of 3.5 ounces of hand lotion and gel shoe inserts, wouldn’t allow passengers to board a plane with aniPad or Kindle, for fear that they would be used by terrorists... The government might be causing more unnecessary interference on planes by asking people to shut their devices down for take-off and landing and then giving them permission to restart all at the same time"

Is the time you spend online ruining your marriage? - "The more frequently an individual uses the Internet the happier they are in their marriage. This news comes with one caveat, however, that independent of frequency of use people who are compulsive Internet users are less happy with their spouse... The authors test to see if the unhappily married were more inclined to be compulsive Internet users, as opposed to compulsive users being more likely to be unhappily married and found no evidence to suggest that the causality runs in that direction. Here is the most interesting result, though: the compulsive Internet users are only making themselves unhappy. They perceive that their marriages are less satisfying and behave toward their partners in an increasingly negative way over time as a result. This could be related to the fact that 42% of compulsive internet users admit to engaging in affairs online and that 50% use the Internet to engage in sexual activities"

Cadence: i've misjudged your character. - "BEST COSTUME had to go to this young dude who came around smiling benignly and shook everyone's hands. omg he was so in character, i knew what he was immediately - with all the General Elections that just took place this year it's not hard to guess - HE'S ACTING AS A YOUNG PAP MEMBER. he even gathered his friends to behave as his minders, WOW. WOW WOW WOW...
them: er, i think he was a real MP or a member of the GRC.
me: WHAT!! wai, you stay here. do you know him?! ... OH GOD WHY DIDN'T ANYONE TELL ME?!?!??!?! i hate you all.
them: we don't know who he is!!!!
me: wah lau eh! who goes around and shakes hands on Halloween, what the heck?!"

J.Ko » The Straits Times and Copyright - "It is a shame that while The Straits Times is suing Yahoo! News for copyright infringement, it does not conduct proper citation or image attribution in its very own backyard."

Boys’ brains, girls’ brains: How to think about sex differences in psychology. - "His colleagues are so afraid of being called “neurosexists” that they’ve refused to study or acknowledge differences... two female scientists in the audience... called the aversion to studying innate differences anti-scientific and an impediment to understanding mental illness in women. The exchange, in which one panelist repeatedly portrayed sex-difference research as a waste of time, confirmed the problem: Fear of sexism has produced a bias against conceding sex differences, which gets in the way of frank discussion and investigation... anyone who dismisses boy-girl differences as cultural artifacts (the panelists criticized Cordelia Fine’s Delusions of Gender in particular) isn’t accounting for similar patterns in animals, such as research showing that male monkeys prefer to play more with cars and less with dolls than female monkeys do. Hines also mentioned a male-female gap in “maze performance” among rodents. You can’t blame that on society... sex differences in math performance had largely evaporated over the past 20 years. But not all differences: A stubborn gap remains in mental rotation, which requires the imaginary realignment of three-dimensional shapes... We need more of that humility, and less glib generalization... 78 percent of effect sizes in studies of psychological sex difference were small or near zero. But that aggregate figure obscures the fine print: Half the effect sizes were between .11 and .35. In aggression, they averaged around .50, and in mental rotation, they were even higher... While Eliot and Hyde characterized the effect sizes in sex-difference studies as small or near zero, Cahill argued that these effect sizes were no smaller than those typically found in other neuroscience research. (Indeed, I heard no complaints from the panel about small effect size when Wraga cited a 6-percent effect on math scores as evidence of stereotype threat.)"

Is there a First Amendment right to beat your MMA opponent senseless?

