Links - 2nd December 2016

Sex, violence, and hormones - "Why are we so comfortable with assuming that other animals are controlled by their hormones whereas humans are not? The prevailing view is that human behavior is regulated by higher cognitive processes. Reason cools the blood, allowing us to take responsibility for our actions. This is an ancient philosophical formula that was most explicitly developed by French Philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650). Yet, even Descartes did not believe the rational soul was always in charge and accepted that there are times when humans are ruled by their passions.Evidence that human behavior is partly governed by hormones is mainly restricted to correlations, which are not the same as causes. At least one experiment found that large doses of testosterone increased aggression but only for a small proportion of men. Young men who use anabolic steroids - a synthetic version of testosterone - are also more likely to be involved in violent crime. Taken together, such findings imply that high levels of testosterone can cause aggression in at least some men. Other evidence points in the same direction... When men divorce and begin dating again, their testosterone level rises, just as it does for male robins in the breeding season. What is more, their involvement in violent crime increases. This is at least partly due to an altered lifestyle with more time spent staying out late at night in clubs and bars where single women are encountered. Increased alcohol consumption is a complicating factor as this clouds reason and impairs judgment. As correlations go, the link between testosterone and violent crime is arguably as compelling as the link between testosterone and mating aggression for robins and other animals. Indeed, one can argue that most violent crimes occur because of reproductive competition (e.g., male-male assaults and homicides, domestic violence)."

JK Rowling reveals vile anti-English tweets from Scottish nationalists

The Bigger Your Brain, the Longer Your Yawn - "Gallup proposed what has become known as the thermoregulatory theory of yawning. It holds that opening our jaws and sucking in air cools the brain, something other labs have found support for. Yawning might also kick the brain out of its so-called default mode—a sort of background humming-along state—and into a paying-attention state by increasing the circulation of cerebrospinal fluid, a 2014 paper found."

Mafia criminals' income 'boosted by education' - "The University of Essex study of 712 Italian-American mafia members in the 1960s showed their income had risen by 7.5-8.5% per extra year of education.
Those involved in complex crimes such as charging exorbitant rates for loans or extortion saw three times the boost of those who committed violent crimes."

Essex girls rise to delete term from dictionary - "It is a phrase synonymous with 1990s ladette culture, used to define brash party girls in one part of England. And that is why two Essex women have launched a campaign to remove the 'rude and stereotypical' term "Essex girl" from the Oxford English Dictionary. Juliet Thomas and Natasha Sawkins want their proud peers to post their success under #IAmAnEssexGirl and sign their petition to have the term scrubbed. But, a dictionary spokeswoman said, "nothing is ever taken out of the OED". "It's a historical dictionary," she told the BBC. "Definitions can change, but an entry will never come out." The dictionary defines Essex girl as: "Essex girl n. [after Essex man n.] Brit. derogatory a contemptuous term applied (usu. joc.) to a type of young woman, supposedly to be found in and around Essex, and variously characterized as unintelligent, promiscuous, and materialistic." The campaigners were further peeved by a Collins definition that added: "devoid of taste"."
Too bad they aren't shitlords like Merriam-Webster. Maybe SJWs didn't read 1984

The Strange History Of How A Gene Was Named "Sonic Hedgehog"

These Scientific Names Were Chosen Purely To Insult Certain People

Science Explains Why Superman’s Glasses Actually Work As A Disguise - "Researchers at the University of York recently conducted a study about the effect that glasses have when it comes to facial recognition, and while the thinking behind the experiment was driven by important world matters like border control security, they seemingly inadvertently showed that Clark Kent's disguise is somewhat plausible"

Columbia U. Students Tear Down Posters Advertising Christina Hoff Sommers Visit - "Posters advertising Sommers' visit were torn down in buildings across campus, according to Toni Airaksinen, a reporter for Campus Reform and student at Columbia-affiliated Barnard College. Airaksinen wrote on Twitter that only one of about 20 posters survived for a full day... if Columbia's leftist-students are so afraid of alternative perspectives, they can't have very much confidence in the persuasiveness of their own beliefs."

