Links - 6th March 2015 (fixed)

(accidentally posted a near-dup post)


Why Do Women Cry More Than Men? - "“There are several studies over the years that have shown that men have larger tear ducts in their eyes, so that it is less likely for the tears to well up to the point of spilling over the eyelid onto the cheek,” said Dr. Geoffrey Goodfellow, an associate professor at the Illinois College of Optometry in Chicago. There’s also this paper from the 1960s, in which a physician from the University of Michigan reports how he used male and female skulls to measure the length and depth of tear ducts, finding that women’s were shorter and shallower. Hormones also may provide an explanation, too, including testosterone, which, Vingerhoets believes, inhibits crying. Male prostate cancer patients, for example, tend to become more emotional when treated with medications that lower their testosterone levels. But this isn’t just about testosterone: Back in the 1980s, biochemist William H. Frey and his team analyzed the chemical makeup of emotional tears and compared them to tears caused by irritants. They found, among other things, that emotional tears tend to contain prolactin, a hormone produced by the pituitary gland that is associated with emotion. Vingerhoets passed on a 2012 paper from a team of Nigerian scientists that he said may help connect this to the gender difference in crying."

Italian man who forced daughters to diet and ski for being 'too fat' guilty of abuse - "An Italian father who forced his teenage daughters to ski competitively and eat a macrobiotic diet because he was concerned they were too fat has been found guilty of abuse and sentenced to nine months in prison... He said he encouraged them to ski and to eat a macrobiotic diet, avoiding processed and otherwise refined foods, out of a normal level of parental concern. But the mother of the teenagers and the prosecutor in the case painted a different picture, of constant pressure and taunting by the father of his daughters."

The Problem With Rational Wiki - Less Wrong - "While factually it is as about as accurate as Wikipedia, it is very selective about the facts that it is interested in. For example what would you expect from a site calling itself "Rational Wiki" to have on its page about charity. Do you expect information on how much good charity actually does? What kinds of charities do not do what they say on the label? How to avoid getting misled? The ethics of charity? The psychology, sociology or economics of charity? I'm sorry to disappoint you but the article consists of some haphazardly arranged facts and stats on how much members of some religions give or are supposed to give to charity, a dig against Christianity and a non-sequitur unfavourable comparison of the US to Sweden. Contrast this with what you can find on the topic on sites like LessWrong or 80, 000 Hours. Basically the material presented is what a slightly left of centre atheist needs to win an internet debate. As is much of the rest of the site. Indeed some entries have a clear ideological bias that is quite startling to behold on a "rational wiki" and it has been noted by some"
Comment: "Another example both of blatant bias and why I stopped reading liberal blogs even when I felt entirely on their side. Such a complete refusal to offer respect to your opponents is epistemically rude and super annoying for me to read.

What dark secret is in the S'pore basement? - "You could say more Singaporeans are walking away from their Omelas, and the city changes as a result"
So the best way to change the system is to migrate

Nutella not a girl’s name, French court rules - "A French court has barred a couple from naming their daughter Nutella after the popular hazelnut chocolate spread... The court ruled that such a name was against the girl’s interests as it would cause “mockery or disobliging remarks”... The days are long gone when a French child would be named according to the saint’s day on which it was born. In 1993 the law was changed to enable parents to freely choose their baby’s name – unless it is deemed contrary to the child’s interests... a separate case in the region concerned a child who had been given the name Fraise (Strawberry)... In 2013, a boy named Jihad caught the notice of school authorities when the three-year-old was seen wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “I am a bomb” on the front, and his name and date of birth, 11 September, on the back. His mother was acquitted of supporting terrorism by a court in Avignon."

Adrianna Tan - Instagram Photos - "They even sell SIM cards at arrivals now! (6 months ago, a SIM card cost $250; 3 years ago they cost $2000)... The sims are [now] 1500 kyats. (1.5 dollars)"

Nicholas Cho - Mobile Uploads - "This is why I fear for the future of Singapore.
For the record our pay $6-$7 per hour
Pooled incentives up to $400
Uniform allowance up to $100
Oh wait. Maybe the pay isn't high enough for your superstar salesman son ( no experience btw)
And the best part!
Location: Cineleisure!!
And that is why I fear for Singapore's future"

Singaporeans have misplaced sense of entitlement, says SICC head Victor Mills - "One issue that has become a challenge for many businesses is excessive job-hopping. This has come about only because of our economic success and a very tight labour market. I have seen one extreme example in the SICC. We had employed an assistant finance manager who had a lovely personality with all the right experience and skills. We thought we hit gold. But she turned up for work for just one day and then disappeared. When we tracked her down a few days later - she was not answering her phone - she said: "It just wasn't for me." But my response was: "How could you possibly know after just one day? You are not giving yourself or the organisation a chance.""