Thai crackdown on Facebook remarks on king - "Thailand has warned users of Facebook that they could face prosecution under harsh lese-majeste laws if they press ''share'' or ''like'' on images or articles considered unflattering to the Thai monarchy"

Atheists can not be trusted: Religious people rank non-believers alongside rapists, study

Why women can be their own worst enemies: Tracy Grimshaw - "If you get a bunch of blokes together in a pub, they are more collegiate, whereas women will be checking out the size of each other's butts or whether they're wearing the right shoes, or what sort of clothes or whether they've got dark roots ... "

Female labour markets: The cashier and the carpenter | The Economist - "It may be unfair, but by working shorter paid hours, women are managing to achieve a reasonable balance in their lives. In a regular survey produced by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, only 16-18% of women (depending on whether they have young children) across Europe report dissatisfaction with their work-life balance, against 20-27% for men... Hours and conditions [in the public sector] are usually more congenial and maternity arrangements more generous. So with better pay, conditions and promotion prospects, it is no wonder that the public sector is the employer of choice for so many women."
This survey is full of more reasons besides discrimination for gender gaps in labour markets. Among other gems, "in all the Nordic countries working women are heavily concentrated in the public sector", "women can be their own worst enemies. They tend to be less self-confident than men and do not put their hands up, so they do not get the plum assignments or promotions or pay rises", "asked to advise a consultancy on the reasons for high turnover among its women, it found that the firm’s projects were often badly managed, making for long hours. The men, it discovered, were not happy either, but they quietly rearranged things to make life easier for themselves. The women went part-time or quit"

Power Rangers run Standard Chartered Marathon.

You May Want to Save Your Pocket Change Next Time You See a Jingle Dude - "The Salvation Army has a wide and noticeable history of financing and supporting anti-LGBT legislation, such as opposing marriage equality. Is that where you want your pocket money going… to defense of marriage lobbyists?"

Inequality and taxes: Equality doesn't always mean redistribution | The Economist - "While income taxes in the Netherlands are highly progressive, all the other taxes (VAT, social insurance, excise taxes and so forth) are so regressive that the total burden of taxation is almost flat across income groups. Everybody pays about 40%... the main reason the Netherlands has low levels of inequality is that incomes in the Netherlands just aren't very unequal, even before taxes or transfers... After taxes and transfers, the Netherlands has about the same level of inequality as Germany and somewhat less than France or Italy. But before taxes and transfers, Germany, France and Italy are far more unequal; in fact gross income in Germany and Italy is more unequal than in America. You can't really say "in Europe, they have higher taxes and more transfers, which is why inequality is lower." That's true in parts of Europe. In other parts, inequality is lower because people just tend to earn relatively equal amounts of money."

Ron Paul vs. the New World Order - "Ron Paul has made a career out of transmitting extremist beliefs, particularly far-right conspiracy theories about a looming "New World Order," into the mainstream of public discourse by reframing and repackaging them for wider consumption, mostly by studiously avoiding the more noxious and often racist elements of those beliefs. Along the way, he has built a long record of appearing before and lending the credibility of his office to a whole array of truly noxious organizations, and has a loyal following built in no small part on members of those groups."

36% of 16-19-Year-Old Boys “Sexless” - "The results of the latest governmental survey of Japanese attitudes to sex and marriage, undertaken every 5 years, reveal a society in which men and women are apparently increasingly alienated from one and other. The survey found 61% of unmarried men aged 18-34 have no girlfriend, a 9.2% increase from 2005. For women, 50% had no boyfriend (suggesting they are tending to date older men)... A quarter of unmarried men and women in their late thirties also reported having had no sexual experiences at all... A related survey of young people aged 16-19 found extraordinarily low levels of interest in sex amongst youngsters – 36% of boys reported having “no interest” in or “dislike” of sex, up 19% in only 3 years, and amongst girls it was up 12% to 59%... It has also been frequently suggested that [Japanese women] tend to have unrealistic expectations as to the income and status of their desired husband"

Nude Lady Gaga reveals all on bad romance - "She added that sometimes she feels she is destined to be lonely. “I had a man say to me, ‘You will die alone in a house bigger than you know, with all your money and hit records, and you will die alone’”"

Philosophy Bro: The Full List - "Philosophy is hard - I read and summarize, so you don't have to, man"
"All it would take is one sneaky little motherfucker near the foundations of my beliefs to blow everything else I believe up, and not only is that fucking terrifying, it's completely possible. Shit."