Don't know the difference between emoji and emoticons? Let me explain - "Unlike emoticons, emoji are actual pictures, of everything from a set of painted nails (💅) to a slightly whimsical ghost (👻). And where emoticons were invented to portray emotion in environments where nothing but basic text is available, emoji are actually extensions to the character set used by most operating systems today, Unicode... To complicate matters, some emoji are also emoticons"

Is it Possible to be Vegan in India? - "As a person who also loves to cook and serve people, I understand the joy that comes from serving guests. So to me, it is rude and difficult in some senses to turn down their hospitality when I am in their home. Of course I make sure that they serve me veg food (verses non veg food), which is never a problem, and many people are even shocked and curious to meet a western vegetarian. But when it comes to dairy, there is sometimes cream in the dish, or ghee (Indian clarified butter), and it is difficult to explain why I do not eat these ingredients, especially if there is a language barrier involved. In India, milk is sacred and people here really do not understand why I would not eat this sacred food... my saving grace in this country is that in India pure vegetarian food means no eggs, so I figure a little milk or ghee here or there won’t kill me"

‘Feminist’ Trudeau under attack for attending gender-segregated event at Ottawa mosque - "Three female MPs accompanied Trudeau during his brief remarks, though they had to arrive by a side door and stand with their heads covered. They did not address the mosque... recent surveys indicate about two of every three mosques separate men from women, but that is up from a decade ago when only about half did... he made no mention of LGBT rights nor did he make any mention of gender equality."

You can be fined for not calling people ‘ze’ or ‘hir,’ if that’s the pronoun they demand that you use - "people can basically force us — on pain of massive legal liability — to say what they want us to say, whether or not we want to endorse the political message associated with that term, and whether or not we think it’s a lie... We can’t be required to even display a license plate that says “Live Free or Die” on our car, if we object to the message; that’s what the court held in Wooley v. Maynard (1978). But New York is requiring people to actually say words that convey a message of approval of the view that gender is a matter of self-perception rather than anatomy, and that, as to “ze,” were deliberately created to convey that a message. What’s more, according to the City, “refusal to use a transgender employee’s preferred name, pronoun, or title may constitute unlawful gender-based harassment.” The label “harassment” is important here because harassment law requires employers and businesses to prevent harassment by co-workers and patrons and not just by themselves or their own employees... Feel uncomfortable about being forced to use terms that express social status views (“Milord”) or religious views (“Your Holiness”) that you may not endorse? Well, you should feel uncomfortable about people being forced to use “ze,” which expresses a view about gender that they might not endorse. And, more broadly, I think we should all feel uncomfortable about government regulators forcing people to say things that convey and support the government’s ideology about gender."
When Brietbart covered this, people dismissed it. The Washington Post is not so easily ignored

Study says women are worse drivers, get in more car crashes despite driving less than men - "Researchers at the University of Michigan analyzed 6.5 million car crashes in the U.S. between 1998 and 2007. Female drivers were found to be involved in 68.1 percent of all crashes, according to The Daily Mail. The results are especially surprising given that men were found to drive 60 percent of the time, while women only 40 percent. In other words, women got in more accidents despite driving less than the opposite sex... female-to-female accidents made up 20.5 percent of all crashes, much higher than expected. Male-to-male crashes were lower than expected, at 31.9 percent, while male-to-female crashes were close to their predictions at 47.6 percent."

Australian students to be taught about 'male privilege' - "A state in Australia has launched an education programme designed to smash gender stereotypes and tackle the root causes of domestic violence. The "respectful relationship" curriculum will be mandatory in all schools in Victoria from next year. Students will explore issues around social inequality, gender-based violence and male privilege. However, a report on a 2015 pilot trial accused it of presenting all men as "bad" and all women as "victims". Pay inequality, anger management, sexual orientation and the dangers of pornography will be among the topics explored by students in the programme, costing A$21.8m (£13.5m; $16.5m)...Jeremy Sammut, a senior research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies, a libertarian think tank, told The Australian newspaper that it amounted to "taxpayer-funded indoctrination" of children. "The idea behind this programme - that all men are latent abusers by nature of the 'discourse' - is an idea that only cloistered feminist academics could love," Dr Sammut said. "A lot of evidence suggests that like child abuse, domestic violence is a by-product of social dysfunction: welfare, drugs, family breakdown." The royal commission that recommended education as the key measure for preventing future family violence found that 25% of victims of family violence are men. Critics argue that point is often overlooked."
Amusingly, some people think that male privilege is responsible for men being victims of domestic violence

Story of domestic violence against men is hidden, complicated and disputed - "Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said to Brisbane Times last month that she would be approaching Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull about launching a domestic violence awareness campaign that includes male victims. Ms Palaszczuk has also changed her language around domestic violence after hearing of the men it has impacted."