Vagina canoe artist defends herself over ‘obscenity’ charges - "“I don’t believe my vagina is anything obscene,” Igarashi said in a July press conference after her release, the Japan Times reported. “I was determined I would never yield to police power.” Writing on her website Igarashi describes her project: “Why did I start making this kind of art pieces? That was because I had not seen pussy of others and worried too much about mine. I did not know what a pussy should look like.""

Profs on Paris Attacks: Je Suis NOT Charlie! - Campus Watch - "University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole accused the Bush/Cheney administration and the Iraq War of "radicalizing" terrorist brothers, Sharif and Said Kouashi:.. Hofstra University Islamic studies professor Hussein Rashid, claiming that Muslims in Europe "feel like they are besieged" and view satirizing Islam "as bullying," concluded that, "it is not so much about religious anger, as it is about vengeance." Ingrid Mattson, who chairs Islamic studies at Huron University College in Ontario, tweeted that, "The attack on #CharlieHebdo is not about Islam vs the West. Many Muslims have had their heads taken off by fanatics who detested their views," as if the Paris terrorists were motivated by Muslim-on-Muslim violence. Meanwhile, Khaled Fahmy, a historian at the American University of Cairo who has taught Islamic studies at New York University, argued that religion was "just a veneer" for resentment against "colonial powers" and Western "Orientalist" condescension. "It is the nonviolence that needs to be explained, not the violence," he asserted. Taking the willful blindness even further, M. Steven Fish, a political scientist at the University of California, Berkeley stated, "Is Islam violent? I would say absolutely not. There is very little empirical evidence that Islam is violent"... One might expect acts of unadulterated evil like the massacres in Paris to be met with unqualified condemnation from the American professoriate. But obfuscation, moral relativism, apologetics, and anti-Western bigotry are the strong suits of today's Middle East studies establishment. Islamists seeking to forbid criticism of radical Islam and undermine Western law and culture can count on their allies in academe."

Thousands chant for Hizbullah in Charlie Hebdo protest in southeast Turkey - "Around 100,000 people have protested the French magazine Charlie Hebdo in Diyarbakır, a Kurdish-majority city in Turkey's southeast, cheering for Turkish Hizbullah... "As long as you are the enemies of Allah, we will be your enemies," the Free Cause Party (Hüda Par) chair Molla Osman Teyfur said in his speech, vowing to "cut the tongue that talked against the Prophet.""

Photos: K-pop gal's sexy dance causes nosebleed
The Japs are actually right about nosebleeds!

The Conversation isn’t getting very far - "Firstly, it reinforced what I have called the petitionary state, that is one in which the government’s monopoly of power goes unquestioned, but like so much noblesse oblige, now and then, it generously lends a listening ear to the king’s subjects. But, and secondly, the problem with that is that people then get into the mode of asking for favours and seeing what is eventually sprinkled upon them as gifts; they don’t have to work for them or pay the price for them, whether it be smaller classroom sizes or more frequent trains."

How Carson Block Can Take On Singapore - "how do Temasek, GIC, and the government itself work with this seemingly odd cash flow? To Balding, the answer lies with something called the Central Provident Fund (CPF)... Balding conjectures, however, that CPF funds are being used to finance investments in GIC and Temasek. If the two investment vehicles return well over 2-4.5%, as the government claims, that's fine. If they earn less, the government has to put up the money to ensure that citizens get their returns. That means digging into government funds. Balding believes that this, at least in part, explains Singapore's massive debt."

Can women tell if a man will cheat on them just by looking at him? - "They also found a high correlation between attractiveness and perceptions of trustworthiness, with more attractive people judged more likely to be trustworthy. 'There might be some sort of attractiveness halo effect going on there,' Professor Simmons said. 'What was also really interesting is there was no correlation between peoples' rating of sexual faithfulness and trustworthiness. 'So they're obviously very different tasks and people are looking for different things.'"

Porn Predicts Same-Sex Marriage Support, Says Regnerus - "He suggests a correlation among young adult men (but not women) between regular porn consumption and support for same-sex marriage."

Social Scientists Defend Mark Regnerus' Controversial Study on Same-Sex Parenting - "Media outlets have not properly critiqued the "small, nonrepresentative samples" used by previous studies that showed equal or more positive outcomes for children of same-sex parents vs. heterosexual parents... Another new study (published this month in the Journal of Marriage and Family) – also based on a large, nationally representative, and random survey – comes to conclusions that parallel those of Regnerus's study."

How Common Are Stable Same-Sex Couples? - "The October issue of Journal of Marriage and Family published an analysis by Charles Lau of a British probability sample, “The Stability of Same-Sex Cohabitation, Different-Sex Cohabitation, and Marriage.” Lau found that cohabiting same-sex couples in Great Britain are twice as likely to break up as cohabiting opposite sex couples — and married couples (all opposite-sex in Great Britain) are at least five times more stable than same-sex couples... He also reports no increase in stability of same-sex unions between the 1958 birth cohort and the 1970 birth cohort."

Affirmative action (and feminism) kill

Safety Last? - Chicago Tribune
December 01, 1995|By Elaine Donnelly, President, Center for Military Readiness.