Caught out for Gobbledy-Gook

A: I am not sure how many people would respond, but does anyone here think that it is never right to describe a suicide as a selfish act? If yes, why?

B: A, I think any response to your question will be inadequate in light of its decontextualisation from the possible circumstances surrounding a case of suicide. At most, we can say that sometimes it isn't right to attribute an act of suicide as being selfish. In the case of the suicide of the Singaporean teenager, we are completely capable of making overarching statements regards the circumstances surrounding her death, but at the same time, we are also able to realise that whatever rationalisations we can concieve of, they always have a tendency to inadvertendly trivialise the situation; that the methods we somehow employ in making sense of her situation can never quite fully comprehend the pain and suffering she had to go through. I think this sense of impotence when dealing with any kind of experience which might be called subjective can be attributed to the tangential lives we are condemned to be living. Just like numbers on a number line, '2' can never really get to '3'; the chasm between them is infinity; '2' gets closer to '3' but never any closer. And so when faced with the absurdity which Life can sometimes throw at us, we can either take it heroically like Camus's Sisyphus or we can choose to abdicate our responsibilities and discard the boulder. Ever so often, from our vantage point from where we roll our boulders inexorably uphill, we see our friends giving up, throwing in the towel. We would like very much to lend a hand, but our hands can never quite reach them from our isolated vertices, and so the most we can do is to cheer them on and hope they somehow receive our messages and pick themselves up again.

C: i marked B's comment as spam

B: It's regrettable that you will regard my comment as spam-but no matter, i merely wanted to give an opinion. Cheers =).

Me: For one to give an opinion it is first necessary for one to have content to communicate

B: Indeed Gabriel, i do agree with you. i had initially thought of messaging you privately but i suppose it be better to not rely on the veil of anonymity and reply here directly. i was wondering if you can put it across to me starkly, am i right to say that the opinion i managed was 'all form no substance'? i think i'll need to know, it'll help me. Thanks in advance Gabriel. ;)

D: Your comment is spam regardless of our attitude towards it. If I see a pile of shit, it is a pile of shit no matter how hard I imagine it as something else.

Your ability to confuse people with your words is astounding. If they had a competition for this kind of thing in the Olympics, you would definitely do our country proud by winning the gold medal. I have, to my misfortune, come across showers of shite, streams of drivel, and all manner of incomprehensible things, and I have to say, what you customarily produce is simply in a league of its own.

You express your ideas in 1,000 words when 100 will do. You enjoy using obscure references to illustrate your points. It is impossible to read your writing without suffering pounding headaches and waves of nausea.

Your vocabulary is atrocious. You seem to be on a mission to misuse as many words as possible within the shortest amount of time it takes for you to force out your linguistic excrement and form it into sentences.

Your spelling is unimpressive. All the time and effort you waste on browsing the thesaurus for big words can be better put to use on checking the dictionary for correct spellings. Of course, we all make mistakes - nobody is perfect - but you give the impression of trying too hard to impress.

Long, flowing, and beautiful scripts are beyond your ability to produce. Do not waste your time creating dismal failures. When in doubt, stick to simple English. It makes proofreading easier. Your readers will be less inclined to dismiss your comments as nonsense and mark them as spam.

If I were your English teacher and you served me your usual fare, I would order you to rewrite the whole thing. If you are thinking of pursuing a degree in Philosophy, Political Science, or some other course requiring a strong command of English, I urge you to reconsider your choice. Any lecturer or professor marking your assignment would definitely contemplate drowning his sorrows in the Bedok Reservoir. Let us try to save a few lives.