Man who drove into pedestrians shouting Allahu Akbar ‘was just singing along to rap music while buying pizza’ parents say

Student officially changes his personal pronoun to ‘His Majesty’ on campus roster - "top administrators at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor announced a new campus-wide policy that allows students to select their own “designated personal pronoun,” informing the campus community they are expected to adhere to those preferences... "I henceforth shall be referred to as: His Majesty, Grant Strobl. I encourage all U-M students to go onto Wolverine Access, and insert the identity of their dreams""

Washington Post: Dog Halloween Costumes 'Sexist' for Perpetuating Gender Norms

[SAGA] The Western Co (TWC) f**k up customer service & chase customer out - www.hardwarezone.com.sg - "TLDR: TWC ownself send typo sms nv apologise. customer say wtf when realised cannot pay nets. the cashier took the f of the wtf personally then want to chase the customer out of the shop
such fk up attitude. they shd be boycotted!"

The Western Co. threatened to SUE food blogger - www.hardwarezone.com.sg

S’porean man who turned himself into a URL points out licence peculiarity of The Western Co. - "In the latest turn of events involving The Western Co. (TWC), food blogger Seth Lui of SethLui.com published an article, “The Western Co: Dishonest or Misunderstood? Don’t Believe Everything The Owner Says”, recounting his experience of how TWC did not pay for its advertorial on his website... more interestingly, Lui pointed out some discrepancies with TWC’s NEA licence at its now-defunct 30 Foch Road premises...The address on the license corroborates with The Western. Co’s previous location, but it was registered as a “Mixed Vegetable Rice Stall” instead of the supposed western stall TWC was operating. According to Lui’s post, the company the licence was issued to — Rendevous Holding Pte. Ltd — is not The Western Co.’s alleged parent company (Appendix K Investments LLP)... Lui also pointed out that TWC had announced it was closing “for good” in September 2016 with TWC “vehemently insisting they weren’t relocating”.He then questioned how TWC had acquired an NEA licence for its new Tyrwhitt Road premises in such a short time"

The Western Co. issues apology statement, appoints social media agency, promptly hides post from its Facebook page - "If you happened to be online on Monday, you might have heard of an establishment called The Western Co., and perhaps also of the way it mishandles customer feedback (using a cocktail of sarcastic replies, deleting comments and banning users, and even posting statuses insulting them). Around 10.20pm Monday, the now-embattled business owners took to their otherwise-silent Facebook page (apart from actively deleting comments and banning users from posting comments)... the number of comments and people that have been deleted and who have been banned from the company’s page has resulted in people finding and befriending one another"

Looks like The Western Co. is latest S’pore eatery on its way to social media destruction - "it looks like they have a history of passive-aggressiveness against their customers on their own Facebook page as well... We’re pretty sure this is a classic example of how not to run a food establishment’s social media presence."

I Dreamed I Saw Old Socrates

I Dreamed I Saw Old Socrates | Darkness of His Dreams

I dreamed I saw old Socrates
Walking Athens after dark.
No people to harass, no questions to ask,
No great debates on which to embark.

His face it looked so serene,
As he contemplated truth.
Is this the man they put to death
For corruption of the youth?

The men in charge, to keep their jobs,
Don’t want us thinking for ourselves.
Its sheep they need, easier to lead,
Not the depth to which wisdom delves.

Question every single authority,
Be certain only of what you do not know.
These men of Athens knew right then
This gadfly had to go.

I dreamed I saw old Socrates
Teaching with his last breath.
I stood among his crowd of friends
As he bravely met his death.

