Links - 30th November 2013

"Patriarchy, routinely blamed for everything, produced the birth control pill, which did more to free contemporary women than feminism itself." - Camille Paglia

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Report: London no safer for all its CCTV cameras - "there's been little or no change in London's crime rates since they were more widely installed in the mid 1980s... The civil rights group Liberty estimates that the average Londoner is captured on camera around 300 times a day while BBW claims Britain has 20 percent of the world’s CCTV cameras and only 1 percent of the world’s population. There is a perception that the cameras reduce the crime rate, but there is no evidence for that, say activists. “The Met police have said that in 2008, only one crime was solved for every 1,000 CCTV cameras,” says Carr... "I have colleagues from East Germany who came to London and were shocked by the number of cameras""

Asian Women Get the Most Attention When Online Dating - "The site found that Asian women get messaged the most by all men except for Asian men, who like Hispanic women best. That's all right though; Asian women respond to Asian men the least as well. Black women are the least likely to get a message from anyone and white men are preferred over all races – except by black women. A slightly more scientific study just released in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that utilized online dating data from OkCupid reports that "users from all racial backgrounds are equally likely or more likely to cross a racial boundary when reciprocating than when initiating romantic contact," meaning that if someone is messaged by someone of a different race, there's a high chance they'll message that person back – higher than the likelihood they would have reached out to someone of a different race on their own terms. And once that exchange occurs, there's a window of time when that messaging impacts their own thinking positively, and there's a higher chance they will message someone of a different race"

Online daters often willing to cross racial lines - "Lewis finds the strongest within-race contact among Asians and the weakest among whites. However, if someone of a different race contacts an Asian woman, she is more likely to contact another non-Asian... Lundquist finds gay white men and heterosexual white women are the least likely to cross racial boundaries. The most likely are heterosexual white men and lesbian white women... "The big thing we're learning is the difference between stated preference and actual behavior, and that's a big deal – both as a business and someone interested in human behavior," he says. An earlier study he conducted into age preferences led to website changes after men who said they only preferred younger women actually were equally likely to respond online to women of varying ages"
As a good economist I believe in looking at revealed preferences

Powdered coffee 'creamer' isn't food, it's processed chemicals - "When powdered coffee creamers first came onto the scene back in the 1950s, they actually contained real dehydrated cream and sugar, which made them a convenient, non-perishable source of cream for coffee. Over time, however, manufacturers began to phase out the cream, and replace it with things like processed vegetables oils, stabilizers, chemical sweeteners, and other additives that were less expensive and that more easily dissolved in coffee."

Chillin - The People's Funny Pictures Blog - Quora

Censorship and stupidity from “free-thinking-feminists” - "‘Surly Amy’ — blogger for the Skepchick network and creator of ‘Surly-ramics’ jewelry — has recently appeared on the August 5, 2012 episode of Amanda Marcotte’s “RH Reality Check” podcast, to discuss feminism within the atheist movement. Of particular interest in this short podcast were Amy’s comments on her experience at The Amazing Meeting (TAM) and thoughts on anti-harassment policies at atheist/skeptic conferences. During the discussion, Amy had said that she — and presumably other feminists in the atheist community (she uses the word ‘we’), wants conferences to have rules restricting particular types of jewelry people wear. For instance, Amy says atheist/skeptic conferences should have policies which restrict “fake jewelry” which is “intentionally offending.”"

misogynist-trolls-memories - "Sarah Jaffe’s “Memories of My Misogynist Trolls*” piece on Jezebel. The only thing the much discussed pieces seems to indicate is that if you pick disagreements with people they will yell at you. Just as people have been doing with other people essentially since the dawn of time... You went up to a guy you didn’t know, and before saying any pleasantries whatsoever, accused him of being ill informed when he was expressing his opinion, privately, to his friends. When he tried to explain his opinion to you, you nearly snorted, and made a blanket assumption about him and his politics, and were then shocked – shocked! – that this guy you had never met, in a bar, who you’d just belittled, yelled at you. Presumably you were shocked by this because you had no way to anticipate that if you demean people you don’t know publicly, they might get angry... Interestingly, if the genders in this story were reversed, I would think that this was a story about misogyny... This is certainly a story about gender, but not the way Jaffe thinks it is... You’re a feminist because you don’t like men yelling at you? That is not a reason to be a feminist. That is a reason to join a role playing community with a strong emphasis upon chivalry. Being a woman and being a feminist does not give you a free pass to go around antagonizing strangers with no repercussions. Feeling shaky and victimized afterwards certainly doesn’t make you a feminist hero, it makes you a person who does not anticipate other people’s responses well. There is, to my memory, no episode of the Mary Tyler Moore show where she goads a guy into a bar fight and then, after he is ejected, sits at a table, tearily murmuring “I’m a feminist. A feminist” to her friends... Saying your opinions about things in public is not an odd or remarkable thing to do. It is what men have been doing for centuries. But, likewise, men have been being yelled at for centuries. It’s still going on"