To summarise, your writing is as long-winded as a nagging old hag, as uninspiring as a woman imitating a dead fish during sex, as meaningless as the ejaculations a fundie makes when he speaks in tongues, and as pretentious as a drooling popinjay who wears an expensive suit and fancies himself an urbane gentleman.

I suggest you purchase a copy of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Grammar and Style and read it. Give yourself this Xmas present. It will change your life. Maybe you can even get a date!

Me: In short, "no form, no substance"

On Historical Perspective and the Decadence of the Modern Age

"Conspiracy theory is the sophistication of the ignorant." - Richard Grenier

***

"Without some historical perspective, we wouldn't fully understand what the real problems of today are.

And one of the ways in which I think that is true is that much of the discussion about history teaching in schools today thinks that there has been a catastrophic decline from some sort of Golden Age of History in an earlier time, an earlier time interestingly never actually specified. And that on that basis, draconian measures are needed to try to retrieve what appears to be a catastrophic situation.

One of the things, of course, that we were able to check out as we looked into the history of the teaching of history in English State School classrooms from the 1900s on, in terms of the nature of the teaching, in terms of the number of people studying History, in terms of the exams, in terms of the textbooks. One of the things we were able to check out, was whether there was in fact a Golden Age when everybody knew the reigns of all the Kings and Queens, or whatever it might be.

And it turns out that has never been, as far as we can tell, such a Golden Age. There has always been criticism of the teaching of History in schools as long as History has been taught in schools. And much, I think, of that criticism been valid. But it's also worth saying, in fairness, that there has also been praise for the teaching of History in schools all the way through that period.

None of that, I think, is to say that there was ever a Golden Age. I think we may indeed have a set of problems about teaching History in schools at the moment, but I don't think what that problem is, or what those problems are, is to be understood in terms of a catastrophic declension from a once-great Golden Age."

"And yet that view is always trotted out. People are always saying 'It was better in my day'. And as you say the time period isn't normally established. So why is that? Why do people always think it was better in the past? And is that just people looking through rose-tinted spectacles?"

"It's a standard explanatory paradigm for much of the media that things are terrible now, and they must've been better earlier. And that in a sense absolves you from having to dig deeper into the subject to find out what the truth of things might be. But it's certainly true that from the 1900s on, people have been complaining that History is less well-taught than it was before. Well, that can't be true for the whole 100 years, since if it were then presumably no History would be being taught at all at the moment. But it's always a strong temptation, I think, to say that things were better in the past, and part, of course, of the point of studying History... is to suggest that that's very often a lazy way of thinking about things, and it's very often wrong."

--- 1st December 2011 | BBC History Magazine

Freedom of Speech vs Freedom from Criticism

EDITORIAL: Freedom of speech does not imply freedom from criticism

"Freedom of speech is the cornerstone of any successful democracy. Any modern society that does not allow its citizens to express concerns or grievances in at least some manner is one that is doomed to long-term failure.

That being said, the concept of freedom of speech is one that is frequently misunderstood, even by those who depend upon such a right for their livelihood. “My freedom of speech” has become conflated with “freedom from criticism of my speech,” and every time this fallacious equivalence rears its head it minimizes the struggles of those who face true challenges to their freedoms.

Every media figure faces the prospect of criticism. Every media figure with an audience surpassing his immediate family experiences criticism, and the more successfully he does his job the more criticism he receives. Yet, people refusing to place an imprimatur of approval on a journalist’s speech after the fact does not abridge his freedom; his words are still free to influence whomever they will. Likewise, when a publication makes a poor decision and readers express a modicum of disapproval, that publication is not the victim of speech suppression; on the contrary, citizens with the same right to express their various and sundry opinions are exercising the most important freedom of all.

One’s speech is suppressed when government censors must approve a work prior to its publication. One’s speech is suppressed when speech codes choke words, even unpleasant and unfortunate ones, from the vocabulary. One’s speech is suppressed when he is beaten with sticks for complaining about the local royalty. However, one’s speech is not suppressed when he says something others find objectionable and the offended express their distaste. In fact, such arguments are the only means by which discourse can hope to improve.