I awoke in tears of anger
At the injustice that had been done.
But I could not define what “justice” was,
And I knew that old Socrates had won.

Links - 1st December 2016

REFUSED! - INTERPOL Rejects Najib's 'Red Notice' Request Against Sarawak Report - "Crushingly, Jurgen Stock added that member countries were further advised not to use Interpol’s channels in this matter and requested them to remove all data from their databases as well – it is a telling indication that the organisation is of the opinion that their processes, which are designed to catch dangerous criminals, had been abused by Malaysia... Fair Trials had taken up the case as an example of what the NGO regards is a worrying trend on the part of certain oppressive regimes to abuse INTERPOL in order to clamp down on legitimate dissenters."

DON'T PANIC - Keep calm and

Toronto professor Jordan Peterson takes on gender-neutral pronouns - "University of Toronto psychology professor Jordan Peterson had enough of what he saw as a campus culture where "social justice warrior, left-wing radical political activists" ran rampant. In September he released a video lecture series taking aim at political correctness... At a free speech rally mid-October, he was drowned out by a white noise machine. Pushing and shoving broke out in the crowd. He says the lock on his office door was glued shut. At the same time, the University of Toronto said it had received complaints of threats against trans people on campus. His employers have warned that, while they support his right to academic freedom and free speech, he could run afoul of the Ontario Human Rights code and his faculty responsibilities should he refuse to use alternative pronouns when requested. They also said they have received complaints from students and faculty that his comments are "unacceptable, emotionally disturbing and painful" and have urged him to stop repeating them... "I've studied authoritarianism for a very long time - for 40 years - and they're started by people's attempts to control the ideological and linguistic territory," he told the BBC. "There's no way I'm going to use words made up by people who are doing that - not a chance." Dr Peterson is concerned proposed federal human rights legislation "will elevate into hate speech" his refusal to use alternative pronouns... terms like "gender identity' and "gender expression" are too broad, are the "propositions of radical social constructionists," and are being used to bully opponents into submission. "There's only two alternatives to that," he said. "One is silent slavery with all the repression and resentment that that will generate, and the other is outright conflict. Free speech is not just another value. It's the foundation of Western civilization.""

U of T professor attacks political correctness, says he refuses to use genderless pronouns - "Peterson told the National Post that he decided to make the video and go public with his views after receiving a memo from university HR outlining new mandatory anti-racist and anti-bias training. “That disturbs me because if someone asked me to take anti-bias training, I think I am agreeing that I am sufficiently racist or biased to need training,” he said in an interview. Peterson also said he doesn’t believe there is sufficient research to show these kind of HR practices, which he said may constitute “psychological intervention,” are effective. He said he is concerned the university is consulting groups like the Black Liberation Collective on campus policy matters, noting he respects their right to exist and protest, but questioning their credentials to offer expert opinion... he fears Bill C-16 could lead to legal action against legitimate discussion and research on gender and sexuality, including research on the “biological origins of gender.”... Peterson suggests the “overrepresentation of social justice warrior-type activists” in government may have impacted the tabling of legislation, noting also “our current Premier (Kathleen Wynne) is lesbian in her sexual preference.” He goes on to claim the LGBTI community “has become extraordinarily good at organizing themselves and has a fairly pronounced and very, very sophisticated radical fringe.”"

University of Toronto SJWs Hate Speech Exposed: Cassandra Williams & Smugglypuff - "A video of Lauren Southern being assaulted by a Social Justice Warrior went viral a few days ago... This is part of a larger effort orchestrated by the vice-president of university affairs, Cassandra Williams. She is the first trans person elected to an executive position at the University of Toronto and rose to that position by militarizing the on-campus LGBTQ community. Earlier this year, Williams fabricated a controversy in a debate against her opponent, Andy Edem. When Edem accidentally referred to the former Shawn Williams by the wrong pronoun, Williams pointed it out to him – for which Edem immediately apologized... The seemingly sincere apology wasn’t enough for Williams and this was her/his/ze/its response later on social media... When one of Williams’ cronies stole somebody’s cell phone, she blocked that woman from chasing down the perpetrator too"