Is rape different? - "Freedom of speech is one of the human rights granted to citizens in progressive countries. We consider it important. As such, it was shocking to see feminists@law rallying a protest to the London School of Economics (LSE) Department of Law’s recent debate called “Is Rape Different?” It should concern academia that feminist lawyers don’t support free speech. They seem to hold myths about freedom. The October 30th, 2013 debate was led by Helen Reece, based on an article she wrote concerning deeply flawed rape myth studies and other feminist rhetoric which currently informs the law... The short story — the feminists feel they lost the debate. We all know what happens when a feminist feels bad: The world must stop and do something to fix it... Normally, when a university lecture or event is protested it is a singular speaker who the protesters claim are disseminating “hate speech”. This was not a lecture, it was a debate in which four competing points of view were given equal time. Even Jay-Z seems to understand free speech better than feminist lawyers. “We change people through conversation, not through censorship.” It’s a sad state of affairs when a rapper would make a better lawyer than a feminist trained in law... The rape myth surveys that she de-constructed in her initial article were all peer reviewed. That such shoddy academic work can not only pass peer review but become incorporated into decisions about legal reform is reason for alarm. The need for freedom of speech in academia is best proven by the existence of unsupported feminist rhetoric as the accepted worldview.

Yes, for the Millionth Time: You Can Be Fired for This — Crooked Timber - "the American workplace is one of the most coercive institutions around. It’s a place where, whatever the niceties and pieties of our allegedly tolerant culture may be, bosses and supervisors get to act out—and on—their most regressive anxieties and fears. It’s a playground of cultural and political recidivism, where men and women (but more often men) are given the tools to inflict and enforce their beliefs, their style, their values upon their employees... in most American workplaces, the boss can fire any brony who loves My Little Pony. It’s totally legal"

Stop clowning around! Police urge public to ignore creepy clowns after sightings across UK - "Police have vowed to track down pranksters dressing up as clowns and offer them "strong words of advice" - but added that dressing up as a clown is not actually illegal... Pictures of a man dressed as a creepy clown and stalking the streets of Northampton went viral earlier this year becoming a global internet sensation... Supt Carl Edwards speaking to the BBC said: "Firstly, I'd like to stress that it isn't against the law to dress up as a clown. "Nobody has been assaulted and it appears that the people involved are waiting for a passer-by to be startled by their appearance and run away, and then the clown runs after them for a short distance.""

Couples that drink together, stay together - "Surprisingly, if both partners drank equally heavy than their chances of splitting up were no higher than couples that didn’t drink at all. “Our results indicate that it is the difference between the couple’s drinking habits, rather than the drinking itself, that leads to marital dissatisfaction, separation and divorce”"

This Guy's Live-Tweets Of His Neighbor's Breakup Are Hilarious And Heartbreaking

(Math) Exercise, Dividers Of Theoden » Funny & Interesting Student, Teacher, Parent, & Staff School Stories – Not Always Learning - "Professor: “Forth, and fear no problems! Solve! Solve, students of calculus! Points shall be taken, scores shall be splintered! A pencil day! A red-ink day! Until three thirty!”
(The professor pulls out a pencil, holding it out like a sword, and runs down the first row holding it out. Students hold up their pencils, hitting his as he passes.)
Professor: “Solve now! Solve now! Solve to good grades and the class ending! MAAATH!”"

Alison DeNisco: Dating: Women May Care More Than Men Who's Taller - "A 2008 study of 382 undergraduates in the journal Personality and Individual Differences found that both sexes preferred relationships where the woman was shorter than the man. Curiously, the research also showed that women enforced the norm more strongly than men. Twenty-three percent of men but only four percent of women said they were open to a relationship in which the woman was taller... ABC News conducted an unscientific experiment to explore how willing women were to date shorter men. They lined up several short men next to tall men, and asked women to choose a date. They gave the short men exceptional résumés, including those for a doctor and millionaire venture capitalist. Despite their glowing qualities, the women always chose the taller men. Some said they would only choose the shortest of the bunch if they learned the taller men were murders or child molesters. Some relationship trends are showing a reversal of traditional gender roles, like the rise in breadwinning mothers and stay-at-home fathers, according to a study in the journalWomen and Language. Yet dating in the U.S. has remained highly gender-typed in over the past 35 years, according to a 2011 study in the journal Sex Roles. Heterosexual dating followed traditional gender roles for beliefs and expectations, as well as interpersonal actions. Though there was some variation in terms of more women initiating dates, it was not widespread enough to challenge the dominant roles... researchers examined 547 personal ads... despite what preference they expressed, women preferred a physically fit partner, while most men indicated that a number of body sizes would be acceptable"

Attractive women expect their date to pay for dinner because they're worth it - "Pretty women are less likely than plain Janes to offer to contribute towards the bill on a first date, research shows. But they are not worried about the expense - it is likely to be because they believe their date should pay for the pleasure of being with them"
Self-objectification!

Chinese Store Clerk Gives Zero F**ks About Being Robbed - "While to the police it might have seemed like the store clerk might be in cahoots with the robber, they actually were able to remove her from the suspect list. Instead, the actual suspects were a boyfriend and girlfriend couple that was subsequently arrested. As it turns out, one of the them was a former employee of the convenience store who had quit after being robbed once at knife point."

AWARE's Sexuality Education Doublethink - "AWARE regards all cultural or religious beliefs and perspectives should be respected because they are as "just as valid", on the other, it repeatedly slammed the "faith-based group of women" and the "fundamentalist group" in its report. It has shown us how doublethink is done in practice. Hence, Singaporeans would do well to beware of AWARE and keep their children away from the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of AWARE's sexuality education programme. This is especially so since AWARE presupposes an Orwellian state-centric idea which places primary responsibility for education of children on the State rather than on parents"