This is not to say that all criticism of speech is necessarily well thought out or valid — far from it. However, when one assumes a public stance on a controversial issue, one should not only expect but welcome public disagreement, as the process of argument ultimately benefits everyone."

Correlation and Causation

Schopenhauer on Hegel

"Schopenhauer expressed his dislike for the philosophy of his contemporary Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel many times in his published works. The following quotation is typical:

'If I were to say that the so-called philosophy of this fellow Hegel is a colossal piece of mystification which will yet provide posterity with an inexhaustible theme for laughter at our times, that it is a pseudo-philosophy paralyzing all mental powers, stifling all real thinking, and, by the most outrageous misuse of language, putting in its place the hollowest, most senseless, thoughtless, and, as is confirmed by its success, most stupefying verbiage, I should be quite right.

Further, if I were to say that this summus philosophus [..] scribbled nonsense quite unlike any mortal before him, so that whoever could read his most eulogized work, the so-called Phenomenology of the Mind, without feeling as if he were in a madhouse, would qualify as an inmate for Bedlam, I should be no less right.'

In his Foreword to the first edition of his work Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik, Schopenhauer suggested that he had shown Hegel to have fallen prey to the Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

Schopenhauer thought that Hegel used deliberately impressive but ultimately vacuous verbiage. He suggested his works were filled with “castles of abstraction” that sounded impressive but ultimately had no content. He also thought that
his glorification of church and state were designed for personal advantage and had little to do with the search for philosophical truth. For instance, the Right Hegelians interpreted Hegel as viewing the Prussian state of his day as perfect and the goal of all history up until then."

--- Works of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life, Religion: a Dialogue, On Human Nature, The Art of Literature, The Art of Controversy, On Authorship and Style and Other Essays (Mobi Collected Works)


Someone: Hegel is infamous for his incomprehensible jibberish; it's not any better in the German original...

LKY wants students to defy the government

"I had a high regard for the discipline and seriousness of purpose in life Chinese school students displayed compared to English school students. One of my most unforgettable memories was when the Chinese High School was having a sit-in led by my left wing pro-communist activists in October 1956 to protest the arrests of student leaders and closure of Chinese High School and Chung Cheng High School. The Chinese school students camped inside the school. After watching this drama of the sit-in at Chinese High School, I passed by the University of Singapore's student hostels on Dunearn Road, just around the corner from Chinese High. The contrast was stark. I could see the students - the English-educated students - enjoying themselves. They were laughing and blowing whistles, regarding the clash between the Chinese students and the police as a big joke. I thought to myself that if Singapore students all turned out like those in the university hostel, Singapore would fail. I vowed then to change this state of affairs.

This was why I decided to save the good Chinese language schools as Chinese schools switched into English as the main medium of instruction"

Links - 1st December 2011

"We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true." - Robert Wilensky

***

Saudi moral committee threatens to cover “tempting” women’s eyes - "Women with sexy eyes in Saudi Arabia may be forced to cover them up, according to the spokesperson of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (CPVPV) in the conservative Gulf kingdom... In 2002, the committee refused to let female students out of their burning schools in Mecca for “not wearing the proper head cover,” which contributed to a large number of dead"

Skinny People Need To Stop Pretending That They’re Fat « Thought Catalog - "When thin people talk about their poor eating habits, are they showing off? Are they letting us soak in the irony that they’ve maintained a nice figure by eating absolute crap?"