Turkey transgender activist's death highlights rise in hate crimes - "Emirhan Deniz Çelebi, the director of SPoD, a national LGBT organisation based in Istanbul, joined other LGBT associations in condemning what they believe is deliberate silence by the country’s mainstream media in the wake of the activist’s death... Kader’s murder comes less than two weeks after the beheading of a gay Syrian refugee whose body was found not far from where Kader was discovered... “Since the coup-attempt, a number of my transgender friends have called me and talked about how they were discriminated against because of their ID Cards and appearance”"

I was reported for gender misconduct for calling myself handsome in class - "The teacher sat next to me on a bench outside the classroom and told me that I made a comment in class that upset someone. Consequently, I had been reported to the Gender-Based Misconduct Office... “Even if I agree with you, I obviously couldn’t say anything…” I had the impression that she was too scared to challenge Columbia’s extreme politically correct culture... This experience taught me one thing more than any other: the human toll of “triggered” culture is a serious matter. I cannot help but feel for those who are deeply embedded in it, or rely on it for food and shelter. Furthermore, by reporting my innocuous statement, serious matters like sexual harassment and assault are trivialized and victims end up neglected. That is unacceptable... I told friends in the class about the experience and they were shocked I had been reported. Later that week, in Chinese class when my teacher was having us use a new sentence structure to talk about things that make us upset, my sentence was: “I get upset when I get reported to Gender Misconduct by my classmates (OK, I may have used a little bit of English to get the full phrase out). I probably shouldn’t have done that but it was just too damn funny not to."

Former Amnesty International gender head Gita Sahgal accuses it of supporting terror groups - "It (Amnesty) gives space to Hamas supporters rather than secular and human rights voices from Palestine”

Don’t laugh: I have a serious reason for raising my cats gender-neutral - "The cats’ lives wouldn’t change, I reasoned, and it would help me learn to use plural pronouns for my friends, neighbors and colleagues who individually go by they, their and them. Even though using they, them and their as singular pronouns grates on many people because it’s grammatically incorrect, it seems to be the most popular solution to the question of how to identify people without requiring them to conform to the gender binary of female and male. It also just feels right to refer to people as they wish to be referred to... friends would ask me: How is your cat? “They’re better” or “The same. The vets don’t know what’s wrong with them,” I’d say. “Wait a minute—are they both sick?” people would reply, confused."
Comment: "This takes the meaning of crazy cat lady to whole new heights...."

Why women’s education doesn’t always improve equality - "Educated women in sexist nations are less likely to get married—and in a sad Catch-22, consequently are less likely to have children who can change their country’s attitudes"

Man stabbed with Legend of Zelda Master Sword in serious condition - "The ex-husband was taken to hospital following the altercation, but not before he, in true Zelda fashion, smashed a pot (a flower pot, over the head of Thompson)."

Gender equality? TV censors blur out male nipples in footage of traditional Javanese wedding - "Just when we thought it couldn’t get anymore ridiculous than when TV censors blurred out parts of Puteri Indonesia 2016 pageant contestants wearing the traditional Indonesian kebaya, it appears that men’s body parts are equally yucky and must be censored too."

Indonesian netizens shocked by "Doraemon" censorship on TV - "The following tweet from Twitter user Andika Tri Saputra features a screenshot of “Doraemon” playing on local channel RCTI in which the character Shizuka, who is a 9-year-old girl, has the bottom half of her swimsuit blurred out."

Tajuddin: Dr M, Jews working together, have same agenda - "Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad shares a common agenda with certain Jewish-controlled media, claims Umno supreme council member Datuk Seri Tajuddin Abdul Rahman"

Q'iswa Chaka - Wikipedia - "Q'iswa Chaka (Quechua q'iswa a rope of twisted dried maguey or ichhu, chaka bridge, "rope bridge", also spelled Keshwa Chaca, Keswachaka, Q'eshwachaka, Qeswachaka, Q'eswachaca, Q'eswachaka, Queshuachaca, Queswachaka), consisting of ropes made of grass and spanning the Apurimac River near Huinchiri, in Quehue District, Canas Province, Peru, is the last remaining Inca rope bridge"