LIVONIA, Mich. — In a Nov. 14 article on female pilots training to fly combat aircraft (Main news), Michael Kilian suggested that questions about double standards in combat aviation training are primarily political and without foundation.

Unfortunately, Mr. Kilian had not yet received a copy of my organization's "Special Report: Double Standards in Naval Aviation," which documents an extraordinary and unusual pattern in the training of two female pilots. One such pilot, Lt. Kara Hultgreen, was killed last year while attempting to land an F-14 on the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln.

Detailed training records obtained by the Center for Military Readiness, a public policy educational organization specializing in military personnel issues, suggest Lt. Hultgreen may have been the victim of a flawed policy.

Lt. Hultgreen was an impressive and courageous woman, but the instructors gave her low scores and four signal-of-difficulty or unsatisfactory performance "downs"--one or two of which are frequently sufficient to end an aviation career. Two of Lt. Hultgreen's downs highlighted mistakes similar to errors made during her fatal approach to the carrier.

Navy instructors also awarded an astonishing seven downs to another female pilot, one of which was not recorded so that she could graduate as a "fully qualified" aviator.

After a series of meetings at the Pentagon, high-ranking Navy officials conceded, with much reluctance and only a few minor points of disagreement, that the material obtained from sources known to the Center was largely accurate. We then released the comprehensive Special Report.

Even proponents of women in combat should agree that safety should not be compromised and young lives put at greater risk because of "flexible" standards that treat men and women differently.


AIM Report - September B, 1997

"Men with equal or better records had waited a year or more for carrier training. The discrimination had a cost. The IG wrote: "The decision to move females ahead of males in the training pipeline, necessary to get them to the targeted carrier/air wing before deployment, contributed to the perception that women would receive preferential treatment to satisfy political objectives, a message that hurt morale and teamwork."

Lohrenz, Lt. Kara S. Hultgreen and two other women were among the 10 pilots assigned to Fighter Squadron VF-124. The training was supposed to be "gender neutral," but according to three flight instructors interviewed by the IG, reality was another matter. By their accounts, Cmdr. Tom Sobiek, the commanding officer, convened instructors who had expressed concerns about the women's flying. Sobiek allegedly said that "the women are going to graduate regardless of how they performed." One officer summarized Sobiek as saying, "you guys don't understand, this is bigger than all of us, these women are going to graduate no matter what."

Sobiek denied making any such statement. "That is a flat **** lie," he said. "And whoever told you that, if they were under oath, should be taken to task." The IG concluded "it is more likely than not" that Sobiek said something to indicate that the women "are going to make it to the fleet."

The IG said the Navy wanted to use the women carrier pilots as symbols to counter Tailhook and that overly zealous press agents helped create a climate that led to Lohrenz's failure. They used women fliers to prove that sexual integration of the military was working. One commander told investigators that the Navy was in a race with the Air Force to get the first female fighter pilot. The IG suggested that publicists wanted fliers to earn their wings regardless of their performance: "The failure of any single female aviator would have implications (at least in the media) far greater than the concerned individual. Failure would be portrayed as a failure of the female gender"...

Lt. Patrick J. Burns, "Jerry" to his shipmates, came into the Navy as an enlisted man and rose to officer rank as a carrier pilot. He was still in his early 30s in 1994, when he became one of the instructors for the pioneer women fliers. Persons who know Burns say that he says little about integration of women into the combat military; but he is a zealot on safety. He and other instructors raised questions about Hultgreen and Lohrenz early in their cycle. Respectful of protocol, he worked through the chain of command, to the squadron's operations officer, training officer, executive officer, and finally to the CO, Sobiek, who allegedly pronounced that the women were going to graduate regardless of their records.

Burns was worried. As he would later tell the IG, "the majority of the officers felt that safety was being compromised...[they] almost universally felt that...Hultgreen was a marginal pilot at best, [who] required very close scrutiny if she was to graduate to the fleet, and that Lt. Lohrenz was a substandard pilot [who] should not graduate..." The Navy chose to push the women through to graduation anyway. As Burns testified, "I...specifically told individuals that I expected a catastrophic mishap to take place concerning one of these individuals sometime during their fleet tour." In three months, Hultgreen was dead, victim of her own error and the Navy's lowered standards for women pilots...

At this point, Burns made a calculated decision that put his career at risk. He passed copies of training records to Elaine Donnelly, who runs a watchdog group, the Center for Military Readiness. A former army officer, Donnelly served on the Defense Department task force which studied whether women should be put into combat situations, something she opposed. Her center monitors the sexual integration of the military. Burns realized he was violating the Federal Privacy Act, but he had been ignored by superiors. He explained, "If I was walking down the street and I saw somebody's house on fire and I knew there were people inside and I knew I could get them out, I wouldn't be concerned about dragging them out in their underwear because of their privacy concerns"...

Concurrently, someone leaked the technical report on Hultgreen's accident, putting the lie to the claim that mechanical failure caused her death."