Bob Ostertag: Militarization Of Campus Police - "Apparently, in the state of California felons incarcerated for violent crimes have rights that students at public universities do not... former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper published an essay arguing that the current epidemic of police brutality is a reflection of the militarization (his word, not mine) of our urban police forces, the result of years of the "war on drugs" and the "war on terror"
"There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people"

Funny? The LTA not amused by pedestrian crossing prank - "At the pedestrian crossing in front of Rendezvous Hotel Singapore in Bras Basah Road, a button on the pedestrian crossing has been covered by a sticker which admonishes: 'Press Once Can Already'... [LTA] is not amused by the prank. It warns that individuals who are caught pasting signs or illegal advertisements on street infrastructure can be fined $300 for the first offence and $400 for a repeat offence. If prosecuted in court, they may be fined up to $2,000"
Apparently they don't have better things to do; it's significant that no one they asked disapproved of it per se - despite the journalistic imperative for "balance"

Oddly, Texas can teach the UK a thing or two on criminal justice - "It is the unlikely centre of a revolution in prison reform sweeping the US, overthrowing decades of failed polices and sterile debate driven by politicians scared of being seen as soft. The state has cut crime, costs and the numbers in jail to such an extent it has just shut a high-security prison for the first time in history. What makes this prison revolt even more unexpected is that it is led by some of the most conservative figures in politics. They have decided – correctly – that an expensive prison system repeatedly locking up the same people is a sign of failure. As a result, they have endorsed policies traditionally seen as liberal to keep people out of jail."

Racial murders: nearly half the victims are white - "Nearly half of all victims of racially motivated murders in the last decade have been white... The disclosure will add to the intense debate over multiculturalism in British society. The figures also overturn the assumption that almost all racial murders are committed against ethnic minority victims. Senior police officers have admitted that 'political correctness' and the fear of discussing the issue have meant that race crime against white people goes under-reported. One chief constable has claimed that white, working-class men are more alienated than the Muslim community... it was harder to get the media interested where murder victims were young white men... 'Sometimes we forget that ethnic minorities actually make up quite a small percentage of the population'"

Websites Let People Farm Out Chores - "Erika Dumaine, 24, logged onto TaskRabbit this April and saw the following plea for help: "Buy me shoes ASAP. I stepped in dog poop." So Ms. Dumaine, now a full-time nanny, bought and delivered a requested new pair of navy blue Toms shoes from Nordstrom's to the poster, Guillermo Rauch. (Her payment: $17.)"

Lawsuit: Man fired for not wearing "666" sticker

Behind-the-Scenes Photos of Natural History - NYTimes.com

African-American Atheists - NYTimes.com - "In most African-American communities, it is more acceptable to be a criminal who goes to church on Sunday, while selling drugs to kids all week, than to be an atheist who ... contributes to society and supports his family"

Alcohol-free whisky is halal-certified

Lawsuit Says Prosecutor Went Too Far In Charging Boy - "A 6-year-old Grant County boy has been accused of first-degree sexual assault after playing "doctor" with two 5-year-old friends... the prosecutor, Grant County District Attorney Lisa Riniker, on Monday morning asked a judge for a gag order in the case and was granted it. The gag order prohibits the boy's parents from talking about the case... "She (Riniker) bypassed the parents and sent a 6-year-old boy a summons, on which is a threat that the 6-year-old will go to jail for failure to appear"... The attorneys said they have sought the opinion of many experts who said that children "playing doctor" is not a sex crime"
"The lawsuit says that once he turns 18, he will be listed as a sex offender"