PlayFlash 32bit :: Add-ons for Firefox - "Flash player plugin - unofficial xpi repack for 32bit browsers.
Use when official plugin installer is not suitable."
Addendum: Alternative - Flash Player plugin XPI v28.0.0.137

Men Who Do More Housework Have Less Sex - "married couples in which men take on a greater share of the dishes, laundry and other traditionally female chores had sex less often than average, which in this study was about five times a month. Yet couples in which men confined themselves largely to traditionally male chores such as yard work enjoyed sex more frequently than average. Taken to the extreme, men who performed all the traditionally female chores would have had sex 1.6 times less often than men who did none of them. The study authors, from the Juan March Institute in Madrid and the University of Washington, arrived at the correlation by crunching data from the National Survey of Families and Households (NFSH), which gathered survey information from 4,500 U.S. married couples. The researchers ruled out any kind of coercion on the part of the “manly” chore-performing husbands by looking at data from the same survey on sexual satisfaction: they found that women from households with more traditional divisions of labor felt no less happy with their sex lives than women in more gender-neutral ones"

Women believe men should take out bins and mow lawns - Telegraph - "The list of 'his 'n hers' chores emerged following a study of 5,000 adults into which sex is responsible for everyday jobs around the house. Women also ruled out getting things out of the loft, removing sticky lids from jars and unblocking the lavatory. Meanwhile men believe women's jobs include remembering birthdays and anniversaries, organising the social calendar and replacing the toilet roll when it runs out. A spokesman for www.TheBabyWebsite.com, which carried out the survey, said: "There is a very clear divide between the chores men and women will do, but at least it shows that both sexes are responsible for the running of the household. "There seems to be a general trend that women are responsible for the day to day chores, such as keeping the house clean and tidy. "But men make sure things are fixed and in good working order. Neither sex is afraid of getting their hands dirty. "We're sure that in some households there will be a point where a man is forced to do a pink job, and a woman finds herself carrying out the odd blue job"

Column: Why millennial women don't want to call themselves feminists - "could it be that some women shun Clinton because of competitiveness? This phenomenon, in which women simultaneously hold other women to higher standards, and then penalize them for reaching those standards, often plagues highly successful women. We see this kind of thing all the time in academia, where female professors routinely get lower teaching ratings than their male colleagues, particularly from female students. But my reading of this phenomenon is more forgiving of millennials. I think their distrust actually represents an indictment of modern day feminism...
1. The current generation has rarely experienced institutionally and legally sanctioned sexism.
2. The term “feminism” has been hijacked by a minority of vocal extremists who have redefined it as “gender feminism,” claiming that gender is a patriarchal social construct created in order to oppress women.
3. “Feminist” has come to mean “careerist” — competing with men in the workplace on men’s terms.
This implies that stay-at-home mothers cannot be feminists and that women must put career ahead of family in order to compete. This phenomenon can be traced to a shameful chapter in second-wave feminism. Shulamith Firestone declared “Pregnancy is barbaric.” Ellen Willis admitted that “I saw having children as the great trap that completely took away your freedom.” Gloria Steinem described her mother as spiritually broken by giving up her career as a journalist to raise her children... today’s two-income family earns 75 percent more money than its single-income counterpart of a generation ago, but actually has less discretionary income once their fixed monthly bills are paid. This is because higher family incomes triggered a ferocious bidding war for housing and education among the middle class"

"Home" by Warsan Shire - "no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well"
economic migrants
do not exist

I accidentally slept with a Donald Trump supporter - "He said, “Hope you’re still not upset over politics LOL.” I explained that it’s hard for me to remain attracted to someone whose views are so different from mine, and who believes in bigotry and xenophobia—which sucked, because the sex was amazing. Then he said, “Not accepting other people’s beliefs is the definition of bigotry.” So apparently it was my fault"

'CU in the NT' is quite possibly the wildest tourism slogan ever - "There's something in the water in Australia's Northern Territory a.k.a. the NT. f you've ever had the pleasure of reading the always-entertaining NT News, or checked out the "fun" tourist activities on offer, you've probably figured out that Territorians have more of a rough (and sweary) vibe than other Australians."

Bryan Caplan on "Does parenting matter?"

Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS144 - Bryan Caplan on "Does parenting matter?"