Perverted Justice - "The panic that followed Megan Kanka's murder produced an alarm system that often fails to distinguish between dangerous predators like Timmendequas, who had a record of assaulting little girls, and nonviolent lawbreakers like Elliot, who posed no discernible threat to the general public. They are all mixed together in the online registries of sex offenders that every state is required to maintain... Registration only rarely leads to murder, but it routinely ruins relationships, triggers ostracism and harassment, and impedes education and employment... In Miami local residence restrictions have given rise to a colony of more than 70 sex offenders who live under the Julia Tuttle Causeway, a bridge that crosses Biscayne Bay... Two decades of ever-more-punitive legislation have produced sentencing rules so bizarre and byzantine that the punishment for possessing images of sexually abused children can be more severe than the punishment for sexually abusing them... at least 13 [states] required [sex offender] registration for public urination... the rules aimed at discouraging sex offenders from committing new crimes can produce the opposite effect. "One of the most powerful things that keep people from breaking the law is a sense of what they will lose if they do," she says. "If you're treating someone like a cur, a dog that is being kicked out of the village, how are you strengthening that person's desire or ability to follow the law?"... "Though often thought of as the most persistent and dangerous criminals, sex offenders are among the least likely criminals to recidivate"... conventional wisdom assumes child-porn consumers are undiscovered or future molesters, that assumption is also wrong... "People who watch movies like Saw and Friday the 13th are being titillated by the act of torture and murder. That doesn't mean that they're going to go out and commit torture and murder"... a substantial share of defendants were themselves victims of sexual abuse as children and look at these images as a way of working through the trauma"

Being 'Born-Again' Linked to More Brain Atrophy: Study
The interpretation is odd: in that case atheists who used to be religious would have atrophied brains too

Give them what they want: The benefits of explicitness in gift exchange - "Five studies show that gift recipients are more appreciative of gifts they explicitly request than those they do not. In contrast, gift givers assume that both solicited and unsolicited gifts will be equally appreciated. At the root of this dilemma is a difference of opinion about what purchasing an unsolicited gift signals: gift givers expect unsolicited gifts will be considered more thoughtful and considerate by their intended recipients than is actually the case (, and ). In our final two studies, we highlight two boundary conditions for this effect: identifying a specific gift and using money as a gift. When gift recipients request one specific gift, rather than providing a list of possible gifts, givers become more willing to purchase the requested gift (Study 4). Further, although givers believe that recipients do not appreciate receiving money as much as receiving a solicited gift, recipients feel the opposite about these two gift options (Study 5)."

Dartmouth Algorithm Rates Altered Images - "Dr. Farid got the inspiration when he read about feminist legislators in Britain, France and Norway who were trying to get legislation passed that required digitally altered photographs to be labeled as such... "Readers aren't fooled if you really sculpt the images," Seymour said. "If you're a good editor, you don't go too far these days""

Creative thinkers more likely to cheat: Study - "Creative people are more likely to cheat than less creative people, possibly because this talent increases their ability to rationalize their actions."

How my mother's fanatical feminist views tore us apart - "My mother's feminist principles coloured every aspect of my life. As a little girl, I wasn't even allowed to play with dolls or stuffed toys in case they brought out a maternal instinct. It was drummed into me that being a mother, raising children and running a home were a form of slavery. Having a career, travelling the world and being independent were what really mattered according to her. I love my mother very much, but I haven't seen her or spoken to her since I became pregnant. She has never seen my son - her only grandchild. My crime? Daring to question her ideology... Feminism has betrayed an entire generation of women into childlessness. It is devastating. But far from taking responsibility for any of this, the leaders of the women's movement close ranks against anyone who dares to question them"

Amazon.com: What's Wrong with Benevolence: Happiness, Private Property, and the Limits of Enlightenment - "The attractiveness of communism—the “emotional fuel” of communist revolutionaries for over a hundred years—has always been “exactly the same as the emotional fuel of every other utopianism: the passionate desire to alleviate or abolish misery.” Yet communism was such a monumental failure that millions of people today are still suffering its consequences. In this most prescient of essays, Stove warns contemporary readers just how seductive universal political benevolence can be. He also shows how the failure to understand the connection between benevolence and communism has led to many of the greatest social miseries of our age."

XXX Site to Taylor Swift: Convert to Islam, and We'll Take Down Photo - "We will remove the [photo] if Taylor Swift simply agrees to convert to Islam. To convert to Islam, Taylor Swift must publicly renounce her Jew God Jesus [...] then sacrifice a goat and devour its entrails"