"If you go and take a look at the 1960s, which is the tail end of the baby boom, actually moms on average spent less time taking care of their kids than they do today, even though they had far more kids, even though they were less likely to have jobs outside the home and even though dads helped a lot less. Still back in those days moms were doing less...

Out of the people who do adopt, there is a lot of reason to think that in fact, there is evidence that if the adopted children is having trouble, the adopting parents put in extra for them or they compensate for whatever problems the adopted child might have. I'd say that there's very good evidence that adopted kids are treated very similarly to biological children. There's been stuff done on these things like, do adopted kids get a normal share in inheritance, and they do...

[The effects of parenting are] generally short run effects. To use a term that comes up a lot in this research, there’s “fade out” -- so while you can change your kid in the short run, over the long run they tend to go back to where they would've been if they've been raised by a very different family...

Here's the important thing to realize about all of these estimates of the effect of nature, the effect of nurture -- is that they include all effects, direct or indirect, as long as they actually are caused by being raised by one family or having certain genes. So for example if you go and find there is a genetic effect on income, this could mean that there's actually a gene for money making, but it could also mean that there's a gene for good looks and that good looks are rewarded in the market...

There's one very interesting study of church attendance that finds that by the time that you were in your mid-thirties there's no longer any effect of the family that raised you on how much you go to church...

There are a number of different measures of health that researchers looked at using these adoption or twin methods. The most objective one, of course, is how long you live, your lifespan. In that one a lot of our best evidence comes from Scandinavia because they've been keeping records on everybody for over a century. And the punch line there is it's very hard to see an effect of upbringing on how long you live...

How much your parents affect your obesity -- and that's one of the very strongest results, looks like parents do not change your adult weight. Being raised by a family of health nuts is not going to make you thinner. If your biological relatives are overweight, then you are likely to be overweight, and the fact that you are raised by a family that valued keeping very thin, that's not going to change your weight...

Why is it that the long run effect will be smaller than the short run effect? You might think the short run effects will all tend to add up into one big long run effect, but the main thing to remember is that as people get older, they gain more and more control over their own lives, and if something just doesn't feel right for them, something you've been sort of pushing on them that just doesn't resonate with them, then the older they get, the greater their opportunity is to do what they want rather than what you raised them to do...

One of the few things that actually you can get very good permanent results on, is if kids have sleeping problems. Because there is the Ferber method where you just let kids cry it out for a little while and then you don't immediately comfort them. So as you might guess, if kids immediately get attention whenever they cry, they cry a lot and they're bad sleepers. Experiments were done where some kids, you just do whatever you want, some kids get the Ferber method where they at least let them cry for five minutes before you go to them, other kids just let them cry it out, it doesn't matter how long it takes. This works, but not only does it work, once you get a kid on the right track of sleeping they generally don't stop sleeping again. And once they start sleeping then they aren't awake to go and want to get attention anymore. So that's one where as long as you do it for a good six months, even kids with pretty bad sleep problems can be fixed with this problem, fixed from parents’ point of view anyway...

Identical twins who were raised in different homes were more similar in their adult happiness than identical twins that were raised in the same home... there is a story that people told – it’s just a story but, my first two sons are identical twins, so it does resonate with me a bit. This story just says, that when they were raised together they naturally tried to differentiate themselves in an artificial way just to get their own niche: I'm the hard working twin, I'm the lazy twin. I'm the cool twin, stuff like that...

Tax records for this giant sample of twins. So you know exactly how much legal income they're reporting for many decades, and what he found on income was that when you're in your 20s, there we still do see this effect of upbringing on your income, but by the time you're in your 30s it goes away...

The resemblance between parent and child for divorce is highly genetic, maybe entirely genetic. You can actually see that the similarity of identical twins for whether or not they're divorced is much higher than fraternal twins, which is a smoking gun of a large genetic effect. And really if you go and read a bit about the effect of personality in general on divorce, it's nothing too surprising. People who are disagreeable and have low conscientiousness and who have bad attitudes, have high chances of getting divorced...

I am as your readers probably don't know, a long time libertarian, but I will say almost every book of libertarian political philosophy embarrasses me"